Watched Ocean’s 12 2 nights ago. Wanted to write a review, but found an excellent one here. Help yourself!

Today is a nice day to take stock of my life. It’s a good idea to look back at the years. Kinda helps you count the hits and misses and all that which went in making you what you are. Well, I kinda know what I am…..not sure where I am…..

Now this “where am I….where do I go from here” question can get a fair answer only after you have established a point of reference. A point of reference that is not subjective to the life you are living at the moment. If you are unhappy about a powercut and tell yourself “I hate this place… I wanna move out….”, then you are not making a wise judgement. Your point of reference is temporary and may not hold good against future impulses. But if the powercut is a REPEATED phenomenon and you say “I can’t live with these powercuts…..I HAVE to watch T.V when I WANT to…”, then you have made a good decision of moving out. Of course, it’s quite subjective…..the urgency in having to watch T.V….but you get the idea…

Along the same lines, I would like to look back my life today and make assessments. But what would be my point of reference (P.o.R)? Happiness, on the outset, seems like a good one. But happiness is too broad a thing to be a P.o.R. And the million dollar question is - do you seek happiness in what you do…or do you make happiness your mission and direct all your actions towards finding it? Sounds confusing? Well…..there is an Occidental and Oriental twist here.

As far as my understanding of the Oriental thinking goes….every person is born into a family that has been into a particular profession since a long time. You are automatically expected to follow your family’s profession. And find happiness in doing that. Of course, all this was probably followed to the T last only in the year 1945….(nothing significant abt that year, except for the fact that India became independent….and it’s been downhill ever since). Times are different now and people are free to do whatever they want to get their kicks. So it doesn’t matter which familiy you are born into, but the bottom line is that you have to perfect your action and find happiness in doing so. Of course, a fallout of this ‘find your kicks’ attitude is the ‘greed is good’ and ‘money matters’ mind-set. ” Where is happiness in all this”, if you ask, will only yield a reply, “isn’t money = happiness??!!!” Suddenly the ancient values of the East seem to have become just that - ancient.

Coming back to the Oriental school of thought, if you have seen ‘The Last Samurai’, you would have noticed how Tom Cruise is surprised at the Japanese way of life in the village. They seem to be spending all their waking hours in perfecting whatever action they are doing. Like drinking tea. Outsiders may see tea-drinking as a ceremony..but I bet the Japs are just being very Zen. Their happiness is not an outside entitiy that they seek to find, but a personal thing that they strive to realize.

So where does happiness lie? Am I to accept my life as I am living it now….and seek happiness by striving for excellence in all that I do….or, am I to go out and search for happiness? If I am going by the latter, then I have to take in to consideration something my boss once told me. She said, when striking business deals…every 10 tries will yield 2 sucessful outcomes. And this, she said, applies to many things in life. If I am to believe that, I cannot say I have tried enough to be happy. I have not tested many waters to see what suits me best.

Well, all this talk won’t amount to anything unless real facts are taken into consideration. Real facts such as money, responsibilities as son/husband/father, curses and blessings of relatives etc. Most Indians are weighed down by these factors and they matter more than anything else. And I bet only a handful of those Indians find happiness AFTER taking into consideration these very real and very absolute variables. So there you go…the P.o.R by itself is so difficult to establish. How am I going to evaluate where I am?

Many a times, it helps to approach this a little differently. Start not by using happiness as a point of reference, but by listing all that is causing unhappiness. Ask yourself…”if I were to remove all these factors that are keeping me from being happy, will I find what I am looking for”…

I’d say that life would be good if I unlearn a few things. I’d then have more oppurtunities to live a life that is not constricted by repeating patterns. And indeed, a life of adventure and uncertainity is challenging and interesting. Have I been able to make my life intersting in that way? Oh god….why do I bother answering such questions
Well, there are no absolute answers here so it’s a futile exercise. However, counting the times that I have been happy…and tracing that happiness to something that I can work on, is not futile. Having done that, I have to say that there are a few things to work on. In fact…there is a long way to go. And covering that distance is a challenge. Looking back at the distance covered is rewarding. It is an experience that is not as temporary as the happiness that we all seek. In covering that distance lies the truth about our mental evolution. The focus, if you didn’t realize, hasn’t been about the P.o.R itself.

And check out this link sometime…

I am on a blogger’s block these days. So instead of writing, I have been reading some good ones. And the best part - most of these blogs are by people closer than I could have imagined. This is surprising, considering the fact that I have grown up with a good deal of entertainment coming from outside my own country. Well of course, blogs are a relatively new concept so it’s not correct to say that. (told ya, I can’t write for jack) You may now proceed to read the following interesting blogs (posts):

1) Suderman

2) Ramya

3) Vinod ( I have linked to this chap on my web site).

4) Kiity Cat

Yeah, the last one was a joke….but with a wife like that…sigh…

Peace!

A Zen tale taken from here.

The Idiot and the Theologian.

A Zen monk lived with his brother, a one-eyed idiot. One day, when the monk was scheduled to have an interview with a famous theologian who had come from far away to meet him, he needed to take care of some matters and would therefore be absent when the theologian arrived. He told his brother: “Receive this scholar and treat him well! Don’t say a word to him, and everything will be ok.”

The monk left the monastery. Upon returning, he went to meet his guest.

“Did my brother receive you properly?” asked the monk.

“Your brother is outstanding. He’s a great theologian!” exclaimed the theologian with great enthusiasm.

“What do you mean? My brother… a theologian? stuttered the surprised monk.

“We had a passionate conversation,” replied the scholar, “we communicated exclusively by means of gestures. I showed him one finger and he replied by showing me two. Logically, I answered with three fingers and then he astonished me by raising a closed fist, ending the debate. With one finger, I alluded to the unity of Buddha. With two fingers, he expanded my point of view by reminding me that Buddha was inseparable from his doctrine. Delighted by the reply, with three fingers I expressed: Buddha and his doctrine in the world. Then, he suggested a sublime response, showing me his fist: Buddha, his doctrine, and the world, all together as one whole, thus closing the circle.”

A little later, the monk went to look for his one-eyed brother.

“So how did it go earlier with the theologian?” he asked.

“Very simple,” said the brother. “He made fun of me: he showed me one finger emphasizing that I have but one eye. Not wanting to fall into the provocation, I showed that he was fortunate enough to have two eyes. Sarcastically, he continued: “Be that as it may, between us, we have three eyes.” That was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Showing him a closed fist, I threatened to lay him out right then and there if he didn’t knock off his insulting insinuations.”

This story perfectly shows the type of conversation we often have. We think we’re talking about the same thing, but in reality, we’re talking about subjects that are diametric opposites. We discuss things in a passionate way with the belief that we’re intimately communicating with the other; but in the end, we haven’t communicated a single thing. Each of us uses a deaf and dumb language. Each of us speaks of himself.

Kids….so much fun….

I wish to write a book sometime in life. A book that speaks of all the lessons I have learnt in life. As I trudge through life everyday, I’ve come to realise that my mind has to continually fight powerful inertial forces. There is ample oppurtunity to feel “smug in the woolly cotton brain of infancy” (to borrow a quote from James Douglas Morrison here). There are enough things out there waiting to entice and invite you into stagnation. A simple example of this would be cannabis. Grass, weed, pot, dope and whatever you want to call it. For a long time I was under the impression that dope is linked to creativity. Well, I don’t want to get into refuting or defending that school of thought, but I’d like to say that I’ve have noticed otherwise. An observation, far from the pre-concieved notions I had. Most dopeys are terribly hung-up people who are just out to escape a reality they either can’t face or don’t want to face. Yes, a good number of them are just escapists.

But again, this post isn’t amount dope and dopeys. It’s more about discovering things in life - things that make you reconsider your perception of life and how you are living it. But this kind of discovering is healthy. In fact, it is very important. Unlearning and re-learning is something that is built into every intellegent human being. And here is where the inertial forces of life wage a war against the intellect. And this is how I learnt the truth about the city of Bangalore. It’s anything but a melting pot of talent, cosmopolitan and all that. Another of those mis-concieved notions gets corrected.

It takes a great deal of energy to keep re-inventing oneself. And when I say ‘re-inventing’, I don’t mean changing fashion designers and striving to look different on page 3 every season. I mean taking stock, contemplating and bringing iterations into the learning curve. Some people need to take a ‘break’ and walk by some lonely seashore to do this. Some people do it on a day-to-day basis. I belong to the latter category. Bringing those evil inertial forces into the discussion again, I’d like to say that it is getting increasing difficult for me to fight inertia in my life.

The dreariness of a ’stable’ job - especially IT related, takes it’s toll on any fecund man. The result of this kinda computer related stress is noticable in the stagnation that sets in both between the ears and between the legs. And to look at it from one angle - the kind of salary they pay you to sit in front of those over-sized calculators seems to be cleverly aimed at making you so smug that you’ll never ever have another original thought. But who’s to ask? I have known guys who, minus their IT jobs, are as talentless and boring as Britney Spears. And is it any wonder that Britney Spears is so popular in the times we live in?

But don’t get me wrong. I am not cribbing about my job or asking for world peace. I am only seeing cracks in the way we are raising our children and settling down in life. I don’t remember the last time I met someone who made me think “wow, I wanna be like him”. I have only been meeting people I don’t wanna be like. And maybe it’s just me. But ever since I left college, I have hardly met any of those mavericks who personify words like ‘adventure’, ‘wit’, ‘wisdom’ ‘innovation’ etc.

Yes, I have known extremely quick witted and smart chaps in the past. And if I am ever going to meet another of their kind, it will only be when I do something about my quest for intellegence. And after that, I’ll prolly retire to write a book.

Which way did you get lost?
Can you find yourself if you walk backwards?
I’ll show you how I got in here,
I’ll show you childhood pictures
I’ll trade them for cheap love in the silence of the night

But it’s up to you to remember
Remember that we were but single celled in the start
And went different ways only to play our part

I know that memory fails us
Memory fails, feelings change and children grow
Which was the way to school you’ll someday ask
The classroom walls, the blackboard songs
Yes, they tell a tale, they are keepers of the flame

But it’s up to you to remember
Remember that we were but single celled in the start
And went different ways only to play our part

Now we do it out of habit
Now we don’t even hear the applause
We gather fallen dreams, the leftovers from our sleepwalking scenes
We recite rhymes to our children, prayers to our gods
We try and connect in the shadow of our desires

So if you walk backwards
If you understand what you feel, your sweat and your love
Will you tell me what it takes to play your part
What it takes to propogate and plant seeds in the dust
How it feels to know we were but single celled in the start
and before that, an unfinished act of someone else’s lust….