Defining my Nemesis: A meeting with the Devil

They deem him their worst enemy who tells them the truth (Plato)

Every man constantly goes through some defining moments in his life. These acids tests are a means of high powered education, to constantly modify one's opinion of life and get better with each passing day. How and in what stride we take these entirely depends upon our intellect, adaptability and maturity.
Now there is no set way be prepared for eventualities and despite all our best preparations, there comes a time when we are rattled to face the ultimate reality during the course of time and it is better best to randomly shape oneself at every given instance and take the learnings of life well into our intellectual being.
The last couple of months have been acutely rough for me; having not kept well for an extensive period of time, I decided to call it quits at the harrowed organization that I worked for and headed home southwards. So rapid were the turn of events that I had little or no time to account for even my personal belongings. I headed for Ooty on the 28th of Dec 2007 with mixed feelings.
While I was homeward after a considerably long time, the worry of presenting myself with incredibly frail health to my Parents persisted all along. Much to my dismay, my coming home was shadowed greatly on account of my health and the initial joy of meeting with folks dwindled almost instantaneously!
However, home is where the heart is. I began recuperating the moment I stepped into home.
But my troubles were far from over. To begin with, my former management was ganged up against me in the fear that I might hold them accountable for my health and state of mind, considering that they had been extremely irresponsible in paying my dues.
Thus began a long and protracted battle to recover my dues and my relieving letter. I had to spend a great deal of effort and money calling an extremely shady HR department in my previous organization. They say misery is man's only company during bad times. Slowly and steadily so-called freinds started staying away and began circulating rumours which were in bad taste. These tough times saw me well supported by my parents and my elder cousin and his family. Perhaps, it was one of the most real lesson I had to come to terms with.

Idling away at home while shaping up health is not easy for someone who had accustomed himself to long work hours and sharp deadlines. It began taking an immense toll on me and I was riddled with the guilt that I could not provide for myself. It was one thing to fit myself into Dad;s business, quite another to achieve something on my own, and it was the latter that I was gunning for.

I spent an immense amount of time reading, reading everything that could lay my hands on , from philosphy to Tintin and attempted to ease out while time inched ever more slowly.
Comparisons and uncalled for counsel ricocheted often and it took great courage to abstain from them and not taking them personally.

The new year came unannounced and I spent time with folks, doing some reading and being absorbed in music. The Narayana Gurukula offered me great sanctuary to ease myself and collect my thoughts and re-analyse them from the perspective of what really is needed in life.
Swamy Tanmaya & Swami Vyasaprasad, with their immense knowledge of life itself, were a great source of comfort and inspiration.
As we progress, I was told, we always encounter the horizontal and the vertical depths of life.
While the horizontal side is our existence in the social and official apparatus, the vertical side (being the important of the two), teaches us the ways of life by experience and knowledge, and thereafter presents a more clear picture of reality as we go on.

Come the close of February, I began contacting people for suitable openings. Despite a great deal of opposition from some friends and associates, I decided that I needed to find a place in the Corporate world and perhaps much later assume the reigns of Dad's business.

All this while, I somehow recounted a gut-wrenching feeling that my personal belongings at Delhi (which included many original testimonials received while at work) were being pilfered.
Many a times, I shared this apprehension with Mom, who did her best to comfort me by saying that they were as a result my feeling unable to control the situation. It was only later that I would realize the sinister turn of events and how true indeed that 'gut-wrenching' feeling was.

I travelled to Coimbatore and Chennai for interviews and meetings but decided to keep off Bangalore owing to its excruciating cost factor. Meanwhile, I was also associated with the Earth Trust in Ooty which focused on organic farming, environmental conservation and climate change.
I was placed there in the Capacity of a Manager who had to liase with several agencies and governmental organizations for policy making and proliferating the mission of the trust.
It was one of those rare times when I got a first hand feel of how the changing environment had its adverse effects on the climate, people and their environment. We travelled to local schools to infuse in students the message of conservation and environmental upkeep. Often travelling to interior villages, with little or no transport facility at all, we chanced upon the crude scale of poverty that affected these children. It was hard to fathom their lives, burdened with problems more than you and me could ever imagine. My hardships immediately dwindled in comparison to their suffering. Strikingly though, they often were a committed bunch of students much unlike the city folk who were lapped in luxury. India is a sad nation, with an extensive bridge between the poor and the well-to-do. When I hear political honchos making tall claimed that this insidious gap will be closed, I scoff and think, years later, despite all the development jazz, there will still remain a huge population that cannot get themselves a decent meal to eat, basic medical facilities and a roof over their poor heads! God help them, for there is none truly born of this wonderful nation who can yet solve this predicament. Today, when the buzzwords of corporate social responsibility and government assisted are at large, it seems that they dont really perculate to the very bottom. Or perhaps as in many cases, they are merely etched out in paper for purposes of eyewash only!
Incidentally, I got an understanding of how schools in rural areas suffer due to lack of infrastructure and inadequate manpower combined with the burden of lack of financial resources. The government, mired in bureaucracy and red-tape shows no interest in augmenting these educational bodies and thus students who depend on such schools due to their economic troubles, are in the long run forced to compete with a bunch of skilled others against whom they find themselves unmatched and lopsidedly pitted.
I had never before witnessed face to face the hardships faced by rural folk in their day to day lives. Strangely, what was in store for me, in the next coming days would shock the living day lights out of me.

It was close to the end of March 2008 that I got an offer from an IT Organization as a Research Analyst. Having been a Business Analsyt before, I decided to enhance myself in the field of Market Research by accpeting the offer. My former Asst. Vice President Tony and his wife were largely responsible in squaring this opportunity for me and I was required to travel to Pune to operate out of there.
Shortly after I accepted the offer I decided to travel to Gurgaon, Haryana, where my baggage and documents remained over the last couple of months. Or so I thought!
After a harrowed start and having missed my flight, thanks to the all-curses-deserved traffic in Bangalore, I reached Delhi during the first week of April. I was told by the so-called friends that I entrusted my belongings with that my luggage was now split between two people who had custody of it in their respective places.
After having painstakingly aggregated most of it, I found, much to my utter horror & dismay, that many of my files & testimonials were missing. Apparently the 'safe-keepers' themselves had in fact plotted to destroy them for reasons I have no knowledge of. What had been a tremendously well accumulated repository for years was now missing. My wardrobe was broken into and many other personal belongings along with money had gone missing. Sadly, there was nothing that I could do. It is indeed strange and disgusting how certain people readily assume somebody else's belongings to be theirs. I thank my Parents for the wonderful upbringing that I had been taken through which has greatly help shape my character and moral values which I consider intact and non-negoatiable under any circumstances. However, when one steps out into the real world, one notices at length how easy it comes to people to pilfer and loot. Often jeolousy and the need for quick growth spurs an animal instinct in many people, with them often resorting to thieving. I had literally come to meet my worst enemies here.
People hailing from some Indian states where gun-running and criminal politics are the order of the day have spread themselves out in large across this once superb nation and are steadily corrupting every sphere of what remains a moral environment. I wouldnt be very suprised to see many well educated and sensible people leaving this country to seek a better and much more cultured living environment in the future (me included).
It will be very interesting to watch the upcoming generations of this nation!
In many ways, I had seen the devil itself on my trip to Gurgaon and attempted to come to terms with my tragic loss. Maybe this was God's way of telling me that misplaced trust can be nothing short of a disaster that one would regret for a lifetime.
For good reason, my stay in Gurgaon was very short and I returned to Ooty in the coming days after which I began to prepare myself for another relocation, this time to Pune.
I had not visited the central Indian region and was keen on doing so. Having heard a great deal about Pune, I looked forward to the assignment. Boarding a train from Coimbatore, Dad & I reached Pune on the eve of Vishu, the Malayalam New Year.
I do not remember a time when Mom & Deepu have been by themselves at home during this celebrated occasion. My faith in God was renewed with each passing day despite the hardships that I had faced in the past. Perhaps as is said in the scriptures, it is the virtuous who are repeatedly tested in order to gauge their faith.

So then I begin a very new chapter of my life in Pune while tremendously missing my family.
I must thank them for the wonderful pillars of support that they have always and unconditionally been, for without them I would have been terribly lost on life and devoid of any support and good conditioning.

Thank you GOD!

Passing COLT 97 - APU1

The First Electronic Steps passing COLT97 - APU1



Un-docking the module began as a marathon effort a long time ago.
On a tarmac far away from the hub of activity the Black Bird was parked . It was a service bird altered for minimal passenger airlift with its aft doors open.
It contained a maze of electronic equipments aptly designed for its mission. The Folks from the company and the Firm along with the cousins stood monitoring the airlift even as its timed progression was long overdue.
A brother in blood disagreed on coordinated papers even as the bird was being fuelled.
Presently a game of soccer was in progress and the cameras were not allowed to film the Bird's take off as mandated by protocol. After having ascended to the required height of 17000 ft as required by the air traffic control, the bird was joined by another of its kind, all attributes matching, in the pretext of a mid-air refuelling.
The mission was an unknown and yet undone air to air transfer. The Commander set coordinates to designated passes and auto-pilot was activated. The Altimeter indicated presence on the required air-corridor.
Unknown to him, a Secondary Protocol was unveiling itself and radars did not indicate the newly arrived bird.
The Executive Officer was a beautiful young lady trained to execute the protocol exactly on the drop zone. She had by now memorized her to-do actions a million times and did exactly as required.
Air turbulence and wind speed having been checked, the air-to-air transfer began and concluded as smoothly as planned. The Commander who was unaware of this was the mole and duplication of equipment was completed in the second bird. The Original bulky aircraft, this time only with its 'Mole-Commander' suddenly lost equipment control and began a pre-initiated free-fall onto the ground.
A single button was pressed and a lone F-117A Raptor witnessed the black bird's disintegration and final scatter spread over two time zones on Earth, thankfully on an uninhabited plain.
The Mission was accomplished and the trio were now in a dingy looking service elevator of an upscale English hotel looking for a key-card which was safely tucked away on the air-vent of the 7th Floor.
Upon descending, they clearly saw the Crown and the word Dictionary scrawled on the Broken Wall.
A button was pressed, alas the dream was gone and the child had grown.
Somewhere in reality; a remembrance of the Space Shuttle Columbia was made along with Josh Groban's musical tribute to its lost crew!

Footnotes:
Wake up to the morning Sun - Wake Up realized! The Orbital became the Saint.
APU stood for Auxilliary Power Unit.

Defining Constantine

Into the darkness, stepped someone called Prince Akhamir Nevzerov, into a world called Second Life 2.
A world that was sensitized into being a conditional fraction of what is the realm of the truth and a dimension called the unknown, there was a warning sign not to taunt the Devil for the creation of the Key Maker was that the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle not be disturbed until oblivion came calling.
Oblivion therefore was a true state of not being able to be controlled as much as the reflections and refractory laws of physics and the absolution demanded.
The same story of Anakin Skywalker which demanded that the world would not be touched by the intricacies of the trade federation that posed a serious yet ignoble threat to the peace of the world!
The twin Suns rose over the horizon and held the laws of physics until Sirius came calling for more light!
Time lines are undefined and all possibilities turned into absolute values of physics!
Then somewhere time turned its path and the lines were written and Constantine quipped to the knower "So you think you can tell, heaven from hell?" The answer was obviously an emphatic no.
But into the hues of green and blue, a voice carried by the updraft of the wind commanded unification of the self with the ongoing edifices of the built in world. The Matrix was something of the past and Constantine walked a lone path, a path unknown and undefined yet into the meaning of time!
The return of the Jedi and the Senator blocking the absolute value of time extracted much of information which was beyond computation of the world's fastest computer despite its calculable abilities in teraflops or even a value that was beyond computation. Helizons (future versions of the exiting helicopters) flew into a realm scanning all potential extra-sensory threats to the so-called world, a world that we human beings know as "Earth"
The burden of carrying a trust was one like never before, so Constantine being the most constant in his definition of moral and absolute values set apart himself and wished that no one associated with him for the reason that he having seen that "unknown realm" not scare the mortal aptitude of human kind.
Therefore the world changed with the theories that existed and sadly people made a mask of all that they could and not see or say! For good reason that is, had this not been done, the bearers of all the truth would have been accidentally stepped upon and graded by the machine as the anomalies in the being!
So he chose a lonely yet fulfilled path to seek knowledge and gained a share more than he actually wished for!
Its for good reason that they say "Ignorance is bliss!"
With attention mounting every which way he walked, he began to question the relativity of time in a manner never done before.
It was a known fact that (51) gravitational inputs could not be changed and redefined as the world would not have wanted it to be. Flight 417 was never an option for the shooting star.
Presently Metallica said "My friend of Misery" and "Nothing else matters" in the same echo that Amy Lee sang "Wake me up inside"
While this was a case of mistaken identity, it was also a burden of proof that was constantly demanded from the passage of time and the Legend of the Chimera came all too clear into the input of the intelligent system as if the force was being guided by an unknown foot soldier being burdened to carry a secret more sinister than the company and cousins already knew.
Wars were inevitable for different causes as they could not be plotted to unnerve the fact that superior domination was the need of the hour.
However, make no mistake, this was not the carnival of rust, and lust for all good reasons was killed as Enigma overplayed the burdened soul's request that MEA CULPA was a primeval mistake and one that need not be bothered about.
Reverse physics then questioned the inputs from the mirror and the eye of the Tiger was all that mattered.
Terrorism and crime plagued the nation and the people and were adopted for unknown and unseen means.
Crime in all forms is crime and cannot and should not be glorified but must be condemned as per the futuristic input of the Minority Report!
The prism brought about the Dark Side of the Moon and still people failed to realize that this was a mere statement and not to be taken seriously as much as it did not warrant itself to be remarked in as a random thought that came before the action.
Constantine remembered that "Speaking before the mind, posed a danger of its own kind since the formation of words demanded a pattern that was orderly and not chaotic."
All said and done, things were looking super kewl prima facie and Neo refused to submit himself to the machine, no matter what the need, want or reason.
India, in all its crowned glory celebrated its 59th Anniversary of being a republic!
Par le Vou Francais? Did I hear someone say?
The future is always brighter that what we assume it to be.............and it will come soon.
So fear was extinguished as much as the need for life needed to continue!
Folks, the role of Constantine is ongoing and will never change even if the greatest force would converge!

Erasure on COLT97 – Ty(i)re Pressure Messages!

There’s something inside me that pulls beneath the surface – Linkin Park (Crawling)

The Burden of papers begins once again and reality is well understood by the new born, proacting to establish order in the chaotic surrounding of the delimited grounds of time.

Action 1 demanded Erasure on COLT97 (not to be confused as the Gun).
The music played ongoing and plated comfort into the mind of the T3 and an energy source was derived from the meager fractions of the mind to understand the ‘road ahead’ and to determine a course of action at the speed of thought.

Phoenix rose from the ashes this time burnt completely and the vault containing the
X- Files remained in place, well sealed and armed as if an ICBM was being fuelled and attack capabilities were being determined!

That’s what happens if you step into the future all too sooner than the future arrives!

It is certainly not a negative action provided the end objective is the endorsement of the cause of the minority report!
Anyhow, the programmed input to self-destruct has begun a very long time ago and reactivation was confirmed 27 years ago when the opposing forces had wished a different road for good reason that is.

When recently the time came for unification, a draft proposal was made to treatise and one side respected that famed River of Rubicon which if crossed could end up in a nasty civil war. COLT97 made steady progress and ventured beyond the sands of time to ultimately find no time to process the relative expressiveness of the ultimate purpose – one that was aimed to unite friends and folks alike so as to smoothen the flow of information without any disengagement from the whole purpose. After all the burden of presenting the message lay in the messenger and not the listener (reader, viewer).

Remembering Balto & Steele and the icy cold winters upwards and also the Day after Tomorrow, there was a minor chill that went up the spine and a shrill into the vast expanses of the mind which was by now half-man, half- machine and the PONR (point of no return) had arrived in a steady yet streaming format.

The program worked its way to limit the understanding of external forces (other things not being the same as they should) and relied on internalization as a sure and sharp way to establish the path.

Somewhere underwater Captain Nemo with his 20000 leagues “tripped” over the Nautilis and an unknown hydrophone picked up the streaming signal to the relayed to Central Command via the SSIX (satellite submarine information Exchange).

Moving backwards (for this is the way COLT 97 was designed to operate), it swam into endless spaces and ultra-locking every single input in a vertically random manner understood only to its creator and abolished every code-breaker from access to the terminal point of Zed and Zerosys (read: the beginning) and its objective was in progressive motion, misunderstood by all at sometimes, many at all times and understood by the program in its fullest functional intelligence. Actions were suo-moto and interpreted command of the Cerebro stood uncorrupted despite outward intrusions and replications of the code.

Somewhere in the mind, the Sun shone and COLT97 was celebrating a victory of sorts, far from reality (yet). And Q was born! The Subroutine COLT re-designated itself into the self and awaited further inputs if there were any to come! Cold-fusion and the Orbital Saint found a way to sit and stillness was overachieved much to the despair of many!

Stuck in Reverse (or back to the rivers)

A long time ago, a biophysically abysmal dream appeared to a small boy and he pondered over it time and again trying to relate why the very same dream came over and over again!
Remembering the famed movie “What dreams may come”, he listened to Ain’t no sunshine and High from the remarkable studios of the Light House Family.

Presently the thought of being woken up when September ends came and flashed as much as reality indicated that he was walking through the Boulevard of Broken Dreams.
Shrinks called it a ‘figment of his imagination’.

As much as restecpa (read: respect) needed to be given to the Doc, the boy did so and endured everything that was presented as non-curable and wondered as any normal person would “Is this for real when I trip that I’m called and designated forsaken.”
So he chose (very consciously and willfully) to listen to the passing day and experience what each had in store for him! Listening to Sir Elton John’s ‘Candle in the Wind’, which echoed a tribute to two legends that time consumed without an effort!

He remembered Eva Peron (Evita – beauty surpassing any personification) and told himself that fading with the sunset was something that he knew much better than himself sometimes.
So the worry was passed onto the machined inputs that controlled his every move and made him feel reclusive even more withdrawing himself from ‘contact’ (remember Jodie Foster).

Into the deep end of the ocean he swam in thoughts and said a few hellos to the mighty Polar Bears and the majestic Siberian Tiger, the girl he once knew by the name of Sasha.

And the voice of the snake called onto to him and made him understand that the terminal intelligence lay in the making of the sound mind despite whatever pressures, days may present and he succeeded to overcome all of them in measures and parts. But no one understood that being personified as the enemy was a ballgame in itself.

Quoting Sigmund Freud “The pleasure of satisfying a savage instinct, undomesticated by the Ego, is uncomparably (not incomparably) much more intense than the satisfying a tamed instinct. The reason is becoming the enemy that prevents us (me) from a lot of possibilities of pleasure.”

Relieved at the momentary playing of Kiss the Rain (Billy Myers), the little boy remembered the times that were bygone and waited for another dawn and said to himself “We’re under the same Sun.”
Heavy thoughts, deep insights and more than depth in the water of analytics always draws a great deal of ‘flak and criticism’ and the more things change, the more they remain the same and life seems an uphill battle traversing in the endless boundaries of live in the mind.

The feeling of MMFD (miles and miles of F****** Desert = Empty spaces) lay everlasting as Leo Sayer said when he sang “When I need you!”

And the program reversed without integrating with the self-written imposition of the class path subroutine and detached itself from being a full human complete in his own identity of himself, something that was in the past never understood, currently misunderstood and futuristically engineered to be stuck in reverse with the stupendous burden of crossing and bathing in the rivers of belief (only to find that the waters dried long before the mirage approach).

The skies remained blue and the warmth continued and nothing else mattered.

It was the beginning of a phase like never before –the boy chum, the electronic hum of the machine and the mind of an animal. The trilogy stood completed and he felt that he had never opened himself this very way, only to be delimited into a world that he had always known

Endeavour calling Freedom 1:7

Goodbye blue skies! Goodbye time lines! Goodbye all those I have known and Goodbye ambitions and dreams unlimited.
Like Aerosmith said “Fly away from here” to “anywhere”.
Solid states of matter and fluid dynamics do not hold true any longer and there is no pain, it’s just that ‘we’ (I referred in the third person) have lost true belief and true understanding of the so-called demented world around!

I remember an old saying “Smile and the whole world smiles along, shed a tear and folks become fair-weather friends.”

Fixed in the unknown, yet fully conscious and knowledgeable of the happenings around keeps me wondering if there is a time that defines completion of all obligations and pressing the button to be teleported into a realm the beginning of which is seen in hues of green and warm yet soothing rays of the run, green grass all around, no mayhem, no apprehension, no limitations of boundary, no staunchly magnetic force pulling from behind in the name of friendship and relationship!

Such a world, I guess is a dream and cannot be ‘transmogrified’ into the dimensions of reality.

The day break signals the arrival of many a woe and worry, oblivious even to the closest let alone the farthest. Explained better best in the manner of understanding the wildly orbiting lone satellite much beyond the hemisphere in an apogee and perigee uncharted, fully loaded into the trajectory that it is programmed to move and achieve its operational efficacy (efficiency for common parlance) until its End of Service / Product Life (EoSPL) is truly achieved unlike the mathematical hypothecations that mission control coordinates have stretched beyond realism.

However when the antennae unwrap to soak the heat of the Bright Star, all is not well.
A meteorite hurtling at 30000 mph is headed straight toward the command module and the Skipper has less than a fraction of a second to take an alternate course of action.

And then R. Kelly sang his best for Space Jam – reeling under the words “I believe I can fly, I believe I can touch the sky.”

With the flyby successful and out of course of a so called bird-hit in orbit, decisions had to be made fast and Secondary Protocol to jettison excess baggage must be made., decisions which are consciously tough and unknown until the point of execution!

It is an incongruent space and silence continues to roll the time as Hans Zimmer would have put it. Signalling to the unknown, unsaid and the unknown a man fixates himself in a manner that appears for people to ‘be a target for faraway laughter.’ Reaching for the secret all too soon, the doors open to reveal two objects of affection; a colt .45 and a white ribbon that would symbolize continuum in theory and eventually practice.

Gladiator battles continue in a different sphere and the morning light soon passes for the Sun to stay atop when the clock strikes the arrival of noon. Evenings are mellow and silent with many a hand trying to reach the Poseidon!

And as Poirot (from Agatha Christie) would have pointed out to the acoustic and now electronic senses inbuilt in the humanoid, reprogramming is a waste of effort and also a marathon task like never before. Tupac Shakur once sang “We ride on our enemies.”

Like the Rose from the concrete, there was a dark desert highway and I checked out despite all opposition and calling to stay.
Finally the Kilo Hydrant Condor 11 made a fly pass to ‘observe’. And I looked through to mock it as ever.

They called it the bearer of unconventional things!

51 Refractions of a Mirror

When I was a young boy, I tried to listen – Coldplay X & Y

But that was then and now is now! So to speak, Almost Sunday has come and gone, to come and go for Eons to come and the spirited search for “Kaya” continues in full momentum as every passing day is briefed to exist from the break of dawn to the twilight of dusk.

The concept of Geocaching, Mercurial Messenger(ing) and flatbed tablet controls of the computer all aimed at converging to harness the unknown potent that might give way to a discovery so unknown that the world will change forever or for ever after!
Drop a pencil into a glass of water vertically and it takes a tenth of a nano-second to understand the physically real description of refraction.

Reflection however is a different ball game and can be understood as a matter of choice or chance for those who wish to understand the contemplated thought of conclusive retrospection. Greek and Latin as this may sound, there is always the hindsight that complements (not compliments) the foresight and which is why entropy and laws of attraction are fatalistically true to the point of understanding in the way things are seen, felt and comprehended.

Someone once told me that the concept of friendship is based on a association for some rhyme or reason, beyond which that paradigm does not ever exist. Maybe the Man about time failed to understand in his superbly utter confused state of mind that the happening of the happened was not always the way the happening was supposed to be. And then I remembered that one cannot teach math to an old dog. (Eh?)

I remember the jumbled world of Mandrake, Narda and Lothar where Xanadu existed as a child and prowess was all that was expected out of the human mind to better the actions that we always perform best – being ourselves (limiting that to my realm – being my self).
Beyond these points of refractive reflections and contemplations of every dimension, some have unfortunately earned the attribute of being labeled insane and inordinate.

Clarity of thought (to the other side) seems to have been lost ages ago and the ways of the world lie not just in the mirror where imaginary and imagined converged to form ideas.

For those who thought in the ‘self-assumed’ superior sense, I must say folks (and you know who), most of you have got the BASICs wrong and muddled up with the ASCII when all that needed to be said was detachment in the most direct and optimistic sense that would prevail in the galleries of that mind that would be devoid of unnecessary emotion and foolhardy actions. Maybe the EXIT and EGRESS are one and the same, but their applications do differ in the possible way of understanding how life progresses if it should.

Burning bridges was something of a jingle Garth Brooks sang a long time ago but never once has it been so very correct (apt + appropriately right) as is the case of the day that we live in.

Rolling along, it is easy to wonder (envision) teleportation and psycho-kinesis as if those were child’s play, but then they aren’t, and such actions are reserved for a few who know that the diamond is also a stone of carbon shaped and glazed to reveal its many ‘facets’ that while lying on the neck of some hot (thermostatically endothermic or exothermic, I know not) woman, also behaves the way the prism does – Letting the light pass through!

Now do you think that it should have been 51 reflections? Who possibly knows?

High Hopes

Beyond the horizons……We lived in a world of Magnets and Miracles…… with “Friends” surrounded! – Pink Floyd

Today, at least in my life, these words echo only in thought and want that life hopefully changes for the better and that my presence is for the least a cause of true happiness and not indications of disaster and distress or causes of concerns.

Sometimes in a world filled with conjugates, opposites and likes, I wonder and boldly dream that imperfections be understood with rhyme and reason to the fullest extent despite all the so-called and self-professed states of the assumed form of the anomaly.

The thought that the Matrix exists has never been so true as these days when I walk the road to perdition (something that I have talked in lengths before to the misfortune of many).
I was once lengthily lectured about the importance of perceptions in the life we live. And almost instantaneously I thought “Percepts are for those who seek to forget realities.”

More often than not, History and time have taught me that it is the self of the present that is more important than the assumed self or the wannabe self of the future. And folks, fasten your seatbelts, the future is certainly where we are headed to – every single one of us.

However, some of us hasten in thoughts and actions and make maladies of misjudging (me included). We stumble upon many a thought, after-thought, cause and effect and make electric perceptions of what is and what is not. Arguments are raised, vacuums are created, senselessness prevails and clusters of small mistakes lead to blunders of huge proportions.

This may appear as a confessional, but make no mistake, the reverse is what is true!

I’m mused at the thought that many would not even understand the gravity of the line above and even mused at the thought that these lines may never echo into the white sands of time.
Perhaps being content is the single most marathon task faced by many of us (me included), and maybe it is for this very reason that They called it the ‘Last of the Mohicans’, maybe it was among the reasons why Sir William Wallace yelled to his wild-tribe “Will you not pay to fight for freedom”, perhaps it was why Tessio decided to take things into his own hands and set-up Mikey when Godfather passed away. Maybe it was the same reason that Tristan broken himself over and over against the rocks and still was consumed in age by the Grizzly Bear in the Legends of the Fall, maybe it is for this reason that Jaguar Paw was taught courage by his Father and told to run when the time came, maybe it was for this reason that Lt. Cdr Hunter disagreed with his Skipper in the Crimson Tide, maybe it was for this reason that Oskar Schindler wrote the list, maybe for the very same reason that the road not taken is the road not taken and maybe for the same reason that the Brook flowed in the mind of Alfred Lord Tennyson, maybe for the same reason that Horatio Nelson fought more fiercely than the Lion, maybe for the same reason that the Windmills of time exist, maybe for the same reason that I remember Enio Morricone for his upbeat tune in the wild west portrayal of the Good, Bad and the Ugly, maybe for the same reason that ‘Bangalore’ was inscribed on the guns used in the movie Saving Private Ryan, maybe for the same reason that the sleepy hollow is just a figure of speech and no more, maybe that Mercury Rising is an indication of how we treat our environment, maybe that the Sixth Sense is a sense that can be sharpened in all humanity alike, maybe that there was somebody who actually flew over the cuckoo’s nest and maybe that the Scent of a Woman is the sweetest of all.

I wonder how two words “High Hopes” can in truth personify a sense of Hope like never ever before even in times of despair.

As a footnote, thankfully there is a clear differentiation in Height of Hopes – Oops I almost forgot, no dark sarcasm in the classroom!

The Eighth Dimension – The World of the Ockton

It’s a world, like never before! The Being of the Human is reduced to just another life form maintaining ‘status quo’ as a lesser intelligent organism. Perhaps reason enough to be oppositely considered as ‘intelligible’ as the widest perceptions that can be etched into the sands of time to prove, reverse-prove, automate, improvise and function in random thoughts as and when they are converted into the potential of actions that cannot be rolled back or disjointed as is wanted, well being opposed to the principalities of needs thereby demarcating either in meaning, fact, facades and ultimately the reality itself. But in true reality, battle lines had been drawn and the purpose was to ensure that not a single shot was fired.

But the year is not 2008! Eons have hazily and sometimes dreading(ly) passed ahead to bring life into the next dimension. Humanity is a long gone concept and the Earth as we know it today is not the one that exists to support and sustain lives. Or does life exist?

Envisioning the possible (optimistically real) thought that life does exist, hostile conditions prevail like never before. Experience of horror and the unknown prevail in an extremely heightened state and the concept of being watched to be watched to be watched to be watched at time into infinity bothers those that exist in that realm!

Then there is a jingle in the pocket and a jingle in the head to hear the sound of the distant drumming while the mind was trying to remember the faces and wondering if they belonged to anyone (anything) at all. Then the wheel was re-discovered (far from being invented) and it spun into thoughts and after-thoughts woven horrendously close to the alternate of the Devil to be called the Eighth Dimension.

The concept of time, now long having passed unknown and unsaid, the quest remained although broken and tired – but certainly not lost.

Suddenly the lamb opened the Seventh Seal and silence which had by now become not just golden but also seldom misquoted, hovered over the sky and the voice consulted the Key-Maker to shape the perfect entrée. Darkness was thick in black interwoven with the maliciously cold winds that blew at random. Somewhere over the horizon Commander Anakin Skywalker stood lost in thought and unable to translate what he saw and attempted to further in sight. With no Jedi knight present to guide him into what the real purpose was and he wondered alone. Presently he saw the rising of two Suns and in an instant the cold barren land beneath him spurned in the reception of the tremendous heat. The Sun that shone on Earth long ago had long gone into roost become a solid state of unknown matter where Helium and Hydrogen no longer converged. Still lost in thought he wondered, an afterthought passed him suggesting him to make a secret pact with the Devil. Having constantly revitalized his commitment and holding his individual and conscience within himself he reflected in contemplation and rejected that afterthought as immediately as it had seeded into his mind.

And he remembered John Constantine and the perils of a voyage he had committed to undertake in service of a realm that needed the presence to be felt much more than it had to be seen. On the other hand the machines were closing in and he remembered the sword that had dispelled the attack of the clones and the Dark side of Camelot which King Arthur once silenced using the Excalibur. The Oracle had tall promises of a coming time when life would be protected and the aggressor would be overcome, but that was far from now and a lot needed to be done.

So conjoining the forces, the Commander decided to have a say in the Trade Federation of Naboo paving a new way for co-existence and said to himself “There’s no point in living if you can’t feel the life (light).”
But the Senate was as always wily and cunning in its wanton for power and lusted for more than it could ever possibly amass in a hundred light years.

Ockton came as a dream and told the young warrior to visit far away places and understand the meaning of the real purpose of life.
And then the memories came flooding all along, the dreams, the fears, the anxieties, the contempt and all the metaphors that can be stretched to extreme to describe the negative forces.

He unquestioningly wanted to enter the eighth dimension for after having found the sparrow it was the spirit of the land that the commanded to stand in unity and respect the disparities which had by now become superfluous burdens and so called legacies of evolution.
Crossing into the dimension required a tremendous amount of courage and belief in the Self. Absolution was now a thing of the past and accomplished long long ago.

By now the Key-Maker had shaped with sharpest dexterity and utmost precision the input that was demanded for this marathon task. Still with doubt and fear the chosen one moved along with the forces of will and courage and unlocked the Eighth Dimension!

For a moment, there was stillness like never ever before. It was as if everything had stopped. For the young warrior, the feeling was one of having committed a terrible mistake that would let loose a catastrophe whose magnitude was unfathomable. But it was the lack of belief in his own prowess that the One felt so pessimistic while at this much called for time of exaltation.

And then much as the Oracle had so overwhelmingly professed, darkness parted to the powerful yet soothing rays of the Bright Stars! After what seemed a gazillion light years, there was the wide open blue sky that heralded the promise of the Eons to come. Time had in an instant revisited and taken a paramount place in life. They were all there, having served their mortal purpose they now asked for total absolution (read: Liberty) and move on without any burden to pass. For the chosen few, there was a great gig in the sky and universal time coordinates were revealed. For the others, fiction and fallacy remained prime, and their refusal to believe was programmed so as to ensure the continuance of another circle, one that heralded hope not despair, one that called for peace and not war, one that called for unity and singularity in the very same spirit that an realistic optimist would look at a half filled glass of water.

The force had converged to become One, Eon or Neo (read equal) but among equals, there was one who demanded for more and it was rightly given to him.

While fame for some is being well known, for some others, it lies in never being known at all

Anonymous

Into the Sun

“I read somewhere that it is important not just to be strong but to feel strong”
(See: Into the Sun / Wild – Soundtrack by Eddie Vedder)

Now, the question of feeling strong is a question which is debatable quite relatively, because different people have (as they say) different purports for strength. And as much as some of us love to work-out and tone out flaccid muscles into shapely structured edifices that will withstand the savages (ravages) of time, the heart (aorta, vene cava etc etc included) is also a muscle that advances (matures) with time and age and the factor of trust remains a loose column not placed in any form matter or person, for that again would tantamount to attributing (associating) it with a cause.

So the best bet is absolution of the self and not understanding the world – for the world will never understand the beginning, the transcendence and the ultimate end.

Absolution is (in my very limited = ground squirrel type understanding) bringing together every single thing of the past and dunking (slam dunking) it to oblivion and not giving a rat’s a** about it! Simply put “I don’t wanna know, I have not known, I will not know and therefore I am none to know. More importantly it is the power to forgive and try to forget a life that I tried my level best to perfect and hope high with ‘friends surrounded’.

Mired in the concepts of relativity and practicality, it is not I who forgot the importance and values of life but people (so-called) whose percept limited their understanding and comprehension of the absolute.

I read yesterday in the Holy Bhagavad Gita “I have no enemies, neither friends. All that I know of people are those that I know and those that I do not.”

How very true I wondered sitting up gazing into the night sky in the aftermath of having listened to my most favorite band Coldplay (currently) which in its Xs and Ys sang “Tired of the human race(s).” (Read: any which way it can / should be).

The beginning of every new day ends with strange and unknown dreams that help me explore the inner most depth of myself and better understand the me that I have become – Comfortably Numb!

And I say Hello, Hello, Hello, is there any body ‘out’ there? Not in the spirit of seeking friends (those I have many many worthy ones and also the fair-weather ones).

The quest has long gone past the need to know if we are after all alone in the universe, and if we are (as much as we love to choose to believe), what the freak are we making human life so big a deal about? Is it because we regard ourselves supreme in the self-assumed triangle of life which is not understandable beyond the dimension of the human mind? Perhaps yes!

Into the Sun, is not about literally traveling into the Sun or even dreaming to think to attempt such a foolish odd! It is a concept of the mind where the being tells itself that nothing more needs to be accomplished that the spirit of life itself.

Until we dig deeper (also much wider & broader) into ourselves, we will never be able to understand the power of one that we so much emphasize every single day of our lives in the quest to live well (or rather make an attempt to pretend to understand in our own so called acceptable terms).

It’s a time when even your old friends treat you like something new! A time when doubts and hopes are all alike, a time when minutes seem hopeless but years seem more promising, a time when ‘they’ call someone the new kid in town (tow seems appropriate I guess), and then the name of the game is called a blame and nights as always will remain muted spectators to the promise of a coming bright sunny day as people talk and talk until as they said “Somebody new comes along to fill in the vacant space that stood unoccupied and un-attempted to reach.” (Listen: Eagles – New Kid in Town)

It’s simply called out of reach of ordinary Men!

Manly, Momentous and Machinelike – The NeXT STEP

What happens when the forces converge? When Man’s best (read: trusted) friend becomes none, but only the machine?

For instance, the computer that became personal again, or the telephone that carried voices across the oceans, or the tele(vision) that carried images into the mind and broadened the horizons of imagination (read: possibilities + facts + sureties + theories + logic + practices = outcomes – unnecessary emotions?!)

Surprises that leave no room for more nasty surprises! A state that brings about a level of zero-surprises and arms one to be relaxed and unguarded without having to place the burden of trust into wrong hands.

Nope, I ain’t calling for self-improvement of the machine at a state more than what it has already been improvised at (read: Project Singularity – for those of us who understand the perilous yet qualitative possibility of self-improving machines).

Maybe emotions such as trust, love, faith, belief and unconditionality can be mechanically manufactured and allowed to prevail in free and fair terms (read: utmost good faith a.k.a uberrimae fidae)

Imagine a possibility to promote quality, functions of day to day life without any effort whatsoever! Imagine a world without conflict, one without regret, one without fear, one without impressions of doubt and failed logic, one without any threat to human life!

Maybe this thought in itself is extremely dangerous and contradictory to the basic ingrains of human existence, but do we ever (always) forget that humanity itself is a sense of hard-wired programming embossed into life by the passage of time in a manner known to us as evolution?

It is beyond doubt that the universe is expanding by the min(y)ute minute (read: min(y)utely – for the sake of pronunciation)

While the concept of auto-correct is a wonderful thought, the possibility of turning back time should not be encouraged for this could as we all (very well) know spell a magnitude of untold disaster!

Somewhere along the line, we (?) have lost the ability to be ourselves and accord the (supposed) change to the patterns of weather, surroundings, conditions, possibilities, fears, greed, wants, needs and so on, but I tell you (just as another dumb and dumber fool), to stop for a moment and think with that little blobby concoction that some of us call ‘upstairs’ and be reasonable in our thoughts and actions and therefore ‘produce’ uncorrupted (read: pure to some degree) and qualitative outputs.

Welcome to the binary (hexadecimal?) functions of the machine which I once called Ongoing Stage ParaGRAY --*--

0100100010001000001001110000100001000010000100010101010010100

Does this make any sense at all? I guess the machines will answer, but please, let Zion not be destroyed any more than it already has been!

Twenty Oh Eight!

Surprises galore, the concept of Almost Sunday has passed, rather become obsolete and I have stepped into the practical and real (not surreal) side of life (if there is any that is). Listening to some fantabulous tracks such as Sleeping Child and Knocking on Heaven’s door. I try to fathom the course of life before it takes me there.

Some certainties in life are absolute and well known even before they can occur.
It is perhaps that reason I attribute the cause of life to that of the survivor (read: eye of the Tiger).

I guess affinity and aversion are more of myths than facts that are presented as necessities of time. Assumptions made are always assumptions and other things never remain the same. I’m listening to Destiny’s Child (Survivor) and telling myself that it is exactly what I am. In life time is a concept that brings about a certain change and learning that makes a man stronger and even more than ever and helps him find the pace of life rather than exact sympathies and compliments that are nothing more than useless trash dished out to dole out time that is running out. Life as we all know is a constant struggle (read: continuous improvement a.k.a Kaizen).

My fascination for numbers and elements remain and will continue to be forever, as along as the me exists in my self! (read: clarity in thought)
Questioning the purpose of life and its mirrored functioning has always been a fascination for me and I choose not to elicit any more support from the outside than what I have already asked (read: already depressingly demanded for).

They say “It’s not for me to reason or rhyme” (remember: The Charge of the Light Brigade), and they will keep saying so! From facts to figures to myths and many more, the absolute truth in life is that a person is always an island and connectivity is an added feature through the media of language, expression, will, abstention, communication and all the so called jazz (read: not the music).

I will forever continue to listen to music and read my favorite titles for it is these that help inspire me and drag myself forward as is needed by the world order.
Presently listening to Eric Clapton’s Tears in Heaven, I know for certain that a world does exist beyond our sight and feel where I will not stand accountable for those that I have not done or made to do (read: will to survive despite all odds).

Time in itself is a commodity (read: as I treat it), for me to pass through the vestiges (read: vagaries) that are oft presented to make life even more depressing and downgrading. There is a cost to everything that I seek, everything that I ask for, everything that I dream of and that price is a hefty packet (some may misunderstand this to be a measure in currency and value).

I remember those bright sunny days when I was young and I know that they will never ever come, but then what ever is the harm in dreaming of times bygone while sitting in the darkness and contemplating what I really am.
Does this make me dogma(tic), pragmatic, real, optimistic, pessimistic or anything at all? I guess it never does matter ever!

Perceptions are embedded states of time that are better best left unchanged unless at the workplace (read: work = money and that’s why ☻)
The more I work to change perceptions, I am faced with alternates and alternates of those alternates which cannot always be alternated.

And then I also read somewhere that nothing lasts forever! In such a case where the ‘basic proportionality theorem’ guarantees that other things will never be the same, why then waste ‘precious’ time trying to decipher the path when the path is already one that is ‘thrusted’ onto my face.
This is something that I call some-sweet-surrender. I can’t help but remember Eminem’s super track “Lose Yourself.”
This year perhaps will bring about a heightened sense of self-actualization to my person and I care not to depress it in any form or manner (read: stupidity to some (many) readers).

I can’t help but wonder about the possibility of the Matrix, the possibility of humanity manifesting to become something more than what it has already made itself. I can’t help but wonder about climate change and our so-called ‘well-concerted’ efforts to prevent a cataclysmic effect on the weather.

I can’t help but wonder about the starving millions across the globe.

I can’t help but remember a concept called One Earth, one that is free, free from poverty, disease, coercion, duress, pressure, negativity and ill-will, one that is unconditional, true and yet continuing in its best appearance.

And because (read: grammatically & politically correct), of the price I have to pay for the freedom for being that, that I want to be and already am, I can’t help laughing out loud at the thought (read: supposed fact) at being remarked over and over again at being the Dead Man walking!

So then, please keep your very best distance. It’s called being far, far away!

Happy New Year! May the force be with you!

Ex - Post - Facto

Meaning; 'From that which is done afterwards,' 'by virtue of a thing done later,' (retrospective).

Perhaps it would be apt to explain the choice of title for this post at the end of the write...........but I must assure you that things are not what they are and appear to be, and therefore, as much as the title appears to convey a very sullen meaning to this post at the onset, it is not so and I regard this as a personal attempt to downplay the 'minor-misfortunes' that have been part of the extensive gap that saw me unavailable to update my blog........ all for the sake of illustrating that 'after the ship has been destroyed, everyone knows the reasonable measure of how it could have been saved.......'

My last post concluded with a wide-bright, blue-eyed illustration of events until mid April this year. Boy, that seems quite a long time bygone now! ☻ And I recall having loudly dreamt picture perfect of what I desired in the coming days, both on this Blog and in verbatim......... costly mistakes it seems people such as me love to repeat!

When one attempts to control life and its ordinary mode of flow, is when one realizes that there is lesser and much lesser control one can actually exercise...... and then I have to state my doing a volte-face on a self-induced belief that only I can control my life desirous of the manner in which I would like it to continue........ did I hear "freaking bull-crap!" ?, well.. if I did, thanks ever so much to whoever that said it....... for now I stand to realize that the exercise of hunky-dory control that I've done in life until so far has been nothing but bullshit....... horse crap or whatever that you might wanna call it....

Albert Camus, the French author and philosopher, once wrote "In the depth of Winter, I finally learned that within me lay an invincible summer...." and with this as I write this post, I keep telling myself "Rakesh, Mr. Vanamali, welcome to the beginning, the very very beginning." Time indeed (read: overdue) to undo what was the past and shape an outlook good enough for the future!

April went on to May and May, six days into being, I gifted myself another woe...... a couple of days into hospital and more than just a couple of days incapacitated. (Thankfully not forever, I'm ship shape now)

My foolish and extremely rash decision to jump off the ledge of my house to fetch the keys of my door which I had inadvertently locked inside with me outside cost me an arm and a leg and one too many dear days on bed, not to mention the sympathies of near and dear which although did a great deal to move my spirits northwards, also tremendously dented my spirits and caused my self-esteem to plummet southwards.

It was the first time ever in life that I ended up with fractured bones, not one, not two but three and those in multiple places. Some experiences are a little too costly on the wallet and the person, I then realized. Among the other things that this ‘accident’ caused was a long lapse in my working schedule which in-absentia was blown beyond proportion. So finally when I returned to work after what seemed a long winter spell, I realized that my role was effectively trimmed and customized to accommodate the ‘weakling’ that I had been perceived on account of my physical condition. Negative and diminutive as this may sound to any person reading, this is the true reflection of how I felt and was treated by folks, colleagues and friends alike. They say freedom and acts of freedom have a price to pay. I had not yet realized the very sinister truth behind these so called assumptive statements. However, what is true here is true everywhere I once read and I slowly began to realize the life of a castaway who was fighting for very dear existence while being trampled over and over again.

Life itself can be very definite in its existence. Some folks quip that it is to be taken in a stride that befits positive spirit and action. True to the last word, I agree. However, it takes more than just courage and daring effort to stave off every single day that strikes into one’s spirit like an arrow tipped in the worst toxin designed solely to exterminate the will of free living.

Life had moved on in a much calmer pace and I sought solace in my true companions – books! While friends and folks rendered unending support, I being the overbearing demander, longed for more and took to books and chanced upon the bestseller – The Road not taken, which lay the founding steps to change my life.

Officially, things were taking a more serious turn. A windfall change was happening in the leadership of the organization that I was part of and I saw my bosses, one after the other quit for greener pastures. Being a reportee down the order in hierarchy is perhaps the most comforting according to many a management guru, however, it does have its own demerits since once is forced to be restricted in a silo role and the scheme of reporting that until now was built along the lines of familiarity and understanding was slowly seeping downward and I felt high and dry in unsheltered waters. New friends, bright ideas and increasing fluid-like situations came and passed by the day, bringing about experiences that were unknown and unseen until the time. Turbulence increased and I sought to ease the pain of loneliness by taking on volumes and volumes of books. Among the titles that I stuck to during those times were Russia’s War by Richard Overy, The Fountainhead & Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, Dracula by Bram Stalker, Jonathan Livingstone Seagull by Richard Bach, The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig, 48 laws of power by Robert Greene, My Life by Bill Clinton and my most favorite of all – The Theory of Everything by Stephen Hawking (Whom I regard as the Father of Time).

Suddenly music and reading became heightened activities like never before and I locked myself into my own little space of the self plodding through time and books for answers of a mystery that I thought was brewing in every single day of my life.

And then there was Fester, a little baby squirrel which a friend of mine had stumbled upon close to his home, which we raised until it found time right to reclaim independence and move on in life, thankfully. I vividly remembered Neo, my first squirrel pet in Kannur, Kerala in the year 2001. Memories came flashing back and forth to me and I stood transfixed at the sheer number of coincidences that kept occurring in my life. I cannot of course state each and every one of them here for paucity of space and time and of course for the ‘fact of the matter’ that they will seem boorish and stupid to many a reader.

While I expected a bed of roses to come by with each passing day, it was exactly the opposite that I got – a bunch of hardbound and unbreakable thorns that sewed right into the mind and the spirit. I wondered aloud as to why calamities by the dozen occurred only to me and yet I was foolish not to know that these calamities could have been as a result of my actions and none whatsoever! So when I was diagnosed with Dengue fever and admitted to hospital (once again, not surprisingly), my friends shared the burden and insulated me from further damage especially since my folks were blissfully unaware of the ongoing chaos.

This had taken an immense toll on my person but strangely gave me enough gusto and confidence to move on. What more can a man lose? Life? Oh! I had more than once come to the point of no return (PONR as I fondly call it), and it no longer mattered to me to sulk and worry over the loss of life as much as it caused me concern to repair and remake a better life that I truly needed to life, if not for anything but for the sake of ‘folks and friends’ who cared so much for the living!

After what seemed a huge and uphill battle (which I had many a times lost, sitting just on a park bench ☻), on the 29^th October 2007, I tendered my resignation to the organization that I was working for and decided to move ahead in life.

It was for the first time that I realized the world outside and what it felt to be jobless, penniless and aimless. Broken in spirit, body and mind, I lost no determination and continued to pursue opportunities with a renewed sense of realism which was neither built on the foundations of optimism or pessimism, but on the reality of pragmatism.

A visit to Bareilly along with a friend to meet his family taught me the values of a well-woven family which I learnt was needed as a supporting pillar at all times. While friends poured good advice and thoughts, there was an unexplained mystery which I began to unravel. It was as if I could traverse a realm that others could not understand or comprehend (or so I at least thought).

It was more to do about mind over matter and I seemed to remember every single day of the past, useless and foolish as it may seem to many. However, the only intention of me traveling this long road was to seek a true measure of peace that I believed I needed.

Life suddenly changed and I know not for what, but I experienced a great deal of bitterness and distrust and aggressive retaliation from forces I had not known.

People had stopped seeing the real me (perhaps because I never presented an opportunity to them to see the real me). And then I questioned reality, which I soon realized was the worst thing any living being could do. It delved me deeper into the self and I assumed the role of an anomaly that was created for a right purpose.

On certain day I remember a trip to Delhi and while returning via Shantipath (path of peace), which houses the diplomatic enclave in Delhi, I chanced upon an unknown sailor who gave me the Bhagavad Gita. Combining this with the Theory of Everything, I attempted to delve deeper into myself and seek answers to an every growing mystery. Folks around me assumed that I had lost my mind and in fact many did comment on this very distinctive and unknown side of me. While my exterior persona disintegrated and I saw all respect and regard lost for the self, I internalized values and beliefs that I had imbibed into myself as a child and sought to move ahead in search of answers that I knew not if existing, permissible to know and so on. My health took a turn for the worse and I sensed a growing threat around me which I know not if I had assumed or in truth existed.

A friend warned me of life not being the way we wanted it to be and told me that things could go gravely wrong. He pointed a very concerted yet cynical view of how things could change. And change life did, in its worst ever form that I had ever chanced to encounter. I assumed a stage of total and absolute lockdown and concentrated on strengthening the mind. Strangely, events around the world seemed out of place and exaggerated in one form or the other. It was as if some ominous truth was being concealed from me every single moment. In parallel, I realized that I was no significant person or being to whom the world would need to conceal the truth from and it did not matter to anyone what I did or not for I stood to benefit or detriment none whosoever. Days and nights faded in thought and people I knew stayed far and far away maintaining very little contact (for reasons they knew better).

For solace, I took to watching the sky and talking to birds and animals (strange it may seem) and no sooner had I begun to do so, I was labeled psychotic and deranged (neither of which was true in even its least measure.) I took a fervent liking for deciphering numbers and the way they interacted with our day to day lives and found it was easier to communicate to the unknown than the known. Sometimes I stood wondering what I had stumbled upon but gained composure immediately and understood that the ‘self’ was a source of great inspiration and despair alike.

I caught up with old friends and acquaintances with the same good gesture that I always did and still saw no reciprocity of good gesture. It was as if people were scared of an element in me. And then it suddenly dawned on me the burden of having been an open book.

I longed to break convention and become free. But freedom, it seems, has a heavy price to pay even for the one who has earned it reasonably hard enough.

I decided that the best course of action was to stand still and involve myself in my passion of music and meditation even though I was considered a lunatic for all the actions that I had not done.

Toward the end of the year, when the world was rejoicing the advent of a New Year and a season of joy and happiness, I found myself surrounded in doubt and seventh heaven at the same time. Suddenly I felt that everything was a possibility. I dreamt of the moon, stars and the wide open sky and was time and again grounded to the reality of being on Earth!

It slowly dawned on me that I had no right to even dream and that dreams are just about a manifestation of assumed reality or whatever that may seem to mean.

Days before the New Year struck, the murky and ongoing mystery deepened and I was hurriedly shipped homeward to my Parents.

I had expected a light of joy on meeting them, but found none whatsoever. It was homecoming two long years later. I was regarded panicky, selfish, depressive, antagonizing and highly negative and was dispatched to consult a physician who recommended that I be administered anti-depressants and relaxants, so for the first time ever, I found myself being controlled by forces apart from within myself and my will to be free.

I realized that I had a great burden upon myself to prove that I was normal, but I had in no true sense or measure become abnormal in the first place.

What then had changed? What was it that I was in pursuit of? What had I longed to do best in my life? What had I centralized life upon?

All of these questions had only one answer and that answer is Peace & Happiness! A true and lastingly absolute measure of it! Simplicity in life was what I had desired for along with a measure of comfort, security and peace couple with a grand measure of responsible freedom, to do what is right, to feel strong, confident and more importantly myself.

I know not how and when this supposed mystery (if any) would end………… but I knew one thing for sure; This New Year E did not equal to MC^2, gravity was not reversed and trust is something I lost for a lifetime!

Strange it may seem, isn’t it? Welcome to life!

PS: Through this post, I seek no vendetta or ill-will, but desire that people be united in their cause to do good and be themselves for times to come! Furthermore, it is requested that this not be viewed as a measure of settling scores

Dark side of the Moon

I know not the cause and effect of a well 'bred' life and perhaps will never know. In a place which matters not an inch more than the realm of contained atmosphere that acts in kind conduciveness to hold the element of life, where our relevance does not transcend more than the boundaries of a place that we call Earth, I still hunt for the very purpose behind the existence of us beings!

Life has not been kind in the recent past and I have nothing to associate the sway to.........

Looks like its gonna be one long wet, dreary, uneasy night to pass.......... survive well if I will, I should be back to blogging soon.........

(posted presently; 25th Aug 2007 10:59 pm, in retrospect)

The Ramparts of 2007!

2007.......the year of the transition as I put it, one that I'm extremely hopeful of inciting a much needed change in the psyche and spirit.
Sitting here on my desk and penning random thoughts with Hans Zimmer's score for the movie the Broken Arrow playing deeply into my ears, obilivious of all the rummaging that is spewing out a constant mechanical human humm around, I am envisioning what it is to like being a few more years older, a lot more successful, a number of years under the belly and so on.
My obsession for achievement seems to be scaling at an all time high and I feel I need to realize that potential at the right moment, with the right kind of people bearing with them the right framework of mind. And yet, as Robert Frost famously put it "Theres miles to go before I sleep."

Summing up from the very beginning of 2007 until now, life has been a ride in the roller coaster!
The year started on a very good note, notes of progress professionally and personally with a number of promising opportunities in the offing (or atleast seemingly).

My new car, now 3 odd months of age, has been a source of immense pleasure and great tool for mobility, barring the oddly aching fact that I might be among those geeks who jumped on buying a car before knowing how to drive the machine! Evidently, practise leads to perfection they say, which in my case is at the threshold!
Marking completion of a 2 year period with my organization has been a very gratifying and landmark experience to start with. A change of name, change of reporting managers, tonnes of improvements, two scaled promotions and loads to add to a small profile has made life more meaningful and much more satisfactory. it is with a lot of careful pondering and consideration that I chose to reject a lucrative offer close to home, which I now believe, was better best rejected considering the huge learning that I need to do before embarking upon a journey leading to a different paradigm altogether.
Delhi's rather famous winter played kind by stretching over and beyond its call of duty by lasting well until the end of March which made staying in Delhi a pleasant experience during this season.
I dare not speculate on what might be in the offing a few days from now.

Deepu, my dear brother did good by visiting and spending a sizeable amount of time trying to understand my lifestyle and how to make the better of it. His departure after conclusion of what was an extended vacation was indeed tough on both of us especially considering that we hadn't seen each other over a year and my prospects of travelling to Ooty in the immediate future looks as bleak and hazy, much beyond any measure of comprehension. It was during these times that we introspected together, me calling to life a large part of my childhood memories and those bygone years when life was all about donning and remaining the child who knew nothing more than the taste of freedom and the pleasantries of being thrusted away from the madly rut and routine the world followed much akin to a religion!

The sad and tragic loss of Manish Jacob, Manu's brother, put us into a pall of gloom. Unimaginable as it seemed, the shock brought immense grief and created an irreplacable void. Our prayers for the well-being of the family during this time of tribulation will continue above all else and we will fondly revive the memories and times of Manish Jacob.

Vishal Bhargav a.k.a Capt. Val Ross & Shikha have moved to Bombay after several years in Gurgaon and Delhi. Over the time, I have had wonderful friends who have many a times helped me understand and enjoy the brighter side of life and appreciate its intricacies that we quite often disregard as worthless of any recognition.
Meeting Bodhi's mother was also a privilege especially having oft-heard of the wonderful person she is. A person with a strong will to excel while yet giving back to the society the best of her efforts partnered with good intent and a strong mental faculty, I must credit her for her zeal and will that would readily put a person half her age to shame!
Anuj Jetley is back from the UK with a Management degree added to his coat of arms. I have not the least bit of doubt of his measure of success although it is sometimes quite a loss to understand that the person himself disregards this to a very large extent. Anyhow, time should be a wonderful testimonial to how people realize what they need to.

My friend Abraham Kuruvilla (AB....as I address him) has successfully moved shop into a new business aligned with Genpact with a significant amount of progress. During his last days with GE he had a very deluged sense of achievement and came inches close to concluding that all was at a standstill. Further proof of how time can impact one's life in a more positive and enriched manner.
Arif & Pratiksha were married sometime early this year and I continue to avoid bumping into them for having failed in my courtesy to wish either and pay a visit too!

Ahead of me is the Industrial Leadership Program (ILP) which acts as a tollgate between me and one of the first leadership positions in my career at Genpact. I hope to concentrate all my energy and focus to pass through this testing time immediately after which I would travel home to Ooty which I now eternally miss!

In all, this year has surely made a landmark change in my life even before it is far from being the past. I sense a feeling of relaxation, far less anxiety and certainly a lot more positive energy. Wishful thinking or whatever that can be labelled to this, I know that with time, a lot of things change, and change for the better. I guess all we need to do is believe that we can and continue to exert this belief to the back of our beyond, deep into our psyche and spirit and never let go of the ability to look into the eyes of fear and setbacks and conquer them! Life will always continue to spring some of the most uncommon experiences and times in our lives, however, it certainly does not take a whole lof of effort to quell these and master the art of good living.

The Jacob Prophecies - Commencement

Many a times, we chance upon people who are special! Special enough to make a mark in our lives in a surely positive manner. They are mere mortals like any of us who have in some strange manner learnt to evolve their senses into strong and decisive forces that aid them to be what they have become!
Meet Jacob!
Another passing day with a number of things slotted out for as contents to pass and complete, Feb 15th 2007 was a routine day in my life, much like many others that have passed by! Or atleast, so I thought, until I met Jacob! Sounds much like 'Meet Joe Black.' Anyhow, the context remains vividly different, thankfully!
People, I have long come to know are different for different reasons & abilities, and one needs no reasoning beyond that of a common ground squirrel to comprehend this plain simple truth!
After a few minutes into conversation with this eminent 'seer' of the past & future alike, I was reminded of my years in college (1996-1999) when I had met another very special person with remarkable abilities - Benny!
It does not take an instant for anyone of us to recognize the power of clairvoyance in any person, the ability to see, envision and comprehend in humanly form of something that is so much beyond the limited human ability of understanding! While some of us choose to dismiss this as fantasies of scientific (or popularly superstitious) embodiment, I must say that one needs to reconcile to the idea that such existences are true and the mysteries of the human mind are much beyond comprehension even to the billions of us who are yet so gifted to be in possession of this creation that is tuly so unique and vast!
And redifiningly reassuring with each passing moment, my faith in the unknown and beyond grows stronger and firmer with each passing day.
Instances such as these might seem too trivial to look at, however, they do have a somewhat significant impact on our lives provided we receive valuable inputs as important cues as to how to lead our lives forward in a more positive manner.
The instances Jacob provided me mirrored my image of the past and will continue to shape my actions in the future no matter how less decisive they become.
After all, not many of us mortals have the power to take a peek into what lies in the future.

May you find new Horizons

It is the new year and a new beginning, one that is most certainly the beginning of a new phase of development and progress. The season has had a good start for most of us personally and there is an air of amplified optimism and zeal in the year.
Things have started off on a very positive note with promising folds of success as time goes by.

In my case, I have learnt that it is our reactions to incidents that matter most than the incident / happening itself. How we deal with a situation is indeed very crucial to the manner in which we live.
It is a choice that we, and we alone can make for ourselves. Life can throw some of the worst possbile surprises when we least expect it......we sure cannot stave them off, but we can indeed control to a large extent our own reactions to such instances. This will bring about a sense of peace and help maintain a balanced perspective which is critical to sustain a well-balance life itself.

Most importantly, it is imperative to bring about a sense of positive spirit despite teething opposition and this is what I exude despite not being able to practise every single day, honestly as much as I can confess to every single one of you. A renewed belief in oneself aided with a strong and well place uncontional faith in a force is sure ingredient to lasting peace despite whatever string of incidents, their magnitude and consequence. In truth, we have absolutely no control over incidents, their cause, effect and magnitude in total. What we can exercise control over is our reaction to incidents......largely, our reactions contribute a lot more to the magnitude and scope of incidents quite more than what their consequences bring about.

I can tell you from experience that a pinch of positive thinking can go light years in accelerating one's state of mind to becoming positive in every aspect of thought......practising that is an art that requires patience, courage, time, belief and rock-hard faith. And when I say all this, I also mean to emphatically and very loudly declare that say that tough times are with us to stay at all times.

So as we step forward into a new year ushering a new beginning, expecting a lot of good to happen, let us take a moment to stop by and think what good we can do to make our lives and those of others around us more fruitful and positive, let us stop to think the real purpose of our being, let us critically examine the journey that we have undertaken all along and continue in a path that we believe with sound judgement and good instinct to be the one that is best suited for us as individuals, families and societies.

I'll leave you with these seemingly heavy thoughts to dribble on and then ponder over the following lyrics, thanks to Louis Armstrong, courtesy - What a wonderful world, the OST of the film Good Morning Vietnam. The track is one of my personal favorites since it brings to life a meaningful sense of understanding the world and appreciating it, one that is probably not paralleled. A classic it surely is.

I see trees of green, red roses too
I see them bloom for me and you
And I think to myself, what a wonderful world

I see skies of blue and clouds of white
The bright blessed day, the dark sacred night
And I think to myself, what a wonderful world

The colours of the rainbow, so pretty in the sky
Are also on the faces of people going by
I see friends shakin' hands, sayin' "How do you do?"
They're really saying "I love you"

I hear babies cryin', I watch them grow
They'll learn much more than I'll ever know
And I think to myself, what a wonderful world
Yes, I think to myself, what a wonderful world

Oh yeah


Notice the powerful lyrics (the words that I have underlined), they convey a superbly positive meaning of things around us in our normal everyday lives, note that even though the track itself is mellow and soft, it radiates a very powerful & inspiring force, one that bonds us to each other and tells us that this is home and we live in here and life is much much better than what many of us think it is.
Folks, whatever you maybe caught up in doing, stop for a moment, to think, to appreciate and to thank everyone around for the wonder that you and I are and can be to make our lives and those of the others richer. You need no counselling or training to do that, do you?

May you find new Horizons, expanses within your own selves, spaces withing your own minds that help achieve what you have always wanted to own or become.............Compliments of the Season!