The Drunkard's Sermon

Alcohol, the secret love affair of many. The love affair with such a beautiful thing is kept in secrecy since it is shunned by the worldly protocol. Most people will hide their love for alcohol as they’ve been told by family, religion and even society as a whole, that it is a downright bad thing. But then, what do they know?

The preachers and the family men will point fingers at alcohol since they feel complete with what they have. A family life or a religious approach to life may not be the answer for everyone. We all are different, different people with different lives. That’s why one cannot create same rules of living for everyone. That’s where societal guidelines and religions fall short. Such things forcefully impose principles without understanding the hardships of life that are largely subjective. So yeah, what do they know?

The politically correct minds will advocate their righteousness by stating that alcohol is the cause of family feuds and alcoholism is very much responsible for the devastation of many individuals. I cannot help but agree with them but that does not give me enough reason to completely zero down alcohol as something destructive. Excessive indulgence in anything invites disaster, and alcohol is not an exception. But their minds are extensively tamed and are afraid to think freely thus they will not cease to have blind opinions. In the end, it’s the same question which concludes it for me, what do they know?

If alcohol is just limited to some sips and some drinks. It is a boon; it quenches the thirst of a thirsty soul that feels helpless sometimes, it fills the perennial voids of life for some time and lastly it makes the less fortunate a little numb to their misfortunes. When I’m advocating this subject I know that I can be proved wrong by infinite proportions of people in the world, from the religious ones, to the successful ones and even the family oriented ones. It just proves that people can only talk and their opinions are poorly judged since we humans do not have the ability to feel someone else’s emotions, emptiness and feelings. We judge everything by our own life and every life does not make the same individual out of everyone. That’s why, what do they know?

As humans, the unchangeable roads of our lives remain the same. Some of us are walking terrains that are very rough. We may find ourselves helpless and that’s when a few sips of this bitter blessing will be our helping hand. While the people point fingers, talk and look down upon our blessing, we will keep surviving our life and with a drunk grin we will silently ask ourselves, what do they know?

Realization of Life

Somewhere down the line, in addition to just being an experience life also ends up giving you a realization. The realization is encountered by us mortals sooner or later. It’s when the desires lose their appeal and luster and man realizes that what happened just happened, and does not hold an everlasting importance since nothing is constant in life.

Now when we say that, whatever happens “just” happens we should know that the series of events in our life are just self-unraveling. Our efforts or actions are just ways with which we let our minds make sense of what happens. The actions are actually also a part of the self-unraveling trait of life, because our actions are governed by circumstances and circumstances are never certain. So yes, actions are a part of the unknown which only our life knows and we can in no way change the unknown, we can only face it.

During youth when we all are so full of energy, we tend to think of our achievements as our own. We tend to keep more expectations and start working even harder. Working hard is never a problem, expectations are, and when these expectations are not met as they do not coincide with life’s plan, there is sadness.

Whatever I’m talking about may not make sense to you, but just take a while, look back and think of a situation when you made a narrow escape and things just fell in place. Any such incident is a proof that life itself is striving to fulfill the unknown.

Experienced and successful people individuals who weren’t believers of the destined progression of life, eventually agree to the fact that everything just happens. This realization comes easily to those who do not attain enough success in life. They do not let their efforts have a purpose as they’ve understood that the ultimate control of everything is under life itself.

Everyone will develop this realization sooner or later, that’s why the King of Bollywood himself talks about it in his speech at Yale University.

“"Success just happens. Really. It is accidental and we take credit for it..." -

 -Shah Rukh Khan

Indian Relatives -The High Maintenance Girlfriends

There’s a thing about knowing a lot of people in life and especially in a place like India, where there’s an army of relatives that are a part of your life. Relatives, the people who’re your so called well-wishers, who will give you cash money in your birthdays on fancy envelopes, the people who will assemble at your place on your big days, give you free advises to show that they care, eat food and then talk about the same food when they’ve left. Relatives are the circus performers of human relationships that keep one amused and a little less lonely.

Maintaining relations with so many people is a tough job; there is a lot one has to do. Especially because in India formalities are to relations, just like spice is to food. The formalities can range for calling up your relatives on special occasions, indulging in a restricted small talk that does not hurt their sentiments in the remotest way and even giving the right amount of money on the right occasion. Indian relatives as you can see are easily much more demanding than your regular high maintenance girlfriend.

Due to the considerable amount of time I’ve spent outside India, I’m not good when it comes to maintaining relationships with relatives. I have to be told when to call whom and when I’m on the line, I don’t know what to say. So when I start repeating the round of questions, I somehow know it’s time for Changa fer (Okay then) to contribute to the tenor and the call to end. The case is different for people who’ve grown up here, some have a genuine liking for relatives; some have trained themselves to develop a liking. I on the other hand am still learning.

The problem with some people is that they cannot fake emotions. While we’re struggling and crawling through the hell holes of our life, apart from our own confused inner self, there is very less possibility of people stealing the spot light. When I’m living the life that’s not of a retired person there’s a lot on my mind, formalities somehow remain far from my state of mind. The only true affection is for those few people you meet every day while riding the unpredictable bull of your life. When you and your relatives are altogether on a different road with the restrictions of many rules of interaction, affection is over powered by formality.

Relatives should not stick to so much of code of conduct, because we all have our lives which bears its own set of orders, therefore having another governing system and that too in a relation is not feasible. The important thing is that even though you may not be in touch with your relatives but when you meet them you should be glad because that feeling of well-being in a social gathering is genuine as compared to the fake display of affection over phone calls.

In the end, I would just say that out of those 10 fake smiles in a social gathering, around 1-2 are genuine ones. Maybe that’s how relatives justify their role in life. Relatives are also the boons that can back you up in times of needs both financial or moral (not emotional). Because no man deserves loneliness in life and these relatives fill the void and keep you safe.

To My Fellow Virtual Inhabitants

So you wake up in the morning, as your consciousness takes its own time to wake up, as that sub conscious voice is blurting out some final thoughts before hiding away in secrecy. And while these mental activities are happening, you're just staring blankly while motioning your hand to grab your mobile phone. It was the same old early morning curiosity to greet the itch of social networking. How utterly connected you are, Aigh?

So you sit down all excited, grabbing this book you'd bought. The cover had been keeping you entertained for quite a while now. After much delay and suspense, it was time to witness the magic this book had within it. With just a page down, your hand moved, not to flap the page, but to check the mobile phone. It was time to feed the weeping baby of curiosity with a feed of social networking. Again, How utterly connected you are, Aigh?

So you drop yourself on that couch ready to watch the Sunday night movie, or that much awaited cricket match. The sexy blonde guest star or the smashing sixer by a tail ender, reminded you of that seducing lady of social networking who cajoled you to share the excitement with her. It wasn't an interruption, it was just an act to complete your excitement. Oh well, How utterly connected you are, Aigh?

There's no doubt about how utterly connected you are how willingly you are letting a mechanical medium suck your life up, little by little.

Why are good people unhappy ?

….And just like that my mind was ticking, walking yet another road of contemplation, trying to find a destination, an end to the answer. But the roads of thoughts are mostly about the observations and very less about the conclusions.

The question being asked was, What is it with good people and suffering? There’s this peculiar pattern in the universe which “gifts” suffering to the good people. For some time I just kept my thoughts open to various hypothesis being preached on the inter webs.

There were some who painted a picture in the colors of Christianity who claimed that the good were fighting a war against the evil; therefore suffering was just a part and parcel of their path. This religious theory keeps a bunch of grapes at the end of the path, the grapes are the heavenly treatment for those who manage to survive their life, while sticking to their faith.

Another very practical theory is something that can be easily digested from a logical perspective. It takes the principal of evolution and claims that good people aren’t necessarily on the same lines as evolution. As their survival instincts are already crippled by a strict moral code of conduct. So “good” people suffer but “fit” people survive and are less prone to suffering. Fair enough.

I myself am very hesitant to believe all such hypothesis. I never believe in actually “finding” the truth by digging the logical layers of one’s intellect or by blindly use religion as a walking stick.

My perspective relies heavily on something called “Pre-defined randomness”. It means that everything is shaping up through a random way with an overall pre-defined pattern. The big bang was a random phenomenon that was pre-defined and the fact that everything just fits into the slot is a proof that there is a divine presence that governs the evolution.

It’s like throwing the pieces of a puzzle as they scatter in a random fashion, but slowly and gradually every piece is finding it’s place as the pieces are being arranged in order. So you’re walking the road and not constructing it and while you’re at it, your sufferings and your joys are pre-defined.

…Because you never chose your family, your existence was an outcome of randomness, which was predefined and so will be your death, “Random” and “Predefined”. So when the start and the end of a life are agreeing the same rules, even the entire course of life works in the same way. You’re fulfilling the course of destiny, the course of universe’s plan where happiness and suffering are given to everyone in a pre-defined manner.

So the good people are the ones on a different road and the bad ones are on a different one. The question is who walks wisely and finds a way out ? The road, the destinations will remain the same, what will change is "You". And it's "You" who can decide to be good or to be bad. Suffering and joy will remain predefined.

In this entire process of fulfilling one’s chosen path the ultimate virtue becomes finding and cherishing the flashes of bliss, that you encounter, choosing to walk your road with less regrets but with indifference and some gratitude.

Because you never choose it…you always get it.

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Such an argument is very debate-friendly. We mortals are mere outcomes and forever we'll remain the children of existence. So...till the end of time we'll just make our approximations about the truth like mad children who're overly curious.

This approximation is just another child bragging his heart and mind out. You can do the same.

Cheers.

My Gurus

My Gurus were bad men, they were drug addicts.They were those corrupt-Buddhas who had known that life was a tasteless experience They'd understood the lying optimists and the religions of hypocrisy. But instead of using meditative suffering, they used intoxication to open the doors of bliss, to get a glimpse of heaven.

They were on a different road altogether, the only thing about life that made sense to them was its eventual end.

You might say, my Gurus were bad men. They weren't those who would be accepted by the society. For they had surrendered and turned towards the darkness, the darkness of truth that envelopes a reality.

My Gurus were wishful thinkers. They knew that reality wasn't worth the admiration. So they used intoxication and dreamt like children, lived in a dream world, wrote, sang, danced and remained in a meditative state of intoxication. They taught the world to dream, and not to keep running away from the reality.

My Gurus may be bad men for you. But for me, they're men who weren't sucked by the whirlpool of make-believe as they had their realizations intact, deep inside their honest hearts.

To Morrison and Osho.

[Image courtesy- http://bit.ly/ABJDw8 ; http://bit.ly/z41Jtv ]

[ Mood setting courtesy- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jq9IhOhQt40 ]

A Self-Proclaimed Truth

Your different appearance can cripple your character. Sadly the worldly eyes do not look into you. A surface-level judgment is passed and things proceed from there. The worldly eyes are blind to something that’s different. No matter what their lying mouths utter, their eyes will never see through.

We’re humans who can only sense our own emotions. Emotional reception is not something that is one of our abilities. Pain is either felt, spectated or questioned. Pain is never shared. That way, the sufferer is a lonely person, left alone, in a corner, with his misery. Tragic is not the fact that the world does not understand another man’s misery. Tragic is the fact that no one even tries to.

This is the truth, the truth which may be regarded as Cynicism by the world. But it’s just another way by which the world shows its hypocrisy. A world which ends up doing whatever it denies. A world that’s full of angelic tongues that hide demonic minds.

The world will rediscover life once minds are silenced and hearts are allowed to surface up in our lives.