To all the days that are gone... To all the joys...

I dedicate this post to all those moments of joy and bliss that have gone by in my life. My moods are a million, my thoughts a zillion, but my joys are memorable. Destiny is what people can hide behind to shield themselves from the uncertainties and randomness of life. A spirit to take life in their stride is a thing that does not become of everyone. Old joys turn from memorable to painful when not taken in the right spirit. After all the term old joys means that there is no joy anymore. Those moments of pure joy, when the mind is at its most peaceful, when you want to inhale life, and well they go by in a flash! The memories however remain to haunt you forever. A picture, a place, you do not want to be reminded of any of those moments, as it brings forth the point that you don't have them anymore, and the even more pricking fact that you are probably not doing a lot to have such moments anymore.
Life is all about choices, decisions, pick a way, take a call, go for what you want. Well, ironically man is a dependent being. Things change from going for what you want, to going for what we want. Its this part that most people cannot master. Who is the 'we', who all do we include in this 'we'. Too may directions, too many to please, you drift, you float, you let the tide take you, let it decide your way. Now and then you realize hey I can steer myself in any direction I want. Well, now who wants that kind of power. Then you will have to reason, weigh pros and cons, and yet again you wonder, may be there is a that slight hope and possibility that the tide knows where to you should be, and may be, just may be it will turn out to be all you wanted it to be.
Choices were made, supposedly life affecting choices. Well if only you knew you were making a life affecting choice. As many a great person has said 'Life can be solved looking backwards'. From those lazy, hazy, crazy days, to the day when happiness is the one thing that eludes you. To all the days that are gone... To all the joys...

Gone with the wind...

Rarely does a movie or a book gets you thinking about life itself. This was one book that had my head spinning and made me scared and insecure about everything. It had so many aspects woven intricately into it that it just amazes me! Makes me wonder what the writer had in her mind, was it actually her aim to incorporate intense aspects into her book, or was it a lucky coincidence that it turned out to be like that. Reading a book always makes me think about the writer, wonder what made them write that, does it reflect any or all parts of their personality and thought. Perception is what makes a book appeal to a certain person, although state of mind also plays an important role. Would someone like something the same if they were not in their paticular position in life, would it be less or more appealing to them if they were in a different or contrasting position in life. Why is this particular book so appealing! It amazes me how a parallel intense story runs through each page and character of the book when the surface is telling a simple love and war story. It is always the women who run life, who run emotions, even though its men who win wars and who rule the world. The two main pillars in the book, the two women, one who is pure compassion and blindly affectionate; and the other with an undying spirit and zest for life, who can support the world on her shoulders, as she cannot live without a life that she imagined, and who will get that life no matter what.

So what runs this world, is it compassion and purity, or is it spirit and a never say die attitude. 'Spirit for life' fights and wins bread and butter, leaving hope for a tomorrow, giving support and a shoulder to lean on for 'compassion and affection'; well then does such an undying spirit is what rules the world!? No... For when compassion dies, there is a death of the soul, the very soul that keeps the world alive. Compassion is what glues humanity together, and by potraying compassion as a weak and fragile character, the book truly reflects the world and humanity, and how there always was and always will be a dearth of completely selfless and compassinate people in the world, who give out total undying affection to everybody, and in the end touch every person's soul they come across, even the ones that never realized they had a soul.
So does this mean I do not comply with the leading character of the book! Well no, because everything in this world is interdependent. What you realize is compassion is a weak person, and the undying spirit of life is what carries it along, giving it a supporting shoulder ( many a times unwillingly), feeding life into it and quite unknowingly fulfilling the purpose of compassion in life. If compassion glues the humanity together, its the spirit of life that keeps the world alive. And if there is one person who can survive even the death of compassion, it is this spirit, and thats what makes the world tick each day, thats what makes the world look forward to another day, thats what tells the world that there is a tomorrow, and tomorrow may be a better day.

Whats with the patriotism!!

So I have never been the patriotic person as such. I mean I didnt jump up to defend India, or say India is the best country in the world; neither did I say whatever the fact is I love my country and all the patriotic banter. I have always maintained India has a million flaws and there have been a zillion times when I said 'why was I born here!'. However, what I have come to realize is patriotism is merely an attachment to the land you were born in and grew up in. Yes, there are not a lot of positive things I can come up with if I have to describe India except probably jumping on the defensive about all the negative things there. However, what is shocking is the recent realization that everytime something negative comes up about India, there is something that triggers this alarm in my mind, all my senses are alert, and if the debate continues and there is some more thrashing, this vein in my forehead will be throbbing, and if the debate heats up and nobody is agreeing with me that not everything in India is neagtive, the vein right about pops, and there is smoke coming out of my ears, and this overwhelming feeling that I want to reach out and punch those people, a good solid hard punch would do! Hehe this is something new! Me jumping and defending my country! Never knew there was this sleeping patriot inside me!



Well, it's not that I am trying to be one of those closed minded people who just say mera bharat mahan for everything. It's probably because I was in India at a very good time; the years I was born and brought up in Bangalore were great times of change and progress, and I got to grow up benefitting from all that. We have a whole generation behind us who have a ton of regrets for being born in India, who left the country due to prevailing unemployment, poverty and every negative thing imaginable. Well it's not that these things have vanished from the country, there is still a great deal of poverty; but there are jobs today! There are opportunities in the country that never existed for our previous generations. Those generations which left the country for greener pastures carried with them a relentless sense of disappoinment and hatred for the corrupt governments and non existing opportunities. However, the India I grew up in was quite different. There was a gradual and progressing change taking over India(atleast urban India) through my school days, and by the time I graduated college, all the gates were wide open, there was a world of opportunities and jobs and progress. There were malls, rising sky lines, world class brands competing against eachother to get a share of the growing and curious Indian market. I graduated college with a job in my hand, went straight from student to a high earning job, and I saw only growth and growth all around me. It overwhelms me when I think about the Bangalore I grew up in my childhood days, and the Bangalore now. Its an unimaginable change, and its a change I enjoyed and I know that today I would love to go back and live my life in Bangalore because of this change and progress. I have lived the change and enjoyed every benefit of this progress and I know despite the many many downsides and negative impacts due to these changes, I am so thankful that I do not regret being born and being identified with India. I see many of our previous generations carrying a load of hatred and regret for the country and actually do not want to be identified with India. I feel very grateful that I do not carry any hatred for my country and it makes me happy that I have an option of going back to India to live my life because I know there is good life there today!

The Big Bad World!!

So you want to do an MBA, then you must be like really ambitious. Which field are you focussing on? marketing, finance? or may be consulting? strategy? The most important thing to do is network with people, talk to people, thats how you get into the job market, you must make contacts! ugggh Network network network! If I had a big stone everytime somebody said that word!

So people have everything figured out, suddenly the world looks like a matrix world, everybody knows what they want what they should do to get there, and are working their hardest to get there! man! world is perfect or what! And people just snap into their MBA skin within a second... you see there is the normal skin and then there is the MBA skin... now the normal skin relaxes while the MBA skin screams bloody networking murder! The MBA skin is a multifaceted one, it jumps into team work mode, then getting the class participation mark mode, better shoot some ideas or they will think i am not productive mode, i have to have to be in some of the student clubs mode, and ofcourse we all know the mother of all modes, the networking mode! Strategize, know where you are going, focus, focus, focus! Now one MBA skin is something, room of 40 to 50 MBA skins, all at their peak, lighting up the room with ambition, skills, motivation and what not; then you feel one with captain jack sparrow at world's end!

It was born, it studied, did a degree, worked for sometime, but still something was missing, it analyzed, climbed the hill, went to the horizon, thats when life's goal unfolded itself, BOOM! MBA, networking, networking, oh yeah networking.....

why oh why!

Everything around is still, peaceful? no not possible, still never actually corresponds to peaceful. If it was, I would have used a fancier adjective. I want to speak out, scream out, pour it all out. Isn't that what it was supposed to be like!? I want to, I so want to, but I hold back. It takes a lot of effort, a lot of persuasion, but that is how its supposed to be. Its funny, its all very ironic, sometimes I feel what goes around comes around, and that is why its all happening. Again an irony, since when did I believe in the cliches of the world! Stillness around, screaming inside, cry for help, but is help really needed!? Traces of the once strong mind lingers around for a minute, then taken over by waves of new found agony. Is it just an illusion!!? Am I hallucinating, because its nothing, after all everything is still there, nothing is lost. Why is it so still then, why is there a lump, why cant I scream everything out, why should I hold it all in, why do I say it only to myself. It hurts, more so because of unknown pain, unforeseen agony. I stop thinking about it, think of something else, but it seems to have seeped in through every vein, every artery, every cell in the body, there seems to be no escaping it. Again, its not lost yet, far from it! But I can talk only to myself, why cant I let it out, may be there will be peace again, may be everything would not be so unmercifully still around me....

beware!

Well here I go again wondering what is life after all. I mean is there a pattern to everything that happens in life!? Religions say when you have a bad time its god's way of testing you, and when you have a good time its god's way of rewarding you. They say everything happens for a reason. Say a cheat leads a long healthy life and a supposed good person dies early, people have ways of explaining that too, and when you cant really figure it out, they just say who are we to question god's will, and we are just humans, how can we understand god's mind, and so on. If you look around, there are so many many humans, countless. There are people dying every minute. In any given natural disaster or bomb blast etc, there are tens of thousands of people washed out in a matter of seconds or minutes! Thousands who wont even be accounted for, and thousands who nobody really realizes to be gone. Does every single of these deaths have a meaning and purpose to it!? Then there are the slums and street people, people die, people just run off, beggars who dont have a history or a future, kids being born every minute, unwanted, not cared for, and most of them eventually die the same way, unlike movies where they find something extraordinary. Then there are war torn and troubled countries, afghanistan, iraq, african nations etc, people starve to death, epidemics wiping out thousands and lakhs, war wiping out entire family/village/town/city, people never found, bodies never recovered, do all these deaths have a purpose, does every human life individually have a purpose, a destination!? Hard to believe! Its more like swatting flies or stamping ants. Its just that the fly doesnt realize this, it goes on living life the way it knows, and humans go on living life thinking their every action is accounted for by someone, and their every deed is going to fetch them something at the end, little do they know that someone might just use a bug(human) balm, or stamp them any second!

Humour, philosophy, whatever :)

• I would not know whatThe spirit of a philosopher might wish more to beThan a good dancer.

• It is nobler to declare oneself wrongThan to insist on being right - especially when one is right.

• In heaven, all the interesting people are missing.

• Is man one of God's blunders?Or is God one of man's blunders?

• Love is blind; friendship closes its eyes

• The true man wants two things: danger and play.For that reason he wants woman,As the most dangerous plaything.

• There cannot be a God Because if there were one,I could not believe that I was not He.

• Two great narcotics: alcohol and Christianity.

• We love life, Not because we are used to livingBut because we are used to loving.

• The happiest moment of the happy manIs that of his falling asleep,Just as the unhappiest moment of the unhappy manIs that of his waking.

• We cannot put off living until we are ready...Life is fired at us point-blank.

• I don't know why we are here,But I'm pretty sure that it is notIn order to enjoy ourselves.

• There is no greater distress to be feltThan that of one human being.For if someone feels himself lost,That is the ultimate distress.

• The real question of life after death isn't whether or not it exists,But even if it does, what problems this really solves.

• There is no statement so absurd that no philosopher will make it.

• My advice to you is to get married:Iif you find a good wife you'll be happy;If not, you'll become a philosopher.

• It is the heart which perceivesGod and not the reason.That is what faith is:God perceived by the heart, not the reason.

• I have the true feeling of myselfOnly when I am unbearably unhappy.

• For what is man without desires,Without free will,And without the power of choiceBut a stop in an organ pipe?

• We are all mortal until the first kissAnd the second glass of wine.

• Life can only be understood backwards;But it must be lived forwards.

• There is merely bad luck in not being loved;there is misfortune in not loving.

• It was previously a questionOf finding out whether or not lifeHas to have a meaning to be lived.It now becomes clear, on the contrary, That it will be lived all the better if it has no meaning.

• It is a kind of spiritual snobbery that makes people thinkThey can be happy without money.

• What is that which eternally is,Which has no origin?And what is that which arises and passes away,But in truth never is?

• Only the dead have seen the end of war.

• If it was so, it might be;And if it were so, it would be;But as it isn't, it ain't.That's logic.

• Philosophy consists very largely ofOne philosopher arguing that all others are jackasses.He usually proves it,And I should add that he also usually proves that he is one himself.

• If it turns out that there is a God,I don't think that he's evil.But the worst that you can say about himIs that basically he's an underachiever.

• More than any other time in history,Mankind faces a crossroads.One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness.The other, to total extinction.Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.

• We should not worry about striving for happiness;Rather we must pursue ways to beProperly and productively unhappy.

• Life may have no meaning. Or even worse, It may have a meaning of which I disapprove.

• Booze is the answer. I don't remember the question.

• I drink to make other people interesting.

A Lousy Day

Its one of those days.. boring..dull...nothing happening... kinda start to wonder whats life after all. I mean people have bad days when something unexpected and negative happens, but how can you have a bad day when nothing happens!? Dont know why this question did not pop up sooner, because I have had loads and loads of such lousy days! Its amazing how your mood can change like a flip of a coin, one minute you are starting and looking forward to another day and the next minute you start to wonder whats the purpose of me being here anyways! You may have everybody around you, but when its time for that lousy day theres just nothing anyone can do to help. If a day without anything happening can bother you and bring you down to such a large extent, then I wonder how a person's emotional capacity handles actual lousy things that happen in life. Well, think about this, what part of the brain do you think reacts to make for a lousy day. Acually, I feel no part of my brain reacts as a result of a lousy day. I sat there watching Winona Ryder in some movie called Reality Bites, she was having a lousy day too, well she lay on the couch running up her phone bill and smoking away pack after pack of cigarretes!

Reasearchers itseems have said that 'Its high time boredom be recognized as a legitimate human emotion that can be central to learning and creativity'. Well I have never seen any of my boring and lousy days turn into anything other than couch lazing, binging on fatty food and watching any damn thing on the TV. If you are bored, itseems your brain has concluded there is nothing new or useful it can learn from an environment, or a person. Yeah! I have been living in the same house for more than 2 decades, watching TV forever, what do you expect, for me to discover a falling apple! or get a sudden entrepreneurial brainwave! come on get real. Well ofcourse the researchers say 'Its the difference between a sort of person who can look at a pool of mud and find something interesting, and someone who has a hard time getting absorbed in anything'. I tend not to like such quotes, because I somehow never make it into the good group! Arent quotes like that supposed to be inspirational! Check this one out 'When the external and internal conditions are right, boredom offers a person the oppurtunity for a constructive response'. Well since we are not breeding a million scientific inventors and entrepreneurial geniuses every minute, it can only mean the next choice, most people bothered by boredom do not possess the right external and internal conditions :). Well finally they say 'Boredom has the power to exert pressure on individuals to stretch their inventive capacity'! I am definitely waiting for the day when that one comes true!

some quotes that i found to be interesting :)

"Question with boldness even the existence of God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear"
Thomas Jefferson quotes (American 3rd US President (1801-09). Author of the Declaration of Independence. 1762-1826)


"Socrates, you will remember, asked all the important questions - but he never answered any of them"
Dickinson Richards quotes


"You ask: what is the meaning or purpose of life? I can only answer with another question: do you think we are wise enough to read God's mind?"
Freeman Dyson quotes (English Physicist, b.1923)


"I refuse to answer that question on the grounds that I don't know the answer"
Douglas Adams quotes (British comic Writer, 1952-2001)


"I think and think for months and years. Ninety-nine times, the conclusion is false. The hundredth time I am right."
Albert Einstein quotes (German born American Physicist who developed the special and general theories of relativity. Nobel Prize for Physics in 1921. 1879-1955)


"When I get ready to talk to people, I spend two thirds of the time thinking what they want to hear and one third thinking about what I want to say."
Abraham Lincoln quotes (American 16th US President (1861-65), who brought about the emancipation of the slaves. 1809-1865)


"I must write it all out, at any cost. Writing is thinking. It is more than living, for it is being conscious of living."
Anne Morrow Lindbergh quotes (American writer and aviation pioneer, 1906-2001)


"Thoughts lead on to purpose, purpose leads on to actions, actions form habits, habits decide character, and character fixes our destiny"
Tryon Edwards quotes (American Theologian, 1809-1894)


"Clear thinking requires courage rather than intelligence."
Thomas S. Szasz quotes (Hungarian psychiatrist and Professor of Psychiatry Emeritus at State University of New York Health Science Center in Syracuse, b.1920)

live and let live or die and let die

Have you ever come across certain people who make you cringe in anguish!! Why are certain people so sadistic! What do they gain out of it... Sometimes I feel the only way to get back at them is to die with a suicide note naming these people as being responsible for this, add a line about harassment, mail a few copies to some news channels and go... The case may eventually not be proven, but atleast you would have made those people go to the slammer for a few days, get humiliated in front of everyone, and scar them for life! Calling me sadistic?! Well what do you know! These people look like they are flourishing more and more each day, its like the sadism is a manure thats nourishing them to succeed even more! If sadism is not getting to them and nothing negative is happening to them, then may be what the world assumes to be bad is not bad afterall, may everybody has got the meaning of good and bad twisted! Sometimes sweet revenge seems to be the best thing, because if you keep quiet, everything will remain the same, no protector of this universe is up there keeping tabs of all this and waiting to get back at such people! Simple theory of the world, either live and let live or die and make them die!!

Crossroads

I guess there is a time in everyone’s life when they feel they have reached an unknown place, and they dont know where life goes from then on. The feeling of uncertainity, the feeling of what’s going to happen next. Especially when people everywhere around seem to be in the most perfect place in their lives. Why is it that the world seems to have this template, which people need to follow in order to be called successful, and therefore acceptable. People say everything will eventually fall into its place, that’s the norm of life. But, what if, when the pieces fall into their place, you dont like where the pieces have fallen.
I guess most of the people avoid this period of uncertainity and pick a safe path, a path which is trustable and has been tested to give the most promising results. I actually envy such people. In a strange way they know what they want. They have picked a path, and they are happy with it, relaxed, peaceful, calm in their lives.
But ofcourse, people who make a difference in the world are the people who are not scared of the uncertainity. These are the people who are always restless to be different. These are the people who have the dare to pick an untested and a never travelled path. A great person once said “ be the change you want to see”! how many people would really dare to be the change. Everybody wants to enjoy the fruits on an evolved and enlightened society, but only a few, very few, would want to be a part of the change, the evolution. In a way I guess that is justified, because if everyone had what it takes to be the change, imagine how many zillion pages our school history books would contain! I guess nature has its own way to even out greatness in those few people with the mediocrity of a zillion other humans.
Then again, there are these other kind of people who tried and failed. For every Vascodagama, there would have been thousands of people who set out to discover distant lands and were never heard of again. For every Dhirubhai Ambani, there would have been lakhs of people who came to the city on that very same day as him, tried their luck and failed, or simply didnt make it as big as him. What is it with great people, what are they made of! Or is it just about being at the right place at the right time. Is it just a stroke of luck that decides between being in the mediocre group and being etched in the human history forever!
I guess that’s the downside of picking the less travelled road, there’e a chance you may lose direction, chance of finding a deadend, chance of only red signals all the way, chance of just missing the green light at every signal. Its like forming a pyramid, there should be people at every level to hold the one at the top! There are people at the bottom, there are people who almost made it to the top! A person who dares to be different should also have the dare to face the consequences. If you are scared of falling off the pyramid, you better stick to the bottom levels!

What is Life...?

Isnt that a million dollar question! Many great philosophers say that each man has to try on his own, in his own life to find an answer to that question. Probably one of the things where experience doesnt really count. I have had people ask me why I dont believe in god, why is it so hard for me to believe in the many learned minds who have spent their whole lives finding out the purpose of a human beings’ life. I definitely repect all the great religious leaders in our history, who are trying to teach the world through their own experiences. But, there are so many theories, so many beliefs! Who do you believe?
That is where your birth, your upbringing comes into picture. But, what if a hindu was not born a hindu, will he still in the course of his life embrace hinduism and put all his faith into it?! Highly doubtful! Like a river, wherever it is born, wherever it flows, has to end up in the ocean; will a man, wherever he is born, whatever his upbringing is, will he end up embracing a faith he is destined to ?! Looking at the people around, I will have to say No! Faith and religion in almost all cases depends upon a person’s birth and upbringing. Imagine a child is not brought up according to any particular religion, and you tell the child that it is free to pick whichever faith or belief it wants. What will the child do! It now has all the freedom in the world to embrace anything, any faith, pick from the many theories that exist in the world! I have seen a hindu’s child being a hindu; a muslims’s kid following islam; an atheist’s child probably ending up an atheist, but what would a child left to its thinking, its choice; what would the child do!
I think any person who truly wants to find out what life is should think like a child who does not belong to any faith and has the freedom to embrace anything in the world. Why is that the first rule in any religion is complete submission to the belief, unquestionable faith !? Go to any religion, the ground rules are the same. If you want to be here, have faith, believe in only this and nothing else. And if you want to do more, be a goodwill ambassador, tell the rest of the world that this is the belief that will take them to heaven, spread the word. Complete devotion to Vishnu, unshakeable belief in allah, or submission to jesus is what will take you to heaven and will give you a good life after death because this is the purpose of your life. Then there is the book! It has everything, how to live life, what’s good what’s bad, what will get you in the good books of god and what will count as a sin, it even has points on how to sin and wash off your sins!! Thats the great thing about these books. If you sin and you are kicked out of the religion, you will be let off the hook, you wont be a follower anymore, so you can sin and jus follow the rules in the book, wash off your sin and still be a staunch follower of the religion!! Then there’s the aftermaths of a bad sinful life, what can be your punishment, and thats why in order to avoid all that, you better follow the rules!
So now you know why the world is such a happy, peaceful place! You have people sinning all the way, and then washing off their sins all the way back. So hell must be an empty place after all, if you have forgiveness for every sin you do, why in the world would anyone end up in hell! And whats the single fastest way to forgiveness? Yeah you guessed it! Complete submission to the faith again!
My purpose of saying all this is not to just ridicule all the people who are followers of all the different religions in the world. It is to tell them open your eyes, open your mind. Dont you see a pattern in all these religious rules, dont you think that by asking you to have unquestionable faith, it is asking you not to reason, not to think, saying dont question is actually suppressing the free thought process of the brain. Drawing boundaries and limiting the thought process of an individual is no way of getting someone to follow any theory. If every sin has forgiveness, then why do we give death sentences and life imprisonments to criminals. If god is willing to forgive, then who are we to punish. May be there is a god. But the ways of approaching him need to be questioned. There are many things in these religions and their books that are meaningful and need to be respected, but unquestionable faith and complete submission is something that needs to be given a proper thought; proper, unbiased, fearless thought.