The strength within...

I have seen the past...
The crowning glory to the dusk of doomsday
The ecstasy of win to the heartbreak of failure
The wreckage of hope to the most hopeful of dreams
The feeling to stand atop the most daunting of challenges
The strength to withstand any and every kind of adversity
I embody all that is good
I embody all that glorifies humanity
And yet, people ridicule me..
But then, I am controlled by the brain, managed by the heart
So you can punch me once
I shall stand up
Punch me again
I will stand up
Punch me again and again
I must stand up
I love being tested again and again
only for the sheer pleasure of seeing you punching the walls
...in anguish, in disappointment

As Swami Vivekananda said:
"When I Asked God for Strength
He Gave Me Difficult Situations to Face

When I Asked God for Brain & Brown
He Gave Me Puzzles in Life to Solve

When I Asked God for Happiness
He Showed Me Some Unhappy People

When I Asked God for Wealth
He Showed Me How to Work Hard

When I Asked God for Favors
He Showed Me Opportunities to Work Hard

When I Asked God for Peace
He Showed Me How to Help Others

God Gave Me Nothing I Wanted
He Gave Me Everything I Needed "

So God, I am thankful to you for all that you gave me.
I curse myself for not being able to glorify you enough...

Rejoicing our freedom...

At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom - said Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru (1947)

A billion population

A billion ideas

A thousand languages

A hundred religions

A hundred rivers

ONE NATION

ONE DREAM

INDIA !!!

kar chalein hum fida jan o tan saathiyon

ab tumhare hawale watan saathiyon

- sang the soldier in his death bed...

His wish translated in english -"We leave this land forever after giving our everything, now this motherland is yours" (...respect her the way you respect your mother!)

True - there are differences, there are conflicts, there are challenges, there are diversities, but the reason we stand together to this day is our unity in integrity.

Friends - Let us not compromise the dignity of our motherland on any pretext. You cannot see you mom bleed. Can you? So, we should not let anyone hurt our motherland!

Indians should strive to respect every guest in this country on the lines of "atithi devo bhava..."(Guests are as good as God). But given a challenge, where our unity, integrity, sovereignty and freedom is threatened, we should be powerful enough to retaliate strongly!
Terrorism in all forms, in all names, in all pretexts should never be let to grow. We are a free nation and we have every right to lead our lives in our own ways.

No nation is perfect. India is also not. But, we have the onus on us to make it perfect. We fail to understand the meaning of freedom simply because we were fortunate enough not to experience what slavery meant.

India is a land of great men and women!

Stop! Think! Ask yourself - are you carrying the legacy forward? Are we upholding our values and principles?

All is well! Partying, catching movies, playing pranks, working like work horses - all come and go! At the end of the day, what is it that we are giving back to our motherland?

I loved Gandhiji's talisman.

It reads - “I will give you a talisman. Whenever you are in doubt, or when the self becomes too much with you, apply the following test. Recall the face of the poorest and the weakest man whom you may have seen, and ask yourself, if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him. Will he gain anything by it? Will it restore him to a control over his own life and destiny ? In other words, will it lead to Swaraj (i.e. self-rule) for the hungry and spiritually starving millions ?
Then you will find your doubts and your self melting away.”

Please try to follow this, so wonderful that this can be applicable for everyone, irrespective of nationality!

Finally, today is 15th August! Happy Independence Day, India! May the flag keep fluttering for thousands and thousands of years! Amen!

Image source: Google image search

What is Friendship?

Back from an intermittent exile, here I am. First of all, let me wish all you readers out there a very happy friendship day. No matter which part of the world you belong to, today is the day to glorify friendship! If everyone could have regarded everyone as friends, the world would have been a different place to live in - no quarrels, no fights, no wars, no bloodshed... think about it!
That has been my dream for so long now, and yet to be realized and I am not sure, if ever that will be realized. *sigh*

Never mind , I thought what constitutes friendship. Is it about mutual trust and respect? Is it about alliance? partnership? In a recent study on friends and best friends, this is what Professor Kuezban had to say with respect to the newly coined Alliance Hypothesis for Human Friendship

"Friendships are about alliances. We live in a world where conflict can arise and allies must be in position beforehand. This new hypothesis takes into account how we value those alliances. In a way, one of the main predictors of friendship is the value of the alliance. The value of an ally, or friend, drops with every additional alliance they must make, so the best alliance is one in which your ally ranks you above everyone else as well."

The study also revealed that our mind subconsciously reads what our prospective partner (read friend) thinks about us. So, if we consider someone as our best friend, inherently we want to know if it is the other way round. So, a sort of mutual alliance is set up.

As per wikipedia, there are so many dimensions of friendships today, some of which are:

• Soulmate - This is the ultimate form. Soulmates, sort of, die for each other. The ideal friendship - rarely found these days. Tell me people, do you have a friend who could die for you (I am not talking about love), or you could die for him(or her).
• Penpal - You write to me, I shall write to you. We will exchange ideas and thus, we will know each other better and gather knowledge. Remember the days of postcards and inland letters? ...and of newspaper advertisements asking for penfriends (or penpals) [in the pre-internet boom era]? Why- even the day before, I came across a newspaper advertisement looking for penfriends, so it is very much there today.
• Internet friendship - This is very much in place today. With hundreds of social networking sites, keeping in touch is really easy notwithstanding which part of the earth you belong to - only condition is you should have access to the internet. Some of the most popular networking sites today are Orkut, Facebook, Twitter, Zorpia, Fropper, Ning and Linkedin.
• Comrade - This is a term very much use by the leftists in West Bengal when they refer to fellow political party workers. Mainly used to denote an ally, someone with a similar objective. Also used in military to denote team spirit and high esteem.
• Casual relationship - This is considered to be a fling in the US. No expectations from either party - just for the sake of having a 'good time', whatever that means!
• Boston marriage - Same as the legalization of Indian Penal Code 377। Do I need to say more?
• Blood brother - Denotes blood relationships, , 'खून का रिश्ता' (in Hindi)
• Open relationship - A relationship where the partners are free to choose others for fulfilment of physical desires. When this happens in marriage, it is called "Open marriage".
• Roommate - The person who has lived with you at one point in time, generally in a hostel or a PG accommodation and do not share a family or romantic relationship.
• Imaginary friend - General imagery created by a child when he or she considers someone as a friend - could be a living (example: a butterfly) or a non-living object (example: a doll).
• Spiritual friendship - This refers to the kind of friendship with a higher purpose, as in Buddhist ideology. One of the friends can have more knowledge than the other and the relationship sweetens when the flow of knowledge enlightens both.
• Inter species friendship - This is so common. Millions of us have pets in their households - be it cats, dogs, cows, goats, sheeps or something as weird as a venomous snakes! But when the creatures stay with us for a long time, a kind of friendship develops. Personally I had a cat who lived for 5 years and I loved it. We would play in the evenings and I used to be thrilled with all its antics. I am sure, many of you must have had similar experiences.

So, the word FRIENDSHIP is vast and used in a very wide range of scenarios. There are also theories that suggest factors which have an effect on friendship, some of which are:

• Similarity - We instantaneously like people who are similar to us.
• Proximity - "Out of sight, out of mind" is much more than a mere phrase. So, seeing each other often counts in a BIG way!
• Reciprocity - This was discussed at the start. We tend to like people who like us and dislike those who dislike us.
• Beauty - Looks kill. So, if you are beautiful, if you are good looking, if you are handsome, you definitely have an edge in making friends. People would fall flat to your charisma without you trying too much.
• Competence - Last, but not the least: Nobody wants to make friends with idiots and duffers. So, if you have the skills, the competence, if you are sharp, demonstrate knowledge and intellect, there are hundreds who would be turned on!

Think about the people who are your friends (or whom you regard your friends). I am sure one or more of the above factors would be at play.

As the saying goes, "Great minds think alike", similarly, friendship develops among like minded individuals. You can probably empathize or sympathize with all. But while making friends, there would be more factors to count on. It's more than just a click on the button "Accept as a friend" on a social networking site!

Image source: http://www.quotesarcade.com/graphics/friendship

Love and Friendship

“Friendship may, and often does, grow into love, but love never subsides into friendship.”

-- Lord Byron.

The reason I quoted this is, I often get to hear people commenting on couples broken up as... "They could have continued as friends." or, "Friendship is bigger than love" or like RJ Arvind went on air the other day, saying, "Who said love cannot turn into friendship?"

Well, it's all very debatable. It may be possible for some, not for others.

Essentially whenever a person falls in love and then out of it, a void is created instantaneously. The human mind immediately tries to fill the void with whatever is available at hand. If it really gets filled up, well and good. In that scenario, it is possible for the old love to turn into friendship. This is a good instance, as whatever pain had been there, is slowly minimized and may even become null and void at one point in time.

In another scenario also, this is possible. Suppose, if the person is hurt the first time around and he/she gets hurt even more the second time, it becomes easier to forget and forgive the first instance. Because now, the latest instance assumes a bigger proportion and the older problem seems lesser of an issue. However, this is an unfortunate instance in the sense that, here, the sorrow remains. It only transforms or to some extent gets distributed from one object to another.

The Lord had considered the quotation in only one light, where the unlucky person had none else to look forward to in the event of a break-up. It was logical as well in the sense that, society was not as open, as it is today. Love itself was sort of a taboo. And there were more boundaries than what was visible with the naked eye. But, in today's scenario, probably love can turn into friendship if the will and intention are in the right places.

But all said and done, there are very few people who have been able to prove Lord Byron wrong! Readers, what's your take on this? What do you think?

Image source: www.zorpia.com

Home alone

Pray that your loneliness may spur you into finding

something to live for, great enough to die for.

- Dag Hammarskjold