Wish you a well behaving planet

Please click to enlarge, the text is very small here
Wish you what you'd wish for yourself, Enjoy the day !


Blunt knife

Expectations2

Chinna gave me a good subject in his comment in 'Expectation' page. I did not respond to that comment because I had a whole page for that subject on mind. Please read that comment first and continue reading the rest.

The road to Christmas is more enjoyable than Christmas itself. Waiting preparing shopping for Christmas is fun. Waiting is real Christmas, Diwali or Eid.

I don't have a passport, I don't intend to go anywhere abroad. There is so much to see in India that another 200 years are not enough for me. Believe me in my 58 years I haven't seen much. There is a world of experience yet to touch me, teach me. So much to be discovered.

I like to go to new places always. I enjoy the road, I enjoy the chaos of travel, railway stations, the struggle, I enjoy my window seat. and I enjoy the waiting. But I don't enjoy reaching. After reaching my excitement disappears, I just see, take pictures. But on the way in a train I enjoy visualising what the place is going to look like. Some times I am happy sometimes I am not. I expect the place to be like I heard or read.

I have tried not to have any expectation and failed.



My first experience of Taj Mahel was very unique.
After reading about it in school history books and seeing countless pictures over the years, the most photographed structure in the world, after reading many poems and hearing many songs on it, my expectations were touching the sky. I entered through one of the three gates. I was simply paralysed with what I saw. No picture including my own has done justice to this structure. Perhaps the only man made structure in the world on par with the splendour of nature. I did not regret not carrying a camera. Taj Mahel was million times higher than my expectations. I'll write more about Taj Mehel in Blunt knife soon

I'll continue the expectations tomorrow.
Oh my goodness, forgot to make the new year greeting.

Please click on the pictures for a full screen view. These pictures don't give you any idea of the splendour of Taj Mahel. You HAVE to be there. Being there spiritually is a big fat joke. Being there means go there and touch. Its a unique experience.

Expectations

Chinna called, Rauf we have internet.
I wasted no time, I was there early in the morning.
Mala gave me internet breakfast.
Like the keyboard and the computer my first internet experience was in Mala Chinna's house. I was impatient, Chinna was restless, repeated dialing.
What is this screeching noise ?
Its a modem Chinna said, through this modem you get connected to the world.
I was thinking how I would tollerate this screeching noise when I get the internet, it was getting on my nerves. I don't want the internet if this is going to be this noisy. After a long wait and couple of coffees and continuous screeching Yes said Chinna.
I did not know what was happening. Got connected. ?
YAHOO on the screen, oh! its a song I said
No Rauf, Chinna said, these are people who search things for you, any information.
so this is internet I thought Yahoo is internet.
What do you want Chinna asked.
Without thinking I said Enya
Chinna typed Enya in a box, Waited. One more coffee
Andy was there too, unlike me, he was asking sensible questions.
After a long wait, more coffee, and a couple of disconnections and reconnections, a text page appeared, beautifully designed, as expected of Enya. Now I was impatent I was afraid Andy would ask for something else, I wanted to eat every thing on the screen.I said I want to see her pictures. But they never came, got disconnected again. Chinna was frustrated. Mala was walking around just did not bother. What happened ? She asked why three of you look punctured ?

Much against Chinna's advise I got the internet after a few months. He knew I'll get stuck with fat telephone bills.
I got stuck with fat telephone bills.
It took 3 to 4 minutes to download a picture. I used to patiently wait.
Now if a picture doesn't appear in 5 seconds I am off to a different page, there are so many pages open at a time. I had the time I had all the patience in the world. Now I have the time but have no patience. I am the same person, no personality change. What has happened here is, my level of expectation has gone up. I no longer accept slow speed, its misery for me.

You buy a book, just off the shelf or recomended by a friend. You have already formed an opinion of it. If you think its a trash you would not buy it, you expect the book to be a good read. If it falls above your expectations its joy if it falls below your expectations its misery.

What is this level of expectation ? What decides it ?

Spielberg's ET was released here after a long wait, after running in remote places in Africa. By that time I had heard and read so much about ET. It recorded the highest gross collection ever. Standing in the queue in the hot sun with my friends on the day of its release my heart was pounding. We all were disappointed with the film. I did not like it. It was a sin to say that the film was bad. The film was not rusty rotten or decayed. It was the same film that was shown in Los Angelis or Istanbul and people loved it. My expections soared so high reading about it and waiting, that the film failed to satisfy me. There was nothing wrong with the film
Some thing was worng with me.

I'll continue tomorrow, its getting too long.
Blunt knife

A breath taking journey

A new post at Blunt knife, took so long, I am just lazy.

A journey in to yourself is scary, but worth taking, I keep going knowing fully well that I am going nowhere and I have to come back to where I started, back to square one.
Foolish thing to do ?
No
time wasted ?
No
Energy wasted ?
No
You are a lot better than some one who has not moved out of the square one, who is too confident, who knows for sure that its a waste of time and who thinks he has all the answers.
The journey opens the windows
Fresh light, fresh knowledge
and the knowledge makes me aware of my ignorance.
What's the use of the knowledge which makes me aware of my ignorance
I have to know how much I do not know. Its pretty much the whole thing.
I have to keep going,
Yes the journey is worth taking.
No answers. No results.

He takes you there....for a while.

I have said in some page that I may like my preferences but there is always some one out there who would treat my taste with utter contempt.

Rajni kanth is a south Indian film actor, I need a lot of courage and strength to watch him for more than ten minutes on a big or small screen.

I can describe him in one word,

Intolerable.

I can see my friends punching my phone number now.

For those fortunate ones who have never heard of him, I'll give a brief introduction.

He is a superman a batman a spiderman, Evel Knievel, Bruce Lee, Rudolf Nureyev, Andrea Bocelli, Kimi Raikkonen all rolled into one, perhaps a bit more, I am inclined to add god to the list.

Enjoys phenomenal popularity. Here I am at a loss to describe his popularity in words. Perhaps gods don't enjoy such status.

This is India for you, more or less.

Apart from those who can afford, the poorest class of people blow more than a weeks wages to watch him hammer the bad guys and sing duets and dance with the leading lady in pouring rain, in the most exotic locations of the world. A man making an honest living carrying heavy load in the harbour, wearing a blue shorts green shirt and a red hand kerchief tied around his neck, waits in the queue in hot stinging sun for the whole day, blows his entire weekly wages, without caring for tomorrow, just to watch his hero toss the cigarette in the air, which lands right between his lips and light it with grand style.

The labourer or the rickshaw driver is in such a level of ecstasy that I can never dream or hope to reach anywhere near there. What I have been longing to achieve all my life, this labourer has experienced it.

He is already there.

He has reached.

I am groping in the dark, utterly confused, scared of the saints, scared of the people too sure of themselves, who think they have all the answers, people who are too sure of existence or absence of God, scared of people who say ' this is it '
I don't know where I stand. 

Blunt Knife