Reaching There

The other day I was wandering down some unknown alleys of the brain-land. I was searching for a rather peculiar place known as 'The Nothing Box'. I had been dying to come out of my peaceful apartments located in the distant suburbs; called 'The Complacence' for sometime now.  While wandering through the 'Tough St' I took some time to glance around the surrounding area. It was full of shanties with clouds of hopelessness hovering in the sky; with drops of frustration bent on wetting my peaceful attire. I was on the brink of giving up. Suddenly I heard a melodious tune which was coming out of a small pub with a sign hanging that said 'The Faithfuls'. I wasn't sure whether I should stop in this infamous ' Tough St ' and risk being robbed of my peace (I had only few left in my wallet). I went in through the creaking door and saw a lot of guys like me just blowing out puffs of smoke; with glasses clanking against the wooden tables...

Mahatma Gandhi Julius Caesar, Mbade Nzinga, Napolean I of France, Elizabeth I, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D Roosevelt and Mahatma Gandhi. Am I being naive if I ask who these people are? Of course, these are some of the most notable names from ancient to modern history. Their lives were subjected to intense scrutiny and their actions were (and are) considered as exemplary. Most of them unified their countrymen and are considered as great leaders, especially in times of crisis. Atilla the Hun, Genghis Khan, Mahmud Ghaznavi, Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin, Reginald Dyer, Slobodan Milošević and Pol Pot. Some of these names are instantly familiar to most of us. These names are ingrained in the history of mankind, perhaps etched deeper than the names aforementioned. Their lives were scrutinized to greatest possible degree, sometimes in the court of law. Their actions left thousand of lives incapacitated and brought world to the brink of anarchy. Sergio Vieira de Mello S...

In about few hours I would complete twenty eight years on the third rock from the sun, the planet we call our home, Earth. Of course the political divisions in the modern world have restricted our view to the countries we live in. However sometimes while switching through the myriad of television channels inundating our minds, we come across a picture of this rock taken more than forty years ago by the crew of Apollo 8 as they orbited around the moon to witness the ‘Earthrise’ by a member of the mankind. To see this beautiful blue ball hovering in a seemingly endless space forces us to move beyond the boundaries and into the realm of space. Perhaps that is the time when our minds echo with the words of free thinkers like Socrates or Kaniyan Ponngundran. The sentiment of ‘World Citizen’ these men believed in hundreds of years ago are as contemporary as the efforts of a slightly aging United Nations to promote world diplomacy and cooperation.  I was born in the year 1983 in the ci...

Disillusionment is a dreaded word which we always try to avoid. It is like an illustrated scary book I had when I was very young. I didn't wanted to get rid of it neither I wanted to keep it within my eyesight! So what did I did with it? I hid it under my mattress and soon forgot about it. I wanted to keep the book as it scared me; a feeling that challenged me as well as gave me kicks! But it was a feeling I wouldn't like to be reminded of too often. I am not sure if disillusionment gives me kicks but it certainly challenges me. This is the same perplexing relationship we have with disillusionment. It scares the living daylight out of me. It dissolves all the hope and life feels like a boat without oars. If carried on for too long disillusionment is the "stepping stone" to depression. But there is an other side to it as well. Disillusionment gives a unique opportunity to contemplate on things we may never have taken a time out for. It is a self-realization tool tha...

Some of you might have seen a movie called " Good Will Hunting ". The movie is about an orphan whose family are his three other friends and his desires are limited to the neighborhood he grew up in. Although blessed with an extraordinary gift for mathematics he is too feeble to take a chance for something even slightly larger and complicated. The tag line for the movie says it all "Some people can never believe in themselves, until someone believes in them". Although my current post doesn't have much to do with the movie but it did caught your attention, right? My post is more about "God Will Hunting"  rather than "Good Will Hunting". It is about the perpetual hunting we all go through in our lives. The hunt for desires, success, money, love, passion; so it is either something or someone. We are hunting not just looking because hunt is more painstaking. We toil in our lives each day and night to build a world of our own. A world which we fee...

I was wondering how unusual a relationship I have with God. A small devout petition to the Almighty and I expect my problems to be solved and my desires to be fulfilled. I blame Him for the problems but still reach out to Him for fixing them. Sometimes I just treat Him as an ombudsman whom I expect to be ever ready to hear me out. I expect Him to carry me through the difficult times yet I forget Him once I have entered the land of happiness. Ain't that the strangest form of expectation in a relationship? I expect Him to protect me in times of sorrow and guide me through the stormy sea of despair. When He does bail me out through ordinary or extraordinary circumstances I sometimes do hail Him as the savior but more often than not I "judge" His actions based on what the result was for me. Everybody trusts His fairness. Yet the "fairness" of His judgement is constantly evaluated based on the outcome. Ever wondered how simple God is? I pray to Him with great exp...

Elliott Smith was probably one of the songwriter/singer who was bestowed with divine gift of music. He is popular among the masses for his Academy Award nominated song " Miss Misery " which is part of the soundtrack for the movie " Good Will Hunting ". Although he died young but his music has endured the waves of time. This post is inspired by his interview posted on youtube . In the interview he is asked general questions about his music and song writing tips for budding musicians. Although his answers sound rather simple but they do carry a certain hidden weight within them.  The first question is about his method to write & compose music for a song. He simply states that there isn't any methodical approach he uses. In his own words " It's just the divine force, and if you don't block it up it'll come out and surprise you ". So does it mean we all have the ability to surprise ourselves if we just allow ourselves to be free? The...

The physicist J. J. Thompson discovered electrons, the smallest known elementary particle until the advent of quantum physics, in 1897. He used a cathode ray tube to "detect" the presence of electrons but no microscope exists which can see the subatomic particles like proton, electron or neutron. All these subatomic particles make up an atom. The atom is million times smaller the thickest human hair. Quantum physics has further discovered subatomic particles such as quark, lepton and gauge bosons. Scientists are using a Large Hadron Collider at a cost of $9 billion, with a diameter of twenty seven kilometers; it is a particle accelerator which uses electric fields to propel subatomic particles at very high speeds so as to collide such beams of particles with an intend to study smaller particles formed as a result of the collision. But no scientist would ever see any subatomic particle with his or her naked eye. The scientists consider universe to be very large and of infini...