How many times have you come across moments during your mundane routines that remind you of little things from past ? Little kids playing under the scorching sun reminds you of your summer vacation afternoons spent on the cricket field. A group of friends laughing around a coffee table in CCD reminds you of your days with your friends.
And then there are some others.

Like this drowsy much-maligned Monday Morning. With closed eyes, I was listening to this song on my i-pod while on my way to work. And for the briefest of moments, I found myself in my school classroom standing for the daily morning prayers and the sweetest voice singing the same song on the PAS (Public Announcement System) . It was the most meaningful song I had heard so far, then. And it is one of them, still. The beautiful voice had convinced me that this was always meant to be a prayer. Until later on, I realized it was a song composed by arguably the first international pop star people of my generation must have heard of.
Thank you MJ for the song.
Thank you MJ for a few memories.
Thank you MJ for the words that would mean a lot yesterday, today and forever.

Heal The World
Make It A Better Place
For You And For Me
And The Entire Human Race
There Are People Dying
If You Care Enough
For The Living
Make A Better Place
For You And For Me

When was the last time you had such a moment ?

No, I don’t want your opinion or for that matter, someone else’s point of view.

I just felt like being listened to.Yesterday was just one of those days…

I asked myself what I would do under the circumstances mentioned below. You can also do the same while reading. Take a pause and think what would you would do under the given circumstances and why.

1. A person who is very near and dear to you and whom you respect a lot asks you to do something which you know is i) Not correct or unethical and ii) may lead to undesirable circumstances.

2. If your family suffers for your single mindedness

3. If your wife is dishonored and you alone are capable of fighting the wicked.

4. If your wife, who is a mother of two, is accused of dubious character by some dubious character

Now that you understand the situation and, I hope, you have evaluated each of them and tried to find out what would be your decision in each case, I am sure it will not tally with the one that I am going to mention below.

This story is about a person who blindly followed what his step mother commanded him to do. He should have, even with half a wit that he was believed to possess, ruled against the command and been a little more pragmatic. This spontaneity of his led to restlessness in the family and vicinity and also resulted in an untimely demise of his dear father.

His brothers found themselves double orphaned as he vacated his house to fulfill his step mother’s wishes. One of his own brothers had to lead the life of a nomadic just for the sake of sharing the elder’s pain: or his painful decision may one say.

He also acted irresponsibly by letting his wife alone in an alien place, and did not take any immediate action even though he could easily have had. Even after being one of the most powerful, he showed cowardice to not confront the enemy alone.

When the wife returned she was unnecessarily pulled into a controversy. This person not only showed his callousness to let the situation go out of hand but also as a result succumbed to a forced pseudo divorce.

If we can, for a while, forget Rama “The Lord”, and analyze his human traits, it is not difficult to point out that he was a over-subdued son, an irresponsible husband and subsequently an irresponsible father, a feeble king and most importantly an indecisive person. Ironically enough, the Supreme decision maker faltered even in mundane human decision making.

Another question that comes to the mind is, in this hour of weakened believes, is: Is it worth making him our idol. And more importantly, is it really worth fighting amongst ourselves over a person who was, if anything a very ordinary Human brain. Though I have enough respect for his literary coterie, who went beyond human literary limits to usher flattery, to gain, I don’t know what.

If you are in dire need of a man-made God for inspiration, I promise there are better and more tangible alternatives like Swami Vivekananda or Mother Teresa and the likes who have paved their way out of the ordinary to achieve extra-ordinary. Lets make them our idol so that we do not start with a diluted source.

Let’s make rational decisions today so that some geek doesn’t get a chance to write about our callous decisions, tomorrow.

I never had mood swings earlier but somehow for the past few months I have been experiencing them and what I said earlier was in testimony of that.

You can’t provide explanations. Just doesn’t seem right. But you so want to call up and tell that “Hey, it wasn’t me… I didn’t mean to hurt you…” But come to think of it, how many times can you do that? Will people always understand? If you apologize, would it really make a difference? Can you undo the wrong behavior/gesture/act? The answer is a big NO. You cannot. The only thing that you can do, is probably, try not to repeat it.

I think I should get into yoga. Probably, will help me relax and get me into a mode where the mood swings are irregular.

Bachche aankhein badi kiye, jhopdi se ghuspaithi paani ko nikaal bahar kar rahe hain. 

Maleen kapde ki chhat ke un an-ginat chhedon se aati dhoop ko bachche kabhi apni masoom mutthiyon mein qaid karte they, aaj unhi chhedon ko aur cheerkar barsaat ka paani taat ke bistaron se unko dhakel apni jagah bana raha hai. Gayi raat ko aath nanhi aankhon mein aansoo they. Ab neend bhi hai aur sookhey aansoo bhi. Unke katoron mein aaj sikke ki khanak nahi, paani ka chullu hai. Paanchwaan, is sab se bekhabar, maa ki godh mein jhunjhune se khel raha hai.

Khaali kanastaron ko jhooth-muth thok-kar maa roz chulha lagati, kuch der kadhai mein paani pakati, bacchon ko dilaasa deti… chhote-chhote pet jab aasuon se bhar jaate, hont chabakar maa khud se kehti, “ghar mein paani kam hai, khaana nahi ban payega”, aur chulha bujha deti.

Lekin aaj bachche khush hain.. aaj paani bahut hai… aaj bahut khaana banega, bahut khayenge, baba se kahaani bhi sunenge. Unhe kya pata ki maa aaj kehne wali hai, “paani zyada ho gaya, aata geela hai, khaana nahi ban payega”.

Sept 2006, Tokyo, Japan
Me : “Damn, we have no coriander here..how will I make some chutney.. i like daal chaawal with chutney… no probs… lets use some parsley.”
Friend : “What’s parsley?”
Me : “How dumb can you be? How can you not know parsley means? Are you tryin to pull my leg?”
I, someone who enjoys cooking & expect everybody to know these kinda things…
Friend : “How do you spell parsley?”
Me : “Forget it!”
Friends : “This is good yaa…dal chaawal tastes good with watever chutney that you have made.”
Me : smiles
2 days and the chutney dabba is empty.

Next supermarket visit:
Friend : “Hey, don’t forget to get that ingredient of yours… what do you call it?? farsley…”
Me : Show him the bunch that I had already taken
Friend : smiles “parsley.”

good ol’ days…miss staying with friends…

I see people; I see myself – the hapless & perennial prey to this Un-reasoning. Somehow, each one of us finds a rationale behind it. Time-to-time, names have been given to the rationale. Some call it optimism, others call it faith.

The sapless mind wanders in the infinite azure in search of an answer. What mightier could have compelled God to infest humans with this mystery?”

The seeds of the volatility were being sown from quite some time now. Seeing an opportunity to reduce their dependency on OPEC countries, for their gulp of fuel, US and some of the other developed countries started to divert a large chunk of their food producing agricultural land towards land producing fuel rich agro products. By giving large subsidies and multiple incentives, the government not only made this transition easy but lucrative too. The result being that large tracts of food producing land have been brought under fuel producing commodities like corn and sugarcane.

Two droughts in a row in Australia have only aggravated the issue at hand. As the supply of food products dried up, the hoarders found the situation congenial to hoard items which they speculate would fetch a better price in times to come (as the shortage spreads). Countries, by putting bans on export of commodities, have broadened the horizons of hoarding and hoarders. This effectively will push the price of food products a notch further up. And to add fuel to fire, the cartel of OPEC nations will ensure that fuel comes at a price. 135$ per barrel and still going strong!!! Any takers?

The above factors, viz. transition of agricultural land to produce fuel producing products, natural calamities, local and global hoarding together with the rise in fuel price orchestrated by OPEC nations have led to a shortage of agricultural produce required for feeding billions of mouths and threatens world food security as a whole, and worse, the poorer nations.

Governments, the world over, are fighting inflation at war footing. However, the steps taken are found to come too late and more importantly in the wrong directions. Take for example, the case of banning exports of commodities produced in a country. This leads to other countries reciprocating it by banning some other commodities, resulting in the creation of a vacuum and in the process, unnecessarily, causing spiralling of prices of multiple commodities where a few or none was present. Another glaring example of making headway in the wrong direction is the price rise being imputed to the trading of the commodities on the exchanges and incessant appeals towards banning the same. The real need of the hour however, is to regulate commodity futures trading in a way so that speculators and speculations are kept at bay. Closing down the trading would just mean closing down the market indicators and that is in no way going to meet the increased demand in the absence of supply side issues, which unfortunately is the root cause of the problem.

It’s high time that governments together with other institutions of the world start looking at the core issues, which in no doubt are supply side constraints, and build up mid-term as well as long-term strategies to address the same. As for the short-term, measures should be taken to stop activities like hoarding and forming cartels (esp. oil) which have a negative effect on the remedial process as a whole. Long term measures should include among other things relieving supply side constraints in terms of agricultural expansion and modernization, improving the distribution system and find a systematic solution to the lingering energy crisis. If we fail to strike the right balance now, we might step into a period of uncertainty in terms of food and fuel supply and jeopardize the basic right of living, for the thinking inhabitants of this planet, on this planet.

]]> http://thecolourpalette.wordpress.com/2008/06/11/food-%e2%80%93-the-human-fuel/feed/ 0 aakashwani http://thecolourpalette.wordpress.com/2008/06/11/first-few-feelings/ http://thecolourpalette.wordpress.com/2008/06/11/first-few-feelings/#comments Wed, 11 Jun 2008 11:13:58 +0000 theincessanttalker http://thecolourpalette.wordpress.com/?p=4 ]]> It was raining heavily when I first read the name and I liked it instantly! It reminded me of a lot of things.

My dad’s an excellent painter (so is my sister) and last June, after a hiatus of 35 years, he painted. I saw him paint for the first time in my life. What passion! How excited he was when my nephew showed some interest in his palette and was asking him questions about paintbrushes, colors and canvases.

It reminded me of my school days. How every Monday and Wednesday we had a Drawing period (more a picnic as there were 2 continuous periods which meant 80 minutes of fun and fooling around).There was a huge basin, those long ones with multiple taps..everybody used to go out and fill their palettes and water cups and try to sit in the last row. We had a huge room and the seats were arranged such that the center of the room was empty. We had our seats along the walls. The centre was empty for the still life drawing articles.

It reminded me of how everytime my sister used to give everyone hand painted greeting cards for their birthdays and how I would just admire them (I can’t paint).

And I didn’t realise how time flew by…My palette today had shades of passion, excitement, innocence and admiration. ‘Twas a perfect rainy day!

Thanks to you, Mafia Mufasa!