Dear Mr. X,

I apologise for having hurt your feelings on a certain issue. In my attempt to make a black and white approach to the situation, may be i’ve overstepped certain boundaries. But it has got to be that way...is it not...Black or White...no grey zone. It was an honest attempt to balance what Mr. Y called an ‘Identity’ and what you called a ‘Tribute’. In my view, there is no differentiation between a ‘Tribute’ and a ‘Perfect Tribute’. They’ve got to be synonymous.

Though our thinking matches to a certain extent, it differs widely in purpose. When i said i want to keep the Spirit alive, i meant i want it to grow. Memories are things from the past. Spirit is something transcendental. I don’t want to cling to memories in a fit of desperation.

My view of a tribute would be to nurture the spirit, each of us adding a tinge of what we know him as, and what we thought he’d be like. In growth of a spirit lies its liberation. Stagnation of its growth and restricting it to our past memories is not exactly what i’d like to see us do. We need to befit it to his physical and mental prowess that his spirit unfortunately got deprived of. I know we’re talking on two very different schools of thought...yet i’m happy we care/think for him. Rather than the one-sentenced ‘Go ahead’...’I agree’ stuff.

Again why do we want things to be easy? It feels like being stabbed by a dagger whenever i hear people say ‘because it’s easy’. Is it because we don’t love him enough? I hope not. We need to fight this inertia, for him...for ourselves.

I loved your mail, particularly the sentence ‘A 1000 years from now, when i go to this place...i want to meet him....’. Very thought-provoking. But my question is...why do we need to go to a place to meet him? A 1000 years from now i want to see him in me...in you...in us...in People. Think about it.

Cheers!

Ideas...Ideas...Ideas...!!!

An Idea is Immortal!! Men may fail fighting against/defending an idea, but what remains at the end, unscathed, pure, unperturbed, and sanctimonious to its very genesis, is the Idea itself.

For whatever it might lead us to, one always needs to venerate the verity of an Idea. And the best means to respect an Idea is to vouchsafe its chastity by creating newer ones!! Because Ideas are aboriginal!! They might be stolen, yet they can never be commanded, never be governed!!

Ideas may be a mere perspective for their creators, but they define his very existence. Because what you are is what you think, and what you think governs what you create, and what one can always create is an Idea. In these days of prevalent plagiarisms, the only basis for a differentiating judgment is ‘thought’; and the perspective to ones school of thoughts - an Idea.

But be warned, Ideas are not easy-to-come; there are no readymade perspectives. It is with one’s own intelligence, used by his discretion, that one builds his perspectives. And that intelligence is in turn a function of his very percept. If one has to wait for a lifetime to gestate an Idea, His Own Idea, an Original, Pure, Chaste Idea, then there must be no second thoughts on that the wait must be worth it. As is said, It is better to die fighting, than to live fearing…Better to burn out than to fade away…!!

Horizons Unknown, Oblivions Unexplored

60 years of Independence...are we really independent???

Throwing orselves into unknown oblivions might seem to be an inherently risky proposition. But, given the range of possibilities and the scope for excelling with them, the proposition must supercede all the apprehensions. Men of Honour are necessarily Men of Courage, Men of Virtues. And virtues are incumbently developed only by a range of experiences. some abominable, some rather exhilirating. No achievement ever would be as acclaimed had it not been put through the rigours and rhetorics of a wishful cult, a hopeful chance. It is in the journey and not the destination the actual sense of success lies with.

Today, most people bask under the aegis of their achievements, since many feel that it ultimately boils down to a result-business. Well, they often miss the crux of the journey, its ethical viability, its creativity, the innovations involved, the actuating persona required. Ignoring these may be a safe way to evade cynicism, but a deeper retrospect would reveal a sense of self-compromise. Choosing an out-of-box proposition would most definitely require a whole lot of abnegatory traits, but it is abnegation, the joy of life lies with.

The world might not had witnessed a scientific revolution, had Newton not chosen to give some thought to something as trivial as an apple falling down. The software revolution might've been shambles had it not been for people like Bill Gates or Steve jobs going out-of-the way in choosing their goals, in realising their visions.

In the indian context, our business world would'nt have had the impetus it enjoys today, had it not been for visionaries like the Ambanis, the Tatas or the Birlas. But a closer look at todays generation would reveal aberrant traits. None would want to take up the challange, for the fear of failure. Playing safe is the call of the day. Many of our fellowmen conveniently fuel the Brain-drain by choosing to flow with the current, never giving a trifle of impetus as to what difference it makes; what difference it could make. Every other day, we discover an Indian holding a key-position for an entirely irrelevant firm, with an entirely alienated community. I'm often left aghast by the way we immortalize such events, in exemplifying them to our younger generations. This is absolute indifference, absolute insolence. It boggles me to find none (well, not many) who'd actually read between the lines. Is it not obvious that these stewards of the battlefield with their intimidatind shields and overtly ornate spears, merely form the frontline of the army, only commanded by greater generals; fighting for somebody else's cause

We boast of Institutes which offer some of the best routines for Technical and Management sudies, yet never really manageto make ant significant contributions to the nation, with all the socalled intellect imbibed. We still have time for retrospect, if not remorse, to identify our strengths & weaknesses, Successes and blunders, for the future is a function of our thoughts and deeds.

60 years of independence, and it is time we concentrate on being independent to its true sense. The perfect gift for our mother-land on this occasion. Let us be Trend-setters. Let us be true humanists. Let us be true nationalists; true INDIANS

Quest

Competition, zeal, success, excellence are some of the words that strike us instantly, if we are to think of todays so-called life. All through our adolescent years, the emphasis is solely on these words. Maybe they serve well to pervert us from the usual traits, very characteristic of those charismatic years; from the plethora of thoughts in the young minds - some prodigal, some tender, some mature, som wishful, some naughty. But is that not the way it is supposed to be?? One's got to be naive to choose not to say that those years are the most satisfying and enthralling ones ever.

Today we're giving a lot of impetus to being environment friendly and to proactively deal with pollution and such stuff. For all our so-called maturity and complexity, how do we miss to understand the simple laws of nature, which are quintessential for our very existence.

Streamlining our thoughts, making them unidirectional - not letting our intellect explore the unknown horizons of our own self, as is the case today, what about that?? Is it not pollution?? Don't we need to oblige mother nature in this front too?? Career orientation must be a priority, not a constraint. More than focussing on being successful and looking for excellence, we need to try and develop into complete and accomplished humans in the true sense of word and deeds. We need to live every small experience to its fullest.

This poem presents the musings of a successful person, in deep retrospect.

in my quest for excellence
i was forced to sacrifice
sacrifice things considered petty
yet so very essentially dear

in my quest for excellence
i could'nt build relationships
relationships utterly fragile
yet so very exclusively important

in my quest for excellence
i had to dwindle my priorities
priorities seemingly silly
yet having the multitudes of life

in my quest for excellence
i simply lost my life
a life of going-to-live
a life never really lived

now i wonder what excellence really is
is it discovering happiness in life
or discovering life in happiness itself
happiness so arrogantly elusive to me

Chaos

Des: This one's about the contemporary world...the way we see the world today, the way it'd been since the war times, not much of a difference anyways....But even the catastrophe of the world war in all its colossal magnitude had certain undoubted contributions to the mankind...say for example...the world war-II created a sense of urgency and competence in the scientific world...with a venom never-seen as yet till date, for that age. Well in terms of scientific progress, we'd have to accept the wartime (the cold war included), as a golden era.

Humanity is the sole virtue, a virtue which could never be lost, that binds us all together in the face of the dwarfing situations...and humanity like any other virtue, has the tendency to rise like a phoenix, victorious, everytime its roots are put into jeopardy, by forces insolently dark.

Painting Courtesy: Claude Monet

Dreams of shadows...
towers of death...
streams of blood...
no trifle of regret...

heaps of the dead...
loads in dread...
weapons of fire...
lives gone haywire...

child in the darkness...
chilled by the night...
ignorant innosence...
death showing its might...

plethora of hatred...
sons of lust...
fear and anger...
defeating the love...

fear in the mind...
deceit in the eye...
zeal in the heart...
direction lost...

cities destroyed...
emotions distorted...
all that is left...
is ruins from the past...

this feeling of guilt...
this pain from within...
tough to control...
better forget...

demons from the past...
hovering aghast...
cruelity personified...
humanity in doldrums...

questions of intellect...
force so brute...
supression intended...
rebirth imminent...

glimmer of hope...
days not far...
war and terror...
never stand a chance...

this dismay this destruction...
rennaisance in the shaken souls...
re-forging humanity...
with castings of CHAOS'...

P.S: Observe the physical shape of the poem, a Sceptre, of humanity...a beacon...only passing hands, never yet extinguished!!!

The Blog Business

Well, since times unkown, i had all the stuff to fill in to the requirements of being a blogger (for, today, blogging is an almost-must for every individual). All the ingredients, all of them but for one, were always at my perusal. 'The One' in this case being TIME - the singlemost value-adding entity worth mentioning if one wants to define, well, anything for that matter. 'The World Respects The One Who Respect's TIME'. This very important parameter, divides our lives into a bunch of milestones called events. Lost in the mysticism of his/her very own existence, these important milestones called events are what define one's existence, in this perpetual quest for excellence. The flipside of the coin is the entity called THOUGHTS, very characteristic of any individual. Events, we may not have control on, but THOUGHTS, definitely yes. This blog attempts, for now, to picturise my THOUGHTS, showcasing my very own self, in all due respect to 'The One' - i'm sane enough not to mingle with this 'all encompassing' Virtue of Virtues.

Also i have a profound belief in the adage,

Great Minds discuss Ideas,
Average Minds discuss Events,
Small Minds discuss PEOPLE.

well, i definitely don't belong to the third category; And as of now i don't wan't to be characterised by the second one either. Here again, i'll let the 'virtuous'(time) catagorise me

And So It Begins.....!!!

Hope u ppl hav a good time having a sneak-peek into my Mirror of Thoughts!!!

Cheers!!!