Balaji Nagar, IInd Street

It’s a fortnight since I arrived in India...; a fortnight of life in Chennai...

... Balaji Nagar 2nd Street.... comfortably sheltered in one of her many serviced apartments...

On the first day... a month after I first came and delivered a few training programs... August 09th... it had its very pleasant surprise that awaited me at the airport, one that had in my heart and mind delightful fireworks; put that into perspective, that brightness, the colour, the sparks and the feel of that ‘delight’ would dwarf the fireworks of Beijing Olympics that may be fresh in your mind.

A fortnight has passed... with mostly curd rice, custard apple and the varieties of banana's Tamilnadu has to offer... and if I am to take stock of the achievements, what would they look like? They are not big in size, but they are essential to achieve the bigger ones. And in fact a couple of them truly essential – finding a home to move in, the registration of the organization and a few other legal documentation were a few of the big catches, and one that is even bigger is the satisfaction in seeing the office work progress.. the steel frames becoming walls and the walls holding windows and windows opening into the dreams of future. The small ones in the net are things like the website design that is progressing, brochures and other collaterals that are being printed, just got my business cards in, and a few discussion on potential business locally and one internationally.

Nothing would have been possible if it were not for the relentless support of my partner – a gracious lady whose support and kindness I will never be able to pay back in kind; one who could move mountains with ease of pulling a string through cheese cake.

And just as these days came into being, there had been a few days and nights that I found myself in the centre of suffocating pain...; they were from the discrepancies from the variables of equations that the heart and mind had in its choice of calculating the possibilities of events; they were caused by the capricious images it painted as seen in the mirror of an impossible future that was but a dream from an inevitable past. They were part of growing too, they were part of learning too, they were part of understanding too... and they were and remain as my bridge to the future... in all the roles I envisaged as it being unfolded from dawn to dusk and through the nights, to the silent rhythm of the nature of universe.... they unfolded behind the curtains, witnessed by the squirrels and humming-birds on the branches of the tree just outside my window... in Balaji Nagar 2nd Street...

...as the “Oracle” in Matrix.... no one can see beyond a choice that one can’t understand....

A Big Heart.. Or A Heartless Soul?

We all have an eye for beauty. An eye for good things. A yearning to possess the things around us that we admire, adore.

Some things we can possess. We can possess a vehicle that we like, a television, a house... a sandal... a pen, a shampoo, ... products and materials that we see ‘there’ which we yearn to make our own.

Some things we can only admire. The silver strings that fall from the cotton clouds amidst the golden shade of sun ...the rain drops.... the smell of earth when it receives with warmth the cool drops on her bosom... the silver shades on the leaves and the glazing pockets of water on the roads reflecting the clean face of the sky and her clouds...the feel of a nice and clean day and its freshness... I admire the beauty of nature when it rains; how can I possess them and make them mine? How can I carry with me a string of rain and hold her in my hands and think to myself that she’s mine? It’s to be waited for, to rain.... to feel that rain... to feel the beauty of nature... when it happens, if it happens.

It is just the same with this beautiful flower in the planter on my window sill. I just have to believe that it is mine, while it is not. It belongs to that plant –he owns her, its roots are in that planter – not in my heart, and its nourishment comes through the roots leaves and stem that shelters her – not through what I can offer....; but because she stands with a glowing smile just there on my window sill, waving to me with her enigmatic smile now and then as I look at her, and as I run my fingers through her petals.... and because she would let me come closer, and at times hold her, smell her, feel her.... and talk to her...in moments that we reserve for us alone... I am made to believe that I own her, but I do not.

If I want to hold her close to my heart, take her from the roots...if I want to have her for me...remove her from the shades of her leaves and the support of her stem...I will have her no more to cherish, for, the very admiration for which I yearn to bring her close will perish...

Do I have to have that flower in my hands.. all the time, for me to enjoy her beauty? What would it take to love that flower and to continue to admire her and to continue to take care of her even when I know she belongs to the roots that’s growing her....?

A big heart?

Or a heartless soul?

Some things exists as an impossible truth.

Some things exists as an unpleasant reality.

(We create Gods to worship.... when the admiration goes beyond what hearts can hold.... )

Pollen Grains: scattered thoughts on a rainy day

Everything you do at any given time, you are creating an expectation in the one for whom you did that act. You also may be perhaps causing a crack in the expectation that was already created in one earlier act.

Everything you say creates a visual image of what is said, associating with it the feeling and taste in direct proportion to the intensity of the words used...thus adding a piece of experience in that person's life, one that will remain for the remaining part of life that might be a cause to empower or a reason for destruction.

It’s life’s paradox that you may have to be with someone for whom it doesn’t matter if you are with or not, and you cherish a yearning deep inside you to be with someone for whom your presence matters most...; one is governed by the rule of society, and the other is governed by the pulse of heart...; one is a dictated by the moral magna-carta, and the other by the emotional freedom.

It all begins and ends with tears... the expression of joy and sorrow...

From existence to non-existence, the distance from win to lose, yesterday to today, from sublime to worst ... are all the influence of a moment of time... And time is moment of movement.. time is motion.. motion from now to the now-after-now...

And I know, nothing makes sense until your senses discovers them; and for the senses to discover, experience of events and an intense journey through its valleys and hilltops is the catalyst..

And this too wont make sense, because you are a stranger to my events...

Memory of your beloved one...

Yesterday was our 61st Independence Day...

...children had their sweets in school and a holiday to celebrate independence; you and I had a holiday at work; politicians and those movers and shakers had their air time on various television channels...

...and you...

...dear mothers andfathers and wives and husbands and sons and daughters of men and women in their uniforms serving on the lines of our borders and in their tents and trenches.. and of those who hoped to build a future for self on the future of the country but had to succumb to the heat of the bullets.... Oh! My dear ones who spend this day remembering your beloved ones... standing in front of the picture probably with the tri-colour flag beside and a garland of love around... to you my dear ones...my hands are stretched to give you a hug... wherever you are.. whoever you are.. I am joining with you to share your agony, your loss.... and I am listening to the words that your deep sighs translates as you watch the India today around you....

Your hopes had to be cracked and dreams shattered to help us build our dream...

Thank you for your sacrifice...; I just want you to know that your loss is not gone unnoticed.... and your contribution is regarded as high...

I Haven't Been Talking To You, I Know...

I haven’t been talking to you for a long time now; I haven’t been sitting with you for a long time; we use to have those silent moments where I kept telling you things that you already knew, and you still listened...; we use to have those silent moments where I kept asking you for things that you have already designed, but since late, I haven’t been coming to you as often and yet you have been so kind to be with me all the time...

I am leaving today, and you know how does it feel. I know you know that because the origin of this feeling is you.. you have the ability to intensify this feeling, and you have the ability to lower its intensity too; because who else know me any better than you.... you have seen me from the very first moment of my life... and I have had you to hold, every time I wanted you... and I have had you to talk to, every time I wanted you... and I have had you when the sail was rough...and I have had you when the water was calm...

I haven’t thanked you enough...; I haven’t, I know....but I have been always thankful...

But now, I am sitting before you.. in fact I am imagining myself sitting close to you.. in front of you...

With love.. with hope..with my heart beating unusually fast...

I am kneeling down before you... with love and hope ...

...with my eyes closed....

I am kneeling before you, My Lord!... asking you for your guidance... as I enter the next phase of my life. Bless me...

...bless me, as I walk from an end to another beginning... an end that once appeared to me as too far... and a beginning that once was at the edge of the horizon behind the cloudy motion of time...

...bless me.. as I walk from a night to another morning...


. august 08, 2008 .

The Cardinal Difference!

I think it is in a movie of Al Pacino I remember hearing a line that makes more sense for me now in a different context! “The guns doesn’t kill anyone; it is the finger that holds the trigger that kills”, said the character in that movie...; it is the mind that shelters the motive to kill which gives it the costume of a killer, and gun is just a medium.

So is religion. Religion doesn’t kill anyone; it is the mind that shelters the motive to use the religion as a medium, to employ their personal choices heedless of the tear it cause on the social fabric, that is causing divisions in our society.

In a recent training I was conducting in Chennai, I was using a metaphor of fruit salad. Fruit salad is made of mixed fruits (duh!), and that itself add to its taste while each piece of fruit still retains its own identity – grape never fearful of changing its taste as pine-apple! It works for an organization, a family... Why then is religion standing out as a bowl of fruit cuts that has to fight over the other to announce its dominance? I am shocked to have exposed recently to a particular trend in the southern city of India (Chennai) that the residences advertised as for rent are, when approached, explicitly non-rentable if you are a Muslim!!! Wow!!! These are the men and women whose living rooms are decorated with Encyclopaedia Britannica, and the latest gadgets and gizmos that announces to the world their contemporary nature of life, yet nurturing these very unhealthy belief that cracks the society right in the middle and across.

Sixteen years of being away from India, I have had the opportunity of befriending with people of different religion from different countries around the world. Never once in my experience did I have this misfortune to see any one of them through the prism of religion... Loic, Eric, Clive, Wendy, Santosh, Joseph, Simon, Sashi, Jimmy, Vasanthy, Ravi... they all had a face and heart that didn’t amplify their religion, instead their kindness to human beings; and today I am given a different experience too – the venom that runs in the arteries of India - one that’s going to stay and one which I will have to get accustomed to.

I return to my birth place to pursue a dream, a dream like anyone of you must be nurturing close to your heart. And when that dream has begun to grow larger than your size, it eclipse all the other mundane issues as this; it may cause inconvenience, it may put on my path speed breakers that might slow down the pace of my race, but, as so rightly said by Paulo Coelho in “The Alchemist”, “when you want something, and when you want it enough, all the universe conspires in helping you achieve it,” – and I think God has sent me the entire ‘universe’ in the form of my wonderful business partner (who is again from a different faith!!)

Randy Pausch’s “The Last Lecture” echoed the same, that, we will face “brickwalls”; brickwalls are there for a reason; brickwalls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. Brickwalls are there to stop the people who don’t want something enough...

I want what I want bad enough... and I am writing this tonight...

...to reinforce that feeling in me...
... to strengthen that desire in me...
... and to uphold that resolve in me...

...and I love my friends of all faith, for they are sons and daughters of mothers and fathers none different than mine...

Peacock Feather and Water Lily

We may go mad; we may go sad; but we know it’s our love that makes us mad or sad; In despair, ‘go’ we may..., but go only unto the arms of each other, not away. “The voice of life in me cannot reach the ear of life in you, but let us talk that we may not feel lonely” (Khalil Gibran) and that’s the wisdom that will take us to fifty years of life or five hundred years of remembrance.... There is nothing too small or too big in what can be a love that marks the beauty of human race, just as how the sound of universe is captured in a sea shell...and so be this love the epitome of that beauty, a defeat of reality.

I searched around for the creations of God, from which what I can offer you that carries the pulse of my heart; everything is touched by everyone, and nothing is pure that I can offer you. Inside is a poem of love, but I don’t have the words to wrap them; inside is a song of care, but I don’t have the tune to breathe; in a book of love that you once gifted me, I kept a broken piece of peacock feather...one that you gave me in return for a pencil in school; in my treasure of collections is a petal of water lily from that good old Sunday morning, dry in time but fresh in memory ...

...wrapped in my love I offer them to you, for, only they are mine and the memories are ours.

... from a fictional page of life...