Dancin in the Rain ???!!

I was in deep slumber when the thud of a thunder woke me up. I was instantly reminded of little Grethel in Sound of Music. Nanny Maria explains the reason for thunder and lightning that the lightning says something to the thunder and the thunder replies. Little Grethel asks innocently "Why is the thunder so mad?" Yup, I had the same feeling that very instant. Why is that, our mind associates its feelings with nature? Why do you feel happy on a beautiful morning during spring? Why does your mind feel at peace when you see beautiful flowers bloom and birds chirping away at dawn? Why oh why does the rain bring out mixed emotions in you?

I am totally intrigued about the simple phenomenon of precipitation having a huge impact on the human mind and how it feels. I was just entering Bangalore the other day by road and man what a sight? I felt I was entering the realm of evil! The skies were densely overcast and lightning raging from the skies. For the first time, I felt I was about to face the wrath of nature but it was just another rainy day! I guess rain produces mixed feelings in you because of the varied intensities with which the heavens pours down. Its just like forest gump experiences in Nam... there is rain which pours down straight... there is rain which pours sideways... there are times when the rain defies all laws of gravity and pours upwards... The people on Hosur raod would definitely relate with that. Phew... really where are those good old days when your hearts skipped a beat when you saw silver droplets of water on the window sill? What has happened to those good old days when you wanted to get out and get wet and literally Dance in the rain???

I guess people have become so monotonous that they have forgotten what it is like to be in ecstasy when the skies shower the earth with pearls of life. We have entangled ourselves in the so called "worldly affairs" that we really have forgotten that "rain" is so beautiful. It had inspired so many poets and they used its beauty to create masterpieces. I feel its got a lot to do with the perception of people. Have people forgotten how it feels when on a rainy day... we are cuddled at home and mom makes those fantastic pakodas and fragrant chai? Have people forgotten that it is this time of the year that you yearn for your beloved to be next to you cuddled up in front of a fire? What's with this world?

Thinking in a global perspective, I feel that the prayers of all farmers in Karnataka and Tamilnadu have been heard by the lord himself and he has, with all his might showered his "love" on the planet earth. Well, too much of anything is bad... be it love.... remember fatal attraction??? Wow... its amazing how world teaches you the fruits of moderation.

People define fun in parties where a "rain dance" is arranged. Well they step into an arena with sprinklers and have fun showing of their skills in dancing... well now they have their chance... The heavens have provided them with a free arena to shake their whatever ! But what do I see? These people are running indoors away from the rain ... Yeah right! some sort of pseuds... If you ask them, they would say its dangerous, risky, disease prone etc,. These people need to make up their minds! Well as long as there is rain, we would still have kids running out to enjoy... and moms shouting at their loudest to bring their kids back inside.... Its a wonderful world isnt it?

I am reminded of a phenomenal statement "Life is like a rainbow. You need both the sun and the rain to make its colors appear".... Cheers and have fun !!!!!

Potpourri of Thoughts (Basically Time pass)

Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one. - Albert Einstein

In this utopian planet, the only species bothered about deciphering cryptic illusions are us humans. Have you ever wondered why we do the things we do? I am sure many would relate with the thought that we are all stuck in a truly metastable state of mind synchronizing with the events which takes place around us. The inkling feeling to be different fades away with time and we become one with the "clan". It takes a lot of effort to be different in this beautiful life of ours.

According to Dennis Wholey, "Expecting the world to treat you fairly because you are a good person is a little like expecting the bull not to attack you because you are a vegetarian". The crux of the issue is that everybody lives their own lives according to their perceptions towards life in general. With this existent difference in perception and opinions amongst mankind, we are always in turmoil struggling and continuously fostering the phenomenon "survival of the fittest".

To simplify the issue lets take a simple example. How do we know that the color red really looks red to different people? It is just because people have been bludgeoned with knowledge. When a child is molded to perceive a sense of color, the whole room is filled with objects of that color and the teacher repeatedly rambles that every color the child sees is red. Imagine if a teacher told a child, "All apples are red in color". Then if you show the child a golden apple and ask its color the child would definitely say "red". From this example we realize that the initial conditioning that mind faces, makes a difference in how we perceive things. With all this knowledge inside us accruing as we grow up, we fail to understand the abstract and true knowledge of self.

If you are reading this line, you are as lost as I am in thoughts of your own. This was one of the main reasons of this blog. An interesting thought: - "Failures are divided into two classes - those who thought and never did, and those who did and never thought". I truly prefer to be of the latter type and who knows that sometimes crap like these make sense to a lot of people including me. Are you wondering what to say? Well don’t say anything because "Silence is one of the hardest arguments to refute!"

Sometimes we are so bogged down by petty failures that we fail to see the bigger picture. Rabindranath Tagore said, "If you cry because the sun has gone out of your life, your tears will prevent you from seeing the stars". I believe we are aching because our "self" feels let down. It is amazing how some of our characteristics surface beyond the heaps of knowledge just to save the day. I guess I am getting nowhere with this discussion....

I believe, I have been a successful failure in streamlining my thoughts and hence the title.

I will end this potpourri with an interesting thought. "Everyone has inside of him/her; a piece of bad news ... The bad news is that you don't know how great you can be! How much you can love! What you can accomplish! and what your potential is!!! ... and the good news comes when you realize it ... :-)

chao!!

Peter Pan!! Where are you??

Since when did your lives become routine?? You get up and stare at the mirror and see a Zombie staring back at you! You just ignore that ugly sight and go on with your daily ablutions and finally drape an attire and then again look at the mirror just to check if the zombie is gone! Hurray! Zombie just made an exit and an engineer is staring at you. Then it occurs to you, did I just wear the same dress a couple of days back? Oh, well Whatever! and you stroll off for work!

The story continues at your work place when your outlook calendar beeps a reminder for a meeting. You go to the same conference room and listen to people jabbing and cribbing about the same thing again and again! Phew what a mind job! At that instant you realize you've grown old! You are shocked at this revelation and helpless because you really cannot do anything about it! Then you tend to ask yourselves, where is the "child" in you. Whenever I hear people say things like "there is a child in everyone", I am totally pissed off. I have to rephrase their statement saying "there WAS a child in everyone".

The other day, I had to do some major time pass and decided to watch "Peter pan" the movie. As I saw the movie, I felt the child in me being resurrected and I began to dwell in thoughts about my child hood. Nostalgia all the way!! You recollect the millions of stuff you did everyday. When some "grown up" said "I'm bored", you would put up a sincere interrogative expression to him and ask Huh? What does that mean? The entire day would be spent as if you were over charged with stimulants! Oh the excitement of being a police in police-robber (a really trivial game with made-up stunt artists (us!) whose parts were played by our gang impeccably). The sheer thrill of trying to mock the sound produced by a gunshot, the innocent claims that the make-believe bullet had just scraped through and so we were still alive (in the game!). Any physicist watching the entire episode would be going "How the hell"! Ignorance was truly bliss....

How did that child in you disappear? I guess in the process of gathering knowledge, which was rather forced on us by the community we live in, the child just made an exit to Neverland. What is Neverland? The adult in me explains that it is a make believe place featured in a kids novel authored by J.M Barrie "The adventures of peter-pan". The child in me who was resurrected at that time started off with praises for Neverland! He started telling me that it is a place of dreams, with no grownups around to tell you to come home for food, with no Nerdy class teachers providing horrible assignments and projects.

I guess when we evolve in this world; we just go through phases which are very unique in themselves. I do not intend to criticize the life of an adult. The life I am currently living has a lot of things I like, for instance the freedom to do what I please (of course, with freedom comes responsibility). So, I guess in the process of "growing up", we sometimes forget how to have fun! I know most of us will find the very thought offensive! Just think about the zillions of weekend rendezvous with friends lead to a stalemate when it comes to discussions on what to do next. You get on the phone with a friend of yours, after a brief exchange of status updates; you get tongue twisted with the phrase "what else is going on??”

These are the times when I am reminded that in the make believe world of Neverland, everyone would have a "Tinkerbelle" prompting you to do fun stuff all the time! I think this is the time we need our guardian angels or fairies to nudge us to go out, get dirty and have fun! Yeah you could be strictly morose to the idea and refuse the very idea that fairies exists and lead a monotonous life, technically perfect. Every time you hear yourselves say, "what else is going on??”, just stand up and yell out "I do believe in fairies, I do, I do". You'll find yourselves having fun even if it means you've embarrassed yourself and your friends in public... Hey such a stunt is fun too...

Cheer up! It’s Christmas!

It’s about 7AM in the morning and the sun is barely rising itself to the horizon. It’s as if it sulks like any other kid on a beautiful day to get up. Have you ever wondered, if you personify the sun, how it would feel to be getting up that early in the morning? Nyways... it was a beautiful day. The streets were covered in a thin layer of snow (it really doesn’t snow too much in north Texas). I had to hurry to my bookstore for my job and was walking briskly. Something amazing happened then, which has changed my outlook towards life.

There was an old man draped in a rather heavy jacket and he was using the shoveling machine to clear the road of sleet. He stopped his machine as I passed him and he gently said with a beaming smile: "Good morning young man, merry Christmas". I just stood there, not knowing how to respond and I guess I gave mixed signals to him as he reiterated himself to me. This just brought a smile to my face and I wished him back saying "merry Christmas". This moment was so profound that I began to deliberate... why is it that this doesn't happen in India? Are our people so cold hearted that they look at every other human being with suspicion? Why is it so difficult for us to smile in public? The whole day passed by with a tingling feeling in my heart. I just had a wonderful day. I felt everyone were rejoicing "life" in general.

I began to think.. is it the weather? Or the festive season? I guess it is neither. It is just pure and basic courteousness. Why can’t we Indians be as courteous as everyone else? I guess we have our own reservations about things. I guess the word "good morning" is rebuked by everyone strongly. The reason for this may be our schooling system where the kids get up coherently and shout in chorus "good morning miss/sir" every time a teacher walks in to the class. Phew... I just hated that and I loath it to this day. Why can't kids be taught to just say "Hi". That is the word they are predominantly going to use...

Getting back to the festive time I was in, it was really special. Wherever I went, people in their jocund moods smiling at everyone and stuff. it was really such a pretty sight. I guess a valid reasoning for this is that, on Indian roads, there are so many pedestrians that your face would begin to ache if you kept smiling at everyone. This is why we, in India save our greetings for acquaintances and friends. This seems to be a very logical reasoning.

I began to wonder if there was a specific season when we celebrate in unison. Well if you think about it, at any given point in time there is something going on.. Life is just too busy for us to think about trivial issues such as courtesy and stuff. When I had made my peace with "not being courteous" to everyone, a similar thing happened to me today in the morning. As I was walking to take my bus to work, a police constable was cleaning a car (it was a "***" car meaning that the car was for a commissioner or a higher rank). He just smiled at me and said "good morning sir". I was shocked beyond belief. It was almost like deja-vous. I have seen him stand there before but had never had a similar experience. I guess in all these days he had seen me walk by, we had developed a bond like an untold acquaintance or something.... It was phenomenal... I smiled back and wished him.

Now I realize, we are just as courteous as anyone else. We just take our time in getting comfortable with situations. Coming to think about it we as a race are the most adaptable of all. Can you as an American to settle down in the most obscure village in India? I am sure he'll go nuts before you can say "nuts". But we are there everywhere. There is a saying that every third person you would meet in the world had to be a Chinese or an Indian. We can adapt to any situation, country and people.

We should also have a unified festive season when everyone is just happy... period... does a lot of good to our minds. My notion of Christmas has got nothing to do with religion but it is just a global season of happiness all over the world. It'll be nice if we have more of such seasons. I guess as Shakespeare’s play, we are "a man for all seasons". We are getting there and I am ready to wait for the day when not being courteous to strangers becomes a thing of the past... What say guys ??????

Do you SEE THROUGH things ???

Amazing incidents in place today!! I thought they were definitely blog material. Have you ever wondered about how your mind classifies things happening in your mind and prioritize them? In digital terms, a priority decoder is functioning in your mind trying to work as an arbiter for the various thoughts. I guess this is why people refer to it as a thought process. Can anyone refute the fact that you have more than one thought in your mind at any given point of time?

Let's take a beautiful day, you are engrossed in some deep thinking (supposedly!) and your gaze is fixed upon a beautiful and well endowed girl! Once you get out of your trance, you realize that the girl is giving you the dirty looks!! Then you realize that your gaze was fixed upon "objectionable" areas (ouch!... spank me... I am getting mischievous here...). But you realize, hey... I was thinking! You failed to perform the act for which you are being spited for.

This makes you think. How in heavens name did your mind fail to register what you were gazing at? How does your mind put a picture before you that does not happen? This defies all laws of physics. The reflections from the source is supposed to register an image in your retina but the laws fail and you see that you are in a misty place with all the serenity around you! The adaptability of the human mind is commendable in this context.

Nowadays listening to music has become more routine my daily ablutions. It so happened that when I was coding something that was really interesting, I realized that the player had been playing my favorite song and I missed it! I was in shock because I felt my auditory senses broke down... but then I realized that it came back to me when I was thinking about it. Wow! I just had a true fade experience. It’s like your mind DJ is fading away your sensors.

It would be long before we understand the complex circuitry that runs in your brains to perform these feats of miracle. Even if we don't try too hard, we are slowly beginning to understand the multifaceted "mind" of ours. So the next time you give an excuse saying "Sorry, I wasn't ogling... I was thinking deeply", go ahead ... she'll understand....and that gives us an excellent alibi...

Soulmate !

"…Natural selection acts only by taking advantage of slight successive variations; she can never take a great and sudden leap, but must advance by short and sure, though slow steps." - Charles Darwin.

This statement by Charles Darwin made a deep impact on me, considering the fact that he has written it about evolution itself. According to me, this statement is analogous to any situation faced by mankind on the planet earth, the most intriguing of all being, "love". Pardon me when I compare "love" (I believe it is the most abstract emotional pandemonium faced by mankind) with something very scientific like evolution.

The crux of my comparison has lot to do with ecstatic couples all over the world who are in total bliss when they are with each other. I tend to question, what phenomenon binds them so strongly? The strongest bond I can think of is a "covalent bond" which requires a very high energy to break free from. I am sure, if I tell this to anyone stricken by the love bug would sneer and tell me "get a life man...". Well, now I am determined to decipher this cryptic concept and to establish an explanation for the success of the concept of "soulmate".

Science drives me to approach this by asking the three basic questions "what?", "Who?" and "why?". I wish to answer these questions to finally help me make revelations on why I am still alone!!

As a concept, finding a soulmate is establishing the interdependent nature of our lives. Its true, very few people can live by themselves. So a soulmate is the one who would be with you no matter what. Ok that seems fair considering the fact that these lovebirds do not let a whiff of air between them (I meant physically, predominantly).
A companion you can rely on to share your most intimate secrets and the most trivial of facts with.

The next question is, according to me the most cryptic to answer. My observations on this is very vague. People go about various different ways of determining "Who?". The most common solution to this is "arranged". Well I am not against it at all because I have seen most of the successful "soulmates" brought together this way. Their explanation "We learn to love". Well, I think this is a very scientific approach to go about establishing a relation ship. Let me give you the reasons for this. Most relationship is like a task provided to you. The problem of most people is their escapist attitude. They just want to run away from a place when they are faced with a problem. Well, this category typically does not have an escape route! I say they are all the better for it because it brings out the best in them. They want to "make it work" and that is why they are very successful at it. The other category, when posed with a question on how they got together, they do not have a definite answer for that. "I guess we were destined to find each other" comes the general reply. Well deliberating on this I find that this is based on a very unlikely probability. Mathematically the chance that a person like me would find someone in this manner is limit --> 0. So miniscule and obscure that I have assumed that it is never going to happen!!

One of the important criteria to analyze this myth is "How?" does the mutual feeling last? Well, after a lot of brainstorming, I have collected a lot of important facts that matter. Firstly, to be with your soulmate is more like pulling a person into your circle of trust. You might find a very hilarious illustration of this fact if you have watched "Meet the Parents". Robert deNiro has very articulately enacted a character who places his would-be son-in-law, the soulmate of his daughter outside his family's circle of trust and tries his best not to let him anywhere near the periphery. Though this is something unrelated to a couple's circle, in our country, it is very much the case. Secondly, I have understood that in a relationship, the most important factor would be to "manage expectations". How profound is that phrase?!! I believe this is a crux of any successful relationship and if you want to be in one, this is the mantra.

To sum it all up, the very process by the virtue of which a person becomes your soulmate is analogous to Darwin's statement. It is a slow process that just grows on you. You become so dependent that a point comes when it is impossible to break free.

But then again some of the answers are so contradictory that it makes me wonder. Like the other day, I asked a girl about the criteria on which she chooses her boyfriend. Well, she said, "he should make me laugh". I was totally appalled by that statement. Logically, the comedy sitcoms on television make me laugh, so does that mean your soulmate is television shows? I found that it is true. So many people are happy doing what they do like my friend (Who I am sure will marry the television someday) that the concept of a soulmate would be totally abstract to him.

Finally I am just as confused as ever! The solution to these questions seem very abstract and away from logical reasoning. Well, I am just ready to take a chill pill and wait for the day I meet my soulmate. Then, I would update you guys with the intricate details of the concept. For now, I will just go with Darwin on believe that "finding a soulmate" is like evolution. The answers are coming and I am definitely ready to wait for them.....