Its me and my world

After going thru the “beautiful straight from the heart” piece from Madhu, I could not resist writing about my own first time visit to Ashram. Very contrary to Madhu’s grand event of an Advanced Course with the Master Himself, the time I went to Ashram, there was no course, it was dead at night and there was no Master !!! But there was something remarkable about that visit that it is etched permanently in my memory. It was Dec 2006. I had visited B’lore for some office seminar and I had this deep almost uncontrollable desire of seeing the Ashram. One of my good friends, Mukul (to whom I had only talked over phone so far !) came to see me in the office guesthouse for some work and I simply told him, I just want to go with you to the Ashram. It was quite late in the evening and he was worried about my safety. So he told me to stay back at the Ashram only for the night, the proposition to which I readily agreed. Looking back, I realize that I was simply in a different state of mind altog...

“How can you lose when I am with you” I was blessed to do the Blessings course a couple of months back at the Bangalore Ashram , and that too in the presence of Guruji !!! The Blessings course is a profound course by itself and it makes the virtues like innocence, naturalness, simplicity and humility shine forth in the participants. It forces you to break your own judgments about yourself and other fellow human beings. The feelings of purity and total freedom that I felt on the last day left me with a rapturous sense of ecstasy and bliss ! It is very very difficult to put into words anything about the blessings course as it transcends any kind of human expression and logic. I will recommend all of you doing this course as soon as possible (prerequisite : 3 advanced courses). It makes us realize how very very fortunate we are , amongst the 6 billion human beings inhabiting this planet. It also gives a little glimpse as to what Divine has in store for us and and we are in reality (pe...

Time with Kids There were 26 of them all, their age ranging from 7 to 14 years. They do not live as comfortably as I used to in my childhood. Most of them sleep in cramped rooms of size 8' X 8' with questionable hygiene. They do not go to the best schools of the town. Neither their parents are over-eager to have them educated nor do they care about taking them to extra-curricular classes. They were children from a slum dwelling in South Kolkata, yet they had the same innocence on their faces as any child from a well-to-do family. I was very thankful to Kajaldi (Kajal Nag) for asking me to come over to that area to take a Bal Chetna Shibir (roughly translates into "Awareness camp for children"). It was my first Bal Chetna Shibur, and though I was happy, I had no idea who would it turn out to be. Bal Chetna Shibir is a beautiful course of Art of Living which teaches children very core human values through games, stories , processes and some pranayams and meditation. ...

My first meeting with Guruji I have met Guruji (Sri Sri Ravi Shankar) on several occasions, and each meeting with him is very special, but the first meeting with Him was extra-special. It was about 2 years I had done the Art of Living Part I course but I was pretty much marooned on my intellect at that point of time . :-) I came to know of His visit through a very loving and caring Part I teacher who kind of coaxed and cajoled me not to miss this opportunity to see Him. I was also a bit curious to see "this" personality who seem to have charmed so many men & women around the world. He was coming from North east region of India and He was supposed to stay for only a few hours in Kolkata. The best place to see Him was in the airport. So I headed for the airport , the due time of landing of His plane was sometime in the 2nd half. On reaching the airport , I heard a no of people greeting each other with "Jai Gurudev" (I knew very less AOL ppl at that point of t...

The Last Lear This is not a formal movie review, but rather a message to all you movie buffs, the people who enjoy watching good cinema ! Pls go and see this movie - The Last Lear, you will love it ! I saw it with my family last weekend and it was a completely enthralling experience. With wonderfully creative direction by Rituparno Ghosh, he showed again , what a director who is fully in control of the script, the characters & the actors can do ! Based on a play written by Utpal Dutta, the story is as expected marvelous. It depicts how true love can be - totally unselfish, totally undemanding and abslutely unmindful of any rules (Satvik love) It also depicts on the contrary how feverishness towards perfection (also a kind of love - Rajasik love) can be the cause of so much misery ! One of the best selling points of the movie is the unique narrative style adopted by Rituparno (which I am not going to divulge now !) The actors simply give outstanding performance - Amitabh's b...

Mahalaya Ya devi sarbabhuteshshu, sakti rupena sanksthita Namasteshwai Namasteshwai Namasteshwai namo namaha Today is Mahalaya. Bengalis (originally people residing in undivided Bengal of pre Independence India, now divided into West Bengal of India and Bangladesh) around the world consider this a very auspicious day. It is the day which to invoke our dear beloved Goddess Durga to descend on earth for a trip to her maternal home, along with her 4 kids - Ganesh, Saraswati, Laxmi and Kartik. Goddess Durga is considered Durgatinashni or a vanquisher of all troubles. She is also the slayer of Mahishashura - the buffalo demon. Mahalaya is very special for a special audio program that is broadcasted over AIR (All India Radio) year after year (precisely from 1930) from 4 AM in the morning. Termed "Mahisasura Mardini" (the lady who killed the buffalo demon) this program is a beautifully composed and rendered with Vedic slokas, songs and ...

War Cry I received this forward from a friend and I cringed in horror and revulsion ! Tragedy should only happen to enemies or any body remotely associated with the enemy - by location, by religion, by country or by ideology. Our enemies are always black, and any anyone even subtly donning the color of white is comfortably wiped out ! They all our enemies ! They are terrorists ! They have killed our children and women and hence we must kill theirs too ! Ours actions are "provoked" not unprovoked barbarism like theirs. Our actions are justified because they are for the greater good of mankind, they are meant for perishing the evil ! Yes a few good humans will also die, but it is a necessity ! Necessity? ! bloody hell !!! It is not a necessity when you see your own child cut in half lying in a pool of blood, it is not a necessity when you see your wife a burnt corpse, it is not a necessity when your mother is an unrecognizable bundle of flesh !!! We are so bl...

Da Vinci Code in reel Well, finally I could see it, on the 2nd day of the official release of DVC in India. I saw with an additional minute of display of a mindless statement, 30 secs before the casting and 30 secs after the film ended (just in case I forgot what I read 152 minutes earlier). The statement (technically a disclaimer) looked like written by hand (exaggerating a little here, but nevertheless it was pathetic looking), it told me the greatest truth on earth -- "All the charcters and events depicted here are fictitious and any resemblance blah blah blah..". But anyways... I liked it. It was not outstanding but much better than what I expected after reading Cannes reviews. The film was honest, truthful to adaptation and intelligently paced. I found Tom Hanks very good, and also Jean Reno and Sir Ian McKellen. However I was a bit dissapointed with Audrey Toutou. She somehow did not live upto the image of Sophie Neveau. Sophie was a confident and a nextremely brill...

Dance of Democracy - Subhas Chakraborty vs. EC The Election Commission has got a job to do, and it knows how to do it very well. If the recent elections in Bihar are any indication, we should be assured to leave all the decision making for election processes to the Election Commission body. We should feel very grteful, that the election commission is not answerable to any political body. CPM anyway is thriving on 100 year old ideologies. It is a shame that they get away with doing whatever they want to, simply because there is not other credible alternative in the state. Infact CPM has ensured using its muscle power that there is no united voice of defiance to its archaic rule. I completely agree and support the Election Commission in whatever measures it takes to conduct free and fair elections in this state

Crashing into each other We saw the movie Crash this weekend, and I must admit it is a mind blowing movie. It kind of catches you by the caller and shakes you up. The multi starrer cast has Don Cheadle, Brendan Frazer, Sandra Bullock, Matt Dillon to name a few .There were quite a few star performances from the other casts, but I am not here to write a fim review so will move on. What shook me really hard is that the world we are living in is so flimsy, so sensitive, so fragile! It is exactly like a water bubble, so beautiful yet you never know when it is going to burst. What the movie glaringly told the audience is today's world is so very divisive and there are so many identities one can associate with. It is easy to to deduce that movie talks about racism in the richest, and the most powerful country in the world - the United States of America, but no, if you simply hold on , take a deep breath and think - the subtle underlying messages in the film are all pervasive. Sudde...

Myself and Sammu in majestic Himalayan ranges - in Arunachal Pradesh 

International Women's day - Is it a woman's world ? Like the numerous days that are celeberated across the globe, "International Women's day" has also caught on fire. Getting the required boost from the commercial establishments it has become almost a festival. However my attempt here is not to rebuke the celebrations, something that many women do so often , that even that cognizance has become cliched by itself. I am going to write about an interesting angle of all this woman stuff seen from an urban modern man's point of view. What started off as a friendly banter and argument amongst office colleagues - who are male as well as female, on 8th March, led me to think about something intriguing. There was a time, may be 10/15 years back it was an uncontested fact that ours is a male dominated society. Nobody doubted it, it was etched in our psyche much like the truth that father is the head of the family. There has been a paradigm shift to this mentality,...

On our way to "Lake Madhuri" the proverbial lake named after Madhuri Dixit. It was really a paradise for the eyes !!!  

Do not let the child grow D o you remember the wide eyed kid that you were many years back? Those absolutely carefree times when you discovered a new thing or two at every nook or corner. Remember the first time you saw heavy rains and wondered from where so much water coming from. Or the first time you saw water logging in streets and longed to jump in that filthy water Or the first time you saw a rainbow and kept gazing at it. The first time you saw a skyfull of stars and kept bothering your dad or mom to explain those twinkling sources of light. The first time you saw a butterfly and were so excited to see so many colors together. The first time you discovered a touch-me-not plant in your backyard and were amused beyond words. Your days were laced with so many “firsts” and yet the “firsts” never seemed to tire you. Your infectious enthusiasm and energy never fell short of questions to ask from the elders. Fast forward to the present day you – a hot shot professional i...