Yours for the taking

While I was browsing through random pictures on flickr, I came accross a not so impressive image. But something caught my eye. A dull green sketch was overlayed with words so true that I couldn't stop writing about it.

"Sometimes, when one person is missing, the whole world seems depopulated" - Lamartine.

Some survey shows that almost 6% of population between 18-35 yr is suffering from depression. While there are many causes of depression, one of the prime cause is loneliness. A sheer lack of anyone close to you who can understand or emphathize with you.

Unfortunate it is. But then a lot of the folks are unfortunate. You can't change your destiny. It is yours for the taking.

Beginning of the End

Why would I choose this title? At the moment I believe that if I begin contemplating in this direction I know I would reach the end. Sounds trite!

I, like many other people in my age group, find myself in a state of wasteful youth. Doing what everyone else is doing. Always choosing to flow with the river. My mind wants to revolt some times but then revolution is not easy when you are living easy. Revolution is always born out of sheer pain. The impetus required for a revolution is not found yet. But my gut says it won’t be far ahead in time when this impetus is met and the need for a revolution embarks on.

Human mind is juvenile. Believing in god/karma/etc when scared or when in pain and not believing when in joy. The reason for that is simple no human being is sure of the existence of an almighty. Everyday I want to give myself 100 reasons why I should believe in god and I do that. It is not that those reasons are not strong enough; I would say most of them prove the existence of god by rejecting the reverse hypothesis, but then the problem with human mind is that it can’t stop thinking. It would come with another 100 reasons to not believe in god.

Free will

Freedom is one of the most sought after virtues. My soul always seeks liberation from the shackles it is tied in. My thoughts are like a free bird. They fly so high such that no one can see you. But the moment they come to someone Else's sight, more often than not, they are shot down. That’s how cruel the society is to my dangerously free will. These monsters defend the killing by justifying growth of civilization or existence of elements which may not have existed.

Crazy winter night & Insomnia

"Its freaking cold today and I can't get no sleep. Reason, lack of love. Love is beautiful. Each one of you reading this must should fall in love. To be loved is astoundingly crazy. To lose love is really sickening. Cause of my insomnia. But that's how life is. Fall in love, but at this risk and never make a mistake more than once."

Mary Jane

And I thought I will be the first guy in the history to die like this.

The entire day I just wanted get over with my work, and at last have a peaceful sleep. Two days lots of work, highly laborious with lots of caffeine I was stretching my body to limits. Then you have funny friends around you. They play a highly respectable role in the stressful office environment; they will take you out for a smoke, you will laugh with them over some funny chick, or crack a few super stupid jokes. They make your best buddies in the office.

But then fun mostly comes at a cost. Cost could be time, remember time is money, or cost could be money itself. Often this cost is your health. With friends you would want to do things you wouldn't normally do. You will drink as if you were a fish. You race your bikes/cars to limits. You would just go overboard stretching your limits in almost everything you do. But then that is all fun. These days you will never ever forget, so it is worth paying that cost.

Likewise, I and my dear office pal were having a busy though fun involved good day. "Bro you want to smoke some shit", is the punch line when ever any of us wants to smoke (this isn't smoking up, just some tobacco). "Sure bro! Let’s do it", I replied. Well we went to the balcony on our office floor, letching at almost every second chick who came across the two of us (by the way I completely loathe doing it, but unfortunately I was born with this disorder/sickness what so ever you may want to call it). It is completely dark, 10:20 pm at night, two of us, I take out a joint out of my cigarette pack, no technically it wasn't a joint, it was pure marijuana, ok may be not pure marijuana by quality but it was 100% marijuana with no tobacco in it. Then thanks to my loving woman, she loves me more than the number of finely grinded marijuana particles in that roll. Yes she grinded it in a mixer, so as to save the time involved in rolling a joint, aren’t she a creative genius, I bet she is!

Next thing, I plucked out the filter of the cigarette with my grippe teeth, quicker than usual, I must add. I made a small roche, plugged it at the filter's place to build a fine spliff. Without wasting much time, I lit the spliff and started inhaling the smoke. THC is absorbed quicker than most of the other substances by the blood. As it enters the lungs, it is absorbed by the blood, which takes it to the brain. THC acts by binding or activating specific receptors in the brain. These receptors affect your memory, concentration, coordination of movement etc. So, if THC binds with these receptors your brain is going to be f***** up. And here comes the role of your best buddy in the office. "Dude, I don't feel the hit, I think this stuff is shit", why not, here we are to kill ourselves. Honestly it would have different levels of impact on different people, he didn't feel the hit, and I was just blinding or stonily believing his words, as a result I was taking a large amount of smoke with every drag. After 3-4 minutes, perhaps lesser, we were through with the entire stuff. We walked into the office lobby. I was slower than before.

There was a feeling of mild Euphoria. I was happy and looking forward to get back to my work. But wait a minute, my buddy tells me, "Dude I am feeling good, I think I am stoned", I reply, "Huh...Are you? Nice!" He looks at me and makes a funny expression, "Dude what happened to you eyes, why they are so red?" And this wasn't a streak or two of red lines, my both eyes were blood red, only thing apart from red was black. I moved to loo, I concurred with his opinion. This was the first I sensed fear. Well I have smoked a lot of junk in past, far more than this, but my eyes never went red. This was surprising as well as scary. First my buddy made funny comments, "Dude you are f*****, you stoned man, what did we smoke man", but soon I scare the shit of him also. We walked to our desks. I sat down on chair right besides him. I could feel that something was wrong with my heart. And that was making me anxious. Next worst thing, 15 minutes back I was feeling cold because of the air conditioning, but now I was sweating like anything. I sweat at least half a glass of water in 3-4 minutes. What was happening to my muscles, I don’t know. But this never happened before. My buddy tried to calm me down, but I was telling him to stay with me for some time. I even told him to take me to the doctor in the campus. He told me relax for some time. Everything will be fine. Then I might my senior. He took pity on my condition and told me to leave for home and work on the next day. Gracious! Thank god he didn’t ask me the reason for my f***** up situation.

Now the next effect, my lips became brown. They already half brown because I am brown man and I smoke, but then they so brown as if they were drained out of blood. Why would this happen? I thought and my stoned head gave me this answer, “may be your heart cannot pump sufficient blood; is it a heart attack?” That thought made me paranoid. I told by buddy to call my pal at home. I was unable to talk to him, he explained him something and my pal immediately came to office. But by the time he reached my condition improved. All this happened in 10-15 minutes of time. I walked out of office, I had no faith in my driving capabilities (not to mention that I have an experience of 1000s of km driving after getting sloshed) so he took me in his car. I busted his balls by telling him that I might have had a heart attack. We immediately went to the doctor. And the f****** up doctor without much inspection said you are fine. He asked me twice or thrice, did you take alcohol, I refused. He asked me did you take anything else, I said food. I told myself, “I am not gonna tell you, I did marijuana”. He said you are fine. I asked him so many times are sure. Ultimately he said, ok! You get an ECG done for your satisfaction. ECG is a scary process. They put so many small leads on your entire body that the first thought you get is that you are going to get an electric shock. As he pointed ECG was also fine, no heart attack. The doctor was a sarcastic bastard. He told me do want to get a CT scan done! May be it is a stroke! No thank you for you cooperation. Perhaps he came to know that I was high, and no one suffers from a heart attack after doing marijuana.

We walked out of the hospital. I came back home. Ate a lot of kheer and then slept.

Hedonsim --->

Though segmentation of various sects of society has already created many problems; nevertheless I propose another one. Like all other segmentation philosophies this one is also based upon a premise which would want to boost social welfare. Without digressing much, I shall jump to the critical points.

Well, why do we need this philosophy? I don’t think we do. Let us not argue upon why we need this philosophy, let us talk about when we need such a philosophy. Segmentation is done when there is some kind of homogeneity present in smaller groups, contrasted against other smaller groups. Thus, I would say color amongst people wearing red, blue & green caps; I would want to segment them on the basis of the color of their caps. I can go another step further and say that I want to segment them on the basis of the color of their skin. Possibilities are limitless; you can go on refining your segmentation criteria to get more and more segments. One such criterion is morality.

Someone said morality is universal. It has to be same and true for all beings. I do not refute that, in fact that is what I believe more strongly in. But we shall not forget that when your views are presented against a wall, you feel that the wall is stronger, unless the views are allowed to diffuse from the sides, so that even they can show that they have capacities to impregnate the walls of the common high held notions of the society. Hence, a new thought in the air.

Today is a very different world compared to past, but still there are few things common. The world still has people who have power, money and desires with which they seem to conquer this world. It is difficult to explain the segmentation I am proposing but the basic rule is to contrast them on the basis of different morality. Consider a section like film industry. For an average individual the values hyped there are futile and shallow. People live their lives maturing in these values. For them enriching their pockets, lusting for fame and power is considered reverent. Individual possessing any of the above is more or less worshiped. And that is their culture. For most of the individuals in this sect this is nothing morally wrong. They have cultivated such values within themselves, which are considered to be their way of living. At the same time an individual living in an entirely different sect, per say some one like me, who still believes at least if not follows in entirety, the values of an average Indian society man, these would be considered lowly. Because my parents never taught me to run after money, they never taught me to praise people possessing power/money, they never taught me to act as a social butterfly. And yes these are never my priorities in life.

Well I can be a little less harsh and instead of using morality I should use the word values. So, it is basically value segmented society. And yes values vary largely from one sect to another. But after all we wanted to talk about moral values so I will be calling it moral values now. Moral values are relative. That is why it is so difficult to form a universal civil code. Born as free human beings, we have all the right to behave in a way that we want. But are we really born in a free world? We are born in a civilization. And civilization is bound by a code. A code which has been refined over ages by the experiences and learning of mankind! So, we say we are born in a free world, if our country is not ruled by some other country, but the truth is that in any case we are ruled by someone. We are never free. You are not allowed to murder, hunt, do drugs, and free sex. So considered evils are unacceptable. Hence, here we are slaves of the modern free world.

Different sects of society tweak these constraints according to the prevalent moral values.

Thought for the day

A seed is sown. A stem appears with little leaves. Along with these leaves grow tiny buds. A visionary very keenly observes each stage of growth of this plant and sees the future beauty yet to appear. This visionary pictures the future of this plant on a piece of paper using a palette of colors and a brush.

And finally bud grows into a full fledged flower, sprinkling the beauty of its color, brilliantly into the environment. Each passing day registers another tiny little advancement in its size. Visionary captured this entire beauty in the painting, and was happy with the progress and waited for more.

Until one day when the path of growth of this flower is obstructed. Lack of anticipation baffles my visionary. Since, this is not something that was expected. Visionary was stuck in strange situation, where the prediction of the flower’s growth had gone wrong. So, visionary decided to observe for more time and draw another real time picture. And thus compare them for true beauty.

The flower tried to force its way, but failed after a few tries, and it bended its path. Suddenly the visionary realized that the beauty of the original picture was no where seen. It wasn’t hard for our visionary to realize what had gone wrong, neither is it difficult for most of us to realize that, but then when we are not in observation mode we tend to ignore this just like the flower. Because being a part of the system we know how things are from our perspective, but a universal perspective is also something that is with us alone. And from inside we know what is right and what is wrong! What we should be doing and what not!

From being someone who respected values and followed them religiously to someone who compromised once and then just went with the flow is trivial. There is a very high likelihood of finding such people in your vicinity. More or less everyone is like that. But then so is the loss of beauty.

It would be highly immature to think that your entire life will witness absence of compromises, but when it matters the most, one should not bend their rules.

Full and Finals

All your FnF’s are done here only. You hit someone with a stone; someone else will hit you with a stone, just that these events would be dislocated in time, so that you don’t realize that you were paying back for that particular misdeed of yours. Not that it is just related to misdeeds but your goodwill is also rewarded in a similar fashion. The laws remain the same.

We humans have a tendency to crib when things don’t seem to go our way. We tell every one our sorrows. We share the opinion that god has been rude to us, really mean. But we forget when we are being mean to other human beings. Let us talk about me only, because this is more of introspection rather than a preaching talk. I crib a lot when some shit happens to me because of some other person. And I keep on cursing that person and god (poor god always takes shit). It is true that this person is to blame for what he/she did. But did I ever wonder why this event occurred to me. Yes I did. And I could exactly see a parallel event in my past. It seemed the same story, only the roles were reversed. And yesterday’s tyrant was today’s atrocity bearer.

So, how am I supposed to behave when I find out that reason for the havoc of my life? Easy said, but once identified the cause should be pursued. Time machines have not be invented as of now, so you can’t go back and set that thing right. The best you can do is accepting it. Accept that you deserve a punishment for your past follies. And take is gracefully. I don’t say that I repent on what I did, because remorse is never a suggestion I would want to give, but take it indifferently. Try cutting the cribbing part. That will help you regain the peaceful state of your mind. This is one of those small line equations which have too much theory in their background and too much of ground work has been done for them, so that you can’t derive them every time. So, like those few formulas that you just have to cram only, do for this law as well.

Morality tells me for every wrong deed there should be a punishment afflicted. And there is no better justice than tit for tat. Only then you would know how it is like, to be, in someone else’s shoes, who has been a victim of your atrocities in past.

Self realization and self control are two modes of relieving the pain one is entitled to!

Wise Guys...

Unpredictability in love is one of the most delicate intricacies of life. These emotions impart a beautiful feeling when two minds are in coherence, but they create fear and insecurity when incoherent.

It is something in which you have absolutely no control over other person’s emotions. You cannot, just cannot force things on anyone. In a clearer tone, you cannot cultivate love in someone’s heart for oneself; neither can you destroy the love you have for someone. The mechanics of love must be very complex, and at least, presently out of human comprehension. Though attempts have been made by predictive psychologists, but most of them have been to explain the already happened phenomena rather than to predict future behavior.

There are two types of learning, organized learning and experience learning. Well, the distinction between the two is somewhat like this, organized is something that is taught to people by regular courses, and experience learning is something that a person learning through the environment he/she goes through. And then, taking a perspective for love, human beings can be categorized into a set of two; viz. the ones who have taken society standardized courses in love/marriage and others who were a little more fortunate in terms of chance that they got opportunity to experience love before marriage as well.

When I make this categorization I want to see how one of these people’s is different from the other one. A person who straight away marries, without prior experience of a relationship is a less learned man, I assume experience adds to learning, compared to a person who has had relationships in past as well. Set aside the learning, there is a pertinent question in my head, which constantly asks me about the positives of the first person in above lines. What is the motive of love? Is it happiness? If so, then who is a happy man? The person one or person two? And how is happiness proportional to love?

Love definitely means happiness, but the converse might not be true. For the first person the happiness comes from love. His/her case is fairly simple. This person always thought he/she has to be the only love of her/his life. This is the universe for them, once in, they never thought of going out of it and they never actually did (assumption for this case). So, whatever experience they gain in their post marriage love life, they are smug with it, because they didn’t have any prior exposure to love, so they don’t have a bench mark to compare to. And they our society defines rules; they would be too hesitant to go beyond these shackles and explore. So, for person one, love is happiness and the converse also holds true.

Person two has a slightly complicated case. This person has had relationships in past, he/she knows what problems they had in their past experiences. He/she knows what to expect from a relationship and what not to. This person is like those wise guys who would want to ponder over every little thing before action. With experience this person has defined rules for himself/herself. With experience he/she has realized that all these rules have to be followed religiously, else the consequences could be detrimental, since each of these rules, have punishments associated with them, which enable their enforcement. Now, for evident reasons, once a person starts thinking so critically about the consequences of each step he/she is going to lose some charm in life. After all, there is more fun involved in breaking the law! So, this person stops repeating the actions that had caused trouble in past. Remember this person has experienced all this in past, as in he/she had already seen the consequences of breaking a law!

Love is a sweet fluid, you take one sip and you want to finish the whole bottle, alas it is intoxicating at times, and you never know when you might suffer from an overdose.

In reminiscent of their experiences, I rove into this person’s mind and I picture a soul wading through the oceans of constant pain and agony, with the hopes that this turmoil would cease one day.

This person makes a note of this experience, every time it happens to him/her, so that he/she learns from it. If you were lucky enough to survive once you would not risk your life again, since you might not get another chance. This is what life is like; learning from experiences and just dying one day. That is all to it. There is nothing beyond that we can see and there was nothing before visible to us.

A Skeptic

If you let others govern your life you are going to get hurt. The entire idea of living for someone else or for others in general is hurtful. Because of its extrinsic nature, it is going to be unpredictable. The way you think about a person today might not be the way that person is in future. By living for others you are naturally privileging them with the power to play with your emotions. And believe me they are not mean or rather I would use a more generic term, they aren’t bad at all. Because had you not been doing what you are, you would have been doing what they are and thus in your own vision you wouldn’t have been bad.

Love and affection are beautiful when they go the way they are expected to. But like Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle puts a limit on how you know position and velocity, it perhaps also puts a limit on prediction of thoughts and feelings. Attachment is a state of high risk. Because it is state of stake involved, which one wouldn’t want to lose! It is the state of your commitment or rather the emotions that your body produces. If I grow really skeptical about attachment and if so does every one on this planet, life would become more predictable, and yes more mechanized as well. Because then you would know what is good for you and you would know which path to choose. However, life would lose its charm of suspense i.e. the unpredictability we were talking about; we would attain a state of altogether elimination of this factor from the society. And life would become like one of those predictable dull movies. Every human being would want to follow detachment because that is a state of less risk and thus less chance of emotional trauma.

As mentioned before, this is really a disenchanting way of living, since humans are used to living in crests and troughs, they would never want to be something like this, a life of a flat-liner. States of human mind are temporal, so is the risk taking capacity of human mind. Today’s jarhead is tomorrow’s smooth criminal, an example that with time wisdom grows. And thus to the delight of a skeptic the state of least risk is a choice of wisdom.