long time no blog .....

just have not been logging onto the net from home for ages now. i don't know if you ever go through such a phase where you just don't want to do something which has always been a habit... and you suddenly get bored stiff or so sick of it that you just want to hang loose and take it easy for sometime. maybe take a good book and read every night before hitting the sack (like i've been doing).

i've noticed this happening to me whether it is people, places, things (books, music, food, etc.). in fact anything for that matter. i wonder if anyone of us is ever continuously able to do something with the same level of enthusiasm, energy, passion like we initially did?

why is this so? any theories?

I did a recording of the commentary for a cassette with all the songs sung during the Chinmaya Vishwa Sammelan. I feel good doing this. I believe I can pursue this as an alternate career.

And now with so many FM channels being launched I am sure lots of opportunites would be available.

Have you also noticed how most of these channels sound so alike. And all of them assume that all the listeners are youngsters in the late-20s or early-30s, are party animals who go to rave gigs every week-end, who love party or trance music, .... you know what I mean.

Excuse me, but I don't think I can be slotted thus. I love music. In fact I am quite broad-minded about music. I love all kinds of genres. But I can't find a single channel which puts together a sensible mix of programming. What would be ideal would be a bouquest of channels with each channel positioned sepaprately for a aprticular kind of listener.

I am sure there is a very large section of people out there who would love a channel dedicated to devotional music, or one for classical music, or even for regional music. And a channel which identifies such segments and offers such a mix would definitely stand out in the clutter.

Anyone listening?

I don’t believe most of what the newspapers shove into my face every morning. The graphic scenes of violence, the smoke and the gore, the sickening descriptions of the mindless madness going on in not too distant places.

I think this is just a ploy for them to sell a few copies more. Anything for a few copies more. To harvest my sympathies for a select group of people. Maybe to shock me into reacting.

But maybe I am too numbed. Maybe I have become too distrustful, too cynical.

I know many people who hail from these places. Would they too have participated in this themselves if they were there? What prompts sane (?), well educated (?), normally non-violent people to embark on such mayhem? Would I do it too if I were in such a charged atmosphere?

How does sacking anybody help? How does it help the countless children who have lost their parents and have no clue why. They don’t know what wrong have they done. They don’t even know which religion they belong to.

But I feel safe and secure. I am sitting here in the air-conditioned confines of my home, far away. (Am I really that far away?) It will not affect my life. Why, I don’t even believe it is happening. Or at least its not as bad as the newsrags make it out to be. Else how can something like this be relegated to inner pages while IT raids on some famous cricket stars (I have nothing against them. I love cricket – that’s just for the record) generates a lot more interest.

There’s something terribly wrong here. Something in the air which is slowly corroding our collective conscience. What else can explain the general apathy? The fact that we are so busy with our own lives that we don’t even have the time to read the details of the 6 more dead today?

But I sometimes pause (very rarely) and wonder that if this malaise were to rear its head in my neighbourhood, then what comfort or security would my current lifestyle offer? Nothing…..

Have you ever tried to honestly describe yourself to yourself? Not like how you describe yourself to everybody around you – family, friends, colleagues, clients, strangers. We normally introduce ourselves only as we would like the other person to perceive us. We are not actually introducing ourselves, truthfully. We are only projecting a picture we would like the other person to see. Even to the people closest to us.

But then have we ever introduced ourselves to ourselves? Quite a challenging task, at least that was the case with me.

How would you do it? How much of our past do we remember? Or want to remember? How many of the lies (maybe harmless) that we project to others have we also started believing in? How many of our successes are we able to attribute completely to ourselves? And how many of our failures are we able to admit to?

And then I think that maybe this is how it is meant to be. Maybe this is what helps us keep moving on. Else we might have just got bogged down in our pasts, never being able to climb out of the troughs we fall into or the peaks that we sit atop.

As a person who continues to keep getting amazed at various people, incidents, places, music, books, movies and learnings, I come across everyday, as well as my own reactions to all these, I would like to put my experiences down where others can share and possibly live some of the experiences with me.