Thanks to you, my friend.!

There are days that I wish to empty myself.

Empty myself of everything.

Of all the clutter that distorts.

 

So I can make room to breathe.

So I can make room to imagine.

So I can make room to love.

So I can make room to forgive.

So I can make room to listen,

 

To listen to you that is.

 

Listen

to your worries,

to your fears,

to your aspirations,

to your hopes,

to your dreams,

to your passions.

 

That way, I have little to do but be still,

be silent,

be kind,

be empathetic,

as I listen to you.

 

And in understanding you,

I become me again,

I become hopeful,

I become gentle,

I become uncluttered,

I become quiet.

 

For your wishes

are like mine.

 

For your dreams

are like mine.

 

For your fears

are like mine.

 

And as I bid farewell to you

My hesitations are silenced.

I no longer wish to be empty.

Rather, I want to be drenched,

saturated even,

in the beauty of life.

 

Thanks to you, my friend.!

INVICTUS.

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul. 


--William Ernest Henley

Autopsy of Love: A Story

Love is an illusion. ‘May be’. Love is the most beautiful feeling ever experienced by humans. ‘May be’. Love is an over-rated emotion. ‘May be’. Love has the power to destroy not only one’s life but the whole world around you. ‘Well…May be'.
I never disagree with any definition for love. People have their own theories and versions for love. Even I have my own. One could prophesize any philosophy about love but if one-sided love prolonged for many years, you can relate to every known definition of ‘love’. My love story was not a very different one.
We were friends when we were kids. In adolescence, I developed some ‘special’ emotions in the friendship. I didn’t figure out it was love until my friends convinced me that it was love. Moreover, there were stuff like cinema, novels etc. that compel you to believe in the thing called ‘Love’. And from here I started my version of love.
Story becomes more clichéd as it progressed. She never had this notion of ‘love’ for a friend like me. With time, I tried everything to express my love. My innumerable banal poetries, songs had proved that I was a matter of fun in the school. We were no longer friends now. And one day, I came to know that she had an affair with our captain of basket ball team. I felt heart-broken but blissfully, when you were teen, there are other distractions than love in life, called ‘Studies’.
So, I studied hard and thought may be, I could marry her if I become a rich man. But, then in my final years, I heard that she was getting married. I gave my final shot and called her that if she could accept my love and reject the other marriage proposal for her. She told me, it was a love marriage.
“Ouch…!!”
“What are you thinking??Why are you worried now??….we had accepted your decision of marriage.”
My mother just broke my thought process, the thoughts of my immortal love story and dragged me to the present.
“Mummy, I am not worried. Just give me a moment of silence.”
So, I believe, we were at ‘Ouch..!!’. With it there was one more emotion ‘Enough of this propaganda of love, now I refuse to exist as a loser in real life.’ I had gone for further studies. I had no news about her. Then I met Trisha. She was a nice and intelligent girl. We enjoyed each other’s company. I started believing in mature love stories, a love where you could analyze the pro and cons of everything. A love whether you could envision the point ‘and they lived happily ever after’ based on your logic and statistics.
So, we fall in love. Her parents had no objection from marriage. Now, I went home to cajole my parents to the idea of ‘Trisha’ as their daughter in law. I could see the future in front of my eyes. Then one day, I went to my friend’s wedding and I met ‘Deepika’, yes…that’s her name, my first love. Believe me!..She was not my ‘only’ love…. she was my ‘first’ love.’ I kept saying this to myself.
After twenty-two years of my acquaintance, eighteen years of friendship, fourteen years of one sided love and six years as strangers, we met again. She was wearing white sari. She was more beautiful than I had ever imagined her in my dreams. I could still feel her eyes were searching for me. Now I kept on repeating ‘She was now a married woman’. But I couldn’t control my heart beats.
“Hi”
“Hi…. long time…, I can’t believe that we are meeting again.” I still had to control my eagerness to talk to her.
“Yeh…after really long time.” She sighed. “So, you went for post graduate studies.”
“Yes…my studies were over three year back. Now, I had been working. How have you been?”
“Great!! I had been working with ‘Airtel’ for past two years. Its nice to meet you, old pal. Do you remember we always used to have a blast when we were kids?”
..
“I remember everything. We were the best friends until I acted stupidly. You know in teen-age..it happens.”
“I don’t think it was stupid. It was just how you felt at that point. OK!..Forget about it..So any plans for marriage or are you a married man??”
“Partially true, I came home to tell my parents about ‘Trisha’. She was my fellow mate in the college. We share an amazing chemistry. And then we realized that we both loved each other. Now soon we will be getting married. What about you? How has been your married life? Any kids?”
“Actually, marrying ‘Ronit’ was not a good decision. We were not meant for each other. Within a year, we got divorced. There were very difficult days that followed. You know when ‘Love-marriage’ fails in India especially in a small town like ours, its really tough to fight with the image of a convict who got the punishment of what he or she deserves according to the society. But now everything is fine. I am enjoying my job and independent life.”
She was busy in meeting other people. My mind was blank for a while but suddenly thousands of emotions splurged into my mind. First, Happy - She finally got divorced. Yippee!! Sad- She was sad and lonely. Devil- You finally got your chance. She was single, and you are a successful bachelor. Angel- What about Trisha? She has been waiting for you.

As they say, Love was illusion, power, stupidity or anything one could ever imagine. It could be both selfish as well as selfless. I could not resist myself with the forces that attracted me towards 'Deepika' to surrender myself. And I could only feel sorry for ‘Trisha’. I could live ‘happily ever after with Trisha’ but I don’t want that ‘happy’ life.
I went to Deepika, “Deepika!...I had to say something to you…it’s important. I can do anything for you but please for once….”
Deepika interrupted, “Can I ask you for a favor as a friend? I would appreciate if we remain friends. All my life, I went for the things that I want and never cared for others. And still, my beliefs are not changed. I am fighting with the world for an independent and respectful life. Now I want to be a good daughter, good employee, good friend and a good person. Please don’t take my dignity by asking to follow my heart. I believe, I answered for your every unasked question.”
And she was gone.
My mother and I arrived at ‘Trisha’s home’ to talk about our marriage: Our love marriage. I was still debating with myself on definition for love.

I am thinking..what to think?

It is a general apothegm; Simple questions have complex answers and complex questions have simple answers. My actual question here is 'do we actually think?" The answer to my question is, we generally think what we are made to think. It can be done by our books, family atmosphere, society around us, newspapers TV channels and even all the sources of entertainment, right from cinema to soccer.

The three main pillars of thinking are rational mind, discussion and questioning. All the three are inter related to each other. Now let us discuss all of them one by one.

1. A Rational Mind
First, we generally associate ourselves with prejudices and dogmas very easiuly. For e.g.. we follow our religion and admire it. It is not because we have analyzed with substantial facts, but as we are born in it, we have prejudices and affliction for it.
Second, experience of others; any revered person can be a hindrance to experiment and formulate our own theories. A common example is, a man who has lost all his money in business will try to convince his son that business is bad.
And third, the fear of failure has been so much exaggerated in our society, that we are afraid to think of our own. Why else do you think that most successful business magnets, who were college dropouts themselves - Dhirubhai Ambani, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Michael Dell etc. are employing the best minds from Universities. Because they have come off all prejudices, dogmas, and fear of failure. They have experimented and written their own rules.

2. Discussion
There is no point in any discussion if the first requisite condition of rational thinking is not satisfied.We generally do not have healthy discussions because either we get trapped into the never ending debate or we popped out some points that have already been presented before. That is because we have the habit of taking secondary pleasure of thinking without actually thinking. But in reality, we are just refreshing the thoughts which have intentionally rooted in our minds; all thanks to the society and the media.

3. Questioning
When we say questioning, this is actually a prohibited part of thinking. As George Bernard Shaw once said, "All greatest truth were once blasphemous." If we question the authorities then we might be called traitors. But, questioning does complete our process of thinking. The irony lies in, if we question the authorities about their working in a throng, we can bring justice to Jessica Lal's and Ruchika's murder case. But if I am alone then I can be either Jessica, Ruchika or Safdar Hashmi. We have two choices:

1. Be ignorant, think within the frequency allotted by the authorities and take vicarious pleasure

2. Fight with the ignorance, but then find wisdom and struggle to find the satisfaction.

This may be a case of Simple question with difficult answers. I myself am in a dilemma of choosing the road...

Till Next then
CIAO

Confusing Indian elections.

I find these elections confusing. I completely support all the NGO’s that are making great efforts to et everyone to vote, and striving to provide details of the candidates at a click of an sms request on your cell phone.
But what do the parties stand for ? The platform for everyone seems to be why the other party was not the right candidate. The electioneering seems to be completely negative. Putting down the opposing candidate. Why I should not vote for the other Candidate, not why I should vote for you ?
Why should I vote for you ?

My Ideal World.

 

A world without suffering.

A world without pain.

A world without guilt.

A world without war.

A world without hunger.

This would be my ideal world.

A world without greed.

A world without selfishness.

A world without fear.

A world without hate.

A world without strife.

This would be my ideal world.

A world without crime.

A world without tears.

A world without sorrow.

A world without disappointment.

A world without sickness.

A world without prejudice.

This would be my ideal world.

A world without jealousy.

A world without divorce.

A world without lust.

A world without poverty.

A world without unforgiveness.

This would be my ideal world.

A world without famine.

A world without drought.

A world without conflict.

A world without division.

A world without disasters.

This would be my ideal world.

A world with peace.

A world with love.

A world with joy.

A world with laughter.

A world with honesty.

A world with acceptance.

A world with forgiveness.

This would be my ideal world.

Till Next then

CIAO

Whispered into the Wind.

Whispered into the wind
every unspoken word
of love
that my own ears
yearn to catch.
Every moment
that floats
unseen,
unnoticed,
unheard,
untouched,
that I yearn to hold,
to memorize,
to imprint,
so I do not forget
ever.

Can I not hold
even one fleeting moment
inside?
So that when sleep escapes
into the storm of night
I don’t have to yearn
to search
in sheer panic?
For that
which I cannot see
cannot hear
cannot touch
but that
which surrounds me ?!?

Can I not?

Till Next then
CIAO

Did you hear the Whisper?

Did you hear the whisper
that floated by,
that you thought
was your mind
playing games
as usual?
Consumed
as you were
by the noise
inside your head,
did you hear the whisper?
That you tried to catch
but wafted away
even before you could listen?
Did you hear the whisper
like a gentle song
in a distant land
trying to come through
in the roaring traffic
of everyday existence
Did you hear the whisper?

If only I could. Or did I...

Till next then
CIAO

Just am.

Born

without questions

about existence

accepting that I

just am.

But now

I learn every moment

who I am not

before I know

who I am.

And then, simply

that I am not,

we die

as we are born.

 

Till Next then

CIAO

Attention Seeking...

We spend our lives trying to get attention and loving it. Getting attention is what provokes people, creates relationships and also destroys relationships. At some levels the ego is propelled to do greater things while it seeks attention. But at other levels, for so many of us attention seeking becomes an obsession. Therefore self-destructive. You can’t spend your life seeking affirmation through other people’s eyes. More often than not this leads to a loss of self-worth with all its associated problems.

I spent many years of my life as a child in wonderful adventures, but also in “Vanity” about myself. I often look back at my life and wonder how many beautiful relationships I missed out on, how many great adventures I did not give myself to, because of my own vanity or the need to seek attention.

But better late than never, I am on a different path now as I realize that the greatest adventure of all, the greatest potential relationships of all, the greatest love of all, lies in what’s given. Not in what is received.
Not because of some great “altruistic” or “selfless” illusion of myself. But because the greatest adventure of all lies in seeing yourself not as an individual drop, but as the ocean. To lose my sense of individuality. To lose that which is “Abhimanyu Manna” the individual allows me to lose “me.” I am not saying that I am there yet. My ego still carries too many remanents of the past. Past desires, past aspiratons and past insecurities. But I’ve made a start.

Everyday, for a part of the day I argue against my own ego to remind myself of the greatest illusion of all.

My individuality.

Me.

Till next then.
CIAO