MIND AND SOUL

  Motivationally   Demotivated Moti   Quite often we come across words such as – Enthusiasm, Motivation, Positivity etc. And somehow it helps us inch closer to our goals, whenever we derail. Words, oration, and certain frequency of positive vibes, that is all it takes to move ahead amidst the gloomy fog of uncertainty and despair. Human emotions have always been a driving force for market. This includes that of “Motivational Speakers.”   Every living soul must have faced the moment when it is impossible to move ahead or go back. Impossible to breathe or die. Impossible to smile or cry. Impossible to speak or keep mum. Such combinations of contradictory emotions are quite the symptom of lack of motivation in life. No matter how energetic one is, ‘Time’ is a powerful weapon to suck one’s soul completely dry. Life does not happen linearly. There are phases of crests and troughs. There is always a Sunset to a sunrise and vice versa. So, the need for nudge, a...

Silver Lining When a person’s actions are based on the quantity of pleasure and pain surrounding it, he becomes “utilitarian”. Thinking about “greatest good for greatest number” becomes the ideal thing to do. Then there are those who think about themselves, self-centric, and the universe revolves around them. Generally they are pleased by the materialistic pleasures and hence can be an example of consumerist or materialistic mindset. There are others who believe in destiny and have a positive vibe about things, no matter how bad the weather gets, they are the optimist and diametrically opposite stands pessimist. There are sophists, realists, hedonists, pluralist and plenty of other heavy words to describe the behavior of a person. Philosophers/ phycologists tend to categorize people over certain key traits and then behave accordingly. There is no right or wrong in it. It’s just the way a person thinks or behaves in a given condition. But is that all? No. There certainly ...

Broken compass Earth is the only planet supporting life. There is no ambiguity in this statement. There is another truth, human being is the only species with the highest level of intellectual and emotional quotient. So, what do we do with that? We create fault lines and widen it. The only thing differentiating men with animals is “humanity”. Do we actually know its meaning or is it just a shield to be used as time demands? Humanity is quoting Gandhi, Mandela or Teresa? Humanity is the award given every year to certain accomplished and outstanding activities done in sphere of humanism? Humanity is represented by those handful of “incarnated” souls having halo around them? Humanity is the philanthropist charity done by the golden piles of money? Humanity is a duty or a right? There can never be a single point of convergence as far as the definition and understanding of humanity is concerned. Every day, every moment we define who we are. It’s the action of ours and not the...

Race that never happened After the defeat, the hare thought about this impossible and couldn’t come at terms with the fact that he was defeated by a turtle. It wasn’t the stutter of the turtle that cost him his pride, rather his own sense of entitlement. Why do we keep these two words, “slow” and “steady” together? What positivity does “slow” brings to the table? Isn’t it eulogizing this behavioral attitude which is at the other end of the table as far as present epoch is concerned? That hare can’t even think of sleeping during a race if he was living in the reality. Are we trying to discourage our toddlers, year after year, to give up speed and rather be slow? When we talk about this combination, the lazy bones pick up the slow part and ignore the steady part. Can’t we focus on “Swift” and “Steady”? The present reality is all about speed with accuracy, persistence and generating enough credibility. Where does this fairy tale fit in? When you teach a story, you create a ...

LIFE AS IT IS Way behind the herd of some, way ahead of the rest. Blurring the line between pessimism and realism as well as realism and optimism. Having the faith and questioning the existence. Fetters and freedom. All exists simultaneously. Running miles to cover a step or being at inertia to cover miles, all at once. Loving the mere existence and hating everything about it, all at the same moment. What is it? It’s the paradoxical conveniences and consequences of every moment we blink, every breath we take, every time heart beats and every morning you wake up alive. What happened? Life happened. Feel good about it or question why the hell it happened? For that we should know what’s the alternative? Should we believe in the existence of heaven and hell? If yes, how do we know where were we? Life exists in between the pleasantries of hell and heaven. It’s such a comparative study. I will be grateful to the Almighty if I have been promoted from hell to earth or else deeply re...

FREE LUNCH Why do we work? There might be different reasons depending upon varying circumstances but primarily it’s because of the necessity to fulfill our never-ending needs. What if we get our needs fulfilled without working? Hindu mythology has a concept of “kaamdhenu”, a cow who fulfills all desires of her owner. May be that’s the concept fantasized by many. Imagine an island where nobody works and everybody is paid well just to live there. Sounds Utopian but there is an issue. This island will not grow, will not evolve and will never achieve any height. There is not even a single example where success came without hard work. Then why do people get mesmerized by freebies and why is this freebie politics so popular in India? Population of a nation can be its strength or weakness. It depends upon how the nation channelizes its energy in the form of demographic dividend. The nation is built by its people, the intentions and motivations of its dwellers, the dream to achieve a...

Google is a giant as far as search engines are concerned. We rely heavily upon it for our day to day activities. The first thing over google when searched for “journalism” will be – “ the activity or profession of writing for newspapers, magazines, or news websites or preparing news to be broadcast. ”. Journalism can be classified in many categories. But in none of the categories you will find an ideology attached to it or a bias objectification of events. Rather that leads to a mental corruption when journalism starts acting like a daily soup, trying to get TRPs high rather reflecting the truth in its purest form possible. The death of Gauri Lankesh shook the entire nation as it was unfortunate and as the subsequent reports showed it followed the same pattern like some of the earlier high profile reporters’. Her ideological dissent and a strong voice against the Government is believed to be the cause, which is still foggy. But what emerged to be clear is the ideological divide in ...

Dekho, magar pyaar se Usual day, it was. So were the gazes, glimpses and looks. As I walked past a bus stand, the temporary stampede gave me a feeling of something crawling over my body and a wave of fear shivered down my spine. I took taxi and it stopped on the most human-less lane where again the fear took over me. I used metro route and I found hands waiting to bruise my soul. I was on foot just few feet away my home and again someone came from nowhere to kill my spirit with the weapon of their lust, male-chauvinism and sometimes just revenge for God knows what. Sometimes my dresses, my open-mind, my beauty and sometimes the circumstances are put forth as an excuse but my existence is much more than my body. When my soul is hurt, my body has no role to be blamed. My existence is more than what meets your eye. I looked upon my brother and I saw a person who will never do anything like this. He is so nice to women. I try to find whether it’s just me being his sister or h...

MY MOMENTS 24 hours a day and still waiting for the next sunshine. Days passed, still in search of the day. The day when everything will fall into places. The day when you wake up and miracle starts with the first step of it. The day when you put a full stop to the search of that one perfect day. The day when you smile throughout and all your tears find the exit door. The day when happiness knocks the door and hugs you so tight that not even the slightest of sorrow pass through. That’s my tomorrow. I have only three days to live. My past, my present and my future. I shouldn’t care much about my past since it’s gone. All I can do is learn and move on. My present is a work in progress and soon will change its category to past. It slips through my hands and all I can do is carry forward my lessons to the future. People say there is a reason behind naming of “present”, because it’s a gift. How? Gift of what? Gift of thoughts about the future? Gift of memories about the past? Gift...

FALSE GOD If Darwin’s theory is to be believed and the evolution of Homo sapiens be credited to the fabulous discovery of bright mind inside the hard skull of Darwin, we were someone who didn’t know how to communicate properly. It was all the playground of sound waves. So, God created us and sent us to this terrestrial place without any means of communication? We figured out ourselves how to speak and eventually how to write. Is literature an important chapter in the book of human development, from a caveman to an astronaut? Can we say that language helped us understand things better? We developed faster because we had means to convey our thoughts. We communicated, shared and developed. Cheers to that. So, God didn’t give us a language, but still we have verses and scripts praising him. Is God only for humans? Do animals have their God on whom they rely upon? Do animals pray? Do they bow their heads in front of any deity of their own? Do they sing a song describing the Almighty? ...

ALLURING DEATH How real is birth? How real is the existence of a being? How real is the life nurtured inside a beating or palpating heart? How real is the blinking of eyelids? How real is the emotions flowing through blood? How real are the senses? One can’t actually quantify the magnitude of reality but can surely say, without a bit of hesitation that these things exist for sure and has a sense of reality in them. But all these are related to the so called positive aspect of life, where we live. There also exist another reality of life where our lives are seized, which is considered a negative shade of life. But which is as real as the positive aspect. Yes, death. Death is as real as life. It is as true as truth himself and as life, even the quantification of death can’t be done, only the tears can be seen all around the place to welcome this sibling of life. What is death? Why is it considered so gloomy and people are afraid of it? The existence of death is analogous to the ...

MIGHTY ME Since childhood, I have heard about the Almighty. I always pictured Him someone or something very mighty, very big, immense and obviously larger than life. Once I was thinking about something and suddenly I saw an ant, walking past me in her own thoughts, with her own pace and her own passion for life. I stopped her, blocked her path, changed her trajectory, added a mass upon her, drew a thin line of water in front of her and observed her response. It was not very different from ours, when we face the same thing. All of a sudden, I felt like the mighty image of myself portrait on the canvas of childhood memories. So, how is it? God is someone so huge that we can’t see him? If I am living in one of the colonies of ant, I may never understand the circumference of a single human room, forget about the house or the city or the state or the country or earth or solar system and so on. I guess you understand what I am trying to convey. So, it all seems so relative to ...

INDEPENDENT INDIA 15 TH AUGUST 1947, by the stroke of mid night, India got independence and two centuries of British Rule came to an end. This is what we studied in our history classes, but is this all? I learnt a lot about India in my primary and secondary level education but now I realize I should have questioned the authorities at that time, but then I realize, you can’t question an authority. The British Army, not even them, a small company of The Great Britain came to India and conquered it so easily as if this was a barren land, not supported by any protection to the unwanted malware. Why were we defeated and then ruled against our will? What exactly happened at that moment and what led to the slavery? I don’t know and now I don’t trust any authority to get a genuine answer, so basically I don’t want to know what were the incidences in that era. Even The USA was once a slave but know I don’t need to elaborate what it is. What is the difference between us and them? Forget a...