Close encounter with this beautiful leopard at Kruger SA

The wild, the natural and the beautiful

 

Slumdog millionaire: movie

Slumdog millionaire

I saw the film in a theater ‘cause I wanted to enjoy the movie as it was intended to be enjoyed.

It’s a wonderful depiction of the craft of film making.

Give a predictable almost mundane story; convert it into a skillfully crafted script. Combine it with dazzling cinematography and boldly conceived visuals. Add to that the genius of Rehman to spice it up and you already have a near winner. Get a Boyle as the director and make Mumbai slums as the backdrop and you have a “masterpiece”.

And that’s our Slumdog millionaire.

When we, in India, watch this movie it feels good. Though with a tinge of envy (on craft of film making). Nice film. Well picturised. Good drama. Happy ending.

But when foreigners watch the movie they get exhilarated. It took them to bring to the world the goodness of India through Gandhi and now through SM they bring to the world the filth of it. It is when we look at SM with this mindset, that we have problem.
Who are they to show us the mirror?

When we shoot in London, we don’t show Brixton. Neither do we show south hall or east London. When we shoot in NY we don’t shoot the ghettos. We always shoot the best symbols in the city. We are sentimentalists. That’s our choice.

They (I include the second generation NRI directors) come and make Salam Mumbai, Water and SM (save that kind fellow Richard Attenborough; bless his soul).We are romanticists. We create fantasies to live the movies. We live among reality. We don’t need to see it on the screen. These movies are made for foreigners. They can’t believe it. It stirs their soul. Some feel good because it makes them feel secure… even superior. They are comforted after watching SMs. They feel relieved as they see us living in the filth. They feel a great exhilaration.

Let’s enjoy and learn the art of film making from SM. lets not make judgment on others about their mindsets and perceptions. Let’s see if there are things that we can learn from others.

I believe in optimism. I believe in continuing to reach for the sky. Let’s continue making a mark on the world and keep appreciating the excellence even if, at times, it’s not convenient.

Wiping thy tears

Cry, my beloved City,

How much more mayhem?
How many more bullets?
How many more bombs?

How much more can you bear?

With each blow you have staggered, bled and stood up again.
But now too much blood and too many betrayals...

Cry for those who went away defending your honor and cry for those who would embrace your bosom never again...

Cry my beloved city, cry.

Alvida Kittu

Queen Kittu

There are moments within which the whole eternity shrinks and you transcend the physical reality to enter the world of deep feelings, Compassion and Love. We should call ourselves Lucky if we experience even one such moment in our entire life.

With you kittu, the ten years, that you spent with us, were such divine beautiful experience that it hurts when you are no longer with us, even though we know, that you have merely gone away to change your ailing attire.

In life you were a queen and you went away being a queen.

You may have gone far..but you will ever remain close.. in our hearts.

Alvida Kittu.

Adieu

Sep 13, 2008

A melting life

A melting life

When the sheer intentionality to be, intricately assembles the elements from the ingredients to create a being that can breathe, think, meditate, reflect, reason and love, a miracle that is life, begins.

The being then wishes to ‘become’, giving birth to ego and fear, which in turn, manifests as anxiety, depression, jealousy and hatred.

This compulsive nature to become grows into an obsession. The self (I) and everything associated with it (mine) becomes the epicenter of the existence, bringing the corporeal world to the centre stage. Life thus, becomes a perpetual race where we all try to quench the unquenchable thirst of the ego.

A day, however, arrives in all’s life when the revelation comes. To the rare, it comes early but to majority, only in the end. But comes it does. It may come weeks before, hours before or even moments before the end.

When the end is in sight, life begins to melt and ego begins to fade
The reality of the illusion begins to dawn and the true meaning of existence transcends the being.

As tears trickle down the eyes, a sad smile appears on the lips and futility of the spent life is realized, a new intentionality is born even as the corporeal world disappears;

The resolve, to come back again.

Grand illussion

Living the moment

Lately the whole world has been talking about Living the moment. Is it that suddenly our evolution has begun moving faster? Is it that the philosophy of life is finally beginning to be understood?

Alas! The phrase is being taken too literally.

Living the moment is being interpreted to defy your own logic. It is thought to be the point of liberation from all kinds of ethics. Morality that has been the reason for a lot of conflict is suddenly no longer a burden.Living the moment is interpreted to succumb to your sensory system completely. A complete liberation from reason.

This is the grandest of all illusions.

Living the moment is to live every moment in complete awareness.To Live with complete knowledge. No bias. No conditioning. No denial. Only compassion. Pure awareness.

It's the feeling of unification with everything.
Yet being aware of oneself.

Welcoming an opportunity

We are blessed with yet another year to understand our true nature.
Let us welcome the opportunity of spending some precious time together on this planet.

Let us celebrate this togetherness in complete awareness.
Welcome the new year.




WELCOME 2008

The state of No-mind

I reproduce a comment/question from a wise friend along with my observations. I am taking the liberty to post it here (rather than replying in the comments space) so all could see it.

Dear Mr.Singh,

I recently saw your movie and was extremely impressed by your deft handling of such a complex topic.

I've been exploring mysticism for a few years myself and have heard that one needs to drop the mind to realize the "no-mind".

Like you, I too am a techno marketer and find it difficult to balance the use of the mind in creating business strategies and then drop it while meditating.

What I do for a living requires intensive use of the mind and the thought process, while the investigation of the ultimate tool requires dropping the mind / thoughts all together.

How does one create "cunning" business strategies to outmanoeuvre competition and at the same time develop compassion.

Have you faced this dilemma and what has been your experience?

Would love to hear from you.


Anonymous



Dear sir,

I thank you for taking time out to write to me. I also wish you to succeed in all your quests.

In my mind you can never play a role honestly until you have known yourself.You can pretend to be a marketer but you will only play that role the way others expect you to.

Business, as we understand is “competition” and competition is primitive. It all is very Darwinian. And if you want to be a true winner, you have to be watchful and adaptive. But the destination of an evolved business should be excellence and not competition.


Yet business like any other living entity, needs to survive.You used the word “cunning” in the context of business strategy but you must remember that when you create business strategies you “become” the business. Business strategies need to be defined in complete awareness and there is no question of them being “cunning”. You do certain things, you win, you do some other things, you fail. There is nothing “cunning” or “wrong”. There are only the right things that need to be done.

However, you have a choice to play the kind of role you want to, for a kind of (business) entity you wish to. It’s completely your choice.

Sir, since you are already having the conflict all I can say is your level of awareness is changing. Conflict brings change. You are seeking non-movement of thought, a kind of transcending peace, but your role is bringing you a disturbance. You need to investigate the two and create harmony between them.


If you know me then you know that I left big companies so that I could live by my own value system, I could live my dream. Not that the companies I worked for in any way were wrong ( in fact some of them are the most reputed companies of our time) its just that I “grew” to become “non-fit” in those surroundings.


This is the clue to attaining a state of “no mind”. You have to align yourself to who you are. You have to continually work to end the conflict.This is how you will evolve and that’s how you will achieve the “no-mind”.


Let me also say that the peace thus attained shows on one’s face as also manifests in one’s work.


I do hope I have not sounded like a preacher, and if I did, please forgive me.

God is not great..... by Christopher Hitchens

The case against religion.... and God


After I finished this book titled, God is not great,
I tried to fathom the unfathomable dissonance of a mind. I guess when someone as informed as Hitchens, enters a state of I-know-all, the outcome is a highly jumbled up and an opinionated product, nothing less than this book.

Hitchens attacks everyone and everything. He makes sniper attacks on Jesus, Mohammad, Moses, Buddha and every other prophet you can think of, and sprays bullets on the likes of Gandhi, mother Theresa and Martin Luther King. He declares all religions to be evil and all believers to be idiots, extremists or terrorists.

Religions, in time, become dogma and dogmas are not something to be proud. Hitchens is entitled to his opinion about individuals from his knowledge of right and wrong and there is little one can do change it.

Hitchens ridicules God and in fact negates his very existence. And that prompted me to write this article.

First and foremost, from what I could make out from his book, his mind is conditioned by the description of God as he may have interpreted from reading books. He may also be influenced by the disillusionment he may have personally experienced by living in the company of “masters” he may have chosen in the past or were chosen for him. He looks for a God of some higher order who has the capability to interfere with our actions, decide our fate and generally keep a watch on whatever we do. Will he be disappointed? I bet.

God is not something that can be captured even in imagination, leave alone being described. And it is very stupid of Hitchens to make presumptions about believer’s perception of God.

According to Hitchens, our world is completely explained by Charles Darwin and all the credit for our being here is given to “evolution”. While I have no quarrel with Darwin, I have a few questions for Hitchens.

The world (or any system) left on its own has tendency to move towards disorder (Law of thermodynamics. We experience this in our daily life, as we have to spend large sums of money in repairing and maintaining our belongings), implying that when we get a glimpse of some kind of “order” among chaos, it is manifest of some intelligence. Our species and all other species living on this planet are good examples of this.

Humans are more evolved than other species because they have the potential to “connect” and “see” the truth much beyond the capability of their sensory system. However, this transcendental experience, being tacit in nature, is beyond articulation and can not (is incapable to) be expressed or shared with others. And such people, who, even though have personally gone through such experience, when confronted by people like Hitchens to give sensory evidence of that experience, can only listen and smile.

Unchecked by his own reason, Hitchens goes after the idea of intelligent-design and uses some convoluted logic to explain our presence through evolution.

According to Hitchens “airplanes are, in their human-designed way,”evolving” and so in a different way are we”. Taking his argument further, if the airplane “evolution” is driven by human-intelligence what intelligence is driving the Darwinian evolution?

Hitchens should know that intelligence does manifest in other forms and can be replicated but never be created from nothing. If evolution is intelligent, then there must be a source for that intelligence. I wonder if Hitchens would like to propose a name for such a source.

Evolution is limited only to conscious entities. It is not applicable to the "material" world. Evolution is a process that is authored by some intelligence to ensure that it doesn’t have to keep looking over it.

Certain intelligence creates a universe with certain laws and replicates itself inside to create evolution, much as humans create airplane and replicate themselves inside the airplane. The laws of the universe do not evolve. Only the consciousness does.

And consciousness is a replication of the infinite intelligence that causes everything to emerge from nothingness. If that can be called God then he certainly is great.

Banaras at the Wychwood festival in England

Banaras receives standing ovation at the Wychwood festival in Cheltnham.

Cheltnham is among one of the most picturesque locations in England. The festival for music and movies was organized in the famous Cheltnham racecourse grounds of this beautiful city. The festival attracted more than 8000 people on this sunny and warm Saturday of the 2nd day of the June.

The movie Banaras, a mystic love story was selected as the only Hollywood movie ‘cause of its “spiritual” appeal.

The audience comprised of families and mature audience who were all enthralled with the music, dance and the sheer experience of watching the movie.

The intensity and the effect of the movie were visible on the audience as many of them had tears in their eyes. The viewers were all English and Europeans. At the end of the movie, I was invited to come to the stage and take questions.

It was a wonderful feeling to know that the movie had connected so well with the audience who knew nothing about Banaras and did not speak Hindi.