Saket Suryesh's Blog, page 24

The Psychology of Running

I stepped into the dreaded zone of diabetes, close to one year back. That placed a seal of educated declaration on what I always believed in - that is, I am a basically, a sweet person. It was heavy and dreadful with research on the internet and scary taglines screaming - silent killer.  The struggle began with some medicine and then some gym. Eventually, as with everything else the dread faded away and so did the exercise. Lack of time, irregular work hours, travel, moodiness- I was having a quiver full of arrows in terms of excuses. Eventually, slowly and slowly I drifted in to danger zone. Then almost on a whim, I went out and bought out an expensive pair of shoes. I began running. No gyms, no machines, out in the wild. It was a different world. The initial pain slowly became fun. It was my way of testing myself and surprising myself. The great thing about running is that it suited my temperament. It is a solitary exercise. You do not need a trainer to make a run, to tell you how to do it the right way. All you need is a pair of shoes.  That is the great fun part of running, it has least dependency on the external world. Then, half-mile by another half-mile, I took to running. The run always began with great deal of dithering, and then you promise yourself another mile, and then another. The rhythm of the steps clears off the tense thoughts and slowly the sky is  clear. Slowly, it doesn't  matter that you are loved so little or so much, nor does it matter that no one understands you. Nothing matters except the run. There is something soul-cleansing and divine in the drop of sweat which runs from the back of your neck as you cross the first mile. You are cleansed and pure soul. The body and soul are one for a while and you bask in this oneness.  I run in the park nearby, which is an amalgamation of three different landscapes. One is the manicured district park with picnicking crowds, Other a large lake with some historic ruins on the other end, and yet another is the deep, shadowy run in slumbering woods with cozy couples and feisty fawns. Against the boring environs of treadmills, running in open gives you a lot of choices. You change the track, elevation and scenery as you might want to. The perspective of life changes with each vantage point. That is the fun of running in the open space. Another advantage, I found when I was on vacation recently in the hinterlands of Amarkantak where I ran in the forest along a brook, relishing the greens without the worry about equipment or space.  Slowly the thoughts space out and mind is busy watching the birds, the people, the changing hues of the skies. Then there is ample opportunity to do body weight exercises in the open park. Towards the close of the run, I find a tree and do pull-ups. Then drop on the ground to do some push ups. Life is unpredictable and we know not what will happen next. But when I run, I feel I am in control and I will someday run with my daughter when she is sixteen without embarrassing her. I am not afraid of dying, I never was. I however, do not want to decay into death. I want to walk into the sunset. No man can wish for eternal life. We at best, can wish for an easy death, easy and quick. That is what a good health can assure us. To quote Haruki Murakami from "What I Talk About When I Talk About Running"  "Most runners run not because they want to live longer, but because they want to live life to the fullest...Exerting yourself to the fullest within your individual limits, that is the essence of running and a metaphor for life." I have been meaning to write this post advocating running since the time I took to it, but never thought I could qualify to write. However, now slowly, with difficulty having crossed 4.55 Miles, I feel, I have some moral right to write this. My advise: 1. Get the right kind of shoes and clothes to begin. Having spent some money will bring some seriousness to it.  2. Don't wait to get into shape to begin running. It will happen. Don't underestimate your body. It will surprise you. It is not about overcoming your physical limitation. It is more about overcoming your mental limitations. 3. Don't wait for the right state of mind to begin running. Mind will fall in line. The thuds of running feel will settle all the noises in the mind to silence.

PS: I am trying to breach 5 Miles barrier, and while away from any medicines, feel I am not that wseet anymore. 

The Tough Art of Apology

Courtesy Mark Twain, we know that forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the feet which crushes it. Which is a lesson good learnt and easily executable. What is more complex, more difficult is the task of seeking apology. 
It takes a great soul to forgive, but it takes a greater soul to seek apology. Even more complex is the task of seeking apology when none is necessary, even when logical. We do not seek apology to assuage the feelings of hurt party but very often to assuage our own ruffled soul, which stares at us with those innocent, unbelieving eyes. We surprise ourselves with our greatness many times. But as a contrary corollary, we also shock ourselves with shallowness of thought which we never thought we were capable of. We laugh empty laughs, discover flimsy reasons, and stay up for nights saddened of the evil we have perchance discovered in our own souls. Our sleeps are troubled and souls are fractured. Only merciful solution which can make us reach some solace is apology. 
It is so difficult to apologize. It amounts to the admission of the fragility of our morality, admission of the presence of evil lurking from the dark corners of our mind. It is humiliating. But it is only liberation that we can hope for. Of course, the inner turmoil after an immediate moral slip will fade away with time. But it will require you to cultivate an duplicity of conscience to bear it for a time long enough for it to fade away. And that duplicity will haunt you for the rest of your life. 

There could be other instance when you know for sure that you are a victim of interpretation and inherent dislike of your being as a person. In such cases your ego will stand in your way of apology. You are a victim of unreasonable evaluation of those who have, in any case, no assigned job to weigh you. But they do. I have written in many a blog posts that ignore those small souls whose only way to greatness is to shorten your stature. I am not going to deviate and ask you to apologize for something which isn't your fault. You ought not apologize to please those who seem to have been waiting for you to fall, so that they may pounce over you with a feral righteousness. 
You ought to, however, apologize if you slip off your own measure. That could be even when you are not the reason for such a slip. It takes a grander, larger heart to apologize for things which you have no control over. Be clear in your mind, not to feel criminal or victim over the failure which was incidental.  Be very clear that your admission of failure does not offer the lesser soul an opportunity to pounce over your soul. Apologize for the act, not for the person you are. Apologize with a straight spine, for you are the brave, blessed child of God, who has both the nobility and courage to say sorry. 
How to do it? 1. Plainly, without justification. Don't beat around the bush, just do it. Never ruin an apology with an excuse- Benjamin Franklin
2. Do it quickly. The more you delay it, the more the noise will be, the more it turns into personal affront, and more difficult it will become. This doesn't mean you do it in a rush, with a secret hope that no one hears you making it. Do it boldly, with serious intent, not shoot-and-scoot. 
3. Taking responsibility. Standing ahead of a team to get credits of good work is so easy, taking charge and saying sorry for the failure of the team is so difficult. That is what leadership is all about, even when it is Robin Sharma's oft-quoted Leadership-without-Title. 
4. Without shame: Don't let the apology haunt you for the life. That is the purpose of apology- to move ahead, to leave the past behind. That you could go beyond petty ego and cleaver justifications, makes you a nobler person. An apology doesn't define your relationship with the person in front of you, with yourself and with the world at large. An apology doesn't mean you need to remain apologetic for the rest of your like.
Remember, you are doing it for yourself and the fact that you are able to do it, makes you a better man.
Post-script: The post arises out of a sense of immense emancipation which I felt after writing in apology note to a customer, whose deliveries got delayed and who almost waited for the slip to happen. It was a disaster for sales people when your phones are always designed to send message of "I am in a meeting" simply because you have no answer and the other party has no respect for reason. I had no way to hasten the deliveries and I do not know I am forgiven. The best part is, I do not care anymore. I breathe a free man.

Thoughts on Martyr's Day? In the Backdrop of 2014 Election

Notwithstanding the guilt-trading post which became viral on the valentine day, which yours truly was shamefully guilty of forwarding before being scolded to sense by some enlightened and better-informed soul, 23rd of March is the Martyr's Day of Bhagat Singh. Not that I am presuming for a moment that my lack of knowledge was representative of many in today's world, but the term Martyr's day has been used so loosely that it is rarely a surprise that the confusion hounds most of the citizens. In India, we do celebrate Martyr's Day on 5 occasions at the very least, depending on the ideology we follow and our allegiance to the political ideology. 
Such abundance of symbolism has killed any thought which might justify the observation of Martyr's Day- any or all of them. The greatness of souls which died is not based on the fact that they are dead today. It is based on the greatness their soul ensconced, the thoughts and values that they stood by when alive, even at the risk of being dead. The observance of the Martyr's day is to not sit in gloomy obeisance, with heads held down, rather to dig into the history to know what went into making of this nation which is today struggling against corruption of a magnitude which makes us wonder if we are the same people who could at one point of time in history give birth to such great souls as Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev Thapar and Shivaram Rajguru. It is the celebration of defiant voice of reason, which will not be cowed down by the mobs of the time.
We take pride in our modest sacrifices and our shallow intellect. Intellectual discourse does not stand by any value today. Most often what we read is not aimed at shaping public opinion, rather follows public opinion. It is reportage which clouds our thinking, not thought-building and thought-provoking ideas. The intellectuals of the day, look for the direction in which the wind might be blowing and than write in the direction where the wind might be carry least amount of sand. We have of late, observed a great rising against corruption in the country. The interesting thing about this whole India Against Corruption was the timid opposition it faced. I wonder if we, the generation of the day, could have withstood an opposition more fierce or an uprising, if I may call it so, more prolonged. Even baton-charges were seemingly orchestrated for least damage to either side, not taking into account the midnight assault on unsuspecting protesters led by Yoga Guru, Baba Ramdev. India against Corruption was fueled by typical youth rebellion and that it came with a fashion statement and very less to be placed at stake, with a possible chance at power, made young men and women join it in hordes. The Common man, having had the Cappuccino in Cafe Days, felt enlightened enough to come out in the street and jump over the chance opportunity. It was a two-minute-noodle revolution in making which was to smoothly slip into a pursuit of power, crushing and humiliating any dissenting thought or intellect which went into initial creation of the movement as it were (Ex- General, Ex- Police Officer). Anything longer, stiffer, I suspect might not have kept up with ever-shifty attention of today's youth. 
We take pride being the generation of 21st century, being an informed and intellectually alive society. Information has replaced intellectual discourse in today's world where every dissenting voice is shouted down. We are so starved for heroes that we jump at every impostor with a foolish hope. Irreverence is considered as intellect. It is true that Arvind Kejriwal carefully places the framed picture of Bhagat Singh behind him in most interviews, but given that he considers it necessary to wear a skull-cap while discussing the roadmap for Indian Muslims, I can not fathom it to be anything more than a symbolism, trying to leverage the emotional feelings of citizens for his electoral gains. I can only hope Mr. Kejriwal found time between his thermodynamics classes in IIT to read "Why I am an Atheist" by Bhagat Singh which is an interesting read. All the religions in this world are not sufficient to counter the ills of religion. When religions escapes your mind and heart and tries to overwhelms the space of public governance, it starts getting disfigured. I wonder if the AAP roadmap for Indian Muslims speaks of Muslim only roads and Islamic electricity and on the counter-point, if Modi speaks of Hindu electricity which chants Ram-Ram every time a bulb is switched on. Governance is secular by nature and it should remain thus. The insistence of citizens to be treated as separate from fellow citizens is stupidity and the agreement of leaders to succumb to such desire of interested parties is callous, calculative, uninspiring and saddening. It leaves no hope for future. It creates mobs and offer them legitimacy. It allows them to frame the rule. I wonder an India in which Salman Rushdie is banned, Bhagat Singh could have escaped trouble after writing "Why I am an Atheist?" 
Even Bhagat Singh lamented our own lack of capability to throw ourselves in for a cause in face of ridicule, opposition and threat for life. He wrote," We highly appreciate the situations of pain in their (Russian) stories, but we do not feel the spirit of suffering within ourselves.We also admire their passion and the extraordinary height of their characters, but we never bother to find out the reason. I will say that only the reference to their resolve to bear pain has produced the intensity, the suffering of pain, and this has given great depths and heights to their characters and literature. " Of course, he was referring the times in Russian politics before Crony-capitalism and Communist Billionaires appeared on their scene. Those were different times and the failures of Communism were yet to come out. He might have thought differently today and attempts by people on either side of the left-right divide to appropriate Bhagat Singh's legacy is saddening. One can not but be mesmerized by the depth of thoughts of a young man of twenty three. 
It takes great intellectual strength and great spirit of wisdom to place it on record (nothing off the record, Mr. Kejriwal, here) that " This is a struggle dependent upon middle class shopkeepers and few capitalists. Both these and particularly the latter can never dare to risk its property or possession in any struggle. " He goes on expressing fear that "the present struggle is bound to end in some sort of compromise or failure." I as a mugwump need to see intellectual uprising that goes beyond the Namo chants and skull caps. We need anarchists with defined intellectual moorings. 
We need people who can rise against the popular opinion and stand for what is right, and no, it will not be a two-minute noodle. We can not have a fast-food freedom. We need to restructure our thoughts. We need to have policies for education which is beyond setting up of schools. We need to have infrastructure policies which tells citizens the roads which will be made, village which will get electricity, and we need tall leaders who come out and say that they will not be able to offer televisions because they need that money to build roads and provide electricity and clean water. We need leaders, not the status-quo-ists who are bothered by skull caps, and for that we need to become the citizens who are not bothered by such symbolism either. We do not need school buildings, we need educational policy, we need the teacher hiring programs. Why do we have teachers being baton-charged all across the country? Where is health care? Health care, schools - they are not about civil work and festival for contractors, they are about people who man them. In a Billion plus population where people are desperately looking for jobs, can't we find manpower good and sufficient enough to run these organizations. We can no longer afford to be satisfied with symbols. We can not gloat at Sanskritized re-naming of aged and retired Russian equipment and be a self-proclaimed global leader, when our soldiers are beheaded on border and we are worried about what to wear on the head. One merely needs to go through the structured plan made by the brilliant intellectual Bhagat Singh was in the days of unstructured freedom struggle and understand how lacking we are today. We need to look beyond 300 litres of free water and free electricity. We need to ask on economics why the country with largest coal reserves is biggest importer of coal and also at the same time ask on probity as to why people who make hosiery are getting license to mine coal. It is time to ask brave question and not be intimidated. Let us try to inculcate a little bit of intellectual courage of twenty three year old. Times are less trying, just a little bit will do, but even just a little bit is so difficult to come by these days. It cannot be rushed. It will not happen in a hurry.  As Thomas Paine said, " What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly. 'Tis dearness only that gives everything its value. Heaven only knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; And it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as freedom should not be highly rated. "
Sources:Internet Resource: Writings of Bhagat SinghWhy I am an Atheist?

On International Women's Day

There's nothing international about the woman who taught a three year old alphabets at the doorsteps of a kitchen, handed rolled paratha on way to school. 
There's northing international about the woman who held a young man's hand in a smouldering summer day and sat in a lonely prayer outside an ICU fourteen years back. There's nothing international about the woman who took a part of her being and handed me over the most amazing of her creation six years back. There's nothing international about the woman who struggles to keep her space in a hostile and competitive world and still try to teach alphabets to her child, at the kitchen door and hand her over the rolled paratha as she leaves for school.
 There's nothing international about the woman who ties a thread to my arm every year, and looks at me as if I were a guardian and protector of her soul. 
There's nothing international about the woman who reads what I write and sometimes, even loves it. There's nothing international about the woman who makes me wonder how she writes so well as if there were a Virginia Woolfe's proverbial room with a window in her soul.
There's is nothing international about the woman who tolerate my mediocre talent, and makes me believe in my unknown possibilities. There's nothing international about the woman from whose guarded stories rises like butterflies and color the skies. 
There's nothing international about the woman who looks at unyielding life in the eyes and whispers through a determined mouth, " Was it life? Give me once more." 
They don't carry higher causes. They are not in the newspaper. They everyday fight with their own demons, and come back home with weary souls and winning smiles. They diligently work in their small ways, and make grand changes to the world. They offer a soft, silent strength to me which whispers in magical voice in my loneliest and weakest hours. They believe me, even in the moments when I have lost all the belief. They are the women in my life, they are the Constant Spring. I wish you all A Happy Women's Day. All the days of the year belong to you, but this day is to be grateful for all those other days blessed by you.

The Mind of A Mob

The mob is an outcome of fear. It feeds on fear and emanates fear. That is the basic anatomy of mob. It resembles a people rising, which is nothing but a pathetic attempt to cover an evil, selfish and feral rising. What differentiates the two is a distinguishing cause and a well-defined decency. People uprising is a chorus of empathising voices rising in a perfect harmony, while the mob is a cacophony of voices trying to outshout every dissenting voice. The line between an overwhelmingly beautiful note of music and the shrill noise is insanity if often very thin. The possibility and dread of falling to either side is always available to each mass of men (and women) coming together.
The mob becomes an end to itself and threatens to muzzle those who do not agree. It no longer seeks to convince or convert. It demands slavish surrender of every voice of reason. It tries to crush you into supplicant subjugation.
Unfortunately social media offers another platform of anonymity to people who are infatuated by the power of number. Those who inherently lack both courage and conviction to kill or die for a cause, set themselves on pulpit, urging others to kill. They let spite spill over the media and pounce for blood on anyone who bothers to respond. They are necessary for the mob. The mob on one side needs another equally belligerent mob on the other side. They need to invent it even if the real opposition were non-existent. They progress through their Quixotic movement. It would wilt and die if it doesn't continue to look at the people at other side of the fence as a uniform mass, with homogenous thoughts. Any independent thought confuses it and threatens its bearing. Therefore, it tries to threaten every independent voice of reason to join a mob that it could then hate and fight against. 
An individual's only choice is to stand alone with his own voice. This would keep them confounded. That is only safety that the individual has. Also it is so much fun. 

On Reading ..and Reading Slowly

The haste is killing all the beauty of life. We are wading through life barely living, huffing and puffing barely catching our breath. We are barely holding on to the breath, trying to hang on to a tired heart and a brain pummeled to pulp by pounding sense of constant urgency. The butterflies, the lovely butterflies which yearn to escape to the free, virgin airs of solitary mountain, struggle, caged in a rigid mind.
The time is running out is a constant theme which pervades all my being. I read and write as if racing against the time which is fast running me out. I read with more of an urgency of a dying man than with the living curiosity of a new-born child (latter I so much long to have). We listen to music, on the commute, not to exceed even for a moment beyond the pre-assigned time. When was the last that we fit in our day’s work into art which spread across the day, luxurious, broad and glorious?  It is always the other way round, and we fit in art into the cracks. Art, in all its forms, sleeps hidden in tattered clothes in the dark, damp corners of our lives, like the little Cinderella in her step-mother’s house.  The pumpkin vegetates in the damp corner, waiting for the day when it might become a grand carriage.
We meet friends and greet each other with “There is no time” like the timid hare of the folklore who when out exclaiming with fear, “The sky is falling.” Time isn’t shrinking; it is about discipline and prioritizing the things which are important to us. We do tend to find time for the things we consider important. The attention has shifted outwards and we are generally spending time in outward grooming of the body, while the soul remains impoverished.
I read. I want to write. For me, writing is nothing but an extension to reading. When you read something brilliant, you want to imbibe some of that brilliance of that into your soul and let it flow on the paper. I am quite worried about the recent interviews of rich writers claiming to never have written anything of consequence in their life, thereby claiming to be producing a low-brow literature which is accessible to masses. I do not suppose that is the purpose of literature. True, writers, at least the full time ones, have to eat and therefore need to establish markets. But then, establish is the key word. No point in writing railway timetables because there is an established market for them. Literature is meant to uplift the mood, if not the soul. It should pull up the level of mass intelligence and not be pulled down to the mass dumbing down of generation as we observe. It is the ladder to a better human thought.
Reading is becoming a lost art. People do not read. If they read, they read in a hurry. This is unjust to the writer and even more unjust to the art of writing. You can’t and mustn’t read Crime and Punishment or The Heart of Darkness or Lord Jim in a hurry. These books are written with great honesty and deserve to be read with religious attention. They weren’t written under million dollars, three books contract over a year. They are not written with profanities to extend their reachability to the masses. They contain magical words, written with immense labor. When you read them, you can almost see a solitary figure, struggling with each sentence, working perilously close to break down in search of a solemn truth. Those written words are to be read with respect. One must almost want to take of the shoes before sitting down to read these classics. Anything less seems to be condescending to the writer and blasphemous to the written word. You cannot read them in a rush, you need to pause and read. You read each sentence and throw it up in the air, and then watch it floating gloriously in the lightness of immense truth they hold inside.
Literature is nothing but a private pursuit of truth made public. Truth, of course, is ever-elusive and keeps moving farther. But these immortal classics offer us long legs, with which we may cross the Nietzsche’s abysses of ignorance, abysses over which the rope connecting the man and the Over-man stretches. We must read and more importantly, we must read slowly, with care and with awe, for our own truths may be hidden within them. They are the friends who will never have ego issues, will never misunderstand you, and will never abandon you. They will embrace you without any bitterness if you hold them back again, even after having abandoned them for years. You do not talk to the friends in a hurry. You need to grab your cup of tea and sit patiently with them and they will open a world which will present truth several colors, each truer than the other. They will offer you fiction of truths which will rescue from the reality of lies we live in. Wrote a poem "Read Slowly" on this topic, few days back (Didn't I say, writing is a private search for truth made public)
It seems to have been long
Since I read slowly
So slow, that the words
Float in the air
As if drunk on their own beauty
And I could just catch them
One by one
And hold them in my mouth
To my hearts content,
To let the taste lingerand the brain dance in rapture,Slowly read, Slowly breath Slowly live this Saturday Afternoon.

If you thought Classics are dead, one of my most read post is The Insulted and The Humiliated by Dostoevesky- Review
 And the brain dance in rapture
Slowly read, slowly breath
Slowly live this lazy
    And the brain dance in rapture
Slowly read, slowly breath
Slowly live this lazy Saturday.
And the brain dance in rapture
Slowly read, slowly breath
Slowly live this lazy Saturday. 
 

An Ode To The Doubters

To doubt, to debate, to negate, counter and argue is the greatest virtue of human mind. It is a pity that we have long since forgotten taking a position. Then, one might argue, why should one take a position- any position? Why do I have to side with any truth which I have not discovered myself.  The people are divided into large masses, a huge chunk of human sea, split by diverse conviction.  Social media which was invented as a platform to share one’s own convictions has long since been reduced to a virtual battleground. A converse opinion is responded with  a feral violence.
I do not feel happy anymore about debates. They aren’t debates.  There can’t be any debate without decency. The world is fractured and it demands that I lean to one side or the other.  Why must I surrender my right to be an individual and join a group to seek strength in number? Why there are no debates which either converts my opponents or me? We are fast turning into a world of non-believers. We are transforming into a world of lambs, leaving it to the lord to be our shepherd. We bow every hour of the day to our own invented lords. We shift from one group to the other and scream loudly to prove our point. F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote in his The Beautiful and the Damned, “ Once upon a time all the men of mind and genius in the world became one belief- that is to say, of no belief .” I wonder, was he speaking of some “once upon” time or was he speaking of the world that was to be- that is today.
Beautiful is the world in which free clouds of doubt float in the bright, open skies and questions rise, unabated like beautiful kites in those skies. You do not win my vote by numbers; I will not surrender my intellect to the larger group, to the largest and shrillest mob. Didn’t inimitable Mark Twain wrote on siding with the mob, that “ Whenever you find yourself siding with the majority, it is time to pause and reflect .” The right to logic is the Prometheus fire. Nothing’s sacred, nothing is above question. Why should we side- with this or with that? There is nothing given, everything is to be derived. Let the greatest of the Gods be mocked, be question.
This age of lolling logic and dead debate struggles for its voice and is keen to surrender to any imposter who claims to be God, so lacking of self, have we become.  Nobility has become so obscure that we are thirsty for a drop of it. We pounce like wild dogs on any semblance of nobility we see. We uphold every imposter as god and chant his name so loud that our souls die overwhelmed with those chants. A sad smile declares the hollow happiness we seek in servile obeisance.  Something dead smiles in those smiles and a stench of cowardice sits heavy over the pen.
Every leader runs the danger of turning into a dictator and every follower runs the risk of turning into a fanatic. We need to be observant for the right to question is the most sacred of all human privileges. Nothing sacred, nothing above the question, including our own selves- let that be the dictum of our generation. We are turning into a generation of blank fanaticism. Angry waters of unquestioning faith and sub-human servility gushes into the vacuum left by the cynicism of last generations. This is worse since it pretends to be intellectual. Nothing stunts human growth than pretended intellect. How can servility be intellectual ever? Intellect by nature is iconoclast; it is the breaker of the current order.
We walk in columns, with our silly smiles and blank stares and scream from our twitter timelines at anyone who breaks the columns. We cling to slightest trace of nobility, so hungry we are of the idea of lofty possibilities of human greatness. We cling with our eyes shut tight as we do not want to see the cracks on the icons thus created. We don’t write letters, not even e-mails. We post our thoughts- an extremely passive act, which doesn’t want conversation, doesn’t invite discussion. We merely want others to like what we post. And liking is so easy.  A sad little button can be clicked to like, at times, without reading. It is an grand play of narcissistic intellect and passive persuasion. There was an inherent beauty in letter-writing as it was based on a communication which moved in both directions. It called on us to understand the contradicting thought, understand the person on the other end of the conversation. Even if Ghalib might contend “Qasid ke aate aate main khat kuch aur likh rakhun, main jaanta hoon who kya likhengey Jawaab main” (Let me write another letter before the messenger returns with the reply, since I know what she will write in response), there was an anticipation, a possibility, a hope. Current modes of communication doesn’t allow such tentativeness, it provokes no communications. It seeks surrender of the reason and whatever goes under the pretense of communication is the competition of the loudest, the shrillest. In the struggle between profundity and profanity, latter wins. Wisdom retreats in silence with bruised dignity.
 Logic is the only savior; debate is the only meaning of being human. It is our own small sun which shines through foggy mornings. We need to steal the light from it, question everything and welcome all questions. Nothing is certain, no right way. As Nietzsche would say, “This is my way. What is your way? There is nothing as THE way.” We need to search our own truths and there mustn’t be any compulsion to side. Sometimes, we might contradict our own position, but then I seek courage from Walt Whitman who asked, “ Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitude. ”  It takes immense courage to contradict one’s own past position, but then as I contend, nothing is sacred. Our own position need to stand the scrutiny of truth.  Let truth be our only measure. All nobility sleeps in the graves and all great wars, already fought, all great truths, already told. The only hope for our generation is to keep churning in search of newer truth which will emerge like elusive nectar. There is no easy truth. The road to truth is winding and perilous. We have to walk those slopes of Vesuvius. Every shining truth takes birth in dark shadows of hopeless search. It needs us to pause, to contemplate to toy with the facts and let the truth emerge. This isn’t a job to be done in hurry, it will take time, patience, and blood. We need to find our own truths which we need to hold on to against the mob which wants us to surrender it. That will be our greatest accomplishment- that is to "To be yourself in a world which is constantly trying to make ourselves someone else" as per Emerson- so true.I hope, this post is not only liked but responded with thoughts and counter-thoughts. Let’s talk, let’s build a tribe of talkers. Let us converse.
  You shall possess the good of the earth and sun, (there are millions
of suns left,)
You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through
the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books,
You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,
You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self.- Walt Whitman

About Death

Death is such an easy thing to happen. At times, I feel, it isn’t death which is accidental; rather it is life, which is. It is strange not to have written about it. Death has been a consistent thought hovering over my mind like an ominous vampire clouding over a meek moon. While two of my stories, “ The Death of  A Soldier ” and “ Betrayed by Time ” dealt with death as a kneel over which they revolved; on my blog, I never have written about death. To think of it, it seems a rather strange  thing.  Not to have written about death. Any blog about life had to stray somewhere into the dark realms of death.
It is rather coincidental that in last few months, I have read several books which dealt with death, the most recent being “The Year of Magical Thinking” by Joan Didion. The book traces a period of intense grief through which she survived post the death of her husband and her daughter. While reading it, I found it rather strange that having had so closely been touched by death, I had steered off the subject almost like being in an adamant denial. Before I was so closely visited by death in my own life, I would boisterously conclude any discussion about death with a solemn one step sideways argument. But that was before 17thof August, 2001 fell on that long balcony of that house on the fourth floor. Hit by a sudden uneasiness in the chest, which quickly turned into a pain which found me doubled on the balcony, I, on a later thought, was driven by a unique kind of stubborn stupidity to have walked three stories into a hospital next door. The visit to the hospital coincided with the daily round of senior doctor who was a heart specialist. Once coincident led to another, and I survived and woke up on this side of the world. Those three days which had the door opening in both the directions proved what I always said in my youthful sagacity- Death is nothing but one step sideways. I survived, and I continue living, in dark shadows of death still hovering over the brightest sun. Nothing came close to that feeling than what Joan Didion wrote about her husband when she wrote- John lived with a bad heart which will someday kill him. One only needs to replace John with my name to understand my usual day.
There is nothing sanguine about death. It walks lonely in the dark alleys with its head held down. It doesn’t ever look up, it doesn’t smile at you, it promises nothing but an eternal silence in the end. It doesn’t even have to take you along, a brief embrace hangs over your soul forever and your whole life thereafter becomes a struggle against it, against death, against the futility of life and against the eternal silence in which all the noises are to eventually fade. I survived death but had since been living with the feeling of a borrowed time. It gnaws my soul, feeds on the innards of my being. Didion’s husband inherited a bad heart. I didn’t. My father had a cardiac episode, but that was later than me. I had it at twenty eight, he at sixty two. Maybe, at some metaphysical level, he inherited it from me, something like the magician whose life was in a bird, I being that bird. Maybe, inheritance of a bad heart is a flawed idea in itself and we both embraced our own frailties through our own accidental turn of fate.
At the end of it, a fractured heart beats inside me which like Didion’s husband will eventually kill me. The knowledge of that damaged heart struggling hard to keep me alive does strange thing to my mind. I want to respond to minor kindness with wholehearted gratitude. I read my obituaries in my dreams. It makes me realize my own existence as an idea, extending beyond mere physicality of existence. I recognize myself as an idea, a though, a confluence of values. I do  not want much from the world. I want my six year old to delve deeper into her heart and derive her own value, spring-boarding from the foundation that I have built. She has a good heart and she need to be rescued from the vagaries of intemperate thoughts. She doesn’t inherit a bad heart and she needs to learn the deeper meaning of life without having to encounter the painful intimacy with death like her father. I need to teach her that before I someday take that one step sideways. I look forward for a good obituary on the day that happens and in the meantime, I want to prepare my daughter for the inheritance of a good heart and a kindled mind.  And of course, in this borrowed life of mine, I want to be pampered and loved, for I am the pampered prince of pathos.

Guest Post by Marta Moran Bishop- Author and Poetess

Marta is a prolific writer and a noble soul whose acquaintance has blessed the writing of many a writers, including the yours truly. I, a moonlighting, conspiratorial writer, have often been inspired out of the non-creative phases by work of Ms. Moran. I know, people like Marta have some inherent catalytic features which can induce mere mortals to turn into creative intellectual powerhouses, if only they have a rare spark in them. I requested Marta to share her writing life which I am certain will induce many to write and also forewarn with the hard work which such a choice will impose on those who want to write believing it to be an easy profession. Writing is an art of hard work. It needs you to want to speak truth with such intensity and urgency that it far outbalances the chilling nights of loneliness. It isn't a fancy occupation, and not everyone gets multi-million dollar contracts, but still people go on writing. People, who have a heart with innocence which has a story to tell. Such noble hearts carry something in them which has to be told. Marta is one such noble heart and tell the stories which if not told is a loss to the world, and if not read, is a loss to the reader. The Guest Post: The Secret Life Of One Writer:In many ways for me, writing is therapy. I can’t tell you when I started writing, for I don’t remember a time I didn’t write. I can tell you my first published work, my first interview, my first novel, how I write, and why I write, but when I began writing is a mystery.My first published book was a collaboration with my grandmother, Helen Springer Moran, though she had died before I was born, I met her through her poetry, and her writing. The short children’s poems she wrote became the start of many of the verses that make up Wee Three: A Mother’s Love In Verse, though I expanded her verses and added additional ones. These short poems introduced me to the process of learning to think and write from the viewpoint of a child. Even those verses that belonged to a different era in our country’s history taught me how to immerse myself in the thought process, the joy, and mind of the child I used to be. Wee Three, went through three different additions, until I decided to split it into two books. Wee Three: A Mother’s Love In Verse and Innocence and Wonder.Each review I receive, no matter whether it is a favorable review or a not so good review I am touched by, for someone took the time to share their feelings about my work and I learn something that will help me grow as a writer from them all.Through my writing, my imagination can take flight. I discover new worlds and find the ability for a better understanding of people and animals.I don’t usually choose a topic to write about, nor do I outline my characters as many do and those writers that do, do it well. My mind, doesn’t work that way, though I don’t think either is wrong, they are just different.For example, when I wrote The Between Times, the story began with the world I saw forming in my mind after reading many current day news articles. As a result, a dark world populated with what might be, should all of these events I had been hearing and reading about grew large in my mind until one morning as I sat in the pre-dawn air, enjoying the view of the forest behind our house, and the quiet of the morning, the story took root.From there it floated in and out of my brain, gathering a life of its own, until a few days later during the wee hours of the morning it took flight on paper, or should I say on my laptop. Jewell, Ben, Carlos, and Jamie took over, I was only the conduit for them to tell of their lives and show us their world. A world that had been built upon the seeds of choices and beliefs in today’s society. After the first draft of the story was written, I researched those parts of it that I didn’t know to be true, (i.e.) are there, in fact, enormous caverns and caves under and around Chicago? Yes, I know there will be those who will (and perhaps rightly so) question the fact that my research was done after the story was written. But, please try to understand, I believe I was only the conduit for their story. I did, however, discover through my research that there are caverns/caves in/under, and around Chicago. Did I read that somewhere before I wrote the story? When living in Chicago, did I hear about it? Possibly, I don’t know the answer to that question, but Jamie and Ben knew the answer to it, they knew about the caves and caverns under Chicago.As I said, I write a bit differently than many. One day I might be writing children’s poetry and the next I will be deep into the mind of Dinky, my rescue horse, or a paranormal world. I might write a poem about two trees whose love for one another caused them to wrap their branches around each other and grow from two tiny saplings into one tree. Standing together entwined for a hundred years and more.Speaking of Dinky’s book, some have asked how one gets into the mind of a horse? I honestly cannot tell you how I wrote first person horse only that when I was typing the story, it felt as if I were Dinky, living and remembering it. As I mentioned earlier in this article, when I write I am a conduit for the spirit of the tale that is being told. It is after the first draft that I will add some pertinent fact or facts to it that might be deemed necessary to help the reader understand.I watch people, animals, plants, trees, the way the clouds move, and snow falls. All of it stirs in my mind and becomes a character, a line from a poem, a story, or a novel. A puddle in front of me, a bird flying overhead, a bug crawling up the fence post, my horse standing in the middle of the field quietly looking off into the forest behind the fence, and the movement of life builds in my mind until the time comes when I can stand it no longer, and I must put it on paper.Dinky: The Nurse Mare’s Foal took two years and about seven rewrites before the story became a book. Before, I could tell Dinky’s story, I had to understand his early days. I had to know what it felt like to be ripped from your mother and shuffled, from place to place filled with fear. In order to do this, I had to write a great deal of his mother’s story first and understand how his mother felt, what she saw and how she lived. (I hope to have Dinky’s mother’s book finished sometime this year.) After the first draft of Dinky: The Nurse Mare’s Foal, I was lucky to have a brilliant author and professor look at the first three chapters and give me some much needed advice. He told me to read a variety of books, among them Jack London’s, Call of the Wild, White Fang, and Charlotte’s Web, by E.B. White, to name a few. It helped me to have a better insight into writing from the perspective of an animal.Presently, I’m working on multiple books that are in various stages of completion. It is the story that screams the loudest that gets my attention. Yes, I actually mean that, for they swim in the proverbial, primordial soup, waiting and building in my head until they shout I am ready.This year, besides Dinky’s mother’s story, I plan on finishing the prequel to The Between Times, (Darkness Descends) (which unlike many of my books I have been researching for two years, for the beginning of the book is based on an actual coup that was planned by a group of millionaires in nineteen hundred and thirty three.) That small part of the book is based on true events, the balance of the novel will be based on current events, in order to build the world that became The Between Times. However, Rebecca, Ben, and Jamie, and the lives they led are swimming in that primeval broth in my mind as we speak, begging me to get on with it. Still some things must wait for all the pieces to fall into place before the story can be told.One could ask how I ever manage to finish a book if I am writing so many simultaneously. Well, when I reach a certain point in the tale, I stop working on all other books. It is then that I focus my time and energy on that one book.Writers begin in many ways, each has their own method, and not one of them are wrong, just different.For me, all of my poems, stories, and novels are built upon a line, a thought, a world, or a vision, something that has been whirling around in my mind until it finally begins screeching at me. I’ve been known to stop on the side of the road and write down either whole poems or bits of stories when they shriek too loudly for me to ignore them. In the book I co-wrote with Saket Suryesh, A Walk Through Nature, the poem The Yeti Screams In Pure Delight, was written on the side of the road, for it was one such poem that would not wait.I am never without pen and paper and carry at least one small journal with me at all times. Jotting down the emotions that I feel when I look at the beauty of life, or see a scene unfold in front of me. In my head, I am always writing. I begin each day writing in my journal, during the day at work if a line or a verse comes to mind I will write it in my journal. Sometimes I will write entire scenes and once nearly 2500 words flowed out of me for a new novel I am now in the process of writing. I don’t have a particular time of the day I spend writing, this depends on the muse, whether I am at work or at home, and what life is throwing at me at the time. But, I do usually sit down and write at least one hour a day, every day. What I write that day may not be worth reading, but by writing each day I keep in the groove so to speak. If possible I usually write in the morning after I feed the horses, cats, and bird. I find my mind is less crowded with the events of the day in the wee hours of the morning.There isn’t a day that I am not reading something, each book teaches me how to be a better writer while transporting me into other worlds.All of life is what sets the backdrop for my work. I don’t have any particular rituals, unless you call opening myself up to the world and sitting down and writing each day a ritual. I am extremely lucky that my husband is so supportive of my writing, even taking on more of the household chores when I am nearing completion on a book so that I don’t have to leave my muse and hope I can regain it later. There is one other thing I suppose one could call a ritual, is when a story isn’t flowing I put it down for a while. I might paint, take pictures, make video’s, listen to music, or meditate, knowing that, at some point, the story will flow again, when the time for it is ripe. If I make it sound easy it isn’t, it requires enormous amounts of time, energy, care, and yes a skilled editor.  Author Interview- Marta Moran Bishop Author's Page on AmazonAuthor's Website

The Opinionated Writer..is there other kind?

Non-fiction and fiction make different demands on the writer. One takes spine, the other -heart. There is no character to hide behind in non-fiction. It is the writer speaking in active voice and risks being wrong, it is an eternal danger. The words you write are etched in time for eternal ridicule, hatred or rarely- adulation. You cannot and must not deny having written them. Even if wrong, you hold on to them like a wayward child. It is worse, you cannot disown them. When you find yourself wrong, you have to bring to life another child of yours as a counter-point. 

You can't disown and simply walk away. You can't claim never having  written it , you can't claim mis-interpretation. You have to pay for your words with sadness and shame. You are a writer, not a politician. You are a step away from sainthood. You have chosen for hard life and hard punishments in exchange of a right to speak out truth as you see it. In fiction, a writer can put forth opposing views as character's voice. But then, to be honest, one of them will be proven wrong and writer will be blamed for the wrong one. Ah, the difficult life of a writer..

"No comment" isn't an option for you. You always have an opinion, and the pen you hold proclaims you inability to hold that opinion within. You are setting yourself up for publicly being wrong, when you decide to write. That is the downside. The upside is that sometimes you will be right. Not immediately, not right after you have written. Maybe, in a while, maybe, after you are dead, but you don't write to be proven to be right, you write for you think it's right. You write your truth, and incite others to state their.  You set yourself for a debate, you trust your words, but you want them to be challenged. This play of thought, this acrobat of words keep you amused. You smile as you are stoned, for that proves you are read. Isn't that why you write? To be read, by the world at large, or sometimes by yourself through a non-writer's eyes. You argue with yourself on paper, for you aren't convinced on either side of the argument. Your opinion isn't clear to yourself, and you can't bear it, not to have an opinion. You must discover it, polish it and present it to the world to be mocked, spit at, and at times , at very rare occasions to be idolised.