some songs sometimes had the power of presenting itself when the mood calls for it. Today I had a bad day owing to some misunderstanding arose between my near ones and myself. I was completely out of sink with my normal daily routines. Suddenly these lines came out of nowhere and started ringing in my ear.

हमने तो जब कलियाँ माँगी
काँटों का हार मिला

which literally means,

Whenever I asked for flowers
I received a garland of thorns.

These lines were from the song Jaane woh kaise log the jinke pyaar ko pyaar mila from the immortal classic Hindi film Pysaa.Sung by Hemant Kumar to the tune of S.D.Burman and lyrics written by Sahir Ludyani.These words appear to have written for me.

The song is about unreciprocated love and how it can be painful. The lyrics “Whenever I asked for flowers, I received a garland of thorns” encapsulate the pain of unreciprocated love. The song also gives words to the pain of people who could not get or reciprocate the love.

You ask me what since we must part
You shall bring back to me.
Bring back a pure and faithful heart
As true as mine to thee.
You talk of gems from foreign lands,
Of treasure, spoil, and prize.
Ah love! I shall not search your hands
But look into your eyes.

Juliana Horatia Ewing {1841-1885)

Happiness is a profound emotion that evolves from within rather than being dependent on external factors. Within the confines of our home, we can experience its true essence. It is not an ephemeral sensation that sprouts overnight; rather, it grows and flourishes over time, nurtured by the things that surround us.

The books that line our shelves, each one a gateway to knowledge and inspiration, contribute to our happiness. The carefully chosen curtains we drape and hang lend a touch of warmth and comfort to our living spaces, creating an inviting atmosphere. Adorning our walls with pictures, especially those of our beloved family members who may be physically distant but remain close to our hearts, brings immense joy. The mere thought of them ignites a sense of contentment and affection.

May Sarton, in her exquisite poem “The Work of Happiness,” beautifully encapsulates this notion. She reminds us that happiness is not a passive state but an active pursuit—a labor of love that involves surrounding ourselves with meaningful objects and cherished memories. It is the tender care we invest in our home and the people we hold dear that truly cultivates lasting happiness within us.

I thought of happiness, how it is woven
Out of the silence in the empty house each day
And how it is not sudden and it is not given
But is creation itself like the growth of a tree.
No one has seen it happen, but inside the bark
Another circle is growing in the expanding ring.
No one has heard the root go deeper in the dark,
But the tree is lifted by this inward work
And its plumes shine, and its leaves are glittering.

So happiness is woven out of the peace of hours
And strikes its roots deep in the house alone:
The old chest in the corner, cool waxed floors,
White curtains softly and continually blown
As the free air moves quietly about the room;
A shelf of books, a table, and the white-washed wall—
These are the dear familiar gods of home,
And here the work of faith can best be done,
The growing tree is green and musical.

The journal of an old man-2

I am for IPL matches. I think Cauvery struggle has gone out of the limit. Let us keep cricket out of politics. If we boycott IPL would be snatched by ever waiting other franchises . The loss would be Tamil Nadu.

My support for today match is obviously for Dinesh Kartik.

In an op-ed column titled “The Underlaying Tragedy” David Brooks brought an interesting observation in The New York Times. California had experienced an earthquake of similiar 7.00 magnitude that Haiti had now in 1989.But casualties were different.California had a death total 69 where as death total of Haiti might be any where between 40000 and 50000. The reasons were poorly constructed buildings,bad infrastructure and terrible public services. Read the full story http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/15/opinion/15brooks.html.

yester day i read an interesting blog. A policeman showed literary taste in filing a report.Policemen are genearally known to be tasteless bunch of croonies with out heart. But here isa policeman who shows his literary skill and flair for dramatics in filing a report.Enjoy THIS

when every one in the world shout over climate change here in India Intergovermental panel on climate change and Minister for environment Mr .Jairam Ramesh are at loggerheads. Minister is refusing to believe global warming is responsible for DEPLETION OF HIMALAYAN GLACIERS.- The same Minister yells louder about environmental disaster when it comes to Periyar dam. The polticians have two different sets of rules.

 

India

According to dailyfinance.com, news 800 million people in India are still below poverty line. As per their article it will take another 34 years to bring them above poverty line. India is a country with vast middle class. But the gap between haves and have not is widened. But we have resources. What India lacks is good governance. Corrupt politicians and equally corrupt bureaucrat are responsible for this mess. China with a population more than ours made a remarkable progress. Of course their government is totalitarian. As one of the Bric nations (Brazil, Russia, India and china) Will India live up to the expectation placed upon it?

Here is an interesting quote from the web

what we do is only partly
our own and partly continuation
down through the chromosomes.

A drive way in Pennsylvania

“Colors burst in wild explosions
Fiery, flaming shades of fall
All in accord with my pounding heart
Behold the autumn-weaver
In bronze and yellow dying
Colors unfold into dreams
In hordes of a thousand and one
The bleeding
Unwearing their masks to the last notes of summer
Their flutes and horns in nightly swarming
Colors burst within
Spare me those unending fires
Bestowed upon the flaming shades of fall.”

–   Dark Tranquility, With the Flaming Shades of Fall

 

Image via Wikipedia

 

 

 

Today in my favorite site Letters of note , I saw an interesting letter sent to F.B.I Director Edgar Hoover by a Catholic religious newspaper in 1956. The complaint was about Elvis Presley stage performance. The hysterical behavior of the teens during the performance irked him. He wants Elvis to be put behind bars as he poisoned youth minds with his gyrated sexual movements.

But eyewitnesses have told me that Presley’s actions and motions were such as to rouse the sexual passions of teenaged youth. One eye-witness described his actions as “sexual self-gratification on the stage,” — another as “a striptease with clothes on.”

What he would tell about today’s rappers. Enjoy the full letter here.

How would an aged but affectionate couple look like?

“long-married couple, who hardly

notice each other but find it somehow a comfort

sharing the couch, the evening news, the cocoa.”

(Katha Pollitt-Cats)

Image via Wikipedia

It’s always a great surprise whenever an underdog demolished a strong team in sports. In 1983 world cup cricket final India dwarf in cricket beat Mighty West Indiies that consisted fearsome fast bowlers. Sometimes even in war a small band of insurgents defeat strong army.

Malcom Gladwell author of Blink and Outliers in article titled How David beats Goliath published in The New Yorker he gave an account of how an underdog   school kids were coached to beat good team which had players who were tall and could dribble  and shoot well in American National junior basket ball league. Their game was aggressive defense.

“David can beat Goliath by substituting effort for ability-and substituting effort for ability turns to be a winning formula for underdogs for all walks of life.  “

He gave instances of history in which a band of insurgents beat well trained and equipped army. T.E Lawrence, Lawrence of Arabia, in one such battle with the help of hand full of Bedouins drove mighty Turks to its knees. In a conventional war fare Established army always wins. Insurgents cannot win a conventional battle because rules were made by the establishment. But in Gorilla tactics, when underdogs choose not to play by Goliath’s rules, they win. “Even when everything we think we know about power says they shouldn’t.””Insurgents work harder than Goliath. But their other advantage is that they will do what is “socially horrifying”—they will challenge the conventions about how battles are supposed to be fought”

“David’s victory over Goliath, in the Biblical account, is held to be an anomaly. It was not. Davids win all the time. The political scientist Ivan Arreguín-Toft recently looked at every war fought in the past two hundred years between strong and weak combatants. The Goliaths, he found, won in 71.5 per cent of the cases. That is a remarkable fact. Arreguín-Toft was analyzing conflicts in which one side was at least ten times as powerful—in terms of armed might and population—as its opponent, and even in those lopsided contests the underdog won almost a third of the time.”