The way

"Way".I got fascinated abt this word quite suddenly when it struck me how frequently we use it, even if not in words,definitely in thoughts
Whats the way to happiness?
whats the way out of this mess?
whats the way to look at career?
whats the way to love somebody?

or more seriously,

Whats the way to the toilet(in a new building say)
Whats the way to woo that hot girl(or guy,depending on what u are..no pun intended..) over there?
Whats the way to wipe that mud off our shoes without anybody noticing?
Whats the way to resist the urge to pick our noses, which inevitably surfaces only when we are in a group?
whats the way to fart without making a sound?(..and please dont deem this example to be gross..afteral...its biology :) )

WAY

Its everywhere. We need it everywhere.

And i specifically want to turn this post into a boring one. That was the disclaimer incase u didnt recognise it. Its ur chance to stop reading.

I am gonna start off with a very peculiar thing. My opinion about cats.gotcha! i know u didnt expect anything like that did u? ha ha..beware of sankar..And no..please dont tell me that u thought of the mba cat incase u had indeed thought abt the mba cat...EWWWWWW...yuccckkk....am a biologist/..or atleast an life sciences enthusiast and dont make me guilty of even a possibility of making someone think that i would write abt mba...good riddance!! ok..now that i had cleared that part up..lets continue...

Cats..scientific name : Felis catus (just so u dont get a feeling that u hv wasted ur time at the end...here is ur guaranteed takeaway... the scientific name of cats.. and the scientific name, in scientific terms is called Binomial nomenclature.. note that the first word is the Genus name and it starts with a capital letter and the second word is the Species, starting with a small case)

I always thought of cats as this cunning animal. Partly due to the fact that it annoys me to see something that struts around with so much authority. And mainly due to the fact that it chooses its master. or ive felt so. A cat never comes near when i call it.wen i want to take it and cuddle it in my arms it just gives me a stare, full of condescension, ridiculing this stupid insticnt to show affection. But it does come to me.Sometimes. When he/she feels like it. He/she comes and rubs on my legs. or sumtimes just lie down in my proximity. Almost telling me, "hey dumbo...here i am...if u want to show affection, then u can do it now...u can pat my head or rub my belly...".

And so i do. Technically speaking i should probably think , "oh..now u want me is it? now u need me to give u food is it? and that day u just walked like a king?like u dont need me? hah...now il sulk..why the heck should i do things for u? why should i pat u, wen the other day, i not only not wanted you to do anything for me but only wanted to just pat u" .....

But no...I dont think that do i?
Why? May be because its just an animal.

Now i am gonna say the thing thats gonna make this post boring as I promised.

EXTRAPOLATE what I just said.

Extrapolate it into real life- human-relationships....

We would think exactly the way i said.We would sulk.

Realise that, first of all, we dont qualify to think like that all the times and defintely not with all the people.When have we not wanted anything in return but only to show affection,( or coz that phrase "show affection" is a litte heavy..may be il say..hmm.."rub the belly"..ok..no...that seems vulgar out of context...how abt "pat"...thats cool enuf)
so,
When have we not wanted anything in return but only to pat somebody... ( i know..am cunning..i just managed to say that twice and rub it in...incase u get offended, i am rubbing it in for myself too)

the answer is quite simple. NEVER.

And oh yeah...just coz i dont sound too lenient on ourselves... The answer "never" was to the question whether thers any instance of us not wanting anything but only to pat somebody...this question assumes that we actually indeed pat somebody the first time all on our own...and i suppose thats a wrong assumption...(and no...am not generalising...and am not blaming or alleging either....i say this coz, the beauty of this thing am talking abt is such that, we ALL think that we show great affection on others or our dear ones, and that its we , who have not been reciprocated to...)

My next point started from within that parenthesis. Expectation. And thats our inborn norm. and all of us know abt it. that we cant escape it either. So lets not brood abt it and just go ahead and accept it.that we expect.that we need to be loved back. that we need to be made feel belonged to. that we want our "patting" to be reciprocated. ok.thats that. lets catch the cat again.

So in the Cat and the Human, this problem doesnt exist. or lets say, the human just loves, just shows affection, just pats,without requiring it back, without feeling insecure.

So what am I saying? that that human(with the cat) is an idealist? the perfect lover?(and puhhhleaaasseee "lover" is anybody who loves..not necessarily someone who loves someone of the opposite sex and near his/her age ) that he/she is impossible?

WRONG.

we have them. All of us have them.

and we call them MOM and DAD.

And i havent yet said the most toughest part yet.
In the case of the cat and the human, the human doesnt really need anything back. the human doesnt expect the cat's love that much. so that human is being the perfect lover easily.

But mom and dad,they are being the perfect lovers, the most hardest, most toughest, most whateverst way.
They expecct. They want to be loved back for the love they shower. They want to be patted too. They want to be simply loved too. YET. They hide it. They kill it.
i read somewhere that the most toughest thing is not being a fountain of affection, spurting whever we feel like it, but being a well of affection, giving whenever its asked for.

and why do they do it?

so that we can guiltlessly be the cat.

I know, u would be tempted to deny that. but isnt it true? we let everything rule our lives. we go from place to place. We live far away from our parents.Career demands it i suppose.Some other city.Some other state. Some other country. And we come back, whenever we could.(we need to make a living too. I am not blaming. I am not saying anything of that sort. i am merely poiting out the irony)
And we come back to the place called home whenever we could. And whenever we do that, we are acting the cat. No.Not with the intentions of the cat. And i sure dont know the intentions of the cat for either..Am just comparing the behavior,which looked at objectively, is the same..)(PS: cat lovers,mba aspirants and alike, please dont kill me...i do like cats..infact,if u notice,i am saying that we are like cats..)

But you know the brilliant part of this all. We do realise something. Deep down. "The Way". and thats probably we dont feel guilty abt it.

Ok. May be ive been a pessimist of sorts by not mentioning anybody other than parents. but then thers a reason why the love of the parent is the golden standard. And as i see it now, may be the reason is this.
May be, if we are blessed, we'l have parents in the forms of friends and siblings and family too.

Oh..I didnt mention "The Way".

One way and sometimes the only way to love somebody is allowing ourselves to be loved by them.

Illusions

Illusion:(Noun)
1.An erroneous mental representation
2.the action of deceiving
3.the state or fact of being intellectually deceived or misled
4.something that deceives or misleads intellectually
5.perception of something objectively existing in such a way as to cause misinterpretation of its actual nature

Well well well.. illusion seems to be something bad and evil and a must-avoid-thingy.
infact the pejorative nature of the word seems intuitively perceivable.

NO.

My purpose here in this post is to consecrate that word.

Lets start.shall we?

(w)(h)ole
The fact that the blog is basically "read" and not heard, has incapacitated me from fully perpetuating the confusion i actually wanted to cause.
Please imagine that u actually heard the word.(am sorry if u r unable to imagine..but i suggest u take a break from watever job or study that you are doing , go for a vacation with your family and read some comics)so now that you have imagined hearing the word, I expect you to get confused regarding what you just heard..was it "hole" or was it "whole" (am sorry again if you are unable to get confused..but i suggest you read a book or two from the shelves of "self improvement" or "philosophy" category from a book store)

so now that u have sufficiently imagined and confused, i shall take a chance and come to my point.

The first thing i want to stress is the point of confusion. Not just in this word.Lets put aside for a moment, that among the two ways of interpreting (again putting aside the 3rd way and the other ways of increasing orders) one way seems optimistic and the other pessimistic. Oh this is just to purposefully coincide with the cliched and well known concept of duality, of yin and yang, of black and white. As long we dont have "the" confusion, we are pretty much clear on what we perceive, which pretty much solves our side of the issue, for being on the yin or yang side of it is just actually the interpretation of it, the post mortem, and not the cause or root or reason.

The problem is with the confusion.
Where are we actually if we get a doubt regarding what we just saw or heard or experienced?
are we black or white when we get a doubt whether it was hole or whole?
We are in effect preventing ourselves from placing us.

No.thats not what we are doing. We do place ourselves but then do the postmortem ourselves and then we go back on our stance, claiming confusion.

The reasons of this can be multifarious and multipronged.(constipation might be one
too..we never know...what with chaos and butterfly effect and all..)

But the main point i want to make is, we are indeed aware of that fact,that we sumtimes hide things from ourselves. And the not-so-main point here is that we do that probably only when what we experienced clashes with our in built-stubborn-framework that combines our idea of the world at large and our idea about ourselves(ok..that was boring...my apologies...note here that i am not contrite about it..am merely being diplomatic)

So when we vehemently denounce illusions and uphold accepting the elusive "reality", we are, ahem, being hypocrites.

infact, we NEED illusions.

Everytime i take my bike out through the gates,
I have an illusion that accidents happen to others and not to me.
I have an illusion that as long as i drive carefully, i am safe.
I have an illusion that people(girls) dont really expect(like) all young guys to drive fast and sexy.
I have an illusion that they way i drive is not really a factor by which i can impress somebody.
I have an illusion that driving is a matter of ethics and self discipline and other related stuff
I have an illusion that all the drivers acknowledge the fact that any of their stunts, that can lead to a succesful suicide can also lead to a successful murder.

Just a simple act of driving a bike carries behind it so many illusions.
Infact i am sure that if we start counting the number of illusions that we have..
oh..ok..sorry for the generalisation...
Infact i am sure that if I start counting the number of illusions that I have it would need another illusion to hide that.

just so this post doesnt become too cliched i am not going to enumerate the examples of illusions that we(..oh..sorry again...)i have in almost every aspect of living the 21st century life ranging from career to relationships to cell phone battery life.

Infact we get sad or morose or lachrymose or disappointed (or snappy or sarcastic or reticent too) when we get "dis-illusioned"....i think a more technical word would be "cognitive dissonance"
and i have a suspicion that the time we take to come back is actually the time we take to either rebuild the same illusion again or conjure a new illusion.

am sure the dogs and pups, wen talking among themselves would hv so much fun talking and wondering about us...

In a nutshell, illusions are our shield, our immune system.

illusions? yeah..bring them on..i love them.

Illusions help us in retaining our sanity, paradoxically, by allowing a little insanity.