we are our choices

http://www.ted.com/talks/jeff_bezos_gifts_vs_choices.html

this is a great talk and I encourage you to listen to it and not get bored with the slow pace of talk.. he ends it beautifully..

will you wilt under criticism or will you follow your convictions?
will you bluff it off when you are wrong or will you apologize?
will you choose a life of ease or a life of service and adventure?
will you play it safe or be a little swashbuckling?
will intertia be your guide or will you follow your passion?
will you be a cynic or will you be a builder?
will you be clever at the expense of others or will you be kind?

every choice that he brings up, prompted an answer in my heart.. and i realized that i have bluffed, have played safe, have let inertia be my guide, and most definitely been clever at the expense of others.. i have enjoyed realizing some of these about myself as he asked these questions.. but as beautiful as these questions are, just finding out my passion seems like a gaping hole in my heart...

i know enough of myself that if i was passionate about something, I would do it.. it's hard for people to stop me.. i have too much of my own mind.. but why have i found it so hard to find what I want to do? there is this niggling idea that i should be a better person and use all my gifts to the benefit of society.. that's what i have always wanted.. from the time i was like 12 - i have wanted to benefit the poorest of society.. but how?? when i am loath to be a mother teresa or give up too much of my creature comforts?? how can i help others when i am not willing to sacrifice of myself the way Gandhi did? is there a way? is India the solution? anyhow - these thoughts are always circling my head.. and i hope to someday not too far in the future have an answer.. what I will do is spend time with small kids when I am in India this winter.. i would love that most of all..

m

not me, but my mean old heart..

my latest favorite.. the song does so much justice to the lusty old heart which doesn't age - making us all feel guilty and miserable! i love the fact that this song has become a hit in mainstream bollywood - it's almost a validation of the emotion that not many people talk about (at least in the civilized world) and i love the "ji" that sort of buffers the ugly (or beautiful, depending on whether you are young or old) thoughts of the old man! Also notice that he has made his "dil" to be different from himself.. which is interesting.. what a way to take off the blame.. it was not me, it was my stupid old heart!

The song can be found here:

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJxc5yUbczY

Aisi uljhi nazar unse hatthi nahi
Daant se reshmi dor katthi nahi
Umr kab ki baras ke safaid ho gayi
Kaari badri jawani ki chhatt ti nahi
Wallah ye dhadkan bhadne lagi hai
Chehre ki rangat udne lagi hai
Darr lagta hai tanha sone mein ji
Dil to bachcha hai ji
Thoda kaccha hai ji

Kisko pata tha pehlu mein rakha
Dil aisa paaji bhi hoga
Hum to hamesha samajhte the koi
Hum jaisa haaji hi hoga
Hai zor kare, kitna shor kare
Bewajah baaton pe aienwei gaur kare
Dil sa koi kameena nahi
Koi to roke, koi to toke
Iss umr mein ab khaoge dhokhe
Darr lagta hai ishq karne mein ji
Dil to bachcha hai ji…

Aisi udaasi baithi hai dil pe
Hassne se ghabra rahe hain
Saari jawani katra ke kaati
Piri mein takra rahe hain
Dil dhadakta hai to aise lagta hai woh
Aa raha hai yahin dekhta hi na ho
Prem ki maare kataar re
Tauba ye lamhe katt te nahi kyun
Aankhon se meri hatt te nahi kyun
Darr lagta hai mujhse kehna na ji
Dil toh bachcha hai ji…

m
(i am still trying to figure out the meanings.. word for word..)

why vampires make for good bfs

okay - as much as i am ashamed to admit it, I am reading the twilight series.. and i love edward cullen and as I was thinking about it, i thought i will write a short post on why vampires make good boy-friends :D

1) Vampires are breathtakingly beautiful, smell good and are fast and strong
2) Because they don't eat, they won't fart/belch/burp
3) They don't sleep, they'd rather watch you sleep, how cute and what devotion!
4) They drive incredibly fast and hence own fancy cars
5) They follow you around because they care for your safety and protect your accidents - doesn't hurt right?
6) They are afraid they will hurt you, so they don't demand sex! (and that too only until marriage! if you are interested in remaining virgin that is, you have a choice!)
7) You can piggy back on them and they will fly through the forest and put you on top of a tree so you can get a view and feel the breeze.
8) They tend to be old (mentally, not physically) and hence very wise
9) They admire you and wish they were you since you get to die and they don't.
10) They jump in through the window after your parents sleep and keep company throughout the night

wow.. now you know why the women love the twilight series.. this is even better than the best fantasy out there :)

m

changes to the blog

hi - I have arrived at a compromise. blogspot has a way of inviting your readers, thus effectively blocking random checks on me! so I have sent an invitation to a few that I know have read my blog at some point in time or the other.. this is only to protect myself from strangers.. so please don't take offense!

m

half full..

i have this big fear.. and i think i have found an accurate way of describing this fear.. it was not clear to me earlier.. it is this.. i feel half full.. my life goes on, i am doing all the right things and meeting all the deadlines (most of them anyway) but still my life seems half full and my biggest fear is that i will die feeling this way.. i know what you are thinking - did i ever feel full at any other point in time? and the answer is yes.. i always used to.. in fact, this is a feeling that has only been growing over the last 2-3 years.. i feel like i can't be too happy, or too sad.. like i have attenuated - if you know what I mean.. and nothing moves me too much.. maybe its maturity.. if it is maturity, i hate being mature..

anyway, as the author of "unbearable lightness of being" says, you have only one life.. so there is no way of knowing what could have happened if ta-da-da-da-da.. i can't compare and contrast.. my decisions and actions are irrevocable.. so i guess time will answer this question.. i don't feel comfortable about this blog.. but wanted to put it out there and see how i feel about it.. maybe I will remove it soon.. it's scary to read..

m

10 things i love about my life..

wow - lists.. a new thing to my blog.. especially given that i have been wanting to write so much these past 2-3 days, but haven't time to!! but net-net, weirdly, I am in love with life right now.. and i wanted to share something positive about what's going in my day to day with my audience! so here i go..

1) my morning chai - this is the best time of day... i make tea and sit and watch my backyard and enjoy my morning.. i rush around all morning (being my hyperactive self) but calm down utterly for my tea..

2) afternoon yoga - sometimes, just sometimes, I do yoga at noons.. wow.. it's such a great experience.. i leave my office, mind and soul - and it feels wonderful..

3) the steam room - about 2-3 times a week, i use the steam room in my gym - and it's great (although it always always reminds of my hostel room in iit madras!) it's such a break from the weird chillness that always pervades the air in the bay area - even on nice summer evenings..

4) listening to oldie goldie on 1170 am - i love listening to these old hindi songs on my way to work.. it's great.. always pulls me back to my times in india.. and i can relate to almost every song!

5) going to the library - sometimes i come home early and when i do that i take a walk to my library.. my home is in a beautiful neighborhood.. flowers, parks and children with golden hair playing in the swings and climbing structures.. (i never cease to be amazed by the golden hair - on little kids, it looks like corn silk!) as I walk past these views under the setting sun, I feel so happy and lucky!

6) my music class - i am learning carnatic music.. and sometimes when we all sing together.. the resonance and synchrony touches me and it's beautiful (and noisy depending in your perspective, I think..)

7) grocery shopping - i love my weekly grocery shopping trips.. i am imagining all the stuff that I am going to cook and my culinary senses kick to life in a grocery shop.. love it!

8) sunday evening chaat - i have taken to having chaat on sunday evenings with my hubby.. and i love making my own pani puri.. and i am literally jumping in my seat by the team they serve it!

9) sense of nostalgia - i am a nostalgic person.. i have resigned to that fact now.. but the interesting thing is, i enjoy my nostalgia.. it's private, it's special and it gives me a reason to be utterly happy!

10) falling asleep with the book dropping from my hand - i love sleep - don't mistake me.. but i don't like going to sleep - if you can understand that.. so i have to read a book till it thumps to the floor and i am asleep - and i enjoy that transition.. that two seconds of consciousness that one day has ended, and when I wake up again, it will be a new day..

wow.. i am so happy that i wrote this.. so many beautiful things - i am so lucky.. and it again it reminds me of all the things that i should be doing for the others who don't get quite so lucky! looking back at my list, the only thing missing is human contact - so abundant in india, so difficult in the US.. i keep trying to work on it.. but its hard.. and i don't like the idea of committing my all too little discretionary time to anyone.. so let us see how it works out..

so now, you guys should try it too.. what are the things that you like about your life?

maalika

experience vs memory..

been reading up on happiness.. it's interesting.. listen to this one:

http://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_kahneman_the_riddle_of_experience_vs_memory.html

you can be happy with your life without being happy in life!! can you imagine that this is so different?

esp the part on spending time with others.. probably why i was so happy when my mom was here for 2 months..

maalika
fyi - he is a nobel laureate.. and is considered the founder of behavioral economics as a field.. his work is pretty interesting.. all over wikipedia for your reference..

moving on..

i think my idea for a new blog has come at a good time.. this weekend i had a long discussion with hubby about moving on.. we discussed what is not such a big revelation you know - that i am stuck in the past, i never really accepted my move to this country etc.. and what i didn't know very much was - how this has made me a not-so positive person.. and knowing that has scared me.. i have always been such a positive person and i really do think that what little i have achieved may not be attributed so much to genius, as it is to being optimistic and brimming with hope..

and somehow that hope has dimmed in the past few years - leading to an aura of negativity that rubs on others too.. god - it is so scary to even be thinking this.. but confronting it and accepting it will hopefully help me change for the better.. so i have promised myself to be more positive going forward and live in the now.. at present.. and just saying this to myself has made me so happy..

since this blog has borne the brunt of my negativity - it is only fair to delete this completely and not have it present to remind me of this dark period (and i am so good at forgetting that if I didn't have this blog, I will probably not recall any of it in the future!)

m

love story..

what can you say about a 25 year girl who died? that she was beautiful and brilliant.. that she loved mozart and bach.. the Beatles.. and me?

saw love story - just ended.. for the umpteenth time.. and loved every second of it..

m

hypocrisy, freedom and obsession..

I can't believe i am writing so much these days.. anyhow.. as i sit to write, there are three topics looming in my mind. topic 1 - hypocrisy in society.. my opinion is that hypocrisy is a consequence of human society.. that is where there is man, there is hypocrisy.. at some level.. i have some arguments that will go towards proving this.. but the point of writing a blog on this topic would be to declare that "i am a hypocrite".. i feel incredibly light to be able to say it aloud and have it out there.. i don't people to think that i holier than thou and have a possibility of being disillusioned later.. that's why i found gandhi's experiments with truth so refreshing.. how light he must feel!!

the second topic is about freedom.. a question is could gandhi have become the president of US.. an election here means having to defend every shit you have ever done.. almost as if they want to elect a perfect (consistent) person to represent the country.. when the country itself is so not perfect.. you might remember that i wanted to be a politician at some point.. but now, I no longer do.. i cannot beyond a point defend myself or my actions and i don't want to put in a position of having to.. i have a discussion with a friend the other day about tiger woods apologizing to public about his behavior.. i thought it was so bull shit.. he is a golf player.. a good one at that.. that's it.. whose fault is it that he held up to a saintly standard? he needs apologize only to his wife and kids.. that too if he feels the need to do so.. that's why i like george orwell's philosophy. how much freedom are you willing to let go of in order to have order in society.. i think it is a very important question.. and that's why communism scares me so much..

Topic 2 links to topic 1 - it is a hypocrisy of society to expect it's leader to be free of all hypocrisy when everyone knows in their hearts they are hypocrites in some way.. and I don't want to lead a hypocritical society unless i am able to say this aloud.. and people accept that i may not be perfect, but i can be a good leader to them.. what do you think?

the third topic is about being obsession worthy.. i am a little bit of an unstable personality and i tend to obsess stuff for short periods of time.. like a movie, or a song, or a person.. i am not loyal.. just short term obsessions.. if you want me to cherish something, I should have obsessed it at some point.. this has been an interesting line of thought and i realized that while i have enjoyed many things in my life.. i have only obsessed a few and those are the ones that I am pretty sure i will take with me to the grave.. i wonder if others think this way too..

there - i have written a little bit about all my three topics.. without going into the gory details.. and it feels good to have let it out.. and I can't believe that I wrote about hypocrisy, freedom and obsession in 10 min!!

maalika

beauty of the unsaid..

this is going to be a short post - i don't have much time to write a lot.. but i was thinking about the story that's never told.. sometimes in a book or in a movie, the meaning of the story and beauty of the plot is exemplified by the things unsaid.. two instances particularly comes to mind - i think i might have written about it before too..

in the godfather, when michael's first wife dies, the author never explains what he goes through after that.. the plot directly jumps to 6 months later when michael returns to the US.. and that gap is so obvious.. so contrary to the rest of the plot that it kills me to imagine in multiple ways what he would have gone through.. and how he would have had to harden his heart... i always found this poetic.. and love the book for it..

and similarly in the movie anand the plot never goes to the sadness that rajesh khanna seems to carry.. there is just this one song kabhi door jab din, which alludes to his past, but is never elaborated anywhere, leaving us to imagine the rest.. and again, given my active imagination, it moves me no end to think of all the tragic possibilities.. but i love this song.. every line is beautifully written, sung and acted.. he is both in the moment with nature and far away in his dreams.. the light breeze that plays with his hair, the slight wetness in his eyes and the slow movements of his brows alone make this song an evergreen one - especially to those who have ever nursed a broken heart..

hope you are all enjoying your weekend..

time for a new blog???

my heart aches at the thought of having to delete this blog.. but i am having to.. incidentally, right after i wrote my post on how i hate anonymous blogging, i read in the paper about how 70% of the employers check you out in google before hiring you.. and my blog is the first link if you searched for my name!! and my name is rare enough that you will know who i am.. so i am thinking that i will delete this blog in the next month or so and start anew - i will try to inform all my friends who I know have read this blog at some point or the other so that you may continue to follow me.. to my anonymous friends, I am very very sorry to lose you.. but hope you understand why i am having to do this.. internet could be a harsh scary thing where friends could turn into enemies if they saw fit to use your words wrongly.. while i am an open person and am not ashamed of myself, i don't relish the idea of my potential employer mis-understanding me either.. and according to one of my friends, showing passion means showing weakness.. and my blog has been all about the weak moments of my life with some rare interjection of passion! hopefully the new one i start will be a little different, a little less melancholic and a little more purposeful.. (though that sounds little like me :D)

so, before i become another mayonnaise toss or a bombay dosti (in a month or so) i thought I will write about rajesh khanna here.. you know how i have opined about shah rukh khan many times in this blog.. but i am also a big fan of rajesh khanna.. and this morning the radio (yes, bay area has an indian radio channel!! 1170 AM if you didn't know) ran a special on rajesh khanna - his dialogues, his songs and some bits on his life.. i only heard a part of it while I was driving to work.. but what i did hear was that he was an adopted kid who had decided early in his life that he was going to crack it in life..

i was shocked to hear about his ambition because i, probably like others, mistook his soft on-screen personality, his voice which breaks so charmingly, his eyes dripping with kindness and a sort of deeply buried tragedy and his small frame mostly clad in dhoti kurta for a peaceful personality without a notion of ambition.. and how wrong I was.. anyhow, i have loved this guy's songs.. from his joyful "ye sham mastani" to his passionate "yeh jo mohabbat hai" to his bittersweet "kahi door jab din" and owe many a deep moments to the moods brought on by these songs..

here's to rajesh khanna!! have a good weekend friends..

maalika

with love, wife..

i have tons of work.. i really do. but it is one of those days when I am simply not able to focus. but what is different is i am not feeling romantic or nostalgic or melancholic.. i am outright indignant.. outraged.. and the root cause is an article that i read which seems to state that it is a lucky man who gets a beautiful (of course) but also a submissive sweet wife who will honor him in front of others.. i read it and i realized that this is a very common view held by many men (i will not mention which country such men mostly belong to)

i for one, am independent, vocal and if I have to disagree with my husband will do so outright and expect him to have the backbone to defend his view. but at the same time, i would feel badly if my husband thought i was less of a wife because of this. marriage is a relationship between two individuals who possess all faculties needed for full functionality.. but expecting the women to not deploy her right to express her opinion freely, or defend herself is retarded to me.. but it is a most common expectation that men be allowed to talk in public setting while the women just smile and agree and all in all be a gracious wife..

one argument that I have heard (from a man, i might add) is that women need to deploy different strategies.. like be more charming.. because it is common knowledge that while power and attraction are positively correlated for men and it is negatively correlated for women.. and given that is a natural instinct for all of us to want to be attractive, what we are essentially saying is that women should not exhibit power openly.. but instead exert it through underhanded means such as "charm".. the whole discussion disgusts me.. i live and work in a world where overtly, all of us, irrespective of gender, are expected to perform equally, but behind the curtains, there are different expectations in terms of behavior. I don't want to discount this issue in the name of evolution, psychology etc etc.. it's a bloody disadvantage, and I will do the best i can to dispel this notion form society at large in my lifetime..

so if you find me arguing with my husband in front you, please don't bother feeling sorry for him.. he is a lucky man to have got a full person (with all faculties and thoughts and opinions intact) as a life partner who didn't see the need to charm anyone by any underhanded means whatsoever!

by
not a feminist yet,
maalika

period or pause?

Ok - so one of my distinct if utterly irritating writing styles has been the lack of caps and the ...s. Today I was chatting with a friend who has just started reading my blog and he commented on it. Apparently, it irritates him. He also shared with me a blog that he has been following for some time - without linking it here i will just say that it's named after a neurotic food item. For the very first time, I had spent a significant amount of my time reading through a blog that written by an anonymous. She had a lovely writing style, thought very much like me (as in romanticized a lot of things, albeit without the melancholic ring to it) and used caps and periods.

As usual, I can see my writing has chosen its own topic - the first one being anonymous writing. I don't like it. I don't know why - we are all anonymous in this world in a way that no one beyond the handful who bother to read cares about what we write and to add another layer of anonymity seems pitiful. As much as I hate taking controversial view points, i always comment in my own name even if it's national newspapers. Somehow I feel others have the right to know where the voice is coming from. And because I hate anonymous writers, its only fair that I am never anonymous. Hence my posts are signed with my name and you can trace me quite easily if you are into stalking and that kind of thing.

So I read this blog today and while it was nice and everything, I kept feeling guilty as if I was prying (which is why I won't share the name here) and alienated that this person didn't want me to know who she was while she wanted me to connect with her writing by keeping it open. Maybe she wanted it read by only a select few of her friends. I don't know.

Anyhow, coming to the second point, which was the original intention of this post, I am trying to use caps and periods for size - it's a new habit and my fingers are protesting and I having to delete two dots at the end of every sentence :) but you can give me feedback on whether this looks better. Language is an evolutionary science after all and maybe there are meaningful reasons behind a single "." versus "...". To me the "..."s have signified a continuation in my thoughts which never stop, but smoothly flow into the next one. That said, I will try to put a full stop, period.

That apart, I am happy that I have two new visitors for this blog and hope they continue reading it and be a part of my literary journey - how much more lively it is to graduate this internal monologue into a deep, fulfilling conversation!! And in the interest of taking off the air of depression around my blog, I will not mention my accident earlier this week and the unforgettable tragedy of seeing my precious black hybrid car (who is by now as good as a partner in crime, my almost magical portkey) being towed away. Miss you babe.

Have a happy week ahead my dutiful friends, and if you are not (dutiful that is) - the weekend is only 4.5 days away!

Love, m

shah rukh khan..

i realized that i had written too many serious posts in the last 4 days.. which is not fair, since i am a fairly happy person and anyone reading it will think I am not.. so thought i will put some of my happier thoughts here :) about shah rukh khan.. i just saw DDLJ for the twentieth time i think (although not in a long time now) and fell in love with him all over again.. and as i was regaling to my husband the effect of shah rukh in my life, i thought it might make good blog material :D

so along with countless others across India, i had given my heart and soul to king khan.. and even though i was hard core tam in everything else, i had a large poster of shah rukh khan staring at me in my room for all the four years of my undergrad.. his face was the first i saw when i woke up and the last i saw when i went to sleep (often with a sigh on my lips.. it was hard to feel lonely with his soulful eyes staring right into me as if saying he was there only for me.. worked better than all the hindu gods put together, trust me) his role in my life is as tangible as anyone else with whom i have interacted..

when my dad was buying a car in 2000, i made him buy a red santro just because it was the car with an ad by shah rukh.. and i was clear to my dad, the only car worth buying is the one that shah rukh khan recommends.. i would take my entire family with grandmom included (none of them understood hindi, not that it mattered, you only need to understand the language of the eyes to understand a shah rukh movie) to every one of his movies that got released in Trichy (trust me, there were in all some 4-5 hindi movies that released in any theatre in trichy in a year).. and dream and re-dream every scene for many nights after!! (i can't believe i did that!! but be it his palat palat of DDLJ fame, or his aur pass aur pass of DTPH, what's not not to dream about???) and lastly, when I chose my life partner, the fact that he had a lot of resemblance (to my infatuated eyes) to shah rukh khan cinched the deal for me.. this was the guy i wanted to marry because he had dimples like shah rukh when he smiled.. his brows and mobile mouth all seemed to me like shah rukh!! and he was a die-hard fan too!!

you are probably laughing aloud now.. but seriously, the effect of this cute dude on my teenage mind was endless... after DDLJ today, all i am wishing is if and when I have a son, he should be like shah rukh khan.. playful and soulful at the same time.. please wish that my heartfelt prayer comes true my friends :)

maalika

spurts of stupidity..

every once in a while, I have to make a fool of myself.. it is a must.. a necessary condition of my existence..

and it is during these times that you will see a spike in my blogging frequency.. it's crazy.. but i love my blog.. it lets me reveal my stupidity.. there are folks who take tons of pics and look at them to recapture their memories.. i just look at my blog and it helps me recapture so much more (again the power of imagination)..

so many times i have debated changing the name of my blog - but i don't want to.. let my stupidity be public.. it just seems like the human thing to do..

anyhow - i have been feeling extremely uneasy the last 2-3 days.. hope the feeling subsides and i return to reality.. this surrealistic environment in which i roam for however short a time period, cannot be too good for me.. maybe you have good advice for me?

maalika

salvaged ego..

you might have noticed that i have not written in a long time now.. and the reason this time was really - i no longer knew who I was writing for.. as much as i wish i could write for myself, i have found that talking to myself when I am alone more or less satisfies the urge.. but someone - a random stranger.. i really do not know who and cannot begin to guess, thinks that my writing is nice.. and so here i am at it again..

that said, i have also been meaning to write now that I finished the book I was reading - the name of the rose.. one of the most beautiful works i have read in a long time.. written by a novice in the fourteenth century about his unique experience as a youth in an italian abbey.. (i think its a true story) - in this story, the novice who hopes to become a monk someday chances upon a beautiful girl one night in the abbey, and ends up having sex with her..

he knows he is probably never going to see her again, he knows that he wants to be a monk.. and devote his life to god.. but at his young age, he goes through the same tumult that each of us have gone through.. everything he sees is more clear, brighter, more beautiful the next day.. at the same there is a melancholy in everything he sees.. kid that he is, he goes to the library and reads experts books on curing love sickness (which according to him, is like a disease, which could even cause death - which technically is true too).. he reads lots of different solutions - like spend time with an old women who will scold the girl so much that all his love disappears, sleep with a lot of slave women etc.. but the thing that he uses is one solution - which is to repeat to yourself that you will never meet your love again.. that is is hopeless... apparently, this subdues the feelings and changes the pattern of over-excitability in the brain..

its probably all common sense.. and again stuff that we have been through.. but what was interesting for me was to study it clinically - as though love sickness was truly just a sickness.. and not something more.. just chemicals, hormones.. not the unlikely union of two minds.. not the magic of touch revealed.. not the sense of drowning in another's eyes... not the feeling of destiny locking the door behind you.. i dunno.. the powerful storm of feelings - all described as an illness, like jaundice.. it was interesting.. moving too.. because the prose evoked so much pity for this youth who was so chained to his ideas, that he thought love was a sickness.. the power of the society that he moved in.. very transporting..

anyway - it was a beautiful read... its actually like a mystery novel.. of course, to me - the only mystery continues to be human thought processes...

Karma..

i read mahabharata (the tamil version by rajaji) recently and am reading ramayan (it's a tamil version, but with the original kamban's four liners interspersed - making it a very engrossing read) right now.. the single thing that stands out most in these books is this concept of karma.. told and retold in every little fable within these epics.. its astounding how these books have been so powerful in laying the foundation of the culture of India.. fear of our action and the corresponding reaction..

i recently went through a bad experience.. and the western medicine practice here simply called it a statistical issue and how we cannot help these things and how it's all part of life.. but when i talk about it to any indian.. the first thought is bad karma.. and they say it's good, the bad karma is gone... now you can start fresh.. and that makes me guilty trying to correlate which bad action i did that led to this horror in my life..

when rama goes to the forest, dasaratha remembers the curse on him by shravan's parents and thinks this is his due.. in some ways, putting the blame on fate/karma makes it easier to accept your lot - since it has now become your due, rather than an unpleasant surprise that life hurled at you.. but it also leads to some sort of a fatalism.. the fate concept subdues our reaction to any incident.. makes us less angry.. and that is scary..

just imagine.. if a child got killed by a drunk driver on the road.. the american mother starts a "mothers against drunk driving" NGO.. the indian mother would think it happened because she scolded the kid a lot when he was alive and that she deserved it.. (a common belief that scolding your kids causes them to have accidents) - the reaction is so much lower.. there is so much more acceptance!

anyways.. i always knew that this karma concept was fundamental to hinduism.. but reading these books and the thousand subtle ways in which it reinforces the principle is incredible..

so much food for thought :) - but it did help to put this in writing.. as my friend says.. write for my own self!!

maalika

Ennamma thozhi bommaya kaanom...

recently heard this song.. and it keeps ringing in my head.. the more i try not to think about it, the more it keeps resounding in my head.. struggling to accept it.. and move on...


Ennamma thozhi bommaya kaanom
Naa enna seiya poren
Thala vari pinni, pookkal vaithu
Pudhu chattai pottu vittu..
Ippasi masam kaveri snanam…
Bommaya vaangi vandhen
Thaalattu naan pada kanmooda mattayo
Maraindha podhum… manadhil ennum …
Malarodu pesum mazhalai geetham ..

Maranam ella varam kettu…
Maru jenman ondrirundhal maari vidum…
Mugam madhiyo udal nadhiyo…
Melliya kai viralgal pulveliyo….
Kaalai pozhudhellam kaathirukkum
Ival vizhi kaanamal kalai izhakkum…

Ennamma thozhi…