Category: Purpose

  • Shaantam

    A thought that I’ve received for the second time – the first time was during a yoga class, and this time, it was thanks to the book I just finished reading – ‘Mistress’, by Anita Nair, as one of the navarasas that come into play in dance art forms – in this case Kathakali.

    Detachment. Freedom. An absence of desire. A coming to terms with life. When all is done, that is all we all aspire to. Shaantam.

    Now, I’ll not be presumptuous and claim that it applies to all, but it definitely does to me. For a while now, even before learning to articulate it, that has been a task I’d set for myself. The rough aim for me was to be comfortable with myself, and be as emotionless as possible with the judgments of others on my self and actions. I’ve had more failures than successes, but I’m learning. Learning that this state has to be acquired over a period of time. Learning that it can be done only in stages because there are things that one has to do to merely sustain the self in this world. Learning that there are responsibilities. Learning that there’s a time for everything, even for coming to terms with life.

    But for me, the revelation to me in that explanation was the word ‘absence’, while most of  my thoughts and actions had been done to suppress. There is a huge difference.

    The cold and cough that has been plaguing me for the last week made me go for an antibiotic. While it did its work on the trouble makers, the side effect was that my taste buds were rendered inactive. So, though I had a great dinner on Saturday, the desire that used to precede the regular weekend dinners was conspicuous by its absence. I read it as another signal – that the absence of desire is not to be achieved by frontal assaults meant to suppress it. That does more harm than good. The absence is merely a side effect of something far larger in scale, changes in the greater canvass of life, a gradual cleansing process. I shall start again. 🙂

    until next time, merry xmas, and I shall see you next on the first day of the new year

  • Despair

    is perhaps when life slips by playing its part
    and you slip by without playing yours..

    until next time, no time to spare

  • And that would explain a lot of things..

    “..They would return to unwanted jobs, unloved families, unchosen friends, to drawing rooms, evening clothes, cocktail glasses and movies, to unadmitted pain, murdered hope, desire left unreached, left hanging silently over a path on which no step was taken, to days of effort not to think, not to say,to forget and give in and give up. But each of them had known some unforgotten moment – a morning when nothing had happened, a piece of music heard suddenly and never heard in the same way again, a stranger’s face seen in a bus – a moment when each had known a different sense of living. And each remembered other moments, on a sleepless night, on an afternoon of steady rain, in a church, in an empty street at sunset, when each had wondered why there was so much of suffering and ugliness inthe world. They had not tried to find the answer and they had gone on living as if no answer were necessary. But each had known a moment when, in lonely, naked honesty, he had felt the need of an answer..”

    until next time, ain’t Rand right?

  • Tick Talk

    Do you think i should go for some kind of treatment – i cant seem to resist puns :)..oh well, we all have our quirks, and puns have been proven to be harmless except for odd cases where people have choked on their food… but then, timing is everything, isnt it… so lets do some tick talk…no, not the ones you find on your dog, the verb, the clock ticking… only in this case, i am referring to humans ticking… (no, not the ones they have in Sri Lanka!!)
    all of us traverse the graphs which go around the thin line of emotionlessness, some skew more towards happiness and some towards sorrow, and most of us have a fair mix of both.. Like the charged ions who are forever trying to return to a neutral state, sometimes we too end up longing for a state of no emotion, maybe because we are at a stage where even happiness is momentary, and sorrows seem to last forever.. but we dont seem to fall into that emotionless state, because there’s always something that keeps you ticking…
    its different for different people, and different for the same person at different times..it could be the refreshing weekend that just got over, or the one thats about to start… the good song you just listened to, or the album that you are waiting for… a rocking love life,or an ex-love whose separation rocked you and left you with sweet nostalgic memories…. a lavish meal, or the thought where the next meal would come from…. a ride in your favourite machine,or being constantly taken for a ride.. standing outside with a pleasant breeze on your face,or stuck in the rain and just wanting to get inside…for good or for bad, there always seems to be something that makes us tick, until, in the end, like evrything else that has done its time, our machinery also has to stop..
    until next time, what it is…makes you tick?

  • Of Missions and Missionaries

    Consider your general position in life…:) with a title like that, thought i’ll start with that statement myself before one of you smart ones decided to comment… but the statement wasnt just for the sake of it..
    what we do in life as a profession has very little to do with what we really want to do in life.. having said that, we are part of a timeframe when this is being realised, and more and more people are setting out to do their own thing… but different things like finance, peer pressure and the sheer lethargy of moving out of a comfort zone prevents the majority from starting all over again…which is where we come to the subject of people who walk a path that they have voluntarily seeked out… missionaries so to speak.. not just those of religion, but with various other purposes like saving the narmada or setting up old age homes… does their single mindedness ever fade, do they ever begin to doubt the cause? or is their faith so strong that they go through their life without questioning the purpose at all? maybe, just maybe, its perhaps better not to have too many options…
    i have always believed that to every life there is a reason.. every person is here to do something that wouldnt have happened without him.. he is a link – big or small, in a chain of events that when seen it totality, makes a profound impact… pravin mahajan is a case in example.. by himself he might have been a nothing… but by his action, he has altered the course of a national party, and perhaps the nation itself..each of us is a case in example, some of us realise our action and its effects, and some of us will be left wondering at the end of it all, what difference did we make?
    until next time, a different position, a different life 🙂