"LIBERTY IS LEARNING, YOU KNOW"

The pencil makes circles over the word ‘The’ in the book ,as a 60 year old prisoner, Hanna Smidtz, learns
 to read by matching the words written in the book with audio tapes . She loved reading but was an illiterate
and too ashamed to admit it that she accepts life imprisonment rather than accepting her illiteracy.
      Still mesmirised by Hannah smidtz  , the Oscar winning character of the movie ‘The Reader’ , played
by Kate Winslate, I was truly inspired when I unfolded the newspaper today.Those words that make the title
of this post are of Kimani Maruge. No world leader. Just an ordinary man with an extraordinary zeal to
learn,which took him to school at the age of 84 ( a Guiness book world record).
      A Kenyan caught up in the turbulent Mau Mau revolt in his youth , he failed to attend school as a boy. But the intense desire to be able to read Bible for himself drew him to school at an age when most people wait for death. And he was true to his words that he would only stop only"  if he goes blind or dies" ; nothing
stopped him. Cancer didn’t; loss of his home which was burnt in post election crisis didn’t; being displaced
to an old age home didn’t. Nothing but death stopped him from going to school. Two years away from
completing his primary education , Maruge , the man who travelled in 2005 to New York to urge world
leaders to press education for poor , died at the age of 90.
       Even the newspaper imbibed his undying spirit and printed his picture in class room sitting, with little
boys ,hunched intently over his notebook . As his pencil moves on his notebook I imagine a sparkle in his
eyes and am filled with awe as his unfathomable intense desire to learn seems to reflect from his wrinkled
bony face.

LOTUS LESSON

The lotus looked
At the muddy pond
“oh! this is where
I have to grow!
This hurts me though
Yet I know
It is my goodness
That should show.”


And it spread its
Petals like sunshine
Cos the lotus had
No time to whine


What is within you
Let it define and determine
And never let the mud
Take away the purpose Divine!

LOTUS LESSON

The lotus looked
At the muddy pond
“oh! this is where
I have to grow!
This hurts me though
Yet I know
It is my goodness
That should show.”


And it spread its
Petals like sunshine
Cos the lotus had
No time to whine


What is within you
Let it define and determine
And never let the mud
Take away the purpose Divine!

OF BEAUTY, DREAMS AND DESTINY

Shortlived like the
Joyful thoughts
in my head.

A bubble floats
so candidly unaware
like a breath of life
trapped in a fragile sphere...
destined to vanish
without a trace...

Still the amazing spectrum
romances carelessly on its face
like a stray rainbow dancing
with euphoric grace

Beautiful without resistence
all through its short existence.....

 Like a distant
Dream in my eyes...

The sky stares back
From the worthless puddle
Where the sky drops
Came together to cuddle
When the last cloud passed
And the puddle relaxed
It mirrored the extreme
Living a distant dream.....

 Like my lone travels
Hunting for a future bright ....

A seed so feather light
With all hair white
Carried on it’s flight
Moving away
from the earth
the place of it’s birth
Yet it must go through
The turmoil
Before it reaches
And chooses
It’s destined soil ....

OF BEAUTY, DREAMS AND DESTINY

Shortlived like the
Joyful thoughts
in my head.

A bubble floats
so candidly unaware
like a breath of life
trapped in a fragile sphere...
destined to vanish
without a trace...

Still the amazing spectrum
romances carelessly on its face
like a stray rainbow dancing
with euphoric grace

Beautiful without resistence
all through its short existence.....

 Like a distant
Dream in my eyes...

The sky stares back
From the worthless puddle
Where the sky drops
Came together to cuddle
When the last cloud passed
And the puddle relaxed
It mirrored the extreme
Living a distant dream.....

 Like my lone travels
Hunting for a future bright ....

A seed so feather light
With all hair white
Carried on it’s flight
Moving away
from the earth
the place of it’s birth
Yet it must go through
The turmoil
Before it reaches
And chooses
It’s destined soil ....

(At last) it's written!

Year 2004 ,there was a small column in news about a book of fiction . What took my attention more than the plot was the fact that it was written by an Indian beaurocrat and that it was immediately signed up for a motion picture. I eagerly waited for the book. Saw its copy in June 2008. Did not buy it because I had no time to read.
Somewhere in September 2008 I read an Anil kapoor’s ( an Indian movie star) interview in which he mentioned about a movie off from an English director.He had no clue about the director .Though he didn’t refuse the offer When he casualy mentioned it to his son, he was astounded and told him that he was a great fan of this director and the offer is not to be refused. He accepted.
The film sweeped the golden globe awards . It was released in the theatres in early December but I was too busy again to watch it. So it’s like I didn’t get to read the book or see the movie ,I took track of for almost 4 years . Then came the biggest honour . The Oscars. The ‘Mozart of the east’ got two Oscars in one go! It was the front page news and a national frenzy. Slumdog Millionaire a motion picture directed by Danny Boyle based on Indian beurocrat Mr. Vikas Swaroop’s fiction Question and Answers was a hot news. It spoke of the misery of slum dwellers and destiny . Amidst the great frenzy and the flash lights I wondered where did the slum kids who acted in it go. The very next day I saw a complete cover up on the kids in the Hindu weekly supplement and then there was the Oscars dinner where these kids pictured with Dev Patel in the celebrity dinner. At the same time there was another Oscar for a short documentary about a girl Pinky who had a cleft lip. It showed how a surgery transformed her life. Pinky got international fame and so did the plastic surgeon who would have done that work anonymously for years. So it was a happy scenario . I almost equated it with the fairy tales we used to read and enjoy. It was like all the bits of news were reaffirming a fairy tale to me. I was ecstatic to the extent I wanted to write something on it.But I didn’t. Then when the excitement was over I thought was it not pseudo-fame for these slum kids! They reached a place even the most famous stars from India haven’t reached . They are flashing smiles in fashion shows and magazine covers . But what comes next when the media flashlight shifts to something else. They need news. They made a great show out of the murder of a fourteen year old girl and the misery of her parents for months and then it suddenly was wiped out from the scene like it never existed. It has to happen. Thereafter how do these children deal with same miserable life again , having tasted success and grandeur. While I was busy with these thoughts there came the news that the child actor Rubina’s father was arrested for trying to sell her off. So what changed in Rubina’s life? May be she was saved just because she is famous now or may be she was being sold at a high price because she is famous now. Well again I wanted to write something and again procrastinated. So I neither read the book nor saw the movie or write anything.
Last week after my exam I finally watched the movie and particularly admired the never give up attitude of the protagonist and the tenderly woven love story. The next day Rubina khan was in news again because her slum was destroyed by the municipality. I thought I must write something because it’s been long I have been postponing it.

Gandhari Blindfolded

Two days back Gangubai Hangal ,lengendary singer of Kirana Gharana, passed away. Going through the orbituary ,memoirs and tributes to her some things took my attention.

I tried to imagine the young girl clad in a saree moving out on the streets to learn music.It was a time when a career in music wasn’t very acceptable . She dared the bad words and braved the street urchins who threw dirty water on her. What struck me most was that her real name was Gandhari but that wont suit a ‘gaanewaali’ . Though she could fight the laughter and the insults but she had to change her identity for societal acceptance. Men in music were revered and bestowed ‘pandithood’ and ‘ustad-dom’ but a feminine talent of music could not surface above ‘gaanewali’.

So brave Gandhari blindfolded herself and camouflaged as Gangubai so that her great talent could survive; her love for music could live. Amidst the hardships she underwent to sustain her ‘world’ may be this was the last thing she could have complained about.

The beginning...

Kamala and Bimla, raised by wolves,never learnt to be human let alone learning the nitty gritties of feminine behaviour. In short it's the socialization that makes 'humans' and definitely 'being a girl' is taught.The process starts from birth and under the same roof differences in bringing up exist with a sad subtlness. This is so engraved in the society that even the most liberally raised women can't deny its suffocating shadow.
This blog is my attempt to unwind and write about things which actually initiated my 'affair with words' about a decade ago . My first poem 'WINGS' , represents the first encounter with this subtle, suffocating web of demands on a human ,born feminine.
Eve shared a bite of the apple of wisdom with Adam. This was called the blame and burden of Eve that led to banishment from garden of Eden to the mortal world full of misery . But I believe that 'bite' was her bold quest to say 'no' to ignorance and her generosity to share it with her beloved... what came later is her magic and not her fault....

PART OF A CONSPIRACY!

Today I was at a departmental store, waiting in the queue for the billing. A little boy went past me with a keenness in his eyes . He forged through the crowd of larger and older humans and picked up a pack of some snack . The pack being big enough to make his effort to hold it look like an embrace. With the same keenness and a little spark in his eyes he walked to his mother. He had my attention because the queue was long and the wait was boring. His mother busy on the phone looked at his son’s hunt ,ignored the spark in his eyes and tossed that snack bag in a pool of packed vegetables. She went back to her important call. The kid did not throw any tantrum rather he was now focussed at getting his goody bag back.
He made arrangement to reach the level of that square pool and dipped his hand in. Poor thing still could not reach it.But he kept struggling without despair. I watched him all through. His was mom oblivious of the entire affair and may be no one else noticed too. I had almost developed a kind of liking for the kid. While he was still struggling I left my queue for a silly second rescued the goody pack and handed it to the kid. He didn’t smile at me but the pack was again held close to his chest .
When I went out of the store the famous words of Coehlo raced through my mind ‘when you really want something the whole universe conspires in your favour’ and sometimes we become part of a conspiracy.

EMPTY TALK!

Its about a glass in which some water was poured and then people were asked about what they see?A half filled glass or a half empty glass? The response defined the person as an optimist or a pessimist. A well known and interesting interpretation. I was fascinated by it for a long time and was happy it was half filled for me. But something struck me today. Just flashed. The glass is full. Half with water and half with air. The emptiness is but illusory because eyes don’t perceive the gaseous mixture. This is science and yet I see some flash of thought in that. Nothing is truly empty . Its but our failure to identify the filler or may be a yearning for something we want more than what already is. The truth is true emptiness cannot exist for long. It would then create a vacuum which would frantically try to absorb itself with whatever comes it’s way!

YOUTH

Youth lies, not in the turgidity of the skin but in the flexibility of the mind.

STAY IN TOUCH.....

It’s a busy world bound by a routines and schedules .People constantly nag about lack of time. I don’t know about others but there are times when I find myself searching for someone to talk to. When I am not that busy and I find timeout of ‘my routine’. Nothing could be more frustrating and miserable then finding that the free time isn’t of any use as I really don’t have anyone to share it with. Besides I feel bad about disturbing others. So many times I resist to contact fearing I might disturb them.
One can cry alone but laughing alone isn’t funny. People complain on being alone in hard times. Isn’t it obvious by the nature of the situation that the hardship lessons will have to be learned alone? Fortunate people have friends to share the load. The tricky situation is being alone in happiness and success . I would agree some people won’t mind that too. Others would buy or lure company .That is a superficial avoiding of the fact of lack of people who truly care. At the end of all exploration people just want care and love , even though they might be miserly in giving that to others. Today something similar was happening as I wanted to get in touch with a few caring friends only to realise that I was disturbing them. I recalled a friend of mine who was terminally ill. He suffered from Hodgkin’s lymphoma and was undergoing chemotherapy and and had stem cell transplant. His name was Aman ( Ironically same as the name of the character played by Shahrukh Khan in ‘Kal ho na ho’). He had an amazing positive attitude sometimes I sounded miserable and so out of tune with life . He never showed his despair except on one occasion he mentioned that he has nothing to do and everyone else was busy with their lives. He had mailed me his therapy regime from London where he had gone for a stem cell transplant. I thought he did that because am a doctor . Today I feel may be he had nothing else to send .His entire life was wrapped around chemotherapy and it’s side effects. At that point of time I was busy being miserable about the inhuman demands of my post graduate programme never to realise how fortunate I was. I could console myself that ‘its just a phase and I will live beyond it’ .He didn’t have that luxury. We got out of touch and then one day I learned that he passed away . Today I tried to fathom the kind of lonliness he would have been fighting.
We live with the notion that the busier we get the more important we are and more acceptable to people. We try to calculate relationships .Though we dream of unconditional love and concern , the truth is unconditional feelings are the most difficult to understand and to accept. Our insecurities grow .We scrutinize it and try a frantic search for ulterior motives.Our spheres of communications have increased but people avoid reaching out. All time goes concentrating on the perishable and we fail to find time to laugh with a friend. Nothing is more soothing than a the voice and touch of a friend. So may be I end up disturbing people but its just an attempt to stay in touch. I should not get overwhelmed by it .It’s just an attempt to stay in touch. This is all that matters.

COGITO ERGO SUM

Professor Higgs thought of the, unknown ,wonderful particle responsinble for mass of matter and called it Higgs Boson or the ‘God Particle’.A falling apple made Newton think.He realised the force of gravity (which of course existed much before apples existed). The mass of water displaced by weight of his own body made Archimedes run yelling “Eureka “.My thoughts are reeling somewhere in between’ mass’ and ‘thought’ itself . I am wondering what should I give more importance to..A ‘God Particle’ could give mass to everything existing, gravity may make us aware of it and we may actually experience the ecstacy of discovery through realising principles of physics. But somewhere in the realms of the human mind , in those wonderfully arranged cytons and axons lies an unmatchable thing. A thought. Abstract ,in itself, arises in an unknown territory and ends up in defining everything around; in creating and destroying people, communities, countries and empires. Aptly said ‘The empires of the future are the empires of the mind’. When gravity is defied , as in the outer space, weight exists no more. Only thoughts remain.Verified by astraunauts that in outer space only thoughts make them feel their existence. To put it in the words of the French mathematician and philosopher Rene Descarates ‘Cogito ergo, sum’ meaning ‘ I think , therefore I am’. Since human beings can think therefore all the chaos and harmony exists . It couldn’t be more correct that everything begins with a thought. Thoughts become actions. Actions guide everything around .
The Karma theory that is the essence of the great Bhagwadgita has its roots in the thoughts. The way a person thinks shall define him or her eventually. Actions are so many times an end result of a crusade between thoughts of negative and positive intent. Ironically the absence of action is also an attribute to a stalemate of thoughts. Indecisiveness is the result of lack of clarity of thought. Impulsiveness is an avoidance of thought. The mind can’t rid of thoughts. Heaven and hell exist in the confines of thought.When thought dies memory fails , events blur and the thoughtless moment goes non- existent only to be defined by the boundaries of the thoughtful moments.
No wonder all self help authors and orators stress on the power of thinking . The great thing is there is no restriction on thought . It isn’t the territory of the rich and influential. A peasant’s thought could be more glorious than an emperor’s. Here I feel I can’t think anymore. All I conclude is that thoughts should be handled like babies. Thoughts should not be neglected. Thoughts should not be overlooked or dismissed because they have the potential to create both disasters and miracles.

THEORY OF FUN

For a very long time I have been living with the idea that I miss all the fun things in life.’ The fun things ‘ I stop and muse . Let me define fun for myself today. Fun for me is when I can be truly myself. When I can appreciate and be a part of nature. When I can yell at the top of my voice and sing and giggle without being interrupted. When I am with people who would listen to me and enjoy my company without judging me. This is what all comes to my mind . In essence, I observe, I talk abstract.For this moment I would like to move away from me and observe the world around me. Fun can have different meanings for different people . ‘Fun’ can be innocent and it can turn sinister and in some situations can be labelled sinful. Some people abstain from ‘fun’ because it may not be the norm or may not be righteous. Here one should not think of just erotic things. Even simpler pure things are included. We stop making paper boats and dancing in the rain as we grow up . Not that we don’t enjoy it anymore . Just that we are too old for it or we are afraid of looking childish or even that we forget that we enjoy it or simply because we don’t want to look funny for the sake of fun. But people device other methods of having fun as they grow up. The enjoyment may shift to sports, music, travelling , reading , dancing , movies, friends and myriad of things. Fun gets transformed into entertainment, ecstacy , adventure . Some people give into hazardous activities like smoking, drugs, alcohol, rash driving, sexual acts and sexual perversions to seek the devilish high. Fun transforms to an unquenchable thirst for more. The quest never ends for some and some live in a puritan world thinking everything tagged ‘fun’ is to be avoided. I am trying to understand fun in its essence . Neither as an elusive glamorous superstar nor as a path to evil. Just fun as it is.
It’s fun to watch children playing. It’s fun to listen to people knowing different languages trying to communicate. It’s fun to eat ‘golgappas’ with friends by the side of the road. It’s fun to feel the rain on your skin. Its fun to smell the earth after the rains. So all the senses can make us experience fun . Sometimes its an amalgam of all of them like watching a movie munching on pop corns and sipping on a carbonated drink. The senses have a peculiar character. They tend to get used to a stimulus . So we can have the same great feeling with the same stimulus many times. At the same times there could be exhaustion and sensitization so that a greater amount of stimulus will be needed to experience fun again and again. People who live for fun have to search for a greater thrill everyday to keep them alive. Ironically as the world is becoming more and more advanced with better resources of fun and entertainment, more and more people complain of boredom. To the proportion that I fear at some point of time it might as well be labelled an epidemic.
I am contemplating that may be fun is misinterpreted .It’s just a state of mind and the senses just the tools to experience it .’Having fun’ might actually be related to the ability rather than the availability . So may be ‘I miss on fun things in life’ isn’t a problem at all because I haven’t missed on the ’ability to have fun’ ,sometimes even in the mundane.