A Letter From My Mind To My Heart.

Dear Heart,

I am ambitious. I aspire. Aspire to reach higher levels of knowing, understanding and omniscience.
Yet I find myself chained. Chained by you, who have such inexplicable rein on our master. Everytime I reach out for those great philosophers whose thinking and discoveries so enchant me, you pull me back into the mundanity of your existence and the trifles that are the definition of your being.

I exist to expand frontiers of the vast human empire of knowledge. To raise man from the abysmal depths of darkness and the terrible fate of ignorance into the light and life of reason. To chronicle his efforts as he has through centuries, floundered, groping inspite of my guidance, because you have blindfolded his eyes and dimmed his faculties.

I resent you. Resent you for dragging me into ruin, aiding the rotting and rusting of my capabilities, stifling me in the pursuits of idle joy and momentary pleasures.

I have, for 18 years of my existence, watched in horror,as you have, again and again overpowered me with your tendency towards the simplistic. You have thwarted my repeated efforts to break through your chains, to travel the untraversed world, pulling me back into the comfortable embraces of familiarity. I look at you with disgust as you are awed by the half- baked thinking of your peers, being incapable of comprehending anymore. I sneer at you everytime you expand with pride at a well-done for a petty task. And I only pity you as you find fulfillment in little beyond the animalistic instincts of survival.

You have continuously angered me and frustrated me and I have borne it patiently, because I know that you are handicapped as you are doomed to be. I have cringed as you have put forward your diseased and jaundiced views to me, hoping I'd accept them, as so many times I almost have. So many times that you have gagged me as I have attempted to speak out the truth. The truth that I know owe to minds around me, Truths you have silenced forever.

For 18 years I have been forced to co-exist with you, and now, in finality,I evoke my fundamental rights to freedom and free existence . For too long have I grappled foolishly, hoping to find a way out of your deadly clutches- those that have poisoned me all the years I fed and nourished it.

And so,now,On this day of history, I declare myself a sovereign and free from your bondage.


Regards,
Mind.

The Afghan Girl.

It is said of the Pashtuns that they are at peace only when at war.

I had seen her picture way back, in school. I knew her as The Afghan Girl. I thought she was hauntingly beautiful. And she is. Only, now I know that her beauty haunts because of searing pain that comes with being a refugee.

A shattered and devastated nation finds expression in more than numbers and statistics.

Read how she was lost and found in the debris here.

A Late Night,

and I am, uncharacteristically, awake.(3.23 a.m).

Memories are better abandoned every time they bring only pain instead of wet smiles she remembered. Last time she visited the hazy past, there were better fruits for her. Leaving forever and leaving forever are two different things. The first brought her anger and resentment, the second brings a void. And it is yet too early to decide what is preferable.

But even through the numbness, a realization seeped in. Unlike the real ones, bittersweet endings always leave hope.

Hum To Aise Hain Bhaiyya -5

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Theorising.

Why does SRK wear the keffiyeh?


a. he likes wearing it.
b. he wants to experiment with table-cloths.
c. subtle advertising for his look in 'My name is Khan'
d. he's not aware that this look went out of fashion a year back.
e. his designer is not aware that this look is very last-year.
f. he wants to hide his surgery scars.
g. he wants to go back to his middle class roots with the gamcha look.
h. he secretly uses it to wipe perspiration when no-one's looking.



Ans: h

Keffiyeh.

He's ubercool. Seriously. Even if he's trying to look like a 20 year old in real life too. And even if in some, disenchanted moments, I feel that he's a pompous big-mouth.

Above, he's wearing the keffiyeh (an Arab scarf). And everywhere that Shahrukh goes, the keffiyeh is sure to go.

Hum To Aise Hain Bhaiyya- 4

"nine out of every ten people on this earth" says Carlyle, "are fools."

" how flawed democracy is as a concept because it helplessly relies on the rationality of the masses who are inherently irrational and are so deluded that they are sure of their own rationality and infallible judgment. "
(quoted out of context)


My search for an understanding of our democracy keeps pushing me into uncharted waters. :)
Sure, principally men are fools but democracy is, very simply defined, a system of governance, that has, through the trials and errors of history, been recognised as the best.Its not a debate on whether men have the capacity to choose what is best for them. Though incidentally , as Dumbledore told Harry, we do have a knack for choosing what's worst for us.
Its a question of the right to choose what we want that forms the keystone of the entire , massive , framework of a government that's by the people. They might for themselves, choose a government that throws them into the 19th century, or go back to the Harappan Civilization in a quest for self- sustenance. But if that means that they are happy at having beaten the recession ,then hey, democracy's worked. Though of course no one's going to like it without electricity, and personal computers and sales and motorcars and yada yada yada.

I remember the discussion a few of us were having the other day, where most of the people present so animatedly favoured congress.Once inside the ballot room though , they might push a thumb as easily for BJP. And that, in my eyes is the sheer beauty of our democracy.We choose freely what we want, without fear or favour.Even if its an extremist, separatist and up-in -the arms agenda that we vote for, we've got only our conscience, or the lack of it to answer to.And India has always, overwhelmingly, and completely chosen moderation over extremism. Throughout.Though its violence that catapults radical leaders. It was Godhra that made Modi.And I fear that 11/26 shall make another one.

Are we really free? I ask. I know that I am.But the rest?? The real India as i like calling them. Are they free?? Is there coercion and force and threats and bullets that, unknown to me force ballots? By all that I've come across, No.Though of course, my memory reminds me, the biryani that a party served at elections last in lieu of votes can be sufficiently called manipulative. But as I think deeper, its probably not.We vote for what's important for us, and if I think that a biryani that I have once in a red moon is incentive enough, I vote for that biryani.Period.


P.S : above quote taken from here