I am Shiva

By the Adi Shankaracharya

Om. I am neither the mind,
Intelligence, ego nor chitta.
Neither the ears, the tongue,
Nor the senses of smell and sight.
Neither ether nor air.
I am eternal bliss and awareness -
I am Shiva! I am Shiva!

I am neither the prana,
Nor the five vital breaths.
Neither the seven elements of the body,
Nor its five sheaths,
Nor hands, nor feet, nor tongue,
Nor other organ of action.
I am eternal bliss and awareness -
I am Shiva! I am Shiva!

Neither fear, greed, delusion,
Loathing, nor liking have I.
Nothing of pride, or ego,
Or dharma or liberation.
Neither desire of the mind,
Nor object of its desiring.
I am eternal bliss and awareness -
I am Shiva! I am Shiva!

Nothing of pleasure or pain,
Or virtue or vice, do I know.
Of manta, of sacred place,
Of Vedas or sacrifice.
Neither I am the eater,
The food or the act of eating.
I am eternal bliss and awareness -
I am Shiva! I am Shiva!

Fear or death, I have none,
Nor any distincton of caste.
Neither father nor mother,
Not even a birth, have I.
Neither friend, nor comrade.
Neither disciple, nor Guru.
I am eternal bliss and awareness -
I am Shiva! I am Shiva!

I have no form or fancy.
The All-pervading am I.
Everywhere I exist,
Yet I am beyond the senses.
Neither salvation am I,
Nor anything to be known.
I am eternal bliss and awareness -
I am Shiva! I am Shiva!

Waah!!Waah!!

I just came across this couplet by the urdu shayar Zauk and cant help writing it. This is as relevant as they come.

Hamne maana dakkan mein hain , bahut se kadr-e-sukhan,
par kaun jaye ae zauk, ye dilli ki galiyan chhodkar

On the Tao Of Physics#6

And Mr. Sankara replies:

Hi kislay

Have read ur entire mail. Ur arguments about UNIX processes is quite interesting to read. Nice one, I must say.
As far as bomb case is concerned, u have got me wrong, I was quoting it to substantiate my arguments regarding not being receptive about a particular thing and not as an example for instinct.

Yes, we are talking about a hard gained skill. What Capra is trying to say probably is that the efforts needed for getting that "hard gained skill" is very similar to what an eastern mystic goes through. That's why he made a comparison.

Also I talked to Gaurav Singh ( COE guy, jo bahut lamba hai and b-ball team captain)about ur post. He also said something very similar about instinct being the result of subconscious mind. In fact that's what they are trying to model in their idea for a paper on automatic essay evaluation. So I think we do have a convergence of views there.

I am not arguing about that UNIX process thing as I don know anything about neural networks or that feyman's theories. So I reserve my comments. If at all I do get something to read on that and if I don agree with u, I shall raise those points.

Also, I think I am understanding objectivism now. For more I read about hindu philosophy ( once again the vedantic philosophy which considers vedas as the defining text on hinduism), I feel there is some sort of convergence between the vedic philosophy and objectivism. I plan to read some books on hindu philosophy, notably works of vivekananda and some commentaries of adi shankara on various upanishads etc.

Once I read that, I think I wud have a decent understanding of hinduism and will be able to better comment on the following question.

"Has Ayn Rand, been inspired by certain ideas of our philosophy?"

Also, I suggest u try reading few of those and more importantly try to get the true meaning of it by transcending the obvious ones.

How is the work pressure there? Did u finally understood your role in the organization?

Now that CAT notification is out, I am back to square one as far as clarity of my career path is concerned.

Regards
shankar

On the Tao Of Physics#5

This is the mail I wote after having gone through Sankara's replies. It is mostly concerned with instinct and the origins of Epiphany.

Hi,

How you doing man. Project fine?STM still not bankrupt eh???

>>>>
I feel everybody is born with it. Everybody can perceive things which cannot be justified by reasons of logic, but just we feel it.

If u remember Alchemist, we have something similar saying that nature always gives us signals. We need to listen to them. If we regularly overlook it, we feel the signals have stopped comin...... Along these lines.
What I feel is we stop being receptive about it.
>>>>

Really can't say anything about what Paulio Coelho has written. I think it is a critical case of words and phrases being inappropriate/insufficient to convey what he meant when he wrote "Maqtub" in that book.

What I understand is this-Instinct is the knowledge which comes before conceptualization of the problem. Imagine someone punches you and you see the punch coming fro the corner of your eyes. You duck (hopefully) and what makes you do it is instinct.

>>>>
Why lay man does not get that instinct.
1. lay man does not even know the objective of the experiments. Even if he gets a result he cant make sense of itfor the raeson that he is not aware
that such a problem exists.
Say if i pull out the wire and give u a bomb, u wud realize what it is and run away. But if u never knew that such a thing like bomb existed, how wud u identify it. For u it is nothing more than a round ball.

2.he does not actually set out to look for it. Its like it, u know a signal is coming on a particular channel. All these years u were not tuned to it. So u never realize the transmission. The research, training etc that is being talked about is for the correct tuning.
>>>>

Understanding the objective of the problemis outside the domain of instinct. I think the problem here is that we are confusing extremely hard gained skill with instinct.
Consider a golie in football.In penalties, he can be said to be jum,ping left or right on 'instinct' but is it really so? Would you then say that the players at the highest level of the game have greater instinct or greater skill. You or I would have absolutely no clue of what to do.

As for the bomb-you said it yourself. My 'throwing it away' does not constitute instinct at all.It is a conscious decision taken so fast that even I cant consciously follow the chain of decisions.

So in my opinion, A layman having not getting those epiphanies but a scientist getting them has nothing to do with instinct.

Another point that I would like to raise in this regard is that of the subconscious mind. It is well known fact that even when we have banished some thought from our mind it persists in the subconscious.e.g. we are trying to remember a name but cannot recall it.Then several hours later we suddenly remember it.

I like to think of our mind as one huge UNIX machine which is extremely likely to create orphan processes. Even when you have killed the active process, the neural circuits still bear the computation as it is not possible to them all due to the highly decentralized structure of a neural network.This 'orphan' process may ,later on, come up with a solution, which the mystics/philosophers/godmen claim to have as a godsend or instinct.

Your point about no reaction without knowledge is exactly the one I am trying to make. The 'instinct'of the scientist is his subconscious mind come up with a solution.

>>>>
And for the last question,capra has himself given a very good account of it. They were not able to get that brainwave earlier because they were looking
in other direction. The moment physicists started looking for it( as an eastern mystic does)they were able to get it.
>>>>

By all accounts, the eastern mystic does not look in any direction at all. He is sitting there trying to calm down all his 'orphan' processes to extract 'maximum' performance from them.

Just consider this:
Consider some huge problem like 'who made this universe?' or some such. If you know of swarm intelligence, you will know that in them we consider ALL POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS (kinda like FEYNMAN'S SUM OVER HISTORIES) and gradually converge to the best solution. But the problem with our mind is that in our mind we are carrying so many deeply ingrained filters regarding what is possible and what is not. So the result thrown by the orphan processes I just mentioned are being actively filtered out when we try to intellectualize the problem. And that cant lead us to a solution as the solution demands that all possible alternatives be considered.

Here states like meditating or sleeping come to limelight. From a technical/scientific point of view, these states are a SUSPENSION OF DIBELIEF-a state where our filters are suspnded so that our neural circuit can realize the full potential of that swarm intelligence process running in the background.

Hence Kekule's six snakes dream. I belive it was not a dream about snakes at all. It was one of the possible solutions given by his mind. He subsequently described it as snakes as a sort of verbal approximation. Or his mind, represented its result in the form the imagery it found to be closest to what the result actually was.

>>>>
Just to give an example, do u remember how Kekule came up with the structure of benzene. For us, it wud have been a bad dream about snakes but for him that was an insight, a hint by nature, which his instinct interpreted correctly. It came just by chance, he did not try to get that dream
>>>>

They say you can not find it if you look for it. I think the hypothesis of the 'orphan process' and the mental filters explains this koan beautifully.

On the Tao Of Physics#4

Hi
Now the third question.

I am not fully convinced by the arguments of Capra. To tell the truth, I don have an opinion on this. However, the fact that a physicist says so makes
them somewhat credible.Had this been said by a mystic, I wud have outrightly rejected it as case of my area being superior.

Regarding instinct,

I feel everybody is born with it. Everybody can perceive things which can not be justified by reasons of logic, but just we feel it.

If u remember Alchemist, we have something similar saying that nature always gives us signals. We need to listen to them. If we regularly overlook it, we
feel the signals have stopped comin...... Along these lines. What I feel is we stop being receptive about it.

And for the last question,capra has himself given a very good account of it. They were not able to get that brainwave earlier because they were looking
in other direction. The moment physicists started looking for it( as an eastern mystic does)they were able to get it.

Why lay man does not get that instinct:
1. lay man does not even know the objective of the experiments. Even if he gets a result he cant make sense of it for the raeson that he is not aware
that such a problem exists. Say if i pull out the wire and give u a bomb, u wud realize what it is and run away. But if u never knew that such a thing like bomb existed, how wud u identify it. For u it is nothing more than a round ball.

2.he does not actually set out to look for it. Its like it, u know a signal is coming on a particular channel. All these years u were not tuned to it. So u never realize the transmission. The research, training etc that is being talked about is for the correct tuning.

Just to give an example, do u remember how Kekule came up with the structure of benzene. For us, it wud have been a bad dream about snakes but for him that was an insight, a hint by nature, which his instinct interpreted correctly. It came just by chance, he did not try to get that dream

I hope it clears a bit.

Regards
shankar

On the Tao Of Physics#3

Hi
This is my reply to Q2.

Mysticism (from the Greek ??st???? (mystikos) "an initiate" (of the
Eleusinian Mysteries, ??st???a (mysteria) meaning "initiation"[1])) is the
pursuit of achieving communion or identity with, or conscious awareness of,
ultimate reality, the divine, spiritual truth, or God through direct
experience, intuition, or insight; and the belief that such experience is
one's destiny, purpose, or an important source of knowledge, understanding,
and wisdom. Traditions may include a belief in the literal existence of
dimensional realities beyond empirical perception, or a belief that a true
human perception of the world transcends logical reasoning or intellectual
comprehension. A person delving in these areas may be called a Mystic.

This is from wikipedia.
But what I believe is as follows.

Western philosophies do not have a very close relationship btween religion
and philosophy. They are quite distinct identities. While one encourages
reason and logic while the considers them as satanic. However eastern
philosphies, in particular hindu philosophy( the philosophy propounded by
Adi Shankara, for there are many differences btween the philosophies)
considers philosophy and religion as two sides of the same coin.
We make extensive use of religion to convey the philosophical thoughts.

So mysticism, I feel is a term coined by westerners so as to handle this
unique amalgamation of religion and philosophy.

On the Tao Of Physics#2

This and the next 2 posts are Shankar's replies to my e-mail.

Hi,

I did not read the entire book. However, I will try answering the questions
according to my chota dimag.

1.Religion is a kind of user interface to the philosophical thoughts. See,
many of the philosophical thoughts are quite abstract and people use
religion as an approximation to comprehend the abstract teachings.

The aim of philosophy, I feel, is self realization i.e a better a
understanding of your life and the surroundings which affect directly or
indirectly ur life. Only by self realization, ie by knowing who am i? whats
my role in the world, can we try to attempt the more difficult question of
why I am here, and what next.

The path of self realization is very tough and I feel religion is a
companion/ friend/ guide/ vehicle that eases our journey. Lets take a simple
example of meditation. U try medidating with blank thoughts ie the state of
void, No thoughts entering ur mind and its perfectly peaceful. This is the
ideal state, that we shud strive.


But meditation by no thoughts is very difficult. So what they suggest is to
medidate ny focussing on one thought, ie thoughts about God, which is
definiltely easier than the previous one.

Thus we see religion has made our journey somewhat less tedious.

That's what I feel is the role of religion.

To further substantiate, I have read translations of 3 different shlokas in
one of the orkut communities. One on shiva, one on krishna(gita) and one on
shakti (lalita sahasranama). All three are exactly similar extolling the
opulence of respective deities.so what does it signify?

The simplified view is that there are inherent contradictions in the
scriptures themselves. But is it so? How I understand it is not one of
contradiction but one of convergence.

There is something called the Supreme Being ( what Adishankara called
brahman)and the religion has given us different instances of the same thing.
For some, he is krishna, for others rudra and for some she is shakti. That's
the role religion set out to fulfill but now people are missing the woods
for the trees.

I will mail u those three translations when I reach home.

I hope, I am coherent. If not tell me I will mail u in the weekends.

Other questions I will answer later

Regards
shankar

On the Tao OF Physics#1

What follows is a series of e-mail conversations between myself and Mr.R.Sankara Narayanan (copyright protected etc. etc.) sparked off by the book "The Tao of Physics" by Fritzof Kapra. They include the tossing back and forth of our own meager ideas about what constitutes the difference between skill and knowledge and the playoff(???) between mysticism and the world-view modern physics is beginning to uncover. That, of course, is also the principal theme of the book.

This post contains the text of my first mail in this regard and the subsequent posts contain the replies and counter-replies.

Hi,

I was busy with a training program for the past 2 days so not much time for the TAO.But the internal conflict has started from Chapter-2 itself.It'll be great if you can answer these questions for me,considering that you have already read the book:

1. What is the difference between religion and philosophy?
2. What is mysticism, as distinct from religioug and philosophical movements?
3. Do you agree that mathematical symbols are not talking about reality just because we can not perceive the reality they describe as such?
4. What is instinct?
5. If instinct is something fundamental to all humans, then why can a layman not find the answers to quantum physics problems instinctively?If this insight/intuition is enabled in a scientist due to the years he has spent in research and study, can this form of epiphany/brainwave/sudden insight be called intuituion at all?

I am going to have a good time reading this one I'm sure.

More question when I have read more chapters.

Take care,
Kislay Verma

A footnote to this series of posts-if you are interested in science and/or philosophy, don't miss this book.

Shibboleth+lisp

Sitting here in the training room Nalanda at my ofiice, with the steady hum of the trainers voices lulling my mind and making my thoughts drift arbit-ward, I just had this amazing thought. The thought came thus: I lisp( or maybe I should say lifp). And I suddenly realized that this trainer babbling about something or the other, is a shibboleth( speaks 's' in place of 'sh').

Now anyone can tell you that 's' is not a lispist's favourite consonant. So I thought, what would it be like for a guy(or girl,whatever) to be both a shibboleth and lisp at the same time. How terrible mangled the English language sound, when left in the care of such an individual. And how terrible( or funny, depending on your taste) would it be for the listener.

Consider the following sentence:Shashank should have shown him the chateau....It is hard to figure out exactly how this would sound in the tongue of the aforementioned fated person, but after repeated trials i have come to the conclusion that it would be something like: Fafank fud have fon him the fatoo.

Not pleasant, considering that I myself am halfway there.

Apart from thinking up stuff like this occasionally, I remain firmly on sanity's terra firma, enjoying a hyderabadi sun come out after almost 1 week.The company gave me 2 days off to "recover from the strenous training before you are assigned to your respective teams and real projects".

Couldn't have been better for me. After sleeping my a** for almost 1 month in training sessions on arcane topics, I get 2 days off to "recover' from it
Might get a lil boring though.

Oxymoron Profile

This is from the orkut profile of one of my school friends. I always figured him as quite a bit of a retard and this has finally confirmed my suspicions.

This is the dude's about me:

smart sexy hot down to earth n simply coooooooolllllllllllll.

Note the down to earth in beween all the other self-endowed accomplishments...nothing could be further away from earth.

Now this is one of his testmonials. Can't blame him totally forhaving that in his profile as someone else must have written it but you always have the option of deleting one of your testimonials.That this person hasn't exercised this option speaks volumes.It goes:

VEL I HAV NEVR MET VITH GAGAN BUT STILL I VOULD LIKE 2 WRITE SUMTHING DAT HE IS SUCH A CHARMING PERSON I HAV EVER MET IN MY LIFE.HE IS A VERI JOLLY NATURE N FUN LUVING GUY.HE LIVES 4 OTHERS.HIS MAIN MOTTO IN LIFE HOW 2 MAKE OTHERS HAPI.I M GLAD DAT I GOT A SWEET PERSON LIKE HIM IN MY LIFE .THANX ALOT

We will pretend not to notice the rigour with which grammar rules have been followed. Notice I have never met with gagan and then in the same sentence notice Ihave ever met in my life.

Ek hi profile mein do aise kamaal ke paap heere...kya baat hai!

Neural Networks Revisited

QUOTE(dude @ Feb 5 2007, 08:36 PM)

In essence, the type of generalization you are referring to, is the basic building block of what we call science. Observe phenomena, formulate a theory that explains in general the behaviours that you have observed (and test it too!). But IMHO sometimes we need contrasts to move further in our quest for knowledge and I think this is very important.

Think of it this way, we were used to burning coal and oil to generate heat for our power plants. They worked on the principle of combustion... But when we discovered nuclear power, we had to change our viewpoint that apart from fossil fuels, nuclear energy can also be used to generate electricity. We could have formed a general opinion that combustion is the only feasible way to generate large amount of power in a viable manner. By thinking different, creativity is encouraged and people tend to think out of the box. Finding general patterns seems great (as it seems that we would have to work lesser for future discoveries, I suppose) but might lead to stagnation of knowledge.

Hey!
I think I have misconveyed myself, so I will try to make things a little more clear.

I'm not saying that all scientific work should be aimed at generalizing (although I do believe that that is what brings the quantum leaps). As you have said, work at lower levels is important too, more so because how things work at a lower level can often give invaluable hints to the overall larger order of their working.

What I was trying to say is made more clear through an example. Consider any novel groundbreaking system which makes some sort of decision based on a distance parameter between two vectors.

The system qualifies as genuine research and ought to be hailed as such. Once, the system has been specified however, then the choice of the distance parameter becomes trivial. Any half educated technical student knows that there are several measures (Hamming Distance, Euclidean distance, Mahalanobis Distance,Correlation...) and others can be invented as you go along.So that if you have spent 15 years just trying variations of all these distance on the same system, I say something is wrong. And for these things to be published in IEEE journals as articles of cutting edge research is greater folly still.

Pick up any volume of Technical transactions and you will find discussion on things analogous to the example I have given above(e.g. "Modification of the Karhunen-Loeve Transform using matrices of all image classes rather their correlation matrix") as if the aim of their research was the distance measure rather than the system (which in the previous case was Facial Recognition). I can't help but feel that these guys keep forgetting what they started out to do.

A final word on this-I am also not against working these 'distance parameters' if it can be shown that one of them is more fundamentally related to the system than another.e.g. In the case of Self-Organising Neural Networks, A feature based approach can aid in preliminary input differentiation but if we want to draw conclusions from input data, then an Information Theory based approach is required. In this case, the determining principle for self-organisation needs to be changed and I am all for it.

I hope I have made myself clearer.

The Diaries#3

They come less frequently now, these fits. I remember listening to endless hours of ENIGMA under their spell when in school, but these days work usually keeps them away. There is this ever present feeling of breathlessness, anxiety, ticking of the clock, dripping of the sand in the hour glass, that there isn’t enough time to do all that must be done. What is to be done, though, I haven’t the slightest clue. Mine is already a life driven not by goals or even desires but by what others are doing. I don’t not know what I want to do, and therefore must do everything that everyone else is doing to stay in the race to dozen unseen finish lines.

The fear of being left behind is too much to bear, even when I realize that the race is one in which ai don’t care to run. The prospect of losing, hidden behind the excuse of keeping my options open, is too grim to contemplate. All of them are my compatriots aren’t they? Then why should I not do all that they are doing? If they are reading 3 books at the same time, I can do it. If they are getting papers published and going abroad for higher studies, I can too. If they have IIM calls, I must obtain those. And beneath all this, an ever-present tiredness, a panting whisper which acknowledges the impossibility but still wants more time.

I wonder if I will still feel these things in the future. Will I have the occasion to remember these remembrances when the bustle of a mundane life has overtaken me? If I don’t, then will some part of me have died, for if there are only two halves of my personality, then what is it that stands apart and observes both of them in my moments of sanity?

The Diaries#2

I’ve always been suspicious of generalizations and those who make them. Whenever I read through the stuff I’ve written over the past 5-6 years, I can’t but escape the conclusion that I ought to be terribly suspicious of myself. As a lot of people have told me-“No one thinks of the survival of the species when lying…”. Very correct, but not correct enough if I am correct.

I think it’s a social problem; a personality disorder I have about which I have managed to convince myself that it is a good thing through verbal grandstanding in front of an audience comprising myself. I certainly do talk enough to myself to have done that in a careless moment. I’m a misfit-always have been-and I have convinced myself that this is because my perspicuity allows myself to see so much more in the course of life which others do not and therefore do not understand. I’m a self-proclaimed crusader for removing hypocrisy fro our lives-and have built this almost alternate personality which doesn’t ordinarily allow me to see that I may not be fully equipped to handling real problems in a real life-hypocrisy of the first order.

It is only these formerly explained periods of dazedness that I see both the I’s separately, objectively and know both of them to be conceited, real me. Maybe its wrong to call these spells dazes. Maybe they are the only lucid intervals in an otherwise hallucinatory existence.

I can see the two selves clearly as I write this. One, totally tongue-tied I front of any audience larger than one, and that one himself. The other, full of himself and his ideas, loving the sound of his own voice too much. One, wanting nothing better than to crawl away somewhere and hide. The other claiming that this is an intellectual inclination and not a reluctance to face the world. One which must make jokes incessantly to hide that he doesn’t have anything to say. The other claiming that this isn’t insularity but rather ‘ the pleasure of being alive’. One which barely feels any emotion. The other hiding thefrigidity under the cloak of stoicism.

I think that’s why people find it difficult with me. They don’t know about the two me’s and can’t understand the mixture they see. They’d rather be friendly with me rather than be a friend, because they don’t know what they might end up befriending. That’s probably why so many artists have espoused drugs. It’s a wonderful thing-this state of oblivion. Though grass has never left a pleasant experience with me, fortunately I am able to get to this state without any external aid. Even now I can hear a small voice at the back of my head saying-“See,See! I know! I know my problem and am not ashamed to talk about it!”. Too proud, too proud. Is this self-glorification? I do not know.

The Diaries#1

Today I found the old diaries that I used to maintain when at school and in the first year at college. It has been a long time, almost 4 years since I saw them last. Even I had forgotten a lot of what was in there, but as I read through them, I remember-old memories and impressions, vague now with time and other cares of the intervening period.

Also, I think, what do they read like? 4 years doesn’t give much of an age perspective but I have to wonder whether these are my original thoughts or just recycled crap-garbage imbibed in the meandering course of my education and random images that our lives throw at us everyday.

A lot of it was written merely as an ‘attitude’ thing, and the rest sounds too grandiose for a 19-20 year old person. It also makes me wonder as to how I could think up that kind of stuff. A lot of it very well written, hinting at the kind of clear, coherent thought of which I seem to have lost the capacity of late. Unless of course it is sermonizing about how to live our lives most of which is as obscure to me as it must sound to others.

It’s a rather garbled mess-my brain, like an overcrowded attic with an extremely random collection of thoughts and ideas thrown together pell-mell. And most of the thing I there can’t stand the company of most of the other things in there. It’s an effort to keep them all together-but it must be done to maintain the conceit of open-mindedness I pride myself upon.

It used to be a lot less cluttered back then. I was much less profligate with what I read, much less judicious-reading mostly the kind of stuff that you read once and forget quickly- Sidney Sheldons etc. No ideas to store, no thoughts to carry in my head. A lot of the entries are straight from the covers on ENIGMA cassettes.

But most of all I remember the condition all of the entries in those diaries these were written in. It’s a kind of daze, a numbness that I sometimes find myself afflicted with, as I find my afflicted with right now. It’s a little like being stoned, nothing is quite as sharp as it usually would be, the feelings are not quite as animated, the usual whirring inside my head is dulled to a steady throbbing-like all those disparate things in my head had decided to stop fighting each other and set me a joint petition to be let out immediately.

At times like these, it’s like I’m not in my body anymore-like one of those near death experiences we hear about. It’s like standing someplace else and looking down (well maybe not down exactly) on someone who thinks and looks the way I do. Vague impressions pass by, maybe phantasms of my own sub-conscious, or probably chips and fragments of all the conflicts I have chosen to stuff my head with. Not really my own, but not really not my own either.

And to think that after all the guff I have spouted about reason, consciousness etc. etc. blahblah on this blog, these diary entries comprise most of my creative work and they are done in one of these mystic dazes that I’m so totally going to trash in the next entry. It’s a contradiction-and there are no contradictions. Maybe I’m just expressing hidden feelings. Maybe I’m just some guy who doesn’t who doesn’t what the f*** he is talking about.

Silence must be heard

Silence must be heard.
In silence there is vibrance of life.
In silence there is stillness of death.
In silence there is gaiety and mirth.
In silence there is despair and frustration.
In silence there is warmth of sentiments.
In silence there is chaos of emotions.

Listen to the silence.
Wails of defeat dwell in it,
As do roars of triumph.
It is the home darkest fears,
and the abode of glorious hopes.
It is gentle as the rustling of leaves
and horrendous as a tempest.
It is the determination to win,
and the surrender to defeat.

Listen to the sound of silence.
It is the sound of sad partings and happy meetings.
It is the sound of cherished memories.
It is the sound of unbroken vows and forgotten promises.

The voice of silence is your voice.
The voice of silence is my voice.
It is the beginning of all ends,
and the end of all beginnings.
It is soothing and yet it is terrifying.
It is lonely and yet encompasses the universe.
It never was, and never will be,
and yet is-infinite, eternal, timeless.

And that is why,
Silence must be heard.

Look into the others’ eyes, many frustrations.
Read between the lines, not words just vibrations.
Don’t ignore hidden desires-pay attention,
you’re playing with fire.

Silence must be heard.
Noise should be observed.

Or diamonds will burn,
Friendly cards will turn.
Because silence has a right to be heard.

People talk too much for what they have to say.
Words without a meaning, just fading away.
The time has come to learn,
That silence must be heard,
noise should be observed.

Saki's Verses

A mouse that cried for allah’s aid, blasphemed when no such aid befell.
The call which devoured that mouse, thought allah managed rather well.

A poet praised the evening star, another praised the parrot’s hue.
A merchant praised his merchandise, and he, at least, praised what he knew.

“You are not on the road to hell”, you tell me with fanatic glee.
Vain boaster, what shall that avail, when hell is the road to meet thee!

There is a sadness in each dawn.
A sadness that you cannot see.
The joyous day brings in its train,
The feast, the beloved, and the steed.

There shall come a dawn at last,
That brings no life-stir to your ken.
A long cold dawn, without a day,
And you shall see its sadness then.

The Best of the Rime of the Ancient Mariner

These are some of my choicest verses from the Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.

Water, water, every where,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop to drink.
One after one, by the star-dogged Moon
Too quick for groan or sigh,
Each turned his face with a ghastly pang,
And cursed me with his eye.

Four times fifty living men,
(And I heard nor sigh nor groan)
With heavy thump, a lifeless lump,
They dropped down one by one.
The many men, so beautiful!
And they all dead did lie:
And a thousand thousand slimy things
Lived on; and so did I

I looked upon the rotting sea,
And drew my eyes away;
I looked upon the rotting deck,
And there the dead men lay.

I looked to Heaven, and tried to pray:
But or ever a prayer had gusht,
A wicked whisper came, and made
my heart as dry as dust.

I closed my lids, and kept them close,
And the balls like pulses beat;
For the sky and the sea, and the sea and the sky
Lay like a load on my weary eye,
And the dead were at my feet.

An orphan's curse would drag to Hell
A spirit from on high;
But oh! more horrible than that
Is a curse in a dead man's eye!
Seven days, seven nights, I saw that curse,
And yet I could not die.
The loud wind never reached the ship,
Yet now the ship moved on!
Beneath the lightning and the Moon
The dead men gave a groan.

They groaned, they stirred, they all uprose,
Nor spake, nor moved their eyes;
It had been strange, even in a dream,
To have seen those dead men rise.

The helmsman steered, the ship moved on;
Yet never a breeze up blew;
The mariners all 'gan work the ropes,
Were they were wont to do:
They raised their limbs like lifeless tools--
We were a ghastly crew.
Swiftly, swiftly flew the ship,
Yet she sailed softly too:
Sweetly, sweetly blew the breeze--
On me alone it blew.

Oh! dream of joy! is this indeed
The light-house top I see?
Is this the hill? is this the kirk?
Is this mine own country!

We drifted o'er the harbour-bar,
And I with sobs did pray--
O let me be awake, my God!
Or let me sleep alway.
O Wedding-Guest! this soul hath been
Alone on a wide wide sea:
So lonely 'twas, that God himself
Scarce seemed there to be.

Farewell, farewell! but this I tell
To thee, thou Wedding-Guest!
He prayeth well, who loveth well
Both man and bird and beast.

He prayeth best, who loveth best
All things both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us
He made and loveth all.

Random Rants

…A trifle, a little, the likeness of a dream,
And death comes as the end.

When there’s nowhere left to go, the only way left to go is forward.

Wandering stray thoughts,
Grim battles fought,
Hard time borne,
Scars on the heart wrought.

Ambition is a poor excuse for not having enough sense to be lazy.

I’ve been thinking on my thinking, and I think its improving!

This is the story of the loves and hates of men and women that have long been dust; the story of a day when the red earth was young, and the gods sat steadfast in their places; the story of a time and times; and behold! It has never been told to human ear till now…
Everyone loves god. I have sympathy for the Devil.

If you understand, or if you don’t.
If you believe, or if you don’t.
The universe of justice, and the eyes of truth
Are always watching you.

There is a tide in the affairs of men, which, when taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and misery.
On such a sea are we now afloat, and we must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures.

Arbit Verses

Take a leap into the unknown,
Ask for a life that I’ve never known,
Stand with my hands outstretched,
Still can’t fly…

Grab at the chances fate has blown,
Past me, moments long gone,
Hold on to myself ad watch them
Pass me by…

In the tide of time, tossed and thrown,
The tumult of destiny waits for none,
Dare to face the inevitable,
Head held high…

(First verse courtesy Mr. Meekal Bajaj)

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Kidhar Hai Satya

It’s the old debate. Did the river carve the land to make way for itself, or did the river bend to offer the river a course? Would the course of time allow itself to be marked by something as tiny as one man? Are his shoulders strong enough to bear the weight of the responsibility of the endless millennia?

Do great men match their wills against the wheel of time, marking it indelibly, thus shaping the lives of men and women for years to come? Or does the host of history, marching its predetermined course, produce such men as it needs to do its bidding? And when these are no more, goes on to find others?

“Kidhar hai satya?
Nadi ne khud banaya tha apna raasta,
Ya parivesh ne jhuk kar nadi ko raah di thi?
Kidhar hai Satya?”