# 2

When the wind runs
through the fingers,
when the sand is kicked up far,
when the night of
endless whispers
and the days of dreamy stars,
wither out with but no trace
from the steely hate of gaze
and the broken empty pot of heart,
cries out with bridled rage.

When the mask in man is torn,
and the weight of life is borne,
when the people keep on stealing
thoughts undeserved and out of tone,
when the flowers rust in peace,
in the falling might of trees
and an endless screaming wail
hits home
in a leaden hollow wheeze...

Will this throbbing ever stop?
In the vacant sea of hearts?
Will the winter wind turn green
rush as the summer brushes clean?
Will the spiders of our past
clean out the cobwebs off the lost?

Will the winter wind turn green, rush as the summer brushes clean?

I just want to know. Why?

#1

Its just one of those days, when all your anger gives way to a sudden explosion of peace, when the evening light flickers back on as the curtains fall, filling the darkest chambers of your heart with an earthy glow.

Peace and contentment. When things lose the importance you give them, and obsession gives way to indifference. When you sense your own shift in perspective, and you feel glad for the smallest and most trivial of things.

You stand alone, at peace with nature, and you smile at the endless stretch of clouds in every direction. You stand, high above, poised precariously, and gaze down at the innumerable specks of humans hurrying about their chores in an endless stream of life.

Its the feeling of amusement and awe that slowly dawns on you, when you see a colony of ants bustling about here and there, seemingly oblivious to the World around them. To our presence... oblivious to the presence of the greatest among us.

Morality decays into absurdity, and ego loses its worth, when you realize that the whole wide world is, after all, a farce.

The world is a mirror, and you always end up seeing what you want to see.

Those that crave for beauty shall find it even in the tiniest of places and events, and those that crave for power shall find every stone worth conquering. The World, as we know it, is a collection of fables from every man that ever lived.

Life evolves, times change. Species rise and fall, the best among them speculate, searching the answers for questions unknown. Their time runs out eventually, and dust covers theirs ruins, as their decline ends. The eternal questions remain unanswered. Memories erode, and yet, this too shall pass.

'Dust thou art, to dust returnest..'- Was indeed spoken of our times.

And yet we choose to sleep with our eyes wide open, refusing to let comprehension creep in. Enlightenment.

For in comprehension, lies our salvation. Or so we believe.

Like some guy put it forth quite simply, the only constant thing is change.

Absurdly random post, I know. What is a blog, after all, but a masturbation of self?

That Time Of The Year

'Joel: [voice over] random thoughts for Valentine's day, 2004. Today is a holiday invented by greeting card companies to make people feel like crap. - Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind.'

Advertisements haunt me in every single channel. News reports, cover stories, an explosion of interest in a previously unknown subject of thought. Yet another instance of a country torn between what it is and what it wants to be.

Discussions on civilian rights in every group I pass by on the road, people debating with interest after the Mumbai fiasco. Topic in debate being the Ram Sena. A bunch of white haired, or even worse, hairless 'activists' fighting for the cause of upholding a 'culture' that is prone to 'infiltration' by 'unwanted' elements.

According to them, apparently, locking up the women in your family and denying them the very gift of freedom will protect our integrity and individuality. Maybe there is a scarcity of burning issues in the nation, so much so that we have to grab the least excuse of a 'controversy' and project it as a matter of national importance.

Its not these fake activists that I detest, it is the one thing that gives them so much coverage and nation-wide recognition: Valentine's Day.

Pink tacky decorations in every third shop, hanging springy pink things, hollow glassy bubbles and fake enthusiasm among the general public. You can almost see the pain behind their smiles.

Over-rated commercial gimmicks, diamond pendants, heart-shaped boxes of pure milk chocolates that nobody ever buys on any normal day. Fluffy and freaky teddy bears with 'I-heart-U' tags. Its almost like some crazy look-at-me-I'm-so-happy-and-committed spree.

Maybe the whole wide world is basking in some sudden revolutionary happiness or maybe I'm too miserable to give a damn about it all.

Don't count the days and wait for February to arrive to show your gratitude to the ones that support you emotionally throughout your life. Do it today, tomorrow or on any random day. Show them you care, just don't publicize it and blow it up into a huge carnival.

And a fake one at that.

For all you lovey-dovey ones out there, happy Valentine's Day.

Stalin

-"and with her died my last warm feelings for humanity" - Josef Stalin.

Amen.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Friedrich Nietzsche... one man who never ceases to amaze me with his countless quotes and observations on mankind. Its almost incredible to believe the guy fathomed so much way back in 1880, his philosophy takes extremity to a whole new level.

His quotes have very deep issues, and being one among the countless layman, I can understand only a layer of what he's trying to convey. But they have a tendency to present different meanings to different persons based on their outlook and mindset.

Who would have known, the guy called for education and social elevation of women much before it became a raging issue!

I've samples a few of his quotes... try googling the rest if interested.---

Whoever has overthrown an existing law of custom has always first been accounted a bad man: but when, as did happen, the law could not afterwards be reinstated and this fact was accepted, the predicate gradually changed; - history treats almost exclusively of these bad men who subsequently became good men!

-from Nietzsche's Daybreak,s. 20, R.J. Hollingdale transl.

What is new, however, is always evil, being that which wants to conquer and overthrow the old boundary markers and the old pieties; and only what is old is good. The good men are in all ages those who dig the old thoughts, digging deep and getting them to bear fruit - the farmers of the spirit. But eventually all land is depleted, and the ploughshare of evil must come again and again.

-from Nietzsche's The Gay Science, s. 4, Walter Kaufmann transl.

Truth as Circe.-- Error has transformed animals into men; is truth perhaps capable of changing man back into an animal?

-from Nietzsche's Human, all too Human, s.519, R.J. Hollingdale transl.

Not enough!-- It is not enough to prove something, one also has to seduce or elevate people to it. That is why the man of knowledge should learns how to speak his wisdom: and often in such a way that it sounds like folly!

-from Nietzsche's Daybreak, s. 330, R.J. Hollingdale transl

The vain.-- We are like shop windows in which we are continually arranging, concealing or illuminating the supposed qualities other ascribe to us - in order to deceive ourselves.

-from Nietzsche's Daybreak, s. 385, R.J. Hollingdale transl

It is not things, but opinions about things that have absolutely no existence, which have so deranged mankind!

-from Nietzsche's Daybreak, s. 563, R.J. Hollingdale transl

Will and willingness.-- Someone took a youth to a sage and said: "Look, he is being corrupted by women." The sage shook his head and smiled. "It is men," said he, "that corrupt women; and all the failings of women should be atoned by and improved in men. For it is man who creates for himself the image of woman, and woman forms herself according to this image."
"You are too kind-hearted about women," said one of those present; "you do not know them." The sage replied: "Will is the manner of men; willingness that of women. That is the law of the sexes - truly, a hard law for women. All of humanity is innocent of its existence; but women are doubly innocent. Who could have oil and kindness enough for them?"
"Damn oil! Damn kindness!" someone shouted out of the crowd; "Women need to be educated better!" - "Men need to be educated better," said the sage and beckoned to the youth to follow him. - The youth, however, did not follow him.

-from Nietzsche's The Gay Science, s. 68, Walter Kaufmann transl.

We have arranged for ourselves a world in which we can live - by positing bodies, lines, planes, causes and effects, motion and rest, form and content; without these articles of faith nobody could now endure life. But that does not prove them. Life is no argument. The conditions of life might include error.

-from Nietzsche's The Gay Science, s.121, Walter Kaufmann transl.

Cause and effect: such a duality probably never exists; in truth we are confronted by a continuum out of which we isolate a couple of pieces, just as we perceive motion only as isolated points and then infer it without ever actually seeing it. The suddenness with which many effects stand out misleads us; actually, it is sudden only for us. In this moment of suddenness there are an infinite number of processes which elude us. An intellect that could see cause and effect as a continuum and a flux and not, as we do, in terms of an arbitrary division and dismemberment, would repudiate the concept of cause and effect and deny all conditionality.

-from Nietzsche's The Gay Science, s.112, Walter Kaufmann transl.

Until next time... free.. peace.

Mind Matters

The phrase ' The things you own end up owning you' is so amazingly true when you think about it.

The human mind is the all powerful creator behind the various things it is now addicted to. We created computers, television, the World Wide Web, drugs, cigarettes, cellphones and a hoard of other stuff, and we have ended up feeling woefully disabled without these secondary luxuries in our life.

The mind, while potent enough to think up these things and also the remedy for preventing addiction, is incapable enough not to realize that we are its true masters and not the other way around.

In Crichton's style... Man creates God. God enslaves Man.

Our minds rock... cheers.

Shadows On The Glass

Realization is a slow process.

I see the body of a frail old man preserved in an ice-box and I feel nothing.

I see a hoard of people crowded around him, red-eyed and unmoving, but still not grievous and I feel nothing. I see not only relatives, but also a crowd of the native town folk who only know the deceased as an upright Revenue Inspector and I let it pass.

Maybe I'm numb from the sudden ferocity of it all. Its not everyday that I wake up to the sound of my Mom crying, and to a hurried departure to a relatively distant native town with only two cups of coffee keeping me vaguely awake, and not fully aware.

Maybe I didn't expect to see so calm a face, or so natural a death, being a part of a generation that revels in violence. But realization is a slow process.

I stand near the unmoving old man, holding a flaming stick of long fingered fire, and by the light of the fire I see his face, and comprehension dawns.

I remember the times we spent, the crosswords we solved. His view on politics, his belief in India. I remember the stories he told me of the times when he was a rebellious teenager rooting for Gandhi in khadis, a remainder of a generation that brought a dawn on an enslaved country. His tenure as the Deputy Collector, and his refusal to bend down to people which yielded him countless transfers. I remember tales my Dad told me of him, including the time when he sent back ten cartons of apples that came as a bribe, even when the family was struggling to make ends meet. One of the few good men on a totally corrupt government machinery. The joy with which he welcomed guests, and presided over their stay. I remember all that he taught me religion and identity. His vast knowledge and his steadfast stand on his conservative outlook. I remember mythology, and the collection of Amar Chithra Kathas he bought me regularly. His ritual of reading 3 newspapers a day, and the scriptures. His will power and his very few medications.

I break through my stony silence with silent denial, when I see my Grandmother sitting speechless near him, her eyes vacant, lost in thoughts whose burden I cannot but imagine, the shock of having lost her her husband of 64 years of wedlock in her face. Sixty four years of a wedlock, and I had never known. It was just one of the things I took for granted, but the enormity of the relationship knocked the breath out of me.

My hands clasped over my grandmother's, she leans to me and sobs "He promised not to leave me till I die. He promised that he would never leave me alone."

I retreat to a far corner, and I see an empty armchair by the window, its shadow stretching towards me. An empty armchair. His empty armchair. What is existence? What is its purpose? What is death? And what lies beyond that?

I remember GS's post as I type this out. His post on the insignificance of our size, compared with the vast volume of the universe. Millions of galaxies and stars, ever changing tides and a constantly evolving universe. Does a life matter in all this chaos?

And I realise, it does.

Sujeet's past words haunt me.

"Life is not about making yourself a prominent part of the universe, on the contrary its understanding how improminent you are. The truth is that you are as small a quark as small can be in this universe..
but a greater truth is that without this tiniest bit, the universe wudn be complete..its impossible 2 chuck u outta it, whether u r on d earth or heaven or watever.. meaning d universe cant do without u.."

Elegant. And that questions the very basis of my Nihilistic principles.

Until next time.