1.Courage is the dragon of your heart.
2.The elephant tail is what some hail.
3.The blood from your hands is yours.
4.What you love, you must be ready to give up.
5.The wind will blow and things shall pass.
6.Strength is not always a partner.
7.Anyone can grow claws and fangs.
8.Love is a fluid as it flows through the eyes.
9.Love is the art you know.
10.Carnage flows through all.
11.The air we breathe is polluted.
12.Don’t be a rose.
13.Music is the voice of the soul.
14.What is valuable is never in abundance.
15.Be like a rocket, my friend.
16.A snake slithers and a man walks.
17.The rock can crack.
18.Hope is the Eternal Truth.
19.You have the weapons you need.
20. Death forebodes when life begins.
Today, after what seems like a hundred years, I am finally inspired to write. I say so because after ‘The Battering Ram’, I have dedicated my energies only in fleeting moments to writing and reading, giving my pieces a very half hearted and artificial feel. After a while I lost all confidence and hence stopped writing for a good, long while. This inspiration has also turned me towards more reading. For the experience to have made any impact, the story goes to how I landed from the ‘Shatabdi’ in Chennai, got my visa for my American trip from July to August, met people in the American Consulate and how I reflected the revelation while eating the famous ‘Thalappakatti’ biryani. I will mostly concentrate on the parts where I got my visa and met some people at the American Consulate as that is where things make more sense to me and also because I remember those parts more accurately. Here goes nothing:
May 13, 2014
The heat and humidity of Chennai descended upon me as I got down from the ‘Shatabdi’. I was mainly here to get my U.S visa and also to check out the museums and the best food. The heat was always going to be difficult and I was ready to face it. I felt deep within my mind that any determination I had was false, as a few days ago I had tried meditating, but had not been able to reach the light. I also had a recent tiff with a good friend of mine (Ananya). Though it had taught me a lot, it had put me in a bad mood as I was simply angry (not at Ananya, but at myself), feeling I had disintegrated as a person. At the same time, I felt I had not been at my best for the past few days. All these factors put together made me an unstable, aggressive person. The weather explained my mood better. The heat was simply unbearable. Later that day, after going to my biometrics, we went to the ‘Bronze’ museum, which had artifacts made of bronze. Here was an interesting thing to be noted. The Shiva statues were all on the ground floor and the Vishnu statues in the second floor. Pappa claimed it was Tamilnadu politics at play and that they wanted to keep the Vaishnavaites and the Shaivaites away from the other. I liked a certain Nataraja that had a broken circle of flames. It looked like a piece of modern art. Most of all, I and Pappa liked a Hanumanta standing next to a Rama in half crouch, who looked like he was doing a Salam. I also liked their collection of ancient coins but unfortunately they had no museum store, so we could buy no replicas. One unique feature I noticed about the collection of Buddha(s) was that they all had a little flame or peacock feather on their heads. The reason they could be flames was because they looked like a flame in the circle of flames behind a Nataraja. Somehow, I felt a very introverted person making artificial judgements. It was because I had gotten into this stream lined thought process of self loathing, which I soon got over.
May 14,2014
I will simply begin at the beginning of a point of interest, at least a point that seems of interest to me.
“What the heck should I do mom?” asked a kid of about twelve (It sounded more like – Whoot though hoek am I gonna do myom?”). Obviously, this Dude who had come to apply for the U.S visa was definitely trying to imitate their accent. “Will you keep quiet and simply stand with me Danie?” said an imposing woman who seemed to be his mother. She spoke faultless English.
We were here at 9:00 AM, half an hour early for the appointment. The sun was up high and blazing and the humidity made it worse. It was like having a bath, but the only difference was that instead of water, it was with sweat. There were two long ques and we somehow made it to the front of the first que and it definitely saved a lot of time, as an arrogant co-ordinator came to tell us that the second que would only be allowed in after the first que. Now, of course everyone would go to the first que. How cruel and stupid. Anyway, we finally made it through the security checks and got into an air conditioned room. Now that was some relief as standing so long in the blistering Sun was getting on my nerves. As we sat waiting for our turn, Pappa told me, “You not only need intellect, son, you also require street smartness.” Something I will always remember. At the same time, we were listening to a loquacious, jolly visa officer who was asking applicants all kinds of questions such as:
1. It rains a lot in New Jersey, right?
2. It is really hot in this city isn’t it?
He was also telling friendly things such as : 1. Enjoy your trip.
2. Hope you like the U.S.A
What more, he could speak in Tamil being a foreigner and all. The first bell rung in my mind. The world is a wide place. The reverberations seemed to say. Besides, the other visa officers, while also being Americans were all dull and seemed bored compared to the loquacious man. When it was finally our turn, we were interrogated by an African-American officer. He mainly asked three questions:
1.Will you stay in Colorado the whole of your time in America?
2. What is your name?
3. Won’t you miss school?
We had an appropriate answer for each question as each was like a breeze on our backs. We came out of the consulate to revisit it on the office side, where we had to meet Mr. David Gainer (Public Affairs Officer) and his colleague Ms. Shana Surendra. We were to first meet Mr. Bharath, who is a good friend of Pappa’s. He would take us to Mr. Gainer and also allow us access to the library of the American Consulate!
Mr. Gainer and Ms. Surendra were very kind people. They treated us extremely well. Their smiles were powerful and comforting. Not what you would usually see on the faces of the modern children – without innocence, without care for anyone or anything’s feelings. That rang another bell in my mind. All the people in the world are not the same. We were later taken to the library where I got just enough time to explore the children’s section. These are the books I found:
1.We can do it
2.The Magical Life Of Long Tack Sam
3.American Dialects by Lewis Herman
4.Colin Powell by Warren Brown
5.Oprah Winfrey by Lois P. Nicholson
6.Muhammad Ali by Jack Rummel
7.Extraordinary American Writers
8.Little Women
9. The diaries of –
a. Remember Patence Whipple
b. Kathleen Bowen
c. Piper Davis
A third bell rang. This time it was an exquisite combination of emotions in the form of pictures. I will decipher it for you.
I had always felt that there was a chasm between me and imagination (with writing) that I could never cross. But I have now seen that it is not deep, nor wide. In fact, it doesn’t even exist. I feel this connection only with books and felt it then, after ages. I simply felt I would someday be a writer.
Maybe it was all the inspirational books that I saw that made me feel what I felt or maybe it was the tasty combination of their colors. I don’t know. Maybe I will never know.
When we later walked out of the consulate campus, Pappa said, “Just as we did sweat to get in there and then were treated royally, so is it in life. Work hard now and you can enjoy eternal bliss.”
After this, I reflected on all of what I mentioned above while eating the ‘Thalappakatti’ and wrote this at night. Just as a conclusion to the story, we left for Bangalore the day after seeing the Fort St. George, i.e, the next day. And while I went back to Bangalore, I became more sure of myself than ever.
Here are the songs and pieces I love.
1.Chopin- Nocturne op 48 no.1 in C minor
2.Beethoven- 5th Symphony, Moonlight Sonata
3.Bob Marley- Don’t Worry Be Happy, Get Up Stand Up, No Woman No Cry, Redemption Song, Jammin, I Shot The Sheriff, Iron Lion Zion, Buffalo Soldier, Mr. Brown, Mellow Mood
4.Leadbelly- all songs
5.John Lennon- Imagine
6.Bob Dylan- Blowin In The Wind
7.Eric Clapton- Tears In Heaven
8.Imagine Dragons- Demons
9.Twista- Hope
10.Sister Act 1 & 2 (movies)- Oh Happy Day, My God My Guy, Oh Maria, We Will Follow Him
11.Beatles- all songs in The White Album And Yellow Submarine, especially ‘Back In The USSR’, ‘Happiness Is A Warm Gun’, ‘Rocky Raccoon’ and ‘ Yellow Submarine’
12.Louis Armstrong- All Songs, especially ‘Down By The Riverside’, ‘What A Wonderful World’ and ‘La Vi En Rose’
13.Pete Seeger- All Songs, especially ‘Down By The Riverside’ and ‘We Shall Overcome’
14.Elvis Presley- Down By The Riverside
15.Ramana Gogula- I Am A Travelling Soldier
The poem that you are now going to read is a poem that I wrote in February of this year. I wrote it after a weird dream. In the dream, it was a bright day. The world was a jolly place and everywhere, people laughed. A road ran in front of a school painted in pink and the sun rays deflected from it in such a manner that it made the onlooker curse himself for looking at the building. Then I realized that this was my school. And despite such a horribly bright day and a menacing school, people laughed. The watchman guarding the apartment in front of my school laughed at a man passing by, and the passer-by laughed at him. Next to the school ground stood a woman ironing clothes, and she too laughed, seemingly for no reason. Near the border of the school ground stood six trees of which two were blackberry trees; about five yards away from the fence, leaving enough place to park a row of cycles. All around the ground was sand just like in any other ground, and a gust of wind scattered it all… and as a single blackberry fell from the tree next to my cycle, the bell rang. And from the soothing quiet of the afternoon only broken now and again by laughter, the world turned upside down as a storm of heaves and happy screams filled the air. But I didn’t notice this all. All I could see was that a person whom I dearly loved left from the freshly opened gates, never to be seen again. Amidst all the joy, I saw the world fall to pieces as a boy walked from the gates to his new red cycle next to a blackberry tree. And that boy was me. I saw myself sit leaning to the fence and shed soft tears as I could think of nothing else but the leaving of that one person. I saw myself raise my head and recite the verses of a lost, ancient poem. It went like this:
Another wound dealt,
Another cut unhealed,
The battering ram ran and battered
While also getting battered.
Immediately, I woke up and wrote the whole poem including that verse which was recited in the dream. The poem runs like this:
There was once a ram of honesty,
Truth, pride and purity.
Only a few were there like him,
But without pride they lived.
They knew not of difficulties,
They knew not about fear and lies,
And thus they lived with purity,
Devoid of all experience.
But,
There once came a time,
A phase in everyone’s life,
A time of complete destruction,
A time of illness out of desolation.
The destruction nothing but betrayal,
And illness nothing but
The facing of fear, death and dishonesty.
And when this time came,
It came to the rams of
Truth and purity.
Few survived,
Wounded but revived,
Few as hard as rock,
Now became the gemstones of wisdom.
The rest died their gory deaths,
Gory because they knew not
To face their problems.
When all the survived,
Came and rejoiced,
Only our ram and two others
Had not faced difficulty.
They knew not
When their time would come,
To suffer and to survive
Or die.
They knew not, because
They had never faced reality,
And knew not of wisdom
Or of experience.
When their time came,
A time the others had shared,
They did not retreat, as they knew
They had to pass this phase.
But what they did not know,
Was that they would face the toughest times of all,
Times through which we all have gone.
First came betrayal,
Of course in its house,
And all rams charged at them,
Put all their energy into
Battering three rams.
Here one ram gave up,
He was a ram of truth and purity,
But not the ram of pride.
Here, the pride in the ram of Ural
Diminished greatly,
As a ram from the side battered him,
Breaking his leg at contact.
As the painful blow was dealt,
Though not the very final,
He knew he needed to continue,
And break through the walls of betrayal.
He ran now, though
The leg splintered more and more,
And battered the wall with his friend,
Which gave away at first contact,
Gave way to the rest of their journey.
The rams of betrayal did not follow,
As they were strong only
When their betrayal was unknown.
Now there came the time of rest,
Though not of rejoicing,
Not of rejoicing as they had to pass
Three more difficulties of life.
The wounds tended and
Cuts half healed,
The ram walked and trotted
Until his leg was healed.
Now,
Two rams of betrayal ,
Strewn around every street,
Came and battered the two rams.
The other ram of purity and
Of truth but not of pride,
Gave way to death, at
The battering of one ram.
This he did because,
He no more wanted to live,
As he had seen in the house of betrayal,
His own kith and kin.
But our ram did not give up,
Though filled with incredible grief.
The battering ram ran and battered
While also getting battered,
Ran and ran through the streets
With wounds untended and cuts unhealed.
Another blow dealt,
A great one though not the final,
And through this street the battering ram,
Ran with his pride diminished.
He ran till there were no rams,
And tended his own wounds,
And ran as no wounds, though near his heart,
Had completely destroyed him.
Now came the house of dishonesty,
Nothing but the mansion of lies,
A mansion of such vastness,
That even the good was not so vast.
Then he realised the reason,
As he saw the many rams getting ready to batter,
The number of which used to be,
In the Mansion of Vast Goodness.
When he started to pass this phase,
He realised that dishonesty,
Was nothing but another betrayal.
Now he ran and battered
While new wounds were cut afresh.
He ran and battered and battered
And battered,
Until he reached the wall,
This wall far thicker
Than the wall in the house of betrayal.
He charged and battered
And battered and battered,
Four times of which he did,
By bloodying his own horns
With new wounds far greater than the rest.
And at the fourth blow,
The wall gave away,
Making way for the rest of his journey,
While splashing a bucket of water at his face.
A few rams followed,
Whom he slew out of displeasure.
He tended his own wounds
And ran and ran,
Encountering no ram
As the battering was now
Done by his mind.
This time his mind battered him,
And he couldn’t fight it,
As he would be fighting but himself.
Now he ran with realization
That he could turn bitter,
Or better for that matter,
All by the turn of the past.
He chose to never give up,
He chose to turn better,
And became a gem of wisdom unshatterable,
Not only from the inside,
But also from the out.
And as he ran
He saw the skeletons
Of the rams that ran before,
Rams that had given up
On everyone that hoped.
These signs of death made our battering ram
Determined to achieve the fruitful,
The fruitful freedom of life.
He ran until he came,
To a mansion of impurity,
Impurity of the ultimate foul.
Here there were fewer rams,
But so strong was their impurity,
That their horns were dark and black.
And when they charged and battered,
Four of them against one,
New blows were dealt,
Wounds cut afresh,
Wounds so deep and terrible,
That they almost cut him apart.
There was damage to be done,
To completely destroy him,
So he ran and battered and battered
And battered until the other rams were sent
To their heaven or hell
Who knows?
With new blows dealt,
All of them deep and harsh
Though not the very final,
The battering ram ran and battered and
Battered the wall of impurity,
Bloodying his own horns,
Damaging his own head.
This he did eight times,
Till the wall gave away,
Gave way to another path,
Gave way to the final test.
With wounds tended and cuts half healed,
The battering ram ran and battered ,
Battered a ram of impurity,
Impurity that was passing by.
As he battered did he realize,
That there were cuts unhealed,
Cuts that had reached his mind,
The bloody marks of impurity.
And now he fought with himself,
Though unwillingly he did,
Till his wisdom strengthened him and told him
There was no mistake of his.
It told him though the impure were there,
They were not impure by the body,
But by the mind,
And wanted others to join their side.
It told him though he fought the impure,
He would never become the impure.
With the new confidence given,
The pearl of wisdom enlarged,
Strengthened and strengthened
And strengthened until it could no more.
Now came the palace of terror,
Terror of immense power,
Fear that could rule the minds
Of even the bold and wise.
To get in he needed to batter,
The great walls of Terror,
Which at first contact,
Gave away very easily.
Though the wall gave away,
The shards pierced our ram,
Giving him new wounds,
Creating a blanket of unseen fear.
A new blow received,
Another wound dealt,
Another cut unhealed,
The battering ram ran and battered
And battered and ran and
Battered, battering nothing
But darkness in confusion.
The blanket of fear around his mind
Completely covered him,
Making him unable to see
The walls of unseen fear.
At last he came with his eyes covered
To the terrible wall of fear,And though he rammed it many a times
And broke a horn and damaged his head,
The wall stood still like nothing had happened.
His pride abolished and fear in place,
He shrank to the size of a pea,
But his wisdom and experience
Both told him not to worry,
As fear did not exist,
It did not exist as it was a feeling,
A feeling created by him
With his eyes uncovered
And confidence renewed,
He battered the wall,
Though quite thick,
But passed through it as it was
An illusion, only created by his mind.
He tended his wounds and his cuts
And ran into the freedom of life.
And as he ran his wounds completely healed,
Though scars remained,
Scars that he could be proud of,
Stories about whom he could tell,
To all in the ages to come.
And as he ran he remembered his past
And wrote down what I have told you,
Something that I found at the base of a mountain
In the range of the Urals.
His story did not end here,
As he ran in joy,
Joy that none would see in
The Great Ages to come.
He ran and ran to the top of a mountain,
Where a ram lurked in the bushes.
It charged at him in a great speed,
One against one,
Knocked him down a mountain
To the bottom of a rift unknown.
And as he fell the battering ram
Remembered all his past
And understood that life was nothing,
But an act of giving away,
And closed his eyes and put on a smile,
A smile of enlightenment.
As he fell down through thin air,
His enlightenment grew and grew
Until a rock pierced him,
At the bottom of the rift,
Sending him to his heaven or hell,
I truly do not know.
After I finished the poem, I decided to name it “The Battering Ram”, as a person in it had to batter again and again through the avalanche of life. And to this day, I do not know who left in my dream.
I’ve been into karate for a long time, and it is quite fun! But when I got into Karate, it was for a different reason. It attracted me through its philosophy. You see, many misunderstand Karate to be a violent art. But that’s not true. Karate is a dance of grace with great power, while it is also an art of meditation. Karate was the result of Taoist priests of China trying to defend themselves from thugs. They added their philosophy and their knowledge of the human body to create not one, but several martial arts, each with their own significance. The arts that were then created were Karate, Kung-fu and Taekwondo. But somewhere along the line, Japan took credit for Karate’s invention. Karate’s aim is to strengthen one’s body and mind simultaneously. And after an hour’s practice, a person will remain fresh and active all day long. It is a wonderful art and that’s all that I can say for now.
For a long time, I haven’t updated my blog, and I have my reasons of course. I have been quite busy with my studies, exams and homework. From now on though, I’ll update my blog frequently. And by the way, while I was offline, a lot of things have changed. For example, I’m no more twelve but thirteen; and I’m no more the same guy!
Rumale at NGMA
Posted: January 13, 2012 in UncategorizedTags: Chennabasavaiah, collage, NGMA, NGMA cafeteria, Rumale
The boring Lokpal debate was going on in the Lok Sabha. I saw Mr. Lalu Prasad Yadav wearing a fur cap, and with hairs on his ears, getting up and shouting in the middle of someone’s speech. After that, I saw Mr. Manmohan Singh sitting without an expression. He didn’t even blink his eyes. His face was totally pale.
So I thought of calling Lalu a SPOILED TEDDY and the expression Singh wore as OVER EXPRESSIONLESS.
There was also a minister, whose name I learned later was Mr. Narayanaswamy, he was shouting and shouting. I thought his lungs will burst open. So I decided to call him a LUNG BURSTER.
My dearest brother Rocky gave his first Piano recital in Santa Clara on December 12. He did an awesome job. He followed all the that he was told to do without fail by his teacher and my kappa and kamma. He was the youngest among the performers. He is just six now. I adore him.
This is a new painting that we bought for Christmas. I have called it ‘Dreamer Boy’. Akumal mama helped us buy this from a very talented young artist called Veerendra. The artist had displayed thirty of his paintings and I chose this one. I will write about this painting shortly.
Chilly's Corner 