Life within

Every new learning brings along a feeling of being energized and a feeling of growth and its amazing to feel good for yourself with a bit of progress you achieve every time.

I have been for some time now being keenly interested in people growing around me. Peoples growth in their beliefs, evolving in their thinking patterns, having a sense of way ahead in life in context of the way they look at their life and easing themselves expressing close held worries, fears, insecurities, inadequacies and sometimes its surprising that many of us also hold back joys. Sounds strange, strange it is.

For some time now I have realised, that I need interactions outside my immediate circle of reference to experience diversity to swim out of my own pond and experience the harshness of the sea and in the process both bring in new energies to my own circle of reference and a sense of realisation and growth for self. When I say so I do not take my own pond for granted but I guess I would want my pond to have routs and ways to navigate away and back.

With people another source for immense inspiration for me has been the nature and the out door. Might sound a bit old school but I feel I have always learnt a lot in life form nature and that space is close to my heart and will always be.

After a long long time (years don’t matter just that it seems really long is good enough) an amazing amalgamation of both my experiences and process of growth with people and the nature amalgamated for me. For me it was both very curious and an anxious moment. Cause though I had looked at both the facets closely in my own life, was a bit nervous about its culmination.

But after the experience something amazing happened. It brought back my old self the positivity back to me. It took me back to my sense of people being people with out any color or shade. Also experiences of others around me got me in touch with how this has been so integral part of me and my being and my growth as person. It feels like taking a step ahead.

Metaphorically the nature out their also welcomes you without conditions and smiles back to say hey! no rules will apply. May be I can go on and on this. But what really has come to me is the sense of comfort with uncertainty and preparedness to take up things with a need of design without being fanatic about it.

Like nature invited me and everyone around to be spontaneous and took care without making much noise. Also This experience was an amazing melody of both high and low notes with just experiences with self and the feeling of togetherness, the sense of achievement and a feeling of breaking up. As I write this I feel mostly it might sound like cliché but what really happened is I Experienced life and got in touch with Life within me.

NUDE CLOTHES AND SEXUALITY

Today on CNNIBN in one of their surveys about women and … I really don’t know what the focus was as it was neither seemed leadership nor violence as the focus.

Though what caught my attention in the burred repetition of debate, was the use of phase women wearing ‘nude clothes’ by the ex-member of National commission of women (hey! We are so special we have a commission for ourselves), my immediate reaction was alright!

Till date the debate was women wearing or not wearing clothes, or how much was the talk of the town and it made some sense not as a debate but at least it builds up logic. But what does it mean by nude clothes, either the person has to be nude or wearing clothes or if the person is wearing clothes she/he can not be nude, simple logic right!

Wrong! The objection is really to clothes being metaphor of being expression of women’s sexuality. Does that mean that women who do not let their skin show have no sexuality? All those who ask such questions and are bothered about issues so narrow I feel are too unsecure of change, expressions an need help.

For me sexuality goes beyond what I wear, the texture of the cotton I wear, the print on the cloth and the color of the cloth, the border of the cloth, the fragrance of the drape. It is for me so beautiful that the even the fragrance of my hair would exhumes ones sexuality, the pen I use the color of my pen the stationary I chose, the wall paper of my laptop all is extension and expression of my sexual being.

The problem is looking at sexuality only form the glass of lust and not beauty, expression, space, freedom and much more.

I am not a sexist and nor a feminist but I would like to believe that I am very sexually aware of myself and would be happy to have space for expression.

Life is beautiful

Never though, living life can be quite a thing. Very often an expression like -What a life! Quite a life! Such a life! Spurts up in our expressions, but right now I feel I am in the most amazing phase of my life.

To begin with I am feeling good that after a long time I am back to feeling self; a feeling of ‘right now’ is the best time in my life. Kind of had started missing that feeling for a while now, it feels like back in driver’s seat in your own life.

What is amazing though is a big difference that I experience in the way I looked at life. I realise I was in many ways kind of passing by in my life journey without experiencing life, like passing though a zone with just having a look around and being amused not experiencing it, not interacting with it. Like walking through this tunnel of aquarium and not being in the sea.

It’s kind of quite over whelming too much to take and still leave on. But in all this what is amazing is really experiencing each challenge to self and to others around, experiencing and not be an on looker. Play a role when needed and that to always aware of uncertainty of weather need to do so or not, or would it be over stepping or required.

A lot of time it is such an amazing life expressing to keep self assessing but also not to get driven and become ‘Zombi’ in this analytical world. Also just letting oneself go. Ya! I know sounds like too much; I guess that is my reason of writing this blog. This discovery of life I owe to many who accompanied and will always be their in my life journey not as long as I want bust as long as they choose.

I guess this is one reality to which I have embraced its amazing, I have realised I need to be aware and conscious as I act but also -just be and even after facing all these challenges and expressing my self all I can only choose and do what I decide to and be comfortable with people being people and react as they want.

It’s a creative network of overlapping spaces like the vines of the creeper overlap as they grow; all exist and grow on, take their own spaces and create and give spaces.

Indeed life is beautiful

I dedicate this bog to my father, my Baba.

Energies are like ‘Snow Globe’

Hey guys don’t be surprised I also did not know its called show globe, But yes I am talking about the Christmas toy, which when you shake up the snow flake seems to keep falling all the time.

Some time back I was talking to some one and I used the phrase ‘draw energies’ from … Something about it did not give me a very good feeling. The word drawing sounded like extraction.

I wanted to look back at my own life experiences, where in I am a source of initiating the energy circuit flow. One, for sure I feel this would necessarily not be an expression I would want others to use for me. But more precisely I was at ease with a feeling that it’s not a draining process for me it also energises me. But the expectation of always being the source of energy can for sure be draining.

At another point as I was in a process of looking at my own energies and the energies around when the metaphor of ‘Snow Globe’ struck me. It a sealed space, where in there is nothing added or reduced, Just like the energies of the world around. (Don’t be dreamy! I am not sure if I men cosmic, I am more grounded) I mean energies among us you and I.

Its such a unconscious process where in a casual talk, a chat with a friend completely meaningless, a Childs sharing of his/ her fun and exploration, a look, a touch, anything around you has potentials of giving energies like the flowing water in the Globe with two colors when you shake, it just livens up the globe and each module of it then goes back.

Yes so if you exhume (is it a correct usage, any way) energy organically it will come back to you form the same person or some where else but it’s always in motion moving. When it does not reach back you feel a temporary moment of depletion and low on energy, till it reaches again.

Sometimes you are in a still snow globe where you do not feel any motion or movement, but I guess the best part of the Real show globe in which we are, are like modules floating in water with permeable skins and not ‘sealed’ so if you do not get energies from the snow globe you are in you have an opportunity of relating to another snow globe.

Hmmmmm! That makes me think is the world around us which we think is ‘our’ world a snow globe or we as individuals are then a Snow globe in ourselves.

……………………

Bombay a Story

After a very long time a couple of days back i took my chance of being a traveler with no specific purpose or objective into a place not much know or familiar. Though i have always preferred the greens and the wilderness as my thing to explore this time i chose a completely different destination.

A city bursting with people, every one in his or her own mind involved in a world in a way very personal to all. Sill lot and secluded form most things happening around. I had a 10 MPS 15X lance in my cam but just could not click picks felt like would intrude on to some one. It was amazing being in different locations form Malad to south Bombay to the campus of one of the best know colleges to government building and many more, though the most interesting of all i found were the streets of Bombay. It was a life and experience in itself.

It was such an amazing thing to see that the city pushes you to the brink and situation where in you are just a nut and bolt of the metros machine but that in a way also makes or helps people explore life where ever they are. A lot of our Indian picks have used statements like 'there is a story behind every face...'

For once i was not over whelmed by the city, nothing much bothered me i was much at peace enjoying my experience as a traveler. It for me was a experience of being lost but also relating with people on impulse.

One experience though i would put at as top of these couple of days experience was a a Irani tea stall. I was served by a a very interesting youth, who dosen't seem to ask questions about the realities he is in, dosen't complain and was so much in sink with himself and his realities, extending his SELF to customers reaching out without any surety 'how the other will react to me' this was something remarkable and made me think and explore what in him makes him go so easy on/in life. Ya! there might be deeper stories behind him, but here at work in this place he know its a different life space and looking at him a thought struck me and i feel that is my learning form this life experience and this experience with Bombay - Here you have to FEEL A WORLD ABOUT YOUR SELF TO BE IN THIS WORLD. And i guess that is what i take form this trip of mine.

Thanks to him :)

Do you know how many times you breathe….

No this has nothing to do with the science or metabolism or any thing you though of. This is where I slowly feel we might move.

At first amused by the kind of data government has of the population, of the natural resources, the kind of data every day the Indian bureaucracy generates in terms of communication, who came how many times to a particular office to …

Then the Research institutes for its research maintains some amazing data, we have all kind of research institutes the perfect sciences, the imperfect sciences, the management and so on and so forth

Followed by Voluntary sector trying its hands at research, though there have been some amazing efforts at it to help them feed into the advocacy of their issues.

This then followed by the advertising and the news agencies made fun of also in many spoofs with the kind of questions they pose.

I just though of writing this because a realisation of growing madness of data generated with out thinking made me claustrophobic of the kind of information and data we are maintaining of the current civilization as if every single thing done in today’s time can be found maintained in some data where. The question is what are we doing about it, do we stop, ask ourselves and just look around or just keep seeing though the tunnel vision and churn out report after report, idea after idea of research.

As if not to be surprised if you walk out of your house tomorrow and someone asks you ‘how many times do you breath in a day?’…………….(The over kill)

Changing hoardings on the roads…

I guess there is not too much to blog about this one just a thought. With the on going recession as it slowly hit India and now it is making lives difficult. But in all this I saw recession coming in through the ‘hoardings’. As I am often driven ;-) I would like to look around and since the recession and markets have been affected over and above the going up prices what I watched was ‘vanishing’ hoardings.

It was first one out of 5 hoardings going blank, then it grew to two toady in a stretch of 5 kms in the city one can at least count 25 hoardings blank some also without the hording companies number, telling us advertisers are not even looking at them.

In all this one fine Saturday morning as we stopped by the traffic signal a group of chirpy teen age children caught our attention. As if one had to be blind to see them. The were standing right before the traffic waiting at signal with Traffic rules related couplets all smiling at the innocent ‘power’ they enjoyed of taking control of traffic minding a few of us.

In their had I was presently happy to see the ‘New hoardings’ for once not over the top, for once not very glamorous, but funny and fingering our conscious.

A funny thought occurred to me are the hoardings of commerce giving way to hoardings of consciousness…..?