Proving Fredrick Nietzsche wrong!!!

Fredrick Nietzsche once famously quoted, "Hope in reality is the worst of all evils, because it prolongs the torments of man". Till sometime back, I used to agree to Nietzsche 's argument but I am glad that I don't feel like that today. This happened an year back, when we (me and a friend) while discussing about random things heard two big dogs fighting. In revenge, one of the big dogs caught hold of the second big dog's puppy and pounced over. It was too bad because the baby puppy started bleeding terribly. However, after a huge struggle of calling several veterinary doctors (who did not extend any support to help a street puppy), me and my friend decided to tie band-aid around the puppy on our own. Trust me, both of us were shaking as we did not even know how a puppy is held while its continuously bleeding and is in terrible pain. While we were trying to lift the brooding puppy, several people (holding ice-cream sticks) laughed at us saying that hope is a stupid thing and that the puppy would not even last for more than ten mins. But we decided to play hard with hope and we finally won. Our puppy is alive today!!! No consolation prize could have given me that feeling- a feeling in which I felt so proud of myself. I wanted to run back to those people who were mocking at us and tell them that 'Hope is good'.

Hope is good as it helps you keep trying harder and harder. In fact, stupid hope also is sometimes good as it will stop you from saying 'I quit'!!!. Don't be a quitter and at least try. My mom says - 'No is always in your pocket, then why not try for Yes'.

Dark it was but eyes could still see,

Forgetting all that existed around  me,

We sat there cheering and celebrating,

Old friendships with tinge of whining...

All was good till that happened,

Heart went berserk and eyes saddened,

We ran towards the murderous site,

To discover what is the destined plight...

We heard the puppy cry in pain,

Almost escaping the Yama's  train,

We stood there with eyes numb,

Felt helpless and inanely dumb...

Tick-tick the clock screamed,

Hypnotised we were, it seemed,

Time was running with shorter seconds,

This was my life's biggest betting...

The decision was made much before by heart,

Mind did not get to even think apart,

The puppy will be saved, has to be saved,

We began our journey to be braved...

People stood there with candy in hand,

Mocked at us saying our plan was too bland,

One of them quoted, "it will die in ten minutes",

The other said "all you can do is eat some peanuts'...

But they all were proved so wrong,

The ordeal was though tough and long,

Our puppy breathed and breathed hard,

And made us earn life's difficult greeting card...

Cheers,

Hena

300 eyes staring at me...

Just after 15 days of my joining Great Lakes Institute of Management (my MBA school), as part of a course, we were asked to deliver a 2 min speech on any topic of our choice. Well, sounds so cool naa. Being a public speaker all my life, honestly, I was not scared and thought that it would be like just another delivery. But oops, this baby was quite a huge one to deliver. For the first time in my life, I wanted to hide behind the podium and get done with the process, and you know why. Because, for the first time, I was standing in front of 150 people in one go. 300 eyes staring at me with not even a blink. It makes one feel naked. Suddenly, my wheatish complexion turned red. My legs felt that the earth was too soft. My eyes wanted to go blind.

I walked toward the podium almost as if I had been asked to commit a suicide. Never did holding the podium seemed so assuring. But finally the moment came and for ten seconds, I stopped and looked in the faces of those 150 people. It was spectacular. It felt like a huge mountain that was desperately waiting to be explored. I smiled and finally started speaking.

Courtesy an awesome friend Mayank (who is an expert on the subject), I chose to speak on 'Life and Madhushala '. Madhushala is one of the finest pieces of Hindi literature written by Sir Harivansh Rai Bacchan. I took few lines from this beautiful poem and related it to our usual mundane life.

It goes as follows :

"madiraalay jaane ko ghar se, chaltaa hae peene waalaa
kis path se jaaoon asamanjas, mein hae woh bholaabhaalaa
alag alag path batalaate sab, par maen yeh batalaataa
hun raah pakad tu eka chalaachal, paa jaa aega madhushaalaa"

It Means

(madiraalay = the house of liquor, pub) 

With the intention of going to the pub, the drink-seeker starts from home
He is confused as to which path should he choose
Different people show different paths, but I suggest only one thing
Take one path (any one) and just keep going, you will get MADHUSHAALAA.

Mr. Bacchan wants to say that, people would show you a million paths, but what is important is that YOU CHOOSE YOUR PATH. Believe it or not, if you chose one path and keep walking persistently, you would eventually reach your madhushala, your destination!

Finally, the baby was delivered and the mountain was captured, leaving me quite disappointed with all the stammers and grammatical wrong doings. I requested a friend to shoot a video and each time I look at it, the desire to get better becomes stronger. Each time I watch this video, a mixed bag of emotions is left behind.

Disclaimer : The amateurish video starts in the middle of my speech. I was shitty scared , and so please excuse me for all my stammering.

Cheers,

Hena

And I met Howard Roark...

We were sitting in Cafe Purple (with the only shade of purple to be found in my jacket!!!)  in Auroville village. The perfect weather dictated us to sit in the open section of the Cafe. For past twenty days, we (me and my friend 'Akka') are on an experimental mode i.e. to not have any food items that contain onion or garlic. Apparently, it is believed that quitting onion and garlic enhances one's ability to concentrate and meditate better (the funny part is that none of us are either meditating or doing anything material these days for which we need to concentrate hard...lols). Anyways, we were served our handsome Paneer butter masala. But in a while, we discovered that our awesome Paneer butter masala had onion and then what, the usual happened. The poor waiter was called and thrashed (oopsy sorry...) by us.

After the waiter left, we suddenly heard a voice, "Why do you guys not eat onion and garlic?". It was only in that moment that we realized that we had a silent neighbour. Our conversation with our neighbour started with food and it progressed further quickly. She was called Tanya. Later, Tanya told us that she was an artist (the super cool Tanya works 'only' when she needs money, while in all other times she loves to paint). She joined an 'Arts School' to formally learn painting but decided to drop out of school after three months as the school did not find her painting style very appealing. Her suffocation at the Arts School made her choose the way of learning art in Eklovya's style (learn from the best from a distance with full 'shiddat'!!!) That's what makes her spend more time in Auroville where she could meet artists from all over the world and learn various styles and techniques of painting 'without spending a penny'. She was blatant enough to admit that she loves stealing the styles and techniques of other artists only to mould them into Tanya's style of art.

Suddenly our 'unnoticed' neighbour became my like my star ideal, my Howard Roark ('Fountainhead' without Howard Roark is like a temple without an idol!!). Howard Roark too was a man who dropped out of Architecture School because just like Tanya's ideas, his ideas were also not acceptable to the conservatives. I am glad that I met this girl who seemed to be in love with oil paints, who humanizes the idea of red passion, whose world is so different from mine, who may easily go unnoticed but definitely not forgotten, whose frustration for amateurs claiming to be artists was right there at the surface, who gave me a new definition of 'unlearning' and then 'learning', whose idea of conviction seemed so compelling. I am glad that I had that little conversation because for the first time, it gave me a reason to believe that all our fantasy characters whom we idealise day in and day out 'do' exist in reality. This little conversation gave birth to a small (but beautiful...) desire in me - to be a character in some Fountainhead, somewhere, sometime... Inshallah!!!

This 'little' desire is strong enough to make us all work in a direction that we really idealize... Think about it!!!

Cheers,

Hena