Courage of Compromise

I am a restless person. I cannot stay at a place for long. I have to move and go someplace else. I cannot stay still for long, and then I also cannot stay silent for long. I don't know if it is a good thing or bad but the fact that I have survived so far indicates that it's not a real cause for worry.

 

But I wonder what it means .. and why is it so ? Over the time I have realized that my inability to make peace with my present is one of reasons I am this way. I HAVE to move away, I HAVE to find something better, I HAVE to be something else and then I see other people.

 

I see kind that is like me, which I must say is in plenty and confirm my belief in my disappointing commonality. I also see the kind which is different and is in rarity, the kind that has made peace with what they have and make the best of it. Their life is not the endless struggle of haves and have nots but rather a poignant conduct with which they live every second of their lives, keeping the remains of their once cherished dreams, hidden from the world and deep down the depths of their hearts. It is not very difficult to identify such a person, their eyes tells you their stories. The calmness past the days of juvenile excitement in those eyes is sometime soothing and sometime mocking; telling us where we stand and where we could have been. The relief of being past the chase that once haunted them is apparent in those eyes.

 

If I have confused you(which I am sure I have), just think of a female relative who was far too educated to be the wife of your dork uncle but still chose to make the best of her home, her kids. Think of an uncle who is too good for the place or his job but still chose to give his job the best he can and still love that God forsaken place. Fools might believe that these people were not in love with their dreams enough to pursue them. Actually, I believe nothing can be farther from the truth. Dreams are always cherished, by one and by all. Some of us had to let go of them mostly because of things that are beyond our control. In fact, sometimes it is easier to fight than to give up and move on because it requires a certain amount of emotional maturity to do so.

 

What most of us don't understand that life probably is not about pursuing a better future; it sometimes can also mean simply living and cherishing our present. They say something about "counting your blessings" ..right ? That is what I am talking about. No matter what they say about the will and its way, the truth we all know deep down in our hearts is that there are dreams which won't come true. So what do we do ? Some people turn bitter, for their whole lives. They refuse to accept the truth. But, some people do accept this reality and move on and make the best of what they have. Fighting is sometimes easier than giving up or what we know as compromise. This rare ability of people to accept the their fate is what I call the courage of compromise.

To know is to Be.

In Buddhist religion, there is a term called "Karuna", compassion being its closest synonym in English.When we understand the true meaning of this word, we move closer to the very key to understand people.

A person can not be understood by staying where we are.To understand a person, we will need to reach out,offer a helping hand, put yourself in his shoes and try to feel his sorrows & experience his happiness.

When we do that, the answer to the question(which we all have asked at one point or the other), "How could he do it ? " suddenly becomes clear.

Needless to say, practicing "Karuna" is very difficult.When we are kids, we are not mature enough to understand it.When we grow up & are young, there are too many people around us to understand and we are always in a unexplainable hurry. Who has the time to be compassionate to so many people ? We pick some and we leave some, whoever is convenient to keep around is kept.Those who are difficult, are left behind.

As we grow old and are left with fewer people, then it becomes a lot easier to understand the meaning of "Karuna". But then only a few of us understand it since age and wisdom rarely go hand in hand.Nevertheless those who do become wiser with age, become more forgiving, and experience a rare sense of calm and peace.

Understanding people is a slow and painful process. We can not gain trust without trusting, we can't avoid being judged without being non-judgmental ourselves. We must be ready to make allowances, ready to become a little vulnerable.When we raise big walls around us, neither we see anyone nor anyone sees us.We take this risk of getting hurt with the people we love.They in turn do the same, believing that we will never hurt them, and when we do hurt each other, we have the belief that it was not what we meant to do. Faith is the key to any successful relationship.If we lose it, we lose each other.

If you haven't realized by now, we all can be accused of (at one point or the other) of hurting most the people we love the most. Maybe the assurance that they would not leave us has something to do with it. Mostly they suffer in silence, sometimes they tell us.But still they stay because when you love someone, you ought to accept the worst along with the best. There is no selection, only a peaceful acceptance of the person the way he is. You are aware of your own frailty and hence you accept their imperfections. We practice Karuna with people we care about, every single day, every single moment, because we know and we understand.. we understand.

Just My Anger !!!

इस मातम-ऐ-दुनिया में अमन-ऐ-जहाँ भी नहीं, अमन-ऐ-दिल भी नहीं |

अमन के कातिलों से कह दो उनका यह जहां भी नहीं, वो जहाँ भी नहीं ||

मजहबी नहीं काफिर ही सहीं मैं,

यह जो हैं वो तो इंसान भी नहीं, हैवान भी नहीं ||

Where is your home ?

Home not necessarily needs to be a place or location, it can be a person, idea or anything for that matter.It is that to what one would like to go back to.

It is this constant awareness at the back of your mind,that we need to go back to it, constitutes the idea of home.

So here is a question for all of you, seemingly the simplest yet one of the most profound.(as Richard Bach pointed out in "Illusion")

"Where is your home ?"

Stay Beautiful,
Amitabh

Life in Short !!!

That's a piece I wrote sometime back as part of my application for a PG admission process.(Believe it or not :P ).

Enjoy Madi :)

-->

Adieu Amitabh (A eulogy)

Born on the 18^th Nov, named after a living legend, Son of a homemaker & a teacher, Amitabh was an exciting prospect. He was good at studies, followed Cricket and Bollywood religiously (Name does have its effects, doesn’t it?).He duly pursued Engineering where he discovered Public Speaking, Table tennis, English literature, SPIC MACAY, guitar and not to mention his major Information Technology too.

A two year stint with TCS took him from Trivandrum to Cochin, Cochin to Bangalore and finally to Gurgaon. He made some interesting friends & despite all his dislike for food cooked in Coconut Oil, he swore by the Fried Fish till the very end. He liked to claim that he had found enough stories from Cochin and Bangalore for his Grandkids to last 20 years.

His love for printed words was a legacy of his father who was a librarian himself. Starting with Champak, Nandan, ChandaMama, Paraag, not to mention a fanatic following of Cricket Samraat he then moved on to read English Literature, reading classics, fiction-nonfiction with equal gusto. In particular he was fond of Indian Authors Vikram Seth & Arundhati Roy being his favourites.

He was confident, contemplative and had a sense of humour. He was afraid of stagnation, disliked hypocrisy (mostly his) and liked people. An atheist, he respected other’s belief but hated Religious fundamentalists.

Once when asked if he had any regrets…he said “I have many…but I won’t mind living to have some more”. We couldn’t agree more. Good Bye ‘O’ Beloved Friend. May you start again from where you left.