IF

This is the poem (by Rudyard Kipling) that still gives me goosebumps even though I have read it umpteen number of times! A real inspiring poem that bails you out of all possible mood swings!

IF you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
' Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!

the year in store!

ah.. its almost an year... last post was dated august 2009. My birthday is approaching fast ... actually on august 5th, it will be another year gone.

Today , while I was lying on the bed, in a futile attempt to sleep by 11 pm, i recalled all my childhood dreams of being a civil servant, a doctor, engineer, businessman .... and what not, before i realized that i wasn't made for any of them! Not because i can't achieve most of them... rather i don't find them worth any effort anymore!

for me atleast, the famous "college mein knowledge" funda doesn't seem to work ... When I think of this postgraduate degree which is about to be conferred upon me is, i feel having wasted my 7 precious years... chasing something that I never wanted to have... Its not that this degree won't be detrimental in me getting a nice job and making me financially independent... Indeed this degree is the only thing that will ensure this 'financial' freedom. May be this would not have left a sour taste if I were not at my present institute... may be a third rung private college would have treated me better! I wanted my university education to be like my vidyapith, a man making and character building education.... but this education has almost killed the man in me... and no point in commenting on character building! It is so unfortunate that we don't realize the worth of things when we get them for free! I feel so disgusted when I am at my 'prestigious' institute of 'national importance'!

I feel like a sheenless, stinky ass...i want to sleep for next couple of years before I find myself energised enough to make a fresh start... but can't even do that... dunno what next is in store for me! lets hope for the best! Hope I will land in LBS or HEC or any other top B school..... and fly out of this country to some alien land and remain anonymous for next couple of years and make some real reliable acquaintance, trustworthy friends and don't have some real blah relationships!! Hope i am at peace with myself!

Poem of he Week

Once more, with feeling, please! I've had enough
Of lubricated passion come and gone!
Years and years and years and years of stuff
Squirting, squirting, squirt – and then it's done!
With feeling, please! Companionship, affection,
Shared pain, shared joy, shared silences, shared thoughts.
Not ecstasy fast moving towards rejection,
Frantic with the fear of time and loss.
Slow down, life! Slow down, and be content
Just to be awhile, and let love grow
Or not, as seedlings by the wind are sent
To find their bit of fertile earth, or no.
Let there be no ecstasy until
The plant has been well tended by the will.

© by Nicholas Gordon

karla n me.

"I don't know what frightens me more, the power that crushes us, or our endless ability to endure it"
--Shantaram.
Reading Shantaram and regretting why I didn't read when I had it an year ago. Full of dialogues and superb quotes!! Am loving it.
Am off to Ajmer and Pushkar for a couple of days. I have been to these places last year as well. The visit marked the beginning of the trouble I am in for quite sometime. It took me out of the ignorance I was in and brought me into light.
Karla says "Truth is a bully that we all pretend to like" and the truth I came to know was actually a bully that I did pretend to like despite the fact that It made me sick and helpless. "Some of the worst wrongs, were caused by people who tried to change things" is pretty much true but in this case it did something very unusual. It made the situation better for a change.

Pushkar is one place I guess that will give me much needed peace of mind before I am in familiar and yet not so familiar place, the start of the next semester at IISER. A place where loyalties and commitments are deliquescent and volatile. I have been forced to live in the pretext of commitment and crushed in all possible ways. I hope wandering around in pushkar give me the strength to take revenge -- remain silent for 'Silence is the tortured mans revenge'.

Or maybe 'If fate doesn't make you laugh, you just don't get the joke' is true and I still haven't got the joke! May be I am not afraid of getting crushed by some power but of my 'near' - endless ability to endure it.

Second Best

They say – you never win a silver, you lose a gold. This is why they say second placers are not the happiest bunch of people.


Sometimes, I have worked hard to just fall short of my goals. I know how it feels to know that you were almost there but didn’t quite make it. Not bad, actually. In fact, it feels great to have a “silver medal” to show for the effort. But, then there are times when at core you know that you didn't even deserve a Bronze but won the gold. That is the feeling I rarely have experienced. That is depressing.

I don’t mind being ‘second best’ as long as I know I did what I could. I am not competing against others, only against myself.

Silence

Much talking is the cause of danger. Silence is the means of avoiding misfortune. The talkative parrot is shut up in a cage. Other birds, without speech, fly freely about.

Let Silence prevail!

Amen.

I am on the other side ...

It seems like a déjà vu. I am at the verge of another battle like I was a few years ago. I was a teenager then but now I am considered adult enough (in the eyes of law) to get married! I was a naive kid then and my problems were shallow. Now, I am an adult; my problems are deeper but I am more equipped to handle them. And, unlike many, I am loving growing older and the freedom coming with that.

Earlier my father used to escort me to my boarding school which was just few Km away from my home town but now, I have traveled over 100,000 Km in last 3 years, all alone! These last few years of life have given me an experience which I guess, many even don't have in a life time. I have been through ups of power, love, fame, success and company and relatives... somebody has rightly pointed out "Success is relative, more the success, more the relatives" and then I have seen nadirs of them. I have been through spells 'being purposefully ignored', deceit and dissimulation. I have earned a real bad name at times and lost on many occasions.I tried of redemption on all those occasions but succeeded once or twice.

Now, these three months (May-June-July) I have and am invested a lot of my resources on introspection and channelising my energy in the direction I wish, an attempt that has always been futile on earlier occasions. I wish to be a stone -- cold, very cold. A state in which neither a butterfly effect nor a hurricane could disturb me or even gain my attention. I don't want to be trapped by the 'pseudo' commitments that I might have made in some idealistic situation. I have got to learn burying the past and moving on, I have got to learn to be equally expressionless at the moments of joy and sorrow. Put in Rudyard's Kipling's words, I have got to learn 'walking with crowd and keeping my virtue, be someone whom neither loving friends nor foes can hurt, I need to be a Man'.

It is a tough task, but this exists because I am old enough to analyse the situation I am in and think of a possible solution.
I will have to do it. I need to win this battle.
I can do it.
I will do it. After all 'I am on the other side' !!