The Transcendental Thinker

The masked face of terror

2008-11-28T02:02:00.000-08:00

On the night of 26th November 2008, I was surfing the channels on my TV as I suddenly stopped to see a breaking news story.... It reported that there have been firings and gunshots at some locations in the city, in my city, Bombay. I followed it for some time and thought it must be a local gangwar thing as the reporter reported from Leopold cafe in Colaba. Cafe Leopold is the Hub for international tourists in Bombay. As the night progressed, it became more and more destructive and within 2 hours of the initial attack, the entire city was at the gunpoint of a few teenagers armed with AK-47's and satchels full of grenades and ammo. Well into the night, I began receiving calls from friends and relatives informing me about what happened, I switched off the TV because first, I thought it was a casual gunshot....second, I hate to see such things on TV...it pisses me off. Within the next two days, they killed more than a 100 people, injuring about 400, many of which are critical. All these "TERRORISTS" are teenagers from a neighboring country who came into bombay by sea in an Indian fishing boat captured by the neighboring country's troops off the coast of Porbandar in Gujarat, India. And we thought there is something called as the "COAST GUARD". And if statistics are to be believed, India maintains the world's fifth largest navy and the third largest Armed Forces in the world. Yet a few teenagers from a damned country were able to outsmart them.

These people have no motive, no reason to kill. The only intention of all these people is to create terror in the minds of people and I hate to say this but they have been pretty much succesful. As I retrospect on the happenings of the day, a weird thought crosses my mind.... Real Life is becoming more or less a Computer game of COUNTER STRIKE( the hugely popular role playing game played world over by teenagers and adults). That game has two groups....terrorists and counter terrorists. The game has all weapons from the real world and yeah obviously, it has no motive, jobless suckers sitting at their computers world over try to kill some random guy in a far off country. The same thing happened in Bombay, a random guy walks in to VT station with an AK 47 in his hand and a bag of ammo and walks in casually through the metal detector, starts firing rounds randomly at random people and then just like a terrorist, flees away.
These people are not afraid of death, they actually are so irritated by their life that they want to die themselves, but they want to kill someone else and then die. They are such big losers that they dont get something in life and they think the solution is to pick some weapons. To top it all, they do such things and justify it by saying some crap about some holy scriptures and some holy intention.

I am not against any religion, Noone is. TERRORISM HAS NO RELIGION, terrorists have no religion, no family, no friends. They are lonely souls who wreck havoc on earth and rot in hell.
Clearly, everyone knows from where these people came from, and rightly so, Our country has done good by accusing them directly. The country I am talking about, a few days back, did not have enough forex reserves to sustain their country for a mere 8 days and they have money to fund terror operations and organizations all over the world especially in India. Newly elected Prez Barack Obama has said that America will hunt down each terrorist in the neighboring country if need be, and we all very well know what america is capable of doing. (Remember Afghanistan, Iraq?) Maybe the war against terrorism may never end, but my way of thinking about this is...an eye for an eye now. You hit us, we hit back harder. Don't forget, you were born out of us.

This year, it all started with hyderabad where a blast occured at a stadium where some LASER show was going on, and then Bangalore, Surat, Ahmedabad, Delhi, Guwahati and Bombay followed. Each one as predicted before by the militants and carried out succesfully to the last detail with chilling accuracy. Needless to say, we were overpowered by a bunch of cowards.
These people don't have anything special. These people don't have more people than us. These people don't have more money than us, these people don't have better technology than us. There is only one thing which sets them different from us, in a bad way though. These people have no Identity of their own, they are masked faces....cowards and ruthless people angry with themselves more than anyone else. These are people who can kill their own family if need be. These are such cold hearted and brainless people.

It may actually sound a bit funny, but if we don't think rationally for a while and if we are to believe that there is something known as an "AFTERLIFE"....then I am sure these people are going to pay for their sins in hell. These people say they are here to do the "WILL OF THEIR GOD" and to spread the message of JIHAAD. Well, Their God and Our God is no different...and definitely, any God does not want his creation to kill his other creations in such a brutal way. God wants us to live and let live. These people are doing the exact opposite, killing others and getting themselves killed.

Rejoice for now terrorists, because for now, you think you may have won it. But as written down by history time and again, the good prevails over the bad eventually, the Evil never has won and never will win. Every evil has to be met with Justice, and when Justice will be done, it will bring joy to us, the righteous ones and it will bring TERROR to you. We have never feared you, and we will never fear you. We will prove your efforts unsuccesful by not fearing your dastardly acts of terror. The only thing we fear is fear itself, unjustified, nameless and unreasoning.
How do you expect to create fear in the minds of people when you yourself are so afraid....so afraid of love, peace, joy, happiness. You are yourself so afraid of life, The most destructive element in the human mind is fear and fear creates aggressiveness...that is what makes you so aggressive, so violent, so ruthless, so heartless. Fear grows in the dark, switch on the lights and see how beautiful the world is really and how beautiful people are. See the truth once, accept the truth once and stop living a HALF LIFE. Yes we fear death. We all fear death, even you although you say you don't. You may kill people, burn buildings, but you will never ever have one thing that we have. You will never be able to love anyone or able to kill our love for others. Your biggest defeat lies there. But remember this, At the end of the game, The King and the pawn go into the same box..... You, too will die some day, a much more painful death, and you will rot in hell paying for your sins.. atleast we will have the satisfaction of loving others and being loved when we were alive....which you will never have. You came here with the intention to win but you are already defeated...you are fighting a losing battle anyway.

Winston Churchill once said....
"Victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without victory there is no survival"....and yes we will survive.

I pray to God to give courage to the family of the deceased, strength to the people of this nation, and to restore peace and joy in this world. United against terrorism, together we can, together we WILL....

Opposites

2008-10-20T08:32:00.001-07:00

Life is full of opposites, For each thing in this universe, there is an opposite value. Life is followed by death, death gives birth to new life. Happiness is followed by sadness, sadness gives way to happiness, Sleep is followed by wakefulness and wakefulness gives way to sleep, temptation is followed by satiety, and satiety paves way for a new temptation, Success is followed by failure and failure gives way to success, However dark the night...it is always followed by dawn.....

My point of saying all these things is....we always expect the "GOOD" things from the lot mentioned above..... We would invariably always want happiness,success,power and we would obviously be upset if we end up getting the opposite values....sadness,failure and the likes....
And Life is no lottery, life doesnt give us every good thing just like that.....You can compare it with a situation like this.... How would it be if there was no day at all...and only night....always....we cant have such a situation...similarly we cant have every good thing in life.

I recently read something about this....it says....Most of the time, life throws unexpected things and surprises at you.....most of which you do not want at all. The correct way to deal with such a situation is....accept the opposite with a smile....accept sadness if you are not happy and still manage to smile...

Consider it this way....Life is a mean, cruel, selfish, unfair thing which wants to see whether you can withstand what it does to you....which wants to see whether you have the endurance to stand tall in any suffering which it inflicts upon you.... If you do, If you pass this test...Life rewards you.... and when you know you have passed this test...you know that you have achieved everything in life....

When all your wishes aren't fulfilled.... life expects you to be sad, to regret...to be not content....
Don't give life all these things....life doesnt give you everything....we must do the same...we must not give life what it expects from us...do the opposite...accept the opposite....be content with whatever you get....
of course....if you are happy with something...you will not go around searching for the opposite and be sad just because you want the opposite... The only ultimate wish of any person is happiness....and happiness is a state of mind which depends entirely on our mindset.
The greatest person is the one who manages to smile in difficult and testing times.

I am no great person, nor am I God so that I can manage to accept everything that comes my way and be happy and casual about it....It is difficult to NOT CRIB about anything and to NOT WISH for anything in life...Not just me, everyone else too, for that matter is not that great.
But we can try to implement some of the above mentioned philosophical and hypothetical stuff.....and try to be happy always

Dear God...

2008-09-16T08:46:00.000-07:00

I thank you God......

For showing me what failure is, I now understand how good it feels to be successful.

For making me cry, I now long to smile and laugh.

For creating hurdles in my path, I now know how to cross them.

For making me fall and crash time and again, I now have the wish to rise above all and above everything.

For showing me what betrayal is, I now don't just blindly trust anyone.

For showing me what denial is, I now wish to accept everything that comes my way.

For not giving me everything I want, so that I know the value of things.

For making me love and lose, I now love myself more than anyone.

For making me possessive, I now want to disown and surrender.

I thank you God for all those things you have given me and all those which you have not, because I know you want me to find my own way through everything, You want me to love and be loved, You want me to stand tall amongst all others because I know I am one of your most beloved and special creations, You want me to go through all this turmoil because you have a much bigger plan in store for me, You want me to be fearful because fear brings me back to the source, and that is You. I know you understand all my prayers even though I may be unable to say what i wish to say at times.

I now prefer to walk with you in the dark rather than walk alone and find light. Just as I believe in the sun even if it isn't shining, I believe in LOVE even if I am alone, I believe in YOU even if you are silent....

Right now, I am at peace.

Loss

2008-09-14T03:35:00.000-07:00

Life is a medley of colours. Some days are bright, while some are a dull shade of grey, like today. There are cycles of Joy-Sorrow-Joy, cycles of Success-Failure-Success, as soon as you reach a destination, you begin on a new journey. The paradox of life is that the only CONSTANT thing is CHANGE. As life progresses, we learn to accept changes and move on. There are many uncertainties in life, everything cannot be planned to the last detail. Accepting the change and moving forward is much more easier than RESISTING the change.

There is one change in particular which I, or for that matter all of us find difficult to accept....the Change of LOSS. We cannot withstand loss, loss of anything.....money, things, people..We never understand how little we need in this world until we know the loss of something... we desperately want the lost thing back...somehow...anyhow!

Life is 10% of WHAT HAPPENS TO YOU, the remaining 90% is HOW YOU RESPOND TO WHAT HAPPENS. I have made many mistakes in life, I have lost many things too, I am responsible for my attitude towards the misfortunes of this life, I always want to hold on to the slightest of hopes wishing somehow that i recover my loss, while it is much more better to move on and forget the past. I fight with my own self to let go and not let go at the same time.

But as Winston Churchill once said...Success is going from FAILURE to FAILURE without LOSS of enthusiasm. We can all choose to sit in perpetual sadness due to loss or we can rise from the pain and treasure the most precious gift we have....LIFE itself...

Friends

2008-08-03T08:37:00.000-07:00

I am really happy today. Today was the day when I met all of my best friends. It was after a long long time that we all were together again. Friends have a special place in a person's life. You share a completely different comfort level with them. Along the course of life, many friends walk in and out of your life, but true friends are those who leave footprints in the heart....they stay forever. I cherish all the moments spent with my friends. I once had a fight with one of my best friends....we decided that we were through with each other and that we won't ever talk to each other again in life. The "DECISION" lasted for 3 days! We met at a common friend's house and we started laughing at what we had "DECIDED".

It's a really good feeling that you have your friends beside you.Even if everything else in life goes wrong you have someone...you have something to cheer about...somewhere to go. It's as if there are people who share the burden with you. Time really flies when you are with your friends and you wish that everything stays that way always. There are times when you are unable to meet yur friends due to many reasons.....all it takes is a phone call. A chat with a good friend really sets the tone and makes my day. A good friend is one, in the company of whom you enjoy even the silence. I remember one such occasion when two of my friends and I were together and we never talked a word.....we were just there sitting quietly for about 3 hours! When we left we told each other that we had a great time together....although we did not speak anything!!

A true friend is someone who is with you although he'd rather be somewhere else. Today is Friendships day. A good friend may bail you out from jail but a true friend is one who is sitting beside you in jail and says "Dude, we really screwed up!" On this day I take the oppurtunity to wish everyone.....even strangers....you never know..strangers may be just friends waiting to happen!!.....HAPPY FRIENDSHIPS DAY!!

Past....Present...Future

2008-07-31T08:58:00.000-07:00

This is yet another of my Guru's thoughts....He says that the human mind has the tendency of oscillating in the future and the past. It never stays put in the present. When something bad happens, we think about the past and think that the event could have possibly been avoided. Likewise, we think about what we are going to do in the future. We get worried about small trivial matters (we includes "ME" too!!) for no particular reason. I remember a very good quote right now....it goes like this..."WE WORRY ABOUT WHAT A PERSON WILL BECOME TOMORROW YET WE FORGET THAT HE IS SOMEONE TODAY."

One way to look at things is to think that everything happens for the good and everything happens for a reason. I have learnt not to regret anything in life. Whatever has happened will stay that way....whatever has to happen will happen regardless of whatever you do.

You have the present moment...seize it....because the same moment will become the past a moment later. For some strange reason, things happen in a particular direction only....time is unidirectional....as i said...for some strange reason. I wish time wasn't unidirectional....but maybe then we wouldn't value it as much.

Time is free, but it's priceless. You can't own it, but you can use it. You can't keep it, but you can spend it. Once you've lost it you can never get it back. Don't count every hour of the day. Make every hour in the day count.

A Journey called Life

2008-07-28T08:19:00.000-07:00

Life is a journey, not a destination.

One cold morning in december of 1996, i woke up to go to school, as i always did. As i walked towards the other room i saw that everyone in my home was awake already. And i remember that my sisters and my aunt were at my place. I began doing the routine stuff before going to school as i used to do every day. I was told that i don't need to as i was not supposed to attend school that day. Naturally, as any other seven year old, i was very happy about the fact. Turns out, i was supposed to go to Bangalore that morning. There I was, standing confused because till then i knew Bangalore is the place where the Chinnaswamy stadium is located....just that much. And i remember my elder sister saying "Naren!, don't forget to see the Chinnaswamy stadium there." I said "Sure!"
When asked why i was going....i remember my aunt saying "Your dad wants to meet you."

A little while later the highly bizarre turn of events took another twist....i was FLYING to bangalore. Naturally, i was surprised. My mom looked upset to me through the morning but she kept laughing and talking to me throughout the journey. We reached Bangalore pretty soon. A white Omni was there to receive us and was driven by a man unknown to me. We reached a house. There was a crowd of people outside the house. We walked inside. The person who wanted to meet me was no longer in this world. For the first time since the morning i saw my mom cry. Actually, i did not know what to do for some time. After some time i cried. I stepped up and walked out of the room where my brothers and uncles where standing. I remember that i asked them frequently when i would go home. All i wanted to do was I wanted to go home. I would ask them repeatedly when i would go home. In between this i would run inside to my mom and tell her not to cry. I hated to see my mom cry. I did this many times and once even asked her to promise me not to cry, something which she had done all morning....she had not shed a single tear in our journey from bombay to bangalore, HOW? I do no know till this day.

9th December 1996 was the longest day of my life. It stretched on forever. To be honest, i did not cry through the day, even if i wanted to. I did not know what was going to happen, and what i was supposed to do. In the evening it was over, they took him away and i was not allowed to go with him.

I have very vague memories of him. I do not remember his voice. The last time i went out with him, he bought me a CAMEL WATER COLOURS pack. I watched the India v/s Pakistan Sahara cup test match with him at his house. He bought me a Clorets mint when he came to call me to watch it with him together. Even before he left us, i did not live with him for a long time. We lived separately. I do not know when his birthday is. My mom knows probably, but i do not ask her purposely when it is. My dad used to smoke a lot, i wanted to tell him not to, but i did not, for i feared it might offend him. At that age, i did not know whether it was a good thing to smoke or not, but he did it in privacy and not in front of me and i hated the smoke. Today if one of my friend lights up a smoke, i tell him to stop. A few days back, i was studying about Bronchial Asthma and Cardiac Arrest in Pharmacology. I think one of them killed him. He was taken to a hospital which "DID NOT" have the "FACILITY" to treat him. And they hurried him to another hospital but could not make it in time. I think it reflects the bad state of hospitals in India even today....and yeah I am becoming a doctor, a dentist of course.

I am writing all this.....for no particular reason and just because i want to. I remember everything right now. And if i forget, i will remember it all when i read this.
I do not want to forget the events of that day ever.

It may sound like a cliché from a movie, but i still communicate with him. Maybe it is not for real, but i do not want it to be unreal. I ask whether or not i should do something and i do what the "THOUGHT" says. Each time i sit outside the examination hall either for theory or viva voce...whatever be it....i just ask him to see me through....make it a smooth ride....make everything easy for me....make the paper easy. And to this day i have always found good results. When i told this to one of my friends, he said that such communication does not exist and it is just His good "Part" in me. Whatever you call it, i believe that if i ask anything i get it.

My mom is the greatest person in this world for me for whatever she has done for me. Not once have i been said NO for anything by her. I have great friends and a LOT of them too. We are really close to each other and noone of us can really be "LONELY" at any hour of any given day at any damned place in the world. I have a loving family, I have two very loving cousin sisters (I have 11 cousins in all!!) who have always shown me the right path and are always with me. God takes something from all of us but gives so much too. I can't call it a "DEAL" but you can't think otherwise.

I love everyone in my life, I love God, I love myself. I love my life.

P.S. - LIFE IS TOO SHORT TO BE SMALL. MAKE IT LARGE. LOVE EVERYONE. BE HAPPY ALWAYS.

Numb

2008-07-28T01:14:00.000-07:00

One lazy july afternoon i was hanging out with my friends as always, having fun, laughing, playing, pulling one another's leg. Everything was good and everyone was happy. Then someone changed the channel on the television set and there was this "BREAKING NEWS" about something which i assumed initially to be one of those kind of breaking news stories.."MAN LIFTS BICYCLE WITH HIS HAIR....or "MAN PULLS TRAIN WITH HIS TEETH", just the kind.Turns out, it wasn't.Our city had been jolted by 7 blasts and the target was our city's backbone....the local trains. I shuddered when the thought crossed my mind that what if someone i knew was on these trains. A few phone calls and 15 minutes later i could sit down somewhat peacefully. But what about the hundreds who left home that fateful day and never came back home. The images on the news channels are still fresh in my mind. Wrought iron melted at that impact and temperature, imagine the pain felt by the ones present there, even if for some seconds. I was too scared to travel in trains or let my loved ones travel as well. But,there is no way out. Everyone forgot about the incident and hoped that such a thing would not happen again. Then after a few years, cities like hyderabad,jaipur and recently bangalore and ahmedabad faced the same fate.

The one thing everyone says is to be alert, to keep vigil. I fail to understand how this is possible. In a local train in Bombay, you can't see where your own feet are during rush hour. How the hell are you going to see who left his/her bag where? One more thing..."KEEP LOOKING FOR SUSPICIOUS PEOPLE"......can someone please tell me why on earth would a terrorist look "SUSPICIOUS"?They are not 3rd grade school students. They manage to plan such a big activity in some of the busiest cities in the world, carry it off perfectly and manage to ESCAPE!!poof!!!

All we hear is all news channels and all news reporters screaming angrily that they want answers...who'll give us answers. The nation is already angry at the happenings and all these news channels do is add fuel to the fire. Holding someone else responsible is damn easy. OK i understand it's the fault of the nation's security but are they solely responsible?? What can be done in a country that has a population of over a billion people and where people are finding an excuse to kill each other on the grounds of religion,language,caste,sect,votes and what not!!!

Some fool says "BOTH KARNATAKA AND GUJARAT ARE BJP-LED STATES".....so what??big deal?? Is it the only conclusion we can draw from it? The next thing we see our great leaders clarifying each other and the nation that it has nothing to do with XYZ party and no conclusions should be drawn. Noone knows why it all happened and noone wil ever know.

With bomb blasts happening by the dozen, one does not have the guarantee of returning home once they've left for work/school/college or whatever. And as i said before, nothing can be done about it. We watch it, we pity it, we feel bad for sometime, then we move on. With these events happening so frequently, we have stopped reacting to them somehow and as the title of this post suggests....we all have become NUMB.

Why innocent people? Why kill anyone, innocent or not? What right does one man have over another person's life? Definitely more questions than answers...and the worst part is...there are NO ANSWERS.

Relationships

2008-07-24T05:37:00.000-07:00

Relationships are a part of everyone's life. Some relations have names, some don't. Needless to say, relationships change, a person who was once your arch rival ends up being your best friend and vice versa. Some relationships persist for years while some end on a bitter note. It all depends on your view of looking at people.My Guru says every person in this world has a habit(including me) of segregating people....you draw a line....which is where you stand....and you consider some people above that line(better than you) and some people below that line...needless to say you hardly find someone AT LEVEL with you.And if you notice, the persons above this line have qualities which are lacking in you. Human beings are a selfish lot. We do everything to be HAPPY just for our own sake. We ask ourselves a question each time before we do something "HAVE I FOUND JOY?".......but we fail to ask another question...." HAVE I GIVEN JOY TO OTHERS?"

Knowingly or unknowingly, i had the same attitude about being happy and was "HAPPY" in a relationship with a person. Needless to say, the relationship ended. Much later my definition of being happy has changed. Being sad is a good thing sometimes. My Guru says "whats the big fuss about feeling sad?" Everything changes, feelings too change. "FEELING SAD" becomes "FEELING HAPPY" in no time. This realization has made me feel that sadness is indeed beautiful.

The same Guru says..."Relationships are like desserts, a small aspect of the meal...you can't have dessert for main course." We all were created for a reason....we must pursue that cause...as our main aim in our life...relationships happen along the way.

Love yourself the most. This is not being selfish. Be your own friend. People can change, relationships can change.... You can't change your relationship with your own self.

In fact, loneliness has always been ,is and will always be the only constant entity in a man's life.

Naren Ramachandran