Tuesday, August 19, 2014

Karma ?

Browsed a website on some ancient form of destiny prediction. Found a link to "what is karma?". On clicking found 'Under Construction'. Pretty symbolic.

Today's day was better than the rest as I just went on typing like crazy. Just wrote whatever I remembered and put into place things the way I liked. This is the nature of my job.Absolutely alone and fearless. It might happen someday I just doze off on my desk and no one bothers me at all. I then wake up and come back home.

Well mornings speeds up by itself. I am grateful to it like anything. I accelerate the afternoons by good string of songs. A meeting or 2 adds to the fun.
Seems like I am working without a very strong motivation. Perhaps I need to undergo this period of restlessness where in I find out what is the real motivation behind my work and and how I am moved by it.

I have always felt that my Singapore visit is little different. Its perhaps my last opportunity to test and try before setting in. Not to confuse it at all with settling in which people generally refer to. I mean they refer to marriage and things attached to it. But in my opinion, a point of time where the restless and experimenting mind just decides to put a stop to multiple dimension of thought processes is the time when one starts settling in. May be I have settled way back and am just anxious about my future now. Now that I have said that it looks scaring and true.

4 years later and thousands of miles away the seeker still is out looking.

The Desperate Seeker

Each one of us has a desperate seeker inside. And this seeker in you loves abstract things more than real brick and mortar objects. It has distaste of things that are real and mundane and that you can associate with in a very physical, regular and real way. It likes to know the right method of living, correct ways to build relationship, ideal frame of mind to attain spiritual peace and tranquility. At the same time it generally hates finding right ways to reduce electricity bill, figuring out how to pay taxes yourself or how to apply and get driving licenses for oneself. It puts a premium on meta-physical (non -real) notions and psychological concepts. It sells this notion that historians, scholars and the monks figured "enlightenment" in the past and solved all their problems with it. All in one shot. If you figure out that one trick, all problems wrap up themselves one after the another in front of you. Of course you will never know before hand how your real problems will go away. But they will eventually. That is the major part of the selling point. The minor yet important point is the halo that you are going to be suddenly surrounded with. The aura and the charm of being enlightened ( or "known") makes you become a perpetual source of inspiration for the less privileged desperate seekers around.

NYC India Independence Day Parade 2014

I felt the need of blogging again after significantly long time. I am in New Jersey for a year now. Time flies by fast. Each day is new and different. I was at Indian Independence Day parade at New York City yesterday. We enjoyed watching Daler Mehndi perform his unique punjabi mix of songs. We were glad to see Sunny Deol, Leander Paes, Raveena Tandon and few other Television personalities right in front of us. The kids came out in us and we were waiving hands to all the stalwarts as if we were handed few seconds of stardom for free.The cultural program, hallmark of all such celebration, really made my wife feel good. She liked it even more because she wore a new dress and was looking gorgeous.

We missed the actual parade altogether as we were short of time. I heard through the news that it was lot good. We did try Indian food in the stalls nearby. I didn't like the food stalls as the food was not cheap and they had very few unique Indian food to try. The cloth stall was not at all happening. I would have loved to see Indian hand looms line up on the madison avenue. The state hand looms are popular among so many fairs a.k.a. "mela" across the nation, especially in smaller towns. I remember Khadi Gram Udyog would set up big stalls in Bokaro (my home town) each year and the city used to crowd at those stalls for cheap and good quality clothes.

The parade reminds where I belong to in spite of where I eventually want to belong to. In modern demarcation of state and countries, both differs significantly and that's the big deal. For many people of Indian Origin, an event like this is a big deal. It may be the only way to stay relevant to their ancestors and roots. For me, it was more about hanging out in the Sun.