Oh to be alive

Even though every single day is rife with struggles and tribulations beyond normal levels of comprehension, adding to it is a sense of disregard and a huge gaping divide; in spite of a series of events that often push one to become cynical and a non-believer, there is, however, sometimes that one event or a string of incidents that invariably make/s one believe in the goodness of mankind. A brush with a kind and compassionate stranger, who is on the periphery of society himself, trying to eke out a decent living: with meagre means, barely sustaining himself and his family, but with a heart of gold, ready to do a good deed for those less fortunate than him. It warms the heart immensely to see an old woman being fed a hot meal by a road side food vendor: he doesn’t get off a swanky car, wear branded clothes, kick the puppy in the middle of the road, mouth inanities and flash his obscenely opulent hand phone several times in your face, whence you have the terribly primeval urge ...

             The sky was a bright azure as she lay on her back, admiring the contrast created by the lush verdant foliage of the huge walnut tree that was in the farthest corner of the field.   Lost in the moment, she squinted through the gaps in the dense foliage, spotting an occasional red speck punctuating the frame and it always seemed to vanish faster than it had appeared. It fascinated her no end and sometimes she was so taken up by the sight that she slipped into a languid stupor, only to be rudely woken up by her name wafting in spurts through the valley.             This was her favourite position and safest haven; she waited eagerly every morning to escape to this retreat, for a while beneath this soothingly serene canopy. All of ten, she felt a strange tug to the spot and was often reprimanded by her mom for loitering off from the field where she and man...

Human nature is as dynamic as the world inhabited by these creatures. There is a constant tussle to fit in. Earlier it was more about brawn, then only brain and then brain and brawn. A perpetual struggle to perform, whether as a member of society, as it evolved, or whether to sustain the levels of excellence achieved, there was always the need to excel physically or mentally or even say emotionally. The underlying principle in most cases being how to make a niche and/or getting ahead. As long as these forays followed the norms set by society at that point of time, there was little disgruntlement, but very often there was a tweaking, a beckoning by the Devil as it were, to change the rules of the game to suit oneself and how! Since millennia Homo sapiens or human beings, have evolved, devolved and progressed from the days of hunter-gatherers to settlers, emerging perhaps winners only in some fields; chiseling, honing and creating masterpieces, sometimes manifest as entire civiliza...

           As the winter Olympics draw to a close, one is once again mesmerized by the beauty of the human body and what it is capable of achieving, especially when coupled with a beautiful mind. More than the sheer aesthetics of the body per se, it is the functionality that comes into play; sheer grit and determination, pure resolve and the urge to be the best of the best, sometimes at a nail biting tie, at the finish line and sometimes just a fraction of a second away, shows who nets a gold. The Olympics were started nearly 3000 years ago, in Olympia, Greece and were called Olympiads. It is popularly believed that it came into being to appease the Gods, particularly Zeus and perhaps it has therefore been a tradition ever since of creating records and benchmarks that are hard to break, striving every now and then for a higher and more perfect score: both as a personal achievement and as a collective triumph.  History has shown that the best p...

    “ In addition to being a profoundly bewildered man, I am an incorrigible introvert. I am awkward, soft-spoken, ineloquent, and intensely shy. I do not enjoy speaking in public, posing for photographs, or asking other people for money. I dream of privacy, I revere silence, and I loathe any action that involves drawing attention to myself ,” extremely eloquent words by Greg Mortenson the author of Stones into Schools and Three cups of tea. The sentiments reflected in these very succinct, yet persuasive words, in more ways than one, reflect the personalities of several people who go through life being grossly misunderstood for they do not fall into the slots that have so divisively and deliberately become a part of human psyche and populist society, pushing to the borders and brinks people every now and then. Some survive to become stable contributors to society, some succumb way too soon: groveling for the rest of their lives in the darkness of despair or merely t...

Chronologically speaking there are two ends to a year, a beginning and an end. But, perhaps if viewed on a continuum, there is more to it than just two ends. There are several moments in time, ensnared, entrapped; pulsating and/or just being. In more ways than one the year that is, is just about to slip through the fingers with the speed of light and thought or the slowness of a languid afternoon, as one may want to perceive it; the truth is, it is coming to an end.  A word not many of us are perhaps fond of, but, only in every end, is a new beginning.  For some it is like a DNA strand, a complex, intriguing helical structure, imprinted with traces of eons that encapsulate or burst forth in the blink of an eye. Each molecule a beholder, each atom a memory bank, juxtaposed through time. In the run to the end, however, many overlook or forget the beginning, thus leaving the circle of life incomplete, unguarded; open to repetitive contempt. How one wonders would contempt en...

Often when anything bizarre happens in society, almost everyone likes to flee to a higher moral ground. If this is the case in a catastrophe, it is reasonably understandable as all one is trying to do is protect oneself physically and hence survive. Survival is the key, it is a basic and universal instinct looked upon as a means of adaptation. Both, being interchangeable, are to a large degree acceptable in the realm of Nature. There again if only the urge to survive becomes the uppermost need, then there wouldn't be the possibility of allowing another to hang in there, with perhaps just a toe-hold. Self-protection would take on in totality in deciding either or.  And that is just the beginning of the problem. So is it the survival of just an individual or an entire species? In the churning of the universe there is a constant upsurge of waves, only a part panning into view for a while but operating on a very subtle and micro-level are changes that impact eternities. Similarly...