Love v/s Fear

An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind. So what do you do? Wait till the perpetrators run out of stones? I don’t think that’s the solution. The answer is blind the inflictor before he can blind someone else.

We are a species like any other on this planet. It’s in our genes that the main goal is survival. Most of our efforts are directed towards overcoming and preparing for the adversaries. You change when you feel you can no longer survive. Hence fear is a driving force in bringing about a change. When you fear that you might perish, you consciously or inadvertently change.

People say love can change the world. Well, it might but then you won’t be here to witness it. And by the time the love that counters today’s hatred starts working; the hatred might have evolved and might become immune to this love. Love might be the medicine but we always have medicines for yesteryears diseases.

How do we do pest control? Do you feed the pests until their conscience wakes up and they feel that they should leave us alone? Can we wait until they say ‘oh we have been so wrong but you changed us and now are going’? We need to bloody kill them. They need to experience the fear that if they continue to stay in our houses they might get killed.

They say you feed love and love grows, you feed hatred and hatred grows. I agree to this completely. If you want the good to out last the bad it’s very essential that you discourage the bad. For crops to grow you need to remove the weeds. Weeds are not just bad people they are also bad attributes in a person.

- (written 29th Mar 09)

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There are some feelings that are always within you but it’s not easy putting them on the table. Probably you can’t explain as to why you feel a certain way but you know that this feeling is there deep inside you. You fear expressing them lest they would change over time.

I know there’s someone who loves me truly. Many a times I feel the same. But then I have this fear inside me. I fear that probably someday my love would change; it won’t remain the same. I would be the reason for someone losing faith in love.

Does truth change over time? Maybe not, but I know my love would. Maybe it’s not true then. And it’s going to be instrumental in contaminating someone’s love. At some point of time I might make her believe that there’s nothing as true love.

That’s the reason it’s said that undisclosed & unrequited love is the truest. When you don’t disclose, the feeling just remains within you and never seem to get over it. I.e. it remains fresh and pure forever.

Love is probably like a scent that vaporises if kept open. But then if enclosed you would never know how sweet it is. So it’s for you to decide what you want to do with these feelings.


(written 07 Mar 09)

Trek To Vasota

Its difficult to plan trips when a lot of people are involved. At one moment you could have 15 people and at the other moment the count can reduce to 5. Knowing that its essential to wear the right mask at the right time you can expect a lot of people working during the weekends towards the end of March. We however, survived all such scares; on the contrary instead of an initial figure of 15 we had 21 people turning up for the trip.

We had planned a trek to Vasota fort in Satara district. It wasn’t only a trek but also involved crossing through a wildlife sanctuary. That meant there was a possibility of watching some wildlife like black panthers, bears that were said to dwell in that sanctuary. One more crowd puller was that girls were going to be part of the trek. Whatever the reasons there was a great amount of enthusiasm about the trek.

The group assembles at Sasken Pune office

Though 4am was supposed to be the starting time we invariably got late and the journey started at around 5am.

We headed for Satara where we were going to have breakfast and also pick up lunch for the day from Sawanta’s home. Antakshari was a major activity during our bus journey.

Antakshari in full swing

We had our breakfast at some local stalls at Satara. Time was around 9am.

Breakfast time

We also had a look at an old court nearby.

Only time would decide the fate of this court

From here another 2 hours of bus journey took us to the banks of Koyna dam’s backwaters. We reached here around 11:30am.

Near the backwaters


We bade goodbye to our bus here. A motorboat ride of about 2 hours took us to the starting point of our trek. The motorboat went winding through the mountains.

Water carves its way through the mountains


Finally we landed from the motorboat and started our trek at around 1pm.



The trek starts...


The road ahead wasn’t all that easy. It was paved with stones and walking over them was a struggle.


The road ahead


But stopping was beyond question. We hadn’t come so far to get deterred by such obstacles.

The march continues


We did take occasional halts.

Catching breath


We had our lunch around 3:30pm.

Lunch time


And then a power nap

Post lunch nap


But now the climb gets steeper and the Lakshya is still far off

Wo raha hamara lakshya!


It seemed like we would never make it.

Strength and will were dying out


But finally we made it. Nothing is beyond us if we decide to achieve it! We reached around 5pm

Triumph at last


After that we had a refreshing cup of tea. After that began the preparations for dinner. We had plans of making Khichdi. Of course majority of us had plans of only eating it.

Dinner getting cooked


In the mean time campfire was getting ready.

Campfire in the making


Many a times cooking is simpler than eating what you have cooked. But here it wasn’t the case and the food was good.

Dinnertime


After dinner we assembled around the campfire and everyone gave some or the other performance. Most of us opted to sing and we discovered that there were good singers amongst us. We also realized that we should avoid personal calls from our extensions.

Shailendra sings 'kahin door jab...'


Before the campfire Viru and Ganesh supposedly saw a black coloured animal a few metres from the place we had camped. The animal didn’t have eyes nor did it leave it pugmarks. May be the secret of this mysterious animal would get unveiled in our next visit to Vasota.
Now we needed to catch up on some sleep. We already had a hard day and possibly a harder day awaited us. We slept in a cave; it was as if a time machine had taken us back in time. We slept around 12am.

Iss raat ki subah nahi


When we woke up the next day a phenomenal sight was in the offering. Possibly nature wanted to reward us for all the hard work we had done.

Never seen anything like this before

Neither anything like this

Then it was time to move on. Our next destination was Vasota fort. We started for Vasota fort around 10am on Sunday.

Udya pahate doosrya waata dujya gaav cha waara


The previous evening yet another group had made an attempt to go to Vasota but had aborted the mission since they heard the cries of wild animals on the way. There’s nowhere to go if an animal attacks. On one side there’s jungle and on the other side deep valley. This news thrilled us (a chance to see some wildlife) as well as made us cautious (it could well be the last time we see a wild animal).

This time we soon realized the trek wasn’t going to be easy. The road was slippery and a wrong foot meant a visit to the valley. Also we needed to move together to prevent attacks from wild animals.

Watch your step!

Mission Impossible?

At one point we needed to enter the jungle. The jungle wasn’t all that dense but still it was a jungle and wild animals inhabited it.

Enter the jungle


We made good progress in the sense that the number of halts was very few. But we needed one; it felt like we had walked across half the globe. And then a board told us that we had only walked 3 kms!

Please remove this, its discouraging!

We had been crossing the jungle for quite some time now and still there were no signs of any wild life. Just then we spotted something strange.

Can you classify this creature?


We reached the Vasota fort around 2pm. We refilled our water bottles and also had light lunch.

We had come a long way

And so had the gods...

Time for a group photo

Now it was time for the return journey. This is the worst part of any trek. But that’s life need to face it.

We landed at that riverbank on Saturday afternoon


We were running behind time and needed to hurry up. The motorboat was scheduled to come at 3pm and we started our descent from the Vasota fort well past 2pm. On the way back we finally did manage to spot a snake and everyone wanted to take a snap of that snake.

Beware! Its poisonous

On the way back we saw what people said was a tiger’s dwelling.

Tiger's dwelling

We reached the banks at around 4pm. Here we a black animal. There were a lot of speculations about what that animal was. Some said it was a fox; some called it a black panther while some thought it was the same animal that Viru and Ganesh had seen the previous night.

Fox or a black panther?

It was a great trek that wouldn’t have been possible without our guide Ananda. Without him it would have been impossible to find our way through the jungle and select the right routes. Possibly he wouldn’t even know how helpful he was.

Ananda had played his part

We had our dinner on the way to Pune and then by the time we reached back to office it was 12am. And then there was a sickening realization that the next day we had office. Unfortunately, what we do to earn a living is different than what makes life worth living.

- (written 5th Apr'07)

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Time and again I am confronted with the question, ‘What is it that I want from life?’ And there are no answers; in fact everything ends with a question mark. I am at a railway station with no sense of direction. There are two trains on either side of the platform going in opposite directions and I am not sure which one should I board.
One question that keeps on popping up is, ‘What is more important, happiness or success?’ But before acknowledging either one as more important than the other it’s essential to have a strong self belief. Irrespective of what people have to say, you should be able to tell yourself as to why what you feel is more correct than what they have to say.
Self belief is vital because both success and happiness do not have a pre-defined set of values/degree which when you attain you could be perennially successful or happy. You could be the world’s best batsman and yet people could prove statistically that you cannot play bowlers whose name start with ‘G’ especially in the 2nd innings. Here if you lack self belief, you end up being unhappy and think yourself to be unsuccessful even though you are the greatest batsman of the era.
Once you have a fair amount of self belief there’s no real need to answer the ‘what’s more important…’ waala question. That’s because both success and happiness cease to be mutually exclusive. With self belief, with whatever you have achieved, you could convince yourself that you are successful enough and once you are convinced, you could be happy about it too.
But then how far does self belief take you? Does it last for a life time? And even if it does is it really good for you? There are always at least 2 ways of looking at any idea/thought. Convincing myself that self belief helps was only one way of looking at it. It was an explanation that I conceived so that I can live peacefully at least for some time.
Like structures built in seismically active zones stand tall only till things underneath are quiet so also the self belief theory holds good only till something else doesn’t start boiling. And this something else is the awareness that everything here comes with an expiry date. I remember in my childhood telling myself that I could always remain in love with a certain toy, only to eventually lose interest in it.
However, rather than speculating how long would self belief keep you successful and happy it’s imperative to deliberate whether self belief is good in the first place. Surprisingly, in a way self belief is bad. It hinders your growth; it’s like a blind that doesn’t let light enter your room. You are content living in your small room but beyond those blinds lay an even more beautiful world that you are refusing to look at.
Imagine that as a toddler you could think for yourself. Then perhaps lying in your cradle, you could have had the self belief that this is the best life you could lead. Is self belief right in this case? The example seems silly but then life is like a maze. As long as you are in the maze, you feel like you are lost but the moment you get a top view of it, finding your way out is very simple. Looking back at the past is like having the privilege of having the top view, while in your present you are a part of the maze and struggling for directions.
Coming back to the point, self belief can very well leave you a toddler for life in some way or the other. Whereas self doubt always keeps you on your toes and willing to look for better things in life. Only when a mason feels that the structure is weak does he work on fortifying it.
Now I am back at the railway platform. Both the drivers have given me an overview of what’s in store if I take their respective trains. One is the train of self belief and the other of self doubt. Now even though I know which train goes where I am not quite sure of what I want in life. Do I aspire for contentment at the cost of stagnation or growth at the cost of discontentment?

(written - 30th Dec' 06)

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Life is always full of surprises provided you have your eyes open. Today morning I had my eyes open i.e. I woke up early and found time to browse through the newspaper before I left for office. It had the following article:

WOMEN’S TENNIS

Archana packs off Sonal

Parija goes down fighting to Palkina; Ankita, Nungnadda move up

By Rajesh Korde/TNN
Pune: Almost six years ago, when Sonal Phadke was peaking, she had won her first seniors title in Indore defeating Archana Venkataraman in a thrilling encounter. However, the lanky Mumbai player could do precious little on Monday. Semi-finalist at the recent DSCL National championships in Delhi, Sonal certainly discovered that it was not her day as she lost rather tamely to Archana 3-6, 2-6 in the first round of $10,000 NECC-ITF women’s tennis tournament at Deccan Gymkhana. Playing a steady game devoid of frills, Archana hit the ball deep and hard, seldom making unforced errors. On the other hand, Sonal made numerous unforced errors and committed six double faults — three in each set.

Since months I had planned that I would be going to Deccan Gymkhana, Pune to watch Archana (from whom I learnt tennis in Bangalore) play. But as it normally happens I couldn’t make it and the next day even forgot about it. Today morning after reading through this article I was thrilled and wanted to tell everyone about it.
Reason – I am not sure. But may be it’s for the same reason as I like to see Sachin succeed. When you know certain people are good (as a person) you somehow want them to succeed and when you hear about their success it gives you a joy like nothing else can. Guess it reinforces your belief that good guys do not necessarily finish last (something that is often said about Rahul Dravid).

- (written 7th Nov'06)

ICC Champions Trophy Gets Some Credibility

Quite often you feel that people at the top don’t really deserve to be there. You actually know people who seem to be much better than these 'people at the top'. That’s when you get a feeling that there’s something wrong with the system. Yes, only when the system is wrong can undeserving people be at the top. I had a similar feeling about the ICC Champions Trophy.
The intention of any tournament should be that the best in the business should be rewarded. If this is not happening you are spoiling the entire scheme of things. You are spoiling a sacred game like cricket. Everything around us works that way or is at least supposed to work that way. Right from our childhood we have been rewarded when we have done something better than others or at least the correct way.
Since the inception of the ICC Champions trophy, Australia hadn’t even once won the trophy. And for me this was really surprising. A team that’s way ahead of the rest of world doesn’t win this cup even once! Does this mean that a team that has been virtually unchallenged for over a decade is not capable of winning the trophy? And look at the list of winners; it includes West Indies and India!! These are the most unpredictable teams in terms of performance. When a tournament allows such teams to win you naturally question the credibility of the tournament and it’s format.
Here I don’t want to say that only Australia should win all the tournaments but I don’t see a team that deserves to beat Australia, be a world leader and tell the world ‘look this is the kind of team that deserves to win and not Australia’. And nobody is anywhere near to even catching up with the Aussies.
I feel you don’t have awards/trophies to actually felicitate the deserving people. In fact people who design such tournaments take pride when the awards are won by truly deserving teams. That way they can boast that how correct they had designed the format that brought to light a truly deserving winner. And now ICC should be a proud body since at last a truly deserving team has won their ‘Champions trophy’ and a cameo from Sachin or Lara hasn’t upset it.

(written - 6th Nov' 06)

What took Vadi so long?

As Vadi disclosed, this was a case of high school love. But Vadi didn't want his parents to know about it and at the same time marry his high school love. So Vadi played a game.When his parents started looking for a girl, Vadi bribed an astrologer who told Vadi's parents that ideally the girl's name should start from 'S'. So in phase I Vadi met all girls whose name started with 'S' but somehow his parents did not shortlist Vadi's love. So Vadi brought in the astrloger again who said that the girl's name should end with an 'I'. With this began the 2nd round but even in this Swathi wasn't somehow shortlisted.Now Vadi was in a fix as to how to make his parents suggest Swathi. So Vadi put in a condition that he wanted to marry a girl who was 5'4" tall. This time Vadi's relatives did suggest Swathi since she was more or less of the same height. Vadi's parents asked Vadi if he was very particular abt the height factor or an inch here and there would do. Vadi said that he wanted the girl's height to be exactly 5'4". Vadi's parents said that there was a good girl satisfying the 'S' and 'I' criteria but was 5 feet 3 and half inches. But Vadi said NO. That girl was Swathi, she had claimed her height to be 5'3-1/2" in her matrimonial resume (though she had told Vadi that she was 5'4"). However, Vadi didnt know what he had missed.Now time was running out and Vadi wasn't getting anywhere close to getting his parents suggest Swathi or so he thought. So he added one more criteria that the girl should be 2005 pass out. But all the conditions were 'AND' conditions and due to the height factor Swathi was not even considered with this new parameter.In the meanwhile Swathi came to know that Vadi had rejected her although she wasn't aware that Vadi had done that accidently. So when they met in Hyderabad, she slapped Vadi and demanded an explanation. Now Vadi knew what a grave mistake he had committed. He too was angry at Swathi for quoting the wrong height in her resume but then it wasn't possible for him to get angry at Swathi leave aside scolding/slapping her in return.But Vadi couldn't directly go and tell his parents to go back to old rejected resumes and reconsider them. So he took help of a wise Baba who asked him to add one more condition, that of girl being a mechanical engineer. Now Vadi's parents were frustrated with all these conditions. But they searched with this new condition.However, the search said 'no match found'. Now Vadi suggested them to relax one of the conditions eg. height. They did that and there was only one match Swathi.So Vadi said that for them he was ready to relax the height condition though he was not too keen about it. His parents thanked him profusely for being so understanding and so Vadi finally got to marry Swathi.

(written - 30 Oct' 06)

Being Virus

Hi! I am a virus. Don’t worry I am dead now. It’s good to be dead. At least there are no illusions now. Everything is so clear, no false hopes, no blind beliefs and no fear of the unknown. I think death is the only good thing that ever happens to a living creature.
Not sure where I was born. I mean that I am not aware whether the world that we lived in was someone’s stomach, chest, throat or anything else. But that was our world or so we believed. And our scriptures often praised the order that existed in our world. Everything was very well planned and everyone said that some God had designed it for us.
I remember as a child I marveled at everything that existed around me. Everything seemed to have a purpose and may be even I had a purpose – that’s what everyone told me. They also told me that only viruses were the chosen ones to understand and realize their purpose. I am not sure who told these wise viruses such a thing. And whether they were told such a thing or they simply assumed it to satisfy their egos.
The presence of a supernatural power was a very compelling idea. There was no way we could refuse it. It was as though we were playing a game that had a set of rules. Whenever anyone tried to break them somehow something inadvertent happened. Someone always seemed to encourage certain behavior while discourage yet another.
The behaviors that were encouraged by this supernatural someone were labeled in our world as good moral behavior while the ones that were discouraged were assumed to be immoral. Parents always taught their kids to be good viruses, good as explained above. We led our entire lives believing that being a good virus was the most important thing in life.
However, there was a certain discrepancy in our orderly world. But it was unto us whether we wanted to notice it or turn a blind eye to it. Somehow everyone suffered here. Viruses who led a moral life suffered equally as the amoral viruses. The only difference was that whenever a moral virus itself suffered it often thought that it was growing but whenever an amoral virus suffered the same moral virus thought it to be a punishment meted out for the immoral deeds that it had performed.
Let me admit that even I was one of those viruses who always strived to be a good virus. And whenever things went wrong I assumed it to be an opportunity to grow, to learn new things. Though I never quite believed in supernatural power, I had an indivisible faith that what was called moral was in fact moral and that this was the only way to lead life.
Then I met my dear friend – death. Death awakened me and made me aware of the story that I was telling myself and believing it too for my entire life. I could never believe that someone could betray anyone to such an extent to meet its own needs.
Death took me to a different plane from where I could see things in a different light. I could see how our world was only a part of some organ of some being. Death showed me how our existence and growth in a controlled manner helped the organ of this being to perform optimally. Also, about how certain behaviors on the part of our community worked to the advantage of this being. Hence we were conditioned accordingly and manipulated psychologically to have faith in certain things. To this being me as person had no significance. It was only utilizing me and when I ceased to be of use to it, it got me killed.
I wonder if this being is what our scriptures referred to as the supernatural power. If it is so, then I am glad that I never had any faith in it. But I am disappointed with myself for almost blindly believing certain things to be moral or otherwise. Also, I am disappointed to know the way I was manipulated and that I am in fact nothing in this scheme of things. And that my beliefs that I so dearly trusted are only my self made illusions.

(written - 19th Sept' 06)