Drunk Wisdom

Ctrl+A works on Winamp. Did you know that? I didn't. I always used the remove tab on the playlist to delete all. I just used Ctrl+A and Del to do that. Thats new to me. It probably wont matter to you because you either dont use Winamp or dont listen to songs on your laptop or dont listen to songs at all or...... The point I am trying to make is there are positives of almost everything, even getting drunk. I am drunk and I tried Ctrl+A by accident and it worked. So, being drunk is not bad, it is good, it helps learning new things, even if thats by accident. Try new things, however stupid or silly they may sound, you will come out a better person.

If you go to a monument like the Masroor temple ruins, like I went yesterday and you want to photograph them in all their splendour, make sure you go in the morning. Usually, monuments are built facing North or facing East or facing North East. If you start after 9 am and travel more than 2 hours, you reach them when the sun is behind them and you get a dark monument and a white sky, like I got. Be a good boy/girl, get up early and leave by 6 am. Then you will get a bright monument and a blue sky like you wanted.

Why are all of us brought up conditioned to be awfully nice to each other? Nice to the extent we fear speaking the truth. The other day I had a nice little argument with a friend over Virender Sehwag calling the Bangladesh cricket team ordinary. My friend thought Sehwag was arrogant. I thought he was wrong. Bangladesh are not ordinary, they are sh*t. Whether thats because they are only a decade old in tests or not is immaterial, the fact is they are sh*t. Just because Sehwag said it, the entire world is after him. His statement was factual. Whats so wrong with being factual? Are we brought up to be such sissies that we cant speak and take the truth?

Our education system is in shambles. This statement is not inspired by 3 idiots. I have always felt that. To put my point across, just one simple example. We preach about tolerance towards and equality of caste and religion in our books right through school. And yet, parallelly, we preach nationalism in all its glory. If all castes are equal, if all religions are equal, why is India more equal than other countries in our text books?

When we 'evolved' from monkeys, did we actually evolve? I have my doubts. We created this thing called society. Animals eat what is palatable, they sleep where night falls and shelter is available, they dont have stereotypes to follow; each living its life as it pleases as long as it survives. We seem to have so much around us that most of us dont know what we should do. There are so many prescriptions available at all times. You maybe anyone, you may be doing anything, chances are you are receiving advice all the time and the advice is almost always unwanted, unsolicited. And we call ourselves free!! Free in body but free in spirit? No, not by any means.

When I was young and read about Buddha giving up his family to travel in the woods and starting preaching 'detachment', I termed him a 'loser' in my mind. Now, years later, I admit I was completely wrong. For one, I myself travel in the woods very often. For second, I misunderstood detachment. To the new me, detachment means lack of inertia. The state of detachment from one's current state i.e. ability to cope up with change in circumstances, change in the world, change in ones desires. So, if I tomorrow feel that all this trekking is no use and I should be a painter, I should be able to trash my site and pick up a paintbrush. Thats detachment. Not being attached with something so that you deny yourselves new experiences. Stretch this thought to every aspect of life and you get a happy human being, who takes life as it comes and makes the most of it. He was a winner, The Winner.

Tomorrow I leave for a Dhauladhar base trek. Thats another way of saying it is too cold to be scaling the peaks and I will be happy looking at them from afar and walking at their bases. I dont know what will the route be or where will it take me. Leave all that to the one and only Jango. When I am back after 4-5 days, dont forget to read the travelogue. I promise it will be nice.

Cant make much sense of what has been posted above? Seems like none of the paragraphs are connected to any other? Have a look at the title. It should tell you the reason. This is like Catch 22, you begin at any chapter (paragraph), doesnt make a difference. Only thing is it is more evolved than that. You can read any paragraph and you wont miss anything. There is gain in reading any paragraph of this post.

If you felt this post is full of insights which you never thought I was capable of, please post your appreciation in the comments. If I get more than 5 comments, I am going to make all posts drunk!!