Let a smile kiss your lips

A smile is like the sun on a cold, frigid, gray day. Comforting. Warm. Healing. Soothing. It dispels the gloom. It absorbs the pain. Its nonjudgmental rays embrace you in your totality, the way you are. It touches you with sympathy. It becomes your lenient confidante.

You may not be enjoying a rollercoaster ride in life. There are pains and problems and of course you feel like crying. Of course you are not in a position to laugh. Well, if laughing seems too much, you can smile at least. Even a sad, resigned smile will do to begin with. Smile just to yourself. Without any reason. Or at least try. Even a fake, feeble smile will do. It reshapes the lines of your tensions, your worries. You will instantly feel its warmth, its light. It cannot be the other way. A maneuvered smile at least cannot give you more pain, cannot aggravate your messiness, however hard is the situation.

And then there is always something or someone around who can help you in building up a smile. There are more reasons to smile than cry. Just that we overlook them. So give yourself a reason to smile. It’s as simple as picking up one tiny one from the overloaded basket. So move away from the big garbage dump of worries and smile as you walk away.

Forget about the little world of your problems. This creation is not human centric, and within the human system the thoroughfare is not you-, me- or anyone-centric. In fact it’s not bothered about anyone or anything at all. So why should we?

The world around you is too big. And you are just a tiny part of its endless bounty. The things of beauty are as good for you as are for any other happy person around. Claim your share. Observe. Look around. Pick out from the unassuming treasures lying around in bits and pieces. A flower. A child’s pure smile. A bird chirping. A gust of breeze. Some green tree. A sparrow’s free dart in the sky, the sun, the stars, someone helping somebody, or anything for that matter, provided you have the loving eyes to see.

Everything is just drenched with beauty; it’s we who throw the jibes of ugliness born of our biases, greed, hate, jealousy and anger. Remove these blots from the screen and you clearly see the perfect beauty around. And once you see the beauty, love oozes out of your spirit in copious amounts.

There are infinite reasons to let a smile kiss your lips, to help you, to sympathize, to emphasize the cool hold of goodness inherently holding the system together. Just open up the door for a smile. It will open up a huge gate of comfort for the inner self. Light will enter the dungeon of real and imaginary problems. There is no logic for this. It just happens. Just like you feel the healing warmth of sunrays on a cold day! Try to smile without any reason. Immediately you will get a feeling of so many things to be smiled at, to be felt euphoric about, or even laugh about.

Do you know there is brain-brewed whiskey: Anandamide. It’s the chemical of happiness, ease, comfort and contentment produced in the brain. By learning to smile more often, you start the brain brewery in motion. It’s a simple practice, just like you get habituated to go for invigorating early-morning brisk walks.

The world is full of those who need narcotics, drugs and alcohol to enter a pleasant, forgetting, easy-going state. These definitely give you some temporary solace but come with huge physical and social side effects. Count upon your own self-made, brain-brewed chemical of bliss and happiness, Anandamide. It's available free to all of us. Just that we need to look within for the joys that we seek outside! So seekers, happy days and nights! Brew your own Anandamide and stay blessed permanently. Happy spiritual boozing! Booze makers, beware!

I have started to smile more and brew mine quite copiously...

Inhale Your Portion of Wellness

It’s a lush green forest around you. Birds are chirping. It’s early morning and a cool breeze is blowing. Nearby, gurgling waters of a brook add music to the stillness around. You feel better. It feels good. The external orderliness, peace and calm raise the bar of your better feeling. With the same set of your own individual, internal, self-specific problems, worries and concerns, you feel better if the surrounds are better.

The desert sand is burning. It’s noon and forget about trees, you cannot see even a blade of grass for miles. You feel horrible. You feel bad. You find yourself worse than your self-specific set of worries make you feel normally. You feel bad if the surroundings are not convenient.

We cannot inhale in isolation. Or put more simply, we cannot exist in isolation in this universe. We are just put somewhere in the chain of interdependence. If there is misery in the air, it will enter your lungs. Use air-masks and air filters, do whatever. Life still will be stifling and genuine efforts just a struggle because we cannot help inhaling our share of the miseries prevailing around. The solution lies in cutting down on the pollutants. Not in wearing masks. When it comes to our struggle to increase our happiness, the efforts are almost as useless as wearing masks when the air is polluted.  Fighting the consequences is never the durable solution, fighting the cause is.

Our own set of factors that make life either good or bad are not the sole deciding elements in making us happy or unhappy. If we are happy, then we are just sharing a fraction of the overall happiness surrounding us. Our lungs are safe just in proportion to the purity of the air around. If the quality of air is good, only then the individual battles like quitting smoking, eating healthy food and doing yoga to keep your lungs safe will be meaningful.

If we are unhappy, that also is a fraction of the overall misery spread around. Individual is just a constituent of the whole. Happiness is drawn from the overall pool. How long the frogs will sing songs of self-gratification in a vanishing muddy pond? Its waters vaporizing. Its shoreline decreasing. Stanching green mossy puddle. What can be drawn out of it? Only death and misery, not life and happiness.   

A talented software engineer, with his tools of prosperity and happiness, is of no use at a place like Somalia. There is no surrounding prosperity to help him nurture his talent. There is no supportive economy and companies to help him contribute to the overall wellness and get a fraction of the happiness in return. A software engineer prospers in America because using his skills he can contribute to and earn back a fraction of the happiness spread around.         

The surroundings set the stage for either make or break.

“Love thy neighbor!” By loving others you are loving yourself. By caring for others, you are caring for yourself. By contributing to others’ happiness, you are adding to your own happiness because your share of happiness and prosperity will be just a fraction of the overall happiness around. With your effort and skills, you draw a big portion if the social forest around you is healthy like the natural forest where each breath installs new vitality in you.

Long before you really start doing something to add to the overall wellness around you, start with a simple practice. You might be busy with scores of neck-breaking responsibilities, leaving you with very little time for real action on the goodness front. Start thinking good of others. Think good for your surroundings. Be happy over others’ victories. Smile over somebody’s stroke of luck. Feel bad for somebody’s loss. Say some sympathetic words as well. Over the years, the goodness in its womb will get healthy. It will deliver a healthy baby. And sooner or later, you will definitely ‘do’ something to add to the overall goodness around you before you finish your journey.

You will then have a larger share from the pool of wellness. When the sun will be setting and you preparing to enter the night for long deserved rest, you will walk into the forest with well-meaning steps. It will be a far happier retirement than it would have been otherwise.

A well-cooked love recipe

"The trouble with falling in love is that, unlike death, love kills you every moment, robbing you, at first, of reason, and then, slowly, consuming you bit by bit until you lose the sense of time, of the true nature of things, and of all other precious relationships."_Siddhartha Gigoo in Mehr: A love story.

No wonder they say one "falls" in love!

PS: ..and no conjecture plz...about me ‘falling’...haa haa... My version of love is ‘rising’. There is abundance of love around, of family, nature, birds, animals, flowers, clouds, honeybees, insects, beetles, crowded bazaars, isolated vales, springs, summers, winters, autumn, everything in fact. If you have the eyes for it, everything is saturated with love like luscious honey oozing from fat honeycombs hanging over wild rose thickets and the nectar dripping. And the honeybees tasting their own fruits as they buzz around collecting pollen from the flowers!.  

When hate vanishes, love blooms and you ‘soar high’ with such love instead of ‘falling’. You love all, simply because you don't hate anyone. You don’t have any enemies because you are friendly to all. If you have only love to offer, you just cannot have hate around you. The hate that we see in our lives is just the multiplication of the traces of hate inside us. Kill it inside you, it gets killed from around you. You see light around, simply because there is no darkness inside anymore. You smile more, simply because a smiling face still contributes to the struggles of even a stranger coming across the street.  

Love for a man or woman is the first step in the ladder. Fall in love with your man or woman, and go all the way in pursuit of your passionate craving. Melt in it like butter in the frying pan. Lose your identity, break the walls and surrender your self-driven cart to the free wheels of airy jaunts. This is the fire which melts the outermost stony ramparts that hinder you from the freest flight. No wonder, to rise you have to fall first. It’s a rebound. All natural laws say so. Your rebound is just in proportion to your ‘fall’ for your man or woman.

Only after touching one summit you feel like going for the other. So give all you can in your love for your man or woman. Touch your peak. There is no chance for half bakes. Cook it full. Boil it well. Lukewarm things keep you in a vague haze. Bake it full. Boil it. Vaporize with the heat of your passion. Then you feel like soaring high, instead of crawling in the cauldron.

But don't just stop at this point. It's just a beginning. It’s the path to a bigger destination. From particular to the universal. With your categorized love for your partner, you get a glimpse of the bigger possibilities. The limited love, the so called love for your partner, is simply a window to help you have a glimpse of the infinite potential of bliss, the universal love.

Do you know, why do you feel like falling again and again? Simply because you don’t fall completely. You go with insecurities and fear. You love your man and woman with lots of apprehensions, fears and insecurities. You are partially into it. No wonder, the delicacy of your affair is always under-cooked. And you always feel dissatisfied, craving for more and more. Then you proceed to cook another half-cooked affair. We rarely complete the recipe. It’s my promise, if you cook one relationship well, you will not be left with any appetite to run for more along the avenue.

So guys keep falling in love. But just falling forever doesn't define you as a human being. Rising will. And rising occurs when you start loving all. When you use your full potential to love. And the path to hitting the full potential starts with your full love for your partner without any roadblocks of fear and apprehensions. The destination of love is to be all inclusive. Your love relationship with the man or woman in your life is simply an apprenticeship to help you become an all-loving person. So keep falling, but learn to rise and love all.

As you enjoy the ecstatic grip of love chains of your partner, slowly learn to wipe away the names of the people you hate from your little black book. Take a sip of love from the petals of your partner and forget and forgive one name at a time. The honey of love should be sweet enough to make you forget all the bitter tastes driven in your memory at the mention of certain irritating names in your life.  If your life’s bitterness isn’t swiped away by the sweet cherry of your love bites, then you have to objectively assess your level of dive in the love pool. If you are sufficiently deep in the pool of love for your man and woman, you won’t have any reason to be hateful of even the worst beings who have hurt you.

So here I rise high and see all people good in their unique ways.

Love you all!

Sufi Meditation

Music for Sufi Meditation

My father named or nicknamed me as Sufi. As a Hindu I rate it as a great syncretic sentiment. And why not, probably I am the only Hindu in Haryana who is called Sufi.

Coming to Sufism. It’s the best mystical offering by Islam to the overall humanity. The strands of unity, oneness, universal brotherhood and love for all waft around from the esoteric incense of Sufism. So I am happy to be called Sufi.

Sharing a musical piece for Sufi meditation. Play the music on a higher volume so that it swathes you in its gripping, haunting pools of melodious surrender to the ultimate. This meditation is best done in a spacious room or hall because it involves swirling around.

Listen to the initial notes and you will feel some spiritual haunts spreading from the central Asian lands. It is about connecting to mother earth, and from her to the solar system, galaxy and the ultimate. So perform it on naked feet, or be in socks at the most if the climate in your part is too harsh.

Stand still as you listen to the build up of the Sufi melody. Just relax and look within, taking the enchanting trilling of the music seep into you. Now spread your right arm by your side, raise the arm to the level of your shoulder, elbow turned at an angle and the hand raised up, palm facing upwards . Your elbow shoulder and chest being in a line. Spread the left arm to the other side, keep it comfortably straight, without putting strain to straighten it. The palm spread out and pointing to the ground. The hand dangling at an angle from the horizontal.

And start swirling, go round and round on your feet in anticlockwise direction. Just slowly build up the momentum. There is a difference between exercise and meditation. In the latter your spirit is involved. The body is just the starting point. Keeping the hands as mentioned above, as you start swinging, swirling, allow the divine forces to take control of your body. If you really do it, believe me you won’t fall, because there are balancing forces all around you.

When we stand we think we are in control of our body and only we are managing the stand of our body. Little do we realise that our apparent control is just illusion. The all balancing forces of eternity are what which maintain our standing. And look at the eternity’s grace, it allows us to think that we are solely responsible for maintaining our standing.

Your body will be swinging in circles, like a swinging top, but that is just the outer periphery of your being. After a time you, will realise that just the matter or food body is going in circles. The real you, the axis of your being, the consciousness, remains immovable. Just like a swinging top swirls around a central nail, you will go within to the immovable point of your being. The externalities will be swung out by the centrifugal forces of divine realisation. The centripetal forces will suck you into the core of your being. And the apparent objectives around you—and so will the illusions—will just merge into an all-pervading continuum, one layer of energy, which even quantum physics has verified.

The differences will melt. Going in circles around the point of your consciousness, you will realise it is all just one energy, spreading, transforming, altering, from here to there. If you maintain that equipoise of spirit, soul and matter, you can build up the momentum to continue for ever! Well, you need not do that of course. Haa Haa.

So continue as long as you enjoy the deep sips of solace. After that lie down on your stomach. Surrender to mother earth and the grandmother eternity. Just lie like a child. You will have glimpses of that cosmic security and protection when your mother carried you in your womb. Remain like this till the momentum of mystical oblivion embraces you.

Open your eyes later. Take a turn to lie on your back. But move very gently, without giving any jerk to the body. Be so soft as if you want to preserve the softest thing in you. Rub your hands. Place them gently on your face, smile, be thankful to the eternal law for the moments of peace. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-J1hVGzWro&t=13s

Nurturing the seeds of goodness

The things which ought to be simply done, should just be done. Otherwise, their shadows linger in the mind. They grow heavier with the passage of time. This invisible weight is heavier than the stones we see around. Simple, harmless acts of appreciation, of enjoyment, of helping someone cross a stream are better done and closed with a full stop. It’s better for a healthy mind. Otherwise, they linger like conspiring shadows over our conscience.

A missed chance of being good will definitely cast a shadow on our mind. An effort to help the self in being good, on the other hand, will hardly leave any unbecoming imprint on our conscience for pinching reflections later.

Only goodness has a legacy and a future. Hypocrisy and meanness are just bad examples and leave repentance most of the time. To do good is instinctive for a human being, it’s however another matter that we stifle the urge most of the time. To be bad, on the other hand, is not intrinsic to our nature. It is wrongly reflective, a miscalculation, a tragic bypass of the instinct of goodness.

Nurture the seeds of the instincts of goodness. It’s a simple practice. It gives peace of mind, clear conscience and makes the journey enjoyable. Avoid it and you carry the burden in your mind.

Happiness: as simple as breathing

It’s basically we who repel happiness away from us. We don’t allow it to come to us, embrace us, take hold of us. We set it as a goal too far down the line in future. Some house, some grains, some accumulation of pleasure, some relationships, etc., etc. We set up goals as the preconditions for our happiness. And the goals keep on piling up, over the years, and set up a wall between us and happiness. And happiness keeps on getting more and more distant from us. I will set up a home and then be happy. Happiness delayed. And then I work over the years. There is no end. I set a goal to raise a family and then be happy. Again it sets up a wall between happiness and us. Relentlessly we just push on. Happiness stays thus a distant goal. Never to be achieved. We make it conditional on endless goals, which are never met, because it’s the destiny of a goal to merge into another bigger one. They never die, only we die. Huge immortals they are. In pushing for them, we die. Separated from happiness that could have been the greatest gift of life, had we not pushed it away from us.

The remedy lies in taking away happiness from the far end of our endless goals and keep it safe in our house, like we store some grains for the harsh winters, near us, in the safest part of our house. It has to be cut away from the trail of endless goals and ambitions and kept with the self, in the present. It has to be set free from any conditions of meeting some goal. It’s a state as good as being healthy. Just being and living for a day. Separate being from becoming. You can be happy if you set your happiness free from the chains of your lifelong dreams.

You should be pushing towards yours goals as a happy person, rather than somebody who wants to be happy in future after completing the goals. The goals never come to a halt, only we do, at the moment of our death. So we die unhappily, separated from the natural state of happiness which could have pumped our life with unthinkable contentment and satisfaction, only if we had set it free from the chains of goal-setting and placed it unchained from those unreachable spots in the future.

Let happiness be a precondition for our doings, not a poor outcome of our efforts. Do everything as a happy person; instead of doing the deeds to become a happy person. Happiness is a state of being so, not the specific result of some hot pursuit. There is only one way it can be availed. Either we embrace it in the condition we are in, or it just eludes us. Keep it with you while you fly. It will boost your determination to go far and high.

So the only way to remain happy is just to be happy, instead of slogging it out to become happy later. Fellas, kindly decide to keep happiness as a routine, let it take possession of your present, like a monkey eating fruits and the birds flying. All in the present. Now. Just being. Simply being happy. 

The Regalia of Old Age

So he, the regal old man, embracing his age with fragile but tight grip, lives happily as the tail-end of a great life lived. He has weathered the tempests of youth: the force of beginning, starting and acceleration! And now the path of letting it go; losing the pace slowly, gracefully, receptively. The deceleration.  Slowing down with effortless muse. To stop finally. It gives him as much excitement as the force of starting. And then the final rest. Now, during the slowing down phase, his time has become slow, the world is a small puddle around his feet. He lives like in a dream. A slow-paced one, minutes stretched like hours, days like weeks, weeks like months, months like years. In slowing down gracefully, effortlessly, he lives equal to a dozen lives lived in the beginning mode.

He enjoyed the choices which fate sieved for him. Just grabbed his share. Now he picks up and plays among those things and coarse, discarded chaff which remain unwanted above as the fine particles, much in demand, trickle below. But it’s great fun, he tells with mischievous gusto:

“In youth, we just think that life means rolling in the sieve’s fine brew. But life can be equally enjoyable among the discarded heap, little malformed grains, sand-grains, specks and chaff. Now I roll like a child in the rubble of the past, which was once waylaid by the youth’s blast. It is now the precious wealth of my old age. Mellows down the rage in this haze. There aren’t any takers for it now. So I enjoy it alone, without that competitive drone.”

The old reveller, away from the fire, cosily lying at the margin, where the faintest traces of warmth touch his old bones before moving into the cold darkness.

The majestic slow down, as important and enjoyable as the headlong thrust of the beginning, the youth. The source, the beginning, and the slowdown, and the end. A cycle. Enjoy it!

Ice Cubes on Desert Sands

The cover page of my upcoming book...

The Voice Inside

The Voice Inside

Forget about the hoot and holler

emanating from the world outside,

And give an ear to the soft and murmurous

cooings emanating from the soul,

It has a soft and sympathetic

message for you only,--

your most personal message,

meant only for you,

Listen to these delicate chimes,

It’ll help you in finding peace in chaos,

In getting a foothold in the stampede,

In feeling rest, repose and respite

in the face of constant buffeting by the world around,

It’ll help you in breaking

the hardest of superficial layers,

which suffocate and limit your identity,

And put you face to face with

your  true self, your real worth,

Listen to it, close your eyes,

And pay attention with all your heart,

Just for a change,

don’t look far, look closest at yourself,

It’ll be as uneventful as looking

at a dust particle around your feet,

But it changes the universe for you,

You will have the biggest message

in the softest of whispering phrases!

And it’ll help you in finding yourself.

My Mind, My Buddy

Be the seat of my strength, not weakness.

Be the seat of kindness, not cruelty.

Be the source of light, not darkness.

Be the source of energy, not idleness.

Be the source of creativity, not limited vision.

Be the source of love, not hate.

Be the source of smiles, not tears.

Be the source of happiness, not suffering.

Be the seat of optimism, not pessimism.

Be the seat of gain, not loss.

Be the source of help, not obstruction.

Be the seat of leadership, not just sheepwalk.

Be the seat of a better human being.

Be the source of a more loving person.

O my mind, my seat of potential, take my journey further.

Please choose the better half of all the dualities for me.

Keep reminding your mind. Repeatedly. Daily. With eyes closed and fervent request. It’s a very nice, nutritious pre-breakfast food.

Choosing the better side of the pair of our actions and feelings is as easy as flipping a coin in our fingers from head to tail. We are pre-conditioned for the negative end of dualities. The instinct can be broken. Just early morning practice is sufficient. It’s needs much as reminding the self. Repeatedly.

God by Chance

God is just an incalculable sum of infinite serious of chance factors.

Chance is divinity! If ever there is a force that shapes things in universe and consequently in human life, it is the chance factor. Random forces shape even the patterns that appear constant and infallible to us. Suppose you hold ten playing marbles in your hand. You keep these on your palm and take utmost focus to throw in a way so that you get maximum pieces in the hole. The chain of event that proceeds is utterly carried and pulled by the chance factor. Who knows with what balance and from what height, distance or tilt you decide to go for your throw!? You have numerous options as per the aforementioned variants! Then chancely you get carried to think one particular position more suitable than others. Who knows in what funny ways the marbles float in air? These can float in relatively favorable and unfavorable arrangement to hit earth in who knows how many ways to scatter in who knows in which directions and strike each other in who knows how many ways and how many angles to result in who knows how many moving away or into the hole?????? It is a long and endless serious of independent still minutely dependent possibilities. One conscious act of taking the marbles in hand driven by the intention of putting as many as possible in the hole results in an endless series of probabilities that work independently in between the throwing stage with particular intention and the resulting stage emerging as an independent result. The result is free, so are the numerous bits of independent realities driven by the free will of the chance factor. From micro to macro levels this factor works to chancely shape destinies and the way universe functions. In the fathomless domains of this chancy superquotient, we have independent units that recur in patterns with regularity to substantiate our scientific theories. These are but particular outcomes carried by the swift forces of chance. Universe is an outcome of some chancy explosion. Life on earth is pleasant coincidence, divine chance. See the dance of prince chance in all its charm around you and in your life and you will feel its superweight!

Tiny god with huge godliness

We may argue about the existence of God. But godliness definitely exists. It lies there in the innocence, verve, playfulness, laughter, smile and unconditional ecstasy of a child. Nevaan, my nephew, splashing godliness around during one of his godly moments...

The Mother

Just a few visuals are enough to tell  the infinitely long story of maternity and its multihued colours. A mother  is a mother,  is a mother, is a mother. Tough mother's training... follow me, but learn to make your own path along the way...he was just about to make it. But she pushed him back because he was following her steps on the snow which made the climb a bit easier. But then she knows he has to be a man. She just  cannot stop just as being the mother of a son. The little one then heaved his own way from the bottom of the precipice, planting his own paws on a new path as the proud mother looks on. Salutes to motherhood...

A stringed kite is better than a free flier

We can fly and rise higher only if we are tied to certain responsibilities and commitments; our freedom-lorn spirit tamed to an extent by social conventions, individual values, family setup, the sweet-sour tides in our offices, etc. But most of the time we find it as a drag on our real enjoyment of life. We just feel how great life would be without all such traditional stuff. But guys tell me, can a stringless kite fly?The kite flies because there is a string pulling it to higher skies. It also tries to negate the limitations set up by the string. It shakes its head in negation. OK! What happens when its dream to be string-free become true. It just takes a few ecstatic circles in air and falls onto the ground. Those free dives of its dreams prove to be its death dives. We are the stringed kites fella. We fly and rise high only because our destructive passions and traits are tamed and tied by a string. So love your commitments, your responsibilities, and your struggles for small small things in life.

Antaryatra...

When the journey within starts...

Dewy fun under nightly sun

Swathed in the cool shades of a dewy night,
We stand brave with smiles and innocent delight,
When all sleep, we hold the beacon of love and light,
The moon is our sun,
When you will get up in the morning, you can't imagine how much was the nightly fun!

The evening guest who won't have tea

Well, the sunrays are losing their pinch. And the moment they lose their hot potency, your skin pines for the warm kiss. Welcome early winters! Have been writing for my blog almost through the day. Was moving around to take a tea break in the evening. And here comes the guy, the bald Romeo who has shed his plumage. Hence bothered more about food than peahens. No spare chapati, his favourite, this evening. So I offered biscuits. He took a few unwelcoming bites. I tried wheat grains. Lo, here he is savouring his evening snack. Sad that he cannot have tea and be my tea party partner...

Some random non-offensive farts by the brain

There is no absolute truth. All we have is just a pliant, relatively swaying sea of fractional truths. We draw out our suitable share of tit-bits of truths from this sea to complement our sense of identity with the self, i.e., ego, self-consciousness, our perception of the things, our vision of the world and the people around.

****

Women are humanist!! Almost perfect except one thing! Their humaneness crosses the zone of perfection and slightly touches an arena where bitchiness for their own sex starts in free flow. It is here the man's chance to appease his women opens up its welcoming arms. A man has to realise that it is more practical to say a few negatively critical remark about other women than millions of appreciating words about his woman!!

****

In the burning whirlpools of the desert storm, some tears shed by a suffering heart vaporize and go high in the sky for rainy prospects. Don’t get senty guys, it’s just an airy oasis.

****

Don't take victory for granted. She is a very choosy bride. She has her own, sometimes illogical, criteria to pick up the groom.

****

A nuclear bomb undoes all other types of technical superiority in conventional warfare. Similarly, leaps in space technology will see a country undoing various technical superiorities in the hands of rival countries on land.

****

To escape boredom, a man has to just extend his normal schedule; the same extension, which overlaps a woman's effort to tide over her boredom, turns her into a sinner.

****

The best compliment for my book Faceless Gods was by my friend's six-year-old daughter. 
Struggling to hold the fat book in her small hands, and lost in the dense text, she gave the expert review, "Uncle has got a very nice handwriting."

****

Truth need not be salted. Even in its bland form, it's more vocal than any well-peppered, politically correct, hypothetically safe and socially convenient cuisine.

****