Candle in the Storm

Sarfaroshi ki tamanna ab hamaare dil mein hai
Dekhna hai zor kitna baazu-e-qaatil mein hai

Karta nahin kyun doosra kuch baat-cheet
Dekhta hun main jise woh chup teri mehfil mein hai
Aye shaheed-e-mulk-o-millat main tere oopar nisaar
Ab teri himmat ka charcha ghair ki mehfil mein hai
Sarfaroshi ki tamanna ab hamaare dil mein hai

Waqt aanay dey bata denge tujhe aye aasman
Hum abhi se kya batayen kya hamare dil mein hai
Khainch kar layee hai sab ko qatl hone ki ummeed
Aashiqon ka aaj jumghat koocha-e-qaatil mein hai
Sarfaroshi ki tamanna ab hamaare dil mein hai

Hai liye hathiyaar dushman taak mein baitha udhar
Aur hum taiyyaar hain seena liye apna idhar
Khoon se khelenge holi gar vatan muskhil mein hai
Sarfaroshi ki tamanna ab hamaare dil mein hai

Haath jin mein ho junoon katt te nahi talvaar se
Sar jo uth jaate hain voh jhukte nahi lalkaar se
Aur bhadkega jo shola-sa humaare dil mein hai
Sarfaroshi ki tamanna ab hamaare dil mein hai

Hum to ghar se nikle hi the baandhkar sar pe kafan
Jaan hatheli par liye lo bhar chale hain ye qadam
Zindagi to apni mehmaan maut ki mehfil mein hai
Sarfaroshi ki tamanna ab hamaare dil mein hai

Yuun khadaa maqtal mein qaatil kah rahaa hai baar baar
Kya tamannaa-e-shahaadat bhi kisee ke dil mein hai
Dil mein tuufaanon ki toli aur nason mein inqilaab
Hosh dushman ke udaa denge humein roko na aaj
Duur reh paaye jo humse dam kahaan manzil mein hai

Sarfaroshi ki tamanna ab hamaare dil mein hai.
Dekhna hai zor kitna baazuay qaatil mein hai.

Whenever I go through these lines I am constantly reminded of the hundreds of martyrs who gave up their life for the independence of the country. The things that they did to get independence. When I talk of these martyrs then I talk of the ones who were not recognised for their effort and have been long forgotten. Theres a very famous quote probably by Ashfaqulla Khan. It says:

Shahidon ki mazaron per lageinge har baras mele,
Watan per mitne walon ka baaki namo nishan hoga,
Agar yeh samajh sake,
Toh samjhoge kyun maine hai kurban hona sikha,
Kyun maine hai kurban hona sikha.

These lines send a chill down my spine. I am actually appalled as to how noone cares about them any more. I share similar kind of sentiment as these martyrs and similar kind of love for my country. But its really sad to see people around me who couldn't care less. They are just worried about their salary and ways to increase it. But its not their fault as well. All of us have actually inherited freedom and have every right to take it for granted.

Me, how can I turn a blind eye to things that are so wrong. Corruption has infested every level of the infrastructure of our country. Who will free it from this cancer. No one is willing to move forward and try to make a difference. They all call the bureaucracy and politics a gutter but no one wants to clean it, simply denying the fact that somehow somewhere they themselves, all of us, are responsible for the state the country is in.

Its simply disheartening at times to move in a direction where no one accompanies you. But then I try to remember these martyrs and this encourages me that they(the martyrs) will always be there in spirit with me. I am actually encouraged by the extreme love that these people felt for the country, something that I have started feeling more and more as i try to move towards my goal.

Jai Hind!

Religious Perceptions

Well here is a conversation between me (Kapil) and Madman...Sorry for the irregularity in use of punctuation and proper grammar...as it has been taken up right from chat logs.

Madman: mornin kapil., do we get to the religious boundary now?

Me: well my thoughts on religion can well be explained by the quote::"Religion is for those who believe in hell and spritualism for those who have been there!!!"

Madman: nice quote.,in a way U hav shut me up.,but I aint gonna let tht happen.,U wnt do drugs cuz U promised someone makes complete sense.,its gud for ur health too.,but U get religion into this too..

Me: well not me.....had it not been for my mother i wouldn't have kept my hair as well.....well religion comes in b/w 'coz my mother believes in religion and its boundaries not me

Madman: ahaan.,so U do it cuz of her.,n U see the kinda risk Ur gettin urself into.,once U succumb .,U enhance the expectations.,but on the other hand U can have ur way from now on since U can claim that U do certain things for them.,I tried gettin into this trap but cudn.,so got a hair cut.,this route was easier for me..

Me: well sometimes the easier and convinient path is not always the best....well more than anything i have started believing in relationships that actually matter...i can and will do anything my parents ask me to do whether my personal beliefs are against the request is a separate thing all together.....i may decline the request if i feel strongly against it but then if by doing certain things one can actually make a person happy and i dont find anything totally offensive against it then i might as well do it.

Madman: Is this not an escapist route then?

Me: is it? I ask you by actually makin someone happy and smile makes me an escapist....let me put it this way....i believe that there is nothin purer than a relationship between a man and his mother....a mother would never seek something harmful for her children... i may not believe in religion but don't have anythin against it as well.... I believe it is good that religion is there to some extent it keeps a control over the animal called man.....Although it may at times provoke the animal as well when religion takes the face of riots but then my guess is that ppl need riots and wars to make them feel that they are alive.....and so they go and get it

Madman: escapist in the way., that even if Ur correct wit ur belief n thought process U readily change it.,I never understand the logic behind the same, but that is how most parents like to perform.,they love to compromise n try to force us for the same..another., the reason why I am being so straight forward in the talk is cuz I m assuming that Ur open to this conversation.,if at any point U feel offensive or confused lemme knw

Madman: well U have put forward ur point really well.,n wat U say abt a mother is true., she wont harm Us.,but the deal is she decides most things on the basis of her upbriniging.,.wat worked for her mite not work for U.,and as far as religion is concerned., i think it shud be by choice n not forced.,happiness is again a debatable issue.,the thing from wat I knw abt my father,he is way too religious.,n most religious tend to philosophize most other peopl on the basis on religion.,my father wud have talked a lot abt religion and at times maybe taunted some peopl in the society.,as n wen I grow up.,he starts feelin insecure.,in my age gropu of say 18 - 24 .,that I mite get a hair cut., start trimming my beard., n peopl mite start givin him the same bull shit ( religious lessons ) that he gave them.,sole idea of religion is make U a good human.,someone good in deeds n at heart., and to metruth and abiding by the truth is more important than praying every mornin.,U can take it this way .,i believe in religion., but i am against religions

Me: well my beliefs are somewhat opposite....what i feel is that parents expect their children to do things that they could't achieve themselves.....At another end there is a continuous feeling of keeping their children close to themselves.....somewhere in their hearts they know that all their beliefs in religion etc. are somewhat society bound. But at the same time they know this as well that anything or anyone against the society is generally crushed..... Being aware of all this they continuously feed their children of morals that are adherent to the society....this is all because of the love that they have for you....they are scared for you....all this is beautifully potrayed in the lyrics of the song "Mother" by Pink Floyd in their album "The Wall"

Madman: ahaan., interesting put forward again.,U in a way summarize the insecurities parents go thru..,and in a way brief their reasons behind their actions.,

Me: Well what ppl dont understand is that praying is not something to be done as they say "religiously" but the most important thing is to understnad what the person, who wrote the religious teachings actually meant and then try to remind yourself everyday of that and try to abide by that......And just for the record my parents had given me the choice of trimmin my beard but i didn't coz i knew in the end its not what they wanted.....my mother is somewhat way too religious but my dad is much like me....'coz he is more experienced and knows how to handle things tactfully n to make ppl bend in favour of his points in the end...

Madman: how do U decide as to wen our thinkin is inspired.,or is it always inspired?

Me: Well depends.....at times I feel it is inspired all the time by either your experiences or someone influential in your life...but then I guess all this in the end adds up to only your perceptions.....even to think that our thinking is inspired might just be a perception....perhaps a perception that the person who inspired you has a thinking so deep.....but never underestimate your brain...its the best and the worst thing you got, depending upon how you utilise it....but one thing is for sure, you think of one thing but then it depends upon you what direction do you give it......

Madman: interesting but no complete.,n the reason being.,U give me all possibilities.,n the problem here is to define authenticity.,wat U say can be summarised this way.,humans discover most of the things n not invent them

Me: somewhat...yea...in the beginning it is discovery but who knows in the end lies an invention

If life were a song??

If life was a song what would I be…? Or rather which song will most aptly apply to my life(uptil now)? Well there can be different aspects to this point as well. What quality of the song are you looking at? Is it the lyrics, perhaps tempo or may be even music? Well if its total music quality then probably it would be Layla(unplugged) by Eric Clapton. Well the best reason I can think of is that even though the lyrics are totally in contrast to the music. Well if I base my judgment on the basis of lyrics then the best I can think of is Learning to Fly by Pink Floyd. The lyrics are as below:

Into the distance, a ribbon of black
Stretched to the point of no turning back
A flight of fancy on a windswept field
Standing alone my senses reeled
A fatal attraction holding me fast, how
Can I escape this irresistible grasp?

Can’t keep my eyes from the circling skies
Tongue-tied and twisted just an earth-bound misfit, I

Ice is forming on the tips of my wings
Unheeded warnings, I thought I thought of everything
No navigator to guide my way home
Unladened, empty and turned to stone

A soul in tension that’s learning to fly
Condition grounded but determined to try
Can’t keep my eyes from the circling skies
Tongue-tied and twisted just an earth-bound misfit, I

Above the planet on a wing and a prayer,
My grubby halo, a vapour trail in the empty air,
Across the clouds I see my shadow fly
Out of the corner of my watering eye
A dream unthreatened by the morning light
Could blow this soul right through the roof of the night

There’s no sensation to compare with this
Suspended animation, a state of bliss
Can’t keep my eyes from the circling skies
Tongue-tied and twisted just an earth-bound misfit, I



The song in itself makes me think only of life. How there is a continuous process of learning to fly or rather learning to live life……I will try to describe my interpretation of the lyrics of the song.

The first paragraph describes how you look forward for happiness into the future and move towards it till you move to a point of no turning back. You are all alone in the battle of life. What keeps me going….a fatal attraction to play with life…..learn about it or try to make interpretations about it based on my own experience. Can I escape this irresistible grasp?

But I can’t keep myself out of it(life). So I play it through with its own, unmentioned but underlying rules…..I am tongue-tied i.e. I may cry foul but still my prayers fall on deaf ears. So what do I become…..an earth bound misfit.

I move on and what do I see, unforeseen circumstances…but I thought, I thought of everything!!! Is there anybody who can help me…no.
But I am a fighter who wants to just learn to fly……even if things are against me….can’t just let the distant dream move away….but still feel somewhat out of place!!!!

And if I am good enough I succeed and man what a sensation it is…(am not in quite a position to explain this as have not been there yet!!!)

But this is what I feel life will be all about!!!

The boo hoo around victimization and the judicial system.

I was watching this debate last night on tv on one of the news channels. It hosted a lot of prominent personalities like Kiran Bedi, C J Thakker(ex – CJI) etc. The debate was about whether the people should react as the lawyers of the Ghaziabad court did in the Pandher case. There were a lots of points exchanged. The debate also included an audience of the “victims” of the Indian Judicial System.
There were a lot of interesting views exchanged. Some of them I have mentioned below:

1.”How many people here in the audience know about the Police reforms proposed by the Supreme Court rulings of September 11 and January 22.”
-Kiran Bedi on being asked the shortcomings in police role in the Nithari killings.
2. “The change has to be made at the core of the system.”
- C J Thakker
3. ”The women killed Yadav because he was released on bail 14 time and he had raped 22 women. And such incidents will happen again.”
- A social activist from Nagpur who was defending the action of 5 women who had killed a serial rapist in court.
4. ”Why is there time to attend to high profile cases and not the regular ones.”
-Barkha Dutt
5. ”Its been 10 years that I have been waiting for justice, this is despite the fact the Supreme Court in its ruling had put forward to dispose off the case by 2002.”
- A victim and a mother of one of the victims of the Upahar cinema.
6. ”Do you know how the rape victims have to go through when the appear in Punjab and Harayana High Court?”
- A victim and a mother of one of the victims of the Upahar cinema.

This discussion got me thinking again. And I thought of the following points:


Whenever such cases (Nithari killings) come up the blame game starts up. The people blaming the police. The police blames the judicial system and finally the blame lands on the politicians as in this case as well. Except here there was no representative from the politics side, so as expected the whole blame landed on them. We as a country are all responsible for any of such negligence. Isn’t it true that the accused has come out from one among us the “society”. They all talk about improving the system but you can’t change the system unless you try to become a part of the system. Is it not true that you will grab the first opportunity that comes your way to cheat the system for your own personal gain? If you want to improve the system first improve yourself. Stop taking the easy way out!!

There was an argument that such examples of taking law in your own hands as in the case of Ghaziabad is just the beginning of many such cases to come. That the middle class society is now arming itself for a future revolution against the system. But my thoughts are otherwise. According to me people do not care as to what happens to others and the attitude is such that its not our problem unless it happens to us. And when it eventually happens we all cry foul and cry for victimization. Tell me how many of us will be willing to carry a man hurt in an accident and lying on the road to the hospital. We all believe in social activism, such a simple and hip word isn’t it. But wearing a kurta and jeans and walking around with a jholla is not social activism.
Social activism begins with being socially aware and then followed being socially active. You have to become a responsible citizen first and then wait for results rather than becoming a “victim” first and then striving for social justice.

Salute the institution called the indian army

As I was driving down to the office today. Just a few blocks away I noticed two of my collegues walking on the other side of the road. So I thought I'll pick them up and we can all go to office in my car. As I crossed the road they vanished somewhere in the crowd. My eyes searching for them, and not realising that I was turning without looking and then came a bang. I had crashed my car into someones side. The bumper of the other car came out slightly from one end. And then I thought that probably I was doomed.

It was yesterday only that I was reading about cases how such accidents lead to cases of road rash and probably even hospitalisation. The driver came out of the car to look at the damages. He was actually smiling. I realised why he was smiling, he was not the owner, the owner came out now as well. Since my car was stranded right in the middle of the road, I gestured to the owner that I am gonna park my car and then we can talk. Oh boy i thought....the owner came towards me and asked me if I was new to driving and then I apologised. After that all he asked was where do I stay and what was my father's name. On replying the questions he told me his name and that he too was a Brig. in the army just like my father. I enquired about the damages but he said it was okay and asked me to be more careful in the future, as i may get hurt.

I was like wow what happened back there. As I was driving to my office then I began thinking why in this money hungry world would a person become generous enough to let a young boy like me walk away like this. I came up with two explanations. One, probably he was in the later years of his life and money was not all that important to him or probably he was just in a very genereous mood. Two, it was probably because of the ARMY sticker at the back of my car. And then I thought the second reason sounded more reasonable. Man, this really showcases one characterisitics of the officers of the Indian Army, they really treat each other as a family. They love and respect the rests of its members. I am not sure if such a kind of relationship will ever exist in any other organisation.

I SALUTE THE INDIAN ARMY.

Friends??

Here's a situation:-

You have passed out from college about 10 months back and then one day you get a call from one of your old batchmates(who by the way flunked an year and is still in college). And what does he say? "Hey i will be coming back from my home and am planning to stop over at your town for about a couple of days and we'll do party."

Sounds great, old friends meeting and having a good time. Now there's another side to it. He also says that since he's not informing his parents about his stopover at my place, so i would have to get him a ticket. I buy a ticket for him. He stays over at my place, eats and drinks merrily at my expense. And guess what he ain;t that good a friend of mine either. Was one of the first ones to mock me during my stay in college. Always tryin to dupe people by taking loans from them and having no intention of returning them. And the way he expects me to "buy" him a ticket as if I owe him something. Wooooh.... some guys sure have balls. He expects me to do all this stuff, reason: he flunked an year and now I am earning and have a bank account that will make a native of a third world african country laugh with misery.

How am I supposed to respond to such guys....the world is full of such bastards...Balls to you dude you can suck my balls.

Grab what's yours!!!

Well don't you think I am right in this aspect. Am I being too selfish here?? Thw world will snath you whatever you got if you don't keep a grip on it. Take for example, the project i am working on, there are about three of us out of eleven who have worked their asses off. And one of them was not quite a worker in the eyes of our team leader hance he got fairly lesser grading then the two of us. My theory is whenever I do work I make it a point that I get the result. No use of doing work that will not lead to any outcome, wherther profit or loss is a different question all together.



That's why I say take grab what you deserve rather than watching people walk away with your prize. You may call it being selfish i call it being smart. The world will not keep things in front of you in a platter....you have to grab a plate and serve it yourselves.

Is it worth it??

I ask you the question in the title....is it worth it??? All the running around all the chasing success thing....??
What is in us that makes us run in the rat race?? Why do we run after success.....is it as Bhagvada Gita puts it our attachment to Maya (worldly things)...or is it something else..... Why do we run and waste all the time behind this.....Is it worth anything?? What remains with us when we leave this world?? Then again if it is not worth anything then why are we put on this earth.....there has to be a reason behind it.....
As my analytical and scientific side (not much of it actually if you read the jist of the whole blog) puts it there is a reason behind everything.....so as Gita puts it...the soul purpose of life is Karma. All is based on ones doings and Karma that one goes through life......Then my question is are we a leading a life inside a life?? Is the aggregation of Good Karma and Bad Karma part of a greater form of life.....As Gita puts it the soul passes through different lives...then as the ordinary life are the different lives that the soul passes through part of as I put it earlier a bigger or better form of life??

The question still rings Is It Worth It??

Master of Puppets??

Well as the Metallica song goes....I ask myself why the master or rather is there a master?? The question always cropping up in my mind is whether I am just a puppet in the hands of fate or do I have a will that can take me places......There are incidents that support both the thoughts...., then why is that even if I put energy of my maximum capabliity into one thing, I still stand a chance of loosing in it.I am gonna provide the arguments of both the sides in me, ever in conflict..

Soldier of Fortune......it may be better soundin title but the truth is that I am probably just a puppet in this world, nothin is in my hand......just another role in this never ending play....it may all sound to be too philosophical......but I ask you, have you ever been down to such point when you feel nothin is in your hands.....I have seen the most strong people, people with probably the strongest back bones bend down at the hands of fate.......Is it the "Master's"(God) ever-hungry ego that tries to keep even the most hardworking, most brilliant people at a check....Does he fear that probably they may turn out to be better than him.....sounds too fictious ..eh.



But then why this struggle, the struggle is there mind you. I keep askin myself is it a struggle between me and him or a struggle within.......Whatever it may be...all these thoughts lead to a lot of energy which when utilised properly lead me into this vicious circle...where i keep fightin fate and it keeps tryin to beat me.......But is this of any worth....will someone ever be an accountant to this struggle.......They will only remember the results and never the struggle.....

Well the other part of me says....man is a maker of ones own destiny........all these struggles are a part of the game....they help to choose the meanest of them all....It keeps on insisting to work hard and things will fall in their place.....There is never any end.......even if you go away your results will always be remembered......n mind you never your struggle......The pressure is there but then the race is always hot.........

Sometimes i think that probably i should retire and seek reclusion...........