Green Bean

Prayer Wheels

2011-10-22T21:32:00.001+05:30

Om Mane Padme Hyung

Diamond

2011-10-22T20:58:00.004+05:30

Shine on,
You Crazy Diamond.

Creating Love

2011-10-19T14:19:00.001+05:30

In my non essential
capture of these,
Necessary lives-
I try praying,
so deep-so keen-
And in all,
Of my conscious,
Subconscious,
Thoughts-deliberate and not theirs;
You continue to exist.
Your face of anger,pain,
Sorrow and
Gleeful laughter.

A Repetitive cognizance,
to my half-drenched
Heart.
Often too afraid
to admit, its odd fortunes-
The duplicity,
of choices,
I may be called,
Upon, to make-
To live a life,
Subdued for,
Survival.
Nay, for my,
ever longing,
soul's outreach,
To be with you.
When-then-
shall we
ever be
together,
my beautiful
Dear.
You who
continue
To fear.

Solitary Splendor

2011-05-30T19:54:00.001+05:30

Read Me a Lesson, Muse

2011-05-30T19:27:00.000+05:30

Read me a lesson, Muse, and speak it loud
Upon the top of Nevis, blind in Mist!
I look into the Chasms,and a shroud
Vapourous doth hide them,-just so much I wist
Mankind do know of Hell;I look o'er head,
And there is sullen mist,-even so much
Mankind can tell of heaven;mist is spread.
Before the earth,beneath me,-
even such,
Even so vague is man's sight of himself!
Here are the craggy stones beneath my feet,-
Thus much I know that, a poor witless Elf.
I tread on them; that all my eye doth meet
Is mist and crag,not only on this height,
But in the world of thought and Mental Might!

3rd August 1818

John Keats' Sonnet.

On the poet-
John Keats(1795-1821) came from a family of modest condition faced with the early death of his parents. Attacked by consumption and agonized by a hopeless, unrequited love, Keats died young in 1821.

Autos

2011-05-08T15:53:00.000+05:30

Black and Yellow.

Yellow and Black.

Just Right.

Excerpts from "Eleven Minutes'

2011-05-02T16:00:00.001+05:30

HYMN TO ISIS
For I am the first and the last
I am the venerated and the despised
I am the prostitute and the saint
I am the wife and the virgin
I am the mother and the daughter
I am the arms of my mother
I am the barren and my children are many
I am the married woman and the spinster
I am the woman who gives birth and she who never procreated
I am the consolation for the pain of birth
I am the wife and the husband
And he is my rejection
Always respect me
For I am the shameful and the magnificent one.

At every moment of our lives we all have one foot in a fairy tale and the other in the abyss.

How is it possible for the beauty that was there only minutes before to vanquish so quickly?

Sometimes you get no second chance and that it’s best to accept the gifts the world offers you.

If I must be faithful, I have first of all, to be faithful to myself.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Courtesy: ELEVEN MINUTES by Paulo Coelho.

'C' for Clothes!

2011-04-30T15:54:00.000+05:30

Kadleikai

2011-04-24T19:19:00.000+05:30

Significance

2011-04-16T20:58:00.003+05:30

[Sanskrit]
Mamavatu Sri Sarasvati
Kamakoti peta NiVasini
Komalakara Saroja Drita Veena
Seematita Vara Vak
Vibhushani
Rajadiraja Poojita Charane
Rajiva Nayane
Ramaniya Vadane
Sujana Manorata poorana Chature
Nijaguna shobhita manimaya haare
Ajabhava vandinta
Vasudeva
Charanarchita Sakala Veda Sara

(Saraswati
You who reside in the temple of Kamakoti
Rescue me

Bearing lotus and veena
In your beautiful hands
You give truth to speech
Your feet are worshipped by Emperors and Kings
Your eyes are as wild as Rajiva flowers
And your beauty bewitches

Garlanded with gems
You fulfill the desires of the good
Indra himself bown down before you
I, Vasudeva, am your servant
For you are the divine word in its essence)
[Lyrics Courtesy-"Mamavatu" By Susheela Raman"]

For the M-Monkey in you.

2011-04-16T20:38:00.001+05:30

BANANARAMA.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/amruthabushan/3759098372/sizes/z/in/photostream/

A dance Around the memory Tree

2011-04-16T20:30:00.002+05:30

Words we have said
Grew in my head
Colored my thoughts
Sang me to bed

Lost memories
Grew into trees
Covered the doors
Swallowed the keys

Winters have come and gone
You know
Winters have come and gone
You know
But I'll meet you young and free
For a dance 'round the memory tree

Said I forgot
But I did not
Dreams we have had
Play in my head

Did we believe
The cry of the leaves?
Did we regret?
Would we forget?

Winters have come and gone
You know
Winters have come and gone
You know
But I'll meet you young and free
For a dance 'round the memory tree

('A Dance Around the Memory Tree' -OREN LAVIE)

Being and knowing

2011-04-16T02:46:00.001+05:30

The city of men and women. Young and old. All knew the Koel. Ebony feathered, plain, morbid. With her small sweet voice and common appeal. She could more than sing. She would talk to everyone in the city. About real things. Things that really really matter. Groceries, bills, business deals, jobs, and important things. The koel had more to her than her small sweet voice. She had societal understanding and impact. Sadly for the koel, there came a day that a Nightingale befell the city - of the young and old. Of men and women. She drew their attention with her massive charm beauty and melody. But the nightingale could but only sing. She could but only be. Like the naive self absorbed frog in the well. She could be in both land and sea. Like a mythical creature. For she swam like a fish, lest like the mermaid. The nightingale would sing. All day all night. She would sing for love. She would sing for joy. She would sing for her own melody's sake. The city was drawn to her rare being. She sang songs for no reason. With no purpose. With no intentions. Neither for praise nor attention. Neither for them nor the koel. She sang her way. Her, her melody and the existence merging as one. She sang for all of life. The city of the young and old- men and women- the city of people with purpose, could not comprehend the purposeless creature. Their only bond with the nightingale was their 'amusement'. Their 'curiosity'. Which only lead to more curiosity. Questions- like- where is she from? Why does she claim to be unlike us? Why wont she talk like the rest of us? Eventually the koel heard of her too. The koel thought to herself - the nightingale was a joke. A silly myth. But after seeing the nightingale, the koel began pondering like the rest. Thus the koel went on to call the nightingale- A farce. A non comprehensible creature demanding attention. A creature worthy of contempt. A show of ridicule. She conviced the city dwellers of the same. She promised them welfare in the form of undue wealth and credit. Some of which were rightfully the nightingale's. Under the condition that the nightingale be gotten rid of. She had begun to eat away the koel's peace of mind, with her controversial fame and attraction. But the koel within her deepest self, a place of conscience knew better. The koel tried with much desperation and exasperation- to do all things the nightigale did. She mimiced the nightingale endlessly. In vain. The koel knew. The koel knew. Like she knew from the beginning. The koel knew.

Once

2011-04-16T02:02:00.000+05:30

Are you really here?
Or am i dreaming..
I cant tell dreams from truth.
For its been so long, since i have seen you- I can hardly remember your face anymore.
When i get really lonely, and the distance causes only silence. I think of you smiling, with pride in your eyes, a lover that sighs.
--chorus--
are you really sure, that you believe me...
When others say i lie.
I wonder if you could ever despise me, when you know i really tried...
--- ---
i'd do what you ask me, if you let me be, free...

Lyrics courtesy- Marketa irglova and Glen Hansard(if you want me)

As without, so within

2011-04-09T22:58:00.001+05:30

When you look up at the clear sky at night, you may easily realize a truth at once utterly simple and extraordinarily profound. What is it that you see? The moon, planets, stars, the luminous band of the milky way, perhaps a comet or even the neighbouring Andromeda galaxy two million light years away. Yes, but if you 'simplify' even more, what do you see? Objects floating in space. So what does the universe consist of? Objects and space.

If you dont become speechless when looking out into space on a clear night, you are not really looking, not aware of the totality of what is there. You are probably only looking at the objects and perhaps seeking to name them. If you have ever experienced a sense of awe when looking into space, perhaps even felt a deep reverence in the face of this incomprehensible mystery, it means you must have relinquished for a moment your desire to explain and label and have become aware not only of the objects in space but of the infinite depth of space itself. You must have become still enough inside to notice the vastness in which these countless worlds exist. The feeling of awe is not derived from the fact that there are billions of worlds out there, but the depth that contains them all.

The Upanishads, the ancient scriptures of India, point to the same truth with these words: "What cannot be seen with the eye, but that whereby the eye can see:know that alone to be Brahman the spirit and not what people here adore. What cannot be heard with the ear but that whereby the ear can hear: know that alone to be Brahman the spirit and not what people here adore.... What cannot be thought with the mind, but that whereby the mind can think: know that alone to be Brahman the Spirit and not what people here adore."
- Excerpts from A NEW EARTH. (Awakening to your life's purpose)

The Frog and the Nightingale

2011-04-04T16:09:00.001+05:30

'Dearest frog,' the nightingale Breathed:'This is a fairy tale- And you're Mozart in disguise. Come to earth before my eyes.' 'Well, I charge a modest fee.' 'Oh!' 'But it wont hurt, you'll see.'

Now the nightingale,inspired, Flushed with confidence, and fired, With both art and adoration, Sang- and was a huge sensation. Animals for miles around, flocked towards the magic sound, And the frog with great precision, Counted heads and charged admission.

Though next morning it was raining, He began her vocal training.
(BEASTLY TALES from here and there- by Vikram Seth)

The Louse and the Mosquito

2011-04-04T14:32:00.000+05:30

Leapt upon the royal back, And with fierce and fiery sting, Deeply dirked the dozing king.
'Help! A Scorpion! A Snake!' screamed the King, at once awake. 'I've been bitten! Search the bed! Find and strike the creature dead!' When they made a close inspection- The mosquito foiled detection, Hidden in the canopy; But the louse clan could not flee. All were killed without ado. Meanwhile, the mosquito flew, Looking out for further prey, Humming mildly on his way. (BEASTLY TALES from here and there- by Vikram Seth.)

Press and democracy

2011-03-31T19:04:00.001+05:30

In a democratic country like ours, the press is the strongest means of communication. It makes the functioning of a democratic government ethical. It helps in portraying the image of such a government as a citizen friendly & reliable one. People can express their appreciation or grievances in a precise manner through the press, which acts as a reliable mediator. Every newspaper, magazine or any other form of press may not contain the same news & definitely not in the same way. By understanding & assimilating all these different viewpoints, we can draw our own conclusions of the happenings.... But at the same time it is important to do so without including the various biases that surround the situation. For instance, newspaper agencies or the media may be owned or even controlled by a person or a group of people who may use it to push forward their opinions and interests. The opinion, or viewpoint of the paper you read or the news you may watch on the tv, may not correspond to that of yours. It may be influenced by the policy of that particular media group or agency. That is, the same happening will look different to the person, to whom it happens & to the person who sees it happening. So, though freedom of the press is important, your own judgemental power plays a key role.

Freedom

2011-03-29T14:31:00.002+05:30

Freedom means understanding. One has understood the game, and seeing that this is the way that the soul is prevented from growing, the way one is not allowed to be oneself, one simply gets out of it with no scar on the soul. One forgives and forgets, and remains without any clinging to the society in the name of love or in the name of hate. Society has simply disappeared to the rebel. He may live in the world or he may go out of the world, but he belongs to it no more; he is an outsider. "The crowd never forgives strangers, the crowd never forgives outsiders, it destroys them. It has to destroy them just for its own peace of mind." Courtesy: Freedom-The courage to be yourself. (OSHO's recorded lectures/St. Martin's Griffin publication)

Reality- for Real?

2011-03-24T20:14:00.004+05:30

A Bookshop.
A possible destination for someone who forgets to borrow a text book from the library?
Evening Air. Evening Traffic. Evening crowd.
An hour or a little more,before dusk.
After appearing important with unintended quick footsteps that carry a heavy backpack- A weary saturated student(Myself,only. Hello. Applause? thank you.) finds a luggage locker to her relief.
An old, feeble,almost well dressed, man, takes care of the luggage locker.
I am handed over a key.
Another vain attempt at finding the right textbook. I settle for whatever I can find.
After billing,I hand over the locker key to this old man. I ask him to open the locker for me.
He does as asked. Kindly so. With a gentle smile.
I instinctively want to acknowledge and respect that. I offer a 5 Re Coin.
He shies away. I ask him to accept it, again, affirmatively this time.
He takes it,with a smile that suppreses fear and eyes that look around anxiously.
Why?
Because the 5 Re coin is not 'honestly' a part of his monthly pay? Because his position and stature cannot defend a questioning official?
Maybe.
Or is it because he already knows that in a place like his-even an iota of 'dishonesty' could land him in trouble?

Is this the secret language of reality?
The reality, we are welcomed to, everyday, even without our consent?

The Monk With Sweaty Palms.

2011-03-20T10:12:00.000+05:30

Kasan,a Zen teacher and monk, was to officiate at a funeral of a famous nobleman. As he stood there waiting for the governor of the province and other lords and ladies to arrive, he noticed that the palms of his hands were sweaty. The next day he called his disciples together and confessed he was not yet ready to be a true teacher. He explained to them that he still lacked the sameness of bearing before all human beings, whether beggar or king. He was still unable to look through social roles and conceptual identities and see the sameness of being in every human. He then left and became the pupil of another teacher. He returned to his former disciples eight years later, enlightened. Excerpts from 'A NEW EARTH' (awakening to your life's purpose)

Approval

2011-01-19T01:04:00.001+05:30

"We are just monkeys, wrapped in suits, begging for approval." - Jake Green:THE REVOLVER. courtesy Leeladhar Bhovi/ Lee Bhovi.

Battle Strategies for the "Strong"

2011-01-15T16:45:00.003+05:30

Strategy 1:
Coercion,Control,Power.
Coercion,Control,Power.
Coercion Control,Power.

Strategy 2:
Confidence Trick.
"Oooh I have been through So-o-o mooch in laife!"
Response: "Oh Me too.. look this, this, ___,___, also happened to me."
Information Obtained. woohoo!

Strategy 3:
Pinch the baby,make it cry.
Then sing it a lullaby!

Strategy 4:
While I write a Blog post, you do the job of saving it prior to I publishing it :D
AWW. smart ass! :)

Strategy 5:
Highlight and exaggerate mistakes and insecurities.
Use them as your tool to defame thy enamiee.

And for you to think I am a victim of thy folly!

Oh how i can forget the Death Threats!?! Icing on zhee cake! :D

Illusions

2010-12-10T14:26:00.003+05:30

"Don! Are you OK?"
He opened his eyes and smiled. His own blood was sprayed wet across his face.
"Richard,what does it look like?"
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Is this how it ends,I thought, is everything a master says, just pretty words that can't save him from the first attack of some mad dog in a farmer's field?
I had to read three times before I could believe these were the words on the page.

"Everything in this book may be wrong."

Excerpts from ILLUSIONS-The adventures of a Reluctant Messiah.

Na Thukaram Alla

2010-11-23T17:25:00.004+05:30

Play: Na Thukaram Alla
Venue : Ranga Shankara
Price: Rs.100
Date and time : 21st November,2010.(7:30pm)
Duration: 150(woah) minutes.

Watching a play like this can have consequences such as:
*Discussing your regional background with a fellow kannadiga
*Sudden snorts of laughter
*Becoming aware of diversities in one's regional language
*A growling tummy compensated with a break of sabudana vadas :))
*An extremely worried and annoyed parent waiting for you at the entrance :D(re:150 mins)

Thanksgiving

2010-11-13T04:28:00.001+05:30

" ... And i thank thee lord; That you have enabled - Me to do many things. I can - I believe - Since they have no motive, nor an intent. No point. Just your grace. A name with no face. Your fragrance, of touch - Let it lift me high and nigh... I thank thee."

New Shoes!

2010-11-11T20:13:00.002+05:30

"Hey, I put some new shoes on,
and suddenly everything is right,
I said, hey, I put some new shoes on and everybody's smiling,
it so inviting,
Oh, short on money,
but long on time,
slowly strolling in the sweet sunshine,
and i'm running late,
and i don't need an excuse,
'cause i'm wearing my brand new shoes!"

Lyrics Courtesy : Paolo Nutini- New Shoes.

Still

2010-11-07T01:42:00.000+05:30

Trampled-
Judged,
Speculated,
Chained.
Controlled and Coerced. Still the beauty reigns. The essence untouched. Fragile, Vulnerable; quiet - Slowly, silently - It continues to grow. The flame unput - Still aglow.

Yellowed

2010-10-08T21:12:00.001+05:30

Hallowed be thy name.

Enter - The door;

Of power, games and fame.

Yellowed.

(NB - attempt at Haiku. Couldnt resist the influence :( )

songs

2010-10-05T18:46:00.008+05:30

Ten Thousand of your long dark hair-

Paving me the path,

To your glory; your crown : Your heart.

I abstain. I fear - Grandeur.

Grandeur of Life.

Life as is supposed to be.

Children -

They run across the streets.

They laugh; Hymns of joy..

Sounds like thy name.

Music put to shame.

reach out - i try.

the harder I try;

The bigger the gaps grow -

Hollow.

The longer the hours spent,

in your glory -

All but a memory.

Fear

2010-08-25T17:45:00.003+05:30

* Shringara

* Hasya

* Adbhuta

* Shanta

* Raudra

* Veera

* Karuna

* Bhayanaka

* Vibhatsa

The cheapest commodity: Fear.

Even animals react to it.

2010-08-23T18:27:00.001+05:30

In our World...

2010-08-19T00:20:00.003+05:30

So many names, so many chances,

So many days; and in so many ways..

Thou art special. Lead, and Thou - I shall follow.

2010-06-01T01:53:00.001+05:30

Thirsty Mursty

2010-05-27T00:24:00.006+05:30

Read Between the Lines ..

There's a bulk of truths

And a bulk of lies;

Think with your heart

Read between the lines.

Text courtesy : "Read Between the Lines" Bonobo.

2010-05-27T00:03:00.001+05:30

Rows and Columns.

2010-05-16T01:09:00.004+05:30

This one step...

2010-05-13T18:05:00.000+05:30

Evil Eye

2010-05-08T10:23:00.003+05:30

Angels/Demons

me and you?

Humans?

Space

2010-05-07T18:25:00.002+05:30

Space-That Parts;That Holds; All Things.

Slick

2010-05-07T17:42:00.001+05:30

Slicker than thou.

Auto/Auto/Auto

2010-05-04T23:32:00.001+05:30

I look.

I keep Looking.

For that One-

One empty Auto.

2010-05-01T08:51:00.001+05:30

Gullabbe

Pann

Colored Tongue

sleep sleep. sleep.

2010-04-28T03:21:00.001+05:30

sleep sleep. sleep.
Originally uploaded by Amrutha Bushan

One rainy afternoon.
sleep calls these weary eyes..to, sleep sleep sleep. sleep now darling.

2010-04-25T22:36:00.000+05:30

Finally!
Finally..im a Pro!!!
:D
Wooo!

ಇಡ್ಲಿ ವಡೆ ಸಂಬ್ಹರ್

2010-04-22T23:14:00.002+05:30

Idli Vadai Sambhar

TV

2010-04-16T19:30:00.005+05:30

Its been easily, about a year and a half since i watched Television.(no,really)
Today, when i did sit for lunch at the table, the little monster in the house had Cartoon Network running.. And something was unsual about the Program. The characters looked familiar and well, made me nostalgic*, then it hit me..that it was the Amar Chitra Katha series which were being aired.
Ah, just the sight of it made my day!

*Me and Harshu had our very own mini lib of ACK books and we made good money of Rs.65 in a week. way back in 1998 :))

Laundry

2010-04-16T01:39:00.000+05:30

Laundry

Coffee

2010-04-16T01:18:00.000+05:30

Coffee

Pro Photo Or so..

2010-04-13T19:12:00.003+05:30

Clothing and Men

Soccer

2010-04-12T20:32:00.009+05:30

I have never been into sports..ever. The closest ive gotten is to watch a Wimbledon match. That too for some bizarre reason like-the green court and the players in white is so eye candy :D

Anyhoo, the point being, recently a very dear friend of mine comes up with a "poem" for a footballer .. apparently, the guy saved the day for his team etc :D

Here's the link to that post :
Stevie G

For those like me, who have no idea who Stevie G is.. Here's
the enlightening note.

Hey Amrutha,

Stevie G is the nick name for Steven Gerard. He's the captain of Liverpool Football Club.
The poem is about one game, it was the final of the most reputed tournament in club football.
well basically - Liverpool were playing agains AC Milan (The team I support) and AC Milan is huge in Europe!
So in the first of two halves, AC Milan was up 3-0.
Everyone thought the game was over.
But Steven Gerrard orchestrated an attack and helped Liverpool score 3 goals in just 6 minutes of the 2nd half.
He pumped his players and supporters like insane.
Liverpool went on to win the game; which has now gone down in football history as the most amazing game of football ever played.

This is a short clip out of a documentary which was made about that game.
It's fucking beautiful!!
Anyway, I was watching this video while I wrote the poem. :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHtjmofqBeM

Seriously, this is one of those folklore things!!

Think how beautiful that game must have been for me to write a poem after my team lost!

Vishal

Quote

2010-04-07T16:49:00.004+05:30

M: "I think we both are against the system so much that we dont have an internal system anymore!"

New Music Muse

2010-03-12T21:17:00.004+05:30

*Susheela Raman*

Spirited moods, elated lives, Joyous days and Peaceful Nights. So glad to have found her work! ( :

Music on my mind -- Ketto by BONOBO.

2010-03-04T00:47:00.003+05:30

KETTO

Thanks to archana's and priyanka's classes.. I cant get this out of my mind ( :

2010-03-03T21:14:00.002+05:30

Allow me to repeat,.. someone very dear and her wise wise words --

Each one of us here today will,at one time in our lives... look upon a loved one who is in need and ask the same question.
"We are willing to help, Lord... but what, if anything, is needed?"

It is true we can seldom help those closest to us. Either we don't know what part of ourselves to give...or more often than not,the part we have to give... is not wanted.
And so it is those we live with and should know who elude us..

but we can still love them.
We can love completely...
without complete understanding.

Its amazing how..

2010-03-01T23:04:00.003+05:30

You can know a person who has the aesthetics to appreciate Nina Simone's Music and yet the galls to spit on the streets..
Its amazing..

Citizen Josh

2010-02-28T00:23:00.003+05:30

A monologue .. amazing amazing performance by the legendary(ahem!) Josh Kornbluth..
ladies and gentlemen I present to you.. Citizen Josh

An excerpt: A Jonathan Reinis Production, ‘Citizen Josh’is written and performed by Josh Kornbluth in collaboration with Arena’s Associate Artistic Director David Dower. In this production, Kornbluth examines and engages the fundamentals of democracy through his entertaining and moving autobiographical stories.

In 1980, Josh met every requirement to graduate from Princeton except one — he didn’t do his “senior thesis.” Now, over a quarter-century later, he tracks down his old advisor, a brilliant political theorist named Sheldon Wolin. Josh asks Wolin to help him complete his long-overdue thesis, on the subject of democracy. Josh’s explorations of political theory soon bring him into the “real” political world — as he finds himself at the center of a number of grassroots protests involving his local playground, state education funding, and even global warming. Including a pivotal encounter with former U.S. Vice-President Al Gore, this tale blends recent electoral history with stories from the Civil Rights movement and academia.

Mr. Josh Kornbluth is the author and performer of the celebrated monologues Love & Taxes, Ben Franklin: Unplugged and Citizen Josh, among others. From 2006 to 2008 he hosted the weekly KQED-TV program “The Josh Kornbluth Show,” interviewing such figures as Annie Leibovitz, Alan Alda, Helen Mirren and Michael Tilson.

I still cant get over his shiny head and the unique slurp from the saucer. The show was at Ranga Shankara on the 19th of August(and the weekend close by-i think! if i remember right)On the occasion of treating a friend the tickets were brought for the play..with the presumption that "Citizen Josh" stood for "Citizen जोश" and mentally preparing myself to stand a couple of hours of hindi theatre simultaneously pleasing the friend that he got to watch a Hindi play.. but i was in for a pleasant surprise -- The play was Citizen Josh(:D) and an amazing single act of monologue by an infamous Princeton dropout Josh Kornbluth :D oh by the way, the play was worth every rupee and every minute of my time :))

Hedda Gabler

2010-02-14T14:07:00.007+05:30

*First play I attended with an intermission.
*Very first play where I couldnt stop fidgeting
*Surprisingly I was more interested in the food than what happened in the audi..
*2 entire hours of glum :|
*but yes,Jørgen Tesman is somewhat delightful

Hedda Gabler- Originally a Norwegian play written by Henrik Ibsen,also famously made into a sensational Broadway, present day India gets to watch Hedda Gabler protogonised by the almost well known Sheeba Chada.
Intense,Dark and Deliberate..

Here's a famous quote from the play.
"Yes, courage... if only one had that... then maybe life would be tolerable, after all..." HEDDA GABLER.

and, the friend exclaims -
You've taken me to the best & the worst plays I have ever been to :P

Memories that make the Heart sing..

2010-02-11T01:04:00.005+05:30

I was reading a friend's blog and it got me thinking how things from Childhood remain unfazed in the Heart. You may experience a thousand different things growing up..but none compare to the allure and transparency of Childhood. For most of us i think this holds true..
Here are some of my 7-8yr old days' highlights..

*Yanni's Music - I know he is no longer in the Music scene but few have surpassed his musical ability to make the heart soar to celestial places!

*Tinkle club - My neighborhood club of its own..Under the guidance of Editor-in-chief of Amar Chitra Katha Mr.Anant Pai (Uncle pai :D) god, we did most of what we do now in college fests back in the early 90s itself.. from Painting/art/craft Exhibitions to our very own mini libraries toCooking competitions to Badminton tournaments.. ( : suprising how ive regressed..boo :|

*Yardley talcum Powder - My favorite aunt used this all the time.. i think english roses or something .. the smell is still so fresh in my memory..

*Amar Chitra Katha Books - The Ramayana, Jataka Tales, The greedy mother in law :D,and the fortnightly tinkle subscriptions.. oh gosh..it makes me teary eyed..

*Chocolate halwa - My super duper hit for Cooking Competitions :D..psst,mail me if u want the recipe.. :D

*Unit tests - Scores ranging a x/y range of weirdness.. 3/10,7/10,..its a UT afterall :D

*Pop music - Yes, i was one kid who grew up on pop music.. hello we're talking about the year 1997-98..BSB all time fav :)) somehow i dont know many who like pop music :/

*Doordarshan- Surabhi every sunday night.. Small wonder,..somehow the hindi version was funnier :D

Well, that quote is sure a wise one.. The kingdom of heaven belongs to children?..

I want!!!!!!

2010-02-11T00:43:00.002+05:30

Nikon D..sigh..!!

Only some things can get as good..

Songs on my mind right now..

2010-01-31T13:50:00.004+05:30

*Humuhumunukunukuaoua'a -- (bonus track- HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL :D)
*You'll never find another love like mine - Lou Rawls
*Me and Mrs.Jones -Billy Paul
*I'll be there - Jackson 5 (its amusing how 10 yr old michael's voice is hard to miss..)
*Kiss and say Goodbye - The Manhattans.

The above songs may be just a handful,but God they are stuck in my head like a broken record..Wurrr!

Jim Carrey ( :

2010-01-27T22:59:00.001+05:30

2010-01-17T22:33:00.001+05:30

Here is a friend cheering me up for my latest disappointment at my phrases being plagiarised.

"Wise men make proverbs.Fools repeat them."

Ohwell!

2009-10-05T01:15:00.003+05:30

Visual Poetry.

Don't worry, its not the Camera..its the person behind it that matters.
- Hellmuth Conz

IRON

2009-09-16T03:33:00.002+05:30

http://www.gittlen.com/rollins.htm

2009-08-17T02:14:00.000+05:30

I believe that today, more than ever, a book should be sought after even if it has only one great page in it. We must search for fragments, splinters, toenails, anything that has ore in it, anything that is capable of resuscitating the body and the soul.
Henry Rollins

Mutiny of the Soul.

2009-07-22T23:24:00.000+05:30

Mutiny of the soul -by Charles Eisenstein.
Depression, anxiety, and fatigue are an essential part of a process of metamorphosis that is unfolding on the planet today, and highly significant for the light they shed on the transition from an old world to a new.
When a growing fatigue or depression becomes serious, and we get a diagnosis of Epstein-Barr or Chronic Fatigue Syndrome or hypothyroid or low serotonin, we typically feel relief and alarm. Alarm: something is wrong with me. Relief: at least I know I'm not imagining things; now that I have a diagnosis, I can be cured, and life can go back to normal. But of course, a cure for these conditions is elusive.
The notion of a cure starts with the question, "What has gone wrong?" But there is another, radically different way of seeing fatigue and depression that starts by asking, "What is the body, in its perfect wisdom, responding to?" When would it be the wisest choice for someone to be unable to summon the energy to fully participate in life?
The answer is staring us in the face. When our soul-body is saying No to life, through fatigue or depression, the first thing to ask is, "Is life as I am living it the right life for me right now?" When the soul-body is saying No to participation in the world, the first thing to ask is, "Does the world as it is presented me merit my full participation?"
What if there is something so fundamentally wrong with the world, the lives, and the way of being offered us, that withdrawal is the only sane response? Withdrawal, followed by a reentry into a world, a life, and a way of being wholly different from the one left behind?
The unspoken goal of modern life seems to be to live as long and as comfortably as possible, to minimize risk and to maximize security. We see this priority in the educational system, which tries to train us to be "competitive" so that we can "make a living". We see it in the medical system, where the goal of prolonging life trumps any consideration of whether, sometimes, the time has come to die. We see it in our economic system, which assumes that all people are motivated by "rational self-interest", defined in terms of money, associated with security and survival. (And have you ever thought about the phrase "the cost of living"?) We are supposed to be practical, not idealistic; we are supposed to put work before play. Ask someone why she stays in a job she hates, and as often as not the answer is, "For the health insurance." In other words, we stay in jobs that leave us feeling dead in order to gain the assurance of staying alive. When we choose health insurance over passion, we are choosing survival over life.
On a deep level, which I call the soul level, we want none of that. We recognize that we are here on earth to enact a sacred purpose, and that most of the jobs on offer are beneath our dignity as human beings. But we might be too afraid to leave our jobs, our planned-out lives, our health insurance, or whatever other security and comfort we have received in exchange for our divine gifts. Deep down, we recognize this security and comfort as slaves' wages, and we yearn to be free.
So, the soul rebels. Afraid to make the conscious choice to step away from a slave's life, we make the choice unconsciously instead. We can no longer muster the energy to go through the motions. We enact this withdrawal from life through a variety of means. We might summon the Epstein-Barr virus into our bodies, or mononucleosis, or some other vector of chronic fatigue. We might shut down our thyroid or adrenal glands. We might shut down our production of serotonin in the brain. Other people take a different route, incinerating the excess life energy in the fires of addiction. Either way, we are in some way refusing to participate. We are shying away from ignoble complicity in a world gone wrong. We are refusing to contribute our divine gifts to the aggrandizement of that world.
That is why the conventional approach of fixing the problem so that we can return to normal life will not work. It might work temporarily, but the body will find other ways to resist. Raise serotonin levels with SSRIs, and the brain will prune some receptor sites, thinking in its wisdom, "Hey, I'm not supposed to feel good about the life I am living right now." In the end, there is always suicide, a common endpoint of the pharmaceutical regimes that seek to make us happy with something inimical to our very purpose and being. You can only force yourself to abide in wrongness so long. When the soul's rebellion is suppressed too long, it can explode outward in bloody revolution. Significantly, all of the school shootings in the last decade have involved people on anti-depression medication. All of them! For a jaw-dropping glimpse of the results of the pharmaceutical regime of control, scroll down this compilation of suicide/homicide cases involving SSRIs. I am not using "jaw-dropping" as a figure of speech. My jaw literally dropped open.
Back in the 1970s, dissidents in the Soviet Union were often hospitalized in mental institutions and given drugs similar to the ones used to treat depression today. The reasoning was that you had to be insane to be unhappy in the Socialist Workers' Utopia. When the people treating depression receive status and prestige from the very system that their patients are unhappy with, they are unlikely to affirm the basic validity of the patient's withdrawal from life. "The system has to be sound -- after all, it validates my professional status -- therefore the problem must be with you."
Unfortunately, "holistic" approaches are no different, as long as they deny the wisdom of the body's rebellion. When they do seem to work, usually that is because they coincide with some other shift. When someone goes out and gets help, or makes a radical switch of modalities, it works as a ritual communication to the unconscious mind of a genuine life change. Rituals have the power to make conscious decisions real to the unconscious. They can be part of taking back one's power.
I have met countless people of great compassion and sensitivity, people who would describe themselves as "conscious" or "spiritual", who have battled with CFS, depression, thyroid deficiency, and so on. These are people who have come to a transition point in their lives where they become physically incapable of living the old life in the old world. That is because, in fact, the world presented to us as normal and acceptable is anything but. It is a monstrosity. Ours is a planet in pain. If you need me to convince you of that, if you are unaware of the destruction of forests, oceans, wetlands, cultures, soil, health, beauty, dignity, and spirit that underlies the System we live in, then I have nothing to say to you. I only am speaking to you if you do believe that there is something deeply wrong with the way we are living on this planet.
A related syndrome comprises various "attention deficit" and anxiety "disorders" (forgive me, I cannot write down these words without the ironic quotation marks) which reflect an unconscious knowledge that something is wrong around here. Anxiety, like all emotions, has a proper function. Suppose you left a pot on the stove and you know you forgot something, you just can't remember what. You cannot rest at ease. Something is bothering you, something is wrong. Subliminally you smell smoke. You obsess: did I leave the water running? Did I forget to pay the mortgage? The anxiety keeps you awake and alert; it doesn't let you rest; it keeps your mind churning, worrying. This is good. This is what saves your life. Eventually you realize -- the house is on fire! -- and anxiety turns into panic, and action.
So if you suffer from anxiety, maybe you don't have a "disorder" at all -- maybe the house is on fire. Anxiety is simply the emotion corresponding to "Something is dangerously wrong and I don't know what it is." That is only a disorder if there is in fact nothing dangerously wrong. "Nothing is wrong, just you" is the message that any therapy gives when it tries to fix you. I disagree with that message. The problem is not with you. You have very good reason to be anxious. Anxiety keeps part of your attention away from your tasks of polishing the silverware as the house burns down, of playing the violin as the Titanic sinks. Unfortunately, the wrongness you are tapping into might be beyond the cognizance of the psychiatrists who treat you, who then conclude that the problem must be your brain.
Similarly, Attention Deficit Disorder, ADHD, and my favorite, Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD) are only disorders if we believe that the things presented for our attention are worth paying attention to. We cannot admit, without calling into question the whole edifice of our school system, that it may be completely healthy for a ten-year-old boy to not sit still for six hours in a classroom learning about long division and Vasco de Gama. Perhaps the current generation of children, that some call the Indigos, simply have a lower tolerance for school's agenda of conformity, obedience, external motivation, right-and-wrong answers, the quantification of performance, rules and bells, report cards and grades and your permanent record. So we try to enforce their attention with stimulants, and subdue their heroic intuitive rebellion against the spirit-wrecking machine.
As I write about the "wrongness" against which we all rebel, I can hear some readers asking, "What about the metaphysical principle that it's 'all good'?" Just relax, I am told, nothing is wrong, all is part of the divine plan. You only perceive it as wrong because of your limited human perspective. All of this is only here for our own development. War: it gives people wonderful opportunities to make heroic choices and burn off bad karma. Life is wonderful, Charles, why do you have to make it wrong?
I am sorry, but usually such reasoning is just a sop to the conscience. If it is all good, then that is only because we perceive and experience it as terribly wrong. The perception of iniquity moves us to right it.
Nonetheless, it would be ignorant and fruitless to pass judgment upon those who do not see anything wrong, who, oblivious to the facts of destruction, think everything is basically fine. There is a natural awakening process, in which first we proceed full speed ahead participating in the world, believing in it, seeking to contribute to the Ascent of Humanity. Eventually, we encounter something that is undeniably wrong, perhaps a flagrant injustice or a serious health problem or a tragedy near at hand. Our first response is to think this is an isolated problem, remediable with some effort, within a system that is basically sound. But when we try to fix it, we discover deeper and deeper levels of wrongness. The rot spreads; we see that no injustice, no horror can stand in isolation. We see that the disappeared dissidents in South America, the child laborers in Pakistan, the clearcut forests of the Amazon, are all intimately linked together in a grotesque tapestry that includes every aspect of modern life. We realize that the problems are too big to fix. We are called to live in an entirely different way, starting with our most fundamental values and priorities.
All of us go through this process, repeatedly, in various realms of our lives; all parts of the process are right and necessary. The phase of full participation is a growth phase in which we develop gifts that will be applied very differently later. The phase of trying to fix, to endure, to soldier on with a life that isn't working is a maturation phase that develops qualities of patience and determination and strength. The phase of discovering the all-encompassing nature of the problem is usually a phase of despair, but it need not be. Properly, it is a phase of rest, of stillness, of withdrawal, of preparation for a push. The push is a birth-push. Crises in our lives converge and propel us into a new life, a new being that we hardly imagine could exist, except that we'd heard rumors of it, echoes, and maybe even caught a glimpse of it here and there, been granted through grace a brief preview.
If you are in the midst of this process, you need not suffer if you cooperate with it. I can offer you two things. First is self-trust. Trust your own urge to withdraw even when a million messages are telling you, "The world is fine, what's wrong with you? Get with the program." Trust your innate belief that you are here on earth for something magnificent, even when a thousand disappointments have told you you are ordinary. Trust your idealism, buried in your eternal child's heart, that says that a far more beautiful world than this is possible. Trust your impatience that says "good enough" is not good enough. Do not label your noble refusal to participate as laziness and do not medicalize it as an illness. Your heroic body has merely made a few sacrifices to serve your growth.
The second thing I can offer you is a map. The journey I have described is not always linear, and you may find yourself from time to time revisiting earlier territory. When you find the right life, when you find the right expression of your gifts, you will receive an unmistakable signal. You will feel excited and alive. Many people have preceded you on this journey, and many more will follow in times to come. Because the old world is falling apart, and the crises that initiate the journey are converging upon us. Soon many people will follow the paths we have pioneered. Each journey is unique, but all share the same basic dynamics I have described. When you have passed through it, and understood the necessity and rightness of each of its phases, you will be prepared to midwife others through it as well. Your condition, all the years of it, has prepared you for this. It has prepared you to ease the passage of those who will follow. Everything you have gone through, every bit of the despair, has been necessary to forge you into a healer and a guide. The need is great. The time is coming soon.

x-static Process

2009-07-16T15:36:00.002+05:30

I'm not myself when you're around
I'm not myself standing in a crowd
I'm not myself and I don't know how
I'm not myself, myself right now

Chorus:

Jesus Christ will you look at me
Don't know who I'm supposed to be
Don't really know if I should give a damn
When you're around, I don't know who I am

I'm not myself when you go quiet
I'm not myself alone at night
I'm not myself, don't know who to call
I'm not myself at all

(chorus)

I always wished that I could find someone as beautiful as you
But in the process I forgot that I was special too

I'm not myself when you're around
I'm not myself when you go quiet
I'm not myself all alone at night
I'm not myself standing in a crowd
I'm not myself and I don't know how
I'm not myself, myself right now
Don't know what I believe

Jesus Christ will you look at me
Don't know who I'm supposed to be
Someone say if I should give a damn
When you're around, I don't know who I am

I always wished that I could find someone as beautiful as you
But in the process I forgot that I was special too
I always wished that I could find someone as talented as you
But in the process I forgot that I was just as good as you

written by Madonna and Mirwais Ahmadzai

Man in the mirror

2009-06-27T00:54:00.003+05:30

"Why not just tell people I'm an alien from Mars. Tell them I eat live chickens and do a voodoo dance at midnight. They'll believe anything you say, because you're a reporter. But if I, Michael Jackson, were to say, 'I'm an alien from Mars and I eat live chickens and do a voodoo dance at midnight,' people would say, 'Oh, man, that Michael Jackson is nuts. He's cracked up. You can't believe a damn word that comes out of his mouth'."
—Michael Jackson

2009-06-25T01:33:00.000+05:30

In these dark nights
Embezzled with terror and fear
There rises a flame. Just a flicker.
Of love, bliss and a person who knows.
This person who is me.
He that was abandoned with hands that trembled-
To embrace the massiveness of faith. And hope.

Miles Away

2009-06-12T23:04:00.004+05:30

Love,love the song!

I just woke up from a fuzzy dream
You never would believe the things that I have seen
I looked in the mirror, and I saw your face
You looked right through me; you were miles away

All my dreams, they fade away
I'll never be the same
If you could see me the way you see yourself
I can't pretend to be someone else

You always love me more
Miles away
I hear it in your voice when you're
Miles away
You're not afraid to tell me
Miles away
I guess we're at our best when we're
Miles away

So far away, so far away
So far away, so far away
So far away, so far away
So far away, so far away

When no one's around, and I have you here
I begin to see the picture, it becomes so clear
You always have the biggest heart
When we're six thousand miles apart

Too much of no sound
Uncomfortable silence can be so loud
Those three words are never enough
When it's long distance love

You always love me more
Miles away
I hear it in your voice when you're
Miles away
You're not afraid to tell me
Miles away
I guess we're at our best when we're
Miles away

So far away, so far away
So far away, so far away
So far away, so far away
So far away, so far away

I'm alright, don't be sorry, but it's true
When I'm gone, you'll realize
That I'm the best thing to happen to you

You always love me more
Miles away
I hear it in your voice when you're
Miles away
You're not afraid to tell me
Miles away
I guess we're at our best when we're
Miles away

'Miles Away' - Madonna/Hard Candy

psst! the song was released on my birthday. so the obvious extra admiration, i guess :D

2009-05-07T22:16:00.003+05:30

Morning walks! Anticipation! Butterflies!
:D

Moonshine and Skytoffee

2009-04-23T18:05:00.003+05:30

My dear Saramma,

How does my dear comrade spend this all too

brief phase of existence when life is bubbling with

Youth and the Heart is fragrant with Love?

As for me, my life passes moment by moment

in the love of Saramma. And you Saramma?

Begging of you to think it over well and bless me

with a sweet,kind reply.

Saramma's own,

Keshavan Nayar.

Original title 'Prema Lekhanam' (By Vaikom Muhammad Basheer) Published as a novelette in 1943

A very happy play performed by PERCH(Chennai) at Ranga Shankara. Congratulation to the director Rajiv Krishnan and the crew.

I seldom come out of the theatre hall smiling to myself ( :

Thank you so much for the lovely show! ( :

--
Meowrr!

Why the Now is bliss (courtesy-theage.com.au)

2009-04-13T03:27:00.006+05:30

For the best part of two years in the early 1980s a man in his mid-30s would sit on a park bench in Russell Square, central London, and in a state of deep bliss watch the world go by.

When winter crept in, Eckhart Tolle, a German-born linguist who had once been thought to hold great academic promise, would retreat into the University of London Library nearby and pore over esoteric books. And word spread among students that this man was no ordinary drifter but a modern mystic who had undergone an extraordinary inner transformation.

A man, indeed, who was spiritually enlightened.

Twenty years later, Eckhart Tolle (pronounced Toll-ee) says that while “there are shifts in intensity”, he remains in the same state of “bliss and peace”.

He no longer sits on a park bench but lives in a high-rise in Vancouver and teaches others how to attain enlightenment, among them Gillian Anderson of The X Files; Cher, who says he “has changed my life”; and Meg Ryan, who introduced Oprah Winfrey to Tolle’s first book, The Power of Now: A Spiritual Guide to Enlightenment.

Last year, Winfrey chose the book for her Favourite Things show, saying she had read it eight times and keeps it on her bedside table. Sales skyrocketed: The Power of Now — with an original print run of 3000 — became No. 1 on Amazon.com and spent 20 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, selling more than one million copies in North America. Released in Australia in 2000, it was still on the top 10 list this year, and has been translated into more than two dozen languages.

Tolle’s second book, Stillness Speaks, was released here earlier this month and publisher Hodder Headline says both books are selling well..

When I first met Tolle — a slight man with soft, grey-blue eyes and a goatee beard — he by no means exuded charisma. Rather, the air of a shy professor. He spoke with a faint German accent, his conversation frequently punctuated by staccato laughs so fierce as to make his shoulders shake. Nothing, it seemed, was to be taken too seriously — least of all his international success.

The essence of his teachings, he says, is that the present moment is the most meaningful in life. By aligning with “the now”, he says, “you are also aligned with life itself. You experience coincidences.

“Suddenly just the right thing happens at the right moment. Or you become more intuitive, more creative. Many deep insights and realisations come out of being present.”

Written in a question and answer format, The Power of Now explores perennial spiritual problems: how to overcome the feeling of separation, the meaning of surrender, how to avoid pain. It requires the reader to let go of preconceived ideas and focus less on what he or she does and more on being.

Tolle asks the reader “not to stop thinking, but to step out of being completely entangled in the stream of thinking”. This, he believes, “is the the real meaning of spirituality. People still think spirituality is having certain belief systems — in God or angels — but ‘spiritual’ means to be able to step beyond the conceptual reality in your head. In other words, accessing the dimension of stillness within yourself.”

Does he consider himself enlightened? “Well, one could say that,” he says, and pauses. “But that leads to delusion. When one says I’m enlightened or you are enlightened, that enlightenment is a personal achievement or possession or some kind of attainment.”

He feels his way cautiously. “There is simply a state of peace, clarity and aliveness.”

It wasn’t always so. Brought up near Cologne in Germany as Ulrich Tolle, he had a miserable childhood, largely because his parents constantly argued. “Even aged 10 or 11 I was trying to figure out ways I could commit suicide.”

Refusing to go to school, he was taught at home and learnt several languages, as well as studying philosophy and astronomy. At 19, he moved to London where he worked in a language school teaching businessmen.

But “suffering from depression, anxiety and fear”, he started “searching for answers to life”. Believing these lay in philosophy and literature, he took evening classes, and then went on to King’s College, London. He was 27. “For a moment I thought, ‘I’ve finally made it’. And then after a few weeks I got depressed again.”

One night shortly after his 29th birthday, Tolle says he was in a state of suicidal despair. “I couldn’t live with myself any longer. And this question arose without an answer: who is the ‘I’ that cannot live with the self? What is the self? I felt drawn into a void. I didn’t know at the time that what really happened was the mind-made self, with its heaviness, its problems, that lives between the unsatisfying past and fearful future, collapsed. It dissolved.”

He pauses and reflects. “The next morning I woke up and everything was so peaceful. The peace was there because there was no self. Just a sense of presence or “beingness”, just observing and watching.” He laughs lightly. “I had no explanation for this.”

In his mid-30s he lost interest in research and abandoned academia, drifting for two years, staying with friends or occasionally in a Buddhist monastery, sitting on park benches and sleeping rough on Hampstead Heath. His family thought him “irresponsible, even insane”.

It was, though, after this “lost” period that people — former Cambridge students, those he met by chance, friends — started to ask Tolle questions about his beliefs.

More students gravitated towards Tolle over the next five years, and he moved to Glastonbury — the nexus of “alternative living”. In 1993, he arrived in Vancouver. It was there that he wrote the first question in The Power: What is enlightenment?

“I wrote an answer,” he says. “And then a stream of writing happened, which was very empowered, very different from the casual writing I had done before.” It was published in 1997 and has since been described as a “seminal work with a vibrational energy”.

When talking with Tolle, I neither experienced a great sense of awe nor had any momentous revelations. But, as I was leaving, he caught me off guard, and hugged me. It was as though I had been squeezed by a huge force that, nonetheless, trembled like a feather in the wind.

I walked out, and my mind fell quiet. For some reason, I could feel tears in my eyes. Suddenly, everything on that ordinary Kensington Street and in the cafe where I stopped to collect myself, seemed intensely beautiful. I also have no explanation for this. Tolle is now in the limelight. His appearance hasn’t changed much — since “the shift”, he says, he has aged slowly — but his life has.

When I spoke to him last month, he played down the pressures: “I’m not like some gurus who never meet anyone who is not a devotee.” But, he adds, “I do sometimes wear sunglasses when I go out”.

Tolle is keen to emphasise his ordinariness: he says he enjoys simple pleasures — a walk on the beach, shopping in the supermarket, sitting quietly.

He says he doesn’t pay much attention to money, although he jokes that he “should pay more”. He has used his new-found wealth to buy a flat, which overlooks wild parkland, and a car. He says that while he has no intention of setting up an ashram or centre, “it could develop organically”. Still, he has no plans to create an empire or “a heavy commercial structure”.

Munro Magruder, assistant publisher at New World Library, the American publisher that picked up the American rights for Tolle in 1999, says: “The last big best-seller we had was The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success by Deepak Chopra … One of those laws is to practise detachment, but Chopra doesn’t. He is very involved in the business.

(But) Eckhart truly practises detachment. “He’s never asked how many copies of his book we’ve sold, nor enquired about the marketing campaign. He couldn’t care less. He’s only interested in being a teacher, and people resonate with that. He’s the genuine article.”

- Telegraph Magazine

Prayer

2009-04-08T21:28:00.003+05:30

Im ninalu.. (if they were locked)
Daltey Nadivim (doors of the generous)
Daltey Nadivim
Daltey Marom (doors on high)
Im ninalu ..

Staring up into the heavens
In this hell that binds your hands
Will you sacrifice your comfort?
Make your way in a foreign land?
Wrestle with your darkness
Angels call your name
Can you hear what they are saying?
Will you ever be the same?

Mmmmmm
Im ninalu Im ninalu
Mmmmmm
Im ninalu Im ninalu

Remember remember and never forget
All of your life has all been a test

You will find the gate that's open
Even though your spirit's broken

Open up my heart
And cause my lips to speak

Bring the heaven and the stars
Down to earth for me

Im ninalu
Daltey Nadivim
Mmmmmm
Im ninalu Im ninalu
Mmmmmm
Im ninalu Im ninalu
Mmmmmm
Im ninalu im ninalu
Mmmmmm
Im ninalu Im ninalu

El- Hay (god is alive)
El- Hay Marumam Al Keruvim (god is alive, elevated upon cherubs)
Kulam Be-Ruho Ya'alu (everybody in his spirit will rise)

Wrestle with your darkness
Angels call your name
Can you hear what they are saying?
Will you ever be the same?

Mmmmmm
Im ninalu Im ninalu
Mmmmmm
Im ninalu Im ninalu
Mmmmmm
Im ninalu im ninalu
Mmmmmm
Im ninalu Im ninalu

El- Hay (god is alive)
El- Hay Marumam Al Keruvim (god is alive, elevated upon cherubs)

Madonna featuring Isaac(from the album Confessions on a..)

How I feel about you.

2009-04-08T01:40:00.005+05:30

because I wasn't with you all these many years..
Because I didnt let you be you
Taking my own demons and old ghosts to crusades- Lost,
Mostly. Won none.
But now you're here..
So fleeting yet
So real
I've found you My
Dear
but to call you a 'something' again, would be such wrong
cos that would be me who wrote your passionate songs
there we go again with my stupid ol flub Of
making you into all me.

To: The peace that passes all understanding.

2009-04-02T00:06:00.002+05:30

Is this really summer? Bangalore weather is sure crazy. Its summer and I get to see flowers of colors i didnt know existed! On every alternate tree! damnn,where's my Camera when I need it?

Cults and their Onslaught

2009-03-26T18:05:00.001+05:30

We know of all kinds of Cuults and deenominations AND other forms of Fanaticisms.. Religious fanatics,moralists,political cults and fanatics,and da da da da das and yayayayayas! but then there are also the rock and roll fanatics, religious rock music fans and death metal/ heavy metal/ soft metal/neo metal/contemporary metal and also gold metal-oh yes..these are the genres-and people who listen to music of such genres and understand them are so very..hm,.COOL(im sure theres a metal slang for the word 'cool', but lemme just stick to the language i can comprehend best.) So! these are people who are respected and looked up to when it comes to music in all its credibility. Aaand, this doesnt end there.. like all people belonging to cults that take their ideologies and preferences too far- it must be imposed on every Jane-Doe! These higher strata of music listeners shall presume it their birthright to spew every profanity there is, on others who dont think their sense of self need be derived from a music genre. I mean, will you take a minute to estimate what kind of person will want to derive their sense of self from something as distinct to them as 'music'.. musicians apart.. But tell me, hows it that a twenty- something , be so friggin identified with John Lennon whose era they did not even belong to! What kind of realism are you talking about! It amuses me, really- How can anybody be so vain to live in their head so conveniently their entire lives, and have the conviction to impose such similar off the wall theories and tastes on someone else? Or tag a person uncool just because they dont share your ideas about music and wish to take music lightly-as a form of entertainment(pop music fans buck up!)! I see this as a form of delicate violence -- Nourishing your sense of self from an ideology, holding on to it forever(since apparently it looks like you havent figured out who you are! what would u be without the doors' number that you use as a "aww, my favorite quotee" or using Morrison's views about himself as "your" own view about yourself!!(Check! Whose a wanna be here really? It don’t matter who the heck you’re trying to ape-you want to be someone you’re not-that’s that-even if that’s Mick Jagger,hell yeah! You are a frigging wannabe!).. actually there is a word for all this. its called 'bi-polar disorder'.. Its where your foundation and knowledge of who you are is so weak, and rootless that you derive it from an external source that is,well,sadly, as fickle as your friggin 'about me' definitions. And honey, did you ever notice any blonde or boy band reacting to your "Such sad losers!" comment...eess, its probably beeecause they knew they'd have the last laugh! har har. Oh, sure! Varun Gandhi is a rock fan! lets have him for PM!

Sexy Plexi!

2009-03-19T20:22:00.002+05:30

The first verse of the song just wont stop playing in my head! and for good reasons i believe :D
Oh how I love Jack and his lyrics! JACK I have a crush on you :D I do i do i do!

Sexy sexy made up of plexi disasters
Pushing and pulling conservative rolling
Unlike plastic, easier to see through
Just like glass with no ring
Softer and sadder you sing
Sexy sexy do your thing
Learn to be shy and then you can sting
Plexi, plexi bend don't shatter
Once you're broken shape won't matter

You're breaking your mind
By killing the time that kills you
But you can't blame the time
Cause its only in your mind

Quickly quickly grow and then you'll know
It is such an awkward show to see
And everyone you wanted to know
And everyone you wanted to meet
Have all gone away
Well they've all gone away

And now you're
Breaking your mind
By killing the time that kills you
But you cant blame the time
Cause its only in your mind

You're breaking your mind..

Oscars and Observations

2009-02-25T09:34:00.004+05:30

If you missed the Oscar night - You Missed a Lot. You missed one of the scrumptious visual treats of the year. No, I'm not talking about the entire clan of Slumdog Millionaire being on stage to receive the 'best picture' academy award. We refer to the Duke of Music - AR Rahman and his choreographed musical performance with this amazing troupe of dancers which comprised of people- a variety of them. Black,white,indian,asian.. women with those jasmine bud flowers encircling their hair buns. "jai ho" and "saaya" -- god,what are they? I cant figure which genre they belong to. They have the soul of jazz and the zesty,jump-off-your-chair spirit of pop and the authenticity of world music. I see, watch, hear,gape-with goose bumps sprouting like nobody's business. and then, there's John Legend who to tries to perform his bit of OST too..which went unnoticed..har! har! -- perhaps why Hugh jackman verbally spelt the "special thanks to john legend" and conveniently forgot to thank Rahman or was he too paranoid to pronounce his name wrongly? Rakkman?! :D
Dont get me wrong, im a fan of Legend myself.
But the herculean energy with which the performers synched their bollywood moves with Rahman's stirring vocals and the women back up vocalists was just.. Overwhelming. Overwhelming to an expanse that.. I wanted to return to poetry. It was as if someone kissed your soul and set her free to rejoice in the festive shades of ecstasy,worship,reverence,hope and bliss.

2009-02-09T17:06:00.000+05:30

Diamonds are forever but so are Pink Chaddis.

Bruises! ; )

2009-02-02T19:01:00.002+05:30

I tried to do handstands for you
I tried to do headstands for you
Everytime I fell on you, yeah, everytime I fell
I tried to do handstands for you
But everytime I fell for you
I'm permanently black and blue, permanently blue for you.

I tried to do handstands for you
I tried to do handstands for you
Everytime I fell on you, yeah, everytime I fell
I tried to do handstands but everytime I fell for you
I'm permanently black and blue, permanently blue for you-ooh-ooh-ooh

For you-ooh-ooh-ooh
So black and blue-ooh-ooh-ooh
For you-ooh-ooh-ooh.

I grabbed some frozen strawberries so I could ice your bruising knees
But frozen things they all unfreeze and now I taste like....
All those frozen strawberries I used to chill your bruising knees,
Hot July ain't good to me
I'm pink and black and blue for you.

I got bruises on my knees for you
And grass stains on my knees for you
Got holes in my new jeans for you
Got pink and black and blue

Got bruises on my knees for you
And grass stains on my knees for you
Got holes in my new jeans for you
Got pink and black and blue for you-ooh-ooh-ooh

For you-ooh-ooh-ooh
So black and blue-ooh-ooh-ooh
For you-ooh-ooh-ooh

The Great Robbery

2009-01-10T13:58:00.000+05:30

The sullen, resentful, rebellious teenager is a figure so universal in our culture as to have become a cliché. Whether it takes the form of a brooding, barely-controlled rage, or explodes outward as violence, or turns inward as depression, anger is a near-universal characteristic of modern youth. What we hesitate to acknowledge, though, is that this anger is well-founded. It is not some passing immaturity. Young people are angry about something, something real, and if we pay that anger heed, and trace it to its source, we will find there a clue to what has gone wrong with our world. Better yet, we will also discover a path toward the world’s healing.

On one level, the anger of youth stems from that cardinal characteristic of adolescence, idealism. Idealism is the belief that a more beautiful world is possible, and not only possible, but attainable. It is the conviction that we need not settle for the lesser world in which we find ourselves.

Allied to idealism is its interior reflection: a sense of our own individual magnificence. This is the feeling, “I am in this world to do amazing things.” It is the knowledge that we are divine beings here for a divine purpose—nothing less than to participate in the creating of that more beautiful world of our idealistic intuitions.

When these beliefs are denied or betrayed, outrage is the inevitable result. Essentially, we are told No! A more beautiful world is not possible. Things are just as they should be. It is foolish to dream of more. This is the way it is done. This is the way of the world. Get used to it. That’s what my fourth-grade math teacher told me when I complained of boredom doing pages of long division, “You’re going to be bored a lot in life, so you’d better get used to it.” From this perspective, schooling that is a dull routine, beholden to petty authority, motivated by trivial external rewards, defined by fixed schedules, and filled with meaningless assignments is actually good—salutary practice for the “real world".

The teenager’s rage builds up over years. The fourth grader, gazing out the window, looking at the clock, waiting for that half-hour of freedom at recess, sneaking some social time into the margins of the schoolday. The 12-year-old, looking out on a vast world into which he is never allowed unsupervised or unscheduled, too busy to play. The high school student, scrambling under the pressure to excel, disciplining herself to stick with the grind. The first-grader, sulking on the “time-out bench", humiliated but still defiant. Children made to feel ashamed of themselves by parents, principles, churches and teachers. Made to shrink into something less. Made to shy away from the wide wide world. Be small. Be practical. Lower your expectations.

Yet after 15 or so years of spirit-breaking, something in the teenager still resists. Unable to articulate what is wrong, the teenager rebels in whatever way he can. Anticipating this, the spirit-wrecking Machine turns this rebellion toward its own purposes. Set off a smoke bomb in the bathroom, get caught, and learn the lesson, “You can change nothing. Resistance is futile.” Or the rebellion is diverted toward harmless avenues of expression that pose no threat to the system—listening to loud music, using profane language, getting tattoos and piercings.

The anger of the teenager is the indignation of the dispossessed. The Great Robbery is first and foremost the pillage of their childhood. Childhood is supposed to be a realm of exploration in which we discover our passions, our selves, our life purpose. What we get instead is enslavement to schedules and obligations. Childhood is supposed to be a time of play. And what is play? Play is something far different from what we, in a degenerate age, call fun—the consumption of entertainment. Play is supposed to be nothing less than practice in creating the world. Its highest expression is “deep play", the kind which unfolds over days and weeks. In deep play, children create entire worlds of the imagination, in which toys are but props. In so doing, they prepare themselves for an adulthood empowered in the divine function of world-creation.

One way we rob children of play is by taking away the time and space for creating worlds of the imagination, and filling their lives instead with preprogrammed activities, prefabricated worlds through which they proceed as instructed, step by step. Video games are a prime example. Here, a world is already created by software programmers. The children merely walk through it. The same goes for television—no imagination is necessary on the child’s part, because it has already been done in the TV studio. The same as well for organized, supervised sports. This kind of childhood is preparation for a very different adulthood than that of the empowered world-creator. It is an adulthood bound to live a preprogrammed life, a life handed one, a life not one’s own. This is how we are robbed of our potential for magnificence.

An equally grave loss is the loss of our passion and purpose. Bereft of the chance to explore our inner world, we grow up not truly knowing what we love or what we want to make of our lives. In the absence of a passion, we easily accept the range of available substitutes. I might as well be an engineer. Maybe I’ll major in finance. That might be okay. I’ll get a good job at least. Ask someone thus dispossessed what they really love, what makes their heart sing, and they won’t even know.

If you accept that the purpose of life is indeed merely to get by, to survive, to get a secure job with benefits, get married, have kids, retire securely, grow old and die, then perhaps this result isn’t so tragic. But if the adolescent intuition is true, that we are indeed here on earth for a magnificent purpose, then the cutoff from our passion is a terrible crime. Before you read any further, decide which alternative you believe. What does your heart tell you?

I think the spirit of youth never actually dies, but lies dormant in even the most hardened, controlled, uptight adult. That spirit will never be satisfied with a life handed on down by the impersonal forces the drive our society. Its dissatisfaction manifests as an omnipresent discontent, a feeling of emptiness that the rewards of doing-as-you-are-told—status, material possessions, etc.—can never fill.

If you are in the place of disconnection from your true self, true passion, true reason for being on this earth, don’t despair. Well, actually, do despair. Despair, or more precisely depression, is often the first step toward discovering true life. In order to discover the right life, it is first necessary to withdraw from the wrong life. This necessity drives many of the supposed character flaws common to teenagers. Laziness, procrastination, apathy are all different permutations of the urge to withdraw. They are a covert way of saying NO! when more overt rebellion is impossible, or demands too great a leap of courage. In the American South the slaves, unable to rebel outright, instead pretended to be lazy and stupid, in many cases coming to believe in their own pretense. Teenagers often do the same thing. Stupidity is a kind of protection. But—and I don’t care who you are—you are not stupid. Never believe that.

Oftentimes, laziness and apathy are insufficient to withstand the pressure to perform. Applying willpower and self-discipline, threatening ourselves with the inner voice of shame and guilt, enticing ourselves with external rewards like grades, status, and approval, we overcome the urge to blow it all off. We think of ways to make ourselves live the lives expected of us. In this case the rebellion of the soul manifests even more deeply, for example as clinical depression, anxiety disorder, disease, or suicide.

The defining feature of depression is a kind of paralysis, which is precisely the withdrawal from the wrong life I have been talking about. It could be the wrong job, wrong relationship, or something else, but essentially it represents the soul’s rebellion against circumstances that the conscious mind believes cannot be changed. “No!” says the soul. “I’d rather not get out of bed!” Psychiatric medications can quiet this voice for a while, but even if successful they only end up transforming it into another form of refusal.

That deepest, truest part of ourselves, that I refer to as the soul, or the spirit of youth, will always think of a way to eventually bring us into the space of emptiness that is necessary for the discovery of our true self and life purpose. Disease is one avenue. Cancer in particular represents the somatization of a kind of self-betrayal, in which cells forget their proper function and usurp the body’s resources for their own unlimited growth. Psychologically, the counterpart of these renegade cells is the security-obsessed ego, consuming all our gifts for the dead-end goals of security in all its guises: wealth, status, power, and so on. And if death is the result, so be it. Better to die than to live the wrong life. So goes the logic of the soul.

This is also the logic that propels the tremendous rise in the youth suicide rate. When every other avenue of refusal has been cut off, the teenager is trapped. Self-destruction is seen as the only option. The escalating regime of control imposed by parents and schools, with the aid of surveillance technology, psychological manipulation, and psychiatric drugs, makes suicide all the more likely. And the antidote is to empower young people—and the spirit of youth in all of us—to discover another way out. To say, “Life is just fine, it is you who has the problem” is incredibly disempowering. But that is the implicit message in the regime of medication and control.

Here is the right message—and it applies equally to the suicidal teenager as well as to the commonly resentful. The message is that what you have always secretly suspected is true. The world is not supposed to be like this. Your intuitions of something more beautiful are valid. You are meant for an amazing, divine purpose. You are brilliant, possessed of unique gifts just waiting to be discovered. And—very important—anyone who tells you otherwise is lying. Worse than lying, they are stealing from you. Much has been stolen already, but there is one thing no one can ever steal (though you might put it aside, temporarily) and that is your soul knowledge of the message I have just related. What’s more, it is possible to recover all that has been lost. It might take time, but no one is a helpless victim. All we need is to reconnect with the power we already have. It is the power, first and foremost, to say no. You have been exercising that power all along, in fact, but when you begin to see the source of the betrayal, when you begin to see through the lies that construct the lesser life and lesser world that most of us have grudgingly accepted, then that power is multiplied a thousandfold. You have the power to withdraw, not through the unconscious mechanisms of laziness, depression or suicide, but consciously, mindfully. And then, in the empty space that you create for yourself, begin to play. Begin to do what you enjoy, without having to justify it to anyone. From this starting point you will discover meaning, passion, and life, and you will become indominable.

Charles Eisenstein, 2005
www.ascentofhumanity.com

Flowers

2009-01-08T18:41:00.003+05:30

We fought. I told him he was the lousiest flower vendor there was.
Disrespectful and obnoxious!
I was the rudest customer he had ever met too: he said.
Day after day, I continued visiting his shop. His were the freshest and cheapest flowers available,you know.
I greeted him with a smile and spoke to him like a friend.
I never bargained.
And he gave me flowers just for their own sake.
He is the best flower vendor I know.
I was the loveliest customer who visited his store:he said.

New year.

2009-01-01T07:20:00.001+05:30

cool water on my face,.. and i am so very happy.
the heart's where it should be. the mind is where it should be.
What a start!

..

2008-12-27T02:18:00.007+05:30

"Hi!"
"Hello!"
"Taxi!hey!!"
"Helloo!"
"How're ya?"
"Hello!"
"Hi!"
"hows it going?"

"You have to leave.Leave"
"Ok Sir,Ok."

"No.No."
"Why not?"
"Heart's too big."

"Hello."
"Hello."
"You need help?"
"Who Doesnt?"
"Is that your heart?"
"Yeah."
"Big!"
"Its small now."
"Small?!"
"It was bigger before."
"Scary!"
"Yeah,thats my problem."
"Do you wanna get a cup of coffee?"
"Yeah?!"
"Yeah."
"Now?"
"Yeah..Now."
"O..kay."
"Okay."

"This is you?"
"Thank You, 'had a good time tonight."
"Thank you!"
"See you again."
"Bye.."

A 28-year Old Lie. (By Charles Eisenstein)

2008-12-21T20:06:00.000+05:30

April 27, 2007

The New York Times reports today that M.I.T. admissions dean Marilee Jones has resigned after admitting she fabricated her educational résumé. Apparently, she did not even have an undergraduate degree. M.I.T. is, according to Chancellor Philip Clay, "taking a big lesson from this experience," in which it made little effort to check her credentials. Hmm. There is a big lesson here all right, but I think it is almost the opposite of what Dr. Clay thinks it is.

Reading the article, what stands out is that Ms. Jones was obviously doing an outstanding job. The recipient of M.I.T.'s highest honor for administrators, "The M.I.T. Excellence Award for Leading Change," she was a major force in the movement to reduce the pressure on high school students. She was very accessible, well-known and well-liked by the students; as the NYT put it, "widely admired, almost revered, for her humor, outspokenness and common sense."

Yet, if she had been honest about her educational background (or lack thereof), there is no way she would ever have risen to the position of Dean. Why? After all, her own accomplishments prove that a degree is not necessary to do a great job. The reason that no university would make a degree-less person Dean is that to do so would undermine one of the key ideological pillars of the university system. It goes something like this: "University education prepares people to be effective in their vocations. A university diploma demonstrates that someone is capable of handling positions of responsibility." It is because of these widely held beliefs that a college education is considered a "good investment" in the future.

I have little problem with Ms. Jones' supposed lack of integrity. I think the lack of integrity is in the system she engaged. Her own story demonstrates its unsoundness. She did what she had to do to thrive in a system that is fundamentally unfair. I see no lack of integrity; in fact I commend her for her courage. She has had a positive impact on thousands of young people, and she could not have done that if she'd been honest about her background.

Now I suppose someone is going to say, "She should have completed her degree; then she could have accomplished all she did with integrity." I disagree. I see little integrity in wasting years on an unnecessary education that you pursue merely to acquire a qualification that the powers-that-be demand. The kind of person who does that is not the kind of person predisposed to "humor, outspokenness, and common sense." Outspokenness is usually a liability in the degree game, which also tends to deaden humor and replace common sense with institutional values. That's the real reason why a degree "qualifies" you for a position of authority. A degree certifies that you will play along with the game.

Ms. Jones is being fired because she did not play along with the academic game; in fact she flouted one of its most basic rules. She is living proof of the vacuity of some of its basic assumptions.

In her public statements upon resignation, Ms. Jones made every effort to appear contrite. No doubt she is feeling a painful humiliation. But I wonder if, deep down, there is still a spark of protest within her that believes she did nothing wrong. If you ever read this, Marilee Jones, I hope it awakens within you the knowledge that you possess a kind of integrity that is deeper than merely following the rules. You said, unconsciously perhaps, "No, I will not participate in that silly charade." There is no dishonor in gaming a corrupt system in order to achieve the beautiful results you achieved. Don't capitulate. Instead, let this experience radicalize you, so that you can teach others to create their own lives too, and not live out the programmed lives to which our schooling conditions us.

BLACK and others (By MURM)

2008-12-17T17:47:00.002+05:30

For Love's sake

2008-12-06T02:07:00.001+05:30

type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344">

2008-12-05T01:12:00.001+05:30

Printed Text, stapled sheets, Pinned hair, Warm Mufflers, Large suitcases, Rich dinner, recycled papers, ball pointed pens, colored walls, heated arguments, exhausted pages for continual garbage.

The Republic of South Africa's measures against terrorism,with emphasis on public safety in Urban areas.

2008-11-16T13:24:00.001+05:30

Terrorism is a prevalent world trend and it is continuing to spread its wild entrapments in every corner of the globe possible. It is ludicrous- the common man knowing the truth about the hideous acts of terrorism and the state, expecting him to carry on his everyday life without much angst. The Republic of South Africa makes every attempt to understand its people and provide them with every safety measure,that ensures a cordial and healthy environment. In this regard, The Republic of South Africa has shown keen and sincere interest by being active in the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) during 2004-2005, which sought to promote the development of sustainable cities in Africa. The Republic of South Africa is known to house the greatest number of urban communities in the African Continent. It is therefore extremely important that we focus on our urban communities-their safety, development of infrastructure and communications; that are essential for us to continue our survival efficiently, as a thriving nation. The Government of South Africa, between January 31st - 4th of February 2005, hosted AMCHUD (The African Ministerial Conference on housing and urban development) which was jointly convened by UN-HABITAT and The African Union, in Durban. South Africa’s devoted interest in urban development and housing in Africa, fetched her the chairmanship. The initiatives that were brought to light via the above mentioned conference were provided with unrelenting support from The South African Government, UN-HABITAT and The African Union. Since Urban Communities across the world are the most affected during an occasion of bombing and the terrorists consider urban sites as the ripest for terrorist attacks, The republic of South Africa seeks to develop her infrastructure and the ambience of her civil society that guarantees her people not only realistic and uncomplicated infrastructure but also that which provides for public scrutiny and security at all times. Some of the ongoing ventures include the measures taken by the National Department of transport. The National Department of Transport has developed the Road to safety strategy, which seeks to promote and ensure safety on the roads; the NDoT has also developed programmes such as the ‘Arrive Alive programme’, ‘the Shova-Kalula programme’,’The Access Roads Development programme’, and ‘the National pedestrian business plan for hazardous locations’. In 1998,the NDoT launched ‘Moving South Africa :Towards a Transport strategy for 2020’- the purpose of this project being, the growth of a strategy for ensuring that the transportation system of South Africa meets the needs of the country in the 21st century, and that it would add to the nation’s growth and economic evolution.

Prevention is still the top logic of counter terrorism, and in this regard, the Republic of South Africa seeks to enact new anti-terrorism legislation, take stringent measures against assets used for criminal purposes, strengthen territorial control and request international cooperation.

An important stance The Republic of South Africa has taken is to encourage people across the globe to respect human rights, as the fundamental basis, for the fight against terrorism. We believe in the ideals of harmony and universal brotherhood. This is evident in South Africa playing a key role as a mediator, in the African conflicts over the last decade, such as in Burundi, The democratic republic of Congo, The Comoros, and Zimbabwe. In the recent years, The South African National defence force has become a major peace keeping force in Africa, and has been involved in Operations in Lesotho, The democratic republic of Congo and Burundi, amongst others. It has also actively participated as a part of multi-national UN peace-keeping forces. Our dedication to a peace filled world,with universal messages of impartiality and diversity has been ancient. South Africa is proud to be one of the founding members of the United Nations, and having, its then Prime minister Jan Smuts, contribute to the preamble of its Constitution

Building Accountability within the UNO

2008-11-13T13:21:00.000+05:30

"Every day we are reminded of the need for a strengthened United Nations, as we face a growing array of new challenges, including humanitarian crises, human rights violations, armed conflicts and important health and environmental concerns. Seldom has the United Nations been called upon to do so much for so many. I am determined to breathe new life and inject renewed confidence into a strengthened United Nations firmly anchored in the twenty-first century, and which is effective, efficient, coherent and accountable."

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon

As the secretary general himself is well aware of the enormity and importance of strengthening the UN on the foundation of sincere accountability, the member nations and the functioning councils of the UN ought to second him. Possessing the integrity and credibility in being able to be answerable to each and every member of the civil society must become the mantra of every local government. It is at home, that we learn values of responsibility, authenticity and honesty. The qualities that do not come from the roots will seldom be reliable or steadfast. It is only when people are governed under an authority that makes every effort to remain consistent with its transparency, people can dream of a creditable and worthy government. And only nations with such governments, can be held accountable for and trusted by the international society.

For achieving a peaceful, secure and sustainable world, the accountability between the competitive member states is essential, for it cannot be achieved overnight and is a multi-year mission. For this to be implemented, the confidentiality between certain potent states and their sources, pertaining to their activities, which are of great impact to the rest of the world, must be made transparent and accessible to the other nations.

Inter-state ties should be acutely affected by cordiality and cooperation in a manner which, the habitual blame game eventually ceases between the member nations.

This has the potentiality of promises for better future ties between the member nations too. The accountability must stem its growth from ground level so as to sustain a strong escalation. The initiation must start with the individuals being accountable to their fellow beings; individuals to their local authority; one local authority to the other, these local authorities uniting and being liable to their centre, and this in due course leading to the member nations being liable to each other.

This establishes an infallible authenticity of each and every member nation of the UNO. It is also important that the UNO provides for full cooperation to its member nations in achieving legitimacy at an international echelon.

The mode of approach instigated by a member state along with its regional organizations should be a multi-tasking one, which enables the challenges at different levels to succeed proficiently and the interest of different sectors to be met suitably.

The model of establishing and building accountability does not end at the doors of the member nations. It should transcend to the functioning councils and organs of the United Nations. An Organization in which all the members are held accountable for upholding their responsibilities will be a noticeably strong one. The working organs and councils of the United Nations must implement greater transparency and ingenuousness in decision-making by involving the civil society in the work of the Organization as cohorts and regulators.

two yawns and more..

2008-10-31T14:51:00.001+05:30

The room is solemn.delegates with their serious tone of voices and crisp clothing.
They are here. To discuss important matters. concerning you,me and people thriving across the seven continents.
ah! so perfect the scene! such bright and intellectual faces. so fine!
the members of the chair are kids with greater experience than any one of us sitting in the council room, so they get to sit on the dais and ask you to 'shut up' if you talk things irrelevant and make your speech Verbose. Ow! one hard punch in the belly and out comes the air too. and such tiny fists! the previous night was a sleepless one.. can I talk about 'trivial' things? non-political matters? things that matter to the neighbor I know, things that matter to my house maid, to the young girl who is desperate every evening to sell her basket of flowers, the mason cementing the fresh bricks, to the hospital peon who gets grandpa his dietitian prescribed meals everyday? Why must we talk of history and remember only the ravages, talk about political belligerent figures as if they were saviors because they controlled big portions of land and had their hands laden with gold? What happened to the woman who conquered your heart and made you weep for a week? the man who wrote poems that made your hair stand, and blurred your eyes? the guy whose moves were copied by old men to budding teenagers alike?
What does a common man understand? What does he identify with.. you really think its the 14th president or the 1st prime minister of a country whose name requires one to twirl their tongues is who he cares about? really? Haha.
OH by the way, this 'World Organisation' was built from 'ideals' of One World and other dreamy theories..

2008-10-13T13:58:00.003+05:30

I smelled the white roses today;they smelt like sweet peaches..

Happy Birthday Adit! :o)

2008-09-28T15:19:00.004+05:30

Happy Birthday to you..
Happy Birthday to you..
Happy Birthday..Happy Birthday..
(oh,you're getting Ooold!) :P

Huaxia and her conquests..

2008-09-20T17:52:00.001+05:30

The narrow cross and broad seas, the forts of history and the scars we see
What we fail to know is what truly we believe,
The little lotus bud and the pond so deep
With leaves so green but the fragrance lost she weeps within,
The drop of water that lay afloat, the hope they carry yet not to violence they resort…

When the world began a lot was there to receive(1), man lived in harmony with what was given. He cherished what was “ours”. Man learned to live with man but then, he found the key to Pandoras Box . The words that rhymed with anger and greed drew lines between the masses. The uncertainty that came along with the life of faith ceased to fancy him.

The cruel rules that we humans follow, shows its colour in the silent valley of a Land named Tibet.

History(2) has it that the wheels of peace ran parallel to the tracks of the Manchu Civilization and the Tibetan Lamas. Acting as spiritual leaders and in turn holding faith in a promise once given for safety against all might they lived in unison.
Only to be followed by a plague. A plague of social unrest, a plague that shattered not only the tranquility of the valley but also uprooted the basic social and cultural integrity of two nations. Where kings and queens ruled lands so vast the arms of faith knew less of what was.

Communism was a disease that questioned the superiority of the Spiritual head and led to the ongoing hostility between the valley and the vast lands. The promises of Theocracy no longer satiated the games and lust for power. The people who were the gate keepers of faith and vowed to protect, the roof of the world, craved for their absolute recognition. The eternal battle within for identity and ego gratification led the millions of Chinese eventually to form strong rooted ideologies that counter acted what was followed age immemorial.

The meaning of life was undermined and the language of blood became normalcy. Then the world took turns to rule each other; in paper and on tables the leaders would meet.

The mother land(3) beckoned her reluctant child(4) to her ‘warm’ mantle..as countries became mere cards in the hands of the mighty only to be played, tossed and dealt with power permutations. The ‘seventeen fold path’(5) proposed by the Mother Land was based on sheer favourism and the deafening cries of the Child was treated with apathy.
The internal clash and battles within the anatomy of Tibet, proved to be catastrophic for its well being and resulted in the discord of Tibet’s Spirit, leaving Tibet befuddled than ever before. The Tibetans were given a piece of reality that proved to threaten their long standing faith in ‘ahimsa’, compelling the face of Tibet(6) to flee for refuge. Meanwhile the elements of man’s desire and nature’s course took a violent turn. Man’s voracity for material requisites and the inevitable quest for economic and political power led to undermining of the true values of human life. This was the apparent aftermath of the uninvited interference of a Super power(7) which completely ignored the possible solutions that could have worked out on humanitarian grounds. The Onward struggle for supremacy was taken to the fore and the formulations for such further expansion of China was masterminded by the elected Yuans.

The ‘World Police’(8) continue to make their abortive efforts in preventing China taking over the eastern world. The Chinese however strategically pacify the agitated sect of the world community over the Tibet and Taiwan Policies with their ever ambassadorial pacts(9), which are ensured to benefit the Mainland of China subsequently.

The wheel of Karma, the predictable course of life, the philosophy of ashes to ashes and dust to dust, the medium for transversal to the outer being and the reason for the acknowledgement of an outcast, these spells are those that cast a dark shadow on the survival of the human race. The question of man’s superiority over mother nature and the survival of the bridge of life over troubled waters, are those which are simply man made. Are these the reasons for us to wake up to a better tomorrow? Are these the ideals to be preached to our young? Are these the reasons for a truly better future or will this lead to the extinction of what remains? How long will it take for men to realize that the silent valley that once was, could serve as an ideal example of what could or could not have been done? These are not words penned by a great poet nor mouthed by a holy saint, if it took only a little reading then why still do we turn a blind eye!!

CITATIONS:-

(1)The Bible- Genesis 1:1
(2)A History of Chinese civilization --By Jacques Gernet,JR Foster and Charles Hartman.
(3)People’s Republic of China
(4)Tibet
(5)The 17 Point Agreement
(6)The Dalai Lama (Tenzin Gyatso)
(7)The United States of America (President Richard Nixon)
(8) The United Nations Organization
(9)The PRC policy, The CPPCC and others.

hours

2008-09-15T14:58:00.003+05:30

i see them,green,blue and white..
soothing wind in my hair..caressing my ears..
it took me so many years
to stay close and near to thee
come here.. i already am yours..
you are the sun.. lord, i am only your shine..
i understand i am no entity.. i belong.. i am a part of you..
and then i begin to 'think' of ways to prove you really are there..here ..there..somewhere..
and ways to learn to trust..
In vain.

Linteen

2008-08-13T16:49:00.003+05:30

Naps in my pocket, nibbling, crawling..all over, I am his tree,habitat,.. my limbs are the tree branches he would find in the greens. So little, So flawless, So Aditi, Such short period of time.. yet such everlasting happiness and joy.

Rest In Peace.

Looking/Spectating/Witnessing

2008-07-30T18:33:00.006+05:30

The public on the street comprises of those who 'experience' street sexual harassment, i.e. the survivors; those who cause street sexual harassment i.e the perpetrators and those who witness street sexual harassment i.e the spectators.

Our very own stat counter on the right hand bar of the page says that 22% of the Blank Noise blog visitors are spectators. Now its your turn to speak!

Most cases of street sexual violence go unnoticed because they are intangible , can be doubted as 'accidental brush/ touch' ( strictly in the Indian context). More often than not the survivor feels embarrassment and shame for being sexually violated and does not wish to draw further attention. Some survivors of street sexual violence don't seek public support because of the fear that 'the public' may not always show support, act indifferent, or be one more face in the crowd watching the scene.

Blank Noise Spectators Special asks members of the public, both men and women to share what they witnessed. What was your first reaction? Was it to intervene? Was it to ignore? What did you do? What would you rather have done? Can you share your thoughts about being a spectator. If you have been a 'special spectator' , that is, intervened in the situation, please tell us how! Was it with wit and humor? Or did physically assault the 'perpetrator'? Did you walk away? Or call the cops? Or gather a crowd? Or see another spectator take charge of the situation and participate in any way.

To participate in this online event please register by emailing us at blurtblanknoise at gmail dot com subject titled Blank Noise Spectators Special. Link this post to your blog, and send in your blog address. We will add you to the list below. Deadline for your post on being a spectator is August 15th.

IF YOU DO NOT HAVE A BLOG: no problem. what matters is your point of view. Register with us via email anyways. We will publish your ideas on the Blank Noise blog on Aug 15.

This event hopes to be one in the series of events planned in bringing together 'survivors'(http://blanknoiseactionheroes.blogspot.com), 'perpetrators' (male only event coming soon) and 'spectators'.

We look forward to hearing from you!

Blank Noise Team

(())

2008-07-15T21:11:00.005+05:30

I don't want to be your fan
I don't want to be popular
I don't want to be a Sinner
I don't want to be a Saint
I don't want to be Sick
I don't want to wake up
I don't want to sleep
I don't want to be Chained
I don't want to be free
I don't want you.
I don't want him.
I don't want her.
I don't want to know you
I don't want to love you
I don't want to listen to you
I don't want to talk to you
I don't want to do you favors
I don't want to learn
I don't want to think about them
I don't want to care
I don't want to pretend to feel
I don't want to pretend to think
I don't want to own you
I don't want to be loved
I don't want the past
I don't need the future
I don't want the truth
I don't want lies
I don't see Red
No,I don't see Green.
I don't want to write
I don't want to Dance
I don't want to get out
I don't want to stay home
I don't want Chocolates
I don't need flowers
I don't need an Education
I don't want the money
I don't want chains
I don't want Shackles
I don't need Slippers
I don't need a place
I don't need a face.
I don't.
I don't want to be You.

From an Old Diary.