Some thoughts in support of a Smile

 Victory gives you a trophy; failure gives you a chance to fight for a still bigger one. Keep going. But never miss the beautiful scenes of life on both sides of your path. As long as you enjoy the free bouquets of nature around, life no longer gets defined in victory-defeat terms. It acquires a larger dimension. It turns meaningful by itself. And joy and happiness turn the natural, unconditional fruits of the path. Journey well. Never miss your smile.

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Well there never was a destination. The only destination has been to move from a painful journey to a joyful one. It's a very subtle change in gears: From the outer shadows--which are ever shifting and fleeting--to the inner substance which is ever unperturbed and waiting for the journeyman to come home at long last.

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So much for the conceptualized set of sins and vices. We have too hypothetical concepts to tame the basic instincts in humans. A vice is not a vice everywhere. A so called 'vice' with larger motivation loses its dark shades. Without a supportive chorus in the background, it again becomes a loathsome act in abstract. But there is hardly anything in total abstractness, except in the pages of books and the brains revising these for one-upmanship to win a point. Reality is too muddled up. There is hardly any vice that goes totally unjustified. And rarely a virtue that stands perfectly justified. Read Dostoevsky's Gambler. It treats gambling as a viceful and then not so viceful art driven by the pure psychosis of a helpless heart mad after the chancy windfalls of win and loss and even beyond.

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Now I understand why economically challenged households have bigger treasure in the form of children. As Mr. Micawber says in David Copperfield:

"In our children we live again, and that, under the pressure of pecuniary difficulties, any accession to their number is doubly welcome."

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To lead a successful social life, invest in a few relations wisely and with soft emotions. Work and behave with people in a manner as to have two or three persons who will always have a room for you in their house, half a dozen at least who will always have a chair for you at their dining table, a few dozen who will always have softness for you in their hearts and a few hundred who will surely smile at you as you pass them. This, dear readers, is the hallmark of a peaceful, happy, mundane life of a common man. If the ingredients of joy are so earthly, why aim for cosmic shots then to find meaning in life?

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While we fret, fume and get frustrated for the things that we don't have, feeling wronged both by the system and destiny, there are people we carry on uncomplaining, even though they have just a fraction of what we have, but deserve 100 times more than us. Just give a careful look around. We have many in our locality itself so there is no need to pack bags and search in far of lands. Doesn't it makes you feel the luckiest of the lot. A sense of gratitude needs this much of attention.

Many times we think we don't have enough for our talent. So many times we crib about having less for what we do. But then there are the lives who could have been better than any of us just that they were born in a ditch and circumstances never allowed them to come out. I see scores of such unsung heroes on a daily basis and find myself humbled and cut down to my real size.

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What are tough circumstances? They are just some sick moments needing doctoring from you. Take the pulse of difficulties. Analyse impartially like a doctor. Put up the diagnosis. Prescribe a solution and come out hale and hearty.

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Don't take life as a mystery. It's an open book. Each line has just one message: The time you are allowing to slip away without celebrating my existence (and your own -- both are same by the way) will never come back. So celebrate life. Light new lamps of exuberance, fresh dreams, undying enthusiasm, unrelenting creativity and many more. Happy Diwali everyone!

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A continuous run is no fun without rest, repose and pause. Inviting you to slow down and have a bit of rest...fast mode has no meaning without the slow mode. A run is fruitless without rest. In any case we have to stop to reap the rewards of our running, huffing and puffing...

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A little song book of eternal hope, love and loss. A cup of tea brewed with night blooming jasmine flowers. A perfect date on partially sunny warm day! Ordinary has the hallmark of perfection. What else one needs in life?!

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The potted rose has turned into a heavy bouquet of roses. Giving its best shot at life! You no longer fear death once you have given your best to life and blossom the potential mother nature has given you. Smile full and sadness vanishes. Light fully and darkness turns on its heels. And what is a flower? It's simply mother earth smiling as you carefully caress a bit of soil with loving hands. We create blossoms with our emotions. The potential is already there. What we need is a gentle emotion and a bit of smile to create something that adds to mother earth's smile.

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And now dear earthlings, the winter softly coos: 'Dear, I'll cool down the burning hot field of realities that tortures your soft feet!' Open up to the invitation. Give mother nature a helping hand. She will put our house in order far too soon than we believe. But we have to do our bit first. Please resolve to plant a few trees and see them grow up strong with mandatory post-plantation care.

Be a creator

 Giving its best shot at life! You no longer fear death once you have given your best to life and blossom the potential mother nature has given you. Smile full and sadness vanishes. Light fully and darkness turns on its heels. And what is a flower? It's simply mother earth smiling as you carefully caress a bit of soil with loving hands. We create blossoms with our emotions. The potential is already there. What we need is a gentle emotion and a bit of smile to create something that adds to mother earth's smile.

An invitation for laziness to see the truth in slow mode

 A continuous run is no fun without rest, repose and pause. Inviting you to slow down and have a bit of rest...fast mode has no meaning without the slow mode. A run is fruitless without rest. In any case we have to stop to reap the rewards of our running, huffing and puffing...

The puppy-touch of unconditional love

 If one fish can spoil the entire pond, can a single lotus do the same from the side of beauty? Well, it serves a big purpose if we believe so. Let’s believe that an ounce of goodness is enough to counterbalance tons of evil. This belief itself serves a big purpose. It keeps the hope alive for love, joy and compassion.

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It is so easy to react on impulse to the instincts driven by hate and revenge, and so difficult to postpone the very same, think coolly, and take calculated measures and respond. Our success and standing in life is decided by the time gap between raw impulse and cool deliberation. As we move towards lessening this gap we take a firmer grip on the wheel of life. There comes a time when impulsive reaction and cool deliberation merge into one. Then you are in the driving seat and this mind your servant. In that position, you create, you become a creator. You are no longer a piece of mere creation. 

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A stray puppy licked my hands...its tiny tail wagging with loads of greetings. It was so friendly, so pure and honest. The puppy feels far more loving than so many smart humans having super-egos who just love to hiss and bite...hiss and bite....hiss and bite! 

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Dark is the poor sidekick of light. It just exists to provide a canvas on which the multihued colors of light get painted in dazzling arrays and patterns.

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What is the difference between love and infatuation? Infatuation is that glittering fake jewel that glitters like most of the modern things in design, pattern and finish. Love is the real gold, smiling unceremoniously with its subdued colors and toned-down purity. And all of us are jumping over the barbed wires of infatuation, our emotions bleeding, to reach the compound of love.

Maradona

 The archetypal distressed genius, Maradona, who wrote the shimmering lines of his life with his left foot (and left hand), died on November 25 at the age of 60. He always courted skirmishes on and off the field. Beginning as a cheeky burglar involved in daylight robbery, the destiny catapulted him to become the audacious marauder playing tricks with feigns, passing steps and acceleration and stops and side turns. It flummoxed the opponents.  

He had a tendency to steer around the normal as much as he veered around the defenders. To him the world itself looked like he was in a stadium, sidestepping over social norms and sometimes even the law. No wonder, he remained a pleasant, unbridled, obese trickster even long after he hang his boots. An unfettered and effervescent spirit, we may say.

The stocky paragon of Argentina pride inspired a fierce devotion. To the millions of his followers, it was a quasi-religious experience. You could love him or hate him, but you couldn’t ignore him. His innings on this planet has turned out to be a eulogy to a life in tantalizing excess ranging from superstardom to drugs to domestic abuse to guns to cocaine to involvement with organized crime: A lotus out of the muddled tumult of muddy waters. Or we can say, it was an awe-inspiring darkness coupled with the silver-lining of his genius.

He flirted with football with an impetuous cunningness. Moderation and discipline wasn’t in his dictionary for it was a testimony to excess in all he did and thought. A banner sums it up: ‘It does not matter what you have done with your life, it matters what you have done with our lives.’ He was indeed a heady rock star who commanded the stage.

‘I am Maradona, who makes goals, who makes mistakes. I can take it all, I have shoulders big enough to fight with everybody…’ He gave enough credit to his vaunting words through his Aztecan sorcery with football at the Mexico stadium.    

From winning the 1986 world cup indisputably single handedly to be unceremoniously kicked out of the 1994 event on doping charges, he dribbled between glory and ignominy. God was with him through ‘the hand of the god.’ At one end of his excellence, he is credited with the goal of the century. But then his gluttony for goals in life included food, alcohol and drugs also. In fact, Maradona and moderation never fitted in closely. From a lithe demigod of an athlete, he went on to turn into a sniggering puffed up drugs addict. From holding the world cup, and the consequent slaloming into countless hearts, to barely holding his life in his fist after a cocaine-born heart failure twenty years ago, he had hit crest and trough of life without injuring his reputation.

The ‘Hand of God’ punching the ball into the English net during the 1986 world cup quarter finals. His ruggedness was pinching but his playing style was far more bewitching. In his football mad home country, he was the quintessential ‘Golden Boy’. Like he out-jumped the England goalkeeper Peter Shilton, almost twice his height, feigning to head but hoodwinking the referee by patting the ball with his left hand, to score the ‘Hand of God’ goal, he jumped over literally all norms to score goals and lead life the way his free-will dictated.

Who can forget the goal of the century!? Just four minutes after the ‘hand of god’, he hoodwinked all realistic expectations even from normal geniuses. His 44 strides in 11 seconds involving 12 touches gave us the greatest goal of the century. The 1986 Mexico world cup belonged to one man only. He madly burst into boxes. He crazily brushed off defenders. He maniacally squared off the ball towards the net. He magically outmuscled his tall and giant-type markers. His stinging left footers would be drawn to the net even from the toughest angle. Like a farmer ploughs through soil, his flicks and dribbles scythed through a slew of defenders and hapless goalkeepers. The blast of raw energy through his stocky bundle of animalistic muscles left him an autocrat on the turf.

Polarity melted in the photogenic blizzard of his dazzling runs. He was an angel as well as a devil, a rogue and a genius in the same vein. He was too far from the singularity of existence and very near some unpredictable multitude. He was reckless, brazen, desperado, sublime, elegant and graceful in a space of few minutes between the ‘Hand of the God’ to the ‘goal of the century’, the latter almost divine in terms of its guts and audacity. He gathers the ball to his side in the stadium, swings and opens up two defenders, blazes on like a bursting comet, chest puffed out, his tongue leering and jeering and cutting across like a knife through butter, cutting the moorings of a posse of 7 English defenders to romp home to glory. This mesmeric run is unsurpassed. Those 11 seconds, and a run of 60 yards, beginning from his yard to the final romping home after rounding the English goalkeeper, involving stepping on the ball, setting right, left and forward thrusts like a brute steam engine, the opposition scattered in disarray, he creates history. Just four years after the Falklands Islands war, where his country lost to the opponents on the turf now, he had given enough to the entire nation to forget the bruise and celebrate victory on the playground. The sweet redemption, almost a kind of salvation for the millions of souls.     

The stocky and strangely built spiral of life from a small shanty town to superstardom had glorious twists as well as dark knots of drug addiction in his stormy flings with life. He flirted with death with as much ease as he did with the ball, the crazy behemoth.

As the supernova preparing to die out with a dazzle, the tantalizing little giant had to be lifted out of his seat as a bloated behemoth during a world cup match in Russia in 2018.

Imagine his hold on the psyches of fans across continents. A band of Egyptian bandits freed a group of Argentine tourists after coming to know that they were from Maradona’s country.  A hero for the disadvantaged and unprivileged, his pics on T-shirts boosted the morale of those who were born in slums but had stars in their eyes.

His moves, both on the field and in the larger arena of life, were sublime, uplifting, farcical, even tragic, all mixed in an out-of-normal concoction. His outspoken tongue gave a good company to his magical left foot in expressing the bulging life and spirit in him. No wonder he was a salvation to an entire generation of Argentina.  

His casket lay at the state presidential palace draped in national flag and his famous number 10 jersey displayed before the final rights. Three days of national mourning becoming that of a head of the state. Here lay the almost singular hope of the country throttled by the military junta, economic backwardness and defeat in the Falklands war. Such full of life men come once in a rare while. Rest in peace brother Maradona!