Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Open Book

Wondered why I named this blog Open book? Neither did I when I started it. Then a few days ago I wrote this poem which coincidentally also explains the blog name. Well the first part is not exactly a poem, but I don't write poems anyway so it doesn't matter.

Life is an Open Book Exam.
The Lesson is always there- right in front of my eyes.
Written on the face of every person I meet, scattered across my thoughts;
etched in every probe of my conscience,
hidden in every experience,
in every obvious and cryptic coincidence, in every twist of fate.
Scattered across my dreams; in lecture rooms, rain drops, and those pure delightful rays of sunlight.
Across every conversation and every confession.
In everything that went wrong and everything that went just right.
In every pang of guilt or envy, in every feeling of love.
In every insult and every hurt.
In every friend who stabbed and every friendship that could have been but wasn't...

(and now the bit that actually rhymes)

The hard part is to follow,
To do what I know is right.
To have faith in my instincts,
and not give up the fight.

But it's hard to keep the faith
in something I can't see.
Like in God or in the future,
whatever it may be.

What I need is inspiration-
perpetual as the sun.
To always come remind me
of all things to be done.

In search of such a brilliance
so far, I have been fruitless.
Although these diamonds in my path
surely can't be useless?

For inspiration is not found
in great epics or great tales.
It lies in the smallest things in life,
"God lies in the details"

Monday, December 1, 2008

The Terrorists Within

‘Terrorists’ are far more abundant than one might think.
I believe that every dominating or aggressive act aimed at inducing fear for the purpose of asserting authority, gaining respect, profit or revenge is an act of terrorism. So logically, every bully in school is a terrorist and so is every politician making inflammatory speeches.

When this guy said, “I’ll break the arms and legs of anyone who dares to get in the path of my party workers”, people actually clapped and cheered. A few days ago I had seen those very oh-so-noble party workers beating up any and every shopkeeper they came across, in order to force them to shut shop- all for the purpose of ‘showing them who’s boss’. If that’s not terrorism, I don’t know what is.

It’s not the fault of those monkey-see-monkey-do workers though. Heck it’s not even the fault of their twisted leaders. It’s our fault.

Some idiot comes and shouts, “Hey, those people are bad. It’s all their fault. Don’t let them come here and dominate us!” And off we go running behind him, thrashing people and bad-mouthing communities, never sparing a thought as to who is actually being dominated by whom.
We must stop being the puppets of these power hungry politicians. They will say and do just about anything it takes to convince us that they are right. It is our duty to stand firm and let our conscience decide, based in all available facts. These people will only use us and throw us, gaining more power in the meantime.

Let us stop being blindly led by these people, otherwise what is the difference between us and herd animals?

The military will always be there to protect us from armed terrorists, but the above-mentioned form of terrorism will not be gone until we start acting less like cowardly baboons and more like courageous men who do not need to be spoon-fed what is right for them.

Unless we learn to stand on our own feet and stop tolerating these political bullies, we have no right to teach the government or anybody else what they should do.