Sunday, June 26, 2011

Transmogrification

This simple looking old man in the picture is a tattoo artist. India have had a history of tattoo making, I learned this from my Grandmother. She used to tell me that women in her time used to get tattooed not for a style statement, but to secure their identities. In her time there was a big insecurity of forced conversion from one religion to the other. So women used to get their names tattooed on their hands. Writing a name with too simple a font, requires no or some aesthetic qualities.

Now the purpose of getting a tattoo has changed tremendously, and demands trendiness. This old, simple looking tattoo artist belongs to the period of my Grandmother. But I was amazed to see the transmogrification he was able to pull off, and that too in such an age. He had all trendy designs under his little roadside setup; from tribal to celtic font tattoos. I was thinking from where did the motivation came, to learn, when learning becomes more and more difficult as you start growing older and older. There was a whisper in the winds there, that 'with life; possibilities are endless'.

A picturesque or personification of an ingenious tattoo artist in this modern era is that of a long haired, immensely tattooed, immensely pierced individual. It is now the era of 'Judging a book by it's cover'. In such an era; this old, simple looking tattoo artist compels us to believe in those anachronistic lines 'Never Judge A Book By It's Cover'.   

Saturday, June 25, 2011

Love; Perception; aesthetic qualities.

You walk down a road, or stand on your balcony, or drive a car, bike, cycle, or anything else. Do you see anything ecstatically jubilant, worth noticing (Unless you are not in Laddakh or Alaska) ? I guess it will be a meek yes or probably a no. Have you ever wondered why people want to break free, why they have this connotation of being a footloose, and break this chain of irksome obligations and oppression?

I cannot say about anyone else, but I pondered over this subject for many years. In my 24 years of life I read many sages (of the likes of Buddha, Kabeer, Bulleh Shah, Tolstoy etc.), but no one emphasized on leaving your home, family; and live a deserted life of an ascetic. Yet the idea of such life fascinates us and stirs up a kind of wild fascination. Why is it so? Are we not content with the life we are leading? Is there a kind of hidden beast, inside all of us? Or are we too busy in affectations? Or is it our curiosity towards the ultimate truth?

I cannot be sure, nor can I provide you with a readymade answer.

But what can I do is that; I can discuss love, complacency, and inexpectation. But to doubt is humane. Who am I to talk about such intricate issues? I am not Lord Jesus, nor I am Gautama The Buddha or any other enlightened or wise soul. I’ll quote Dostoevsky here

“When the whole essence of an ordinary person's nature lies in his perpetual and unchangeable commonplaceness; and when in spite of all his endeavors to do something out of the common, this person ends, eventually, by remaining in his unbroken line of routine--. I think such an individual really does become a type of his own--a type of commonplaceness which will not for the world, if it can help it, be contented, but strains and yearns to be something original and independent, without the slightest possibility of being so.”

Again Dostoevsky says

“Of such people there are countless numbers in this world--far more even than appear.”
I am an apotheosis of the same commonplaceness.

But since there are countless numbers in this world of the same commonplaceness; so many will be able to connect with what I write from now on.

I’ll take up love; since perceptions and aesthetic qualities all depends upon love.

But before that let me put up this audacious question, that ‘what makes up a sophisticated human?’

Sophistication? Intricacy? Circumlocution? Politics? Philosophy? Nah!

My experience says, simplicity, ingenuousness, and innocence.

I used to go to this tea shop every weekend. There are many vehement forms, contours, formations and arrangements of nature which usually goes obscured and dissimulated, under the kaleidoscope of resentment, apathy, aversion, craving and other such mind dwellings.

But when the mirror of the same kaleidoscope changes with the mirror of love, everything becomes so conspicuous. Beauty shouts at you, subtleties of things exhilarates you, simplicity towards ingenuousness amazes you, and you expect no more, at that space and time.


Above picture is the same clichéd arrangement of nature, I go through every weekend. But this weekend was a bit different. When I encountered this same old clichéd arrangements of nature with the goggles or spectacles or kaleidoscope of love, empathy, complacency, I was awestruck with the magnanimity of it. It was huge and unexplainable. 

Love is the base of every magnanimous perception which in turn becomes an aesthetic quality. Without experiencing crystalline love, human life is incomplete, and without getting habitual of it, human life is a waste.   
Unadulterated love has the power of such; to turn obtuse into acute. It gives you a clean pair of glasses to look at the world and childlike world is what I call paradise. I do not know how to develop such kind of love and how to sustain it. I just know that don't create an affectation of it.     

Sunday, June 12, 2011

Yeh Jo Desh Hai Tera Swadesh Hai Tera - Incredible India



Mixed a few pictures, I took, while wandering around in India, mostly
delhi, with the OST (Yeh Jo Desh Hai Tera Swadesh Hai Tera) from
the movie Swadesh. All the pictures I have also uploaded in many
of my posts as in:

Saturday, June 11, 2011

The List Of Ten Things To Be Done, Before Hitting My Deathbed.


During my V&A training our trainer threw many questions upon us which were carrying this epitome of 'how much you know your own self'. I realized that we know about everything which is unimportant, without knowing what is most important. This Gap, or self-ignorance reduces and limits our perception of perceiving the external world. This wish list exercise is a very minute step towards knowing your own self, because it hardly tells us about our deepest inner self, but no gigantic step is sudden, but an aggregation of such minute steps. And as the famous saying goes 'Know Yourself To Know God'. So I thought to commence with this exercise. Day before yesterday I thought out my wishlist, somewhat performed a soliloquy, articulating my thoughts into speech, and today I'll be putting them into a blog post.

Following are the ten things which I want to do before my song gets over:

1) There are these six books which I want to read before dying : Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak, War And Peace And Family Happiness by Leo Tolstoy, White Fang and The Call Of The Wild, both by Jack London, and Being and Nothingness by Jean Paul Sartre.

2) Attain Enlightenment. The whole purpose of life, in my point of view, is an opportunity to redeem yourself from your old habit patterns, break the chains of bondage, fear, aversion and craving, and eventually harmonize your being with nature, with people around and most importantly with your own-self.

3) I want to love a woman, with all my heart and being. I am not talking about that typical and cliched love we witness around us. I am talking about love, in it's most crystalline form, unadulterated by expectations and craving. But this should happen naturally and should come from within, otherwise that love will never be unconditional.   

4) I want to adopt 2-3 children and raise them as healthy (both mentally and physically) individuals, by inculcating in them high morals, values, and providing them with good education. I will never reproduce, as there are so many children already on this planet.
There is so much to learn from children. They are the apotheosis of innocence and love. 

5) Open up a tea shop, somewhere high up in a Himalayan village, where everyone working in it will be the owner of the tea shop, sharing equal usufructs. We will practice communism in that small institution, spreading good will. The shop will have it's wall full with graffiti, there will be good music playing all through from Pink Floyd to Bhimsen Joshi to Sabri Brothers, shop's ambiance will be benign, peaceful, and full of harmony.

6) Quit smoking. I don't want to die, craving for a cigarette. My last thoughts at the time of my death, should not be persistent with smoking.

7) Participate in both marathon and triathlon.

8) This is from one of my childhood fantasies, that I always wanted to become an engine driver, not an engineer, doctor or advocate, but an engine driver. So I want to work as an engine driver for maybe two or three years. The reminiscence of that view, which I experienced from an engine cabin, when I was a kid, still exhilarates me.

9) I want to swim across, from Rameswaram in India to Mannar in Sri Lanka.

10) To put a tick mark in front of every point in my wishlist. 
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