wisdom?... Courage? . .whatever. It worked!

These are some of the instances I have heard about, how people have acted in the smog of hatred and suspicion.

First one is of a high-school-aged boy. Those were the days of hindu-muslim riots in India. There were talks all around all the time on this issue, what should be done and what should not be done and all everything. One evening this boy returns home after his evening game of cricket and suddenly says to his mother, "These muslims, all should be sent to Pakistan!". Mother just nods, buying time to probe into him. Then she says,"Okk, if you wish so. Lets start from the ones we know well. May the first one be table maestro Zakir Hussain". The boy was shocked by the name, but quickly recollects himself and says,"No no no. Let him stay back". Mother asks,"Ok, then shall we send Bismillah Khan and stop him from playing his sanai here." Boy says,"No no, he plays wonderfully. Let him stay back". Mother continues,"Then shall we send Sharukh Khan, Aamir Khan, Salman Khan, Katarina Kaif?". The boy errupts, "Are you mad Mom? Why should we send these people. I even have katerina's posters on my wall". This wasn't a mother who would give up easily. She persists,"So you want to send ALL the muslims that you select. Ok! Lets look for some more. How about Azaruddin or Zahir Khan". "No No No". yells the boy running out of the room. He decides it is safer to study than talk to Mom on this topic.

Again, it was time of hindu-muslim riots in Mumbai. Red hatred was overflowing all over the city. Weapon weilding mobs were moving around hunting for their prey. Many many citizens hated the hatred, but were either scared or whatever to protest. But there were folks who did muster courage and staked their lives to save many lives. These people not only saved lives right then but also doused the flames of hatred and saved many lives in future. One such person I have heard about is a famous indian cricket opening batsman Sunil Gavaskar. A saffron mob was moving around his locality hunting for prey. Sunil could not take it sitting idle. He is always known to be man of utmost courage on cricket field. Everybody knew what a player he was! But that day he showed what a mettle his character had. He walked out of the house and stood in front of the mob spreading has hands wide and preventing them to move further. The mob shouted at him to move away. He quietly told them to hold down their weapons and quietly return home. They refused and angrily started moving towards him. He was poised and stood fast there, "You will have to kill me first before moving on to anybody." He just kept on looking straight into the eyes of hatred, his wife standing next to him in horror. As had always happened in cricket field, his courage overpowered his opponents. Leader of the mob, turned his eyes down and followers turned their weapons downs. The leader gave a angry look to Sunil Gavaskar and sullenly turned back and started walking home with drooping shoulders. It is rumoured, it is said that this incidence happened. Sunil Gavaskar himself has never uttered a word about it! I wouldnt have known about it if I had not heard it. Now that I have heard it, I am writting it down so that people, who may not get to hear of it, would get to know of it.

Copenhegan

I have put ear plugs in my ears and so am immune to all the hoopla and loudspeaking at Copehegan Environmental Conference. I don’t expect anything other than complete cacophony when so many beurocrats and politicians gather together. (Huge amount of energy is wasted in keeping all of them warm in the freezing Danish winter. Isnt this ironical and representative of the way things are going! Couldn’t they have met at an environment friendly venue in a enviroment friendly way?) All of them are hassling and haggling over amounts of emission cuts without initiating any action at home, as if emission cuts are automatically fall from heaven. So I do not expect anything happening on ground whatever they agree or agree to disagree. Nothing substantive can happen from the current economic scenario which is fundamentally rooted in two notions of 'consume' and 'more'. Both these notions are diametrically opposite to emission cuts.

For too long we have let corporates tell us where our happiness lies in. Looking at the western societies we have come to realize that, beyond a certain level, material comforts do not lead to increase in happiness, rather the opposite happens. We end up loosing any meaning to our living. So if we have a fundamental relook at our lives and lifestyles then we may feel like living differently and maybe that would be immensely environfriendly way of living.
• Instead of buying, Do more (= consume less, enjoy more)
• Participate in the things in our lives (=buy less)
• Experience the joy of putting things to a newer use (=throw away less and recycle more)
• Live with nature (=have seasonal habits, use local stuff than getting things across seven seas, commute less)
• Spend more time with ourselves and with our family and friends (=enjoy the work you are doing, live close to work or find work closer to home, have time in hand to 'do' things)



WHAT DO YOU THINK? DO YOU AGREE OR DISAGREE? HAVE YOU TRIED THIS OUT? WANT TO TRY OUT?

जुन्या सवयी

गवत उपटून टाक्लं तरी
झाडं छाटून टाकली तरी,
तंतू दटून राहतातच
बिया लपून राहतातच,
पाण्य़ाची वाट पहात
संधीची वाट पहात,

अलगद रुजतात
सभोवार मुरतात
पुनःश्च फ़ोफ़ावतात,
म्हणून तर अनुभवी माळी म्हणतात
सतत मशागत करत रहावं लागतं
नाहीतर
बागेचा पुन्हा माळ व्हायला
वेळ नाही लागत

Wagging Love

Some babies are born with silver spoon in their mouth, some are born with golden spoon. I was born with doors of my house open. Love came in from all doors and windows. Even before I was born, at the first signs of my arrival love had started filling our house and our hearts. We welcomed it with open arms and wide smiles. So much of love started arriving that we had to break open the walls and make news widows. Wide big windows, from floor to roof. Our family was blessed with all that warmth and love. We kept on welcoming it.

We kept on welcoming it till one evening love followed me in the form of tiny woolly ball with wagging tail. We were all snoochy-moochy to receive this ball with a wagging tail and seducing squeaks. As time went on, my mother started realizing side-effects of love. With incessant slaps of wagging tail, woolly ball jumping through her legs during household chores, and cute squeaks asking for attention all through the night, she started feeling like love is sort of started overflowing for her. She had more than enough of love. She tried to keep that woolly ball out but it bounced back in. All efforts to get rid of this live ended in vain. So she did the next best thing she could do, that was to ensure no more love could come in. She closed all doors and windows and sealed them with latches and locks. Now nothing could come in. And nothing could go out either!

Woolly ball was naturally called Wuly. With no way to go out Wuly showered all her love on me. I used to be wet with love all the time. This wetness percolated inside to my heart and too became full of woolly love and I was always smiling, cheery, lovey. From Wuly I learnt to wag, I learnt to move my ears. When I entered a room I would know beforehand who were inside and who had left, merely by their smells. By their smells I would know who is happy or who is angry. I became so adept in these expressions that my family would lovingly call me Wulo. In school my antiques were looked at with some fascination, some fun and some ridicule. Some boys were called girlie or sissy, while I was called doggy. I did not mind it, rather I was enjoying all of it. It went on well till I went to high school, where I took fancy of girl. Soon she was called as girlfriend and I was called her dogfriend. Then I realized that things are going a bit too far. It was all alright about me but I would not want my girlfriend to be ridiculed, though she herself did not mind it. But now I was grown up and I have to take care of my girlfriend. I need to be a man.

It was very difficult for me. I needed to close doors and windows of myself. My feeling could no more flow out freely as and how they wanted. I had become man and feelings would have to walk out of me only in a manly way. That was the first jolt to my young and lively heart. Destiny had enabled me to learn all the nature's wonderful ways of expressing and receiving feelings, but now I would need to sacrifice all those in order to be a man! Ooooff!

In the early stages of evolution as man started reaping benefits of developed mind, its focus shifted more and more towards mind. In the process all other facets and abilities got neglected. Today we have reached such a stage that we have hardly anything to fear from the external world. The biggest threats to mankind are from its own kinds, from its own selves. So many of conflicts, so many fights arise out of misunderstandings that if man had been able to communicated better his life in turn would become a lot better. A man would not have to doubt about his girl-friend or a woman about her boyfriend. She would not need to ask him, "Do you love me?". She would know herself by his smell, his sound, his so many bodily actions. When a person is trying to feign his emotions, others would immediately know what he is really feeling. People would not need to go around uttering "I love you, dear" so many times as to make those three lovely words a cliché. Our expressions, our smell, our sounds, our touch, our actions, anything and everything would clearly speak out our love, our anger, our sulkiness.

We have reached a state where most of our basic needs are getting satisfied with minimal of efforts and time, and we have left with lots of time to do nothing. This is pushing us to contemplating, to look deeper into ourselves, to seek to find out 'why's of our actions. And what we are seeing is surprising many. Most of our seemingly rational, logical actions arise from emotional, completely irrational roots. Rationality is seeing to be inadequate to satisfy our emotional needs. And we are seeing the changes. The old time heroes with stony faces and inhuman actions maybe bygones. Today's heroes are more explicit in their expressions. We are seeing many of hard-nut sportsment openly giving out their intense emotions. We see them shout aloud, see them kiss ground, see them laugh or cry, cry both in pain of loss and in pleasure of winning. Just yesterday a young Chief Minister of an Indian state said publicly, "If I react with a bit of emotion, good. For too long, politics has been dehumanized in this country". Well said, Chief Minsiter. My whole hearted applause to you. I too am looking forward to the days when I can muster enough courage to raise my ears and to wag my tail openly and to the days when my friends too can gather courage to respond to me with wagging their tails.

Power of Places

I have been to different places for my morning workout of walking and jogging. I have been to bylanes of Dahanukar Colony, to Kothrud Hill, to Deccan Gymkhana jogging track, to other grounds, to Prabhat Road bylanes, and to Law College Hill from Kanchan Lane. (For those who are not from the western part of Pune, these names may sound unfamiliar. But they can of course google to see the places. If they are not satisfied with simple googling they can also google MSN or Yahoo!)

We Indians have this special knack of converting proper nouns into common nouns, or even into verbs. For us Xerox is not a company which makes photocopying machines. For us Xerox is everything and that. Xerox machine can be a Canon photocopying machine, to xerox is to photocopy. A yellow board with XEROX written in black paint outside a shop means a shop vendor who is offering many facilities in addition to photocopying. We have converted Cadbury chocolate into Cadbury = chocolate. So we have Amul's cadbury, Nestle's cadbury and so on. So . . . . We google Google, we google MSN, and we google many other things.

Oh, I must return to my hill, the Law College Hill, if I have to continue writing. This hill casts a sort of magical spell on me, that once I am in its shadow my mind starts acting creatively. While my feet are wandering through bushes and trees of the hill, my heart and my mind are wandering all over the world and beyond. There on that divine hill my mind often leaves this earthly world and wanders into the worlds beyond. Its wanderings and wonderings were so blessed by the hill that they not only travelled to different worlds but created newer worlds. The worlds I had never experienced in my life before, were lighting up inside me. And slowly that life started sneaking out through the thick dark wall that I had created myself. And then what happened I could not believe myself, and maybe you may not believe it either. But its true as I have experienced it. Nothing can be truer than experience. In this light of new worlds I started seeing This world differently.

Inside my house there is one such place. Its my bathroom. This place to casts it magic over my creativity. But this is a different spell than the one by my hill. This one leads me into oration, to music, and to things I don’t even utter outside of this place. In the outside world I am shit scared of public speaking. But here, I have given longest and strongest speeches with all the accompanying bodily expressions. Here, when I am describing flying I don’t only describe with words, I do actually FLY. Aah, flying inside bathroom! ! ! But yes I do, I really do fly inside my bathroom. Its such a fun. Once a friend told me that fear of public speaking is the most common of all fears. I believed him right away, without even an iota of doubt. When I enter my bathroom, there is no fear, no apprehension. A huge crowd is eagerly waiting for me to speak and I too am all eager to start. Once I start there is all smiles and laughs and claps and shouts. I am enjoying everything that’s going on inside and outside. I am in state of bliss. Be it speaking or singing, I am simply unstoppable, unbeatable. I transgress the boundaries of this world and be in a different world. Its MY world. I am the actor and I am the observer.


Women have this charm of creating such divine places near to themselves. Be they mothers or be lovers, once they take you close, you start dissolving. No more there is any body nor clothes. Your heart is in direct contact, heart to heart, heart to divinity, you to God.