நின்னை சரணடைந்தேன்

A rather long prelude to even longer post

This post is probably first of its kind in this blog. Now that I have got your attention or rather lost it like the dud tam channels when they say “ulaga thollai kaatchi varalaatril muthal muraiyaaga…”, let me go on with the background of this post, which I believe is very essential to relish this post. This post was written listening to “Ninai Charanadaindhen” by Bombay Jayashri and Illayaraja for the film Bharathi. You would find sentences from Bharathi’s song interlaced with the post, to add “weight”. ;) This is broadly about the concept of surrender. Of course, there are bits, here and there, of things that man can’t live without: sex, philosophy and traces of doubts about himself, the world and life at large. 

Mind you, you might find a few too mushy statements that might cause envy in even Karan Johar. A lot said here are debatable; but before you argue, make sure you read and understand. The description of certain qualities and states of mind like love in this post might seem to suggest that the author had indeed been under heavy intoxication of love for too long. The author would just like to point out that it is not exactly true. That said, he would love to get intoxicated if it is possible, and for forever. ;) And this post might seem to be an anti-thesis of my old post (here). But, it certainly is not. Try surrender ;) to the author of this post! Now, let's begin.

பொன்னை உயர்வை புகழை விரும்பிடும் 

என்னை கவலைகள் தின்ன தகாதென்று 

நின்னை சரணடைந்தேன் கண்ணம்மா நின்னை சரணடைந்தேன்

Being in love is being blinded (note it is not blind, for the other sensors of a blind are extra sensitive), to reality, how much ever badly constructed by the mind. Being blinded makes you lose your capacity to doubt and makes you do things that you wouldn’t ‘normally’ do. And that makes you beautiful/dumb, depends on where you see it from. It is beautiful/dumb, because it is out of the ordinary. So freshly different from the mundane that you feel like you ARE LIVING.

Then, there is sex. I make no moral judgments about it, premarital or even extra, if all the other partners agree. The question is whether it is out of an urge to relieve, just like the one you feel when your bladder is full, or an urge to share the probably the most intimate of your moments with someone out of love. Again, nothing moral or otherwise about it. Just that, if it is an urge to relieve, you are blinded and would not care about where/with whom you get it done. The focus is on the act and not the person. Or rather the focus is on the ‘best’ person you can ‘buy’. This, IMHO, is likely to slowly weaken your capacity to value another human. And, most likely, leave a vacuum inside over time. Apparently, Gandhi was just doing exactly that, when his father was on deathbed. I say this not to point out the need for discipline or any such stuff that Gandhi had spoken about, but just that how sex can so easily blind you to things around you. No wonder, in Mira Nair’s Kamasutra,  towards the end, Maya chose to make love to Jai, her lover, and ask him indulge himself in the memories of their lovemaking to help himself not feel the torture.

That said, sex can make you ugly. Not in the physical sense. When sex blinds you so much that you don’t care for the other, not even the one whom you are doing it with, you are obviously ugly. Am I being sissy/prudish here? I think I am not. I would say the litmus test for the beauty of an act of sex would be the quantum of solace that both feel after sex. Well, this measure is a lot dicy one than the Bang Brothers’ kind of hard measures such as how long and how many etc. But, there is a high likelihood that you might stay with a person IF and till you feel peace after sex with him/her. It is about the awareness in sex: about not being blinded by the urge. This is probably what Vigyan Bairav Tantra and Kama Sutra try to do. While Tantra does it by focusing on breathing, like yoga, KS makes you explore many possibilities, at the end of which it fondly hopes you would realize the peace. And this, I believe, would probably increase your capacity for happiness, which just hopping across organs cannot give you. 

Ask me why? Simple. Man is weak for emotions. Or rather, the thoughts that bring emotions, for that exactly is what makes him unique. Yeah, each one has one’s own bin of garbage, which is full of such ‘personal emotional thoughts’. And it is exactly this garbage that makes your life unique and beautiful, if you  chose to call it that. Or else, if man is rational, life will be more of theorems than one of tears, whose beauty we seldom understand. ;) More on that sometime later. Probably after I get to shed them a lot, hopefully out of love and joy. ;)

தன் செயல் எண்ணி தவிப்பது தீங்கென்று

நின் செயல் செய்து நிறைவு பெரும் வண்ணம் 

நின்னை சரணடைந்தேன் கண்ணம்மா நின்னை சரணடைந்தேன் 

Now, on a slightly different note, a bit of symbols. When does a guy feel at peace with his lover? Holding her after great sex? When making her sit and cocoons her with himself, protecting her like his little daughter? Or when he rests his head on her lap, holding as much of her as possible with his hands? So much in love with her so that he wants to be part of her? To be as deep inside her as possible? To be born out of her? To be her son?

Well, if that appears hard to digest, just know that the last one, IMHO, is probably the most loving/respectful statement that she might hear from him. It is all about surrender, a complete one. Bharathi did that to Krishna: he considered Krishna to be his lover, his consort and at times, his son. (I don’t know about the songs where he considers him to be his parent.) 

மிடிமையும் அச்சமும் மேவி என் நெஞ்சில் குடிமை புகுந்தன கொன்றவை போக்கென்று

நின்னை சரணடைந்தேன் கண்ணம்மா நின்னை சரணடைந்தேன்

Now, a lot of subtleness here, so much so that you might miss the point. So (t)read carefully. How often have you experienced the feeling of total surrender? Not in the sense of an act out of fear or force, but out of love. Mind you, surrender is not an act for the weak. It is the act of beheading oneself. If a weakling does it, it is suicide not surrender. The surrender I mean is out of love. Again, surrender is not about being a slave. Rather, it is the opposite. It is about liberation. The one who you surrender should be so that he/she liberates you. Surrender is so dangerous that you better carefully chose a better person to surrender to. It will help to contrast with the ‘religious surrender’: more often, it is out of fear rather than love. The ‘object of love’ there is god, who is perfect. I know absolute is an illusion. ;) Rather than fearing/doubting the absolute, I would better love the imperfect. Love dissolves your doubt and makes surrender very much natural. Philosopher’s stone is nothing but love. ;)

துன்பம் இனியில்லை சோர்வில்லை, தோற்பில்லை 

நல்லது தீயது நாமறியோம் அன்பு நெறியில் அறங்கள் வளர்த்திட 

நல்லது நாட்டுக தீமையை ஒட்டுக 

நின்னை சரணடைந்தேன் கண்ணம்மா நின்னை சரணடைந்தேன்

C'mon, let's fight!

Try answering this pretty straightforward question before you read on.

“When do you think you really know a person? When you both are having a great time together? When you have a fight with him/her? When he/she is by your side when you are down?”

So, now that you have gotten your answer, let me go on with mine. Yesterday, I happened to watch Matrix Reloaded on Zee Studio. There is this scene where Neo goes to meet the Oracle and on his way, meets Seraph, the personal bodyguard of the Oracle. And Seraph asks for forgiveness and starts attacking Neo, even before Neo realizes it. After a few moments of breathtaking stunts, he says

"You do not truly know someone until you fight them."

How true! Hit the nail bang on its head! By now, the intelligent souls among you, and which I think is almost all of you as evident from you being the readers of this blog, would immediately recognize the hard hitting truth of this statement. Nevertheless, I don’t intend to have this post ended here.

Now, I would rather say we do not know even ourselves until we fight someone. You can get to know a lot about someone, including yourself, by just watching them for a few minutes when they are in a fight. For the simple reason that a fight is when one is really exposed and how one behaves at that time says a lot about him. That is exactly when he loses his head and how fast he can get that thing back on his shoulders depends a lot on what he really is. It reveals his strength of character as well as the concern he does/doesn’t have for the other.

Anger is the emotion that is the hardest to express I guess. Or rather the most unintelligently expressed. No surprise there, anyway, for we lose our heads then. Anger unleashes a energy that we wouldn’t normally have. And it has to be spent. The problem here is the confusion that arises when we are told: “Be yourself. Don’t control your emotions, particularly anger. Repressing anger is dangerous.”

But the catch lies in how you choose to express your anger. Do you take it on the person who caused it? If you choose to do that, will you be able to choose what you say and how you say that, so that you don’t end up setting off a chain reaction/ vicious loop that harms you both? Would you feel vindicated only if you see him sulk (even better, crying) or when you see him coming back to you (preferably with a smile)?

That is not all. What happens after a fight also matters a lot. If at all you feel vulnerable after a fight and feel you might lose the other person, then right away know that that is your best chance to judge how far and how long the relationship is going to last. It is your chance to show that you understand and provide the space for the other.

However, as I said in my earlier post, there is also a possibility that providing space might be mistakenly construed as aloofness/ indifference. You got to be right there, yet invisible. Be present, but not intrusive. It is a very fine balance.

All said, just like alcohol, many other things, including fights, in moderation, are good. However, just a word of caution.

வம்பு சண்டைக்கு போகாதீங்க,
வந்த சண்டைய விடாதீங்க!

Happy fighting! ;)

love chokes

Thanks to innumerable oft-repeated forwards that clog our mailboxes and “wise” status messages on gtalk, it is common knowledge that the one who hurts you the most is the one you love the most. But common sense, if any little shred of it is left in you, would say that should not have been the case, for love is almost an antonym of hurt. How then would you explain this apparent contradiction?

The answer probably lies in the way we see love. Relationships are all about sharing spaces, particularly emotional, and not invading each other’s spaces. But, invade we do - that too, so righteously, without even thinking about it for a second. For we take it as our right, sanctioned by just being in a relationship, however fleeting it is, to load up our expectations about the other person.

As I said in my old post, the existence of love is contingent upon the extent to which the expectations are met. Love is all about managing expectations. More often than not, we tend to force our expectations on the other. And we end up choking the very person we supposedly “love”. The more you “love”, the higher the chance that the other will be choked to death by “your love”.

And the irony is increasingly friends, who are supposedly “loving angels”, are rapidly taking over other relationships to win the hideous title of “The Biggest Chokers”. Probably large part of the problem lies in the very tag attached to a friend - “the one who listens to you without any judgment”. We are fooled into thinking that listening is essentially obedience. No wonder then that "perceived" disobedience leads to punishment and hurt!

Now, let me add to the heap of numerous platitudes that use the syntax ‘This is like that. Blah blah…”

Relationships are like trees. They need space – both sides: above and below the ground. The more they have space, the more they grow. So if you want your tree to grow, break the pot and plant it in the ground. Give it more space. If you insist on retaining it in the pot, you are stunting its growth.

That said, there is also a possibility that providing space might be mistakenly construed as aloofness/indifference, which might kill the tree straightaway. I for one would prefer giving space and ending up without a tree rather than having just the plastic "beauty" of a bonsai in the place of the full blown magnificence of a tree. It is up to you to decide whether you want bonsais! A tree is a tree is a tree.

Vilaichalin sumaiyai naan
vithaiyin muthugil yettruvathillai.
Vithai valarattum virumbiya vannam.

Uravugal Sirukathai

The title says it all. But, I am so bored that I am going to continue to add fluff till I run out of energy or someone buzzes me or I am called for lunch. Moreover my trips to several towns across Tamil Nadu to attend about eight weddings last month aren’t helpful either. Rather they made me realize the acutely short lives of our relationships.

More often than not, we tend to think of our lives as one of those TV soaps whose end is nowhere near in sight and that we have time to add chapters later to make up for the ones lost on the way. Seldom do we realize that it is string of short stories connected in space and time by what is defined to be our ‘egos’.

Mind you, relationships are made out of the stuff that resides in your memory. It is on strings of these memories, albeit colored by your egos, that relationships are built. So the better each byte of these memories is, the stronger the relationships are. And it takes a lot of creativity (not in the regular sense but to be sensitive to the moment and be able to be original in your response) to make every moment count and thereby make relationships memorable.

Seems a philosopher named Kant had written volumes about human tendency to invariably relate to things in terms of time and space. More often than not, we tend to assume that we got more-than-required, if not unlimited, time with us. This patently erroneous assumption lulls us into a pitiable state where we continue to fail to make every moment count. That leaves us with loads of insipid if not outright repulsive stories and then we complain.

Let us blow a K.I.S.S. (Keep It Short and Sweet or Keep It Short, Stupid) to ourselves and try to make our short stories a lot more interesting! Let’s find the Gods (in the sense of Creator) within!

Carpe diem fellas!!

Next:
Back to The SK-ool
Master SK speaks on how to K.I.S.S., personal bubbles and a lot more!

Jarugandi.. jarugandi...

There is nothing to lose except Time. And there is a lot to gain.

Go to places you wanted to go to, but never did. Go out, talk to people you wanted to talk to, but hardly did. They may be here with you today. You may not find them by your side when you want to. For there is little time left, dear friend! The prospect of death puts everything into perspective.

“Unheard melodies are sweeter!” Damn! What are the ears for then? Songs are meant to be heard, words are to be said. Sing your heart’s songs loud and clear!

Let go! Talk crap, have fun like a fool! For those moments are more memorable! (yeh, intelligent exchanges require several GBs of memory while the not-so-intelligent stuff require only a few bytes! So don't clog your memory and overload your system!)

The clock is ticking. You he(a)re?

Kids???

Why do people go on having kids? Kids are the biggest demonstration of their egos. That is the “grandest” way to flaunt their egos. It is the favorite past time of human race. Kids are sure-fire means to kill time, which people have in plenty because of their lack of creativity. Since they feel too bored by being themselves, they “procreate” problems, which then go on to consume all their time.

Remember the Akbar-Birbal story, where the king draws a line and asks people to make shorter without rubbing it and Birbal draws a longer line next to it. In a similar vein, kids are the longer lines that make the problems of being with your spouse (assuming you are fooled into marriage) “appear” smaller. And it works fabulously! More often than not, it becomes a BIG inescapable trap that backfires on you both. And you spend the rest of your lives looking for better ways to deal with the trap!

This post sets out to show how surprisingly shorter the line is - without kids relative to the one with kids.

If you are one of those with enough intelligence not to be teachers/professors, then you are dead. If you are intelligent enough not to be a teacher, then obviously you would not waste your brains remembering inane stuff like science, biotech and history. You would rather use it to store important stuff like the Shakira’s ‘Hips don’t lie’ lyrics or Sharon Stone’s haunting dialogues from BI or Tyra Banks’ amazing statistics. So imagine how hard it would be to talk your kids to sleep, which teachers/profs can do so artfully to even a bunch of pranksters. Btw, was it Shrek who kissed The Sleeping Beauty out of her slumber?

If you can handle him/her even then – in the cradle, how will you be able to when he/she grows up to be more intelligent than you, which is inevitable by evolution?

When they drill you with their innumerous stupid questions, your super-intelligence will be of no avail. You can’t give a straight, logical answer (assuming you know it), for children are too stupid to understand your genius. This is what Thiruvalluvar, the famous Tamil sage poet said:

Thammintham makkal arivudaimai maanilathu
Mannuyirk kellaam inithu

This means Children who are more intelligent than parents are sources of happiness for the whole world. Except the parents. The whole world goes on laughing at you, while your own kid makes you look like a moron. So they drag you down to their level of stupidity. Over time, you become dumber and dumber to a point, where you forget you were intelligent before this brat was born.

With you getting dumber, they quickly take control your life – particularly the omnipotent TV remote, which you had been wielding till then to show who is in power. Nimmathiyaa nallathaa vaazhkaiku thevaiyaana naalu Namitha dance paaka mudiyaathu, naammalum ukkaanthu Power Rangers –Time Force, Pokemon nu paathu tholaikkanum. By taking over the TV, the only intelligent trusty companion you had in your house against the bully that your wife is, they make you lose your self-respect.

Before you realize, your wallet falls victim to “Pester Power”, apart from the “Pondaatti Power” that till then had had unquestioned authority over your hard-earned money. You become the dumb ATM of your house that gets punched day in and day out for money.

Moreover, you would have absolutely no control over your kids, who are now less idiotic than you. You can’t even have the happiness of giving them any advice for 1. they don’t need as your intelligence is now reduced to below their levels and also, 2. they would not care a damn.

So why would you want to create something that robs you of your time, happiness, self-respect and more than anything, money – the supreme power. So maapla, naan solratha nallaa kelu. Wear rubber. Save your self.

Vaazhkaiya yosingada, thala ezhutha nallaa vaasingadaa

Yosichu paarungadaa, ellaarum onna koodungada

Chennai 600028

P.S.

Whether the world is getting any more a safe place for children is a serious question. Think of what all they would be facing – sexual abuse, drugs and adverse climate changes (check out this interesting post). If you call these inane ramblings of an inexorable pessimist, think again. These issues are very much real and their incidence and prevalence are also on the rise. Generally, Indians are forced into having children right after marriage, which restricts them from exploring any further passions, including sex. Ithula “Kuzhantha kuttingala thavira vera enna irukku vaazhkaila?” nu kelvi vera. What worth is life without kids? It is high time many of us started seeking answer for that.

P.P.S.

1. Understand kids are statements of your BIG Egos. The apparent happiness you get from kids is from the satisfaction of your egos! That happiness is so individual, just like orgasms. You might have it or might not. Even if you have it, it would a short-lived one. And there are better, healthier ways to groom your egos.

Search out the ego in these: "En kooda padicha Annalaksmi-oda paiyyan evlo thuru thuru nu irukkan theriyumaa. Enakkum athu maathiri oru kutti paappa venum", "Enakkae enakkunnu oru jeevan", "My girl always gets first rank", "En ponnu periya singer, Vijay Super Singer la second round varaikkum vanthurukka!", "En paiyyan naan kilicha kotta thaanda maattan." And here is the winner: "Naalaikku enakku kolli poda oru paiyyan venaamaa." Adinga! Dei, kolli podrathukku Carbon Credits vaanguniyaa da?

2. Daddy! I Shrunk Your World: Your world gets shrunk to a pint sized, irrepressible brat. (assuming you have enough intelligence left to stop with one!)

3. Kids form costly and ineffective substitues for passions.

4. Kids are born out of fear.

5. Would you never learn from your parents' experiences? Don't you remember how your parents suffered because of you? Do you want something much more intense than that for you?

6. Kids give meaning to your life? BS. The meaning of life is what you give to it. So, give a better one!

naanaaga naanillai...

The most remarkable woman in my life - Sulo, my mom.

Well, this is not a mother's day special. But the hype given by chennai FM stations for that day. Aama, avanunga ethukku thaan hype kudukkala! Tom Cruise veettu naai naalavathu kutti pottrukkunnu sambhandhame illaama chennaila naal fullaa discussion, sms contest nu koothadippaanunga. I just hate celebrating all these Special days - Mother's day, brother's day, onnu vitta chithappa day, oora vittu odippona periyappa paiyyan day and veetta vittu odipoi vera castela kalyanam pannikkitta maama ponnu day. Yuck! It is just foolish. Everybody knows it is all made up by Archies and Hallmarks of the First World to sell more of scrap paper to the innumerable losers around the world.

But, I just take this opportunity to remind myself what my mom means to me. I don't intend to do some "poignant" stuff à la Cheran or Karan Johar. All that I want to do is reflect on the sheer strength of her character - the woman that she is. If the post has any shades of amma sentiment in tam films despite my intentions, it is because of the love and awe I have for her.

I am what I am today, because of her. Her self respect and strong will is just amazing. It should have been very easy for her to turn negative in the face of what happened right after her marriage. But she decided otherwise and persisted despite all the putdowns by our relatives. Surviving on a few hundreds of rupees, she decided to give me and my brothers the best of education in an English medium school nearby. I remember some caring words from relatives - Sothukkae vazhi illiyaamaa, english mediathula padikka vekkaraalaamaa.

I still remember how she would walk us to the school on exam days, conducting Q-A sessions all along the way. And how we had to be on our knees for about an hour on the day we ate sathunavu saappadu at a government school nearby. But that food was a lot better than what I get in most of the hotels in Chennai.

I remember my answer to the question "Who is your favorite manager?" in the interview for MBA admission. "My mother. She does everything that a manager is supposed to do - strategic planning, resource management, goal setting, performance appraisals and reward management."

She had 1001 ways to earn that extra money so that she can cook a better meal for us. I just wonder at how she made our wet-grinder an earning member of our family. Oru padi arisikku 75 paisa. Then, she and dad would carry bundles of saris from Trichy to our colony. Her selections were quite a rage among the gals of our colony. Rajni pada release maathiri, ammavoda sari collection release. In fact, i still remember a lot of those gals from a street complaining to my mom that she had given a better sari to other gals from a different street.

To top it all, Sulo's sense of humor and culinary skills are extraordinary. A lot of our family friends and neighbours would swear by the taste of her sambhar. The only thing we disagree is God. In fact, my previous posts on Rama and God were out of my arguments with her. She used to say "Work hard. Pray for a better result". Being the lazy idiot that I was, I conveniently missed her emphasis on the first part - hard work. I don't understand why she gave me so many gods (existent or otherwise) to look up to, when I had her right in front of me to look up to.

Knowing her makes you realize how little relevant "education" is for character. One amazing thing about her is that she just turns silent whenever she is angry. Mind you, this is not submission. She is very well aware of the pointlessness in talking when you blow your top. Once you cool down, she minces no words in telling you what she thinks. I just compare her with the old lady next door, who almost always shouts at the top of lungs at her husband. Free tuition on swear words in English for those on our street. Most often, the poor old man shuts her mouth up by banging something on the floor. I just wonder at how this little lady from Kallivalasu (a small village near Dharapuram, Erode district) speaks so loudly with her silence.

I don't know whether I really deserve such a great mom but i am very much certain that she deserves a much better son than me.