Ardh Satya by Dilip Chitre

Chakravyuh mein ghusne se pehle,
kaun tha mein aur kaisa tha,
yeh mujhe yaad hi na rahega.

Chakravyuh mein ghusne ke baad,
mere aur chakravyuh ke beech,
sirf ek jaanleva nikat’ta thi,
iska mujhe pata hi na chalega.

Chakravyuh se nikalne ke baad,
main mukt ho jaoon bhale hi,
phir bhi chakravyuh ki rachna mein
farq hi na padega.

Marun ya maarun,
maara jaoon ya jaan se maardun.
iska faisla kabhi na ho paayega.

Soya hua aadmi jab
neend se uthkar chalna shuru karta hai,
tab sapnon ka sansar use,
dobara dikh hi na paayega.

Us roshni mein jo nirnay ki roshni hai
sab kuchh s’maan hoga kya?

Ek palde mein napunsakta,
ek palde mein paurush,
aur theek taraazu ke kaante par
ardh satya.

The Road not taken by Robert Frost....

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

By Paul Chello....

"And because of our selfishness, we will be condemned to the worst torture humankind ever invented for itself: loneliness"

"Everything tells me that I am about to make a wrong decision, but making mistakes is just part of life. What does the world want of me? Does it want me to take no risks, to go back to where I came from because I didn't have the courage to say "yes" to life?"

"When someone leaves, it's because someone else is about to arrive."

"Waiting hurts. Forgetting hurts. But not knowing which decision to take is the worst of suffering."

"Love is an untamed force. When we try to control it, it destroys us. When we try to imprison it, it enslaves us. When we try to understand it, it leaves us feeling lost and confused."

"A child can teach an adult three things: to be happy for no reason, to always be busy with something, and to know how to demand with all his might that which he desires."

"People give flowers as present because flowers contain true meaning of love. Anyone who tries to posses a flower will have to watch its beauty fading. But if you simply look at a flower in the field, you'll keep it forever.
That is what the forest taught me. That you will never be mine, and that is why i will never lose you."

"If there is any possible consolation in the tragedy of losing someone we love very much, it's the necessary hope that perhaps it was for the best."

"Human beings can withstand a week without water, two weeks without food, many years of homelessness, but not loneliness. It is the worst of all tortures, the worst of all sufferings."

"You are someone who is different, but who wants to be the same as everyone else. And that in my view is a serious illness. God chose you to be different. Why are you disappointing God with this kind of attitude?"

After having lunch I and my friend went for our daily afternoon walk.The weather was cloudy and breezy.We were seeing the people sitting beside the lake,some lost in their thoughts,some gazing at the sky,some smoking to get relief from the mundane life.
While waking we saw a very cute puppy on the road running here and there with zeal.
We were talking,looking here and there and while returning back we see the puppy which
was jumping with life was lying dead,a vehicle had run over it.

I was stuck with a lump in my throat. A being which was full of life before few minutes is now lying dead.No one will mourn over it,people will see the body feel sorry and go back to their work desks,forget about the world and immerse themselves in the daily routine of slogging themselves to make a code work.

How we humans manage to be like that?How do we forget to live the small moments of our life?We are always chasing things,how do we don't get time to pause?How do we forget to laugh,cry and live every moment of our lives?How do we start behaving like robots?Life is short and we worry too much over every small thing.Death is inevitable and can strike us at the most unpredictable moments.We postpone,delay,procrastinate things saying there is a tomorrow.But how do you know that tomorrow will come.We worry too much about our past and plan too much for the future that we forget to live our present.We are never satisfied. Even when the future we have imagined becomes the present we again start off this vicious circle of being unhappy with what we have and start off planning to think about the future.
Is their an end to our desires?Why are we the way we are?

Confusion exists everywhere,what to choose,what to do,what do you like,what do you want to become,we humans are so damn confused.
Given so many options our mind just keeps on wandering on what do we want.Even if we choose something and may assume that our mind has now calmed down we do know that our mind is not an easy one to be pacified.
It is hard choosing which is the best for us and sometimes we just want everything.In this context remembered one scene from the sitcom friends where Phoebe is asking everyone if given a choice for sex and food what would they give up.The moment she asks Joey who loves both the things,the poor guy is just unable to decide.

Phoebe: Joey, if you had to give up sex or food, which would you pick?
Joey: I don't know it's too hard.
Rachel: Come on, you have to answer.
Joey: Okay... sex. No, food. No, uh... I want both! I want girls on bread!

Sometimes we are spoilt for choices.We happen to love many things at a time and when the time comes we all have that lovely confused look on our faces.But why should we choose??Why can't we just experience things and decide for ourselves what is good by the hit and trial method.Why do we need to give up something when we can have it?
Why aren't we allowed to experiment and live life as it comes with its surprise and excitement factor? Why others have to make choices for us? Why aren't we deciding for ourselves?
Why we have limited our choices??Why can't we expand our horizon?So many whys which have become a part of our lives.
Make a choice Engineering or Medicine,then after that MS or MBA or JOB.
At every stage someone will decide what is good for you without your assent and then we just go by the choices that have been defined for us and become a part of this mad rat race,a part of this crowd,forgetting
what we wanted to do actually.Late Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw once in his interview had stated:

“I always wanted to play with dolls. When I was young, my mom wouldn’t allow me to, then my wife came along, and I still was not allowed to.
Finally, I told myself, now I am the Field Marshall, I will damn well do as I please and went and got myself the dolls!’ ”

Surrounded by so many dos and don'ts we sometimes just forget the beauty of living,doing what we actually enjoy.Life is a journey of self-discovery,too short to be wasted in doing what we don't like :)
Hope I too sometimes heed to the above lines :P

Whenever I sit and think things may not be that bad in India,why I always get proved wrong.
We like to live on the false presumption of being the next super power. We blabber about how well are we advancing and go on citing our so called heritage and culture to be proud of.We do like to blabber and boast a lot...but the reality is exactly opposite...
Our society is no less than a Talibanized society...where caste has penetrated so deeply into our lives that we just can't get it out of us. Caste is a matter of honour for most of us here.Infront of it there can't exist the emotion of love,brotherhood...we all stand divided on the basis of it..
The recent increase in the number of honour killings makes me ponder about the kind of society we are living in. Couples are killed by their own families for committing the so called blunder of falling in love with someone outside their caste..
The barbaric way of killing your kin..no remorse even after killing your loved ones makes me shudder at the thought of how honour and caste supersedes everything else and turns us into savages. Added to that the meekness and lack of iron will from our elected leaders to fight against these social evils just makes the matter worse...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/south_asia/10334529.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/south_asia/10316249.stm

One just wonders when will we become humans who learn to respect and value life...