My Belief . . .

From past some months, i am constantly being pulled by this topic on Beliefs, by noone but myself, whenever i come across some writing or view point. So few days ago when i came across this article in the Times about atheism or read one by a fellow blogger, whose writing i am following a lot off late, i felt i am sort of repelling the idea of putting forward my own thoughts.

(…Please ignore my style of long sentence formations…)

I believe in Religion, I believe in God,  I am Vaishnava- Hindu, I feel the need to so and at the same time I feel it advantageous to do so. I need inspiration, I need my Conscience to help me do the right and ignore the wrong. I need to develop my spiritual thought for it would help my mental strength and makeup. I wish and above all I pray. WHY?? BECAUSE??

For all the reasons and some unexplained above…

Believer

I do not like people who accept or for that case negate a thought or an idea without any insight or knowledge about it. If believing is based upon blind faith or following then I am Sorry I have got the definition wrong and do not wish to correct it. Beliefs are in real terms based upon your experiences and knowledge. They are a reflection of your mind and personalities. If i say, my motive or purpose of believing is based upon self realization, mental strength and inspiration then i have my own right reasons.

I have friends who are atheists, some who are agnostics and some who are believers; all having staunch or flexible natures, but I always felt its reasoning that justifies once beliefs. All the same, i let them have their beliefs and pray they let me keep me mine, for this matter is no national consensus or a mass propaganda.. Its individual.. Its subjective..

So my message to others… ???

Think and know about what you feel is right. Somethings are above our manual reasoning, whereas others could be understood, but based on entirety of combination of knowledge, facts, experiences and purpose, form your beliefs. World is at the same place it was 2000 years ago in the human thinking index, its just the media and surroundings which have changed and which influence us. Atheists, agnostics and believers existed then, do now and would do so ahead. Do what makes you Happy and Joyous and not what would people think about you.

Be Light

Hindus, Muslims and Christians are not wrong in their beliefs, its just that people with more moderate views and more extreme views have grown up and we do not have the complete insight into any belief. There is no taboo now or rather pronounced freedom of thought exists. It is good, for it liberates us, not from reasoning though.

So of all the reasons i believe in it for the sake of knowing it and realizing the truth about my beliefs.

Try and get that and then BELIEVE!!!

A Something as ‘Remembrance’

My Brother has come home.. My brother has come India.. My dearest bro is with me..

As i sit in Ahmedabad with bro here, who came from London 2 days ago, for a fortnight, and me bunking the whole week, with a special kinda health problem which i have and which i would need to show to the lecturers… ( )

I was seeing this serial the other day- One Tree Hill and came across this saying from its pilot character, “Most of our lives are a series of images, they pass us by like towns on a highway. But sometimes a moment stuns us as it happens and we know that this instant is more than a fleeting image. We know that this moment, every part of it, will live on forever.”

Ever had such feelings when you had seen something and felt a sense of nostalgia or a term I call ‘REMEMBRANCE’ ?

Memories down the lane

For example, you would remember how you used to jump around in childhood or the grounds or staircases where you used to play, exactly the spots and times of the day. Some would also remember the exact feelings when they would have got hurt or had had a minor accident, some stitches or a fracture; the taste of that nervousness and fear or anger in your mind stays fresh and afloat. What is that feeling? Is it really helpful? Is it Good or Bad?

I feel, its something abstract, just something which has no quantity like Love or Hatred, something which has no Objectivity or articulated value. Infact they are meant to be remembered and felt. They are meant to be revisited and understood from the very essence of difference between now and then, between the times from where we have grown. They are the moments which define Life!

So there again, I was remembering the times of childhood we spent, the events and incidents, good and not so good, and I came across many such. We all do!

I remember my grandmother and her rituals; she’s a staunch vaishnava and a disciplinarian. She hasn’t eaten outside home for eons; she has barred herself from movies and fashion. She is devoted worshiper of ‘Thakurji’ or Shrinathji. Sometimes as I belong to a diff. generation, I find it lame, doing so much so, but perhaps its that discipline and mark of love that defines one to live life without self-interests or lust but that set of memories one had in past.

I remember how I used to play with my neighbour Shardul, how we used to rakhdu-fy till late evenings, some incidents where i would have had a beating or fights, kite flying, pup raising and many such childhood ex’s. Similarly one would remember the tutions; the Farm side ex’s at Rajkot, night outs, etc. ….The list goes…. My first road accident, first time Porno view, etc.. It would wrong if i wouldn’t be honest so incl. the last two ex’s.

Some have this practical sense of thinking or ideology, where in they do not like to drift into their past or even compare it with present. Somehow it makes sense as well. Why to care much about things that do not matter much? Why to repent on things which cannot be changed now? They are right. But again is everything to be seen in objective sense, does everything have to be productive or tangible? And even if one drifts and retrospects into life, it is the sense of closure which must prevail upon him/her, rather than avoiding the very thought.

Probably this is rhetorical piece of philosophy with no relevance for some and not so commentable topic for others, but I feel its not for a sense of talk but for a sense of understanding.

Today i remembered few momentous times from my past and it helped me feel good. That has satisfied me. I feel Happy. Perhaps tomorrow, i would remember today and have some feeling; maybe happy, maybe not. But i wouldn’t find myself wondering why  did i have, ” Something as Remembrance! “

Thr n Bk Agn.. (Revisited)

Insignificance?

Its n end to d vacations. In a few days i would b bac to d old perspiring and humid climate of srt. Bt aftr two mnths of absolute boredm nd virtual sense of nothingness frolicking around my invisible aura wich in itself is shrinking with d passing day, i feel a sense of relief tat m gng bac.

Ftr 1 yr experiencin d ride of d roller coaster of ‘acads’ n seein it ever so gng down, i hope to perform b8r.  Tis vac ws a sort of packd wid events like family occasions(nt all so rejoicing) nd sum trainin. Bt as far as i cud sum it up. It ws a waste!!

Bt focusin agn to next 5 mnths. Hv sum plans n things on mind wich i wud pretty jaldi share wid u. Ofcrse d ‘Einfo Impts pgm‘. Hope it goes wel. Furthrmore i put up this advertisement wich is an irony of wt wrth ws my 2nd yr ::

‘                              Wanted

A Room partner for the III yr in Hostel 9.

One who bears this eccentric guy, with guarantee of good night sleep and assurance of maintaining the room clean.

No problems with tampering and Girl issues and definitely not a GAY.

All expenses to be shared and promise for fortnightly parties in CANteen.

Contact- ME for details or comment on this post.

  ’

With this i sign off.. Chao and see you on the other side!!

Etym-ohh..-logy

I am hearing a wonderful song ~ LOVE STORY by Taylor Swift ~ as I surf the internet.

Browsing through the net I wonder, social networking is infectious! From Orkut, My space to Facebook and Twitter; and I guess it all started from the young boy who found a place to find his love to the latest geek associating micro blogging and hyper terms like CSS and virtual catalogues of people’s lives. It has transformed life!

Just like that, I was thus surfing the site named FACEBOOK which holds the Indian imagination at present which some months ago would be in Orkut, and I found this wacky offer to keep a surname for myself on it. I said to myself, but I hold one myself and so do almost all people on the earth. But things ain’t that simple everywhere. The issue with Surnames has been in times dated been very important.

We in India have a system that women after marriage adopt the surnames of the men. I suppose it has been from ages since the beginning of the civilization. Since a woman spends on an average the life after 20 years at her husband’s house in majority of the civilisations, they adopt the new surname, that of the husband and live and raise families with it. The men are thus regarded as carriers of names. Few exceptions were that of the royal families of Europe, which they took names based on places or rituals. In Icelandic countries, they have a complex system of naming their sons and daughters, wherein they add a part of their own name in their son’s. The etymology and history of surnames is a very interesting field. Try Wiki.

The surnames in India were originally meant to denote the castes or occupation or the place from where people reside. Mehta’s for example where people who kept the accounts of the families or gave out salaries to the workers of the firms; their name originating from ‘Mehentana’. Singh in Punjabi means ‘Lions’, and people of the caste were regarded as warriors or protectors of righteousness. Similarly Trivedi, dwivedi and chaturvedi’sRadhanpura means one who dwells from Radhanpur. There are many more examples and almost all surnames in Indian subcontinent context would have logical origins.(Link) being Brahmins who would have knowledge of 2-3-4 Vedas respectively. Soni’s is a caste associated with business and services with gold and gems. In my case, being

In western countries it is much more informal and holds lesser equitable value or importance in terms of the society or caste. They name their children sometimes with surnames out of interest of nicer names, sometimes out of their own names, and sometimes according to the places from where they would dwell. It seems pretty unhistorical and baseless when you generalize in their case. But they do give importance to the names as much as we do, only not think it as a sole identification.

Now coming up to contemporary times, as the world turns more chauvinist and sexist or for other places the other way round, the debates and issues regarding surnames have intensified. In the US, liberal European countries and the Australia during the 60’s, 70’s, 80’s, 90’s more and more women were treading a different track by either keeping their own parental surnames after the marriages or many more cases of new names appeared. It started a revolutionary idea for the women rights and many observations showed that those societies were much more advanced, with higher education and women rights. In India since the last decade, you could see a small step in the direction with the metro crowd women following their western counterparts.

Recently I read an article in Hindu(With ref. to The Guardian) about a british based media personality marrying and keeping the name of the husband, on this action some women’s group is ballistic and condemns the lady for doing so. Link. I came across this article around a year back when i was searching something else, about the surnames and problems in Meghalaya, India(Link). Such so, i also came across this weird study and report in Hindu about relating DNA with your ancestral surnames(Link). So much said and done, there are various institutes on Name Etymology among humans that study anthropology, archeology and psychology among us.

I read the book The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri some time back and came to know that in some places discrimination on the basis of surnames apart from color is prevalent. It is a fact that some surnames are language specific and its difficult for people from different countries to understand and spell them properly like for example the surname: Gogol, amenikhev, Akkerdijsk... Frankly I have problems spelling Russian and African surnames with elongated or suppressed syllables they comprise of and understand they too would have similar problems with ours. But its kind of sympathetic for those whose names are spelt, mine sometimes being among them!!

On the lighter side, we have surnames which resonate with abusive words like Banchood’s and Lodha or those with kunjinath and chudawala. It’s a birth luck for many in India to be born with some specific surnames like those with tribal names are regarded in future and treated on first impression as backward; or for that matter names like Singhania or Oberoi, or some with Brahmin names are treated with reverence and respect.While on the other hand we have big personalities who change their names by adding an extra syllable or replacing some letters to suite the pronunciation or if they provide good luck. More people are turning to vaastu for the new names and changing a lot more than just names.

All in all its not entirely in our hands with what names we come, but it is not in our hands whether we give importance to the surnames we have or whether it shows our oppression (in case of women) but it surely is in our hands to keep our actions and image ahead of the surnames which people may remark. It may not be possible to name parks and bridges on surnames apart from Gandhi  but It definitely is in our hands to make it a point that although the surnames may be important in distinguishing us, but they are not our sole identities.
our power we can have names to our liking and the governments do provide the right to change so.

For times change and so do the means, and times demand that we be legitimate to our actions much more than regard our birth as our destiny.