Friday, January 27, 2012

God (?? or !!)

A few months back when someone told me to watch a movie called, “A Man From Earth” and added that it’s a good movie, I, like every normal Indian youth, downloaded the movie from torrent and watched it, which was when I realized how wrong my friend’s comments were about the movie. It was not just a ‘good movie’ but was a life changing one which unconsciously changed many of my views on religion, life and me. In brief, the movie is all about a 14,000 year old man from upper paleolithic age who survives until the present day, his unique experiences, ideas and his beliefs. The man starts his experience by narrating about his early life, rise and fall of empires and finally reaches a crescendo when he reveals his identity.

So why am I writing a review of an already well acclaimed science fiction movie that was released some 5 years ago? The reason is, the movie unconsciously has imbibed into me certain ideas. At one point, the oldman when talking about religion says,” Believe in what He (God) tried to teach without the rigmarole...Piety is not what the lessons bring to people, its the mistakes they bring to the lessons.” Yes I am going to blabber about this in the forthcoming paragraphs and these are completely my opinions alone and I do not wish to insult or dishonour any religion or its beliefs although I may talk my opinion about many of the practices involved in them.

Almost all religions, especially those of Indian origin and Abrahamic religions when started, stressed more importantly on the principles to be followed and the ultimate gain associated with it – to reach God or to reach the ultimate truth and in some cases both the same. The prophets who established the religion also laid some basic ground rules for the group to follow to facilitate easier practice of the principles without confusion. But as time followed, the principles got diluted and the rules became more rigid. Men who were head of their religion started bending the rules according to their whim in the name of God and made humans as sinners. The principles, the reason for which the rules came into existence in the first place is now long lost in books and rules are followed blindly without reason. Even the principles present in the books are twisted beyond recognition by the heads who followed the initial founder and modified it in the name of commentaries and explanations.

I definitely do not blindly accuse that all commentaries and explanations are fake and misleading. There does exist some worthy explanations but are like finding white grains of sand in a pile of rice. The original manuscripts of these religions cannot be directly read and understood by a naïve common man since most of them are either lost, mutated or is present in extinct languages leaving him to go for translations and commentaries most of which are screwed up beyond recognition leaving the ignorant man bewildered as to which path he has to follow. This was the same problem which I too faced unable to decide where to rest my belief. Unable to rest it at one place, I decided to test it.

Yes I am talking about the incident that occurred in Tirupati of which I’ve described about in the blog , “The Fortunate Folks” - http://www.thoughtsofvenky.blogspot.com/2011/04/fortunate-folks.html It has been less than a year since I had challenged God for 3 favors and asking for atleast one to occur! Interestingly, of those wishes, exactly a half of each of my three wishes has become a reality.

So does that mean that there is a God with conscience? If so what does that exact half signify? Or since only a half of all the three occurred should I stick to the idea that there is no God. But since the prayers seem half answered I come to this final conclusion. There is a God (definitely not the God what you are thinking right now). But he doesn’t have four hands and ten heads or he doesn’t say that all humans are sinners. Neither he asks women to cover their faces nor does he ask men to grow beard and cover their head.




A God is above all these mundane stuffs. He doesn’t ask you to praise Him and sing about Him. He doesn’t care whether you pray, worship and chant his name a million times. He is above what is good and bad to human race. A superior man may want his subordinates to do all of the above said stuff. But definitely, not a God. A God doesn’t even need to have a conscience to give justice at every single turn. God is truth and justice incarnate. He is the physical law that acts upon the universe, the law that makes earth go around the sun, the law that generates huge quanta of energy when hydrogen is fused to helium in the sun and the law that causes protons and electrons to attract and at the same time unite the same positively charged protons tightly together. He is present at every soul around you, every inanimate object that surrounds you, every celestial bodies including the very earth on which we stand and also on the empty voids that lies between two such objects. He is the Universe, the law that created it and the law that holds it together. Every single atom to supermassive blackholes, from suns and nebulas to yourself and your hated neighbour - we are all a part of this universal soul – The God.

Aham Brahmaasmi!!

Monday, January 9, 2012

Apology

A loosely crafted poem straight from the heart!



At dawn I hold you in my arms.
And at dusk I threw you out
As a worn out old toy.

Plunging your heart
With deep agonizing pain.

Forgiveness – a day dream
And mercy – a butcher’s knife.

A fool was I to lose my truth in you;
And search it in others.

With no words to speak
And no words to apologize
I stand before you
With tears of regret.

With shame for my actions
And hate for my being
I wish every second
To delete that single damned moment.

Thursday, December 29, 2011

Broken Love




Let me rest in peace; Let me forget you
And let me suffer in solitude.
But please take from me,
Your aching memories.

Making my life a living hell;
You Haunt my days with ghosts from our past.
Haunting my days with every minute I cross;
You made my life a soft toy in your hands.

The groaning cry that emanates
When you come in my dream.
And the searing pain that implodes
When the dream vanishes in reality.

You forget my words and the promises we shared,
You disregard my love and the days we spent
You lose my love and lost yourself,
As you burn my soul,a can of carcass.

Let me live; Let me breathe
And let me smile once more
Please give me back my reason for life.
Give myself back.

P.S: Inspired from the song " Po Nee Po" of the album 3.

Thursday, November 17, 2011

Declaration of Principles by Paulo Coelho

Lines taken from the paulo coelho's blog: http://paulocoelhoblog.com/2010/08/07/statutes-for-the-present-moment-2/

Sharing some of the lines that stole my heart!!

1. All human beings are different. And should do everything possible to continue to be so.

2] Each human being has been granted two courses of action: that of deed and that of contemplation. Both lead to the same place.

3] Each human being has been granted two qualities: power and gift. Power drives a person to meet his/her destiny, his gift obliges that person to share with others which is good in him/her. A human being must know when to use power, and when to use compassion.

4. Each human being has been granted a virtue: the capacity to choose. For he/she who does not use this virtue, it becomes a curse – and others will always choose for him/her.

5] Each human being has the right to two blessings, which are: the blessing to do right, and the blessing to err. In the latter case, there is always a path of learning leading to the right way.

6. Each human being has his own sexual profile, and should exercise it without guilt – provided he does not oblige others to exercise it with him/her.

7] Each human being has his own Personal Legend to be fulfilled, and this is the reason he is in the world. The Personal Legend is manifest in his enthusiasm for what she/he does.
Single paragraph – the Personal Legend may be abandoned for a certain time, provided one does not forget it and returns as soon as possible.

8] Each man has a feminine side, and each woman has a masculine side. It is necessary to use discipline with intuition, and to use intuition objectively.

9.Each human being has the right to seek out joy, joy being understood as something which makes one content – not necessarily that which makes others content.

10. Each human being must keep alight within him the sacred flame of madness. And must behave like a normal person.

11.The only faults considered grave are the following: not respecting the rights of one’s neighbor, letting oneself be paralyzed by fear, feeling guilty, thinking one does not deserve the good and bad which occurs in life, and being a coward.
Paragraph 1 – we shall love our adversaries, but not make alliances with them. They are placed in our way to test our sword, and deserve the respect of our fight.
Paragraph 2 – we shall choose our adversaries, not the other way around.

12.We hereby declare the end to the wall dividing the sacred from the profane: from now on, all is sacred.

13. The impossible is possible

Share with all!!

Saturday, October 22, 2011

Pangs of Hunger

Tear down the clouds,
Ignite the sun,
Freeze the moon and
Purge the world.

Enough of
The deaths;
The cries;
And the tribulations.

Paint the moon red
Paint the night red
Paint the sky red
And wash the nations with blood.

Cleanse the world
Of the putrefying humans.
Set fire to them all
For a child died of hunger.



Set them ablaze
In the smouldering pangs of hunger,
And from the ashes,
Let the new order begin.

A world devoid of hunger
A nation united by bonds of blood
And a society lacking prejudice
But filled with pride of who we are.

Inspired from:
தனி ஒரு மனிதனுக்கு உணவில்லை எனில் ஜகத்தினை எரித்திடுவோம்
- மகாகவி பாரதி
If there is no food for a single man, then let's burn the world!!
- Mahaakavi Bhaarathi

Sunday, September 25, 2011

Apologies

Once Maadhavan, a friend of mine (definitely not the film star) called me at around twelve in the midnight and said, “Hey EG how are you da? I am so sorry da. I have many a times acted rude and insensitive to you . Have neglected you and have been indifferent. Am sorry for all of it.” Well…. How do you think should I respond to it? I didn’t know what to do. So I said, “Hey why asking sorry and all. Chill! It’s ok da! No problem! Free... blah blah blah (formality speech)” and ended the call. I don’t know what made him to ask such an apology with self-confessions of his guilty acts. At first, shocked to hear such words, I started rewinding and replaying all the happenings and times when he had done wrong. Once I started reviewing all this, automatically all my wrongdoings and mistakes also followed. So the next day morning, it was my turn to ask an apology to him. The next day I repeated the same dialogue stated by him the previous day followed by the same blah blah blahs…

This apology that I asked acted like some sort of primer which initiated a chain reaction of many apologies that followed for the next few days. I started pondering over my mistakes and intentional insults and bullying that I have done till now and apologised for it. (Now, don’t act as if I am the only one who has done a bad act intentionally! Everyone does so, but the degree may vary! ) So, it was a pretty short list with some ten to fifteen names in it as far as I could remember. To some people to whom I was able to contact in phone, I called them and apologised just as maadhavan did. To some others who loathe me, I apologised through sms (may be that itself is rude! But whateva! It doesn’t seem like that to my conscience and that’s wat matters the most in the end to me) and for overseas contacts and for those with who I’ve lost all contacts, email, fb and gtalk was the means of apologising.



Of all the people I have apologised, they always came from one of the four basic categories.
1. People who were truly innocent and I was the real culprit and all of them forgave me with a warm heart and open hands. Usually their reply was similar to this, “Why bother asking after such a long time. It’s not even necessary. I don’t even remember it properly. Forget it!” or “It’s ok da. I have forgotten those things long back. It happened when we were stupid kids!:) ” I was truly happy after asking an apology to these people and made a note of never to lose them in my life!

2. People with who I’ve started the whole ‘wrong doing’ process and they took on to it after me. They weren’t as gracious as the previous group. Their words went on similar to this,“ Fine… it’s ok! Both of us didn’t know how to act and you acted weird. It’s forgiven. Am glad that finally you found the courage to ask an apology. Good! “My inner voice said, ”OMG! You are talking as if am the only one who is guilty. You are equally guilty, you self-righteous jerk.“ Unable to put this thought into words, I was just able to give polite thanks with all the blah blah formalties. Note made to myself: Keep a fair distance away from them in your life.

3. And then, there are those who have so proudly insulted me in front of others and in return I too have done a fair amount of damage. These people are the last ones who you want to apologize. They are not just self-righteous but also too proud of their actions that they still acted as if I was guilty right from the beginning and at present, I was the erred man and they, the forgiving God! And the worst part is, I can’t point that out to them after asking an apology and bring about another hateful conversation. So I became a wagdoll and nodded to every word they said. My inner voice scolded myself for going so low and talking to such ‘bragging bsratads’ (if you know wat I mean!). Note made: Goodbye... My dear!


The happy part is, most people were too gracious and apologised for their mistakes too and they fell in the first two categories. And I don’t have to talk about the depressing stuff since I have rambled on it throughout the post.

After all this happenings, why did I publicly come out and confess all that has happened??? Well, it’s not my mistake... a friend of mine who knew about my apologising series wanted a detailed explanation of why, how and the outline of what has happened and hence the post!!
Hope some enjoys it while the rest curse me! :P ;)

Wednesday, September 21, 2011

A mail to Yodhakaa

Due to the uncontrollable awesomeness of yodhakaa songs i've finally and for the first time sent a mail to a band praising them!! :D





Subject: Pure awesomeness!!

Haven't heard such songs in my lifetime!! Awaiting your next album!!

Especially jataa kataa song is extraordinary! i have no words to describe the magic that comes when your music and the sanskrit verses are mixed together! It is like the perfect mixture. An ambrosia to the listener's ears. It seems to be the panacea which can cure all the ailments for the mind! I really feel fortunate to have heard such a music.

Thank you so much for giving us such a composition!

Your dearest fan,
Venkatesh E.G