Destiny's child...!!

This morning, luckily i got up just in time when newspaper comes at my doorstep as there is someone around who steal it almost 10 days in a month before i see it.

I live in Flat no. 705 n people in 701 to 704 don't look like that they cant pay for their newspapers. Anyway i will catch that thief very soon.
So, when i found my beloved newspaper lying there on doorstep i was happy but only for a very short time.

The 1st thing i read is one of my favorite articles in TOI and 1st time find it so depressing at prima facie. its the famous "speaking tree" that comes daily. I said, i found it depressing initially, because it reaffirmed few of my fears on 'fate' but initially and just so bcoz it also provoked my thoughts on a very relative individual thing we call "success". It talks about something so beloved and feared by all of us ....but we remember it only when we are either in a complete comfort zone or completely out of it. There is a word for it and that word is "Destiny".
The article i am talking about is titled as "what Geeta says about Free will and destiny".
well...well...right now or for past few years my only hope in life is my "Free Will". to take right decisions as per my own free will and correct and improve a lot about past, present and future. Dont we all live with this Idea; this hope? This article draws upon two sources and finally concludes it on a rather superficial, trivial note. it quotes from "Padama Purana and Bhagwat Geeta" (Both of them i keep in highest esteem) and recent developments happened in a German institute....that researches on psychology and human consciousness.
Alright so lets get down to it, here comes the smasher of all our hopes -
Padma Puran (an ancient Hindu Aryan scripture) says...that the fate of five things are already decided at the time of one's conception in the womb. The aggregate wealth one will generate, education, occupation, life span and the way & place of his death. wow, that takes away literally all hope. Now it goes on saying that - its all preordained and will come to pass no matter WHAT.

So before, i scrutinize this with my infinite intelligence and undying optimism, it has to get even worst by what Germans recently discovered as mentioned in the article. Lets get over that as well. Those German researchers have concluded that so called "Free will" is not free after all. Its little more than just an illusion. it further says that human beings are merely a clog in the biological clock-precise machine and we don't have any more control over our destiny or don't have any more "free" will than a Swiss watch.
They discovered (too late...) that , our sub-conscious mind dictates and decides on all our actions long before our conscious mind realises it. They were too late ...alright but their discovery is also too little ...because what they didn't discovered yet is that ...what they call conscious and sub-conscious minds are just one layer in unknown number of layers or consciousness. That's just one level of abstraction and there are unknown number of abstractions. its like there is .....sub-sub conscious mind and our sub-conscious is conscious with respect to our sub-sub-conscious. u get that? So the fundamental reason of our decisions and actions comes from a layer of consciousness thats too deeply hidden from our outward consciousness that its completely out of understanding and hence control. Phew....scary...isnt it?

Now, the writer ...run back to Bhagwat geeta on this depressing note and try to draw inspiration from there ....from what does Krishna says about it. Finally concludes that we do have some "limited" free will ...and we should use that for better. can you believe this ...."Limited Free will"!!! Isn't it so inherently contradictory. Whatever is limited, cant be free and vice- versa.
Freedom can not be quantified....its free from all measures and character and thats why its freeeee. So writer falters there ....and i guess he was amiss since the very beginning of his propositions. Well, tell you the truth... he simply is a skeptic of all things Godly and divine. Lets say ...he is not able to understand yet.
Now....i intend to re-write that article in my next post. Yeh, i didnt answer any of those questions i raised so far but ...i got a meeting in next 20 minutes and need to focus on that ....but then it will happen as its destined so whats there to prepare....:). but i am going to think about that and give it my best. so ..whatever i write in the next post......the hint is ....I can be Freeee...!!

Shadows

Shadows so inviting,

never found before, never looked for.

Light so harsh,

anticipated, feared, loved, hated.

Failure - dreaded, Success - empty

One day, life - loving

and the next, life - dreary

Everyone so close, so dear

and yet so remote.

Cared for, protected,

pushed away, longed for.

So many secrets, kept

and partly revealed. Truths hidden,

lies exposed.

Looking for refuge in pity or

solace in anger

Rumours - started, ended, accepted, denied

testing the strength.

Rumours to hide behind,loathing, relieved.

Memories - happy, sad...

Life - unending remorse

Uninterrupted joy.

Cant Sleep tonight ...

What do you do when sleep refuses to come to you?You’ve been in bed for more than three hours now. Waiting. Wide awake. He simply has better things to do than to be with you tonight.You burrow deeper into your bed. It’s so comfortable, it surprises you anew. The room is dark. All yours. Alive to music. The soft strumming of an acoustic, the rhythmic beat of the drums. Perfect to drop off to sleep.Except, of course, you don’t. You just can’t.You’ve been thinking. All day long, you’ve considered, reflected and reasoned. It’s not an answer you’re searching for. Not that there aren’t questions – oh my, yes, there are. Enough. More. But answers are a ridiculous option when you’re in the mood to appreciate the questions that have arisen. You want to explore them. Tease them. Follow one question and see where it leads you. Another question, probably. You don’t mind. After all, these are not problems that demand to be solved.And without warning, you’re suddenly in a whirlpool of memories, possibilities, forgotten lyrics, cherished plans that didn’t see the light of day and promises you’d made to yourself. Feelings you’d buried (and had thought were quite dead) surface, sticking out their tongue cheekily at the observation that they’re entirely pointless.So, yes, you’ve thought. But it’s enough now, and you want to sleep. You really do. You’ve exhausted your stock of questions. Besides, you’re no longer in the mood. You have to wake up early in the morning. You can barely grab a couple of hours of sleep if you crash into slumber mode right away, and those couple of hours you definitely need.Why bother emphasizing the need to sleep? You know you’re not going to get any.What do you do when sleep spurns you, and there’s no one to stay awake with you?

It happened last week ...

The brutal pants of the sea drifted into my ears as that inevitable silence crept into the conversation, like an awkwardly hungry stranger waiting for you to leave your seat in a restaurant. She looked at me fondly for a moment and then encircled her arms around me. “I might never see you again.” That was it. Goodbye. I stiffened instinctively within her warm embrace, like blood congealing within a throbbing bruise. The trailing red tape of Goodbye was gagging me shut with its usual armory - indefatigable silence and an overwhelming blankness. It was the certain consciousness of drowning as your arms flail about, painting desperate survival strokes that tar the canvas of Goodbye. I stuttered, waited for her to complete my incomplete sentences, and to mouth the inanities of Farewell. With a perfunctory wave the embrace broke.

Goodbyes are like earthworms- every time you get done with the decapitation of one parting, a different head emerges almost instantly. Though it doesn’t actually have multiple avatars, this sneaky little earthworm has burrowed so deep into my mind, leaving behind earthen suds of phantasmal fears, the fear of separation being the least monstrous. And its sting seeps in long after the actual moment passes, when you’re bereft of words and tears. It hurts in the most improbable places, at the most improbable moments.
In the raspy creak of a broken-down bicycle. In the casual reminiscence of the everlastingly inexplicable tears of a cold Sunday morning. In the wrinkled disgust of my eyelids when I screw my eyes shut while making my way through the debris of a demolished intimacy (meaning: hesitant glimpses of heated e-mail tantrums, tears, threats, conversations from the past.) Or was it an intimacy that was demolished before it was born? Right now I’m building a second castle on the rubble of the first. Its certain collapse lies in my muted compliance with the uncertain terms of torture that intimacy establishes.

Goodbye, till had been the intermittent glip-glop sound of hesitant water drops making their leap into the communal safety of a bucket from a metallic cliff. Now it seemed like an incessant rush of water from a conked-out tap that I’d to have deal with. A presence that would henceforth be a constant, like a sporadic spook becoming a full-fledged ghost.

The muck- green colored ticket hopped across a multitude of coarse alien palms before landing gently into my pocket. It was just a tiny piece of brittle paper dripping with the dilute ink of economized printing. Goodbyes extract more punishing tolls. The change went into the other pocket with a jingle- it kept clinking throughout the journey- the insistent protests of unshed tears, the frozen tears of Goodbye. I remembered a conversation ...
“Goodbyes seem to be cascading on me in multi-packs, like Grocery items, you get more than you actually bargained for. I don’t know how to handle it. I have very little time to negotiate terms of peace with these transitions. And it takes so long to get rid of that unending plastic packaging. ”
Then i tend to dismiss my maudlin leaps of self-pity with a tact that doesn’t leave me feeling sheepish.
“Listen people will keep entering and leaving your life. People you know will leave college. You’ll leave people you know behind when you graduate. It’s unavoidable.” And after an inspired pause. “Have you traveled on a 29C?”

of a sagittarian..

He liked to believe he was a hero, the last of the knights that cantered on the lush meadows of earth. But where was the greenery, except in his eyes, and where was his stallion, save in the idleness of his reveries. Yet he galloped on, in search of something he never knew.
There was no war for him to fight; there were no damsels in distress for him to comfort. It was hardly a kingdom of yore with carnation at his steps and the whole wide world under his chin. He evaded the reality of his displacement with a taciturnity of a lonesome house lizard: there but not there!
He remained invisible throughout his life, for he lived in a different plane. And he died a lonesome death. His disappointment unctioned by the fact that Galileo died a sad man, and Columbus did discover America. He bore the ridicule of time with a nonchalant stoic, as is the badge of his tribe.
After his death, the white stallion traded his rein. He gleefully ferried teenagers on sea-beaches, his arrogance obviated by his hunger. As his silky mane swayed in the evening gale, his master smiled in his grave.

So its weekend's dizziness time...and my head feels like it's been used on a cheese grater after all that T&D and chatting and Scorpion Holiday and google.Sure....its not infected mushroom.Its overdose of internet I think and Im not tryin' to dramatize....but when my broadband fails to work , I use dial up to stay connected.I am sensing God's ridiculous efforts at refining me which is why this weekend instead of Barista or The Beach ,I was wandering at British library. Road. It really makes sense, inspires me to keep moving,instead of Thinking and loving....just to keep being.I wanted to stop my social running around and take time to engage in pleasant activities around Gym and home. Spend time in the my Study or kitchen or arranging indoors to take my mind off more complicated issues for a while.We cannot shut off the flow of thoughts, but can shift our attention to more enjoyable pursuits even from home.My heart had been broken, and there is spaces left behind, there's no quick fix for me, not even forward rolling time. Rather than complete it with 'superficial filling', I choose to embrace it this way and walk my path taka style.So,as I returned home...I tried planning my dream madly, with years worth of thoughts and aspirations beginning to flow from me freely.But I still don't know what I am going to do with..BIG crafted paint tat i bought recently.I think i'm goin' to take a picture of that and load it here.I decided that the best thing for me to do today was to play some of my favorite songs and relish.So,I downloaded Holiday from Scorpions and played it fifty times.Took me back to those chilly concerts at CIH lawn.
Let me take you far away
Youd like a holiday
Let me take you far away
Youd like a holiday
Exchange your troubles for some love
Wherever you are
Let me take you far away
Youd like a holiday
Longing for the sun you will come
To the island without name
Longing for the sun be welcome
On the island many miles away from home
Be welcome on the island without name
Longing for the sun you will come
To the island many miles away from home

Lets hear something bout Coffee now

Lets hear something bout Coffee now ..
Of all the addictions there are out there…mine is coffee. However this addiction isn't so selective! I am addicted to any old coffee…but yeah it must be good strong preferably a latte or Americano that generally leaves a slightly bitter yet aromatic coffee flavour in my mouth (ya I know I sound like a pompous twit). I generally dose in my addiction four to five times a day.You see drinking coffee is not just about stopping the headaches you are getting (its true I really do get headaches) from the lack of caffeine, …drinking coffee is all about the experience. It is about enjoying the bitter aromatic flavours as they hit your mouth, its about the feeling on relief as you satisfy you coffee craving but most importantly alone or not its about enjoying your surroundings, slowing down the pace of life and to follow the line of kitkat ad with a student twist… “take a break have a coffee.”My friends knows about my need for coffee and one of them was the first to identify the sources of my headaches were from the lack of caffeine.However, he never understood why drinking coffee is my favorite pastime.That is when I needed to explain to him the idea of the “coffee experience” which consists of slowing slipping your coffee, enjoying the weather (rain or shine) and the company of your friends as your chat and talk about nothing and everything all at the same time.If you coming this way…let me know and I can give you a list of the best coffee around…maybe then again maybe I am the only one this obsessed with coffee…hmmmm…

Salman Rushdie won the booker of bookers..

There wasn’t much surprise when Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children won the Best of Bookers—for the second time—last week. The shortlist included works by Nadine Gordimer, Pat Barker, J G Farrell, Peter Carey and J M Coetzee. Those who voted in the public poll did so with a slight sense of déjà vu, for Rushdie had won the first Booker of Bookers for the same book in 1993; it’s a bit like handing out the same gong twice, or like presenting a re-Nobel Prize. What the second Booker of Bookers really accomplished was to shed some light on the process of how a book becomes an enduring classic. In 1981, when Midnight’s Children won the Booker—this would be the plain vanilla version of the prize—Rushdie was seen as a fierce young talent with a pile of unpublished books in his drawer and a work of equivocal merit behind him. Grimus, his first published work, hadn’t done that well and remains a literary curiosity—though this early, science fiction-influenced work, still has its admirers and was a pointer to the sometimes alarming erudition that Rushdie would summon throughout his literary career.But Midnight’s Children, though it drew puzzled reviews in the UK, captured the imagination of Indians and some of the more attentive reviewers in the US fairly soon. Rushdie’s central conceit was the perfect metaphor for a nation still looking back at Independence and Partition. His protagonist, Saleem Sinai, is born (like Rushdie himself) in 1947, and along with those born on or close to midnight on August 15 of that year, possesses certain talents. Saleem is a telepath; the boy with whom he’s accidentally switched at birth, Shiva, possesses extraordinary fighting skills. Saleem’s fortunes mirror those of a changing India, and he and midnight’s other children are threatened by the figure of the Widow, whom most readers had no difficulty recognizing as the figure of Indira Gandhi in the Emergency years. It’s just as hard to assess the impact that Midnight’s Children has had on Indian writers as it is to imagine Indian literature without this book. The novel has its detractors: Amit Chaudhuri attacked the “loose, baggy monsters” that it spawned in its wake. It also has its imitators, those who have, with varying degrees of success, attempted to carry off Rushdie’s swashbuckling brand of magical realism or to create equally large, “holdall” novels where everything of importance about India can be crammed.For my generation of readers, Midnight’s Children gave us a voice that had been either constrained or limited previously. From the publication of the first Indian novel in English—Bankimchandra’s Rajmohan’s Wife—writers had struggled with what might be called the “salad” problem. Struggling to find the words to describe the dish created by a Bengali housewife from vegetables plucked in her garden, Bankimchandra came up with the term “garden salad”, though the very English image that conjures up is nowhere near the reality of the Indian dish it describes. A few writers—R K Narayan, Raja Rao—had found a way out, deploying simple, almost artless language that allowed them to duck the problems of depicting accent and cadence. A good eight years after the publication of Midnight’s Children, a writer like Shashi Tharoor would feel free to employ his very Stephenian English to rework the Mahabharata into his The Great Indian Novel. But Rushdie’s English in Midnight’s Children was deliberately, exuberantly over-the-top. Saleem ‘Piece-of-the-Moon’ Sinai, “handcuffed to history”, switched back and forth from Indianisms to lyrical flights of almost classicist English—in exactly the same way that most Indians do when we speak.Some have suggested that Midnight’s Children has survived because of Rushdie’s personal, and growing, fame, his second life as a celebrity. But that’s a facile interpretation. The difference between Midnight’s Children and a worthy, but now little-remembered work like Iris Murdoch’s The Sea, The Sea (Booker winner, 1978) is that the former continues to generate new readers. Each generation reads Rushdie very differently, perhaps; but none can bypass him, can ignore this blaring, audacious and triumphant early novel. If this remains true in another 20 years, I suppose we’ll have to put our hands together for Rushdie and Saleem Sinai yet again in 2028, presuming they win some future Absolutely The Best of the Bookers. To paraphrase Rushdie, sometimes the legend really does outstrip reality.

Great Stories

The secret of the Great Stories is that they have no secrets. The Great Stories are the ones that you have heard and want to hear again. The ones you can enter anywhere and inhabit comfortably. They don't deceive you with thrills and trick endings. They don't surprise you with the unforeseen. They are as familiar as the house you live in. Or the smell of your lover's skin. You know how they end, yet you listen as though you don't. In the way that although you know that one day you will die, you live as though you won't. In the Great Stories you know who lives, who dies, who finds love, who doesn't. And yet you want to know again. That is their mystery and their magic ..

another day

I was prepared for an annoying day ahead this morning. So, before starting my day i again thought of having my now regular sessions of soul-searching and try to make sesne of all of it....that we call life.
So i started again - Life starts from nothing and end at nothing, its what we make of it, Its short, we get want we truly want, everything is just a 'thought and practice'; so.. nothing is impossible....n bla bla bla..!!
I sat back n re-checked my list of improvisations in life....i need to do so much ....correct so much ...and at the same time to be myself. how wud u relate to your existing one and the new one you can see coming ....how wud u merge and relate the idiosyncrasies of ur former and aspiring new self. well, thats the tough part....otherwise...it all started making sense to me now.
Good luck to me. Aray, but i also stopped beliving in luck as part of my new agenda...see i told u its not easy to change your outlook and start thinking differently.

Love

Then said Almitra, "Speak to us of Love."
And he raised his head and looked upon the people, and there fell a stillness upon them. And with a great voice he said:
When love beckons to you follow him,
Though his ways are hard and steep.
And when his wings enfold you yield to him,
Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.
And when he speaks to you believe in him,
Though his voice may shatter your dreams as the north wind lays waste the garden.
For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you. Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning.
Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun,
So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth.
Like sheaves of corn he gathers you unto himself.
He threshes you to make you naked.
He sifts you to free you from your husks.
He grinds you to whiteness.
He kneads you until you are pliant;
And then he assigns you to his sacred fire, that you may become sacred bread for God's sacred feast.
All these things shall love do unto you that you may know the secrets of your heart, and in that knowledge become a fragment of Life's heart.
But if in your fear you would seek only love's peace and love's pleasure,
Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love's threshing-floor,
Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears.
Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself.
Love possesses not nor would it be possessed;
For love is sufficient unto love.
When you love you should not say, "God is in my heart," but rather, I am in the heart of God."
And think not you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.
Love has no other desire but to fulfil itself.
But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires:
To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night.
To know the pain of too much tenderness.
To be wounded by your own understanding of love;
And to bleed willingly and joyfully.
To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving;
To rest at the noon hour and meditate love's ecstasy;
To return home at eventide with gratitude;

- Kahlil Gibran

Work

Then a plowman said, "Speak to us of Work."
And he answered, saying:
You work that you may keep pace with the earth and the soul of the earth.
For to be idle is to become a stranger unto the seasons, and to step out of life's procession, that marches in majesty and proud submission towards the infinite.
When you work you are a flute through whose heart the whispering of the hours turns to music.
Which of you would be a reed, dumb and silent, when all else sings together in unison?Always you have been told that work is a curse and a labor, a misfortune.
But I say to you that when you work you fulfil a part of earth's furthest dream, assigned to you when that dream was born,
And in keeping yourself with labor you are in truth loving life,
And to love life through labor is to be intimate with life's inmost secret.
But if you in your pain call birth an affliction and the support of the flesh a curse written upon your brow, then I answer that naught but the sweat of your brow shall wash away that which is written.
You have been told also life is darkness, and in your weariness you echo what was said by the weary.
And I say that life is indeed darkness save when there is urge,
And all urge is blind save when there is knowledge,
And all knowledge is vain save when there is work,
And all work is empty save when there is love;
And when you work with love you bind yourself to yourself, and to one another, and to God.
And what is it to work with love?
It is to weave the cloth with threads drawn from your heart, even as if your beloved were to wear that cloth.
It is to build a house with affection, even as if your beloved were to dwell in that house.
It is to sow seeds with tenderness and reap the harvest with joy, even as if your beloved were to eat the fruit.
It is to charge all things you fashion with a breath of your own spirit,
And to know that all the blessed dead are standing about you and watching.
Often have I heard you say, as if speaking in sleep, "he who works in marble, and finds the shape of his own soul in the stone, is a nobler than he who ploughs the soil.
And he who seizes the rainbow to lay it on a cloth in the likeness of man, is more than he who makes the sandals for our feet."
But I say, not in sleep but in the over-wakefulness of noontide, that the wind speaks not more sweetly to the giant oaks than to the least of all the blades of grass;
And he alone is great who turns the voice of the wind into a song made sweeter by his own loving.
Work is love made visible.
And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy.
For if you bake bread with indifference, you bake a bitter bread that feeds but half man's hunger.
And if you grudge the crushing of the grapes, your grudge distils a poison in the wine.
And if you sing though as angels, and love not the singing, you muffle man's ears to the voices of the day and the voices of the night.

- Kahlil Gibran

"If.."

If

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on";

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!

- Rudyard Kipling