These are some of the excerpts from my Chhottu Uncle's diary !!!
Worth a read and Worth a thought.
I am still unable to realise the entire depth of these words. . may be some of you can help me out.
To bring about a totally new mind
It is definitely possible to bring about a totally new mind. But there are certain indications, certain necessary characteristics which do bring about that quality of newness. They are affection or love and integrity. Most of us do not know what it means to be affectionate. To us, it is a word which we casually use without much significance. Love is of course something very carefully guarded, something with which we ar not so familiar, though we use the word so glibly, so facilely - love of the country, love of truth, love of life and many many loves that we talk about; and I do not think it has anything to do with this. The ingredient - if I may use that word which is absolutely necessary is the quality of affection and integrity. I don't mean by integrity any form of pattern of belief, nor do I mean it as integrity according to the experience through which one has to live; but I mean that integrity that comes about when you begin to observe every movement of your own thought and when no thought is hidden. You do not wear a mask, you do not any longer pretend to be something other than what you actually are; and therefore there is no discipline, no fancy, no worship; and out of that comes the external sense of integrity I mean that kind of integrity, not the man who has belief and lives according to that belief, not the man who is sincere but with certain ideals, not the man who follows a certain discipline or tries to bring about an integration emotionally or intellectually. Such efforts do not bring out integrity. On the contrary, they increase conflict, misery. Whereas the integrity that we are talking about is the quality of seeing the fact every minute, not trying to translate the fact in terms of pleasure and pain, but letting the fact flower without choice, without opinion - out of which seeing comes integrity which is never altered. Now these two, affection and integrity, are necessary.
Love is not a sentiment
Obviously love is not sentiment. To be sentimental, to be emotional, is not love, because sentimentality and emotion are mere sensations. A religious person who weeps about Jesus or Krishna, about his guru and somebody else is merely sentimental, emotional. He is indulging in sensation, which is a process of thought, and thought is not love. Thought is the result of sensation, so the person who is sentimental, who is emotional, cannot possibly know love. Again, aren’t we emotional and sentimental? Sentimentality, emotionalism, is merely a form of self-expansion. To be full of emotion is obviously not love, because a sentimental person can be cruel when his sentiments are not responded to, when his feelings have no outlet. An emotional person can be stirred to hatred, to war, to butchery. A man who is sentimental, full of tears for his religion, surely, has no love.
Why are our desires never fully realized?
This is a very important question to go into because, as you grow older, you will find that your desires are never really fulfilled. In fulfilment there is always the shadow of frustration, and in your heart there is not a song but a cry. The desire to become -to become a great man, a great saint, a great this or that- has no end and therefore no fulfilment; its demand is ever for the "more", and such desire always breeds agony, misery, wars. But when one is free of all desire to become, there is a state of being whose action is totally different. It is. That which is has no time. It does not think in terms of fulfilment. Its very being is its fulfilment.
Think on These Things
Showing posts with label Compilations. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Compilations. Show all posts
Sunday, August 15, 2010
Monday, August 2, 2010
Life of a model !!!
This is a blogpost by Shobhaa De' . . .
There came a masala story which had the hungry media vultures scampering – an ageing model’s tragic suicide. Hardly headline news. But there it was, on every channel and newspaper. Poor Viveka Babajee hadn’t received even half this level of coverage during her lifetime as she struggled to keep up appearances, keep body and soul together, in the big, bad and coked out world of Mumbai modeling. She was considered over the hill and ‘finished’ within the glam fraternity – that in itself is a killer judgement. Combine her downgraded professional status with personal traumas, and you have a tragedy waiting to happen. For newshounds, this is another sensational tabloid scandal involving a pretty woman, a rich boyfriend (or many) and a lifestyle that shocks those outside the charmed circle. What most press reports aren’t saying is that what really killed Viveka was not a thwarted love affair but corrosive insecurity and despair.
It is a common story. Some girls can handle it better than others. Some manage to escape. Some don’t. Viveka didn’t. But look around you and you’ll find several walking wounded models struggling to stay afloat…. stay alive. The route taken is familiar – get discovered, get to Mumbai, get assignments. The first two or three years are generally heady and brilliant. The money rolls in, wealthy admirers pile up, lifestyle options multiply… and with luck, Bollywood beckons. All this before the girls reach their sell-by date ( 25 at the outside). Once your shelf life is over, the assignments dry up and even those panting middle aged, married men move on to younger chicks working the circuit. The first sign of desperation is when such a sought- after girl finds herself in the social wilderness and starts looking for lolly from other sources. She has bills to pay, loans to service, and an image to protect. Creditors start breathing down her neck… and with the heat getting a bit too hot to handle, the girl panics. Most times, she is miles away from home, living by herself in a suburban flat without support systems of any kind. She makes alcohol her best friend. In order to keep meeting her new ‘best friend’, she lets it be known she’s open to attending parties thrown by strangers – for a fee, of course. There are shady ‘party agents’ who round up hard up models and small time actresses for clients (mainly prosperous traders from Punjab, Haryana, Delhi) but at least the booze is in plenty even if the money is pathetic. Then come the shadier proposals to spend a weekend in Goa or Dubai – the money is not big, but it covers shopping kharcha. What the hell, a girl’s got to have the latest cell phone and ‘IT’ bag.
From this stage to full time hooking takes no time at all. The stakes are further lowered – but what is on offer is far more addictive – coke. Party girls in frilly frocks are always welcome at power evenings that need a strong glamour quotient – that is exactly the model followed by organizers of sporting mega events worldwide. But there is a catch - the cocktails that keeps these evenings in high gear do not flow out of glasses. The powerful hosts behind these parties know there is but one hook to get these girls to hang on - cocaine – lots and lots of the white stuff. Champagne and coke become the preferred mix. Throw in sex with strangers, and what starts off as a ‘fun’ thing, soon turns into the blackest nightmare ever with no escape. Dirty weekends grow into four and five day orgies. The protagonists are usually society’s top drawer men – industrialists, movie stars, ex-sports people, tv producers. And of course, the fashion crowd from Delhi-Bangalore.This is where girls like Viveka descend into a private hell from which there is no ‘out’. They are literally and metaphorically at a dead end. Strapped for money, strapped for love, strapped for security on any level – they turn the searchlight inwards in search of salvation. Some find it, most don’t.
Viveka’s suicide is being compared to Nafisa’s. And, no doubt there are unmistakable parallels. The main thread involves their respective backgrounds. It was hard to believe Viveka’s family is originally from Satara – a small, obscure town in Maharashtra. That makes Viveka a Maharastrian-Mauritian! What was a girl like that doing in a biz like this? Perhaps she was lured into it with promises of big time success. Ditto for Nafisa, who was also a misfit in the murky world of modeling. Both girls were above average in looks and intelligence. Yet, both got mixed up with men who gave them grief and treated them badly. Both chose a violent exit after giving up on life and themselves. Their contemporaries are made of sterner stuff – some have married ( and divorced) foreigners, others have switched to choreography and event management. Photographs of Viveka’s friends at her funeral, tell their own story. Shockingly enough, some of the girls who showed up to pay their respects clad in pristine designer white , posed for the cameras like they were at a fashion week showing. What should have been a somber occasion was converted into a celeb circus. Viveka’s funeral provided some much needed eye candy and a few photo-ops to the starved media. So much for the current crop of ramp scorchers. Then are still others who fled India and left their old world behind. I was surprised to run into the lovely Shyla Lopez who now lives in Moscow with her Russian husband and a young son. Did she look happy?? Ummmm…. I’m not sure.
There came a masala story which had the hungry media vultures scampering – an ageing model’s tragic suicide. Hardly headline news. But there it was, on every channel and newspaper. Poor Viveka Babajee hadn’t received even half this level of coverage during her lifetime as she struggled to keep up appearances, keep body and soul together, in the big, bad and coked out world of Mumbai modeling. She was considered over the hill and ‘finished’ within the glam fraternity – that in itself is a killer judgement. Combine her downgraded professional status with personal traumas, and you have a tragedy waiting to happen. For newshounds, this is another sensational tabloid scandal involving a pretty woman, a rich boyfriend (or many) and a lifestyle that shocks those outside the charmed circle. What most press reports aren’t saying is that what really killed Viveka was not a thwarted love affair but corrosive insecurity and despair.
It is a common story. Some girls can handle it better than others. Some manage to escape. Some don’t. Viveka didn’t. But look around you and you’ll find several walking wounded models struggling to stay afloat…. stay alive. The route taken is familiar – get discovered, get to Mumbai, get assignments. The first two or three years are generally heady and brilliant. The money rolls in, wealthy admirers pile up, lifestyle options multiply… and with luck, Bollywood beckons. All this before the girls reach their sell-by date ( 25 at the outside). Once your shelf life is over, the assignments dry up and even those panting middle aged, married men move on to younger chicks working the circuit. The first sign of desperation is when such a sought- after girl finds herself in the social wilderness and starts looking for lolly from other sources. She has bills to pay, loans to service, and an image to protect. Creditors start breathing down her neck… and with the heat getting a bit too hot to handle, the girl panics. Most times, she is miles away from home, living by herself in a suburban flat without support systems of any kind. She makes alcohol her best friend. In order to keep meeting her new ‘best friend’, she lets it be known she’s open to attending parties thrown by strangers – for a fee, of course. There are shady ‘party agents’ who round up hard up models and small time actresses for clients (mainly prosperous traders from Punjab, Haryana, Delhi) but at least the booze is in plenty even if the money is pathetic. Then come the shadier proposals to spend a weekend in Goa or Dubai – the money is not big, but it covers shopping kharcha. What the hell, a girl’s got to have the latest cell phone and ‘IT’ bag.
From this stage to full time hooking takes no time at all. The stakes are further lowered – but what is on offer is far more addictive – coke. Party girls in frilly frocks are always welcome at power evenings that need a strong glamour quotient – that is exactly the model followed by organizers of sporting mega events worldwide. But there is a catch - the cocktails that keeps these evenings in high gear do not flow out of glasses. The powerful hosts behind these parties know there is but one hook to get these girls to hang on - cocaine – lots and lots of the white stuff. Champagne and coke become the preferred mix. Throw in sex with strangers, and what starts off as a ‘fun’ thing, soon turns into the blackest nightmare ever with no escape. Dirty weekends grow into four and five day orgies. The protagonists are usually society’s top drawer men – industrialists, movie stars, ex-sports people, tv producers. And of course, the fashion crowd from Delhi-Bangalore.This is where girls like Viveka descend into a private hell from which there is no ‘out’. They are literally and metaphorically at a dead end. Strapped for money, strapped for love, strapped for security on any level – they turn the searchlight inwards in search of salvation. Some find it, most don’t.
Viveka’s suicide is being compared to Nafisa’s. And, no doubt there are unmistakable parallels. The main thread involves their respective backgrounds. It was hard to believe Viveka’s family is originally from Satara – a small, obscure town in Maharashtra. That makes Viveka a Maharastrian-Mauritian! What was a girl like that doing in a biz like this? Perhaps she was lured into it with promises of big time success. Ditto for Nafisa, who was also a misfit in the murky world of modeling. Both girls were above average in looks and intelligence. Yet, both got mixed up with men who gave them grief and treated them badly. Both chose a violent exit after giving up on life and themselves. Their contemporaries are made of sterner stuff – some have married ( and divorced) foreigners, others have switched to choreography and event management. Photographs of Viveka’s friends at her funeral, tell their own story. Shockingly enough, some of the girls who showed up to pay their respects clad in pristine designer white , posed for the cameras like they were at a fashion week showing. What should have been a somber occasion was converted into a celeb circus. Viveka’s funeral provided some much needed eye candy and a few photo-ops to the starved media. So much for the current crop of ramp scorchers. Then are still others who fled India and left their old world behind. I was surprised to run into the lovely Shyla Lopez who now lives in Moscow with her Russian husband and a young son. Did she look happy?? Ummmm…. I’m not sure.
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Bithday - A truely beastly blessing - Shashi Tharur
This is an article written by Mr. Shashi Tharur in The Times of India on his own birthday. Surely he makes an interesting point here
Why do we celebrate birthdays? This is a perfectly serious question, prompted by the fact that today happens to be mine. I will receive cards, phone calls and messages of congratulation from family and friends, all for having accomplished — what exactly? Nothing more than merely emerging 52 years ago. Whereas the person who did all the hard work that day, the one whose effort and sacrifice and pain resulted in the fortuitous event — my mother — will be ignored by all and sundry.
She will go to the temple, as usual, and feed the poor, as she has done on each of her children’s birthdays for decades. But no one will congratulate her for what she accomplished on that March Shivratri day more than five decades ago. Instead, the tributes will come to the least deserving beneficiary: the person whose only real challenge on that occasion was to be able to manage to breathe.
Yes, life is unfair, especially for mothers. And yet, it’s true that each passing birthday marks a milestone on the road of life, something by which to measure the way you have lived. Not that most of us use birthdays for that purpose: usually it is the occasion for a party, and for the more spiritually-minded, for prayer; some spend it with close family, others with raucous friends; but few use it to take stock of what they have done and where they are going.
Indeed, it takes landmark birthdays to prompt that sort of self-assessment. In my case, 30 did it: it was, after all, the age when my cricketing heroes began to think of retirement, and up till that point i had thought of age entirely in relation to the careers of cricketers, most of whom, in those days, were over the hill by 30.
So at 30 I took a long hard look at my life and concluded that there was a great deal more I needed to do to justify my presence on the planet. Thirty was far more significant a threshold than 40, which passed by scarcely noticed. When I was a child that would have surprised me, for 40 had used to seem forbiddingly middle-aged, the point at which all potential had been exhausted, the beginning of an inexorable descent into decrepitude.
But by the time I got there, 40 seemed to me to be an insignificant age, populated by striplings and rising stars and the leaders of tomorrow, rather than a turning point. Perhaps, it is a reflection of the enhanced longevity of our times that the mid-point has been raised: 40 is still young today, and 50 is the new 40.
But what does that mean? No one I know who has reached 50 seems ready to be put to pasture. The days when office-goers contemplated retirement at 55 are gone almost everywhere, even in the hidebound confines of Indian government service, which now expects its bureaucrats to toil until 60 (and rumour has it that may soon rise to 62).
During my years as a manager at the UN, I used to find it deeply frustrating to lose some of my best staff at 60, an age when many of them seemed to be in the prime of their professional lives and had never been more assured or more productive. (Some, particularly from developing countries, would attempt to claim that their original birth certificates were wrongly filled in or subsequently doctored, a claim whose plausibility was undermined by the fact that they chose to reveal this only when they turned 59.)
Then came 50: an alarming age which seemed to suggest the imminence of irrelevance. At 50, no one can plausibly be described any more as "young" (an adjective that had dogged me all my life), or as "up-and-coming" or as an exciting new talent. By 50, you should have pretty much made your mark; for 99.99% of the human population, you know that in the race of life you are closer to the finish line than the starting gate.
And so 50 tends to be a landmark you notice. Intrepid gerontologists may come up with long lists of people whose major accomplishments occurred after they turned 50, but in most cases, 50 represents the narrowing of possibilities, the closing of avenues, both personal and professional. Choices you haven’t made till 50 are no longer available for you to make.
Of course, there are professions where this isn’t true: Indian or Japanese politics, for instance, where you have to be at least 50 to be taken seriously at all. But even your body reminds you daily of the things you can no longer do without feeling the consequences. Comedians tell you that if you wake up after 50 and don’t feel a nagging pain anywhere, you’re probably dead.
But I'm still here, unless I’m struck by the proverbial bus between sending this column to my editor and waking up on Sunday morning. Fifty-two isn’t a landmark of any sort; it is an age of no particular distinction. It’s the sort of age which, if it were a cricketing score, would carry an asterisk, meaning "not out": innings still going on, much more to do, plenty of batting still to come. The new ball has been weathered, some of the uneven bounce in the wicket mastered (or at least understood), an intelligent estimate of the field taken, and the bowling sized up.
Of course, the bat is now a bit worn, smudged both from the fours that went off the meat of the bat and the nicks and edges that accompanied your scoring, but you’re still there and the great cosmic umpire doesn’t seem to be readying to raise his finger. Fifty-two not out! You squint into the sun. Would somebody please move that sightscreen?
Why do we celebrate birthdays? This is a perfectly serious question, prompted by the fact that today happens to be mine. I will receive cards, phone calls and messages of congratulation from family and friends, all for having accomplished — what exactly? Nothing more than merely emerging 52 years ago. Whereas the person who did all the hard work that day, the one whose effort and sacrifice and pain resulted in the fortuitous event — my mother — will be ignored by all and sundry.
She will go to the temple, as usual, and feed the poor, as she has done on each of her children’s birthdays for decades. But no one will congratulate her for what she accomplished on that March Shivratri day more than five decades ago. Instead, the tributes will come to the least deserving beneficiary: the person whose only real challenge on that occasion was to be able to manage to breathe.
Yes, life is unfair, especially for mothers. And yet, it’s true that each passing birthday marks a milestone on the road of life, something by which to measure the way you have lived. Not that most of us use birthdays for that purpose: usually it is the occasion for a party, and for the more spiritually-minded, for prayer; some spend it with close family, others with raucous friends; but few use it to take stock of what they have done and where they are going.
Indeed, it takes landmark birthdays to prompt that sort of self-assessment. In my case, 30 did it: it was, after all, the age when my cricketing heroes began to think of retirement, and up till that point i had thought of age entirely in relation to the careers of cricketers, most of whom, in those days, were over the hill by 30.
So at 30 I took a long hard look at my life and concluded that there was a great deal more I needed to do to justify my presence on the planet. Thirty was far more significant a threshold than 40, which passed by scarcely noticed. When I was a child that would have surprised me, for 40 had used to seem forbiddingly middle-aged, the point at which all potential had been exhausted, the beginning of an inexorable descent into decrepitude.
But by the time I got there, 40 seemed to me to be an insignificant age, populated by striplings and rising stars and the leaders of tomorrow, rather than a turning point. Perhaps, it is a reflection of the enhanced longevity of our times that the mid-point has been raised: 40 is still young today, and 50 is the new 40.
But what does that mean? No one I know who has reached 50 seems ready to be put to pasture. The days when office-goers contemplated retirement at 55 are gone almost everywhere, even in the hidebound confines of Indian government service, which now expects its bureaucrats to toil until 60 (and rumour has it that may soon rise to 62).
During my years as a manager at the UN, I used to find it deeply frustrating to lose some of my best staff at 60, an age when many of them seemed to be in the prime of their professional lives and had never been more assured or more productive. (Some, particularly from developing countries, would attempt to claim that their original birth certificates were wrongly filled in or subsequently doctored, a claim whose plausibility was undermined by the fact that they chose to reveal this only when they turned 59.)
Then came 50: an alarming age which seemed to suggest the imminence of irrelevance. At 50, no one can plausibly be described any more as "young" (an adjective that had dogged me all my life), or as "up-and-coming" or as an exciting new talent. By 50, you should have pretty much made your mark; for 99.99% of the human population, you know that in the race of life you are closer to the finish line than the starting gate.
And so 50 tends to be a landmark you notice. Intrepid gerontologists may come up with long lists of people whose major accomplishments occurred after they turned 50, but in most cases, 50 represents the narrowing of possibilities, the closing of avenues, both personal and professional. Choices you haven’t made till 50 are no longer available for you to make.
Of course, there are professions where this isn’t true: Indian or Japanese politics, for instance, where you have to be at least 50 to be taken seriously at all. But even your body reminds you daily of the things you can no longer do without feeling the consequences. Comedians tell you that if you wake up after 50 and don’t feel a nagging pain anywhere, you’re probably dead.
But I'm still here, unless I’m struck by the proverbial bus between sending this column to my editor and waking up on Sunday morning. Fifty-two isn’t a landmark of any sort; it is an age of no particular distinction. It’s the sort of age which, if it were a cricketing score, would carry an asterisk, meaning "not out": innings still going on, much more to do, plenty of batting still to come. The new ball has been weathered, some of the uneven bounce in the wicket mastered (or at least understood), an intelligent estimate of the field taken, and the bowling sized up.
Of course, the bat is now a bit worn, smudged both from the fours that went off the meat of the bat and the nicks and edges that accompanied your scoring, but you’re still there and the great cosmic umpire doesn’t seem to be readying to raise his finger. Fifty-two not out! You squint into the sun. Would somebody please move that sightscreen?
God in a Gucci - Shobhaa De'
This is an article written by Mrs. Shobhaa De in sunday Times life for the column "God in a Gucci". I really couldnt find any other better argument on this subject. .
IT is important to de-link spiritualism from religion. I believe that a religious person can be deeply spiritual and not be seeking anything. Not even God. A spiritual approach to life is far more important to one's sense of well-being than blindly following religious texts and rituals. The idea of GOD is a reflection of man's own insecurity. The most pathetic aspect of this is the way in which we foolishly fight over 'our' gods. Claiming superiority of one over the other, as if these various gods are competing in some absurd religious Olympics, featuring winners and losers. Belief is personal and frequently irrational. Nobody has the right to question it. Or declare a race to the finish line. Why do we hanker after 'answers'? Who has them? Has anybody met God? Since I am not really looking for God, I don't feel the need to search for Him. Or Her. Or 'It'.
As for whether one can be wearing an expensive Gucci or Cavalli and still be deeply religious, and whether we can be sexy and religious, materialistic as well as spiritual, and whether one precludes the other, I would say, it is not a valid debate at all.
What a person thinks, feels, is the key to understanding the bigger picture. To equate wealth with evil is to confuse issues. Not every rich person in designer gear is morally decrepit, just as not every poor person in rags is a saint. Nobody has been able to 'explain' inequalities. These value judgements are childish and irrelevant. Besides, even the most evolved ascetic can slip up and make terrible mistakes. That is the challenge of being humane and human. To think of God as an allseeing, stern headmaster, punishing the wicked, and rewarding the meek, makes the Almighty sound pretty dreadful! These are small consolations we dream up for ourselves, that's all.
There are thousands of people who put everyday life on hold to go off in pursuit of happiness or spiritualism, outside the realm of daily concerns. It's a matter of personal choice. Who can challenge that? It is an individual option. Only someone who has taken this route can comment on its validity, that too, in a strictly personal context. What compels an individual to go down this path? Who knows?? I am sceptical at the best of times since I have yet to meet a 'genuine' fakir. Renunciation is for those who can't cope with domesticity and life's petty struggles or simply refuse to.
I abhor rules and regulations that dictate to me what I should do if I want to reach God. These man-made pre-conditions were created in a specific historical scenario to offer guidelines that would discipline those the state could not effectively subdue. They have little relevance in an age where individual freedom precedes virtually everything else. Religion offers a matrix for those incapable of thinking for themselves. Organised religion is politics by another name — a way to control people through fear and punishment. It is easy to manipulate the uneducated, ignorant masses by talking of God's 'wrath'. This gives God a bad name!!
Seeking God does not necessarily have to be about listening to the silence within. I am not attracted to silence. I like chaos and noise. I can generally reach the spot I need to within myself, by concentrating on it briefly. This can happen even in the midst of cacophony. I love visiting temples, churches and mosques. I feel energised by the atmosphere. Other people's faith touches me deeply.
People, the world over, get possessive about 'their' God and spend time looking for imagined insults, and reacting to them. A confident believer is not as easily rattled. If Cavalli decides to put some image on inner wear, does that make God any less important? Or does it reflect Cavalli's ignorance? True spiritualism frees you from such bondage. It liberates while it celebrates differences. When our very existence is so ephemeral, why look for 'concrete' proof? God can wear Gucci, a dhoti or nothing at all. It's all about loving an illusion.
IT is important to de-link spiritualism from religion. I believe that a religious person can be deeply spiritual and not be seeking anything. Not even God. A spiritual approach to life is far more important to one's sense of well-being than blindly following religious texts and rituals. The idea of GOD is a reflection of man's own insecurity. The most pathetic aspect of this is the way in which we foolishly fight over 'our' gods. Claiming superiority of one over the other, as if these various gods are competing in some absurd religious Olympics, featuring winners and losers. Belief is personal and frequently irrational. Nobody has the right to question it. Or declare a race to the finish line. Why do we hanker after 'answers'? Who has them? Has anybody met God? Since I am not really looking for God, I don't feel the need to search for Him. Or Her. Or 'It'.
As for whether one can be wearing an expensive Gucci or Cavalli and still be deeply religious, and whether we can be sexy and religious, materialistic as well as spiritual, and whether one precludes the other, I would say, it is not a valid debate at all.
What a person thinks, feels, is the key to understanding the bigger picture. To equate wealth with evil is to confuse issues. Not every rich person in designer gear is morally decrepit, just as not every poor person in rags is a saint. Nobody has been able to 'explain' inequalities. These value judgements are childish and irrelevant. Besides, even the most evolved ascetic can slip up and make terrible mistakes. That is the challenge of being humane and human. To think of God as an allseeing, stern headmaster, punishing the wicked, and rewarding the meek, makes the Almighty sound pretty dreadful! These are small consolations we dream up for ourselves, that's all.
There are thousands of people who put everyday life on hold to go off in pursuit of happiness or spiritualism, outside the realm of daily concerns. It's a matter of personal choice. Who can challenge that? It is an individual option. Only someone who has taken this route can comment on its validity, that too, in a strictly personal context. What compels an individual to go down this path? Who knows?? I am sceptical at the best of times since I have yet to meet a 'genuine' fakir. Renunciation is for those who can't cope with domesticity and life's petty struggles or simply refuse to.
I abhor rules and regulations that dictate to me what I should do if I want to reach God. These man-made pre-conditions were created in a specific historical scenario to offer guidelines that would discipline those the state could not effectively subdue. They have little relevance in an age where individual freedom precedes virtually everything else. Religion offers a matrix for those incapable of thinking for themselves. Organised religion is politics by another name — a way to control people through fear and punishment. It is easy to manipulate the uneducated, ignorant masses by talking of God's 'wrath'. This gives God a bad name!!
Seeking God does not necessarily have to be about listening to the silence within. I am not attracted to silence. I like chaos and noise. I can generally reach the spot I need to within myself, by concentrating on it briefly. This can happen even in the midst of cacophony. I love visiting temples, churches and mosques. I feel energised by the atmosphere. Other people's faith touches me deeply.
People, the world over, get possessive about 'their' God and spend time looking for imagined insults, and reacting to them. A confident believer is not as easily rattled. If Cavalli decides to put some image on inner wear, does that make God any less important? Or does it reflect Cavalli's ignorance? True spiritualism frees you from such bondage. It liberates while it celebrates differences. When our very existence is so ephemeral, why look for 'concrete' proof? God can wear Gucci, a dhoti or nothing at all. It's all about loving an illusion.
Compilations
India is blessed with some of the most extraordinarily talented and creative writers. But most of their work is scattered somewhere in the pages of newpapers or magzines. While some part of novels or stories can also be worth pondering over.
In this section i have tried to collect all that I find interesting and something really worth thinking.
Enjoy Reading.
Hope you all like it.
In this section i have tried to collect all that I find interesting and something really worth thinking.
Enjoy Reading.
Hope you all like it.
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