Weaker

I tell you a thousand things,
Feelings, fears, and hopes.
No one else knows what I am,
I care not for those folks.

When I was in pain, I ran to you,
To tell you my life is sore.
But I ran to tell you what happened,
Because than life, you meant more.

Times have changed,
And we have drifted in life.
aLone I have faced it
and conquered many a strife.

When I finally ran to you,
To tell you what I was doing.
I realized I had changed
From where we were to where I am going.

Sadly, I return to my corner,
In life, I am now my own sense maker,
Knowing, without you there
I am all the more weaker.

Date: 3^rd December, 2006

Absence

Time has dulled the pain,
Of your absence.
I have made me live the life,
I thought I would never live.

Nightmares of moments
Spent in your company,
Dreams of moments
That you held me in your arms.

Those moments are just a memory
Of a time long gone by
A time I was younger
A time when I was happier

Now that I realize you are gone,
Never to return to my side,
I walk on into the darkness
Without a hope of finding light

Power

It has been long since I have had the time to sit and talk about things that make me think. Last week, I was browsing for information regarding some college assignment, when I happened upon a website of one Mr. Bryan Caplan. He is an economic professor at GMU and has an amazing website. One of the pages that I read talked about power.

Every man has four things that he works for, money, love, sex, and power. And the most elusive of these is the most sought after one, by simple Law of Supply and Demand, Power. Those who do not have it want it and those who have it cannot seem to get enough of it. Thus, life is simply a struggle to see who can have the most power. Every war fought, in the battlefields, the courtrooms or in every household was over power.

There is an eternal struggle in a man’s life to be more powerful than someone who controls him. The car driver one day wants to be the one on the back seat; the secretary wants to be in the boss’s seat someday. This is given. However, the thought that arises, is humankind made for power, for control?

The quintessential feature of every man is the desire for individualism. This is what drives him, is the fuel for his ego, something to give him a reason to live. Under every man, here is a small voice telling him that no matter what, he is one of the best examples of human beings made. The main target for a power wielder is this voice. As long as one has this voice in him, he refuses to be ruled.

The power wielder and the target of the power are locked in an eternal struggle, with both not winning. The only thing that remains is feelings of ill and desolation. For a normal human being, even when he controls another being, his conscience will not allow him a moments rest. The case for the target is simple; as long he is a subordinate, he will not be satisfied. Every revolution, every fight for independence has stemmed from this.

What happens when a man is broken? When he loses that spark, that fire, that ego? He becomes no more than a robot, no more a part of the human clan. Percy Shelly immortalizes these thoughts.

'Nature rejects the monarch, not the man;
The subject, not the citizen; for kings
And subjects, mutual foes, forever play
A losing game into each other's hands,
Whose stakes are vice and misery. The man
Of virtuous soul commands not, nor obeys.
Power, like a desolating pestilence,
Pollutes whate'er it touches; and obedience,
Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth,
Makes slaves of men, and of the human frame
A mechanized automaton.
--Percy Shelley, Queen Mab

Is there a solution? Not as far as I can see. As long as there are people whose egos are insatiable, and as long as there is envy and jealousy over the influence wielded, there will be power struggles and that will make life miserable for the rest of the world.

Orkut-ian

In the last year, a new craze has caught fervor among the students. There are more people following what is going on in that then there are people following class. Every break, no matter how small, every class no matter how important, every system no matter the owner is plugged into this forum. It is called Orkut. All those who were on the forum will differ saying that they were there long before the craze caught on. The time of joining does not matter. What matters is what people do in that. What matters what is each persons take away from that.

I used to be a member once. Then in a fit of, for lack of better adjective, stupidity, I deleted the account. The second stint has been very rewarding. As far as I am concerned what people have taken away are:

• People that you talked to once upon a time, people that went to the same class as you did, people that lived in the same apartments as you did, people that you knew by name long time back are there, just a click away. You may never know when you have an urge to talk to someone that shared a joke with you when you were in your unddies. It is then that this forum comes on its own.
• When there is no time to call up and talk, when there is no time to send a detailed mail regarding the state of affairs on your side, but you desperately want the other person to either share the agony or the joy, all you need to do is to send a scrap. And they are intimated of the matter. On the other hand, so are the millions of others that are frequent visitors to that person’s scrapbook.
• If you are a lonely soul and want to find that perfect life partner, the man/woman of your dreams, that elusive personality, chances are that you may find them. I have an instance where a girl talked to a person for six months at the end of which she was convinced that he was the one that she would spend the rest of her life, so much so that, she told him. What happened then is an altogether different story.
• The fierce competition to get more friends, more scraps, and more testimonials than the roommate of yours. Every nigh is spent checking how many new friends you have added and how many he has. Every single minute supposed to be working is spent trying to create a one sided conversation that ensures that your buddy get to a milestone of scraps, 100, 200, 500, 1000 and so on.
• The community where you get to discuss thing from what you had for dinner last night (not that I want to know), to the performance of the cricket team (not that I am bothered), to the nuances of science and technology (now we are warming up), to religion (talk on buddy) and to what one can do for the world at large, this is the true soul of Orkut. This is when you realize that you can be the part of something big.
• The down side is when people abuse the faith you have bestowed upon the world, where they take your identity using the photos that you have uploaded, call you names, call your girl friend names, and make your life a living hell. It is at times like this that you question the forum. One of my friends told me the reason that he was not so active on the forum when I was at the peak (2500 scraps, 66 fans, 475 friends all in a period of 3 months) that he felt odd that what he told me was being read by others, that what he says to me is to be between us. I told him that there was messaging. His reply that he can call me and talk, rather than this, was true.

You have to realize that the forum was meant to bring together people sharing a common past, people that want to share a present and are looking to meet new people. It is for people that are looking for people that want to talk, people that are willing to debate on things that they believe in, people that are networking, people that are not able to keep in touch for reasons unknown. In short, Orkut is a way of life these days, a religion. Hail Orkut.

What am I?

The question posed to me or rather a statement that led me to the question that is defined by three simple words; “What am I?” is because of Pushkala response to the piece, “Illusions and boundaries”. She told that the word ‘you’ itself is an illusion. So here I am, asking the same thing, what am I?

Do I exist,
Do I live?
Do I meander,
Along paths tread for me?
Am I an illusion
Of the things I show?
Do I define what I am
In the acts I perform,
In the crimes I commit
And by the passion I exhibit?

Am I just a figament
A creation in your head?
Do you see me the way I am
Or the way that you wish to see me?
Are you aware of me, and my existence?
Do you see a reason
For my existence,
For my living
For my travails along paths
You yourself don’t approve?

Am I an illusion
Taking form when needed?
Living between perception
In the eyes of the world that I see?
Am I real
Or a falsified reality?
Where do I live,
Where do I hold weight,
In the unreal outside world
Or the real world; in your head?

Dated: 14th August 2006

Boundaries to illusions

Sitting in class
With a thousand thoughts,
I wait for the day
That shall bring freedom

Freedom from boundaries
Set as limits to conquest,
Freedom from illusions
Of a life free to love

Nothing matters other than you,
Your needs and your wants
You limit yourself
To the boundaries you set to illusions you perceive

Dated: 7th August 2006

Snapshots of life

I stare out of the window,
At the world passing by.
So many faces, so many stories
So may things to behold.
Each person has a tale,
Of a life they have lived,
Ambitions unfulfilled, hopes harbored.
Each carries a suffering,
Each carries a joy.
Some show on their faces
The life they are leading,
Some keep it safe inside
Safe from the world they are running from.
They walk on taking each step
In the hope that this day will be better
Than the one they are coming from.
They pass by without a glance,
Not a break in the stride.
They walk on into the distance
Leaving no trace of them having been here.
Their faces forgotten in an instant,
They stories remain untold.
I go back to my life,
To the dreams and hopes I harbor,
To live the life I have unlived
To walk outside someone’s window.

Dated: 9th August 2006

Dead and buried

The days have gone my dear,
They are dead and buried.
I stand here before you an accused man,
With nothing to say to defend myself.

I have sinned in the past,
Crimes of passion I have committed,
The days are gone my dear
They are dead and buried.

The passion has fizzled out,
The time has made me weak,
Thoughts crawl through my skin
Make me tired and weary.

I do not repent for what I have done,
They are in the past, long forgotten.
The days have gone my dear,
They are dead and buried.

People I hurt,
To please the people I treasure,
People I stamped upon
To rise through the system I despised.

Those times shall never return,
Those days have gone dear,
They are dead and buried,
I am still alive, just dead on the inside.

Dated: 9th August 2006

The greatest compliment

I have been writing for seven years now. I have been writing seriously for not more than three years. Before that, it used to be a past time. I used to write to express something, because I thought that I was somewhere special. It has been in the last year and a half, that I consider my writing as a serious venture.

It began as a personal thing, for my eyes alone, and then passed on to the eyes of the one person whose comments I valued. It was when I realized that I was getting better; I decided to let the world read it.

Through the means of the blog I keep, I get some comments. The best comment came last night. Most of the people who are regular readers of my blog, I chat with. For privacy sake, I shall not name that person.

Last night we met online and started talking about neutral things. That person suddenly asks me if I can do them a favor. We have become good friends and the request surprised me. I told them that I would if it were in my powers.

That person told me that they have a cultural thing in their college and they have to submit something for that. They were wondering if they could take one of mine and submit it.

On the face of it, this seems like copying. I generally am very possessive about my pieces. The fact that someone wants to take something that I created and make it their own intrigued me. If you look deeply, you will see that they are telling me indirectly that they really like my work and would like to be like me.

Is this not the greatest compliment ever? To be recognized is something, to have someone tell you that you are doing a good job, is amazing, but then to have your writing taken with your permission is something.

In fact, that person need not have even asked me. All they needed to do was go to the blog, (they have linked my blog to theirs) and take what they please. The very fact that they waited to ask me shows the integrity of the person. That person told me that if I was not ok with the entire thing, I could refuse. That person thanked me in the end, but I am the one who needs to thank them, for giving me the best compliment that I have ever received. I hope that they read this entry. This is to tell them that I have no ill feelings and am thankful for the compliment.

Thank you.
Dated: 9th August 2006

Illusions and boundaries

Do we know what we are doing? Do we have a plan for each event in our lives? Do we control what happens to us? Do we decide what we are going to do? Is the world we see really the way that the world looks? Is what we see as our boundaries really the limit to what we can achieve?

Each person claims to have a hold on the path that his or her life is taking. They claim control over destiny. Some people take the extreme opposite view. They say that they are clueless over how their own lives are going. They are helpless and say that they follow a prewritten path. They even have a name for all this. They call it fate. The question is which of the two are right. Does a person control his life, or is he destined to do things whose happening are beyond his control?

Why does a person limit himself or herself to a certain boundary? Why is it that they claim that they can only do so much and no more? Have they ever tested the boundary by actually trying to cross it? How can they say that this is the limit when they have no idea as to where the boundary actually lies?

The limit that a person sets to achievement in his or her life entwines with the illusions that a person lives under. The human being was the result of millions of years of evolution if we believe Darwin or is the creation of a super power in his reflection if we believe the holy books of the world.

He is the Supreme Being that has powers over anything that he chooses. He has over the centuries, overcome the fear of things that he did not understand, understood them and finally began exerting control over them. He overcame the illusion that he had about these and then he redefined the boundaries that he set for himself.

Man chooses to live under a certain set of illusions in life. To lead a life under that set of illusions, he sets limits to what he wants to do so that he need not venture out of those illusions. These boundaries are of cast iron that we cannot overcome them. It is just that we choose not to. This is because to overcome this we need overcome the illusions we have and that is a scary thing. Man is a creature of habit and to break the habit, he needs to come out of the shell enclosing the illusion and think.

Man has no boundaries nor does he have any limits.
Man is beyond doubt; he is the light that removes the doubt.
Man is impervious to fear; he is the knowledge from which fear flees.
Man is supreme, to control, to have or to lose.
That choice is his, to live free or to live under bounds.
He has to remember that no one sets those boundaries for him.
He has to remember that he chose those limits.
You limit yourself to the boundaries you set,
To live under the illusions you wish to perceive.