EnCompassing Life

 

          Long ago, during our childhood, we used to carry a thing which was of utmost use to all of us going to school. It was something which made its presence daily in our bags. Its contents were of utmost use to all of us at different stages/lectures in our schooling life. I am referring to the geometry ‘compass box’. The contents of this compass box had different use to each one of us at different times.

           A thought stuck to me that can we relate to the articles in this compass with the life we live in. Can we draw some parallels from these based on their characteristics and the way we use them. I have tried to draw analogy of the components to our life.

           Here is a take on the various components of the compass box and philosophical or light hearted parallels in our life. This came out from a thought that…what if each element had a story to tell which we can relate to the way we live our everyday life. For some of us it will be vague, for some it will be relative, for some it will be too philosophical and for someone it will be just a read. Nonetheless, lets see what each element has to tell us about life.

Pencil

No matter how you are from outside, be what you are from the inside throughout. Not changing yourself from start to end is the key.

One has to go through lot of tribulations in life but tht will make a good person out of u

You can always erase certain unwanted things out of ur life

Be the same from start to end

You never know what you got in you unless you bring it on paper

Eraser

Be the one who can erase all sorrows / unwanted things in life

When you give all of yourself to others, you can see them rewrite things

Be useful with what you have and what you can do

Ruler / Scale –

No matter how crooked the world is, be straight in life..

People will rely on your ‘straightness’ for drawing lines in life

Sharpener -

You never know what you have unless someone makes use of you to ‘sharpen’ their skills. As a person moves on in his life drawing lines, he needs a point to pause and add value to himself to sharpen himself. He has to come to you to do that.

Compass and divider –

You need your feet strongly grounded on ground to move places.

If your feet are properly grounded , you know how much your reach it based on the radius of your limitations

Set squares -

The fixed angles of you add to the perspective on which one wants to draw lines onto. Few look at life at a particular angle (say 45deg) and few at different (60 deg) perhaps. But many also look at a mix and match of all the possibilities of angles 45+30, 45+60 t explore life from different perspectives

Protractor –

You present life in all possibilities, come and pick and choose the angle depending on your requirement.

I present a ‘180 deg’ view of life. Choice is wide

These were the components of the compass box aka Life. We need all of these components with the characteristics they present to make the 'geometry of our life' more meaningful. As they are useful during our school days, its characteristics can be useful during our entire life  thus learnings from a compass box is like Encompassing our Life

Dream to chat with you

Chatting – what an amazing tool to connect yourself to someone you want to. It is one activity which forms the basis of our being. we as humans are constantly in need to connect to someone. Chatting in person has a personal touch to it. Now, Virtual chatting too has become practical means to share and explore ‘the me’ with ‘the you’. It helps to connect/reconnect with all our past, present acquaintances, friends, relatives alike. A random thought brought up by the 'We chat' group interested me in particular – the topic being 'whom would you connect (anyone alive/dead/ fictional) with in a wechat group'. This topic serves a possibility to explore the imaginative dimensions to connect the me with the unknown. After a exhaustive search within myself, I came up with those five souls I would like to connect myself to.

The first soul certainly has to be my baby daughter. She is seven months old and I am often intrigued by the way she might be thinking at this particular age. The amusement to know what dwells in her mind when me and my family talk, play, make funny faces, sounds in front of her. Does she think of us as a set of entertainers or has got some different take about it. This thought intrigues me. How does she look at things around her? How and what is she absorbing amongst the gamut of things she happens to see each day.  It is indeed a blank hard drive which is going to be fed with data with each passing day. I would definitely like to bond with this thought matrix of hers.

Second soul has to be my brother, whom I could never really talk to because he wasn’t there when I was born. Given a chance I would certainly like to have long and perennial conversations with him. Not having him around and still wanting to talk to him is the unusual dimension which I would like to explore in these talks.

Third soul which I would definitely like to chat and know more about is Chanakya. With the kind of extremely upsetting state of affairs our country is facing, it would be noteworthy to have a comprehensive conversation with him to help our countrymen come out of this rut. How much of his values principles need redefinition in today’s context needs to be questioned and the strategies to overcome the dilemmas our country is facing. His take on the contemporary state our politics is, would help to ascertain  the right track for our country.

Fourth on my list of people I would love to have a chat is Pete Sampras. My sporting hero that he is, would definitely like to have dialogue with him on the game of tennis, how he used to approach his game, his preparations and much more. An interesting chat this would be surely for me, for the kind of humility, grace, dignity he displayed in his entire sporting career.

Lastly I would want to have prolonged chat with is the musical maestro Mr A.R Rahman. A discourse with this genius would surely be enlightening for me. What amazes me about his work is the detailing of music which is being worked out in his songs. As it is said that 'God lies in the details' , and it is in this detailing of his work, that i feel a divine intervention. His work is like a fluid medium which embraces differentiation  improvisation and is always ahead of times. A maverick that he is, would definitely prove to give an insightful dimension to the way one approaches life. I believe there are immense things to be known and learnt from this prodigy , the lessons which are  hidden deep within the layers of silence, humility and focus on his work. It is through these conversations that the true face of this person could be seen.

There could be more to the list of such people to know more about life- but to shotlist these are the people topping my list for ‘Dream to chat with you ’. 

This Post is part of a contest for 'wechat' ...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjGoyjH-AuM

Invisible Love - My entry for the get published contest

Love can only be realized when one drowns in its depths. Love is also finding about oneself than finding someone else. It is the emotion which has began life and the elemental sentiment that revolves the world.

'Invisible love' is a story of pure love which is felt by the senses except for the sense of sight. Two hearts beating in two different parts of the world get connected to each other through the medium of the internet. What is conceived as a mere friendship blossoms into an extraordinary feeling of love for the two. Both of them become inseparable on the virtual world and carry each other in their minds in the real world. They decide to bridge the gap between the virtual and real when they decide to meet after knowing each other 'virtually' for six years and things take an ugly turn minutes before their first meeting. They had planned months before their first meeting as it was supposed to be an absolute spiritual experience for them. But with the unusual turn of event before seeing each other brings forth the harsh realities of life and tests their convictions and the feeling of love for each other. This incident also puts forth their true faces not only in front of the other but also in front of themselves. The incident jostles both of them and their dreamy picture of the first sight of each other turns into an unexpected rendezvous. The incident proves to be a test of their invisible love. 

What makes the story real –

The drive for attaining pure love and the lengths to which one can go to achieve it makes the story more compelling, riveting. To love another without any bias, to create and nurture a garden of unconditional love needs a strong heart, willing soul with strong spirituality.

"This is my entry for the HarperCollins–IndiBlogger Get Published contest, which is run with inputs from Yashodhara Lal and HarperCollins India."

If you found it worth reading more, and to see it in print, please like it at : http://www.indiblogger.in/getpublished/idea/523/

Geometrical Driving

Most of us are frequent users of automobiles- either a bike/cycle or a car. These are the mechanical innovations which have made our life rather time saving. Earlier walking was the source of movement which has now been replaced by these machines. With the factors like rural urban migration, population explosion and less dependence on public transport, lot many of us are party to the use of these engines. The city design thus is guided majorly by vehicles.

The city design is a complex process with numerous factors governing its outcome. Geometry is one mathematical logic which applies to create a sensible blueprint of the city plan. It plays a major role in directing the arteries of the city and evolving overall form of the city. A well planned city is often a classical example of geometrical design.

Transportation planning also considers geometry as a major part to determine the road layouts, junction geometry, street patterns, sidewalks and many more. The way a street is designed and intersects other street/ road holds lot of meaning in its smooth and proper functioning. The execution too plays an important part in ascertaining a proper geometry.

But all said and done, the most impotant aspect of proper functioning of roads is the end users i.e the commuters. Like a well designed road pattern can create a havoc if the end users don’t respect it , equally ethical driving can make a insensibly designed road/ junction work smoothly. 

Like me, most of the Indians spend major part of their life on wheels and I have been a spectator to the ‘driving marvels’ of several commuters. Though I don’t pride on being an ethical driver, but it falters to understand why people take things for granted while driving. The geometry learned in school if applied in the mind while driving on road can save us a lot many accidents and fights on street.

There are several interpretations of ‘go straight’ while driving. For some go straight is following the road edge, centerline, a zig zag way on the road is ‘straight’ for some. Lane cutting without observing , rushing through and many more add to the list. A junction is the best example to demonstrate the manie examples of the way road geometry while driving is perceived. To make my point clear, the image below illustrates the fact in a slightly better manner.

Driving past the junction is a herculean task if such a driving geometry is observed. The additional layer of pedestrians is not marked to avoid more confusion. What we need to understand right now is that roads can work properly and efficiently if we imbibe proper road driving ethics. By simply following the traffic rules and the road geometry we can certainly o our bit in saving the city from accident hazards. One must understand that this is not only for the city for but for our safety too. We can avoid the large infrastructural set ups like flyovers, metros by adhering to some simple ethics.

This blog post is not as a learning guide but as an observation. It aims at making a point that a slight correction in our manner can help us save our future generations. What it aspires to tell is that even planes have a well defined paths while flying. The expanse and the infiniteness of the sky is restricted for the flyer just to make sure that he is well directed. This helps him minimize any confusion. We still ply on roads and surfaces which are well marked, it is upon us to define our own paths.

 Let’s give the straight lines in our driving a meaning. Let the curve we take while turning be defined. Let’s give in to the geometrical driving!!!!