Mom, I love her! Can I bring her home?

Its a question a lot of people of my age group have! Can I marry the one I love? Will my parents understand? Will the society understand?

The funny thing with parents is that they will more or less accept anything less than what we are bringing. I have a friend who told to his parents about having a girlfriend who is from another country and they say that they will accept if he brings anyone who is an keralite! I have another friend of mine who tried for a girl who belonged to a different religion and his parents told him that they will accept anyone from their own religion no matter who she is! I have yet another friend who tried to make her parents accept her lover who belonged to a different caste and her parents said they will accept anyone from the same caste.

When we fall in love, we rarely check if the girl is from a particular caste or religion or region or have a family belonging to a particular society status. Is it wrong to make them try and understand that marriage which is supposed to be a union between two souls is made into some kind of business deal for the society by them? Isn’t marriage about the compatibility of two souls rather than two social animals! God had given us the ability to love but I wish he had given us the ability to love 'only' a particular sect of people.

How can people even think of marrying someone who they have never seen or talked to before? According to our society the girl is going to be living in the boys house which makes it even more tougher for the girl. She is not only going to call a stranger her husband but she is going to have to call the stranger’s mother as "MOMMY!". According to the current custom, the house she was born to, the family she had, would no longer becomes her own and in one lavish ceremony she would not only change her social status from 'Ms.' to "Mrs.' but she also have to make the stranger's family as her own! Is that fair on that poor girl?

Recently while I asked my mom why I cant try and find the girl who is compactable, she replied in one word 'Tradition'. Wow that’s a huge explanation! So I continued.. Do you think the girl who you find will be able to understand my weakness and strength? Again my mom replied in one word.. 'Yes'. What???? How can you know that? eager to know which one word she is going to use this time. This time she replied a bit more than a word. "Well.. you see when I got married I never saw your father! I didn’t know who he was or what he did. I just felt confident that my parents will find the right person for me! I did alright didn’t I? So will you!" There you go.. Just because she got lucky, I have to believe that I will be too! For her, parents have some kind of psychic ability to find the right guy/girl for you!

What can parents actually know about that stranger which is going to come to your life. Well in case of girl they will find ... He has a nice job! He is working outside India! He is handsome! He has moustache!!! Similarly for the guy... the girl is homely or working in a good firm or her family is a very well known one, so she will have been brought up properly! Wow.... that’s materialistic to say the least. Does he smoke or drink? Does he beat? Does he get angry for no reason? Is he a chauvinist? Does he have a previous lover who he can't leave out? Will he let me wear jeans? Similarly questions for the strange girl! How can parents know these unless they know the boy close for sometime?

Currently among us, we want to marry a person we love! We want our parents to understand us! Will they be able to understand that we want to only marry a girl who we know for sometime, who we fell in love with? How can they understand when they themselves got married without seeing the other person? They wont be able to digest it! Why? If my daughter or son came out telling that she is in love with a guy, wont we accept it. To a large extend we will provided he has the capacity to give her a good life. Then why cant they think in the same line? I will tell you why. These are things which is natural to us and accepted by our circle! We can accept this! But consider the condition where my daughter comes up and tell that she loves a person but she also want to be sure she will be able to live with him, so she is going to move in with him!! My god my daughter is going for a live-in relation with someone!!! What will the society say? What will my friends say? Maybe that is the in thing with her circle but it is not acceptable in mine!!! I cant dare to imagine such a thing!

Maybe this is the scenario which is going in our parents head! Maybe we need to find a way to satisfy our needs without hurting our parents! After all for what ever we do, they are indirectly responsible! So what can be this midway which will satisfy both us and our parents? Or is there no such thing as a midway for this crisis?

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Palmistry - An Incomplete Truth?

Recently I became interested in the art of palmistry. It is something both my religion and science are against. Then is it something I could believe in?

As a scientist I have been taught to think logically. As a firm believer of my religion I have been taught to have faith. I believe both logic and faith are very important in life. There are somethings that can be explained by logic but for others we need faith. Many 'logic-only' people tend to have this necessity to have a proof to believe in something. They will only believe something when they see, hear, sense or at the very least have a mathematical proof to substantiate it. But it can be very well true that what we see, hear, speak or sense may not be all that true. There are sounds that we cant hear yet it exists. We may have seen mirages but are they really present? A lot of mathematical proofs which may have seemed to be right can very well go wrong because we didn't put a previously unthought variable into it. Do we certainly need to have a solid proof to believe in something? Well... at least I don't!

Twenty years back, If I got hold of a hair strand of yours or some dry skin and said I can tell you a lot about your character from it, you would have labelled me as plain 'mad'! Yet now in this age of gene deciphering, we could come to know a lot of our inherent characteristic with these pieces of waste. I believe the same maybe true in the case of palmistry. Just because we don't know whether some information has been put on our hand, we cant say it is wrong. From personal experience,there is a lot of a truth in it as much as there are errors.

I am not asking people to believe that palmistry is right. What I am telling is to be open and explore it. It may or may not give a lot of right answers about yourself but this is not like fortune telling, this is something which is part of our own body, it is there to be examined. Because it is not be understood properly, it may not be fully correct. But there can be instances which it may help you with.

Just because it is not understood properly doesn't mean it is wrong! It just means it is incomplete! An Incomplete Truth!

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Never Give Up! Just Kop With It!

The piece below was not actually written today. It was written back in May,2005 - a day after Liverpool's (Its an Engish Football Club) miraculous comeback win in Champions League Final! Its not a post on football, there is much more to it! Even if you dont like football, I will advice you to read...

25/May/2005

Not only did I get so much joy seeing my favourite team win but I actually learned one of my most valuable lesson that day. A lesson which I hope will come in handy when things are not going that well for me. I have edited this piece a bit but have kept most of it intact becuase even though editing may make it more beautiful to read, it may lose that bit of emotion and orginality.
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"It aint over 'till the Fat Lady sings . . ." or to put it in words meaningful to this context - "It aint over 'till the referee blows that final whistle".

I am almost in tears writing this stuff because the club I love most and the club which was slatted by every tom, dick and harry proved to everyone that IF you have determination, will-power and most of all luck (for me this is same as God's grace!), you will succeed in what you set out to, no matter how daunting it may look to you at the beginning. It is amazing what God can do for you, if you have that full faith in him and never give up praying to him. He will give you whatever you want if you ask him with that 'Full Heart'.

Today is the day where passion uprooted gift and money, today is the day each and every true football fan can be proud of - Money may enable you to buy things but only with 'Passion and Desire' will you be able to enjoy the joy that come along having earned it.
When the match started, I had hope. A hope that we will win the trophy even though our team was a distant second on paper. For me 'Hope' is one of the most important thing in a man's life. Without hope, he is doomed. With it, he maybe able to climb the tallest mountains, face his darkest fears and succeed what was thought impossible by others.

No sooner had the match started we went one down. I knew we would conceed but I did not know it would be so soon. I was angry and desperately thinking how we could make a comback from this, when they scored another! Comeon 2-0 down??? My anger turned to despair! It was a hopeless feeling! I never felt soo bad in my life. And thats when it all happened, they scored a 3rd. Wow! 3-0! I could see the faces of the players... They have given up!
What is weird is that at 3-0 instead of switching off the TV and going into a shell, I got a new feeling inside me. I didnt care anymore if they lost! I didnt care if they got thrashed. All I cared now was that they shouldnt give up... I wanted them to fight! I wanted them to give it their all! All I cared now was they came out fighting. Then even if they lost they can look back and say that used up all that god had gifted them with and that is all that matters.

The second half started and all I kept yelling to the TV was "Fight!Boys fight!" and prayed to god that they have the courage to fight and not get insulted! I didnt pray to god to please let them win! As I said before I never cared for that! All I asked god was give them the strength to lift themself, so that they can fight! Maybe God listened because we got a penalty then! A chance to score!! If that was not a sign, he confirmed it when the guy who took the penalty shot straight at the other keeper. The keeper got a chance to deflect it away! But to whom? to the same player! and he scored on his second chance! Wow! Talk about luck!
That actually lifted the whole team! And before I could believe what was happening, from 3-0 it became 3-3!!! 3 goals in 6 mins, labelled as the greatest comeback in the Cup history! That is the day I learned one of my most valuable lesson, "NEVER GIVE UP UNTIL IT IS OVER!,NEVER!!"

I started supporting Liverpool 4 years ago and there hasn’t been a moment in my entire life (I don’t think there ever will) that I got so much satisfaction in life. This satisfaction is due to the fact that, a team which didn’t have the most gifted faces you would see in a footballing pitch comes out and dwarfs a team much applauded for their individual array of talent, due to their sheer determination and will power.

Here again I learned something else, All of us are gifted some way or the other. Take the example of studies - some of us get marks because they are just naturals (having higher IQ, blah blah blah) while some have to spend the entire night sitting and cramming the stuff. Now isn’t that unfair, I wouldn’t say so and why? Because ask the first type to sit and work for 10 hrs and they just wont be able to do it. Everyone comes to this world with gifts. Its is just that we have to discover what gifts we have and where to use it. I have always thought of me as one of the lesser gifted ones, but this incident changed it.

As a human, even now after after all this happened, i doubt myself time to time, but this incident is a reminder to me that I am gifted, You are gifted and Everyone else is! Some use it and some dont. Our job is to get into the first kind!


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And so it Begins...

Its weird that I wanted to start blogging a long time before, yet it just never happened for some reason or the other. But I guess this is just about the right time to start it because this is the starting of what I call a new "Phase" in my life.

I dont know how many of you guys will have these but I do have them once in a while. Its the closest I could get to restarting my life. I wish I could restart it like a computer when it hangs or a video game when i lose, but I know life cant be restarted like that. What is done is done in life and thats what makes it so interesting.

When I start my new 'phase', I dont forget what happened before, I dont throw away my life's ambitions, I dont thow away my loved ones. I just throw away my life's problems, the problems which other people are not affected by,the problems which will bring despair to my loved ones.
When I do this, I dont change my destination, I just change my path towards it. Somethings you need to let go, somethings you need to leave behind, so I leave them behind. I make myself throw them away, because if I dont, they will drag me down, they will pull me towards them and push me further away from my actual desire.

This is one such moment in my life, a start of a new phase, a new path. All I ask god now, is give me the strength to leave my past and give me the faith to move towards what I really desire.
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