Wednesday, May 27, 2009

I wish

His right hand fondled the left pocket of his loosely hung shirt with collars akin to an elephant’s ears. There it was, lying in the pocket at the bottom corner. Its mere touch sent a 100 watt smile across his face and his legs swung into action. Murmuring the poem, the one that has got his palms unpeeled, he dance walked, high in the air, towards the only tar road near his village. The time was right too, mid afternoon, teachers would still be at school and parents in the farm. The murmuring got louder and joyous as he thought about his new possession. He took out a polished rock, of the size and shape of a pebble, and started tossing it in the face of the sun, as if tossing his legs and murmuring the poem were not actions enough to justify his happiness. The rock became even brighter in the face of the sun making it possible for him to see it only once it landed in his hands ready for another toss.
The place where he reached was where he enjoyed the most. The people the buses carried in them were amusing. It sort of titillated him when he saw their inability to punish him on seeing him doing all sorts of mischief. He teased buses after buses. He won the arguments and the battles here which he couldn’t manage in his home and the school. And today he had the lucky coin too.

Tuesday, May 12, 2009

My Country, My Religion

Men of religion have become less tolerant. In fact, they always were and they always will be. Religion was a bright idea, which was meant to propagate universal brotherhood by the prophets of religion, like a country which limited the concept of brotherhood to its own land, on a smaller scale.
Thousands of wars were fought by men to either expand the boundaries of their religion or to save it from shrinking or extinction, just like men of countries did.
Could the prophets have fought wars to save or to expand their idea of oneness? No, is the only answer. Then why have the followers of religion waged wars?
As the followers they are and the followers are they, did the duty of fencing the ideas of their prophet by laying down the rules in the form of books and became proud of their religion and thus intolerant of anyone who overlooked or affronted it, just like the men of countries did.
The men of countries inherit a frog’s view and so do the followers of a religion. These men from generation to generation have taught their children to be proud of their country or their religion and to follow it just like a follower does.
Why do we men forget to see the real message and act blind? Why do we always love to be a follower and not a prophet himself? Why do we not become the prophets of oneness, which was what a prophet wanted us to be? Why do we become frogs when we are offered amendments?

Friday, March 6, 2009

virtue

The other day I was sitting in a pensive mood. I go into this state out of habit and not because of mood swings. It helps me channel all my emotional and intellectual (in whatever way, small or big, they are) energies in knowing the answers to those few questions which are not mere questions (atleast to me).
And the question that was nagging me was not uncommon. It was common and simple and it was this.
What is the biggest virtue that a man must possess, Love, forgiveness, patience, honesty, Humility, selflessness?
I agree all of them are big. Even if we possess one of them we eventually end up possessing most or all of them. Most of us think that we atleast possess few of them by connecting some instances/incidents of our lives where we had braved an act of selflessness or humility. We even have ‘example incidents’ reflecting our magnanimity, love, patience and honesty.
Why then, even after our many virtuous acts do we live in fear? Why are there so many moments and times when we feel frustrated, back-stabbed. The ungrateful acts of others become just like songs, our minds love repeating. The heart sobs for the unkind, inconsiderate, self-seeking nature inherited in people around us to whom we have forgiven umpteen number of times.
‘Silence’ becomes our virtue. Now, Silence means nothing more than just not talking to those who have inflicted a lifetime pain on us.
Oh! Wait, I think I must rewind back from here. Who inflicted pain on us? Somebody else? Really?
People back-stab, remain ungrateful and be unkind, I agree, even after we have shown all the goodness in us to them. But are they really responsible for our unhappy mood. Are they responsible for our sagged head? Are they responsible for deterioration our heart, mind and health?
Somebody else’s act of vice do not get plainly converted into our pain. There is a twist involved. It so happens that when we see, hear or feel an act of ungratefulness, we instinctively react to it in different ways depending on the character that we are (some cry, some slap and some remain shocked). But the twist is not this.
The twist is that that we do not act virtuous enough to let go the bad experience off the mind. We recreate the scene in minds and start playing it, by controlling the pace of the ill act that had taken place, just like the tape recorder with a fast forward and reverse button. What could have been controlled becomes uncontrollable. The same incident/experience becomes a chain reaction of pain hence unleashing the demon called intolerance.
What we don’t understand is the vicious song going on in our mind doesn’t help us in our resurrection. Mind you, our mind is not always the foe of the turncoat and a friend of ours. Just beware of the games that a mind can play. Avoid talking to it when it is showing its fingers on others.
And how do I avoid talking to my mind about the failure?
By being forgetful
Forgetfulness of bad experience, a virtue I am striving to possess, for my happiness and those around me.

Thursday, February 19, 2009

Shakespearian tragedy

The two protagonists of Shakespeare’s drama are talking about the course of the drama behind the curtains just before the play is about to start.
Character1: We both start as best friends, but to end the drama tragically enough we both fall in love with the same lady.
Character2: To give it a twist, the lady loves you but I get to marry her.
Characher1: because you speak up and I remain silent.
Character 2: Yaw, but I get heartache when she tells me that she had loved you.
Character 1: And then you start despising me, so much that you contemplate to kill me, waiting for the right chance to come.
Character 2: Incidentally you come to know that my wife was in love with you; you confront your love to her and hatch a plot to kill me. I don’t get to know about this.
Character 1: And while coming out of your home, you stab my back with a dagger out of jealousy and spite; I turn around in pain and stare at you coyly (as if I was about to beg you to have used a sharper dagger); but you strike again, this time thwarting my heart. I fall.
Character 2: feeling of anger and envy gives way to feeling of miserable satisfaction. I reach home and as soon as I enter the door I am smacked with something very hard. Blood squirt out of head. I get hit again till I loose consciousness and fall to the ground. I just get to see a blurred glimpse of my wife with an iron bar in her hands watching me dying.

Character 1: hey we both meet our ends, what did the women lose.
Character 2: like most of the women on earth, she gets to loose THE MAN WHO LOVED HER AND THE MAN WHOM SHE LOVED.

Curtains open and the drama starts.

Wednesday, February 4, 2009

indian liberlism

The recent Mangalore pub incident has once again sent shivers in the evolving part of the society, the one which is labeled as liberal. The principles followed by it can closely be associated with the western culture, a constant target for its unnatural behaviors by the followers of the ‘Hindu code of conduct’ in India.
The incident didn’t come as a shock to the world, but it did provoke some positive reactions like the Mumbai disaster did.
Most city dwellers and the pub goers follow liberalist ideas, but unlike the dogmatic elements, this chunk doesn’t strive for a socio-political clutch.
Liberalism has an enormous social relevance; nevertheless it also inherits social absenteeism as well as silence-ism in countries like India.
The sorry story of liberalism in India is that it doesn’t actively participate in earning its place in society by opposing doctrinism. The ‘don’t care attitude’ of Indian liberalists has come back to sting them in a hard way.
The negligent liberalists have no time to vote or give heed to social prejudices but have time to go to pubs.
As long as liberalism doesn’t understand the complete social cycle it can’t enjoy its liberty.

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

aerins challenege

Aerin at In Search of Giants is hosting a/'>http://insearchofgiants.com">a writer’s challenge to foster inspiration and community. It's pretty low-pressure: 1000 words a month. At the end of the year, you'll have a total of 12,000 words, which is not even half a NaNo entry. Go here to sign up!

BONUS: If you sign up for this challenge by January 14, your entry to the Ascension'>http://clarityofnight.blogspot.com/2009/01/ascension-short-fiction-contest.html">Ascension Clarity of Night contest counts as all 1000 of your words for January!

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

matter- instinct... life?

Put two drops of water on the table close to each other. Now take a pin and draw a line between the two drops. What do you see? They try to come to each other and they ultimately mix and form a whole. Put a stone instead of one drop and draw that line again. The drop still goes but doesn’t mix with the stone.
Who told the drop to do things that way? Who asked it to mix with the other drop and not the stone?
We have evolved in a similar way, mixing with some things and not mixing with others.
Don’t we humans react to things outside us in the same way? Things which are good for us are taken in and things which are not are just scraped.

We react to things in the same way as that droplet of water but the only thing is our mind is a much much much more complex a material than water.
Our emotions and our thinking and our feelings are just the instincts that all matters in the universe carry. We are formed so complex that our matter-instincts give a false impression/illusion of something called life