Who am I? What am I?

Good or bad
Happy or sad


Dark or bright
Heavy or light

Right or wrong
Verbose or song

Noise or silence
Compassion or violence

Harsh or kind
Is it me or my mind?

If mind is but an alibi
Then, Who am I? What am I?

Distraction – The Enemy Within

Days go by and nights get restless

Tossing around as dreams get edgy

Relentless pursuit of happiness

Amidst comparison, excuses and a vision sketchy

In what we call a society

We are but a social animal

Lurching and reacting with instinctive notoriety

Emotional dearth making us a quasi-cannibal

Despite the gifted intelligence

We are mere mortals

What outlives us is intangible & without accurate evidence

Yet we fight for the tangible and kill for alleged morals

 

To each his own

Not just one's choice, beliefs and perception

But also the goal and milestone(s)

And the mandatory loaded distraction

Once dwindled from our Focus

Each distraction multiplies into chaos

Ripple effects eventually provoke us

To find a way out of our pathos

Least realizing the magic within

Using others’ yardstick, we seek pleasure

If only we stayed calm and practiced discipline

Could we see the impact of our flawed measure

Success and happiness although unrelated

Mocks away at our intellect

Attempting to satiate an ego ever inflated

In meandering ways far from perfect

Life is but a countdown

In the cosmic vibration

Legacy has trickled down

Diluted by interpretation

Every cell in our body speaks

If only we could listen

Following some ancestral techniques

Our Aura too can glisten

WORDS and 'Con'Text

There are numerous quotes and phrases that highlight the power of words.
Words begin and end wars. They create and destroy families. They break hearts and they have the power to heal.
Words are apparently so strong; it can either make or break someone’s life.

Is it really so? Well, technically not. It’s the emotions behind these words that does all of this.
Sometimes old texts and scriptures spark controversies and riots.
So whose emotions does it really depend on? The writer’s or the reader’s?
If a said extract is used in a speech, does it depend on the orator’s or the audience’s emotions?
Or does it depend on interpretation and grasp of language and grammar?
The contexts for such occurrences / speeches are usually set, in someone’s conscience.

My theory is it depends on the individual’s frame of mind and the context in which these ‘words’ are thrown or consumed.

Now, the word ‘context’ in itself is quite intriguing, you’ll see why.

On one hand, we have powerful motivational speakers who’ve made a career out of talking or using these ‘words’ to their advantage, who’ve inspired greater success stories. We’ve also seen people jump to conclusions and take drastic steps including committing suicide based on some words.
What really happens is that we the audience go in there with an expectation and either come out satisfied (read inspired) or feeling cheated (read dejected).
Yet again that entirely depends on the individual’s frame of mind.

On the other, there was this spiritual leader who was preaching how to ignore what the world says and thinks of us and urged each of us to find ourselves, not being influenced by others’ words and actions. He recommended that we focus on just being us. And yet there we were, still willing to be influenced by his words. Ironical – eh?

Words are mere reflections of our emotions and thoughts. We kind of choose what we want to hear or sometimes what we don’t want to hear triggering powerful emotions such as anger, distress and tears. That my friend is what words or ‘text’ does. It cons us – giving us our perspective and context.

Communication as such is a complete package. It includes words, tonality, body language and eye contact. Works best if used with touch.
The more evolved communication technology gets, the less understood we are as all these are either split and/or missed in most communication channels these days.

Also explains why the trend of having a pet has gone up dramatically in the last decade. Almost the same time communication technology has evolved. Co-incidence? Probably.

The secret to a loving relationship with a pet is that pets don’t use words. We believe that we understand each other. It works at some level because it uses the fundamentals of communication as a complete package including touch.

Next time you hear or read something regardless of the media, don’t let the text con you.

Let better sense and optimism prevail!

There’s something about the basics and fundamentals with me. I seem to see things threadbare.

The keyword being “seem” to see.

It started with analyzing an issue, a difficult individual or personality driven corporate battles. This habit spilled over into life itself. It’s almost like I see everything in 1’s and 0’s like Neo sees it in the last scene of Matrix (First part).

That movie was indeed prophetic. Today we are living in the Matrix. Everything around us is as fake as it can get. We are slaves to a system that pushes us into paying up. Taxes or EMIs. One way or the other.

We keep cribbing but struggle to stay within the system and in fact climb the ladder.

We’ve distorted the very meaning or definition of Happiness.

We are running around or driving each other crazy in this fast urbanized/westernized world.

We aim to have a lavish house without having the time to dwell in them.

We aim to have a lavish car without enjoying the drive in itself.

We aim and keep slogging for a mirage called “Happy Day”.  Even if it were to come, it wouldn’t last more than a ‘day’. The very next day, we would be back in the same rut.

We don’t have ‘Time’ for our people. However, we claim to be slogging FOR them.

We are all fooling ourselves beyond limits. Why do we work beyond office hours? Why do we travel crazy for hours in traffic? We are so zonked on weekends that we don’t want to get out of the house. What was the bloody point? Or What IS the bloody point?

We work hard for a promotion. Once promoted and with a meagre increase in salary, we are worried about tax saving. With that comes the most lucrative option of buying a house on EMIs. Rest of our life is ‘invested’ in servicing one EMI after the other.

Mind you – At the end of it, happiness is still elusive.

However, we’ve experienced Happiness. During our younger days.

The wealth we had was TIME and NOT money. That was immaterial. Reality never changes. Somehow, we have this weird belief that to be happier we need more money and then sacrifice the basic ingredient.

I’m all set to reclaim TIME.

Whether happiness still remains elusive or will my theory hold true, is yet to be seen / experienced.

Let better sense and optimism prevail! J

'Bang'istan OR 'Ban'istan

The age of producing visionaries and revolutionaries is passé. It’s the age of “reactionaries”.

There is a sudden outburst of reaction and they defy Newton’s laws as well.

For there is never an equal and opposite reaction. Reactions are always far more superficial and exaggerated.

It is sad when decisions are taken or changed on the basis of such reactions.

I’m hinting at the recent endeavor to change our ‘Bang’istan into ‘Ban’istan.

On one hand, our nation is grappling with a ‘men’tality that encourages rape and objectifies women.

On the other hand, we collectively howl at porn being banned.

This is where the real issue is left behind and superficially being dealt with by our very own reactionaries.

I’m not saying that porn is the only cause or even one of the causes of rape. The point is objectification of women. Let’s try and find out one valid reason why pornography exists.

Let alone the decision of some authority “allowing” us to view it or show it.

Here, I refer to pornography for the heck of it and not artistic expressions of erotica.

The issue is NOT that of freedom of expression or freedom to watch what we want in our privacy.

The issue is WHY watch it at someone else’s cost? 

Porn  gaining an “industry” status should be a shame.

Today the supply of porn exists and is growing at astronomical pace on the behest of an alleged demand. So why not kill the demand? What's wrong with it? I don't support the concept of 'ban' in general. But for this issue, why NOT?

This demand has got into scary proportions of voyeurism that makes us think twice in changing rooms, wash rooms, in hotel rooms. In the pretext of catering to the sadist invisible demand, there are possibilities of hidden cameras and each one of us being a potential porn star on one of these sleazy websites.

The issue is not about hypocrisy. It’s not about a nation that gave ‘kama-sutra’ doing something dramatically ironic.

Yet again, I ask for one valid reason WHY "Porn" should even exist. Let alone the freedom around it.

Happy Friendship!

The basic fabric or the foundation stone of our societal structure is discrimination and hypocrisy.

Before evolution, the primary objective of all living beings was pure survival. Someone at some point in time decided that we must live in a society instead of killing each other in the name of survival.

However, living in a society demanded people to assume roles. Roles meant division of labour. Could have been based on ability, availability of resources etc. The next obvious step was to choose a leader to manage these resources. With each role and the first level of hierarchy came a set of privileges. Thereby planting the first seed of discrimination. Anything after that has been a case of one’s understanding, perception of role, point of view and/or convenience.

Anything one does or says has been based on their understanding.

Rules were made by some for the others to follow. Hypocrisy was thus born.

Communities based on common tasks or responsibilities probably gave birth to tribes. Next step was creating an identity. Maybe this has something to do with the current caste system.

Adapting to change without a fight is not an inherent quality of us homo-sapiens. Survival had taught us to be extremely barbaric. Taming for the sake of society was a daunting task and against the nature at that time.

The side-effects of inculcating a societal structure came with its share of resistance and revolution. The best proven method to tame anyone is by scaring. That of the unknown.

Seeds of religion were thus sown.

Yet again, the concepts of God, Satan, heaven and hell were off-springs of these seeds.

Every citizen who then comes in to the society is given a “house” with a “set of clothes” that he/she is expected to use without changing or questioning.

People have sacrificed lives or taken lives ever since in proving that their house or clothes is better than the others.

What it has manifested itself into today is another case of cross-pollination and interpretation as per convenience. I use the word ‘convenience’, not carelessly but because it has been as per each one’s understanding not taking the pain to realize the true objectives / goal of any action.

What really bakes my noodle is if those objectives are still relevant at all?

Comparison in the societal structure has pushed mankind from ‘hunt’ to ‘feed’ and from ‘need’ to ‘greed’ with unreasonable expected ‘speed’.

Relations and relationships have been strained in the endeavour to display a sense of belonging to the society without understanding the objectives. The root cause being expectations and disappointments thereafter.

The one thing that has remained unaffected or rather shone in all this churning or ‘manthan’ has been the concept of FRIENDSHIP. There are no limitations or boundaries to friendship. There are no rules or guidelines to being a friend. Friendship in itself is not driven by any need.

Friends can assume any role as the need of the hour is and yet remain Friends in its purest form.

Some people still abuse or misuse it is another story. But once they do so, it’s their individual friendship that falls prey but the concept remains unhurt by and large and is still widely accepted and practiced by humanity.

When the concept has stood the test of time through such a rough evolution, how can we dedicate just a “Day” to it?

Long live such a wonderful yet unaffected concept.

Happy Friendship - PERIOD!

WAR it is!

I’m not referring to battles that cause death and devastation or the ones that is synonymous to blood and gore. This WAR certainly causes pain but not of physical nature.

In the 80s and 90s. if there were a fight/argument on the street, people would gather around either to relish the free ‘tamasha’ or some might even add in a few punches of his own without knowing the cause of fight. Some good Samaritans would try and resolve the tension on hand too. However today, it’s just WAR.

Not that human kind is newly introduced to the concepts of rain and some flooding, but now it’s all about the right angle/view with an exaggerated perspective. With the equipment to shoot in almost every hand, it is WAR.

And God forbid if there is any murmur of a celebrity illness or death, the mad rush to spread the news is sickening. In most cases, false news. Sometimes I wonder if the statement I read is a question where the writer simply forgot to add the “?” at the end of the sentence.

But like I said, it’s blissful, almost orgasmic WAR.

WAR is a new virus that has affected most of us. There is no vaccination or antidote available off the shelf. Instead, this virus is available very easily off the shelf or should I say, at the ‘click’ of a finger (not button).

The areas this impacts directly on our body are “eyes, neck, fingers and brain cells”.

The brain sometimes is overheated with high activity (something like high RPM in an engine).

Information Overload and compulsive urge to opine on just about anything and everything regardless of our own knowledge on the said topic.

One of the biggest but unnoticed side-effect is disorientation of all kinds.

Most dangerous side-effect however is that of an identity crisis.

We forget we are normal human beings with other roles to play in Real-life.

We all turn into a “WhatsApp Reporter” practicing “WhatsApp Reporting” – That’s the WAR I’m referring to.

The only way we can get rid of this is by exercising self-control.

“Determination is The Termination of all problems”.

That’s the true ‘Selfie’, if any.

Now, let’s not get started on the existing ‘Selfie’ virus.

That’s for another article and day to mull over.