Magic and fantasies

Magic and fantasies have been born out of man’s greed….well not exactly greed but the need to get more…a lack of satisfaction…God has created the world with all its pains,. defeats, and that kind of depressing things. Its man’s search for an utopia…a perfect land where every wish comes true that have given rise to all the imaginary stories and stuff. He is not just happy with the way God has created so he is playing the role of a mock creator. I am not saying it is a bad thing but fundamentally this behaviour points to the never ending wants of man. So God has been thoughtful in not bending to every wish that man had, then what will be the condition of our universe? it will be an utter chaos. But God has blessed us with the power of imagination and dreams and that is one of the best gifts he has given us
Some days back I just checked out the list of world’s top grossing movies of all time…No wonder except titanic which is based on a true story all others are fantasies and the super-natural stuff. Among the top 50 there are some like Da Vinci code, Forest Gump, Passion of the Christ, Mamma mia that deals with themes that are possible in real world all others are just supernatural. People are paying money for seeing this and it is all about entertainment. Even among the top selling books a lot of them deals with fantasies. Girls especially have a love for the not so ordinary. Twilight series is about a girl who falls in love with a vampire…I don’t know where our world is coming with all imagination and stuff. We are running out of options at inventing stories so new and much more crazier themes comes and we just accept it because all we want is a change. Well among books fantasy has not made such headway as it did with movies. Well only few among the new generation are passionate about books than about movies.
Now about magic….some months back there was a programme in a TV channel where all the secrets of magic tricks were revealed .I watched all without missing an episode but later I realized that the fun of magic is not knowing the secret… we actually want to believe something wonderful and magical happened and it is not just a trick .I think our believe in existence of spirits is also part of this .We still have a little expectation that our dear ones are not lost for ever but they are with us in some unexplainable manner. If that thought gives us comfort then go with it for the time being. When we are strong again we could think about reality till then, live in a cocoon of fantasies. In olden times stories of “yakshiyis”(beautiful nymph like vampires) were popular in Kerala. There was a belief that the persons especially females who are murdered or had such kind of tragic end came to haunt the people who was responsible for their death. This actually helped upto a level to check the landlords from exploiting their servant women and other lower class women. A fear is much better restriction on a man that doesn’t have any morals. Preaching him about the good deeds he is supposed to do might not work well.Atleast he will fear the hell……. and will have the common sense to let people live.
Heaven will be no fun for the adventurous category in new generation.They regard themselves as little daredevils searching for adventure all the way. They want challenges to prove themselves. Even in the olden times sea explorers ventured into the ocean without knowing what lies ahead for them.Ofcourse there was a motivation factor….. the riches of the east. But to spice up the whole “adventure thing” they invented stories of sea monsters like “Kraken” lying in wait to suck them to the deepest part of sea…….mermaids sitting by the rocks seducing them and leading their ships to wreck on those sharp stones. At that time people believed in all this fantasies as there was no way to conform the truth. But our new generation is slightly disappointed by the lack of danger in their adventure. Even the trip to moon is safer than driving a car on the highway. Some are very comfortable with all is secure and safe stuff. There are some who considers all this as kill-joy, they want more adventure and danger. So they invent crazier schemes for the adrenaline rush. They spent thousands of rupees to spend a night in the so called haunted hotels just to come in touch with the unnatural. They go in search for spirits using I.R cameras and the so called science equipments to prove something that cannot be explained by science.I have often wondered why our ancient mariners could not be optimistic and hoped for fair winds and safe journey.Then I think what is the fun without exaggeration. Our ancestors were very good at exaggeration. We are also good but not as half as good as our imaginative ancestors. Some exaggerate stuff without meaning any harm. They just want to entertain people and to be good story tellers. Everybody likes some action and miracle .We don’t want some dork telling us a boring stretch of events when we are in the mood for adventure.
So all this fantasies and magical stuff are a way to escape from reality….. upto a level it works…. when we live in the moment it works…But when perspective comes to life and along with it our obligations, our code of conduct we have to embrace reality no matter how tough it is.

Star gazing

When I was little I used to ask a lot of questions like any other child growing up. A lot of curiosity and imagination drove my life back then. My dad & I used to watch stars at night when I was little….He was not that interested but he accompanied me. The one thing I love about him is that whenever I asked him a difficult question he tried to stick to the facts. Its difficult to explain to a 3 year old the science behind why stars glow but he tried to explain it to me and didn’t invent stories like they are glitters that god has thrown over the sky, and that kind of absurd stories. Even though I didn’t understand it that well he used to say stars glowed because there is gas on them and its burning to give light.  As a grew up I learned more about it and I felt grateful to my father because he tried to give me reasonable answer to my childhood curiosities. Still I imagined things, I thought if I looked long enough at the stars they will look back on me…  it was a time of expectations….truly stupid and fantastic expectations……

                  But times have changed I don’t do star gazing anymore. I cannot see the star clearly as before……city smog has hidden most of the little stars ,only the bright ones have overcome the ugliness made by pollution. And I don’t any longer worry about the complications of universe or its mysteries because its charm has been long lost for me along with other childhood fascinations. I think about things that matter in my daily life……. to be a better human being, to be a good daughter, to be a trustful friend. I have asked my dad why we keep on loving dead people…….. why we r crying over something that is not ever gone come back, they say don’t cry over spilt milk…but crying for the dead is kind of like that…nothing is going to rewrite what have already happened. I think its funny when people say they are going to rewrite history…how can they do that? not even God can change our past… But it is better to cry out our distress than holding all inside and waiting for a tempest to break out inside us.I am not talking about being a crybaby at every turn of difficulties in life… but there are certain situations where tears can do wonders....... the time of crying gives me time to think, and not do or say anything stupid .

               But my father can’t help me with answers now, he tries to comfort me but he also can’t answer all my philosophical questions. And sometimes I keep on wondering and wondering till I scold myself….. girl you are hopeless….. come on…… get a life and move on. So I wake up from my slumber and I am again back to my books, time-killing and usual rational stuff that humans generally do… .One more thing ……I am an idiot in philosophical thinking and it is not my field. Hmmmmm…….I do learn lessons quickly nowadays ……

The colour of beauty

The colour discrimination is so into the grass root levels in our Indian society. That means from grandparents to grandchildren all are in praise of the fair skinned beauties. They say the beauty is in the eyes of beholder but still some have some kind of ‘black blindness’…they don’t see the beauty in black coloured skin..One look at the black coloured skin they write it off as ugly and they don’t give a damn about how beautiful they are…Its like the preliminary test of being beautiful is fair skin and if they fail in having the basic qualification of being fair skin they are failed in the being beautiful test
What made me so frustrated is a question my grandmother asked today. My neighbour gave birth to a baby and the first thing my grandma asked after knowing that the baby is a girl is whether she was fair or dark. It’s not only my grandmother but some others also asked that question. I feel so ashamed when I hear that. I mean not even animals discriminate their babies on the basis of colour but still I see that around me.
This colour discrimination in India have roots from the time Aryans came to India about 2000 years ago (there is still controversy over when exactly they came….)..According to historians the Aryans where fair – skinned ones and they hated the original inhabitants who were dark skinned they called them ‘dasa varna’..so ‘varna’ means colour. Then and there was born the concept of low caste having dark-coloured skin…
Our society is so good at picking up bad habits I just wish they won’t pass the colour prejudice to the younger generation. I wish my grandma would stop bugging me to use turmeric on my face to increase my skin glow . Even though I repeatedly tell her that I am happy with my wheatish colour and all ..she just feels that I am trying to hide my disappointment of not having a fair skin. During my childhood times she even made up a story that if I sit near white people I will get more fairer and if I sit near black people I get darker. She may not have thought about the ripples that piece of information made in a young mind. It’s by God’s grace that I got over the whole concept of colour prejudice. I love my grandmother for so much other things but I feel disappointed when she sneers at black coloured people. It’s not just about my grandmother there is lot of others in the society who behave worse than my grandmother. For example, the TV ads of fairness cream. How absurd, stupid and freakingly painful they are..a dark coloured girl who uses the particular fairness cream … she becomes fair within 4 weeks and some prince charming comes and marry her.. if she remains dark(that is if she doesn’t use the fairness cream) you could guess the rest she will have to settle for a secondary type of guy.. no prince charming because prince charming only likes fair girls... I know advertisements doesn’t exactly give morals but when I think about the people who made that advt concept… they are the so called new generation and they are worse than my grandma…………

My summer of ‘99

Well my best childhood memory was the time I spent with my 3 cousins .Those were the days were we saw wonder in all the mysteries of nature .But as we grow up we got all the explanation from the science classes. Human beings can never accept the ignorance, it really hurts their complex if they don’t know something .They make up stories ,gossips or whatever they can if they are not able to find any logical explanation for something .That is how superstitions were born .
It was so fun to think about the imaginary countries we made up when we were kids. How we set up defense, government, wildlife, marine, transport, houses .Well we were mostly interested in guns, war and animals as my playmates were boys and they never agreed to play with barbies and dolls, so for the girly plays I used to invite my neighbour girl, who was almost about my age. I still remember the fun we had planning operations in war, playing dead and the thrill to watch soldiers getting killed in war in movies. We were so ignorant at that time and took pleasure in all that .But when I look back now I see those innocent faces, not knowing the meaning of death or birth, not knowing which is right or wrong, just being happy and playing all the time. At that times our minds were more free, there was no need to think about consequences, no need to measure the words .We could play in the rain and not worry about catching a cold, we could dress up the way we like and don’t care about the commands others say, we could just gobble up anything without worrying about our waistline getting bigger.
A sadist thing we did when we were children was to load the snails (hard shelled big ones….nasty right?) to our toy trucks and dump them in the trash and when the servant came and burned the trash we watched the green and blue flames coming out of those poor creatures. When I think about it…..I feel sorry for those snails that attained martyrdom for our pleasure. Another exciting part was when we went to collect flowers for onam…we exactly didn’t ask the neighbors permission before plucking flowers from their garden….During one such flower plucking expeditions we encountered a snake…we ran howling all the way back to our homes throwing the flower baskets …near that snake……….

View from the top

For me preparing for civil service is like swimming against the current. The most contradictory part is I don’t know how to swim. So basically I have no actual experience of how tough it can be. Still the view from the top is what inspires me……..Wonder what it is? See the preparation process can be sometimes tedious and boring. It’s an uphill climb and when I finally reach the top of that mountain I get the view of the beautiful panorama there. I will feel like I am at the top of the world. But a small doubt is creeping within me nowadays whether I will like the view from the top. How to explain that concept……. Let me give an example….I so wanted to read the Harry Potter book 7 badly that I downloaded it from the net and finished reading that on computer from morning 10 to night 2 O’clock. My eye will never forgive me for the strain I put on them. Next day my eyes were red till afternoon. But after reading that book I didn’t feel excited. I think I was more excited before I read it. You know the intuitions about the unknown kept my curiosity level up. So I am a bit afraid whether I will like my life as a Civil servant. Forewarned is forearmed. So what I do is I prepare my mind to go ahead and grab it whether I like it or not. Because my aim along with the good things that I will be able to do for others is my priority and it will be selfish to think about my conformability level. Most of all being a civil servant means sacrificing some thing for the good of nation.

Getting interested in history

Starting from the school level onwards I was an average student in all subjects. That means I got almost 85% above for all the subjects I studied till my 10th std. So that doesn’t prove that I am intelligent, but it showed that I have a talent to study all the subjects in the same magnitude. I now find that as a disadvantage, because it’s better to have a deep knowledge and extreme interest in one subject than having a little knowledge in all subjects. Well this principle is only applicable if you want to become famous as Einstein who was interested in maths and was considered as an idiot by his social science teacher.
So if you want to be like a regular human, getting a good job that earns you money and look after the family and all that, you need not be an extra –brilliant scholar in one subject. So this doesn’t mean I want to be world famous or anything. Still I want to leave behind a legacy, or some milestone or something that people will remember even after I am dead. So now let’s not let our imagination run wild. Practically thinking I will also end up like a regular human working, looking after the family, and hopefully dying peacefully at home when I get old. Still considering my current age it’s possible to understand the revolutionary spirit that I have in my blood and the dreams I wove. At the end of the day this all may be fruitless. There maybe many untold tales of failure and always what we hear are stories of success (we hearing it is a proof of success so…). Still the one factor that gets me going is what if we had a chance to excel in something and we didn’t try out that. I certainly don’t want any regrets in my life or more practically I want to keep the number of regrets in my life to the lowest number possible.
So back to my choice of history. So after 12th I really thought hard what I wanted to study. In that thinking I gave priority to what I like than what I thought I liked. So it was a moment of self-discovery. I always was fascinated by history. The heroes of the past gave rejuvenation to my imagination. I liked to think about what it was like living in that period of history. I think it’s an honour to study in detail about the great personalities in history like Gandhiji, Mother Theresa etc. Well it’s the least we can do to show an appreciation to the noble deeds they did. There are diverse things that capture my attention in history. History can be studied in a story telling way. Or it can be boring with dates and number of dead soldier. Or it can just be a bunch of lies written by the victors. There maybe thousands of treasures that maybe lost forever by the crookedness of men or by the sheer accident or coincidence. By treasures I men not the gold, diamond stuff because they are the things that we can put a price tag. But some facts in history are invaluable and are like hidden treasures. We have a right to know the truth and the injustice of the past deserves to be brought to light. So that’s just the outline of things that got me interested in history.

Estimation

We usually over-estimate or under-estimate. It’s very difficult to estimate. In my case I usually under-estimate myself and over-estimate the people I met.
My college class gives me no environment for an intellectual growth or development in the sense that there are not many bright students. So the thing is that there is no one who I could look up to……no debates, doubts, discussions in the academic level. I believe in finding happiness in the little blessings of life. Not the ‘nature, air, food, shelter’ concept …….I am thankful for that ……but the little individual happiness like I got a new PC, long hair, .blah……. blah…mom’s food, dad’s humor……friends…& so on. So one thing I learned from my college life “if you have got no role models around you, look for persons who you don’t want to be like". It maybe things like their behaviour, talks, or even the way they dress up which we may not like. So when a situation comes where u need some thinking just remember a tip “If I do like this I will be like that person,……. its so not happening.”

Turning point

What is the relation between a revolutionary and a conventional girl like me? Conventional in the sense that I grow up as a single child getting all the care, affection and protection of my parents. I was in a dilemma after finishing my 12 th standard. I didn't like the professional courses, which was the general trend. I wanted to work for public good rather than for private greed. I was afraid to try out the civil service ambition. 2 years of study in Kendriya Vidyalaya had drained out all my self-confidence and esteem.
It was at that point of time that I came across the book"CHE" (ofcourse its a book about che guevara) I only understood a bit of it and that bit was the life of Che upto the age of 30. He studied engg for 1 year then dropped it because he didn't like it(We all make some stupid mistakes,right? He then joined for medicine in 1948. In the year 1951 he went on a "motorcycle journey " through south american countries. He saw the poor, sick, hungry,...... the face of despair. He said "The highest form of human solidarity & loyality arises among such lonely & desperate people". I felt the same feeling when I started my degree years in Govt: Women's college (mostly in the BA history and philosophy classe,as they are the supposedly useless subjects according to some.) Most of my classmates are from poor family,their parents are daily wage labours and I understood the value of each rupee.They store 1 re & 50ps like magpies, they plan on buying things. Things which may appear petty to the 'well to do class'.
I got to understand poverty even though I have never been there. So I really want to help those people.
So Che's book gave me courage to pursue what I wanted in my life eventhough it meant going against the expections of the society .There were only a few people who supported me, my father he was such a darling. Its like even if I fall I have him to catch me. Then some of my friends were also my side. Most of my relatives had a sarcasm in their voice. My chances of becoming a civil servant are only about 25%.But I will try . I beieve life gives you what you deserve not what you desire. Even if I fail in that I still have other back-up plans like teaching, other govt services, atleast any job to support my parents.
This may not seem like a revolutionary step. But considering the fact that I am basically a bit cowardly,and a bit selfish (its not my fault that I didn't have siblings) this is a big turning point in my life. That is the relation between me and a revolutionary.........we kind of took the uniform decision to help people, but our ways have no similarity at all. He is dead but still everyone remembers him. I am living and apart from my parents and some few friends nobody will remember me.....
"I am so glad that, once upon a time there lived a man called Ernesto Che Guevara". Because he kind of helped me make up my mind .That is a turning point in my life for better or for good.....? The future will reveal....

The Other Side

The other side,the other side of me.......
Well its not a Miley Cyrus song.......OK!Fine it is.
But I am not stealing .....It just stuck me one day...
The following lines are from a French movie"The Black Box"

There are 3 persons within us
1)what we want to be
2)what we think we are
3)what we really are........unfortunately the third person is a stranger to us
So 'the other side' of me is what I think I am
Its always a question within me
"Who am I?"....You got me again I know its
the title of a Jackie Chan movie
Still its the question I am born with
Not only me but every rational human........

Two Friends

I started this blog because of two friends
But they don't know it
One friend is my inspiration,cause,effect,.......
She lives on the other side of the world
So writing letters to her is what motivated
my thinking
She is my BEST FRIEND.......!

The other is my good friend
Seeing her blog gave me the idea to
Start one of my own...(I am a complete novice in the cloud network
so its my first experience as a blogger)
This blogspot is dedicated to my parents & friends........