Monday, December 21, 2009

DREAMER .......

"your clock has started ticking", gasping for air, finding it hard to keep her eyes open,but these words sounding loud and clear in her mind. she realized she had almost forgot about it. Her mind went wandering to her childhood when her cousins would tell her that they dreamt her flying a helicopter, riding a big white horse, riding a loin and she with enthusiasm declaring, "yeh i remember , that was me , did you see how beautiful clothes i was wearing". these self deceleration were what the older cousins of her liked, they enjoyed these wild exaggerating of her imagination, for them it was an enjoyable performance. Her mother encouraged her to dream bigger and bigger, even after knowing that others where everyday cooking up stories and letting the girl to complete those wild imaginations. one day in the morning the little girl came running to her mother and said that she dreamt herself riding a white elephant and a herd following her. Her mother told her not share this dream to anybody, it was a dream dreamt by those who were going to rule over a kingdom.

She grew up, but her thoughts and words always made her to look much older than the other kids of her age group. when other girls were playing with dolls, she was discussing politics with her grandfather,these kinds of behavior always made her the odd one out among her age group. The other thing that she was gifted with was winning of hearts, making people smile in worst times even though she was terrible with jokes, helping people even if she didn't know them. With time her dreams became bigger and bigger, she started to dream about other people, she had started to dream for them, she started to dream about a Utopian state. she used to say, "dream big and keep your eyes open while dreaming , u will get it". She even dreamt about her exit from this world, half of the world with moist eyes saying her good bye, she wanted herself to be remembered long after she was gone, she wanted to continue to live even with out physical presence. she wanted to be there in the hearts of people till eternity.

As is the case with dreams , all can't be true. her dream also was broken even before she had finished dreaming, with these very words, "your clock has started ticking". She visited a doctor for an ailment which seemed to be a not so serious thing, but the doctors words changed her whole life for ever. it had been five years since then and she had kept on moving from one place to another, not being at a place for more than a year. Trying to not to get attached to people, but where ever she went every single soul that she touched was overwhelmed by her caring and charming nature. but with the passing years she had mastered one Act of her's - "Vanishing". When ever she felt that she was getting attached to any place or people she would just vanish in thin air, no goodbyes.

she had been in the current place for more than a year and was finding it hard to do what she did best, "vanish". she had tried to vanish twice but her heart had failed her, she had always tried not get in a relationship but all her precautions had gone out of the window when she met a guy, who always had a mysterious smile on his face , eyes filled with strange shine, a strange kind of attractive force was all around him which pulled her towards him. she tried to give herself false hope that she can vanish from here also and with time everything would be back to normal. but she had never imagined that it could be so hard for her to vanish from here. with every passing day vanishing from here was becoming more and more harder. She new that she had to leave this place quickly. but before leaving she wanted to say GOODBYE for the very first time, but she didn't know how to say it as she never had.

Her dream of her exit from this world was no more her dream, she wanted to leave this world as quietly as possible, she didn't want anybody to miss her or even remember her name. she no more wanted her kingdom, which had grown exponentially with each passing day of her life, The Kingdom of Hearts.she no more wanted to DREAM !

Sunday, December 13, 2009

The Myth of Free Will

“Do whatever you wish to do”, this is a sentence that we have all heard be it from our parents / siblings / friends / girl friend / boy friend / even politicians and the so called liberators. The sentence seems to be simple and clear but the question that arises is do we really do what we wish to do even when we are told to do so. The answer to this question is tricky as the question itself, it is a fact that whenever we are told to do whatever we wished to do , at these very moments we actually are supposed to do the opposite i.e to do whatever we are expected to do or simply whatever the other person wishes us to do. So most of the times we tend to do whatever others wish us to do. Now the question arises does the free will exist?
“Free Will” has been linked to freedom, freedom of expression, freedom of thinking, but how free is our mind today, how free and independent is our thinking? The media is controlling what we think and how we think; media is proclaiming the accused as criminals even before they have been proved so in the court of law. This has led to jury being influenced by the media trails and recently many faulty judgments were passed which many intellects opposed. what is right what is wrong , what is moral what is immoral is being decided by the people other than you, other than your own intelligence and analytical mind. Whatever we do is always dependent on the fact what others will think of it rather than what “I” as a person think of it. Let me try to give an example, let us say a college girl in a western country does not wear miniskirts or other such clothes, what is the image she creates for herself- that of a bore, unattractive, idiot and nobody pays attention to her or gets too much of undue attention…. she is forced to wear the kind of clothes which helps her to move with the crowd. Now take the example of a college girl in a conservative Asian country, if she dresses the same way as girls in west she would be considered a slut and looked down upon. What happened to her freedom of wearing whatever she thinks is good for her , what about her free will. This is just one example, this applies to almost all walks of life be it when we vote for a political party , it not we who decide whom to vote for but the some other person who tells us this political party is good that is bad, who tells us these policies are good those are bad. It is same when deciding about whether a movie is good or bad, say you have heard a lot of good stuff about a particular movie from almost every friend of yours and you decide to watch it. After watching the movie you do not find it up to the expectations but when your friends ask you how you liked the movie you have doubt about your own assessment and join choir praising the movie. Almost everything that we have to decide is being decided for us by somebody else, but we fail to realize this.
Free will goes for a toss in every aspect of now days life, the only place I think of where it may still exist is the solitude of Himalayas. But it isn’t easy to go there and be there so we better continue to cherish the pseudo freedom , pseudo democracy, pseudo equality …..