candid conversations

  

   is there eternal peace                              

 i ask a banyan tree

meditative he's  been 

for long lost centuries

whizzing in theirs nests

birds and little scurries

line up his neck

itch his roots 

nibble his leaves

banyan mute and steady

eaten and teared apart

braving the raveging

braving the incessant miseries 

quietly wondering i asked

how do you find the peace

in this heat searing

how do you find peace 

in chills bearing

nay...its all perjury

the perennial banyan smiled

Its constance beamed

i love my lord

my God 

with all my heart

therein lies true peace

beautiful pain


have you felt that pain today
nay, not the bodily ailment...
that wrecks your knee or splits your head away


have you felt that pain today
not the humiliating pain of accepting
that you cannot go forward again


have you really had that pain today...
if its not physical...
is it then some psycho coctail....


then i ask again, 
to men swooned in ecstasy
with exotic pails gone over their heads
drenched deep in frolicks of your monies
have ye really felt the pain?


 pain of not letting go
when everyone said it'd be okay
pain, of seeting a goal 
and following it to the very end,
pain of letting a temptation by
without raising an eye
 pain of running that one last lap
pain of keeping at it when snores go by
pain, the joyous pain of winning yeah.....
have you felt that pain today...?




PART II
Lives go by, wihtout a recap
of what yesteryears have been
in monotony of drudgery
in helplessness of divinity,
in lethargy of eternity,
in lust of of infamy,


lives go unfullfilled 
in wait of morrow sunny, 
in brutal twist of destiny, 
in askence of a bloody penny,
in wait of ascendency


Its the PAIN 
the bloody, nasty inner pain
with the necessary pail of 
ice cold water, upon our heads
in winter's midstay,
pain, the bloody nosed gain
of smiling at the opponent
at end of round thirteen


its for that pain 
that our lives have a meaning
its after that pain that
the necter becometh
its that beautiful pain
that we remember having taken
to climb atop our everest
most acute of all sensations
is that bloody pain


its the pain, the pain most beautiful
when all others are seeking joy fleeting
and you sit down, to take that pain
for one day....
all this pain 
would become all that joy

my first article

                                          a flirt with SSB

I never wanted to be in the army. I really didn’t. never mind that I came from a proud lineage of army officers and war heroes. My father, my paternal grandfather, my  maternal grandfather, my great grand fathers….all were proud part of army. But not me. I hated the marching and discipline and relentless workload that came with the job. I was better off being an engineer. But my family was literally pushing me to go for it.
And so it happened, I got my call for SSB interview and off I was on a two day long train journey to Allahabad, the hometown of Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru, the world capital of pan chewing and spitting (the city is literally red with pan stains!!)

As I headed off from the station to the army center, I was firm in my resolve to not to get selected no matter what it takes.

The fun started from the second day onwards with the psychological test. There I wrote answers which I knew would have me screened out on the first day itself. According to the test I ought to have been a raving lunatic.
After the test followed a group discussion where we had to write a story upon a picture given to us. I wrote a crazy story on an alien who has landed on earth to gain nirvana by becoming a Buddhist, on a football match scene. I practically shouted everyone down in narration and interrupted the speaker.
I thought the army guys wouldn’t be psycho enough to keep me there. Infact I was so sure of my success that I had even booked my train tickets back home.

But hallelujah, a miracle occurred and I was selected. We bid a farewell to our teary eyed friends who got evicted. The rest of the day was spent in roaming around the city which was dirtier than Hiroshima was after the nuclear explosion, only in this case it was pan that was all around.

The third day was the most memorable. We had our physical tests that day. Dressed in white we went to the obstacle course. The first obstacle up our sleeves was the snake race, in which a team has to take a long rope through various obstacles while holding on to the rope. We also had to scream a slogan in the process. We started off and screamed jai hind loudly enough to puncture our lungs and ear drums. We were all excited to do something so fun together…..until came in our front a ten foot wall which we had to climb. All of us did so somehow, but our friend “Motoo”, a 120 kg giant was barely able to breathe, forget climbing. It took three people from below and two from above to be able to get that sumo over the wall. The rest of the course was somehow completed with the load of 120 kg s on our shoulders. But it was an awesome experience to do such a thing with friends.

That was followed by some more physical tests and then we were given off. We decided to go sightseeing for the day. Our group of five took a taxi to see the sites. First up was Nehru house. It was a grand estate with huge garden and a double storied house with more books than our college has and a lift too!!(The man was filthy rich to have a lift for ten stairs to climb!)
Next up was the sacred sangam of Allahabad, the “greatest spiritual spectacle”, as the sadhus there told us. Our hopes of seeing it were shattered however, when we were told that boating was forbidden for SSB cadets. My other friends headed off to see some drub castle ruins. But being a man of courage and conviction, I decided to go to the centre of the sangam and have the holy dip. The boatman a thin pale man of fifty who looked a hundred and fifty took me there taking an hour for doing so. In the middle of Sangam I stripped and jumped off . The sacred waters of Ganges and Yamuna were filthier than a nullah, with bits of plastics, decaying materials and stools all floating right in my face. I was already repenting my decision. But to my horror, my boatman was furiously paddling to the other shore. I started screaming and waving my hands, but to no avail. My friends realized I was in trouble. They took a motorboat and came for me. We followed the damned thief. He was paddling fast enough to win an Olympic gold. As we neared him, he suddenly turned and thrust his knife at me. My friend however grabbed hold of him and snatched the knife. After several punches, kicks and a solid blow from a rod, justice was restored and my clothes returned. We happily returned to shore, and laughed for a very long time over the incident. But that day my friends had saved my life and risked their own. We were strangers till 3 days ago, but today we had a bond stronger than any. We were brothers.

When we came back we played all the evening , talked, told jokes, told about ourselves and got to know each other, we told of incidents and of our homes and many other things.
That bond that we developed was so strong that I  wanted  to be with them. I suddenly knew that being in army was much more than just marching and parading. It was a band of brothers who shared their troubles and walked with each other. They could lay their lives for their nation and especially for each other.

The next day I fell ill. The “purifying ” dip in the Sangam had definitely purified me. With fever running there was no way that I could hope to do the physical challenges of the fifth day. Then on top of it, I puked on the feet of the officer who was taking our test. I don’t think I got very good marks from him

But the most touching part was that each of my friend helped me throughout the course. The even nursed me through the night. I was touched by their camaderie that only a soldier displays towards his fellow one. The next day I recovered and was frantically hoping to be selected this time. I had worked this time and really pushed myself.

But the miracle wasn’t to be this time. As it slowly sinked in that I couldn’t be any longer with my friends, my brothers, my emotions also started welling up. I realized the tradition of my forefathers and wanted to continue it with the pride and courage with which they had.

Now it was all over.
As I parted ways with hugs and tears, I vowed that the next time I go for the SSB it wouldn’t be a flirt.
Jai Hind.

sleepkarmas

the emotions of our body and the symptoms of our soul are very hard to detect

I really want to write a story, I really do and a good story at that....But the problem that I face is the absolute lack of hard work that I am willing to put into anything,...except sleeping of course for which I have more than ample tim, in fact so much so that I dream even of sleeping. I don't reackon there is anybody else who is quite as inclined to sleeping as I am. Far from being merely a past time, it has developed into a full fledged lifestyle of its own. The lifestyle of sleeping and the lifestyle of not sleeping at all are two very different sides of the same coin. In one case the guy probably had the last birth of sloth where he/she had had more than enough time and energy or rather the lack of it to sleep to their hearts desire. But some unfortunate fellow might have had to spend a lifetime of an elephant, which spends despite its enormous size a very tiny fraction of its lifetime sleeping. The majority of its lifetime I suppose goes into walking haphazardly in search of food and water. And as the strict laws of Karma demand the absolute balance of things over the period of births, thou shalt sleepeth if eye thine hadn't slept a wink in your birth bovine. Thus the poor man dictated by the laws of Karma sleeps and some other unfortunate souls on the other sid e of the scale spend a lifetime craving one single good bout of sleep. This complementary action ofcourse is what is the most beautiful about the whole thing.

Now suppose I was able to trade sleeping hours with someone else. No, not in the sense of strictly enforcing this as a matter of some disciplinary action. But to be done by some sort of divine intervention wherein the hours allocated by the lord himself to us can be swapped around like some sort of currency. This would certainly end the dollar woes and give us an imaginary currency for all sorts of the imaginary things that we do purchase. But with dwelling much into the sleeponomics, we should focus on its effect upon the quality of life. Those lethargic souls who have for years dedicated their energies towards the noble work of sleeping would be able to trade their sleeping hours for the waking hours of some insomniac who has for years been trying to sleep and despite the best medicines, hasn't been able to ever sleep comfortably.....except for the times they get tranqualises for causing public nuisance at midnight ofcourse...but that's another story, to be dealt some other time. The thing however upon which I wanted to lay particular emphasis upon was the theory of auto balance. Many things in nature are aligned to the natural principal of auto balance. When the grazing animals start exceeding a particular number, automatically nature devices ways to limit their population, either by predetory action or by their own activities such as migration or fights for mating and sorts...but nature has done grave injustice in applying its principal wantonly in the distribution of the sleeping hours. This quantity is not quite the same as the herd of a million animals. It is a very personal endeavour which each one of us undertakes by the lifestyle that we have to choose in the course of our lives. A guard who has to do night duty would suffer terribly by virtue of bad karma ..... u noe he cud hav never been able to sleep in his previous birhts. On the contrary, some other person, a tired buisnessman who really wants to sleep after the hectic time spent in his office, just wants to get a wink of the precious pearl of sleep but is absolutely unable to do so because of some bad karma...u noe the karma plays both sides. It really is sad that our civilisation so advanced,,,,,,,and yet we are unable to do somehow exchange the hours of our sleep.

The national institute of sleep studies established for the purpose of examining the intricacies of this little known phenomenon has failed miserably in furthering the advance in this field by even a single nanometer, the reason being their own bad Karma which prevents them from waking up at work. Such tragedy and such comedy.....Shakespere would have made it into a play.....the tragedy of sleep which would have left the paltry tragedy of hamlet and romeo juliet far behind....

Wherewithal by understanding all the facts and by keeping all the figures in our mind I have come to the sincere conclusion that sleep as a subject has rarely been examined in terms of the Karmic dimension....but then there are millions of people out there who have had to suffer as a conseaquence of the lack of the research in this very important subject. What we really have to do now is to get hold of couple of insomniac scientists and get them to work at it reaaaaly to help the world become a better place.

blogging artform....................:0:

blogging.....the word itself sounds so strange.....blaaauggginggg.....like someone with a serious nasal problem.....bt a world exists where blogging is the thread common to many lives, to infact people around the world.....their lives are irrevocably connected by this medium.

In the true sense blogging is the perfect medium of exchange of ideas, of values and of that special thing...something about our own selves.

I sincerely believe that in the interest of the entire blogging community and of general universal harmony, i should start my blog with a general description of ......something...myself perhaps...

ok then let's do it formally...u noe with tie coat and all...a formal intro...

respected sirs and madams, (the very same who are currently staring at their computer screens)....i wish u all a very warm welocom...sorry welcome..

how are you

i am fine thank you

there, now that we've formally greeted each other.....we will start on a long and interesting journey through time and space over vast forgotton lands and so on and so forth....

i do have a very peculiar idea in mind....this is regarding winning....success.....getting ahead....having mojo whatever u may call it...

recently i went to take part in a marathon...it stretched over a distance of few miles at the most ...so for most of the professional runners it was just a sprint lap...but for most others...it was an agonising journey through hell....but that's not the point...the point is that the guy who won the marathon was a wanton son of a truck.....im not swearing at him....and neither am i angry at the fact that the two ton truckload won the marathon in a record time....and not by any personal endeavour of gutwreching practice or anything...he won because when the race started he was already standing at two thirds of the course...but no one evidently did notice the fact....and as things go...he wonn....and well even got praised for running inspite of his tremedous weight and winning....he's an inspiration now...he might even make a movie.....like seabiscuit...only in his case the name of the movie would be ocean biscuit or something.....

bt inspite of all that i've written...the point remains that he did win the race....by hook or by crook...and that's true for life too.....everyone salutes the rising sun...and no one cares where it came from..

even the holiest and the most prestigious historical figures have resorted to Mechavillian ways to win....look at the Hindu pantheon of gods...Lord Krishna won the Mahabharta to a great extent because of his cunning and crook....Now i am not a historical expert and neither am i a savant to dish out detailed analysis but, I hold my views just the same....Prophet Muhammad too was a great strategist....and was a great human being too.. but he too applied a lot of cunning and used all possible ways to secure his win....

the point is that inspite of all the ethical bullshit....winning is in short everything......sore loosers may praise the journey.....narrow loosers would disparage the winner......but it is the victory that remains important over and above everything else...and the rest of the social dillemmas....the values and ethics would be adjusted according to the winners idealogies.....

its survival of the fittest baby......survival of the fittest

What the hell'

07 june 07
The life as I have known it has never been simple and easy, the disasters that have always been around me have shaped my destiny and my life, the first major tragedy of my life was the day I was born and that was because the day I was born nine of my close relatives died an untimely death and all that was without an explanation.

Three years after I was born the day of my third birthday, both the buildings sorrounding mine collapsed and killed several people and again there was no explanation and just my birthday. The whole day that day my parents wondered if it was I who had done it somehow and had caused the disaster, but soon they waved the idea off .

On my sixth birthday again a great disaster took place, a flood in the Indonesia took the lives of thousands of people and again this was without any sort of explanation as any such activity was not expeceted before six months.