Half measures

“She taught me to laugh,

to be kind yet tough,

and that half measures

are never enough”

–To my mother by Leonard Wise

 

Faded destination

Its very dingy and depressing to be unsuccessful. Its even more sore to realize our abominable workmanship. The craft of being successful has become a faded illusion to me. Now standing at the brink of a passing year, nothing is left in it for me to rejoice….. let alone survive!!!!!

Now I am ignorant of directions and I dont see any roads leading me to my destination…. I am wonderstruck since I dont actualize any destination at all….!!!!!!

 

Identify the ‘real dogs’!!!!!

I was taken aback by the comment passed by the Chief Minister of the most literate state in India about the martyrdom of Sandeep Unnikrishnan. He stated that if it was not for Sandeep not even a dog would have turned towards them. He neither showed due respect to the patriot who laid his life for the country nor did he seem to be politically and diplomatically correct. In a country were diplomacy is always given a chance even when the heart has been shelled in to pieces, this should not have been a surprise to anybody.

We shed a part of our income to pay these public servants who has no control not even on their tongue. Lets take an example…… we have a maid servant at home and we pay her to do her job in the most appropriate manner. If she fails continuously to do her duties, what would be our reaction???? Will we keep her forever or we replace her with another one???? But in our democratic set up, we have to wait for 5 long years to show our reaction or objection to these hare brained and insane individuals.

I wonder where Mr. Maratha- jai Maharashtra- Raj Thackerey was when Mumbai was quivering in the terror attacks. It seems that his policy was not to allow any non maratha to live in Mumbai and it doesn’t pertain to non Indians at all. Terrorists are most welcome. Very amusing policy indeed!!!! Mr. Maratha should realize that those brave Indian Commandos who lost their lifes to liberate the city were not marathas alone but were from different parts of India. Its time for Mr. Maratha to agnize that attacking the innocent people who come to Mumbai to earn their livelihood is not the right way to define bravery. If he really loves his birth place, then take action to restrict the entry of foreign terrorists who spits fireballs on the heart of the Motherland.

I know that nothing is going to change. Diplomacy will be given yet another chance. And all those “enlightened” rulers of the country will try to remain politically correct sacrificing the beautiful face of our Motherland.

 

Punjab da sher

nandu my nephew

Sher-e-Punjab: Nandu ready for a costume party on Grand Parents day

 

My Web 2.0 odyssey

I am a fervid user of social networking sites and blogs. Little did I realize that I am due to sell this technology to corporates in a country hit drastically by the economic disaster or “slow down”- just to go by the common term. Never in my wildest imagination did I ideate that Orkut, Facebook and YouTube had so much to do with collaborative computing and web 2.0.

Nowadays, whenever I log in to any of these sites, I fail to see the beauty and utility of these applications….. I forget to realize the essence and gist of these tools…. what curbs my mind is collaboration, content-syndication, messaging-protocols, plugins, widgets etc which broadly comes under the term coined by Tim O’Reilly as Web 2.0.

Now I realize that the beauty of anything and everything will be at sea when we understand what it is made of….. whether it is technical applications or human beings… the less we know, the more we like it…. and familiarity indeed breeds contempt……

 

Quitting vagabondage

It has been more than a month since I wrote something here. Was a bit busy with work and the time in office was a hectic caboodle of chafes. A whole lot of assignments and a new but tight schedule as well. The clocks were adjusted to account for the daylight savings time and that entailed that my sleep will be delayed for an hour more.

The pilgrimage season has begun and I am on a fasting fling. That implicated a strict shift in my zoophagous food habits and strict abstinence from any form of flirting (mental & physical), insobrieties and tipsinesses. The facial hair growth is getting denser with every passing day and hopefully I am bound for a weight loss too. The purity of mind and body are basal requisites during this period of austerity….. and that is an acclivitous task………!!!!! I am tripping and falling…. straining to get up again and to be on course…… believing that I could elapse through the whole episode, perhaps with a bit of pain…… and ofcourse with His blessings…!!!!!!!!!

 

My Favorite Quotes From The Book Eleven Minutes By Paulo Coelho

My Favorite Quotes From The Book Eleven Minutes By Paulo Coelho

• “At every moment of our lives, we all have one foot in a fairy tale and the other in the abyss.”
• “While she was waiting for her Prince Charming to appear, all she could do was dream.”
• “She had to content herself with loving and suffering in silence until the end.”
• “When we meet someone and fall in love, we have a sense that the whole universe is on our side.  And yet if something goes wrong, there is nothing left!  How is it possible for the beauty that was there only minutes before to vanish so quickly?  Life moves very fast.  It rushes from heaven to hell in a matter of seconds.”
• “…but something always went wrong, and the relationship would end precisely at the moment when she was sure that this was the person with whom she wanted to spend the rest of her life.  After a long time, she came to the conclusion that men brought only pain, frustration, suffering and a sense of time dragging.”
• “I can choose either to be a victim of the world or an adventurer in search of treasure.  It’s all a question of how I view my life.”
• “(Don’t) listen to the malicious comments of those friends who, never taking any risks themselves, can only see other people’s failures.”
• “If I can walk on my own, I can go wherever I like.”
• “Life always waits for some crisis to occur before revealing itself at its most brilliant.”
• “Despite her apparent freedom, her life consisted of endless hours spent waiting for a miracle, for true love, for an adventure with the same romantic ending she had seen in films and read about in books.  A writer once said that it is not time that changes a man, nor knowledge; the only thing that can change someone’s mind is love.  What nonsense!  The person who wrote that clearly knew only one side of the coin.  Love was undoubtedly one of the things capable of changing a person’s whole life, from one moment to the next.  But there was the other side of the coin, the second thing that could make a human being take a totally different course from the one he or she had planned; and that was called despair.  Yes, perhaps love really could transform someone, but despair did the job more quickly.”
• “Beauty changes as swiftly as the wind.”
• “Humans can withstand a week without water, two weeks without food, many years of homelessness, but not loneliness.  It is the worst of all tortures, the worst of all sufferings.”
• “In love, no one can harm anyone else; we are each of us responsible for our own feeling and cannot blame someone else for what we feel.”
• “As if everything had been ordained by fate, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, as if she had known this man all her life or had already lived this moment in dreams and now knew what to do in reality…”
• “That’s my one great virtue: I refuse to deceive myself of you.  Because it’s not worth it, because you don’t merit a lie.”
• “If he was the man she wanted him to be, he would not be intimidated by her silence.”
• “Considering the way the world is, one happy day is almost a miracle.”
• “…but he should understand my insecurities, because I’m a woman, I’m fragile, and when I’m in that place, I’m a different person.”
• “Love is not to be found in someone else, but in ourselves; we simply awaken it.  But in order to do that, we need the other person.  The universe only makes sense when we have someone to share our feelings with.”
• “I’ve learned that waiting is the most difficult bit, and I want to get used to the feeling, knowing that you’re with me, even when you’re not by my side.”
• “Profound desire, true desire is the desire to be close to someone.  >From that point onwards, things change, the man and the woman come into play, but what happens before–the attraction that brought them together–is impossible to explain.  It is untouched desire in its purest state.  When desire is still in this pure state, the man and the woman fall in love with life, they live each moment reverently, consciously, always ready to celebrate the next blessing.  When people feel like this, they are not in a hurry, they do not precipitate events with unthinking actions.  They know that the inevitable will happen, that what is real always finds a way of revealing itself.  When the moment comes, they do not hesitate, they do not miss an opportunity, they do not let slip a single magic moment, because they respect the importance of each second.”
• “Now that she had nothing to lose, she was free.”
• “And that was now her great joy: to say to reality that she didn’t need it, that she was not longer dependent on what happened in order to be happy.”
• “Now she was searching once more for her reason for living, or, rather, for the kind of utter surrender by which a person offers his or her heart and asks for nothing in return.”
• “Anyone who is observant, who discovers the person they have always dreamed of, knows that sexual energy comes into play before sex even takes place.  The greatest pleasure isn’t sex, but the passion with which it is practiced.  When the passion is intense, then sex joins in to complete the dance, but it is never the principal aim.”
• “Anyone who is in love is making love the whole time, even when they’re not.  When two bodies meet, it is just the cup overflowing.  They can stay together for hours, even days.  They begin the dance one day and finish it the next, or–such is the pleasure they experience–they may never finish it.  No eleven minutes for them.”
• “Every human being experiences his or her own desire; it is part of our personal treasure and, although, as an emotion, it can drive people away, generally speaking, it brings those who are important to us closer.  It is an emotion chosen by my soul, and it is so intense that it can infect everything and everyone around me.  Each day I choose the truth by which I try to live.  I try to be practical, efficient, professional.  But I would like to be able always to choose desire as my compassion.  Not out of obligation, not to lesson my loneliness, but because it is good.  Yes, very good.”
• “The strongest love is the love that can demonstrate its fragility.  Anyway, if my love is real (and not just a way of distracting myself, deceiving myself, and passing the time that never seems to pass in this city), freedom will conquer jealousy and any pain it causes me, since pain is also part of the natural process.  Anyone who practices sport know of this: if you want to achieve your objectives, you have to be prepared for a daily dose of pain or discomfort.  At first, it’s unpleasant and de motivating, but in time you’ll come to realize that it’s part of the process of feeling good, and the moment arrives when, if you don’t feel pain, you have a sense that the exercises aren’t having the desired effect.”
• “If you love another person, you don’t depend on the sex act in order to feel good.”
• “The world enjoys suffering and pain.  There’s sadism in the way we look at these things, and masochism in our conclusion that we don’t need to know all this in order to be happy, and yet we watch other people’s tragedies and sometimes suffer along with them.”
• “As I say, it’s the human condition.  Ever since we were expelled from paradise, we have either been suffering, making other people suffer or watching the suffering of others.  It’s beyond our control.”
• “Why was it that in God’s holy world men were only interested in showing her pain.  Sacred pain, pain with pleasure, pain with explanations or without, but always pain, pain, pain…”
• “‘I felt that pain is a woman’s friend.’  ‘That is the danger.’  ‘I also felt that pain has it’s limits.’  ‘That is the salvation.  Don’t forget that.'”
• “That’s why I’m telling you: don’t get used to it, because it’s very easy to become habituated; it’s a very powerful drug.  It’s in our daily lives, in our hidden suffering, in the sacrifices we make, blaming love for the destruction of our dreams.  Pain is frightening when it shows its real face, but it’s seductive when it comes disguised as sacrifice or self-denial.  Or cowardice.  However much we may reject it, we human being always find a way of being with pain, of flirting with it and making it part of our lives.”
• “Pain and suffering are used to justify the only thing that should bring only joy: love.”
• “I need to love–that’s all, I need to love.  Life is too short, or too long, for me to allow myself the luxury of living it so badly.”
• “Original sin was not the apple that Eve ate, it was her belief that Adam needed to share precisely the thing she had tasted.  Eve was afraid to follow her path without someone to help her, and so she wanted to share what she was feeling.  Certain things cannot be shared.  Nor can we be afraid of the oceans into which we plunge of our own free will; fear cramps everyone’s style.  Man goes through hell in order to understand this.  Love one another, but let’s not try to possess one another.”
• “Always making plans for the future, and always being surprised by the present.”
• “In all the languages in the world, there is the same proverb: ‘What the eyes don’t see, the heart doesn’t grieve over.’  Well, I say that there isn’t an ounce of truth in it.  The further off they are, the closer to the heart are all those feelings that we try to repress and forget.  If we’re in exile, we want to store away every tiny memory of our roots.  If we’re far from the person we love, everyone we pass in the street reminds us of them.”
• “The only thing she could do now was to shed a few tears, feeling rather afraid of herself, an intelligent young woman, who had everything going for her, but who tended to make wrong decisions.  She just hoped that this time she was right.”
• “She made this promise because she knew love’s traps all too well, and knew how easily they can change a woman’s mind.”

 

Today………

Today…………..

Today… I feel like my hands are empty and my heart is vacuous …… but if I assay to drop a word, I know it will spill over……… Its time for self discovery… not for self amelioration or self improvement…. because without discovering the lost self it would be inconceivable to improve……

I am trying to tune in to the music that my heart ineluctably needs…. but the chords are so wispy and obscure that I cant make out even a single note…. I want to accede in to a trance…. even that is unattainable…..

I am sacking the thoughts right here for the fear that it would bubble over………!!!!

but “today”…………. I wish….

 

Paulo Coelho: Post cards

 

Nice quotes

“I laugh, I love, I hope, I try, I hurt, I need, I fear, I cry. And I know you do the same things too, So we’re really not that different, me and you.”

“And if it all falls apart, I will know deep in my heart, the only dream that mattered had come true. In this life, I was loved by you.”

by Colin Raye

“I must learn to love the fool in me the one who feels too much, talks too much, takes too many chances, wins sometimes and loses often, lacks self-control, loves and hates, hurts and gets hurt, promises and breaks promises, laughs and cries”

by Theodore Isaac Rubin

“I miss you when something really good happens, because you are the one I want to share it with. I miss you when something is troubling me, because you are the one who understands me so well. I miss you when I laugh and cry because i know that you are the one that makes my laughter grow and my tears disappear. I miss you all the time, but I miss you most when i lay awake at night and think of all the wonderful times we spent with eachother;for those were some of the best times of my life.”

“Love is when you shed a tear and still want him, it’s when he ignores you and you still love him, it’s when he loves another girl but you still smile and say I’m happy for you, when all you really do is cry.”