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It was one of those days which stick in your mind no matter how old you grow.
It was the 17th of August, 1998.
I hadnt slept well the night before. Not without a reason for
Wipro was scheduled to visit our college for a campus interview that day.
With a mind rapidly oscillating between tension and anticipation, I remember driving down to college that day dressed in a white
van heusen shirt (for the first time in my life :)) already feeling a bit lost and out of place.
Seeing the same “I am scared but I wont show it on my face” look on many of classmate's faces, I eased up a little.
The written test was much easier than I had expected and I settled for a long wait for my interview which was scheduled at 9:30 PM in the night.
I have had several extruciating waits in my life but that one must rank among the most painfull. I waited and watched quite a few of my classmates enter and leave the room displaying a wide range of emotions a kamal hassan would have been proud of :)
In the end after what seemed like an eternity, I was called in. With trembling hands and a heart beat faster than schumacher, I remember entering that room. What followed was a surprisingly pleasant conversation instead of a nightmarish situation I had conjured up in my mind.
By the time, I came out, I was back to my confident best almost sure that I would be selected.
It took another 3 hours for Wipro to announce the result. I still remember sitting of the steps in front of my class room talking about my dreams and the life ahead with a friend who goes by the name Vishnu. Both were selected but he has left wipro long back for pursuing higher studies in the states.
What is clearly etched in my mind about that night is the drive back home on my trusted kinetic honda. If there is one moment in my life worthy of the song,
aaj mein upar,
aasman neeche,
aaj mein aage,
zamana hai peeche,
it was that.
The cold wind running through my hair, the biggest smile possible on my face, the empty roads ... It was a surreal moment alright :-)
The smile on my mother's face when she heard is yet another moment etched on my mind.
So why I am writing all this ?
Tomorrow is my last day at
Wipro. After 3 and a half years, I will be going to a
different companynext monday onwards.
How does it feel ?
A little bit of nostalgia. A little bit of sadness. A little bit of happiness. A cocktail of emotions is perhaps the best description.
Wipro was fun. I had some of the best colleagues a man could ask for. In the end, nothing lasts forever. I had to move on lest I run the risk of being stagnant proffessionally and financially ;-)
So if you have been mailing me at my wipro email id, send them for the time being to anand at this particular domain. I will update you when I get the new one.
I dont know what is in store for me in the new place. Life is best lived moment to moment and so will I.
Al vida. I will be back :-)
Damn it. There is a tear hidden somewhere behind my eyes waiting to come out ..
I guess, only when you walk out of something, you realise what you are losing ...
It was the october of 2001.
Our client, a small internet based startup, had already been hit hard by the late 20th century collective madness , the dot com boom ( and the subsequent bust ). 911 proved to be the killer blow for our project and we parted ways saying solemn good byes. Faced with nothing to do, our situation was something like that of soldier pulled out of a gruesome war and put in a budhist monastery. We just couldnt take the silence and lack of work.
After days of tea time terrorism discussions and idea generation sessions, we invented creative methods to spend time like network roadrash races and chatting.
Now ever since Internet was introduced in the late 90's by VSNL, I have been online. Those days, you had to fill a form, send to VSNL chennai office and then wait for a good amount of time before VSNL send you back the connection details. Over the last so many years I have done most of which can be done on the net except for one thing : Chatting.
Why ?
Right from my childhood days, I have been this shy silent guy whom you will more often find in a corner reading a book than in the centre of a crowd talking. This has changed considerably over the years but still in many ways I remain such a person.
So chatting was not something that came to me easily. But when it came to text chatting on a computer, I had a small advantage. It is my belief that I am a better writer than a talker. So armed with a keyboard I was a wee bit more confident than I would be otherwise. Using a combination of instant poetry and fancy icons, I managed to build huge friend list in my messenger within a short time.
It was during this period that I met the person for whom this post is being written. The first thing that stuck me is the unabashed joy of living seen in the person.
I need to digress again and detail a personal quirk. By the by, a complete listing of my personal quirks might take more space than my host provides :) Anyway this one details my friends. A long time back when I was an antisocial nerd ( I still am in a small way ), I had oh so serious friends, People who find it easier to quote Nietzsche than wear a smile on their face. Luckily
this guy stepped in and more or less changed the way I used to go about life. Ever since, I have been fascinated by people who are genuinely happy. Pretty soon, my craze for chatting died a natural death but my friendship with my new friend endured.
Thus in the strangest of circumstances started this special friendship. Now I have a couple of friends who could perhaps one day start a new cult among them with the title, “The Joy of Living” :-)
Today is my little friend's birthday and so here comes the wish for which the whole post was written.
Happy birthday, my dear friend.
Something new is happening at
itismylife.com.
I have started something there which I hope will grow over time. Each of the pages there right now has a different design or rather a different graphic on the top and a matching color scheme. Let me know whether anything there is to your liking.
netLife will link to anything new that appears there. So for all practical purposes, you can continue visiting this page to read anything and everything that I write.
The reason behind the lack of updates on this site can be summed up in two words : world cup. When all you do is to track the scorecard during the day and rush home in the evenings to catch whatever little action is left, you dont have much time left to do anything else least of all blog.
It feels great when sachin is in such fine form, isnt it ? I read a while back a stock broker proclaiming that the BSE sensex shoots up whenever sachin scores a century. Just the other day, I was reading an article saying the viewership on setmax goes down by 20 percent when sachin gets out. It is amazing how much power one man holds over the collective psyche of a nation. Is he the most popular man to have walked on the surface of the earth since Jesus ? If you go by just the sheer numbers of his fan following, I would say yes :-)
Masala gets a new url :
netlife.tamizhan.com. From my referrer logs, I can see that people tend to make the mistake of thinking that the name masala implies content, the sort of which is found on sites like
these ;-).
Last week, something interesting happenned on
my site which even I failed to notice till yesterday. For some time now, I have given the option to
advertise on my site. Never thought somebody would actually do so. So imagine my surprise when I found out that
somebody has done just that. There is indeed an advertisement
there now. So if you are not doing anything in particular, do go there and click on the ad. Since it is a CPC ad, I need to get another 25 odd clicks before I get money from my advertiser.
Thanks goes to my
sponsor. I hope, you got something out of this and even better, keep doing this again and again :-)
Before I wrap up this entry, there is one surprise news. We had an impromptu indian blogger's meet yesterday at koramangala, bangalore :-).
Shyam was in town. So was
nilesh.
Vignesh is always around. So we decided to meet up and the conversation went on expected lines atleast for me :-)
Shyam was the observer. He is a lot similar to apna vignesh, though to be fair to him, a lot quieter :-) Nilesh was the thinker and he reminds me of
sreekanth. Both have a serious air to them though the smile is never far away.
Suresh as always kept all of us smiling.
A major portion of the conversation was around my still to be released article titled Thrill Vs Peace. I have been teasing vignesh about this for a while now since he plays the main role of the thrill seeker. I get the author backed role of Peace Lover. This article is going to unleash the flame war to end all wars ;-) The moment I decide how to end this article, I will be publishing it. So stay tuned.
Well, As expected the
google takeover is shaking up the blog world. Enough time and words have been spend on what it means, why it was done and what we will see in the days to come. There is probably nothing more to be said and no angle left to be probed. Still, I will make a couple of points which stuck me as pertinent.
Google's traditional model is to wait for information to be created and then go and look for it. There is a significant time lag in this process which might prove to be critical when an user needs information and needs it now. Once google gets into the business of content generation ( courtesy an army of mostly free volunteers ), they no longer need to go out looking for it. They will be the first to know when new content has been created and will be in the best position to function as an information gateway which I think is what they are aiming for. This perhaps is the single most best thing to come out of the whole thing.
But for all this to succeed, Blogger must regain its once pre-eminent position. Blogger is only a few features ( comments, categories, titles, trackback ) away from doing so. And once you have those google PhDs developing for blogger, who knows what they will conjure up :-)
News for too long has been diluted by the commercial aspirations of the news reporters. It is time to set news free.
I was pleasantly surprised to see that
rediff has re-designed. And even more pleasantly surprised to find that they have given their
blog service such a prominent place on the main page.
This augurs well for the indian blogland. A few people I know visit rediff daily but have never heard of the word blog. This might the stimilus needed to bring such people into the blogging world. Kudos to
rediff for spotting this trend at such an early stage.
I havent taken a close look at their tool but i must say that the lack of commenting option is disappointing especially since their main site now supports comments beneath all articles. It wouldnt have been difficult to add that here as well, isnt it. Maybe, in a later version.
All in all, good days ahead for indian blogland.
Now if only,
humblog would take off ...
I am a big fan of
nucleus ( which is what is used as the backend script for this site ).
Why ?
The first choice to be made when anyone looks for a weblog script is to decide whether to go for static publishing or dynamic publishing. Dynamic publishing can be a big overhead if you have a lot of visitors and the database chokes on the number of connections per second. On the other hand, static publishing can be a big pain if you change your templates or skins as frequently as I do.
I did play around with
movable type for some time but found it incredibly slow. Again, the fact that 2.51 might be the last free version ( ? ) put me off. I didnt want to get stuck with something which will not move forward unless I pay for it.
I found
nucleus to be a well-designed script with a really cool plugin interface which enables me to extend the script in whatever direction that I want without bothering
karma :-)
I have been writing a few plugins for
nucleus like the
Macros plugin or the
Ping pong plugin or a few others about which you can find more information
here.
Today, I have coded up something which I wanted for a really long time. Click on the comments link and check out my new threaded comments plugin. This is alpha code. So please be gentle with it. If you come across any errors, kindly send me a
mail with a small explanation of what went wrong.
Enjoy :-)
I have three designs and a question for you.
Do you guys/gals like the
1. the current design of
tamizhan ?
2. or the new sandalwood re-design of
masala ?
3. or the govinda re-design of
punnagai ?
As you can see, the three are different color schemes applied to the same design.
I have put up an ad at
masala or rather a way to put up an ad. Anyone wanting to advertise there can use the link there to do so. I dont expect anyone does though ;-)
Among other things, I have plans of putting up “theme based links” on
masala. The idea is to celebrate a particular week as say philosophy week and then put all the links that I like and can find on philosophy in that week there. Just to add a little bit of novelty to the proceedings. Let me know if you guys/gals like the idea. Suggestions for themes are welcome as well.
Moving over to cricket, I do think that these defeats are a good thing. Once we come out of the hype, we can take a realistic view of the whole thing and learn a lesson or two. Ganguly definetely needs to be axed from the test team. Maybe, it is time to give sachin a chance to lead the test team and see how things work out. Maybe, age would have added the necessary qualities required for a captain to sachin.
More chitchat :
I just love the two centershock ads. From the name of the product to the message they want to convey to the ads themselves, everything is in perfect sync. It must be a whole lot of fun working in such ad agencies, isnt it.
Waiting for the reliance infocomm service to start in bangalore. I am most intrigued by the 144 kbps internet connectivity advertised. If that comes true, then it will be mobile blogging now onwards. Thoughts as it strikes posted on the web. Maybe, I am hoping too much ?
Happy New Year.
Funny how things look different on days like this. It is a sad fact that the mind needs a reason to be happy. I wonder what it takes to be happy on all days. I guess, you have to be very young, a saint, mad or in love :-) Anyways, as long as there is a reason, let us go for it. Live it up this year, folks.
Here is hoping that a smile will be the only emotion that your face will wear all year.
I will leave you with a few lines from a lata mangeshkar classic,
Kaanton se keech ke yeh aanchal,
Tod ke bandan baandi paayal,
Koi na roko dil ki udaan ko,
Dil woh chalaa,
Aaaj phir jeene ki tamna hai.
I am yet to come across a december which makes me happy about the year that just went by. Promises made to self are the easiest to break. Guilt is a momentary flutter easily forgotten.
Still, It never prevents me from looking forward to the new year with the eyes of the young kid who has just realised that so much can be done with the gift of life. SO MUCH.
For now though, I have to live out December and so for a month, this site will reflect the general dullness in the air.
When the new year comes, when my mind wakes up to the possibilities, so will the color scheme of this site.
Till then, This will be the color.
Been blogging for over eight months now. A pre-occupation with design and frequent changes in the backend/host has meant that writing has taken a back seat.
Note to myself : write more.
Sreekanth, Please get back to blogging.
Bill Gates will be giving a speech at the wipro amphitheatre in ecity day after tommorrow. The thought of kidnapping him and asking a BIG ransom appeals to my criminal mind :-)
The one day series without sachin holds no interest for me, more so since the Indian bowlers seem to be in a genorous mood.
The ban on tamil movies in karnataka has meant that I am yet to see even a single tamil movie released on Deepavalli. Gotto to get my hands on a VCD soon.
The new ThumsUp ad with Akshay is cool. Finally brawn takes a backseat in a ThumsUp ad.
The Vaa Nila song in the latest rahman album, Kaadhal Virus, is groovy.
Time to get a snack.
Feels good to be back in bangalore.
Busy searching for a new project. So updates will be sparse over the next week or so.
Meanwhile, I have restored itismylife.com to its previous state.
Yet Another Redesign :-)
Things look a bit different, dont they ?
Played around with some syndication stuff and a photograph of arjuna's penance from the mahabalipuram site.
itismylife.com will be re-directed to tamizhan.com for a few days to popularise this way of reading all the stuff I write at one place. It will be restored to its previous state in a few days.
Note that the content syndicated at tamizhan.com can be read individually at
oru.tamizhan.com,
anand.tamizhan.com and
masala.tamizhan.com respectively.
As always, I am interested in all of your opinion on the new design.
naan saibaba illai,
endha pakkamum sayadha baba.
annikku solrathuthan innikkum,
innikku solrathuthan ennikkum.
Bhagawanne kumbidu. Inda Babavai nambidu.
Asantha adikkarathu maththavanga policy.
Asarama adikkarathu taan en policy.
en vazhi tanee vazhi.
ennodu puthu email id :
naan.taanda.tamizhan@tamizhan.com.
One of the advantages of owning a domain is the ability to have vanity email ids like my new one above :)
The other day, me and my good friend Gautham, were discussing screenplays. Now before I proceed further, a little background information on me. I am a hardcore film buff. The emphasis is on
hardcore. I dont just watch films. I note the camera angles used, the frame composition, the editing techniques and what not. I have carried along with me, for a long time, a secret fantasy to be a director. :)
Gautham is no different from me and he has a bigger range since he also watches telugu and english films ( which i dont but for a few ones).
I started tossing ideas at Gautham but he was quick to point out almost always that a film had already been made on my idea :( Originality is difficult these days for there are not that many ways left to tell a lovestory. Ranging from a ideology conflict set against the backdrop of the freedom struggle to a new age love story of an anti-devdas, almost everything has already been tackled by our film-makers. Just when it seemed hopeless, I was able to come up with an idea which seemed original to both of us. So in the coming days ( after I reach bangalore ), expect a screenplay to be put up on
tamizhan.com. I will be interested in knowing all of your opinion on the same :).
PS : Gautham, Considering that hey ram flopped, maybe the idealogy conflict against the backdrop of the freedom struggle might still be a good idea for a second screenplay :-)
PPS : All these as always is for fun. Maybe, Maniratnam might accidentally visit my website. What if I caught his fancy with a crazy idea. Who knows :-)
Yesterday, 6:45 PM.
The old school bus, doubling up as the AT&T shuttle bus in these difficult days, pulled into the parking lot of the usually deserted train station. The sole occupant of the bus, on his way out, exchanges a few pleasantries with the bored driver. He slowly makes his way to the Track no 2 to catch the New York bound train. It will be atleast 45 minutes before the train arrives.
In his hand, the young guy ( the sole occupant will be now onwards referred to as the young guy ) carried a plastic bag with a few sheets of paper in it. Extended waiting times at the train station had taught him to come prepared. It is his habit to print out a short story or two from the
gutenburg site to read while waiting. However having exhausted most of the titles from the short story section, he had printed out a translation of the
Bhagavad Gita on that particular day.
Having spend most of the day conducting training sessions for new developers taking over his project, the young guy was not in a mood to read. The wooden bench on the platform beckoned him to lay down his tired body in its lap and enjoy a few minutes of rest. Without a moment's hesitation, he streched his long lean body on the bench, using his bag as the pillow and closed his eyes for a small nap.
Unknown to him, on the opposite platform, a middle aged american picked a cellphone and made a call.
A couple of minutes later, a police car pulled into the train station. The young guy was woken up ( he was not really asleep in any case ) by the flashing lights of the car. He watched as a young clean shaved policeman came out of the car and looked around. The moment the policeman's eyes met that of the young guy, he started walking towards his direction. Not thinking much of it, the young guy continued in his horizontal position. When the policeman came and stopped in front of his bench, it dawned upon the young guy that the police man had indeed come to meet him.
This is what followed.
Policeman : “whats going on ?”.
Youngguy ( with a shrug ) : “Well, I am waiting for the train”.
Policeman : “I figured that”, with a cold stare.
Youngguy : “Well, why the question then ?”, with an attempt at a smile :).
The Policeman showed with an expression on his face that he was not in the least bit amused.
Policeman then asks, “whats your name ?”.
Youngguy : “anand”.
The Policeman's eyes drift towards the young guy's AT&T badge, pinned on his shirt, and find a different ( and in no way related ) name there.
Policeman : “Well, your badge here says something else”.
I ( now onwards the young guy will be referred to as I since as you would have guessed by now, he is me ) : “Well, Thats my real name. But since it is so long and difficult to pronounce, I use my nickname which is anand”.
The Policeman is not satisfied but still buys my argument.
Policeman ( now pulling out his notebook ) : “What is your home address ?”.
( I had recently moved from one apartment to a basement sharing arrangement with a friend. I only knew how to walk to my new place from my station and had no idea of the *actual* home address. )
I try to explain my above predicament.
Policeman ( getting annoyed now ) : “What is your home phone number ?”.
I did not have a phone for my personal use and had no idea about the owner's number.
Policeman : “Show me another id, Please”.
I did not have any other.
Policeman ( getting a bit frustrated here ) : “What is your Social Security Number ?”.
Me : “I dont remember :(”.
Policeman ( now getting really irritated ) takes a look at my plastic cover : “What is in there ?”.
I say,“Just a few printouts” and hand it over to him.
Policeman opens it casually to find the title on the first page saying Bhagavad Gita. Now getting increasingly interested in me, he says “Do you always carry the Gita with you?”
I say defensively, “I just printed it out to read while waiting for the train.”
Policeman asks me many more questions during the course of which I blurt out ( quite honestly, I must add ) that I am flying from JFK next week.
The three letters, JFK, had an electric effect on the Policeman.
He walked a few steps away, pulled out his walkie talkie and called ( presumably ) his superiors.
I ( watching this scene from a distance ) was getting a wee bit worried. My position definetely looked bad.
A couple of minutes later, a bigger police car made its way into the now slightly crowded parking lot. A big fat guy and an old wise ( the reason for him being called a wise guy will become clear in a few lines from now ) guy got out.
A few more questions later, We still dont reach anywhere. There is nothing on me to prove who I am and nobody nearby to tell them I really am what I claim I am.
The three men start an internal discussion at a small distance from me.
The young policeman says “We must detain him until we can verify his id.”.
The old
wise guy takes a look at me and says, “He doesnt look suspicious”.
All three look at my direction. I put on my best smile and try to bring an expression onto my face which says that I am the nicest guy on planet earth :-) The three men realising that I have overheard their conversation walk away a bit further with a sheepish grin on their faces.
An even longer discussion ensues with a lot of shaking heads and gestaculating hands. I watch in rapt attention while three men discuss about who I really am.
Finally, the three men walk towards me with the old guy leading the way.
He asks me a strange question. “Where you sleeping on the bench ?”.
I reply in the positive.
He replies with a weak attempt at humour. “People dont do that in these places.”
I raise an eyebrow and say nothing.
It seems a gentleman ( the middle aged american on the other platform ? ) had called in to report a suspicious character. With a friendly warning to carry an id with me whenever I go out, he wished me good night and walked away with the other two.
and I turn back and walk, in the land of free, unable to sleep on a bench.
“Who are you ?”, You ask me.
Not used to answering such blunt questions which probe the reason for my very existence, I try to pretend that I never heard that question. In an attempt to divert your attention, I point to the poster of the upcoming Rajni movie,Baba and start off on what was supposed to be a long monologue on the star and how he might represent a new hope for a state tortured, indeed mutilated, by politicians taking advantage of the gullibe, simple and loving folk. Something in my actions, ( the fear of the question or the ignorance of the answer showing itself ? ) makes you repeat the question.
I realise with a sinking feeling that today, I will not get away unless I answer that question. I ponder the various approaches to take. Should i do a straightforward name address occupation recital ? Something in your manner shows me that you are not interested in such a superficial understanding of who i am. You show with your questioning glance that today what you are interested in is knowing who i really am.
I turn away lest my face betrays my true emotions. I lock my eyes on the horizon which inevitably leads to looking inside.
“Who i really am ?”. Now that is a question which has teased me all my life. Every now and then, I get glimpses of the answer. But then Time has always stepped in to prove that what i thought was an answer, was an illusion. Illusions that my mind makes up in attempt to pacify my heart. Deception of the heart by the mind to justify a mundane existence in a mediocre world which has seen only a few flashes of brilliance. I check myself before i go into a loop. I inadverdently go into an infinite loop of self loathing when that question comes up. My mind not able to control itself goes off on a tangent.
There are dreams waiting inside my mind. They have only seen the dark of the night when i let them loose inside in my mind. They complain of being afraid of the dark and want to come out with me in the day to see the world they have heard so much about. I lock them behind doors lest the world sees and laughs at them. I carry on with my ordinary life doing not what i want to do but doing what the world asks me to do. Doing not what gives me hapiness but doing what gives me money.
Money steals away from you what you could have been and in return decides who you are and what you would become. The purpose, the motive of life has become to earn money and more money. Money is happy only when it sees more and more of itself and in turn makes its owner feel the same.
When a few sheets of paper decide who you are, that is when you want to run away from life.
All these thoughts flash past my mind as i struggle for my answer. In a sudden moment of inspiration, i hit upon a way to answer your question. I take out a few scenes of your life and scratch away the superficial motives with which your mind was deceiving you.I show them to you and return the question, “Maybe, you could tell me who you really are ?”.
You realise that some questions do not have answers. Maybe, The answer to this one will be a consolation prize God gives you when you die. Or maybe, He himself is searching for a reason for his existence beyond that of a support system for a man too weak to live life on his own.
Lately, I have been reading MY blog. Strange as it sounds that is exactly what I have been doing for the last three days. Before you guys put me in a straightjacket and pack me off to the nearest asylum, let me clarify myself :)
As you all know, I have this terminally ill and close to dying site called
Tamizhan.com. After briefly entertaining notions of building a community site built around it, I have dropped the plan for lack of time, energy and motivation. But I cannot sit idly watching that site die :( So I decided to approach the problem seriously and do a complete re-organisation of that site and along with that, this site. So I have been reading my blog to solve the question of how to re-organize my sites.
Here is what I found out ( Nothing earth shattering really :-) )
Three things happen here :
1. Every once in a while, I manage to write something reasonably long and worth reading. This is a rare occurance and happens mostly once or twice in a month :-)
2. I post a lot of links to other sites/stories. This happens frequently.
3. Rarely, Very rarely I write about myself. The archives show me that this has happenned maybe less than 10 times in the last six months.
Now I have two sites and three types of articles.
For the first type of articles, I have re-designed
Tamizhan and am re-opening it. ( PS : I am not the kid in the photograph there :) ).
For the second type of posts, I have started a new chota blog at
masala.tamizhan.com under the name
masala : netLife. This should be the most frequently updated of the three.
And the third type of posts, the ones which talk about my own life, will remain in this site. I hope to write a lot more of what happens in my life in an effort to create an archive of my own life so that at a later point in life, I can look back and laugh at myself :-).
So thats it folks.
Hop over to
Tamizhan and
Masala to see the newly opened sites. Not much of a design there actually. Something barely enough to hold the content. A more complete design will be put up shortly.
Do tell me your views on all three :-).
It is time now for the Brahma hypothesis.
I am going to use the usual method that people adopt when writing a hypothesis. Collect a few known facts, add a couple of leaps of imagination and present in a whole new style, claiming the idea as my own.
The brahma hypothesis is the expanded name given to the BHM hypothesis which in turn stands for the Brain, Heart and the Memory hypothesis.
All forms of sensory input create a new memory.
The Brain uses memory to create thoughts.
The Heart uses memory to create emotions.
The Brain and Heart battle for our mental space and what we currently feel is a direct outcome of who is in charge.
We all want to be happy, agreed ?
Now we must take a look at the cross-section of humans who are generally considered the happiest among us. Kids.
What do you see ?
Not so developed brains. Heart completely in charge. More emotional than a kamal trying for a national award. Generally seen to be happy for the smallest and the silliest of reasons.
As we grow older, what happens ? Brains start to develop ( well, in most cases :) ) and the more we get older, the more we think. What does your brain do ? It comes and stands in the way of you and your happiness. Now the brain doesnt allow you to laugh easily. It needs a strong reason to laugh. Gone are the days you could giggle without feeling embarassed. Now you will start displaying controlled emotion. Watch a govinda movie and your brain will step in and stop you from laughing telling you that it is a third rate joke not worthy of your laughter. At the end of the movie, the simpleton from the village would have laughed his guts out while you come out shaking your head mutterring about a complete waste of time. Who is the loser ?
An abundance of thought has generally led to sorrow and depression more times than it has led to hapiness. The person who feels hapiness as the end result of series of thoughts over time is rare. But I can show you a number of people who think a lot, get worked up and generally feel unhappy.
Ever looked forward to something, expecting a truckload of hapiness and when the moment finally came felt a sense of disatisfaction ? The brain imagined a hapiness which was not there, in the meantime forsaking the gift of the moment and the opportunity for hapiness in it.
We now take a look at literature and the movies in an attempt to see what they say. We find that almost always the simple folk are shown to be happy while the city dwelling, cultured and the “intelligent” person is often found to be irritated, frustrated, lost in his thoughts and generally unhappy.
Now we will take a look at that noble attempt to understand the human psyche and the meaning of life : Philosophy. Prominent figures like krishnamurthi have written about the need to eliminate the thought.“See without judging. Observe without analyzing”. The exotic religions like tao and tantra talk about living for the moment. That ( in my current prejudiced state of mind :) ) translates to doing away with the brain. Jesus in his famous sermon has said, “The meek shall inherit the earth”. What does this mean ? The meek not in a physical sense but in regards to your brain. Do away with your brain. Do not doubt. Do not think. Live without thinking, Believe without doubting and this world will be yours.
So what do we conclude ?
Do away with the brain. kill the thought. let the heart be the sole contender for your mental space and be happy.
Problems ?
When you live in the moment and let your heart rule, your happiness will be a function of your environment and the people around you, in short you will be vulnerable. You have nice people around ? you will be happy.
The Brahma hypothesis is the brain concluding that it is useless. It is the suicide call of the brain.
Kill the brain and be happy.
Believe in Brahma.
Words Fascinate me.
I am starting a series of blogs wherein I will be talking about the books that I haved loved the most.
Let me start off with one of my all time favourite books,
One hundred Years of Solitude by
Gabriel García Márquez, one of the masters of the Magic Realism genre. To define what Magic Realism is indeed difficult but let me make a try.
Magic Realism is seeing life with a new set of eyes : combining magic with the mundane, coupling the ordinary with the fantastic, seamlessly blended so much so that you are left wondering what is real and what is unreal. You cannot survive from the hands of a master of magical realism like Garcia, without doubting your own sanity. You will learn to laugh when you should be crying and cry when you should be laughing. In short, at times reading a book like this can be a life altering experiance :)
One hundred years of Solitude is easily his best book : a story about the island of Maconda depicted on an epic level ending with its ultimate disappearance. An extract from the book :
. . . for it was foreseen that the city of mirrors (or mirages) would be wiped out by the wind and exiled from the memory of men at the precise moment when Aureliano Babilonia would finish deciphering the parchments, and that everything written on them was unrepeatable since time immemorial and forever more, because races condemned to one hundred years of solitude did not have a second opportunity on earth. (422 ).
read an interesting lecture on this book
here.
Learn more of Julio Cortazar, the argentine master of the fantastic short story -
here
An extract,
"'It's like a waiting room, life is,' said the bald gentleman, carefully grinding out his cigarette with his shoe and examining his hands as if he didn't know what to do with them now; the elderly lady sighed a yes born of long years of agreeing, and put away her little bottle just as the door at the end of the corridor opened and the other lady came out with that look all the others envied, and an almost sympathetic goodbye when she got to the exit.' (from 'Second Time Around')
Read an excerpt from German Master of Magical Realism, Gunter Grass
here
A couple of extracts,
Often after airing he finds time to sit by my bed for a while, disentangling his strings, and spreading silence until I call the silence Bruno and Bruno silence.
I shall begin far away from me; for no one ought to tell the story of his life who hasn't the patience to say a word or two about at least half of his grandparents before plunging into his own existence.
and how can I forget our own Salman Rushdie and his Midnight's Children, that fantastic interpretation of Midnight, August 15, 1947.
An extract,
Reality is a question of perspective; the further you get from the past, the more concrete and plausible it seems - but as you approach the present, it inevitably seems more and more incredible. Suppose yourself in a large cinema, sitting at first in the back row, and gradually moving up, row by row, until your nose is almost pressed against the screen. Gradually the stars' faces dissolve into dancing grain; tiny details assume grotesque proportions; the illusion dissolves - or rather, it becomes clear that the illusion itself is reality.
read more of him
here.
Have fun.
Please ignore this post.
This is only to test the new
Trackback plugin in my blog.
Mahesh had asked me a
question here seeking advice about blogging tools. I responded with this
answer. Not a word was written as a reply to it. And Today, as i read
this, I cant help saying that Mahesh, you are setting new standards for decency.
Mahesh, Good luck on your new blog.
The saddest thing about America right now is that americans are clueless about why ( a few ? ) people in the rest of the world hate them.
Just look at what Mr.Bush is upto in Iraq ? Forget the part of whether it is right or not. Everyone knows that a cross-section of people in the MiddleEast do not exactly like America and their continued presence in that region after the gulf war. And people are not exactly pleased with the way Afganistan was more or less wiped out in vain as Mr. Bin laden is still out there languishing somewhere. And now comes this Iraq stunt. At a time when America should be trying to win back the hearts of the middle eastern countries, they are initiating yet another war. Is the message of Love lost on America or have they come to the conclusion that War is the answer for everything ? Sadly, It definetely does seem so.
All they are going to acheive in trying to eliminate one Mr.Sadam Hussain is to sow the seeds for a thousand new Bin Ladens.
It is like standing in a busy junction and handing out pamphlets saying “Here is one more reason to hate us”. Seriously, How dumb can you get ?
I cant go on. There is no sense to it.
The most repeated question in itismylife.com : Do you guys/gals like this new design ?
:-)
[ photo location : Alapuzha, Kerala, India. Courtesy :
keralatourism.org ]
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