Something i had posted long back in another blog of mine. I'm quite proud of this writing and call it my 2nd work of art! :)
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The strong cold current of air feels so nice as it hits my face and body. The tail of my shirt flapping and moving as the strong currents of air bully it around. i close my eyes, spread my arms wide and tilt my head up as i feel the wind hit my body. I dont mind the coldness as i'm accustomed to cold, with eveything in my life being so cold that ice would feel like fire in comparison. I open my eyes and stare at the sky:

Is there someone looking after us?
Is there a god up there who decides how our life would fare and what our destiny would be?

Is this my destiny? to stand up here at the edge of the terrace and wonder about my wintery life. I feel like screaming out: "Have you not tired as yet? Have I not entertained thee enough in 22 yrs or Is there anything more in store for me?"

I look down.

Its a 5 storey drop to the ground. I wonder what it would feel like to have the wind whistling in my ears. What it would feel like to be oblivious to existence and creation? Would it be nice not to have any regrets or disappointments?

I wud be at peace. I wud be alone.

But that wudn't be much of a difference from now. I'm alone even now when i'm alive, when i live amongst a nonsensical, whimsical and hypocritical race called Humans. Yes, i'm alone now. However much i try to make a difference. However much i try to be good and touch the heart of others and make true friends, somewhere along the line, even the closest of friends break my trust and belief and leave me alone. They make me realise that companionship, belief, trust, loyalty etc.. are just things belonging to fiction and movies. They don't really exist in the world. A world in which there are so many people that it wud be extremely difficult to actually exist alone, and yet here i am, my lonesome self, with not a soul who would turn and notice my absence.

I guess there has to be someone like me, so that god could compare and tell other people "be thankful, ur life isn't as bad as his".

--> SJ

Thank You..

I was surprised to open up Kartz blog and see that i had received the "Arte-y-Pico" award! I never thought that i would receive such an awards or any award for that matter. My blogs have been very irregular for a few months. Partly due to laziness and partly due to the various things going on in life! Though i have been given an award i do know i have a long way to go and lots of avenues of writings to explore yet!

If you don't mind i'm pasting the link to the post where u do the honours here.

Thank You Kartz for the honour and for thinking that my writings are good enough to receive an award! I'm touched that someone who is so creative and so much better at writing than me thinks so highly of me! :)

Thanx!

Such a Waste!

The biggest disease that this planet suffers from is religion. Soft!.. I’m not saying that everyone should become atheists.. please worship in the way you see fit.. what I am saying is that everyone should realise that religion does not exist. What exists is one God, and religion is nothing but the different ways in which humans express their sense of faith, belief and perception of the higher power. They assume that God will look kindly upon them if they worship in a certain way. What they do not realise is that God, when he/she made this universe established one very simple rule in nature, one which even he/she cannot break and that is balance. Nature consists only of balance; for every bad there good, for every action there is a reaction and for every deed the doer is either rewarded or punished in a way no one can foretell. So even if you do use the various religions to show your devotion to God, he does not look kindly upon you as he cannot do anything to release you from what you are to reap because of your actions. The worst part of this is that Humans know and realise that there is one God but they still keep on squabbling in the name of religion. What happened to the Christians in India is deplorable, Hindu terrorism is stupidity by some fanatical leaders who can’t see beyond their nose and Jihad carried out by Islamic terrorists is nothing but madness. This kind of incessant squabbling does nothing but prove how stupid humans are and prove that our mental capacities can go beyond madness into a realm not discovered yet.

Terrorism is nothing but a mutated strain of the religion virus where the diseased have been afflicted by a madness unheard of as yet. A madness which brainwashes them into believing that there is only one way of life in this multi-faceted universe. Will they just stop at humans and go beyond into terrorising animals too? Who knows if this madness will end.

Such terrorism initially begins with religion when a person becomes so blind that he cannot see that other people are worshipping the same God he does but in a form which is different than his. He thinks that any person who doesn’t think in the way he does should be eliminated. The terrorists think that that inflicting fear will get them somewhere; on the contrary it will only strengthen people’s resolve into fighting till they die. Unfortunately these terrorists can see even less than the aforementioned leaders of Hindu terrorism which is in its early stages of this disease.

A common bully is usually a coward who thinks he can fear people into respecting him but shies away when he sees resistance. Terrorists are such bullies except they don’t fear resistance. They only have one answer to every problem: Violence and killings. They have become so blind and so diseased that they see violence as the only way and have reached a stage where it is incurable.

You are going to say that now these terrorism attacks are beyond religion. Yes now it has reached a stage which goes beyond religion. It now concerns objectives which include revenge (1 cause is: the tragedy which occurred during the partition of India), getting their way where all else fails (ISI’s thinking of getting Kashmir), disagreements on moot points (disagreement with U.S. foreign policy favouring Israel – 9/11 attacks [see WIKI 9/11]) et al. So you can see that terrorists are beyond madness. They do not even see their religion as it should be seen. You still don’t believe me?

Bin Laden’s "Letter to America", October 2002: "you are the worst civilization witnessed by the history of mankind: You are the nation who, rather than ruling by the Shariah of Allah in its Constitution and Laws, choose to invent your own laws as you will and desire. You separate religion from your policies, contradicting the pure nature which affirms Absolute Authority to the Lord and your Creator."

If this doesn’t convince you then nothing will.

Like any other bully the main aim of terrorists is to strike fear and grief into the hearts of people. As we have seen from the Mumbai events, they succeeded in doing this. People lost whole families in the event and many loved ones. While it has been tragic, heartbreaking and so sad that no words can describe it, we should realise that we are in fact helping the terrorists reach their aim. If we grieve their deaths we are fulfilling the terrorist’s aims. Yes, we are filled with unimaginable grief that we will not see our loved ones again, but we should now resolve not to grieve for the people who have died and will die in terrorist attacks. We should celebrate their deaths that they have become Shahid and Martyrs in the war against terrorism. We call the commandos and the policemen who fought terrorists Martyrs; I call every one of the 160 odd people who died a martyr. They died in a noble cause. They died fighting terrorism even though they did not put up a resistance. They were prisoners of war and are war heroes.

>>I salute everyone who has died in terrorist attacks and everyone who has fought to save the people caught in such acts of senseless human waste and violence.

>>Terrorists I call on you to take a moment to look at the destruction you have caused and realise the utter waste you have caused when your planning capabilities could have been used in other ways to make humans more humane.

"Violence begets violence and hurts the soul of the victimizer as well as the victim."

--> SJ

And we thought the skies were empty !!

Air Traffic Worldwide 24HR from kouko a on Vimeo.

What you see above is a video made by the Zurich University of Applied Sciences showing worldwide commercial flights over a 24-hour period. Watch as flights start in the morning in the western hemisphere, and as the sun starts to come up in the east, more flights begin in the east.

--> SJ

Financial Times... Un-Financial Times..

What happens in a recession? What happens in a depression? How does an economy lose its top-most position and become just another country following the leader? All these questions will get answered in the coming 2-5 years time. An experience and an occurrence which happens once in a lifetime.

As most people would know, or would have found out by now, the bubble called United States of America, the dreamland, the benchmark for all countries to achieve, is on the verge of bursting. Just like other bubbles, for e.g. the dot-com bubble, this will be a very big reality check for the world. It will be a check for people to understand and realize the value of money. USA and all its luxuries and spending habits eroded the value of money. People all across the world have been for many years adopting all the habits (i must admit that some good but mostly bad ones) of the Americans and Americanizing themselves forgetting their own cultures and heritage. As a result, everywhere people have forgotten the value of money. They don't realize that earning money is hard enough but making it grow and multiply is harder still. Once they start earning they seem to think that can afford anything and take loans and start living on credit. WAKE UP everyone! See what that has done to Uncle Sam and will ultimately do to us.

Lehman Brothers, AIG, Bear Stearns, Morgan Stanley.... how many more great names will be added to this list? how many countries will come in this list? USA? Japan? India?..

Centrals Banks trying to increase global liquidity and stabilizing the US Dollar shows that some people have realized the threat. But what they have done is just extended the time needed for the collapse of the US Dollar. The average person who reads the newspapers will not realize the extent to which this can and will effect us and most of the countries round the world. USD is the only international currency in today's world. When it collapses what will the world use to trade with each other? Will they still value everything in the USD? or will we have to alternate to the Barter System?

This current international monetary system was established in 1945 with the Bretton Woods Conference. Valuing everything to the Dollar was decided, it probably, was the intelligent thought of the day then! But for more than 60 years this system has not been changed, has not been adjusted, has not been modified for the current scenario and trends. This system is obviously unsuitable for today's level of cross-border transactions and transfer of money. How valuing currencies of so many countries to one currency could stand the test of 60 years is something i will never understand! You are valuing something with reference to something whose intrinsic value itself keeps on changing and shifting with time. This is probably the most foolish thing to do. The value of a standard against which other things are valued should be stable and its worth should not change in the short-term.

We should never have stopped valuing our currencies against Gold. It was the currency in ancient times and should be the value of our currencies now. The Economists of the world have studied in detail and understood the repurcussions of the previous gold-standard, they can help us devise a new standard based on gold such that those repurcusssions do not occur again. A standard which will be flexible and adopt itself as society changes itself over time.

Ultimately we should look at Free Trade Areas with a more open mind. With the working of the EU we now know that however difficult, FTAs do work. Our ultimate aim and goal should be to make the whole world an FTA such that we have one currency. Its then and only then that there will come about a betterment in other areas of life and human aspects.

The collapse of the US into a catastrophic recession is not far, it has been inevitable for the past 4 years and is not far away. Look ahead for hard times to come, especially for countries like China, India, Japan, Britain. Its going to get tough soon. 1929 will soon seem like a walk in the park. Whether the Tough will get going is yet to be seen.

But it is a big chance for India, we should pull up our pants and get ready to provide leadership to the world. This chance will not come again for a long long time. Will we be ready then (i mean the next time this chance comes around)? we can't say, but for now we should open the door when opportunity knocks and here she is standing outside the door waiting for the correct time to knock.


--> SJ

Quote Blast

"The identity of the official whose alleged responsibility for this hypothetical oversight has been the subject of recent discussion is not shrouded in quite such impenetrable obscurity as certain previous disclosures may have led you to assume, but, not to put too fine a point on it, the individual in question is, it may surprise you to learn, one whom your present interlocutor is in the habit of defining by means of the perpendicular pronoun."

-Sir Humphrey Appleby, Yes Minister (1980)

Confessing to his boss that he was responsible in causing a loss of 40m Pounds to the Government of The United Kingdom. :D

Talk about talking through your hat.. lol

Calvin - My Idol :)

--> SJ :D

Quote Blast

We live in accordance with our deep, driving desire.
It is this desire at the time of death
that determines what our next life is to be.
We will come back to earth to work
out the satisfaction of that desire.

-The Upanishads