Welcome 2010

One more year passed…and a decade too….I notice a strange thing in me….whenever at the end of a year I look back to recollect how the year passed….I couldn’t think about not-so-good things that happened…..and thus I conclude that the year’s been wonderful…same is the case with the past year too…..It was, as is life… a mixture of good and not-so-good…..but all over it has been very well spent…
Through 2009…I got to spend some real good time….stay in a new country…see places I once dreamt of visiting…. Meeting new people and all that... I would regard 2009 as a very comfortable one….
This year taught me that it’s really wonderful to have a busy scheduled day…and that multitasking is necessarily good for life …felt again that love is most important…peace with yourself …even more so. I realized that many things in life change with time….much more remains the same, though.

Now…coming to the favourites of the year…
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini has been the best read …Pursuit of Happyness, the best movie watched, The Essential Gandhi being the most inspiring read of the past year.

So, in a way, 2009 was good in more ways than one….
For 2010….I resolve to stay calm, that’s all…
I regret nothing except hurting my near and dear ones unintentionally…may they know that I love them…
I wish to have a life full of love, peace and work…
My mind’s humming…
“Goonja sa hai koi Iktaara… Iktaara..”

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.