Abhijit Naskar's Blog - Posts Tagged "dreams"

Woman empowered is civilization empowered.
Dream empowered is progress empowered.
Parents empowered is children empowered.
Teachers empowered is future empowered.
Don’t defund the police, use those funds,
To send the officers to behavioral therapy.
To have an understanding of justice and order,
We must have a grip over our impulses and biases.
Discrimination don’t disappear if we shut our eyes,
Each of us must live as an antidote to discrimination.
Ignorance doesn’t become knowledge when peddled by scripture,
Better burn all scriptures if they peddle hate and division.
To conquer our biases and stereotypes is to conquer inhumanity.
To expand our heart beyond assumption is to empower humanity.

Dreams that we witness in sleep, ain’t no dream,
Real dream is the one that doesn’t let us sleep.
Only when mindful martyrs work without blink,
Rest of the world has a peaceful sleep.
I have been sleepless ever since I came of age,
Such is the madness of the dream of assimilation.
The thought of rest rarely enters my mind,
No matter how much the climb causes desolation.
No dream comes to fruition without restless nights,
No sun ever rises without first crossing darkness.
No mortal ever turns immortal without self-sacrifice,
No world is ever beautified without martyr’s madness.
Enough with the snobbish nonsense of dream analyzing!
All know sleepwalking, now let ‘em witness dreamwalking!

What is the point of you? What is your worth? And by worth I am not talking about your financial value, I am talking about something much more significant than that. So, I ask again – what is your worth? And you won’t find the answer in any scripture or church – you won’t find it even in this book. Because no external power can give you the answer to something so incredibly existential in nature.

If you want to know your worth, ask yourself, what are you without your bank account. The worth of a person lies in character. The same goes for a nation and the same goes for a world. Therefore, a nation’s worth lies not in the value of its currency, but in the character of its people. And it all begins with the individual – it all begins with you. Your character holds not just the worth of your own life, but that of the lives of your people as well. So, feel like it’s the feeling of your society and act like it’s the action of your society.

But mark you, here I do not mean, feeling and acting like the society, rather, I am asking you to feel, think and act as an original, brave and conscientious human being, so that you become the very emblem of humanhood in front of others, for them to draw their life’s inspiration from. Doing what the society wants, makes you a second hand human – wanting the society to do what you want, makes you a narcissistic bigot – but being an embodiment of humanhood without any expectation from others, is what makes you a sentient human.

I just want to write –
that’s all I ever want –
to write, write and write!
The day the words stop coming,
will be my last corporeal night.

Either I shall die by an assassin’s bullet,
or I shall die on my keyboard,
but I refuse to die of old-age and disease.
Death scares those who are scared of life,
I have already lived my life in service.

I live on keyboard, I’ll die on keyboard,
Keyboard is my instrument of illumination.
Nothing short could satisfy my palate –
Give me a keyboard, I’ll give you revolution.

With my keyboard I’ve defended the meek,
With my keyboard I’ve castrated the pricks.
With my keyboard I’ve brought down dictators,
With my keyboard I’ve schooled bigoted pigs.

With my keyboard I’ve raised Gods by hundreds,
With my keyboard I’ve delivered world-builders.
With my keyboard I’ve produced hatebusters,
With my keyboard I’ve raised bulldozers.

Death is but a myth – body dies, not bulldozer;
Body is merely a vessel for the mission.
If you want your ideas to live forever,
You gotta sacrifice your life for a vision.

I never lived as body, but only as a dream –
My life is testament to the dream of united earth.
I don’t have a message, for I am the message –
Sacrifice is beacon, that illuminates the universe.

Naskar is made by Naskar alone, not an industry or benefactor – or more importantly, by family wealth. I had a roof over my head, food on the table, and clothes on my back – that was more than enough.

I started writing with literally zero dollar in my pocket. Let me tell you how it began, because for some reason, I completely forgot a crucial event of my life when I wrote my memoir Love, God & Neurons.

I once met an American tourist at a local train in Calcutta. The first thing he asked me was, had I lived in the States? I said, no. Then how come you have an American accent – he asked. Watching movies – I said. We got chatting and he told me about a book he had recently published, a memoir. I believe, this was the cosmic event that planted the thought of writing my own books in my head – I had already started my self-education in Neurology and Psychology, and I was all determined to publish research papers on my ideas, but not books. Meeting the person somehow subconsciously shifted my focus from research papers to books.

So the journey began. And for the first few years, I made no real money from my books. Occasionally some of my books would climb the bestsellers list on amazon, like my very first book did, and that would keep the bills paid for several months. Then the invitations for talks started coming, but they too were not paid in the beginning. The organizers made all the travel arrangements, and I gave the talks for free. It’s ironic and super confusing really – I remember flying business class, but I didn’t have enough money to even afford a one way flight ticket, because I had already used up my royalties on other expenses.

Today I can pick and choose which speaking invitations to accept, but back then I didn’t have that luxury – I was grateful for any speaking gig and interview request I received, paid or not. One time, I gave an interview to this moderately popular journalist for her personal youtube channel, only to find out, she never released the video publicly – she posted an interview with a dog owner instead – whose dog videos had gained quite a following on social media. You could say, this was the first time I realized first hand, what white privilege was.

Anyway, the point is this.

Did I doubt myself? Often. Did I consider quitting? Occasionally. But did I actually quit? Never. And because I didn’t quit, the world received a vast never-before seen multicultural humanitarian legacy, that you know me for today.

There is no such thing as overnight success. If you have a dream, you gotta work at it day in, day out – night after night – spoiling sleep, ruining rest, forgetting fun. Persist, persist, and persist, that’s the only secret – there is no other. Remember this – the size of your pocket does not determine your destiny, the size of your dedication does.

I only have one advice for you,
own your life, from head to toe –
unapologetically alive and original,
not a carbon copy, with second hand woe.

Civilization is not a conjuring trick,
Civilization is a long labor of life.
You don’t figure out everything overnight,
You figure out things over time.

Sweet dreams are made of sweat-n-dare.
Sweat makes it sweet, dare brings it true.
Sweet society is made of reason-n-care,
When I’m your shelter, my shelter is you.

I be your vision, you be my mission.
Divided we drown, together, Tierratitan.