Oh to be alive

Matters of the heart in every which way matter! Be it a casual hello or a nod of the head across a street or corridor or just the glint of approval or scorn in someone’s eyes: it impacts us very deeply, affecting our psyche positively or negatively. A deeper insight thus into both the workings of the head and the heart are extremely essential. There are no thumb rules or established theories that would help one to tide over the intricacies of life, but certainly a few universal and time-tested rules could be adhered to, in order to sail through happily, rather than be faced with obstacles at every turn. At the core of our daily lives are relationships, as we are a gregarious species by design and thus default. From the age of hunter gatherers to a settled and more elaborately socializing group, we are up against newer challenges every single day. Old orders are changing, increasingly being replaced by a more global perspective. Cultural lines are thinning, merging or overlapping,...

Courage in the face of sheer adversity, grit and determination when pushed to the wall; aspiring, dreaming, voicing one’s concern, all of it and more is seen from time to time in the world around us. Right from bone chilling tales of escapes from the most horrendously warped regimes, with equally perverted mindsets, to sick minds on the loose in homes, on the streets and just about anywhere, the malaise is deep set. In fact it all begins and ends with the mind.    Pain, suffering, atrocities either experienced firsthand or through another, are all examples of the so called bestial primeval instinct in man; the inhuman side, once unleashed not only devours the perpetrator over a period of time, but wreaks havoc in everything around.  In times or climes such as these, where the world has become a narrower place to live in, there are competitions of a different kind, in spite of the Thomas Friedman model of a flatter, more equal earth, there are huge and glaring disc...

Slowly ever so slowly, over the last few years it has been dying a slow and painful, though sometimes almost hilarious, death. How could death and humour go hand in hand? Strange bedfellows would be an apt way to describe it.   Change is a part of life, one is told, there has to be a passing over, the cycle must be completed, one often hears. Hence what is, wasn’t so before, what will be, is not what it is right now or what it is supposed to transform into! The situation in question is baffling, intriguing, consternation-riddling and incomprehensible, to say the least. How then, just how does one see something go before one's very own eyes? Sometimes it is a murder, sometimes it is a self-destructive, callous and very strangely egotistic suicide. Sometimes it is due to a systemic spread almost akin to a cancer, where one rogue cell finds its way slowly, but surely into almost every healthy cell, fanned by the mediocre but potently artificial diet of junk food and steroid...