Panddoorraa

It happens rarely in your life that you behold a dream with open eyes. It rarely happens when the reality is more beautiful than a dream, you wish it never stopped.

Avataar is an experience that can only be seen, not told.
A magician has oozed and squeezed all his magic in a utopian saga and a pure spectacle. A movie has been eccentric by not being just a stereotyped sci–fi where massive destruction (2012, Independence Day, matrix) had been the modus of entertainment. This has been a story of construction, of connection of getting back to where we belong. Nature. Our roots.
Technology, Science, Ambitions have taken us really far away from our roots. And for inscrutable reasons we are strangers to our planet, confounded on where we actually belong, perhaps the only species to have inflicted so much damage to its only abode in the universe. And the antagonistic nature is reacting, tsunamis global warming. The kind of rift between nature and its kin cannot be sustained; we are like the pariahs being thrown away from their mother’s lap.

Avataar is like Ozzy Ozzbourne’s mama I am coming home. Nature has accepted us, taken Jack (representing us) in her tutelage. Singing lullabies of adventure, exploration and the Connect! Canvassing the miracles and phenomena of Pandora.
Pandora is an exaggerated Earth. Exaggerated conspicuously and consciously to elucidate the oneness of our being. Where wishes have wings, a genie at one’s disposal to fulfill all one can desire. You may become a part of the mightiest bird and presumptuously rule the skies or ride muscular beast, you might just melt in the glowing waters or get cozy in the branches. You may make the mountains float or fall from a cliff with your head high. You could be humble even after killing someone and die peacefully & live eternally with Eva. You may fall in love with the Gods testifying it.

Our body contains 90% bacteria, viruses and the most basic of cells. Our airs and grace are definitely apparent in our affective demeanor, but we are just a congregation of the most elemental form of life; the origin of life (amoeba). Not us but everything that breathes on this planet is just a manifestation of the original 5 elements.

But why then their fate is at our mercy. Why are we not living in the lap of nature? Why do we need to take a holiday to experience Ladakh or feel the serene waters of Kerela? Why do our children learn about nature in their books or a discovery channel but not through experience?
And why in spite of us living on the planet of grand snow capped Himalayas, exotic wild life, Amazon forests and magnificent oceans, royal Bengal tigers and blue whales, polar ice caps and the tropical forests crave to be in Pandora?

They are all what we are not! They have everything what we don’t! They have a home unconfined, without any proverbial boundaries, they are free.

Freedom, aren’t we free too? No we aren’t I say. We are not in control of our lives. We are bounded by comparison with our peers. We are answerable to our own ambitions and expectations. We are guilty of not gratifying because of our schedules. We long to meet someone, but cannot take a leave. We cannot answer back at our bosses’ dogmatic behaviors. We live in a society build more with dogmas and less with experimentations.

But I am grateful that there is one thing that is consistent in Na’vis and us. That is Love. And with Love there is hope, of being liberated like them.

Tips for happy travelling

I've been travelling for a while now, and its not just a fixed location just those brief sojourns in god forsaken smaller towns of U.P. and Bihar. Its like before you acclimitaze to a city and get accustomed to its viccissitudes, you have to move to another location. The moment you commend your heart in an abode, you have to abandon that dwelling place and just move on.
Atleast, by this alogrithm of travelling, i don't find time to identify myself with a particular city, so I never miss it. But then, I never feel that homely cozy warmth & comfort anywhere.
Someone said that "one step in travelling is worth more than reading hundred books"
because the use of travelling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are. Fine, that is a solace for me, instead of sitting here in meerut(U.P.) & wondering how the fading yet glaring sun would be setting in marine drive, or how my friends would make merry in red box - bandra, or romeo(my black labrador) would curiously yet innocently be gazing at a passerby.
In the same trip someone also told me about "Vihar". The same word which was used to christen the eastern state "Bihar". Though the culture and philosophy of the state has digressed and polluted a million times by millions of its burbaks the philosophy still in its essence is quintessential. Vihar is basically a Buddhist philosphy in which Buddhha recommends Vihar for even person. Vihar is constant travelling, since if you stop somewhere you consider it as your home and get attached to it. And once you get attached to it, you miss it and you forget the purpose of your travelling.
Hence even I, when on the cusp of embarking on a long ardous and tiring journey, compel myself to forget that I belong to a place. I start the considering the universe as my abode, and its just shifting rooms then.
Or if one follows the Gita, its just the change of position of a destructible manifestation of five elements, though the soul is omnipresent.

P.S. Right now the itinerary Aurangabad-Delhi_Dehradun-Haridwar-Roorkee-Muzzaffarnagar-Bijnyor-Meerut-Kanpur-Jaipur-Ahmedabad-Mumbai-Aurangabad and back

I want to witness a miracle

Yeah..I want to witness a miracle. To believe in something incredible. Just to believe. They say ignorance is a bliss, and knowledge isn't. I believed in everything until my rationality refuted it.
I want to believe to get that hope in life. A miracle which might corroborate the very purpose of life, or something supernatural, something existential , or may be God. Which might help me raise above the algorithm life-to-death every human follows, raises me from the trivial litany of happiness and mourning. which is more than what science prescribes.
I want to do that justice to my rationality, which is looking for something it cannot usurp, it wants something to overpower it, something that dwarfs it, smothers it.
Something that tells me, it owns everything, something that tells me that am not that independant being as it seems to be, 'cause my independance exists only between my life and death, and after that even I wouldn't exist. I want to witness a miracle that gives a meaning to my existence.

Anecdotes

In a business meeting with a client in my hotel room at patna...

Me: what will you have sir?
Client: Nothing. I just had my breakfast.
Me: Atleast Tea or Coffee
Client: Hmm okay..

Me: (calling room service) Room no 406. can you fetch tea or coffee?
RS(Bihari): Hain???kya??
Me :chai ya coffee milegi?
RS : Mil to jaayegi. Laate hain.
Me :Dono mat lana ..ek he lana jo bhi hai.
RS: ok

Me: (Hungry after 10 mins) Biryani milegi
RS: han miljaayegi,laate hain
Me :accha chai bola tha laye nahi.
RS : Haan sir bola tha. Par doodh nahi hai.
Me: batay kyon nahi.(to client) would you have something else??
Client : Fresh lime soda
ME : Please get me fresh lime soda.
RS :Nahi milega. sirf nimbu paani hai soda nahi hai.
Me : !!!!! (embarrased) will you have something else.
Client :..anything!!
ME : Mirinida hai?
RS : nahi thumbs up hai..layein?
ME. jo bhi hai lao.

RS guys come to my room with a bottle of sprite. I ha that inquisitive look on my face..And am sure he wanted to say....sir yeh thanda hee to hai!!

Anecdotes

Last week I came for a romantic sojourn in patna. I was conveyed here by nice 2 tier boggie. The so called elite of the train..the elite of a limited universe. Actually its better to be an elite persona in a limited universe, than a pedestrian millionare in a downtown area..
Anyways coming back to the platform...I was completely loaded. a back pack, my guitar, a massive suitcase and the narrow aisle in train. It was an ardous tast to get all of it to the main platform.. A coolie approached me proffering his service..and what a look of attitude and supercilliousness he had..with that naughty smirk on his face when he saw me fiddlig with the luggage.. I gave it back to him....A smile grew on my face to...when i pulled the lever and brought the wheels of the suitcase to life..Effortlessly i was able to drag it along the platform.Within that moment of triumph..i saw the coolie disppointed...his "bony" had gone..
Machines were invented to make our task easier. Wheels were used to make our work simpler but not to snaffle them right away from someone..Irony it seems but true..

Anecdotes

This was something way back in 2005, where me and a friend indulged in a weekend getaway at esselworld. It was all engulfed in a spirit of a carnival. The had beckoned a belly dancer from somewhere in middle east, and what incredible moves she managed to manifest!!
It was followed by games for children. Some kind of passing the parcel or something like that, with just a shabby teddy as the prize. The kind of euphoria that smothered those children was a treat to watch..
So..this game..someone loses if they still hold the parcel when the music stops. and I saw those children whining in all the frenzy when the were caught holding the parcel. And so trivial was the game, that I could just have that condescending smile on my face when i saw them reluctant to leave. So fleeting were their moments of happiness and mourning, and moreover they kept coming one after another. The children though not completely aware of the fate of the game, reacted religiously to all these moments. and I...could just smile.
Funny it might sound.. I realized that it was something analogous to the game of life we all play, desiring, disappointed , ecstacy and discouragement, hope and hopelessness....and there somewhere up there....I know someone is smiling condescendingly

Mind and heart

The conflict of mind and heart has been enigmatic; it is these attributes of a human being that begets one more perspectives to think upon and makes choices more difficult.
I remember that dialogue from kabhi khushi kabhi gam “ jab bhi tumhe koi baat sataye, to aankhe band karo aur apne dil kee suno”. Does that mean listening to your mind makes you inhuman, or insensitive? Various movies and books have alluded to the fact that “heart” (of course that is a proverbial heart that thinks, otherwise heart is only a normal blood pump) is more concerned about your happiness and hence it is more human, and apparently happiness is the primary motive of all the actions of human.
But does it occur to you, that listening to your heart makes you more myopic and indulge in a happiness that is so fleeting and ephemeral. For e.g. a diabetic might be tempted to gorge on something sweet, such that he beckons his two his consultants, the mind and the heart. The mind would obviously rebuff the idea of eating sweet, but the heart would definitely say “yes sir”, your “happiness is more important”. Or a teenage couple might consider eloping disregarding the ramifications of their actions. True, the happiness is our only quest on this planet, but survival or sustenance is also important. That happiness at that instant might look the raison de’ etre, but happiness is something which ensues by various reasons and actions. What my point is, that though heart perceives happiness of the moment as important, it doesn’t see that very action as a source of future misery. Mind is more long sighted, and consults us deeming the long term sustenance and survival.
But then one might argue, that we are human and not machines. Machines need to perform and last long. Only existing is not the primary motive of one, but living is. It is important to be “in pursuit of happiness”, to feel the joy of being happy, the bliss of being human.

Lines i loved from the movie- stardust

Yvaine(the star) to Tristen

"you know when i said i knew little about love. that wasn't true; i know a lot about love i've seen it. seen centuries and centuries of it and its the only thing that made watching you world unbearable. all those wars, pain, lies, hate; may be i'd want to turn away and never look down.
But to see the way mankind loves. I mean you could search the farthest and farthest of the reaches of universe and never find anything more beautiful.
so..yes i know that love is unconditional but i also know it can also be unpredictable unexpected uncontrollable unbearable and strangely easy to mistake for
loathing.... but what i'm trying to say christen is i think i love you. my heart it feels like my chest can bearly contain it. like it doesn't belong to me anymore... it belongs to you.and if you wanted it i'd wish for nothing in exchange..no gifts no goods no demonstrations of devotion..nothing but knowing that you love me too. just your heart in exchange of mine."

No better than a virus

I was just going through this world population statistics. The number of people who populate this planet is 670 crores worldwide and is estimated to be 890 crores by 2050. Everyday there are 220000 people adding to the tally.
We are some kind of a virus which is multiplying, a virus with no antidote, a virus which has myriad means to destroy the very planet it is inhabiting, a virus which has destroyed the habitat of many many species and instrumental in helping many species getting extinct or on the verge of extinction.
We are a species completely disillusioned by our own might. We place human species on the highest pedestal since we proverbially have conquered this planet. But in fact, we are just an animal , an insect for that matter. Imagine a whole world be plagued by termites or rats, where forests and cities are destroyed by billions and billions of those. This is something synonymous with what we are doing to this world, we have plagued this planet.
Is it ignorance that is leading us to completely ignore the perils of crowding this planet, or is just defiance what the learned prescribe to the populace, or is it just indifference. The problem mainly is emanating from that strata of the society which is uneducated, underprivileged. It is not that they don't have a right to breed, but they are completely unaware of the fact that they are breeding more of their kind. They are breeding a generation of criminals, misfits and underprivileged. This factor is apparently is evident even now. The criminals, poachers et all are produced from that factory.
Now am sure we are looking for someone to blame, because that is the easiest part of understanding or analysing a problem. Blame someone!!! Now that being so easy, i too am compelled to indulge in the blame game..
One might be tempted to praise China and deride India in terms of population policy. China has had "one child policy" for some decades now,and has done remarkably well in controlling its population rate, though the resource constraint it would have on its resources would be less considering that its land area is more than 2.5 times that of India. In India where the masses have a say in the pseudo democracy only during the pre poll campaigns, where political parties fawn at the hilt of servility to please the masses, policies like these would be a ticket to a self imposed alienation. Though we crib about the high unemployment rates, high prices, congested cities and poverty, the masses never are enlighten toward the cause, the high demand by a humungous population India boasts of is a major reason for our problems.
Understandably, when the majority of us are looking to expand our footprints on this planet through our descendants, we wouldn't celebrate any politician promising to stop the motor of the breeding capital of the world.
Today we are 116 crores strong, and our quest to be at the pinnacle of world virus farms seem inexorable. We are treading a dangerous road, that leads to a nation of underprivileged, criminals and deprived. Or nation has done a great job of keeping us all together. 100+ crore individuals; all capable of destroying, exterminating the environment and the species are bound by a common thread. Is it religion or the fear of God that keeps us morally upright. Is it faith that keeps our hope alive in this depressing and desperate country. Or is it just the greatness of "Indianness" the common thread that binds all the ethnicity and religions together
It is time to nudge our conscience and realize that we need to save our country and we need to save our planet. Let us stop this blame game, and realize that it our generation that will shape the future of India, it is us that will change the precarious fate of earth.
Let us enlighten people about perils of our own device, and let us not multiply ourselves into a metaphorical virus.