Tsunami!

Tsunami strikes!

It was 26th Dec 6.03 am when my brother reached me through the Bell mode of communication all the way from Chennai to let us know that everyone was doing fine! Till then I was never aware of the disaster! The place it ripped apart was one of the most popular ones from my childhood memory...had spend thousands of hours as a cricketer, ornithologist, philosopher reinventing myself in different phases of life!! Never in my wildest dreams I expected this!

One of my friends who is now serving the Chennai community with some welfare organization, emailed to let us know that they found more than 50+ dead bodies in less than a hour within a 100 m radius! Now when I read and hear stories like that Nagapatinam- the mass burial ground, people with unidentifiable dead bodies, my heart pounds with frustration on this mass money making attitude of ours and the stay away from people who needs help and support in their worst instances of life and life after!! Do we have a choice…probably we do!

At this stage, all we can do is a couple of teardrops and a card swipe to welfare organizations, and hope that everyone who survived contributes something for a better World ahead!

Are we behind “Money”??

For international graduate students in the US!!

Right from the moment we made the decision (!) of studying abroad and making a decent (which is mostly defined on a monetary basis) living for ourselves, the numero-uno motivation factor was "Money”. The question to be answered now is: Are we going too much behind it? The life that most of us lead now is like an arranged marriage, where you accept what you have (or going to have) before knowing or getting what you like or want. Shouldn’t we be motivated by factors like peace, love etc instead of Money? Is it too matured a thought or is it just another issue that we fear to explore? In the past years of accomplishments in academics, career and in telephone bills, almost none of us are exploring the fact that we are object oriented? Or Money based? Higher education and self-realization have honed the reasoning skills of every graduate student. We are now perfectly learning and reasoning the life backward but forgetting to live it forward. Of course one such vision of learning it backward gave birth to this thought.

A typical international graduate student's (exceptions are not examples) target is to finish his/her grad school, find a job, bring his/her parents, get married, stay healthy and of course diversify their career options (which most of them don’t see now). If this is something that one wants to do, it is definitely not driven by their very own thoughts alone, the influences of the people around them is almost 90% (says god-knows-what journal). Just because an Indian looks happy with all these doesn’t mean that it’s the best algorithm. Of course this is sufficient to lead an ordinary life with less satisfaction and mediocre money. Is this what you really want? Most of us are motivated towards that point without knowing what we will and will not achieve by doing so.

We have heard about people who are working in places, which are associated with danger both legally as well as physically. Is this the reason for their existence here? A graduate student who makes more money working in a gas station will obviously be motivated to own one in days to come! Rather than following the heart that brought him/her in! In this process the student would lose his/her pride, brain, passion as a researcher, desire and finally end up making money and losing peace. Is this what you call reinvention? For some reason some of us have found peace in money. We work so hard in making money that we don’t have time to spend it. Some of us work hard (before and after we graduate) and send a meager percentage of that money to parents and people back home. What’s the point if we are not there to share the happiness? And if you do some math, you will know that the same support could have been extended right from there. As a matter of fact, you would have possibly done it with better credit history and more happiness!

There are some things money can’t buy. For everything else we have master card! Of course we do, sometimes we use that dangerous card to buy something and fail to realize what we are supposed to earn with it. What you earn from those small gifts that you send home is the happiness in their faces and lives. And the best part is that you can’t be enjoying it with them, because you are too busy paying the card bills or making money for it here!
Why are we doing this? Cant we just stay there and be with them and realize the happiness instead of finding out a reason for our existence here! Yes! Some of us are still attempting to find a reason for our very existence here. Why are we here? Are we justifying our stay-away from the people we love the most?

There is certainly an exponential increase in our reasoning skills and exposure by staying here. But how does it matter if you are not thinking bigger than the box. Great personalities in this world have sacrificed one thing or the other in their life to reach that level. Are we sacrificing family and peace to achieve something really huge in life? If so what is that? Have you ever asked this question to yourself?

Character- influence of society

Everyone’s character develops as we grow. One of the main factors that influence this development is the society. Why does society play such an important role in that development? If a person is locked for life without any of the external influence, will he/she be the purest of all? The chances are pretty high - “ignorance is bliss”. Jiddu Krishnamurthy claims that the tendency of the human brain to record previous disturbances, hurt, anger love etc., is the main reason for chaos in the society. If the brain is formatted in such a way that it has only short term memories, then the chances of getting hurt due to prejudiced thoughts are very less. A brain with a short term memory will cause less damage than the one which remembers every bit of its proceeding. An enclosed being will have very less thoughts due to lack of knowledge, but knowledge is power…! The brain has to know before it can react! So if we gain knowledge from society we will obviously be influenced by it. How strong is this influence? The social influence should lead us to the path towards truth with lots of perceptional derivatives! Whatever the way it is, one has to make sure that the influence in the later part of the development should not change the fundamental character that was spoon fed by the loved ones.

To write to cherish to learn

The tendency of the human mind (or heart) is to unwrap the wrapped, unlock the locked, unpack the packed and reveal those mysteries lying under the veneer of false personification! So if you are thinking you would encounter any of my personal secrets here, I am sorry folks you are in a wrong place...! Words are the best way to express...every being in this world has learnt to communicate...so why not do it with your own “self"!

According to me...the most difficult thing to comprehend is one's "self". Writing is one of the ways of exploring "self". I started writing diaries and journals to increase my vocabulary...but when I read them back...the thoughts reflected my personality then....! It was amazing to witness the change in the thought process....10 years from now my philosophies and ideologies that I have framed for my own self would have changed based on experience....but it would be great to read how I was and how time, people and world has changed and influenced my so called thought process!

So here am starting to write my own philosophies...my own ideal ways of thinking ...may be its completely different from your vision ....but to reach ideality one has to know what it is...so jump in and pour in your thoughts! Discuss, argue, learn and teach me!