Racism Anyone?

The late great Joseph Keller wrote,"Racial prejudice is a terrible thing."

This was an article published in the TOI. One of the rare good ones that the semi-porn tabloid has done in ages.

The attacks on Indians in Australia have once again raised the ugly head of racism. Once again India is caught up in the midst of a racist storm. A while ago, the Big Brother controversy launched Shilpa Shetty as an international anti-racism icon from India. This is entirely appropriate as Indians are arguably the biggest targets of racism in the world. And they are targeted not just by unlettered British yobs or Australian thugs but, first and foremost, by their own compatriots. It's because we are so racist ourselves that we are so quick to react to a racist slur: it takes a racist to catch a racist. And our racism is colour-coded in black-and-white terms: white is intrinsically superior and desirable; black is inferior and undesirable.

In the Indian colour scheme of things, black is far from beautiful. The colloquial word for a black person of African origin is 'habshi', an epithet as offensive as the American 'nigger', both terms derived from the days of the slave trade.

For all India's official championing of the anti-apartheid crusade in South Africa's erstwhile white regime, north India at least is steeped in colour prejudice - ask any African student who's had a taste of Delhi's campus life. For the north Indian, fair is lovely, as those abominably tasteless TV commercials keep proclaiming: Don't get sunburnt, use skin whitening creams, or you'll end up dark and no one will marry you. (When did you last see a matrimonial ad seeking an 'attractive, dark-complexioned life partner'?)

Why is dark literally beyond the pale for so many of us? Is it an atavistic throwback to the supposed superiority of 'white' Aryans vis-a-vis the 'non-white' original inhabitants of the subcontinent? Is it the result of 250 years of white rule under the British? Is a pale skin, as against a deep tan, a testimonial to social rank, segregating those who don't have to toil under the sun from those who do? Is it an amalgam of all these?

Whatever the reason, 'chitti chamri' (fair skin) is a passport to fawning social acceptance -- which might partly explain why an increasing number of Caucasians look for assignments in India, be it as MNC executives or bartenders in 5-star hotels.

Our racism is largely, but not exclusively, based on colour. Caste is India's unique contribution to the lexicon of racial bigotry. Whether 'caste' - a result of cultural and social segmentation - can legitimately be conflated with 'race' - with its genetic and physiological underpinnings - is a matter of academic debate. However, as only too many horror stories testify, the average rural Dalit fares worse on the human-rights scale than her 'kafir' counterpart in the worst days of South African apartheid.

Caste apart, real or imagined ethnic traits compound our racism. People from the north-east are said to have 'Chinky' (Chinese) eyes and are routinely asked if they eat dogs. Even in so-called 'mainstream' India we sub-divide ourselves with pejoratives: 'Panjus', whose only culture is agriculture; stingy 'Marrus'; mercenary 'Gujjus' who eat 'heavy snakes' for tea; lazy, shiftless 'Bongs'; 'Madrasis', who all live south of the Vindhyas and speak a funny 'Illay-po' language. In our ingrained provincialism is our much-vaunted and illusory unity.

No wonder we can't stand racism. It reminds us disquietingly of the face we see in our own mirror.

Paradoxical Personifications

This is one of the most hilarious stories I've EVER come across. I almost died laughing over this one... I got this some 4-5 years back, most probably over e-mail; so much so, that I can't even remember who sent it. Its a tandem writing exercise i.e. one person writes a paragraph, while the next one is written by another person.

THE STORY:

(first paragraph by Rebecca)

At first, Laurie couldn't decide which kind of tea she wanted. The chamomile, which used to be her favorite for lazy evenings at home, now reminded her too much of Carl, who once said, in happier times, that he liked chamomile. But she felt she must now, at all costs, keep her mind off Carl. His possessiveness was suffocating, and if she thought about him too much her asthma started acting up again. So chamomile was out of

the question.

(second paragraph by Gary)

Meanwhile, Advance Sergeant Carl Harris, leader of the attack squadron now in orbit over Skylon 4, had more important things to think about than the  neuroses of an air-headed asthmatic bimbo named Laurie with

whom he had spent one sweaty night over a year ago. " A.S. Harris to Geostation 17," he said into his transgalactic communicator. "Polar orbit established. No sign of resistance so far..." But before he could sign off a bluish particle beam flashed out of nowhere and blasted a hole through his ship's cargo bay. The jolt from the direct hit sent him

flying out of his seat and across the  cockpit.

(Rebecca)

He bumped his head and died almost immediately, but not before he felt one last pang of regret for psychically brutalizing the one woman who had ever  had feelings for him. Soon afterwards, Earth stopped its pointless hostilities towards the peaceful farmers of Skylon 4. "Congress Passes Law Permanently Abolishing War and Space Travel,"

Laurie read in her newspaper one morning. The news simultaneously excited her and bored her. She stared out the window, dreaming of her youth, when the days had passed unhurriedly and carefree, with no newspaper to read, no television to distract her from her sense of innocent wonder at all the beautiful things around her. "Why must one

lose one's innocence to become a woman?" she pondered wistfully.

(Gary)

Little did she know, but she had less than 10 seconds to live. Thousands of miles above the city, the Anu'udrian mothership launched the first of its  lithium fusion missiles. The dim-witted wimpy peaceniks who pushed the Unilateral Aerospace disarmament Treaty through the congress had left Earth a defenseless target for the hostile alien empires who were determined to destroy the human race. Within two hours after the passage of the treaty the Anu'udrian ships were on course for Earth, carrying enough firepower to pulverize the entire planet. With no one to stop them, they swiftly initiated their diabolical plan. The lithium fusion missile entered the atmosphere unimpeded. The President, in his top-secret mobile submarine headquarters on the ocean floor off the coast of Guam, felt the inconceivably massive explosion, which vaporized poor, stupid Laurie.

(Rebecca)

This is absurd. I refuse to continue this mockery of literature. My writing partner is a violent, chauvinistic semi-literate adolescent.

(Gary)

Yeah? Well, my writing partner is a self-centered tedious neurotic whose attempts at writing are the literary equivalent of Valium. "Oh, shall I have  chamomile tea? Or shall I have some other sort of F--KING TEA??? Oh no, what am I to do? I'm such an air headed bimbo who reads too many Danielle Steele novels!"

(Rebecca)

Asshole.

(Gary)

Bitch

(Rebecca)

F__K YOU - YOU NEANDERTHAL!

(Gary)

Go drink some tea - whore.

(TEACHER)

*A+ - I really liked this one.*

P.S. I saw this in my good friend's Blog, and its to his credit. This was just too good to not be out here.

The Grief That Made 'Peanuts' Good

A Review of the book "Schulz and Peanuts" by Bill Watterson published in the Wall Street Journal.

The comic strip "Peanuts" was more than a decade old when I started reading it as a kid in the mid-1960s. At that time, "Peanuts" was becoming a force of pop culture, with best-selling books and a newly burgeoning merchandising empire of plastic dolls, sweatshirts, calendars and television specials. The overwhelming commercial success of the strip often overshadows its artistic triumph, but throughout its 50-year run, Charles Schulz wrote and drew every panel himself, making his comic strip an extremely personal record of his thoughts. It was a model of artistic depth and integrity that left a deep impression on me. While growing up, I collected the annual "Peanuts" books and used them as a personal cartooning course, copying the drawings with the idea of someday becoming the next Charles Schulz.

At that time, most of the strip went over my head, and I certainly had no understanding of how revolutionary "Peanuts" was or how it was changing the comics. "Peanuts" pretty much defines the modern comic strip, so even now it's hard to see it with fresh eyes. The clean, minimalist drawings, the sarcastic humor, the unflinching emotional honesty, the inner thoughts of a household pet, the serious treatment of children, the wild fantasies, the merchandising on an enormous scale -- in countless ways, Schulz blazed the wide trail that most every cartoonist since has tried to follow. David Michaelis's biography, "Schulz and Peanuts," is an earnest and penetrating look at the man behind this comic-strip phenomenon. With new access to Schulz's personal files, professional archives and family, Mr. Michaelis presents the fullest picture we have yet of the cartoonist's life and personality.

Born in 1922, Schulz always held his parents in high regard, but they were emotionally remote and strangely inattentive to their only child. Schulz was shy and alienated during his school years, retreating from nearly every opportunity to reveal himself or his gifts. Teachers and students consequently ignored him, and Schulz nursed a lifelong grudge that so few attempted to draw him out or recognized his talent. His mother was bedridden with cancer during his high-school years, and she died long before he could prove himself to her -- a source of endless regret and longing for him. As a young adult, he disguised his hurt and anger with a mild, deflecting demeanor that also masked his great ambition and drive.

Once he finally achieved his childhood dream of drawing a comic strip, however, he was able to expose and confront his inner torments through his creative work, making insecurity, failure and rejection the central themes of his humor. Knowing that his miseries fueled his work, he resisted help or change, apparently preferring professional success over personal happiness. Desperately lonely and sad throughout his life, he saw himself as "a nothing," yet he was also convinced that his artistic ability made him special. An odd combination of prickly pride and utter self-abnegation characterizes many of his public comments.

"Peanuts" launched in 1950, appearing in just seven newspapers. The comic strip grew slowly at first, but as its vision expanded and the characters solidified, it caught fire with readers. Schulz's fixation on his work was total, and his private life suffered as a result. Mr. Michaelis uncovers quite a bit of Schulz's more personal tribulations. Schulz's strong-willed and industrious first wife, Joyce, grew disgusted with his withdrawal, and she often treated him cruelly. As the marriage finally unraveled, Schulz had an unsuccessful affair, and he later broke up the marriage of the woman who became his second wife. Schulz's life turned more peaceful after he remarried, but he never overcame the self-doubt and dread that plagued him. Work remained his only refuge. At the end, deteriorating health took away Schulz's ability to draw the strip, a loss so crushing that it can only be considered merciful that he died, at age 77 in 2000, the very day his last strip was published.

It's a strange and interesting story, and Mr. Michaelis, the author of a 1998 biography of artist N.C. Wyeth, paces the narrative well, offering many insights and surprising events from Schulz's life. Undoubtedly the most fascinating part of the book is the juxtaposition of biographical information and reproduced "Peanuts" strips. Here we see how literally Schulz sometimes depicted actual situations and events. The strips used as illustrations in "Schulz and Peanuts" are reproduced at eye-straining reduction and are often removed from the context of their stories, but they vividly demonstrate how Schulz used his cartoons to work through private concerns. We discover, for example, that in the recurring scenes of Lucy annoying Schroeder at the piano, the crabby and bossy Lucy stands in for Joyce, and the obsessive and talented Schroeder is a surrogate for Schulz.

Reading these strips in light of the information Mr. Michaelis unearths, I was struck less by the fact that Schulz drew on his troubled first marriage for material than by the sympathy that he shows for his tormentor and by his ability to poke fun at himself.

Lucy, for all her domineering and insensitivity, is ultimately a tragic, vulnerable figure in her pursuit of Schroeder. Schroeder's commitment to Beethoven makes her love irrelevant to his life. Schroeder is oblivious not only to her attentions but also to the fact that his musical genius is performed on a child's toy (not unlike a serious artist drawing a comic strip). Schroeder's fanaticism is ludicrous, and Lucy's love is wasted. Schulz illustrates the conflict in his life, not in a self-justifying or vengeful manner but with a larger human understanding that implicates himself in the sad comedy. I think that's a wonderfully sane way to process a hurtful world. Of course, his readers connected to precisely this emotional depth in the strip, without ever knowing the intimate sources of certain themes. Whatever his failings as a person, Schulz's cartoons had real heart.

The cartoons are also terrifically funny and edgy, even after all these years. The wonder of "Peanuts" is that it worked on so many levels simultaneously. Children could enjoy the silly drawings and the delightful fantasy of Snoopy, while adults could see the bleak undercurrent of cruelty, loneliness and failure, or the perpetual theme of unrequited love, or the strip's stark visual beauty. If anything, I wish Mr. Michaelis's biography had devoted more space to analyzing the strip on its own terms as an art. Knowing the sources of Schulz's inspiration does not explain the imaginative power of the work.

I was also surprised that Mr. Michaelis largely glossed over the later years of the strip, despite major shifts in its focus and tone. As newer characters developed into dominant voices, Charlie Brown receded, becoming almost avuncular, and "Peanuts" abandoned much of its earlier harshness. It would have been interesting to learn how Schulz's conception of the strip changed over the years and what Peppermint Patty, Spike and Rerun offered him in the way of new expressive possibilities. I was not always enthusiastic about Schulz's later choices, but it says something for Schulz that he resisted the simple, robotic repetition of a successful formula. In this, too, "Peanuts" was unlike most other comic strips.

For all the influence that "Peanuts" had on me, I was content to admire Schulz from afar, and like most of his millions of readers I never met him. Mr. Michaelis has done an extraordinary amount of digging and has written a perceptive and compelling account of Schulz's life. This book finally introduces Charles Schulz to us all.

An Unnamed Feeling.

Good Night, and Good Luck.

Frustration, anxiety, hopelessness are all a state of mind and rather depressing ones at that. Issac Newton said, rather foolishly I feel, that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. I am pretty sure he wasn't eating some bad fruit or peeing down the barrel of a gun when he said that. Maybe his mid was influenced by the bloody effect of gravity.

Wasn't he also the one who said whatever goes up must come down?

I have come to believe that he wasn't sitting beneath an Apple tree that prompted Steve Jobs to name his company Apple but he was sitting in a really fucked ups ewer and saw what-they-call-it-but-I-feel-grossed-out writing it still get sucked down.

Gravity is arbitary. It truly is.

If there was one of the two adages I believed in, genuinely did, it was that there is a clear, distinct, direct proportionality between how much effort you put in to how you get rewarded.

The second one being that there is a clear, distinct, inverse proportionality between how much something is good for you, and how much fun it is. PERIO.....

Nope, couldn't get myself to finish it. I firmly believed that these two fuckisms were as sure as the fucked up euphemism called gravity (read state of mind, it somehow gets you down, almost always). That's why I say and have very grudgingly come to believe that gravity is arbitrary.

Yes, a paradox. I know. An antithesis. Never when I want it to be. A personification. Unfortunately always. Uncomfortably numb, actually.

The other day, I was waiting in line to get my hands on this textbook I have really been craving to read since I got wind of the fact that it is imperative in my coursework. It was, for me, one of those absolutely-must-get-done situations as-soon-as-possible. I waited in line all day in the blistering winter, it was snowing. All the shipping orders were sold out only to institutions and certain gold members so there was no other way but to wait like this a la "an assclown" feeling completely "El Fucko" down to my bones.

We waited in line since 4 am the previous night, precisely 6 hours before opening time. There were some nutters who waited in line since 2 am. Some, since 10 pm. Well, but what had to be done had to be done. And you won't believe this, I see this set of guys, relatively unrelated come up as late as 9-45 am and still get their hands on this book and walk away knowing that their graduation was now an absolute certainty, unlike gravity.

I mean, OHH MY GOD!!!! You have truly got to be kidding me. This is blasphemous in it's entirety.

To this day, I am still standing, in line. Many people are. But some aren't, some "lucky, fortunate" few aren't. I don't believe in those wisecracks anyway.

Calvin griped once that why isn't life ever fair in his favor. Well, that would be akin to gambling on a game of long odds, wouldn't it now??Akin to gravity being fool-proof all the time. Bloody Glorious Bastards. The ones who had their fun in the sun. These fuckers mow lawns in the snow.

Truly inglorious testaments get lost. Why is it that these things always come in spades?

Conclusions are liable to be harmful, if you let them be, like first impressions that we form of people. Well, who gives us the right, the authority, and quite honestly, the brains to do so? There are certain things that we do because they are the right things to do. Yes, I still believe that there is, without exception, an inverse relationship between how good something is for you and how much fun it is and also, generally speaking, without exception (i still like to think so), how difficult something is to be done and how much rewarding it is.

Boredom is the worst disease ever, there's absolutely no excuse in this beautiful world to be bored.

Hope. Then hope. Then hope again. The hope some more. Keep at it.

Good Morning, and Good Luck.

Days of Glory

The Unsung hero.

The phrase has its own aura about it. The queen's language is fraught with it in relevant lore. Almost always, every chest beating heroic story is accompanied with the phrase.

The skies were as bright as they could be, but there was gloom in the air.

It was the Heathbourne Airfield on the outskirts of London in the summer of 1943. The great war had entered into its third year and finally the Allies could see hope, maybe even flashes of victory. It was to be a series of operations from the allies to break into France. The regiment, "Wolf Company", would be flown in specifically in Holland from a carefully chosen, elite squad handpicked from the finest military schools in England.

The operation was simple, fly out from Heathbourne, land in Holland on the outskirts of Eindhoven, hit the enemy hard, drive them back out of Eindhoven, hopefully towards Germany, then come back to England. This was an extremely crucial operation as it was a precursor to D-Day. This was to be the distraction to channelize the Axis' attention towards Holland and away from Normandy.

Jack, 21 was sitting alone atop the medical supplies' barrel looking out onto the sky. The atmosphere was quite understandably tense, you could cut the tension and the fading hope with a knife. It is just one of those things in life, thought Jack, that comes onto us that we are expected to do.

They were all ready to go, but not really raring, quite understandably. It was one of those things, thought Jack, that they were trained and trained for since the last 18 months, but there was arguably no mental perparation for such a thing. The release would come when it would.

That precise moment, a clarion blared, an alarm sounded, and a voiceover boomed on the microphone, something incoherent as far as Jack was concerned, he heard what he dreaded, they were going to Holland and had to assemble at the airfield runway entrance in the next hour.

Two hours later........

Boom.....BOOM....BOOM......BOOM....the sound of heavy artillery and rapid, rabid incessant, unrelenting gunfire. With them expected to jump out of the 11 airplanes, 21 in each, all teams individually sorted on the basis of certain very specific skills with their team leaders. Then the green light flashed like mad on the door, it was the signal for them to jump, behind enemy lines.

Jack figured the worst that could possibly happen at that moment was that he would be shot while in air, completely helpless, defenceless.

He was wrong, completely, totally, drastically wrong.

He had completely underestimated the worst case scenario.

He landed all right, but landed somewhere in the middle of a rain soaked forest, had no idea where he was and more crucially, had no idea where his regiment had landed. He was stranded in the middle of the night in the middle of a rain soaked forest with just 16 of his comrades. 5 had been shot while in air. The nazis knew that the allies were coming.

The troupe decided to focus thier directions towards the missiles as that would be most likely where everyone would be headed. They passed small, deserted, dilapidated towns, with little or no resistance. Then they reached a small town called Vessen and saw a road sign that said Eindhoven was around 250 kilometers away. With them tarvelling at night and avoiding travel on day to avoid being ambushed, and with drastically low medical and food supplies, they imagined it would take them a week. But with every minute wasted they realized that theywere losing out on the objective of being in Holland.

So they set out, and actuallt managed to reach the outskirts of Eindhoven in two days from that point, rejoined by a larger number (now they were 68) but saw only Germans everywhere which meant only one thing. The mission had failed, was aborted or that the regiment was all dead. Field captain Ben Curtis decided that there were only two options, either retreat or beat the Germans using some guerilla warfare. The easy thing to do would have been retreat. Of course, had they made it back home, they would have been lauded for their efforts in coming out from behind enemy lines bravely.

Everyone looked at each other, going in meant more sufering, more loss, an almost certain death, and who really cared about an all-honor funeral and a few sonnets here and there when you wouldn't be there to enjoy it.

Jack had no idea what made him say," Who knows what we will be faced with and if we might make it home or not, there's no gaurantee that even if we retreat, we can make it home safely. to do so, we would have to swim the english channel and risk being blown to hell by the U-Boats, walking by day would mean sitting ducks for the Luftwaffe. And they are already trying to take England. I say we get onto a reconnaisance mission, map out the hiding places of the krauts, and ambush them at night, hide their bodies, and just hope that maybe some other teams are fighting their way to the city."

"Jack, thats suicide, sooner rather than laterm the krauts will find out and will go on an all-out manhunt for us."

"Jack, you lost your mind, or you want to lose your balls. I have a kid, an aged mother, ......"

and so on and so forth came the barrage of complaints..

But then Jack asked very earnestly," Why then did we come here?What was the point?We hoped that we would meet more, didn't we?So why give up the hope now? I came here for a purpose and I am goddamn gonna make sure that I give it all I can. I know that I may well die in doing this and I know that it will be a 'hero's death' and i dont give no fuck about 'em poems and roses over my grave and some beefy prick playing me in a play 10's of years from now but, for now, I say we try. We have the world to lose, but then we have the world to gain."

Something stirred in the men, and they set about their task, divided their team for the operation, operation fuck-up as they called it. In the next 3 weeks of intense warfare that followed, the krauts simply could not understand the level of intelligence that hit them and the team of 68 actually managed to grab the attention of the krauts and keep them at bay.

At night, the snipers stuck out the watchpoint gaurds, and made sure they located the camoflauged tanks. They dug tunnels on the outskirts of the city by day, to enter the drainage of the city and struck them from below. They piled up the uniforms of the fallen krauts and used them to pose as germans to disable the tanks from inside, and blow apart their firing ranges.

They blew up the communication lines of the germans making sure that the germans couldn't communicate with the outside world and in doing so, sent a very clear message to the allied decision making think tank. If someone blew up the communications network in Eindhoven, it ha to be a few survivors of the regiment. The wolves were still on the prowl.

But the icing on the cake was Jack, he did the craziest of things imagineable, and the most unimagineable of all was that he never gave up, nor did he let the others give up. He was the deFacto leader of the troupe that Ben Curtis was dead. In spite of all that he had seen, he had been shot six times, thrice a bullet brushed his leg, once he got hit in the back, he fell 20 feet from the top of a building while on watch. He had also seen, unimagineable as it may seem, seen his comrades being relieved of duty, his comrades shoot himself, some literally being whisked away back to England, few comrades had lost their legs, some had lost all kinds of body parts, some had been shot in the ass, some had grenades blasted in their face.

They were putting a marvelously brave fight, they were down to 29 when the reinforcements arrived and yet they unwaveringly carried on, and actually managed to hold off the Germans for over 9 months with all the courage they could muster.

Jack was there the day the US troops arrived in Holland and specifically in Eindhoven, and finally secured the town for the allies. Of course the "Wolf Regiment" was lost somewhere and never got its due. This was the direct cause of operation D-Day and was widely seen asd the turning point in the Allies march against the Axis. They actually succeeded in forcing the Germans back into Germany. Jack's big dream was actually realized.

Ben Curtis, Jack and all the other brave men who had died fighting the Germans were all but forgotten till for a few years after the war. The "Wolf Regiment" had suffered unimagineable losses, their lives had been changed forever, but still they survived.

Years later, in London, Jack was a content man, working peacefully, led a simple, idyllic life with his wife, his parents and his two kids.

He was once overheard talking to an old comrade on the London subway reminiscing about Eindhoven and a little girl very innocently asked him what made him stayed there?

Jack said, "Hope. It is the source of our greatest strength, our self-belief, our passion, our desire, and eventually our accomplishments. Never, ever, ever give up. The end to an extremely well-efforted process is always a smile followed unbridled, pure contentment."

To this day, I wonder what Jack found internally to enunciate that solemn dialogue to get his company going, how deep did he dig into his psyche to find the nerve, the will, the hope to carry on. Where did he dig to find it all? Were it simply the means to an end? Were it simply just one more obstacle, luck, fate, destiny be damned??? Where did that hope come from???

I still dont know, but it sure as hell helps me understand things in black and white, though the world has ceased to be. There are many things we dont control, that we will never control, that we dont need to control. The thing is, there truly are certain things that dont need the attention we give them.

Today, there are probably no sonnets, no poems, no sobriquets "honoring" these men, Glory never befell them, just a simple monument somewhere in a bustling suburb of London which is now a tourist attraction for tourists to pose and smile with.

The Un-sung hero.

Good Will Hunting.. Indeed...

This completely blew my head off... I am never going to watch it again, i dont need to (the partial inspiration for this post)....

This needs to be out there.

A part of a dialogue between Robin Williams and Matt Damon;

"... And if I asked you about women I'm sure you could give me a syllabus of your personal favorites, and maybe you've been laid a few times too. But you couldn't tell me how it feels to wake up next to a woman and be truly happy. If I asked you about war you could refer me to a bevy of fictional and non-fictional material, but you've never been in one. You've never held your best friend's head in your lap and watched him draw his last breath, looking to you for help. And if I asked you about love I'd get a sonnet, but you've never looked at a woman and been truly vulnerable. Known that someone could kill you with a look. That someone could rescue you from grief. That God had put an angel on Earth just for you. And you wouldn't know how it felt to be her angel. To have the love to be there for her forever. Through anything, through cancer. You wouldn't know about sleeping sitting up in a hospital room for two months holding her hand and not leaving because the doctors could see in your eyes that the term "visiting hours" didn't apply to you. And you wouldn't know about real loss, because that only occurs when you lose something you love more than yourself, and you've never dared to love anything that much."

Inspirations

"This is the beginning of a new day.

You have been given this day to use as you will.

You can waste it or use it for good.

What you do today is important because you are exchanging a day of your life for it.

When tomorrow comes, this day will be gone forever; in its place is something that you have left behind...let it be something good."

Its an intricacy of life I have somehow missed. The other day I came across a certain individual who was just practicing his posture in front of a mirror, and all for the good, because it was in a museum. Out of mild curiosity, I went up to him and asked him what was the purpose of this exercise. He told me in an equally mild tone, that he had a spate of interviews lined up in the following hours and was practising his mannerisms in front of a mirror.

So naturally, why not home in the confines of his own privacy??

Well, my dear friend, for two reasons,

One: The people around me inadvertantly react to me as I do this and I get a fair idea of how I may be presenting myself. It is always good to see what people unknown to me percieve me to be as the interviewers fall in the same category.

Secondly and least importantly, I dont have a mirror at home.

It was a beautiful example of focus in all it's simplicity. I dont know why but it made me realize the importance of the bare minimum in life. Everyone strives to be flashy, smart, and always fail in their attempts to be sexy but I think very few ever strive to be perfect down to and starting from the bare basics of any task at hand. It was a fine lesson I was priviledged to be inspired by.

Inspirations are probably the best teachers, second to experience if we just learn to glean from these. Experience is food for the brain, and inspiration is food for the heart. If we just marry these two within the confines of our conscience and a really fertile imagination (read Calvin), I think it may safe to consider that we have hit the jackpot.

I remember watching a cricket match between Australia and India in Shajah and Sachin Tendulkar was batting his heart out for India to get us to the final. He got us there, an then he wanted to win the match though lesser mortals would have just been content to play out the match. But the most amazing moment in the match, at least for me, came when he was incorrectly declared out, adjudged leg before the wicket. As this happened, the Aussies rejoied and the little man walked back, and as he did so, he looked back, quite definitely ruing the fact that the match was lost. I wouldn't be surprised if he must be seething in the dressing room at the fact.

Michael Schumacher, I dont believe starts his race when the fifth light goes out, I think he starts his race at the first light, the fifth race is probably when his brilliantly red Ferrari starts the race. Diego Maradona, probably the finest footballer of recent years gone by definitely must be preparing himself for the match when the teams must be warming up before the pep-talk.

I remember Eric Cantona, Manchester United's most loved player making a beautiful statement, saying," I don't play against any team, I play against the idea of losing." It is a fine way to strategize any scenario, and it may well be said that such statements areapplicable to any and every person for any and every situation.

There are many people who come to mind as having done something really worthwhile professionally which can be considered a benchmark of sorts in a very unique way.

Dr APJ Abdul Kalam, Harsha Bhogle, Sachin Tendulkar, AR Rahman, Aamir Khan, Roger Federer, Daniel Day Lewis, Vishwanathan Anand, Bill Watterson, Arsene Wenger, Paolo Maldini, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Steve Jobs, Warren Buffett, and many, many other people that have given us the priviledge of learning from them including three other people who have been the most prominent inspirations.

It was a lesson extremely well-taught, it is for us to listen between the sentences.

I have really come to believe that in almost every situation, the first step is the most important and must always be the most basic step.

For all sad words of tongue and pen, The saddest are these, "It might have been".