Solitary Reverie

O! I found a road, to land of dreams,
Where Sun is calm, and Moon is gleam,
With Joyful souls and colorful stars,
Shacks are built of blissful flowers.

O! I found a valley, with sound of streams,
Where trees are tall, and hills are green,
With river ebbing on floor of pebble,
Bridges carved on logs of sandal.

O! Its a wonderland, Unbound of time,
where truth is devotion, and love is shrine,
With fairies singing tails of my adore,
And, angles guarding values at core.

But, the Road will have to wait,
And, the Valley will have to sleep,
My shadow has gone in woods of sorrow,
I'll wait, until she decides to recede.

Answer me.

Where am I going,
where am I heading?

Why am I aimless,
feeling so clueless.

Where are the reasons,
so many confusions.

No answers till now,
as to what am I for?

Been living this life,
like a quest infinite.

No flaw in design,
is my role defined?

Universe is self sufficient,
where are my dividends?

Wheres the source of shine,
or has it to be my own find?

Why kind of constant fear,
somethings gonna disappear.

For sure its not the time,
nor pleasures of worldly wine.

Is it you my dear friend,
one who brings noises to end.

Or is it a different soul, with
similar questions, and similar goals.

Thanks for being there.

All these days, when the Life is mess,
struggling hard to make me depress;
In spite of being away thousand miles,
Thanks for being reason to all my smiles.

In this crowded world with millions of faces,
no one has got time as all are into races;
wished somebody patient, could lend me ears,
Thanks for being reason to make void disappear.

Day to day with clashes of ideologies,
no way to present my strong rationalities;
confused, should use wisdom or the arms,
Thanks for being reason to make me calm.

In this chaos with noises all around,
so impossible to find my own sound;
forcing me to give up and seek to retire,
Thanks for being reason to keep me inspired.

The Honeymoon that Never Ends: Osho

LOVE IS NOT A RELATIONSHIP. Love relates, but it is not a relationship. A relationship is something finished. A relationship is a noun; the full stop has come, the honeymoon is over. Now there is no joy, no enthusiasm, now all is finished. You can carry it on, just to keep your promises. You can carry it on because it is comfortable, convenient, cozy. You can carry it on because there is nothing else to do. You can carry it on because if you disrupt it, it is going to create much trouble for you… Relationship means something complete, finished, closed.

Love is never a relationship; love is relating. It is always a river, flowing, unending. Love knows no full stop; the honeymoon begins but never ends. It is not like a novel that starts at a certain point and ends at a certain point. It is an ongoing phenomenon. Lovers end, love continues– it is a continuum. It is a verb, not a noun.

And why do we reduce the beauty of relating to relationship? Why are we in such a hurry? Because to relate is insecure, and relationship is a security. Relationship has a certainty; relating is just a meeting of two strangers, maybe just an overnight stay and in the morning we say goodbye. Who knows what is going to happen tomorrow? And we are so afraid that we want to make it certain, we want to make it predictable. We would like tomorrow to be according to our ideas; we don't allow it freedom to have its own say. So we immediately reduce every verb to a noun.

You are in love with a woman or a man and immediately you start thinking of getting married. Make it a legal contract. Why? How does the law come into love? The law comes into love because love is not there. It is only a fantasy, and you know the fantasy will disappear. Before it disappears settle down, before it disappears do something so it becomes impossible to separate.

In a better world, with more meditative people, with a little more enlightenment spread over the earth, people will love, love immensely, but their love will remain a relating not a relationship. And I am not saying that their love will be only momentary. There is every possibility their love may go deeper than your love, may have a higher quality of intimacy, may have something more of poetry and more of godliness in it. And there is every possibility their love may last longer than your so-called relationship ever lasts. But it will not be guaranteed by the law, by the court, by the policeman. The guarantee will be inner. It will be a commitment from the heart, it will be a silent communion.

If you enjoy being with somebody, you would like to enjoy it more and more. If you enjoy the intimacy, you would like to explore the intimacy more and more. And there are a few flowers of love which bloom only after long intimacies. There are seasonal flowers too; within six weeks they are there, in the sun, but within six weeks again they are gone forever. There are flowers that take years to come, and there are flowers that take many years to come. The longer it takes, the deeper it goes. But it has to be a commitment from one heart to another heart. It has not even to be verbalized, because to verbalize it is to profane it. It has to be a silent commitment; eye to eye, heart to heart, being to being. It has to be understood, not said.

Forget relationships and learn how to relate.

Once you are in a relationship you start taking each other for granted– that's what destroys all love affairs. The woman thinks she knows the man, the man thinks he knows the woman. Nobody knows either! It is impossible to know the other, the other remains a mystery. And to take the other for granted is insulting, disrespectful.

To think that you know your wife is very, very ungrateful. How can you know the woman? How can you know the man? They are processes, they are not things. The woman that you knew yesterday is not there today. So much water has gone down the Ganges; she is somebody else, totally different. Relate again, start again, don't take it for granted.

And the man that you slept with last night, look at his face again in the morning. He is no more the same person, so much has changed. So much, incalculably much has changed. That is the difference between a thing and a person. The furniture in the room is the same, but the man and the woman, they are no more the same. Explore again, start again. That's what I mean by relating.

Relating means you are always starting, you are continuously trying to become acquainted. Again and again, you are introducing yourself to each other. You are trying to see the many facets of the other's personality. You are trying to penetrate deeper and deeper into his realm of inner feelings, into the deep recesses of his being. You are trying to unravel a mystery which cannot be unraveled. That is the joy of love: the exploration of consciousness.

And if you relate, and don't reduce it to a relationship, then the other will become a mirror to you. Exploring him, unawares you will be exploring yourself too. Getting deeper into the other, knowing his feelings, his thoughts, his deeper stirrings, you will be knowing your own deeper stirrings too. Lovers become mirrors to each other, and then love becomes a meditation. Relationship is ugly, relating is beautiful.

Hence I say relate. By saying relate, I mean remain continuously on a honeymoon. Go on searching and seeking each other, finding new ways of loving each other, finding new ways of being with each other. And each person is such an infinite mystery, inexhaustible, unfathomable, that it is not possible that you can ever say, "I have known her," or, "I have known him." At the most you can say, "I have tried my best, but the mystery remains a mystery."

In fact the more you know, the more mysterious the other becomes. Then love is a constant adventure.

The last letter

Had fallen in love,
Coz of the charming voice;
God’s sake; don't hate,
I had no other choice.

Felt the deepest pain,
Seeing tears in your eyes;
Now it’s my turn,
Expect you to be nice.

You have turned selfish,
Really hard to believe;
Love I saw was selfless,
Oh God!! It was a relief.

Am grateful to you,
Taught me to love;
Don’t teach me to hate,
causing explosions in my nerves.

I know u don't love me,
But I love u that’s a fact;
Don’t crush the broken heart,
Let friendship be intact.

Am not a poet,
And not so wise;
God bless is the only wish,
Take care is the only advice.

I Feel You.

I have been working in a firm at Bangalore since last two years. Most of the employees are IITians and hence I never realized that I have left the campus long back, and now live in real world. The other day I was chatting with a pal who is not from IIT and was not accustomed to IIT lingoes. I was deep in conversation without realizing that from the other end I was getting weird expressions due to incompatible vocabulary I was using. When I realize, I apologized and tried to explain the lingoes which I used. I was successful in terms of producing explanation for most of them, but I was embarrassed by one word which I use quite frequently and I myself am quite unclear as of its meaning and usage. The word is “FEEL”

“I don’t do stuff unless and until I get a feel for it” what does ‘feel’ mean here, obviously it means ‘urge to do’; but by saying ‘feel’ instead, I intend to clarify that the degree of urge is one step more than the usual.

“What the hell are you trying to explain, I am not getting a feel out of it”. Feel – sense. When I use ‘feel’ here I want to express that may be I am able to understand but I am unable to believe it inside.

“Do something with a feel.” Do something not only with dedication and enthusiasm but also with realization.

Basically I use this word when I want to associate heart factor in the stuff. There could be several such examples of the different usage of this word in my own vocabulary.

Now with such a habit of mine, I used this word on a public forum which was altogether taken on a wrong note. “I wish I could feel you.” I was speaking to a pal and this came out of me. I was thrown into a state of shock when she reacted with “You frustrated bastard, How dare you.” Though it didn’t take me a long to explain it to her what I really meant by that was certainly not to feel her ‘physically’, but at that moment she really made me feel like a ‘frustrated bastard’.

This incident forced me to think what I really mean when I say to a person that “I feel you”, as I use this word to associate heart factor, does that mean that “I love you”. If not how is it different form it. I have realized that if I am able to say it to a person that I feel you then I am certainly in a state which is more than a friendship but no less than the state of love.

Let me first explain how it is different from friendship and how the state is superior. Categorization of friends is a well known practice (as we do it on orkut); we do have casual friends, good friends, and best friends. Is there a limit to the extent of friendship; can there be friends better than the best friend (if we have many best friends then we can have a friend better than those). Consider your good friends, certainly you can show empathy to them, and even sympathy to your best friend. But will you be able to cry for your best friend, coz of his or her pain, in the same way as he or she will do; will you be able to get excited in exactly the same manner as your friend will be, coz of his or her own achievements. In other words; can you “feel” your best friend? If you can “feel” your best friend then, why is he or she not the love of your life? Is it because you already have a love in your life and you are not “suppose” to have another simultaneously, or is it because you are straight and your such friend happens to be of same sex as that of yours.

How is it different form love? Well, this can be answered as follows,
Love can be irrational (love at first sight, obsession, etc) but “feel” cannot be irrational. When you fall in love with some one you wish to delight your love at any cost, on the other hand if you fall in “feel” with some one you find it pleasure to delight your “feel” but on rational grounds. There is a kind of disconnect even if two person are in sync, or if they “feel” each other, but there can be no disconnect if they love each other. For example you like to spend time with your “feel” but you do not become restless if you do not get a chance to do that, on the other hand you just die if you don’t get such chance with your love. One can fall in love in short span of time but to “feel” someone one needs substantial amount of time.

Most of the time people fall in love first, then commit and then try to “feel” there beloved and on many occasions they succeed in doing so, but life surely become chaos if you find incompatibility after commitment. So with such a definition of mine, do you think you really feel someone?

Don't bother your sis dude; she is a girl after all

I happened to come across an article saying IIT campus lack girls. It discussed how this problem could be dealt, raising various vicarious issues. Proposals were made to slash down the admission fees by half to encourage the parents, to inspire there daughters to try for the IITs. The problem was scrutinized to the conclusion that in our country there are not enough opportunities for the girls. People do not prefer to send the daughters to the coaching institutes and most of the time they cannot afford to. To discourage the couching practices, emphasis were made to change the pattern of the entrance exam (JEE).

What I felt after reading the article was that these geeks have sworn hard to not analyze the problem for the remedy. I agree that even in the contemporary India women do not find enough alternatives, but this is not the cause for this particular problem. I have been to coaching institute and am quite aware of the economic status and the background of the fellow mates. Most of them were from well to do families which could have afford the fees of their sisters as well, still we never got to see many girls in the institute. The trend of the coaching have emerged form late 90s. IITs and JEE have been into the existence for not less than 40 years, but the lopsided sex ratio has been more or less the same for the entire period. Issue is not that of the discrimination for the opportunities but, of the differences in the aptitude. Aptitude is something which cannot be developed by the crash courses, but requires constant hand on experiences on relevant stuff.

Difference in the aptitude between the males and females in today's youth of our country is the consequences of the difference in the brought up of the children in the Indian families. On the one hand parents claim to be open-minded and educated; at the same time they practice different modes do deal with the male and female child. Small experiences at the child level itself contribute in a big way when the individual weather he or she grows to an adult. Almost all of us have experienced the comment from our parents at the time of quarrel with our sibling, "Don't bother your sis dude; she is a girl after all". When ever mother in the family needs an aid in the kitchen stuff, I don't know why but even if she has the choice to make a call for the son and daughter for the same, she prefers to go for the latter one. This is probably because she had also undergone the similar experience when she was a child. Father in the family will never ask the daughter to fetch a draft from the nearest bank. Probably because he feel how can he expose his sweet heart in the struggling environment, but I don’t know how to enlighten him, that if he will have such attitude towards her, she will definitely lack something. Most of the parents do not have an issues upon spending on there daughters, but the problem with them is that they shield them so much and interfere a lot in there decision making, they forget that sooner or later there ward has to be in the system, it is inevitable.

Problem is not concise to parenting only but, is with the general attitude of every one. I remember an incident when I was in school some 12 years back. I had a dispute with one of my class mate, on the occasion I did not regret to slap her to answer her arrogance, and I have no shame in admitting that I faced the reverberant act of her. We had to face the music of school administration for the punitive act of ours, but the music was different for both of us. I was caned, and had to keep standing in the class for couple of days, but her case was dealt in a different manner. As per the school admin, being a girl and getting into an offensive feud was definitely unusual, she had to face the torturous counseling form the principal. I am not arguing hear that if she would have caned equally she meight have developed similar aptitude as boys do have, but what I want to make out is that, the way she was treated certainly led her to believe that her lines of action has to be very deferent from that of the boys. Point I want to make here is that the system around us in this country perpetually reminds us of being a man or a woman. You are a girl and you are not supposed to do so. I am not arguing here that the dichotomy in the attitude is right or wrong, what I want to make out is that dichotomy surely is the cause of the difference in the aptitude of the grown ups. When I say that the dichotomy in the attitude needs to be removed I donot wish that that we should stop the courtesy showen to wards the females. For example, we should continue to stand up to give seat to a women traveler in bus.

Engineering is a profession where analytical aptitude is required. In order to be proven a good engineer, one needs die hard attitude to search the cause and the fix for the problem. How will this attitude be developed in the daughters when moms call there sons to fix the regulator of the cooking gas cylinder or to change the fuse 100W bulb. Gone are the days when the daughters used to score bad in science or mathematics, and parents were not worried because they had alternate carrier plans for their daughters, and at the same time prefer to scold hard there sons for the similar bad performance. I do agree that now parents are equally worried for their sons and daughters about the class performance, but it would not suffice. Performing well in the school curriculum would not guarantee a break through in the competitive exams. Especially JEE it needs an aptitude as well. If not more than at least 30% of the pupils clearing JEE had scored less than 70% in there higher secondary exams, I being one of them.

I don't condemn the idea of having more female candidates in IITs, and I am convinced that further changing the pattern of the JEE may lead to increase in the intake of girls, but aren't we compromising with the aptitude of the incoming Junta (both males and females)? Wouldn't we be inviting the pests who got inspired to clear JEE not quiche the curious inner thrust, but to eat the IIT brand? Among the engineers produced by the IITs, how many of them would be true engineers and how many of them would be mere rubber Stamps?