The Mumbai Spirit or The Mumbai Predicament

 

Dear Fellow World Citizens,

There were three Bomb blasts in the city of Mumbai on Wednesday, 13th July, 2011 that once again showed how vulnerable we are in the face of such threats of terror. It was the 5th attack on the city since the serial blasts of 1993 and this time the city has responded in a different manner than before, or at least not exactly as before. People are either numb and indifferent to it or are enraged and vociferous in expressing their discontent about the goings on in the country about protecting its financial capital. The much acclaimed spirit of Mumbai has been shaken off to reveal the predicament that the city faces today at the helplessness and sorrow that we carry in our hearts and can’t even afford to show on our faces for longer than a few hours or days! Most people agree that we don’t have a choice and that please don’t mistake this resilience for anything but our lack of choices! In Mumbai, if you don’t keep running to earn your daily bread, even if there is a bomb blast and you wish to stand and ponder, you will get trampled over by the sheer pace and urgency that runs this city! And the end of the day, you have only two choices: to stop running and do something and in that process risk your daily bread and feeding your family ‘or’ to hope and pray tha u don’t die in the next blast that hits the city and keep running, indifferent to what happened the day before!

There have been various opinions and debates on every platform from News channels to Newspapers to Social Networking Sites to Twitter and not to forget the dialogue each and every citizen must have had with everyone they communicate with over the last two days.

I’ve been closely following whatever has been said or expressed in various quarters and have gathered all the thoughts here to the best of my ability and the yeah I do feel at a loss of words to truly bring out the feelings I’ve witnessed or observed!

Majority of the people who spoke, have condemned the acts as dastardly and inhuman to say the least. Many have played the blame game and another whole lot of them have been cynical to the extent of being insensitive. Clearly, a few things that have come out as consensus are startling and thought-provoking.

The most common sentiment that has come about is the fact that we must not mistake the resilience of the people of Mumbai to go back to work the next day as a false sense of bravado or something that can be used as a convenient way of forgetting how such acts have yet again shaken the confidence of ordinary people in the ability of the establishment to find a fool-proof way of dealing with this world-wide threat of terror!

The second important thing that has come about is that people are not going to fall for national leaders indulging in politics of blaming each other over the dead bodies and the ones who are left crippled for life: physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. the people of this city are looking for a serious change to come about to protect the lives of ordinary citizens. It does not matter if u can call it a ‘intelligence failure’ or just plain “failure”!

Another aspect that has come about is the acceptance by common people and opinion leaders that we need to focus on finding a long-term solution of providing security to this financial capital of India, the largest democracy in the world and unfortunately, a favourite terror target of people who are enemies of the India that stands on the world stage as a nation which has held on to its rich tradition of peace and non violence despite being attacked repeatedly over 90 times in the last decade if  I recollect correctly.\

What has not yet happened is that the leaders of the nation in whom we trust the management of our country, have come-out and said anything that is even remotely different from what they have said at every such occasion in the last two decade.:’ We condemn it! we will find the perpetrators of these attack and bring them to book!”  really wonder if there is any need of saying these words that are mouthed like recorded messages on an IVR of some toll-free number!!

As a common citizen of this great nation, and a citizen of this maximum city as many call it, I feel at a loss of words to express the disgust and the shame I feel about having such leaders who are not in least concerned about the welfare of the common people/ or think that the only way to express it is by taking a round of the hospitals and the place of the attacks a day after when it’s fully protected and cordoned off!  And all that they have to offer our teeming millions are promises that they break regularly! It’s also a shame that we bring them back to power by voting or abstaining to vote! It’s a greater shame that we don’t have any alternative set of leaders who we can be confident about to run this country in a better manner! And its an even greater shame that the people who are young politicians, are more interested in collecting vote banks for regional and ethnic reasons than for some real constructive work they are willing to do!

And yes another clear sentiment that has emerged is that people are fed up of blaming Pakistan for every such act and want to know what we are going to do to take the responsibility of the lack of security of our citizens and not look over our shoulders and blame our neighbors just like they would do if there was such an act in Karachi! The people want results! Like an ordinary citizen on TV news put it:” At our jobs, we are not paid for efforts made! We have to show results to keep our jobs! So why does the same principle not apply for our politicians to whom we entrust the responsibility to run the country??”  It is a job they are entrusted to do isn’t it???  And if we are so convinced it is the doing of that country then why the hell are we sitting like ducks and waiting for the next attack and don’t take some action at the same level as the US did in Abbotabad!!??”

Amongst a few people who refrained from blaming others or our fate and offered some suggestions that can help were:-

Priya Dutt, sitting MP from Mumbai, who said that we must not keep blaming the police force as they are way to less in number(30,ooo) to manage a population of 1.2 million. Her suggestion was that we must let the police do what they should be doing(protect the people) and create a separate task force to do all the extra(strangely more important duties ) that are expected out of the police force like VIP movements and special protection to Celebs and VIPs.

Mr. Bachchan suggested we should come up with a training programme for citizens to deal with such situations that help us prepare for such occasions and probably even prevent them from happening.

Julio Rebero(Ex Police Chief ) shared how the current administration of the police force is totally controlled by the political establishment and that can lead the police to get arm twisted and handicapped (paraphrased) in running their own corps.

All in all, we need some serious results to come about and for once stop getting too happy about the efforts made so far. Each life is precious and each one is as precious as any others including the life of our statesmen/VIP and society and business leaders! 99% is not good enuf when it comes to protecting life of ordinary citizens!

 Hope this reaches like minded people who can come up with even better ideas and suggestions and a plan of action that can resolve this crisis!

till then… in our fate we trust!

Cheers and happy weekend to all:-)

eat pray love

It’s a lazy Saturday afternoon…woke up late n felt a strange sense of loneliness…strange coz  I havent felt like this in a while…probably coz dint get the time to think or sense it in a while. and loneliness that ive not experienced for the last few months. but a loneliness that ive known for years…one that makes me wonder about everything…myself, my journey so far and where I’m headed…

Weird as it may seem…no, today I don’t think its weird…it’s just about coming face to face with myself…a moment of truth…of reflection, inner self…and unlike other times ive felt this moment of truth, today I dint feel the feeling of confusion or emptiness, not guilt alone, not regret (alone about the things that went wrong)…for once I think I cud honestly accept myself the way I am…with all the scars and all the deformities…and also the beautiful shades of blue and white that I see within this life I’ve lived so far…serene and peaceful…full of gratitude to the universe for letting those things happen to me…to make me who I am today in this present…moment of truth…for some strange reason again, as I try to relive that moment in which I felt all of this( when I woke up this morning, afternoon rather), I find it hard to explain all of it in words…and even wonder if I really did feel all of it in that one moment or am I reading too much into it…:-)

I think I woke up early around 11am..called up my girl friend and rambled something to her which I don’t recall now, I do remember she told me something about how she wasn’t happy about my driving my car back home last nite. I agree…but I guess I didn’t have the heart to leave the car outside the pub we went to. I do feel that many times it’s the people around me, the ones who love me, are the ones who have a better judgement about whats good for me. And I wonder why I can’t do that for myself on such occasions…anyway, as I was woken up again by a call from the dvd store… had to return two dvds…one of which was eat pray love…been lying around for a week since we got it last weekend…on the first attempt at watching it, I went of to sleep… but remembered some portions I saw every time I woke up for a bit that time…so the dvd guy said he was gonna collect it in an hour…I felt the will to see it till he comes to pick it up…to see if I can make sense of the movie this time…I pulled out some snacks and ordered some thums up and cigarettes(my favourite soda in recent times) and got online and drifted thru my twitter and fb accounts to find nothing too exciting…thats when i felt the urge to write after long…

The rain has been incessant, perfect weather for coffee and reading, when I woke up I intended to do that too…except, as I was wandering around the house as I usually do when I wake up on a weekend, I read the paper sitting on the throne, looked out of the windows to see the lush green trees and plants in the building compound, made myself a milkshake as I felt hungry again… had drunk a bit more than I should have last nite I think.

So all the random ramblings I”ve done so far on this post bring me to the key conclusion for the day..or atleast for the moment: eat pray love…I guess they pretty much sum up all that we do as human beings on this lonely planet.

Eat- for obvious reasons. Though as we go up the food chain, we eat more to fulfill our mental craving than for our physical hunger. Pray to fulfill our spiritual hunger and desires of life and love to express our gratitude to others.

We do these three things almost as involuntary as we breathe…day in and day out…the reasons for hunger change, the reasons to pray change, the reasons to love also change with time. But more often than not, at any point in my life, I always are doing these three things. Hahaha! I almost am beginning to make sense of the title of the movie!! Not bad I say! And it has led me to write a blog again…very meaningful to me indeed!

The rain has begun to come down even more heavily…as I think more about the title of the movie, love stands out amongst the three as the most enigmatic for my life (as I guess for most people) …it’s forever made me wonder with it’s covert ways of functioning…almost like it’s center of operations are outside my own being. and hence so hard to control. When I’m in love, I am happy and when not, I’m in a kind of mourning that I cant even see myself. But when it happens I do indeed feel how the same world and the same eat and pray become more enjoyable.

As my mentor’s mentor Mr. Toda said:” Love is an undependable emotion”. I agree, it can truly deceive and sway one to dizzying heights of ecstasy and/or misery. Having experienced both on many occasions, I wonder why I still do feel love today or feel like loving always!?

Indeed, in the case of love for another person, I think it’s a feeling of gratitude towards them. Love, for one’s partner or family or friends, is a human being’s natural and involuntary manner of expressing gratitude. And that is probably why one feels a comfort and peace within while in love. Gratitude, for everything that person brings to our lives, some visible( as my girlfriend would happily agree!) but for the most part unseen by the eye and inexplicable by the mind. So why then do we end up losing our love for others? Or why do we fall out of love? And why do we not just revel in the love and be happy and satisfied with what we have? Why go back and forth like a pendulum as we live out our lives? I guess the thing about man-woman love is that its too much feeling and emotion stuffed together in a relatively small amout of time. And hence, when the euphoria gets over, one questions it’s very existence and value to one’s life. Indeed, love must be nurtured over time with lots of patience and care. concern for each other and letting go of the smaller ego within. But sadly, many people consider doing such things as a sign of losing themselves and their balance in life. I guess people who can do those things are the ones happily settled as family people; raise kids, go for family vacations, watch movies together at home eating proper food and not just junk and soda! I truly salute such men and women!

So I’ve been watching the movie while I’ve been writing, and its come to it’s expected hollywood movie end. But somehow, I liked what the Bali shrink/guru tells Julia: “Sometimes to lose balance for love…is part of living balanced life.”  And also what Julia says with her V.O. at the end: ” In the end, I’ve come to believe something I call ‘the Physics of the Quest’. A force in nature, governed by laws as real as the laws of gravity. The rule of Quest Physics goes something like this: If you’re brave enough to leave everything behind, everything familiar and comforting, which can be anything from your house to bitter old resentments, and set out on a truth seeking journey, either externally or internally, and if you are trully willing to regard everything that happens to you on that journey as a clue, and if you accept everyone you meet along the way as a teacher, and if you are prepared most of all-to face and forgive some very difficult realities about yourself, then the truth will not be withheld from you.”

I too cant help but believe it, given my experience…So lets cross over!! Continue to Eat, pray and love!

Have a happy weekend people!!

grandparents…

hi people,

finally felt compelled to write again…i guess its one of those days when ive been forced to think and express…move out of my intertia and make the effort…

a dear friend lost her grand mother today…after a long battle with illness, she finally decided to let go and move away from her loved ones, her own and others who were praying and wishing for her recovery all these days…

the news came in as a simple message:’ my nani passed away’…but it brought to me a whole gamut of emotions and even more brought forth from within me…

set me thinking about the impermanance of life once again…how dearly we cling on to life and our loved ones…how much we are willing to put at stake to keep them alive and happy…or just alive…many times it seems the way of expressing our gratitude to our loved ones…at other times…it doesnot matter what it means…we just want them to be with us forever…no matter what!

and yet life and death are inseperable and cannot be avoided…death for sure brings up a lot many questions than birth does…so where is she now?- my friend’s naani(maternal grand mother in India)… where is her life? a few days or even hours ago she was there…infront of her family…and breathing her last…and probably remembering all the good and bad times she had experienced in her life…of everyone she was attached to, of every single member of her family and friends, the moments they shared, from the time of their birth to her present moment then… all that she found worth living for and all that she remembered was worth dying for when she was faced with such crisis in her life…just trying to put myself in her shoes at those moments- its hard to imagine but i guess this may have been her final thoughts amongst wishing her successors and loved ones a happy journey ahead in their lives and wondering what is in store for her next life… trully its hard to fathom beyond that…

ive never met her… and most certainly will not ever again…but having prayed for her the last few days and being aware of her well being and her struggle to beat the shadows of death and emerge out of it alive and reunite with her loving family, brings tears to my eyes…tears that stem from a bond that i feel with a fellow human being who has walked this planet while i did…tears that remind me of my own grandmothers…one who passed away years ago, and one who is fighting illness and old age right now as i write…a feeling of compassion that wells forth from within me for her, its inexplainable! but it does make me wonder about how we all are essentially connected as lives that are part of this vast universe…we feel the same kind of joy and sufferings and have largely the same kind of journey from birth to death…and yet we fail to see that common ground for most part of our short visit on this planet as human beings….how easily we get swayed by the relative happiness we find in things and moments…and forget the essential meaning of being a human being!

surely, this day brought back to me a lot of thoughts and reminded me about my own grand mother after days or even months…so i found it worth my while to call her and hear her old, and yet loving voice…a voice that i remember from the time i began to remember…a voice that never once wished me anything but happiness and a voice that has reached out to each and every one she gave birth to and the ones who came thereafter…all that she has done all her life for all of us is everything she could in her power to make us feel comfortable and happy despite her own struggles and shortcomings…trully, there is no one else that could be compared to the almighty in this world than such a Mother, such a Grand Mother! 

As i mourn the death of one such grand mother today, i salute all the grand mothers who are alive or have lived and made life worth living for all us grand children who probably never could do enough to repay our debt of gratitude to them…and i shall continue to pray for them to born again in great health and better circumstances and live out yet again such meaningful and selfless lives for the sake of us lesser mortals.

And yes, in the present, i determine to visit and speak to my own grand mother more often and treasure all such occassions for all time to come:-)

hope u all do the same…

P.S. dont wait…

getting linked….

in the middle of lonely nights…there comes along a fellow traveller…some one never known…never felt…never expected…and yet so up close and personal that it leaves a lot of stuff unanswered…unquestioned too!

now if that is life and that is the journey…unquestioned…un expected…out of the blue…then y do we spend so much time analyzing and deciphering it to make sense somehow!?? wonder if it ever helps…and wonder if it can be avoided at all…

but such is life…”the truth is like a stranger that hits u right between the eyes…”(Def Leppard-When Love and Hate collide). we dont know what to make of it and yet it exists in its full glory..teasing, tempting, puzzling, coaxing us to break it down to
peices and make some sense of it afterall!

some get lucky and see the light of the day while others spend their days mesmerized by the sparkle of the unreachable gem that has made a place in the hearts of many but cant be owned by more than one patron…the highest bidder wins it all:-)

brings to mind the easy to acquire stake in the world one is in…a good round of bidding and one can walk back home with a sense of fulfilment and pride…and yet most times we end up not winning the bid…and liking the purchase made by another…and feel stupid or unwise too!!

i guess many such let downs will eventuallly lead to a greater humanity and more heart felt human experience! unless we make that a possiblity…one must strive on to gain encouragement!!

so what is the right wat to approach life…moving away from the crowd and be the rebel with/without a cause..?
i agree to one and all…

sunday afternoon…

so its sunday again…and some how its moving faster than all other days…though there is not too much to do…actually there is but too lazy to oblige…just lazing around…music…pizza…some red wine…port… yeah!

so the sun looks at me thru the window on this sunday…its pretty busy as always…dont stop for no one this guy! wish i wudnt too..but somehow…feel m always waiting for one thing or the other…even on a sunday…:-) spent all these years learning from my experiences…and a few from others’…and yet…somethings dont change do they??!! as i look at the fan on the ceiling…moves without any complaint…the music system keeps playing the songs that i click on….my micro warms up my food coz i want it…so a whole lot happens just as i want and yet…certain things dont…and those are the things i keep wondering about…how strange!!
i guess i havent learnt enough afterall…not sure if i ever will…not sure it matters…and this life is moving on…along with the rest on this lonely planet…plenty of lives…such wonderful lives…seem to be so much more in sync with the universe…far more satisfied…hmmm…atleast it appears like that…kudos to those guys who live like that:-)))
so m gonna just sip on the wine and play some more music as i await the monday rush! u guys have a good one too…
cheers!
P.S. Now playing: wake me up when september…green day

after ages…

just rambling off a few unchecked words….been ages since i wrote…nothing so exciting happened i guess…but the world has kept moving on at a formiddable pace…feel a bit left behind at times…like a sheet of paper, lost in a place full of reams of paper bundled together…and lying unattended in some store house….never cared for…and yet always must live with the responsibility to retain the test that is printed on it…despite all weather changes or the termites eating into its edges each day and nite….

well but m glad to be back to the writing bit…will try n write more often…and hope all are doing well:-))

cheers!

take care and be good:-))

gorakhdhanda

heard this awesome qawali by nusrat saab… some very deep adn insightful points he has raised about the god/almighty… many doubts and fears and confusions are expressed…some frustrations too… interesting to see how wonderfully he has made such a wonderful connect with most people in some form or another….and yes he has not answered the questions but is somewhere encouragin us to find out our own answers…amazing Nusrat saab…RIP:-))

dilemma

gotta little dilemma today…
have to go to the gym and also at a meeting with some friends which is important and once a months sorta thing…what to do??? dont wanna miss gym as ive been irregular for last three weeks…only determined to be regular this week and have gone twice…any wisdom??

once upon a time in India

once upon a time is a great beginning… it usually sets the premise about a story… the time..the context…the conditions thereof… the reader or listener is willfully ready to travel to the time and place that the story teller is addressing… so easy to believe really! now if we add the word India to the phrase once upon a time … suddenly millions of visuals and sounds come rushing thru the door of my mind and are vying with one another to say that they are the better representation for India… in the midst of all this infighting of thoughts and ideas…i have my own little experience and perspective…the one that unknowingly makes me think the way i do…certainly part of the whole truth..but not the truth as a whole… coz I too have only been a part of a certain time in India… and have access to only the few other times that I have heard about or read …other people’s points of view…

so what is this once upon a time that i have in mind? or rather…what part of time can i speak with authority about? time itself is passing by all the time and we yet its such a constant…

so once upon my time in India brings to mind the tricycle rides with my best friend neighbor in patel nagar in new delhi…i was about 3yrs old…the sultry afternoons with power cuts and no great modernization in recreation yet achieved… we used to sing some popular songs and ride the tricycles till as long as our mothers find us missing from the house…

there was a neem tree on the pavement near the crossing…a few meters from the the porch of our rented house… we had a little verandah where the tricycle-athon would happen in the quiet of the delhi summers….the verandah was a common  one which was shared by about 4 sifferent households…in the same complex……

near the neem tree was a cycle shop which rented bigger cycles…the ones we both would ride some day soon…but back then they seemed too dangerous and hard to handle…how cud anyone ride only on two wheels??? seemed so impractical…how bad will the balance become!?…and then people complain about accidents… we were convinced that three wheels are better than two wheels… nevertheless…later on in life we were bound to change our opinion and how!

the neem tree had a look of eternity on it…like its been there from the times of the pandavs or even before…and may just have given them shelter in similar sweltering conditions during their exile…what poise! what a strong appearance it had! In fall the neem tree threw down some seed like fruits…yellow with a soft center… and they were so many that it wud cover the enitre foot path around the tree. As people walked by they cudnt avoid stepping on the seeds that wud make a squishy and irritating sound…i used to hate that sound…really! and sometimes avoided going in that direction for the same reason… the cycle shop was owned by an old gentlman…he seemed to me a very content and calm person…never fretting over anything…he used to breeze threw his days with total control without begrudging anything… he was probably muslim or sikh coz he had a long beard…more white than black and used to have a sort of turban/cap… he wore very dirty and wierd clothes…somtimes his pajamas would be worn so high that his ankles and lower calves cud be seen…sometime he wore a sleeveless sweater too… but the important thing for me and indeed for us is that we both wanted to get friendly with this man…coz our future lay in his hands…very soon when we sud start liking two wheel bikes…he was the only one in the whole of east patel nagar who cud fulfill our dezire… so we both started early enough… we wud just hang around the shop and make polite conversation from time to time… many times just touchand feel the cycles standing there and gettin a high…nothing seemed more exciting than this… and then suddenly my mother wud come searchign for me and find me wasting time in the shop and whisk us boys away… till another time when we wud come back and continue building our future relationship with the cycle shop…and the old shop keeper…

will be back for more…in Once upon a time in India:-))

hello bloggers

its been a long time and seems like just yesterday that i was regularly here… guess such is life… we all drift along the waves every now and then…and then time just passes by…

im not sure what i wanna write today… i guess that is how i feel..not sure about what i wanna say or think or do…does it happen with every one of you? when you are just … sorta there but not really there…

and then i cant deny that i dont feel so many ways all at once…. its like the maha platter of kebabs at some ruby Tuesday joint i went a long time ago…kebabs of all shapes and sizes and too many to finish…lol…

so then where were we? kebabs remind me that im pretty hungry since i dint get have breakfast today…got up late and rushed thru the chores to get to work in time… i guess ill eat in a bit…it all happens involuntarily…mechanised to perfection like clockwork…thats corporate culture for you!

so as i yet dont know about what i wanna say..i guess ive been able to touch upon a few things i feel or think at least… its sorta quiet in office last few days…as the boss is away, the mice will play…lol…

 

it’s getting to that time of the year when everyone is in festive mode…everyone is selling for less…and everyone wants to buy more than before…more traffic…more people on the streets…more life everywhere…its nice i guess…sometimes certain involuntary things are good i guess…

to each his own…what a wonderful line… it has been used over the ages and yet we arent tired of it … works like a charm in all cases…everyone usually gets the point fairly quickly on hearing this one- four word line …or is it just a phrase… that brings to mind freedom and democracy…to each his own…free will…liberty… all powerful words..big opportunities for the modern human being …yet not sure how much is really there…with all the invisible strings attached that we all are aware of…nothing comes without a price…wow..that is another famously used line… no free lunch…similar and effective….so intelligently thought out and presented with the right garnishing at every table on the face of this mother earth…we all agree…dont we?

 

i guess this drive thru my free time and cyber space is getting a little too long for us all so lets just end it on a fine note…that is how the cookie crumbles…C’est la vie:-)))