"Imagine...
I see a vast expanse of land. Behind me, a hill rises up almost vertically, topped off by a highway. My feet are on grass, not the soft, short grass of a well-manicured lawn, but the rough, uneven grass that grows in the wild. There are bald patches in areas, where sand replaces the grass. To the right, an impenetrably thick, tall forest blocks off all access.
Straight ahead, the land becomes more and more dusty, as the grass yields to a riverbank. This is the bank of th"
I SWEAR I'll start updating again, soon.
To anyone who cares,
Shreyas
Saturday, March 22, 2008
Friday, February 1, 2008
Relationships
A guy meets a girl, they find each other interesting, go out together for a while, all's rosy and amazing for three months, and then suddenly they meet other guys and girls, and everything's over, usually with one big heartbreak.
Two people studying in the same school/college get interested in each other, get to know each other better, talk about everything (including spending the rest of their lives together), stay together for a few years, and then the illusion evaporates for one or both of them.
Or maybe the exact opposite happens.. maybe things DO work out after all and they (as Baz Luhrmann would like to say) dance the funky chicken at their 75th wedding anniversary. The question is, how do you KNOW until you've TRIED?
One thing, of course, is to go extremely slowly. Know the person for a year or two, their ins and outs, their goals/ambitions/desires/adaptability/mumbo-jumbo, and then decide whether to be together or not. This might work for some people, but then it isn't really falling in love.. its more like putting all the variables into some goddamn equation for horizontal and vertical velocity and factoring in the hardness of the place you're about to land in. It formalizes love, makes it a calculated gamble instead of the wild, growing, mutually nurturing thing it should be.
That obviously doesn't mean that you end up going out with every random stranger you meet.. but you also don't need to know every small detail to even think about a person seriously. After all... hope is a good thing, maybe even the best of things...
"You're afraid of me! You're afraid that I won't love you back! Fuck it, I wanna give it a shot! At least I'm honest with you. " - Minnie Driver in Good Will Hunting
That just about sums up a very common attitude towards relationships... fear of rejection or of the fact that things won't work out. Well, what if they don't? You'll be hurt, sure... perhaps you gave your 110% but things still didn't work out...then what? Is it all over? Is life done with? Most importantly, was that time wasted?
My answer to this is NO. After all, what is life but the sum of the experiences you've had while you lived? Its the journey which matters, because everyone's destination is the same. A bond which lasted a few years and then ended was not a waste of those years. Instead, in all probability, it made both parties evolve into better people, and enriched their lives in a way that only they could, for each other. As Lord Tennyson would put it, its always better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all.
Lastly, of course, there are moments. Things that no one can ever steal away from you... the most special things that people do together... be it walking together down a moonlit beach or just having an ice cream fight... these are things that no one can EVER take away from a person, no matter what happens. And in the end, these are probably ALL that count. After all, life isn't about the number of breaths you take, but about the moments that take your breath away....
Two people studying in the same school/college get interested in each other, get to know each other better, talk about everything (including spending the rest of their lives together), stay together for a few years, and then the illusion evaporates for one or both of them.
Or maybe the exact opposite happens.. maybe things DO work out after all and they (as Baz Luhrmann would like to say) dance the funky chicken at their 75th wedding anniversary. The question is, how do you KNOW until you've TRIED?
One thing, of course, is to go extremely slowly. Know the person for a year or two, their ins and outs, their goals/ambitions/desires/adaptability/mumbo-jumbo, and then decide whether to be together or not. This might work for some people, but then it isn't really falling in love.. its more like putting all the variables into some goddamn equation for horizontal and vertical velocity and factoring in the hardness of the place you're about to land in. It formalizes love, makes it a calculated gamble instead of the wild, growing, mutually nurturing thing it should be.
That obviously doesn't mean that you end up going out with every random stranger you meet.. but you also don't need to know every small detail to even think about a person seriously. After all... hope is a good thing, maybe even the best of things...
"You're afraid of me! You're afraid that I won't love you back! Fuck it, I wanna give it a shot! At least I'm honest with you. " - Minnie Driver in Good Will Hunting
That just about sums up a very common attitude towards relationships... fear of rejection or of the fact that things won't work out. Well, what if they don't? You'll be hurt, sure... perhaps you gave your 110% but things still didn't work out...then what? Is it all over? Is life done with? Most importantly, was that time wasted?
My answer to this is NO. After all, what is life but the sum of the experiences you've had while you lived? Its the journey which matters, because everyone's destination is the same. A bond which lasted a few years and then ended was not a waste of those years. Instead, in all probability, it made both parties evolve into better people, and enriched their lives in a way that only they could, for each other. As Lord Tennyson would put it, its always better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all.
Lastly, of course, there are moments. Things that no one can ever steal away from you... the most special things that people do together... be it walking together down a moonlit beach or just having an ice cream fight... these are things that no one can EVER take away from a person, no matter what happens. And in the end, these are probably ALL that count. After all, life isn't about the number of breaths you take, but about the moments that take your breath away....
Monday, December 24, 2007
What If..?
What if Jim Douglas never adopted Jagdish (Tytler)? What if Heisenberg was not a Pacifist? What if Bush Jr had never been elected president? What if I'd never left Delhi to come to Bombay?
There are billions of questions like these...some with terrible consequences...some that are meaningless and yet fun to think about...and some that just bring a lump to the throat and a tear to the eye.
What makes me bring this, of all things, up? A classic mixture of pictures and words... The Butterfly Effect and "What If-", by Isaac Asimov.
This combination got me thinking... thinking about the choices I've made in the past and the effect they have on me now. It also made me wonder whether what I did was right...or for the best...or both...or neither?
Everyone comes to a crossroads in their life, now and then. The choices we make at these points are what determine who we are at every moment after that, be it a few minutes or half a century later.
Take a judge, for example, who has to choose between punishing a first time juvenile offender, or letting him off with a warning. If the choice is to punish, that child may (and probably will) grow into a hardened criminal, whose later actions will not only affect him, but also the lives of those who become the subject of his crimes, AS WELL as the people associated with them, leading to a colossal chain of effect for that single action of punishment.
On the other hand, if the judge chooses compassion, an entirely new chain of events will be set in motion. With proper guidance, the man who would have gone on to ruin several lives, his included, could become a contributor to society.
The flutter of a butterfly's wings can cause a typhoon halfway around the world.
There are billions of questions like these...some with terrible consequences...some that are meaningless and yet fun to think about...and some that just bring a lump to the throat and a tear to the eye.
What makes me bring this, of all things, up? A classic mixture of pictures and words... The Butterfly Effect and "What If-", by Isaac Asimov.
This combination got me thinking... thinking about the choices I've made in the past and the effect they have on me now. It also made me wonder whether what I did was right...or for the best...or both...or neither?
Everyone comes to a crossroads in their life, now and then. The choices we make at these points are what determine who we are at every moment after that, be it a few minutes or half a century later.
Take a judge, for example, who has to choose between punishing a first time juvenile offender, or letting him off with a warning. If the choice is to punish, that child may (and probably will) grow into a hardened criminal, whose later actions will not only affect him, but also the lives of those who become the subject of his crimes, AS WELL as the people associated with them, leading to a colossal chain of effect for that single action of punishment.
On the other hand, if the judge chooses compassion, an entirely new chain of events will be set in motion. With proper guidance, the man who would have gone on to ruin several lives, his included, could become a contributor to society.
The flutter of a butterfly's wings can cause a typhoon halfway around the world.
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