numb...

this fear freezing around my heart
making pain melt in my eyes
this anger rubbing all over my throat

why don't I just let my hope die
and end this forever..

arrogance of an egotist...

Disclaimer: Ideas presented are personal and prone to changes.

In an ordinary day, when emotions are dull, instincts are blunt and senses are over or underused, we are headed straight towards self destruction. We are afraid of being alone, we think that we are the unimportant footnotes of life, but still we isolate ourselves from the outer world thinking we are different from others. All the desires, all the ambitions to raise ourselves from this life of continuous suffering are hollow. Something more fundamental, very basic is missing in our existence. Dreams of attaining absolute freedom, economic independence are nothing but illusions of a mistaken identity. Not a single moment is passing without this perpetual emotional tumult, this agony of making simple life choices.

What is our life anyway. We are one among hundreds of thousands of ordinary people like us who are a mere vulgar accident of evolution. World doesn't need us and in all probability doesn't want us. We need the world for ourselves to survive. We are the disposable samples of humanity which world uses everyday for its experiments with life. Still we try to console ourselves with the illusions of purpose, of goals which are no more than a few steps in no direction in a dark road. We build our life based on tangible, transient things. Our job, our family, our friends, our bank balance, our material possessions, our beliefs, our ideas out of which only a few come from direct experience, rest are the result of vicarious feelings, second hand experiences. They define our existence.

Then one day the moment of clarity happens, the epiphany, and suddenly we realize that these things can be snatched away from us in less than a moment. And immediately, we stick harder to them, because if we lose them, we lose our life. But that doesn't help and sooner or later, the thing or the idea or the person through which or whom we were trying to find ourselves is lost. A relapse, a shock, alive but no sign of life.

And then we realize that we are not all these things. We realize that our existence doesn't depend on these things. We are only that part of our existence which cannot be taken away from us. Ever. Suddenly heart sinks in, complete chaos, like whole existence being sucked into vacuum, reality which was built in years shatters down in just a second. A search begins for that indestructible part of our life on which everything, 'everything' stands. Everything else loses its meaning.

We realize, we don't need our job, our bank balance, our family, our friends, our partners - we need a guiding light which can take us out of our suffering, the daily unstoppable suffocation inside. Despite every choice that we make in life, ultimately everyone, regardless of his/her status race creed or cult, has to face this truth alone that life is nothing but a preparation for eternity. [Rick Warren]

मामूली...

कुछ सपने, कुछ हकीकत
कुछ डर, कुछ ख्वाहिशें
थोड़ा दर्द, थोड़ी खुशी
कभी रास्ते तो कभी मंजिलें

सीने में दबी सिसकियाँ
होठों पर थकी हुई मुस्कराहट
कुछ ढूँढती हुई सी आँखें
साँसों से लटकी हुई घबराहट
चेहरे में दफन एक तलाश
लिखावट के ऊपर लिखावट

जिंदगी की भारी किताब के इस
मामूली से पन्ने को
न जाने किस बात का गुरूर था
जिंदगी ने तो इसे कभी पलट कर देखा भी नहीं

कभी कुछ लिखा तो कभी कुछ मिटा दिया
कुछ बातें याद रहीं और बाकी को यूं ही भुला दिया
फ़िर एक दिन ऐसे फाड़ कर फ़ेंक दिया
जैसे ये कभी ज़िन्दगी का हिस्सा भी ना रहा हो |

यतीम...

मासूमियत बचपन भी पूरा न देख पाई थी

जब उम्मीद जिम्मेदारियों के बोझ से टूट गयी
रिश्ते वक्त के खिंचाव को बर्दाश्त न कर सके
और प्यार, बीते हुए कल के
किसी बदनसीब पल में ज़ख्मी पड़ा है
इस सबके बाद जो जुस्तजू बची थी
उसे समाज की रस्में निगल गयी
और अब बचे हैं मैं और मेरी आवारगी
हर लम्हे ही जद्दोजहद में अपने
वुजूद की तलाश करते

obsessions...

She had this charm, this joyful air around her he could not resist. How fickle! Soon, she took him away from me.

“Amit! Shall we go for coffee?”

“Oh sorry, you carry on! I am helping Suruchi with her review reports.”

“Amit! Can you drop me home?”

“Can you take an auto today? I will have to stay late. Suruchi has to finish her deliverable by tomorrow and lot of work is pending.”

“Amit! Where are you?”

“Suruchi and I are in a movie! I’ll call you back later.”

“Hi Amit!”

“Hey! Can you put Suruchi on line? I need to talk to her. I think her phone is switched off.”

This went on. For weeks. Or may be months. I don’t know. But, something was happening inside me.

This morning Suruchi asked me: “Do you think Amit likes me? Do you think he will propose to me?” I had said I don’t know. Later Amit had asked: “Do you think Suruchi likes me? Do you think I should propose to her?” I had said I don’t know.

I had been accumulating emotional ammunition. I had turned into an explosive filled with shrapnels of anger and obsession.

Later in the evening when I entered house, I saw her door was left ajar. I found them both in her room; they were lying naked in bed, sleeping, which seemed like after long hours of love making.

My mind went numb.

Suruchi was such a warmhearted person… irresistible… This spring she had arrived at the city, joined the company and was looking for a place to stay. We both were in the same project. I offered her to stay in the vacant room of my apartment. I remember when I asked her to stay with me she had exclaimed with joy... or perhaps surprise... “That would be superb, wow! Thanks… Thanks a lot…” with those big beautiful black eyes widening and her cute little mouth agape. Those eyes, her hair, and her tall slim physique - I had felt jealous the first time I introduced her to Amit.

There was a sense of foreboding from the beginning.

Amit was the technical lead of our project - charming, handsome guy – so outwardly sophisticated that any girl ordinary could fall in love with him at the first sight and so inwardly ordinary that anyone sophisticated could understand his true nature at first glance. I knew him more than anyone else. I knew him more than he knew himself. Staying late nights at office, dropping me home, those hours of talking on phone, hanging out on weekends – we were more than just friends but less than lovers. At least that’s what I thought, until she came. And robbed me.

How can she? How can he? How dare them?

They looked content and peaceful – Amit with his charming face and strong shoulders and she, with her hair scattered on Amit's thighs and black beautiful eyes staring right at me. Only those eyes were now devoid of life. I had killed them both. I took my kitchen knife, made its blade red hot on the gas burner and sliced their throat while they were asleep.

I had exploded, and they became victims. It wasn't easy for me. For them too...

choices...

Dindu was aware of his emotional insecurity. Frequently he would fall into his negative self and lose all his energy to fight back. Handling emotions had never been easy for him especially when he grew up and emotions started becoming stronger and choices more complicated. Relationships and family meant nothing more than an emotional liability. He could never draw strength from his family and was mostly left alone in making important choices of his life, the choices he thought he would never have to make. Somehow he was surviving, but he barely felt alive.

Jay had come in his life a year ago. She was a pain in the beginning, with all uncomfortable questions and those curious, honest eyes. But slowly a bond started building between the two. Dindu could speak openly to her, which evaporated his hardened feelings and his heart felt lighter. Jay was always happy to be a listener. After a few months, Dindu had reached the threshold where friendship starts transforming into a relationship. He was feeling emotionally more stable and alive for the first time in many years. He had decided to let her know how he felt about her.

He still remembered the morning he had thought he would let her know. A strange aura had descended on her face that day. She looked beautiful, much prettier than she usually was. The same morning Jay had introduced him to her fiancée. Dindu remembered that he had managed to smile and congratulate them both and wished them luck. They got married a few months later. Dindu had excused himself from attending the wedding because he had been transferred to a different city. The day before he left the city, he wrote in his diary:

May be the real question is ‘When it will be’ and not ‘Who it will be’. It will be hard. It was a tough choice…

readme...

This is a lot of pressure. Meaningless, but undeniable. I don't want to listen to anyone anymore, my anger is about to spill over my patience. Moments when I want to be heard but there is no one to listen to me. And I cannot make anything out of my own words. Mostly noise. I am cultivating a volcano with boiling words, blistering me from inside.


I paint graffiti of my thoughts - result of unheard, incomprehensible voices screaming inside. Desperate attempts to be free from this noise. I wonder - what's the purpose of words - to create noise, or to create silence...

dolce far niente...

Note: Embedded in "italics" are the quotes by Robert Frost.

I wish I knew how to be idle with dignity.

“The best way out is always through.”

Even though I try to somehow keep my brains occupied, still some moments of void and vacuum remain untouched, which suck the sanity off my existence. Though it is inevitable one day or the other to face the breathlessness of that vacuum, yet there is this disease called ‘hope’ which keeps one away from accepting the inevitability. One day everyone’s got to learn how to keep their mouths and brains shut.

“The reason why worry kills more people than work is that more people worry than work.”

You are given everything. Your basic needs are satiated till the extreme of saturation. Still you are left with more resources to dispose off. That’s when ennui creeps in with its worst horrors. Indiscipline and ennui are the worst diseases of mind. They enter your life like ‘common cold’ and later turn into incurable lumps of existential cancers.

“The brain is a wonderful organ. It starts working the moment you get up in the morning and does not stop until you get into the office.”

Last few days have been total chaos - shifting the house, filling application(s) and sending packet(s) to university(s). Big fight was to adapt to the mosquitoes of new house and the ‘stray dog’ which woke up 4 o’clock in the morning and started barking just below the window of my room. So, this morning when the canine singer started bhau-bhauing with his natural alarm mechanism, I took one small lemon from the kitchen and let the gravity do the rest. ‘Saala ‘kutta’ ab kabhi subah subah bhaunka to me will throw watermelon this time…’ As per mosquitoes, I have a mosquito net now – an impregnable wall of perforated clothing to prevent the ‘Anopheles Arabiensis’ from sucking away drops of my hemoglobin.

“Love is an irresistible desire to be desired irresistibly.”

I realized how poor I am at talking and how good at writing. The proof - ladies not able to spend even two minutes with me talking vis-à-vis, while the same ladies spend hours chatting tête-à-tête on messengers!

“A poem...begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness. It is a reaching-out toward expression; an effort to find fulfillment. A complete poem is one where an emotion finds the thought and the thought finds the words.”

As I set my feet on the ground, the earth beneath me starts trembling... (This one's mine ;) )

are you safe with yourself?

Famous Chinese painter and philosopher Ching Hao said: There are six essentials in painting. The first is called spirit; the second, rhythm; the third, thought; the fourth, scenery; the fifth, the brush; and the last is the ink.

More often than not a person is left alone with himself and his thoughts. Everyone cannot handle these thoughts. Everyone does not (or cannot) enjoy his or her own company. And this solitude is inevitable, one day it comes. One day, everyone gets to encounter his or her inside talking face to face… Solitary confinement given to hardest and coldest of criminals, leaves them crumbling with fear and paranoia. Solitude is something hard to handle.

Sometimes, it is the most silent moments of life which are the noisiest. These are the moments which really matter.

When a person feels in harmony with himself, if a person feels safety from his own thoughts – he feels secure elsewhere too. When a person isn’t safe from his own thoughts, he can neither be anywhere else.

But you see… these thoughts are no real. Yeah! Thoughts aren’t real. Thoughts are something which are formed somewhere inside our brain. You look at this brain map, structure & functions of individual parts of brain and you will come to know what actually is behind the thoughts. Limbic system, cerebrum, medulla oblongata… every part has a role to play. And that is the fundamental pattern our brain follows. Can’t change that... From the most mundane thoughts of liking something, to the most influential life changing thoughts take shape in the same brain.

Then what is it that gives rise to these incomprehensible thoughts? It is the rhythm. You see. Our whole body is in one rhythm or the other every moment. It’s how we are breathing, how our heart is beating, how the blood is flowing in our veins, how our internal organs are working… all these factors form a specific rhythm inside us and that in turn form thoughts.

All thoughts are mere responses to the external stimuli which have been fed inside us since the time we were born. Have you ever looked at a newspaper without first knowing that it is a newspaper, or have you ever looked at moon without saying to yourself that you are looking at moon? Can you look at Indo-Pak cricket match without getting excited; can you forget for a while that you belong to a country?

Enough!

I went to an SBI bank today since I had to get some Demand Draft work done. Government Bank as it is, opens at 10:30 and so there were some 20-30 people already packed outside the gate of the bank. As soon as the gate opened there was disorder and chaos because everyone tried to get in together. Similar thing once caused death of 96 people in Hillsborough in 1989. The point is this – thoughts, though virtual their existence is, keep waiting at the door of our consciousness to get served, all through the day, every moment. Now if you delay attending to them they are going to create chaos! I mean SBI could have learnt something from ICICI Bank but ‘old habits, die hard’. No matter how stupid or how great a thought is, it demands attention from our awareness, otherwise if left unsatisfied creates turbulence later!

Just need to ask how safe are you with your own company... And next time you get a spate of thoughts just issue them a service token and serve them one by one. Not to forget, open up early, don’t delay!

Godspeed!

peeing off the pressure...

GPD growth is about to touch double digits, FII flows are no more flows, they are in spate, Sensex is almost kissing 20k, even the CEO's are saying get the life first then try to balance it:

When asked about the importance of work-life balance, ICICI Bank CEO KV Kamath said: "In the history of our evolution, we are in a phase where work comes first, then life, and then you think of balance.'' Agreed Bharti Airtel chairman Sunil Mittal: "This is our time. If we spend the time in building the nation, we can afford to relax later. We have no time to think about work-life balance." Is anyone surprised, then, that Mr Kamath is ET's Business Leader of the Year, while Mr Mittal's Bharti Airtel is ET's Company of the Year!

Overall, it's getting insane, and growth is becoming very difficult to handle. A guy gaining 20 kg a year is called obesity or growth, I am perplexed! But anyhow, big shots can digest big things without constipation or fat. They convert everything to muscle!

So in this time of extreme pressures, one needs to keep his pores open and strong. The more one can digest this growth today, the more will he/she relax tomorrow. Pee off the pressure, get hold of the life and ride on! This is the mantra. But hey! Who is saying the words...

PS: BTW - Had a departmental celebration today. VVS Laxman (Seems today it was his B'day also) was the chief guest there who was apparently paid handsomely by the company to talk a lot of corporate bullshit... short term goals, long term goals - assholes! FYI... Laxman accepted publically that 'Saurav was the best captain he has played under' in front of some 1000 associates (but no media). It's a kind of insider information for the readers!

this one without a title...

I lived first two years of my post education (formal) life without a television. That’s not something to be proud of but just for the records. In college hostel we had a common room where 260 inmates of the hostel struggled with time, remote and each other to watch their favorite shows. I remember having an argument with one of the guys who wanted to watch ‘Bourn vita Quiz’ on ESPN and I wanted to see a show on Nat Geo. None of us was ready to budge when a large group of Sun TV fans rushed in and the majority won. The other guy joined them triumphantly, for he understood Thamizh, and I had to go back in my room and play Minesweeper on my PC! I remember only one occasion (apart from cricket matches) when every student irrespective of his language & origin was sitting, in the common room with all lights switched off & only TV screen shimmering with cathode radiations, silent, focused and watching TV in the common room. It was when Zee TV was airing ‘Kamasutra’.

Post education era was a mix of mixing up with some things and drawing lines with some others. Finding our own interests, exploring new experiences and of course the search for a meaning in the work we do was major occupation during that time. After two years of search and simulations (useless) a 21 inch box of wonders moved in my life. And when the wire of wisdom was plugged in it from behind miracles started appearing on its screen. I started living the days of past. Most of the time this TV kept channeled into HISTORY, HBO, Star Movies, PIX, TV 18, Star World and not to forget Discovery and Nat Geo. Discovery’s Biggest Shows were in the breakfast & lunch menu and babes of Baywatch and Sex & the City for dinner. FRIENDS, Seinfeld and the frequently repeated movies on Star had become part of everyday life. By now, I had watched every TOW… of FRIENDS at least thrice which comes in Star World and Zee Café. And I was still watching them until day before yesterday the Box was gone!

Thakur had brought the TV when he shifted from Mumbai to Hyderabad. He took it away (even after severe protests-cum-requests from his flat-mates) when he shifted from Hyderabad to Gurgaon. After it went I realized that I was so addicted to it that it’s just 48 hours I have not been with it and I am compelled to write about it.

Sitting on a chair with remote in your hands and a cable wire behind your TV, you can virtually switch between the worlds you want to live in. You have more then 200 options, more than 200 worlds and more than 200 perspectives to be with at any time – 24 by 7. From the most mundane to the most significant – there is a huge band of variety among channels. It reminds me, just 10 years back the struggle in our village was to get your TV tuned in from DD1 to DD2 because of the ‘The Arabian Nights’ cartoon series and a Saturday Matinee movies. Today we don’t wait or struggle; we just press the thumb and keep pressing it until we get what we want, what we hate or what we love – ultimately to get connected to the world.

Sadly, or perhaps not-so-sadly the TV is now gone and I am left with only a humble laptop whose half of the features were victimized by my curiosity of having XP instead of VISTA. And gone with the TV are FRIENDS, SATC and Baywatch… Everything… Stupid soaps of Star, Extreme shows of Discovery (especially Man Vs Wild which had started only recently), Holmes of History have all been taken away from me  :( ...

After TV left me, I realized I used to think other people’s thoughts. I had images of Man Vs Wild in my brain when I was alone. I had voices of Jack Nicholson and Udayan Mukharjee (of CNBC TV 18) in my head. I could hear the tune of Airtel’s ad in my head. I could see the hundreds of bikini clad babes of Axe Vice! I could replay the Amul Macho add in my head!

It is amazing that my brain remembers so much but every Hard Drive has limited GB capacity. Especially there shouldn't be more burden on the working memory (the RAM). The time now post-TV demands I clean my brain nerves. No thoughts in brain but still being aware of the being. I mean – what happens when there are no thoughts but still you know you are there? You hear every noise, every voice, you see every object, you touch every tangible thing – but thought is not there. Time is now to explore and find what happens when the thought becomes naught… Creepy!

PS: I heard Mr BKS Iyengar say here that ‘Mind is the king of the senses. And breath is the king of the mind. And it is our nervous system that drives our breath.’

a staple a day...

(I)

Almost every corporate office has a cafeteria which significantly affects the daily routine of corporate workers. And especially of those health sensitive bachelors(M/F), whose weight has been increasing like GDP of emerging markets since they joined the industry, but the actual flab growth is seen only around the Special Digestive Zones. Quality of the cafeteria and subsequently the health of company's work force can be sized to a great extent by looking at the numbers and ratios in associate delight surveys, workplace satisfaction surveys and attrition rate surveys.

It is an inspiring sight watching people spoon off the oil floating over 'daal fry', dusting off raw 'aata' from half baked 'rotis', soaking dry the oily 'pooris' with paper napkins, taking out small pieces of 'paneer' from the 'paneer butter masala' and at the same time discussing how the rupee appreciation will affect net quarterly revenue of the company and what will be the impact on the variable component of their salary. Maximum of the crowd fill their plates with every dish in the menu, most of which goes uneaten. Well, when there is unlimited grub available for mere fifty rupees who will not compete to maximize his or her consumption? Food sucks anyhow, but wasting it is not a good thing to do. If only hunger could be understood – the bhookh – 'pet ki', 'atma ki', 'jism ki'… he he he…

(II)

Once upon a pleasant time in ancient India, scholars (today's nutritionists) had defined the diets for every work group to maximize their productivity. Brahmins abstained from all the food which tickled their senses to dangerous levels. Kshatriyas, accordingly, had a predefined dietary routine for their strenuous physical requirements. But many years later, when Brahmins were sitting beside Kshatriyas doing code review and quality audits, there was confusion on the proposed diets which could not revised in due time. When Kshatriyas ate their chicken biryani in front of their Brahmin counterparts, Brahmins were in confusion – we do the same work as Kshatriyas then why can't we eat the juicy butter chicken?

(III)

PS: One 'tandoori chicken' PJ I came across recently:

Q:: What is the height of unemployment?
A:: Spider's web in a prostitute's pussy! =))...

sometimes...

Sometimes:

- You just have to stop listening to yourself.
- You need to just give up.
- You need to just walk away.
- You need to accept the defeat.
- You need to accept that you were not good enough.
- You need to accept that you are being controlled from outside.

Sometimes:

- You need to hear the voice of your heart.
- You need to hold on for one more minute, one more day, just once more.
- You need to stay and keep fighting.
- You need to put everything at stake.
- You feel you will never sell your present peace for your future prosperity.
- You wish you knew how to be silent.

ceasing words...

A post dedicated to the silence of the heart and head. A post dedicated to the satisfied souls...

an intellectual orgasm...

Knowledge cannot be distributed like alms, knowledge cannot be transferred like e-checks.

Knowledge happens. It happens when the 'master' is ready to give and 'student' is ready to receive. It is like an intellectual intercourse, at the end of which both individuals get enlightened. Without this moral pre-requisite, it only turns into an intellectual orgy, where one person plays a victim and the other a criminal, or both play victims or both play criminals.

god that failed...

This is something which now makes me ashamed of being born and brought up around such religious philosophy.

A religion of irrational, ignorant, hypocrite, educated-fool majority which lost the meaning of religion somewhere on the road of civilization! Why can't we take religion beyond simply showing off with mindlessness? And it is not only with Hinduism!

Sethu Samudram is another stigma! Why can't we take religion out of politics?

But then... Where should the religion go?

It should go back to where it belongs - into the individual... as sidin said some years back!

trying anti depressant...

Apun ka dimaag mein salaa kuchh chemical locha ho gayela hai...

I need to properly train my brain
From the start, once again
Otherwise this ennui & this rain
Will leave me hopeless & insane!

Oh good... it rhymes... :)...

where do i belong?

It is a question that consciously or unconsciously creeps into every mind at the times when a person needs to find out his or her roots. Whatever the life has been, what it could have been and what it is, create an image of what the life should be. In the course of life, we meet lot of people and some of them are the images of our own future. There is a strange similarity between the two lives, running parallel in space but differs only in the time; as if the two lives are at two different ends of the same string of time.

I met or know some such people. My life would sure follow theirs as the time passes by, if I make the choices they have made. And there is every possibility of me making those choices. But none of their lives have been a role model for me, and I can only pray that I don’t end up on those plateaus.

During one of my visits home, I met a person named Kumar, on my way from Delhi to Chandigarh. A carefree look, hippy outfit, inebriated, with two filled bottles of Bombay Safari in his bag – he was a mechanical engineer from a college in AP (so am I). He had worked in Jalandhar for some time and left his job of 3000 rupees some 15 years ago. The reason was that 3000 rupees were not enough to buy him his quota of cigarettes. He left his home and went to Leh and worked in a hotel there for some time. Then he went to Goa and started his own restaurant named ‘Namaste’, which has its branch in Thailand also. He had a Mexican girl friend, a hut in south Goa, a boat, a hammock and a dog. He said he will not marry his girl friend but they are planning to have a child. There was a bitterness of frustration in him about India and Indians, the frustration which comes when you know nothing can be done with the way life is but you cannot live with that. He was a person who knew that he had lost his struggle to the wrong, but he was running away from accepting that. He was running away from life, from the claustrophobia he felt in the world. The kind of outlook I had at that time, I could have very well turned into the same person.

Then there was this person Yoshi in Auroville (Pondicherry) who had come there from Israel after visiting almost every country of the world. One thing he said made an impression in my mind. He said: ‘I traveled across the world. But there wasn’t a place I could call my home. Then finally I came to Auroville and I have been living here since 18 years. I lived here through every situation, from the time when there were no steel utensils or LPG to cook food. I built my home here and now my roots are here. This is where I belong.’

Then during my recent visit home when I was coming back, I met another person. This person had “fifteen” years of experience in IT industry in which he had ‘worked’ (that’s what he said) in “nine” companies, that comes to less than two years per company. From those fifteen years, he had lived five years in the US. After working for fifteen years, he left IT industry and opened his consultancy firm in Delhi. The kind of choices I was about to make after coming back from home would surely have led me to that. But I never could imagine myself being that person.

Then there is my maternal grand father (my mom’s father’s brother) who had left home when he was very young. He went to Bombay and joined Indian Navy in 1960’s. Since then he has been living there and comes back to the village once in a year. Now when he has crossed 70, he returns home searching for his roots. I wonder where he belongs now and what he thinks. Will he be content that he found life away from his home and lived it through, or will he be sad that now when he has reached the end of his journey, he has gone so far that it is impossible to return to his own home, and that he will get annihilated in an alien land, where there is hardly anyone who he can call his own?

I am always left wondering at the end of such thinking sessions that where would my journey end. Where do I belong?

weekend weakness...

It pisses me off hard when there is nothing to do on weekends. These two days and three nights have become more of a concern than a joy of retreat from work. Earlier I used to have something to read, but now that urge has started diminishing gradually. Sitting mindlessly in front of the television and watching mindless creativity (if that can be called so) is what happens now. But oh! I cannot sleep. I cannot inspire my mind to keep lying down on bed. When I close my eyes and try to give myself off to the darkness, every time I find a pain in the head, as if something is trying to escape from there.

I have stopped reading paper books. Now I read (if at all) the e-Books. The 50 kg burden of the wealth of my books is now compressed into 1 GB of space in my laptop’s hard disk. And this does not increase the tangible weight I have to carry.

Most of the time, I journey through the internet trying to find something to read. Yesterday, during one such hang out, I found myself a very thought provoking idea of great Punjabi poet Bhai Vir Singh. It said: ‘For understanding different religions, the emphasis is not so much on points of similarity as on uniqueness. There are many things common between a cow and a buffalo; but the cow and the buffalo are not the same.…’

I end this aimless blog post with the following couplet by Mr. Basheer Badr:

Mujhe suku.n Ghane jangalo.n mein milta hai
Main raasto.n se nahin manzilo.n se darta hoon…

fear is fun...

The knowledge is not complete until one relinquishes whatever he has learned. Mind is like a glass of water. It cannot hold more than its capacity. Whether it goes to a small pond or to an ocean it cannot fill more than it can hold. The only way it can own everything is by breaking itself and dissolving into the ocean. Sushil's blog says it in hindi here.

Since few days there is this strange fear of death revolving around me. Questions of almost meaningless absurdities are disturbing the peace of mind. Inevitable it is, but I don't want to escape from my fears anymore. After being scared of my fears for sometime now I have started getting intrigued by these questions. What will become of me after I die? Body will feed the earth, but where will I go? What will become of me? What is it that is floating in my head? What am I? Who am I?

Lord Krishna said a lot about this in second chapter of Bhagvad Gita:

Nainam Chhindanti ShastraNi, Nainam dahatii pavakah
Na Chainam kledtyantapoh, na shoshayatii marutah...

&

na jayate mriyate va kadachin nayam bhutva bhavita va na bhuyah
ajo nityah shashvato 'yam puraNo na hanyate hanyamane shariire...

It intrigues me now what this actually means. Just knowing these words is not enough until that fear has subsided from my total existence. My mission has transformed into becoming a person who has overcome all his fears. I want to make my fear fun.

This endless journey - when will it end?