'Tuesdays with Morrie' by Mitch Albom

'Tuesdays with Morrie' is an account of how Morrie lives his life after he discovers that he is going to die in a few years. It is a very "human" account of the insights he gains, how his philosophies take newer forms, and how he treats life from there onwards.

The book has the feel of a movie edited in a captivating manner. The sequence of events, the frequent flash-backs to school days with Morrie, the flow and the informal use of language - all of these give a dramatic feel. Once you start reading, the book takes over and you drift. It does not bore you even a wee bit as it connects instantly to the reader in a very human manner. Mitch does not try to talk from another world or from a different plane. He is very much as vulnerable as any other person – the difference being that he is at comfort with his personal vulnerabilities more than many others.

The most poignant moment is when Morrie is asked in an interview aired on TV: “Morrie, your mother passed away seventy years ago. You still feel the pain?” To this, Morrie replies, “You bet.” This brings out the fact that while most of us “block” our minds of past unpleasant experiences, Morrie was at ease with feeling grief. This is being human and accepting yourself as a human.

I had heard this somewhere: Earlier, people were loved and things were used. Now, things are loved and people are used. If that is true, then Morrie iss a relic of the past. He related to people in a very human fashion, and established a connection, an everlasting bond. In that, he was not a sociology professor just by the books; he lived it. He gave his fullest attention to whomever he was with, avoiding anything else that came his way - including calls from “important people”. He would listen to the person as if he or she is speaking to him for the last time.

Another stunning aspect of Morrie comes through in his answer to the question on how he would live his life if he were granted a wish to be perfectly healthy right now. He paints a very mundane, “average” type of a picture of how a perfect day in his life would be. He would take a walk in the park, watch nature, catch up with friends over meals, etc.

Simplicity.

Given a chance, I would like to make a movie on this book with perhaps Naseeruddin Shah or Anupam Kher as Morrie and Aamir Khan playing Mitch.

A Slow Awakening

kuchh kar guzar ne ko ...
khoon chala khoon chala ...

These are lines from a beautiful song from Rakeysh Mehra's amazingly inspirational movie 'Rang De Basanti'.

A time comes when your hunky-dory, relatively hassle-free life starts to go in a slow motion with you pondering. The things you had asked for at some level from the Existence do keep coming. Say, you had asked for a better job and you got it. You were peeved with a health problem and you found the solution. However,your comfort zones are now filled with more boredom. You want your work to fit in to a larger perspective that is building within you.

sawaalon ki ungli, jawaabon ki mutthi ...
sang lekar ...... khoon chala ...

You now aspire to create a new definition outside of the present limited sphere of your work. New thoughts, new attitude, and new values bring about a shift in your consciousness. You are in a space where you are not turbo-charged by any race, competition, or struggle to survive. Rather, you seek to create a newer “you” through the expression called work. Your work, your potential, your ‘burning flame’ are wasted if not utilized for a vision grander than that of the present.


galiyon se raston se ubharkar, umadkar
naye rang bhar ne ko khoon chala khoon chala

The book series Conversations With God asks you to evolve by challenging your own choices or versions of Who You Really Are.

Whatever one is doing, one should ask the question:
Does the work you do expand your consciousness? Does it fill you up with energy?

A Wednesday: A Thriller With A Message

A thriller with a message. That is what best describes the extremely fast-paced movie. No songs, no dances, no verbosity. Simply action. Even the dialogue sequences "appear as action" where there is no room for redundancy. This is the third off-beat thriller I have seen that had the ground slip from under my feet towards the end. The other two are the psycho-thriller 'Primal Fear' and the bank robbery drama 'Ankhen'. However, none of them carried a social message.

'A Wednesday' is a hard-hitter - on both terrorism and our own so-called counter-intelligence. A common man using his common intelligence (and uncommon wrath) has the city on his fingertips. And has the police held hostage to kill four die-hard terrorists. Why? Because he wants to prove a point. Because he is scared to go out on the street, or on the bus, or on the local train lest there be a bomb planted there. Because he lost a young gentleman who used to greet him in the train he would take everyday. Because he wanted to prove that foiling the terrorists' plans or nabbing them does not require some supernatural "intelligence".

The movie voices the suppressed anger, fear, and hurt of the "people on the streets" who fell victims to the Mumbai bomb blasts. Mind-blowingly enough.

The Purposefulness Behind Calamities

There exists no such thing as calamity. Flash back in to your life’s sequence of events. What looked like calamity to you at some point propelled you to reach a particular stage, or grasp some learning. Calamities or “strong events” that stir you up are “designed” to stir you up from stubborn resistance and slumber, and to make you acknowledge that you need a new take or turn in life. Be it loss of a loved one, drowning of your investments in the markets, or having to relocate to a different place - it is all purposely placed in the odyssey of your life. So when “calamity” falls on you, keenly observe what purpose it may possibly have had, where it is taking you, and what is happening inside you due to the event. Also note that it may not have come unannounced and all of a sudden. Telltale events signaling its arrival often occur but you may not be intuitively tuned to receive their message. However, trust that out of it you will emerge in to something you will appreciate. Every situation is carefully levied upon you. You are always taken care of.

First Fill Your Cuppa

Building a beautiful relationship may sometimes require a lot of effort. Here you are stepping in to another person’ shoes, resolving differences using a lot of communication, and making sure that any free, tattered ends are secured in tight, well-knit knots. While the effort may be really worth it because you immensely love the other person, the process may leave you drained. It is natural. Any activity with a significant amount of work takes up your energy.

When you are drained out, you can not be yourself. When you can not be yourself, how can you bring yourself to the relationship? This is the time that you fill your own cuppa. Meditate, read, play, work, or simply sit with her, holding hands and watching a movie. Just give enough time till the cuppa is filled up again. And that is the time to again go back to each other and fill each other’s cuppa. This will make you bring even more creativity to your most desirable relationship because you are a renewed self now.

The purpose of a relationship is spiritual guidance, to make you return to your Self; to make you see you in your original light. It is in the process of relating to the other that you return to the source - and that is you.

John Grisham's 'The Appeal'

Grisham brings something new with ‘The Appeal’. Let us accept that. Some of his consistent patterns, like righteous-trial-lawyers-putting-all-at-stake-to-defend-the- poor-and-the-needy, are found here too. However, two novel attempts deserve mention. One, heavyweight political and corporate wrestlers manipulating mass perception for the judicial elections to put "their" judge on the bench is quite extensively covered. What maintains your interest in the story is that from time to time, the election campaign takes you away from the high-end legal brawl, and most would find these trips interesting. Grisham succeeds in creating intrigue by running two apparently unrelated chains of events in parallel.

Two, right when you would expect “their judge” to rule differently towards the end of story, his opinion leaves you in an empty space, pondering over a multitude of conscience-provoking questions. “The Appeal” is not a happy ending story, and perhaps that is where its uniqueness lies. The story culminates at a place where the limitations of the legal system are reached, and the triumph of the spirit is called upon.

When Things Don't Work Out ...

ALL of us have gone through these "phases". You wish earnestly for something, set your heart on it, work hard at it, and it looks fairly achievable. Something happens, and you don't get it. You come crashing down. Your mood nosedives. At the extreme, you sink into depression. Scars are etched in some people's consciousness. Many of us wonder what did we do in order to be wronged. Did we lack in something? God knows why it happened. There you go ... you said it! God knows. Here is the simplistic analogy that helps wonderfully.

Say, you are a baby too eager to go out and play on a road. You love doing so for some reason. Alright. But that road is frequented by too many speedy trucks. Obviously, your "Father" does not want you to play. But that is not what YOU want! Your playful spirit demands what it demands. You are a child with all its naivete, inexperience, and little ability to gauge the consequences of many events. You do not realize how your NOT getting what you want at that instant moment fits perfectly with the much grander desire of your soul - and other souls who might be involved too! The child's instant desire is to play. But the child's grander desire is too live, to go through what it has come to the world for. So playing on the highway does not fit well into the overall scheme of things.

Sounds cliched? Perhaps, a lot of people come and fuss over you saying "it didn't happen because it was GOOD for you". And you hate hearing that mighty consolation. The above looks like a "turned around" version of the same? You anyway don't know about what your "grand plan" is supposed to be, and how this all fits in ... and blah-blah-blah. When you are in the "phase", you don't want to hear anything anyway.

Meditation is one key is to develop that intuitional power to foresee how things that happen are fitting in, what they are doing to you, and where you are going with that. One of the things that helps is silently reflecting on your past. What was the significance of that major event that happened years ago? Would it have been great today if that had happened the way I had wanted it then? Look at it objectively, in a detached manner.

Your Father also wants you to play, even more than you. KNOW that now the ripple of thought of playing has arisen in you - a better, more beautiful, and much more grandiose situation will be created where you may choose to play, play, and just play.

I Am your Highest Thought ...

"I am your Highest Thought, your Clearest Word, your Grandest Feeling."

~ from the book 'Conversations with God' by Neale Donald Walsch

I am sure all of us have experienced- without consciously realizing it - the quaint phenomenon of sometimes "operating out of" a different type of a space from within. For example, when you achieved unblurred clarity on some aspect, when you hit the path, the guiding route that couldn't have sprung in you given all you are and all you had done during your limited physical existence at that particular time. Know that some Divine Principle was at work THROUGH you. I had a tiny glimpse of this phenomenon working in me. Back then when I had set myself to preparing for the IIT entrance, I did not have any guidance. Many of the things that I had to prepare myself with were new and appeared difficult to fathom, and I had not known known then how to go about it. I just took to it trusting my intuition. Clarity on the difficult subject matter began to come after I had spent some time dedicatedly trying to make sense of it. And then help from the 'outside world' also started flowing in. True - you just have to start off with conviction, and things around you start arranging themselves accordingly.

How to make every choice of yours the Highest Choice? That remains a question.

Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna: More Than A Perspective

KANK is a product of Karan Johar's astute, discerning, and penetrating observation of the human psyche. The movie subtly, and amazingly, points towards the most basic, the most powerful, the core desire of every being - TO BE WHAT HE OR SHE REALLY IS. Far from being a perspective, it shows how things are - matter-of-factly. The movie does not extol or eulogize Maya (Rani Mukherjee) and Dev (SRK), nor does it paint these characters in dark colors. It shows how unnatural, how "misshapen" one appears when a situation does not allow you TO BE.

Take Maya's disinclination for parties, and Rishi's (Abhishek Bachchan) appetite for them. Audiences would have cheered for Maya had she faked experiencing orgasmic pleasure in his parties, would they have not? They would've gone home in utter bliss, convinced that not only do they have to make up for every disagreeable situation imposed on them, but that life for everyone was hell.

Was Rhea (Preity Zinta) ever able to empathize with Dev's larger-than-life passion for football, his latter embitterment with life's circumstances leading him to failures, or with his sad eyes craving for someone just to walk with him? Were the two ever able to connect? No. Nobody's fault, mind you.

Countless couples throughout the world are punishing themselves. JUST FACE IT: THERE IS NO LOVE! Why have we chosen to be so tightly wrapped up in our abstractions, our stereotyped thinking, our concepts, our own monumental walls of indoctrinations? Where did they come from? Outer space?

KANK breaks barriers. Spouses finding resonance outside their formal relationships is not new to cinema. However, the craft with which KJo presents the story, the failure of our own "systems", and the propensity to be one's own self in everyone, deserves more than accolades. Beautifully illustrative is the first meeting of Dev and Maya. Dev's waywardness or lack of chivalry were turn-offs only for a while. They immediately connect. When they meet 5 years later in a hospital, Dev instantly relates to the "emptiness" that he sees in her eyes - something Rishi had probably not noticed in years.

KANK DOES NOT BRING INFEDILITY "IN VOGUE". It teaches that you should correct a mistake when you realize it. Simple. The message is exactly that! Better still, do not make the mistake in the first place. (Hope you are getting the message.)

The soul seeks to reflect upon itself. It seeks situations and people with whom it could be that which it has chosen to be.

This Morn!

This morning felt so beautiful after a brief meditation that it inspired me to "poeticize"!

When the sun is made mild by the clouds,

When you are far away from the city's concrete and crowds;

When the dew-dropped earth’s wetness is loosing itself to the Sun,

You are waking up to the ever-present newness, and nothing is left to be said and done!

Beautifyy Your Dayy!

ps: Thanks to SN for the inspiration to write!