Turned into Waste

Perseverance, calmness, luck….
All these terminologies are very common when we are working towards a goal. Yes, success and failures are two sides of the same coin and flipping the coin may yield any result. But the thought of the probability of losing should not in any way stop us from working towards our goal.
Yes, failures suck - big time. But they are also learning and stepping stones for something we may work towards, in the future.
One thing sucks though. Imagine you worked towards something for a very long time and finally, after a rigorous walk, you reach the goal only to find out after a while that the goal is a void. I mean, yes, you have achieved what you wanted to but it isn't what you had expected. It has a void and somewhere looks hollow and all of a sudden, all that time you invested on reaching your destination seems to be a waste.
I had faced a similar situation before and, well, resulted in the birth of the song "turned into waste".
Well, we all face bad times in our life and at every bad turn we come across, we just wish to revert it because we are humans and we mostly want to avoid any unconventionality coming our way. Something similar happened.
I worked towards something and I achieved what I wanted to. But that wasn’t the end. It was pretty dark (in terms of scenario) when I realized that what I had worked towards was a hollow and all that I had been looking forward to had just been turned into waste. I had wasted my yesterday, tomorrow wouldn’t be the same and this was a shame to be cried over. Well, the darker side took over me and I started penning down all that I had in mind and well, after 30 minutes, I had 4 verses, a chorus and a bridge lying before me on a piece of paper.
A lyric snippet is as follows:
" today will not be our's,
All of us are at fault,
This step has turned into waste,
Turned into waste"

Well, this wasn’t a song I wanted to remember because it was a personal dark song and reading it drove me back to the moment. But the very next day, I was sitting on the roof and going through the lyrics and humming a tune while reading the words. The melody sounded good and so, I just recorded the verse tune, chorus tune, bridge tune snippets before they would go out of my mind and rushed back to my room and recorded the entire song in one take on my phone. Then I sat back and listened to it over my earphone. Trust me when I tell you, it was one of the best melodies I had come up with so far. The tune, the vibe, the lyrics - everything was just amazing and I simply loved the song - my dark personal favorite.
When I started working on my next project - Cursed Valentine II, this song was a sure fit into the project. The problem began when I had to record it. While going to the studio, I used to listen to this song on the way. Well, that’s how I do it. Every song that I need to record has a voice note on my cell and on my way to the studio, I listen to that voice note over and over again to get into that vibe in which the song was written. The process for recording turned into waste wasn’t any different. I was listening to the song until I reached the studio. I thought that I had captured the vibe and was ready to nail it.
I went into the booth, recorded the entire vocal and came out and sat back to listen to it. I listened and to be very honest, I was shocked and disappointed!!! I thought I had captured the vibe but it wasn’t the vibe that the song was written in. I listened to the voice note and the voice note's vibe still outran the recording. I tried once more but failed. I took a break for a couple of days and went back to record but ended up with the same result. However hard I tried, I was unable to capture that vibe.
Now it got frustrating. Never did I have any problem recording a track to this extent. The whole project was dependant on it. This was the only song left to be recorded and I just couldn’t get the result I wanted.
Finally I gave up. No, I didn’t take it out of the project. This song wasn’t a song to be ignored or to let go of. So, as a last resort, I filtered the voice note that I had in my cell and had to make that work and sound as close as possible to a studio recording. It was difficult but I didn’t want the efforts put into it go into waste and so, this song had to reach its destination.
And so, after making a few adjustments, though this song wasn't sounding as good as the others but it wasn't sounding bad and it was considered done.
Finally, "turned into waste" was completed.

Ciao…

slaves of religion

What is religion?
According to the World Wide Web, it is a cultural system of behaviours and practices, world views etc etc etc….but that’s not how we treat religion as. If I was to define religion, I would define it as the shackle of a prison which binds us to that particular prison and separates us from our prison inmates who are tied to other shackles either in the same prison or of a different prison.
Clarifying my definition, a prison is a religion and different shackles within a prison are the different castes, tribes and so, different prison means different religions.
Yes, it’s a bit extreme to define a religion – the thing which gives us identity as a prison. But that wouldn’t have been the case had it just been an identity.
We humans are mostly born equal – with a pair of legs, hands, eyes, a nose….but once we are born, the first identity card that is issued to our name isn’t our birth certificate. It is our religion. So far, so good. The problem arises when there are objections raised when we want to attend a festival or a celebration of a person belonging to another religion. Why should there be an objection??
I will be honest.
I have people in my circle belonging to almost all the religions and some of the people happen to be my very good friends. Does them belonging to a different religion stop me from attending any function I am invited to by them???
Absolutely not. I enjoy all the diversities and have a great fun learning different cultures. Well, my case could be a bit different because I belong to a state which doesn’t have the religion I follow as the base religion. Naturally, I grew up in an environment learning to mix with people belonging to different diversities. Lucky for me, I had my peer support and I was never questioned whenever I wanted to attend a celebration which wasn’t belonging to my “religion”. Yes, I am lucky that way but it pains me to see that there are some people who fear attending a celebration which is different from theirs. The common excuses are : “ kuch aur khila diya toh??” – translation – “what if they serve something inappropriate??” …….
Yes, people are naïve. But this isn’t being naïve. This is being stupid and ridiculous.
Now I will point something out which I personally dislike the most and would term the people who act this way as sadists to the penultimate level -
This world is filled with miscreants. There are tragedies which are caused by humans and cost a lot of human lives.
I am not lying about this. A tragedy struck one day and a few days later, a guy walked up to a friend of mine and said, “ye kya kiya tumhare logo ne??? kitni jaane gayi hai!!” – translation –“what have your people done???So many lives have been lost!!”.
I was dumbstruck – YOUR PEOPLE!!!!
Seriously!!!!
It sounded like my friend was the leader who commanded the assassination.
But that day, I heard the best reply which shut the guy up instantly…
My friend calmly replied, “mere logo ki jaan bhi gayi hai, iske bare mein apne kuch pucha nhi?”-translation-“my people have died too, why didn’t you ask about that?”.
Life is unpredictable. Judging a person based on a religion which some miscreant may belong to is the utmost shameful and disgraceful thing anyone could do.
Someone else's actions cannot possibly define me in any sensible way...
I thought of penning down why in today’s world, we are slaves of religion. We are separated from the true meaning of friendship and love and affection because of this barrier.
Religion isn’t a bad thing. It gives us an identity and a direction to follow but when it separates us from people, it doesn’t server the purpose of being.

Ciao…..