It's only words....

2011-09-27T20:12:00.000+08:00

I was reading an article from Peter Singer on Gross National Happiness concept this morning and I found one part quite interesting – how to measure happiness? He came up with two reasonable alternatives – (1) Is Happiness a surplus of pleasure over pain experienced over the lifetime or (2) Is Happiness the degree to which we are satisfied with our lives?

It’s a very interesting question because whatever we pursue in life we tend to do with an overarching misconception that we are pursuing happiness and so our pursuit of greed, lust, success, power, more or less everything in life is somehow supposed to make us happy when the truth is that there is a general ignorance about how happiness could be achieved.

If we pursue the two definitions suggested by Mr. Singer, in the first approach he suggests add up positive moments and subtract negative ones and wow we know if one was happy or unhappy. That could be done quite objectively in this age of facebook when most moments of pleasure find their way to the status updates at alarming regularity. So if you had a great day at work, wonderful meal, superb trip, fantastic party, great get-together with friends or saw a nice movie or play it usually ends up on one’s facebook page The only moments of pleasure I haven’t seen on status updates are the likes of “Had great sex, look forward to do it again tonight!!!” but Mr. Zuckerberg will tell you that he is working on that and day is not far when that last wall will also crumble on Facebook. As for moments of sadness, a more ‘social’ creed is already letting us all know when they are sad or down but even without that, it’s not tough to document moments of sadness in a day and so at the end of day just do your maths and you could figure the great secret of life!!! But that’s where I start to differ on this first approach with Mr. Singer because it’s not the frequency but intensity of pain and pleasure that drives happiness and unhappiness. I could have an absolute wretched day at office but one great moment back home could wipe it all off or there may be just one bad incident in the morning which is so overpowering that all the moments of pleasure for rest of the day could never get better of it. So, could this ‘sum-up the pleasure and subtract the pain’ approach ever work for measuring one’s happiness. I don’t think so because while it’s an objective approach but it totally forgets the ‘ness’ bit of happiness.

That brings me to second approach, which involves as per Mr. Singer to ask people at different times in their life whether they are satisfied or not and then use that data to determine the happiness. I agree this is the closest man can come to figure other men’s happiness index but there is an elementary issue with this approach. Do we know are we satisfied with our life? There is an old saying in Sanskrit – “Santosh param Sukham” which means Satisfaction is greatest Happiness but remember the classic Pepsi ad of 90s “Yeh Dil Maange More!!!” (Heart Craves for More). And the two together explains the classic conundrum of human existence – The eternal truth and harsh reality. If we see Abraham Maslow’s famous hierarchy of needs pyramid as a reference point then we could say that as a race we are so engrossed in fulfilling the bottom four layers of our ‘deficiency needs’ of material comfort, career, love, power etc. that self-actualization doesn’t even figure in our to-do list in one lifetime. Is that a step too high & too slippery for humanity in general to tread? In Hindu philosophy, human life is divided into four stages of life, last being ‘Sanyas’ or renunciation which includes a concept of ‘Vairagya’ or detachment – detachment not only from earthly pleasures of money and comfort but also family bonds and relationships. It’s a different discussion but key point is that do we in life need a slight detachment from its pleasure to achieve true happiness. Do we need that to take a step back from all that life offers to be able appreciate all that life offers in true sense. It’s just like being an art gallery where to get the true perspective of a piece of art you need to find the right spot at some distance. But getting back, I think measuring satisfaction is like finding Holy Grail of human existence. I think most of us would have know those days of absolute tranquility when life seems at peace, a state of mind that’s true bliss but transient –that’s what happiness is. I wish it could be measured, a formula could be found to attain it but I know equally well that it’s a futile exercise. It’s something within us which we could only feel when we are true and honest to ourselves and in peace with our reality and that’s where Mr. Singer will face his true challenge in this second approach – finding people who could really tell that they are satisfied or not with their life.

And that’s also where most of us will face the real challenge in our pursuit of happiness…

2010-03-04T19:09:00.001+08:00

Wish God was a mathematician!!! I always wish this. I mean look at all the optimal decisions that well written algorithms could make these days and then you look back at life and keep wondering that the biggest problem of human existence are sub-optimal decisions we make each day of life. How easy it could all have been if our neurons were programmed to make optimal decisions. I remember reading somewhere that if God created everything then did God create evil too and if he did then He represents both good and evil. And if we say that God & Devil coexisted then God was a bad engineer that he left bugs in human brains which allows him to get influenced by evil. Anyways, not all bad decisions are evil but I am fairly convinced that Scientists can’t answer all the mysteries of life because they just can’t think like the Creator. Because if He was a man of science, life would have been far more predictable and orderly.

God is also not learning with times because otherwise he would have long discontinued ancient practice of fitting each man with grey cells, instead why not just set up a call centre 1800-HELP-GOD which you could call if you need to do thinking about some important issue. Most of our daily actions really don’t need lotta grey matter and looking at all the terrorism, violence, scheming etc. in this world we could anyway be better off without the thinkers.

2010-03-03T15:31:00.000+08:00

Sometimes you know that while you may be on the driving seat but it’s not you who is steering where you life would go. Roads chose themselves, turns get made and you sit there helplessly holding on to steering wheel, knowing pretty well that if you lose the way you would be blamed but can you help it? You could stamp your foot on the brake and life may come to a halt for a while but once you start again – life gets back to auto-pilot mode. And it become worse after a while when life hands back the steering to you - By now you are already lost with no map, no GPS so you continue to follow the road, keep making turns that you know nothing about and deep in your heart you know that probably you are lost for good. And in such moments all you could do is to close your eyes and dream of being back on a familiar road, you feel the elation in that split second but then you open your eyes and unfamiliarity surrounds you again, it scares you and make you press your foot harder on the pedal as you want to run away from it but that only speeds you into greater darkness and deep into road which you wanted to run away from.

2009-09-18T00:21:00.002+08:00

“Pakistan backed terrorists strike in Mumbai”
“Indian students killed in Australia by racist mob”
“Chinese gunfire injured 2 Indian Soldiers”

What happens when you read/hear such headlines?
You wish your government could hit back say diplomatically, militarily or in whichever way that could teach our enemies a lesson. But the kind of government we have, it would be wishful thinking for us to harbour any realistic chances of that happening.

But I have realized that there is a way you and me could hit back and no we could do it without doing “A Wednesday”. We don’t need a gun to hit them back; we could do it with our wallet.

Way back in 1921, during freedom movement Mahatma Gandhi started Swadesi movement. He asked Indians to wear Khadi and boycott British machine-woven cloth. People burned their machine woven cloth and took to Khadi It was his Gandhi’s way to hit British economically – hit their profits that enable them to get ships and guns to further their colonial prowess.

And that’s what we need to do in 2009 as well. Every company in the world today wants to be in India because One billion Indians represent world’s most attractive market. With growing financial stature of Indians, all of us possess something that when wielded properly could hurt more than a gun in current world and that weapon is our wallet. And if we Indians learn to spend our rupees judiciously we could teach a lesson to Pakistan as well as China.

Every year China sells to India goods worth “Rs. 150,000 crore” i.e. we Indians buy Chinese goods worth Rs. 150,000, crores annually. If we as citizens chose to boycott Chinese goods then could you imagine how we would have hurt the Chinese economy…won’t they think twice about making incursions of upto 1500m in our territory when each meter of incursion could cost them 100 crore worth of lost trade. And it’s simple to do, every 2 out of 3 plastic toys sold in India are made in China we just need to be careful of what we buy. Eid & Diwali are round the corner and a lot of lights and decorative material is made in China, if we could avoid buying that we would have done our little bit to respond to them.

In current world India matters not because we have nuclear power (really do we have?) but because we have power of a billion people who could spend. And if each of us realizes the power of our wallets then maybe together we could find a way to respond to those headlines through something other than just frustration.

2009-07-19T19:13:00.000+08:00

It doesn’t matter how often you wipe the slate clean, a clean slate doesn’t guarantee that your next letter or the word on the freshly cleansed slate would be anymore beautiful than the last one you wrote. A clean slate helps as it doles out hope, it sweeps away the past for a fleeting moment, it fills you with a renewed energy. But hope, enthusiasm and excitement by itself cannot make your next word better unless you have also learned the better methods since the time you last drew that butterfly on the slate.

So often, we gravely misunderstand a fresh beginning or a new dawn. We become naive enough to assume that if we just change everything around us, everything about us would change. No it doesn’t happen that way. Key in the term “fresh beginning” is the beginning not the fresh, in a “new dawn” it’s the dawn and not the new. It’s probably about unlearning all that has brought you to the current pass and to restart the learning process from the scratch. It’s to admit that your methods that have failed you all this while needs to be forgotten and you need to start learning again. Even if there are no new methods to learn anymore, one must still learn those old methods in a new way or with a new perspective.

It is this unlearning part that we forget most of the times when we decide to start from a scratch. We change the canvas but we quickly draw up the same old lines that are still lingering in our memory, get back to the same pass where we were stuck earlier and then start wondering why even the new start didn’t work. Probably unlearning is one the most challenging tasks of life, to let go something that you have held as your firm belief, to resist the temptation of borrowing from your past ‘wisdom’, all this is not easy.

And therefore there is no point wiping the slate clean if you can’t wipe your mind clean. One without the other would just bring you back to the place from where you have tried to start afresh.

2009-06-28T23:31:00.002+08:00

I finished Shantaram this weekend and I loved it, it had me hooked and it rekindled my love affair with those fresh crisp printed pages bound in a glossy cover with a story to tell. While a lot of people usually get put off by the volume of a book. I look for them. I like thick, voluminous books running into thousand pages resembling more a saga then a story. A Suitable Boy, War & Peace & Atlas Shrugged are the kind of books that attract me at the first glance rather than put me off.

There is something about these multi-character, multi-track storyline spanning years that get me and I think it is usually the alternate reality that they transport you to. The character in the books are like friends in your real life, they don’t endear themselves to you immediately, it’s not before 100-150 pages have passed before I usually start warming up to the characters and start getting into “what happens next” mode. The novellas or short stories don’t give me that kind of luxury. Just after Shantaram, I picked up this collection of short stories by Yiyun Li and I must say that the two of the stories I have read so far are good reads but by the time you getting to sketch that mental image of Mrs. Su or Mr. Fong, you have come to an end. In no ways, am I saying short stories are any lesser. I myself dabble in them sometimes and I know that for lot of ideas and thoughts, that’s the best style of prose but I think am just wondering aloud why I love those thick books.

Back to Shantaram, the beauty of the novel is it’s such an intimate portrayal of Mumbai. I have spent some time in Mumbai and though I have just walked by the Leopold at best or been to World Trade center building once or twice and my only experience of slum is to look at them as my auto used to speed past the S.V.Road but still there is a certain sense of belonging to the settings of this novel which got me hooked as soon as Linbaba got down from the minibus in Colaba.

Though I can’t but admit that the novel did take a few artistic/bollywood-istic liberties but it was still one hell of a tale to tell. It may still not compare to two of my favourite novels set in Indian milieu – A Suitable Boy and A Fine balance, but it indeed completes a quartet of Indian novels (together with Midnight’s Children), I would strongly recommend to anyone who wanna form a reliable picture of India through fiction.

And now I start my similar journey to learn about China through fiction, about years of Cultural Revolution and the reality of modern China beyond tall towers of Beijing & Shanghai. And I am sure Soon I will find something to rave about.

PS: Just noticed this is the 100th post on this blog, just like Tendulkar it got a bit slow near the century but well, it’s time to look up the sky and take a fresh guard :)

And so just for the sake of old time’s, here’s a song recommendation for the day – a piece of nice poetry I heard in the latest movie “New York”
Jo tune na kaha woh main sunta raha
Khaamkhwaah, bewajah khwaab bunta raha…

2009-05-31T00:40:00.002+08:00

There was a time when Australia adopted White Australia Policy to ensure that Chinese can't come and stay there. That was a really shocking form of official racism and now it’s turn of even more abhorrent from of violent racism ‘curry bashing’ that is targeting Indians. Not that racism against Indians is a new phenomena in Australia, I always heard of stray incidents like these from friends. And why only Australia, it’s also true for other countries – after my MBA when I had a choice to take up a job in either London or Singapore, one of the key reasons why I preferred Singapore over London was because I knew that Indians do face racism even in London.

Also, isn't racism just another form of protectionism. When Obama says that he wants to bring back jobs from Bangalore to Buffalo, is he in someway not promoting discrimination in an inter-connected global economy of today. It’s shocking at times when you look at double standards of western countries. First whiff of recession and years of talking open market at WTO goes for a toss with liberal-capitalist economies in US & Europe start talking protectionism, , US starts talking tax restrictions to discoursge outsourcing, after blaming developing countries for not doing enough on environment for years Australia decide to push back certain environmental regulations by 2 years citing recession.

I am reading Shantaram these days and there is this one line in that which stayed with me long after I have turned many pages. There is a French character Didier in this book and he tells the protagonist something which goes like “India is about siz times the size of France, But it has almost twenty times the population. If there were a billion Frenchmen living in such a crowded space, there would be rivers of blood. Rivers of blood! And, as everyone knows, we French are the most civilized people in Europe. Indeed, in the whole world.” Why am quoting it here is because I thought that what author meant was that the self-proclaimed superiority of west is to certain extent a result of being at the right place in right time.

The other day I was in a cab got talking to the cabbie, he was a Singaporean-Chinese and he had a theory why this recession won’t impact China and India. He told me that Indians and Chinese work had, work long because they know the value of money and so they will definitely survive these times. And probably the modern day racism is not arising out of any superiority complex but may be out of fear and frustration in west regarding this survival instinct of east. It’s a fear of those Indian kids winning spelling-bee, fear of Indian-Chinese kids outsmarting them in their own Universities, it’s a fear of these brown n yellow guys who were just smart team members once, now becoming the team managers. It’s probably this fear of competition which is manifesting itself in all the racism and protectionism that we are witnessing these days.

But coming back to Australian attacks, I hope that these condemnable incidents in Australia come to a halt and all the Indian students/professionals in Australia could live in peace. But if they don't, I wish that Indian students start giving Oz universities a so that these universities suffer. After all, lot of these universities which hold education fair in India every year make a lot of their fees from Indian rupees converted to Aussie dollars.

PS: One Indian I must blame for these attacks on Indian students in Australia is ARJUN SINGH, with reservation in higher-education, guys and girls have been forced to look abroad to realize their education dreams and thus expose themselves to such dangers as Shravan Kumar and Baljinder Singh have faced.

2009-05-19T00:27:00.001+08:00

Great Indian elections ended this weekend with Congress getting a surprisingly decisive victory. And as they say - success has many fathers, so now everyone from TV anchors to reporters are falling over each other to describe it as a nationwide verdict for Congress, thumbs up to Manmohan Singh and charisma of Rahul Gandhi. I beg to differ completely from first two and partially from the third.

But before that I must clarify that I was hoping for a BJP victory in these elections. And my change of mind after supporting Congress 5 years back came because of three main reasons:

Terrorism in the country. I have been really pained by utter failure of Congress government on internal security. Bomb blasts became rampant in last year and a half and all government did was to appeal for calm and patience.
Other big disappointment was reservations in IIMs and AIIMS and other institutions of higher learning. I see that as murder of meritocracy and I was hoping that congress would be punished for that by Indian youth.
Finally, 5 years back I had hoped that Congress would do better than push its communal agenda under secular guise but I was wrong. If BJP is a saffron party then Congress is a green party (given their links with IUML, MIM and potentially AUDF its more than obvious anyways). MMS believes that certain people have first claim to resources of our country only because they belong to a certain religion. Unacceptable !!! Just like I believe reservation should be on economic grounds similarly I believe that Govt.'s plan should help all needy and not just minorities.

But let's get back to election results, first question I tried to answer was whether congress victory in the elections really a nationwide mandate for congress ? I looked at election results in some key states and realized that it's far from that. Rather, congress won big in several states not because of any wave but due to lack of unity in opposition. Let’s look at a few examples:

- Maharashtra

Congress+NCP won 25 seats in Maharashtra against 21 for BJP-SS combine. MNS, an offshoot of SS, with a support base derived from those who supported Shiv Sena previously won none. Now consider 10 seats where Raj Thackery’s MNS was contesting. If you add votes polled by MNS in these seats to BJP/SS votes then in 9 out of these 10 constituencies - BJP/SS would have won comfortably. Result would have then read as 30 to BJP+SS and 16 to INC+NCP. So there was no congress wave in Maharashtra it was just a MNS dam that obstructed BJP wave

- Andhra Pradesh

In AP, Congress won 33 seats and “Mahakutumbi” opposition just 5 seats, PRAP of Chiranjeevi none. But PRAP got significant anti-congress voteshare. Of the 33 seats won by Congress in AP, in 28 seats TDP/TRS + PRAP votes are more than congress votes. Had PRAP been part of an united opposition, congress would have just managed 5 seats in AP and opposition would have won 33 seats. Congress wave - hardly !!!

- Tamil Nadu

Go to TN and you will find similar statistics again, had Vijaykanth's DMDK not split anti-DMK votes from opposition. DMK+Congress wouldn’t have touched half the number of seats they finally won.

So in my analysis of vote figures, congress won 85 seats in AP+TN+Maharashtra not because of any wave but mere disunity in opposition. Had there been no division of votes, Congress would have won only 35 seats in these three seats a whopping 50 below its final tally. So if UPA is 260 today and not 210, then credit shouldn’t go to Sonia or Rahul but to Raj Thackrey, Chiranjeevi and Vijaykanth.

Kerala, Uttarakhand, Haryana and Punjab was anti-incumbency vote and Congress benefited by virtue of being sole opposition in these states. In Rajasthan and J&K, Congress government has only been installed a few months back and they are still in the honeymoon period so in-effect they were basically riding on the anti-incumbency vote for the previous government that propelled them to power last year in these states. Call it a lucky timing rather than pro-congress wave.

Delhi did have a pro-incumbency vote but it accounts for 7 seats and to get only 7 seats out of 262 due to good governance is not something to be flattered about.

In West Bengal, the difference in vote share between left parties and opposition has never been too great. With Trinmool and Congress coming together as well as left’s blunder of becoming a B-team of congress thereby tacitly acknowledging status of Congress as key party worked for congress. INC+TMC was a smart alliance and arithmetically all they needed was slight swing to succeed. But I must admit that people must have seen congress positively to provide that swing vote.

And that brings you to UP, and here I will give the credit where it’s deserved. Rahul Gandhi deserves the credit of reviving congress in UP. Rahul had concentrated solely on UP over last few years and so he fully deserves credit for each seat won by Congress in UP. Frankly speaking, UP, Delhi and West Bengal are only states where one can say there was a pro-congress wave.

What proves beyond doubt that there was no nationwide support for congress are results from Bihar, MP, Guajarat, Chhatisgarh, Jharkhand and Karnataka.

So, while there is no denying that results of Indian elections have all but sealed a 5 year term for congress but it would be a major mistake to see this as a countrywide undercurrent for the ruling party. Big Indian elections have lately been a sum of 28 small state elections and this one was no different. Only difference this time was that arithmetic worked out well for INC and to mistake sum of parts to be whole is over-simplification of complex Indian polls.

Hopefully, with leader like Arjun Singh & Antulay out of cabinet and congress no dependent on likes of Lalu, Mulayam and Karat, we could just be second time lucky with MMS. It might also help if pretense of MMS as PM could be done away with sooner than later and one of the Gandhi’s take up their dynastic seat as PM (Alas !!!). As for Congress's youth brigade - it's nothing but an extension of the dynastic politics championed by . All youth leaders in congress like Pilots, Deoras, Scindias and Prasads are not there because they have risen from grassroots but because their parents’ position perched at top echelons in congress.

But there is indeed a silver lining in this cloud and that is that country will finally have a stable government and Rahul indeed exudes sincerity. I am just hoping that better sense prevail on government in next 5 years or else we will be left to rue a choice that can't be undone till 2014.

2009-04-29T23:18:00.002+08:00

Avian Flu – Mad Cow Disease - (and now) Swine Flu.
Wonder if this is nature’s way of telling us to stay vegetarian to remain healthy...

If I look back and have got my fact rights then all these diseases have their genesis in those pig farm or poultry farm or like. These farms which are men’s effort to play God, to control life and death of lesser animals, to alter the food chain.

And somewhere in form of these flus and fevers, nature is issuing us warnings to mend our ways & to restrict our greed. But, probably we are not going to get the message. In a few months, vaccine for swine flu will be developed and WHO will declare human victory over the virus.

But just as a parent is forced to get tough with a kid when he ignores repeated warnings, I fear that if we keep ignoring these warnings from nature we may just be exposing us to a far more serious lesson. But, I pray that this fear of mine is just that – a fear and nothing more.

PS: Just on a lighter note if we look at the pattern in first line ( chicken – beef – pork), may be next big virus is taking shape in some fishery.

2009-04-27T22:11:00.000+08:00

I am beginning to dislike the word sorry. Its just like a mask – hides everything behind it and offer you a straight face. This word is used so often these days that I wonder if it represents “feeling sorry” anymore. Maybe we should no more use the word “sorry” for making show repentence. It’s only good enough to apologize for not switching your cell phone to silent mode during a meeting or to give a $50 dollar note for $5 cab fare. It no more moves you to forgive someone but only make you move yourself to make way for someone.

I have learnt that to apologize is not to say a mere sorry but to throw open your heart and let your genuine guilt show. To apologize is just not a promise to make amends but a sombre plea for repentance. To apologize is just not saying ‘I won’t do it again’ but to share why nothing could ever bring you to do it again. What move people is not how often you apologize but how you apologize.

I am not suggesting that apologies should come with elaborate melodrama. But I think that they need to sufficiently verbalize your regret & repentance. A mere 'sorry' at times does a great disservice not only to others' feeling but to your emotions as well. It leaves you wondering what more you could do to make someone yield and other to wish only if you could have done a little more...

There is a popular saying that “To err is human and to forgive is divine”. I think what it doesn’t say is “If you know how to apologize right then you can turn every human into divine”.

2009-04-26T15:38:00.006+08:00

It was raining pretty hard outside. How I figured it – no not through floor to roof glass paned slide door to my balcony. That was shut with curtains drawn. I heard the rain…in one of those moments when TV volume fell off for the reason I don’t remember anymore, I heard the rain. Rain is a chatterbox, she talks and talks and talks continuously. Doesn’t matter if you are listening or not or interested or not, she just keeps talking in that beautiful modulated voice. And she has a few other tricks to catch your attention coz if constant talking can’t impress you then those occasional lightning will definitely leave you awestruck.

But I didn’t walk out immediately after hearing the sound of rain. I vaguely remember I went out to the balcony looking for something and there she had me. It was that fresh breeze blowing that made me go like one of those guys in TV ads for ponds and lux. Scent of rain has captivated me fully in that moment and I never got back to the room (but for fetching my laptop a little later). I just took the chair lying in the balcony and let that fresh breeze make my day.

Rain is not something rare here, what’s rare is walking out to meet the rain. When people ask me about the weather here am mostly at loss of words. Afterall, in the mornings you get out of your air-conditioned flat into the air-conditioned-cab that drops at your air-conditioned lobby so that you could take the air-conditioned lift to your air-conditioned office. For meals there is that air-conditioned passage from air-conditioned lobby that takes you to air-conditioned restaurants. In the evenings again something air-conditioned will get you to somewhere air-conditioned. And when you at home, you should keep your doors shut so that air-conditioners work properly because that’s what they say in manual. I wonder how much fresh air I breathe these days, may be all my lungs get is just this 'conditioned' air. And now as I sat in my balcony with that cool wind blowing right across my face I realized what have I been missing all this while.

I could remember my childhood days, the whiff of fresh air that comes along with rains was not a stranger in those days rather it was like grandkids of of our landlord who used to visit their grandparents every summer vacation but spent most of their time playing together with me us. Back in those days when I was growing up, there were no air-conditioners and we didn’t use to shut our doors when it used to rain ( not always I mean). I never really figured, was it because we didn’t want to or because we couldn’t. "We couldn't" because if it was to rain then it was pretty much a certainty that power would go off. Usual explanation used to be that some tree has fallen over power cables somewhere and so supply is disrupted. Inverters were still not in must-have lists then and so we used to keep the doors open to let the breeze cool things. And trust me that nice and fresh breeze used to make up for everything but the cricket match that one cant watch on TV because of power-cut. It was just so magical. We do have some trees here that flutter as strong winds blow but in those days when trees outnumbered people in university compound sound of all those trees going wild in those strong winds is an experience that I wonder I could ever have again in the concrete jungles i live in now. I wonder if calling that surreal or magical would be exaggeration – i guess not.

Back to present - I can still hear distant sound of lightning but rain has stopped now, so has breeze. All I could listen to now are the water features across my building, the TV inside the room which was on all this while I was sitting outside and noise of air-conditioned cabs making their way to air-conditioned lobbies as people decided to go and grab a meal or a movie at somewhere air-conditioned.

2009-02-22T01:12:00.001+08:00

Why I won’t celebrate if Slumdog Millionaire wins an Oscar?

I finally saw the movie that world is going ga ga over - Slumdog Millionaire. And there are two people associated with the movie who deserve compliments – Frieda Pinto coz she looked ravishing and Vikas Swarup because I liked the way he presented the basic idea of the story that life at times teaches you much more than what years spent in universities could.

But unfortunately that’s where I will stop with my compliments about the movie. What about AR Rahman’s music? Well, it didn’t help that just a day back I had seen Delhi-6 with some excellent music by Rahman and if you ask me - Masak-kali or Jai ho? Well, masak kali for me, i don’t think any Indian walked out of hall humming jai ho.

As for the movie’s portrayal of India – well, I don’t remember another movie that was such a comprehensive collection of everything ugly about India. Everybody in department of tourism spending millions on ‘Incredible India’ campaign must be running for cover after watching this movie whose commercial success could undo all the branding they may have created over years. But yeah I won’t hang Danny Boyle for showing what he did because as few of my friends have strongly insisted – what he showed is what exist in India – it’s real, it’s the other india which lot of us see very little of these days but we can definitely not deny its existence. And they are right, what Danny Boyle showed is the other India. But I can’t help holding a grudge against him for dividing Indians into the ones who have never jumped into a shit-pool and the ones that did. I also hold a grudge against him for being so selective about his depiction of our country.

What if I promise to show you a rainbow and then show you a blue streak in the sky. But that’s not rainbow – it has 7 colours but see am just showing you a part of Rainbow, the blue part. So technically, you can’t deny am right – blue is part of the VIBGYOR that constitutes rainbow but guess you would still feel cheated and that’s what I felt after seeing slumdog. I saw just one shade of a multi-colour country and I know I can’t fight those who insist that the shade shown is actually one of the many that form India but I still feel cheated. Just think of those who never saw a rainbow before and when I showed them blue they just accepted that rainbow is nothing but a streak of blue – for many who have never been to India, this movie may just be what India is all about. The commercial success of this movie could well be the worst advertisement of our country probably after Mumbai terror attacks.

But may be my fears are misplaced, after all it’s just a movie. Should Indians take pride in this movie –I don’t know about others but I can’t take any pride in this movie by an Englishman that seems to be celebrating the poverty, crime and filth in India. I can’t join that celebration. But then in India – we really take international recognition a shade too seriously and a lot of people have embraced this movie as their own given all the golden globe and academy nominations but I fail to see what recognition are they seeking and recognition of what.

I want to make it clear that am not trying to wish away the poverty in India – it exists and we all hope one day people in our country will not be living in such sub-human conditions as many do today. Maybe, all am saying is that I saw this movie -I tried hard to like it and I couldn’t. So, may the best film win the Oscar tomorrow but I wont be rooting for the Slumdog Millionaire and if it indeed wins the award, despite all its Indian connections, its not going to make me feel any good.

2009-02-19T01:28:00.002+08:00

Few of you may have wondered sometimes why in your class 6th or 9th examination papers – one word answers only had one mark while the essay type answer always carried 5 or 8 marks. After all, one word answers were always the more difficult ones and more accurate test of your knowledge – you either know the answer or you don’t. With essay type questions, even if you beat around the bush in not too distant vicinity you always had a chance of scoring 2-1/2.

But I guess it was probably because most important questions in life could never be answered in one word. Is it right or is it wrong, is it true or is it false – these are valid questions only in study of sciences and nowhere else. Least of all in life, which is a work of art spanning generations. Sometimes we see things in our lifetime which seems wrong and there comes the temptation to paint things black and white but we forget that in the grey of life – a touch of black or white is merely a part of continuum and not an absolute event.

It’s like mixing colours in a palette. You want to make grey – you put some white, then some black you realize the grey is not dark enough and you put some more black and may be some more white later. Now, our lifetimes are just long enough to witness a touch of white or black and based on our limited exposure we mistake things to be right & wrong or black and white but its only when we look at things in their historical perspective that we realize that what’s in the palette is neither black nor white - its grey and that’s how it will remain.

Lot of us point to various things which seems unfair and say look that’s a wrong but then life is never fair or just at any given point in time. It’s always skewed one way or the other but what it does is that it shifts weight as years pass by and so when you average things out over years life still seems fair.

Say for example the reservation for backward or draconian dowry laws for women, they may not be just but probably they are justified. Because the wrongs today are meant to set right the wrongs of yesterday. A generation pays for the wrongs of previous generation or the other way round a generation gets compensated for sufferings of the previous generation. At no point in time, what prevailed was absolutely fair and just but if we aggregate all the points in time may be all that happened was justified.

All of us must have heard the story of the blind men and the elephant. Each blind man touched a different part of elephant and made their opinion about what an elephant is like but none of them got their description right because all of them focused on parts but none of them remembered to aggregate those parts. And that’s why I sometimes hesitate to answer in absolutes on how I view certain events because they may just represent a dot on the bigger canvas of life. May be it’s worthwhile to step back and hear what others have to say and look beyond what’s obvious to your eyes before you step forward and put forth your view.

2009-01-07T22:34:00.003+08:00

Probably photo frames are the happiest being in the world, after all they are always smiling – always, irrespective of whether there are people around or not, whether its day or night, whether times are easy or tough. Visit any home and you will find one of those photo frames smiling at you. Sometimes a solo face, sometimes a bunch of faces - sometimes those faces wear a broad smile and sometimes a mirthful laughter but one thing is sure they are either happy or very happy.

Few of you may say that am misplacing the credit, which should lie either with the smiling faces or the fantatstic cameras that capture those smiling faces. But I differ, do those faces always smile – no, The cameras also capture pain and distress but do those sad, distressing photos ever find their way to photo frames – never. They may adorn exhibition halls or newspapers or your private album or a folder in your comp or a CD in your shelf but when it comes to photo frames it’s always the smiling laughing happy photos that end up there. As if it’s some kind of utopian land that only lets in the eternally blissful souls.

May be the comparison is a bit contrived, may be it’s not but then sometimes it doesn’t harm to let imagination run wild and let it weave its own fantasy. After all, improbable fantasies are still the best place to take a break from the rugged reality.

2008-12-24T01:35:00.003+08:00

It was a summer nobody expected and least of all the young sun for whom this was supposed to be the first summer. He took over as “the sun” last monsoon from his father after bad health prevented him to keep up with the demanding daily routine from dawn to dusk. It was a low-key bginning for the young sun, monsoons proved to be a playground for the clouds overflowing with rain and he knew that he was easily overshadowed. Then came the winter, for days snow, fog & mist reigned and sun was forced to take an involuntary Christmas break. But all along he remained patient and kept waiting for the summer that held great promise to him.

He had grown up listening to umpteen stories of summer splendor and summer-time heroics of his forefathers. His grandpa used to tell him all these stories. They called his grand pa ‘white dwarf’, a name probably derived from his long white beard that complemented his perfectly white hair and his dimunitive build. People say his dad will become a white dwarf too – that’s the natural course of aging for every sun. But for now only 'white dwarf' for him was his grandpa, who used to tell him those great tales every night. A few of those tales used to be about the bravery in face of cruel winters or ingenuity when challenged by crazy storms but mostly those tales told a story about the splendid summers when sun held reign. So he grew up to believe that summer is that time of the year when no one can challenge the absolute authority of the sun, a time when sun is at his glorious best. His grandpa also told him a few tales of those tyrant suns who misused the authority and scorched the earth and mistreated her during their summer rules but all those stories always ended with a good sun displacing the bad sun and deep in his hearts he knew that when he gets his chance he will be the good sun. And it was these tales and promise of proving his worth that made young sun keep his calm and patience all through the deafening monsoon and harsh winters while waiting for the summer.

And then one fine morning when he got up and looked at the calendar the page was turned and it was summer time. And so he dumped his suit, took out his bright T-shirt and went out expecting appreciative glances. But realty was far different, that morning was slightly different from winter mornings as there was no fog or mist and snow was long gone but he could still feel the chill and when he looked down it was still dark and it was still dark because of a bunch dark clouds that were blocking out all the sun and warmth. And this was the beginning of a summer which had surprised everyone with lack of sun & warmth.

On the first morning itself he recognized one of the dark clouds who were part of that bunch; he was not a new arrival rather he has been around since last monsoon. He had first noticed that dark and handsome cloud on one of those cloudy afternoons during the monsoon. As rains took a breather, the newly crowned sun tried to announce his accession by shining through and that is when that cloud first came in his way. It was as if he was marking his territory by refusing to let the sun shine – rain or no rain – and that was the beginning of a duel between them for the attention of earth that lasted rest of the rainy season. Sun remembered clearly that during those cloudy-rainy days that piece of cloud was always his marked foe and how he had wished that he could make him disappear and shine through but then it was not to be and the sun forgot all about it as monsoon gave way to winters.

Winters brought its own challenges; none of his grandpa’s tales had prepared him for hours of grind to break free from the morning fog that used to gobble up all his time till mid-day and the frustration of yielding to evening mist as early as late afternoon. But even during those times that dark cloud, overstaying his welcome after the departure of monsoon, did manage to cast his shadow a few times on those rare sunny mornings when sun succeeded in making an early imprint. But the fatigue of continuous duel with elements of winters made sun ignore those transgressions. After all, summers were just round the corner and the sun was thoroughly convinced that the summer will set everything right or at least so he wished.

And so when he first spotted that dark cloud ruining what was to be his summer, all these memories came back to him together with lot of bitterness. He did give a few days to those clouds to clear out, hoping they have just strayed on to his way but they refused to budge. It was as if they were the crusaders who were out to convert this season into a disciple of Rain Gods or a group of bullies who have been instigated against him by that dark cloud or may be just a group of guys who held personal grudge against him. As the days passed, the young sun saw his patience wear and frustration grow and finally unable to deal with the problem himself he decided to seek counsel from his grandpa and so he wrote a long letter to him telling him all about his struggle and frustration and a summer that was seemingly spoiled and requested him for an immediate reply. And next evening as he returned home, he did get his reply that read as follows:

Dear son,

I think there is one thing that I forgot to tell you and that is – “It’s not the advent of summer that signal sun’s reign rather it is sun’s reign that signals advent of summer”. Summer is not a panacea to all your problems rather it’s a celebration of all your efforts to solve all your problems. A turn of page in the calendar doesn’t signal arrival of summer, nor does the arrival of summer means that all your problems will just disappear rather it’s up to you to ensure that by the time that page is to be turned you have vanquished all your foes and doubts and you are shining bright.

Dates or events by themselves can achieve nothing; they are just a reminder for you to make efforts so as to achieve what a particular day may mean to you. If summer meant so much to you, then those dark clouds were needed to be dealt with and done away by the time summer heralded. says .Look at the earth, people celebrate Harvest Day but that doesn’t mean that they just hope that their harvest would be ready on that day ,instead they plan and prepare for to make sure they can celebrate that day.

Nothing in this universe is yours until you have made efforts to claim it. There would always be old & new clouds that will try & cast a shadow on your joy and clouds are not to be blamed for that – that is there karma – your karma is to fight with them, make them disappear and claim your share of the earth that needs to be lit bright. And until you have done that it’s not summer no matter what the calendar says.

Hope that helps

Love
Grandpa

When he finished reading the letter, he changed back to his night suit and then took out all T-shirts from his cupboard, the ones he was wearing since the day he saw that calendar show summer, and replaced them with his winter suits. As he went to bed he knew that his summer is not spoiled but only delayed and it’s up to him to shorten the delay.

2008-09-13T23:36:00.002+08:00

“PM condemns blast, appeal for calm” read the breaking news on cnn-ibn as I sat watching webcast of the channel covering Delhi blasts. And just an hour after listening to brilliant soliloquy of Naseeruddin Shah in “Wednesday” I just couldn’t help feeling frustrated by that appeal for calm.

Do we need to maintain calm? Do we need to show resilience? Do we need to arrest them and then law find its own course?

A bloody NO – We gotta find these people and butcher them – Do an Israel on these terrorists. I think its time – with blasts in major cities becoming an alarmingly frequent happening – our leaders can’t just issue an appeal on calm, condemn the blasts and raise some decibel levels about cross-border support. We must DO something about it for God’s sake. In less than 50 days there have been blasts in Bangalore, Ahmedabad, Delhi – and we wanna call ourselves an “emerging power”. I would rather say never before were we more weak and vulnerable.

9/11 is among the most daring and bloodiest terror attacks but just look at the way US reacted to it. Palestinians may or may not have a case against Israel but try a terror attack on them and there are booming tanks that is Israel’s response. Whether its Russia in Chechanya or China in Xinjiang– Superpowers don’t respond to terror attacks with calm they respond with a heavy hand. They respond to destroy the perpetrators – they go across borders to do that and its time we do it too. Super Powers are respected and feared at the same time – but from Pakistan to Bangladesh to Nepal – no one seems to give a damn about self-proclaimed superpower called India.

“Lessons have been learnt in handling post-blast situations” said Rajdeep continuing his coverage and I couldn’t again help feeling irritated by the irony. Why “Post-Blast” – when will our police, agencies learn pre-blast lessons that can help avoid them.

“People have become numb to blasts” commented some other TV Journalist. What do you want people to do – a Naseer – take out demonstrations, may be BJP workers will do it. But ain’t this government of the people, by the people? Do they need demonstrations from people to know what needs to be done? Or do we need to take up arms and march to Islamabad ?

May be we need someone like Narendra Modi at the helm, someone like KPS Gill in police – people who may not be favourite of Human Rights organizations but when choice is between human lives and human rights – maybe its better if we care about the first. Rights are subverted and some innocent are compromised but situation we are in can only be corrected at a cost and longer we wait costlier the whole setting right process will become.

I know the lame-duck PM and spineless government of India will do more than paying lip service but I just wish that they had guts to do something more…..

2008-06-16T12:54:00.000+08:00

Been a long time since I wrote…a very long time I should say. I was busy is not a reason, it is just an excuse because I was quite busy even earlier when I was far more regular here.

I think I just lost touch and that’s a dangerous thing to do. It’s far more dangerous than losing focus because losing focus is merely getting distracted but losing touch is letting distance come in between. And we all know bridging the distances are far more difficult then getting over the distractions…

But, am back now or at least that’s what I am trying to tell myself and I hope that for once am right about it.

2008-04-14T23:37:00.001+08:00

“Can you see today?” I asked him.
“Well, what do you think, I am blind? I can see everyday, it’s just that on few days all I can see is darkness” he replied.
“And is there a light at the end of tunnel today?” I asked him smilingly. You may later feel that this was a little mean but two of us have come a long way for me to be overly sensitive about his situation.
“Well, you think you have such a handsome face that if I can see I would call you instead of some young pretty lass. Now would you pour me a coffee.” he said laughingly. He loves to laugh at his jokes.

He is a unique case. He is suffering from occasional blindness. Now, I don’t know if a disease like this is even remotely considered a possibility in medical science but for him it was a reality that he woke up to everyday. There are days when he can see a day in all its glory and there were other days when all he has to work with were shades of darkness. There is no method in this madness, he could see on a Monday and go without vision for 3-4 days or can play tic-tac-toe with sight with each getting alternate chances. You can think of him as a blind who can see on some days or someone normal who turns blind on several days.

“You know Siddhartha I think I am unfortunate in a fortunate way.” he quipped as we sipped our coffee.

I knew what he is talking about. “Well, that’s one way to look at it, you could even call yourself plain lucky, not many people who can’t see, sleep with a realistic hope that when they will get up next day, they would be able to see.” I replied.

“I know Sid, not to have something is unfortunate in its own way but when you have something but you are constantly living with a fear that it would not last, sometimes it saps all the joy of owning it. There are people who are born blind, they have never seen a rainbow they can never tell what a rainbow is like. World is merely a collection of words for them – it’s sad but then they don’t feel that acute pang of loss when someone says aloud how beautiful the rainbow is. But I know what a beautiful sight it is to look at the nature putting colours on sky with single brush-stroke and so in that moment of disability I feel cheated. Once that moment pass I thank my stars for that I have at least seen what a rainbow is like and I can definitely see it again. And trust me, it indeed is reassuring. But Siddhartha, insecurity in vision and momentary frustration in blindness; they just end up ruining too much.”

“But that’s not right, why do you worry so much about tomorrow, why not just let yourself deal in today? Why try and insure joy for tomorrow and in the process end up spoiling the today?” I offered him some seemingly wise counsel.

“Because its human nature and I am one. You know what man strives for – Happiness - it’s different from joy. It is lasting and comforting. We never plan for joy, we always plan for happiness. I wish I was a gambler, staking everything on the present, saving nothing for future. But I am not. When I look at the morning sun, I want to get used to its pleasure only if I can promise myself that I can have it everyday. But the moment, doubt make its way in my mind, whispering in hushed tones that tomorrow while the sun may still be there but for me it could be a dark day, I just don’t know what happens to me. I no more care for the sunshine at that moment – I see no joy, all am left with is self pity.”

“Hmmm, you know what you should do, you should instead absorb so much from the moment that it last you a few days.” I said trying to give him instant solution.

“Siddhartha, Ask someone who lost someone close or faced an impending loss. And you would realize that one can never get so much from someone that he wouldn’t miss him when he is gone. More you get, more you will miss. Loss has something about it which can never be compensated by over-filling. And that’s why we all fear loss. That’s why we all fear living a moment to the hilt because when that moment is gone, the emptiness hits you like a rock. Insecurity is just a messenger of loss. What I fear is my loss of vision. I lose it every other day but that doesn’t diminish my fear of loss - it only heightens it. Fear only grows with time. You can try and not flinch in the face of fear but denying the existence of fear is mere immaturity.”

I couldn’t disagree with him. We all grow up try being heroes or supermen. We forget man is fallible, he does get scared. We preach heroism but moment someone takes off his superman mask and come down from pedestal of strongest and wisest – it becomes difficult to tell them what to do. All along I was trying to tell him what a perfect person would have done, but the moment he pulled out his certificate of imperfection, put it in front of me and asked me – Now that I am imperfect tell me what should I do – I was suddenly lost for words.

But he was not.

“You know Siddhartha, it’s very strange, but I am more relaxed on the days I can’t see, probably because I think hopefully tomorrow won’t be as bad as today. Its hope that keeps me relaxed. But on the days I can see when ideally things should be better, things are worse because what plays constantly on back of my mind is that tomorrow would be worse than today. I spend hours thinking what I would do when I won’t able to see tomorrow. It’s as if vision is merely a preparatory camp for blindness. I never really figured why Tomorrow is so important but it is. They all say what you have today is more important than what you can have tomorrow but all my life I have realized what I can have tomorrow has always been more important for me than what I have today. I will sleep a happy man through all the strife today if you can promise me happiness tomorrow. Why is tomorrow so much more important than today, Siddhartha?”

“Probably, because life is actually a collection of one today and lots of tomorrows. Everyday we wake up to innumerable tomorrows looking into our face. A tomorrow that we have not seen, we don’t recognize and which can completely undo all that today may bring. Just think of it, Tomorrow is like that superpower that in a single sweep make all that we cherish today insignificant. Come to think of it, you are right, a terrific today can be thrilling but it’s the knowledge that tomorrow has been secured which would actually sooth our nerves.” I paused at this moment to look at his reaction.

He was smiling and I knew what he was smiling at. What I had just said was diametrically opposite to how I have started but both of us have been through this before. Arguments are like battles, both parties are just concerned about defending their line but conversations are like long walks, even if you start on two different sides of the road you end up getting to the same side and it never matters who crossed over, no one really cares about it.

“But as I said, I might be unfortunate but in a fortunate way. At least there are days when I can see light at the end of the tunnel. Just that you always want a little more than what life brings you and I am no different. Probably one of these days I will find a promise of tomorrow that can keep my today pretty and peaceful. And I guess then it would all be fine.” he said smilingly.

And I just smiled back. His blind eyes were beginning to see a dream and I was not about to disturb that dream.

2008-04-11T02:27:00.004+08:00

As news agencies flashed the SC verdict this morning, I felt a little disappointed. Because two wrongs never make a right. ‘Centuries of oppression’ can never be undone by ‘decades of vote-bank politics’. All political parties rushed to welcome the decision. I knew what kind of crap Congress and Left would dish out but when BJP came out with a ‘me too’ kind of statement, I felt like going back and launching my own political party. And I indeed, spent time thinking about a logical and sensible political agenda that should be the basis of a new political movement.

But somewhere deep down I was also shaken because I wondered how come the wise men at Supreme Court failed to rise to the occasion and bell the reservation cat that has been let loose by our political caricatures. Sense of despondency came because since I am convinced that it is beyond combined intellectual capability of our political buffoons to analyse and address the problem of caste injustice in a sensible way, so my only hope was that SC would use this opportunity to set things right. But after taking 4 months since closure of arguments, if all SC could come up with is just a nod to quotas then it would have been really sad.

I must have slept as a troubled soul, had I not chanced upon this piece on rediff during my usual surfing routine.
http://www.rediff.com/news/2008/apr/10quota10.htm
And, if this is true then my confidence in judiciary has increased by leaps and bounds. Let me outline what I found heartening:

“You cease to be OBC when you are educated and attain graduation. Test of the OBC is social and educational backwardness. It says "and", that means if you are not educationally backward you are not OBC. The court has accepted the argument that if you are able to graduate you are not entitled to reservation."

I would say this is a remarkably intelligent and logical point. Way back in 2006 when I was still at IIMA, my biggest grouse against reservations was why reservations in Post-graduation? If you can get into an IIT by merely flaunting your surname, do you still need more crutches to get into a post-graduate degree. If you can’t walk on your two feet after 16 years of state-supported crutches then your are not disadvantaged but just plain incompetent. And if indeed SC in its judgment has carved out reservations in post-graduate courses then it’s one of the most wise decisions I have been witness to in my lifetime. Frankly, it was frustrating to see how nobody can notice something so illogical.

"The 1993 criteria to decide 'creamy layer' amongst OBC section says that people with landed property, all government employees above Class II, all OBC families with monthly income of Rs 20,000 (gross annual income of Rs.2.5 lakh and above ) etc. are barred from availing any reservation from now onwards,"

This is again a welcome decision though I have my fears that in the ‘land of jugaad’ (India) people would find a way to hide facts and forge documents to create an alternate reality to circumvent this clause. But well courts can do precious little about that. But I am all for reservations for economically backward and even if only economically backward OBCs would benefit from this ruling, I think it’s still good. What would have really pained me is son of an IAS officer studying at most expensive public school seeking an admission to IITs by claiming backwardness. Only backwardness I can notice in that case is moral backwardness.

I found another interesting information in a article in Indian Express:
http://www.expressindia.com/latest-news/Yes-to-affirmative-action-no-to-mindless-quotas/295151/

According to this piece:

“it is a very welcome judgment as the Supreme Court has given its nod to a new survey, which takes into account not only the caste but also the economic indicators to decide backwardness.”

Now if indeed SC has suggested that government undertakes a proper census to (i) Assess actual percentage of OBCs & (ii) redefine “backwardness” by taking into account both caste and economic factors. It is again a nice thought but as they merely suggested this to GoI and gave them absolute powers to determine who should be OBC, we can be absolutely sure that Government of India would do absolutely nothing about it.

And finally I also read somewhere that SC has indicated that impact of reservations on society needs to be reviewed every 5 years and list of beneficiary casts be revised. Noble thought once more but unfortunately we know our political apparatus would hardly do anything meaningful to meet the spirit of this recommendation.

But cheers again to SC for clarifying the meaning of backwardness and saving at least the institutes of highest learning from being sacrificed on the altar of vote-bank politics.

PS (Friday evening): My latest understanding is that the graduation being cut off point for backwardness is only part of Justice Bhandari's judgement and probably GoI will not be obliged to follow it. Sigh.....

2008-03-21T15:13:00.002+08:00

You should just read this piece from Jug:
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/From_Taslima_to_Tibet_India_proves_chicken/articleshow/2885952.cms
It's one of the most apt political commentary that I have come across for a while and frankly there couldn't have been a better choice of tone than sarcasm.

2008-02-29T23:19:00.000+08:00

He got up in the morning and that feeling of emptiness was there again. This feeling has lingered on for a while now. He had hoped once he gets used to his decision, this feeling would just disappear but that was not to be. He so much wished at that moment that he hadn’t made this decision but then he knew he doesn’t even want to reverse it. All he wanted to escape from was this feeling that life is about to change too much, too quickly. There was this nagging fear of things drifting away, of something precious being lost forever. And on top of it, he knew the day when all this is going to hit him hard. He wanted to postpone it but with every morning he was actually getting near it.

He didn’t want to get out of bed, he looked at the table clock and he still had few minutes. He wanted to hold that ticking hand of the clock and stop it. He started thinking of his schedule for the day to distract himself but soon he again found himself thinking of the same thing. So often, few things become so central to our lives that whatever we do, it all leads us to that.

But then this was his own decision. Yeah, others did play a part in making him sit down to decide but when he made the decision – it was entirely his – no influence, no coercion, no pressure. But he still wanted to blame everyone who questioned him. After all, had they not questioned him – he would have never felt the need to seek the answer. His thoughts wandered to those joyous mornings few summers back, when there was no fear, no anxiety - when it was all so serene and peaceful.

And then his phone rang, he picked up the phone and heard the voice of his sweet little girl, “ Hey Dad, How are you? When are you coming home?” He talked to her for several minutes till the alarm clock reminded him that he needs to get off the bed now.

And so he did but the incessant chatter of his daughter has filled in all the emptiness within him with loads of joy. He was no more scared of losing anything. Calm and peace has returned. And so has the promise – promise of a new life which he was actually looking forward to.He was now ready to turn the page of his life, but before that he needed to finish this one.

And so he got up to get ready, he picked up the newspaper and saw his face on the front page again. A bold headline next to the photograph read – “Adam Gilchrist retires tomorrow”

2008-02-17T01:45:00.000+08:00

It’s amazing how one’s life constantly change over the years. Passions, priorities, people - they all change as years walk by. If you look back, you would realize that at different points in time, different things meant so much to you. Wonder, if life could have been recorded, not just in photographs or videos but in some way where images can be preserved together with feelings, emotions, promises, aspirations and dreams of those moments. And on one of those lazy Saturday mornings when you have nothing better to do, how about playing back your life with a cup of coffee in your hand.

When I look back, what hits me is the force of emotions during the times gone by. How engrossed we were about getting that one thing in that one moment, as if life almost hinged upon it. It always felt like a ‘make or break’ then though now come to think of it – neither when we got what we wanted it turned life into a fairytale nor life turned into a miserable melancholy when we failed to get what we desired. It’s just that this wisdom always dawns when we can free ourselves from the emotional intensity of those moments.

“Intensity”, yeah that’s the word. It’s the intensity with which we throw ourselves in a moment that makes it so difficult for us to gather ourselves when those times have passed. But then, it’s just not about pulling oneself from losses but also staying sober through success. Because so often what shatters people is not just the failure to get what one yearned for but also the realization that life has not really changed much even after getting what you sought so much. But indifference & disenchantment are no solutions, intensity is a must, it drives you, it keeps you afloat and it brings lot of joy and so what if it makes it difficult too, it’s all part of the experience called ‘Life’.

Another thing I find interesting is how demanding we are of life. So often we are just like that kid, who would throw tantrums to get that toy which caught his fancy a few days back. But the day he gets it, that’s it, he might play with it for a day or two but it's just a matter of time till he finds that other toy which he now wants just as badly as he wanted the earlier one. Just like this kid, all of us always have something on top of our wish-list which we want out of life. At every step we tell ourselves – this is all I want but the moment we get it – that’s it. Soon, we want something else – and now that’s all we want. And somewhere in that process, if we don’t get something - well, life would always hear from us – look you didn’t give me that or else I wouldn’t have wanted this.

But I guess am drifting, what was in my mind when I started writing is how much life changes with time. How as a kid I had absolutely different dreams about my life ahead, as a teen it changed and then over the years I kept churning and changing the dreams of my future. Today I have different expectations from life – ones I feel are almost critical for my future happiness but probably few years down the line I might realize that all of them were inconsequential to how life turned out for me. Probably, today I have got much more from life than what I might have had, if life would have strictly given me only what I asked her for. So in a way it's good that life charts its own path, different from the one I want it to. Sometimes, one may get overawed by the change and may feel that his life has lost its way but probably all life is doing is putting you on a hidden trail of happiness, which you couldn't have discovered on your own.

2008-01-30T20:05:00.000+08:00

This post started as a comment in response to Navya’s comment to my last post. But once it assumed its current length I decided to put it as a separate post. So, ideally this one should be read in conjunction with the last para of my previous post & Navya’s comment on that.

So let me start by presenting you a scenario.

Let’s assume there is this very difficult but extremely prestigious exam on Nuclear Physics that people from world over take. Among the numerous participants, there is one 42 year old eminent Nuclear Scientist & a 14-year old class Xth kid. Now when the results, come in our kid or whiz kid (whatever you wanna call him) scores 97 out of 100..Amazing…people stand up to take note, a 14 year old scoring 97 in such a difficult exam. He was hailed everywhere, got standing ovation wherever he went, was interviewed by media as if they have no one else to interview etc. etc. No denying that for a 14 year old to achieve what he did deserves all accolades that he got. But our eminent scientist let’s just call him Mr. K (scientists like such names) scored 98 which was highest among all participants. For a 42 year old nuclear scientist to score highest in a nuclear physics exam is commendable but no miracle.

Now entire public, media and our whizkid himself is demanding that he is declared the topper of this exam notwithstanding that Mr. K scored higher marks. Almost everyone is saying that kid is pure genius (which is something I am not denying) and so he deserves this honour but my problem is he is still the second best in absolute terms. May be if we revise the merit list on Score/Age basis, he would top it but on absolute score basis, Mr. K deserves the honour of topping this exam.

Case of this TZP kid – Darsheel – is same – he may have done great for his age and therefore deserve a special jury/critics award but not the best actor one. That should go to the guy who acted best irrespective of whether he has done 150 movies before or if he is 42, 52, 62. Now, limited question is, are you seeing him as a kid who acted exceedingly well or an actor who acted well. And when I look at him from latter point of view, I don’t see him as the best MAN. But then that’s merely my two Singapore cents.

Personally, I also believe that people are getting swayed by superb emotional appeal that TZP holds and therefore over-rating the kid’s effort (which doesn’t mean that I don’t think he is excellent but just that I don’t think he is something humanity has never seen before) but then that’s an extremely personal view which I won’t even like to present as an argument.

And finally to all Darsheel supporters – IQ comment in my last post was extremely light hearted, just in keeping with the tone of the post and it was not meant to disparage the intellect of any terrestrial or extra-terrestrial being (or for that matter, artificial intelligence of any super-computer even). And I hope no one took any offence to it, if you did my heartfelt apologies.

2008-01-22T04:01:00.001+08:00

321 years back an apple fell and Newton discovered gravity. Today, it was turn of sensex to take a fall and for Indian investor to discover gravity. And what a costly way to discover that – 6.6 lakh crore is what it cost M-cap of India Inc. to discover that whatever goes up comes down. Hopefully, that would drive some SENSE in sensex.

Btw, if you heard me say 6.6 lakh crore, i.e. because I am sitting in Singapore 6 hours away from India. Am pretty sure, had you asked someone in India, they would have said we lost 6.6 crore “Nanos” today. Yups am talking about Tata Nano - supposedly the best thing to have happened to India since Sachin Tendulkar. And, I must say am in no mood to contest that. People might tell you that this would make Indian roads more congested, air more polluted and neighbourhoods more cluttered (where is the parking space anyways?). But I am willing to dismiss that as an elitist view, because I don’t think anyone who made such comments takes a bus to office or cycles his way through. To me, Tata Nano is yet another step towards empowerment of Great Indian Middle Class. And, given huge petrol/diesel subsidies by Govt. of India, for once government is literally fuelling the aspirations of Indian public.

And that reminds me, if you are a foreigner, have recently found yourself in India and wondering why no tourist or business brochure ever told you that most important city in India is Perth. Stay calm, don’t waste your dollars or euros in buying latest map of India, because Google is right when it tells you that only known ‘Perth’ on face of earth is in Western Australia. India has just won a cricket test match there and that’s all. It’s amazing, how we as a nation starved for sporting success goes overboard with any little piece of success that comes our way. We flaunt it so much that it becomes embarrassing at times. But then for all the dollars we pump in global cricket circus, there is something to show at least.

But there ain’t a circus more amusing than Politics and politics can’t get stranger anywhere but in subcontinent. After all where else would you find seasoned politicians asking a 19 year old to run a country? That’s right - Mr. Bilal Zardari/Bhutto must be the most important teenager after Harry Potter in current times, after all he is prime minister elect for running the most unstable democratic government in world. Sounds similar to calls for Priyanka and Rahul Gandhi to take up prime-ministership in aftermath of Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination. Wonder when would people in this part of world will get out of feudal age mentality and graduate to democracy in true sense of the word.

And finally, now that we have discussed, cricket, politics, business and sensex, fitting closure to this post would be a mention of Bollywood. And in current times, when one’s EQ (Emotional Quotient) is being measured by asking if he/she cried while watching Taare Zameen Par or not, how could I discuss something else. I must say that the movie is top rate, kid has really done exceedingly well and Aamir Khan has created one of the finest cinematic moments in form of the song “Maa…”. But “best actor award for the child” …well, where’s your IQ buddy?

2008-01-15T01:51:00.000+08:00

Wish this didn’t happen - wish that happened differently - wish I could do it again.
But fortunately or unfortunately none such wishes are ever granted because Time is a one way street. There are no U-turns, There ain’t any going back. If you didn’t refill fuel of joy at the last gas station, you just will have to wait for the next. If you let go of any moments, they are lost forever – not to be regained, not to be rediscovered. You can find similar moments further ahead in your life but the ones you wasted, are gone for good.

We keep waiting for things to happen the way we want them to happen and during that wait we turn a blind eye to moments that are waiting to be embraced and enjoyed. As time ticks by, we grow impatient and then we pick the hammer made of our perceptions and start striking those moments hard, hoping we would succeed in moulding them the way we want to see them. While a few of us succeed, but far more of us only succeed in disfiguring and destroying the moments. And soon, we are just left with battered moments all around us.

And then you wish you had done things differently. You had smilingly hugged those moments as they were rather than ignoring them for ones which were never to be. You wish you had held those moments tight rather than letting them go, hoping they would return. But when has time ever come back? When it drifts - it just keeps going further and further away.

And therefore, may be key is to not try and wait for time to change but to step up and change the way you look at time. Key is not to sit and say that’s how I wanted my moments to be but to start enjoying the moments as they are. And may be in the process they may just lead you to the times which you were wishing for.

2007-12-25T02:09:00.000+08:00

com·mu·nal·ism
\-nə-ˌli-zəm\
Noun: loyalty to a sociopolitical grouping based on religious or ethnic affiliation

That’s right out of Webster.
And reason why I needed to look up Webster for the most commonly used word in Indian politics today is because am fast realizing that this could possibly be the most misunderstood word in politics as well.

So, Mr. Narendra Modi won Gujarat elections yesterday for his third consecutive term. I remember five years back when he had won a similar majority I was extremely distraught. Afterall, how could someone who ought to be tried for letting rioters go berserk in aftermath of Godhra can be head of a government. And inspite of my greatest regard for Atal Bihari Vajpayee, one reason why I supported Congress in last elections was because I was convinced that BJP needs to be punished for what it allowed to happen in Gujarat.

But yesterday, as I streamed webcast of CNN-IBN to follow Gujarat election results, I was hoping Modi would win. And for simple reason that I have begun to realize that Congress’s brand of communalism will hurt this country more in a long run. I must clarify that I still blame Narendra Modi for Gujarat riots and I have little respect for him given his outright cheap and demeaning political speeches in last election.

But as I said before only reason why I wanted Modi to win, was because I wanted Congress to lose. Same Congress that I supported in last elections, which in hindsight was a mistake. Why? Let’s just sample few of the great steps being considered by this government to figure out why:

1. Muslim policemen in Muslim dominated areas
2. Preference for Muslims in Indian Army
3. Higher UGC grants for colleges with more Muslims
4. Directive to banks to include lending to Muslims under priority sector banking
5. More Muslims on government job interview panels so that more Muslims get selected

So if you just mistook Muslim for a synonym for Indian, you ain’t the only one out there to make that mistake. Apparently, Government of sovereign, socialist, secular, democratic republic of India led by Mr. Muslimmohan Singh err Manmohan Singh seems to have similar misunderstanding.

Now, just in case anyone here thinks that I have turned Hindu nationalist. Hold on.
I HATE COMMUNALISM.
And I hate communalism in its all forms. And you can refer the definition of communalism at the beginning of this post because communalism means religious bias and not just Hindu bias as Indian politicians seem to believe. So, while there is no denying that BJP has communal shades all over, but is Congress any different? BJP at least kept Army out of its communal agenda. And so, when on TV you hear a congressman call Narendra Modi communal, you just can’t help liking it to pot calling the kettle black.

We the people of India are today faced with a choice between devil and deep blue sea. Either we can side with a Communal BJP or a Communal Congress. Either we can vote for Gujarat rioters or Sikh rioters. Either we can elect a government which would thing twice before hanging Dara Singh or a government which would think thrice about hanging Mohammed Afzal. But the real tragedy is that while one of them would always win, we will always lose. We may help one of them to get elected but in the end we will be the ones who’ll end up being sorry for making that choice. Just as I today rue supporting Congress in 2004, I might be sitting and sulking few years down the line for supporting BJP in 2009.
And that’s why I say Frustration thy name is Indian Politics.

2007-12-20T02:06:00.000+08:00

He again woke up in the middle of night. He figured it must be around 3 in the morning. At first when he started getting up in night, he used to keep his watch close by to see the time. Now he just has to look out of the window. One of many lessons time taught him that he never thought himself capable of learning.

It was another dark night, clouds held rein over the night sky but thankfully it was not raining. He absolutely detested that sound of rain lashing against the window pane during the nights. Initially, when he used to wake up to find rain beating hard against the window, he used to feel like screaming at the top of his voice to silence that rain. Now, he just prays for a rainless night before going to bed. But not so long ago, he loved the sound and sight of rain.

He poured himself some water from the jug and started sipping it slowly. He was not thirsty but this is one of those routines that he had invented to spend these almost unending hours. At first, he got himself some books to keep company but then he realized that eyes that can’t sleep through the night can also not read through the night. He stayed awake for three consecutive nights without turning a page and then he realized that sipping a glass of water in dark is a better bet against the night than making oneself conspicuous in the light of table lamp. Now all his books sit in the shelf opposite to his bed, reminding him of days when life was still about hope, ambition and dreams.

And life indeed was good to him till not so long ago. But then he played and lost the most important gamble of his life. Fate conspired with his dreams to make him give up all he ever owned in pursuit of one thing which he can never own. And he fell for it. He staked his entire self to win something which he then realized could never be his to keep. And so at the end of it, all he was left with was a sense of betrayal and bitterness. His dreams betrayed him, his fate embittered him. And they took away everything - his sound sleep, his enthusiasm for life, his little joys and mobility of his lower body.

As his half-paralysed body lay on that hospital bed waiting for dawn to arrive, he suddenly heard the sound of raindrops hitting the window. Another of his prayer went unanswered...

2007-12-14T00:47:00.000+08:00

Last Friday, this blog turned 1.

And as I look back, it has been an eventful year. Over the course of this year, a lot changed and still a lot remained the same. I went through times which took turns being joyous, sad, anxious, calm, desperate, exciting, frustrating and boring but this blog stayed with me through all that.

I weaved stories, analysed politics, reviewed movies, mulled over the past, dissected nothings and acted wise ;-) But through all this, what kept bringing me back here was that I could be myself here. I could weave fantasies, create characters, voice my frustration, criticize what I disliked and yearn for what I wanted.

And hopefully this is one thing that would not change with turn of calendar.

2007-12-05T22:35:00.000+08:00

Other day I was finding my way through a shopping mall and as I looked down I found a really old couple going down the escalators. They must be really old, I guess both of them must be somewhere in mid-70s. Must have been married for around 40-50 years or so. And just when I was about to take my eyes off them, I saw uncle getting off the escalator and holding out his hand for the auntie. She took his hand and came off the escalator, she held a walking stick and was walking very slowly but uncle not for a moment walked ahead of her. It was visible even to my untrained eyes that he is taking those little steps just to walk together with her. I was really distant to notice any facial expressions, but I guess there wouldn’t have been any – there was no need for them. All that was there was - a silent understanding, an unstated awareness of each other’s need and trust developed over so many years that one would be there when other will need him/her.

It was just a little incident, but it was beautiful and left me with a smile that was happy for someone I may never see again :)

2007-11-23T00:15:00.000+08:00

Do you know why Will Smith titled his movie – Pursuit of Happyness?
That’s because God had copy rights on the phrase “Pursuit of Happiness”. Yeah, that’s what He calls life up there.

And isn’t it what life is all about – Pursuit of Happiness. Just in case you think, key word there is Happiness – gotcha – you are wrong. Key word there is “Pursuit”. A pursuit that gets defeated by shortness of life. I suggest that next time they find a star really distant from earth – they should name it ‘Happiness’. Just think about the headline in newspaper next day :
Happiness discovered five million light years away from Earth
Apt. Isn’t it? Even if man can travel at speed of light, longest one has ever lived is 110-120 years, so no would ever get to even reach closer to Happiness. [- the star]

Did any of you used to see those mythological serials on Doordashan long back – they used to show Gods talking and whenever they wanted to punish someone they would pack him to earth. I used to think of it as a pretty easy deal on the culprit ;-) Guess, now I have discovered my Godliness ;-), now I can make perfect sense why anyone would do that. Probably, earth is actually a prison for souls that did something wrong on some planet beta and so they were given a jail uniform (read human body) and sent to this prison, where they get to do jail hours (read work) to earn their living and serve their time (read life) till they can go back again to planet beta ;-)

Now am sure you would have seen those smiling faces and must have heard those ringing laughter – don’t be fooled. It was joy, not happiness. Yeah, life does have enough joy to offer – that’s God’s way of making it up to us. So He packs the joy in small boxes and drops it from up there for us to catch. Remind me again of DD – news this time – that footage of army men dropping food packets from air force planes in flooded areas. That’s how life is - flooded with unhappiness – but for humanitarian reasons – God keeps dropping us those packets of joy – few of us catch them, thank God for that and rest of us wonder what’s there in that packet. We look at that smile and mistook it to be happiness, but its just joy my dear friends. Joy which will not last anyone for ever, coz it’s just instantaneous & ephemeral.

I wonder, why God even gave hope to humans that they can be happy – its sheer cruelty – I mean, just plain tell them, you gonna be a wretched lot down there. One learns to live with his lot. But nopes He chose to be sheer mean and cruel. And for His sadistic pleasure He invented ‘hope’, so that He can look at people living in a constant hope that they can be happy, things can be better. And poor us, we cling on to hope and keep up the ‘pursuit’.

I remember that tale about Lord Buddha, where he had asked a woman whose young child has died, that go get a bowl of rice from a home where no one has ever died and then He would bring her son back to life. Similarly, today I wanna play God, so just show me a man who has been truly happy in his life and I will put you in a constant state of bliss as well !!!

2007-11-11T02:58:00.000+08:00

And so he stood again in the battlefield of Kurushektra with a feeling of déjà vu. It felt exactly the same. Same as it was a day before. No one else remembered it but him. Only he knew that what is going to start in few minutes has played out earlier also.

And he also remembered how it has ended. Abhimanyu was standing again in Kurushektra just a day after he got killed by Jaydrath. Army of Kauravas had the same Chakravyuh formation. He was still the only one who knew how to get into this chakravyuh, he still didn’t know how to get out of it. But this time only thing that has changed was that now he was aware that last time he got himself killed battling his way out of that Chakravyuh.

It was not supposed to be like this. Battle of Mahabharata was to proceed without him. He had played out his part and he was no more to be part of this. But he wanted another shot. Life rarely gives another shot but he insisted. As he stood before God in Heaven, he asked Him to let him live that last day of his life once again. He wanted to get it right this time. He wanted to beat Kauravas, he wanted to be the victor and so as he insisted, God relented. And so Abhimanyu got another chance.

He had thought that this time he wont make the mistakes he made earlier, he would be more cautious now, he would benefit from his knowledge of past. But suddenly as he stood in his chariot moments before conch was to announce beginning of day’s battle, he realized none of that was to happen. He didn’t even know if he made any mistake last time – he hardly did, he was also as cautious as he could be and knowledge of past was hardly an asset as it only reminded him that his best was not enough last time, that no matter how hard he tried he still couldn’t figure a way out of chakravyuh. And he suddenly realized that there is nothing that could go any different this time. If he chose to enter the chakravyuh, he would not get out. And then he remembered face of God as He agreed to let him go and live that last day again. He had just smiled, just as you let the kid has his way knowing fully well that he still can’t change anything.

He suddenly realized how naïve he was to think that he could change the course of life, that he could challenge the fate and come out winners, that just because has lost once before –he would win this time.

And then he heard the conch, and he made his way to chakravyuh. Knowing fully well how it could end but hoping it would end some other way. But when have hopes ever got better of fate? It all played out just as it did a day before. Jaydrath killed Abhimanyu again. Fate & life conspired to get their way once more.

2007-11-08T01:12:00.000+08:00

Living on foreign shores, away from hustle and bustle of India, one thing that I have realized is that those festivals which used to announce themselves months in advance back home, slip by quietly like strangers here.

I remember that as I kid I grew up with, dusshera, lohri, rakhi, janmashtmi, basant panchmi etc. and navratri & ganesh chaturthi joined in during later years. And Holi & Diwali the Big 2 were always there. But somehow over years, I kept losing touch with them one by one, and am more or less left with only Holi & Diwali now.

And though I don't know why, but Diwali was always been my favourite festival. As a kid, initially it were the firecrackers which used to be the major draw but as I grew up and gave up on patakhas, Diwali's place in my list of favourites saw no change. Rather I only got further enamoured by Diwali; sight of diyas lighting up the night held me spellbounded every year without fail. Frankly, if I have a choice I would do away with all the electric lighting and just put Diyas everywhere on Diwali night. They are so beautiful and so surreal. Reminiscent of old world beauty and elegance.

I know I gonna miss all that this Diwali. May be I won't have any diyas that day, even if I find few for my house I know I can't walk out and find every house lit up, doors open, children running around, people all dressed up and smiles just having a field day on everyone's face.

But I just hope everyone back home in India will have lots of such sights.

And as for me, if i switch off all the lights and light up a lot of diyas - it would make a decent sight, rite ;-)

HAPPY DIWALI to one and all :)

शुभ दीपावली !!!

2007-11-05T01:00:00.000+08:00

While putting together few words recently, I realized they ended up looking like couplets.
So thought will post some of them here...

कुछ हवा का ज़ोर था, कुछ बादलों की मर्ज़ी थी
वो उड़ गए वही से, जहाँ छीटों की कुछ ज़रूरत थी
-------------------------------------------------

किसी ने पी के भुला दिया ग़म को
किसी ने रो के बहा दिया ग़म को
इक मैं हूँ जो ना पीता हूँ, ना रोता हूँ
इसलिए तमाम रात, आँखों मे गुज़र करता हूँ
-------------------------------------------------

रश्क करता हूँ मैं सितारों की किस्मत से
काश की मेरे पास भी हर रात , मेरा चाँद होता
-------------------------------------------------

अब तो तुम ख़्वाबों मे भी नहीं आती मेरे
कोई भला किसी से कहाँ इतना ख़फा होता हैं
-------------------------------------------------

चलो कुछ देर और इंतज़ार किया जाएँ,
किसी उम्मीद से रोशन जहाँ किया जाएँ,
दुआएँ असर होने मे वक्त लेती हैं
इतने जल्दी मायूस ना हुआ जाएँ
-------------------------------------------------

Album Recommendation for the day:

While my attempts at poetry may not cut much ice with many but hear the Poems CD of Dus Kahaniyan. It has got some terrific pieces of poetry by none other than Gulzar. You better brush up your urdu though as it does have fair sprinkling of not so common words but trust me its a must hear.

My current fav from this album:

तुझे भूलने लगा हूँ मैं अब... & उसे फिर लौट के जाना हैं ये मालूम था ...

2007-10-29T15:36:00.000+08:00

One of my friend’s gtalk tagline read “when you do NPV of life…u should use a discount rate of approx. zero”. Now given my interest in DCF (Discounted Cash Flow analysis for non-MBAs), it was quiet natural for me to get intrigued by this statement.

After all, if you use zero as discount rate than effectively you don’t discount future at all. So implications are:
(a) NPV (Net Present Value for non-MBAs) of your life gets artificially high,
(b) You come up with a seemingly tough to digest logic that say if you hungry today still you are indifferent to getting a meal now or a week later and
(c) Since you have made discount rate zero so it also means that any return on effort in life is equivalent to nil…so either you having a really wretched life or you just don’t have anything left to achieve or attain.

Therefore, I was a little confounded and I just assumed that what she might have meant is to actually live in present and not worry about the future in which case she should have ideally used a discount rate of infinity ;-)

It was upon broaching this with her when I figured that she came up with this line while reading a book called Secret by Rhonda Byrne and the philosophy inherent in that. So I picked up the trail to chance upon what is known as Law of Attraction. Now, I have a very strong opinion on this “law” but before I prejudice you with my perception, let me just state what it actually stands for, so I would borrow the definition from the link above ( while strongly recommending that you go through that link once):
“It states that people experience physical and mental manifestations that correspond to their predominant thoughts, feelings, words, and actions and that people therefore have direct control over reality and their lives through thought alone.”

Interesting right, let me put it a little simply …it says that “for something to happen, all you need to do is to believe/hope that it would happen” So how life will pan out is suddenly not a function of your actions but simply a function of your thoughts. Now, critics would argue that’s not what it means - one obviously needs to act on his thoughts. So even if I allow lee way for a one to one mapping between functions of thoughts and action i.e. we use a prototype subject who puts all his thoughts into action, then for him things should just pan out the way he wants them to. So suddenly life would become fixed and definite because now there’s no uncertainty. But wait, there is a contradiction, what if two equally deserving and earnest individuals decide to want the same thing with equal fervour and dedication. Now if both of them think that they should have that thing then who would eventually get it. When thoughts of different individuals are contradictory what course would nature take, how would the universe react?

It goes on to say that if you really want something just assume you have it. Now that’s an interesting treatise with long term disastrous results guaranteed. So if you hungry just assume you just getting back from the grandest buffet you ever had and try surviving on this assumption for a week, or if its raining just assume you carrying that black umbrella you lost last week (and hope not to get drenched) and so on… I know am pushing it to logical extreme but then this “law” kinda asked for it.

So now since you have assumed you have everything which you could have ever hoped for, life has suddenly nothing more to achieve. Rather life just becomes a constant wait for your thoughts to turn into reality. And then I see another logical contradiction here. If you assume that you have all you ever needed, would that satisfy you, give you delights of owning what you wanted to own – coz if it does, then there is no need for your thoughts to ever change into reality because you are pretty happy with the virtual reality of your own but if this assumption doesn’t give you any satisfaction or benefit then won’t it leave you disgruntled and dissatisfied - in which case you are back to where you had begun…

This philosophy did have some echo in another popular book – Alchemist by Paulo Coelho (Another popular book that I couldn’t bring myself to like) – “when you really want something, all the universe conspires in helping you achieve it'”. But here it’s far more subdued because it doesn’t guarantee achievement; it just talks about a conducive atmosphere where final result is still a function of your actions.

Nevertheless, my logical & sensible self completely revolted against the entire premise of this theory. But remember, few days back I wrote about little rules of faith and how each one of us need to have some illogical friends like that. Well, I would have let this one pass as one such rule of faith but then what made me write something this long about it is the pretense of this ‘law’ that there is more to it than faith, that you should believe it because it has its roots in quantum physics or its effort to gaining credibility through blatant misinterpretation of Hinduism or Buddhism.

Faith and physics - they make strange bedfellows. I have always believed that faith is as much an ally of a man as logic is. Just that when you base your actions on faith don’t look for support in science and when you act on science just don’t hope that it would turn out any different from how it always does…

2007-10-25T04:00:00.000+08:00

I got back home by 6:30 today and for want of anything better to do, switched on Sony. It was showing some recent hindi movie which I don’t really think I would have seen in a better frame of mind , but when you are acutely bored –anything goes. So I ended up watching this flick.

Now it was another of those usual formula hindi movie – Mr. Hero and Ms. Heroine falls in love in first 60 mins, sing songs, exchange vows of true love. Then some misunderstanding crops up and they get apart in next half an hour. Enter Mr. Nice Guy, he supports our Ms. Heroine for next one hour. Mr. Nice Guy gets into good books of Ms. Heroine though our Ms. Heroine still cries all night for Mr. Hero in one or more of those sad songs. With half an hour to go, she comes round and agrees to marry Mr. Nice Guy. Now we enter the climax, just as they were about to get married, misunderstanding between Mr. Hero and Ms. Heroine gets resolved by some twisted stroke of fate. But all this happen almost always on the wedding day. Now Mr. Nice Guy is left with no choice, he steps up and lives up to his name by bringing together Mr. Hero & Ms. Heroine and walking away himself. And without fail, he does this with a perfect smile playing on his face at the end. Result – everybody is happy at the end of three hours. .

I have seen this plot numerous times, two movies I can immediately remember are Kuch Kuch Hota Hain and Mere Yaar ki Shaadi Hain and I seriously felt bad for characters of both Salman Khan & Jimmy Shergill. I mean poor Mr. Nice Guys, why should they always step aside. Why should fate be cruel on them? Why can’t all these misunderstandings get resolved well in time before these poor chaps make an entry? Now you can’t sympathise much with Uday Chopra but u can’t fault SRK for falling in love with Ms. Heroine at first place and we all want things to work out between the leading pair which eventually does. But someone must spare a thought for our poor Mr. Nice Guys. That way Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam was a little different, while Mr. Nice Guy, as usual, decided to step aside but in the end Ms. Heroine came back to him. But then that happened because Ms. Heroine was already Mrs. Heroine by the time movie entered its climax. Now in almost all hindi movies if Ms. Heroine ends up marrying Mr. Nice Guy then we all know happy ending requires our leading lady to stay put in the marriage. That’s why I think Mr. Johar came up with an excellent story for Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna though he spoiled it entirely with frivolous execution of that movie. Now that’s more or less the only movie I recall where Ms. Heroine walks out on a seemingly perfect hubby to pursue her heart’s calling – guess it was too mature and complicated a story for Mr. Johar to handle but I just hope somebody more competent tries a remake of KANK. Am sure this is one script that has immense potential to change the standard formula of hindi movies.

But coming back to tried and tested love triangles of hindi movies (which upon applying rules of geometry should be isosceles in my opinion), I was just wondering could these stories have any other ends? Probably not. On careful thinking, the very reason why the third angle of this triangle is called Mr. Nice Guy and not Mr. Hero 2 is because he is never supposed to be the hero. He is just there to fill in for Mr. Hero till fate plays one of its tricks and set right all that was wrong so far. I mean while all Mr. Nice Guys are immensely likeable but they are not really supposed to be loved or are they? Not really, if any of the hindi movies are to be believed … I don’t seem to recollect any flick where Ms. Heroine (and not Mrs. Heroine) chose to prefer Mr. Nice Guy over Mr. Hero (and not Mr. Anti-Hero).

Frankly, if you ask me if I would like the original formula changed so that Ms. Heroine forgets Mr. Hero and fall in for Mr. Nice Guy, I myself would have serious apprehensions. One or two offbeat movies ok but always …ummmmm no please. Reason – if misunderstandings did them apart in first place then it would be really hard on Mr. Hero as well as Ms. Heroine, if they are kept apart just because it was too late by the time it all got cleared. Guess that’s why our directors prefer to play the game of brinkmanship and chose to clear air just in time i.e. on wedding day ;-) And so if there got to be one sacrificial lamb in the whole thing, its only fair that it is Mr. Nice Guy. After all, Ms. Heroine was never meant to be with him at the first place.

But then, just for the sake of being different. I really wish to see one movie where our Mr. Nice Guy is both liked and loved. And it’s not him who is required to make way at the end. I mean even by the law of large numbers Mr. Hero should run out of luck at least once after repeated success in all the hindi movies in walking away with the bride. Some bright guy somewhere should come up with a believable excuse why Ms. Heroine can live happily ever after with Mr. Nice Guy instead of going back to Mr. Hero.

Now only guys I can trust to do justice with something like this are either Vishal Bharadwaj or Sanjay Leela Bhanshali. But given Shakespeare never thought of a drama like this so Mr. Bharadwaj might just be long way off a movie like this and as for Mr, Bhansali, well…does anyone know what’s the story of Saawariya ? ;-)

Song recommendations:

Now that I have established my knowledge of hindi movies beyond dispute. Let me recommend my favourite tracks from Saawariya. Excellent album and it was really tough to choose one song as favourite over rest and actually I couldn’t do it in the end.
So, two of my fav songs from this album are:

1. थोड़े बदमाश हो तुम, थोड़े नादान हो तुम….. sung by Shreya Ghoshal; &
2. माशा अल्लाह….. by Kunal Ganjawala

2007-10-19T02:00:00.000+08:00

There are lots of things I like about night.

Like darkness which hides you from constant glare of the world, quiet that let you steal some moments of peace, solitude that let you be yourself.

After a long day, night is like nature’s gift to you. A gift, wrapped in a beautiful starlit sky and laced with a ribbon made of moonlight.

It's so beautiful and fascinating and still people spend it sleeping…

I wonder why...

2007-10-15T22:28:00.000+08:00

I once told myself that tougher it gets for you to get something; greater are the chances that you would eventually get it. Because when something is very precious, God just wants to be sure that He is giving it in the right hands. So, when He makes it difficult for you it’s not to scare you away, but all He wants is to be absolutely sure that you really want what you asking for. And so all one needs to do in such moments is to stay put and not give up.

And while this may sound a little childish, but this invented “rule of life” of mine has stayed with me since then and actually helped me slug it out in moments when everything seemed lost. I would be the first one to agree that this little principle of faith may not be able to stand slightest of test of reason. But then I turn to it only when reason refuses to stand by me.

There are times when you want something very badly but you can’t seem to get it and in these times, your wisdom, your reason, your logic all gang up and ask you to turn back, assuring you that there is nothing wrong in giving up, convincing you that best thing to do is to just step aside. And still you just don’t want to give up, because something deep down tells you not to – at least not just yet.

And in such moments, all of us need our little friendly rules of faith, ones to which we can turn and who can tell us to ignore all the sane advice and just heed to call of our heart – rules of faith which can tell us to stay put and not give up as yet. And they may be childish but all of us need one or two childish friends like these. Because just like little kids these little acts of faith also don’t question you, they don’t argue with you, they just look at you and smile approvingly – and that smile is enough to bring back your confidence and hope. And sometimes this little faith is all that’s needed to bridge the last stretch between your dreams and reality.

And even if it is not enough to take you to the end but it at least takes you as far as you could have possibly gone and doesn’t leave you with a regret of giving it up when you could have still made that last ditch effort.

After all, so often what comes back to haunt you is not that you lost but that may be you just didn’t try right till the end…

2007-10-05T13:43:00.001+08:00

It was very dark. Nobody could have seen it. Nobody could have even seen the drops of red dripping from his fingers. But he could feel the hot blood on his hands. And he could see her body lying in front of him.

It must have been a very painful death. He had slit her throat and as blood drained and her body twitched, he stood there watching. But she didn’t scream. She had not even shouted when he took out knife in that dark alley. She had just looked at him for a moment….and then she closed her eyes. And in that single moment, her eyes didn’t ask him “Why ?”, rather those eyes asked herself “How could he?”. She didn’t say a word thereafter. Not when he pressed the knife to her throat, now when he made the first cut, not when he slit her throat open and not a sound when she lay there fighting a painful battle with death. She just took it all with a stony silence.

And silence is all that he was left with now. He touched her body, it was cold - it had none of the warmth that he was used to. Her eyes had popped out - they had none of the twinkle that he has known. Her lips had turned blue – not the rose red that he remembered.

He had killed her.

He knew he had killed her but it was still very dark so no one else might have seen it. So he decided to wait by the body till the day break. They might just need a witness or two to prove that he killed her…

And he didn't want to take any chances with the hanging....

2007-09-29T03:09:00.000+08:00

It was just 5 in the evening, on a normal day this time of the day would have been mildly lit by a sun preparing to call it a day, but not today. It was dark as a night outside, clouds held the rein, flashes of lightning were warning about the thunderstorm that was readying itself to strike and destroy. May be the cloak of darkness was borrowed by the storm to hide the destruction or may be it was just another tool of its, when you can’t see clearly, you often get sucked in by forces of self-destruction.

But thunderstorms just don’t appear out of blue. It was raining since morning, clouds were building up and light was fighting a losing battle since day-break. No one can complain that storm just slipped in, whoever didn’t see it coming was guilty of either looking the other way or closing their eyes in a hope that all this would just blow over.

Clouds were roaring now and it has started raining harder. How strange it is. Same rain that till yesterday was a welcome relief, a thing of beauty, an object of romance has suddenly turned into a terror, a dance of destruction. There were people who waited for rains, waited to take a walk in the light drizzle or get drenched in the mild one. Waited to smell the fragrance of raindrops falling on the soil. Waited to sit by the river to see raindrops creating ripples in the river. Waited to pick freshly washed flowers from the garden. Today all of them were scurrying for shelter, praying that rains go away, wondering if those summer days albeit a little hot and dry were better than the current madness. How strange it is that situations and events can turn something that was an object of desire till so recently into a distant disenchantment.

But wait, not everyone was hurrying for shelter. There was a lone soul out there, looking up in the sky as if challenging the storm for a duel. He too had waited for rains and he has not yet given up on his dreams. It was pouring hard, nothing like what he had expected. But he was ready to brave these rains, in a hope that at some point they would relent, skies would give in to his desire and storm would pass on to let him dance in the rain. But hopes, that’s what storms enjoy destroying most. Longer he stayed out, harder it rained. Each shower was striking at his confidence, trying to weaken him, making him to give in. But he held out. He fell few times but every time he stood up again. Each thunderstorm comes with a shelf life, and in only that much time it needs to destroy all dreams, desires and hopes. If one can hold out for that long then storm does blow over. But you hold out not by hiding but by facing up. And that’s what he was doing. The storm was running out of time. Soon victory was to be his…

And then the lightning struck.

And this time he fell for one last time, not to get up ever again.

Storm won again. Storms always win. They always do.

I just wonder, why?

2007-09-25T07:03:00.000+08:00

I never asked for the moon…
But He grudged me even the moonlight that found its way into my room
I never asked for the world…
But He grudged me even the little space I wanted to call my own
I never asked for the gold…
But He grudged me even the oysters I had found deep down in the sea
I never asked for the ocean…
But He grudged me even the light drizzle I wanted to get drenched in
I never asked for the whole night…
But He grudged me even the little while that I needed to dream
I never asked for the stars…
But He grudged me even the twinkle of those eyes which were all that I had ever asked of Him

2007-09-25T04:00:00.000+08:00

Can one just know hope and not know despair?
Can one just know affection and not know anger?
Can one just know joy and not know depression?
Can one just know passion and not know envy?
Can one just know love and not know hatred?

Am wondering if we can label emotions as good ones and bad ones, and then pick and choose which one to keep and which one to let go.

If I don’t know how to love then may be its understandable that I can’t hate. But if I am capable of love, then by definition I should also be capable of hatred. Emotions are spontaneous response to certain events and situations so all that should matter is do I get inspired by those events or not. Because if I do - then whether my response is positive or negative should entirely be dictated by the context. Just like you can’t have a pendulum that swings only one way, similarly I don’t think one can have emotions that are always nice and good.

So should I be embarrassed of negative emotions? Or should I be embarrassed of denying their existence because that would be hypocritical?
I think I would rather admit them.

But is it good to flaunt hatred, envy, anger? or Is it good to have depression, despair?
Definitely not.

But denying their existence is not the solution. I think solution should be to admit their existence and then try and cure them. And sometimes even a cure is not needed. Sometimes, its good to get angry. Sometimes its good to hate. Sometimes its good to envy.

So, preferably we should just let emotions be what they are – spontaneous, instantaneous and honest. There ain’t any perfect emotions because perfection is meant for machines. Man by definition needs to be imperfect

Album recommendation of the day:

By the way, listen to Saawariya, absolutely amazing music. All the songs are so good that I have not yet been able to decide which one is my favourite. Had not heard of Monty Sharma before but now I really wanna hear a lot more of him.

2007-09-19T02:26:00.000+08:00

It’s so difficult to tell at what point dreams just quietly turn themselves into illusions. And since we can’t tell the difference, so we unknowingly keep running after those illusions, believing all along that it’s our dreams that we are pursuing.

Problem is both illusions and dreams look so similar. Both have a touch of fantasy and a touch of yearning. And so often feelings that dreams inspire, illusions are able to fake them very well. The last is the most dreadful bit of the whole thing. Even long after your heart is no more there in something that you are pursuing, still you keep running after it, just because till very late, you never realize that it is not what you want.

And that’s not all, if you are smart enough to smell the rat then illusions have other tricks up their sleeves. First they try and confuse you – in trying to keep up the masquerade they repeatedly tell you they are not what they seem, if that fails than they threaten you by trying to tell you that if you turn away now, you would lose more a great deal more than what you are ready to bargain for.

So, one need to get through all this before he can put his foot down and tell himself that there won’t be any more running behind illusions. And then begins far more difficult journey to find those dreams that got lost somewhere while you were too busy running behind illusions.

I don’t know how many people succeed in covering the distance between smelling the rat and belling the cat. But may be its too harsh of us to stand at finish line and judge people just by their success in crossing the line. Sometimes, what takes more effort and guts is not running the full course but stopping mid-way and letting everyone pass as you stroll towards a bench by the track. To stop and to quit are two very different things I guess.

-siddhartha

Song recommendation for the day:

Totally unrelated to the post, this is one beautiful song that I discovered yesterday and no points for guessing that it is now playing for almost 24 hours on my lappy :)

अच्छी नहीं सनम दिल्लगी दिल-ए-बेकरार से

क्यों रो रहे हो, छेड़ा था हमने तुमको तो प्यार से

Rather than writing the entire lyrics, I tried to get a bit techie and upload the audio here.But for reasons best known to Google that didn't work out. But its a nice song Kishore-Asha-Pancham-Gulzar combo from the movie Rakhi and Hathkadi ( What's in a name anyways, however tacky it is !!!). So try it.

2007-09-15T04:25:00.000+08:00

She was painting the morning. I walked up to her and sat by her side. It was a beautiful morning and she has made it look absolutely stunning on her canvas. But admiration is not what I was about to voice ;-)

“So, you again busy painting a picture that has no part for me? “ I asked her teasingly.

“Who says you not there? You are pretty much a part of this, why don’t you find yourself? “ She said those last few words looking right into my eyes with a wicked smile playing on her face.

I didn’t have a choice but to pick up the gauntlet. And frankly I enjoy such games :)

It was a painting of a day break, with wide expanse of the river with blue water seen from top of the cliff, sun just making its way in his usual splendour and sky looking fresh and beautiful in early daylight.

So where can I be in this painting?
And instantly I noticed the morning sun, yes that’s what this painting is about. That’s what every morning is about - the sun, the central figure and isn’t it what I am to her. So if am there in this painting, I can’t be anything but the sun.

“Easy it was” said I, pointing to the sun.

“You wish it was that easy, would you mind looking harder.” she said laughingly.

So, I looked harder this time. What could she have in her mind. Where could she have hid me here? The sky, oh how could I have not thought of it first. It has to be the sky. Sun sets but sky is always there, looking at you and there for you whenever you want to look upto it. So that’s what she thinks about me. I was feeling good.

“So, sky it is, rite !!!” I said smilingly

“Naaaah, you were sharper and smarter earlier. You are losing it. Try again.” Her tone had that naughty tinge to it. She knew I don’t like to be to be proved wrong and she could see that it’s her turn to have some easy fun at my visible discomfort.

River - can I be the river? Now I was not too sure. Is it the image of all encompassing expanse of the river which makes her think of me? Is it the unstoppable restlessness of river that reminds her of me? Is this what I am? The river - in depths of which she can drown herself so as not to be found by anyone else ?

“Is it the river?” For the first time, I was asking her rather than telling her.

She just nodded her head to indicate am wrong again.

Now, it was no more a game for me and neither was I enjoying it anymore.

“I know - must be these stones and pebbles. One of these must be me right. Guess, that’s the best I mean to you.” It was no more about the painting now. I myself could notice the irritation in my voice, there is no way she could have missed it.

“Nooooooo” she resisted the provocation.

I got up. I have had enough.

“So, have you given up?” she was in no mood to let me off the hook that easily.

“Rather, I guess, you have given up on me” sarcasm was dripping in my voice. I knew I started it this but then I have never been a good loser. I started to walk away from her.

“Did you notice the bird ?” she asked me from behind.

“Which bird?” I turned back and asked.

She showed it to me on the painting. For the first time I noticed a tiny bird on the left side of the painting, soaring up the sky.

“The sun, the sky, the river - they were just part of a setting – a pure and pristine setting for this bird to take to sky. But this painting was never about them, it was always about this bird. And, this bird is you - my dreams taking wings - my hopes soaring high. “

She finished but her eyes were still asking me if I have any unanswered questions left.

I walked up to her and whispered a sorry.
Now I knew, she was not just painting the morning.

2007-09-01T03:42:00.000+08:00

It has been a while since he had gone there. He was the only one who had key to that place. But he was so busy trying to play catch up with life that he could hardly take out time for himself recently. Even today he had no intention to go there but an appointment that lasted lot less than what he had expected and left him with lot more time than he had calculated for made him take a walk up there.

He unlocked the door and went in, it was pitch dark. It takes time for eyes to adjust to the dark and he knew that well. He waited, but during that wait, it seemed as if he was staring a darkwall with nowhere to go. It was scary; someone else might have turned and taken the door out. But he stood there, one must be scared of life at times, fear at times is the bridge that brings one back from fantasy to reality. It took longer than usual but when he started seeing the cob-webs, he knew he could see in dark. Yeah there were cob-webs. Webs made by those tiny spiders who find an ignored corner for themselves and then surreptitiously start weaving a web, which you don’t even seem to notice till those delicate yet complicated webs appear out of blue in their full glory (or lack of it). He wanted to brush them away but now it was not that easy. He kept getting entangled in them, and after some effort he cut through few of them to move forward. He reached out to touch the books on the shelf, there was a thick layer of dust on them, a heap of unopened letters from friends and acquaintances were lying on the centre table. There was lot of heavy furniture around. He always liked to keep furniture to the minimal; it allowed him space to move freely around. When did he order all this? He went up to his favourite floor-to-ceiling window overlooking the garden. Earlier, he used to sleep on the floor by this window and when he used to get up in the morning, first rays of the sun used to meet him by this window. They always used to bring a pack of relaxed smiles with them. He looked around but there was no such pack there. Thick curtains on the window were keeping out both the sun and smiles. He tried to pull the curtain but he couldn’t, he didn’t remember putting a curtain on the window but there was one right now and he didn’t know how to pull it off. Dark and dusty rooms which have stayed close for long carries an unsettling smell and a damp feel, he couldn’t miss it. It was a depressing setting, he wanted to relax. He took a chair but it made a creaking noise as if it could give way to his weight anytime. It didn’t break but as long a he sat there, he remained conscious that it can all snap anytime.

He tried hard to remember when did the bright, airy place of his turned into this damp, dark and dusty place. Did someone else come here while he was away? Don’t know why we always start by blaming others for all that befalls us but he corrected the course. No one could have come here - He was the only one who had key to this place. He recalled he had ordered those window curtains last summer when he had started sleeping late and used to feel irritated by sun on his face in the morning. He had stopped opening his letters around the same time, he only read and replied to sms. And that furniture, he liked them in the shop and he kept bringing that home and before he knew that room resembled the shop, just that it was never meant to be that way. Yes it was all his doing. It was all coming back ...

He sat there and looked around. There were things that needed to be cleared and things that needed to be cleaned. There were curtains to be removed, stuff to be fixed and windows to be left open for fresh air to get in. He felt good that he at least knew what ought to be done but he was still at loss to figure what ought to be done first. He sat there brooding for some more time but on some days if you don’t get it right at first, no matter how often you try you just don’t get it right.

He decided he would come again the next day. It was anyways getting late. So, he made his way out. He got out of the door and then took out the solitary key to this place – key that only he has - he then locked the door to his mind and walked away.

2007-08-30T01:11:00.000+08:00

I wonder why at times I act the way I don’t really want to. Actually in most such situations, I don’t act – I react. React to people, situations, perceptions, prejudices. But it’s always a reaction. There ain’t any justification for the reaction but I just feel forced to behave in a certain way, which on any other day in any other situation I would definitely not choose as my preferred course of action.

Sometimes people irritate me and I just want to be mean.
Sometimes situations frustrate me and I just want to bulldoze my way through them
Sometimes I am taken prisoner by my own perceptions and prejudices and then I do as they want me to do.

It’s not that am washing my hands off my behaviour, it’s not that I act like that in some fit, rather my reaction in such cases seems the best response to me in those moments. But once those moments pass, I realize that I could have actually done better than that.

But may be once those moments pass, their intensity gets lost somewhere and so is my view on appropriate response.

May be, may be not.

Guess, reactions by definition are instant natural response to a moment and that’s what I should let them be, till they change for better themselves or I change for worse…

2007-08-19T13:06:00.000+08:00

Nice one by Shekhar Gupta on “presumed” crisis in in Indian Politics

http://www.indianexpress.com/sunday/story/211291.html

With just a year to go for UPA government, you need not be an Einstein to figure out why Congress would rather play the hardball with Left this time. They know that if someone gonna start this race at the pole position, it would be them. But then elections in India are a tricky lot.

Following Indian politics and elections has been a favourite with me since the time of Prannoy Roy and Vinod Dua till Rajdeep Sardesai and Barkha Dutt. I still remember my mom wondering why am I so glued to election analysis long after everyone knows who is going to make the government. I just love those debates and analysis. And I love checking predictions against results. If my memory is not failing me, first ever exit poll on Indian elections was hosted by Nalini Singh and I jotted down their predictions to check it against the actual results just to see how they measure up.

I remember during last general election, with everyone almost resigned to BJP sweeping the elections, when I predicted that Congress has as good a chance of making the government as BJP, everybody was like “what are you talking”, I backed it up with detailed state wide analysis of possible election results and that analysis was not out of blue, when you are watching almost every exit poll, opinion poll and following election news quite closely then if you just absorb the data and make your conclusion then sometimes you get it right. And I actually did. (though my numbers suggested that NDA would be the largest party but Congress + Left would make the government, election result were far more straight forward. )

So, when I read this article by Shekhar Gupta, I suddenly got alerted to possibility of another Indian elections round the corner. And gosh since I would be in Singapore, I gonna miss all those debates, analyses, claims, counterclaims ;-) Build up to Indian general elections has a funny way about it. Though when you get into the character details of all those candidates, it’s no more funny. But would save that outburst for another day.

Anyways, however little I have read about standoff between Left and congress on N-deal, I would go with Shekhar in suggesting that an early poll is inevitable though I disagree that Congress will have it all easy. With Indian elections, you should just wait a wee bit longer before you pick the right horse because I guess that’s what most of the Indian voters do as well.

So right now, let’s just wait and watch and for greater good let’s pray - May the least bad win!!!

2007-08-14T22:50:00.000+08:00

At the stroke of midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to completion of 60 years of unfulfilled promises, unrealized potential and shattered dreams. In few hours we would celebrate our 60th Independence Day, which by definition should be a celebration of our nationhood but in reality seems nothing more than an annual holiday.

Pandit Nehru in his famous “Tryst with destiny” speech has said:

“Freedom and power bring responsibility. The service of India means the service of the millions who suffer. It means the ending of poverty and ignorance and disease and inequality of opportunity. The ambition of the greatest man of our generation has been to wipe every tear from every eye. That may be beyond us, but as long as there are tears and suffering, so long our work will not be over.”

60 years have passed since then and today…

We have more poor than we had then.
We have still not eradicated polio.
We still look towards quotas to provide equal opportunity.
And worst of all, most of us seem to be ignorant about all this.

We are ignorant because glitzy malls that have come up everywhere have hidden the acres of slums.
We are ignorant because bollywood fund raisers for AIDS have made us forget that even today more people in India die of typoid and malaria.
We are ignorant because our media screams out that India has most number of billionaires in Asia but hundreds of people dying of hunger and cold are dismissed as too repetitive a news.
We are ignorant because Raisina Hill has a woman president and so we no more remember how frequently women get raped in capital of Republic of India
We are ignorant because what brings us out in streets is debacle of Indian cricket team in world cup and not our government’s lousy decisions.

And in this ignorance , what we are celebrating today is …

Fact that even after 60 years of independence, our country’s politics is still dictated by casteism, regionalism, communism and appeasement.
Fact that every year with alarming regularity we read about deaths due to floods, cold winters and hot summers but we have done nothing about it.
Fact that we have still not eliminated dowry deaths, female infanticide and polygamy.
Fact that our laws still read as Hindu undivided family act and muslim personal law instead of Uniform civil code
Fact that Biharis are beaten out from Mumbai and Tamils are mobbed in Bangalore
Fact that in one form or another we are facing civil unrest in Kashmir, Assam, Nagaland, Chhatisgarh, Andhra Pradesh, Jharkhand and Mizoram.
Fact that we are biggest democracy but we have more criminals in parliament than anywhere else in the world.

Frankly speaking, people who would be celebrating tomorrow will only be the ones who can’t look beyond BPOs , Sensex, IT czars, Retails Malls, Multiplexes, Private engineering colleges, IIM salaries and Sania Mirza .

And somehow I believe there is more to India than just that.

And so tonight, 60 years after Britishers left us to chart our own destiny, we shouldn’t have been celebrating our freedom from foreign rule but instead we should have been celebrating fulfillment of the dream of a modern, just and vibrant India that inspired our forefathers to lay their lives for the freedom of this country.

Alas, in all these years we seem to have forgotten that what those thousands of “unknown volunteers and soldiers of freedom” fought for was not just independence but everything that can be gained from independence.

And so I believe that tomorrow is not a day to celebrate, but it’s a day to renew a pledge that Pandit Nehru read out on 14th August 1947.

“The future beckons to us. Whither do we go and what shall be our endeavour? To bring freedom and opportunity to the common man, to the peasants and workers of India; to fight and end poverty and ignorance and disease; to build up a prosperous, democratic and progressive nation, and to create social, economic and political institutions which will ensure justice and fullness of life to every man and woman.
We have hard work ahead. There is no resting for any one of us till we redeem our pledge in full, till we make all the people of India what destiny intended them to be. We are citizens of a great country on the verge of bold advance, and we have to live up to that high standard”.

And so if we want to celebrate our INDEPENDENCE DAY in its true spirit, let's go and get what independence should have brought and let's promise ourselves that we would do more than just cribbing to make India how we want her to be.

Jai Hind

2007-08-12T07:42:00.000+08:00

I usually believe by the time you have finished half a book, you must have fair idea of which way would it go. No, I don’t mean how it would flow or how it would end. All am saying is, we must be through with the introductions, building the preface, setting the stage and story should have had hit the expressway, which means signs must be telling me that I am 150km from A or 70 km from B. Now there is this book which am currently reading and am already half way through it but still, I won’t bet a buck on where is it going – and forget me - am sure till this point even author didn't know which way he wanted to take the book.

It’s just not about books, there are so many things in and around that you would prefer to see follow some rule, some pattern. These rules usually are a mix of experience and expectations. Get a clean bowl, put some experience then add expectations as per taste, stir well and you get your rules/patterns. Romantics prefer these rules to taste of expectations, Pragmatists prefer these patterns to taste of experience and then there are anarchists who would give a damn but I don’t really care much about them. I never had.

Now, generally, whenever something fits into the patterns created by you, you like it or enjoy it. And if it doesn’t, you wouldn’t. And that’s plain simple common sense. But then there are times, when even if something doesn’t fit in your pattern, you still don't dislike it, just like this book am reading. I didn’t say you like it – I said you just ‘don’t dislike’ it. It’s only in mathematics that two negatives make a positive, almost in everything else in the world they never do. But anyways, so there are definitely times when things won’t fit in your patterns but you would still like them – these are new experiences and you would add them to mix of patterns next time you make one. But am talking of times, when you know – this is not how it should have been – but some voice is telling you –don’t jump to the conclusions, you never know it may just come around. So while I will read on this book that am reading, it’s not because I am hoping for a new experience but because am still hoping for it to fit into my pattern, albeit a little late.

And that’s interesting because come to think of it, how often we just let things be. How often do we genuinely don’t give a damn how things would turn out. We swing usually between ‘hoping for the best’ and ‘fearing for the worst’, between ‘experiences’ and ‘expectations’, between ‘how things had turned out earlier’ and ‘how I always wanted them to turn out’. We always have a view. A view of how it’s gonna shape up. Krishna might have said in Gita that do your karma and don’t worry about the ‘results’ but unless there is something that makes us shudder and look the other way, can we really keep ourselves from thinking about the results. So whenever we pretend to be nonchalant and wait for things to unravel themselves in due course, it’s usually just a hope that it would turn out good and not a genuine pursuit of unknown.

So let’s just hope my book turns out good, it has been a long while since I really loved something I read.

2007-08-11T00:00:00.000+08:00

Someone asked me a day or two back, why my posts have an undercurrent of pathos. Someone else sometime back had asked me why should my posts always be so philosophical and another person few months back asked me to write ‘happy’ posts.

All these are fair questions. But then, there are people, who ask a totally different set of questions after reading few of my posts, questions like, “So what’s wrong ?”, “You don’t seem too happy ?”, “Is everything fine?”

Now, I don’t really know why people end up getting such impressions. But I find it a little far-fetched to draw conclusions about one’s life merely by his blog posts. At least, not if blog posts are your most reliable source of conclusions.

For me writing is liberating. So often, when you come back home weary from work or you are spending a really lazy afternoon, you want to do something that can unshackle you, free you, let you and your imagination soar into sky. For me writing is that liberation. I am not writing any autobiography here, most of the times it is just a random thought that become a fertile ground for an entire story or some other times it’s a train of thought that may lead you to write your next post. You just pick up a thought flying past you and tell yourself let’s see what treasure it holds. It’s not like I get back home and then write about events of the day or my psychological state. I agree experiences do have a major role to play in what you think or what you write, but trust me it’s not always recent experiences and they don’t always play a lead role. There are times when what I write mirror my mindset at that point of time, but there are equal number of times when it doesn’t.

So...

If I write about fear, it doesn’t mean that I am scared tonight
If I write about loss, it’s not that I have just lost something precious
If I write about distress, it need not imply that I had a bad day
If I write about yearning, it doesn’t mean that I am missing something in life.

Can’t I take a creative license and write things, create characters and weave stories that are no more than just my brainchild. Why my stories need to be put under microscope to find out where am I in them? Why can’t I just be seen as a creator and spared the hardship of being a protagonist?

Also, I admit am no versatile writer – am just a plain amateur blogger afterall, I can’t write in each and every style. So if my writings border on abstract then may be that’s my style, if my writings are always searching for answers then that’s how I like to shape them, if my stories are about yearning and loss, may be that’s the mood I prefer to write about.

But why am I giving explanations at all?

When I write here, I write because I want to and not because someone is going to come and read it up. I write because I like writing and not because I like to be read. I wondered for a while if I should take away the link to my blog from orkut and gtalk but then I didn’t want to be dictated.

So nothing gonna change here, mood, style and content would remain just as it always was and if someone thinks I am going through troubled times, humour yourself – but for God’s sake don’t ask me for confirmations ;-))

2007-08-09T00:27:00.000+08:00

Birches
by Robert Frost

When I see birches bend to left and right
Across the lines of straighter darker trees,
I like to think some boy's been swinging them.
But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay
As ice-storms do. Often you must have seen them
Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning
After a rain. They click upon themselves
As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored
As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.
Soon the sun's warmth makes them shed crystal shells
Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust--
Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away
You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.
They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,
And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed
So low for long, they never right themselves:
You may see their trunks arching in the woods
Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground
Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair
Before them over their heads to dry in the sun.
But I was going to say when Truth broke in
With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm
I should prefer to have some boy bend them
As he went out and in to fetch the cows--
Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,
Whose only play was what he found himself,
Summer or winter, and could play alone.
One by one he subdued his father's trees
By riding them down over and over again
Until he took the stiffness out of them,
And not one but hung limp, not one was left
For him to conquer. He learned all there was
To learn about not launching out too soon
And so not carrying the tree away
Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise
To the top branches, climbing carefully
With the same pains you use to fill a cup
Up to the brim, and even above the brim.
Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish,
Kicking his way down through the air to the ground.
So was I once myself a swinger of birches.
And so I dream of going back to be.
It's when I'm weary of considerations,
And life is too much like a pathless wood
Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs
Broken across it, and one eye is weeping
From a twig's having lashed across it open.
I'd like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate willfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth's the right place for love:
I don't know where it's likely to go better.
I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree,
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

This is one of my favourite pieces of poetry.

And lines which particularly fascinate me are:

It's when I'm weary of considerations,
And life is too much like a pathless wood
Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs
Broken across it, and one eye is weeping
From a twig's having lashed across it open.
I'd like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate willfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return.

I get a similar feeling during times when I am ambling aimlessly, or in times when I feel weighed down by circumstances beyond my control, or when I get frustrated in face of endless contradictions. In such times, there are moments when I wish I could take a break – a break from all the tensions – a break in which I can travel back to times when life was simple and innocent and so was I. And, don’t mistake this to be escapism, because it’s not running away but just a simple wish for a breather– a short little break from which I want to come back with renewed vigour and a clean slate so that I can start afresh.

But then I guess only games have breaks, battles just go on and on and on…..and life I believe resembles a battle far more than a game. Though had it been a game, it might just have been much more fun … but then would we have taken it this seriously ?

And that's why I always come around saying, it's good the way it is :)

2007-08-05T03:02:00.000+08:00

He called out for her but she won’t come, she likes playing hide and seek with him once in a while. He didn’t even know where to look for her, he switched on the table lamp and picked up a book which he hasn’t read for a while, he couldn’t read it still. His mind was elsewhere, words can’t just be read by eyes. His closed the book, switched on some music and switched off the lamp. He tried again and failed again. She was playing hard to get. Now it was no more a game, he wanted to tell her aloud, “Ok you’ve won…now come over”. If he was sure, she could listen to him, he might have just said it. There was a nice breeze blowing inside the room from the open window, he thought for a minute about going out and taking a walk, but then he discarded the thought, he didn’t want to give in to her as yet. He tried to think hard, how he has found her earlier, he couldn’t think of anything he has not already tried. Today nothing seems to have any effect on her.

But he would keep trying….

So, he called out for sleep again, hoping this time she would come over.

2007-08-05T01:02:00.000+08:00

Words are not man’s best friend; they just don’t know how to keep secrets. Even most discrete of the words chosen with great care have a habit of giving it away. If not entirely by themselves then between themselves they always blurt it out. You try and confide in them and they go out and conspire against you telling the world what you wanted to hide deep down.

It’s better to be an artist, colours speak but they still leave a lot to imagination. A stroke of grey can mean lot more than just a sad mood, a bright yellow may not always give away your secret joys, a red may not always be window to one’s fears, a blue need not just be a hope taking shape. They can be all this and they can be so much more and that’s enough to keep your cover.

But alas, I am no artist and words are all I have…

-siddhartha

Song recommendation of the day:

If I ever get to sit and compile a list of my favourite songs, this beautiful song written by Gulzar and sung by Kishore and Lata would always find a place, what better day to recommend it then Kishore Da’s birthday ( for me, it’s still night of 4th August). I especially love the last two lines.

हज़ार राहें मुड के देखी, कहीं से कोई सदा ना आयी
बड़ी वफ़ा से निभायी तुमने , हमारी थोड़ी सी बेवफ़ाई

जहाँ से तुम मोड़, मुड़ गए थे, ये मोड़ अब भी वहीँ पडे हैं
हम अपने पैरों मे जाने कितने, भँवर लपेटे हुये खड़े हैं

कहीं किसी रोज़ यूं भी होता, हमारी हालत तुम्हारी होती
जो रात हमने गुज़ारी मर के, वो रात तुमने गुज़ारी होती

तुम्हें ये ज़िद थी कि हम बुलाते, हमे ये उम्मीद वो पुकारे
हैं नाम होंठों पर अब भी लेकिन, आवाज़ मे पड़ गयी दरारे

2007-08-04T05:35:00.000+08:00

My peak TV watching season usually coincides with EPL and depends on how many Chelsea games are on air. Apart from that, catching up on movie trailers on weekends and an occasional movie once in a blue moon is best I can come up with if I have to justify paying my Cable TV bill. But of late I have hooked on to something new – Indian Idol.

In Singapore, we only get three Hindi channels – Star Plus, Zee and Sony. And 24 hour obsession of first two with some “how could someone see them” serials mean that whenever I tune in a Hindi channel, it is always Sony. So, it all started with those guys carpet bombing their channel with Indian Idol. Rather Indian Idol and Boogie Woogie, coz I remember there was a time when I would have bet all my savings on the fact that when I will switch on the TV and whatever be the time, one of these two shows would be on. And trust me I would have won that bet 10 out of 10 times. Anyways, so I still maintain that I started watching Indian Idol because stars conspired to make me watch it, though I would admit that listening to Hindi songs and Javed Akhtar played some part also.

But the reason why I stay tuned and didn’t surf away was different and it was the reality TV factor. Now I know lot of people believe that reality TV is all sham and mere playing to the camera and I would agree to that to a large extent. But what’s not sham is the joy and disappointment on the face of winners and losers when what is at stake is not money but dreams. And when dreams are at stake, emotions are real and contagious. I remember how often I found myself smiling looking at a beaming face of someone who was told he is selected and how I sympathized with someone who was trying hard to keep a straight face upon rejection.

Frankly, while for us it’s mere entertainment, for channel – just TRP and more ads and for celebrity judges it may just be some extra bucks on the side. But for all those guys and girls who aspire to be singers, this and rather such programmes mean much more than that. I guess it may not be any different for them as it is for so many appearing in JEE or CAT. It’s a test for them to give wings to their ambitions, prove themselves to their own selves, to their families, to their friends and may be to the whole world. And you can see how much success in Indian Idol means for them, while their tears when one of their competitors get thrown out may be meant for camera but when they themselves get selected or rejected, emotions that come out then – they are not for anyone, they are just so real. And these genuine emotions are what I watch Indian Idol for. I agree the producers of this show sometime really try to add ridiculous stuff and unnecessary drama, and I really wonder why they do that. Because there is no bigger drama than a constant effort to pull oneself through, no bigger drama than working through the pressure to live another day, no bigger drama than watching one’s dreams getting shattered. And I just wonder why producers insist on changing this drama into melodrama – there is no need, I wish they knew.

Overall, it’s interesting to note how an anxious face in a moment can turn into a rainbow of joy, what different shades people take up in face of rejection and how people gather their shattered dreams as they walk away from what was supposed to be their flight to fame. And if someone is not in mood for all this – trust me these guys and girls sing pretty well too :-)

2007-07-30T00:36:00.000+08:00

पेडों से छन के, किरणों के रथ पे, धूप छत पे उतरी तो थी
फिर जाने क्यों वो, मेरी चौखट पे आके, ना जाने कहॉ मुड़ गयी

थोड़ी उनींदी , थोड़ी जगी सी, सुबह ने आँखें खोली तो थी
फिर जाने क्यों वो, करवट बदल के , मुह फेर के सो गयी

भीगी हुई सी, छीटे उड़ाती , बारिश ने मुझको बुलाया तो था
पर जाने क्यों वो, मुझको भिगोये बिना ही, जाके बादलों मे कहीँ छुप गयी

बन के, संवर के, चन्दा से सज के, रात घर से निकली तो थी
पर जाने क्यों वो, मुझ से मिलने से पहले, थक के कही सो गयी

यूं तो नहीं हैं कि खुशियों से मेरा, कभी मिलना हुआ ही नहीं
मगर जाने क्यों वो, जब भी मिली हैं, रुकी हैं पर ठहरी नहीं

2007-07-24T22:27:00.000+08:00

Ten days is a long time. And seems even longer when you are Down Under with no internet and no intention to check news channels on TV.

So, in last 10 days while I was busy exploring rainforests, coral reefs, pristine beaches and blue waters around Queensland, lot of water flew through Ganges.

We got a new president – someone whose name I never heard till a month back and since I have heard her name, it has more to do with one controversy or another.

I understand we would also be getting a new vice president soon, someone equally obscure and whose main qualification is that he is a muslim, important consideration given ruling coalition opposed APJ for another presidential term.

Sensex not only crossed 15K rather almost kissed 16K – on Monday it was 15,732 and my returns on investment were making me look like some stock market expert though we all know any body would have made money in such a bull market.

Sachin Tendulkar scored a 171 against some English side in a first class game, long time since one would have seen such a mammoth score against little master’s name. Though what happened in test match subsequently is for all to see.

But of all this, bits that are hard to digest are that Pratibha Patil ( Who?) is President of Republic of India and Hameed Ansari ( Who ? What? Why? ) would mostly probably be our next vice president.

If my memory serves me right, first president of India that I got to know of was Giani Jail Singh, He was the president when I first started keeping track of Who’s who. Then came R Venkatraman, Shankar Dayal Sharma, K R Narayan and finally APJ Abdul Kalam. And now someone who answers to the call of Pratibha Patil and next one could be Hameed Ansari.

I wonder why, highest position of our country can’t be taken by someone who is deserving of that honour. APJ was at least a known name, someone most of us respected and held in esteem. Given, President of India is no more a rubber stamp so I would agree that ambitious politicians would not be interested, and for distinguished citizens we have Bharat Ratna and they need not be made president, but while some political sense and a forward looking outlook should be required, I would seriously believe that President of India should be a man or woman whom people can respect.

Let’s see whom would I like to be installed as next president. Narayan Murthy’s name was discussed widely in media and though I would prefer to see him in active politics but frankly he would have made a president I like. Then, there is Atal Bihari Vajpayee… a politician everyone respected, he is too old for active politics but I guess he would have made a good president too. APJ Abdul Kalam, well I was all for another term for him. Atleast with his vision he could have contributed to education and other areas while continuing in President’s office. T N Seshan, well that’s another man who could have been brought back from oblivion, but politicians would find it too uncomfortable to have him around.

Among seasoned politicians, Jyoti Basu is too leftist for my comfort so I would give him a pass. S M Krishna could be an interesting choice, he might not have been able to achieve much in Karnataka but I think he tried and then he was a congressman and not completely obscure.

And why just politicians, we could have chosen an ex chief of armed forces or someone very active in social upliftment space, a mature academician or any other visionary who could use the office of President to contribute to society and lend some kind of grace to the office.

Alas, that is not to be. So we have Mrs. Pratibha Patil as President of India and Hameed Ansari as potential Vice-president of India. And my frustration with Indian political scene strengthens further.

2007-07-23T23:20:00.000+08:00

Yesterday on my flight back to Singapore, I finally finished reading ‘Life of Pi’. Interesting in parts, though didn’t really match up to ‘Old man and the sea’, one of my favourites which made me pick Life of Pi at the first place.

But I came across a very interesting passage in the book yesterday which seems to resonate what I wrote about ‘Fear’ few days back (and also what I didn’t write).

Thought would quote the passage here :

“I must say a word about fear. It is Life’s only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life. It is a clever, treacherous adversary, how well I know. It has no decency, respects no law or convention, shows no mercy. It goes for your weakest spot, which it finds with unerring ease. It begins in your mind, always. One moment you are feeling calm, self-possessed, happy. Then fear, disguised in the garb of mild-mannered doubt, slips into your mind like a spy. Doubt meets disbelief and disbelief tries to push it out. But disbelief is a poorly armed foot soldier. Doubt does away with it with little trouble. You become anxious. Reason comes to do battle for you. You are reassured. Reason is fully equipped with the latest weapons technology. But, to your amazement, despite superior tactics and a number of undeniable victories, reason is laid low. You feel yourself weakening, wavering. Your anxiety becomes dread.

Fear next turns fully to your body, which is already aware that something terribly wrong is going on. Already your lungs have flown away like a bird and your guts have slithered away like a snake. Now your tongue drops dead like an possum, while your jaw begins to gallop on the spot. Your ears go deaf. Your muscles begin to shiver as if they had malaria and your knees to shake as though they were dancing. Your heart strains too hard, while your sphincter relaxes too much. And so with the rest of your body. Every part of you, in the manner most suited to it, falls apart. Only your eyes work well. They always pay proper attention to fear.

Quickly you make rash decisions. You dismiss your last allies: hope and trust. There, you’ve defeated yourself. Fear, which is but an impression, has triumphed over you. The matter is difficult to put into words. For fear, real fear, such as shakes you to your foundation, such as you feel when you are brought face to face with your mortal end, nestles in your memory like a gangrene: it seeks to rot everything, even the words with which to speak of it. So you must fight hard to express it. You must fight hard to shine the light of words upon it. Because if you don’t, if your fear becomes a wordless darkness that you avoid, perhaps even manage to forget, you open yourself to further attacks of fear because you never truly fought the opponent who defeated you.”

2007-07-12T07:24:00.000+08:00

In all those fairy tales we read as a kid, there was plenty of magic and all that was needed to create that magic was a wave of wand or snapping of fingers. Magic was always instantaneous and spell always used to last a long while. Unfortunately, there ain't any such wands in reality and try snapping but it won't bring you anything other than few raised eyebrows. In real life, one needs to work really hard to create any magic and if you succeed to create some, there isn’t any motor that’s going to keep the spell going for ever. Real life magic just lasts for a short while and then it fades away unless you can quickly get back at weaving it all over again. So often, I wonder if I could just sit back, relax and enjoy that spell for much longer. But then I have realized that’s not how it is meant to be.

How it works is that every time you want to pull that rabbit outta hat, you need to work right from the scratch. Ok, may be not from the scratch but from somewhere not too far from there. And if you are pulling a rabbit out of that hat daily – 3 times a day, then sometimes you just expect that bloody rabbit to come back and quietly slip into the hat at the designated time. Why can’t he spare me the effort? Why should I always create him from nothing? Why can’t he already be in the hat once in a while for me to just pull out?

I wish it was like that and I know it is not and this gulf between 'want' and 'have' is something we all gotta live with. Unless ofcourse, someone can wave a wand and change it....

2007-07-08T17:22:00.001+08:00

Fear thrives on fear. One gets scared only when he or she wants to be scared. As a kid, it’s only when you imagine a monster under the bed or in the dark corner of the room that you get scared of it. It’s amazing that as soon as you stop imagining those monsters, fears fail to find a way to pin you. It’s only when you fear a failure that a fear of failure starts keeping you tense, It’s only when you are scared of losing something precious that you always fear that you might lose it. It’s only when you are scared it might go wrong that you keep fearing that indeed could go wrong.
And as long as they last, fears play great havoc. They say in physics that for every action there is an equal reaction. But fears throw this law out of window; suddenly reactions are bigger and bitter. You are suddenly alert to even most irrelevant and insignificant detail. Your life hinges on anything and everything, priorities are beaten up beyond recognition. And life becomes a constant race that you are destined to lose because fear has a way to catch up with you, wherever you go, wherever you hide. And as you keep losing the race, fear starts taking a more scary form which makes you feel chained and then you start doing its bidding. Unknowingly you start destroying everything because you believe this is the only way to get rid of them.
I have tried sometimes to look the other way, try tricking fears by ignoring them, hoping that moment you refuse to acknowledge their presence they would just fade away like they never existed. But this approach has never known to succeed, because you can’t wish away their existence by just closing your eyes, sooner or later they would slip onto your side and face you and then you would just be more scared than before.

So trick lies in facing the fears. But as you start fighting the fears, they come back with equal ferocity, you try and reason with them but they won’t listen. You try punching them and they would punch you back harder. You try finding a way out and they would always reach before you to block the door. And that’s when you need your confidence the most, because the moment you tell yourself that I’ll take care come what may, suddenly clouds of fear are blown away and light of calm and control find its way to you. If something is precious, all you got to say is no matter what I will hold on and then you would no more be scared of losing it., the very day that little kid decide to look under the bed with confidence…monsters just take the nearest window out. Fear takes control only when we let go of the control. It’s only when I shrug my shoulders in helplessness and say “what would I do if this happen” that fears start scaring me with terrible scenarios. It’s only when you let your confidence be shaken by apprehensions that fears find their opening to get into your mind. The day “what if” in our thoughts get replaced by “whatever” it just becomes too simple. The day I face my fears with my supreme confidence in myself, fear accept defeat and bow out.
It’s easy to blame life for scaring you, but fact is we scare ourselves. No one drives us into a corner, we ourselves get into the corner and then complain that we have no way out. There isn’t any monster under the bed waiting to snatch what we want to keep close, monster is in our mind and all we need to do to drive it away is to retain our faith in us.

2007-07-08T03:05:00.000+08:00

It hurts when you know you are hurting someone and you can do nothing about it. It frustrates you when you are just reduced to a mute spectator, when you can do nothing, can’t say a word of comfort, can’t lend a helping hand, can’t wipe a rolling tear. You just pray that it would all be fine, you just plead that it won’t hurt a lot, you just look down because you can’t look straight into someone’s eyes. You just stand there as a prisoner of life, not even sure if you should plead non-guilty because you can see someone is suffering and you know that pain knowingly or unknowingly bears your stamp. You wish it was simple, you wish it was different, you wish someone had warned you that life can come to such a pass. But ….you know it’s too late for all this. And so you stand still as life goes on to make a case against you and you nod in agreement when it passes a judgment finally………………............…Guilty !!!...........................................Yes Sir !!!

2007-06-30T11:02:00.000+08:00

I don’t know who invented the word ‘perfect’ but I am sure either originally the intended meaning for the word was quite different or this was just meant to be one of those exotic words that are to be used in fairy tales and nowhere else.

I have lived long enough with the idea of perfection that now I am more or less convinced that ‘nothing is perfect’. Because nothing ever was supposed to be perfect. You don’t get to see a rainbow every time it rains, sky doesn’t turn an enchanting collection of colours every time you are enjoying a quite sunset by the beach, not always do you get from a moment what you got from it last time. But then wouldn’t it be boring, if life just gets stuck in a pattern that keeps repeating. We tend to believe that perfection is a permanent state of bliss. But then can such an idea ever be real? And why should it be real?

I am an absolute believer in the fact that one should never compromise with life, should never settle for anything less than what one wants. But sometimes the whole idea of perfection can play havoc with such a mentality. When we end up wanting what is never to be had or at least can’t be had always then life just become an endless chase for nothing. I don’t know when we started mistaking perfect for happy. Happy lives and perfect lives, I am sure are very different. Very idea of happiness is to seek joy in what you have, while perfection makes you seek what by definition is something very few can have.

No one has ever experienced perfection. There can be moments which may seem to be the best that one could have but that’s only till you live a better moment sometime later. So when we seek perfection, we are actually seeking something that we are not even aware what is it like. So often, problem with perfection is that it’s driven by a NOT operator. So, in any given moment, we just think it should NOT be like this, while knowing little what it should be like. And so while sometimes our gut feel can be right there would definitely be equal times when it won’t be and it is those times that I fear. Because in such times our fascination with perfection can make us pass what might have been just good enough for us.

May be Holy Grail of this confusion lies in knowing what we want but that’s definitely asking for too much. When are we making compromise and when are we just chasing a non-existent perfection is something which is hard to tell. I know even if we sit and talk to ourselves it may not always help because we are capable of convincing ourselves both way and so we would keep making right and wrong choices. So while we would learn from the mistakes but may be a realization that magic is only meant for fairy tales, would help people hold on to joy that is meant for the real life.

2007-06-25T03:32:00.000+08:00

While clearing my room today, I chanced upon something that I brought back from my recent India visit. They are nothing but some pages of my diary and some loose pages where I had jotted down few lines from some of my favourite books.

Jotting down interesting lines from the books was never a habit or hobby of mine but I think for a short while I did try and toy with penning down few paras that I really liked and were not too long to write ;-). Soon I gave up on that, but during that short period few lines did make their way from print to pages of my notebook. Come to think of it, these may not even be the best lines of the novel, not even the most potent ideas. While reading these papers, I could think of several other pieces in those novels which should have been noted but they were not. I don’t know the reasons, may be they were too long, may be I was too tired to write, may be I just didn’t care to write but then this post is not about what was not done but rather about what was. And if there are lines that I jotted down then they must have had something in them to make me put pen to paper. Isn’t it ?

Now given, loose sheets are prone to slip out of sight and have a tendency to play hard to get so I have decided to transfer few of those lines from those sheets to this webpage. Hopefully, this will make it easy, just in case I want to re-read them at a later date.

So here we go.

Anna Karenina

All happy families resemble one another, but each unhappy family is unhappy in their own way.

Far from the Madding crowd

Advice is one of those things; it is far more blessed to give than to receive.

It has been observed that there is no regular path for getting out of love as there is for getting in. Some people look upon marriage as a short cut that way, but it has been known to fail.

To Kill a Mocking Bird

[Courage is] when you know, you are licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what.

“They are certainly entitled to think that, and they are entitled to full respect for their opinions”, said Atticus, “but before I can live with other folks I’ve got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.”

Wuthering Heights

My love for Linton is like foliage in the woods - time will change it, I’m well aware, as winter changes the trees. My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath, a source of little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I’m Heathcliff, he’s always in my mind not as a pleasure, any more than I’m always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being.

Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I’m living. You said, I kill you-haunt me then ! The murdered do haunt their murderers. I believe – I know that ghosts have wandered on earth. Be with me always – take any form – drive me mad! Only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh God! it is unutterabl I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!
- (Heathcliff upon Catherine’s death)

Fountainhead

Roark walked home. It was dark and the street was deserted. There was a strong wind. He could feel the cold, whistling pressure strike his cheeks. It was the only evidence of flow ripping the air. Nothing moved in the stone corridor about him. There was not a tree to stir, no curtains, no awnings; only naked masses of stone, glass, asphalt and sharp corners. It was strange to feel that fierce movement against his face. But in a wastepaper basket on a corner a crumpled sheet of newspaper was rustling, beating convulsively against the wire mesh. It made the wind real.

Self-sacrifice, we drool, is the ultimate virtue. Let’s stop and think for a moment. Is sacrifice a virtue? Can a man sacrifice his integrity? His honour? His freedom? His ideal? His convictions? The honesty of his feelings? The independence of his thoughts? But these are man’s supreme possessions. Anything he gives up for them is not a sacrifice but an easy bargain. They however are above sacrifice to any cause or consideration whatsoever. Should we not, then, stop preaching dangerous and vicious non-sense? Self Sacrifice? But it is precisely the self that cannot be and must not be sacrificed. It is unsacrificed self that we must respect in man above all.
- (Gail Wynnard defending Howard Roark in one of his editorials)

All growth demands destruction, you can’t make ommlette without breaking the eggs.

1984

If you love someone, you love him and when you have nothing else to give, you still give him love. When the last of the chocolate was gone, his mother had clasped the child in her arms. It was no use, it changed nothing, it did not produce more chocolate, it did not avert the child’s death or her own, but it seemed natural to her to do it. The refugee woman in the boat had also covered the little boy with her arm, which was no more use against the bullets than a sheet of paper.

Being in a minority, even a minority of one did not make you mad. There was truth and there was untruth, and if you cling to the truth even against the whole world , you were not mad…Sanity is not statistical.

Physical facts couldn’t be ignored. In philosophy, or religion, or ethics, or politics, two and two might make five, but when one was designing gun or airplane they had to make four.

He examined the chess problem and set out the pieces. It was a tricky ending involving a couple of knights. ‘White to play and mate in two moves’. Winston looked up at the portrait of Big Brother. White always mates, he thought with a sort of cloudy mysticism. Always, without exception, it is so arranged. In no chess problem since the beginning of world has black ever won. Did it not symbolize the eternal unvarying triumph of good over evil? The huge face gazed back at him, full of calm power. White always mates.

Gone with the wind

Apologies once postponed, became harder and harder to make, and finally impossible.

Everybody knew how cold and heartless she was. Everybody was appalled at the seeming ease with which she had recovered from Bonnie’s death. Never realizing or caring to realize the effort that lay behind that seeming recovery.

War and Peace

Every one lives in his own way. You lived for yourself and say you nearly ruined your life and only found happiness when you began living for others. I experienced just the reverse. I lived for glory – and after all what is glory? Desire for others’ approval. So I lived for others and not almost, but quite, ruined my life. And I’ve become calmer since I began to live for myself.

Whenever I look at my watch and its hand point to ten, I hear the bells of neighbouring church; but I’ve no right to assume that because bell begin to ring when the hands of the watch reach ten, the movement of the bells is caused by the position of the hands on the watch.
Whenever I see the movement of the locomotive, I hear the whistle and see the valves opening and wheels turning; but I’ve no right to conclude that the whistling and turning of wheels are the cause of movements of engine.
The peasants say that a cold wind blows in late spring because the oaks are budding, and really every spring cold winds do blow when the oak is budding. But though I don’t know what causes the cold winds to blow when the oak-buds unfold, I cannot agree with the peasants that the unfolding of the oak buds is the cause of the cold wind, for the force of wind is beyond the influence of the buds.
I see only a coincidence of occurrence such as happens with all the phenomena of life and I see that however much and however carefully I observe the hands of the watch, and the valves and wheels of the engine, and the oak, I shall not discover the cause of the bells ringing, the engine moving, or of the winds of the spring. To do that I must entirely change my point of view and study the law of movement of the steam, of the bells and of the wind.

But what is war? What is needed for success in warfare? What are the habits of the military? The aim of war is murder; the methods of war are spying, treachery, and their encouragement, the ruin of a country's inhabitants, robbing them or stealing to provision the army, and fraud and falsehood termed military craft. The habits of the military class are the absence of freedom, that is, discipline, idleness, ignorance, cruelty, debauchery, and drunkenness. And in spite of all this it is the highest class, respected by everyone. All the kings, except the Chinese, wear military uniforms, and he who kills most people receives the highest rewards.
"They meet, as we shall meet tomorrow, to murder one another; they kill and maim tens of thousands, and then have thanksgiving services for having killed so many people (they even exaggerate the number), and they announce a victory, supposing that the more people they have killed the greater their achievement. How does God above look at them and hear them?

2007-06-20T01:57:00.000+08:00

Control – that’s what all of us want.
What we seek is an ability to control all the variables around us. So, we want to control our present, our future, course of things and events…. in short, we want life to follow a pattern and we want to decide what that pattern should be.

And way we convince ourselves that we can do that is through endless planning. Planning is our way to make us believe that we are in control. So we spend hours planning the future and try and convince ourselves that it would turn out exactly like that. Not that I am making a case for not planning, all am saying is you can’t plan the way things would turn out, life would take its own unique path and all you can do is see if you have something up your sleeves to catch up with life.

But may be the random variables in function of life is what give it’s a beauty which otherwise could never have been achieved. I sometimes think, had God been an engineer – life could have been more systematic, comfortable and orderly but it wouldn’t have had the beauty and charm that life has now. For that to happen, God couldn’t have been anyone but a young artist. A young artist with no reputation to precede him, no expectations to live up to and an unbridled enthusiasm to experiment with his canvas. So He filled it with colors, let life decide its own course and introduced randomness just to take away the predictability that could have turned life into a boring mechanical routine.

But coming back to my original point, just because you are at steering wheel doesn’t mean that you can also decide which bend road should have and where it should get easy. So when you are driving, you would still have to take the road that’s already laid and being at steering wheel, will only allow you to maneuver as much as road would permit.

So, if one fine evening, life springs a surprise on you - a not so pleasant surprise. One shouldn’t sit back and wonder why he couldn’t foresee it or pre-empt it. No one can. Rather, smile back at life for surprising you and then surprise life by finding the treasure that it has hid for you down that road.

After all it’s worth remembering that whatever happens – happens for good, just that sometimes we are so obsessed with our gloom that we walk past the good without noticing it.

2007-06-14T03:14:00.000+08:00

I know words give form to feelings. But there are situations when words just get reduced to coffins carrying cold and dead corpses which do have a form but definitely don’t have any life. And in such moments, one should know that only way to capture the formless soul of those situations is by letting silence speak. And you would discover that whatever may be the situation and whoever may be the principals – silence always finds a way to express itself.

But so often we are so used to sound of words that, sound of silence escapes us. We are so trained in deciphering the words that we fail to decipher the silence. So, we either mistook it to be vacuum, when that’s one thing it is definitely not or we end up mistaking it for a quiet disenchantment.

But, if there is one thing that is never quiet, that’s silence.
Silence has a strange way of continuously speaking, sometimes in a low whisper and sometimes in a loud voice.
There are silences that say loud and clear – leave me alone and then there are silences - soft and vulnerable which plead – don’t you leave me alone.
There are silences that pose difficult questions and then there are ones that answer the questions which words fail to phrase an answer for.
Then, there are those uncomfortable silences which beg to be broken and those reassuring silences which plead not to be disturbed.
There are those wise silences that tell you when to go and get help of words. And then are those self-confident silences which stands in way of words and tell them, don’t you mess it up - let me handle this.

So may be it’s not a bad idea, to give words an off day sometime and let silence do the talking. Who knows, it might just be the day when unspoken finds an expression.

2007-06-09T03:16:00.000+08:00

I know several people who end long winding arguments with the term “It’s complicated” and expect that to be final word on an issue. There was a time when I used to think if there’s an issue there would also be a solution and it can be found, may be by taking a detached look. It’s actually very easy to take a detached look because one since you are detached so you don’t have to feel what someone is going through and two, since you are just a spectator so you don’t have to live, what he or she is. You just need to sit in judgment and pass a verdict or read a solution, “Do A , don’t do B, try doing C, don’t think of D, believe in E, forget G and so on…” It sounds good, seem easy and you go back thinking you hit the nail in the head. That’s how easy it is to take a detached look. But if solutions were that easy, smartest and best people I know wouldn’t have ended their arguments by saying “It’s complicated”.

I am not belittling an unbiased and unprejudiced advice. So often when you can’t see things clearly, it really helps. But problem is when our good hearted, well meaning unbiased and unprejudiced advisor fail to see things clearly. Facts are just like bones, when you put them together they give you a very good idea of what a man would have been like, but without the flesh you can never say who exactly that man is. And so often when people, just have facts with no knowledge of feelings, it’s like recognizing a person based on his skeleton, unless you are a specialist you would fail and that’s what happens to most of us.

But this realization usually comes, when you come under the lens rather than being a detached observer. It’s only when you are involved and living it that you realize that sometimes things are indeed difficult, there are no straightforward solutions and no one can tell you what to do because no one knows ‘why’ you didn’t do what seemed to them the obvious course of action.

You didn’t do it because it was not that simple, “It’s complicated”.

2007-05-27T16:45:00.000+08:00

“Doubt is useful for a while. We must all pass through the garden of Gethsemane. If Christ played with doubt, so must we. If Christ spent an anguished night in prayer, if He burst out from the Cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” then surely we are also permitted doubt. But we must move on. To choose doubt as philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as means of transportation.”

So reads the last para of chapter seven of Life of Pi, the book I am currently reading. But is it that simple to move on? Do doubts let us go? Or, do they just like that little pup in the Hutch ad, follow us, wherever we go, even if we want to move on?

Doubts are like those acquaintances around the corner, which you want to avoid meeting but who always find a way to spot you and hold you up for a while and that while is always a tad longer than what’s required for exchanging pleasantries. In that little while, they always end up asking you questions you didn’t want to answer or tell you things which you never wanted to think about. And then those doubts pat on your back, promise to catch up soon and walk away or so they pretend coz further they seem to have gone, closer they seem to stay.

But am not saying, doubts are always unwelcome…sometimes doubts are good, they are just the speed breakers that prevent you from speeding just for the thrill of it. Not all questions that you don’t want to answer are also the questions that you shouldn’t answer. So while we may never like doubts but then they never wanted to be admired, they just wanted to help which they do sometime.

But problem crops up when we over indulge those doubts or look for them when none is in sight. Doubts don’t need black soil to grow; they just need a bit of uncertainty and bit of “I want to get that absolutely right” kinda attitude. And both these things are in no short supply. So even before turning the ignition when you start thinking of the speed breakers, then you just stick at the garage and go nowhere. Or when you are always worrying about a speed breaker at the next bend then you end up driving so slow that you are always late. It is this part about doubts that I hate.

I have noted that what clear doubts best are time, that’ the best doubticide. Doubts are nothing but apprehensions that stem from unknown or may be an urge to control the future or at least to shape it the way you want to see it. And while lot of people say it and lot more agree that future is not in our hands but may be its not completely true. Future is nothing but a function of our actions in the present. When you wake up next day how often you encounter something you could never have avoided, “bolt from the blue” is something which is so rare that we tend to pass everything as an imitation of that. May be if we can just accept that future won’t trick us but would unfold right in front of us and would be shaped by none other than our own selves then may be those apprehensions would lay low. And time has its ways to allay the apprehensions, clear the clouds of uncertainty and get doubts fade away into a bright day, just what sun does to morning haze. So may be it’s wise to wait for the noon, and then there won’t be a haze at all, so we won’t need to look through it. So what we need is probably the patience to put up with doubts and not learn not to listen to them till we can’t absolutely avoid listening to them.

But would it be too late? I wish I knew…

-siddhartha

Song recommendation:

Listen this one for Gulzar's fantastic poetry, from the movie Jhoom barabar Jhoom.

My personal favourite is the last para...

धागे तोड़ लाओ,चांदनी से नूर के
घूंघट भी बना लो, रौशनी से नूर के
शर्मा गयी तो........ आगोश मे लो
साँसों से उलझी रहे मेरी साँसे

आ नींद का सौदा करे, इक ख़्वाब दे, इक ख़्वाब ले
इक ख़्वाब तो आंखों मे हैं, इक चांद के तकिये तले
कितनों दिनों से ये आसमान भी..... सोया नहीं हैं, इसको सुला दे

उम्रें लगी कहते हुये, दो लव्ज थे, एक बात थी
वो एक दिन सौ साल का, सौ साल कि वो रात थी
कैसा लगे जो .....चुप चाप दोनो, पल पल मे पूरी .... सदियाँ बिता दे

2007-05-22T23:04:00.000+08:00

It had rained all morning. As I stood against the large window on my 50th floor office and looked out, I could see the distant hills shrouded in the cloud cover, I could also see what looked like toy cars from above, making their way through traffic lights and small boats moving slowly through the Singapore river, which was looking more brown than blue after all the rains.

That’s what rains do sometimes; they turn rivers brown, skies grey and moods blue. Persistent rains have a reputation of bringing up what has long been buried under the soil or hidden under the wraps of time. Or may be rain is just one of the many occasions when time and life conspire to put you in a spot where if you slip, they may just blame the rain.

It has stopped raining sometime back but the glass window was decked with rain drops and they were acting as a reminder that just a while ago these grey clouds in the sky were not so quiet and disinterested. But soon wind would dry up these rain drops, will that be the beginning of a past fading into oblivion? Can past be forgotten so easily? Someone, somewhere few hours back must have hoped that it rains all day, he must have planned his day around those rains - a little getting drenched in rain, a little staying cuddled in bed, a little taking walk in the wet ground and a little waiting for the rainbow. Would drying up of those last drops of rains be also the drying up of all those little dreams? Should he look at the heaven and hope for more rains or should he just get on with a day where it rained just in the morning, just for few hours. And what if moment he gets out after coming around the fact that there would be no more rains on the day, heavens open up. It not only rains, it pours. Would it be a dream come true or a double jeopardy?

I looked up to see if skies look ominous enough, but they were maintaining a secretive silence. I was as dark about fate of those clouds as those clouds themselves were. May be it would rain, may be it would not. May be best thing to do going forward is to take a walk in the cool breeze and may be best thing is to just wait to get drenched. How often it is said that, live life as it presents itself without bothering about how it would be. But there are those tricky bends in a road called life, where you just can't help but think about the turn that it would bring. Isn't it ?

It must have been few hours after this when I finally noticed a ray of sun breaking through the clouds announcing with élan the fate of the day. There were no more raindrops on the window panes, river was not as brown as it was in the morning, sky didn’t seem that dark, just that my mood was still blue. But if with time everything else can change then I knew it’s just a matter of time before last color brought out by rain would also fade away.

And it did, sometime during the day - the blue did turn into green….

-siddhartha

2007-05-16T00:46:00.001+08:00

Success didn’t come easy to me, but somehow I have started believing these days that it didn’t take a hard way either. And a lot of times, when we don’t get something the hard way, we don’t seem to remember how much it meant to us.

Its good to aspire, ambition is what gets one going. But it’s equally necessary to take a moment’s pause and look back that how far have we come and feel happy about how lucky we have been.

As a kid, at school we used to say prayers daily. In the morning, we used to pray to the God probably to make it a nice day, at lunch we used to thank Him for the daily bread and at the end of the school, we used to thank him for all the good He did to us that day. May be we should do it not just at school. I don’t remember when was the last time I closed my eyes and thanked God for all the good He has done to me, for all the success He has brought me, for all the sorrows and pain He has kept me away from. May be I took God for granted, just like I have started to take all that I have achieved for granted.

When success just become a trophy on your table and you start forgetting all that brought you that success, everything that was rewarded by that success, moments that were spent chasing it and struggles that you went through for it then you stop being deserving of that success. You cease to be the guy who succeeded. You would still be called by the same name but may be name is all that you would share with the guy who earned his right to be called successful. And the moment you cease to be that guy who succeeded, you would cease to be the guy who will succeed.

And I think I can’t let that happen to myself. I can’t let myself forget that success might not have had come to me in a heroic manner but it took a lot of me and it meant a world to me. And it does a mean lot to me. And I value it and am thankful that I have it. By being ungrateful even to my own self for what I have achieved so far, am actually insulting all my dreams, all my hard work and all the hopes that I have carried.

And that’s not me and that won’t be me.

-Siddhartha

2007-05-15T06:39:00.000+08:00

It had happened only twice in last 25 years. Even on those two occasions it rode on chariots of death. First time, on death of a popular woman prime-minister and second time, on death of pretense of secularism in Indian politics. So when it happened again last week and there were no vultures to be seen, our naïve media analysts called it a miracle and started prophesying “beginning of a new era in Indian Politics”, yet to be sworn in Chief Minister of UP was being hailed as future PM. It was such a drama that could be seen nowhere but in our country. Just in case it’s still not clear am talking about Mayawati’s BSP getting majority in UP assembly.

I quite resisted the temptation to trash those articles because frankly I knew it’s just a matter of time when this new beginning would crawl back to old routine and reality would give me far better grounds to talk about tragedy awaiting Uttar Pradesh or should I call it a new face of tragedy.

So to begin with read this :
http://www.ibnlive.com/news/politics/05_2007/mayawatis-cabinet-dominated-by-tainted-ministers-40545.html

Of 19 cabinet minsters in Mayawati’s cabinet, ATLEAST 10 have criminal charges, am sure finding as many as 9 non-criminal ministers must have been very difficult for the lady. And then there is a long list of MoS and MoS with independent charge etc.

Then there was this piece yesterday where more than 120 bureaucrats were transferred as soon as she took up the power.

And the most ridiculous one 3 bureaucrats suspended because some tiles in Ambedkar Park are broken. Talk of vengeance politics at its ridiculous best.

Truth is nothing has changed, there is nothing historic or momentous about what happened last week in UP. In a state where it is said that बिटिया और वोट जात के बाहर नहीं जाना चाहिऐ ( daughter and vote should be given only in the same caste) , all that Mayawati got right was demographic profile of various constituencies and utterly weak opponents. That’s it and that’s all.

In an election where 45% people voted and winner got 33% vote-share of those polled, you don’t need to be Phd. in maths to know that mere one in seven people wanted the new CM of UP to be the new CM of UP. But as things stand, with some intelligent manipulation of media, Mayawati can also do a Lalu. We are all afflicted by short-term memory, it wont take us long to forget what these people stood for but we would just get back tired from offices, listen to senseless commentries from senseless news channels and would begin to believe that Lalu is a management guru and Mayawati is princess of India.

Sitting few hundred miles away, I know what happened in Lucknow would never make any difference to my life but I wish it had atleast made some difference to lives of people who live there but I can see it won’t and that’s a real tragedy.

2007-05-07T23:55:00.000+08:00

Late last night, I finally gave up on a story I was trying to complete for last 5 days. It was something I really enjoyed writing when I started, it started pretty well with a nice flow, a generous sprinkle of wit, humour and spontaneity of moments and a gradual build up the way I like.
So why did I delete it then? Because my story had lost its soul. Every piece of writing that claims to be real has a soul just like everything else which is real. And moment that’s gone, all we are left with are pretty but plastic creations.

When I began writing, I was working on a vague idea I was carrying. I thought let me build up the story and in time that idea would crystallize and I’ll have my end. But the idea never crystallized, rather it evaporated and all I was left with was a collection of words which impressed me but didn’t inspire me. For last few days, every time I struggled with the end I re-read those 3000 words and every time I read them I fell in love with what I had written. And obsession reached such a state that last night I almost zeroed in on a hackneyed end just for the sake of completing the story and at that moment I realized how futile my whole struggle is.

It was as if, some distant but dear relative of a guy is dying, doctors have told the guy that it’s just a matter of few days and nothing more could be done. So to show his love & respect, this guy gets a beautiful and splendid coffin made for his relative’s last journey. But doctors being doctors, they were proved wrong, and the distant relative recovered and survived. But our poor guy was in so much in love with the splendid coffin he had got made that he went around the whole neighbourhood asking people if someone 5’7” and not too fat would be dying in their households because he has this great coffin waiting for them. Love for the relative has long gone, its love for the coffin that’s left.

Ridiculous right !!!
That’s exactly what I felt when I went around looking for an end just so that a collection of words which seemed good to me can call itself a story. So I read the whole thing again dispassionately, looking beyond words and clever conversations. And then I realized how life less my story had become, frankly its spirit had long died and I was just carrying the corpse.

Sometimes we get so consumed by our creations that the spirit within us which inspired us get dwarfed. And it not only happens with creativity, it happens when diligence gets dwarfed against success that it has brought, it happens when learning gets dwarfed against adulation that it heralded and it happens when what we want gets dwarfed against what is expected of us.

But late last night, I didn’t let it happen and just for this once I don’t mind giving up.

2007-04-17T22:07:00.000+08:00

Let’s be frank to ourselves, what kind of society knows only one way to express their displeasure or discontent, which is by means of mob violence. I would say a barbaric and uncivilized society.

So all that was taught to us in schools, told to us from TV propaganda and written by numerous historians and authors that we are a great nation with a rich history, I guess is all sham and just a work of fiction. Because if history was really the way they say it was then how could the present be so different.

And all that part about modern and vibrant India on a path to become a superpower of 21st century is an eye wash too. No, don’t reach out for numbers to prove me wrong. I pretty much know what rate we are growing, what the size of our GDP is and how Wal-Mart and Starbucks of world are queuing up to be in India.

But what I fail to understand is - Are we a civilized lot at all?
Indian Cricket team loses a game – a mob comes out in street and stones their house.
A Muslim guy marries a Hindu Girl – a mob ransacks office of a news channel that shows this report.
Municipality tries to remove a token of a shrine so as to widen the roads – a mob is out there against it and whole thing turns into a communal violence.
Indian Citizens travel from Bihar to Mumbai to seek better opportunities – a mob greets them at Mumbai and beat them up
A famous actor dies a natural death – a mob burn buses, stone offices

So this country has a simple solution to everything - STONE, BURN, RANSACK. KILL.

I wonder, a country which prides herself for getting her independence through Ahimsa and Satyagrah, how can in 50 years of self rule it can it turn the dream of Bapu for “Suraaj” to “Gundaraaj”. And how can this be allowed in any collection of humanity which wants to be called a society. While, protest is one of the tools of a democracy, violence is definitely not justified, whatever be the end.

But bigger problem than mob violence is issues which are bringing mobs together. I mean we are talking about an India of 21st century and an inter caste or inter-religion marriage is still a issue that creates nation wide furore – shame on our country and us. When I read about this piece where a NGO was happily taking credit for getting a rape accused to agree to marry a victim in return of dropping of charges, I was aghast. Rape is a crime, how can someone be exonerated of the charges just because he agreed to marry the victim. It’s like a murderer being let off coz he agreed to pay for the funeral of his victim. Has sense & sensibilities of our country men gone for a toss?

For all the talk of India coming of age and being a superpower let’s admit one thing India is in a mess. Regionalism, Communalism, Casteism are more pronounced in the county today then they were ever before. Political stupidity and ineptitude has reached highest levels. We have weakest Prime Minister ever in our history. Per Capita Income can’t be the only way to measure a country’s growth, what about per capita tolerance, what about per capita sensibility, what about per capita broadening of outlook, what about per capita civility? In my opinion India and Indians are getting impoverished in all these aspects.

And while it may be an exaggeration but I would still pose the question – Are we fit for self rule at all? Only solace we have is that we are being ruled by goons and idiots of same colour and at times same caste/religion as ourselves…Big deal!!!

What absolutely pains me is if any freedom fighter get to read what I wrote in last para – my absolute cynicism with Indian establishment would really make him wonder did he sacrifice his life to a cause which people like me are questioning the very basis of? I agree I never underwent humiliation and pain of being ruled by foreigners otherwise to write what I wrote earlier would have been sacrilege. But how long can I base my opinions on what I am told about past and keep ignoring what I can see in present.

And to be frank when I started this post, it was never about my already well documented frustration with the current political establishment, it was against the narrow minded mob mentality that seems to have gripped the average Indian and against a general obsession Indian public has with a misplaced sense of honor and issues of absolutely crappy nature. And till all this change, only inference one can draw is if we are acting like hooligans today, we would never have been any better ever.

And if all we read about our past has any semblance of truth than our current behaviour is the greatest insult to our past. And may be greatest danger to our future.

2007-04-14T11:50:00.000+08:00

I usually don't review movies here, given how frequently I watch them ..this place otherwise would become a page outta filmare.
I absolutely don't recommend movies, afterall tastes differ, expectations differ and what one wants out of a $10 bill and 2-3 hrs of time spent in a dark theatre also differ from person to person.

But right now, right here, am gonna make an exception for purely selfish reasons. So, if you have not seen "The Namesake", run , grab a ticket and watch it and yeah, do take a friend or two along. For I want such movies to succeed so that I can see more of them.

Namesake is a brilliant movie. I don't remember when was it the last time that I walked in a movie theatre with very high expectations and walked out with those expectations surpassed.

Let's talk about what I liked about the movie. Namesake has a very comfortable pace, it doesn't rush past you leaving you with a feeling that something happened though you can't really say what. It flows at a speed which gives you enough time not just to get in the moment but to get intimate with the moment. And that intimacy is made possible by actors who not only talk to each other on screen but also talk to you. Tabu and Kal Penn have got into their characters effortlessly, right from the moment when Ashima steps into Made in USA shoes of her future husband till long after Gogol gets into shoes of his father, there is not a scene where you can pick even a slight fault. But, the man who would make you kneel down and bow to him is Irfaan Khan...errr Ashok Ganguli ....I once attended an acting workshop and trainer there kept telling all of us , you don't act just with your face, you act with your whole body......and oh man what an actor Irfaan Khan is ....he talks with his turn of head, he talks with his eyes, he talks with his postures and when he talks - he talks with a perfect accent. I liked him in Haasil, I liked him a lot in Maqbool but in Namesake he has gone a step ahead.

One of my friend, who saw the movie felt that story is nothing new.....am sure that was an after thought. Artists for ages are painting the same sun setting in the sea. But go take a look at paintings from two different artists and you would know how different can the same sun be when seen by different people. Work of art are not judged by an invenory list of what's contained in a painting, so if my painting has a sun, sea, boat, rainbow and another has same 4 things they are not the same. That's why they call it an artist's impression. And Namesake is a beautiful impression about journey of a family across seas, culture, ways of life and wheel of time. It's about people and their lives and no story can surpass that.

And then there are those powerful moments.
Like when Gogol steps into his father's shoes and realize it's so late...
Like when he tells his girl friend I don't wanna get away from all this
Like when Moushami tells Gogol, "May be it's not enough that both of us are bengalis" ....
Like when Gogol tells his mother at airport.. "I wanted to .."
Like when Ashima get to know of Ashok's death....
Like when Ashok tells Gogol, why he named him so....
Like when Gogol finds his dad's graduation gift for him ...years later....
Like when Ashok asks Ashima as he is about to go ...."Come"
Like when Moushami tells Gogol she has turned down the offer to teach in France
Like when Ashima calls Gogol on his birthday and can't find him......
Like when Ashok tells newly wed Ashima....."It's amerika"
Like when Ashima tells her friend that now she knows why Ashok went to Cleveland
Like when Ashok makes his final call to Ashima and then walk back........

And there are many more....so go find them yourself.
Do watch it !!!

-sid

Song Recommendation:

This beautigul song from yahudi , remixed and rendered beautifully by susheela raman in The Namesake is playing on my system for last few hours continuously, so what better to recommend.

ये मेरा दीवानापन हैं, या मोहब्बत का सुरूर ...

तू ना पहचाने तो हैं ये, तेरी नज़रों का कसूर !!

दिल को तेरी ही तमन्ना, दिल को हैं तुझसे ही प्यार...

चाहे तू आये ना आये , हम करेंगे इंतज़ार !!

ऐसे वीराने मे एक दिन, घुट के मर जायेंगे हम

जितना जीं चाहे पुकारो, फिर नहीं आएंगे हम !!!

2007-04-09T03:29:00.000+08:00

Sometimes you wish life could be like fairy tales, so that they can have happy endings.
Sometimes you wish miracles are for real, so that you can count on them.
Sometimes you wish clock can be turned back, so that you can change the course of events.
Sometimes you pray because you want to believe someone out there can make it right.
And Sometimes you hope against hope because that’s the only thing you can do now.

-sid

2007-04-07T23:28:00.000+08:00

“Train No. 2926 New Delhi-Bandra Paschim Express is running late by an hour. Inconvenience caused to passengers is deeply regretted.” so blurted the public address system at New Delhi railway station.

He was to take that train to Mumbai but now he’ll have to wait for another hour, may be more. He made his way through the crowd to platform no.1. It’s 4 in the noon, Delhi can be brutally hot on a July afternoon & today is one such day. He entered the waiting room & searched for a place to sit. There were people all around, more on the floor than on the chairs. He looked around for a while and just when he was about to turn & get out in despair, Public Address System came to his rescue. Some train, which was running 6 hours late, is finally going to arrive on Platform no. 5. A sudden activity caught the waiting room as soon as the announcement was made. Bags started getting packed. People were shaken back to life from their afternoon nap. It seemed as if the whole waiting room was waiting for this train to arrive. He knew that this is his chance, get a place now or never & then he made a dash to his right where an elderly couple has just got up. Luckily for him there were no competitors & on reaching the chair he himself felt embarrassed for the haste he has shown.

It’s after taking his seat that he first noticed her. She was sitting pretty near to him. He was sitting on last seat of the row & she on the second of one right in front. She had earphones plugged to her ears and was probably listening to some music. Hers was one of those faces that always turn few heads and soon he noticed that there are more than one head turned towards her. Dressed in a faded blue jeans & a strawberry colored T-shirt with hair left loose, she instantly grabbed his whole attention. Her black sunglasses, which for some strange reasons she had not taken off even inside the waiting room, were complementing her fair complexion suitably and were adding to her charms. He kept looking at her for a while, for once he was not complaining about lack of punctuality of Indian railways.

On the floor, near her, an old lady was taking a nap, the sweat gleaming on the old woman’s face suddenly made him aware of the heat & humidity. He strolled out to get himself a coke but he came back fast. There was not much activity now in the waiting room lots of people were having their nap. There were few who were listening to music & few others reading. And rest of them, were just wearing bored expressions. He has resumed both his seat and his vigil. The old lady at her feet in the meanwhile got up. She rubbed her eyes, looked for her luggage and then she asked her the time. Oh so finally he’ll get to hear her voice. He waited but she didn’t respond, probably she is listening to the music quite loudly. The old lady touched her knee & asked her again. Now a reply will come for sure & sure did it come. He expected a polite voice telling the time but instead what he heard was “I don’t know”. It was polite no doubt but it was not the way it was said but what was said which shocked him. He looked at her wrist she was not wearing any watch but then all this while she was looking at nothing else but the big clock in waiting room on the wall right in front of her. She could have told the time & she should have told the time. By now, the elderly man sitting next to her had told the time to the old woman. It was 4:30 pm.

It was a small incident but suddenly that lovely face ceased to be an object of admiration for him. Her behaviour towards the old lady has shaken him out of his spell. He even rebuked himself for getting swayed by her looks. After all, what makes a person beautiful is their character and not just cut of face. He felt a little better after making these lofty conclusions. In ten minutes since that incident he has already pronounced her guilty, pronounced himself an accomplice to the crime and then let himself off with a warning. He was feeling like a man who has just been told that he has been granted a presidential reprieve - sorry but relieved.

He looked at her again. Her face has lost none of the charm. Shades on her eyes still have all the prominence & her smile was as beautiful as before but as he looked at the old woman sitting on the floor combing her hair, all the memories of that incident came back rushing. And those memories were not disturbing him but rather making him feel good. He was priding himself for the fact that he still valued the character of a person more than the beauty. He was patting himself for how he genuinely revolted against her haughty attitude. He basked in the glory of being a perfect hero who didn’t let temptations get better of his values. Biggest of egoists would have been surprised with the ease with which he was finding one reason after another in to indulge in extended self admiration.

His train of thought was brought to a halt by public address system when it roared, “Train No. 2926 New Delhi-Bandra Paschim Express will be coming on platform no. 3 in few minutes. We wish you a Happy Journey.” He checked his ticket and put the bag on his shoulders, he looked at her to steal a final glance. But even she had got up, her back was on his side, he wondered if they would be in the same train. Elderly man by her side picked up the suitcase and the two bags they had, so she will not even help pick any luggage, he sighed and pitied her upbringing. But he still waited for her to turn back before he makes his way out of the waiting room. She turned, her black glasses were still firmly on her eyes but there was something new in her hand - a walking stick. The old man helped her out of the room as she felt her way out with the blind stick. Old woman on the floor got up and took her seat. Wall clock struck 5 right then. He stood there still for a while, held back may be by the weight of his perceptions and prejudices. But then he hurried out, he didn’t want to miss the train; he had already missed enough for the day.

2007-04-03T00:19:00.001+08:00

We all have our questions which we run away from, questions which we fear, questions we don’t wanna face, questions whose answers (and I quote a friend) “might be too hard, too right, too true “ and we do run away from some questions, sometimes for too long.

But then there are questions which we genuinely don't have answers for. Questions for which answers need to be searched and if you look at the right place you may find answers for some of them. But we should know where to search. There are some questions for which you need to look inside yourself to find answers and then there are some other questions for which you need to look outside. But lots of us when faced with such questions keep going back to the same place. It’s like your childhood drawer where you used to hide all your comic books, games, toys and all that you could lay your hand on. So whenever you needed something and you can’t remember where it is, you would go and empty the drawer and look for that thing there. No matter if you remember keeping it there or not….you would still search it with a belief that it has to be found there.

Lot of us do the same thing with our unanswered questions, we just keep looking at one place for our answers. And so there are few people who would always look ‘out’ for answers and struggle with questions that need to be introspected upon and few others who would always look ‘in’ and get frustrated with questions, answers to which lie elsewhere.

Not many of us can tell a difference between two kinds of questions, may be because what we need is not an eye for detail but an eye that has toiled over years and numerous such questions. What we may need is a mind that knows what lie within and an eye that’s alert to what’s around us. What we may need is courage to admit that I would have to seek help to get the answer as well as a belief that you could stand up to most difficult questions when no help is forthcoming. What we may need is an ego that doesn’t come in our way to reach out and a pride that doesn’t stonewall our efforts to dive deep inside us.

And I guess only way to get all this is to let ‘Time’ make all this for you and may be till then we may just have to keep these question together with those for which there are no answers. And yeah, there are always such questions…..for which there are no answers.

Had all questions had an answer, question mark would never have been invented. Isn’t it?

-sid

2007-04-01T16:21:00.000+08:00

Sometimes you can forgive ToI for all the crap that it publishes, trying to pass it off as news coz once in a while there is a piece that escapes its editor’s trash bin and make it to the newspaper and is interestingly different.

My usual round up of Indian news sites threw an interesting article today:
“Married to low IQ”
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Married_to_low_IQ/articleshow/1839631.cms
It’s about mentally challenged people getting married, while it starts as a news item and midway turn to an article but it ends as a story. And what fascinated me was a story coz that was the most real part of the piece.

It’s a story (a real one) about Jacinta, she is married to a spastic for sake of social security and like every other decision in life this one also comes with its share of pros and cons. But no, am not going to weigh the two and say if she made the right choice or not. Sometimes, it is better that if you cannot be in someone’s shoes then don’t try tell them the ‘right’ way. Story of Jacinta’s life may seem a very depressing and deprived one and as you reach the last para you might just be full of sympathy and resigned to the fact that there’s nothing she can look forward to in life and then you read about those bulbuls and for once you feel transported to that room.

You hear her call out to them - "Come Chandana, come to Mama,'', you smile with her as two of them hop out and when she says about the third one, “Goodie, is a slow learner. He doesn’t talk much either.” You can’t help but look over her shoulder to her husband and ponder over her use of the word ‘either’.

Hope and Joy are two things that give life its meaning and everyone needs to find these two to continue living. What amazes me is how people find these things in most despondent situations. How they can live their life counting on the light at the end of a long tunnel. How people find their own ‘bulbuls of hope and joy’ hidden behind the frames and furniture, which they turn to and more importantly hold on to in situations where you wonder what’s keeping someone going.

I don’t really know how it feels when people try to build their life on foundation of everlasting pain and deprivation.
Does that pain stays at back of one’s mind every moment?
Is every smile of theirs just a mask for each tear they have held back?
Does emptiness of their life always more deep than what moments of joy can fill up?
Do their words always carry between them - unfulfilled dreams and quashed desires?
OR
Do they able to forget their sorrows in moments of joy ?
Does their smiles get genuinely free from shackles of pain ?
Do their lives rise as phoenix from the ashes of their losses and soar high into the sky - away from all that they couldn’t have ?

I don’t know but I hope it’s the latter. I sincerely do.

-sid

Song recommendation:

झूठी सच्ची आस पे जीना , कब तक आख़िर ... आख़िर कब तक
मय कि जगह ख़ून-ए-दिल पीना , कब तक आख़िर... आख़िर कब तक

एक महीने के वादे पर, साल गुज़ारा ... फिर भी ना आये
वादे का ये एक महीना , कब तक आख़िर... आख़िर कब तक

सामने दुनिया भर के गम हैं , और इधर एक तन्हा हम हैं
सैकड़ो पत्थर, एक आईना, कब तक आख़िर... आख़िर कब तक

2007-03-27T00:17:00.001+08:00

So Bermuda didn’t beat Bangladesh and therefore even the most optimistic of cricket fans in India are now resigned to the fact that Dravid & Co. would be returning home rather than chasing the World Cup glory in Caribbean.

Though I didn’t spend sleepless night following Bermuda-Bangladesh game but trust me am a staunch cricket fan, can’t stand any criticism of Sachin Tendulkar and I did stay awake till 5 a.m. this Saturday morning watching Indian cricket team’s surrender against Sri Lanka although I was dead tired and on any other day would have traded gold to sleep (ok I admit this was a slight exaggeration)

I got initiated into watching cricket when I was 7. It was the year India hosted Reliance World Cup and I remember how I first got attracted to cricket - it was courtesy a colourful weekly magazine saaptahik Hindustan. It was a world cup special edition of the mag with Kapil Dev, Imran Khan and few others on the cover. That mag was full of pictures of all teams, records and lot of other info. That fascinated me and it was going through those pages and reading all the trivia that I first got interested in cricket.

First match of that world cup was India Vs. Australia and those were the days of day cricket in white cloth and long power cuts. And I clearly remember that there was no power that afternoon and finally when power came and I ran to switch on the TV, they were showing replay of Roger Binny getting run out and India losing the game by one run. So I started my journey of following Indian cricket team’s results with a loss.

By the time we reached semi-finals of that world cup I was not just another new found follower of cricket but an obsessive fan. My relatives can still recount the tale of me crying after India lost to England in the semi-final that year (Oh yeah, and am not exaggerating this time).

And what was to follow was my childhood romance with cricket. There was a time when I used to record scores of every cricket match India used to play in my diary and for tournament finals I used to have elaborate score card as well. I think I must have maintained those records very faithfully till I was in class 8. Well, by then my obsession with cricket had started to give way to a more sane form of following the game. As I grew, obsession got replaced by passion and in few more years passion gave way to passing admiration.

And I thank God for the transformation.

These days when I read news clips about burning of effigies of cricketers and stoning of their houses after their early exit, I seriously wonder do cricket fans caught young grow into such uncivilized hooligans? Is cricket so important? Are we as a country so devoid of achievements that failure of a cricket team is being viewed as a national tragedy?

So we lost ? What big deal ? In a game one of the two teams lose and there ain’t any shame in your team having 2 such days in a week. But that doesn’t mean you would burn their effigies and blacken their posters. It’s such a strange and deplorable way of reacting by Indians that it put me to shame sometimes.

I think it’s not our passion for the game but an inherent fear of being nobody that results in such reactions. A country as big as ours is inarguably greatest sporting debacle on face of earth. Forget cricket and our current list of sporting heroes may not go beyond Leander Paes, Mahesh Bhupathi, Vishwanathan Anand and Rajyawardhan Rathore. May be this is the reason why Sania Mirza who’s only claim to fame is winning few matches in grand slam tournaments is being touted as bets thing to have happened to Indian Sports. And cricket which till now was practically played by mere 8 countries out of 200+ on the globe became our national passion, coz even by law of averages when only 8 countries will play you would win sufficient times to keep up the façade of being a powerhouse. Being somebody.

I think lot of people in India had strangely chosen cricket as a way to forget their miserable existence and when they come out in streets and vent their anger, it should not be seen as a reaction to defeat in cricket but a reflection of a life they would rather live differently. Their failure to chase their dreams has restricted their dreams to victories in game of cricket. I think they just release their frustration by getting together and bringing down brick walls of dhoni’s house but genesis of that frustration is not in cricket.

I don’t think cricket is a passion in our country, cricket is there because of lack of passions in our country.

-sid

2007-03-19T01:24:00.001+08:00

He read the mail again on his blackberry, eleventh time since morning as he settled into the cab that he had just flagged. He had an urgent meeting in another 20 minutes, his first instinct after settling into the cab was to look at the documents for his meeting but then he picked up the phone and scrolled to that e-mail again.

He saw the mail for the first time when he got up in the morning. It was worse than what he had feared. He read it once then got off the bed and read it again to confirm that he is not dreaming and all this is for real. It indeed was real.

Cab suddenly braked on the traffic light, he looked out - it was getting a little cloudy, there are days when weather mirrors your mood and there are other days when the weather mirrors in your mood. But his day has not been gloomy at all. He didn’t forget to pick his breakfast at subway, he breezed through his meetings and telecons with the usual gaiety, had a hearty lunch and heartier laughs over the lunch with his colleagues. It was like any other day, just that every time he had a moment with himself all alone, he couldn’t stop himself from getting back to that mail.

He reached his destination five minutes before the appointment; his meeting lasted 40 minutes and was a productive one. As that was the last thing on his agenda for the day so he took up the offer from his host to go for few drinks. No, he was not trying to get drunk and forget what was happening miles away. He was just spending a Friday evening the way it ought to be spent. He went to his favourite Chinese restaurant for dinner and it was only at midnight when he took a cab back to the hotel that he looked at that mail for the twelfth time.

“She has gone in a coma”. That’s not how the mail had begun, neither were these the last words, but these were the words that shook him when he first read the mail. He stayed at these words. He was still trying to comprehend the magnitude of those words. He didn’t believe it when he read it in the morning. He didn’t believe it when he kept calling her number for last 2 days at hospital and got no response. He didn’t believe it when he had talked to her 3 days back before leaving for London and she had said, “I think, I’m dying.” And he was not ready to believe it still.

Shock manifests itself in various ways, sometimes it takes form of tears, sometimes it evokes anger, very often it brings anxiety and tension and there are also times when it numbs you but he was showing symptoms of none of that. His shock has obliterated every symptom of shock. It was not that he was hiding the pain, he had just driven the pain away because he had refused to believe anything that could hurt him has happened. He was aware of reality but he has refused to live it. He didn’t try call her number, he didn’t even try and call her friend, he didn’t worry about what would happen to her because he has stopped acknowledging that something has happened to her.

He has reached London just a day before; he has to stay here for at least a week. And till he flies back, there’s nothing he can do. He agreed to come to London only when doctors told him she is out of danger, he was postponing this trip for almost a fortnight now and finally he decided to steal a week. After all, it was just a week, he thought he would be back by the time she is ready to be discharged. He talked to her before leaving for London. They talked for a long time, she was scared and it showed. He attributed that to all the medical setup she was seeing around her. But he was more scared than her and she knew how much he wanted her to get all right. Every time he used to tell her “it’s gonna be fine”, she understood that he was telling it to himself rather than her. And she knew that she needed to make him believe that she would be fine because in that moment he needed that belief more than her. So as they kept talking she hid her fears, made him believe that his words has calmed her nerves and when finally when he left he was sure she would be fine and she was sure that he is sure of that.

He reached his hotel a little after midnight, he was a bit sleepy but he didn’t want to sleep yet. He surfed channels for a bit and settled on re-run of a soccer game he had missed last week. Two of them used to talk at this hour usually but today he didn’t look at his phone even once. He was not expecting any call and neither had he got any call to make because he knew it won’t be answered because it can’t be answered. It’s scary when you live through something like this without being scared and he was doing exactly that. You get anxious when you expect that something worse can happen to you, but what about those moments when you know worst has already happened. Do you get scared or do you get fearless? For him this was the worst that could have happened. You and I may say that this could still get worse but for him that was an impossibility. For him low has already been reached, his frame of reason and faith has genuinely excluded any possibility of anything worse.

Had someone followed him since morning, knowing what had befallen him. They would have had no difficulties reaching to a conclusion that he is a heartless cruel piece of rock. After all, but for his repeated effort to find in that mail some hope to cling to, there was nothing that may suggest that he has been saddened by the news that the morning sun brought. Had there been a device that could have figured what’s going in someone’s mind, still he stood no chance as there were little if any threads of anxiety or pain running in his mind. He has not reacted to the news at all, not when he read it first, and not on any of the countless occasions during the day when that crossed his mind.

This was his act of defiance, his challenge to providence. He stood there alone in large battlefield called life and called out the fate to throw at him all it can. It was like that torture-room situations, where the victim when tortured doesn’t writhe in pain but laugh at the face of perpetrator. And he was doing exactly that. He lived his day just like any other day because he wanted to mock the fate. He didn’t pray to God to make her right because he wanted to shame the God to have put her in that state. He just switched off the night lamp and closed his eyes, he was tired, it takes a lot of effort to take the world and his battle had just begun.

2007-03-12T01:49:00.001+08:00

She was still asleep.

He got up from his chair and looked out of window; it was a dark night and all was so still outside, not a single indication that any life exist in the dark outside. There were still few hours to go before dawn would break. He turned back to look at her and then decided to wait at the window for a bit longer. While there was no moon outside and there was a dim table lamp glowing inside the room but still room seemed darker to him than pitch black night.

When they had just met, they used to talk well into late in the night. He remembers this time of the day from those times. With his phone on the ear and night made darker by the shadow of big neem tree right outside balcony of his room, he had seen lot of these nights grow old and weak till they give way to a fresh dawn. He wanted to go out and sit in the garden outside with her, but she was asleep.

He took his chair again ad closed his eyes; he had not slept properly for last few days. Last seven days to be precise. It was last Monday when she got admitted in the hospital, doctors told him it’s a simple surgery and she could be back home by in a day or two. He believed them; he convinced her that it would all be fine. After all these doctors spend their lives learning how to get these surgeries right. He was sure, she was not. But she went along because he wanted her to. He wished he had listened to her. She was still in the same position as she was when they brought her back from the operation theatre. Doctors say she has not responded well to the treatment, she is unconscious for six days now.

He took a deep sigh and opened his eyes to look at her. He has tried it so many times in last few days, hoping every time that as he would open his eyes he might see her looking at him. That’s how it used to be when he used to lie down on her lap and close his eyes, she would keep talking and he would keep listening, and every time he opened his eyes, she was looking at him with her deep black eyes. He longed to see those eyes looking at him again.

For first two days, he believed when doctors told him that she would be conscious soon. They appeared confident and he drew his confidence from theirs. It was on Wednesday night when he started to get jittery, he started questioning them, he stopped believing what they said by Friday. He had it figured that it’s beyond doctors now. He has now started hoping for a miracle, he always believed in miracles. But as he sat in dim light of the table lamp his faith had begun to give way to fear. For the first time in his life, he has begin to fear that he might lose her, such a thought that had never entered his mind from the time they had first met. At first when they met, he didn’t mind letting her go but slowly she became so integral to his life that he just never thought of a life without her. And now suddenly he has realized that this could be a possibility. He shuddered by the whole thought, he wanted to shake off all these negative thoughts. He wanted to believe that she is just taking a bit long to get fine, that’s all. He needed someone to tell him, it’s all gonna be fine.

He got up and looked out of window once more, night was still dark. But suddenly he realized something had changed. He could hear the breeze knocking against the window, dead of night was finally being challenged. He stood there listening to sound of wind hitting against the glass window. No one could tell what that sound was trying to tell him, but he stood there listening for hours and had it not been for first signs of dawn break he wouldn’t have noticed that it must have been hours.

And then he turned and looked at her. She was still asleep in the same position, but he was not worried, it seems he knew she would get up today.

And she did.

-siddhartha

2007-03-11T02:36:00.000+08:00

He’s always there (almost always). At the end of every day as dark of the night try to hide the world, he slips in and stay up ….standing guard till dawn breaks. Every poet looks up to him for inspiration. Beauties around the world often get jealous of him and night wears him as her most cherished jewel. On nights, when you can’t sleep he’s always there to keep you company, all you wish more is that moon could talk.

In the age of neon and almost uninterrupted power supply, the joy of a walk in moon-lit night is fast becoming a thing of past. But I have been lucky, for once those power cuts in dead of the night and those street lamps gone bad while I was growing up do give me a reason to be thankful, for they gave me a chance to experience the night as God wanted it to be, quiet and pure, dark but not blind and hidden but still seen. It’s tough these days to find a place where you could just be left alone with the dark of the night and light of the moon, nights these days are better lit than the days.

But for me, charm of the moon has not dwindled a bit. Right now, from my bed as I glance out of window up in the sky - the pure white moon against a pitch black sky presents me such a fascinating view. Sometimes it becomes difficult to decide that did God create night first and then created moon to make night look prettier or did He create moon first and then as an afterthought made night so that humanity could see the moon everyday (almost).

2007-03-07T01:15:00.000+08:00

Here I'm!!

After a 15 day break, actually it’s a longer break. Coz I just blogged thrice in entire Feb so to write only thrice in 5 weeks is more or less one single long break :-)

For last day or two as I got slightly free to blog, I was toying with the idea of revamping the look of my blog. I thought let me get back from my hiatus by giving this blog a new look. You know kind of making up for not writing. So I checked templates, tried them and ended up realizing how new blogger keeps popping up XML errors with most of the template codes.

And then finally it dawned on me that what on earth am I doing? Why can't i just go back and put my fingers to keyboard (that expression has been invented to replace to put pen to paper).

Sometimes, in our effort to make up, we end up preparing too long. How often you just want to do things perfectly, say the perfect line, buy the perfect gift, wait for the perfect moment, when all that’s needed is just another line, a smile and need to do it now. We want to make up for things we didn’t do by trying to do something special and then delaying the whole thing coz you are busy wondering what could be special enough, when in reality all that is needed is to get back to old ways of doing things without trying to pull off a rabbit from the hat.

So I would keep my hat on the head and will spend time writing rather than looking for new templates.

-sid

2007-02-19T01:08:00.000+08:00

What is it that separate men from boys (or for that matter women from girls).
Is it the knack to spot an opportunity and capitalizing on it?
Is it the perseverance to cling to a chance with all one has got?
Is it stamina to run the course?

To me I think it's none of them ....all this could make you a prodigy but test of character is how you react to failures. It’s how do you gather yourself after a fall and how do you spring back. It’s how you don't let anyone else influence yourself worth. It's not about not losing but it's about to lose but still not be lost and that’s what defines character.

And one man whom I can't I help admiring for all this is Sourav Ganguly - Prince of Kolkatta.

He indeed was a prince till his much hyped exit. He was someone who had all the power vesting in his hands. No one could have questioned him. And he had done enough to deserve that power. But as they power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. And I would admit that when he was finally consigned to ignominy I thought that was deserved too.

For someone who was a monarch - to work as a commoner and force his way in, knowing pretty well that he could never be the king again is very difficult. When you know that lost glory can never be regained, it's difficult to find a motivation. Many would have given up in a situation where they know that they are not just fighting enemies within but even enemies outside. But for a guy to battle to all that and come out trumps as he has is fantastic. I don’t know whether it was hurt pride, passion for game or hard commercial sense that drove him to work his way back. But instead of lying on his back and crying hoarse about being wronged, he bent his back and proved what he is made up of.

I won’t exaggerate and call him a modern hero or something of that sort but yeah I would admit that there are things or two that all of us could do well to learn from his example.

-sid

2007-02-11T20:28:00.000+08:00

Music has immense power.

It’s your companion irrespective of whether you want to party or if you just want to be alone. It’s a great buddy to have when you are happy and wanna dance or if you are sad and just wanna hide. Sometimes it fills an empty day and on other times it provides a soothing relaxation during a hectic day. It gives voice to unsaid and pull out smiles out of nowhere.

Together with poetry, the two weaves a magic as no other known to mankind. At times, I think words were not invented for communication but for poetry coz nowhere else do they seem so comfortable and so apt. A beautiful song is like words dancing gracefully on the tune of music. So sometime you look at the dancer and get wowed by her elegance and grace and on other times you just let music sweep you off your feet.

Poetry is like a sea, majestic when you look at it from a distance, comforting when you let waves come and meet you, deep and magical when you dive in and every time you dive deep inside you find something beautiful to bring out with you. It has got something for everybody…beautiful corals, lively fishes, precious pearls, dangerous sharks ……....That’s poetry.
It doesn’t matter who you like, Shakespeare or Ghalib, Frost or Nirala, Floyd or Gulzar, who creates the magic is not important as long as you can feel the magic, sense its existence and turn to it when you need it.

-siddhartha

Song recommendation of the day:
Am listening to this beautiful song from Parineeta and as is my habit with any song that I like, this song is running in continuous loop…again and again and again.

Raat humaari to chand ki saheli hain
Kitne dino ke baad, aayi woh akeli hain
Sanjha ki baati bhi koi bujha de aaj
Andhere se jee bhar ke, karni hain baatein aaj

Andhera rootha hain,Andhera raitha hain
gumsum sa, kone me baitha hain

Andhera pagal hain, kitna ghanera hian
Chubhta hain, dasta hain….phir bhi who mera hain
Uski hi godi me ,sar rakh ke sona hain
Uski hi baahon me chupke se rona hain
Aankhon se kaajal ban , behta andhera

2007-02-05T03:24:00.000+08:00

I like the word ‘inertia’. First I read about it was in class 11th in physics text book but as years passed by, I have grown to associate this word more with psychology than with physics. May be inertia was never a physics term, Newton must have read psychology and he just saw that physics can do well with this concept. It’s amazing how we let ourselves drift just because we are not ready to force ourselves to stop and turn or we just stay rooted even if we want to move ahead.

Force that is needed to change this state of inertia has its origins in our minds. And that force is generated by vector addition of two decisions – one, to act or not to act and two, when to act if one need to. Sometimes, we like to trick ourselves, we tell ourselves it’s not the right time to act when we actually are not even sure if want to act. It’s convenient and it keeps the difficult question away, rather it allows us to pretend that we have an answer when we don’t have one. I can confidently and with a voice of authority tell myself…it’s not the right time, as if I would know what the right time would be. This I guess is one reason why clairvoyance has enthused humanity for ages, because ‘when to act’ has been one of the key drivers of the force that move people.

But ‘to act or not to’ is definitely the complex of the two decisions. This decision is basically a function of our experiences, our perceptions, our apprehensions, our ambitions and our need to get it right. If life was a recipe book then recipe for making this decision would have read something like this - Take all these ingredients, put them in a bowl and stir well, then let it boil in your mind you might first see some indecision frothing at the top but soon it well get cleared and you will have your decision ready to be served hot. Those who might have tried cooking with the help of recipe books would know how it never works out the way it is written. The froth of indecision never goes, that mixture of experiences, apprehensions, perceptions etc. is always more fluid than how it was supposed to be and when you boil it, it always get overcooked. And maybe this is the reason why people prefer a home delivery for a decision like this rather than showing off their skills.

And this brings me back to what I have written once earlier that sometimes we like our decisions to be made for us if we are not sure that we can get them right. Come to think of it, this post was a prequel to that one. And people think only RGV can do that ;-)
Well given I have dabbled in this ‘decision theory’ of mine quite a few times in last 2 months, am sure a sequel to that post would come too……but for that to happen I guess I may just need to go and find me a bodhi tree ;-)

-siddhartha

2007-01-30T22:39:00.000+08:00

Today is January 30th. Mahatma Gandhi was shot dead on this day 59 years back. They say these days that we have forgotten Gandhi's principles and only remember him on Gandhi Jayanti and his death anniversary, but I guess we don't even remember him on even those days. And had it not been for my growing up to doordarshan news and a 2 minute silence in school on this day, even I wouldn't have remembered because if one go to any of those leading Indian newspaper site they didn't even have a single word about Gandhi till late in the evening. (Though right now I can see a feature on Indian Express and a photograph on HT).

Mahatma Gandhi is someone I have grown to admire. And I really get irritated when people fail to see how remarkably he achieved what he did.

Part of blame lies in the way Gandhi is portrayed, while I agree he is a saint but our school-books, documentaries everything just show so much of gratitude and heap so much of praise without underlining his strategy and philosophy that people just get uncomfortable with the idea.

What doesn't help is that there are people who believe that wearing a torn jeans, doing drugs and bashing Gandhi is a sign of modernity but well damn with them !!!

Non-violence is a philosophy that was needed in a country like India. For a country as diverse as ours and a society which was not as aggressive as few others we know today, a country where Bhagat singh and Chandrasheakhar Azads were far and few, non-violence was the only way to broad base a freedom struggle.

Even during freedom struggle, people had their families to look after. Not everyone could have gone and become revolutionary. I don't even think everyone could have sacrificed not only their life but their families and all they had to the freedom struggle.

But that doesn't mean they didn't want to be part of the movement. What Gandhi did was to unite them. To provide them a platform where they can do their bit for the country and once you have a platform people can do impossible tasks and people did. They faced bullets, took blows of lathi charge ...they did all that they never thought they could. Gandhi made them discover their inner courage. Just step back in time. in those times...you should be sure of your courage to join a bhagat singh but you can discover courage by joining Gandhi. By making his movement non-violent, not only did Gandhi did away with need for people to put their life on the way but he also made it difficult for British to find excuses to shoot those bullets.

People could take part in a satyagrah and go back home in the night. Their families could see them, they didn't have to remain in hiding ...and I am talking about common Gandhi follower. No one should doubt the police persecution, and cruelty that the Gandhians faced, no one should say that they offered even an inch less than the revolutionaries. But all I am trying to bring forth is that but for Gandhi our freedom movement could never have been as broad based as it turned out to be. Gandhi figured that independence can't just be get by few heroes, it requires involvment of a majority of people. He never asked people to do more than what they can, but once people joined him they did what earleir seem impossible.

Gandhi is indeed a saint. His views on trusth, ahimsa, bringing up the down trodden, his love for humanity all that he did in his entire life was just exemplary. When he made Sardar Patel release the Pakistan's share of Indian funds, he didn't do it for pakistan ...he did it for people of that country. For him boundaries meant nothing, he lived and thought of people. And today when people come up with all those accusations that he did this which is benefitted pakistan or he did that which didn't help India, they forget that for him people on both side of border were always Indians who had walked with him on the path to Independence.

But behind that saint was a master strategist, who saw what could unite India. Who figured the key to stimulate common indian to egt out of his and revolt against the British Raj. He did what no one else could do and he did it without a bullet. We somehow miss this man and so fail to find why should we admire him.

Einstein once said of Gandhi: "Generations to come, it may be, will scarce believe that such one as this ever in flesh and blood walked upon this earth". And that's exactly what's happening...people of our time can't believe that Gandhi achieved what he did and so they look for excuses , sometimes invent few and sometimes come up with stupid arguments to give justification to their disbelief.

But Gandhi did walk on the face of this earth and he did lay the foundation of a confident India. He showed that voice can be raised without crying hoarse. He showed that mountains can be moved without blasting your way through them.

And I bow to him for that !!!

-sid

Song recommendation of the day:

Mahatma Gandhi's one of the favourite Bhajans originally penned by gujrati poet Narsinh Mehta

Vaishnav jan to taine kahiye je peer parayi jaane re

par dukhhe upkaar kare toye, man abhimaan na aane re

2007-01-29T22:31:00.000+08:00

Let's sample the headlines ( and I mean top of the page headline) of India's leading newspapers on their website this afternoon.

Times of India : After win, Shilpa in forgiving mood

Hindustan Times : Jade shouldn't be called racist: Shilpa

Indian Express: Shilpa Shetty's career gets 'real' boost

The Hindu: Shilpa looking forward to return home

I felt revolted by the way our media is blowing up the whole thing.

First of all, some bottom of pyramid celebrity ( if she can be called one) shows her crudeness and lack of civility by calling Shilpa names and here we go....that's an attack on nation's pride. Ministry got involved, I was wondering if GoI might just call back our troops from Siachen, so as to teach Jade a lesson. Is it some inferiority complex of our country that makes us respond to something so low and trivial with such ferocity ? For God's sake it's a TV show, the person who said what she said has no locus standi, she may not even represent the British population. What's the furore about ?

And that too when someone got Rs. 3.5 crore to be in the show. Why did media go berserk?

Is our country so devoid of printable news that we now have to resort to printing minute by minute commentary of what's happening in Big Brother's house?

It's amazingly stupid, news I thought was the only medium that brings us close to reality but somehow there is this new form of news which I would label as escapist news that's taking centre stage.

I have not seen Indian TV news for some time but the depths to which channels like Aaj Tak etc had fallen was for all to see or just take the case of Times of India, British tabloids may be shamed by kinda reporting ToI have started doing.

I almost decided never to buy that newspaper ever again by my own money till they become a newspaper once more. Indian Express that way at least till I was in India was still a newspaper and not a tabloid.

And what surprises me that Abhishek-Aishwarya's marriage or John-Bipasha's breakup or salary of IIM grads make up bigger news in the country than Noida killings, Orissa droughts and Assam massacre.

We as a society have become so immune to hard realities of life that only sensationalizing of trivia interests us...nothing else. Isn't it escapism ? We want our news to be served to us like a dessert, sweet and juicy. No bitter truths, no hard debates. Just a relaxing piece of stories sensationalized and put together for my after-office entertainment.

Indian media has finally arrived.................huh !!!!

-sid

2007-01-25T02:37:00.000+08:00

Why Old is gold ? Why 'what was' has to be better than 'what is' ? Why we resist change ? Why we pull down the new so that old can stay up ?

I understand that we might have built a level of comfort with how things were and when they change we feel inconvenienced. But where is the need to steadfastly cling to the old, to not let it go.

Is there some hidden joy in being disappointed with the way things have turned out ? or

Is that an expression of loyalty to old guard? or

Is there a sense of guilt - how can i share the bed with new when till yesterday I pleasured myself with the company of old ?

Why do people just don't want things to change ?

Why past and present need to be compared.....why we need to judge the two and let the world know which one is better. Why can't both be good. Just Good. None need to be better than another.

It's good to just ask questions some days. When we don't check if we know the answer before posing the question then we don't hide the uneasy questions.

-sid

2007-01-21T01:17:00.000+08:00

This is Prof. Anil Gupta and this pic is from the article that can be found on the front page of BBC news site. Well, as I had missed this evening's EPL games so I opened the BBC site to get my EPL update, specifically chelsea's shocking loss to liverpool, but right there on the front page even before I could click on the sports link - I saw Prof. Gupta's familiar face.

It's interesting to know how I heard of Prof. Gupta for the first time. It was a june afternoon, I had got an admit to IIMA. I was back in Haridwar for a while before the joining. One fine afternoon while checking my mails, I found one from Prof. Gupta - he had read my review of '1984' on the online-literature site ( yes, the same review which I posted in one of the posts few days back) and he had mailed me to tell me that he liked them. That's when I first heard of Prof. Gupta.

Next I came across him in one of the courses that he took for us - ISPE (Indian Social & Political Environment). In a curriculum replete with courses on finance, marketing and strategy - this was an interesting and welcome change. And it's in this course that I got to know of his dream to bring rural innovators to fore. It's a very interesting concept and he works on it with full dedication. Few of my friends thought that he sticks to his ideas and convictions rather than taking note of contrary view. But I have no issues with that, I guess that's what differentiate thinkers from entrepreneurs. When thinkers plan something they chose to get into everyone' shoes to figure out, how would each one of them feel on their journey together. It takes a long time and you never start the journey. Entrepreneurs just put on their shoes and run to their goal. Others can join them if they want or just be spectators. And Prof Gupta, nominated by Business week as one of the stars of Asia, is one such achiever with a mind of his own.

If you meet him, and he is a busy man trust me, you will realize that his white beard is just a deception, he stands tall, absolutely upright, walk briskly, talk in a strong and firm voice and has a logic that can be best described as business like. He is fit as Federer from what I have seen of him. Even though his work with rural poor may give you an impression that he would resort to ideas of compassion and care and equality to drive his point, but trust me his logic is far more potent and convincing. In my second year while I was working with a NGO in nearby village, we consulted him for few things and it was amazing how he could understand the reality of rural existence and translate it for "never been to a village before" B-school grads.

I missed a great chance to go on Shodhyatra with him to laddakh when I saved my course bidding points for just a shade too long to ensure I end up getting all the finance courses. Result - I did get all the fin courses but was left with enough points that could have pretty well taken me to a trek across laddakh and a chance to know this man better.

I think what I admire most about Prof. Gupta is his unflinching dedication to a worthy cause. A cause that makes a life purposeful. A purpose greater than buying the swankiest apartment, latest gadget and finest car. May be each living soul needs a purpose like this but not many have guts to go and pick one for themselves. I hear this constant calling to use my empowerment to empower others, not to waste what I have in structuring debt transactions but to go out there and contribute to the society in a meaningful way. But at the same time, whenever I see that stylish Lamborghini parked outside an expensive restaurant, i hear another voice that calls me to go and get one such toy for myself.

One can either provide his life with means or meaning and right now I have chosen to work on the first, but thank god that there's a Prof. Anil Gupta out there who has chosen the latter for himself.

Hats off to you Sir !!! I hope some day, I can gather enough guts to emulate you.

-sid

PS: Here's the link to the BBC story on Prof. Gupta by Peter Day-

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/6279929.stm

2007-01-16T23:09:00.000+08:00

It was a physics lecture at school, must be class 11th, having introduced concept of Ohm's law in last class, my teacher started his new lecture asking the class definition of Ohm's Law. And as soon as he finished, I started - "Ohm's law states that, in an electrical circuit, the current passing through a conductor is directly proportional to the potential difference applied across them i.e. V = IR". As I finished and looked for some words of appreciation, my teacher shocked me by saying - that's not right. How could I get that wrong - wasn't it V = IR ? It indeed is. The puzzled look of mine must have shown coz he came right next to me and asked me to tell where have I made a mistake, but I had no clue. And then he gave me correct definition,

"Ohm's law states that, in an electrical circuit, the current passing through a conductor is directly proportional to the potential difference applied across them, provided all the physical conditions remain constant."

All I had missed, was the assumption but he insisted that for me to get the complete meaning of Ohm's law I should not only know the law but also the assumption on which it stands.

And that's so true just not about a concept in physics but about so much more in life.

So may times, we tell ourselves - If I have behaved in a certain manner with my friends earlier, then that's how I should be with all my new friends. - If i have reacted to a situation in a particular way in past , that's how I should react it to always. - I have made myself believe that to be like how I have been in past , is to be myself.

But what I forget is that all this can be true only " provided there has been no change in underlying condition"

How often we just multiply I and R and say that's what V should be and if someone tells us that's not what V is, we either fault the voltmeter or blame the guy taking the reading, but do we ever step back and check the basic assumption ?

To mistake life to be an excel file where one can just put in a formula in one cell and drag it down the column could be the biggest mistake we can make. Every relationship in life is unique because it has its own context, a context which has taken shape through interactions of two unique individuals. While I may have the same reason to be friend with A and B but A and B can have vastly different reasons for being friend with me. So how can I just let my needs define the whole context of a relationship. How can I be so insensitive so as not being able to perceive that if there is a dissonance in contexts of different relationships then it is because they are not the same. Why I just want to offer just that much of myself to A that I have offered to B and C and D. May be A don't even need that part of me. But I world rather sit and wonder what's wrong with A, coz it's all so hunky dory with B, C and D. Rather than explaining why things should be as I expect them to be, why shouldn't I try and figure out why things are not how I thought they would be. Why can't I just step back and check my assumptions?

Life has no laws but even if we believe for a moment that there are some, what we can't forget is that those laws are incorrect and incomplete unless the assumptions they stand on are true and valid. So while our experiences give us wisdom to act in a certain way in future, we should also be wise enough to view those experiences in their entirety - complete with assumptions, presumptions and contexts - so that we know when is the time to fall back on experiences and when should we just let our instinct show us the way.

-sid

2007-01-14T01:05:00.000+08:00

We all have our shields....arrogance, condescension, silence, mockery, meekness, modesty, aggression, surrender, ignoring ....and more all of these are ways we use to shield ourself.

Someone might just say, "Me need no shield !!!" but that's use of arrogance and if someone ask, "Shield ourself from what ?" he is just making use of tool of ignorance.

And so everyone pretends, that life is absolutely perfect for them........

That pops up two differing questions....

Why anyone else should have anything to do with what's right or wrong with my life ?

Vs.

Why should someone feel apprehensive of letting others know how exactly things are ?

To first my answer is "Why not?"

And unless the first question is backed by high degree of aggression or some contrived logic about individuality, it's tough to see how someone can continue to hold fort on that question.

And so whenever I play referee to a match between these two questions, the second question always come out winners...blame it on me but that's how it is.

And I think my choice of word should have made this clear for someone with an eye for detail. After all, use of 'shield' for what could also be called 'shell' is a clear reflection that I will be more inclined to explore answers to second question and dismiss the first one.

But let me get back to the question that what do we fear after all ? Why do we wanna let everyone believe that everything is fine.

Let's pick probable answers...

Is it a show of strength, a show of control....that we have everything in order ?

or Is it a fear that how would we be judged if we come out as weak?

or Do we fear that someone can exploit us if we let the guard down?

or Do we just don't wanna come out as second best compared to the other guy ?

or We just don't wanna bother someone else with our worries ?

or Is it a hope that soon everything would be ok and why let anyone know that's something i wrong at all ?

I guess am running out of believable excuses that we can invent......answer to the question could be one of these, or a combination of these or may be something entirely different that I have not been able to unearth. But fact remains that there are shields out there and so someone ought to have either seen daggers or imagined few. And this could lead us to only two conclusions that either world is one big hallucination or a battleground ?

I hope it's not first and I wish it's not the second............

And so may be questions that I put up above are still unanswered....well if so, the that's how it is..

When have I claimed that I have all the answers, I just try to pretend that I have.......

-sid

Song recommendation for the day:

From the movie Guru

Ae Hairat-e-aashiqui....jagaa mat

pairon se zameeen, zameen....lagaa mat

Kyun urdu farsi bolte ho

das kahte ho , do tolte ho

jhoothon ke shenshaah bolo na...................

2007-01-10T00:01:00.000+08:00

Discussions over onion rings and french fries are often just like the eatables – spicy but junk. And usually once you have had your fill, you leave those topics on the table with coke cups and used tissues to be put into trash bin by the service boy later.
But in present days when even much-maligned McD have included fresh salad and corn in their menu, once in a while you may just find some interesting cue during those gupshups at the fast food outlets.
Well, last evening while all of us minus Jayesh were taking a snacks break, topic of discussion somehow turned to love.
Now, I seriously feel sympathetic for this four letter word …..it’s easily the most abused word in any of the contemporary languages or to put it in another way I guess it’s the most abused notion irrespective of the language.
First of all, the word has been almost hijacked by a particular relationship so if you love your parents or siblings, well take a walk….that won’t count as love at all. After all, that way everyone love someone …..try understand what we are talking about dude !!!
And well whoever said, you find love only once in lifetime…he was definitely wrong, people here fall in love every quarter and they even show robust growth in volume of “I love you” said quarter on quarter.
But to be frank these guys are not what I wanted to write about. I know they are fools and well I guess they know it themselves that they are just fooling around.
Let’s turn to people who believe they are in love as in the highest and purest sense of the word. Hmmm, People say you just fall in love, it happens by chance or it just happens. A romantic idea I must say, lotta movies have made lot of money cashing in on this idea just like few others have made money showing that there are trains that leave every summer for school of wizardry.

But does everyone really fall in love or do lot of them just convince themselves that they are in love?

Now before anyone accuse me of being a non-believer etc, let me clarify I definitely believe in existence of love. Anyone who needs a proof whether love exist or not, my advise to him is just go and look at a mother with her child. That’s love in its purest and highest form and to me that’s an inarguable proof of love. And given that love exists therefore there can be no denying that there can be other form of relationships full of love and affection.
But I still get the impression that there are times when people just get carried away by grand ideas of love and start believing that they are in love even if they are not. To be frank it’s not difficult to convince oneself of a particular state of mind, a good looking guy or girl who can talk well is a reasonable reason for you to feel sure that you want to spend your entire life with her. You might rue it later (and that explains fate of so many love affairs) but at that point of time you just can’t see anything else. But don’t love affairs last years, well they can but then where am I saying that you have convinced yourself of something wrong. All I am saying is, isn’t it possible that people just condition themselves to believe they are in love. In the process, they may just get the best guy or girl for themselves but that was just incidental. Look at what am explaining as a phsychological process, it's an effort by one's subconcious to make him/her conscious about their being in love. And guess people work themselves into such a state. They play their own doctor, look for known symptoms and then somehow interpret something or other to be those symptoms and make a diagnosis that they have fallen in love and then start treating themselves as patients. And ask any doctor, half the people pay for the medicines not because they are suffering from any illness but because they 'believe' they are suffering from something.
I repeat again that I am not denying here possibility of love in its true sense. But am just exploring why suddenly everyone around you is falling in love. It’s definitely not the weather, is it?
It’s like people who have just started drinking, well they have heard that you get high when you drink. So once they start drinking, just after first peg …they start thinking they are getting high even though they may be in their most alert state of mind ever. That’s what power of mind is. I can be what I want to be. And somehow the grand notions that come with love make everyone believe that this is an experience that they must have and therefore, bit of attraction coupled with some sweet words is often trigger to “I guess Iam in love” syndrome…but it’s not that simple. Because people just don’t mistake themselves to be in love, they convince themselves that they are. And therefore they enjoy the state just like someone actually in love would or feel the pain of break up in exactly the same way. They have to, they must feel the pain or feel happy because how else will they feel convinced that they are/were in love.
Is it good or bad? Well, I don’t know. Am not sitting here and passing a judgment. All am trying to say is that while God might have created love so that people just chance upon it and fall in love, we are just pushing ourselves to take a fall…..if falling is still fun…Good Luck !!!

-sid

Song recommendation of the day:
Just keeping with the mood, here’s this beautiful song from Jogger’s Park

Ishq hota nahin, sabhi ke liye…
Ye bana hain, ye bana hain…..kisi kisi ke liye…………

2007-01-08T01:21:00.000+08:00

Decisions are not difficult to make, difficult part is to stop waiting for decisions to be made for you. We grow up listening to stories about miracles, watching movies where things just happen and somehow we find it difficult to get over these stories. It's difficult to say why we prefer things to happen to us rather than pick up the wheel and drive to where we want. And I have noticed that most of the men and women I know are strong minded people who have made hard decisions once they were convinced that decision will have to be made by them only. But I have also seen that wavering, that indecision, that hope of someone else making the right decision. The most capable people seem to develop an unfounded confidence in someone else's capability . It's strange. There is always that other group which would jump to make decisions for others but no I wont discuss them today.

I guess we as a society judge a man by how things turn out for him rather than how things were for him. It's like this ...say India is playing Australia and they are 17/5 in reply to 275, and this one gentleman make this prophecy that India would win and though realistically this would never happen but just for sake of argument let's accept that India goes on to win. Now this guy would be hailed as the greatest expert on cricket. He will be giving hundreds of interviews with strange theories about why he said what he did. But yeah he would be a hero. Soemhow we are fixated with our desire to get it right in future rather than to do it right now. Reminds me of "Arms and the Man" by Shaw. Our heroes are never practical they are always courageous. I have deep appreciation for self belief and strength of human spirit, but i believe that it's unfair to liberally use those terms to romanticize illogical feats.

But I seem to be drifting, and anyways reluctance to take command of our own lives have deeper reasons than just social conditioning. May be faith in God has a role to play as well , hope for a miracle. But I think biggest reason is absence of a power source to drive up enough force to disturb the inertia. We need reasons to do things, while there are enough reasons available but they must add up in a way that a person is compelled to make a decision. It's physics i guess. I must act because....... that because need to be a strong force, very strong force. Because how often we see that while everyone else is convinced a particular thing need be done, principal actor is still not willing to make a move...why's so? When he should be the most concerned? What's he waiting for? What's his plan ? I guess he is waiting for those situations to add up to ensure that they drive him to action, that explains why men driven to most impossible situations achieve the most heoic feats. I guess in those situations they just get enough motivation to make the most determined action. Till a situation exceeds a threshold desperation, a human being just dont get convinced enough to act to change things. Well this threshold could be different for different people, there may be vector addition of reaosns and so things may not just add up but whatever it is trust me it's a fascinating study. And more need to be understood and written about it. Let's see.....

-sid

2007-01-04T21:47:00.000+08:00

Back from my phuket trip, I was planning to write about the beautiful beaches and scenery of phuket but while checking score of final ashes test on BBC's site I happened to find this strange news piece:

"Kidnap girl grapples with freedom"

(http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6192433.stm)

Now this is a strange story, a girl was abducted when she was 10 and she escaped finally few months back at the age of 18. Now this girl is finding it difficult to come to terms with the freedom she has finally got. Was just wondering what effect such a traumatized childhood would have on the girl. One of the experts quoted in one of the articles said that girl has not lived several phases of her early life in a proper way and therefore it would take several years for her to recover completely from the ordeal. Now, I don't know what could have motivated the kidnapper to do this - every man acts at least by his own mind in a right way - but I wonder what makes a criminal believe in what they do. I can understand that rage may play a role in some murders, greed can make u do lot of things from fraud to robbery, momentary drive of lust can drive someone to rape. All these acts are abhorrent but come to think of it I can paint the man who committed the crime, I can at least claim to understand what could have driven them. But people like the kidnapper here or the serial killer from Noida killings, there mindset just elude me completely....what and what on earth can make these people live on with ghastly acts of theirs. I can understand kidnapping but to live with it for 8 years...well I guess man needed a drive and passion of almost maniac levels to do that - but what could have driven him to that level. After all here the kidnapped was a 10 year girl ?

And come to think of it those perpetrators of Noida known to mankind could describe what they did....30 women and children - killed over two years - why ? sex, organ trade or whatever you just can't be human to have done that. I just wonder how these men get to live with themselves after all that they do. And how can they repeat a wrong over and over again.

I strongly believe that death is not a punishment for perpetrators of such inhuman acts, they must breath but die every day. I care a damn about human right activists for a moment....just hope someone can come up with a punishment which make these guys writhe in pain for every moment of rest of their life.

2006-12-27T23:08:00.000+08:00

When I was in class 8th or 9th, our Hindi grammar book used to carry few essays so that students can learn art of essay writing. Well, one such essay I remember reading was on 'Dowry System', and the way it started was something like this...

"All the socials ills rooted in traditions have their beginning in traditions which were noble and good, but as time changed those traditions remain rooted in past and therefore they turned into social ills"

I liked something about this reasoning and so usually whenever I come across some illogical social evil I try to map it to what could have started it.

But there is one tradition that escapes any sense how much ever I travel back in time - and that is the way women are treated after widowhood.

I guess few thousand years back, few wise men would have gathered and sat together to decide on customs to follow, but what and i seriously wonder, what on earth could have made them come up with such cruel customs for widowed women. I actually saw this movie - Dor today, a nice movie - actually a very nice movie. And one of the central character is a widow. And that somehow get me thinking on this whole concept of widowhood again today. But there is just no logic how hard one may think. Why women just need to do away with all color, all joy, all happiness of their lives because their man dies. Come to think of it Sati system prevalent earlier was plain inhumane but is life a widow expected to live any less inhumane. In sati, a widow was burnt to death on the pyre of her husband but the current traditions are just no better, we burn everything that represents life - laughter, colours, freedom, friendship, desires. ambitions - burn everything that's life and just leave the body - Can we call a person living such life - ALIVE?

Cruelty of these traditions is just too much to bear. And bigger problem is that they don't bother us. Are there more AIDS victims in India or wretched widows ? Which is the bigger problem? Will a generational shift make their lot better ? Can we as a society grant our fellow people their right to live life on equal terms. Can we grant our fellow beings status of an adult and therefore right to make decisions. Can society stop being judge ?

There is a dialogue in Dor somewhere in the middle, " Why men in our society is expected to get remarried if their wife die and why women are expected to mourn death of their husband all their life ? ".

I don't think anyone can answer this question, what we can do is to work towards making this question a thing of past and I hope that happens sooner than later.

-sid

2006-12-25T21:18:00.000+08:00

Today I spent about 20-25 mins searching for a review I posted on some site after I had finished reading 1984. And reason I took all the trouble was because I wanted to notice the difference between experiencing what you read and being a detached spectator to what you read. There are books which you become part of when you read them and 1984 has been one such book for me ( among a long list) and then there are ones which may be equally great but you still just feel distant from them. And that has got nothing to do with the author or the quality of book etc. I think it's very personal, just like making friends, if two people are given same set of people to make friends with, depending upon their personalities, they would connect with few and will not connect with few others. Books are same - a book's beauty lies in the eyes that read them and mind that experience them.

I actually finished reading a novel today - "The Brothers Karamazov" by Fyodor Dostoevsky. It may just have created a record for a novel to have stayed longest on my desk before being completed. I picked a copy sometime in middle of the June while in Chennai. And this novel has stayed with me since then. More than 6 months have passed since the first page was turned in that room at IFMR till today when last page was read in my living room. Karamazovs sat next to me as I saw World Cup Soccer in June in Chennai & Mumbai, they travelled with me to Singapore, they put up with me at service apartment, then shifted base to my present place, they did get left behind as I went back for Diwali but were pretty much with me rest of the time. They saw me get up late in the morning and rush for the office, they woke up to find my returning back at crazy hours, they kept mum as I preferred to spend an evening watching some movie, come to think of it those 1000 pages bound in a blue cover are there in so many of those scenes of my past 6 months but always as a silent spectator at the corner..

We didn't meet too often, which explains why it took me 6 months to finish the novel. There were stretch of weeks when I hardly picked the book. And then sometimes on a lazy Sunday noon I will read few pages and then the book would again go back to my desk waiting for next Sunday. But having said that, I must admit we were aware of each other all this while. It's like one's new neighbours that have just moved in, you invite them for a dinner at the beginning and an acquaintance is made. But after that, while you notice when they come or go, what they do over weekends , who visits them and who don't but unless you stuck it really well in first few meetings you just meet those neighbours of yours only once in a while. So while 6 months may be a long time, but both me and Karamazovs were just neighbours who noticed each other but were never friends.

And that's why I looked for that review today, coz most of the times - the books I read are my friends rather than neighbours. I tend to live them but today as I finished the novel I felt like one of those Dostoevsky's spectators in the court room waiting for something to happen, who just wanted to see Mitya let go, yes I used to applaud a clever collection of words put forth by Fetyukovich just as others did, I used to nod with satisfaction whenever an interesting deposition was made by one of the witnesses but that's because by then I had started reading the novel as a story rather than a work of philosophy. But this happens when you don't connect with the main plank on which an Author is trying to build the whole structure - the theological treatise being explored by Dostoevsky in the novel somehow didn't connect with me. Theology comes deep down my list of things that I look in a work of literature, so while there were times when Mitya's raw passion, Ivan's internal struggle, Grushenka & Katya's jealousy and Alyousha's sincerity interested me, there were times when bond between Ilyusha and his father touched me but overall I just couldn't get myself to become a party to Author's expedition to unravel the existence of God.

And so after I completed the novel and sat by the window think about it, I was reminded of that line from Alyousha's final speech at the stone "...there is nothing nobler, stronger , healthier and more helpful in life than a good remembrance.." and so I decided to turn back and look for a remembrance, of times when I felt being a part of what I read

-sid

PS: Given that I did spend around half an hour looking for my review for 1984, let me save it for future use right here, who knows when I may just need to look for it again and you don't always have 30 mins to spare. isn't it ?

I finished reading 1984 last night & am thinking of it since then. I went thru all the comments above but none of them was able to come near what I felt after reading it.There has been a lot of words written above to find out present day telescreens, oceania & Big Brother. But when I finished the novel last nite it was none of these things which occupied my mind. Only thing that occupied my mind was those haunting last lines.The irony contained in them."But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother. " The struggle was finished , yes the struggle was finished,the struggle of a man to stand up for his beliefs 'coz he believed in their righteousness. He had won the victory over himself. It is this use of word 'won' & 'victory' to represent loss & surrender, irony contained in them,the utter hopelessness coined in those cheerful words which haunted me all through the day. The most dreadful aspect of oceania was not scores of rocket bomb falling or the continuous war or the poverty or the mutability of past, What scared me most was impossibility of calling, what Orwell called, 2+ 2 = 4. The final surrender of Winston in believing 2 +2 =5 is what made me dread the Oceania & then dawned upon me the realization that in various walks of life almost all of us chose to believe in 2 +2 = 5 rather than confronting our private "Room 101". So for me 1984 represents the inner fears & private guilt of betraying our beloveds, our ideals , our principles & our beliefs in the face of adversity.

2006-12-24T04:27:00.000+08:00

Sea-sides have always enchanted me, I don't know why but there is something in that combination of white sand, unlimited expanse of water & waves running up and down the beach that brings an immediate smile as soon as I reach such a place.

Tonight, I was at the beach at ECP for few hours, we reached only after 10 in the night, but dark of the night only added to the charm of the sea. A little walk by the beach took me to a rocky ridge and as I sat at the far end of the ridge and stared at the dark sea, for a while I just forgot about everything else in the life. It's such a pleasant experience when we can just get away from concrete high rises & neon-decked shopping malls to places like these. ECP, from what I have heard is actually a very crowded place on holidays during the day but may be we just chose the right hour today. There were not many people around at that hour and whoever was there was wrapped away in the dark of the night. As a result, we were left with just a cool breeze and waves trying to run up the rocky ridge. It was such a joy, those moments. I could have actually sat there all night with some music playing in the background. I can still hear sound of those waves as they run up to the shore and then run back after kissing the sand. It's a charming game they play. While sitting there, for a moment my thoughts wandered to asking myself, what is it in a sea that makes sitting there such a joyous experience but soon I decided that I shouldn't adulterate those moments with questions and reasoning, and so I left myself to enjoy those pure moments of bliss , moments of ease and moments of peace.

And that's how I will end this post today - no questions, no answers but just a smile :-)

-sid

2006-12-20T22:04:00.000+08:00

Yes this is what December mornings used to look like for all these years. It's so easy to yearn for something while not realizing worth of what you have. Winters are a special time of year, but they are not the same in Singapore. I don't even think they have winters here. All they have here is rains, which are beautiful in their own way but will save that discussion for some other day. Today i just gonna talk about winters. Back there in India, a day off on winter morning is best thing that can happen to you in a month of December. I usually like the sunny mornings more, coz in winters as you get up in the morning and get out of quilt, you just wanna go out and get a glimpse of that morning sun smiling on you. And to have parathas & sabzi in breakfast while reading newspaper in the morning sun is - trust me - "pure bliss". And talking of eatables, how can I talk about winters and not talk about gud and moongfali - you can have them whenever you want but to have them in winters is just great.
If you get up a little early on one such morning, you could catch the engaging game of hide and seek that sun and the fog play. Sometimes just when you thought that there won't be any sun today, fog gives way to the sun and on other days just as sun is all set to make his grand entry, fog would quietly appear on the scene and drown the sun somewhere. And its just not mornings, winter afternoons are specially created by God for people who just wanna lie lazily on their back and do nothing and also for them who just need an wanna go out, find a group of friends and then spend rest of the noon gossipping about rest of the world. Where winter lose out to summers are during evenings, while evenings in summers are like a invitation with open arms - winter evenings are quite opposite, they somehow signal end of the day but yeah bonfires are never better but in cold winter nights.
Nature has just so much to offer. The beauty that nature offers is just unparalleled. But somehow lives spent on 50th floors of high rises trying to assess the financial strength of a cement manufacturer just fail to notice all this. In last few days, as it rained persistently here, when in passing I caught a glimpse of outside world from huge windows of my office, I just couldn't help being "wowed" but not for once could I just stop and look at that for a while coz there was always something urgent waiting for me. May be next time, Mr. urgent may need to wait just a little longer coz I deserve my moment with nature. What if i can't shake hands with the nature, i can always wave a hi from behind those glass walls :-)

-sid

Song recommendation for the day:
Great lyrics from Gulzar and an equally brilliant music from Madan Mohan, this song from Mausam is a gem

Dil dhoondhta hain fir wahi ....fursat ke raat din
baithe rahe tasavvur-e-janaa kiye huye !!!
Jaado ki narm dhoop aur...aangan me let kar
aankhon pe..... kheech kar tere..... aanchal ke saaye ko
aundhe pade rahe, kabhi.....karwat liye huye !!!

2006-12-19T00:17:00.000+08:00

It's amazing how things which seem so trivial till yesterday become so important today. People who meant nothing to you till now, suddenly matter so much to you. All that which you included in "etc." at the end of a sentence is now the central idea of your new essay. That's life !!!
Unpredictable, uncertain and ever changing. A friend of mine wrote to me the other day that while we spend most time fearing that present would never change but things always change and then give way to something which we had never expected. She was so right. But then is that change sudden or do we just fail to notice the change ?
Do we resist change ? Do we romanticize the idea of a sudden change? There are sudden changes like the change that 9/11 brought in life of a mother who lost both her sons who worked in twin towers. But am not talking about those changes, am talking about the changes that we experience in us, they are never sudden....they are always building up but we just don't notice them and then one day we just wonder how and why have things changed?
Sometimes we do it, to avoid few uneasy questions, coz there are reasons that cause change and those reasons are not what we would like to explain at times. Sometimes there is a truth waiting to be discovered, waiting to be faced but we just wanna brush them under the carpets and call it SUDDEN.
And sometimes actually nothing change, but we want to convince ourselves that there has been a change. But since there are no reasons that can explain why should something change, we just take teh easy way.....we say, it JUST changed, JUST LIKE THAT and now we can just live with this fake change - JUST LIKE THAT.

And one thing about blogs, sometimes they start somewhere else and end at some entirely different place.

Unpredictable, uncertain and ever changing :-)

-sid

2006-12-18T01:05:00.000+08:00

Why do men make wars ?

I saw Kabul Express last night and when u see those beautiful landscapes of Kabul and think of devastation that years of war have brought there, u just can't stop wondering why men do it. I had felt something similar when I was in Kashmir early this year, its the prettiest place on earth no doubt but when u think of it all the blood in recent years , u just can't help feeling sorry for inhabitants of taht place.

When we used to read history in school, we were taught that man created first arms to hunt animals for food. But no book ever tell what made men use those arms against fellow beings And today we don't use stone tools, we use laser guided nuclear warheads that can wipe out entire towns in a split second .....human life has really become so cheap isn't it?

Each bullet that finds flesh change a few live for ever, each bomb that hits the target kills more than men and women. They kill dreams, smiles and hopes.

And what makes man kill another man ?

Is it few square miles of land , religious madness , OIL ?

Or is it just human nature , a will to dominate other's will ?

I wish there were no armies, bloody politicians that make these wars should have been expected to go and fight these wars. So if a certain Mr. Bush or Mr. Musharraf or Mr. Saddam Hussain would have had no armies and their lives (and not just political careers) were dependent on dodging the bullets flying all over, then may be they would have thought twice before declaring wars for greater human good.

Words just freeze when I think of all those bustling lives that have been lost to war and terrorism in recent years. When those twin towers came down in NY or when local trains in mumbai were bombed or when those car bombs in Baghdad went off, I don't know how those people who had planned all this would have felt. The blood, the gore, the violence....can those people live with it.I don't think any man or woman can live with so blood of so many on his or her hands. How do they sleep in the night ?

IF I ever meet a terrorist, I would ask him if he ever think beyond the flames of the blast?Could he see the burning lives, charred dreams and mutilated hopes? When they plant a bomb on a bus, do they ever think that that bus might be carrying several fathers who have their kids waiting at home, that bus will have several sons & daughters who are the only reason for their parents to live on?

Do those devils think that thick skinned politicians who drive bullet proof cars will care a damn about these incidents ? No Mr. terrorist, those politicians would do nothing apart from throwing chairs on each other in parliament and announcing cash compensation.

I would like to meet a Mr. Bush, to ask him if before declaring a war against Afghanistan or Iraq, did he give a single thought to those little kids whose playgrounds were converted to graveyard. Did he ever think that a litre of oil may not be worth a gallon of blood ?
I just can't forget that image from Kabul Express as this kid stands right against a blue clear morning sky , supporting himself with a crutch to make up for the lost leg and that look in his eyes that questions everyone, what did he do to deserve this ?
Will anyone, who plant bombs in moving trains or drop bombs from moving planes, answer that ?

-sid

Song recommendation for the day:

This song from one of the most fantastic movies ever made - "Dhoop"
Lyrics by Nida Fazli & music by Jagjit Singh

Benaam sa ye dard, thahar kyun nahin jaata
Jo beet gaya hain, woh guzar kyun nahin jaata

2006-12-16T03:36:00.000+08:00

Can people be classified depending on their behaviour?...like should we form opinions that someone is a outgoing guy, someone else is a snob, this third guys is so carefree and other your colleague in office is just so happy-go lucky.

These perceptions are based on our opinions, opinions we make through our interactions - but catch is - do we spare a moment and wonder if human beings so uni-dimensional ?

Can someone just be happy soul always ? Would he not get hurt, get sad, get disappointed ever?

Would someone always like to have people around? Would he never want a moment of silence?

Why everybody has to be like this or that.

Why I need to identify him or her with some specific emotion and not all the emotions.

Why do we fail to understand that he is just like me , with his moods defining his moments.

We form opinions based on our interactions and then club a person on the basis of that perception. What we don't see that in our interactions that person is reacting to me. So if he is like what he is , it is because i am like what i am.

Our eyes always look out, they always see people around me but never at look at my own self.

We are like those men in that story who crossed a river and when they reached the other end they decided to take a count to see if everyone has crossed safely. But every time they count there was one man short coz they each guy forgot to count himself.

And when we wud have read the story , we wud have wondered who cud be such a fool. But ain't all of us are just like that. We judge a person on how he reacts to 'us' but we conveniently forget the 'us' part, we forget that his actions are actually a reaction.

I might think some guy is aloof but forget that He is so because I couldn't build a bridge to make him open up.

I might think someone is just plain short tempered but i don't bother to check what do i do that make the other guy lose the temper when with me.

And then lot of times we just get too centered on us. Coz i wanna react to a certain situation in a particular way, everyone else should do the same and if they don't well then i wud make unfounded opinions about them.

If I wanna party so everyone else shud or else they are bores.

If I liked a painting, everyone else should or they don't have an eye for art.

If I found a joke funny, every one else should or else they don't have a sense of humour.

So either we forget 'I' completely or just can't forget the 'I' but our interactions somehow swing to these extremes and never balance out.

Somewhere, we forget that a we can never tell what a person actually is like, we can just say what he is like with me. We forget that I is central to hIm. That other's behaviour is as much a reflection of their being as it is of mine.

-sid

2006-12-14T00:43:00.000+08:00

Past has its ways of catching up with the Present or to put it in other words, Present never succeeds in getting past the Past.
In mathematics there is a concept of Markov process, it means that state of a process in future will depend only on its current state and not on its state in the past.
How often I wish life should have been a Markov process, Life will only be dependent on what it is now. All those who say live life as if this moment is the only moment in your life that matters are no philosophers but just mathematicians who loved Markov.

But in real life Present is always a function of past. You can't just clean a slate and start afresh. Every scribbling at the corner of the slate, every drawing made while you were thinking something else, every story that you started but could not end....they all are just there on that slate and u can never wipe it clean.
And difficulty is if you are aware of this , then you just keep thinking before putting chalk to the slate.....and that makes you overcautious. It just takes away that spontaneity out of one's life. And if you are not cautious then it may just leave little space on the slate for making something pretty in future.
But isn't it our past that we treasure most, why do we keep telling everyone that best moment of life is one I have already lived. Why what is no more in my control, is something i want to control most?
Maybe if life was like a Markov process , people would have enjoyed the life more but might have treasured the life less. While life could be looked forward to but there wouldn't have been anything to fall back upon.

And that reminds me of one of my favourite lines from Hugh Prather's "Notes to Myself"

Problem with me is that I analyse life rather than live it.

So let me stop my analysis today.....will resume it some other day.

-Sid

Song Recommendation for the day:

From movie (Hazaaron Khwaishen Aisi)

Baawra mann dekhne chala ek sapna....
Baawre se mann ki dekho, bawri hain baatein
Baawri si dhadkanein hain, baawri hain saasein !!
Baawri si karvaton se neendiyan kyun bhaage....
Baawre se nain chahe, baawre jharokhe se, baawre nazaron ko taknaaa!!!