Unholy Alliance!!!

The headline of today's TOI says ,"Taliban now an ally of Pak army?"Hmm..If this is true ,man this is some very deadly alliance .This reminds me of something from "A lesson from the battle field" by Said Ramadan.He recounts a dialogue between one of his(Muslim brotherhood) friends and an Isaeli soldier.His friend was captured by Israeli's during the 1948 Arab- Israeli war.Just before his release he meets the Israeli officer and asks him if he can ask him a question.The question was"why did you not attack Sur Bahir?"Sur Bahir was a village near Jerusalem which had a lot of soldiers from Muslim Brotherhood.The officer replied that the village contained a lot of Brotherhood soldiers.Upon asking what difference did it make for the Israeli troops,the officer replied,'The fact is that the volunteers from Muslim Brotherhood
are completely different from your regular troops.For them fighting is not a duty which they fulfill within the bounds of tactics and of orders received,but a passion to which they devout themselves with whole hearted enthusiasm.In this respect they are similar to Israeli soldiers who are fighting for the sake of Israel.But the difference between us and them is that we are fighting o found a national state to live in ,where as they want to die!To attack people who are not only unafraid of death but actually aspire to die with an enthusiasm bordering on madness ,as if they were savage demons out to challenge mankind itself,to attack such people is like attacking a thicket full of wild beasts.It is a risk we prefer to avoid."

May be the Indian soldiers can take a lesson from the above before facing the deadly mixture of Pak army and Taliban militants!Lets sincerely hope that there will not be any military action between these two countries.

Khalil Gibran

Where are you leading me ,oh enchanting
houri,and how long shall I follow you
Upon this hispid road,planted with
Thorns?How long shall our souls ascend
and descend painfully on this twisting
and rocky path ?

Like a child following his mother Iam
Following you,holding the extreme end
Of your garment,forgetting my dreams
And staring at your beauty,binding
My eyes under your spell to the
Procession of spectres hovering above
Me,and attracted to you by an inner
Force within me which I cannot deny.

Halt for a moment and let me see your
Countenance;and look upon me for a
Moment;Perhaps I will learn your
heart's secrets through your strange
Eyes.Stop and rest.for I am weary,
And my soul is trembling with fear
Upon this horrible trail.Halt ,for
We have reached that terrible crossroad
Where Death embraces Life.

Padadhyanam man ,Padadhyanam!!!!

John McLaughlin

Words become puerile and inadequate when used for describing or opinioning on such a great genius like Johnji.There are great musicians ,great human beings,great artists,world class maestros. But if you want to use all these adjectives on one person ,here is the man -Sir John McLaughlin.

Richard Dawkins

" We are going to die ,and that makes us the lucky ones.Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born.The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia.Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats,scientists greater than Newton.We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people.In the teeth of these stupefying odds is you and I ,in our ordinariness,that are here."
Richard Dawkins-Unweaving the Rainbow

Prof.Dawkins has always mesmerised me with his intelligence and powerful language.

Sade

"Conversations ,like some part of the anatomy,run smoothly with the help of some lubrication"- Marquis De Sade

Hah.....Pour more!

from atheist's Bible

fear Prophets...and those prepared to die for the truth,for as a rule they make many others die with them,often before them ,at times instead of them.

UMBERTO ECO

Hariji

I first heard Hariji in 1987 or 88.
I was in a cassette shop (no Cd's in those times)and wanted to try something new ..the shopkeeper who knew my tastes very well gave me this cassette named "Horizon" Ghazals by Hariharan.The name was new ,and I asked him to play the cassette before buying. The first song was "Aaj bhi hey mere kadmom"..That's it . Iam hooked on to him from that day to this very moment !...the man is a Gandharva in human form.

insane

Isn't it much better here inside
This den where there's no sunlight
And only darkness reigns ?
Isn't it a better feeling when
There is no face to converse with
And you begin to talk to yourself?
Haven't the putrid souls outside
Called you mad and driven you inside
When you saw the truth and tried
To reveal it in front of the others?
Do you feel the ennui anymore ?
Here there are no betraying smiles
And no false promises.
You and your wounded but enlightened
Soul will lie here ,embracing each other,
Eternally.(Notebook-1993)

Carl Sagan

" Marijuana is often described as improving our appreciation of and abilities in music,art etc and our sensitivity to non verbal communication.It is never reported as improving our ability to read and comprehend Kant or Nietzsche.So rather than enhancing anything,the cannabinols simply suppress the left hemisphere of the brain and permit the 'stars to come out'.This may also be the objective of the meditative states of many Oriental religions." - Carl Sagan

Hmm--Interesting observation.

Kazantzakis

"What a voluptuous enjoyment of sorrow those hours of soft rain can produce in you !All the bitter memories hidden in the depth of your mind come to the surface:separations from friends,women's smiles which have faded,hopes which have lost their wings like moths' end of which only a grab remains-and that grab crawled onto the leaf of my heart and was eating it away."

(I have no qualms to come back to this planet as a human once again if I could write something like this in my next birth... Zorba ,I love you !!!)

be humane human

The idea and concept of the existence of a supreme being have led man to the wrong notion that everything living and non-living around him were created for the luxury of man.This idiotic idea has caused the killing of several animals .We,the most "intelligent"creation of the creator ,have caused the extinction of more than one million species over the past century.Still we have not put an end to this horrible habit .We still kill for fashion ,fun and taste.Iam not promoting vegetarianism,for Im not one.But its high time we did something about this.
(from 1993 Diary)

father in the sky

Man is born with an incurable dilemma in his heart.The big questions of his origin have always perturbed him.Some people ,no most of the people find answers in God.Though we have been successful in getting rid of our caveman-idiosyncrasies eons back ,the need for a father in the sky lingered.Even though we have science to tell us that there is no need of a creator as there was no creation ,we still have the need in us to believe in something. That is the basis of religion.Religion for some people is the answer but for some its the question.Iam of the second category.But the Abrahamic religions have failed terribly to satisfy my spiritual appetite.

( from 1993 Diary)

Aldous Huxley

...that humanity a large will ever be able to dispence with artificial paradises seems very unlikely .most men and women lead their lives at the worst so painful,at the best so monotonous,poor and limited that the urge to escape ,the longing to transcend themslves if only for a few moments,is and has been one of the principle appetite of the soul.Art and religions,carnivals and saturnalia,dancing and listening to oratory-all these have served in HG Wells' phrase ,as Doors in the Wall"

the first page 1993

I remember,how I travelled through the ages .
Acid was my friend,
it brought new visions!
Travelling on the dark pavements ,
kissing the pain and the pleasures..
Flowers were bright and rapture enhanced by sunlight!!!
But Im an empty man !
The trivial world is closing on me ...
( I wrote this in 1993 ..dont remember if I was high!!)