http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqcPA1ysSbw
I thought it was a wonderful video. Off topic, but have'nt seen a cuter couple than Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher in the recent past.
My pledge is to be a better person. To use my time well and to be of service to someone other than my little circle of family and friends.
What's Yours?
Friday, January 23, 2009
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Forgive
Back in school we had a school prayer - a typical catholic hymn kind of a prayer that said "give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our sins - as we forgive those who hurt/sin against us" And then the choir would hit the hi c and go "Oh, forgive us our sins" again. I liked the sound of this tune, the feel of it as well. It was like I could be forgiven for lying to my teacher about homework or faking a stomach ache to miss PT. I always felt good about the bail out option God had for me. He would forgive me for all my sins. Little did I know that real forgiving actually takes a lot of character and it is as Godly as it gets.
I see a lot of my friends crib constantly about something some relative had said that made them mad. They would discuss about come-back lines, revenges and 'paying- it- back- in- their- own coin' remedies. These are the petty vengeance we carry in our day to day lives. Something the neighbor said about the dog poop in their front lawn, some naive comment about our weight or someone making our accomplishments look common/trivial are some of the silly things we might never forgive. We seem to be caught in our own web of un-forgiveness and nurture a slow poison that consumes us form the inside. For that matter, forgiving is more important to us than to the person in question that needs to be forgiven - since our unforgiven baggage make us vile, hurtful and most importantly the victims of our own hatred.
As with everything, forgiving does take time in different occasions. Now, if someone called you something you are not - you could just shrug, smile and go ahead with your life, but someone causing hurt to your family, your lively hood or something more precious will probably take time. Little by little, we heal with time and let go of the hard feelings we nurture for the person that caused them. So, sooner or later, forgiving is the only way out to keep our sanity intact and lead our lives with less complication.
We should probably look into ourselves and try to find the umpteen number of times we'd have said or done something unkind and it might become a little more evident to us that to err is after all human.
Imagine how a lot of heart breaks would have been saved by simply letting go of our hurt and forgiving whole heatedly. The idea here is not to be divine but just to be human and let love spread:-) Like Gandhi said - if we get eye for an eye, the whole world would be blind. A lot of human suffering big and small would have been saved if the policy to forgive would have been exercised. And the best part is when you forgive you let go and alight from the vehicle of revenge and suffering. God Almighty forgives us for everything they say! We should probably let go too... to imitate our creator and better yet, to save our own selves form a vicious circle of pain, suffering and revenge!
So...let's ask Him to give us our daily bread and forgive us our sins along with granting us the strength and character to forgive and hopefully, forget!
I see a lot of my friends crib constantly about something some relative had said that made them mad. They would discuss about come-back lines, revenges and 'paying- it- back- in- their- own coin' remedies. These are the petty vengeance we carry in our day to day lives. Something the neighbor said about the dog poop in their front lawn, some naive comment about our weight or someone making our accomplishments look common/trivial are some of the silly things we might never forgive. We seem to be caught in our own web of un-forgiveness and nurture a slow poison that consumes us form the inside. For that matter, forgiving is more important to us than to the person in question that needs to be forgiven - since our unforgiven baggage make us vile, hurtful and most importantly the victims of our own hatred.
As with everything, forgiving does take time in different occasions. Now, if someone called you something you are not - you could just shrug, smile and go ahead with your life, but someone causing hurt to your family, your lively hood or something more precious will probably take time. Little by little, we heal with time and let go of the hard feelings we nurture for the person that caused them. So, sooner or later, forgiving is the only way out to keep our sanity intact and lead our lives with less complication.
We should probably look into ourselves and try to find the umpteen number of times we'd have said or done something unkind and it might become a little more evident to us that to err is after all human.
Imagine how a lot of heart breaks would have been saved by simply letting go of our hurt and forgiving whole heatedly. The idea here is not to be divine but just to be human and let love spread:-) Like Gandhi said - if we get eye for an eye, the whole world would be blind. A lot of human suffering big and small would have been saved if the policy to forgive would have been exercised. And the best part is when you forgive you let go and alight from the vehicle of revenge and suffering. God Almighty forgives us for everything they say! We should probably let go too... to imitate our creator and better yet, to save our own selves form a vicious circle of pain, suffering and revenge!
So...let's ask Him to give us our daily bread and forgive us our sins along with granting us the strength and character to forgive and hopefully, forget!
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Mera Bharat Mahan.
For those who are immensely patriotic - fair warning - this is not a patriotic blog notwithstanding the very patriotic title.
So here I go exercising my freedom of blog (Speech that is. Hi hi hi)
I grew up with great reverence to my country. The flag was hoisted on republic and Independence day, there is sweet distribution and our netas and elders (big and small) give inspiring speeches and remember great leaders of the freedom movement to who we owe our free land, air and water. When ever it comes to talking about how great our country is ,we have outlandish lyrics in bollywood movies where the heroes sing accolades of our country in the lines of "mere desh ki dharti" and the more recent "yeh duniya ek dulhan - dulhan ke mathe ki bindiya yeh mera India" and of course you can go to any social networking site and see happy housewives that park their butts in lavish mansions in the heart of USA proclaiming how artificial this whole country they are living in is and how India is the best - east or west!! Of course, more often than not, their spouses who hold great influential positions in some wall street or Sfo based MNCs and bring home packets of dead presidents join them in singing praises of how great their Bharat is.
I met a guy who thinks that there is nothing in America. But he travels on his business visa time and again only to discover time and again that there is nothing in America. I almost have an urge to ask him if he is held hostage by his company and sent to the USA time and again as a punishment for some sort of crime. I am sure he'd tell me that he prefers coming here since it looks good on his resume. So why folks - why are we such hypocrites? We speak about unity in diversity and our own Maharastrians cannot tolerate our own UPites coming and writing exams in what they perceive as THEIR Mumbai and their opportunity being taken away by a UP wallah. We hate like we love. We kill innocent people in the masks of defending our religious beliefs. We speak about a western world where there is hidden racism everywhere and we secretly like the actor from our little community or vote for the leader representing our caste. We judge the westerners for their marriages and divorces and give lectures about how Indians are people who have great reverences for marriage, but we see hoards of unhappily married couples around us who cheat on their spouses, ill treat or even beat them up but the sacred union of matrimony is celebrated under the many denials and compromises a couple has to go through. We speak about how a woman is worshipped as a mom and incarnation of Goddess Shakti but grope her in public transportation, leer at her at ever opportunity and burn her up if she fails to bring home the dowry that she is supposed to come with. Interestingly enough, you are better of as a cow than a female fetus sometimes:-)
We judge all our western brothers and sisters for being sexually liberal, for test driving their potential partners for sexual compatibility but we probably have the most number of perverts walking around in the masks of respectable citizens. We leave our country out of our choice, get successful, make a career, buy this state of the art four wheeler and a westernized bungalow in the most prestigious real estate our city can offer and sit and judge our foster mother land for her shortcomings.
The next time any of us is tempted to say how fed up we are of living in the United states (or any other Country for that matter) we should shut our mouths, pack our bags, unpark our asses and leave to the euphoric great India where we meet like minded morons who think that patriotism is all about being a hypocrite and beating your neighbor up because he believes in the wrong God or is from the Wrong region. We should make sure though, that we end up in our own state to find an opportunity, lest we could be killed by the other state guys for trespassing :-))
Fellow Indians- wake up! Stop looking at the filth around you when you have so much of it heaping in your own self.
So here I go exercising my freedom of blog (Speech that is. Hi hi hi)
I grew up with great reverence to my country. The flag was hoisted on republic and Independence day, there is sweet distribution and our netas and elders (big and small) give inspiring speeches and remember great leaders of the freedom movement to who we owe our free land, air and water. When ever it comes to talking about how great our country is ,we have outlandish lyrics in bollywood movies where the heroes sing accolades of our country in the lines of "mere desh ki dharti" and the more recent "yeh duniya ek dulhan - dulhan ke mathe ki bindiya yeh mera India" and of course you can go to any social networking site and see happy housewives that park their butts in lavish mansions in the heart of USA proclaiming how artificial this whole country they are living in is and how India is the best - east or west!! Of course, more often than not, their spouses who hold great influential positions in some wall street or Sfo based MNCs and bring home packets of dead presidents join them in singing praises of how great their Bharat is.
I met a guy who thinks that there is nothing in America. But he travels on his business visa time and again only to discover time and again that there is nothing in America. I almost have an urge to ask him if he is held hostage by his company and sent to the USA time and again as a punishment for some sort of crime. I am sure he'd tell me that he prefers coming here since it looks good on his resume. So why folks - why are we such hypocrites? We speak about unity in diversity and our own Maharastrians cannot tolerate our own UPites coming and writing exams in what they perceive as THEIR Mumbai and their opportunity being taken away by a UP wallah. We hate like we love. We kill innocent people in the masks of defending our religious beliefs. We speak about a western world where there is hidden racism everywhere and we secretly like the actor from our little community or vote for the leader representing our caste. We judge the westerners for their marriages and divorces and give lectures about how Indians are people who have great reverences for marriage, but we see hoards of unhappily married couples around us who cheat on their spouses, ill treat or even beat them up but the sacred union of matrimony is celebrated under the many denials and compromises a couple has to go through. We speak about how a woman is worshipped as a mom and incarnation of Goddess Shakti but grope her in public transportation, leer at her at ever opportunity and burn her up if she fails to bring home the dowry that she is supposed to come with. Interestingly enough, you are better of as a cow than a female fetus sometimes:-)
We judge all our western brothers and sisters for being sexually liberal, for test driving their potential partners for sexual compatibility but we probably have the most number of perverts walking around in the masks of respectable citizens. We leave our country out of our choice, get successful, make a career, buy this state of the art four wheeler and a westernized bungalow in the most prestigious real estate our city can offer and sit and judge our foster mother land for her shortcomings.
The next time any of us is tempted to say how fed up we are of living in the United states (or any other Country for that matter) we should shut our mouths, pack our bags, unpark our asses and leave to the euphoric great India where we meet like minded morons who think that patriotism is all about being a hypocrite and beating your neighbor up because he believes in the wrong God or is from the Wrong region. We should make sure though, that we end up in our own state to find an opportunity, lest we could be killed by the other state guys for trespassing :-))
Fellow Indians- wake up! Stop looking at the filth around you when you have so much of it heaping in your own self.
Like this pretty young thing in Ogilvy told me - Sau mein se Nabbe beiman - Phir bhi mera Bharat Mahan!
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Envy.
Envy, the polished twin of jealousy is green, mean and everything in between. Well, that is a bad rhyming. LOL. So back to envy - have you ever felt it? Yeah! - right? How do you handle it? How do you shoo shoo it away from your mind and your heart? How do you deal with the ways it makes your heart twist and twine? When exactly do you feel it? Is it a healthy emotion? Is it too vile? Well... most of us, nay - all of us have felt it some time or the other. I have decided to look into my own shade of green and do some introspection as to when and how it comes to me and colors my inside this shade that is otherwise tied up with prosperity and in the recent past with a revolution to keep our whole planet this healthy happy shade:-) What an irony! Green with envy or green with prosperity or green with a reduced carbon footprint?
The emotion seems to be as versatile as the multi tasker color it is associated with. The first time I felt this was when - I wish I remembered. So I'll look into the recent past and see when I'd felt it. Probably a few months ago I stumbled upon a very well articulated piece of writing and I was so green that I could not think or write like the writer that I spoilt two days of sleep in a row, got a unexplainable migraine and went on a blogging spree as if to prove it to myself that I am not envious but am actually a better writer than the person envied in question. I look back and see that any creative person who is better than me in my view is an object of envy for me. Sometimes I read Jhumpa Lahiri and go....wow! But somewhere deep inside I envy her to be so good with her expression. It might sound funny and downright absurd that I envy J K Rowling. Yeah...her of all the people. Am I even qualified to do that? - My humbler side kicks in and questions. I get this daily musings into my inbox and some of those make me turn a shade of green since I would not have thought of that thing to write about. Recently I saw a mom with three kids and felt the ever so slight tint of green in my feelings. I wanted to have a big family all my life. For that reason I envy Angelina Jolie too. Six kids and such a cute group. I envy her for her conviction and her love for her babies form Max to the newest additions (sorry not sure what they are called!)
But just like all positive emotions, good ole envy has a nice side too. Form envy emerges a feeling to outdo the object of envy, a genuine voice inside that actually admits to oneself the greatness of the subject of envy involved, and an urge to do something to match up to the object of envy could actually be productive as well.
Our envy is a reflection of what we want. What matters most to us. At a deeper level our envy is what we want our destiny to be. Well, I can envy Rowling all I want but can never create all she'd created. But it does make me motivated enough to create what I can. I strive to do my personal best and measure up to my object of envy. So if imitation is the best form of flattery, envy should be the best form of admiration.
So grab a can of green paint and color away the world with it. Be it envy, prosperity, environmental consciousness . Make sure that the world is filled with more and more green - the color of admiration!
The emotion seems to be as versatile as the multi tasker color it is associated with. The first time I felt this was when - I wish I remembered. So I'll look into the recent past and see when I'd felt it. Probably a few months ago I stumbled upon a very well articulated piece of writing and I was so green that I could not think or write like the writer that I spoilt two days of sleep in a row, got a unexplainable migraine and went on a blogging spree as if to prove it to myself that I am not envious but am actually a better writer than the person envied in question. I look back and see that any creative person who is better than me in my view is an object of envy for me. Sometimes I read Jhumpa Lahiri and go....wow! But somewhere deep inside I envy her to be so good with her expression. It might sound funny and downright absurd that I envy J K Rowling. Yeah...her of all the people. Am I even qualified to do that? - My humbler side kicks in and questions. I get this daily musings into my inbox and some of those make me turn a shade of green since I would not have thought of that thing to write about. Recently I saw a mom with three kids and felt the ever so slight tint of green in my feelings. I wanted to have a big family all my life. For that reason I envy Angelina Jolie too. Six kids and such a cute group. I envy her for her conviction and her love for her babies form Max to the newest additions (sorry not sure what they are called!)
But just like all positive emotions, good ole envy has a nice side too. Form envy emerges a feeling to outdo the object of envy, a genuine voice inside that actually admits to oneself the greatness of the subject of envy involved, and an urge to do something to match up to the object of envy could actually be productive as well.
Our envy is a reflection of what we want. What matters most to us. At a deeper level our envy is what we want our destiny to be. Well, I can envy Rowling all I want but can never create all she'd created. But it does make me motivated enough to create what I can. I strive to do my personal best and measure up to my object of envy. So if imitation is the best form of flattery, envy should be the best form of admiration.
So grab a can of green paint and color away the world with it. Be it envy, prosperity, environmental consciousness . Make sure that the world is filled with more and more green - the color of admiration!
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