My tryst with music while working or KillYourTime.com or Free Advice

It could be that I have no deadlines to meet today… or it could be just that I don’t want to work…either ways… my mind has been playing games with me.

From the topic of love to self love… from goals, destinations to… human nature… or whatever… my mind has been circling round and round.

I guess it started off with music. I cannot work when I play music… that’s a weakness(?) I can’t help it.

So it started off… with Mickey J Meyer. Don’t take the name for some non Indian. This guy is the Music Director of Telugu film Happy Days.

It must be just that I ‘happened’ (?) to read his interview in which he says that he has finished his studies in Music from Trinity College, London!

Now the song is good… original… nice… whatever whatever.

But in the end my knowledge of music (which is definitely less) thinks of two or three famous people. Vamsee (film director), Ali Haider ( Pakistani singer who sang the song… Chand saa Chehraa Samayaa Hai Dil Mein…), and Devi Sri Prasad (best Telugu music director till date (ok my view)) and RD Burman (the great Indian music director who also did a Telugu movie called Antham!).

Now this song has the feel of being A typical Vamsee’s song. The guitars and the beat (percussions) meet those of Ali Haider’s song. And then there is beginning of the song which is horrible and meets a tune of Devi Sri Prasad’s & RD Burman’s different songs. He however doesn’t maintain the beauty of the tune through out the song and especially loses it at the end!

I began wondering if this is the best song/tune of the young chap MJM (for our convenience) and if this is what he had to turn out with…Trinity College of Music was unnecessary.

So after all this dead analysis my mind tells me “look pal even A R Rahman was shouted at for his music”. So I spare him .

And that’s how I went on to think how someone like me passes on judgment on just about anyone. And as usual all my thoughts headed into one direction – Me. I!

I have been struggling to feel something for other around me. To find pity for a woman who begs with a child in her bosom, to find resourcefulness for those who ask me for a lift, to find many other things for many others. This group others also includes people who have been closest to me. In the end… I didn’t … or should I say I don’t.

The beggar becomes unreasonable, the lift seeker become unreasonable… and my life keeps rotating around Reasons!

Reasons, I think, are like sweets. You either like to see them… or to make them or to eat them, and those who don’t like to eat them either become patients or dictators!

Unfortunately I have had too many sweets in the last few days (Atleast 150 – 250 gms of Khaju Khatri (Katli?) from G.Pulla Reddy!)

So I have too many reasons to find what I’m trying to find. But in the end it becomes a search for the Holy Grail. I don’t find it…and it seems I’m enjoying not finding it.

It is just that these kind of things, like this song, prick that enjoyment (that’s why I don’t listen to music when I’m working)! Somewhere they pull you to look deep inside. Make you think.

So I write this so that I don’t forget what I’m thinking right now, and so that I could write the same thing again and compare it with what I write months later when I hear/watch something like this again. Until then I will enjoy this bout of extreme self love of mine… which pushes me to think that I have no friends except me… no love except me… no one in the world except me…me me me!

On a different note:

What could have Siddhartha thought when he left home(identity), his family(security), his wife (a relation with himself) and his kid (his own creation). What would have he thought when he left them all? Was he escaping from something (himself) or was it a great aim that had become a huge urge for him not to care about any of his life (past present or future) but just to comply to a an urge whose root he didn’t know and could never transcend until much later.

What was the frustration he had had to go through to make a decision and finally leave
his home?

And when he found the bloody Nirvana, why did he come back to tell people? Didn’t he know that one will have to go through the same shit he went through, and that his teaching wouldn’t matter at all?

Funny…may be may not be.

Whats funny however is that I have never listened to a song continuously for more 5-6 hours (with the usual breaks… you know which).

Some song this… whatever.

I write this for friends (close and far) so that they grasp the dullness of what I’m going through right now… (which is self inflicted) and may be when then go through, the same thing, to tell them it is not hard… go through it… it is fun… ( I was definitely NOT talking about the song here).

Even you don’t have the opportunity to go through it or you just don’t like to go through it. It changes nothing for anything. It is just the same.

Nothingness in everything.

Peelooh… Peelooh… Peelooh! (got what I say anyone?)

What is Ego?

I thought we all feel a presence of something -  what we call ego – in our life which is unexplained to us…this thing sometimes does some good to us or sometimes does bad as well…depending on how we use it…looks like it is no different from the very nature we are bound with … the very nature in which we are thinking about someone and the same person calls us or comes to us…may be some call it sixth sense…some call it transcendental truth or some call it Ego!

Anyways Ego when translated into most of Indian languages becomes “Aham”! “Aham brahmasmi” I am God! But ‘I’ is ego in the books of philosophy, so Ego is God!

For some, ego is conscience …with which we try to be honest with ourselves. Funny… today ego is used as the lack of conscience. Interesting is this history of words.

Though irrelevant this is something I found searching for the etymology of EGO:
“In the book of Egoism it is written, Possession without obligation to the object possessed approaches felicity.” [George Meredith, "The Egoist" (1879) ]

And for some, ego is selfishness – yeah selfishness…only care about ME ME ME! We all are selfish…I want …I want … I want…all the time. But if this “I want” is understood and then the “I want” of another person is understood…then may be selfishness isn’t as bad. And still Ego remains a positive thing…may be they were right…Aham Brahmasmi!
Ego is God (the eternal one!)

I wonder if the EGO is the supreme bond between each human, but because different people perceive it differently (then compare each perception), and it looks different! No wonder there are so many practices to reach God, no wonder there are so many religions, and yet…if these are the roads…may be ego is the destination…may be the destination needs complete rediscovery all the time (time is a damned funny unit!)

P.S: A friend tells me that I tend to give away too many ideas in one article … another tells me I’m Mr.Complicator…another tells me I use words well to prove I’m correct! But anyways it will be interesting…to know how many understood it…but then there is no way out to do that…(as of now)!

My tryst with Practicality and Passions!

My story of shifting from practicality and passion starts from when I was too young. The first thing I quit was painting…just lazyness…or probably summer holidays just ended!

Practicality meant that I run to school…leave painting! I left playing basket ball and mridangam …quit both …practicality meant that I concentrate on studies!

I left civilengineering studies… in search of an answer that a professor wouldn’t give in his class…I left interior designing for studies in architecture…which only concentrated on designing…not on building…I left architecture…practicality meant that I find a better place…or do the work assigned…which I never did…psychologists didn’t answer my questions nor did anyone…

A Govt. Job meant I was not doing completely what I was capable of …left it! I searched for a better corporate life in MNC…found it was no different from life in a street…

Practicality meant that I find a job…passion meant that life still stands unexplained…practicality meant that I earn something today…passion… I wonder if I have any passion at all…except for LIFE…and I wonder if I have ever been passionate about LIFE and about what it did to me…or what I did with it!!!

All this if I will read it in a pensive mood some day tomorrow…probably sounds dull and pathetic…but I know I have written it at a time when I’m most excited about the things that are happening to me…and things that I’m going to make…no it is not a new (practical) job…or I donno if I’m passionate about ‘these things’… it  is just that I have a feeling that I’m standing on the beginning of a new road…don’t know where it leads it to… but will be glad to leave it…even before I reach the end (if there is one)…or will be more than obliged to find the end…but the excitement stays…and I’m rejoicing it!

The thoughts (or dreams???) of books to be released…or of movies to be made…tickle me…irritate me…inspire me…but may be I wont do any…or may be I will …from where I stand now…looks like it doesn’t matter…not what I do, not what I don’t…but what matters is the joy and excitement I have…even after practicalities have killed passions and even after passions killed practicalities!

And even before I could POST this one…looks like doubt has come into my mind…I’m glad it came…after all what is excitement if it weren’t accompanied with doubt…

I think I should Call this CRAP – 1

Please dont read this …if you are already bored…or you hate crap

I want to shout aloud now, where I stand, but won’t do that. Why? What is it that stops me? Consciousness??? Perhaps (oww…I’m using this word after a long long time).

Funnily this word perhaps brought a smile to me, and the ‘Shout Aloud’ feeling has vanquished, though for a second. Is it that’s why I stopped shouting, because it was futile or because everyone would feel bad… but I’m the one who doesn’t care about anybody else… am I not? But then why did I stop shouting…one should know…

My inability to do something, except shout when angry, laugh when I feel like, and take things for granted…granted yep… the day comes…goes…and goes and goes until it is night… Am I somewhere restless because of all this …going on…Wait a min… “I said my inability to do something…” What do I want to do…hmm make a movie…write a story… find a zero… light a fire…who cares…well do I care…(excuse me if I didn’t then what am I doing here)

I think I have tried to be the best of what all I could do…I ended up nowhere…I have been everywhere…and yet nowhere…and that’s the reason…”I’ve always tried, I never was”. There will be people who will read this and say…”Oh! poor fellow is whining here”…may be that’s what I’m trying to do here…unfortunately I neither have a longing to cry nor feel bad about what I did…it was just asking …whether it was all worth it… what’s the difference between me and the road side beggar…he exchanges our pity feeling to money…I exchange my talents (hehehehe) to money…

So is this similarity that’s bothering me…nope…I’m a beggar I know…but then…may be “I want to be a better beggar” ahaahhhhhaaaa…………

So here goes comparison…comparison & competition dont they make life vulgar…”I’m a beggar who wants to be a better beggar…” I want to remain beggar… funny…

Then how does one find motivation fromlife…work…relationships…self…medititation… nature… just keep doing…but why… how long… “holy shit… the end is not in holy grail… it is the search for holy grail“

Expectations! Random Thoughts !! Foolish Comparison’s !!! Dumb Competition !!!!

Unsatisfactory Victories… and what !!!

I’m writing…I’m writing… I think I’m violating…I’m violently killing myself to write this… because I’m forcing myself..to write..to think linearly “like writing”…while my mind gives me images of Jiddu Krishnamurthy’s photo… Runway 9… Dr Sam’s smile…Gmail chat box… people’s expressions…and a mountain top…where I stand alone…and look down … to see the green earth… hot sun beating…and yet…there is me…

Who is me… who is I… what I’m Searching… just emptiness… lakhs of people… loads of people billions of people and yet the same expression…emptiness… of emptiness…

It is so easy to motivate myself…so easy to do work… it is so easy to shout at any body…every body… but is it easy to enjoy this confusion, this chaos, this violence, this what ever without its consequences…

it is so easy to find oneself lost in this concrete jungle corporate jungle…into ownership and earner… but is it easy to be lost…just lost…and lost…is this what Rags…is doing…is he going thro the same things…

isn’t it wonderful to run through the life…thinking of those great people who make a jungle into a concret jungle…those people who make co operation…into corporation…but isn’t ugly what’s inside…how come what’s inside is differnt fromwhat’s outside???

i can do this…can’t I… isn’t it easy… to get into the thing called HOPE… and BELIEF… but can I make something called chaos (at lost I used the term)… how long… how far…

When will I stop myself killing from killing myself for money…or is it that I’m not killing myself enough that’s bothering me…

Its me…just me …just me…what am I…I ‘m nothing…I’m everything…

I can percieve the almighty and yet I can forget it… I can enjoy the beauty of life…yet destroy it… I can love few things…but can …what (what’s the opposite of love…hate??? wrong)…

I wonder if the words called LOVE and LIFE have opposite words at all…suddenly why is this thought soothing me…was this intention of writing all this crap…to feel into the trap of soothed…or to express…or to condem…or just to be…

I’ve just observed that I had lost the world (until just now)…..and what I got from it was nothing…yet there has been this soothing effect…is it something that my mind is unable to understand but my body and the other things have understood…is there something really above me… (what the hell did I mean by ABOVE ME)…will think later… getting back to world…

P.S.:All those people who will read this…hmm…i wonder if you will make any sense of it..but…if you dont atleast dont blame me…

An Ode to Depression!

This is something that I wrote, when I probably worked with Revenue Department, Nizamabad (2003/04):

It’s the sound – the sound of sameness, the smell of samness, the sight of sameness, the feel of sameness. The same old paperweight, the same old writing, the same old, really old office. The same over road that has seen thousands like me go over it. The same old house, the same old TV. The same old food, the same old people. NOPE. The same old thoughts of people.

Times have gone by, and thoughts never changed. Black & White, Eastman, Techni and yet the thoughts of no colour.

The minds that do not learn, the minds that do not change. And yet the theories of justification. The actions of … something unknown to words. Beyond the reach of thoughts. Yep there it lies – depression.

Thank you depression, for coming back to all of us. You remind us, how futile our life has been. You makes mind our own business. You make us remember the hopes of dreams and then make us feel bad that the hopes still remain. Only that these hopes are not of dreams, but of survival – survival through another hour, through another day and through another hour and another day.

I donno why I haven’t grown up with you depression, even though I believe you were ready to take me into your grasp any time to make me se the nuance of life…or what is it you call them….Oh yes, ‘the other side of life’ .

I think it was you who I was afraid of, in my nightmares and now in my youth (is it?) You are my only friend, of course apart from me.

Wait a minute. I always thought I was three persons. One who would support something, the other who would oppose it & the third… the observer. Now I know there is no 2nd person. I think it was you. I’m my own depression. But tell me depression, who were you opposing…was it hope?

Then does that mean that I was Hope as well. So I’m the first person called HOPE. So you see depression, I’m not just you, I’m hope as well – hope of future, hope of hopes coming true…and the other person was time. What the hell depression, I ‘m Time, I’m hope, and I’m depression. But time is mind, because it sees everything. Hope is fear, because it knows nothing happens NOW. But what I like about you depression, that you are you…just YOU – Depression!

Thank you for being there for me, because you are the only one who taught me what oneness is. You are the one who taught me what individuality is.

But you know what, “when depression is gone” Hope says, “Life will be happy”. And now that you are gone, I don’t find truth in it.

Come back to me depression, because I need you everytime I don’t change, every time I see the same sameness. And when you comeback, don’t go away because if there is anything that I can offer to life, then it is the strenght that you give me, just by being there with me. You turn on my head, when I want to sleep. And when I want to rise, and unable to rise you remind me that all my ‘trials’ are failures (until I realise that I didn’t rise).

Funny you know, they are called all failures, and yet you make me run through them. And out of every failure I’ve, I see you depression, and I’m glad that I see you.

P.S.: If any body understand what I tried to say, do let me know (atleast that way I’ll make something out of it).

Being Numb and Dumb

The other day I was meditating (people tell me it gives peace…do i want it?good question for the next post). Infact it was “vajra” aasana at around 12.30am, with my eyes closed (I just ate my meals then). I was, in my mind’s eye, seeing these images…or shapes which I felt were human forms…probably of ghosts (or) outlines of shapes of people in my memory. That was then I thought, ” do ghosts and life after death exist? May be if power goes now, I’ll know they do.”

My legs started getting numb, sitting in that position for some time (read 3 min). I leaned onto my bed and was staring my white ceiling.

Two minutes later… there was a thud sound outside my building – (probably it was the Electric Transformer) and then there was no electricity. In the moon light from the window, and in the background of street dogs barking I could only hear my heart beating faster.

“Foolish!” I told myself… I knew I needed an escape, and the best option was the LORRY DRIVERS mobile…err Nokia 1108. So while I started feeling for it in the dark, I touched my bed, which was so terrifyingly soft.

I had searched everwhere on the bed, balancing myself on my knees and one hand, while ‘feeling’ with the other. I bent towards my left and there, in that darkness, I felt something, which made my whole body NUMB. Before I could think of what it was, with in few micro milli mini seconds, my brilliant nervous system had already told my brain to invoke FEAR.

While I shivered (following my brains instructions) my mind (where ever it exists) had realized that it was my own leg that I had touched. All this in not even half a minute.

So I found my Lorry Driver’s phone, and my mind (which had gone somewhere for some micro milli mini seconds) said to me that the power would be back after I start playing a game. While it took time for me to set the alarm for the next morning… I had completely forgot about the happenings and when I started playing the SNAKE II, suddenly there was light.

My mind probably died, and my nervous system took over, only this time it was in LIGHT, not in the darkness.

I had to make sure I was touching the lady beside me, avoided going to the loo( I hate Manoj Night Shyamalan for his Sixth Sense), switched off the world by covering my blanket, and tried to sleep.

That was then I realized that I didn’t brush (I got addicted to brushing twice a day badly for the last SIX years!). So at around 01.00am in the morning…errr night…I brushed, making sure that I didn’t look back while I tried to hum a song. Unfortunately the song that came to my mind was “gum naam hi koi…” While I tried to avoid that song the other song that came to my mind was “…bhoooot hai yahaaaaa koi…” was even more horrifying as it brought back memories of the bhoot in Bhoot. So I thought of the stupid dentist who had said my teeth were basically hopeless and tried to sing “ruk jaao raani…”

I tried concentrating on my teeth. By the time I went back to bed again, the lady sharing my bed with me was deep into snoring, so the only option that came into my mind was WORK.

In the end, when I got up in the morning, I realized work was NEVER so helping as it was the previous night. I also got a fair idea of what I had to do the next day at the office.

But there was only one thing I wanted to know…whoever said, “meditation helps”.

I asked our watchman what the noise was the other night, he said he didn’t hear any.

My questions of course have not been answered. What are those?….”Who ever said meditation brings peace?” “Do ghosts and after life exist?”

P.S.: Before starting off the GITA recital, Lord Sri Krishna said to Arjuna, “You ask foolish questions at this hour Arjuna, and you speak like a sage.”

Reluctance … continued

“Why Should I bloody Change?” was the question in my last post.

But Gin said something interesting: we change knowingly or unknowingly.

The reluctance to change is infact a feeling of saying, “look I don’t know why I should change?” My ignorance stops from me changing…but am I ignorant of – “the thing that is about to come” or is it some thing “that never happened to me” (?)

So I’m thinking of something that is future or(and) past, and hence I’m unwilling to change.

But I asked “Why should I change?” – I’m saying I need a reason to change. What could be the reasons to change. The present situation… the situation I’m in demands that I view it differently, different from the one in the past.

But that’s how each situation should be seen, different from the past…but the mind is lazy to recognize this…it wants to use what it has seen, without seeing it differently from the past situation. So when I say I’m reluctant to change I’m saying I’m lazy to see things as they are…because my sentiments(past) my ideals(past and future) and hence my situations (present) do not allow me to see a situation completely as it should be.

But one thing…if I say I’ll always see different things differently ..then am I not saying I will be constant…constant in Changing.

P.S.: An ordinary man is someone who makes ordinary in life complicated; A philisopher is someone who offers complicated explanations to keep simple things simpler.

My reluctance to change!!!

Change!!! The six letter word that plays havoc in our life. Even Lord Krishna had had to say “Only Change is Constant in Life” poor fella that he was, he had to keep changing his tactics every time his protege (s) did something absolutely stupid – saving them from eating their dead father to eating a single grain of RICE.

Any ways I’m amazed and surprised with the way a person “sticks” to the way he is. If some one would tell me thatI do not have a “broad mind” I’ld shout back at him … well, that much for a BROAD MIND… in simpler terms making the person correct. Why are we as such? Why do we CLING to ourselves or I should say our-OLD-selves… may be I will never kow the truth behind it. But probably because we feel safer and saner.

But this question that has been troubling me for quite some time? Have I changed. I did…

I have shouted at stupid drivers like never before, and have stopped shouting at corruption like never before.

But why should I bloody change???

“I had done this write-up and saved this for quite some time now, and it seems to go nowhere beyond this. Hence I thought I should post it as it is. Atleast I will move on with this post…but does that mean I have changed my idea”

A Beggar, a Street Dancer and TIME…

I saw a child dancing on the streets the other day, I thought he was better than a beggar.

He pulled his body out through a small ring, went head over heels, put a toupee on his head and made all the circus tricks he could do. My heart reached out to him, and my mind reached out for me, as my hand reahced out for my purse.

I knew I was no different from him, because I know I’m dancing in the streets called life. What probably would differ on this is a beggar’s take on when I said…better than a beggar.

But what is a beggar any way? Some one who is dependent on another for no reason. Funnily though, we attain great satisfaction when we help the POOR or beggars by giving them clothes or food… but do we care what they do with it.

We feel like helping them and so we help the. And they feel like taking it and so they take it. It doesn’t matter to them where we go from there. Neither does it matter to us where they go after that ONE MOMENT.

So does that mean we are all living for SOME MOMENTS in life? Well may be. Probably because that’s how we define our time – The number of stupid/great things we do between these MOMENTS… that’s why we all are worried about time.

Breakingthrough… with Life

I’m not attentive anymore

My mind doesn’t think anymore.

All thoughts leave me blank

My blankness leaves me blank.

Things aren’t bad

Neither am I sad

Ask me “why?” The only reason that I can show

Myself, I’m a bit slow

To put my thoughts in order

And postpone it to later

“Tomorrow never comes” my teacher said,

But I still believe that I can go ahead.

To where I do not know,

But I know I’m a bit slow

Probably I will never go ahead, I do not care

Beautiful Life has given me my share

Didn’t I live up to life? Won’t I live up to life?

Oh! Now I know what’s troubling me inside

It’s the question, “Is it worth it …what I’m doing now”

For which the answer, “I do not know” as of now.

All I can do is just keep doing

Without complain and with out fuming

For I will get the answer from you

Life, because I know I’m here to break through… YOU