Chronicles of a Solitary Soul – Ubuntu . . . I am because You are !!!

Monday mornings are unique in the truest of the sense always offering the contrary admixture of emotions. While they do open door to a brand new start to life leaving aside all the grudges of the past week with a new perspective and new hopes, they also imply the end of the weekend, the most cherished part of the week . . . and no sooner do the realization of ‘Thank God Its Friday’ creeps in, the revelation of ‘Oh God Its Monday’ comes knocking – Ding Dong!!!

Caught in the similar web of motions and emotions, I started my routine commutation to my office with my brother. The joy of having a younger brother entitles you to the luxury of putting him in the driver’s seat with you surrendering to the adjacent seat catching those short naps with your choicest songs being played in the background – a subtle way to respond to the struggles of Monday Mornings.

. . . as You turn Two today!!

Source: Google Images

Dear Musings,

It’s exactly been a year when I last wrote a letter to you. The delay has been somewhat intentional as I have reserved this interaction for an occasion as special as you – and what could be a more special & apt moment than your birthday.

Kindling the joy with the KINDLE

Source of the pic: Here

While the world is witnessing the paradigm shift in (almost) each of the technological innovations and the new improved advances are eating away even the imprints of their originals, there do exists people like me who are and would always remain those from ‘old school of thoughts’. When I say paradigm shift, I mean fixed lines paving way for mobile phones which later side-stepped for smartphone revolution which continues to storm the world of possibilities; the audio cassette player gave up its life for the survival of compact discs players which again are thwarted by the emergence of mp3 and other media files options; the good old computers and desktops giving space to laptops and palmtops and more recently to tablets, i-pads and the list goes on.

The similar transitional and transformational phase is currently underway in case of our beloved physical books. While the extreme phase of extinction might just remain a fantasy the paradigm has already started shifting towards e-books with the advent of kindle and other e-readers – the fact which I (for some strange reason) hate to own and in which I also seem to be becoming a party.

Chronicles of a Solitary Soul – Missing the Lakshya (Aim) of Life

How strange these dreams actually are – there are some which don’t let us awake while there are others which don’t let us sleep. Caught in the web of these the solitary soul lay hung, suspended and restless completely unaware of what to do and what not to. As the clock is striking past midnight hour, the similar admixture of thoughts and emotions are attempting to engulf me, to overtake me in their stride in the same manner as does the fog outside is making an attempt to capture the world out there. This, I guess, perfectly sums up my current state of mind as the chaos and haziness blooming outside mystifies my inner self as well. What is awaited is that stroke of air, that bout of sunshine which clears away these clouds for a clearer vision and a brighter path.

Zindagi Connects: Floras & Weeds in the Garden of your Heart

Source: Google Images

The world is a beautiful place for sure and the thing that makes it beautiful is we, its inhabitants. The ideal scenario where everyone lives happily devoid of any negativity is surely a fantasy (or is it not!!!). And in actual, we do get carried away by our limitations, insecurity and ego resorting to spreading anguish and hatred around which certainly creates void and differences in the hearts. It’s all so frustrating to witness that. There are already so many layers and lines demarcating the hearts of the people (in the name of religion, caste, creed, race and lord knows what else), let’s strive not to add further to these. What the world and its inhabitants need is more of love and compassion – spread these and then this would be a more beautiful world with more beautiful people. Theoretic, it may sound… but in actual it isn’t one.

The beautiful world is not exactly a myth in itself though a bit distant reality but something which can surely be bridged and converged with today provided one strives for it. And there is no need to traverse a lot in search of those beautiful people who make the world beautiful, because they are right here – YOU and ME!!

Zindagi Connects: Hold on…the dawn is just so near!!

Source: Google Images

 

The husband and wife recently arrived in the village and had bought a piece of land for cultivation. Both of them were very kind and would always serve the needy out of the limited means they had. They had a regular visitor to their house on a daily basis – an elderly old man. Baba, as everyone in the village called him, always came around the noon hour to seek food and the family always obliged him.

… and that’s how, the Musings was born !!

Source: Google Images

It was a lazy Sunday morning when both of us – me and the sun - were trying hard to distance ourselves from the sick daily routine of waking up early. While I lay there in my couch half awoke and half slept not yielding to the constant calls from my mother to discard both the lousiness and the bed; my counterpart, the sun, was comfortably hiding deep under those dark blue sheets of the clouds, unwilling to come out despite being constantly nudged by the flowing gentle breeze.

Mystic Mythos. . .Rediscovering Roots

Pic Source: Google

And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.

~Sylvia Plath

Chronicles of a Solitary Soul – The Lost Soul

It’s so surprising to see the similar state of being alone having varied connotations for different individuals – One who experience the pain in it calls it ‘Loneliness’ and the one who experience the solace terms it as ‘Solitude’. And for the very few who figures in the later, there is some inherent charm in those moments which makes them not only bearable but also gratifying. That is what the magic of the solitary world is all about. There is a parallel world inside which is devoid of any sophistications and baggage of the external world making it as pure as ever.

New Year. . .New Beginnings

Happy New Year (Source: Google Images)

For last year's words belong to last year's language

And next year's words await another voice.

And to make an end is to make a beginning…

 ~T.S.Eliot

As the hands of the clock continue their journey on their pre-defined path, we are just a few hours away from the midnight hour when this year will eventually pass making way for the newer one to come. The arrival of the New Year has always been a source of elation and exhilaration to everyone as it marks the ending of the instant year with all the good-bad things it did to you. However, in strict sense, ending doesn't really mean The End but the start of the New Beginning and hence the beginning of the new year. While the ending emits the negative feel, the beginning ushers the much needed positivity!!

The irony of being December, the Sixteenth. . .

Peshawar Attack on Dec 16 2014 *Source: Google Images

It’s been exactly two years since the 23 Year old Delhi’s daughter Nirbhaya was brutally gang raped by six men, showcasing the need to immediately address the cause of woman safety in the capital. That was brutality at its worst with the fighting soul finally gave up the struggle of her life after few days of torment. Was that the price she paid for being an independent soul in an independent country or for being democratic in the world's largest democracy? She finally left leaving us entangled in the web of so many questions, compelling us to introspect as to where we were currently and where we were heading. Is this the society we, our martyrs and our fighters aspired for their next generation? The day that witnessed that horrific incident was December, the Sixteenth.

Time passed and these introspection perhaps took the back seat with we all adopting the most comfortable manner of tackling with the things – it happens. Unfortunately, those questions came haunting back to us with the recent rape of another girl in uber cab just a few days back. Has something really changed? Can something really change?

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It was again that dubious December, the Sixteenth this year which witnessed another flagitious act of killing of more than hundred small children on the other side of the border. It was again the same date, the humanity was again embarrassed and the innocent was again victimized. Same web questions again cropped their head demanding answers. Where is this world actually heading towards and where has that thing called 'Humanity' gone? How else would one defend the killing of innocent children in Peshawar district of Pakistan today? What reason could one attribute to such a barbarian act?

~ Happy Diwali ~

Let there be light that dispels the darkness outside & gloom within..

Let there be positivity that fills your life with the hope of Happy Times and dreams for a year full of smiles...

Wishing you and your loved ones a joyous and blessed deepawali !!

Be Happy & Make others Happy..

Make sure u bring smile to atleast one face today !!!

***Happy Diwali***

~ Shubh Life. . . OM Sai Ram

© 2014 Manish Purohit (Reserved)

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~ Happy Vijayadashmi. . . ~

Source: Google Images

Vijayadashami or Dussehra is celebrated throughout India, under different names and with regional variations, as the victory of good over evil. The effigies of Ravana (the evil) are burnt across the country as an epitome of the victory of good over evil. This also marks as the culmination of nine day ‘navratra’ festival which is observed across household wherein little girls are worshipped and offered halwa & puri.

However, for Sai devotees this day hold all the more relevance. It is venerated as the holy day that their beloved Baba attaining Mahasamadhi (leaving this mortal body) and is a big festival in Shirdi.

Baba left his mortal coil on the 15th October 1918. Two years before i.e. in 1916 Baba gave an indication of his passing away. It was as follows. . .

Searching for Mahatma, Remembering the Talisman. . .

Source: Google Image

Today is 2nd October, the birthday day of Mahatma Gandhi. The word MAHATMA has its root in Sanskrit and is made of two words – ‘Maha’ meaning great and ‘Atman’ meaning soul. I often find myself wondering hard about the person named Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, his life, his principles and most importantly his ethics & also as to the greatness of his soul so as to refer him as "Mahatma". The life of Mahatma Gandhi is truly an institute in itself and the fact that he stood to his principles and ethics through-out the life is truly commendable. It’s fairly easy to have set of governing principles in life but what’s actually demanding is to able to stick to them come what may. We know from what we have learned and studied about the man, that Bapu (as he was fondly called) has indeed sacrificed his personal and public life for his principles and for the people around (though there exist a considerable amount of debate from some sects of people over his unfair and unjust approach towards his family and children – Read Mahatma vs. Gandhi, for example, which deals with his relationship with his eldest son).

~ Pensive Reflections. . . ~

Source: Google Images

The God has been a marvel to create a masterpiece like we humans (unfortunately we are not doing justice to HIS creation by resorting to trivial stuffs). While I find myself in a fix when I think about best creation by HIM in the humans – the mind that thinks or the heart that feels. More often than not, the ayes are more converged towards the mind and slightly lesser towards the heart. And truly blessed are the people who think by the heart and feel by the mind.

Who killed the Boy. . .???

Picture Source: Google Images

It was a warm Tuesday morning and the Monday Blues had now started to fade away with the mind and soul slowly but steadily adapting to the routine weekly chores. The day was half gone when I just saw flash news of a 20-22 year old youth killed by a white tiger in a zoo in Delhi (India). I, initially, dismissed the news as one of those unfortunate accidents that do happen at times. However, I was obnoxiously wrong at my stand; how mean and un-responsiveness we tend to become at those incidents and accidents which doesn’t directly impact us. Taking respite that we are not the aggrieved party, shedding few thoughts and sparing few moments criticizing at the coffee table, we feel that’s all we are meant to do. How unconventional we unknowingly act at times forgetting that today it’s someone else but tomorrow it can be us.

I resumed my daily work at my desk trying to sideline the thought of the incident that kept on obstructing my work. Ever since I saw that flash news my heart was disturbed thinking about the incident as to how and what could have happened. I strongly believe that there are two types of people in this world – one whose heart rules over their head and other whose head rules over their heart. I often find myself inching towards the former and that day too when the efforts failed yielding the desired result, I was left with no option but to surrender to heart & follow the story.

~ Deciphering GHAZALS . . . ~

Picture Source: Google Images

There is something magical about the world of Ghazals, the warmth and soothe it provides to the reading heart is simply inexplicable. However, at the same time, they also stir those ‘prohibited’ silent emotions which were sleeping deep under the layer of pretense – that innocence of first love, those well covered heartaches, those half-forgotten disappointments and lots more. We tend to get carried away and those strings of words and melody do transform us into altogether different world. The different world is our realm of dreams - some unfulfilled, some broken yet very dear to us. These dreams start peeping through unveiling each layer one by one to impart realization that those are still alive!!!

Additionally they also in a way provide you an assurance that those are inseparable from what we call LIFE and in interim, howsoever harsh and bitter they may seem; eventually they churn out a better you from your self. While the above thoughts might appear subjective, one fact commands unanimous affirmation that each one of us surely have found solace in one composition or the other.

Waking up from the Slumber. . .

“. . . the comfort of reclusion, the poetry of hibernation” ~Marcel Proust

Life has its own peculiar ways to tell us that its all right to slow down and hide away momentarily just to come up again with more rigour & aspirations.

It’s indeed been a time and to say that I was away primarily due to my work commitments or urgencies in life would just be an overstatement. Actually, its been a case of sheer laziness spurring from perhaps the lack of inspirations. Actually lots and lots of things were happening in life compelling me to sit back and take inventory of the situation.

~ Nearer My God to Thee, Nearer to Thee. . . ~

My initial experience of this magical hymn dates back to the release of original soundtrack of the movie Titanic by James Horner which is often considered as the last piece of music played by the musicians on the Titanic. However, did the band actually played this song before the final plunge of Titanic, still remains an uncertain fact, the reality of which (perhaps) lay buried inside the heart of the ocean. At that point of time it was nothing more than a compilation of fewer musical notes rendered just perfectly on a violin making it an apt example of musical brilliance to soothe and relax your mind & soul. In fact, it dint even occurred to me that there can be something more to this magical piece which, just like the above fact (whether the hymn was actually played last on Titanic) remained buried deep inside my heap of ignorance. It was just few days’ back the realization unearthed upon me that this is actually a hymn whose verses turned out to be even more soulful than the music itself.

~ Life's Magic Filling LIFE with LIFE ~

Introspecting about life’s musings does make us smile and wonder about the magic it fills at various junctures of our survival. Strangely enough, we don’t realize the magic instantly but looking back in retrospection do confirm that the magic do exist. Roald Dahl’s truly mentioned the following about the magic around us. .

“And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don't believe in magic will never find it.”