Masks

बहुरूपिये को रूप बदलने में देर नही लगती

The above sentence was from a film and when I first heard it I didn't know the meaning. All I knew was it was from a Raj Kapoor movie.

When i look back and into my life I realize that it could have been my dialogue, and not just mine. Most of my life, I have been hiding under masks and i have changed one too many. I was successful in making many people believe that the facade I put up is my original face, although the intention was not to fool and mislead people. It was more for self defense rather than harming others.

There were times when i wore masks to be accepted, to be avoided, to be mediocre, to make others feel better, to protect my feelings, to hide my intentions, to please others and many more. Then there were those times i wore masks to manipulate others, to hide my shallowness. I have changed masks so often and so many that at some point I lost track.

I hate my masks, i hate all of them
I don't like wearing one
my intentions don't matter
I don't like these games i play
and among those masks
in some lost dimension
lies my true self
waiting to be identified


Now i have reached a stage where i am not sure if I am wearing a mask or not. The masks i wear formed my identity.

Jai Ho

It fills my heart with joy and pride....
Indians at Oscars,
Indians winning Oscars,
I hope to see more of these going further and at this point of time all I have to say is "Jai Ho" to all who have worked towards making this happen

An Apple a Day

Did you know what did Edison do when he saw an apple fall from the tree? Nothing, he ate it. It was Newton who thought about gravity when he saw an apple falling from a tree. Got you didn't I ?

Anyway if you look at the world of fruits, apple is the only fruit with so many stories around it. There is even that saying "An apple a day keeps the doctor away". I am sure it was framed by apple seller's association.

Regular visitors to my blog know that i am on a diet. The dietitian gave me a lengthy list of vegetables, meat and fruits that i am supposed to avoid. We have apple in that list, i am not sure why. So i was thinking about the apple and since gravity has already been discovered , i had to discover something else.

The first ever known reference to apple was in the garden of Eden, when God advised Adam not to eat the fruit which was in turn conveyed to Eve. Now we don't know whether there was a communication gap between Adam and Eve and the message was not conveyed properly, or Eve was sowing the seeds of feminism by refusing to take orders from a man in fact the only man around. We just know that Eve was lured by Satan in the form of a snake to eat the apple and she gave in to temptation. Then she tempted Adam to eat the fruit and since he did not want to displease her, the only woman around, and being such a sucker, ate the fruit and all hell broke loose. (Feminists reading this post, no offense intended)

This whole episode got me into thinking, why apple amongst all the fruits in the garden of Eden? Why not orange or some other fruit? Why is it in the garden if no one is supposed to eat? Why is gaining knowledge bad? lots of questions. After putting a lot of thought into it, it occurred to me that, maybe its not about eating the forbidden fruit of knowledge, maybe it is something else.

If we consider the scenario before eating the fruit, Adam and Eve were just wandering around happily in the garden, oblivious to the fact they are naked. On second thoughts one can't say they were happy, they were ignorant, ignorant of everything and like they say "ignorance is bliss". So we can say, they were in a state of bliss. Then God chose the most appealing fruit, red in colour and shining and told them not to eat. He could have chosen anything less appealing, because he was the one who created the garden of Eden so he could have put knowledge anywhere else. He didn't have to put knowledge in the fruit, he could have put something else, but he didn't want to make it easy for them because he had to see if they can resist the desire , the temptation, more than eating the fruit of knowledge it is this vice that he wanted to test.

It was a carefully thought and well crafted plan. The fruit was meant to be eaten, the rule was meant to be broken and Adam and Eve were meant to be sent to the earth, but if he banishes them to Earth they will not survive unless they have "knowledge", so he had to put knowledge in the forbidden fruit.

So there you go, the fruit was not forbidden because of the knowledge it contained, but on the other hand the knowledge was put in there to enable Adam and Eve to survive if they failed to resist temptation, the deadliest vice.

Bloopers

I love to watch bloopers and movie mistakes and used to wonder how come i never observed those mistakes when i was watching a movie. However hard i tried i could never catch any mistakes.

Finally i caught one. It was a very cleverly edited advertisement of Tata Sky + where amir khan keeps ranting about the importance of wives and their preference to watch serials when asked by a friend to ask his wife to stop watching the serial so that they can watch women's singles tennis match.

If you watch carefully, in the first shot there is a glass of orange juice in front of amir khan. The glass is ordinary and cylindrical from top to bottom. In the last shot where the wife is talking about the features of Tata Sky + and amir kahn and his friend are shown in backdrop, you can still see the glass of orange juice but the glass automatically transformed into a wine glass. YAY to me.

Make a Difference

Everybody is talking about saving the forests, global warming, conserving energy etc etc. Even I talk about them, but i own a SUV. Now you know where this is going.
So it happened like this that one news channel thought that some one has to do something about saving the planet. It aired a 24 hour non-stop Green Marathon programme that hosted several people giving their valuable tips on how to conserve electricity, water, nature reduce pollution, population etc etc. Again nothing was done except for talking.

I could have given them a better idea than that for free only if they would have asked me. The idea is to shutdown their news channel for 24 hours.

• It would conserve electricity as all the offices of the news channel are shut down.

• It would have conserved a lot of water that all the people in the office would consume.

This is the point where a "smart cookie" would think of saying "oh come on, those people will consume water at their respective homes anyway". So this explanation below is for that "smart cookie". There are lots of people who don't bother to take a bathe if they don't have to go out. People don't go to the bathroom for washing their face after entering or before leaving office. People at home consume much less water than people at office basically due to the facts that they don't have to bother about it being over or paying for the water they use. Enough explanation

• It would have reduced both air and noise pollution because the people are not commuting.

• It would have conserved nature because the Air Conditioners are shut down and all the paper that is consumed in one day is conserved and trees are saved.

There you go, but it would have an adverse effect on reducing population as the otherwise busy people, sitting idle in their respective homes might get ideas.

Now I would like to dedicate this post to the actor/ nature conservationalist Afthab Sihvdasani for his most incredible tip on what he does and begs us to do for conserving nature. During his bathe, he turns off the shower while applying soap. Now if you plan to do so too or even think of doing so, this post is dedicated to you too. Adding to it he says that it is these small things that make the difference. Hmm i guess selling off his sports bike and sports car wouldn't make much difference.

Some fan of this actor might want to come back at me saying "How dare you piece of fecal matter, you have no right to talk about him while you own a SUV". Well agreed, but i already turn off the shower while applying soap and even skip taking bath when i don't have to go out.

Nothing

It has been some time. At times i would open the editor feeling the need, the need for writing something and instead of writing i just sit there staring blankly, just like the state of my mind, completely blank. Nothing is happening inside my brain. I look around, read papers, books, magazines, blogs listen to FM, watch TV but nothing. It is as if nothing worthy is happening around that would motivate me to express.

I have a lengthy list of blogs that i searched and found interesting, but even those are not being updated often. It all started (searching blogs) when i came across an article about blogs and in particular, about a an Indian blog that receives most number of hits. That is how i found eM. After that it was just checking out her blogger list and then the blogger list of the blogger in eM's blogger list and so on. Hmm how about writing what i think about each blogger in my list, that would be good. Anyway, thanks eM.

OK, getting back to the point which is "Nothing", I have been in this state of nothingness for some time and i desperately wanted to get out of it and that is the reason why I started writing this one.

I read somewhere, something along the lines of "Happy people seldom achieve anything great". How true!! If somebody is content with themselves and everything happening around, they would not put any efforts towards anything. I wouldn't.

That made me think if i was happy and maybe that was the reason "Nothing" is provoking any thoughts or feelings or ideas. If that is so, then i don't want to be happy, i would be very unhappy to be happy.

A long walk

"Little does it matter to me", he thought and started walking.
His feet were moving swiftly,
and body started to sweat.
His eyes were fixed on the scene ahead,
while a familiar noise grazed in his head.

He walked for 10 and then 20
and even half-an-hour
He increased his pace
and started to run,
but failed to cover any ground
The scene , the place, and everything else
remained the same and the same noise
still playing in his head.

All of sudden the noise stopped
everything came to a halt,
his legs tripped and
he almost fell flat on his face
Shaken by the turn of events
he slowly turned around
walked towards his cycle
mounted it, started pedaling
and thought "Damn!! these power cuts" .