Just like Ally

I love Ally McBeal! Well, the series is all over now, but I had the priviledge of watching an old episode and it brought back all the memories!

Miss McBeal, as the courts addressed her, was a weird one. She thought and did the weirdest things. But if you actually think of it, everything she did, everything that ran in her mind, is as exactly as we would have done it. She was always true to herself, even if it went against her, and I loved that about her. So please let me take back what I said earlier - Miss McBeal, was a lovely one.

The best thing about her, the thing that made me warm towards her and like her was that she was a hopeless romantic. I, being a mushy kind of girl and a hopeless romantic myself, fell for her and to a part, understand where she is coming from. And this made me love the character and the TV series even more.

Her best friend in the series, John Cage told her:

"... This world in not romantic anymore, but some of the people in it, still are. And therein lies its promise. Don't let the world win, Ally McBeal..."... I loved that line!

Having the knowledge that two people she knew were getting married because it was the convenient thing, Ally once asked a friend of hers : "You have to have your heart pounding at least when you walk down the aisle, right?". And in my mind, I nodded and agreed with her - Yes Ally, that is right.

So just like Ally, I hope and wish that someday I have a pounding heart, a pounding that deafens everything else when I walk towards the best man I know on our wedding day! I hope on that day I have an absolute conviction that I want to spend the rest of my life with him and that his love for me is the forgiveness I crave for, for being the mess I am. And I hope that if fate is to decide otherwise, I would still have the strength and wisdom to say Yes to life!

To all things EXTINCT!

When we say extinct, we always think about the animals or plants that have ceased to exist on this earth. But can only living things be "extinct"? I looked into the definition of extinct, and here is what I found at the Online Free Dictionary:

1) No longer existing or living;

2) No longer burning or active;

3) No longer in use;

What I have in my mind, and want to pen down would coincide with the third definition. A hobby that is no longer in use. A hobby that has grown out of style. A hobby that once was the most famous amongst children and adults alike. A hobby, that was Stamp Collecting.

I was channel surfing when I glimpsed at an old old movie, and the actor was holding his stamp collection, and something triggered in me. I used to collect stamps. When I was small, this used to be my hobby.

I wouldn't say with all my heart that this was my choice of a hobby. I most definitely wasn't the kid to be sitting at one place and doing something like this, those things bored me. It was indeed my mother who voiced her opinion to both me and my sister that this was a good hobby to have. And anyways, she had collected stamps as a child, so what was wrong with it and she would like to have someone to pass these onto.

I was enticed. My mother seemed to approve this project, and my sister seemed fully interested too. I doted on my mother (and still do) and I wasn't going to let my sister have everything (and I still won't). Anyhow, there were these small small, jagged edged, pieces of papers with various colors, people, places, animals that caught my eye. So I thought, "why not"? In any case, now I had an answer when someone asked me the question, "what are your hobbies?". I was now equipped with evidence to show that I was an ardent stamp collector.

Thus began my stamp collecting. Some rare ones we got from our mother and the rest came from our father, who brought anything and everything that his mail brought him. We, my sister and me, fought over who got the best stamps and who had the most stamps. Our parents bought us identical stamp books. They were huge - big green hard cover with a thin gold border going around it, and the pages had a blank border at the top and the rest of the page was square ruled. We sorted the stamps by country and then the countries by alphabetical order. Wrote the name of the country at the blank border and carefully pasted the stamps. This whole process took months, because untidiness was not a virtue. Impatient as I was, I had to go through the turmoil, since I had to show off my stamps to my friends.

I learnt a lot from this hobby of mine. About countries, and where they are on this earth of ours. Whenever you come across a country you haven't heard before, it is so exciting to find out where it is and which continent it belongs to. Stamps I think, teach you a lot about diverse cultures and countries. A stamp will portray the best the country has to offer. And when you look at it, you begin to understand that in different countries, there are different people, so vastly different. Different religions, different animals, different celebrations. To a child, as well as to an adult this brings a clear message and understanding. No matter how different we are, culturally, socially, religiously, we are all alike - we print stamps!! :)

Today, I honestly don't know what has happened to that hobby of collecting stamps. Is it still there? I barely hear about it. Then again, where are the resources for a hobby such as this? We are so dependent on Email that the need to mail a letter or something is quite non-existent. How is it that the children of today gather their stamps? How does a parent teach his or her son or daughter, the art of collecting, the art of patience in collecting? This is why I think that Stamp collecting is extinct, or nearing extinction. There is nothing that any of us can do actually, we cannot stand against the advances of technology, we rely too much on it. We've probably lost a good one there, but that is life - it changes constantly.

However, having said all this, I must say that, in the end, I betrayed my own hobby. Something else was creeping into my mind, something else was grabbing my love, something else was trully thrilling me more. I was growing more and more fond of my Lego collection. I had names for all the Lego people, I made up their lives and I played endlessly. I made families from all of them. Almost all the fathers in those Lego families behaved just like my father - the righteous man, the man who provided and gave everything to his family and the mothers acted just like my mother - house wife, great mother, did the cooking, taking care of the family, etc. And as you can imagine, the children went to school, laughed, played and bickered constantly - just like me and my sister. That was my life, my Lego people, oh how I loved them! There is a rumour in my family that I even made all of them stand in a line and taught them Kandyan dancing. Although I have no recollection of this, knowing myself, I cannot dispute it either.

Yet, there was one small hitch. Although I played with it, this Lego collection belonged to both my sister and me. Whenever there was a fight or an argument, my hot-headed sister would carry off HER part of the Lego and hide them somewhere. This caused major problems for me. Suddenly, houses dissappeared from my Legoland, but the worst was the disappearence of family members. Some families were left desolate with only the father and the son. Some families were left without any adults. I was only a kid, I did not know how to cope with situations like that. My sister's trump card was the Hospital. It belonged to her, and when these rifts between us arose, the Hospital disappeared too. I don't have to tell you what that did to a country!!

So in the end, after years of this struggle we finally came to a compromise. She needed something in return if she was to give me FULL ownership of her Lego. So I gave her the next best thing. The thing that she would have killed for! My stamp collection! Yes, I gave all of my stamps to her, but in return, I had the satisfaction and joy of enjoying MY Lego and teaching them as much Kandyan dancing as I pleased, without any worry that parts of this country that I built will suddenly go missing! Even today, I have no regrets - somethings in life are just worth it!!

Of War and Peace

This is one of the best statements that I've come across regarding the absurdity that is War:

"...The battle was over. Our casualties were some thirteen thousand killed. Thirteen thousand minds, memories, loves, sensations, worlds, universes - because the human mind is more a universe than the universe itself - and all for a few hundred yards of useless mud..."

Source: The Magus by John Fowles

Imagination Unlimited

I can't believe this... I am actually writing about a worm and a caterpillar. It is with the greatest of regrets that I say, I hate worms and caterpillars!!! I know that it's not a nice thing to say, but I get all creepy whenever I see one. But of these two species, I just have to write about.

Two reasons:

1) This was the FIRST time that I have ever seen these animals.

2) Man, the beauty of them. Not in my wildest dreams, or in someone else's wildest dreams, would there be such a creation!

Atlas Moth

The Atlas Moth, in its early stages', a caterpillar, is 15cm in length!! (I know I would just die if I see a caterpillar that big). But once it become a moth, it will only live for one day. Just one day, having the most beautiful set of wings. They do not posses stomaches since there is no reason for it to exist (since it'll die in one day) and only lives so that they can reproduce. What a life! Just a question, if you had just one day to live, what would you do?

Christmas Tree Worm

The Christmas Tree Worm is an under water creature, mostly living in Coral Reefs (I think). It actually lives in a tube, and when it pokes its head out, the twin "christmas trees" you see are sort of it's antennae.

Amazing isn't it? The beauty and complexity of all living things. Nature, I think, is the greatest designer ever, with an unlimited imagination!

Hey Jealousy!

Ok, so I am a jealous person! There, I said it. Whenever it involves someone I love, be it a family member or a very very close friend, I become jealous that someone else might take the place I have in their hearts. This has led me to not like several of my female cousins who are of my age, but the most undisputed, THE most pathetic case of jealousy, is me hating my parents’ flower girl! REASON: She was standing too close to my father in my parents’ wedding picture!

After a life long co-existence with this jealousy of mine, I have become very tired of it. It is such an evil thing, like a plant that spreads too fast. If the seed of jealousy gets itself planted in your brain it spreads its roots and branches faster than a forest fire. It gives no peace of mind, all that it cultivates it suspense, doubt and more jealousy. Like an endless vicious cycle, you dig your own grave deeper. I am so tired now. So I am taking the first step towards entirely getting rid of it. I will acknowledge it: I am jealous, and I am NOT proud of it.

As with every other thing in my life, I decided to turn to Buddhism to get me out of this mess. When I googled away on this matter, I found some really interesting articles.

To begin with, what is jealousy? According to the Buddhist abhidharma text it is:

“a disturbing emotion that confuses on other people’s accomplishments – such as their good qualities, possessions or success – and is the inability to bear their accomplishments, due to excessive attachment to our own gain or to the respect we receive”

The ‘attachment' that the above definition mentions is the undue importance that we, as human beings, have placed on a certain area of our life – be it our looks, the amount of money we have, etc. Sometimes, we measure our sense of self-worth by only looking at this aspect of our lives. Therefore, when someone else has more success in this particular area, we become jealous.

Jealousy also arises because of our insecurity and mistrust. Most of us are unsure of our own self-worth. When people are uncertain about the place that you have, be it your parent’s, sibling’s, friend’s, lover’s heart, jealousy slowly creeps into your mind. It causes one to feel that he or she will abandoned.

Buddhism teaches that the root cause of jealousy lies within this notion of “I” or “me”. The feeling that “I” am special. It makes “me” believe that “I” am the only one good at a particular task, like advising a friend, and therefore when someone does the same thing, I become jealous. It makes “me” feel that I deserve the best in life, and that life should be fair to me and when someone else gets what I want, I feel jealous.

The remedy that Buddhism offers is for everyone to understand this fallacy concerning “I” or “me”. It is important to understand that each and every one of us is equal, this is the teaching of Buddha. Therefore, everyone deserves to be happy, they have the same wish to be happy and successful like “me”. There is nothing “special” about me, we are all made of the same things!

The Buddha teaches that to be a happy person we have to be open-hearted. The heart has the capacity to love everyone. Accept the love from your parents, sisters and brothers, friends, pets. Some people are so closed off to the rest of the world that they only concentrate on the love of one person. If that love disappears, the love you get from everywhere else “does not count”. This is the wrong attitude to have. Just because someone doesn’t love you, it doesn’t mean that there are other people that doesn’t love you. You just have to open your heart and you will experience the ultimate joy of life, love and compassion. This makes you feel less insecure and you slowly begin to see your own self-worth.

Sometimes jealousy comes forth in various disguises. Sometimes when you love someone, but the other person is unaware of it, it is not possible to express your feeling of jealousy in an outward manner. This causes the person feeling jealous to express his or her feelings in maybe anger or sarcastic manner. It is important that all of us identifies exactly when and how this nemesis raises its ugly head.

Some very interesting and quite true commentaries by Lama Zopa Rinpoche:

“Rejoicing is the best remedy for jealousy and envy. Rejoicing does not depend on material or physical actions—it can be done while you are working, eating, or sleeping—it can be done at any time and it is such a simple way to create good karma. If a person has many friends and you feel joyous in your heart, that person is lucky. This result is due to the good karma he created in past lives. Having many possessions and children is the same. Seeing this, you should feel joyous in your heart. You may feel jealous of some couples, of their harmony and enjoyments—but you should think that this result is due to the fact that they created the cause for such experiences in past lives. So why shouldn’t they experience the result of enjoyment now?”

“If we have a good heart, we experience much happiness and relaxation. We have no reason to feel angry or jealous and we have a very happy mind. When we speak, sweet words come out. Even our face is happy and smiling. At night we go to bed with a happy mind and have a very comfortable sleep, without any worries. Otherwise, if we live our life with a very selfish, ungenerous mind, we think about nothing else except me, me, me: "When will I be happy? When will I be free from these problems?" If our attitude is like this, jealousy and anger arise easily, strongly and repeatedly, so we experience much unhappiness in our life, many ups-and-downs. During the day we have a cold heart and at night we even go to bed with a cold heart and unhappy mind”

Western culture, I believe, sometimes provokes and sustains the feelings of jealousy and envy. Their ideals of survival of the fittest, and winner takes it all, causes those influenced by it to become rather competitive. The best athletes are glorified and the richest people in the world are revered. Competitiveness causes people to look at their opponents as people who are below them, who do not deserve the same things as you do, and therefore you try to find and exploit the weaknesses in your opponents. There is also Western romanticism that proclaim that your better half is waiting for you to meet her or him and to live happily ever after. Ignited from a Greek myth by Plato, it is Westerners belief that there is someone out there for every one of us, who will complement us in all ways and with whom we shall share every aspect of our lives. This, they call as true love. This has become synonymous with Western romanticism but has little to do with reality.

The path I have to take for salvation from this jealousy is long and arduous. But I think it’s a path that will lead me to happiness, contentment. It is a path worth walking.

Refresh Your Soul

When I go to the bookshop that I usually go to, I always glance at the bookshelf where Paulo Coelho's books are, hoping that there will be a new one. And a couple of weeks ago, there was! :) It was called "Like the Flowing River" and I grabbed it, bought it and came home!

There were so many other books in my "to be read" queue, yet I jumped this book ahead of everything else so that I can have a wonderful book which I know will be definitely worth the read.

It is a book which has the sub title "Thoughts and reflections", a collection of Coelho's stories and articles which have been published in newspapers and put together at the request of all his readers. There are excerpts that I would like to share, that has sunk in me deeply.


The Story of the Pencil

This is a story told by a grandmother to her grandson about how much she wants him to be like a pencil. The young boy is at first flabbergasted, because to him the pencil his grandmother is holding is the same as any other pencil and therefore lacks any special qualities. But the grandmother goes on the explain the five qualities that a pencil have, and those are qualities that will make anyone happy is he/she is to hang on to them. They are:

1) Even though you are capable of great things, there is always a hand guiding you. Be it your god, or your destiny

2) You will have to sharpen the pencil once in awhile. Although this may hurt the pencil, afterwards it will be sharper. Similarly, you will have to go through suffering and pain during your life, but it will make you a better person.

3)The pencil always has a eraser to wipe out the mistakes. You are sometimes given the opportunity to correct your mistakes, this is not a bad thing

4) What matters most is not its wooden exterior but the graphite inside. Always pay attention to what is happening inside you

5) The pencil always leaves a mark. So be conscious in everything that you do, because you will leave a mark.


Genghis Khan and his Falcon

The story is about the great Mongol warrior Genghis Khan and his favourite falcon. At a time when Genghis Khan's army could not find water, he ventured alone with his falcon to find water. In his journey, he discovered a thread of water running down from a rock in front of him. Three times he filled his cup and tried to drink the water but all times his falcon hit the cup so that he could not drink it. The next time Khan filled his cup and the falcon took flight to hit it, Khan pierced the bird's breast with much sadness. Although the falcon was his favourite he cannot allow such disrespect in front of his troops. In the meantime, the thread of water had dried up and Genghis Khan went forward to find the spring that fed the water. He found a pool in front of him and a poisonous snake dead in the middle of it. He understood that his faithful falcon, his friend, had saved his life. He brought the dead bird back to camp and ordered his men to build a gold figurine resembling the falcon. On one wing he wrote:

"Even when a friend does something you do not like, he continues to be your friend"

And on the other wing he had these words engraved:

"Any action committed in anger is an action doomed for failure"


How One Thing Can Contain Everything

Paulo Coelho was trying to explain the alchemical idea that each of us contain the whole universe within us and that we are, therefore, responsible to its well-being, to his friends. He was failing to find the right words when a friend, who was a painter, asks everyone to look outside the window.

He asks what they see. They all reply saying that they see a street. The painter sticks a paper over the window so that the street cannot be seen anymore, and he uses his penknife to cut a small square in the paper and asks what they can see if they looked through the square. They all reply that they would be able to see the same street that they saw earlier. He cuts several more squares in the paper and says:

"Just as each of these holes contain within it the whole view of the street, so each one of us contains in our soul the same universe"


Meeting in the Dentsu Gallery

A poem by a Japanese poet and calligrapher, Mitsuo Aida (1924-91)

Because it has lived its life intensely
the parched grass still attracts the gaze of passers-by.
The flowers merely flower,
and they do this as well as they can.
The white lily, blooming unseen in the valley,
Does not need to explain itself to anyone;
It lives merely for beauty.
Men, however, cannot accept that 'merely'.

If tomatoes wanted to be melons,
they would look completely ridiculous.
I am always amazed
that so many people are concerned
with wanting to be what they are not;
what's the point of making yourself look ridiculous?

You don't always have to pretend to be strong,
there's no need to prove all the time that everything is going well,
you shouldn't be concerned about what other people are thinking,
cry if you need to,
it's good to cry out all your tears
(because only then will you be able to smile again)


This book is filled with much more wonderful stories. It is Coelho's opinion that a miracle is something that fills the soul with peace. This book is a miracle!

The Phenomenon that is Nikolai Nikolavich

As I have mentioned in one of my previous posts as well, I find it rather difficult to read Russian novels simply because every character has two names (which is not wrong, because even we do), but the problem is that whenever the character appears, BOTH these names must be mentioned ALWAYS!!! I can never keep up with it, it just blows my mind and so decided to search about this 'phenomena' on the Web. I came across this article which explained everything and I have linked it here for anyone who is interested:

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/books/2007/03/why_must_russian_characters_ha.html

Apparently the family tree is given as a bookmark - which is true, I have it in my "Dr.Zhivago" - and that helps a lot :)

Here comes the Hotstepper!

I am driving to work in the morning and Shaq says, "I will bring you our version of 'Here comes the Hotstepper', after the break"... Shaq happens to be the DJ that hosts the Morning Show in YES FM, and that is what I listen to all the time...

So I wait, wondering what he has cooked up this time... It's so much fun, the Morning Show, and the DJ's never fail to bring a smile to the listener's face :) Time goes by and the commercials finish up and Shaq plays the track...

I know this song, it came out in the 90's... And this version is sung by a woman, a woman with an Indian accent and probably inclined towards Classical Indian Music... So do I need to say anymore? You can just imagine how bad it was... A classical indian singer, singing a rapper's song :)

I was finding it rather annoying, whenever the woman sang, "Na.... nananana.... nanana naaa... nana naaa nana naaa... nanana naaaa", it just got on my nerves... She is trying to put a rhythmic tone into it (I guess her point was to annoy people) where it just should have been a flat tone... And I am thinking "This just can't be... I need some good music, that doesn't get on my nerves early in the morning"... But I am at a lost as to what to do: Not that I can switch the radio off - then I will hear my thoughts ringing around in the car, and I don't want to hear everyone honking and shouting and it's not like I can switch on to another radio channel either - that would be a loyalty problem :)...

So I listen to this tortourous track, and then it stops and as is the tradition starts on the original track... Now I know this song... I have known it for ages... It was a mega hit when I was growing up... But when the beat starts and the rapper sings 'Na.... nananana.... nanana naaa... nana naaa nana naaa... nanana naaaa' something very discomforting starts to settle on me... There is a tingle in my memory... This song is not 'just' a song, but it has a memory which I have put at the most furthest corner of my mind...!!! And to my utter horror, I start remembering...

The year was 1994, and the place was my school, Visakha Vidyalaya. The annual 'English Day' was coming up and each grade is supposed to do an item! So we girls get together and started brain storming... We were cool, we were hip, at least that is we thought of ourselves (I know, not very modest, but hey, we were teenagers ok?), and we needed something to 'talk about'... What we finally came up with, I can't remember very well... I remember pestering my mother to make me a 'Care Bear' mask, she had to go around searching for dress makers to do the perfect job!! Cuz, I am NOT going to be a snub nossed Care Bear...

Then I remember this song... and something to do with dancing... and some of it comes filtering from the back of my mind.... we were wearing jeans and tshirts tucked in... looking like boys, or rappers, I dont know WHAT we were trying to do... we came out from the side of the stage, in a line, dancing for 'HERE COMES THE HOTSTEPPER'!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That was painful... the memory of it... How embarassed I am to even think of it... I wanted to close my eyes and not listen to the song because I feel like dissolving in my own embarassement... Ok, I am going to say it: IT'S SO PATHETIC.... What were we thinking?? I mean, come on... we were not dumb, were we that bad at this transition period of our lives to think that dressing up like guys and dancing to a rap song would actually make us cooler? WHAT WERE WE THINKING? I blame my parents, I am sure I told them what was happening... They should have stopped me, that's what parents should do right? I mean, didn't they know that 13 years down the line, I would be mortified at the mere thought of it??

Anyhow, trying to see the brighter side of things, we WERE teenagers, and people know not to take teenagers seriously, RIGHT??... oh but when I remember that we did this in front of the WHOLE school, principal, teachers and all the students, AND the students from the invited schools... and that means, BOYS!!! Oh, we sooooo wanted to impress the boys!! I am sure the only impression that they got about us is, 'Man, these girls are gay' - not that being gay is anything wrong, just that it's the complete opposite of the impression that we wanted to give!

I try and console myself... I've come a long way, I am much more sophisticated now... I hope so, I loved the song then and now I have a different view right? I like to think that I have better taste, more sophisticated taste...

And then Shaq says 'I like to play you another song from the same era', and instantly the radio starts blasting 'BOOMSHAKALAK'... And suddenly my entire demeanor is changed... Until that point, I had one hand on the wheel and the other with the elbow resting on the window sill with the hand on my head...

The music started playing....

My fingers started tapping on my head....

My shoulders started swaying....

The singer says 'Wriggle your body' (or belly?)....

And my hips started swaying to the opposite motion of my shoulders...

There was a big smile on my face...

People from the tri shaw nearby peeped to see this mad woman smiling and dancing while driving...

Ok, maybe I am not sophisticated after all!! :)

The Meeting of Giants

Albert Einstein and Rabindranath Tagore
For me, this picture is the collision between the greats of the logical mind and the aesthetic mind. This ordinary picture simply portrays ALL the heights that a human can achieve!

Home and the World

Named as the 'Great Sentinel of Modern India' by Mahatma Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore is one of the greats of literature, be it poetry, prose, drama and music. I had the priviledge of coming across this Nobel Laureate's novel, "Home and the World" or in Bengali: "Ghare Baire", buying it and reading it.

It is a story about three people. It is a story told from the view points of these three people. It is the story of Nikhilesh, the husband, a zaminder who holds truth and morales to be of the highest values; of Bimala, the wife, who has spent her entire life within the walls of, first, her father's house, then, her husband's house; of Sandip, the religious fanatic, who preaches "Vande Mataram" to gain more for himself.

The story starts with Sandip, an old friend of Nikhilesh, arriving at Nikhilesh and Bimala's house to stay during his "Vande Mataram" campaign to arouse the Bengalis during the period of 1905. Bimala, or 'Bimal', as lovingly called by her husband, although deeply in love with her husband and entirely devoted to him, finds herself becoming attracted to Sandip and his seemingly patriotic speeches and flamboyant ways. She who has being walking within the boundaries of her home, is suddenly thrown into disarray with the arrival of such upheaval.

Nikhilesh slowly understands the distance that appears between him and his wife. He is deeply saddened by the turn out of events:

- "Today my sobs are out of tune. I have got to stop this weeping. I shouldn't be cowardly enough to restrain Bimal with these tears. Where love has turned into a lie, tears shouldn't try and bind it. As long as my pain expresses itself, Bimal will not be free. But I have to free her completely or I will not be free of the lie"

Sandip, was the complete opposite of Nikhilesh. He did not mind exploiting others in the name of the country or the people. He was a fanatic in a sense, to get what he believes for the good of the country by any means; be it thuggery, thieving and even murder. He justified all this to himself by proclaiming his supposedly love for his country. Nikhilesh was someone who always believed in not exploiting his country, its people and it's dignity even for it's freedom. Classic example of this was when Sandip demanded and caused riots because he wanted all the shop keepers of the market place to burn their foreign bought clothes and buy swadeshi clothes. And he demanded Nikhilesh to order these people to do as Sandip desires since Nikhilesh owned the market place. Yet, Nikhilesh knew about the poverty that the poor people around him and around Bengal had to shoulder everyday. Burning the clothes that they bought thinking of investing in a business and buying more clothes will most definitely leave them destitute and therefore he refuses, bringing forth on himself the wrath of Sandip and even his wife.

Sandip had a power onto himself. The mysterious power that is inherent in some of the most devastating men of this century; Hitler, Prabhakaran. The power of speech and attraction. Bimala was a moth attracted to this flame of speech of Sandip. Yet, Sandip's innerself is portrayed in his words:

- "For that moment I forgot that this was the reason why the male species was the active one: we are meant to stir up the lives of the passive ones and make it a life worth living. If we hadn't made the women weep for so many years, the door to the vast treasury of their grief would have stayed shut forever. The male was meant to make the universe weep and gratify it thus. Why else would his hands be so strong, his fist so powerful?"

Chauvanism like this is an absolute disgrace to the male species itself.

Nikhilesh is a man who believes in truth. He realized amidst his grief his own salvation:

- "We think that freedom lies in getting in your hands whatever you have wished for. But in reality, freedom comes from giving up within yourself whatever you have desired" - How TRUE!!

This shows him the illusion that he has being under for the entire 9 years of his married life. It gives him the strength to set Bimala free and thus himself.

Meanwhile Bimala, who was convinced by Sandip, that in her resides the goddess of the entire nation, feels a power that she has never experienced before. She crosses the boundaries of her normal world, her home, and enters into the realms of the world and is immediately engulfed in the illusions that make it up. She believes that there is magic in her and she plans to use it to gain what Sandip wants from her husband, blind to the fact that Sandip is actually using her. Yet, when she encounters her husband, she finds that she has nothing left. The true power that she held over him, the bond that existed between them, has being released by him. It is echoed in her words:

- "In all those nine years, I had never seen such indifference in his eyes. It was like the desert sky without a drop of moisture, draining all colour from the object it chanced to look upon. I'd have been happier if he had at least shown some anger. I couldn't touch him anywhere. I felt I was a lie, a dream: and when the dream ended, I was just the dark night"

In her words, we also see the truth that we even today suffer from. It is true about most of the politicians, or enterpreneurs or anyone who holds the reins of power in his or her hands:

- "True power was exempt from all fault. The thief steals, but the victorious king loots"

Finally, the true nature of Sandip becomes apparent to Bimala and she realizes the mistakes that she has done. In provoking the villagers in a fruitless effort andin losing the only man she loved trully. Although she no longer lives blindfolded, she feels like the loneliest person on earth:

- "A lonely human is perhaps the biggest anomaly in Nature. Even the person who has lost every relation to death is not truly alone - he has company from beyond the grave"

I will finish my narration of the story here. I know very well, that anyone who wants to know the plot can definitely find it over the Internet, but I am not spilling it!! :) But may I finish it off with one of the best lines I have read, it's so true.

- "When the eternally familiar turned unfamiliar in an instant, it was a nightmare"

This was a book that I truly enjoyed reading. It is insightful, and it shows that no matter how many boundaries that you have created within yourself or by those around you, they will be crossed at some point in your life. The only things that we are armed with when we encounter the unknown, is the truth, our principles and our morales.

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone

The 'dead' are not just the ones who literally die... They are also the ones who leave our lives because they don't want to be there anymore... This is a tribute to those I have loved and lost...

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone - By W H Arden

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

What do you know about writers?

Trying to answer a question by his mother, an adolescent of 15 years, compiled the following answer... He wanted to be a writer and he voiced this to his mother and in return, his baffled mother, who wanted him to become an engineer and write in his spare time, asked him "What makes you think you can be a writer when you know so little of them?"

(a)A writer always wears glasses and never combs his hair. Half the time he feels angry about everything and the other half depressed. He spends most of his life in bars, arguing with other dishevelled, bespectacled writers. He says very 'deep' things. He always has amazing ideas for the plot of his next novel, and hates the one he has just published.

(b) A writer has a duty and an obligation never to be understood by his own generation; convinced, as he is, that he has been born into an age of mediocrity, he believes that being understood would mean losing his chance of ever being considered a genius. A writer revises and rewrites each sentence many times. The vocabulary of the average man is made up of 3000 words; a real writer never uses any of these, because there are another 189,000 in the dictionary, and he is not the average man.

(c) Only other writers can understand what a writer is trying to say. Even so, he secretly hates all other writers, because they are always jockeying for the same vacancies left by the history of literature over the centuries. And so the writer and his peers compete for the prize of 'most complicated book': the one who wins will be the one who has succeeded in being the most difficult to read.

(d) A writer understands about things with alarming names, like semiotics, epistemology , neoconcretism. When he wants to shock someone, he says things like: 'Einstein is a fool', or 'Tolstoy was the clown of the bourgeoisie'. Everyone is scandalized, but they nevertheless go and tell other people that the theory of relativity is bunk, and that Tolstoy was a defender of the Russian aristocracy.

(e) When trying to seduce a woman, a writer says: 'I'm a writer' and scribbles a poem on a napkin. It always works.

(f) Given his vast culture, a writer can always get work as a literary critic. In that role, he can show his generosity by writing about his friends' books. Half of any such reviews are made up of quotations from foreign authors and the other half of analyses of sentences, always using expressions such as 'the epistemological cut', or 'an integrated bi-dimensional vision of life'. Anyone reading the review will say: 'What a cultivated person', but he won't buy the book because he'll be afraid he might not know how to continue reading when the epistemological cut appears.

(g) When invited to say what he is reading at the moment, a writer always mentions a book no one has ever heard of.

(h) There is only one book that arouses the unanimous admiration of the writer and his peers: Ulysses by James Joyce. No writer will ever speak ill of this book, but when someone asks him what it's about, he can't quite explain, making one doubt that he has actually read it.

The teenager is Paulo Coelho. The author of 'The Alchemist' and so many other wonderful books. He is one of my favourite authors and the above is copied from the preface in his latest book 'Like a flowing river'. It was the most truest and funniest thing I have read in a while :) I hope it brought a smile to your face! :)