Yes, the two invincible, the Spaniard Rafa and the Serb, Djokovic gave all an epic encounter to watch as they fought in the longest-ever Grand Slam summit clash which lasted for 5 hr & 53 minutes.

As much it mattered wh won in the end, it didn’t matter who actually won. As victorious Djokovic spoke-“Rafa, you’re one of the best players ever. You are one of the most respected guy on the tour. We made history tonight, and unfortunately there couldn’t be two winners…”

Even though my heart sank at the defeat of Rafa, this time it didn’t sink in.

A new hope

A new resolution

A new life altogether

To begin anew, end the past

A meaningful end.

Make time, take time.

Don’t hesitate, scratch.

Through the buried pages of spent year.

Touch on the crests

Before the troughs

Do not get struck in the lows

Do not feel sad

No life is perfect without passing through imperfection

No stone is a magnificent statue until imperfections are hammered out

If failure is a mistake, learn from it

Would you be a fool to fail the same way again?

Put down the cap, count the feathers

Let feathers not turn into wings

And you not be carried away.

Success is always a sweet memory

A motivation to the future

Save it, open it time and again

Whenever life dumps you on the bumpy road

Count the steps climbed.

Plan for a new high

Take a new resolution.

A strong oath

The steps ahead are endless

What you achieve in life, is what you wish for

Only when the steps are planned                                

Respect the people you were fortunate to meet

Remember t he moments you were blessed to spend

Bury the rusty hatchet, love with a pure heart.

As Steve Jobs said

The dots are going to connect somewhere down the road

Do not scratch your head

All you get is strands of hair

Just do what you love or love what you do

Gone year or the new year

Life is always complicated, uncertain

It gives you all

It screws you down

Bother not, life is still wonderful

Wish you all a very pleasant, happy, happening new year

Without wax

Ashu

I did it secretly.

It was a cold blooded murder.

It hurt, the pain eating into my flesh

Bleeding till death.

The place I planned to bury,

My heart, was the cradle of everything.

Nurturing the first rush of adrenaline

To the last bleed of breath.

I believed

It to last from the cradle to the grave.

As it bloomed, flowered.

Till the fruit was forbidden.

I tried burying it deep inside.

All my effort in vain to seal it.

It would surface time & again

To feed on my pain

I started to build a tomb,

Still I couldn’t find enough

To stuff thousands of them

Memories that carved a niche

All of which seem nothing, like a cliché

I was lost, defeated.

I stopped with two words

Carved on the tomb, ‘never ever’

I knew, I can’t help

But live with them.

Till someone digs a grave for me on my behalf.

I was about to slip into the depth of darkness when my cell phone shone brightly. There was a message. It read, ‘A lie doesn’t end a relationship.. Usually truth does..!! Gudnite..sleep tight 24 Nov. 2011 11:36PM ’. Sometimes a message intended to wish a sound sleep can disturb its motto by itself. Yes, it disturbed me. It disturbed me because it was true!

We are social beings. A well organised society is what distinguishes us from dogs & other denizens. Even before we understand, we are tangled by relationships. As we grow, the links in the chain grow. Any broken link has the ability to diminish the strength of the chain.

Blood relationships are the gift to us from the almighty. They are the strongest links in the chain. More secure the blood relationships; stronger is a person in his decisions.

All other relationships a person gets into are the outcome of the extent of cooperation he extends. Whatever the name by which it is defined- friend, girlfriend, a wife, a brother, and an uncle – every relationship demands a lot. A lot of cooperation in terms of patience, forgiveness, selfless caring & sharing amidst once own desires, hopes & goals. Many people fail to understand this and get into troubled relationships again & again. Now, does truth really ends a relationship when a lie doesn’t? There can be a debate.

If you ask me, truth can end a relationship but can’t lead a relationship to its end. Truth is just the last nail on the coffin. Truth be said, truth can save a relationship, if one dares to spell it out when it is demanded. And truth be said, truth is the strongest weapon in a righteous man’s arsenal. Only he triumphs who holds on to the sharp edges of truth through the strong currents of life’s nonsense.

But can a lie end a relationship? It can’t, but definitely it can lead to an end. I say, a lie is nothing more than a toothless, poisonous snake. It can’t bite anyone to his instant death. It slowly spreads its venom. A lie is just a veil of saving, a shadow to hide behind. On some unexpected day, the wind of truth blows away the veil of lie, a light of truth vanishes the shadow of lie. That moment ends the relationship which you always blindly thought would never end.

Never lie in a relationship. It’s bitchy to lie. Be truthful even when you are encountered with the toughest questions. We are here to make mistakes. We learn from our mistakes. But being truthful about your mistakes saves your valued relationship. It saves a lot of pain.

Open up! It’s time to express.

It’s ash here..

Am in tears by the time I finish this article. Today is children’s day. A day dedicated to children, to celebrate childhood & to promote awareness on children’s welfare.  Sadly, for a child who died mysteriously in the car parked in front of the residence of BJP state President Nitin Gadkari on May 19, 2009, justice is still undone. Is there a meaning in celebrating children’s day when such atrocities are carried against a 7 year old child and still after two years not even a single person is brought to book?

What is more shocking is that the entire police system of Maharashtra has tried to turn the whole case into an accidental death. There are some shocking revelations found from the information revealed from the papers filed under RTI act by the victim’s family and shared with The Hindu.

Firstly, when the spot punchnama was carried out on a white Honda CRV used by Gadkari’s family and where the body of Yogitha was found dead, the police has changed the make & colour of the car to a brown Fiat Linea owned by Sudhir Dive, MD of a company owned by Gadkari. The police have not collected the finger prints from the car and have not even questioned Gadkari on this till now.

Secondly, the CID in its closure report said that Yogitha died of suffocation after getting into a car with a faulty locking system. If common sense works out, how does the car get locked after the child gets into an unlocked car and die of suffocation?

Thirdly how did the bruises come on her face, arms, & thighs if she died of suffocation? As headlined by The Hindu the investigation is riddled with holes. Chemical analysis reports of Yogitha say that she had nine surface injuries on her private parts, forehead, lips & abrasions on her right forearm & knee. With all these how the cause of death can be stated as ‘smothering’ and manner of death as homicidal or accidental?

This is the painful statement of Vimal Thakre, the mother of Yogitha, “her eyes were open and she looked as if she had seen something horrible. There were nail marks on her forehead. I tried to review her with water but she was bleeding and her mouth was full of blood. When I took her home, my husband came to carry her and his shirt was covered with blood. What did my child do to deserve this fate? She was young and full of life. I want justice. My daughter did not die a natural death. She had blood on her body and her private parts. I want to know who did this heinous act. I don’t want money”.

She works as a home maid and she is on medication for high blood pressure & has become very thin. Yogitha’s 18 year old sister Kiran, is spearheading the fight for justice to her sister. The family has suffered in the last two years, her mother losing some of her household work and her family made to move to a two room leaky house.

Can the whole system go so insensitive? Can the CID be completely controlled because the name of a high profile politician is involved in it? I am ashamed that in the worlds largest democracy the voice of a poor family fighting for justice can go so deaf blinded.

Friends, later this week, a Magistrate’s court will have a final hearing on closing this case. If it goes the CID way, this heinous crime on an innocent seven year old girl will be termed as just accidental. There by, the fight for justice from a poor family will go in the drain. Come on people, can you just close your eyes when a 7 year old child is raped & murdered? Can you close your ears when the judgement says that it was just an accidental case? Yogitha is not just one case. Yogitha is not just someone’s daughter. She is our kid, our society’s kid. And let’s come forward to prove that our society is not so inhuman to keep quiet when such shameful incident is happening.

If you can’t light a candle & protest for justice for Yogitha, do your bit this way. Share it on your networking sites, support for the justice. If networking sites like facebook(thanks to Mark Zuckerberg) can help bring freedom to a Arab nation itself, it can definitely play a role in bringing justice to this kid, Yogitha. Do your bit on this children’s day. Let’s see that justice is done to Yogitha. Let’s make sure that such crimes won’t be tolerated in society like ours.

Please come forward, do your bit. It can go a long way in bringing justice for Yogitha. Let’s celebrate this children’s day in a more meaningful way.

I joined my guitar classes a year back. I attended some 10 classes over a month and then just discontinued. It’s not that I didn’t have the required passion to learn. I really loved to play guitar. But the classes happened to be little monotonous except for the happiness it brought for what I was learning.

 Then after a year I again went and rejoined my class. This time I promised myself that I won’t do the mistake that I committed a year back. I did my best to get up at 5:15 in the morning and ride my yellow beauty to Gokulam and stop near the board “J B musicals”.  Even though the atmosphere seemed to be the same, I tried to involve myself in pulling the right string & the right chord. I didn’t find anyone speaking to the person sitting on the next chair. There was no interaction. I tried to smile at few & got replied with cold stares. That’s it, I thought. Let it continue to be cloudy. Why the hell I worry about the faces around?

Today was no different other than it was a holiday on the eve of Kannada Rajyothsava. Yes, it was no different until I found this girl who happened to stumble into my class because of the changed schedule. She was beautiful, but that is not the issue that I am speaking here. She had something more beautiful than that. Yes, the warmth of her smile.

A smile is the doorway to the opening of heart. I smiled back. We spoke & she happened to be from the same college where I did my engineering. She was 2 years junior to me though from a different branch. We tried  the relevant chord, struggled at F major & played a few songs together.

At the end of the class I questioned her, ‘ Why do girls learn guitar?’.

She replied, ‘It is because I wanted to play guitar.’

I said, ‘What I meant is, one of the motivation for boys to learn guitar is to impress girls & if each & every girl learns guitar, where is the motivation for all of us?’

She burst into laughter.

After the class I realized that I thoroughly enjoyed learning today. And the reason was non-mistakably this girl- her name is Bindu.

So, until it really comes to an end, we are all on a endless journey. Every day we see people around in different avatars, polite hotel boys, arrogant auto drivers, talkative vegetable vendors, old beggars, young engineers, sweet looking girls etc. We see them, we travel with them, we pass them, we buy & we sell. Do we really do anything more than that?

Do we interact? Do we show a little more interest in knowing them? Do we at least exchange warm smiles? If we ever did, life on this planet would have been wonderful to live. Probably it wouldn’t have been so boring or challenging.

So it is just to say that whenever you get an opportunity, try to smile, try to know people.  May it be on a journey or during the morning jog hours or even when you sit in the public rest room? When you know more people around it becomes easier for you to contact them when you are in a difficult situation or when you struggled to find contacts when you want to apply for a new job, or find a new house etc.

As I repeat, smile is the doorway to another’s heart. Just open your heart & smile. Let us make this life simpler.  In the mean time, I would like to thank Bindu for motivating me to write this article and helping me on my ‘mission impression’ 

cheers. open up! ya, it’s time to express

One of my friends used to tell me that she had frequent dreams. Her dreams used to disturb her mental peace, affect her mornings. As morning shows the day, she used to loose her day because of her dreams. Whenever I heard her complain about her dreams I told her to consult a psychiatrist and she never did. In the mean time I wondered what happened to all my dreams. I was surprised to see that I didn’t remember dreaming for a long time unlike when I used to in my childhood.

   Now more or less I feel that I have found quite impressive answers to my doubts. The answers I found are from the work of one of the founders of modern psychology- Alfred Adler. Adler was a contemporary of Sigmund Freud and C. G. Jung.  He was a core member of the famous Vienna Psychoanalytic Society of which he became a president in 1910. When he started having ideological differences with Freud, he resigned to found Individual Psychology.

Adler had following differences in the way Freud had interpreted dreams.

1.     Freudian interpretation presupposed a difference between the working of the mind during the day and its working at night.

Adler opinioned that keeping ‘conscious’ & ‘unconscious’ thinking as opposite to each other & giving dream its own special law are contradictory to everyday thinking.

2.     In Freudian view dreams are set against the background of sexuality.

Adler contradicts this view. He says this view separated dreams from people’s ordinary strivings & activities. If it were true, dreams would mean as an expression of only a part of the personality (sexuality) but not as whole personality. Freudians themselves agreed that Freud’s view was inadequate.

3.     In the answer to the crucial question ‘why do we dream at all?’

Freud says the purpose of the dream is to satisfy the individual unfulfilled desires.

But Adler answers that this view by no means explains everything. For example, where is the satisfaction if the individual forgets the dream, or he doesn’t understand it?  If the dream life is separated from the day life dreams would have no purpose to the waking person.

Now let us come out of the ideological differences between the two legends of human psychology and understand dreams. Here are questions that I have posed and the answers through Adler’s concept of Individual Psychology.

Q1. Is dream life different from waking life?

Dream life is not a contradiction to waking life. If by day we are engaged in striving towards superiority then we must be occupied by same at night too.

Q2. How does dream influence our day life?

Let us first answer this question. What is left with us after a last night’s dream?

Nothing? Something remains; the feeling that the dream has aroused is with us. Pictures, events, faces, nothing persists, only the lingering feelings.  That lingering feeling is the one that influences our day life.

Q3. What relation does the dream associate with the dreamer’s lifestyle?

The feelings that individual create with dreams is always consistent with their life style. If during day we are troubled by problems, our sleep is troubled too.

Q4. Are we away from reality or real life when we dream?

 In dreams we are less in touch with the reality, but there is no actual break with reality. Parents can sleep through the loudest noise in the street & yet waken at the slightest movement of their child which shows the connection with the reality during our sleep.

Q5. If our dreams are connected with our problems of the day then why don’t we feel as stressed while dreaming?

When we dream we are alone. The demands of society do not press so urgently on us and we are not obliged to deal so honestly with the situation around.

Dreaming is one disturbance to calm and peaceful sleep. We dream only if we are not sure of solution to our problem, only if reality is pressing in on us to find a solution. But our mind deals with it lightly.  

In our dreams since we are not dealing with the whole situation, problems appear easier and solution offered will need least adjustment from us. Therefore the purpose of the dream will be to support & reinforce the dreamer’s lifestyle.

 If the individuals are confronted by the problems that they do not wish to solve according to their common sense, they can confirm their attitude by the feelings that are aroused in their dreams.

Q6. So, there is a relation between dreams and common sense?

Dreaming and common sense are arch enemies. People who do not like to be deluded by their feelings, who prefer to proceed in a scientific way, do not dream often or do not dream at all.

Others do not want to solve their problems by normal or applying common sense solutions. Common sense is an aspect of cooperation and people who are not well trained in cooperation dislike common sense. Such people have very frequent dreams. They are anxious that there life style should prevail & be justified. They wish to avoid the challenge of reality.

Q7. So, what exactly are we doing when we dream?

In dreams we are fooling ourselves. Every dream is an auto-intoxication, a self-hypnosis. Its whole purpose is to produce the mood in which we are best prepared to face the situation.

Q8. What are dreams made of? Why do dreams look weird & unconnected often?

As one psychologist says ‘we are poets in our dreams’. Dreams use metaphors and symbols because if we speak plainly we can’t escape common sense. Metaphors are used for beauty, for imagination & fantasy, and that’s what dreams are.

Let us take the example of dream where the dreamer is not ready to face the life or to apply common sense solution to his/her problems.

When a student is faced with an examination, the problem is straightforward & he/her should face it with courage & common sense. But if it is his part of his life style to run away, he may dream that he is fighting a war so that he is justified in being afraid. Or he dreams standing on the edge of an abyss and that he must run back to avoid falling in. He has to generate such feelings as an avoidance tactic, a form of escapism and he fools himself by identifying the examination with the abyss.

Now let us go with the example of a dream where the dreamer is positive & has long term view of life.

With such person she wishes to complete her task & go through with her examination. She still needs support, however, wants to reassure herself-her lifestyle demands it.

The night before the examination she dreams that she is standing on top of a mountain. The picture of her situation is very much simplified. Only the smallest part of all the circumstances of her life is represented. The problem of the examination is a great one to her, but by excluding many aspects of it & excluding many aspects of it & concentrating on her prospect of success; she stirs up feeling for herself.

Next morning she gets up feeling happier, fresher & braver than before. She has succeeded in minimizing the difficulties she must face. But in spite of the fact that she has assured herself, she has really been fooling herself. She has not faced the whole situation in a common sense way, but she has merely stirred up a mood of confidence.

Q9. If we are fooling ourselves in our dreams, what should we do to stop dreaming?

The fact that dreams are designed to fool & deceive us accounts for the fact that they are rarely understood.  If we understand our dreams they no longer have the power to arouse our feelings and feelings and they could not deceive us.

Conclusion: There are many varieties of dreams and every dream reveals the point where individual feel their life needs reinforcement in relation to the particular situation that confronts them. The interpretation of dreams is therefore unique to the individual. It is thus impossible to interpret dreams or symbols & metaphors by formulae. Dream is a creation of the life style, drawn from the individual’s own interpretation of their own particular circumstances.

Here we like to interpret some of your dreams if you would like them to be interpreted. You can share any of your dreams which you want to understand.

Understand your dreams; understand your life.

Its ash here..

I am little high today but it doesn’t matter.  Half a bottle of vodka can’t do much. It can’t keep me away from writing what I want to. Yes, it can’t keep away from writing on Diganth and his ‘one plate meal’ concept. It doesn’t matter even if Diganth himself has finished 2 bottles of beer.

First let me introduce the dark side of this guy. He is little dark  Oh! That’s all? No. He has been one of the most mischievous guy until he fell into the right hands. And that ‘right’ hand is mine

Yes, I don’t know how exactly we became friends. You never need to find the roots of love & friendship. But what I know is how well we have managed to care that friendship for 14 long years. We had several changing phases in life, changing ideas, changing principles on life, we had distance between, & we had some serious misunderstandings within us. But I am more than happy today that we still share all the personal & wordly stuff like we used to do when we were kids and still we make time for a drink whenever possible. I think the respect we have for each others thoughts, passions, family & personality is one thing that has kept our friendship alive even through difficult times.

I have found dramatic change in him over the years. I feel happy for my friend that majority of them were positive changes. He had been very emotional, been into some serious love stuff & after all that he has matured as a person.  The only problem is that he preaches more often these days  Other than that I feel proud looking at the way he has nurtured his hobbies, May it be music or painting.

As I said earlier he has started preaching these days. And one of his concepts has been ‘one plate meal concept’. I don’t know how well I can explain that for its complicated. Here goes the concept: you can make lots of money, you can step up so many positions but the truth of life is that you can have only one plate of meal at one time.  I don’t know if this is as simple as its looks. I assume it to be little more complicated and if it is so, I would like him to come & explain it

Apart from all that he is the one person I look up to from time again. I wish he limits himself to one bottle beer so that he never comes out with concept like ‘one plate meal’ and comes out with more & more beautiful paintings & meaningful musical chords

And let me enjoy the high feeling which the vodka has brought in.

Cheers

Its ash here