Musings

The saint and his disciple.

Two days of self management course has opened me to a new realm. A realm where people believe self-management is all about God and spirituality. I have always seen more than a good share of all-what-I-hear-is-true kind of guys in my short corporate life, but such people come in various colors to appall me. I found a guy in the class grossly proud o f his vast knowledge and proved very little of it by asking questions that he thought was 'wise'.

There were brief lectures on previous-birth, how God created the universe and most of the remaining content was about comtrolling mind and soul. The program conductor himself was quite learned and although he contorted science a bit too much to my liking, always kept himself within limits. A few sporadic facts he told about science were always accompanied by a careful gaze at me to see my reaction (that was after a first few rebellious questions from me). I reacted very little for I found support very minimal and furthermore, I am naturally not a interactive student and I let my sleep take over me.

The course had a stress-index finder with 30 questions to find the amount of negative stress each person has. I found the number high and when the interpretation was given, I was even suprised if I had wrongly understood a few questions. It couldn't have been for almost all the situations asked had a direct answer. In the end, when the program was over and left to my own work, I had to really ponder over what bad karma from previous birth chased me to attend the class ;)

There was pandemonium all around when the ring came. Its suprising to see how the mind works from within me. There were too many questions to be asked and too many questions expected. Only the wise ones ask all. The meek shall leave all, only to inherit more of what they alreay have. This last para is certainly not about my self-management class.

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The ode and a rebuke

Being in a software consulting company (a big one too) and having a client that has a bimonthly-release scheduled, work gets hectic for me in bimonthly patches. The patches are always in the last two weeks of the release- when work gets really tight. Despite our sincerest efforts, our vows to work rigidly to time and have good sleep, get out of the window and we would be barking ourselves for the silly mistake we somehow managed to inculcate in the code. The bigger mistakes are never noticed, somehow.

So often than not, I would be in other real troubles during this phase. Or it could be like the normal nuances of everyday life seem alarmingly large at that juncture. But nevertheless the pressure of all this gets to me and only after a release is successfully over that I breathe easy.

Seemingly in endless dire straits, looking forward to the faint lights of hope (hope is sometimes considered theist by me, but I do give my pardons) - there always is something to look forward to. Being the egotist I am, I didn't expect the light to grow larger or help my cause but I was proved wrong, time and again. For far too many times have I written this ode, and for all what I wrote, I got rebuked.

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My ire;

I am irritatingly good in perceiving things as reflecting my mood in one way or another. Its increasingly so when I am alone and when I am gloomy...Given these facts, the last two days have been a virtual whirlwind.

I played most of the evening on saturday and all of sunday. I was at my humorous best, tickling all around me (except one, who was the object of all our ridicule) and certainly had a good time. But despite all that, even in those envious moments I would stare at object and look at their crestfallen faces. Crestfallen it was, for it is how things look to me when I am gloomy. It was all so natural for me to hide it, I assume its not that difficult for anyone...

Monday came and by the time I woke up everyone had left for office. I went up to watch 'Liar Liar'. It was not my first time but still I laughed at all of Carrey's histrionics. At the end of it, I somehow couldn't keep myself from thinking what someone who loved me would wish for a change in me. I do lie occasionally, but there is something else they would despise. I know it as the only way...

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Jill Carol episode

I am never an ardent news reader nor do I indulge talking about world affairs or politics with my friends. My normal newspaper routine involves sports, sudoku, word puzzles and nothing else. I use google news mostly to read technical stuff, but something interesting caught my attention yesterday. It was the abduction of another US journalist in iraq. It wasn't a lonely case, it was the thirteith-something abduction of journalists alone and if what happened to the predessors is to be taken as a case, the fate of this girl doesn't seem to be too bright as well.

I normally never take a stance on an issue that I don't understand and arguably the iraq issue has its own share of contentions which I can never decipher. But whatever reasons are given, killing of innocents doesn't make any right. What apalls me is that the abductors in their own heart, believe they do a noble cause and staunchly deny their minds any ideas about their captors' lives. Come what may, they should atleast try to understand that every person is unique and they have a right to live.

Having said all that, I do have to admit that I really wouldn't care much for the girl. We all don't care. Its blasphemous to suggest this but its true, no one really cares. Its just that I wanted to put some of my feelings in words...

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A flower story

A week back I was trotting along a narrow alley to go to a distant aunt's home. I was accompanied by my father and we had just turned a corner when my dad said that the lady who had just gone past us was&nbs p;a teacher in my Kinder Gardens. I hadn't seen her and even if I had I wouldn't have probably remembered her. That was almost 20 years ago and even if I do remember her, I cannot imagine that she would have remembered me.

Quite interestingly, the first thing that came to mind was a flower - hibiscus. Its strange but thinking more about it, I realised that whenever I had remembered my two years of kindergarden, I had invariably thought about the road I used to cross to go to the school and a red hibiscus flower. Road-crossing might not have been my favourite routine and thats explainable but hibiscus was not that apparent. Then I remembered my black-board.

The school was a small one (only catered till fifth standard, if I am not wrong) and had only five class-rooms. Each classroom had one small black board and each day a guy would come to clean it, with a hibiscus. The guy was a fifth standard student who was seen with awe by everyone for he was given the rights to perform the sacred ritual of cleaning the boards everyday. He used to pick hibiscus flowers from a plant inside the school campus and at that age, having never heard or seen a duster, seemed the most usual thing to do. Hibiscus was preferred for it was large enough to cater to the whole board and the juicy contents gave a good polished shine after cleaning.

I don't know if the school still exists. I cannot remember the name of the guy whom I would have called my best friend then. But somethings do stay...

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You are tired!

The engagement function was nothing more than normal. I came over fifteen minutes past time and people invited me to sit. I scourged the place with my eyes to see anyone I knew and found a few chatting together in the center of the chaired hall. I went up to them and we started talking of old times.

The arrangements were simple and neatly done. There was a big screen blocking the gents section from the ladies', clearly an indication of whose ceremony it was. Suddenly everyone turned quiet and people were looking in a particular direction. It seems they were doing some prayers - no, it wasn't the usual namaaz style. Everyone is sitting in chairs around a guy in white robes. The guy is chanting something and everyone listens to him. This should be what the function is all about. It was over in not more than three minutes.

Someone served cool-drinks to us, it was not chilled at all. They should have taken more care in things like this. They call for lunch and I go, along with the group. The dining hall was neat but the people were a mess. Too many people running around to serve but few people get what they want. We all get a place almost immediately but no one comes to lay the leaf. It comes - the size of the leaf is too small for my comfort - wonder where they could manage to get such rusty ones. Food was served a good five minutes later, something that I normally would never have endured but had to put up with. The food was good, the sweets were delicios and they even served icecreams in the end. Gwah! That was a tasty meal.

The purpose is over - I wash my hands and after taking another plunge at the icecream I took off. On my way out, I see a guy in a gray kurta walking past me, with fiery pace. I remember him, he is the bride's brother. I wonder why he is so tired...

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The Trespasser

Being back home is like seeing a Ben Affleck movie. Everytime I expect a lot from it but get only a trifle of what I expect. People back home are very normal - they are their own normal self but its me who is seeing things differently, I assume so.

The days are getting shorter and shorter as the big day arrives. Mom still has a list of things to do and my sis wants everything done perfectly. Just as she is...Dad is his own self - but I see him in a different light. I hope to find some solution to all these within the next few days. Sometimes I feel that my whole house is intertwined by a very thin string but the string would hold on. Atleast I am not going to disturb it.

In all this I see a different sis...sometimes I still wonder if she is normal but I think she displays more maturity than ever. She doesn't make me fear for her anymore but still I believe she is just a kid...Gosh! This is too much. Amigos

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Compelling mistakes

The net is a wonderful place to see a lot of arguments, without getting involved in them. I normally use imdb to get track of films and yesterday, I stumbled upon in the message board of a film, a debate about the existence of God. The person who was arguing for God had a compelling argument - about how proteins could be formed using acids and other organic ingredients, without a miraculous intellignent intervention. It was compelling, not because many people were not able to give an explanation to it, but because I think that it was a better argument than simply saying that God does exist and people realise it only when they believe. I have heard a lot of such crap, the most hilarious being the forwards I get wherein Einstein proves that God exists using heat-cold analogy. What was the point made, I simply couldn't understand!

Going back to the discussion, the question was intriguing and interesting. Science has not found an answer till this point - something that is very much understandable since human science paradigm hasn't even reached its adolescent stage. There are a lot of unanswered questions, which i believe would be answered one day. There are a lot of other questions in the theory of evolution and most notably in the big-bang theory. I had already written a two part blog on it and donot want to repeat here - but my point is that God may exist but as long as I find people incorrigible in their theory, I cannot accept their theory.

I believe more in science because it corrects its error over a period of time. Einstein challenged Newton's theory, Hawking and others contradicted Einstein and now, quantum physics makes us believe in time-drifts and multiverses. There is no end to all these postulates and thats what make them interesting. Isn't it good to get involved in all these intricacies which led us to know more about why we are here rather than simply ignore them by believing that some supreme power created us? I guess the answer is obvious, it was to me..

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For whom the bell tolls

Its something that I have been in a dilemma about for quite a while. I had almost condemned myself to the thought that anger was good to me for more than one reason...only to find my basement sway first, rock later, in a way so hard that I had to put on my thinking cap again in this issue. Anger, I believed made me good - its the anger on people demanding undeserved niceties that made me egotistic, its the anger on people not acknowledging the basic need of life that made me seek and worship it, its the anger of people being diplomatic in love that made me throw away my smile-in-adversity thing, its the anger on my own lowly self that made me rich in thinking prowess.

All this was wonderful and absolutely gregarious with good virtues, but only until I opened my ears to the bells. The toll was unheard of before for I was too angry to hear its disturbing tam-tam, a metallic gong that resonates in a frequency not too random for my confort. I woke up and realised, I may be wrong - I said 'maybe'...only that.

I have shouted at umpteen number of persons in the previous few days. I do run into trouble with the so-called conscience after my outburst, but I say to myself that I am right. I have a strange feeling that somewhere I may be wrong and its my anger that I turn on others. Sometimes I wonder if I was really timid before - the ferocity of my anger in recent cases make it unexplainable, if true..I don't believe its true - its just that I had supressed it somehow before.

Of all who are hurt and were sent to shambles by my anger, there is one person who stands amidst all. Its my alpha and the omega...

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