My very first Lohri!!

January 13th, 2013!
Woah!! Look at that,it is two 13s there! ;)

Haha! For everyone who said that today.. I just wanted to share something I realised today, I felt it was important I wrote it down somewhere(later thought, why not share), lest I overlook and forget! It might sound stupid for some,nevertheless that wouldn't stop me from writing it here!

We have so many superstitions, (the 13 thingy I was referring to before), true having an awful day gives every reason to sulk, But doesn't that only mean, this placebo is robbing you of all the opportunities that can kick the day up?! That is old wine! Yeah, it is a universal truth so, I don't have anything new to share there,moving on.

Ohkk ok,Here is what I really wanted to write on,We are so vulnerable and gullible most of the times. We are so full of inhibitions (This stands no exception to the so-called most egalitarian societies of the west). We judge! A lot, and today, I realised that does more harm to us than to the person who is being judged! It is like living in a coffin. Though I can not share the incident that made me realise this, here is what, We end up naming relationships, quantifying them. We always have this preconceived notion that some people 'close' to us can always make us happy. While some people, are always nettlesome. Not at all true.
Well,an hour of Lohri celebrations, pop corn, winter night,bonfire, songs and a few friends, shattered this impression of mine. I had one of the most memorable days, away from home.

Turns out,a truly hearty, selflessly happy person can always make others happy. It is like the sun! It is a radiation,warm and soothing.
People are only what their feelings make them, we never know what their journey is all about,judging them would be robbing ourselves from all the happiness a person can potentially share with us! We might as well make ourselves less gullible.

May be a little less of judgement, can promise a hell lot of happiness. People may not be the same, but then unfeignedly shared happiness has no substitutes. True celebration, is all about sharing,shattering all the inhibitions we brought along with us! We all come in uniquely wonderful, the pursuit might change us,after all.. It is but the 'Difficulty of being Good '

Doubts

Doubts, yeah doubts. I have too many of them.

Is today's 'Education' really the panacea we are looking for? Or is there more?

Many things we need can wait, but the child can’t. To him, we can’t say ‘tomorrow’. Because his name is ‘today’. 

Lately, I realized, contemplating comes involuntarily most of the times. A wide smile that lights up a room doesn't always mean complete, absolute happiness. Change can be as minuscule as maximal it can be. But whatever it is, it is good. Because, yeah... I came to make peace with the notion that utopia is utter boredom,there always has to be some place for change. May be it is but an exaggeration, but I am here to throw light on what I came across recently, and I just got caught up there. May be I should get it out of my system to move on,so I write.

As always, I boil down every human problem to the only panacea I realized since childhood, and that was, is and I guess which always will be ‘Education’. I thought education can change everything, as much as I realize I was right I also realized I couldn't have been more wrong. I miss those days where we can run along the corridor, catch up with a teacher who is taller than you, just to ask a doubt.. So that she can bend down to listen and clarify what is bugging a tiny brain. I miss those days where you raise your hand to get the teacher’s attention just to ask a question so loud to be audible enough to get the doubt clarified. Yeah, back then, I had math doubts.. May be languages and sciences.. But now, I cannot even place some doubts into any genre and my mind doesn't stop blabbering. Well, 20 days at home a bunch of movies and awesome food, may be everyone gets many doubts.

• Change doesn't come to us running if we sit idle. It has got some ego, we need to go there and persuade it to come along and join us, and so is success. While we criticize ego, we try to hold on to it, as that is what gives us the identity we crave for,right?

• Whatever the change the visionaries have anticipated, and strove for, I speak now, actually, we speak now, with the benefit of hind sight that it is inadequate, but we take time to realize that it was relevant and that was what has helped us pave the way to reach this day. Why is it that change has never been overhauling? Why is it always in small doses? Is it like a medicine that the societal system can only take as much as it can agree?

• Just because you know it is panacea, it doesn't mean that it will be the right thing to follow blindly. Doing the right thing is not what matters. Doing the right thing right is what beckons change right into the lap. Every idea that is in shape has to be efficient.It is the idea that is the world around us. So we say, Action has to always accompany idea, so there is no such thing as a handicap right?

• Aspirations can never fall short. But they have to spend more time with action. What appears as the toughest time, as Aun San Suu Kyi said the other day is the time when you think success is round the corner, but sometimes, turning round seems like eternity. There are no short-cuts to truth are they?  Why is it that there is no end to where inspiration can take us?

• Does beauty really lie in the eyes that behold? Don’t you think, all our eyes are tied with the handcuffs of stereotyped socialization? Let me tell this small thing.. fair is beauty, dark is ugly or tall is appealing short is not. At least that is what is endorsed in the million dollar ads that are all around us. If it is so, then where does the eye have space,to make a choice of stamping something as beauty, without going into various apprehensions?

• Initially the bell had no religious symbolism. It was used to grab the attention of the masses. Mind is where things are born. Mind is wonderfully weird while being cautiously vibrant. How is it possible that it is always capable of rhetorically giving life to antonyms, while placing side by side, making conflict inevitable?
• Why is fear so timid? It ultimately takes the form of the brave,it succumbs, with no choice,none at all.

Yeah, I got all these ramblings shouting at me from inside my brain after I watched a bunch of movies. Hmm.. Of what, like, say 5 languages. I know, mind is one thing that never shuts up I guess. Well, here is the realization part, these days I answer everything with this: The Sword and Shield analogy.

Let me take 'Education', as I mentioned earlier. I am not here to endorse or criticize any government program. Because I always think that change that is eternal always comes from within and not from the external push. Education, as a shield, can only protect you from what you don’t want to be. It is rout.It can’t change anything, like we know.. It is memorizing and blurting out. A shield is incapable of inducing change. However, Education like a sword,creative, agile and intelligently adaptable, will protect you, while you shape your surroundings according to what you aspire. A sword, it is creative, dynamic and at the same time protectively hindering. It is not a dagger that kills. A sword moulds what is at your disposal to whatever is the best thing that could be at use right then, right there.

I could not help myself from applying that to 'Talking'. Talking, when used as a shield, is just a protection. It will not give you the dauntless valour to defend against the wrong. Most of the time, it makes you end up ignoring or overlooking it, just to appease to the surroundings. But, talking, as a sword it is one thing that empowers you, that is when you actually talk of the ideas, the vibrancy of the human mind is articulated. Furthermore, I could immerse myself in reasoning this analogy for Listening, smiling, relations and everything, and just when I was thinking, everything has two extreme ends of application,I realized,there is always a third option. Not the both, or may be the both. The sword and the shield. After all, the best wars were won where they all had utilized the both. Well, it is time to for us to get out of the stereo type education systems, and socialization. Well beyond the sword and the shield,there is always more to explore, that is where our vision should lead the light to. That is where we can say, aim of life, not of the dreams. Dreams always have the chance of ‘if’, if we really are here to aspire, I don’t think we can leave that little space. I hope, I made some sense, as this is going a little over my head right now. Or may be I have more doubts. 

Yeah true, now I realize it is very simple to be happy, but it is very difficult to be simple.

I think it is time to say Night night now. Adios!

PS:: A really long hiatus beckons.Living sans technology is finally appealing to be fun. <Hibernation mode>

A Happily Ever After...

Let me first tell you how this started.. :D
I was bored and so tried editing my Google account information when there was this question:

"A thing that google can't help you with.."
I did not even pause and think... Don't know how, may be it was deep down there.. And I filled the tab.. 'In finding out a happily ever after!' Though not here to speak about philosophy (That is not me already! May be there is a lot of time for me to write on that! ;) ) What I wanted to tell was.. I was puzzled about the spontaneity with which I could answer that!! No holding back! Most of the stories I read and admired almost always ended with a happy note.. So, may be, I thought, that's where this blog should start.. With a happily ever after..

For the next 15 minutes after I saved my google account information...
My thoughts.. I always anticipated of how it should be.. The happily ever after..


This anticipation must have started when my father read out "... And they lived happily ever after" before kissing me goodnight.. That was a perfect life then, I thought.. 'this' must be the happily ever after... Not long before I realized.. Nothing remained the same.. School, small fights for crayons, tantrums for a Chocolate, that big red plastic ball, sports day at school, the drama I was in, birthdays, piggy banks.. And the thing is that, at every point, I blissfully thought 'Uhh!! This is the happily ever after! :) ' But it was not!! That was not the happily ever after!


Or it might have started at that time when I secretly read those novels with a happy ending before the next day dawned and Everything changed from school.. As it always did, College came and only things that mattered were ranks, marks and grades! And definitely that was not my happily ever after!! The restless mind ranted whenever there was a mishap.. Very few or may be wait.. There were no incidents at all when I thought 'Awww! This is life!!' In those two years!!

Perhaps it started when i was happily entering this life, the campus life.. with the craving to find out if that was the happily ever after!! Friends forever, late night chats.. blah blah blah **Don’t want to sound more cliched here!! (It will make me feel nostalgic and I may forget that I have one more semester to let these things entice me like they always did!! :D)
But at the end of it.. Perhaps that was not the happily ever after either.. Coz now I Find myself awaiting yet another phase!!







Or may be it started when I asked my then recently married cousin.. 'Is this your happily ever after ?' and he answered 'No..' Bad move, I know. But I verified it!! Genuine? Check! :D And that was because all the fairy tales I grew up listening to,ended with that note..!! (You may laugh,even I was grinning when I was asking that) ;) :D
But I think I realize that the thing is it took 19 long years for me to understand that.. Everything changes, Forever is too good to be true, and that Change is the essence of life! And that change is good, rather, awesome! 
For, in this cycle of life, I now believe that, that innocent thought of 'Aww! This is happily ever after..' Whenever I tasted a candy 16 years back is just true.. Yeah, there must be that happily ever after in everything that makes you truly happy. Because, everything changes, Life is not a fairy tale. It is much n=more beautiful, because the most important things in life remain just the same, come what may! :) Or may be a hope for change is what makes us strong enough to endure what is not meant to be or may be meant to be!


After all, Google can't always help us.. ;)
Some things should be figured out by oneself!!
Moreover, Happiness is not a destination its the journey.. And Memories are bliss!! :)
The savour of bliss.. Never lost!!
Basked them,
Always have.. Ever more!!!