Where are we heading? What can I do?

This part of the year is supposed to be filled with holiday spirit, happiness of getting in to a much needed break, celebrating the innocence of enjoying simple gifts and such. However, the state of mind is filled with anger, fear, frustration, and things like that is usually not an occurrence in a December setting. 

The Newtown tragedy is certainly one of the worst kinds in recent times, especially due to the average age group of people suffered in the incident. Like the thousands of you, I want to assume that the victims have gone to a better place and move on to my mundane activities that revolve around self. However, just like you, I cannot distract myself from the Connecticut tragedy. Having a toddler makes it even harder.

I try to avoid reading or seeing news/stories on the person who is responsible for it, as it (not he) is not worth any of that attention or time. The media is doing a phenomenal job in providing the commercialization that would show the future prospects the popularity or attention that a brainless act like this would get. As rightly pointed out by someone imposing as Morgan Freeman, the media attention clearly provides the much needed motivation for the next to go anywhere from a day care or a maternity ward. 

So, what can I do?

•  "Like" the social media message from family and friends of the victims to show Respect?
•  "Pray" for the souls to rest in peace?
•  Relay your frustration during coffee room conversations?
• "Argue/comment" in forums about gun control?
• Provide monetary help to the family of the victims who are still searching for words to let the world know how invaluable their loss is?
• Get back to life and hope this never happens to you in the future.

The options are either lame or only addresses towards self-enrichment. 

May be a true contribution comes from finding opportunities to burn the possibilities of another disaster of this kind. How do we do it? One way is to get back to basics and live the life you are taught to live. 

Love and Respect

May be if we show love and respect to fellow people, the possibilities of another psychopath in the making is much less. 

I always feel that as humans the respect that we have for one another are often under expressed or taken for granted. Treat each other not with the respect that they deserve but with the respect they need and always a lot more than what you can provide. 

Show love on all occasions. Not like in a Bollywood movie or a chick flick, but the way you glorify the respect you have on that person. You are not expected to be in the line of fire and throw rose petals, but do all it takes to stop the line of fire! 

People are different and they are designed to be that way. Every human being in this world has something to offer, if you cannot find it please do not discard the person's ability/need to be around you. 

Responsibility

You personally have the responsibility for peace and harmony around you. Just like how you do not want to be in a noisy pub when you have a splitting headache, you do not want to be in an environment that harbors violence even in the smallest sense. 

If you see a deviation from a normal behavior, first it’s your responsibility to address that and in case that fails it needs to be taken to the next level. May be a parent, may be a teacher, may be another friend who understands the person better can provide the help to nip this in the bud and address it the way it supposed to be. 

Do you think there is really only one person behind the killings of Newtown? Every single person who has contributed to the breeding of such a mindset is responsible. The “friends” who ignored, the “mother” who did not see this and provided the means in her home, the “community” that failed to address, the possible side effects of “medication” and the list goes on…. The damage is done by one and the tragedy is recorded in the books of horror. 

What is your contribution to make sure that these kinds of tragic events does not happen again around you or anywhere else?

- A frustrated common man

Coming Soon

I will have to Apologize for the Hibernation.

Lost in translation I should say...

For the very few constant visitors... Here is the time train...

Graduated ...Employed...Tennesseed...Married...Will be Coming soon...With a new post as well!

Feels Good to be here...!

Will write soon...Thanks for all the appreciation/motivation.

Earliest Thought Pictured!

A few days ago, I was reading this book from a reasonably popular and young author who irked this thought

“What is the earliest memory of your own life that you can picture?”

I have never thought about it before and I should say the process of tracing back to the first picture on your mental albom is quite an interesting one. It is pretty much similar yet amazingly different from what you would do with your digital images! As you rewind, the pixel count decreases analogous to your memory…you finally end up in scanned versions in your computer and here you scan your entire memory to get oldest versions from your hidden folders!

It could be different to you, but for me I could not say that I have this one particular moment I can trace back to. It would probably because the brain does not have the ability to correlate the earliest memory with my age and hence it is a little vague on the time line. So, I am still not in great understanding on which one was the earliest as far as the occurrence is concerned.

So I looked back! These are the ones that came to my mind!

1. My Grandfather walking inside my aunt’s place as I was running around the house
2. My father walking in from Tirupathi after his tonsure!
3. Me giving a yellow rose to my kinder garden teacher, telling her that I got her the yellow rose because I knew she would be wearing a yellow saree that day (the flirt).
4. Getting dressed up and going to school in my good old blue and white uniform.
5. Letting my kinder garden girl friend Sujatha carry my backpack and lunch bag holding my hands and take me to our reserved corner of the classroom!

I don’t have any memory of me being a kid sitting on someone’s lap as they feed me dinner! I don’t have any memory of anyone putting me to sleep in my crib. No memory of those kinds whatsoever!

I wonder why? May be I was too young to register anything. So, when do one start to register something in the infinite memory space!

What is so special about these memories I listed above is that it still hangs in there as opposed to the other pictures that I fail to recover? I thought about them, and ofcourse I found the reasons for all of them being there, as it holds their unique importance, which is certainly of no interest to you as a reader. However, I can certainly see myself thinking about my current present later in the future trying to capture them as pictures! If you were to do it …what would linger in your mind and why? If we do find an answer to that question are we currently justifying the respect we would give to that memory years later by living it or are letting it pass as one of those moments that we would never be able picture!?

If you still have not short listed who are the possible authors who might have irked this….ask me or read the post again with your eyes open for the clue!

The Hindu

After a while...(or may be it was not that long ago) I am going to complain!

I think I have mentioned this in one of my earlier posts; it’s about the obsession on a few websites that almost every one of us has… to begin the day with. It’s like morning business…. If you skip it…you have a day ahead that you would not want to handle. I was reading one of those websites this morning and realized that there used to be days where we would fight for the morning-few-minute-glimpse of “The Hindu”. If you are one of those who have the privilege of calling yourself a Mylaporeian…I guess you could relate to this much better. Nevertheless, it is probably the case with a whole lot of people who were a part of the newspaper generation in South India. The same fights have been for a lot other newspapers as well and even for the Tamil/English magazines that come with that. The fight has been with parents, siblings, and even with Roomies! It was not one of the cute fights you would see in movies, this one is filled with blood baths, mean remarks and profanities running all over the place! I have witnessed respects shattering on these kinds of fights.

Jokes apart!

May be I was busy graduating, but suddenly I realize that I have survived, I repeat survived, the last few years of my life without taking a glimpse of the newspaper. Now, this is certainly for people who agree that reading news from the website is not an equivalent replacement to the raw newspaper. Call me green-un-conscious or digitally challenged or from the generation stubborn or whatever, I really don’t have an ear for it. The feeling of waking up with a laptop is no way nearer to the one I got with the newspaper.

Of course, I get to read the newspaper even now, almost every day. Is it as exciting as it was from a normal paper format?

Hell NO.

Yes, I know that they do have an e-paper, which btw I tried…. but for some reason…I could probably say that I felt similar to playing book cricket on a 5 ‘0 clock Madras evening.

With the digital revolution et al, I guess its time to quit complaining and move on. We are at the age when news comes to your pillow side on your mobile. Pick that up and get the news. You really don’t have the time to get up early and read the newspaper in and out with the morning coffee and breakfast with your best friend by your side, before you get to work/school. I am sure you would rather appreciate the few minutes of sleep that you get in the morning because of your long phone conversation with the same best friend the previous night after postponing that for a few months, who btw is miles apart cribbing about the same thing.

I have started to appreciate James Cameroon’s hidden/obvious message in The Terminator more and more now a days.

I guess I am trying to say I miss the raw version of “The Hindu”, trust me it is not easy to find a replacement.

What way?

Recently, most of my work-time is spent in Lake Jackson, TX. A small town few miles south of Houston. It is quite an interesting place which offers limited entertainment and a lot of workime. So apart of getting some work done, I get to move around and know this place a little better as well. Following is a excerpt from one of the few interesting conversations happened here a few weeks ago....

"So..Anyways... you getting some work done?"

"Always" I said. "How do I get to Subway?"

"If you get past this way and that way...."

I was trying to look at what she was pointing.....and was puzzled quite a bit! mainly because she was not point at anything.

"Excuse me?"

"Yeah...if you get past this way and that way..." and she lost me right there....

What the heck...is she trying to make fun of me or am I hearing Chinese...

I pulled myself together and asked her..."Where are you pointing at?...I can't understand what you are saying....we keep coming in circle ways!"

"Naaa..Naa....not the circle way...I said this way and that way..."

No way!....This is BS...I can't take this anymore..I waved my hands at her...can you atleast see me....Cant you see me looking like a lost child in an Chennai Exhibition!

"Okay...!" and she pulled her map and pointed at something ....and that's when I understood...

She did not mean this way and that way....she meant This way and That way...

"I am sorry...we were going in circle ways..." I said...

"You dont have to go that far...its pretty close to Winding way"

"Anyway I had it for the day...I will rather stay away from this!" :)

"Dont go to Any way it might be far away" she giggled

Lukily someone on the way mentioned that it is not good to park on the Parking way or His way, when you want to go to Subway.

In the end, I said "I am glad there is no way called No way"

From Wikepedia...on Lake Jackson

All streets radiating from downtown end in the word “Way”. Among the
streets are Center Way, Winding Way, Circle Way, and Parking Way. There is an
intersection of two streets named “This Way” and “That Way”. In the same spirit,
a local church near Bess Brannen Elementary placed a small sign in their
driveway named "His Way". You will also find an "Any Way".

Get used to it?

“Did you see Saw?”

“Yeah I saw Saw and it was pretty good….”

“So, if you are in to gory movies you might like this”, he suggested.

Every now and then I go to Hollywood video store to pick up some movies that the store guy suggests. Sometimes it turns out to be good and sometimes a total failure. I stumbled in to Memento like this, and so did I with Little Nicky. The girl who suggested Little Nicky movie to be a hilarious one was real hot…so I had to take it…. needless to say…it was a total failure…

“Yeah…I like gory movies…I will see and let you know how good or bad this is”

“So why do you like gory movies?” a middle aged man with glasses thicker than my eyebrows, jumped right in to the conversation from the next aisle.

“The same reason, why I like movies…may be to see or perceive things that I cannot experience on a personal level”

“This generation of people are so much in to these kind of movies and they increase their tolerance limit”, he shook his head in disdain, “This makes them tolerate bad things that happen around them, the ones they would not have tolerated before! I can give it to you in writing that you would tolerate less violence to you and your community if you have not seen these kind of movies”

Both the store guy and myself did not want to argue/appreciate such a statement/conversation from a person who is visibly frustrated and reasonable sensible…. so we yesed him for a while…maintained his boiling point state…and made the monologue look and sound like a dialogue with one word responses….

Unlike this particular incident where I chose to shut up (which btw is very rare), I like talking to people of this kind. People who let their frustration out and understand time in a generic pattern through their specific experiences. I am not saying am in agreement or disagreement with his piece of thought, yet. All I’m saying is that I appreciate such thought processes that starts from a tinge of personal flavor to a lesson addressing the larger picture. There is always something you learn out of such conversations that stay with you for a longer period of time.

Well, parallel processing of life lessons led me to the point of correlating his thought process to my lifestyle. Not literally though.

Often times I come across circumstances that leads to the point where the answer is “I will get used to it. It’s a matter of time”. My question to myself here is that “Does this really mean anything?”

Why would one have to get used to something that he/she is not comfortable with, in the first place? Why would we have to compromise and reason life by understanding occurrences as a messenger device to learn time and truth?

Of course am talking from the perspective where he/she has enough knowledge to talk about the comfortability level. So the clan, which claims to be uncomfortable without exploring what it is all about, is totally out of the discussion and respect here.

So, when do we pull the plug and say…that’s it …I am moving on …I don’t want this anymore!

Or do we ever say that?

When there is a whole spectrum or right and wrong with great overlaps, calling it quits based on what is right and wrong is nearly impossible at certain circumstances. Also, there are so many things that happen around us that we are not in agreement with. If we rebel everything that we are not comfortable with, we would have to lose all the time rebelling without enjoying what we have. So, it boils down to priorities and on the quality of compromises.

Gandhi insisted in getting used to the process of earning freedom with Ahimsa, but he always rebelled against getting used to the so-called “freedom” we thought we had. I guess you get the point. But how many of us can trust the Gandhi inside you who tells you to get used to something that you are not comfortable with, to reap real benefits later. Can you trust that voice inside you that sometimes has a vision with just guts and instincts? If yes…then for how long? is the question that follows!

On the plane of multiple options, I think life is like playing Rummy. You will have to get used to the first set of cards and look for the right cards that would fill in for a win. If you are not leading anywhere as you lose time, you just have to change the sets you have and create new ones and play them for a win. You may get that old card that would have filled in for win just moments later, but could you do anything about it? Nope. You just respect your decision and move on! And interestingly sometimes you would not play for your own win….and that is the brilliance of understanding this!

On the other hand, when you firmly believe on something for some reason that you personally understand or don’t, you must differentiate it from the rummy kinds, by holding on to it until time proves that you are right always…. or even wrong sometimes… as long as you have the ability to see what you take home when you are right or wrong…I think you are safe minds!

Stuck

Lately, I have been spending quite a bit of my time by myself. The quality(!) time that I have been getting to spend with someone I love (me - as Woody Allen in Annie Hall says) has led me to visualize world from a photographic perspective...I am neither claiming this to be my new found hobby..nor am trying to be an amateur expert...Its just that, sometimes I get to see these places and things that makes me think ...

oh..f&^&...I wish I am a real photographer to capture this in film than in mind... ...

So, in such attempts to capture something’s I have seen with a pinch of crazy thought process.... I am starting an irregular series of posts with pictures and may be some messages...So, here I go, with the first one.

Image source: Picture taken in Quintana beach, TX, 05/05/2008

Staying grounded lets me see the world I conquered and the world that conquered me!

If am not stuck here, may be I would have conquered the rest of the world!

You are welcome to add any quotes to this!