Beliefs

I had some thoughts on philosophy these days. I should say this is not the first time such thoughts are going through my mind, but why am I pouring out the thoughts here now? That is because this time I somehow feel, my thoughts does make some sense. You guys are totally free to disagree.

So firstly, why did these thoughts pass through my head? Quite recently I heard from my mom about an incident. I should tell you this kind of an incident is not very unique and I am sure each one of us might have come across such incidents which might be totally co-incidental. But still we would never want to believe it as co-incidental and would give some special meaning to it and rightly so, because we never know it might have some special meaning attached to it. So the incident which took place here is: one of my relatives, he is a staunchest of believers in God and has been doing loads of poojas for years, on one particular morning recently when he was going on with his shlokas and poojas, there is one shloka regarding Lord Narayana it seems and after he finished the chanting as he turned around or something he saw a garuda (the vehicle of the lord) sitting on the compound wall of his house (He stays in Bangalore, so I should say this is not an everyday scene or maybe any day scene in bangalore). He was very much overwhelmed and had this unexplainable happiness in him because this had lots of hidden meanings to him which I and you might find irrelevant. I should say this must have been a special incident for him and he might have got so many messages through this highly improbable occurrence (of the lord’s vehicle perching on his compound when he was just praying to the Lord).

At this point I should say I am a confused soul regarding these kinds of questions, which according to the current philosophers makes me an agnostic. But the above incident made me think. It kind of gave me a solution. Again as I am an agnostic, I still am skeptical of even this solution, which is I am not a complete believer of this theory. But I somehow liked this thought.

This universe may be a place where in if you really believe (or not believe) in something then the world conspires to make you believe in your assumptions. It doesn’t matter if you believe in God, religion, or science, or if you don’t believe in God, you will always get many pretty good reasons to believe in your beliefs (or non beliefs). It is something like; maybe our mind has some connection with the outside world and the beliefs in our mind do have some thing to do with the way things actually work. We start to observe things based on our beliefs and we find many interconnections, many meanings and truth in each of our beliefs. This maybe the reason for so many varying different beliefs, school of thoughts to co-exist and so many fanatics to believe their beliefs as the only existing truth unable to look beyond their point of view.

In science also there have been so many assumptions made to give us amazing solutions based on little facts, like if something holds for a verifiable thing we can use the same formula for something non verifiable, we put the data in the formula and determine things.

So based on the small fact which I mentioned before, (that is my relative seeing the garuda after the pooja), I can assume many of the beliefs in the history also could very well be true like the idol of Shri Krishna turning after being pleased by Kanakadasa’s worship. I don’t know but sometimes, in some way, things happen that enforces our beliefs. It’s like the world outside becomes what we truly, firmly believe from inside. It just enforces our beliefs, though no two beliefs might be the same. That is different varying beliefs can totally co-exist and there is a chance that though the beliefs are variant or opposing to each other may very well be true. Maybe this universe has that kind of power or magic. Just maybe.

Bliss....

"Life is not the amount of breaths you take; it's the moments that take your breath away." Had heard this and variations of this kind of quote many a times and also had liked it then. Just wanted to update the blog saying, I had few similar kind of moments this weekend of which I can re-live every second and re-living each second of it just gives me so much bliss that I love it. I realized some of the things in the way my heart and mind works after that. The smallest of the things can get etched in your heart and can become so personal, beautiful and blissful. The memories become like an inseparable entity in your life, It becomes like a few pages in a photo album or a book which you love re-reading and every time you see it or re-read it you find something new to feel happy about, good about. I don’t know how this works, but just closing my eyes and remembering one single moment, a smile, a glint in the eyes, a glance will just take me to a different kind of phase; it brings smile and joy aplenty. It surely is most pleasurable. It has happened before that a certain kind of music or fragrance takes us into a different mode, makes us nostalgic, sometimes even without our knowledge, even without us deliberately thinking about it. I guess that’s because we had such strong bond of that moment that we unknowingly have carried on something of and from that moment with us forever. Hmmm, isn’t it beautiful, becoming blissfully happy just closing your eyes. I sure can say it is as I am experiencing it right now.

Happy New Year 2010

Happy New Year 2010 to all you guys out there. Hope this year brings you all the luck and fulfills all your wishes. Have a very Happy New Year 2010.

I really dont have any topic to write on in this post apart from conveying my wishes to all you guys out there. Some how these years rolling by is making me feel that I am growing old and still not knowing what I want out of my life does make me feel a bit confused. 10 years ago I was in my Xth std, preparing for my board exams. Now a decade has passed since that. Decade, seems pretty long time. Yeah it is.

Hmmm.. Anyways also wanted to write about this guy. This guy whom I see every single day, while riding to office. He stands in one of the busiest traffic signals and sells or maybe tries to sell hats made of jute. The hats are really stupid in design, no offence but they are, They are like the old hats worn by Gavaskar, the only difference he would wear a white one and this was made of jute, it also had stripes in between which divided the hat in triangles. It could be folded to a single triangle if you fold it on those lines. It needed to be tied around the neck. Everyday I see him wearing one of the hats and having a bunch of them in his hand nicely folded in triangles. I have stood so many days in the signal (en-route to office, mind you) observing him, but i didnt even see a single customer remotely interested in buying those hats, leave alone bargaining or talking to him. But day after day, he is there. He always wears a full sleeve crisply ironed shirt and a formal trousers neatly ironed. Most of the days he wears a brown shoe and he always has this stupid hat on his head. He cuts through the vehicles standing in the signal showing them the hats.

I always wanted to say to him "Come on, that kind of a hat could work in some tourist destination in Goa or something but how could you possibly imagine of selling them in a busy bustling traffic signal when everyone just want to reach to their place of work in a hurry."

I wanted to say this to him, but then, seeing his attire I felt he could maintain it only if he could sell those hats pretty well or if he had some side business. Now selling the hat is out of question cos there are simply no buyers, Come on the hats are simply stupid for anyone to buy. So what kind of business could this road side well dressed hat vendor have ? Hmmm .. I thought and came out with 2 options straight away. He must either be a spy, they call as informer, working for the police and informing them the details of dunno what and about you know who (Not Voldermort, the bad guys). Thats such a cool thing, ain't it? Everyday while i pull my lazy ass out of the bed and go to office to act like working on something. He, in the guise of a hat vendor, doing some hard core on field job for the cops, Man ... aint his job interesting ? Or he could be one of the bad guys, but I still couldnt figure how would he be of help being a bad guy and selling hats in a signal.

Pretty interesting theory, aint it ? Ok Enough of joblessness on the first day of the new year. I will get back to doing nothing and you guys, if any of you stumbled on this and did read till here get back to do something meaningful. Anyways wishing you all guys a wonderful wonderful wonderful new year 2010.

The Innova "Guy"

This incident happened in Bangalore, It happened about 2 years ago and I really felt kind of embarrassed to tell this incident to any of my friends, it was nowhere my fault that the things turned out that way, but still it is one of the embarrassing incidents that occurred to me. Just after the incident, I told this to one of my friends we lovingly call "Humba" meaning the wise guy :P. And hearing him laugh I decided I won’t become the centre of the joke again by narrating to the rest of them. But still continuing with my promise of writing as much nonsense possible in my blog, I am narrating this incident.
Hmmm.. It was around 2 years ago and I had been in a software company for around a year then. I used to travel by bus and I really hated commuting. I used to walk kilometers sometimes because I felt it was better than the buses, there were no much Volvos then and the normal buses moving in our routes were filled till the last footstep of the footboard. The plan would be to get your foot on the footboard and something to hold, In the coming stops as the bus moved you would automatically be pushed in, During this commotion if you lose your cell phone, you shouldn’t complain because if you try to save it you would be out of the bus, I have lost more than a couple of them in a similar manner and I really don’t have any qualms about it, at least I reached home in one piece.
This incident too took place while I was on my daily round of adventure, which others also call as reaching home safely. It was around 8 pm, I had made a detour and had come via jaynagar 4th block to the jaydeva stop (buses are relatively empty if I come in this route). My house is around 5 kms from here and there are lot many buses but usually jam packed at that time during the evening. I just reached the stop and it started to drizzle. It was a light drizzle so no one was running for cover. As I waited for the bus, a thought passed that the bus would be totally packed, it is normal and I didn’t mind, but now maybe packed with drenched people if the rain picks up. When I was lost in my thoughts, a middle aged, smartly dressed person approached me and asked me where is the sundarram shetty crossing there near arekere. It was totally near my house. I knew the place, I gave him the correct directions, It was quite easy, just a straight road and a left turn where the IIMB compound ends that’s as straight forward as possible for any person, but not for him, he looked confused, out of the blue he asked where are you going. I told the same way. He suggested he would give a lift so that he too won’t miss the cross. I thought that was not a bad idea, I assumed he had a bike and nodded in affirmative, but he said he had parked his car a little away, I was about to change my mind, but then, to my bad luck, the rain picked up, thinking of the bus and my cell phone, I couldn't say no. I moved towards his innova, but in my mind, I was thinking whatever is happening is a bit out of the normal. No stranger has been so nice to me for no reason in Bangalore. I would like to believe I started to think like the Robert De Niro's character in Ronin (one of my fav action movies). Look for the exits and plan your exits before entering anything you are not 100% comfortable with. As i neared the car, I memorized the regn no. (I was not sure why that would have been required after I was cut into a 1000 pieces), the window were not tinted, gave me a little more confidence. Once I reached the car, I checked if any more people were in the car, if they were, I had decided, I would just back out. But then there was no one so safe there too. I measured how will I stand in a one on one fight with that guy. It could be an even fight and I didn’t mind that. So I got into the front seat, placed my laptop bag on my lap. I was also mentally prepared that if he deviates from the route or if he stops to pick anyone I would be out of the car in a whiff whether it’s moving or not. I was prepared for anything mentally and was looking forward for the adventure. But what happened next was a complete different story.
I was in the front seat, with the window half down as it was still raining, but ever prepared to jump off the car if he removed a gun, a sword or maybe a chloroform laced kerchief. I was ready for anything. But then we started to talk. He asked what I was into, he was quite surprised on hearing me working and felt like I looked like a college kid to which I thought if I had only lost one more subject in my sixth semester, I may as well would be in college then. But that was not to be, so I was here working in Bangalore. He told he was someone related to modeling industry or the movie business. He said he was going to meet some Zulfi Syed or someone for a party and he was the one who introduced zulfi to the modeling industry, I said good for him and good for you, but I didn’t know who any of them were. Then I had the most uncomfortable conversation I ever had in my life. He asked me who my favorite actor is, never had a stranger asked that question when we were having a small talk. I tried to be graceful as I always was and went on with Amir Khan, Tom Hanks and Sean Connery. He went on to say yeah they are good actors, don’t you like any young actors, he rephrased the question asking which actor's body did I like. I was caught totally off guard, how anybody could reply to this. And as any normal guy, I gave him a weird look asking what kind of a question is this. He understood, He clarified saying since he was in the modeling business the question was that and I shouldn’t get him wrong. I had already got him wrong, but was trying to be civil to a middle aged, half bald, huge paunch guy who was trying to hit on me. Never was I in this kind of a situation but I felt it was quite funny in a weird way. So I went ahead and took the challenge and tried to be as graceful as ever in this horrible situation and come out unscathed of it. I replied, I surely would like female actor's body more than men but maybe akshay Kumar or Matt damon or Brad pitt have the kind of physique which I would like myself to have. To this he replied I looked similar to Matt, I laughed as i knew myself better than that. To this he persisted that he was not joking, I was not sure if I was laughing on this guy or the comment. He said if I was interested in the modeling business, I said no I was happy in my job and thought at least I don’t have to meet people like you in there. I was just looking on the road, seeing how far we were from the destination, we were in the Bilekahalli traffic, our destination was just a kilometer away and I was thankful for that. He had decided he would test me to the limit that day. He asked me if I would join the party they were having. I firmly declined, I didn’t have any interest whatsoever what he and his fellow friends planned to do. He later asked me if I worked out. At that point I wasn’t even replying properly just waiting for my destination. I said no to which he said I surely looked like a person who works out. I had not taken so much crap in a conversation the whole of my life. I didn’t react, then he tried to touch my arms, it seems to feel the muscles, I flinched and gave him a look and if lasers would have been implanted in my eyes, he would have been burnt. I could have punched him if he was not driving, but then I just asked him to stop the car, we had almost reached the destination. I told take the next left and go wherever you want. He tried to explain something that he was in the modeling business and hence it was his area kinds but I was not interested. I just walked on to my home. I was totally angry at that moment, but the next moment felt it was quite funny that this kind of a weird incident happened.
The first thing I did was to call "Humba" to tell what happened and that miserable ass was laughing like that was the best day of his life. At that moment I decided, this incident is not worth narrating. I don’t remember the guys face, but whenever I remember the incident I remember the "Miscousi" guy who meets scotty and friends in the train In the movie "Euro trip". Miscousi Miscousi :).

The "Guay" (Cashew) tree :)

I am starting with better topics now on as promised in my previous post. Better for me is some meaningless, reasonless thing which wont make any sense to the reader. So, in this post I will be writing one such incident which is very close to my heart. I have shared it with many of my friends, and all those heartless terrible people who call themselves my friends have laughed like anything over this little incident. They still make fun of me, not understanding the value of this incident to me :). Ok now, enough of the build up let I narrate the incident to you guys.
It was a few years ago, actually many, but I still remember it as if it was yesterday. It was at the time when I was in my junior college. That was one of the best times with great friends in college and a huge family at home. I was living in my grandmother's house in my native. I was accustomed to the city life till then and would be there in my native only for the summer holidays. I loved this place from my younger days. Summer holidays was when I and my brother had the most fun and it was so because of my native place, my cousins there, my cousins who would arrive for the holidays there, all my relatives, the river, the coconut grove, the mango trees, the cricket matches, the fields and whole days spent in the sun with nothing to care for more than my cousin eating one more mango than myself. It was the most fun place to be in and it still is, though all my cousins have grown up and are busy doing some stupid stuff which they consider to be important. Still when we meet up once in a while there, it is as fun as ever. Yeah so I studied my 2 years of junior college there. Those two years were hell a lot enjoyable because of everything, the college, the people at home, and the events I got to be part with, everything. It will be always fondly remembered by me. But the incident I am going to narrate is not related to any of these things; it’s just an incident which made me feel real special.
Our college is around 6-7 kilometers from our house; we had to walk nearly a kilometer to reach the bus stop and would then board the bus. Our college was a typical junior college as is common in my native, with uniforms and high school like treatment up to some extent. I would take lunch to the college, yeah there weren’t any canteens kind in the college and the lunch from home was much better than any of the hotels nearby. With the lunch, I was given a bottle full of water everyday. I don’t know, I used to eat lunch from the Tiffin, but I never drank the water from the bottle, I would prefer the tap water set up for drinking than the water brought from home, I don’t know why. But the bottle of water remained as is till the end of the day. I remember it was summer season and it would be very hot. Actually it is throughout the year hot in my native except for the rainy days when it pours like anything. If it’s not raining the weather is always hot. When I am returning from the college, after alighting the bus the kilometer of walk would not always be bad, I enjoyed walking the distance. It is a broad mud road with light forest adjacent to the road at one end and on the other end there is a railway track. Mid way to our house on this road there is one cashew tree in the middle of the road. In the forest adjacent to the road this kind of trees are abundant, we can find lot many of such trees, but here in the middle of the road there were shrubs and all, but there was only this one tree present. Each day I would pass by the tree and would notice the mud on the leaves on the lower part of the tree mostly because of some vehicle which would pass on that road once in a while. Most of the times I wouldn’t care for such a thing and those times too I didn’t care. But I would get nice scolding at home for not drinking the water from the bottle. Expecting me to change my ways is a futile effort, but then i didn’t want to get any scolding from home too, so what I used to do is, since i couldn’t water the whole light forest on those hot sunny days, I would empty my water bottle on this dusty tree on those dry afternoons. Those days it used to be very sunny and I used to pour water to it everyday. I felt i was doing something good, though there was another part of me shouting from inside, stop bullshitting yourself you ass you are just emptying a bottle of water to save some scolding at home, maybe that’s what i did. But to think of why did I not just pour out the water anywhere and everywhere but chose the same dusty dry tree to pour the water to day after day. To this another part of my soul would shout, to gloat thinking how good you are. I guess now you understand having these kinds of souls inside me it’s so tough to think of myself as good. They are always out there to show me how mean and meaningless worthless person i am. Anyways I think I am deviating too much from my story. Everyday I would empty my bottle on this tree. So one sunny windless day, i remember I had finished some exam, chemistry maybe, it was sunny and my exam had gone good. I was in a happy mood and as it was an exam day, I hadn’t carried the water bottle. Something unforgettable happened that day as i approached that tree. It was in the afternoon, the sun was shining and there was no wind whatsoever blowing anywhere. As i approached a cashew fruit fell from the tree. It fell right near my feet. Yeah , my initial thoughts were also similar to yours, I thought some squirrel might have been trying to eat it and must have mistakenly dropped it as it was a pretty ripe fruit and the cashew fruit doesn’t fall usually till it over ripens or some squirrel eats it half and drops. I picked the fruit half suspecting it to be eaten by the squirrel. But the fruit was in the perfect shape and also it was the most beautiful cashew fruit I had ever seen. Many of my cousins would climb the tallest cashew tree for this kind of a fruit, but it had fallen right in front of me on a windless squirrel less sunny day. You guys may call it a coincidence, but I consider this as a showing of love by the tree towards me, I really do, to this day I believe that tree fell in love with me and hence it bore a fruit specially for me and after it ripened it dropped it for me on a windless squirrel less sunny day right in front of my feet. That made my day, actually it made more than my day, but the sad part is I don’t like cashew fruits; nevertheless I was, am and will always be overwhelmed by the gesture of that tree. On reaching home I gave the fruit to one of my cousins who too were really amazed by the beauty of the fruit. He must have really liked the fruit. I took the cashew nut to the stove and we roasted it and ate it. This incident made me feel, irrespective of what my inner soul contradicts, that I have done one good thing in my life and one living creature unrelated to me did love me so much to do something so so so special to me. I really loved this incident.
Phew, long story, aint it? After I narrated this story to my friends the first reaction was, I was expecting something sentimental, touching, applause, but no, it was a friend saying man if a branch would have fallen instead of the fruit, we would not have to sit through this whole thing. Can you believe it?

A bit sad, actually a lot :)

Hmmm... I am depressed; yeah you don’t have to worry that I would write some self pity crap here, cos I won’t. So the last fortnight was quite eventful. "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times; it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness; it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity; it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness; it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair; we had everything before us, we had nothing before us; we were all going directly to Heaven, we were all going the other way." I love this quote of Dickens, he might have used it to describe a more appropriate times. but right now I too can use it to say the current state of my mind, you can argue saying what the hell why am I belittling Dickens, but again this blog belongs to ME and I can do whatever I want to. Yeah, the fortnight had the best moments experienced in my lifetime, it also included the saddest moments I have lived through in my life. But to think of it the sadness was miniscule compared to the happiness those best moments gave. Anyways, I like to be depressed these days, I don’t know why there is some kind of sweetness in all this sadness, I cant explain you what it is, but it surely does have some, and this is the reason I came to know why some people like to be eternally depressed. I know I am talking crap, I know, I am not feeling any good, I am really hating this. I promise I will write better topics now on. But I really loved whatever happened, I never felt this kind of happiness and sadness ever. Anyways I have made a resolution, from now on I would surely write nonsense, meaningless, reasonless things. I am going a bit insane now. So I won’t type anymore tonight. This is it.

I wonder (only sometimes)

In life, I wonder, I wonder who is a winner and who is a loser... if something like that exists. Is someone who is at the heights of what they are doing the winners and the one who is good at nothing the loser? Or is success and failure measured on the amount of money and fame a person earns, or the respect he gets cos of it or is it based on the amount of people who love him. What makes a human life better than another? How can anyone say or judge one person is better than the other? What would it be based on? I really get confused when these kinds of questions are asked. What are we striving for? Or what should I strive for? Sometimes, I think these questions are unanswerable, unanswerable because, when we don even know the meaning or reason of life, how can we come to know the best way to live it? Are we striving for happiness? Is that the goal ? Or are we a bunch of total meaningless creatures on this corner of the universe that can be washed away anytime just made to think and feel as something important. Are we just like the rocks all around us with just a little more power to make us more and more confused? Is this so called intellect and reasoning just a farce to make us think, make us go round and round just to make us feel we are reaching somewhere but eventually it just makes us rotate insanely and leaves us back at the begining with no answers. We are in such a situation that each and everyone have a definition of life and the reason to live it, but none of them can prove that their reasoning is the right one. It is all based on either assumption, or cos it’s written in some books, or cos our elders were always following it. To come to think of it, we have been put in such a beautiful loop. We have been given a reasoning power, but also with that we have been given a strong set of intuitions or instincts which would try to believe what it wants to. So we assume something’s and then we give some facts on those assumptions and try to establish them as the truth. Every 100 years someone comes along and says the base assumption is wrong so the truth which has been told should be re-written. Initially a group of people would resist, then some would want to kill him for even proposing the same and then gradually we accept and we understand his reasoning power was superior to others cos based on the available facts he had the potential to think so much far ahead. But still, there always are some assumptions somewhere to get the results as we want (this point I started believing since I read about how the light propagates in high school, I am not brainy enough to comment on the theory, but felt we made too many assumptions in there). We were taught "Man is an rational being". But to think of it we are only rational in fraction amounts, else we love to live by how our elder’s leaders tell or the holy book says. If we were truly rational there would be lot less pain around in the world. I think we are a hugely instinctive, emotional people ruined by what we are programmed to do by the holy books, the pandits, the mullahs rather than being rational practical beings. Also I feel how much ever I wonder answering my initial questions in the post satisfactorily is near to impossible, but I still hope, I would find the answers someday ....