Looking into people

You look at a brown skinned man with a beard, you think he is a terrorist. If he looks a little tense you confirm he is one. You will also feel free to think that he just planted a bomb somewhere. You see an African American approaching you in the night when you are taking a walk and you think he is going to mug you. These people might turn into someone whom you are afraid of, the actually point is.. What if they don’t? What if they are not whom you fear they actually are. You look at an accident in the newspaper and feel a chill down the spine thinking what might have happened if it happened to you. . My point is not about what one thinks, am talking about the things which we do not think, but do. The question is “Do you feel the same chill when you stepped on the accelerator and exceeded the speed limit quite a few times?” You see some fat guy and judge him as someone who ate a lot? What if he actually has a thyroid complaint and his obesity is not actually related to his food habits. An eccentric person you might come across could actually be a genius in something that you might be an idiot at. Did you look into the person before judging him? Einstein once said, “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.” Actually speaking, it doesn’t hurt to judge people. It just builds up your negative potential within us unknowingly. Not all books should be judged by their cover. As all of us know judging doesn’t take a lot of effort out of you. It’s easier to talk negatively about someone than positively about the same person. Its human default I guess. Our brain has this stupid ability to think negatively without much effort. Your eyes often show you what you want to see. Looking at a white cloth with a small stain you can easily notice the stain instead of appreciating the rest of brightness surrounding the stain. There is a lot of negativity in this world, But that shouldn’t encourage you to think negatively. The everyday newspaper doesn’t show how many people had a great day, it shows how many people did not. You can say “I Judged, big deal” If you think this way, fine, it’s your choice. Its personal after al. There is no universal right or wrong thing. We have the freedom to act the way we want. What you consider something dark blue is black to me.

What I want to say is “to look into people you need more than just your eyes”

Happening

“Sitting in a chair.. I gripped the handles.. they are soft but sharply cold.. I don’t know where I am.. I looked around.. the walls of the room are made of wood.. I can feel the air from the conditioner hit the back of my neck.. am in the middle of the room sitting in a chair.. there is a desk before me with a monitor, keyboard and a few cables on it.. the table looked dirty.. there were two doors on either side of a window in the room to the right of me.. both had an exit sign on them..I tried to looking through the window.. it was dark.. pitch black.. It seemed like a lab.. something like a working place which is not presently use.. I heard a sound coming through one of those doors.. too afraid to get up I turned my head towards the door.. I could hear whispers from the door.. I tried to concentrate on what they are saying.. but suddenly my head started to hurt and the whispers became louder.. so louder that I can hear them even after closing my ears tightly.. the headache was so excruciating that I can’t take it anymore.. and the pain seemed to increase with the sound of whispers.. Unable to control the pain.. I shouted.. Everything went silent for a minute.. no whispers.. no pain.. I slowly got up from the chair and started walking towards one of the doors.. Interested to know where I was.. I walked towards the window.. I cant see anything outside.. when I turned back.. the air conditioner stopped.. the room is now silent.. dead silent.. I can just hear my heart beat and feel my breath going inside out.. I am shivering now.. its cold.. there suddenly was a loud thunder.. a flash of lightning.. I turned around.. rain drops started knocking slowly on the window glass.. I can see my reflection in the window glass through the dripping rain water.. I walked slowly towards the door.. too afraid to go inside.. even more afraid to stay in the room.. I walked into the room.. it was a little dark.. I looked around to find the light switch.. I looked into the middle of the room.. there were no one.. still I have this weird feeling of someone else being present.. around me.. looking at me.. talking about me.. talking to me.. I started walking into the middle of the room.. there was a sudden change in the rooms atmosphere now.. its like someone are moving around me.. I can’t see them.. I just can feel someone moving from here to there.. around me now....i smell of new clothes.. now chocolate milk.. jasmines.. cigar.. the aromas just passing around me.. I tried closing my eyes and tried to calm myself.. didn’t work.. I ran from this room to another.. this room seemed vacant.. when I tried to walk into this room.. I tripped myself and fell down.. I heard the laugh of little girls.. I turned around to see where its coming from.. it slowly died away.. I got up.. my heart was beating faster than ever.. walked towards the wall yet again.. to find a light switch.. after rubbing my hand against the wall for a couple of times.. finally found it.. when in turned it on.. the light was so blinding that I cant see anything except white space around me.. I shut my eyes closed and buried my head in my hands unable to take the brightness.. I turned the switch off.. it was all dark again.. I am trying to think how I ended up here.. whenever I thought my head started to hurt.. My body began sweating now.. I can feel the sweat dripping down my back.. I stood up from the ground and walked towards the door.. I can finally see some light coming through the door.. I walked towards the door.. towards the light.. I kept walking.. it seemed close.. but am unable to reach it.. the faster I try to go to it.. the more I feel its going away from me.. I was walking and walking.. but am still not there.. what is this?.. whats happening to me? .. it was all silent around me.. I am panting for breath now.. tired of running.. I collapsed on my knees.. suddenly there was a sound.. blasting through the silence.. I sprung back sitting on my bed.. and shut the alarm off.. it was 6 in the morning.. am sitting on my bed.. I collapsed back on to the bed.. relieved it was just a dream.. Am just too afraid to close my eyes again..” .. Like everyday he wrote about this dream in his dairy and went to take a shower. He was a real estate agent, he drove to the trailer which he is going to sell to a client. He drove there earlier than the meeting time as usual and started looking around the trailer. He opened the door and walked inside. His agency’s information is that a family used to live in this trailer. It felt so familiar to him.. as if he was here before.. he saw a table with an envelope laid under a photo frame turned upside down.. he turned the photo frame and saw the picture of a family.. a man with a cigar in his mouth.. two little girls.. and a women with her arms wrapped around the girls.. she has flowers in her hair. He set the frame aside and opened the envelope.. there was a folded paper inside it.. when he opened and read whats inside.. he fell down in panic and threw the letter away.. he heard little girls laughs from the walls.. he got up and ran out of the trailer.. the letter read “What if your dream was real”.

Dawn at night

“Tell me one reason why you had to take such a big risk?”, “Why would you do that, we believed in you, why did you take a decision without consulting us, It’s always about you, isn’t it?” “Why do you need partners in your company when you don’t care about them?” “You messed up everything; we both are not responsible for this”.

All these words are playing in his mind. Suddenly he heard a loud screech, he looked to his side, a car was speeding towards his way honking loud. He was so close that he can see the tense drivers face, the next second he hit floor and everything blacked out, he tried to open his eyes slowly, he couldn’t feel his body, Shouts of people and cars honks are slowly increasing, all he could see is a blurry image of someone asking if he was alright, slowly the noise waned. It was silent all over again. A loud voice yelled after a brief silence “It’s all your fault”

He woke up but he couldn’t see anyone around in his hospital room. He was sweating profusely. Hearing a sound he tilted his head towards the window, it was raining outside. His fractured hand was wrapped in a bandage and he could feel the pain surfacing. He was trying to remember how he got to the hospital, but all he could recollect were a few flashes of memory, people asking him if he was alright followed by the ambulance noise and then the blackout. But, he was unable to forget what had happened before the accident.

After opening a consultancy with two other partners, his life seemed to be sailing smoothly until he took a risk and gambled with a contract and landed the whole firm in trouble. He meant to consult his partners before he took this rather risky decision, but something inside him, probably the ego developed due to the past compromises he made with his partners lead to it. They blamed him for what he has done and disagreed to share the consequences. Blaming him for what he did and with no one on his side, dejected he stormed out of the office, he felt all his life was in tatters, his dreams collapsing before him. He stood at the gate looking at the road, he can hear the traffic speeding before him, and devoid of his pain life ruthlessly seems to rush. The noise slowly became unbearable, he stated walking down the road not caring about the traffic, suddenly he heard a screeching sound and turned to his head, a car was speeding towards his way honking, the next second he was down on the floor.

Lying on the hospital bed now, he was contemplating what had happened and how a decision messed things up. He was there now waking up to the real world, he felt worthless, he felt he has no reason to live, all his dreams were falling apart before him, the company; his dream was lying broken, tears slowly dripped from his eyes, he felt helpless. He lay back on his bed and said “life is not fair”. He knew that risks had to be taken in a business; he shook his head repeating again that life is not fair to him and why does only he have all the problems.



After watching the motionless ceiling for some time, he looked out of the window and saw a kid in the playing happily in the rain; he thought how happy that kid was and wished he was a kid again. He walked slowly to the door, limping and walking. A fresh breeze with a mist of water hit his face when he opened the door. He limped outside towards the balcony; he saw a bench close to the door and sat there. Looking into the rain, he wondered yet again, “Why isn’t life fair to me?” The kid who was playing in the rain came into the balcony, he looked at him with a beaming smile, the smile was such that even he who was misery drowned couldn’t do anything but smile back.
The kid came and sat beside him, the kid asked him rubbing the rain water off his face, “do you like rain?” Before he replied, the kid added “I love it, I like to play in the rain, I always do”. The kid then looked at his hand and asked, “What happened to your hand, did someone hit you?” He replied “Yeah, a car hit me, it was an accident”. The kid laughed and said “My mom always told me that you will be hit by a car if you are not careful”. The kid added mimicking what he was saying “you should look left first and then right and then cross”. The man replied “I was not careful I guess”. The kid asked again inquiringly “Why are you not careful?” The man replied “It’s a long story”. The kid quickly replied “Tell me, I like stories, I anyway have to wait till evening, I am going home today”. The man replied “that’s good, what happened to you, why were you here?” “I got a fever, but now I am feeling good, so they are sending me home, am going to play with my friends. I haven’t met them for a month because of my fever”. The kid without a pause added, “Tell me about your story, what happened to you?” The man replied “Well, you know what a consultancy is? What a tender is? what partnerships are?”. The kid had a puzzled expression on his face; he said “No, I don’t”. The man replied “well, then you won’t understand my story”. The kid replied “Yeah, but how does those things make you less careful”. The man smiled and replied “I don’t know things are not going well for me, life is not fair kid, you will know it when you grow up” The kid looked at him with another puzzled expression and said “I felt bad when I was here for a month, I cannot play and they did many painful tests on me, today am going home, they will let you go home too, you will be happy then”. He looked at the kid and smiled. Both of them sat silently and looked into the rain.

After being silent for some time, the kid slowly fell asleep on his shoulder. After a few minutes, the nurse came searching for the kid, “His parents are here, they were searching for him”. After a few minutes, he saw the kid walking away with his parents, elated. The doctor came out with them, kissed the kid on his cheek and asked him to be nice. There was something that was missing; the doctor’s expressions seemed unnatural. The kid walked away holding his parents hands, as if he someone had called him, the kid looked at him and waved, he waved back with a smile.

The doctor saw him waving back at the kid, he came to him and asked how his hand was, and he replied it hurts. The doctor advised him not to strain his hand too much for at least a month. He then asked the doctor about the kid and why he was here. The doctor began saying “the kid was brought in a month ago with serious abdominal pain, when we looked into it, he was detected with intestine cancer” the doctor looked away from him and said “he only has few days left, he is not responding to treatment, we thought it would be good to let him free the last few days” This hit him like a bolt, more impactful than the car.

The boys words came back to him, “I felt bad when I was here for a month as I cannot play and they did many tests on me, but see today am happy, you will be happy too”. He wondered “I was telling myself life was unfair to me, if it was unfair to me, then what is it to that kid”. Walking back into his room he wondered “The kid doesn’t even know what he has, he doesn’t know that he will die, he was living with a hope, a hope that he will play happily with his friends. He sat on his bed and started thinking “Life is unfair to everyone, no one said its going to be fair, others have bigger problems than us, losing hope is losing life”. That night brought a new dawn in his life.

We and the media

When was the last time you saw a newspaper praising the government for something it had done, not just Indian media to the least, the global media in general. Is the Indian government has really been that bad?, with scams surfacing every now and then, with a GDP expected to raise at 8.3%, touted globally as a rising Asian giant, having a transparency index of 3.3 (on a scale of 0-10, 0 being highly corrupt, 10 being highly clean), with some people trying to fight corruption by exercising their fundamental rights. If asked to describe about this country in a single word, I would say “India”. Growth, scams, hoopla, cricket, movies; everything happens here, everything so contradictory, but at the same time, a striking balance keeps it altogether. In such a country, politics plays a center stage and the media’s role is rather tricky, often biased, often opinionated. Let’s take a look at the contemporary politicians, to start with the Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh, a finance minister in the past, yes he is not that articulate, does it mean that he is ineffective? Digvijay Singh, the general secretary of congress gives his piece of mind which you might not like but you just cannot ignore it. The leaders of the opposition Arun Jaitely and his own party rival Sushma Swaraj use the media as their mouth piece, they don’t leave any opportunity to shout out loud which not only proves their existence but also gives the impression to the common man that they care. The real question here is “how much is essential of a politician to go on air and express his views”. 100% I would say, after all how people would know what’s going on if their elected leaders stay mute. Manmohan singh might be widely appreciated for his integrity but his media silent image makes him akin to a dumb man blessed with a lot of singing talent. Coming back to the media responsibility, ethically speaking, media has to be skeptical, but at the same time should equally be exalting the government on the growth and beneficial policies if any. So much negativity has never lasted long and never will, trash and nail the politicians if they are wrong, laud the exemplary, after all these hiccups are normal in a thriving economy. With politically elite people blogging and twittering, and with facebook triggering democratic revolutions, media and internet have risen to a new level, a link between people at different places and different levels. Media transparency which completes and complements the democratic cycle of a country is the major advantage we have over China, improving it empowers us. If you want to know what’s happening right now, go to a news website, if you really want to know what the hell actually happened, go to Wikileaks.

The Modern Buddha

A few days ago I read about Siddhartha, the rich king who later in his life going through different and profound emotions turned out to be the Buddha. The story seemed so fascinating, what enthuses me about the Buddhism is the fact that it is a religion preached by a person who lived in the recent past. The transformation from Siddhartha into Buddha is so compelling that you will actually believe that, if one passes through a series of intense life changing ups and downs, its believable that you will attain this so called enlightenment. Buddha according to me is not a person; it’s a state of mind. In this state of mind, everything around you makes sense to you, even the most complex of human emotions, in simpler terms, it’s conquering your own self completely, a complete control on your emotions. According to what I read, Siddhartha was a king, he had everything he wanted in his life, he enjoyed music, lived in a palace, was entertained by women, he had every pleasure he could imagine of. He then married a beautiful princess and had a baby. He was never subjected to suffering for 28 years, which indeed was a very long time. It’s better than a fairy tale actually; even characters in a fairy tale had to fight or overcome problems to live happily ever after. So he found out that something wasn’t correct. He then went out of his palace to discover the pains and sufferings people are subjected to. He then leaves his palace and goes into the forest leaving two things behind, firstly the lifeless and temporary riches and comforts. Secondly, he left his wife, their month’s old kid, the love that existed between them and the love that would have existed if he stayed back. He then tried different methods to achieve enlightenment. He did not eat for months and just meditated, he approached different teachers and he was hurt physically as well as mentally. After going through all this, he was said to have attained enlightenment. In the present world, if we begin searching for another Buddha (as I began by saying that I understood Buddha as the state of mind but not a person) if looked carefully we might find them around us. These modern Buddha’s are not raised in palaces (considering that born and raised in a palace is an advantage, which I would like to call it as an “up”), but they are born in homes in which they ate healthy food, went to good schools, had parties, had friends (which Buddha lacked by the way, he was kept away from the outside world by his father). If all these were considered up’s. They might have a few downs in their lives too, breaking up of relationships, failing in school, problems managing money, again Buddha didn’t have these kind of low’s, which has its advantages and disadvantages equally shared. If thinking that going through a series of amazing ups and hard hitting downs, analyzing them and understanding them is a way to enlightenment, then many of us have reached there. Are we all Buddha’s then? The answer would be no. We cannot be Buddha. We do not live in solitaire, we do not and cannot meditate every day, we are the part and parcel of a fast moving world, a world more growing with technology and shrinking in value every passing day, we learn from our mistakes, we make new mistakes, we drink, we eat, we celebrate when we succeed, we lock ourselves away from others and cry when we lose. We, humans are a combination of various emotions. Buddha’s way of enlightenment is past; he was always looking for the reason behind human suffering. The new way to enlightenment is learning from your mistakes and making new ones, thereby learning more. Conquering emotions is what Buddha did to achieve enlightenment, it’s a way. But history would have changed very little if everyone chose the same path. Whoever looks for reasons which lead to their mistakes and generalizes them turn into philosophers, the very new breed of Modern Buddha’s.