This is my prayer to thee, my lord

This is my prayer to thee, my lord -
strike, strike at the root of penury in my heart.

Give me the strength lightly to bear my joys and sorrows.

Give me the strength to make my love fruitful in service.

Give me the strength never to disown the poor or bend my knees before insolent might.

Give me the strength to raise my mind high above daily trifles.

And give me the strength to surrender my strength to thy will with love.

GITANJALI, XXX VI 4
Rabindranath Tagore

Some Daily dialogues we hear

A very interesting aspect of human life is relationship. Now I am not talking about a man and woman only. Neither am I limiting it to any social context.

For instance the relation between the check out clerk and the grumpy old woman or grumpy conductor and equally grumpy passenger.

A simple thing like smile has disappeared from human life. This has a direct impact on relations. Now some may call it as daily interaction but I call it relation.

The old man at the newsstand, the pretty girl at the coffee shop, senior citizen volunteering at road crossing, the cab driver and many other people around you in your daily life has one thing in common. They have a smile. That is the reason one does not feel any awkwardness about them. They are almost transparent to us. We simply assume that they are there, always, with that smile, never realizing that one needs to reciprocate it.

Today will write some typical conversation that takes place in our lives almost everyday. Definitely it has happened once in all of our lives.

“Good morning Hemant”
“Good morning Jane”
“How are you today?” and Jane walks on without waiting for the answer.
“I am not too well, thanks for asking and I will fine soon” but this genuine answer was not heard.

“Darling, tell me honestly how do I look in this dress?” Claire asked.
“That dress suites you well dear.” Bob replies honestly.
“No I think it’s too tight” Claire says.
“Well then why ask me?’ Bob thinks.

“Sweetheart, do you love me?” Brenda
“What’s the purpose of this question?” Timothy
Doh! Can’t you simply say Yes or No?

“Oh man I don’t know if she is happy with me or not?” Jack
“Did you ever ask her?” Hemant
“Ask what?” Jack
Idiot! What do you mean by ask what?

“Moonlight, walking hands in hand on the beach, cool breeze, twinkling skies, oooh So romantic” Priya
“Damn these mosquitoes are killing and all that sand in my feet. Romantic my foot.” mental comments, Mahesh.
Hey come on Mahesh, you said “up to you sweetie” when it was decision time to select venue.

Don’t know why I am writing the above. Maybe because I am sick and tired of hearing this meaningless words everyday. With so much of meaningless conversation, do you think we can ever have relationship?

Where The Mind is Without Fear

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection:
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is lead forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action—
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

-- By Rabindranath Tagore

The life we live(?) !

As time goes by, one realizes, there is nothing called Time. Time does not exist. Things gradually disintegrate. This is a constant process of energy changing its form. Which, Us humans try to quantize in terms of time.

For me, it’s been three years since I have been at this resort, healing my self, and seeing others healed. All the time witnessing the constancy in people’s behaviour and their perceived understanding of evolution. So mutually contradicting and yet so fully true.

We breathe means we bleed too. Most of them us so addicted to the emotional rollercoaster ride that we eventually self destroy our true being. Under the pretext of being truly honest, we always lie to us.

Year 2005 and we are still living barbaric ways. Hunting for weaker; living off the exploits all this is nothing but just pure animalistic instincts. We call it as the ways of civilized society. We have religion that teaches us to hate. We have politicians that divide us on our colour, caste, race, geography, language and even gender. We have priests who preach hatred and lawyers who lie under oath whereas doctors who prescribe drugs under pretext of healing you. We love them. They give us that daily dose of drama in otherwise absolutely meaningless life. We slog like slaves just to earn the resources to keep these politicians, priests, lawyers, doctors and rest of them alive and well.

We pay them. We bring them back every time. We take away the joy of childhood from our kids. We take away the freedom from our friends. We take away our own life from ourselves. Just to do that 9-5 job so that we can pay mortgage, pay insurance, pay government, pay to priest to get forgiveness from our sins and pay to lawyers so that none of the others would sue you for not paying them.

In the end, we die with cancer, heart trouble, kidney failure, liver problems, gun shots, car accidents, stress, drug over dose, surgeons mistake, mistaken identity, terrorist act and if nothing else hurricane and tsunamis.

What have we done to deserve this?

Post Katrina, Americans fume in anger- The Times of India

Post Katrina, Americans fume in anger- The Times of India: "Post Katrina, Americans fume in anger"

Lessons are learnt by ordinary people at a very high cost. Lesson taught to common people due to mistakes of those in power.

Need to write some more... but don't have words.