All things on a Saturday evening....

Laughing a lot these days! Sometimes it's silly but we laugh out loud for the most trivial jokes and pranks at home. I was supposed to get a pay hike this month, but it didn't happen. I vented out my dissappointment and helplessness at family members, who naturally cajoled, and even teased me around for being stupid. After sulking for a day or two, when i go to office on monday morning, there's a mail from the boss informing that the hike will be given!

Some of my colleagues were planning to jump ship if the hike wasn't given and were dusting off their cvs and honing up their interview facing skills. Now the poor guys are in a fix. Nobody knows how much will be the hike, and whether it's appropriate to wait until the amount is announced and then take a decision or just start applying now. And nobody knows if the hike will be given at the promised time or will there be another postponement.

Their bewildered faces keeps me laughing and actually smile through the tough assignment at work.

Saturdays are supposed to be a days of relaxation and laziness, as far as i'm concerned. But off late, it's not so. I'm more busy and occupied on Saturdays than on any other day. There will be at least a dozen small tasks which will be waiting for their turn for saturdays. And before I notice, saturday fades away and a new week starts. Sunday vanishes and Monday stares down your face.

There's a concept that Time is not a reality, it's just a fiction of your mind. Don't think it's true---at least now.

For me, time is very real and very very fleeting. It's also the most precious and most wasted commodity given to me. I can have all the resources available to carry out a work but if i have no time or less time.....

When Mystics say that, in higher planes time moves slower and in the highest realm, there's no time, I wonder at the magnitude of this idea. Without time!!! How's it possible?

Read this long piece on Sephia mutiny some time back. Should have linked up much earlier. It's such a moving and powerful piece, all the more significant because the author isn't someone anonymous but a well known face in the blogworld. Remember Nick wrote a similar but gut wrenching episode from his life here. Such personal episodes have that magical quality of reaching your heart directly. These narrations are no doubt dark, but they reinforce the idea of rightness in us more forcefully than anything else. They also remind us that no matter what happens in your life, you can always smile and come through it.

It was somewhere around 1988 that our ex-president, Giani Zail singh passed away. He wasn't shot dead, or blown apart, as it happened to some of our national leaders, but i feel, his was one of the most unfortunate deaths. He was hospitalized for nearly a month and I remember how this was the topic of hot discussion everywhere---when would he die and how many days of holiday would the government declare. What if he died on a sunday--someone quipped? No--it wouldn't happen. Bets? Okay, how much...!!Never was someone's death awaited and wished for by so many people. Ultimately, when he gave up, it was on a Sunday! Still, the government declared a week of national mourning and we had leave for 2 days.

Pramod mahajan's death brings up this incident from memory. Now the government policies have changed and no such holiday is declared, else, many would have wished for a similar thing. His death also brings in a flood of thoughts and paradoxes----That you know much more about a person in death than when he was alive. That life isn't just black and white; there are only grey areas, unlike in movies. A good guy with dirt beneath the surface? An arrogant, streetsmart politician with exceptional organizational, motivational skills? A mass leader, a charismatic personality who couldn't win the hearts and loyalty of the people who matter most--family.

There were some who speculated that Pramod's death was the result of some personal equation he had with his brother's wife. I personally know someone who is of a similar type. What i can't understand is this: How will the people around such a person view him? How will the children relate to their father knowing fully well about this aspect? And how can such a person look into the eyes of his wife and children?

Riots and killings, everywhere--- in gujrat, in kashmir, in far away afghanistan where lunatics behead an innocent man. In other parts of the world, this seems to be an everyday ritual. From a human perspective, these are worrying and terrifying episodes that foretell even hazardous chain of events. We are closer than ever to a mass annihilation. It's amazing how people lose their sense of perspective-dignity and behave like wild animals in extreme situations.

Whenever we come across moments of great churning ( world wars, revolutions, fight for independence, globalisation), a negative element emerges along with the positive and life-supporting one. There will be darkness and destruction, but the dawn is just behind, somewhere beyond the horizon, already arriving. This can be evident at the individual level when, faced with great danger and moments of intense turmoil, we suffer for a while but once we come out, we're different, stronger and wiser. Spiritually i believe and know that we are headed towards an extraordinary future which is beyond our wildest imagination at the moment. But for the rational mind which demands proof for everything before accepting, there's no proof to be given. The mind will know the light when it sees the light. Until then, suffering in darkness is our lot.

Riots also brings to my mind the work of one of the greatest fiction writers india ever produced--Saadat hassan manto. I've read a few of his stories and this one is particularly relevant in these times when people are killing and burning each other in the name of some god forsaken religion.

Fear and love are exact opposites. They don't exist in the same place. What you love, you don't fear. To be fearless, be filled with love.

Who said this?