I choose not to feel!

I choose not to feel......!

The line is the latest muse that I came across in the recent edition of the star trek movie. A few of my close friends might have already got where such conversations of mine can lead to! The line is by Mr. Spock, the half vulcan and the half human who is constantly torn in between his emotional human side and the logical vulcan side. Many a times he sounds rather robotic and perfectly analytical, and the way he vents his emotions is worth a look.

I was pondering on this line and realized we do have a choice to feel. In our daily lives, the game of choice starts every morning when the alarm wakes us from our dreams. If one can break down time and observe things, its simply amazing how this game of choice works. Each choice in our lives, opens up a whole universe of opportunities not only for us but a lot of people all around us, to sum it up each choice we make has a huge butterfly effect! Having said that, the choice to feel can be strongly related to the emotional being inside your brain. We undergo a lot of emotions both consciously and unconsciously, sometimes we aren't even aware of that fact. We humans, have the ability to control our feelings to a certain extent thanks to the societal norms for that. But, many a times we are let to wonder what to control and what not, now this is again a big choice we need to make. As I said earlier each choice has repercussions over a period of time, thus the choice to feel depends on the depth and width of one's imagination. Luckily for Mr. Spock, he is portrayed to have a profound understanding of the logical sequence of events that are likely to occur depending on a choice and judgement he makes. Thus he says, "I choose not to feel."

For mere mortals like us with a limited understanding of the world, is it really justifiable to say the same? Can we choose not to feel for the people around us atleast the people we consider close? There are a lot many questions which cannot be answered by our limited human logic, but there might be a moment in time when the intelligence and rationality overrules the emotional nature and compel one to make a choice to feel or not! And I hope such moments come with a greater good in the offering. :-)

BIRTHDAY'S!

      Birthday's always amused me over the years and they still do. Many a times I wonder, what is that special feeling or emotion that brightens the eyes of most people as soon as their birthday arrives. Off late many of my close friends in their late twenties are off colour with the idea of yet another year passing by. Though personally I haven't been a great fan of celebrating birthdays lavishly, I prefer to spend my birthdays in the company of my family or doing something new and interesting.

      Recollecting my school days and moments from childhood, birthday was always a wonderful day as a kid. You start to feel special and all the kids around become your friends for the day! I am not trying to point at that piece of cake or the basket of chocolates which gets one all those friends, but my main idea is to understand the belief system with which we all grow up. The beliefs that are inculcated in us over the years are so strong that we often forget their very existence. And ofcourse who can ignore the gifts that one gets on the birthday, now that is the greatest catch which might make many stick to those beliefs, isn't it?

      As I grew older, I kept observing things over the years how the number of people at any birthday party follows the famous bell curve and once a person reaches a certain age (varies from person to person) he/she doesn't bother about his/her birthday anymore. Last year, I called one of my friends for the birthday and to my amazement all that friend said in return for my wishes was,"Good that you remembered, but I don't find my birthday all so happy anymore, it just keeps reminding me that the clock is ticking and its ticking fast!" Though my friend didn't sound sad or unhappy, there was a certain degree of confidence and coldness in the voice which said, "Buddy, now happiness is sought after in a variety of other things than throwing lavish parties on birthdays." 

      The best of the conversations I had about birthdays was the one with my grandmother, she needed to be reminded that it was her birthday. I asked her, if how she feels on her birthday and she smiled at my question and with all the love and affection said, "I don't know if how old I am now, In fact it doesn't matter anymore. At my age, birthday's just come and go, and I am very happy that all you kids are doing well."

      My romance with the natural distribution of events and things is all so stirred up with such conversations and experiences; imagining the wonder in the eyes of a kid, the zeal in the voice of a young person and the love in the words of a granny, I try to explore the universe of my own emotions and ask myself.... 

"How important are Birthday's?" 

:-)

An Evening from my window..

One of my latest crude experiments..... :-)

'Love of Life' and 'Life of Love'!

Finding 'Love',

In the glowing reflections of the beautiful light

In the dreaded refractions of the treacherous life,

has left many a souls perched on their destiny's tomb.

A far cry from the sinful womb

as the world tries to spit with foul,

But love in all its magnificent amalgamation

blossoms forth in all the pious and the sinned alike!

The fire of the lonely blazing sun,

The warmth of the tender earth beneath,

The vastness of the mighty ocean blues,

The ferocity of the hustling wind that flows,

and the very life in the vacuum of every breathing being.

Love in its candidness is all consuming,

it fogs the very essence of the infinite time.

Won't one be lucky to discover it in its varied forms?

Or blessed so, to find it drooling with life deep within?

~ Pancha Janya ~

A tryst with Destiny....

On the midnight of 14th August 1947. The destiny of a country was rewritten in sweat, blood and in ink, a whole genera of humans woke up to a free and independent nation. My recent visit to the Indian High commission on the Independence day's eve brought back a string of memories from high school days, luckily I did diligently polish my shoes the night before. :-)

As always my unsolicited experiments to explore emotions brought me to the famous speech by Mr. Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of Independent India.

http://www.history.com/speeches/nehru-speaks-on-indian-independence-day#nehru-speaks-on-indian-independence-day

"A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance".

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tryst_with_destiny

As I kept going through the speech over and over again, I was initially trying to understand my own sense of freedom, which has infact always amused me. The rich words that describe freedom in the quote can be applied to a variety of context, even a seed sprouting out from the earth gives a similar sigh of relief.

Freedom has always been the basest of the human desires, many a times we yearn for it as if it were the air we breathe. History indeed comes to the rescue in this case, there are a countless incidences in the evolution of the modern man/woman which attribute their significance to the desire of being free, to live as a free soul and to prosper with a free will.

"But, has the modern man/woman with all his/her intelligence and wisdom learned to respect the spirit of freedom?"

One can look at this world from a multitude of perspectives and draw up conclusions accordingly, yet there will always be a few unanswered questions and a few untied knots. The general strife/well-being that the humanity faces from time to time and its solution/celebration always lies with the freedom and the spirit of the choice that we face at each particular point of time. Destiny may have planned a lot for us but we humans have been gifted the ability to rewrite destiny itself. Someday in the future, I wish history would reveal how humankind understood their tryst with destiny and preserved their spirit of freedom.

~ Pancha Janya ~

Tip of the Iceberg

What we see,

What we hear,

What we feel,

And what we imagine....

Are all nothing but a tip of an iceberg!

In my quest for trying to understand and express this idiom in a much better way, I simply googled the expression and it did give a great result.

Tip of the Iceberg:

Used as a noun in English language.

Meaning : Only the beginning; just a small indication of a larger possibility; a problem is much bigger than it seems.

Source : http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/tip_of_the_iceberg

     I came across this term quite a few times over the past one month or so, it rang a bell every time. The latest being in the recent flick of the Bourne Series, 'The Bourne Legacy'. It was often stated with reference to something colossal hidden surreptitiously. Be it the case of simple political discussions that take place over a cup of coffee or sitting in a theatre and watching a plot unfold or taking about research with a colleague. At the end, it pushed me to contemplate about the numerous scenarios where this expression can be applied.

    Being a person in the field of research, the first thing that strikes me about the expression is a larger than life discovery or an invention like "The Higgs Boson", "The Wheel" etc. It is infact a dream for most people in any field to simply strike atleast a small tip in their lifetime, a driving force that helps people push themselves further and further. Now, this reminds me the words of an eminent Professor whom I approached for a research position some three years back, he said,"Doing a PhD is not an easy job it will suck the life out of you, it will drain you out physically, mentally and emotionally. After a few years when you have toiled enough and get a degree in your hand, you will no longer feel elated about it, all you will feel is indifference". I was an eager young boy who decided to leave all the comforts and take the hell's path to glory, he must have said it to a lot of people but these few words turned out to be a blessing for me. Looking at the brighter side of the expression, it allows for a lot of room to grow expand and investigate into the mysteries inspite of all the blows that one might have to take on the way. 

     I narrowed down further trying to understand the beauty of the expression, I came across something very interesting. Our human mind has been designed to such a perfection that most of us are hardly even aware of it, when one starts to push does one realize that the mind is a door which opens up an unlimited space of endless possibilities. Have you ever wondered why a familiar thought about the past comes to your mind out of the blue when you feel a bit low. It is always challenging to try and understand such things, but one needs to be open enough to explore even the darker side of the brain. Looking at the bigger picture, most of us try to strike a small tip of the beautiful iceberg in our own fields but the real iceberg lies in our own head. Once you find the right tip, everything else is just a piece of cake.

Contemplation ?

I drive the beast within

in search of my holy grail,

I tame that beast within

to walk the path so frail.

I have wandered a million miles

and brushed past a million souls,

I have laughed through a million tears

and mourned through a million smiles.

I stay afloat in the deathly seas

dripping my own sweat in the freeze.

I wait for that random breeze

to sail me past the hills and their mighty trees.

I walk the surface of this mother earth

in search of a moment of joy,

a simple moment of glory.....

and Alas! I thus rest in the very moment of my own being.

~ Pancha Janya ~