Oh to be alive

Another mindless act of the mind: another suffering human goes on a rampage and killing spree, stabbing his room-mates and then shooting others, causing suffering all around. All in the name of being neglected, bullied or just plain lonely is hard to say. But, the recent incident in Santa Barbara, USA, brings to the fore the warped psyche of youngsters or long ignored issues that society seems to be facing and has been unable to resolve. What is it that seems to be going so wrong to trigger off events that do not seem to have any logical explanation? What is it that seems to be missing in the seemingly secure, reasonably opulent and materialistically well-endowed lives of young people today?   Is it all about the liberal gun laws or is there a huge gap in the lives of children as a whole as they are perhaps shunted from one failed relationship to another, or is it about having been there, done that, a little too soon? These have ceased to be freak cases and seem to be b...

Oblivious to the early morning din, he slept soundly on the pavement of one of the busy city bridges. His worn out shoes tucked under his head served as a pillow, warding off the odious nightmares perhaps. A little further ahead a family of four or was it six, huddled under a bright pink canopy of a mosquito net, tied to a tree, lost in a dream world; the bright neon pink adding some colour to their black and white lives. Still ahead, three people lay on their backs on a threadbare sheet, their bedroom for the night or every night, a tired smile lurking on their lips as they stared up at the star studded sky, the shimmering lights in the distance bringing respite after a very long day.     They had no choice, they rarely complained: once the sun came up their belongings were neatly packed off and strung on to a boundary wall or tree or just packed into a knapsack, as they head off for their daily grind which varies from a grueling shift in a factory to being casual...

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...