What it takes to be Dhoni

It takes power to dream something incogitable, and then it takes a Dhoni to accomplish it. In a country where cricket is more sensitive than the religious hysteria it has, it takes a Dhoni to command.  No one can deny that he is a tough man, who has shown calm and composure in the times when zillions had chill running down their spines even with the thought of being in his situation. No matter how tough the situation could be, it takes a Dhoni to come out of that situation. It takes nerves of steel to be unruffled, when a billion people have put their hopes on you and then finish things off with a style.  I will join #Gavaskar in what he said, “When I die, the last thing I want to see is the six that Dhoni hit in the 2011 World Cup final." When the whole country goes frenzy in a stream of madness, when everybody in the team is yelling with joy, it takes Dhoni to accept the win with a simple smile. He gave new limits to the definition of coolness. It takes a sensational style to be Dhoni.

It is pointless to count what he achieved for himself and the country, what matters is how he achieved. Everybody will turn into a psychoanalyst and there will be swarms of analysis coming out about his behavior and reasons for retirement. There will always be theories and conspiracies cropping from here and there about his retirement, but the man not flinched for so long will be unhindered by the hullabaloo. This is what it takes to be Dhoni, isolated not from the outside world but from within. People will keep on complaining and praising, isolated is one who is neither titillated by the win nor wrecked by the loss. The notion of winning or losing, people cursing or praising becomes secondary and the person becomes legendary.  To remain in the state of Normalcy in all the chaotic situations around is something he mastered. This is what differentiates him from other leaders and this is what it takes to be the skipper.

He retired in his own unpretentious way, without a fuss or buzz about his retirement. He has done everything in style, and retired with a style in 2014 with a day to spare. He will be acknowledged as best controller and remembered as the best finisher of the game. An era of cricket ends...

Am I lost?

They were telling me that I am lost, and that I do not belong to this place, I was a stranger to them, but I was feeling OK. I had no such outlandish feeling as they were suggesting me.

I was in a rarefied tone of euphoric notes. The surroundings never felt so beautiful and liberated. And as always I took some notes. I was walking and traipsing all over the world just to find myself. I was taking notes, the notes of life and making my own indistinct pastiche of experience, joy, laughter, sadness, pain, ecstasy and numerous such feelings which I always denied to sense and express.

I did not understand why they were so concerned about me. Neither was I too concerned about their existence, nor their opinions. But it was definitely disturbing the rapture I was trying to establish. They asked me if I was following my dream? What kind of question was that, it made no sense to me… If they were asking for some practical money making venture, or a ride to follow my passion, I was away from both of those mainline gambles. My dream, like every other young boy, is still that secret wish inside me of turning up into a superhero one day. No matter how eccentric or maybe uncouth it may seem, but that is the only dream I carry and will always carry.

I don’t understand what most people say to me, and that’s why I may seem lost to them. But I am happy being lost, happy being lost in life. The persistent chase of the hope, the perplexed questions of existence, the confounded source of origin, the riven strings of the past and the unfamiliar fears of the future will always keep you in a perpetual state of being lost in life. Being lost is exquisite in itself. The believer in life will always be happy being lost in it. Some people are happy being dissolved in the background, some try to spread out wings and fly and some are happy just being lost. It is perfectly ok if you are not able to connect the dots backwards, maybe you don’t have to connect them. Let them be scattered. Let there be chaos, enigma, mysteries, confusions, disorder in life. These are the charms that will always keep you lost in life.

The only thing that you need to be concerned of is keep moving, no matter what happens, you must not stop the journey. You can rest, because even homer sometimes nods. And always remember that tomorrow might belong to those who plan, but today belongs to those who don’t give a fuck about tomorrow…

The great Indian Spot fixing...

If you are an aware and conscious Indian, you must have realized that we are in a kind of dire situation where all our hopes are dying. The scandals have reached the peak of all times, where the money involved challenges our mathematics skills to count zeros. Cricket fans are feeling like being ripped off their religion. The only thing that used to give calm to the otherwise detested and dejected mind also no longer seems real. Cricketism which was supposed to bring everybody together is facing wrath from its followers.  In a country famous for intellects, Rahul Gandhi is being portrayed as the potential PM candidate. The media is free and yet all rigged and sold. It has become difficult to differentiate between the news channels and the comedy channels, rather comedy channels are losing their TRPs to the news channels. The politicians were never good, accused of rapes, murders, watching porn in assembly, abusing people in public etc. but are becoming worse now. The business is losing ethics.

If you look carefully, then everything seems fixed, with basic driving forces being money and power as always. The cricketers are paid by bookies to perform badly for their own benefits, and the politicians are paid by the businessmen to perform badly again for their own benefits.  And in the end the bookies and businessmen turn out to be the same. The politicians then again take money from these accused businessmen to mould and maul the laws accordingly and save them.  If a politician is caught the others are there to save him. Even the Chief Investigating organization is not free to act. So, the politicians, the journalists, the police, the businessmen, and almost any other authority to serve the people are being paid to perform defectively. The democracy has come to a standstill, and it is fixed too. The alliances of UPA government are fixed to Congress because as soon as they threat to detach, they cause an immediate threat for themselves of being raided and jailed. This whole bloody system has become so complex and convoluted that everyone involved is fixed.

The situation has become so helpless that despite knowing that Congress is living deep in the hole of corruption, people had to vote for Congress in Karnataka because they had no other option. The media was busy luring us with IPL updates when our borders were facing threats from neighbors. The opposition demands just one thing “Resignation”, so that they get their chance in the game. I don’t know if Congress will lure the poor again in the deceit of schemes like Food Security Bill, or people will vote for BJP to get rid of Congress. But I hope in the words of our lyrical PM that “Sitaron se aage jahan aur bhi hai” comes true for Indian people. 

My Evil...

Under the garb of woes alone I perched,

and the lifeless essence was all around,

I wore the robes of dreadful sorrow,

and strolled into the terrain of barren ground,

there was no one there to sit by my side,

with agonizing deceptions and dreariness beside,

I looked upon the lords of good to bestow,

and I waited, waited in the fallow,

till my hopes of good and truth were all but dried.

Upon me, the preachers of good bellowed and howled,
rejected, abandoned and renounced by them,

I wrestled my way through the forces of condemn,

what good this good is for me?

and what this truth has ever brought to me,

but now the hypocrisy of good will come to an end,

and the existence of truth shall be dispelled,

from the abomination of self and abhorrence of all,

eclipsed by the demonic darkness, cold and cries,

my evil shall rise…

The beauty of darkness…

It was a dark starry night. There is an awe and sense of fascination when you are lying down and looking into all those galactic stars. It is not only with me, it is with everybody, when you take a gander at the raving beauty of the star studded sky you get attracted towards it, it draws you towards itself. It will make you fall for it and you will just keep admiring the vastness and perplexity of the night. There is a depth which goes to abyss, and you get involved in finding that confounding deepness.  It has a sense of pacification and stillness that you are always seeking inside you. There is infinitude of emotions which bring peace and calmness to soul. I was also lying there on the ground, taking a shower of this darkness. The darkness was unparalleled. I call it the beauty of darkness. It is mystifying, alluring, captivating, pensive and mesmeric.

The delicacy is in observance. You feel that you are evoking yourself out, there is an exuberance of thoughts that are flowing all over the places near you, but it is the darkness that sublimes them into itself. It not only sublimes them, it gives rest to your thoughts and invites you to fuse in itself. It is so vast and so profound that it gives requiescence to all your mental deliberations and then after sometime all you see is just the dark sky and the stars in it. All the noise in your head starts to fade off and then you hear the loudest sound of all, the Silence. The silence of the darkness is captivating. You reach the stage of stillness. My thoughts were also running berserk, there was a chaos, I don’t know what I was trying to find, but there was something that my mind wanted to bring out. I wanted to bring it out and give it to the darkness. I wanted the darkness to take it away from me, ever and forever.  

The darkness also beholds you; it will take care of you in the times of loneliness. For ages people have been attracted towards night sky, it is because they find it pacificatory. No one can feel alone in the sky full of stars. You feel a mystic presence near you, which talks to you and yet you are silent. The sense of belongingness to them educes. I was also feeling them, there was no other feeling. I was just looking at the sky, nothing more. I realized that beauty is beyond the things we can see, it is in imaginations, it is in dreams, it is in thoughts, and that day it was in the black. 

The greatest gift of life...

With arms wide open… standing on a cliff… facing the sea… light wind blowing through my hair. It feels as if the whole world is coming to embrace me, and I just wish to squeeze it into my arms. I can feel the breath of life infusing into my lungs, filtering every thought of mine, and giving every reason to smile. The setting sun of the dusk is making things golden all around. It seems that the life is glowing. Life never looked so beautiful before in twilight. In a solemn snippet of this moment of life I relived all my past. Every precious moment, or the moment of joy was flashing through my memory evolving into a picturesque citadel of dreams, aspirations and hopes. It gave me a sense of who I am, it calmed me. I wished to close my eyes for sometime only to capture that moment forever into my eyes and embed it eternally in my memory. So that one day, I will just take it out and give myself the pleasure of paradise.

I know I can, you can… But some people can’t.

Not everybody is lucky enough to see and appreciate all the beauty around. Many people just wonder what it would be to be visually impaired, others are not even courageous enough to think about it. But I met someone who is not only courageous enough to think about them, but is also living her life to lift the spirits of all such people. She is a believer and she told me there is life without eyes too. She talks to them, consoles them, motivates them, listen to them. She is there to tread them through all difficulties they face but can’t see. She told me how it is to see the world from someone else’s eyes. She is that someone who shows the world to them. She tells them the joy of feeling things. She tells them the power of what no one else but a tender heart has to see.

Can you also see through the eyes of your heart? Do you feel that someone who is not as lucky as you has also the right to see this world? Donate your eyes, and feel the joy of giving the greatest gift of life. What can be better than your death bringing life to somebody…

PS: If you wish to donate your eyes, you just need to fill in 6 columns, and you will give one of the greatest gifts of life to somebody http://www.bharateyebank.org/eyepledgeform.php

I can see you…

Now that you are far away,
and the distances have grown large,
I cannot talk, but I can see you;
Sometimes I shout, but always in vain,
for I know that neither my voice,
would be hearkened, nor my pain.

I can see you,
still dancing around the corner,
swaddling and draping freely in the arms, 
but the arms around your waist aren’t mine;
you are still humming the songs of love,
but the love in the songs is no longer mine.

I can see you,
that you have whatever you desired,
and happy with whomsoever you wanted to be,
but gone is the smile that ever was mine,
those hands that swung with mine,
and those lips that once did love mine.

I can see you,
your hands are pricked with thorns,
of holding that rose from the last winters,
the face is etched with the tearstains,
of the tears of the last remembrance,
and the eyes are dry now,
of all the dreams from the reminiscence.

I can see you,
with a cold heart and a longing soul,
in a castle choked with deception and grandiose,
where you bought your happiness
but sold your conscience,
 living with your regrets deep inside,
where the brightness scares you,
and the eternal darkness reside.