My Guilt

As I walked down the lane through the meat market, I saw the butcher running a sharp blade on the neck of a goat. Blood gushed from the severed neck like a fountain and the animal writhed in pain. I did'nt feel guilty that I was also one who had come to buy a part of it......after all we had to eat it.
A thousand rupee note was lying redundant in my wallet, it was torn a little in the middle. During an urgent transaction, someone had cheated on me. I paid it to the old shop-keeper when I cleared my monthly bill. I would have acted as if I was unaware of it, if he discovered. But poor old man with cataractous eyes, he missed it. I did'nt feel guilty......after all, my money had ultimately moved.
The patient was groaning in pain, he could not void urine for the last 24 hours. All he needed was a urinary catheter to be placed, a simple job but the relief was huge, a 24 hour agony over in 2 minutes. I knew I could inflate my bill, knew his satisfaction would make him pay whatever I asked for, finally, charged him three times of what I normally do for such a work. I didn't feel guilty.....after all, it was my profession.
I saw my child beating up another smaller child of the neighbourhood for which I scolded her, she cried and went off to sleep. I looked at her while she was sleeping and she looked so innocent. I felt terribly guilty for having scolded her and apologized to her the next day.....after all, she was also a child, what did she know?
I said something to my wife, which unintentionally though, sounded a little like a sarcasm and she took it that way. I felt extremely guilty and said,' Sorry' on the next day......after all, she was my wife, how could I hurt her?
Its said," There is nothing good or bad, nothing right or wrong; thinking makes it so". We never feel guilty for the grossly wrong things we do to others but can't withstand the guilt that comes on the smallest mistake that we commit to our near and dear ones.
I am a little conflicted as to whether this is true guilt or another manifestation of selfishness and as I feel a little guilty writing this blog, I justify myself saying.....after all, it's a material world.

The Pendulum

The mind oscillates like a pendulum but in varying amplitude. One one side is 'Happiness' extreme of which is called the ' Mania'..on the other side is 'Sadness' extreme of which is the 'Depression'. At any point of time our mind fluctuates between the extremes of mania and depression....the less the fluctuation the better controlled personalities we become.
It is a Herculean task to acheive 'Level-Headedness', ' Mental Balance' and ' Equanimity of Thought' and ' Meditation' is the road to this goal.
Meditation delinks us from the physical world around us and takes us to a whole new world of absolute peace where the pressures of life cease to give us pain. A few minutes of meditation in a day can be so rejuvenating that one can come up with new confidence and energy.
While happiness is a positive feeling it is important that we learn to control ourselves from its extremes. It is said," Never be too happy when you are happy or too sad when you are sad".
The turbulences that we are exposed to in our day-to-day life make us extremely vulnerable to a nervous breakdown and a severe depression and thats the time we need to give ourselves the wake up call and say," Cheer up....Life is like that..enjoy".

Expectations Hurt

Every relationship comes with a package of expectations and when it is not fulfilled, the relationship gets strained. In extreme cases, even parents begin to detest their offsprings when they do not fulfil none of their parental expectations..when they do not complement their parents love in anyway.
So, are relationships too, a form of transaction?
Even the best of friendship is a ' Give and Take' affair. The concept of ' Unconditional Love' largely remains a myth. The word 'I' is the epicentre of all our activities and we live in the pursuit of fulfilling its wishes. Then, are'nt we all 'self-centred' or 'I-centric' people?
Can expectations be seperated from our love, admiration, enamour and adoration for another person?
Is it possible for one to shower all the love to his near ones without expecting a bit in return?
My answer is,'Its difficult but not impossible.....possible at the greatest depth of your feeling and emotion' and the more we are able to do that the less we will hurt ourselves.

A little love and lots of respect

The couple was very close to me , they were the greatest lovers that I had ever known, their love would easily place Romeo and Juliet in the second rung. She was a mesmerizing beauty and he was the brightest brain of our times.....a case of talent attracted by charm and vice-versa.
But then, there was something that was lethal in their love. They always had an overdose of each other....would indulge until they fight...would indulge again after the fight is over, the cycle would go on. When asked ,'Why do you fight so much?', their reply would be,' Fighting makes us love each other even more'........somewhere I felt that in their quest for the pinnacle of love they were accumulating disgust.
I met this friend of mine recently, asked about his old beloved, his answer was 'That bitch'.....we did'nt need to talk any further on that. I was amazed that a relationship that was once the cynosure of all eyes would dwindle down to the level of calling 'A bitch'. Why do we love each other so much if we have to ultimately become sworn enemies? With love, comes possessiveness and with possessiveness comes jealousy....a good and healthy feeling leading to a poisonous one.
The problem that I saw in this relationship was that the love was not complemented by respect for each other.The positive qualities that once draw us to someone, fades as we go closer to that person and his negative qualities become more prominent. It is aptly said ,' Never go too close to the one you don't want to lose'.
It is not obsessive love but deep admiration that binds people together. Isn't it a little love and lots of respect thats required to keep all forms of relationship blooming?

Cricket and the rest

I was a very staunch cricket fan in my school and college days...would miss classes to watch a test match,even one between India and Zimbabwe,would watch from the 1st ball to the last without missing a delivery in between.The knowledge of cricket statistics that I had could have been easily converted to an encyclopedia.I could tell you how many runs David Gower scored in the 2nd innings of his 16th test match,could tell you the directions in which Ravi Shastri hit Tilak Raj for six sixers in an over,predicted of a man called Rahul Dravid much before he came on the international arena and till today talk of a batsman called Dhruv Pandav who would have outshadowed Sachin Tendulkar,only if he lived.

I would think of cricket all the time,would dream of it,had sleepless night if I had a cricket match the next day and would cry if it rains.I would consider cricketing statistics as precious knowledge when I was not sure who won the Nobel Peace Prize that year.

However,I was not alone in this country; there were tens of thousands of people like me ready to waste lakhs of man-hours on any day India played cricket.Such has been the craze of our people for this game,which for all practical purpose is the National game of India( not hockey).

But, what is disturbing is that our extreme enthusiasm for this game has taken its toll on other sports.Cricketers have become millionaires...nay, billionaires but another sportsman who excels in another game is reduced to penury because his game does not have the viewership.

The problem with our sporting scenario is the inequality of sports.Sportsmen's career are not protected satisfactorily....they should be made financially secure or else sportsman will no longer be talent driven but will become reward-focussed.I have seen players leaving certain form of sports because that game does not pay you even when you are at the top-level....and why not...your bread is more important than the laurels your talent may bring to the nation one day,which will be forgotten in no time.
India has to seriously think on this concept of 'Equality of sports',otherwise the country of one billion people will at best, continue to aim at only one gold medal in the next Olympics,too.

Of Relationships and Control

Out of the myriad reasons,that causes breakdown of relationships, one commonest that I have observed is our undue exercise of 'Ownership Right' on people who are close to us. We often try to control the people who are near and dear to us.... be it our spouse, children or even friends.....decide on what they do, what they wear, with whom they make friends etc. without realising that such acts of control comes much at our beloved's chagrin.
We are born alone and will die alone.All these relationships are farce. Nobody actually belongs to no one. Even the phrase that we often say'My Body' reflects that we are not our body..we are an entity seperate from our body...an entity more intrinsic than the body...an entity which we call the 'Soul'.
However, to pass this 80 years of being part of a body,we need a lot of things-health, wealth, good parents, good children, good friends....the list is endless and when we go,we take none of these.
' Man is born free but always remain in chains'.Often these chains have come up from people who are our own but who try to dictate us terms,who try to impose us 'Do's and Dont's'....and these very acts of control have often proved to be the apple of discord between two close people.

The Animal In Me

Making me a vegetarian,would be tantamount to converting a leopard to a herbivore....such is my taste for non-vegetarian food but something within me says its wrong to kill, just for the sake of eating. We love our pet and on his trivial suffering our heart aches, we run frantically for the vet. but for another animal we would issue the execution order to the butcher,not at all bothered what pain the animal must be going through.
I really feel bad when I write this article because this one proves that I am not someone who practices what I preach. Have I become such a compulsive non-vegetarian that I can't change inspite of believing that its wrong to kill?
We kill hundreds of lives to celebrate a marriage and we call it auspicious......our mind justifying all the wrong things we do. We, human beings are the most intelligent lot but are not the best or the kindest. We are as brutal as any other animal. How are we different from the other wild animals like the lions and the tigers?
The only answer is we cook.......they don't.