Hail the Mahatma..

October 2, celebrated every year nation wide as Gandhi Jayanti, to mark the birthday of Mahatma Gandhi, the Father of the Nation. Not only that, UN, on 15th june 2007, declared this day as the International day of non-violence, to mark the supremacy of Gandhiji's ideals and adherence to his belief in peace and non-violence...

Gandhiji played a pivotal role in tha making of India and many a great leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. and Barack Obama are believed to emulate his ideas and ideals, great thinkers like Rabindranath Tagore and Albert Einstein salutes this great man and his works...

For me, in my childhood...or even a few years ago, for that matter, 2nd October signfied a national holiday and not much beyond that...although I knew the importance of Mahatma Gandhi...I was not aware of his impact, I must say. But few months back, I read 'The essential Gandhi'....an anthology of his works and thoughts...in his own words. I was truly moved by reading the book and hence wondering that this day is not only about celebrating as a holiday...I am asking myself how much are we actually imbibed through his ideals, his passions and his enthusiasm?

This one day of observing the ideals of non-violence is not really enough to understand or honour the man who lived his entire life preaching the tenets of peace. Neither can we really salute his works by celebrating a holiday and spending the day in leisure and comfort...We need to realise Gandhi in our everyday lives..A world in which violence is exponentially increasing and almost everyday we hear incidents which propagate signs that are against humanity, we really should assimilate his beliefs into our own spheres..as much as we can...to contribute towards a better, sustainable world....It's high time we give an ear to what Martin Luther King Jr. said : "We ignore Mahatma Gandhi at our own risk".

"Disgrace" - My Take..

One fine morning I was going through the list of books in -"1001 books you must read before you die" by Peter Boxall and Peter Ackroyd. The one author whose titles were frequent in the list is J.M.Coetzee ,the booker-prize winning author from South Africa. In the library later, I searched for his books and settled for the least voluminous of all his novels available....'Disgrace'.

'Disgrace' tells the story of a Professor of communications in a South-African university and his difficulties in conveying himself to the world around...the story in the later part smoothly transcends to another aspect of his relationship with his daughter and the limitations the relationship confronts due to difference of styles and choices of time and people..

The most interesting fact about the book is it's open-endedness....the main characters of the story are not obligated in a way or the other to justify their choices, actions, mistakes or their plans for the coming days. Hopes and doubts co-exist here like any normal life.....the book doesn't hold any sort of idealism which makes it more likely to relate to..the change of life, or life-style for that matter.. shows the adaptibility of men in contemporary world.....the novel also is written with a lyricism of its own. This narration is dark in some ways...strangely positive in others.

The novel has a short-story kind of ending,too.....

An Endeavour..

Sketching..for me is not an easy task....but I seriously try sometimes to draw...

Both of these sketches are drawn by seeing from internet.....hope you like it...

My effort to enhance my skills will go on..

Some Images......randomly captured, here and there.....

1. A view of Manhattan, across Hudson

2. A scuptural depiction of men in work

3. Flying High...

4. An unknown snow-capped peak...taken from air...on our way to Phoenix,AZ.

5. River Colorado.....somewhere near Hoover Dam.

With Myself..

For me, 'Solitude is bliss'......not that I don't love being with people around me......friends and family do play a very important part.....but I love to have a part of each day with myself....and that is not hard to get mainly when you are in a place which is far away from your nears and dears...everyday thus I get my favourite 'stay-alone'.....And a summer afternoon is well suited to make you feel more pleasant....
The silence all around is saintly....the place in my home where I'm sitting now is by the window overlooking the conifers outside.....the needle leaves sieve the lazy afternoon sunlight....
This is a time when you are alone in a way....but least so in many other......for me.....random thoughts drifting across my mind......and I'm finding myself day-dreaming for a few minutes....missing my dear ones at times.....and thinking.....sometimes I really wonder 'bout the range of the thoughts.....so vast and varied.....and this is one reason why I love being alone......you get ideas, inspirations and at the same time bad ideas and things that can deflate you....but still.....
My jija didi says....whatever we think...however weird it is.....is OK.....my loneliness is a space where I enjoy that OK......and I pray, as The Swedish statesman Daq Hammerskjold said, that my loneliness spur me into finding something to live for, great enough to die for.....

Where are we headed?

I cannot keep shut when something happens that doesn't seem proper to me......and It's not possible and proper to say everytime what you think.......so my only respite is...."conversations with myself......" :)
The incident I'm upset today is of a college girl Ayesha studying in SVS College in Bantwal,Karnataka, who has been said not to wear her headscarf while attending classes by college authorities after a few of her classmates threatened to wear saffron to boast their own religious preference,too.....She is fighting for being given the space to do what she wants. Now to what kind of a future are we headed - with these kind of young, intolerant individuals as our generation next? And on top of that the authority who succumbed to these threats of student unrest.
Now, my point is let them wear saffron if they wish to......nowhere it is written that only one particular religion has the right to wear some religious symbols,after all. But let it be out of one's own preference. To infringe upon the personal choice and freedom is unconstitutional. We can really never force someone to wear or not to wear anything, and this is true for every other personal choice as well. I'm more surprised by the cowardly acts of the college authorities, who, instead of defending the girl, is giving up before some fear of student unrest.
The discretion of expressing or not expressing our religious beliefs and preferences rests totally with us, and we cannot be apprehensive about the freedom of others.....that's Indian secularism for you and we better not lead to it's distortion.

A Contradiction in itself.......

My mother always says......"a couple of rotten apples, if not removed, can lead to the rottening of the whole fruit basket..." Many instances show us that numerous 'good' often bear the brunt of a few 'bads'......the detention of SRK at Newark airport..... is just another example.....the scenario of present world leads us to be skeptical about our security based on a certain religion or a last name etc......what a pain!!! SRK is not the only one......many high profile personalities went through the same which included our ex-president Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam. We are slightly being hypocrite in raising a big issue over SRK's detention.....what about the numerous other common people who faces the same thing as because they have a particular religious belief and names?? The security personnels are only performing their duties c'mon......they are hired for that and of course 2 hours of a celebrity cross-questioning is nothing when it comes to the security of a million lives. The irony lies in the fact that persons with a particular name or religious preference is being subjected to this every time. The security concerns are getting pseudonyms of racial/religious profiling. That is the case of the rotten apples of my mom!!! :)
Otherwise the celebrity factor for which it is getting such hype is because of our natural infatuation with the VIPs and VVIPs......we ignore the 'aam-janta' suffering everyday but as our beloved Shah Rukh Khan is questioned, we are infuriated more than the King Khan himself. Our tendency of being soft on the dignitaries of different realm doesn't stop top-level corruption and malpractices.......ministers and known faces are always in the news for all the wrong reasons......so why give them so much 'bhaw'?? Equality before the law should be followed to the marrow and practised as well in our country..before aping the fashion and culture of the western countries, we should practice the discipline of those nations.....their indifference to who you are when it comes to duty and responsibility......
Sinners are not so because of their names and religion, true.....but reality is otherwise......today terror is tagged.....so our patience and co-operation is needed (without the hang-ups) to wipe out this discrimination as soon as possible...... we should react to and prevent the mishaps and incidents of terrorism and loss of human lives, however stringent that needs the system to be....so that innocents are not subjected to embarrasment in near future...
Whatever......Love you, SRK... :)

Happy Independence Day to all.....!!!

Real independence lies not only in self – rule, but in being able to churn the opportunity to create a nation which is not injured by the shackles of casteism, religious intolerance and lack of education. So, as years pass by, the importance of the Independence Day should not wane, rather it should mean more to us....So as we celebrate 62 years of the nation's independence, let's take a pledge – to remember the responsibilities of rediscovering our country, to protect the privilege of living freely which is bestowed on us, to achieve more degrees of freedom by overcoming our weaknesses, because these are the greatest gifts we can give to the generations to come – the roots of responsibility and the wings of true independence.

“It is easy to take liberty for granted when you have never had it taken from you.” So we should be careful to not misuse the advantage we have.....

"Jai Hind"...

Shubh Janmastami......

Janmastami, the festival celebrating the birth of Lord Krishna is today.....May the world be revered by the bliss of the Lord.

It's been a year now for us (me and my husband) in USA, and one of the most pleasant experience in this one year has been our trip to New York City, on the 4th July weekend. The two days that were spent in NYC felt so good that I desire to share what I felt.....We walked the streets of NYC, visited the landmarks......and explored to our heart's fill. We didn't care about getting tired....our enthusiasm knew no bounds......New York city has a charm of its own.....It has its own signature......
The city reminded me of Kolkata.....and naturally made me nostalgic. New York follows an altogether different pattern.....more crowded,happening and happy....throbbing with life.....More justly so, as it is the largest city of USA....but again...come on....don't we know that the largest may not always mean the happiest....? So it possess a different magic......New York took my heart away primarily because it resembled the city I love....Kolkata..the city where I grew up...not in the biological sense of term...but in all the other ways. Now my comparison may well be argued upon....anyone can put down a list of differences between Kolkata and NYC....based on the visible, material aspects....of which I am quite aware....and that of course is not my point here......what I found similar is the essence of both -- the sentiment, the buzz, the liveliness you feel once you land...in both the cities...are same....the differences,otherwise, are as much as that of US and India.....and my writing this piece today is neither concerned nor aimed at those differences. I am trying to align the similarities....the hustle-bustle, the street foods, shops, joy on people's faces, the cosmopolitan demeanour of a metropolis...the overall energy of the two cities, you know.....
I somehow feel that may be the cities by the side of a water body possess a heart of its own.....may be..
I took pretty long to belong to Kolkata........not that I was forced.....but eventually I fell in love with the city......and over the years, that has grown so intense that anything seeming somewhat similar to that .....gets my liking and rememberance......So New York city will always remain in my heart as a relief......the relief you feel when you see someone you know in the middle of a crowd where you feel stranded and somewhat alienated....
Though nothing can beat the 'City of Joy' but I am happy to observe that the 'City That Never Sleeps' comes very close to it.

Sury.

"The Great Perhaps" - My Take

Little things of life can make great stories....a world in its own. I was reading a new novel "The Great Perhaps" by Joe Meno and it showed that......The novel regarding a family of four in Chicago deals with very real and of-the-age issues, little daily incidents we can relate to. Each character has his/her own shares of dillemmas, qualms, and again peace and happiness.....The multiple protagonists of the novel, representing different age groups, have their own quotas of 'pseudo-lives' which they dream of, live and come back.
It appears to be more of a family diary sort of thing....in fiction -- chronicling events, major and minor alike, comforting readers with a generalization of the complicated emotions we feel as we live our day to day lives...

I should be finishing many a chores around my home..but ignoring all of them...I'm here,writing..I have been dreaming too much lately......and fighting inside my mind to overcome certain things that hurt me......that becomes very difficult sometimes though I know that being mature means to be able to see beyond things.....to overcome certain demerits and weaknesses....it is really very well observed that "Experience is not what happens to you but what you do with what happens......"
I am getting ready to fight for what I believe in.....may I get the strength to do so........It may rain today....the nature's gloomy at the moment......gloomy till it rains, I guess.....


Sury.

Happiness

"You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of."- Albert Camus
We assume everybody else in this world is happy but us. We also assume, everybody's idea of happiness is more or less the same as our own. We often focus on things that do not make us happy rather than on those that do.In this vast and mysterious universe, who and what are we? Not even the tiniest of tiny specks. It is such a liberating feeling......like just throwing our head back and laugh at the absurdity of existence. This prompts us to follow our heart, not head.....and heart seeks happiness...
"When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us...."-observed Hellen Keller....We often seek happiness but when it really knocks our door ,we fail to acknowledge it simply with our typical nature of higher pursuits.......we forget that the richest one on this earth is one whose pleasures are cheapest.....
Happiness comes with gratitude....towards others as well as towards ourselves, our own life. We should not take any single thing for granted.......the spiritual experience of living with love can give us immense happiness.If our self image remains positive,we often become capable of conveying positive vibes to the world. Trust, too is one important thing to remain happy...
The things that didn't work well for us.....we should learn from it and move on....and try not to linger on the bad memory that the incident generated....rather count our blessings and remain thankful for all the good things that we have...
We should also learn to lose if we really want to be happy....because although we feel terrible losing, it's also ok to not win every single time......one's happiness is very specific......what makes one happy may not make others the same,too...so each of us have to find happiness in our own measure but not at the cost of anybody, of course, in the process...
To Happiness......!!