Sometimes I can't believe people want to be friends with me...

...thanks! :)

Hurt

You don’t get to choose if you get hurt in this world, old man, but you do have some say in who hurts you.

I like my choices.

Power and powerlessness

We found ourselves thinking about different types of power today, specifically different ways in which power is held, exercised and experienced. Power that can abuse and stomp out disagreements, , power that concentrates responsibilities with a few so everyone can focus on solely their tasks, power that changes the world every night when you sleep and doesn't let you question why, power that is all about building consensus, interpersonal relationships and group decision-making, power that allows debate to foster but gently nudges towards the right thing by reserving authority. 

A few days back a professor said in class: Power corrupts, but perhaps, powerlessness corrupts even more. The conversation then was about examining what people might be willing to do and what personal values they may be willing to sacrifice when they feel helpless and powerless. Driven to the edge with defensiveness, most people will resort to one or more of anger, violence, crime, defensiveness and non co-operation. Needless to say, that is an avoidable situation for everyone concerned. With that background, I found myself wondering about the responsibility of power and those who have it to use it judiciously, in a way that's better for many more than it's worse, in a way that makes those without not feel excluded, in a way that provides direction and peace instead of pushing people into chaos. 

Most leaders - and many of us aspiring leaders - have a high need for achievement, an affinity for power and an eagerness for responsibility. Even if we didn't reach out for it, we wield some form of power in certain contextual settings. And on the other hand, almost all of us as human beings can identify with feeling helpless, almost outraged, in one sphere or the other of our existence, which may or may not be personally very relevant. We definitely have a responsibility to acknowledge and examine our power, the way we exercise it, and the impact it has.

I hate timezones

Why couldn't the world be one small, flat, uniform place?  

ज़िन्दगी भर तुमको चाहा , चाहेंगे तुमको ही

पर है कसम किसी और ज़िन्दगी में चाहेंगे तुमको नहीं

(to be continued)

Adjectives

Life doesn't care about adjectives. At best, a handful of adjectives in some permutation manage to closely describe one narrative of life as it has already taken place. But strictly only the past. Because the present is unfathomable - we being too busy trying to live it or survive it to even try understanding it. And the future, well, the future is the tricky mistress. It tempts you to dream, to paint a picture, to sandbox and call it a variety of adjectives - how things will be. But life carelessly, nonchalantly but almost deliberately brushes them aside and paints its own version of the future. By the time you finish grappling with it and are able to begin comprehending it, comparing it to your imagination, you realise how shallow it was compared to the depth of reality. You also realize how brutal reality is, and how life couldn't care less about the adjectives it was supposed to conform to. Maybe it throws a moment or two here and there to humor you, but the palate of life's art is too complex for us to label with mere names of colours.

Adjectives, you're more or less useless.

Change is a good thing

Change is a good thing.
What makes it hard is not the change itself, but our tendency to want to hold on to the unchanged
We resist, often illogically, to move away from how things "used to be" even if the past seemed highly imperfect and dissatisfying at the time when it was the present. It feels comforting, I guess, to hang on with screeching tooth-nails to the familiar, when facing the unknown.

I think we would do well to remember that "change is a good thing", because it is inevitable anyway. And because it is less work flowing with the current than trying to unsuccessfully swim against it.

Just saying.

Forever

I wrote your name
In my palm,
Everyday, until
it dissolved and wrote itself
Permanently
In the lines of my fate
Until, your name
Became my name
Until, it became
my fate.

So now, can I stop?
Is the pursuit really over?
Will you stay, like your name,
in my life
Forever?

Saans

Woh jo jalte hain chilman
Chiragon mein tumhare
Agan unko hamari aahon se mili hai

Ye jo barasti hai tumhare aangan mein barkha
Boondein use hamari aankhon se mili hai

Yoon to hum jal lete, ta-umr,
Aashiyan ko tumhare roshan rakhne - par afsos

Yeh jo ruk rahi hain, ab tak hamesha
Meri saans humein tumhari saanson mein mili hai

Words

Words are such disloyal friends. They have this stupid tendency to desert you just when you need them. They just run and hide somewhere in the folds of chaotic waves inside you, no matter how much you cry for them. They know they're there, they know what they mean and they know they're needed to stop things going astray, but they wouldn't arrive. Worse, they'd often send some foreign cousins of theirs to cover up- other words that have no clue what's going on and have no business showing up. And you're left cleaning behind the mess they make. Such disloyal friends.

And then, there are other times. When a truth, a forbidden feeling, an honest confession just appears from somewhere inside you. Words suitably accompany and just pour out of you, like they suddenly hate you and cannot stay inside any longer. And so you say stuff, out loud, stuff that leaves you defenceless and exposed. But the listener doesn't care. He's somewhere else, engrossed in some other words. He listens, he reads - probably - and he ignores. And you're left alone, vulnerable, staring at the vomit of stupid unrestrained words spread on the floor. Wondering whether you're not worth it or your feelings are meaningless. Or whether, words are being disloyal friends to your listener, abandoning him, leaving him speechless and unresponsive, when he really just wants to tell you how much your words mean to him.

Such disloyal friends.