GRAVITY

We all are born out of nothingness, even better from assholes. Humans are deuterstomes which means that at one point of time as a developing embryo we all were nothing but assholes and adjusting the lens’ focus today is like reassuring oneself that some embryos just never developed beyond that stage. Long we’ve heard to the tales of a terrible caterpillar which transformed into a flamboyant butterfly. The caterpillar gang lamented her for changing herself, they wanted her to get back to being that ugly little caterpillar, but she had wings. Such gangs of caterpillars are those assholes who never seek for maturity in life, forget wisdom.

Lo and behold! The whim in the wings of that butterfly. She frees herself from all things that weigh her down, and uses all her brute force to overcome GRAVITY and soars high, up she goes!

Now just look up there and you’ll see so many stars than ever before where the butterfly soared. They burn brighter and they shine longer and they never vanish into your periphery when you turn your head. It is as if they come out for us and to remind us that their light took so long to come to us, that if we never had the patience to wait, to endure, we never would have seen them, tonight, like this.

That as much as it hurts, sometimes it’s all you can do, wait; sometimes bereft of and other times with GRAVITY (graveness)  and keep shining knowing that eventually, your light will reach where it is supposed to reach and shine for whom it is supposed to shine for.

It is never easy, but it is always worth it.

Now look down to within yourselves and voila! You ripped your soul apart to keep others whole. Right from our schooling days, we’re taught that there is a universal force exercised by two bodies onto each other known as GRAVITY. But now that we’ve passed school and seen life through higher focused lenses, I doubt is GRAVITY really such a universal might that it is sufficient enough to keep two bodies together? Rapists, GRAVITY will save you from your next hearing. Cupid, GRAVITY says it is natural to stay together then why you be the God?

Kinematics tells us about the effect of gravity on the sun and the moon. It explains the wonderment with which the sun, the moon and the waves amaze us (namely, the high tide and the low tide). It makes us realize that how much loved the sea is! Probably, this love of gravity is the reason which pulls lovers and beloveds towards it. Perhaps, it is the reason behind people settling down on the loose grains of sands, drawing their feet closer to the hip, wrapping their legs with their own arms and just imagining the aura created by this intimacy through a lover. Perhaps, this love due to gravity is the reason behind serenity even in the maximum cities like Mumbai and Sydney.

But, can GRAVITY explain the art behind sharing naked souls than just bodies, please? Can it confirm to me that “exercising force onto each other” is so lowly human while “sharing each other’s soul, scars and wounds” is divine and beyond any definition any science textbook can offer? If the answer to the latter is in negation, then sorry dear gravity, but I disown you. Maybe, you’ve to go back from where it all started to understand that even your source of origin had an origin from an asshole (we’re talking about the birth of Newton).

To fly high, we’ve to surpass gravity (forget the space shuttles) and just remember the butterfly I mentioned, even she overcomes it. To unite as one rather than just stay together by exercising force, we’ve to defy gravity. To shine brighter than before, we’ve to leave gravity and focus on our more practical actions with endurance and patience. So fundamentally, is gravity even needed to carry out life if all we’ve to do with gravity is plain aversion?

Yes, it is. We can only become great if we surpass something, overcome something, leave something and defy other things. Gravity serves all these purposes and pushes us forward to take that leap of faith and commit fully to whatever we want to do in life, after all even a push is a force!

Conclusively, now just look at the jugadu Indians.  Movie GRAVITY shelled out more bucks than Mangalyaan! Kudos.

One word, many definitions. GRAVITY.

TOO SCARED TO COMMIT?

We’re all so convoluted in our lives that our heart has an argument with our head, every time it wants to beat. We’ve finer days in our lives relative to our ancestors. We leave our homes, cities and countries to pursue grander ambitions in life more flexibly than them. We’ve an assortment of choices in everything that life offers these days and every so often. We leave friends, lovers and possibilities for the chance to roam the world and make deeper connections. We defy our fear of change more often, hold our head high more assuredly and do what we once thought was unthinkable: walk away, more recurrently. And this is always scary, but what unfolds beyond the fright is that in leaving we don’t just find love, adventure or freedom, more than anything we find ourselves.

This plethora of vagaries has deluded us from staying committed to a definite thing and more significantly, people in our rusted lives.  We accommodate to deviations in slew spheres of life more sporadically than ever before and in the course we’ve turned oblivious to hold onto someone in life fixedly. Physical appearances are gullible and if that is someone’s utmost priority in settling down with someone then, here’s an advice: You’ll always find a better bargain somewhere down the lane.

“Your naked body should belong to only those who have seen your naked soul” is a thing of past now. “There are still so many kisses and laughs and nights and days and risks worth taking and road trips and books to read and poetry to write and pictures to take, you’ve to believe this please!” is the new in. This new age anecdote is too thwarting for men and women who look forward to get hitched for life. They are muddled in their heap of thoughts than ever before and even overthink their overthinking while forecasting to settle down in life. They are overshadowed by this belief of finding-someone-better-in-life than the one who is omnipresent in their lives.

To people with such a paradox, I would say that if it’s all a matter of finding-someone-better-in-life then this analogy serves well in other relationships viz. parents, siblings et al as well. But do we actually go out on a spree in a hunt of a new pair of parents who are more perceptible to us or a new bunch of siblings who are more fun being with? We don’t. One can argue that we settle with them because they’re our blood relatives. So I ask again, do we keep loitering around colonies and apartments searching for a better neighborhood day in and day out or change our friends the moment we feel there’re differences?  We don’t. We squat down together and talk things out.

We all are so flattered by this new concept of “better” that we apply it in all aspects of our lives with a care in the world. Overwhelmingly, we are now more convoluted in our lives as this new age freedom asks us to decide for our would-be spouse in sharp contrast to the days where the onus lied on the elders in the house exclusively. I vehemently believe that it is high time that we unfasten our safety belts and take a plunge in the deep ocean of love and more relevantly, commitment with whomsoever we’ve spent long time gaily instead of meandering in search of someone who probably exists only hypothetically.

STAY MINDLESS!

There is something far greater than death and that is to be ignored. Sometimes, I think of all the faces I’ve come across and all the faces I’ve forgotten, and how terrible it is to come and go. Imagine meeting someone one day and completely turning a blind eye to their existence the other day. Sadly, this is how we all lead our lives. We only tend to remember the moments that make us feel something and we become oblivion to other times of our lives as life treads on. We all devour only those moments that make us feel like we’re all worth a little more than we were the night before.

In this befitted world of ours, there’re a lot of melodramatic sagas which put on display the mindless people, as I’d call them or the nincompoops, as the world would call them. All of us have moments when we lose track of the present, traipsing off into another world. To a mind focused on the here and now, absent mindedness may seem a negative that holds you back from worldly success. Children are reprimanded for daydreaming and taught the virtues of staying focused. But who says that to be absent minded is to lack in focus?! The absence of mind shall just mean that the mind is meandering through fascinating labyrinths that are invisible to the open eye. Or, that it is focused on something else that is not of this world- an elusive element that we seek to chase, understand, grasp and perhaps bring back into this world as poetry, writing, sketching, a unique thought, a new dance form or a great discovery! It points to a mindlessness that allows us to soak up experiences and knowledge that too much mindfulness of the present reality cannot give us.

Scientists, poets, philosophers and creative people are most notorious for their absent minded ways. Several anecdotes revolve around Albert Einstein and Sir Isaac Newton due to their scattered, oblivious ways. There are multifarious distractions and mind-boggling technology today, so quite cognitively the ‘absent-mindedness’ strikes in novel ways these days. Forgetting where you kept your car keys; having that panicky moment when you think you misplaced your cellphone before you realize you’re talking on it; forgetting why you walked into a room or why you opened the refrigerator or forgetting why you called someone as soon as someone takes the call – are commonplaces to be in.

In The Last Samurai, Nobutada, son of the leader of the Samurai rebellion tells Tom Cruise, “Forgive me, too many minds…” and counsels him that to be a Samurai, he must seek a stillness of the mind “No mind, no mind…” he advises.

When the mind phases out and floats away, it takes away with it any sense of ego. “I” ceases to exist and you float in mindlessness like an empty cauldron ready for new, unique experiences. We no longer see the world so lucidly, though we see more clearly facts and truths hidden from us earlier. Sufis say that in order to reach God in this life, we need to die before we die. Rumi says that in order to open the doors of heaven on earth, we need to melt down ego.

Meditation and sexual climax, when all thoughts shut for a while, are two extreme paths to mindlessness. Osho says, in this mindlessness you become divine. When you become mindless, you unite with the universal flow allowing the right brain to take over. There, at that level, you cannot separate the dancer from dance, artist from sketches and so on. You’re in a unique position where you absorb, understand, discover, become One and create.

Conclusively, there seem to be no fallacy in hanging around mindlessly. Far from considering it a negative, it should be the desirable state that everyone can, or even should aspire to!

THE GREAT INDIAN WEDDING FEVER

In today’s world of cut throat competition, especially in a populous state like India hard work, ambitiousness aren’t just words but are the daily stories of a common (read: from general quota) man. And what separates the ordinary hard workers from the genuinely laborious students is their dogged adherence. When the world doses off, lights turn off, serenity dispels the chaos and desires burn like they are more to an individual than the heart beat and the incessant respiration, that’s when champions are made.

An individual arises from his/her own nothingness and submerges in the same day in and day out to beat all odds and secure meritorious ranks, qualifications and promotions in myriad spheres. Every single time (s)he cracks an entrance exam, or breaks another record and shines in the periphery of the eye it seems to me that they are trying to tell us that they burnt themselves to appear to be illuminated under the dark tragic backdrop. Hence, they deserve true recognition and utmost respect.

But we still live in a society where if a 22 year old lass confronts to her father that she cleared the entrance test to get admitted in a foreign college(say with a total expenditure of Rs 25 lakhs), then the poor girl receives a negation in the name of financial weakness of her parents. The same girl is married off, the very next month with the parents shelling out at least Rs 30 lakhs for the big fat wedding.
A woman is often limited by our society in the name of ‘realism’ to sew her dreams shut by stuffing all her aspirations in a cushion cover aka her soul. Sports aren’t meant for her, mechanics and aerodynamics can’t be her forte, speed and alcohol shouldn’t give her the adrenaline rush, and definitely driving and proficient decision making can’t be her strength. So she is wedlocked by her parents as riddance, or we can say that the onus now switches over from them to her husband. If she’s really eager to work after marriage, then she can do so for another 2-3 years till the time she bears her own kids and grooms them after (mostly) quitting from the job. She can’t afford to soil her saree during a stroll down the lane with her in-laws or laze around in oversized shirts because she always should be presentable. Can she?

So basically, it all starts with a girl who was dying to finish high school to start college and start living fully. When she joined college, she was dying to finish college and start working and living fully. When she was working, she was dying to get married and start living fully. When she was raising her little ones, she was dying to send them to school and return to work and start living fully. And then she was dying to retire from the job and live post retirement fully. And then she was dying, and she realized that she forgot to live.

A young 21 year old lad isn’t better off either. He has been brought up under the anecdotes which encourages him to be unaccountable to his very own mother after growing up to a certain age, take major decisions of the house and turn a ‘father’ to his mother when he starts earning a livelihood. He can’t afford water droplets drenching his eyes and rolling down the cheeks when the going gets tough. He shouldn’t supposedly express himself too much and should remain inhibited and perennially strong. After all, he solely has to handle his wife and kids as if they’re slaves and he the master. And if you’re the one who’s thinking to break the jinx by sharing the responsibilities with your wife then just be prepared to be mocked at.

You might be wondering that why am I not talking about the band baaja baraat, or maybe shaadi ka laddoo as so is the feeling that the title offers. But I wanted to bring into limelight that why are we just groomed in the society to just get married off one day? Can’t there be more things than being the ideal bride or groom in the society? And, may the Lord and God bless you with enough valor to overcome disgrace if you’re thinking to remain a bachelor or a spinster forever! Period.

WOMEN CAN’T HAVE IT ALL : A REVIEW

WOMEN CAN’T HAVE IT ALL‼

Speaking broadly, I’m just too hardcore a feminist to enunciate my write-up with a title like this one. So quite obviously, the title can’t be a product of my thoughts but the nomenclature of the manufacturer of this thought would probably send an electric spark down to your nerves like it did too mine.

The CEO of PepsiCo India, Indra Nooyi notoriously voiced the above titled emotions while being awarded for her prodigious excellence in one of the ceremonies. At the Aspen Ideas Festival, Colorado when she took over the stage, there were business tycoons and men/women from the press alike in galore bracing themselves up to lend their ears to something worthwhile being stressed upon from the podium. India’s most successful woman entrepreneur, till then, was being viewed by flocks of women as a powerhouse, as the Harry Potter who had got all clandestine revealed about the success mantra, as Sherlock Holmes who had spied long at the mysteries behind being efficacious efficaciously, as Dan Brown who had cracked Da Vinci Code tediously, or simply put as a laborious businesswoman inapprehensive of what her genetic coding (i.e. being a woman) says.

The boss, who is a mother of two, further extended her views, saying that she died with guilt over compromises she had to make to balance career and family life. With a stellar career, £7.3 million salary and a 34 year long marriage, statistics flatter enough to deceive her statements though. She insists that women can only pretend to have it all. She says that every day is a choice that in parallel to being a CEO, shall she be a mother today or a wife. Sometimes, during the day itself the decision has to be amended over again and again.

She had put light on how uncooperative her spouse had been, which fundamentally turned things sour as the onus lied on Indra solely. He nagged every now and then of her work priorities and the time she’d put in work scrupulously. Sadly, he is naïve enough to remain disillusioned that being a spouse of a million dollar baby is feasible with a minimum wage work ethic. Sadly enough, in defiance to Indra Nooyi I would say that ‘no one has it all’ in reality. Ms. Nooyi, trust me, everyone just pretends to have it all. Right from the morning, every day is a choice between whether to stay in bed for a couple of minutes more and laze or to get up a decade of minutes earlier and grind. You just can’t have it all. It is the law of the land, you win some; you lose some.

Wrapping it all up, I would culminate by just hoping that all women get better better-halves over Mr. Raj (Indra’s husband), because settling down for lesser things in life can’t be an option for the ambitious lot of women.

Here’s To The Misfits!!

This one’s for the crazy ones, for the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes and the ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules and they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them or disagree with them, glorify them or vilify them but the only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they’re the ones who change things. They push the human race forward. And while others may see in them the rebelliousness, I see the intellect in them coupled with the novelty. I believe that people who are crazy enough to think they can change things are the ones who do.
Someone aptly put it down, “If you set your dreams and goals ridiculously high and fail, then you’ll fail above everyone else’s success”. Great men surpass great hindrances and hence, I needn’t not dig deep down in the history to put the exemplaries on display. So, let’s just adjust our focus on the present generation’s stars. At the age of 15, Cristiano Ronaldo was diagnosed with a racing heart- a condition that might have forced him to give up playing football. At the age of 11, Lionel Messi was diagnosed with a growth hormone deficiency. At the age of 18, Kaka fractured his spinal cord- a career threatening injury. And from 7 billion people, these are the “three” best soccer players in the world.
Furthermore, to whom now the cricketing world looks up to as the brashest player with a care in the world, once cared too much. At the age of 17, Virat Kohli (for Delhi) was playing his first Ranji season. In a crucial tie against Karnataka, the team was jaded and hopes of even saving the match forget winning, were dwindling. The batting stars were back in the pavilion and out came the young lad on a foggy morning with his lethal weapon in hands, tears in the eyes and father on the funeral pyre. The circumstance would’ve shattered any man on Earth into pieces lighting up in them feelings which would’ve later transformed themselves into tortures for life. But it was the valor in him that fuelled him to smoke what he was born to do by scoring a match saving 93 on the day. Ask him today, and he’ll answer “if it weren’t that knock under those circumstances, the selectors won’t have bothered (read: noticed) to pick me up for the U-19 world cup as a skipper” whose euphoria had opened the floodgates for the international arena for him.
Next we hop on to the man who made Personal Computers (PCs) an essence in our lives. He was so obsessed with PCs that he literally died of PC (Pancreatic Cancer). When Steve Jobs was first diagnosed with cancer which he survived later, the doctor had declared that at most he would make up to another 3 months. The doctor had advised Jobs to get over with all his pending works left undone, dates hung for the future, upcoming family gatherings and friends’ reunions for another yet last time. He smiled at the doctor broadly and replied gently, “All that I want to do in life can’t be finished in 3 months. Therefore, I believe that the Lord will help me survive more.” And the rest is history.
Walt Disney was eliminated from the preliminary rounds of a cartoon drawing competition as his teacher cited lack of creativity as the reason behind his send off. Miley Cyrus was told by her music teacher while giving auditions for the school choir that she sounded like a goat. And, today I don’t know what to say about them. Should I say that they won in life because they believed too much in themselves or they won because they proved their teachers wrong? Yes, they didn’t listen to their priest, their parents, teacher, sibling or friends or any random guy on TV elucidating to them how to do their shit. They just listened to their natural instinct or putting philosophically, only to the-soul-of-the-world.
It is the perennial, self-replenishing, undistortable belief in such men and women that makes the ordinary souls of ours too mainstream and too monotonous.  The problem of these ordinary souls is that they think. They think they’re too young, too old, too raw, too ripe, too modest, too inexperienced, too powerless, until they realize that they just think too much. After being hit upon by this realization, they too become extraordinary and in this befitted world, these misfits then look for other misfits. They lose the sanity of applauding the ordinary draining life drenched in alcohol and a paper roll with fire on one end and an idiot on the other; and choose to stay foolish enough to always get driven by the wings of an eagle swaying in the sky, scaling new heights. They’re the ones who can’t be taught “the applications of Earth’s magnetic field” on the board, from the book. They peep outside the window for catching the sight of a sunbeam resting on the ground and quickly relate it to the sundials, then the magnetic compasses and so forth working on the same principle.
So now, let’s all of us believe too. Let us believe too much that we willingly risk everything for a dream no one else can see but just you, and just me because dreams are there for a purpose. If they can come from the imagination, they can be created too. There is no limitation in dreaming and hence it is possible that no limitation exists in reality.

Dreamers remind us that the wonderment we felt as kids is still alive and well in us. When time gets tough, and we start to lose hope, a dreamer will remind us of our place in the world, and our ability to overcome suffering. A dreamer uses failure to improve on his dreaming. Suffering is the stimulus to do better next time. No one can ever suppress a dreamer or force him/her to let it go. Let us believe too much that our 8 year old self becomes proud of us today, tomorrow and forever. Let us set our goals so big that we get uncomfortable telling small minded people and let’s always remember that laughter is timeless, imagination has no age and dreams are forever.
And if you’re still wondering that where you’ll find that one misfit who can inspire you to a different level, then here’s the hint: You’re going to come across people in your life, who will motivate you, love you and change you; and that is a rare thing, but every once in a while you will come across someone/thing who will come and completely rob you from your sleep and those are the people/things who are just too beautiful to be put into words.

Haute couture of travelling solo

Heading on a vacation solitarily is one of the fastest emerging travel trends among Indians, especially women and is making news almost daily! In this day and age where people are taking giant strides in the technological era; people have been sustaining themselves in a hectic life juggling family and work responsibility. Traveling alone is the panacea you need. Travelers claim that solo travel is the best way to see the world because you experience everything without dealing without anyone else’s prejudices, tastes or preferences.

As a novice, the very thought of strolling alone can be daunting but it sets you on a voyage of self-discovery. You can either spend your day doing nothing or hop from one city to another. You can loll on a beach or visit remote ruins. Neither do you have to worry about your fellow travelers nor do you have to line up to what others want from the vacation.

Traveling alone lets you welcome changes with open arms. You don’t have to fit into any group or anyone’s agenda, give explanations or even disappoint anyone. You can even alter your plans whenever you wish to and always stay independent. If you are venturing out for the first time, you are bound to be apprehensive of the anonymous but when you are on your own, you are more aware of your vicinity. After travelling alone you will become stronger and more confident about yourself.

Traveling solo is invigorating. As you interact with new people, your dynamics and conversations are deep and far more fulfilling. In addition to this, you gather time to pamper yourself silly, indulge in adventure sports, gorge on the local cuisines and so on. Countries like Costa Rica, Ireland and the Philippines aren’t expensive countries and are known to be safe for tourists. Lodging charges are nominal and you can simply halt at the countryside where people rent out a part of their house.

So, here I can wrap it up by just confessing that if you’ve been leading a stressful life, here’s when you take a break from work, colleagues, families, friends and spend time to make new friends and be with yourself.

An open letter to everyone who thinks otherwise!

To love

He watched her, from a hundred miles in an hour to asleep in a nanosecond. He wanted so badly to lie down next to her on the bed, to wrap his arms around her and sleep. Not fuck, like in those movies. Not even have sex. Not even make love. Just sleep together, in the most innocent sense of the phrase. But he lacked the courage, and she had a boyfriend and he was gawky and she was gorgeous and he was hopelessly boring, and she was endlessly fascinating. She scared the hell out of him and calmed his soul at the same time. Maybe, that’s what love is, a total contradiction that somehow balances out. So he walked back to his room and collapsed on the bottom bunk, thinking that if people were rain, he was drizzle and she was a hurricane.

And she watched him perpetually fluttered in his hearts of hearts and minds of minds between whether to do what seems right or to follow his heart and go for the kill (read: confession of his love). Observing the surreal ordeals he was going through, she laughed hastily, not because she wanted to seize his attention and distress him by the loud noise but because she hoped that maybe, just maybe he’ll fall for her laughter as hard as she did for his and hopefully, his dilemma would be resolved. He would probably then inherently and successfully argue it out to himself, so what if she had a boyfriend with whom she had made out on several occasions. He assured himself to intensely believe that wherever his thoughts led him to, be an evergreen path. But, it was the road not taken, he reminded himself. It was the way of life that killed him yet made him feel alive. And, alive is awesome. He recollected all the romantic movies’ cheesiest dialogues he had heard ever, dashed towards the heap of books lying on the floor jacketed with dust for some refuge. He muttered all those lines from the love stories which he dismissed as trash someday earlier, thinking to himself about his naivete in the yesteryear. Those lines were now whimsical.

And he read it out loud: “We don’t have sex. We don’t fuck. We don’t even make love. What we do is align planets. Create galaxies. Out shine stars. Give birth to solar systems. Shift the universe. Have planets orbit around us. Cause shooting stars to make wishes upon us. Discover new worlds. Make the time travel. Become alpha and omega.”

“We need to regularly have orgasms of insight, discovery, revelation and understanding intended for the person we claim to love.”, chewed the other book. He exclaimed in the affirmation with all the text he was reading for the n^th time but was absorbing for the very first.

Those words shined brighter in the periphery of his eyes. They emitted light this time too. After all, he’d looked at her in a way all girls want to be looked at.  He was bamboozled in the thick of things but he vociferated the unsaid like a knight would to his warriors or a minister in a political rally or a cheerleader in a house packed stadium or simply, just as he had panned out to do at the age of 8 if he’d found true love.

Now, he was afraid. Afraid like chimes in the wind when the winds lips are sealed. Afraid like dreams when they realize they’re just dreams and reality is that one scar that’ll never fade away. Afraid that she wasn’t the one he had idealized to do life with as a kid. She had flaws, but now that seemed okay. She was fierce, she was strong. She wasn’t the kind who would embrace him in emergent situations and lay back on him. She would get right back up to the scenario and take up the responsibility, and embrace him still. But with an I-can-do-things-on-my-own-and-i-love-you-still attitude. He thought and thought, maybe it won’t work out but maybe seeing if it does would be the best adventure ever. And, soon he survived the tornado of his thoughts, and enlightened himself with a before and after she’d marked in his life. She had made him question things that never appeared like one before.

This was a modern fairy tale. No happy endings, no wind in our sails. But he couldn’t imagine his life without, those breathless moments breaking him down, down, and down. The heart wants what it wants. So, finally he walked up to the cold bed where she laid and slept warm and close. Yes, he slept. Just slept with her. He didn’t fuck, like in those movies. Not even had sex.
With love.