Friendship Quotes

Below is the list of my favorite friendship quotes:

1. Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born. --Anaïs Nin

2. Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: "What! You, too? Thought I was the only one." --C.S. Lewis

3. The most beautiful discovery true friends make is that they can grow separately without growing apart. --Elizabeth Foley

4. If you live to be a hundred, I want to live to be a hundred minus one day, so I never have to live without you. --Winnie the Pooh

5. Perhaps the most delightful friendships are those in which there is much agreement, much disputation, and yet more personal liking. --George Eliot

6. "Stay" is a charming word in a friend's vocabulary. --Louisa May Alcott

7. It's the friends you can call up at 4 a.m. that matter. --Marlene Dietrich

8. When a friend is in trouble, don't annoy him by asking if there is anything you can do. Think up something appropriate and do it. --Edgar Watson Howe

9. Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art... It has no survival value; rather is one of those things that give value to survival. -- C. S. Lewis

10. The most I can do for my friend is simply to be his friend. I have no wealth to bestow on him. If he knows that I am happy in loving him, he will want no other reward. Is not friendship divine in this? -- Henry David Thoreau

11. Lots of people want to ride with you in the limo, but what you want is someone who will take the bus with you when the limo breaks down. --Oprah Winfrey

12. Depth of friendship does not depend on length of acquaintance. --Rabindranath Tagore

13. We cannot tell the precise moment when friendship is formed. As in filling a vessel drop by drop, there is at last a drop which makes it run over; so in a series of kindnesses there is at last one which makes the heart run over. --Samuel Johnson

14. Oh, the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person; having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but to pour them all out, just as they are, chaff and grain together, knowing that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then, with a breath of kindness, blow the rest away. --George Eliot

15. When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving much advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a gentle and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares. --Henri Nouwen

Review : The Lives of Others

Once in your life time , you get a chance to stumbled upon a movie that has the ability to change the way you perceive the complexities of human emotions. Ideologies are not made to be changed in a day or two, but what if your beliefs about the entire system that you are part of get shattered by an innocent and pure soul? That's what from my perspective "The Lives of Others" is all about. Its about the transmogrification of ruthless, tough East German secret service Captain into a humane individual.

The lives of others is an extraordinary cinema, at one level it is a fast past docudrama, at another it is a political thriller with just apt screenplay. But above all its a movie about triumph of honesty and innocence over lust, ambition and blind faith in what can be unjust. Its a simple fictional story that fold beautifully through the intense emotional dilemma for right and wrong.



Set in the backdrop of communist ruled East Germany, in early 80's, the film begins with Gerd Wiesler, a Stasi ( East German Secret Service) teaching his students using a tape of the interrogation to show his class how, by making prisoners awake for a period of days, can break them and get them to confess. Wiesler, a loner, is a firm believer of his ideology, and thinks that what he is doing is right. He believes so deeply in the system, that he no longer questions it at all.

Wiesler is assigned to monitor Georg Dreyman by his old friend who desperately wants to impress the minister Humpf for professional growth. Humpf, wants to have physical relationship with Christa-Maria, a famous and gifted actress and Georg's girlfriend. He must eliminate the writer from his way to fulfill is lewd desires.

Georg is one of the few "intellectuals" who vocally supports the government in spite of his close friendships with artists who are considered dangerously outspoken. Georg wired house is monitored by Wiesler for any anti government activity. uring the course of time Wiesler get to know the true intentions of minister to implicate George and how pure, innocent and good George is. Caught between the lust of power and the honesty and innocence of Georg, What Wiesler does is the heart of the movie.

I don't want to disclose any further as I want people to go through the discomforting unpredictability of the sequence of events that make it as cinema at its best.

Its the silence and facial expressions of actor Friedrich Hans Ulrich Mühe, who plays the captain Wiesler that must be applauded together with the moral dilemma of the Christa-Maria played by Martina Gedeck.

But the real hero of the film is debutant writer-director Florian von Donnersmarck, who crafted such a thought proving and awe inspiring master piece.

The discomfort and tragedy of the "Lives of others" is going to haunt you for few hours after watching it. But, as I said this 2007 Oscar Winning movie is worth a try, go for it.

Spend Money To Get Happy

Yes, Its true spending as little as $5 can make you happy, but you have to spend money on others ( e.g gift, charity) and not on yourself. So buy for someone and get happiness in return. Its an outcome of the research conducted by HBS professor Michael I. Norton and colleagues Elizabeth W. Dunn and Lara B. Aknin. The research also gives answers to how and why spending on others gives a sense of happiness.

The researchers confirmed the joys of giving in three separate ways. First, by surveying a national sample of more than 600 Americans, they found that spending more on gifts and charity correlated with greater happiness, whereas spending more money on oneself did not.

Second, by tracking 16 workers before and after they received profit-sharing bonuses, the researchers found that that the workers who gave more of the money to others ended up happier than the ones who spent more of it on themselves. In fact, how the bonus was spent was a better predictor of happiness than the size of the bonus.

The final bit of evidence came from an experiment in which 46 students were given either $5 or $20 to spend by the end of the day. The ones who were instructed to spend the money on others — they bought toys for siblings, treated friends to meals and made donations to the homeless — were happier at the end of the day than the ones who were instructed to spend the money on themselves.

“These experimental results,” the researchers conclude, “provide direct support for our causal argument that spending money on others promotes happiness more than spending money on oneself.”

Its strange but but do we need a scientific research to make ourself believe in the joy of giving? Being an Indian and a Hindu, its been instilled in our religion/way of living that giving gives divine joy and blessings from God.

CO2, kick the habit

Today when I checked my mails, a mail from my HR with subject "Special screening on World Environment Day..." caught my attention. It says that today is World Environment Day and to mark this day, cafeterias across my organization will screen the documentary "An Inconvenient Truth by Al Gore"

Then, In our monthly group meeting, Bhaskar Paul ( My cubicle mate ) made a point to go green at individual/organization level so that we can do something for the betterment of our environment. So, now very much aware of the fact that today is the World Environment Day, I also decided to write something on it.

CO2 kick the habit, is the theme for this years World Environment Day (June 5, 2008). The theme focuses on reduction of carbon footprint by individuals/organizations/governments. Carbon footprint is a of the amount of carbon dioxide produced by a person, organization or state in a given time.

One can calculate ones footprint at http://www.carbonfootprint.com/calculator.aspx. On the net one can find thousands of article on reducing carbon footprint size. Almost all ask you to go green by:

• car pooling
• using CFL aka Compact Fluorescent Lamp
• buying energy efficient and environment friendly appliances.
• planting tress
• using renewable source of energy
• doing recycling
• and many more.....

I am personally not against all these good measures to go green, but I feel still India has not done that much harm to environment compared to more civilized western countries have. Still our total carbon credit may be high but per person carbon credit is far lesser than advance nation, as more than half the percent of Indians still live in villages where there is almost nil carbon footprint per person.

India is a developing country, and we need solid infrastructure to become a developed nation by 2020, for this we need a lot of energy that translate into high carbon emission. West has already contributed more than there share of carbon credit in their race for becoming superpower, now, its our time and we have to be at par with west in development and growth but, minimizing the mistakes that our friends have already done. Its not the time to blame India and China for the deeds that have been already done by the countries that are pointing fingers on us.

We need to be sensible and intelligent enough to find ways to save our planet together.

My Big Fat Greek Wedding

Today, I was thinking which movie I have watched more then three times. In fact there are lot of movies that deserve my coveted crown of "more than one time watched movie", but there should be a special mention to "My Big Fat Greek Wedding", a 2002 sleeper hit, Oscar nominated romantic comedy drama, in my treasured list.

I, for the first time realized, after watching it, that there are communities that share almost similar kind of emotions towards our families and loved ones like we Indian do. For more detail you can visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Big_Fat_Greek_Wedding.

The film is intellectually witty, romantic and full of family moments. Its a great watch for weekends.

Why Do We Hurt Those We Love Most?

Why do we hurt those we love most, some of you might not agree with me, but its true to some extent.

As a child, when you want something, you first request your parents to give you the object you desire of. If your parents do not accept your request, you either start crying or stop talking and eating or do anything that hurt your loved one.

As an infant you get lots of attention and positive energy, care from your parents and all this train your brain about your relationship expectation form your loved one, as you grow, your parents start decreasing the levels of emotional energy shots for you as they need to focus their energy on newer things. So, when you don't get what you expect you start bombarding negative emotion toward your loved one so that when they feel hurt, they can come back to you feeling guilty and will again increase the amount of emotional energy they give to you.

May sound cumbersome ( as I am not that much of a good writer) but all I can say is that nothing changes when you grow up in your life. When you come out of closet of your parents, you again bombarded by the emotional energies of friends and the love of your life, you again feel like new born to all these complex relationships, you thrive on the energies of all those new found loved ones.

Again, Time comes when you have grown up and the amount of energy from your loved one gets lower, and you start emitting negative energy to hurt the loved one so that their sense of guilt will get you what you need.

So thats why we all always hurt we love the most!

Lonely in the city

Today, My brother is finally relocating to Bangalore, after spending more than a decade in New Delhi. One of the main reason for me to be in New Delhi besides its closeness to Varanasi (my home town) is that I was having my big bro living at the other end of National Capital Region.

Now here, I am lonely single, not ready to mingle living in outskirts of Delhi.

I really find it strange that the reason for which I was in Delhi is not going to be there at all and, I'll have no excuse to say that why the heck I am not able to switch my job.

Now, I need to find a solid reason for not switching my job since I have joined IT industry, also for working for peanuts. Its been four years in a IT firm which was one of my dream company in my college days, its been four years of making and loosing friends, its been four years of living a life in a metro, full of unspoken dreams and pain and pursuit of happiness, and still I want more of it, no change and no gains.

but, hope still floats!