Truth

The truth

What is the truth?

To hell with truth! As the history of the world proves, the truth has bearing on anything. It’s irrelevant and immaterial as the lawyers say. The life of a pipe dream is what gives life to the world misbegotten madslot  of us drunk or sober—Eugene O’Neill says in the Iceman comet.

“If you shut up truth and bury it under the ground, it will but grow and gather to itself such explosive power that the day it bursts through it will blow up everything in its way” counter Emile Zole.

We glorify the Dharma raja and his refusal to tell Drona and Ashwatama was dead, then there is Krishna’s promise of excluding 100 misdeeds of the false Vasudeva.

Truth is relative. Why do we have to speak the truth at all, even here we are talking about evidence based truth.  For being caught telling a lie comes with a huge price tag. Called the loss of credibility.

When there is evidence based truth and an intangible truth with dilemma. I would recommend go with your gut instinct. For if you can tell the truth to yourself it is easier to tell the truth to others. Truth hurts is a favourite idiom, truth is harsh is another pearl of wisdom, but the truth can be told with lot of kindness. One way to achieve it is take a minute to respond, so that you can frame your words properly.

But there are some things that we really need to take care of that we don’t land up being or using covers remember the Asterix story where they go to meet the Roman officer who is in a meeting. When asterisx and Obelix in their own polite way barge into his office they find him snoozing.  These are real falsehood.

Falsehood, lies, untruth are not acceptable. But not really saying the truth is debatable. The shade is very subtle.

Let’s try this exercise for the month of June.

• We do not lie, not even an itsy-bitsy white lie
• When we flatter in our commitment we pull out a currency bill and get inspired by Gandhi.
• We take that frame-up time before we actually vocalize our thoughts.

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant–Success in Circuit liesToo bright for our infirm DelightThe Truth’s superb surprise.

EMILY DICKINSON, Tell all the Truth but tell it slant-

(Updated) List of websites blocked in India

Reblogged from Kafila:

• 

Given below is a list of websites blocked in India by one or more Internet Service Providers. This list was hacked from Reliance servers by the hacker group ANONYMOUS, which claimed in a web press conference that while most of this list of 434 is blocked as a result of government or court orders, some have been blocked by Reliance on its own.

Read more… 2,091 more words

Asura Tale of the Vanquished

Reblogged from bookshelf:

Author:    Anand Neelakantan

Publisher:   platinum Press.

ISBN: 978-93-817577-05-2

First time author Anand Neelakantan, treads the murky waters of telling the tale of the Ravana, here neither Rama nor Ravana are heroes, Ravana is the protagonist.

The book is a fiction based on the stock characters from Ramayana. The tale is narrated through the Ravana and Bhadra an asura who is positioned as the darker side of Ravana.

Read more… 123 more words

Elephants can remember,

Ah! I am only elephantine, and not an elephant.

It was a family get together a cousin of my mother had come down after donkey’s years, okay I’ll cut the excuses I could not recognize her. How many times have we been there and paid the price for it?

When it is a name it is an embarrassment, but if it is an appointment then a whole future plan gets altered, if it is a commitment then the integrity is compromised. Well as I confessed I had been there, I am a workaholic, I mean it I react to work like an alcoholic reacts to alcohol phases of denial, then bingeing. So I had cycles of disorganization so broken appointments or I was over scheduled again broken appointments.

Somewhere along the way I figured I had did not believe my own words. So how the hell would someone else, I could not remember my commitments that do not mean the other person will forget or forgive the lapse.

I had to overcome this memory issue. Well one confession I have to make is I took the help of a colleague and we figured that my memory drive was over full refused to take in anymore. I had to do a lot of work, here’s my regime you can try it out and share the results.

Let’s assume that our memory is a bank where deposit information and retrieve it when necessary. The deposits are free and work 24/7 but retrieval protocol is messy, the authentication is also not authentic, the stay in the storeroom would have cause passive modification to accommodate more stuff. So what do we do?

Lets first and foremost get us a handsome/beautiful banker, mine is Jerry Pinto the writer-poet he makes me laugh, ask my daughters that is a formidable achievement.

Let’s decide what we would like to bank, like delegate we say relegate in the memory bank. All trivia is non bankable.  To be frank the winner of KBC is a trivia king/queen nothing more than that. The page3, the serial are all non bankable for they create large wastelands. That jingle that refuses to let you alone, well sing it aloud as you write it down then flush it you know where, it will go right out. The fight you got into in the third grade over peanut butter sandwich that gets the delete too. If it bothers you too much call up the guy and give him a verbal haul, then forgive yourself for that.

Now that the space has been created you are free to bank just what you want and just what is relevant. But don’t leave the space open for poaching.

….in complete.

 

Round the world

Round the world.

At the toastmaster we are very fond of the story of bill burrows of massachusets’s, well , the story goes that he put a note into a bottle and threw into the high sea. The note was a request that the finder should send him a message.

Forty-five years later he heard from a town that was only few hundred yards away. In the meanwhile he had imagined the bottle traversing the high seas, and against the currents and being tossed to exotic lands,

Now this is often co-related to the midlife assessment and the futile effort we expand in following and trying to fulfil great expectations. It is considered a moment of reckoning, beg your pardon it is a moment of beckoning too.

Addressing the moment of reckoning it goes

• A dream – launch of the dream
• Realization that the bottle didn’t go far
• After the all that time,

Yup, we do assume that the current does rise to act two and maybe , when we find that the bottle landed only couple of 100 yards awaywe fall in our own expectations, there is frustration, fluttering, and we label it a lovely midlife crisis.

What i think we miss out, is that the phrase as the crow flies would not really be applicable here, for the bottle would not really follow the flight of the birds, southwards, perching on signposts handed down by genetic memory . the bottle would have tossed with the waves, floated with the current, risen with the tide, maybe even a jaunt inside a whale but it never got smashed by the rock,  or busted by the tip of the iceberg, it might have made its journey now think of the journey of the bottle, the bottle being our career now what do how would we map the landmarks?

• How many storms have I withered?
• How many times have I re-charted the  course when we went off the course’
• How many lessons did I learn from my mistakes,
• How many times have I called port in distress.
• How many times have I shared the laurel?
• How many times have I gracefully given up?

One major factor that holds most of us back is our anger. We react to criticism, or refusal by counter criticism or allowing in pity but very rarely do we take it on face value.

Here’s a lesson I refused to learn from my mother but I did learn else where,

Usually when someone criticises our filter gets turned on, “Oh! He’s like that he always finds fault.” Our stories begin to play, and our rackets feed the justification. Lets try to analyse on face value.

Criticism à is it relevant? That is am I guilty of that behavior. If relevant and valid, thank the person who criticised and evaluate ways to minimize the damage, and prevent it. FORGIVE YOURSELF

If not applicable, forget it.

Our journey need’s to be measured through the parameters of courage,compassion and humility. Our highs are our joys and our lows are now that we withered the storm, just look at the map, we have come a full circle, its our journey and it has definitely been around, and not only 100 yards away.

Oh! If you have not gone round the world just take a second look, you might have walked the ocean bed.

speechless

Speechless…

Ever been at that meeting where someone babbles  continuously, at the end of the speech the person says with this finish my few words, god if that were few words what would be a whole deal?

The conferences where people eat into the next speakers time, how many of us have been there.

The most painful of them all are those that write their speech out on the slides and read it out, believe me I have just fallen a sleep in many such presentations.

A speech should not just be sharing of information, but a sharing of yourself, — says Ralf Arc hold on speakers and speaking. On the same platform Jim Beggs adds—what we say is important in most cases the mouth speaks what the heart is full off.

we need to have the right pauses, the apt word, the nuances, the body language, a gamut that’s possible only when we speak from the heart.

Interesting is it not.

Many say they can deliver,

But only few can receive.

Lips flapping non-stop

Don’t believe

Ears maybe wide open

But the brain is shut closed.

The is excellent help online if you are interested  http://sixminutes.dlugan.com/ and http://beyondpowerpoints.com   are two of my favourites.

Julie Andrews

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Aetiology — Sathyameva jayathele

Aetiology —  Sathyameva jayathe

The last episode of sathyameva Jayathe spoke of dowries, Aamir Khan spoke of the northe-east culture of no dowry.

I think we are the only country that approves human trafficking,

South-west India also went with the same culture of matriarchy and matrilineal society. But Sardar Vallabhai Patel and his united India, Ambedkar and his aryanization has left the society confused. For those of you who want to know the deep psychological identity crisis it has cause kindly read up Dr.Malavika Kapoor’s research in Psycology. The excerpts of which are archived in the illustrated weekly.

A minister from Punjab spoke about how the exploitation of girls, occurs, where the girls parents spend about 15 lakhs on a wedding and the girl for an NRI groom, how it was unfair.

This is a moment of reckoning here.

The groom is a commodity, and the price of the commodity depends on its saleability, that is what the NRI groom is banking one. The question raised here are many

• Why this craze to go abroad.—Son-in-law in US or Canada means a better performance appraisal for the parents.

I have a friend who is the head of the department of a medical college and scheduled to become Dean of medical studies,  but her father still picks on her for not being married.

• Why don’t we let the girls choose their spouses. I am not talking in terms of Draupadi or Sita’s swayamvar, where they were commoditites I am talking in terms to the swayamvar of Rukmini

When a girl chooses a partner somewhere she is accepting her sexuality, there is a male who makes her aware of her femaleness, which violates our moral uprightness… we’ll go a little more into this tomorrow.

About twenty years ago the gaudy weddings began making their entry, shivalli Brahmin communities of south kanara, . with the emergency of workforce migration—Yes Maccha it is the migrant worker syndrome, and nuclear families, what started off as conviencence twenty years ago has become a norm, or a must in today’s weddings, with popularity of TV and publicizing north Indian culture, mehendi and sangeet’s have become a must.

Where the groom wore a white cotton dhoti, and the bride a simple silk sari, we have a trousseau of ugly sherwani for the groom, and a horde of sari’s and gagra’s for the bride which I doubt if she will ever wear again.

When we were kids since people came from distances breakfast of Upma and Pohe would  be served now we an elaborate breakfast menu, engagements which used to be a quiet family affair have become social events with corn usli instead of the tradition chanadaal sundal, and the whole gamut of opulence flaunting and status declaring has become social acceptable.

When my husband and I tried to put our foot down during our wedding my parents said no, we have social obligations and this is the only way we can return it, we don’t want to burden your brothers in-laws fair enough, but I know that the wedding eve get together, was in its early stages then.

When we say no gifts, very good, the concept of gifts came up to help the couple set up home. But we don’t do away with the sari for the brides sister, gifts for the grooms brother-in-law etc.

I really admire my cousin Anitha I wish I had her moral strength she put her foot down and they had a very simple wedding with just the people that meant a lot to them, in the evening my Aunt and Uncle had an event to satisfy their social commitments, of course people did spew a whole lot of comments but who cares?

re-enforcing listening.

1997 my grandmother passed away, I was winding up her house, I came across a file, where all the letters that my brother and I had written to her were filled, she had marked appreciating comments she had notes things that she had to discuss with my mother from her observation of the letter, they were so astute it was amazing.

Her diary with dates and conversation again along the margin she had observations noted, and more interestingly a note that said “follow up task “it would something like bring to Sheila’s notice, whatever.

Never once did I perceive that she was vigilant she was my best friend so I rattled things to her, including great crush!

That was the power of listening.

When I realized this I started incorporating it in my practise, I found patients by passing five clinics to come to me, simply because I lent them a hearing ear.

They are not looking for a trouble-shooter they just want to diffuse their burden so that they are free to think objectively.

How exactly does one convince the talker that he/she is being listened to?

• Keep your mouth shut don’t interrupt unless it is pertinent.
• Listen in the present. Avoid bringing up parallel incidents
• Maintain eye contact.
• Mirror the other person’s body gestures.
• Avoid telephones and other external distractions.
• Concentrate
• Hear the silence and the unsaid.
• All talk should translate to action

This way the person talking to you will not have to take the trouble Robert McCloskey took to say “I know that you believe you understand what you think I said, but I am not sure you realized that what you heard is not what I meant.”

Saga of Bollywood.

Reblogged from bookshelf:

• 

The greatest show on Earth,

Publishers:                 Penguin

ISBN                         9780143416128

Edited by                   Jerry Pinto

The charmed world of Indian Cinema. With an introduction by the charming Jerry Pinto,

The book takes us through the world of Stars and the Star makers, movies and movie makers, the music and musicians, the film reporters, and the back office that creates the Movie tigers.

Read more… 127 more words