If nothing else works, try yourself

People universally tend to think that happiness is stroke of luck, something that will descend upon you like fair weather if you're fortunate enough. But thats not how happiness works. Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it, you must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into the happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it. If you dont, you would leak away your innate contentment.

Was reading "Eat,Pray,Love"(Yes I finally found my copy. If you are diligent, you can get what you want), and came across above lines.

I stopped here and thought "This is is how exactly I think and see happiness as!"

Happiness is abound, it does not have a theory to it, its forms are multifold
You are the keeper of your own happiness

You define your own potent mix of that happy feeling, which gives a spring to your steps
Let that be a memory of a forgotten song, a drunken brazen night, a kiss, sweet texts, laughter with people who get you , an unforgettable wedding, those glances exchanged with a crush
Maybe its sipping coffee all alone in an airport lounge, or reading a book on a rainy day with a cup of coffee

It could also be about something which never happened, or something you love dreaming about

Is it the smell of incense on durgo pujo, or the possibility of a  romance, or the memory of it? An enthralling performance by you and you regaling in the reverence of audience, or your own idea of how grand you are..

Dig it out, inhale your happiness..let it take whatever to be happy..just dont let go...
You have taken happiness from this world, its people, its beauty...give it back by retaining all of it..in any wierd form as you please..

Keep it pulsating, raw and effervescent..its yours..

And once I finished thinking, I read the next few lines, which is what I was thinking just a while ago

All the sorrow and trouble in this world is caused by unhappy people. Not only in the big global Hitler n Stalin picture, but also on the smallest personal level. I can see where my episodes of unhappiness have brought suffering or distress or(at the very least) inconvenience to those around me. The search for contentment is therefore not merely a self-preserving and self-benefiting act, but also a generous gift to the world. Clearing out all your miseries, gets you out of the way. You cease being and obstacle, not only to yourself but to anyone else. Only then you are free to server and enjoy other people.

A poetess like me

I follow a blog which puts up great work by various artists from various streams and its a delightful blog for me. There are rare songs, poems by writers I was not aware of. One such I came across recently was "Nikki Giovanni". This blog translates everything in hindi, which was beautiful. But I knew the English would be much more, and I searched and fell in love with her many poems which I read. She felt close to heart, a natural, a lover. There is a poem which resembles a line from my hindi poem which I had written ages ago


I am sharing lines from some of the poems I found stunning

 "Cotton Candy on a Rainy Day"

Don't look now

I'm fading away

Into the gray of my mornings

.........

I try I become more difficult to hold

I am not an easy woman to want

They have asked the psychiatrists . . . psychologists . . . politicians and social workers

What this decade will be known for

There is no doubt . . . it is loneliness

-------

"Choices"

if i can't do
what i want to do
then my job is to not
do what i don't want
to do

--
This specific poem written below is the one which made me feel I had written something very very similar way back

"The way I feel"(Ahh this is one of my labels on this blog)

i've  noticed I am happier

when i make love 

with you

and i have enough left to

smile at my doorman

 i've realized i'm fulfilled

like a big fat cow

who was just picked

for a carnation contentment

when u kiss your special place

right behind my knee

most time when you are around

i feel like a note

reberta flack is going to sing

And the lines which struck me with deja-vu are following

in my mind you are a clock

and i'm the secodn hand sweeping

around you sixty times an hour

twenty-four times a day

Sample these lines by me, in one of my hindi poems which I had written way back in 1998, in my diary and had posted it on my blog in 2008, here
http://memoriesofaworldelsewhere.blogspot.in/2008/06/some-love-poems.html

तुम जब चाहो मुझे देखोगे और मेरा दिल सिमट आएगा तुम्हारे पास
तुम्हारी आँखें मेरी धूरी हैं
चाहे जहाँ भी जाऊं मैं , केंद्र तुम ही रहोगे
(When you look at me, my heart will come back to you
Your eyes are my pivot
Wherever I am, you will be my center)



Ohh..sweet love, how you feel so strange when you are gone
Was I ever like this.?

4 more years went since I wrote this on the blog too??? Unbelievable. I feel I started this blog so recently

So we were at 2 different parts of the world, thinking alike..

There are other poems which I loved by her, but the last one I want to share here is this

"Communication"

if music is the most universal language

just think of me as one whole note

if science has the most perfect language

then think of me as MC(square)

what i mean is one day

i'm gonna grab your love

and you will be satisfied

Blissful read is each of her writing, and she has the most endearing face and smile

 
 

An article and my views

Recently read this interesting article by David Bentley Hart, on Ayn Rand's writings and I cant help but agree with few not-so-good things there, even though I have been her hard-core follower. She had always affected my mind many a times in things I said or felt.
Yet there was always a dormant desire in me. to defy her theories, at times, just in small bits

http://www.firstthings.com/article/2011/05/the-trouble-with-ayn-rand

But this article is such a venomous take on her, why so much angst for a woman who just spoke what she felt was right?

Some excerpts from this article:

"Ayn Rand and her idiotic “Objectivism” are enjoying a—well, I won’t call it a renaissance, so let’s say a recrudescence"

"Civilization is always a fragile accommodation at best, precariously poised between barbarism on one side and decadence on the other...Rand was definitely on the side of barbarism."

Barbarism, how?

Though I some what agree with this "I suspect that charity really is the only way to avoid wasting one’s life in a desert of sterile egoism".

And I so not agree with this line

 "And, simply said, I cannot find much common ground with someone who believed that the principal source of human woe over the last twenty centuries has been a tragic shortage of selfishness.".

Maybe selfishness is not the single source, but one of the strongest source. Cos the definition of being selfish, as per her, is not as generally defined by us. So we need to take that in the context and not a stand alone thing.

I just laughed my head off at this: "For what really puts both Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead in a class of their own is how sublimely awful they are. "

The mentality of the herd against someone who stands out is so much around, and fills me with disgust.

When I appreciate something brilliant in other, I am pacifying that part of me which could not be all that brilliant.
But if I negate, make it sound ordinary, then there is just one word for such people "jealous".
They are condemning themselves by denying others uniqueness

Just cos they could not be unique, they try to form a herd of people, who would profess to believe in that no-one is unique, all are the same
But silently, and cleverly, they would ry to establish their upper hand on the other, by forming incomprehensible sentences to intimidate the other. And finally telling that you are ordinary, but I am not, since I know I am ordinary....ha!

People look for redemption in others, for their own misery, they always want to hold someone responsible

As Ryan Said : “They hate you for the greatness of your achievement. They hate you for your integrity. They hate you because they know they can neither corrupt nor ruin you” -  I also say that people hate you for your strength, people hate you cos you dont fall apart, people hate you cos you dont even regard them with a hate and intensity which they ask of you.
Some strands of recognition is all they need, from you

But the side note on this line,in that articel, is really funny (Bloody they—I never could stand those swine.)

:D

Not a bad article in all,it is the author's interpretation and personality which s/he reflects in hi/.her likings and disliking. So has he done it here. But nevertheless, I found it harmless & funny.

He reminded me of that novel again by writing such excerpts : For her, the world really was starkly divided between creators and parasites, and the vast majority of humanity belonged to the ranks of the latter. “I came here to say I do not recognize anyone’s right to one minute of my life,” Roark continues, “nor to any part of my energy, nor to any achievement of mine.”

I absolutely loved that part in "Fountainhead", And just for this, I can be in love with her!

 I had written a similar draft in my post which said(though the context here is different) :
"Well, another has only as much hold on you, as much as you give them at any point in time
Never more!
So if someone wishes to be obsessed with you, but if you wish to extricate yourself. You have all the right to. Everything gone in between you 2, before has no meaning. All that we have is today, and today I am allowed to despise someone, and stay away.
One cant hold a moment of past in their kitty to hunt someone down.
Unless of course I have killed someone, or tortured, then I cease to be human and no human rights are not applicable to me"

This paragraph in the article made sense to me in bits and pieces, but not really, cos Ryan emphasized on these attributes, but not denied that there can not be anything apart form this.(If she did then maybe in my mind I have obliterated it)

"Rand really imagined that there could ever be a man whose best achievements were simply and solely the products of his own unfettered and unaided will. She had no concept of grace, even of the ordinary kind: the grace of an existence we do not give ourselves, of natural powers with which we could never have endowed ourselves, and of all those other persons on whom even the strongest among us are dependent. She lacked any ennobling sense that what lies most deeply within us also comes from impossibly far beyond us, as an unmerited gift. She liked to talk about “virtue” a great deal—meaning primarily strength of will and the value that one creates out of one’s own native resources—but for her the only important question regarding the relation between the individual and society was who has a right to what. That is, admittedly, a question that must be asked at various times, but it is never the question that true virtue—true strength—asks of itself."

But Kudos to this para, I know some people who do exactly this, so I just clapped my hands in glee for saying what exactly I have in my mind:

"And, really, what can one say about Objectivism? It isn’t so much a philosophy as what someone who has never actually encountered philosophy imagines a philosophy might look like: good hard axiomatic absolutes, a bluff attitude of intellectual superiority, lots of simple atomic premises supposedly immune to doubt, immense and inflexible conclusions, and plenty of assertions about what is “rational” or “objective” or “real."

Beyond that I could not concentrate more, since too much of negative energy anywhere is not my cup of tea.Thats why I restrain from beign sarcastic, mean and vomit my hatred for anyone in paper.

“There are two ways through life,the way of nature and the way of grace. We have to choose which one to follow.” ~ The Tree Of Life
I choose grace, let others choose their real nature

So Mr.David, you do have substance and potential. Please use it constructively and not by attacking one Ms. Rand

She loved like she was going to war

"She was tenacious, aggressive as a lover, had tried to prise pieces of him apart. Only when she failed, had she finally let go. She loved like she was going to war, but she also not the kind of woman to wait for a man. Valiant in battle, noble in defeat. She walked away and never looked back"
                 ~ The Memory of Love by Aminatta Forna

Reading this felt like me. At least thats the way I have always thought myself to be.
Verbatim, ditto!

She begins, where your comprehension ends

He loves her in strange ways..
Strange is the only way she can be loved

Not like a woman ,
Not like a beloved, or a sweet sister or a mother

Perhaps like an apparition

Let others have a life of love
a life of celebration
But you have pined and settled for her
So you have her to bear

He thinks she has the secrets, of his happiness
She has the secrets of oceans and rains within her

She needs subjugation

If you can not overpower her,
You do not exist outside of her

Accept and surrender
That's the only way things work with her

Cos she knows,
She is not alone in her loneliness,
she is the celebration

And she believes
She begins, where your comprehension ends

And maybe , she will set your soul free..someday


Inspired by lines from Pablo Neruda's poem

I love her as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul ~ Pablo Neruda

Anna's love

"My love keeps growing more passionate and egoistic, while his is waning and waning, and that's why we're drifting apart." She went on musing. "And there's no help for it. He is everything for me, and I want him more and more to give himself up to me entirely. And he wants more and more to get away from me. We walked to meet each other up to the time of our love, and then we have been irresistibly drifting in different directions. And there's no altering that. He tells me I'm insanely jealous, and I have told myself that I am insanely jealous; but it's not true. I'm not jealous, but I'm unsatisfied. But..." she opened her lips, and shifted her place in the carriage in the excitement, aroused by the thought that suddenly struck her. "If I could be anything but a mistress, passionately caring for nothing but his caresses; but I can't and I don't care to be anything else. And by that desire I rouse aversion in him, and he rouses fury in me, and it cannot be different. Don't I know that he wouldn't deceive me, that he has no schemes about Princess Sorokina, that he's not in love with Kitty, that he won't desert me! I know all that, but it makes it no better for me. If without loving me, from duty he'll be good and kind to me, without what I want, that's a thousand times worse than unkindness! That's—hell! And that's just how it is. For a long while now he hasn't loved me. And where love ends, hate begins.

"And is there any new feeling I can awaken between him and me? Is there possible, if not happiness, some sort of ease from misery? No, no!" she answered now without the slightest hesitation. "Impossible! We are drawn apart by life, and I make his unhappiness, and he mine, and there's no altering him or me. Every attempt has been made, the screw has come unscrewed. Aren't we all flung into the world only to hate each other, and so to torture ourselves and each other? " she thought.
"I thought, too, that I loved him, and used to be touched by my own tenderness. But I have lived without him, I gave him up for another love, and did not regret the exchange till that love was satisfied." And with loathing she thought of what she meant by that love. And the clearness with which she saw life now, her own and all men's, was a pleasure to her.
            Anna Karenina ~ Leo Tolstoy

Is it the story of all women in love? Their love going stronger and men's love waning..or is it the story of all two hearts who were involved with each other anytime? One's love growing in leaps and bounds and another's receding at the same rate(probably cos of the very reasons).
Reading this I felt as if I have said the exact same things to someone , of intensities being inversely proportional

Makes me think why and how this happens?

Maybe cos the base reason for falling in love with someone is inherently flawed.

I never fall for the niceties of a person, I dont fall for a guy who does charity and helps a blind person cross street. I might admire and respect that person, but love has reasons known only to the heart.
The moment you reason, you undermine the very essence of love, of its purity

I will fall in love with the way you smile, the groove in your voice which stirs the unknown in me, your ability to crack me up with the most mundane things, that look on your face when you look at me,your vulnerability, your intelligence, the innocence which makes you impulsive and arrogant but not a stereo-type, your passion for life and for me. Yes, your passion for me, will be my driving force till the end of my life...

So if your eyes remain the same, your voice can still upheaval chords in my soul, the way you look at me never tires me..how can I ever stop loving you?

The body is a house of many windows: there we all sit, showing ourselves and crying on the passers-by to come and love us.
                                                                 - Robert Louis Stevenson

"We need a witness to our lives. There's a billion people on the planet... I mean, what does any one life really mean? But in a marriage, you're promising to care about everything. The good things, the bad things, the terrible things, the mundane things... all of it, all of the time, every day. You're saying 'Your life will not go unnoticed because I will notice it. Your life will not go un-witnessed because I will be your witness.”
                                        - Susan Sarandon in Shall we dance

So I guess I will make this blog my witness.
It will notice things I cant share with people in my life, as I would have liked to...

Vassal-love

"I felt sudden rush of affection for him.An affection which seemed to proceed from and depend upon the in-equalities between us. It was vassal-love, one of the strongest and most mysterious human emotions."
                                                                                                     - Shantaram

I read this and I said "Yes yes yes!", I know that kind of love!
I understand it oh so truly and completely!

I have always tried giving proper words to this emotion and here it is "vassal-love"!
And somehow I feel all love/affection have under-currents of this in it..all!

And please note, its "inequality" and not "difference". We all know differences attract us to each other, but this inequality, which he talks about here, is something different

And many a times its this love, which springs cos one loves what one lacks in oneself.

If you are a timid person, you get drawn to assertive ones..if you are unstable and impulsive you fall for the stability that another seems to provide..if you are classy and prudent, sometimes the uncouthness in someone draws you, cos you dont seem to afford it

And since I understand it, I feel its my analysing skills which sometimes stop me from falling in love with all my heart.
Cos I always seem to understand where it is coming from..and I come to a conclusion that it might not be love..and avoid.

Apart from that, I am totally besotted by this book right now. Its a masterpiece, and I am getting to know so much about my own country from a foreigner, specially the famous slums of Bombay, the mafia world et al..

A good book is such an addiction and occupation..I never turn over pages cos it does not get boring even for a second and I have already read more than 400 pages till now

I have been scrambling to get some facts about this book. It seems like an auto-biography, but all incidents and characters might not be real.

I searched google, you tube...but nothing says if all of it has actually happened.

And how I have bene hoping that the female Karla is for real..it would be such a disappointment if she was not to be...I would love to see what she looked like.

And this is the famous Leopold cafe and bar in Mumbai, which the author keeps talking about in thenovel and creats such a vivid images of this place which had a mystique, a business , a purpose..

Fire-crackers

I read it in some book that we love the fire-crackers so much cos its brilliance lasts for just few seconds

Since we know its going to die soon, we love it with all our heart, for those few seconds..as it gives its all to that moment

Anything which promises permanance, is never loved with that fervor!

Sad and true!

"How our dreams become tainted by reality, how we can turn them into desperate obsession for which we sacrifice the essential sense of dignity and integrity that we yearn for, when we indulge in a dream"
- Lines from a novel "Things I have been silent about" by Azar Nafisi.

So very true and strikes a chord somewhere. This is a novel on Iran's political turmoil, Iran-Iraq war and her personal life (mostly her parents and her own marriages). Very well written and interesting, though I never liked auto-biographical books earlier.

I so agree with this line, that we turn our dreams into desperate obsessions..craving for some image we have, of ourselves, of our lives...and we make such blunders just to see a glimpse of that dream somewhere..in someone..in something

Someone sent me a piece of prose/poetry which I really liked..though I don't know who has written it

Here are some of my favorite lines from that excerpt (the one in bold is my most fav) -

"For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you.
Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning.
Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun,
So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth.
All these things shall love do unto you that you may know the secrets of your heart, and in that knowledge become a fragment of Life's heart"

"But if in your fear you would seek only love's peace and love's pleasure,
Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love's threshing-floor,
Into the season-less world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears."

"Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself.
Love possesses not nor would it be possessed
For love is sufficient unto love."

"And think not you can direct the course of love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.
Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself.
But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires:
To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night.
To know the pain of too much tenderness.
To be wounded by your own understanding of love;"

A thousand spelndid suns!

Have been reading this book by Khalid Mohammad. Had read "The kite runner" before and simply loved it

So many illusion we form of people...and so many times it breaks!
And with that we break each time..little by little..breath by breath...going...going..and there we are gone!
Never to be the same again!

But this specific book raised strong emotions within me..and I thought everything strong in me was dead!!
It was like a gut wrenching thing..something hitting pit of my stomach and I go breathless and dizzy

The atrocities that men endow the women with..the level to which it goes in some parts of the world, was beyond me

There were times when I was scared to read another sentence..my heart came to my mouth..my eyes twitched..and watered

I never knew I could feel so strongly about things which never happened with me

But then arent men the same everywhere..inherently barbaric and callous..god made them like that!

Sweet and gentle if they want something out of you..but this whole charade of sweetness and nicety falls off, the moment their motives are not fulfilled (or they are done with their motives)

I have seen it with every single man I came across in my life...in their sweetness..in their love...in their friendship...the underlying hatred!

But I don't blame them now...maybe they are made like that!!!

Of Astro...Occult...and Soulmates

I am reading an interesting book these days. It talks about magic, nature, astrology and soulmates.

I came across a very novel thought in this book, might be an old one, but kind of struck me.
It says that since the time this universe came into existence, not a single atom has been added to it.
Matter has changed forms, but the sum total from the beginning of life has been the same.

There are 2 ways to know magic in the world..Tradition of the sun OR Tradition of the moon..and both traditions say that all magic begins with search of the soulmate

And with this perspective, the author goes to explain the concept of soulmates...

At the beginning of life, there were very few people but with passing away of each person, the cells of his/her soul multiplied in 2 or more and got divided in different people.
One was male and the other female. Hence the number of people grew in this world.

So in life, one soul is always looking for its other part...and whatever a man does...how ever much he earns or gets power, his true happiness only lies in finding the other half of his soul

And if in one's life, even for some brief moments, one gets a chance to come across his/her soulmate, then all the moments before and after it are worth living..

So now the question comes if there is a possiblity that the soul gets multilied in more than 2? What happens then?
And answer is that it is possible and it leads to a lot of heart break and complications in life...and ends in loneliness!

It also says how to recognize your soulmate. You would see a light above the left shoulder of the person who is your soulmate.

I could imagine myself staring at left shoulder of all the guys I met...a funny sight though!

But inspite of few things which I dint understand in the book...which sometimes I couldnt relate to or grasp the essence of, it was a good feeling to know that there is a power above us. It comforted me to think that there are things which are not in my control, which are preordained.

It fills me with hope, belief in magic and all that it entails...