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February 28 Silver Lined HeartI've been extremely lazy for the last few months and hiding under the time-tested excuse of being busy. I wonder where the inspiration to share my thoughts with the world (well, whatever part of the world that actually reads my blog!) and pouring my heart out has disappeared.
A close friend forwarded this poem and it hit home so I thought I'll indulge in some plagiarism and post it on my blog. If nothing else, hopefully it would inspire me to come back and update this blog with something original. Till then, read this slowly and let it sink in...
Silver-Lined Heart By Taylor Mali I’m for reckless abandon Raise an unexpected glass to long, cold winters Here’s to the soul-expanding power See, things you hate, things you despise, But as far as what soothes me, what inspires and moves me, That’s why I’m for best friends, long drives, and smiles, The solution to every problem usually involves some kind of liquid, I’m for crushes not acted upon, for admiration from afar, I’m for evolution more than revolution I’m for the courage it takes to volunteer, to say “yes,” “I believe,” and “I will.” So don’t waste my time and your curses on verses March 10 love, arranged or arranged love marriage???a recent conversation with some friends made me think about the beaten-to-death topic - what is an arranged marriage? how can someone have an arranged marriage? do arranged marriages exist in the 21st century? anyone from India who has discussed the topic of marriage with their friends would know what i'm talking about.
it is very difficult for some of my friends & colleagues (especially in US) to understand the concept of arranged marriages - how can you get married to someone your parents introduce you to? how can you get married to someone you haven't been going around with for a while? how can you get married to someone you are not in love with? how can you get introduced to someone to get married???
most of my friends have had "love" marriages and then there are some who have had "arranged" marriages - if i didn't tell you who had which, you wouldn't be able to make out just by meeting them. there are cases of happy and not-so-happy marriages, regardless of how the guy n gal met. there are cases when a guy n gal met on their own and "fell in love" and decided to get married in a few weeks/months. then there are those that were introduced by their parents and "fell in love" and decided to get married in a few weeks. does it then matter how you got introduced? can't parents be like any other friends who introduce you to cool (well almost) people to meet and hook up with? i agree that when parents introduce you to someone, there are extra levels of screening much like your good friends would do when they introduce you to new friends ... ok ok i might be pushing it a little too far with this ... but you get the point.
gone are the days (at least in urban india) where your parents decide who you get married to and you just show up for your wedding. you get to meet your "would be" better-half and decide if he/she is the "one". the time window to make up your mind is usually smaller than what you would have if you were meeting people on your own without family pressure but apart from that, is the process really all that different? if "love at first sight" is true, then falling in love is time-independent process. and if it is not true, then you really need to spend lot and lots of quality time with someone to "fall" in love anyway. the concept of love is overrated anyway but i'll keep that discussion for my next post...
so, the million dollar question is - is there a difference between "love" marriages and "arranged" marriages? have modern-day arranged marriages just morphed in to "arranged-love" marriages with better pre-screening? Remember - Match.com has a paid feature for doing that ... your parents just do it for free ... and arguably do a better job at it. <flame mails can be sent to idontcare@gmail.com>
after much contemplation and after long discussions with the wise, the answer appeared to me. the much anticipated answer and one that is contrary to my arguments above, is - yes, there is a difference! confused? read on...
at least in the context of indian marriages, there is a big difference between love and arranged marriages - if you can blame your parents for your marriage, it is an arranged marriage. if not, then you had a love marriage and you gotta take the blame for it!
this definition seems to work quite well for most people i know - what do YOU think?
p.s. as this has become an FAQ - NO, i'm not getting in to a love or an arranged marriage anytime soon. May 29 Sikhism - Faith not ReligionMy first ever "contribution" to all the material available on internet was a very modest website that I created on Sikhism. The site had a collection of stuff I had happily stolen er... sorry, borrowed from other sources. <Hey, I was 14 then and those were the days of 28.8K modems!!!> The only thing original was an article that I wrote to argue that Sikhism is not a religion as the term religion is understood today - it is a way of life and it is a faith. Anyway, this post is not about my website, my article or how I define "religion".
I was going through some websites of free thinkers and atheists, when I came across this very interesting email that was posted on one of the websites. The excerpt from the mail below is a conversation between Dr John Smith (Atheist Society US & author of The Theory of Evolution) and Ali Sina (the ex-Muslim behind the website www.faithfreedom.org). I did some basic research to make sure that these people do exist but I don't really care if this is a true email or not. What I care about is the fact that this email summarizes some very basic facts about Sikhism quite well. After reading this excerpt, I felt a sense of pride in who I am and my decision to be who I choose to be. So, check out this email:
Dear Ali, Please help us. We were very impressed with your website and agreed that religion in general is no longer needed. We can all be humanistic and live in peace and harmony. We are in the process of making a website which will hopefully help to destroy the religious doctrines which divide humanity. We were doing great with knocking out Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Baha'i, [and] even Buddhism but we have gotten very stuck with Sikhism. This religion is (to put it nicely) "a big pain in the back-side" (Please pardon the language). We have only found one site, which tries (very poorly) to argue that even this religion is not needed. But the argument is irrational and very unscientific unlike the very rational arguments you use. When we read the following from your website, we found what you said to be amazingly interesting: "Doubt Everything Find Your Own Light."
Please bear in mind that Bertrand Russell was a great philosopher and free-thinker. We have been trying for weeks now to find a way to fairly and rationally criticize and find fault with this religion but have failed. We even found out that there are many people converting to this religion in the USA and Europe as well as Russia (mostly well educated and affluent white people). We tried to find some of their literature and see what kind of claims they make, but unfortunately they have no missionary material as they do not have missionaries! People become Sikh by learning usually by chance or by coming in to contact with them. They are currently the 5 th biggest religion in the world and growing quite fast in the west and Russia. Please help us as we are stuck to give you examples of [what] they are all about. We found the following websites: http://www.sikhnet.com (this is a pretty good site and helpful); http://www.hope.at/sikhism (this site is very easy to follow. Check it out. They have a Woman's section and a Martyrs section. It looks like that you are not the only one trying to expose the falseness of Islam, Sikhs scholars did it hundreds of years ago and got killed for it!); and http://www.sikhs.org (this is the site that was on CNN when Sikhs in the USA were mistaken for Arabs and Middle Easterners and were attacked by mindless morons).Please help us out, we can't make our website about religion being the cause of war and disharmony when we have this one and only religion which makes a hell of a lot of sense! Lol. (I thought Atheism had all the answers but we're kind of stuck now.) We look forward to hearing from you. We respect your great views and want to promote them to everyone. Thank you for your time. Take care. Dr. John Smith May 27 God is crazy about you...Yes, you read the title correctly - God is crazy about you!
Seriously, just think about it:
This is better than any relationship I have ever had
January 29 sideline or the play-field?i just got back after watching the new amir khan movie - rang de basanti ... based on the movie promos, we went in with the expectation that it'll be another "chilled out" flick like one of his previous movies - dil chahta hai and the first half of the movie did live up to that expectation (for the hardcore movie critics - yes, i do have more tolerance for over-dramatized situational comedy).
the story in the second half of the movie changed quite dramatically and to a topic that is very close to my heart - why do most of us spend our lives making compromises and not change the things we don't like? why do we accept things for how they are but not people for who they are? why don't we fight to change things? can we even change them? can we make a difference? can individuals make a difference or does it have to be god-sent messiahs that can change this world?
the movie might be a bit over-dramatized but it does drive the point home - it is easy to sit on the sideline and complain about things that are broken in this game called life but it takes real heroes to jump in to the field and fix them. and the best part - these heroes are ordinary people who choose to do extra-ordinary things when others don't.
i really don't know what drives these ordinary people to sacrifice everything - love, family, friends, life ... how can they believe in something so much that nothing else matters? and for what? i know that real heroes don't get rewarded in real life (at least in the worldly sense)... is there some reward waiting for them in the other world - the life after or the next life? these are some of the questions i grapple with and i'm not sure if i'll be able to answer these in this lifetime...
but every so often i come across a book, movie, song, quote or a person that gets me closer to the answer. jonathan livingston seagull was my first such step in this direction and ever since i have been fortunate enough to find more stepping stones... this movie turned out to be another. it helped me get one more step closer to the answers i've been seeking for almost forever...
more than these questions, what i really think about is - will i spend my life on the sideline or will i actually jump in to the play-field? will i ever find the one thing i believe in with all my heart that will push me in to the fight? what will that be? will that be my "purpose" in life? the very purpose i've been searching for ever since i can remember the definition of the word purpose...
while i mull over these thoughts, i'll sign-off on this blog post with a salute to the people who step up to the challenge and make the world a better place to live in for the rest of us...
God Bless Them! January 12 It's all about ATTITUDEWith every passing day, I believe more and more in the role of attitude in one's life.
Attitude to me is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than success, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearances or skill. More and more successful and happy people I see and observe, the more I'm convinced that ATTITUDE is what makes all the difference. The funny thing is that our attitude (and hence our success/joy) is actually in our hands - we make a choice everyday regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past...we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one thing WE can control and that is our ATTITUDE...
I am convinced that life is 1% what happens to me and 99% how I react to it. At the end of the day, it's all about ATTITUDE...
<i actually woke up in the middle of the night to write this.... boy, i'm losing it!!!> |
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