Saturday, February 27, 2010

A friend is


A sweet pain in your ass


A kick making you fall and laugh

A hug never too tight

An idiot who annoys your girl friends and angers your parents

A grungy singer asking applaud.

A moron who teaches you to be stupid seriously

A shade in the rain and in the sun

A shadow that follows you even in the absence of light

The one you love despite the way he smells without two days of bath

A disaster

A thief who steals your razor blade and spoils your white shirt

A sigh of relief and joy

Roaming shelter away from home.

A bully you love

The one who always keep asking things

The one who cries hopelessly with a loose nose

© All rights reserved.

Friday, February 19, 2010

The Genius curse




“Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps down new roads armed with nothing but their own vision. Their goals differed, but they all had this in common: that the step was first, the road new, the vision unborrowed, and the response they received--hatred. The great creators--the thinkers, the artists, the scientists, the inventors--stood alone against the men of their time. Every great new thought was opposed. Every great new invention was denounced. The first motor was considered foolish. The first airplane was considered impossible. The power loom was considered vicious. Anesthesia was considered sinful. But the men of unborrowed vision went ahead. They fought, they suffered and they paid. But they won.”(Ayn Rand)

A genius is born ahead of his lifetime. It is hard or sometimes impossible for contemporaries to understand and relate with him. And incomprehensible has always been a threat to mankind: we are comfortable and secure with conventional consistent and certain. Those who try to cross certainty and predictability lines with conviction become a threat to the established, bringing forth a long and tedious conflict of beliefs and survival.

Galileo Galilei was condemned and punished for proposing the heliocentric view of galaxy: a view contradicting established beliefs of geocentric earth being the centre of universe. It challenged Church and, established astronomers and philosophers. Man has always placed himself highest and this theory questioned his superiority that sun is not moving for us, contrarily we are moving around the sun. Galileo faced a number of trials during his lifetime and was placed under house arrest Pope refused to bury him near his ancestors for vehement suspect of heresy. He was buried in a small room next to novices (Wikipedia)

Vincent Van Gogh was dismissed for “undermining the dignity of priesthood” in his early years. His paintings were rejected for displays because they did not fit in contemporary French impressionist style. Van Gogh could not even sell one painting of his during his lifetime and barely managed to feed himself three days in a week. He committed suicide at the age of 37.

Shakespeare was never revered in his lifetime (Wikipedia). Michelangelo lived in recluse and Newton could not gather to publish his calculus works in early years for the fear of criticism. Aristotle was accused of blasphemy and Einstein was detained from school.

Extraordinary intelligence fosters unparallel understanding, curiosity and conviction to create and nurture life around. But “a vision or a dream is very personal”(Osho) and unique. It shapes the bearer in its own form carving him out slowly from collective rock, making him distinct and separate from the background. And, seeing him distant, the separate background condemns him for his rigidity and aloneness. Vision is a curse for its bearer. It will not let him sleep or settle for less and it will not let him mingle with the crowd: a vision makes visionary insoluble contrasting alone and vulnerable. Almost every thinker, artist, scientist and inventor is condemned and denounced during his lifetime. Seclusion is the price they have to pay for the wealth they embrace inside.

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Ugly is beautiful!!!!

My granny used to have a mango tree in her lawn. One evening strolling around her garden, I saw a chameleon sitting on the mango tree. The chameleon had just jumped from the creeper and, its color was slowly changing from green to brown. Suddenly a thought pumped in my mind “It is a chameleon”, my lips curled downwards.

Granma was watching me .She walked slowly to me and asked “Isn’t it amazing how it changes its color?” I looked at her and said” But, it’s ugly. It is a chameleon Granma.”Granma smiled.

Few days later we walked to the market and Granma hit into a lorry accidently. Lorry bashed into a scooter that was driven by a young guy. He fell over a bucket of tomatoes. A bunch of young boys cracked up. Looking around he yelled “You ugly old women, look what you have done?”

Those words pinched my heart. Later that night I asked mom “Ma is grandma ugly?”


“Who told you that?” Ma asked

“The guy at the market said she was old and ugly.”

“But, she is the most beautiful women I have ever met. That means you have not noticed her properly?”Ma replied


I went to the Granma’s room. She was sleeping. I looked at her face. That was the most beautiful face I had ever seen: a face filled with compassion, love and grace.


It was beautiful because I was ready to see it. I could feel it because I wanted to feel her. Since then I have never seen an ugly thing and. even today I can tell you that old is beautiful and chameleons are fascinating.

See without judgment, hear without prejudice and feel without inhibitions: heaven is here, here is heaven. All is beautiful.

Sunday, February 14, 2010

Goodbye Bobby- a tribute to my friend

I had been trying Bobby’s number and, looking repeatedly for him in social networking sites, to my surprise he was not of the kinds to disappear in the crowd. But time is mightier than people and it shapes them to adequacy, so I slowly accepted that Bobby has changed. He was no more the crazy, rambling, ready to blast friend of mine. Or perhaps he accepted my timidity and walked out of hope.





Of all the people who taught me to speak Bobby was the first one. The moonlighted Basket ball court of college was our rehearsal yard. We sat for hours discussing giddy politics, friends and jokes. Often times it ended with “you are so irresponsible” and “you are so dumb” expressions. Two poles of a communal impression, one was fond of crowd and other inclined to retreat.



The girls he chose were crazier than him, none of them was ever sure that she liked him. So they kept coming and going and, surfacing and transferring his melodrama to me and his other friends. Our world gets as confused and messed up as we in ourselves are. Sometimes, I wondered if he ever thought before telling everyone that he had been dumped again.



I remember the day our bike crashed into herbage and, I tried hard to argue but ended up laughing. It was so hard to anger him when needed and when it wasn’t needed he was boiling like a volcano and often people who knew him felt like sitting on one. The last time we spoke, it was unbelievably difficult to stop him from landing in Vadodara, where me and my friend were stuck in riots.



But, despite all that he was and all that he did, he was of the very few people who were actually loved. His irresponsibility started at himself and ended at his friends: He was the first person to be relied upon at crucial times, a friend for whom his friends came before himself. Sporadically, I feel if he really knew his time was short here and so he never wasted it on preparing for future as we all did. May be he knew that when we stop living as ourselves,we start living through our friends.



Mankind is a little hard to understand: we have more words for abuse and few for love. We hesitate most to say that we love people rather than telling them "Fuck you" and "Go to hell". And those who say I love you with their being, we take them as absurd and dizzy.Here flowers sell cheap and guns price high. But, crazier people have something of great sanity in them: crazier one appears on the outside, wiser one is inside. This world has its own reasons to love bonkers; it misses jokers and rebels more than father figures.



Bobby, my friend I miss you and, wherever you are may you make as many friends as you had here.

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

That baffling human paradox

With great power lies great responsibility. Unlike nature that has very efficient methods of balancing power centers, man’s power centers are haphazard and self-regulated. Man is the only creature who can simultaneously live in two worlds: one on the inside and other on the outside.
And both can be diametrically opposite.
Besides, man can use borrowed powers: the powers developed by peaceful intelligent people can be used by destructive, unintelligent people. Creative growth solutions meant for peace and development can be used for destruction, genocide and terror. This combination of delusion and acquired potency brings forth counterfeit leaders and politicians and a hollow or forced governing system.
Every governing system no matter how beneficently conceived eventually tends to exploit the weaker segments of society. History shows us many examples of the worst implementations of benign ideologies. Communism conceived for equality and sanity has been applied by most insane dictators. Equal powers for all is used as all powers for one. Karl Marx and Lenin could never have imagined communism the way it was applied by Stalin.
Albert Einstein considered the theory of relativity that resulted in atom bomb, as his single greatest mistake in life. On the other hand, Harry Truman celebrated the night Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed.
Money that was invented as an excellent solution for relative worth has become the root of all evil among humans. A solution designed for active easy flow became an excellent method for passive, concealed hoardings.
Any creative idea comes as a coin: with both positive and negative sides. The owner is free to encash any of its sides. He is free to buy bread or poison from it. Ironically nature has no substitutes for wisdom. And it has no shortcuts to acquiring it either. Hard earned knowledge always carries wisdom within itself whereas book-acquired knowledge doesn’t. A life lived honestly and fearlessly produces knowledgeable and wise men: men with empathy, righteousness and intelligence.
Contrarily, pseudo knowledge earned in degrees, skills and techniques results in egotistical, destructive and rigid men. Men who do not know the worth or effect of power never hesitate to use it for wrong reasons.
It is a paradox that the more knowledgeable a person becomes the less he yearns for power. It seems as if in some warped way, power attracts the corruptible. A wise person will always hesitate to lead masses whereas an immature person will always rush towards it. So much so that he wouldn’t object to crushing others to succeed in his ambitions. Men love to reap where they never sowed.
Acquiring power helps a person ignore or hide his inferiorities or complexes.
But the fact remains that the big shots are only little shots that keep on shooting. Contemporary society which confuses power with greatness, has encouraged this mutation to flourish. Our social system has a tendency to respect the wrong attributes in subtle ways. The human power pyramid is working upside down. Rather than respecting individuals we respect possessions. This is one of the greatest tragedies of life as we know it to be.
Without a doubt….the right power in right hands blended with knowledge, wisdom, love and respect for life is humanity’s most urgent need at this time.