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.

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?

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.

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.

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”.

“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...

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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

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

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

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.

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.