Dhoni is now spelt Success

It is amazing how much success can change your life..and it's amazing how being grounded, practical and disciplined can blend into success. A few years ago, I wouldn't have turned to take a second look at Dhoni..new player, flamboyant yes, flashy yes, made buzz, but in India, so many come with a bang, but don't stay..I just didn't pay attention. Living in the US, and the CWC 2007 didn't help my flailing interest in cricket. Last year between watching an over here and an over there during IPL, which I had no clue about..came CSK, losing a few matches early on and I thought that it meant an end to CSK's search of their IPL trophy..but the way they bounced back was when I realised what people meant when they said, "this is IPL, anything can happen". Mumbai Indians, who I guess either just lost one match or did not lose at all played CSK in the finals and this lad caught my attention.

It took an Ashes tournament to revive my interest in cricket, and I started noticing just how well team India had been doing. Ofcourse, anything I say about CWC 2011 will be stating the obvious and I am sure not much can be said that hasn't been said already. I am still on a high after the stunning, breath-taking win and IPL4 doesn't do my withdrawal symptoms any good. I'll say this though, this lad MSD has now gotten all my attention and then some. Am sure it's not surprising.

Throughout the history of mankind, success, power and owning the ground in whatever you do have been qualities that made into the turn on lists of countless people. It's no secret that Dhoni is now considered handsome!!! That's what winning does to you!! Makes you look good, darn good I'll say!!

In this day and age, where people hardly look for qualities like honesty, dedication, and hardwork, people like Sachin Tendulkar, and now MSD lead team India has shown us why time tested qualities always win. Style and class comes from within, you walk into a room, a ground or any stage and you own it;own it only by being humble, showing humility and let your work speak for you. Yes, life's going to be hard, not everyday, not even a week, month nor year (just like the title track of F.R.I.E.N.D.S) is going to be your day and you know it as well as I do. You've been told this umpteen times by your parents, teachers, friends and so many others. The question is, how well have you understood it and let the golden rules of patience and hardwork rule your life? The greatest example, Sachin Tendulkar, like whom we all want to be, but like whom we all don't practice, is one heck of a human being. People have said so much about him, both positive and negative. He played after his father passed away, he played when critics called out on his face to retire, he played when the Indian team was in shambles and he played under any scenario you can imagine. Just how much can we praise this guy? Turns out the praise he deserves is limitless. Every adjective of genius/excellence/intellect/hardwork has already been used for him, yet what you say inevitably falls short! As much as people love him, they respect him. Personally, I think that it's easier to be loved by people than it is to be respected. Your character on and off the field, unblemished image, untarnished life mirrors the respect you get. A lot of times, celebs can be loved but not all are admired and respected. You've got to be in a separate league to earn that.

Here's what I have been trying to get to: work hard and pay your dues, God knows we all have to and when success comes knocking at your door, it'll become an addiction! Mark my words, anyone who's at the top of his field and gets there honestly, sure is bound to be handsome and a heart-winner!

I absolutely hate it when people categorize my expectation of accountability from fellow beings as naivety. Oh,you expect your LPG vendor to return the change,you must be naive;you expect a favorable police report for your passport application without a bribe,you must be naive. I don't understand why expectation has b'come a bad word. More and more,we have come to expect less and less of each other,which is why anyone can get away with hurting our feelings and hurting the sensibilities and scruples of this 61year old republic of ours. From personal relations to professional and governmental affairs, I expect people to own up to what they do. For all those people that think that expectation is a foul word, I want to scream and shake you if that could wake you up from the slumber I think you are in. Let's say I am a great friend of yours and I offend you, would you not expect an apology from me? Do you think it is too much to ask of me to apologise while knowing you were wronged by me? Let's say you do overlook it owing to the fact that I am friend and that I said something I wouldn't say otherwise. I appreciate the trust you put in me, but do you not agree with me that whatever I said to you hurt you and that an apology or me owning up to what I did would make you feel better? I also love the classic answer of "I am like this, you either accept it or you don't"...this is the best worst scenario of all, coz either ways, its a win-win situation for the other person. When you accept that he/she "is like that" you are letting them go for whatever they did without an answer. When you do no accept it, well they have made it clear "i am like this" which means whether you accept or not they won't change nor budge. When you do try to drive home your point you are just treated as someone with huge expectations and that you are old-fashioned. The norm of the society has become such, i'll do whatever I want, so long as you do not voice your own opinion, we are cordial, we can even be friends. The minute you have an opinion that's even an iota different than mine, it's time for adios. This is a terrible way to live. When I invest my tax money, when I do my duty, I vote, I live by the law, why cannot I expect my government to be accountable. Agreed that there are 100s and 1000s of tax evaders, and it is not that the govt is irresponsible just towards me, infact I am lucky to have this life, I have a square meal and a roof to live under..But that is not a reason to let my govt get away with doing anything it likes, how can I not question it scam after scam after scam? Land, political power, telecom, mines, natural gas..how many scams have we seen? How long are we to tolerate.
My suggestion is that we start at grassroots. Start by being accountable ourselves first. Start by holding your friends, family, neighbors accountable. If we all are collectively owning up to what we do, it gives us the power to hold our governments responsible too. Neither power is something that is solely the property of those with money and political influence nor power is something someone can give you, you get it by being right and doing right.

Music

Been dwelling on the profound effects on life music can have..earlier this day, two of many masterpieces that acharya annamayya has given us were playing in my mind-brahma kadigina paadamu and anni mantramulu inde avahinchenu. It would be stating the obvious that with each keertana of his, annamacharya himself found God and gave us all a way of seeing and believing sahityam/keertana as a way of bhakti, of reverence. Whether it be Srimannarayana or bhavamu lona, I am, to put it simply transported into a world of happiness, happiness not the way it is being defined now-a-days, but happiness mentioned in our Vedic scriptures. The feeling of being united with the whole world and Godliness and at times, God himself. To my atheist friends, this post might not be agreeable. A lot of people keep saying, I am not religious, or I am spiritual but not religious, or I am not ritualistic. Well, I am deeply religious, I love rituals, though I haven't had a chance to perform a lot, andI am spiritual too. I don't have to show it, I don't have to pray as a part of a group or anything, as religion is something that is private. Well, coming back to the pack, back to talking about sahityam, and classic poetry.

I find it really surprising that I hardly get to talk about any of this with anyone outside my immediate family, and may be a cousin or two. You'd think where I come from, there can't be enough time to talk about our literary heritage. Music, as a form of bhakti as I previously said rarely gets discussed, you hear music as a way of life and this is such a clichéd expression, however to many the music they talk about encompasses very little and what passes for lyrics these days..asalu sahityam edandi? I read an article about Sri Veturi and how much thought he put in each of his songs, whatever the emotion it had to express, love, devotion, sorrow, he wasn't someone that was bound by this nonsensical "contemporary" genre of lyric writing. Sirivennela Sitarama Sastry and Sri Veturi I guess are the two that saved our face and wrote better songs in the last decade or two.

When I was in primary and secondary school, we had both music and drawing classes in our curriculum, besides the teacher we went to learn music from outside our school hours. As long as music was a mandatory class was when it was full. Once music and drawing became electives, our music class shrunk, I for one was never good at drawing, I couldn't draw a bread slice to show a mould in my biology class, so you can imagine, but that's not why I opted for music. I was actually interested in music, from where came the ragas, how they are numbered, what notes make a raga, such and such was taught and I was totally captivated. At that time when I was taught kondalalo nelakonna, or lambodara, it was a very satisfying learning experience. Ofcourse, I forgot all about ragas, but I do remember the songs, easy to learn and retain something when there is a tune attached to it, that we all know. As a kid I used to aspire to sing at Ravindra Bharathi in front of an audience, but then growing up our dreams change and the ones that remain are the dreams we have for ourselves as grown ups. Now I just immerse myself, be it in Vishnusahasranamam which Smt Subbulakshmi recites with such great clarity, just the perfect diction, even though it isn't song, I look for that sravyam and vaksuddhi in something if it has to register in our mind, in this case Smt. Subbulakshmi just knocks it out of the park and makes Vishnusahasram soothing and invigorating at the same time. I also love to read the work of great telugu poets, Dhurjati and likes, and I must do it more. As of now, I have only read them as part of my curriculum and also listened to them listened to them from Sri Chaganti Koteswara Rao garu who peels each layer, each emotion, each word for us such that they latch onto your mind. Humor, devotion, love, hardships, guilt, remorse each of these words take on such challenging horizons in the hands of great poets Andhra has produced. Once one starts delving into these, it is a literary heaven you can't help but embrace.

My father and I have been singing great tunes since yesterday, reminiscing great lyrics from the 60s era. That was the time that produced some of the best songs in the film industry. Outside the film industry, I can't honestly comment as I do not follow anything. Keertanas yes, I am a sucker for them, can't get enough. To my kind of audience, there is no need to tell you how sweet the song "marugelara, oh raghava" is. For a while when I lived by myself in Tulsa, not a day passed by without me humming the song. Even social movies had great songs in olden days. "pidikili minchani hrudayam lo, kadalini minchina asalu dachenu, vedikalekkenu vaadamu chesenu, tyagame melani bodhalu chesenu, ayina manishi maraledu, aatani badha teeraledu", what a great way to capture human behavior in two lines!! Trust me, this is probably the tip of the iceberg in terms of how good a song can be..on the contrary think of the song "twisting my body from side to side" by Three 6 Mafia, am sure you'll agree when I say, I wish I did not understand the song that well, atleast it would spare me the heart-ache that ensues seeing music fall into such abysmal depths. Let's just tell ourselves that we need bad songs so we know the value of the good ones, actually when we try to put a value to the good ones is when we realise the innate "invaluable" nature of the same!

Believe it or not

With a heart too heavy

a mind too aware of itself, and yet not

I stand in the middle of nowhere

knowing all too well where to go, but moving not.

Happy and sad at the same time,

caring and not caring at the same time

my feet are tied, my mind wanders even when captive

with a sense of loss, i stand meek and broken,

knowing to let go but let you go, i did not

reasons of which I know not.

overwhelmed i am, aging faster than my already aging body, oblivious of people and surroundings, unaware of dates and names, of time;

a huge tide wraps me in its arms

life comes to a stand still

teasing me it says catch me if you can, but catch it I can not.

Just venting

and yeah i am smarter than a lot of you combined, no, i am not being arrogant, so spare me the part where you give me your opinions unless asked for. I have wanted to say this sometimes, but do not know what stopped me, is it the tone of the sentence? What am I afraid of? That some prick is going to call me rude, that I am arrogant or bad tempered? What is it that makes me not say things to people and endure all the statements people make about me? What is this quality in each one of us that makes us polite, sometimes while suppressing our own opinions and feelings? Are there not enough of us who give kindness its place in society? Yet, why is the society always portrayed as being so uncivil, and mean.. I distinctly remember reading that Delhi is one of the most impolite cities and that to get directions out of a person on the road is impossible, leave alone the countless number of bad elements that make it unsafe for a woman, and am sure I can add man also to that sentence, to walk the streets. Dil missing from Dilli is what I actually read.. Society at large apart, little things in life are really starting to get me, and I sometimes wonder why I have to be nice to people, but for the stress that being unpleasant to someone puts on me. If I yell at someone chances are I am suffering more than the person yelled at, I don't like confrontations, I believe in people,I take whatever they say to be true, something about face value; call me naive, call me foolish, or call me whatever, I like people in my life to own up to what they do or say, I like to impose standards, coz that's what they get from me. If on some occasions they don't and I somehow fail in my duty, one can by and large expect an apology from me. Someone please explain me why I shouldn't expect reciprocity? or for that matter why am I constantly told not to expect anything from relationships within or outside of the family? When did we all start being so lenient that people think they can do anything and get away with it? I wrote about this before and I say it again, this episode in The West Wing put it very well: "more and more we have come to expect less and less of each other". I hope I am quoting it right.

Everyone I know likes to be kind and nice and right most of the times atleast, I even know people that say they are so respectful of these concepts such as individuality, space, privacy, respect, live and let live, etc etc..so when they are so nice and have such high standards in life, why am I not supposed to hold them to a higher standard; and please don't answer this, it's a rhetorical question; oh you know, you are smart too..only I am a little smarter than you, kidding..

Might for the right or Might is right?

Moral Imperatives, that's what I have been thinking about for a long time. Taking the high road. How many of us feel that it's getting tougher each day to be taking the high road? The soul often feels depleted and depressed, and more often than not exhausted due to a constant fight in the mind. The conscience knows what's correct and yet by not implementing it, we begin a cycle of feeling inadequate, and that our philosophy of life in this present day has become self-defeating. Instead of enhancing and enriching our lives experiences and achieving spiritual richness, we are settling for a compromised way of life. It isn't to say to compromise is wrong, but that's a conversation for a later day. I am saying the motto of this society is "everyone is wrong, so no one is guilty"...That's how a writer whom I immensely admired put it and I cannot agree more.

A nation is wronged for ages and there is a limit to how much its people can endure, so it revolts. Thats totally understandable, it is when these movements for freedom, justice (or whatever the cause is) digress and become self-serving, self-righteous, tyrannical and savage, while interpreting religion or any other doctrine in their own twisted way, that's when things go barbaric. Take the naxals, maoists, rebel groups anywhere in the world, they all lose focus, they forget why they started it in the first place. Killing, hurting human and animal life has become a way of life to a lot of people. Sometimes, I want to introduce these people to a certain something called conscience.

We are all capable of much more than this. We were not made to sit and watch, yet we do, reduced to a herd of helpless beings. I wonder where that quality in us has gone, the quality of tolerance. Did the word Humanity not come from the very word that defines us: 'Human'. Then why is it that we lack the most in that area? There is a lesson or two we can and should learn from some animals, they don't hunt unless hungry, unless necessary, and what is necessary is not set by one animal's standards or one particular animal's fancies. It is the norm. It is how the universe designed it. We should all have more respect to the order of the universe than we do now.

An open letter to God

Dear God,

Hi, there is no need for pleasantries here as you must be well already, so no need to ask you how you are..also, there's no need to tell you how I am coz I believe you already know, infact you are the reason I am the way I am. Don't think that I am being rude, I have a lot of faith in you. I like you and for the most part, the world that you created. Let's just say that all the 27years and 10months I have lived was a seminar you held and now is the time for a Q&A session that every speaker allows after he/she is done talking. I am not saying you are done talking, think of this as a series of lectures and this is a session post your lecture number one. First of all let me start by telling you how kind and all encompassing and beautiful, graceful, intelligent, loving you are. I can add hundreds of thousands of adjectives here, i will just be stating the obvious. You and I both know how powerful you are. You are this humongous ball of energy that has been driving this world from the days of a life less planet and then may be water and then single celled animals to todays advanced beings, yet you tirelessly drive this world and I believe you will keep doing so till the times comes...2012 or whenever it may be. Life has come a long way God and you have worked so well, you are definitely a genius. You brought solace to people since time immemorial, no matter what form they saw you in. You made miracles possible. So, dear God, please tell me why the world has to be bad too at the same time.. A little bad I don't mind, I am sure I am bad to some extent too. I can even make peace with the reptiles and other terrible looking creatures you made. If at this moment you are thinking I am ugly too, I totally understand. I reap what I sow. May be a list of questions will make it easy for me to get my thoughts straight. You don't need a list, you are smart. I am not. At times when I was indeed smart or intelligent, I had to work at it, I had to earn it and it was the most wonderful feeling ever.

1. Why did you give cancer? It's just such a terrible way to die, little children, poor, rich, kind, cruel.no body deserves it. Apart from Cancer, why are there ugly and deadly diseases on earth?

2. Why are some people always unlucky, like Karna from the Maha Bharat, or like the South African cricket team?ofcourse the ones i mentioned here atleast won't die of poverty or lack of shelter like some people born into utter, dismal poverty, bad health, loneliness etc.

3.Is it true that one who suffers is just paying for what he/she did in his earlier lives? Will a terrorist or some rich guy that killed poor homeless people with his BMW suffer the same in their next life?Is Hitler that killed 6million jews suffering?

4.Every time I or anyone else have been talking to you, have you listened to and processed every word of ours? How hard is it to listen to the prayers of all the God-believing people on this planet?

5. I read in a spiritual magazine that every thing I do, every act, every inhalation and exhalation, every thought I get, good or bad is driven by you. I was told that I need to surrender to you and I have, I love that feeling of surrendering to true love, Godliness. But then the Geeta says I'll pay for each bad thing I do, if I did that bad thing under your instructions, why did you make me do it in the first place? So my question is: Is my life my doing or yours? To what extent am I responsible for my own fate?

6. You also said in the Geeta that I should only bother about putting my efforts into something and leave the results to you. If I am putting my efforts in something to get a certain result, like for example, I am typing this letter on my computer, and I expect the letters to show up on the monitor..I can't help but expect my effort in typing to translate into letters on screen...so how do I achieve what you said. Also, as long as I have a thinking mind, will I not expect something or the other?

7. Do you really fry bad people in hot oil when they get to hell?

8. Is it possible for people to make amends in this very life or do we have to wait?

9. When asked why she got five husbands, you reminded Draupadi that she asked for it. Do you decide what I get or what I don't or should I ask?

10. Why do the rich become rich, the poor become poor and the middle class left to rut?

11. Why do some people have to work 100times harder for an easy thing that everyone else seems to get in one shot?

12. Why is there drought? Sure, it is man's fault but won't you give some rain?

13. Why do people kill and slay others?

14. I also don't know why I lost my job, and why I feel this much resentment all the while I am trying to be a happy person. But I am not bold enough to hear your answer on that. I dare not know what I have done. I will try be happy to just have this life, family, friends, food and shelter. But let's say I had an accomplice in all I did, will he/she be given the same treatment as me?

15. Will I ever get a job I love?

16. Will you be mad at me for having asked these questions?

Also, I could have written a much better letter, you know...I think writing is one of my strengths, if ever there is a next time, I will try and do a better job in terms of vocab. I shall have a list of things prepared before I start writing, coz this letter is just all over the place.

Lastly, I trust you to have a sense of humor, so you won't mind all this non-sense, do you?

Yours Sincerely,

M