A note on World Betterment...

7th July 2012

No action or a resolve for the same 

Must be kindled by a feeling of hatred or helplessness. 

One should sit calmly, 

with smile on his face and faith in his heart; 

Faith in the power of God and Goodness of things; 

the Hope of seeing a better World ,

bettered in a small way by the act that he intends to perform. 

He should visualise the assistance 
the Kind Lord will provide him along the path, 

and be aware that it will come 

in unexpected forms 

and will reside

 in unexpected corners of the road to be taken. 

This positive feeling 

is the most important starting ingredient one needs 

before undertaking a beautiful journey 

to self improvement and World betterment.

I just saw the promo of the movie Barfi, and was so enamoured and delighted to see something so beautiful being made in our country. We all know the present state of affairs and it boils our blood most of the times, making us make numerous resolves to take our Nation out of this muck. But we forget that till the time we take the battle axes and move to the front, we are still doing things that matter to our Nation. One mans action will always be small, but it can be made large only through motivation. And it should start from where we already are, and should not be reserved for the times and places where we shall be when we start the revolution.

For the revolution is now, and the preparation has been all through these years that you have lived.

Note: This was a daily note i had written quite long back. Barfi turned out to be a very nice movie on the technical and story front. Brilliant acting by every artiste...and I loved Illeana so much!! The director was bashed for using scenes from Charlie Chaplin classics and other movies. For me, the scenes lifted from "The Notebook" were too much to bear. But the director insists, that its his tribute to those classics. Ok fine, but i am happy that we are finally growing as a cinema loving population.

The songs in this movie are just out of the World. In today's times when Rahman is God and Vishal-Shekhar and Amit Trivedi come just close to the second spot, Pritam shows his latent talent in the soundtrack. Melodius songs, and of so many genres! I wonder no one has been able to tell which songs Pritam has lifted to compose the songs; I would prefer to know they are original. Take a bow Pritam Da...:)

Heres one song which always make me say...now that is how a song should be...:)

The Diwali of my childhood...:)

Diwali was always a time of the year that all of us used to wait eagerly, for it meant a long vacation and respite from the routine of school and homework. The business in the kitchen, with mom and my aunty from the neighbourhood preparing all sort of tasty treats like chakkuli (chakli), tukdi (shankar-pali), masala shengdano, churm-undo (ladoo), besana-undo, shevo (shev) etc. proclaimed that the great days of the year were finally here.  And what happy days were they!!

Diwali also meant that we would get to eat a lot of fish, finally after Shravan, Ganeshotsav and Navratri when eating these was a sin (which I lovingly commit in these so called independent(read unruly) days of mine). There was a peculiar observation I had, that my hair used to grow a lot more denser and quickly during this time of the year than any other time, and I attributed it to the quantity of fish that we used to consume in these days.

For us Konkani’s, Diwali always starts with Naraka Chaturdashi, on which day it is said that Lord Krishna, after defeating Narakasura, had a hearty and satisfying oil bath. 

To commemorate that achievement of the beloved Lord of many, we all have this bath, maybe on the morning of that day (preferably) or the evening of the previous day (as I usually like to have). My mother used to (and still does) prepare a medicated oil that is applied unsparingly all over the body, the head and the face; even put inside the ears (a means of cleaning them) and when we kids used to make a funny face saying that it sucks when oil is put in our aural cavities, our mommy used to say that if I don’t put it in, you guys will turn into monkeys (I guess putting oil never worked, I was and still am one...:P).  After allowing the oil to stand on the body, with repeated massage, our mom bathed us with tremendously hot water, which was a little bearable thanks to the layer of oil.

After the bath, the whole body sank into a great fatigue, which eventually becomes invigorating. To supplement this great exercise of physical cleansing, our mom prepared a ‘kashaayoo’ (medicinal tea)of coriander seeds, pepper, elaichi , turmeric, jaggery and ginger, which was ground well and then cooked in water till the water reduced, and served with a little milk. Such a tasty drink! And for dinner, we had fried fish (usually Raj/Bangda  or mackerel as they call it in English, my all time favorite…J)

{ I am proud to say that I have never broken this tradition of oil bath, even during my training days in Mysore last year, when I got a bottle of parachute coconut oil and had an oil bath in my room Fortunately there was hot water that evening…:). Just that no mackerel and no kashaayoo last year…:(}

After having done all that, one truly could feel happy to be alive, to enjoy such simple treats of life, see the happy faces of people wishing each other well, the diyas dancing gaily in the light winds that flowed; the bursting crackers and the rockets and sky-fireworks, which are my all time favorites.

Diwali will always be incomplete without fire, may it be in the form of the mild, beautiful and unpolluting diyas or the noisy, exciting, polluting fireworks which definitely were loved by all of us when we were kids. Our dad used to provide these in limited quantities, since we never had the kind of money to burn on such endeavours. But I guess the frugality that he observed in buying crackers has led to us having had the best memories of these festive days.

He used to get us a good amount of sparklers, one or two packs of flower pots, zameen chakkars, one pack of small bombs (teta) for me and my bro. When we had grown up, he had got us a pack of sutli/atom bombs each. Every night, myself and bro used to burst one garland of the teta’s each, then two flower  pots, two chakkars and 2 packs of sparklers. We used to get very creative with the small bombs, turning them into chakkars, bursting them in holes in the wall so that small circles of smoke used to come out at times, which was considered as a great achievement. The biggest treat was when we used to collect the powder inside these bombs on paper to create a heap, place a wick on the heap and create a mini conflagration!

{These frugal diwali’s lasted only till I reached 6th std, beyond which due to our awareness of both air and sound pollution, we stopped bursting the crackers completely.}

I grew up in a Gujarati locality, and towards the end of Diwali, came the Gujarati New year.  ‘Saal Mubarak’ (Happy new year) was what we used to call it. It was a day when we had to get up a little early, since hordes of kids would come to our place, to wish us new year, and take away sweets. When we were small, even we were allowed such pleasures but my strict dad never liked that practice. You could see those happy little faces, dressed to glory, with gals having cute little purses, held only with the sole intention of collecting as many toffees and sweets as they could…cute!

Thus were spent the few uproariously happy days of the year…the festival of lights, sounds, smells, tastes and smiling faces….Diwali. Wish you all a great one this year...:)

Note: This one was written a year back...:)

Twinkle twinkle little star...

Twinkle twinkle little star

Among my best friends, yes you are

Have been shining before i was born

Will shine lovingly, on the day I am gone

They have been around for millions of years; witnessed so many mini creations; shared time space with great personalities who have walked the face of the Earth. Scientifically they are burning furiously, but from the terra firma, in a lovely cloudless night, they offer the most comforting sight ever known to human beings.

Some places are full of water; other are forever green; some are deserts craving for a drop of water. And all such places are inhabited by humankind. Whatever the conditions on earth, whatever the status of life, at night, when the World sleeps, these tiny angels come out and arrange themselves into countless arrays for us to look up and forget our worries and care.

True beauty lies in randomness; where do you find such beauty in the order, human beings continously are bringing into the World? A megastore with huge pictures of beautiful faces, brilliantly lit, air conditioned are no doubt a treat for the eyes, but they fail to touch our innermost core. And this is where beauty of  randomness scores. We can make out so many things when we look at a landscape. We even have played games as children, imagining a lot of things by looking at cloud patterns.

In a similar manner, the stars offer a slate full of random dots for us to let our creativity run wild and paint all the pictures that we can ever imagine.

As a child, i had been curious to know how a star looks like. What cute imagination and questions children have - Stars are pins of light floating in the air. The drawing teacher says the stars look like 5 pointed object, but i cannot see those points. How are these things floating out there?

Time passes and science starts revealing the true and not so beautiful face of creation.  - Ohh, so its a big ball of fire like our sun. So interesting it looks like this and actually feels so cooling:); Oh stars have lifetimes, and burst apart...what will happen when our sun bursts apart. Gosh what a terrible moment that would be!!

Ideas came in, facts poured, scientific theories keep me engrossed. But at the end of the day, all that i loved was looking into the skies, thinking about the constellations and their stories.

We knew this pauranic story of how Prince Dhruva, son of King Uttanapada, was not given his rightful place, simply because his mother was not the king's favorite. This strong willed child undertook arduous penance and obtained the highest position ever obtainable - the position of the Pole Star.

The story says that pole star is the brightest star in the sky, maybe to make the story sound more impressive. I used to see the brightest star in the sky but what puzzled me is that it wasn't in the North, and by theory, the Pole star is in the north. Eventually i realised that the star i was looking at was called Sirius (Reminded of Sirius Black? An amazing character from Harry Potter he was...:))

I had this small booklet which illustrated the constellations of the night sky. It spoke of the various stories each of the constellation was associated with. From there i was able to identify Orion and the Great Bear, and they remain, till date, my most favorite constellations.

Orion, the Hunter

The Great Bear(Sapta rishi)

As per chinese atronomy, the night sky has 28 main constellations - 7 in each direction.

Each direction has a God associated. Suzaku for the east, Genbu for the north, Byyaku for the west  and Sairo for the south. 

A time comes when each of these Gods has to be offered a virgin maiden. It is then that by the medium of  The Book of the Four Gods, that a virgin maiden from Earth is sucked into an imaginary World. She is assisted by Seven Star Warriors, each of them representing a constellation in the direction of the God who has to be appeased. The virgin, with the assistance of the warriors has to pass a number of tests, and eventually be offered to the God. Then alone shall peace and order prevail...

This, in brief, is the concept on which an anime series titled Fushiigi Yugi (The Mysterious Play) is based. I had seen it in the year 2000. A very romantic series, it had some amazing music and melodrama. But what it revived in me more strongly was my old love for the stars. I would try to find the constellations in the sky, but in vain.

The theme song of Miaca (the maiden of Suzaku) would run in my mind; i would imagine myself to be Tamahome, Miaca's love interest and one of the Suzaku seven star warriors. What a macho character he was! He had the symbol of the constellation on his forehead. Aah, so many fantasies i had whenever i used to sit outside my house and look at those stars. The memory itself makes me feel happy:)

Twinkle twinkle little star

Among my best friends, yes you are

In all this life that i have known

A lot of care, that you have shown

The next opportunity of stargazing was when i went to Raigad for the NSS camp. It was the night of the Christmas eve. One of our senior council members, an avid star gazer, was giving a brief presentation on constellations to my fellow folks. I saw them, looked above and God! what an awesome view it was! It was one of those rare moments when the heart is filled with an unknown, boundless happiness, and one feels happy to have lived his life, since the present moment has come to pass by.

So many stars, these city eyes had never seen

The last time they had seen them, they had grown scared

A childish fear inside the silly heart

Of the whole sky falling on the little ones head...:)

I joined in, and spoke of all that i knew around the subject. And then an amazing discussion ensued - went on to philosophy, history and all that i had known from my studies of books. The night was a rewarding one - for i won a lot of admirers and also won a real special friend, who has been an inseparable part of my life ever since.

Towards the end of engineering, I felt i had finally found my twin star; those were star studded days of my life! And then it ended even before its first anniversary. The timing was so bad - I had to leave for Mysore for my Infosys training, and i was shattered. The confidence, the calm poise, the faith in Goodness - all up in smoke. My twin star had chosen to fly past the beautiful night sky..

.

The training days were good, despite my bad moods. I was scared of a lot of things - at time of not performing well. My friend from the NSS camp episode was the only one comforting me in those days. Did i have any more friends who were around? To know the answer, all i had to do was raise my head a little more than an average infoscion in Mysore does and look at the night sky.

There have been times, fate has been mean

And in such nights, what a friend have you been!

Ever un-changing, pleasant to behold

Forever young, no one can say you're old

As they say, heartbreak does make you realise that the ones who love you are always around you. Its just that you were blind to their affection all this while. Life stays worth living in the face of adversities.

My good old friends made me strong, silently watching me from up above when i used to go on friday nights to do my laundry. While i was walking from the training centre to my room, i used to think - you guys just don't change. I can afford to smile each time i see you. No ego issues, no insecurities. And boundless love we can have for each other.

In a way, these friends have taught me a lot about life in general. 

One man cannot do much, the beauty lies in being together. 

Clouds may come and go, and we may lose sight of each other at times, but we should remember that our loved ones are just 'round the corner, silently praying for us. 

True love is eternal - not bound by factors of gender, numbers or any barrier. It is not simply what a man feels for a woman - there is always a hint of lust in there. It is rather based on friendship, and one should never feel sorry when one loves another. For we all are meant to live and love like friends, just like the twinkling stars in the sky....

This life of mine, is forever blessed

For it has the nights, my soul has been caressed

By your twinkles so pleasant and mild

Making me wonder, like a child...:)