Every journey is a new story

Hi, This is a fresh beginning of a fresh new day (26th Oct 2008) and venue is Indian Rail sleeper coach no S1/78. Well not that bad at all, I feel so energetic and optimistic about the day at 5:00 AM in the morning. After 30 hours of non stop journey, train looks so familiar that sometimes you feel that you are here since ages. And Now after 35 hours of journey I am feeling little relaxed and comfortable and one big reason for this is not just completing 80% of journey, but also to feel like human. The feeling of being animal has just disappeared after last extra crowd of people got down on Jhansi station. And train is not very crowded now.

I still remember last night when I became freedom fighter and fought for my own democratic rights. Claiming and retaining my own seat was noting less then a freedom fight for me. It was also a struggle for finding breathing space for my sweet delicate wife who is not use to animalistic situations. But I am really proud of her today for getting slowly more partial and realistic towards life. This is real India, chaotic India, the bitter truth off course. I am using this word “animalistic” neither to abuse Indian common person not to be a white color critic. But I am using it to point out and understand very basic animal instinct that remains silent during calm situations and comes out running in chaotic situation. Transformation of civilized specie into a selfish and cunning creature. If you talk more in terms of science then you may call this phenomenon “self defense mechanism” or “struggle for survival”.

When we reached on our seat we saw 6 people well settled on our place and not quite bothered even after we claimed our right of that place. And I had to allow my Animal Instincts to take charge of myself and be aggressive to fight for my right of freedom. But the fight for freedom became little long and people didn’t let my animal go sleep during all of these hours. Either it was a smoker or encroaching crowd, I kept on fighting for all these hours. Sometimes I showed aggression more then I actually had and I had to misbehave even to people much elder to me.

This is beyond my imagination that a person settles on a seat which doesn’t belong to him. And he even resists vacating. Bangalore is well populated by educated and well qualified north Indians who are directly or indirectly associated with software industry. There are 3 trains from Bangalore to Delhi and if someone is really looking forward to celebrate Deepavali with family then he would get on board any of these trains, in spite of having any waiting list ticket or no ticket at all. In a situation like this, all that sophistication of software industry just evaporates and what lefts behind is struggle for getting on board and reaching home at any cost. During this struggle many people doesn’t really care for social etiquettes and civilized characteristic. Not really sure whom to blame for this chaos…to railways for not providing enough trains during festival season or to people for not organizing their travel dates accordingly. Whomever to blame, that doesn’t solve the problem and if I don’t want chaos then I have to work on my travel plans rater then trying to hold someone else accountable.

We had a very interesting fellow passenger with us who got on board in Pune. He was working in Indian Navy as a security personal and had served internationally as UN security staff in Indian command. Suddenly I felt so patriotic and proud for being in the company of such an extraordinary person who has represented India internationally. But this feeling didn’t last for long time, not even for few hours.

And finally came the moment which really scared me. At 5:30 AM. There were only two people awake in the whole compartment, me and the navy personal. He (Navy Personal) found an unclaimed briefcase in our compartment and triggered panic. Suddenly all of those bomb blast coverage that has been recently telecasted on TV, started revolving in my imagination. I went running in the whole compartment asking people for its owner. I was so concerned that I wake up may people and shouted very loud to locate the owner of the briefcase. There were two guys who were also in the same compartment and didn’t have a seat, were sleeping on an unclaimed berth (probably vacant). I literally shacked then and wake them up and asked if the briefcase belongs to them. They said NO!, No one else claimed it in the whole compartment and we became even more concerned and worried. Definitely none of us had bomb disposal experience to dare to open it. However the briefcase was locked. Calling TC was an obvious choice but finding him in a train twice full of its capacity was like finding water in Sahara desert. So my fellow passenger suggested alternate strategy of throwing it out. Sounds quite feasible solution to me as well and I gave my nod. Without wasting a moment he threw it out from the running train. I was expecting a big explosion (Bollywood influence) when the briefcase hit the ground but nothing happened. And if it was really bomb then my fellow passenger is really a Hero who acted on time but no one would know and remember him, off course I will.

At 9AM, I was still full of respect for my fellow passenger for his act of bravery and reacting on time to save so many lives including mine. But suddenly those two guys, who didn’t claim the briefcase in the night, wake up and came searching for it!!!... After that journey was little stress full for me…

God is Important

God and Ghost are said to have one property in common. And that is "everyone talks about it but no one has seen them". Every religion has defined God in some or other way. Some say he is a man who can walk on the water and can give life to the dead. Some defines him as an absolute source of energy who created the entire universe and is taking care of each and every incident that happens, not only at earth but anywhere in universe. Some defines him as an extraordinary man who passed on his teachings and rule book through another man and also allows you to marry four women at the same time.

It sounds funny but it seems, in spite of all the differences, most of the faith groups of the world, they are certain on one point and that is, God is a man and Man seems kind of superior to women. Being a man I may feel good about it but I also feel that God being a Man just signifies the evolution phenomenon where Man ruled with physical power. Some more civilized cultures who respected women as well gave her goddess status, but not all the women of the world were so lucky.

Well who considered whom God and whoever they worship is not a matter of concerned here. The point I would like to stress upon is that all of them believed a supreme power, The God, who has all the rights, interest to do everything in this universe. He is watching evil and holy acts of each and everyone and will reward the good and will also punish the bad. This makes all of the faith followers little possessive to their faith line. Off course there are other stronger reasons exist that makes them fanatic but that is not the point of discussion here.

Some people loves God and some are scared of him. Who loves him they just devote all of their success, failure to God and accept that everything happens with God’s wish. That makes them free from all the worldly worries. They just perform their actions assuming that someone called God is backing them for everything. And that is really good for them. When one doesn’t worry about the results and is honest to what he does then results definitely comes positive. Just imagine you are writing an exam and teacher standing behind watching. You will not be able to give your fullest. And that is what happens with those who are scared of God.

Let’s try to understand that why in all the different parts of the world, all different societies developed a concept of God and religion. Actually in early days human wasn’t equipped to counter the force of natural calamities, although even today he is not 100% successful. So he might have believed that there is some force, some supernatural power behind all these natural calamities. Since, he can’t conquer that force so he started to seek forgiveness and mercy in those situations. That later this belief might have given birth to so many other rituals and religions.

But there is a good thing behind this belief and that is total surrender to that ultimate power. When you totally believe in that Supreme power and completely devote to him then you also surrender your pleasure, pain, happiness, success, failure and fear to him. You held him responsible for all your success so that takes your ego away and keeps you light hearted all the time. When you have pain, you say that you might have done something wrong in the past and this pain is your purification process. So your pain no longer torches yous, and you take as a gift from God. When you embark upon an effort with full dedication to God, you don’t care about success or failure. You just believe that whatever it will be, it will be in the best interest of yours. And that makes your effort even more accurate and sharp. Success is guaranteed if effort is so pure.

Bhagwat Geeta says this, "Don’t worry about the result, just put your effort sincerely". And the law of karma in Geeta is very relevant and scientific. So actually if we look at above point little closely we can figure it out that existence of God is actually irrelevant. But it is belief in God that is more important and makes all the difference. But there are so many people who didn’t believe in God but still created lots of successful stories. Actually they believed in themselves. They were so much self motivated and enthusiastic and resourceful that they didn’t need any other moral support.

But not believing in God is quite difficult. You will have to take the responsibility for each and everything that you do. Failure will ruin you and will give you pain. You will have to bear all the pain by yourself and come out of it with your own strength. Success will fill you with ego and make you feel that you are a super human and above other primitive creatures. You may not do justice with the world and nature.

So looks like believing in God, any god for that matter, is a very healthy practice to lead a tension free and light life. When you have God in your life then ego doesn’t take over you and pain never torches you. When you love God totally, unconditionally then you see the real happiness in life. But I believe it is really not necessary to seek god for full surrender. If you don’t believe in god, assume there is a god in everything that surrounds you. A tree, stone, cow, grass, human or anything for that matter. That’s what many spiritual people say to give unconditional love to everything in this nature to get fullest of life and ultimate peace. One starts giving unconditional love from their relations and may expend it to the entire world and nature too. That makes people complete saint and friend of the World or Vishvamitra.

I truly admire those who invented the concept of God. This is so nice to see that they beautifully programmed the minds of unconscious human beings to the ultimate spiritualism. They were totally genius. But today’s human need to understand the real purpose of the religion and need to avoid those who do business with God's concept.

But the bottom line is "existence of God, even if virtual, is truly important"