Battle won and lost

Here ends a long fought battle. Can we call it a battle? The peculiar thing about this is that I ain’t sure whether this was a battle in the first place and secondly I am not able to figure out who the winner is. Has the battle served its purpose? What was the purpose? Sometimes, it was not even clear who the participants were. Were there more than two sides? Which side was I on? Or was it just me fighting it against myself. Who were my supporters? Were there any traitors? 

The battle was fought without an aim or a strategy.There was no artillery or cavalry. The only sign of a battle having taken place was the damages that could be seen. The debris scattered around were the sole witness of the war. But, still it was difficult to ascertain the extent of damages or to find out which side the damages were more. Since, this wasn’t a normal battle, I kept wondering about the rules of the game. Would normal rules apply here? Or should I twist the rules or as they say “Change the game”.

For the moment,I don’t see any enemies’ flags. I can’t sight any approaching units. No sound of bugle or horns. Not even the typical “Get ready” or “Fire” commands. Have the enemies retreated? Does it mean our victory or rather, my victory? Or are they devising Trojan type strategy and will make a comeback? Should I let my guard down and relax?Or should I enjoy the peace, even though it might be momentary.

May be there was no battle at all. It was just hallucination, a dream or perhaps it was the lack of any battle that made me imagine everything. Was it a subconscious effort to fill the void? We all love to be occupied with something. If we don’t find anything, we desperately attempt to create an illusion of being full and thus ending up filling garbage.

My thoughts kept pondering over the way battles have been fought in our history and mythology. Did the heroes that emerged victorious also have the same feeling? Did they really feel ecstatic after the war? What did they do immediately after winning? Did they go back to the kins of the defeated and offered their condolences. Or was there a feeling of repent? It is of no use to compare this situation to others. This time is different. Perhaps it’s time to think beyond. Instead of being burdened by morality, it is time to go ahead and take the next step.

The last arrow

The last arrow in the quiver goes away. This arrow was hidden.  Even though I knew, it was safely tucked somewhere. However hard I tried to look for it, it couldn’t be found.  Somehow, the arrow eluded me. But I was certain, the day would come and when this arrow would be discovered. And I kept waiting for it.  Even though the quiver was empty, I didn’t throw it away in anticipation of the last one. The quiver was constantly on my back all the while. It had become a baggage, rather. I had often dreamt of it only to wake up finding it empty. I needed the last arrow badly to try one last shot. All the previous arrows had missed the bull’s eye. My hope solely rested on the last one. As time passed, I became more and more convinced that this one would be the saviour. This one would finish up the pending work.

And the time came, the arrow suddenly appeared. It looked silent and innocuous as if it was in the quiver all the time. But I can swear, I hadn’t seen or felt it before. It was mocking at me. But, this was not a time to blame. I had to take my last try. With trembling hands, I straightened the bow, put on the arrow and tightened the string. 

Looking at the arrow, I asked myself. What if, this also misses the point? The arrow, which was missing all this time would again vanish in a moment. Why not just keep the arrow and avoid facing the truth? Atleast, the last hope wouldn’t die. Why did the arrow make me wait just to disappear again and this time never to return? 

I closed my eyes. Perhaps, it wasn’t meant to be.  Every arrow is different and every arrow has its own course. Every arrow has its own target and is different from the target we choose for them. The path laid for them has to be traversed by the arrow alone. Perhaps, it was time to let the arrow go and dump the quiver. I would feel lighter. The quiver started feeling heavier. I couldn’t bear it. 

I opened my eyes. The world looked different. It was all new. Encouraged, I took the aim and shot the arrow.

Reaching the “Break-even” point

Today morning, when I woke up, it was a different feeling. Unlike other days, I felt neutral. I did not feel any emotional attachment to my past days or towards my previous lifestyle. The feeling of change had suddenly disappeared.

The transition was a big one as in the days following the change; I was a person fighting with myself, struggling with the unknown. The fight was between a student and a salaried individual. It was the differences between a young, unknown college and an established reputed college where an engineering graduate tried to master the “master” courses . It was the transition from Bangalore to Mumbai, shifting from being a flat tenant to a hosteller.

It was the change that I had been disliking since. I had been trying to somehow compensate the negative feeling of the transition with the fond memories of the past, hoping that this change is just a short break and the past would again come back with a U-turn. 

I had tried to count the days and got happier with each passing minute hoping that the two years would end sooner. Three months have gone so far and to me it seems like 2 years.  But today morning, I did not feel any such kind of disappointment or frustration. I simple felt calm, as if I had been in this life style for years. I no more missed the Sunday wherein I would lazily spend away time sleeping and relaxing.  Perhaps I thought, this new feeling is just a hallucination and would quickly go away as the day progresses and I would soon return to “normalcy”. But the “normal” feeling never came, leading me to the surprising conclusion that there has been a change yet again.

I knew the change would eventually come but never knew that it could happen overnight without any warning.

 Ok, now that the break even point has been reached, LET’S RUN THE RACE!!

THEY SAY “DREAM BIG!!”

You are allowed to dream, dream BIG, really BIG. They say you should dream. They say you are free to dream. So, you dream but little do you know that you are not allowed to achieve them. Because these dreams are not meant to be realized by you. It is only meant to be dreamt of. And do you know the reason why you can't make your dreams come true, even after being allowed to dream, dream BIG? 

I shall tell you the biggest secret of why you can't make your BIG dreams becomes BIG realities. 

The reason is very obvious but no one realizes it. In fact, the reason is the very same reason why you are allowed to dream. Does it sound strange? or weird? Isn't it weird that the same thing is responsible to make you dream BIG and also responsible to prevent you from making them BIG? It might appear weird for a moment but ponder for two more such brief and thoughtful moments and the truth automatically comes to light. This truth is the very obvious truth. And I shall tell you the truth right away but before knowing the truth right away, to better understand the significance of the truth, we have to digress for a moment and go back in history to the point when you were formed. The time when you were formed, you were in majority and you thought you won but you didn't realize that the majority is the least powerful. Adding to your ignorance that majority had won and was free, was this assurance that they would listen to you. They told you that the time had come for all of you to dream and dream BIG. And so you did. The trend of dreaming BIG has continued since then by every one of you without questioning at any point, this line of thought carried over from generations. It is as though you have accepted this as a basic necessity of life and freedom. 

Coming back to the truth which I had left midway to better understand its significance even after promising that I would tell it right away, the truth is that you all are still in majority and the truth is that you are still ignorant to the same extent as before and the truth is that you can do nothing about it. You can do nothing about it because you have never dreamt of doing anything about it. You have dreamt of all other things, but not this and that’s precisely why you will never do anything about it, even though continuing to be free and ignorant. This is the truth that you are free and ignorant. Free to dream the BIG dreams and ignorant of the fact that you can't achieve them.

Now, after understanding the truth and also after better understanding the significance of the truth, it's time to dwell upon the reason for the truth. Why can't you achieve your dreams, even after being allowed to dream? As I had already mentioned the reason was obvious, very obvious yet not being spotted by anyone. The reason that it was not realized by anyone of you was because none of you could do anything about it. So the obvious, yet unrealized reason is that you all are in a dangerous zone. It is dangerous because it is also the majority. It is dangerous because it is not the minority. It is dangerous because it is neither the upper minority nor in the lower minority. It is dangerous because it is in the middle. It is in the middle majority. They hate the majority. The reason that they hate the majority is also very obvious. The reason is because they are not the majority. And those who are not the majority hate those who are the majority. They are the ones who make you dream BIG and they are the ones who actually achieve them by preventing you to do so. Weird? I guess it is no weirder now. Instead it should be crystal clear. If there is still a shade of doubt in your mind and I know that it’s actually more than just a shade, as I knew you will not believe me, so I challenge you to achieve any one of your dreams, BIG or less BIG. And then you will believe me. You will believe me when you will be crushed by them at the very minute you think you achieved your dreams. And at that moment, you will realize that perhaps I am right. 

So can you never achieve your dreams? The good news is you can. The bad news is that after you achieve them, you cease to be the majority in the middle. You become them. Because the fact is that the middle is forbidden to achieve dreams.

Wrong Judgement

What is the one thing that we human beings keep doing all throughout our life?

We try to pretend as someone else.

We are never happy with ourselves. We always look out for other examples. Every minute, every second, we want to be someone else. We imitate someone all the time, both consciously and unconsciously. The reason for that is put below.

Everyone has an idol in their minds. That idol can be someone in their family, or some celebrity or just some fictitious person who possesses all the qualities and characteristics that they want their idol to have. All throughout their life, they want to get closer to that character. Hence, they talk like the idol, they laugh like the person, they walk, eat like him/her and in fact their every activity tries to imitate that of the idol.

Let’s analyze this hypocrisy from a different angle. Everyone behaves differently at different places. For example, a guy would try to behave like a romantic and loving husband to his wife, a strict and yet loving father to his children, a good, practical and professional at his office. Everyone have their different “spaces” and they adapt to that situation when they switch “spaces”. Hence the quick differences in behavior. The same guy might appear to be very strict at office, yet very compromising when it comes to family matters. The same girl might give the impression of being a very jovial person among friends but at work, she might act as a workaholic. Whenever strangers meet each other on a train, they all put up their best behavior and appear to be very decent and disciplined, which might be very different from their behavior in a familiar group of people.

Now that we have seen that human behavior is never constant and it constantly meanders between the different types of characters possible, the question is, what is the true character of a person? By looking at one face of the person, should one have the liberty to judge him/her? Now that it is proved that everyone constantly fakes their behavior, how does an outsider know which one is the real character?

In this world where we are constantly judged by the society, we live in the constant fear that we are being judged. And on top of that, there is the additional fear that we are being judged for the wrong type. To give an analogy, it’s something like we hate to be tested when we are not ready for the test and that too, when the test is for a different subject itself. It is because of this innermost fear that we, unconsciously, project ourselves as someone else, whom we think would get more score in the exam conducted by the society. Hence, we do not get, even one moment, when we are “unwatched” and we can enjoy the joy and the freedom of being ourselves.

We work so hard , we use all our spare time to get more money and during the process we lose the time to be ourselves and we keep masquerading as the fictitious, wannabe person, who is constantly fighting with the innermost true and realistic person.

The Chase Ends

Often there are many things that one keeps chasing in life. He/She tries his/her best to achieve them. They try all sorts of things for those. But finally realize that all of them lead to the same dead end. All end up at the starting point. Life is such a maze of twists and turns, but ultimately there is no twist. Everything is the same. Life is a pattern. Everything follows a pattern. Whatever you try, How much ever differently you try, you gonna soon see that it’s been happened to you before. Many times you know the result before hand, but you don’t wanna believe that it will end up in the same way as the previous ways. We all want to avoid the past, the patterns already followed before, but the truth is that every new pattern some way or other, is exactly the old pattern. Déjà vu? No not exactly, because in the case of déjà vu, you realize it’s been happened before, but in this case you also know the result. Everyone knows the result of their actions, instinctively. It is just that we don’t want to believe our own predictions. Isn’t it strange that you don’t want to believe in your prophecy, in your instincts? It is because we hope that it won’t be the same as if hoping against something will actually lead to something different. Sadly, enough, it doesn’t work like that.

Talking about patterns, let me tell you that there is a unique pattern for every individual. Something inborn in that person decides the pattern that would be repeated throughout his/her life. There is no problem in this, as long as the person doesn’t realize the truth of the pattern. When one is oblivious of the pattern, he/she will try out things that are supposed to give him a different way of living. This will keep the energy/fire/momentum alive in his/her heart, and will make him/her experiment everything in his/her life. These people do not know the result and keep their fingers crossed till the last moment and still unable to believe in the outcome. This hope of the unknown result keeps them alive. This section of people is fortunate who don’t realize that everything they do will follow the so called “pattern”. But the trouble lies with that category of people, who realize the pattern before it’s too late. They know the result of their experiments beforehand. They know what lies ahead in their career and how their life is gonna shape up in the future. Though it sounds as if these sections of people are fortunate/talented enough to know the predictions, it is worse inside. Why? Let me convince you of this in the next paragraph.

Consider a guy who falls in the latter category who knows the pattern. He wants to try out a different experiment in his career. His instincts tell him that it won’t work, because the pattern depicts so. Now the guy is in a dilemma. What should he do? Should he go ahead with the experiment, being fully aware that it won’t produce the desired result? Or should he abort the experiment and thus get stereotyped as a coward, who doesn’t try out things, going against the popular Bhagavat Gita (which advises one to not to worry about the fruit of one’s action). Should he then just stop fighting with life and surrender to the mysteries of kismat? Wouldn’t giving up everything abate the fire inside him and stop the possibility of making his life different? To give an analogy, it’s like buying a lottery. You know the result that you won’t win it. So should you stop buying up the lottery and hence end up all the possibilities of winning right away?

Poor guy!!! Will he still keep the hope and spirit alive in his soul? I don’t know/care about his new style of living. But temporarily, “The Chase Ends”.

Greatest Inventions of the Aeonic World

What are the greatest inventions/discoveries in the history of mankind?  The three things that have changed the human race and given Homo Sapiens a distinct and superior identity are undoubtedly “Fire”, “Wheel” and “Paper”. All of them have enhanced and sophisticated the mankind at different times in different fields. Let me elaborate on each of them separately.

FIRE symbolizes both light and heat. In the initial days, fire offered warmth to the cavemen, protecting from the harsh cold. It allowed them to see things and work in dark. It also enabled them to cook/roast food. A secondary benefit was that it helped them to scare away wild animals from their homes. Electricity is the modern version of fire. Needless to say, electricity has been very much a part of our lives and development.

WHEEL signifies the entire transportation. It allowed us to save time and energy and reduced the distances between fellow human beings. I wouldn’t be wrong if I say that wheel led to the discovery of continents, mountains, rivers, people, civilizations, etc. It enabled people to mix and trade with other people from different lands. Even today, we feel the presence of wheel in the form of trains, ships, airplanes, rockets, etc.

PAPER, although an invention much later than the first two, has made our civilization progress by leaps and bounds. Paper could imply lot of things. For example, accounting, maths, science, etc can be called the effects of paper invention. If not for paper, we would have still been in the Stone Age and trading in the form of barter system which needed minimal calculations. Paper actually enabled us to refine our calculations and thus came out scientists and technicians. It allowed us to share/retain knowledge in a more visible manner. It developed the traditional form of teaching called “shruti” (ancient oral based learning) to a modern classroom based education, supplemented with books and computers.

Now that we have dealt with all these three, one feels tempted to compare them and ask as to which one is the greatest invention ever.  Anyhow, all these put together have definitely revolutionized our lifestyle and made MAN as the most superior species in the universe. One might also want to analyze if there are anymore similar discoveries. One might say telephones, but if we look closely, it is a mixture of the effects of electricity and paper. Hence, fire, wheel and paper are the mother of all inventions and will continue to do so.

Kismat's Trap

Call it luck,fate, destiny, kismat, naseeb or bhagya. It is all the same and still I have never fully understood as to what is this Kismat.

In my school days, my English teacher had said that Luck is nothing but God. She explained that it is just a word to define God's presence, because something happening by chance in one's favour can only be manipulated by God and therefore luck can never be explained in normal human terms. I have often tried to figure out how God is synonymous with luck and still not been successful to either prove or disapprove the correlation.

Logic fails to explain it. Science calls it probability. Sometimes I wonder that maybe it is not at all complex and is just another word coined by human beings to give a appropriate name to their mistakes or someone else's success.

Many a times, people say that it wasn't their day. Sometimes students before exams say it all depends on your luck. You may get easy questions or you may not be able to recall something needed at that time. Still, there are many others who contradict and say success doesn't lie in luck. They feel that it is pure hard work. When Shah Rukh Khan was once asked about the reason for his success, he had said "You have to be at the right place and at the right time."

Yet there are many who still associate fate with palmistry, and may sometimes develop an inferiority complex in themselves after discovering that their fate line is not blurred/missing. Just to add a note, Panini (the great Sanskrit scholar) had etched out the education line with knife on his palm to make out for the missing line.

According to most of the religious mythology, everything has been decided beforehand. And no one can change the "vidhi ka vidhaan". It is said that none can change destiny.
In the movie "Serendipity", the girl believes in the power of luck and decides to choose her partner only if luck brings him to her. Maybe it sounds ridiculous or superstitious but if properly analysed, people still fall prey to the sheer superstitious power of fate.

For example, today we have many games and lottery that lure people to squander their money by giving them false promises of Kismat. All the share markets, stocks are all one or other form of Kismat. Not only that, the charms, gems,amulets, etc. still have a market of their own.

Kismat is such a beautiful mystical event that it makes almost anyone believe in it. One can't help but get engulfed in this maze and then get trapped and wait for the angel to open the door.

I am trapped and I need to be rescued. Where is the angel whom I am seeking? When will Lady Luck knock my door? If I am to believe the protagonist in Shantaram who defines the angel as "Luck is what happens to you when fate gets tired of waiting", then how long should I (or rather my fate) wait?