Challa...

I've no idea who I have been looking for...
I just keep searching for him... looking for his place... asking people where he lives...
I keep laughing while I look for him...
I keep crying while I look for him...
Looking up and down the streets...
I feel like I belong to the whole world but I have nothing of mine...
I'm looking for him but don't know where to find him.

In the colours of the rainbow, in the chirps of the birds, in sunshine and shadows, I look for him.
Like one looks for the moon among the clouds... I listen for his sound in the silent winds...

I'm sure he is somewhere very close to me, I can't see him but I can smell his fragrance in everything around me.

He was never separate from me, how is it that I'm searching for him and trying to look for him.
I'm like that prisoner of love who never wants to be freed.

He promised that he'll meet me in my dreams, but the joy of meeting him doesn't allow me to sleep all night...
The very thought of meeting him once in this life makes me breathless.

I keep looking for him... not knowing who he is... not knowing what he looks like... not knowing where to find him... not knowing what I would do when I meet him... I still keep looking for him...

The beautiful thing about music is that it carries different meaning for different people. The above expression is a rough translation of a song I heard a few months. (Times like this, I realise the poverty of my language, I don't have enough words to express the beauty of the original song.)

The song is about a guy who is looking for someone he saw just once. But to me this song has a very different meaning.
To me, this song beautifully shows man's search for his God.
Man looks for God everywhere, in temples, in mosques, in churches, in other places of worship. Man goes to wise men, saints, priests asking for God's address, asking for a way to experience God.
Man searches the elements, the nature, the stars for his God.
Why is it that Man keeps looking for Him when He was never separated from Man. Why is it that Man is surrounded by God, yet keeps looking for Him... Close your eyes and you will experience Him...

Challa is a Punjabi word which means crazy guy. So true, if Man keeps looking for Him all over the place, man must be crazy only... right???

Its not something new which I'm sharing, this is the knowledge handed down to us since thousands of years, yet, like a crazy guy, millions of us will get up tomorrow morning and will run to temples and churches and mosques looking for Him. Maybe, just maybe if we stop looking and just be still, be silent, we just might experience him in that stillness and silence...

Challe... tu ki labda phire???

Choices and Decisions???

Choice is a  possibility to choose from among multiple options.
Decision is the action of having made a choice.

All of us know that as long as we have a choice, we are free to choose... Its a huge freedom...
Once we have made the decision, we are bound by it. Look at it, the very languaging is that we are bound by our decisions. Decision is a bondage...
Right???
We know that we are living in a world full of choices... yet... are we satisfied with what we have??? Are we satisfied with the choices we have?
What's wrong?

What if I turned this entire understanding upside down for you...
What if I tell you that choices are not exactly the freedom they seem to be...
What if I tell you that decision is not the bondage it seems to be...
What if I said that Decision is the biggest freedom in the world that you can gift yourself...

Yep... you read it right...

A friend had come over to stay in Bangalore and was put up at a hotel near my house. Three days which he stayed, I would go and drop him to the hotel on my bike. There was a U turn right in front of the hotel, if we enter the one way, we could save about 2-3 minutes and a few hundred metres of distance, but still I was taking the U turn everyday.
You could easily say - "Being in India, everyone doesn't follow rules perfectly... late night at 11.00 pm, there's not much traffic, no cops... its okay just make a quick trip in the wrong direction carefully and just drop the friend quickly..."
I have a choice to go or not to go...
I can choose based on the traffic at that point of time...
I can check if there's a cop there and based on that I can choose...
Once I have chosen to enter the road from wrong side, I have the choice to stay either on left or on right of the road.
A person coming from the other side has a choice to take the other side or keep coming down the same side...
So much energy is lost in thinking all this, within seconds and that too everytime I go down that road...

Honestly, I don't have the patience...

What do I do?
I gain freedom by  making a decision... A simple decision - I will follow traffic rules...
Now I don't have to waste time and energy thinking about these things...

Recently a friend of mine promised me to give up smoking... a few days later, I saw him smoking right outside my house. I didn't ask but he himself came and said - "This is the first one after 2 weeks, just one occasion since I have a lot of tension."
I didn't see a point in explaining anything...
He is still a prisoner of choice... he has not yet achieved the freedom of decision...

I was a hard core non vegetarian. The quantity of chicken I downed in one meal could put any of my non-veg friends to shame.
Umpteen number of times, I decided that I would give up chicken. First I decided I would eat chicken only when my mom cooks it. Then I decided I would eat chicken only on special occasions. I took up will power games of giving up chicken for 2 weeks, 3 weeks and one month etc.
Finally, I would still go and get one for myself and waste all the effort by digging into that grilled chicken.
This was happening because I was leaving choices open for me. I know that a life is lost everytime to satisfy my 2 inch long tongue. I used to go through some guilt everytime after eating non-veg food.

Then one day, something happened and I decided that I will never have a dead body on my plate again. I decided that my taste buds will never cost a life.
That day I achieved freedom. Its been 5 years and I don't even get a question in my mind on whether I should eat or not.

I decided to have her as my life partner, I don't have to keep looking.

I decided to choose this industry as my career path, I don't have to keep searching.

I decided that my family will always stay in the same city where I live, not there's no two thoughts about it... this one decision is clear, all the other decisions revolve around it.

Choices... You call them freedom, I call them wastage of energy...

Decisions... You call them bondage... I call them freedom.

The most romantic couples I have ever seen are the ones who have been married for 30,40,50 years. Do you think they had the kind of choices we have today. Do you think they have grown to love each other because they each had lots of choices?? Or because they made decisions and stood by them??

I know what you are thinking.... "Gulshan, what if you have made a wrong decision? How will you know if you don't keep looking for options"

My dear, never ever question the decisions you have already made, they belong to the past. Even if they were wrong, its past now. Your next decision can define the rest of your life.

There are no right or wrong decisions, what we do with those decisions makes them right or wrong.

Inertia...

Have you ever been in a function where everyone was dancing and celebrating. Most probably, you were the one sitting at the side watching others dance. You too want to dance but feel shy, that's why you are sitting.
Then, someone comes and pulls you by the hand. First few minutes are awkward, but then you start dancing. Before you know you are dancing in full swing and that day you were the last one to get off the stage.
First getting up to dance was difficult, then you enjoyed it so much that stopping the dance was difficult.

One of those days, you were sitting in the office and working on some issue. Since morning, you hadn't moved and inch on the issue. You were totally stuck and had no idea how to proceed. Around 4.50 in the evening you decided that you will give it another 10 minutes and if nothing works out, you'll call it a day and continue working on it next day.
Somehow, at 4.50 you got the breakthrough and suddenly everything started working out. Before you know, it was 9.30 in the night, you were still in office and finally happy that things worked out.
At first, getting a start was difficult, once you found the solution, stopping was difficult.

Back in school, there were times when you would sit for hours together without getting past 5 pages and then something would click and you would finish the whole book before you get up for dinner.

It was a huge deal for me when I started working out first, but once I started, I was totally hooked on to working on my body.

I started blogging 4 years ago and blogged non stop since then. I stopped for some reason a few weeks ago, and I haven't blogged for almost a month.

There's actually a scientific term for this --- "INERTIA"

Apparently, inertia is not just restricted to the science labs. Its deeply woven into our daily lives.

According to Isaac Newton - The vis insita, or innate force of matter, is a power of resisting by which every body, as much as in it lies, endeavours to preserve its present state, whether it be of rest or of moving uniformly forward in a straight line.

In simple english - That which has stopped, continues to stop and that which is moving continues to move.

Whenever we try to start something good, we find it difficult to start because of the inertia. Similarly, when we try to stop something bad, we find it difficult because of the inertia. But the beauty is that once it is started again, then there is no stopping.

Why I suddenly stopped writing is not relevant right now, I've just overcome the inertia and started writing again.

Tomorrow is a Monday and I think this is the best opportunity to identify our inertia. Where do we find it difficult to start, and where all do we find it difficult to stop.
Lets start the week by overcoming the inertia in our lives...