Mirage

Having reached so far, I find you but not you,
Now Nowhere to turn to, I should end up with you and only you.

where I went wrong, I cant see it better you tell me,
Pity it is, with loss of originality, even you cant tell me.

Here I am with all my life for even a not so you of you,
Coz I have a feeling that u can still be seen only through you.

And I shall wait till that moment though temporary comes,
As for me its not time that matters, my beloved "you".

The Complete Man

When I was a kid, I watched Raymond suiting advertisement on television which had its punch line as: "For the complete man" and used to show some nice suite clad men in a marriage, a young guy paying respect to his parents, showing love to his beautiful wife, this was what I always wanted to be. This was fantasy and at that age I did not use to think about things like what kind of professions those guys must be in or what kind of lives guys like those must be leading.
Then I grew older and reached college. There I had a chance to interact with Ankit Fadia( Hacking wizard), I read about Sabir Bhatia or Steve Jobs and my fantasy of a complete man changed a bit and now my complete man used to wear informal clothes. He was a guy who had done something different in his life and had taken a road less travelled.( I had then read poem, "The road less travelled" by Robert Frost. I loved it and do love it still). My complete man was successful in his professional life and had made his fortune himself.
Then I read "Fountain Head" by Ayn Rand,( thanks to a friend, both of us read book as a competition between us, which of course I won :-) ) and this book impacted my concept of complete man immensely. Now he was a guy who was a perfectionist, perfectly selfish and therefore altruistic ( oops I just said that). He did care only about himself and did not have expectations from anybody. I used to believe that protagonist Howard Roark is a utopian concept for Indian society but I had started behaving like Howard and his impact on me was visible to some closer ones of mine too. (I lost some good friends and people started me terming as an individualist but after all collectivists never like individualists :-) )
Then I happened to read a book "Seven Habits of highly effective people", ( I never like books of this sort, but we do sometimes like to do things which we don’t like to do), Some first chapters of the book fortified Howard Roark inside me but then came some further chapters which tried to tone him down a little. This book did not impact me much, only significant thing that I learnt was that one should try to look at other's paradigm also before one reaches to any stand (Well doing this sometimes confuses me a lot, but helps me mostly.)
But then another phase has come where I have become a little negative about all my conceptions of complete man. I term it as that reality has struck me. Aged 24 today, I sometime feel that time is slipping and I am stuck where I have been. I am no longer sure of my control on my life. I just want to float in the river called destiny. But I want to enjoy and do enjoy this floating of mine ( Ah, I remember free floating in Ganges here which I had done on a rafting trip last year, that was beautiful and so is this free floating today.)
Well last paragraph is one side of my thoughts, other side says that life is about being positive. It is your control of life and Hey who can take it away from you? It says you may not be a complete man but you are very good, you may think that you are stranded but if you see closely, you have improved during this period more than any other in your life.
Well, I guess the positive thoughts strike more chord with me than the negative ones and hence here I am doing and experiencing many things in my life that I have never done before. I might be little off the target with which I had started the article but the point that I wanted to make keeping myself at the helm was that- the negative phase that I talked about briefly comes in everybody's life someday. I have seen some people going in depression when they turn 30 because they think that they can't reach the long terms that they had set for themselves 5 years earlier because they have wasted a lot of time. But This is not what life is about, it is about Saying Yes to experiences and being bubbling with enthusiasm and to continue to improve (one must decide his own definition for term improvement though) and we must live and enjoy it to the fullest. Just live it like you have never done before and everybody thus becomes a complete man in his own respect.

Note: I was never sure I would be able to end this article on positive note :-D

My Grandfather

When I was 9 years old, my grandfather died. I remember his funeral when his body was covered in Indian Flag and Commissioner of Police and a police team had come to pay their last visit to him. I was afraid to touch his body and feeling that he was dead, had not sunk in. The first memory that I have of my Grandfather is of him, teaching me Gita in Sanskrit. He was a Freedom Fighter and I used to understand that there was something special about him different from others but the true significance of him being a Freedom Fighter was never understood by me then. I remember, he was very punctual and used to get up very early in the morning, used to do a lot of Yoga. He used to Knit Yarn daily and then he used to bathe with Mud (black mud of my home town, he never bathed with a Soap). He did not believe in worship of statues and rather he would read Vedas for sometime daily in the morning. In the evening he used to do a Evening Prayer called SANDHYA by him and then he would take him night meals. He would sometime create some beautiful stories for us and we used to enjoy them a lot. As when he died, I was very young, I could never see him as a Great man rather I always saw him as my beloved grand father. But today when I think about him, I feel proud of him and proud of myself to be grand child of such a great man.
It is now only that I realize that how hard must it have been for him to leave my grand mother alone at home in a very poor condition and to go for the cause of freedom of India. How much resolve must he have had for doing this. Now I understand why he used to be so excited when I used to recite my Independence Day speech to him in Sanskrit and why he and his many friends used to give me sweets for the same. Now I understand why he used to be so delighted on Independence Day. Now I understand why he was not in favor of worshiping statues of Gods. Now I understand why he wanted to open a naturopathy Centre and give free treatment to poor. Now I understand why he used to give so much importance to healthy living and healthy thinking. Today I am able to understand that he had a lot of courage, he was very honest and truthful, he never cheated anybody and all these things were not that he followed but they were values that he used to live his life with. He wanted his country to be the best in world and preferred simplicity to the pomp. Pain of other persons was his own pain and nature was a balm for him.
If I look at myself, I feel that while he may be happy in many ways to see me as what I am, he must also be very sorry about many things. while teaching me Gita or other things he wanted me to internalize many values which I have not and if I talk of resolve, I think I am very fickle. But I think I have a goodness in me that is a quality that I bestowed from him and that’s why I feel pain for others, and am pround of my country and sometimes feel sorry for many things for which he would have had same feeling as that of mine. I have a wish in my life that I should improve myself in to somebody so that he is truly proud of me when he sees me from Great Heavens. And I continue to strive for that. And I am sure I will succeed some day. Amen.

Epic Ramayana in Few Lines

When I was a small kid, my grandfather had told me a verse of Sanskrit, which summarises Ramayana in few words, today I read an Article discussing if Ramayana is just a fictional epic or it is based on some real events. This reminded me of these beautiful lines of Sanskrit, and there those lines are:

In Sanskrit:

"Aadau Raam tapovanadi gamanam, hatwa mrig kaanchanam, Vaidehi haranam, Jataayu maranam, Sugreev sambhaashanam, Baalee nirdanam, samudra tarnam, Lankaapuri daahnam, pashchaat Ravana Kumbhkarna hananam, etad Ramayanam."

In English (Translation):

In the ancient age, Rama(Raam) went to sacred forest, tried to kill a golden deer. In between Sita(Vaidehi) was kidnapped and Jatayu was killed. A meeting with Sugreeva happened and Baalee was killed. Then travell across the great See happened. and Lankapuri was burnt. Thereafter Ravana and khumbhkarna was killed. And this is Ramayana.

She my trueself

" Thought she was there no more
but she still jolts me.
thought I was not defined by her any more
but she still explains a lot of me.

Thought I breath air of my own,
but still its not my true identity.
thought I don't owe any thing to her,
but I have no such feeling any more.

There she is again more than she was before,
And I do know she is the one, I truly adore."

Susceptible I

I have never found myself more susceptible to new ideologies, ways of thinking and ways of doing things than I am finding these days. Some days ago I was reading a book about "Special theory of relativity" and there I read this chapter about time dilation. I was so moved by this. I was reading this in my office bus and as soon as I understood that our concept of time is not absolute, I was awestruck. I was not able to speak any sentence, I just wanted to think more and more about it. I started thinking about that basic "mosquito in a train example" ( general theory of relativity) and then tried to relate it to slowing of clock ( can be explained on the basis of special theory of relativity). Oh man, I don't remember when I got down from bus and when did I reached my flat. I was so much in to it. I had read this theory before but never was so overwhelmed.
Some days ago I completed book "Discovery of India" and as soon as it was finished,I felt a strange void. The conception of man's thought, his purpose on earth made me feel uneasy. What I am doing? What should be done? Should man seek balance in his life or should he become an individualist and an extremist. All these things had never struck me like this ever before.
Yesterday, I watched 2 movies- " Secret Window" and "In to the Wild", I was so amazed to see movie:"In to the wild". Is man a force of universe? How small are capabilities in comparison to the might that of a river? Why at all we sometime try to go against nature? Why this society? why don't we live as animals in pure coherence with nature?
I have noticed that I have too many questions these days and have very few answers. And somehow, I try to get answers for these complex questions by some rudimentary thinking. I sometimes reach somewhere and most of times I am lost in my thoughts.I know I get a lot of pleasure thinking and which drives me to keep doing so. But this sometimes disturbs me a lot, I get a little absent minded. For instance on Friday after reading after reading this theory of relativity I was nowhere. I was lost somewhere.

I believe I may not get answers for these questions of mine, but somehow this thought process helps me develop me as an Individual. I think this has something to do with my age that I am so susceptible to thinking. And more because of the fact that earlier probably my IQ was not so much that I could appreciate real beauty of all these thoughts. And that is one thing I can be happy about. Ultimately the fact is that I am too susceptible these days and don't know how many new questions will come to me? And eventually how many more dimensions will be added to my perspective further?

Uddvelan

"It hits hard. And leaves no chance to do so. Demon is always there.
sometimes it pushes hard and sometimes just a gentle wipe. The sun rises.and there is always a night after..I think why? Snakes come to me,hiss and try to scare me but never bite. Anyway eventually I have no place to run" Professor is suddenly awakened from his dreams. He has been dreaming a demon since last some days and is aware of doing so. The girl on the next seat is very cautiously watching this old man.She starts crying. The professor feels helpless.What is happening to him? Sometimes he dreams a war, some times he dreams a young man bare chested with blood all around. Sometimes there is light and patterns formed as in Young's double slit experiment. "Oh..Young Double slit experiment..Oh class..Oh what is time: its 9:30..Oh Shit,Late again.Professor sees the crying girl.she is again watching him carefully but this time smiling". Professor checks his notes.They are with him. Fine!! Professor sings to himself: "stayin alive..stayin alive..ah ah ah..." the girl is relaxed now.and so is prof.
Professor is a Physics Teacher in 'Boys High School'. He is again late for class as usual.

Note: I feel as if some burden is off me. I don't know how it happened.