Cirque de la vie

In this 'Circus of Life' who are you a ringmaster, a joker, a caged animal, an acrobat, a magician, a firefly, daredevil, a balancing act or the audience????

I want to be a magician and bring happiness joy and pleasant surprises to people I love, I meet and I know. I want to entertain and excite them. But right now I think I am a balancing act.

Who and What are you?

MUSIC AND LYRICS

Have been gone for quite a while
Didn’t quite discover myself in this self imposed exile

What was I aiming for anyways
In these dark and frosty winter rains

Missed all of you my sweet friends
Alas I return but with no special gifts when my hiatus ends

Been busy, tired and confused
May be I am better when I remain blog enthused

Having said that Hiatus wasn’t quite all waste
Did apply few strategic theories in my assignments posthaste

Reading through Porter’s five force analysis
Desperately hoping entering B-school would be my career’s catalysis

Met and made friends from all over the world
Convinced inspite of these worldly differences we all can still love and be loved

I am so glad to be back
It would be nice not to feel lonely and this strange lack

Do take me back with all your kindness and warmth
I will try like always to write my heart’s truth

That’s a promise I will never break
Not sure about icing but I will be baking a cake!!!!

HI-ATUS

I have been unofficially on and off from blogging but I finally decided to make it official. I won't be blogging for a while, to be specific for rest of this year. Call it if you may my winter hibernation!!
I will miss all the warmth I have received from you and that's what will bring me back next year. Early Christmas and New year wishes to all of you. My love, wishes and prayers for each one of you.
I will try and visit all of you on your blogs to say my goodbyes. Untill I am back, you can keep in touch with me if you wish on dumbdodi@yahoo.com

Miss you all and Lots of Love

Radhika AKA Dodi

Road to Perdition

I am writing about a country about which what I had read and known seemed to have all changed drastically for the worse in last few years. That country is Iran. I read a shocking article about it and then later on happened to chat up with an Iranian co student at school who gave me a true, honest but very disturbing account of the nation’s state.

Iran always had extremely progressive and educated citizens in its society until recent years when it seemed to have all massively gone wrong. The situation there now is a perfect example of what happens to people whose minds are liberal but who are restricted or forced to lead a life which is not true to their souls. People get messed up and messed up big time !

Did you know about 5 million of the population in Iran are drug addicts, many of these addicts are woman who have given birth to a whole generation of crack babies and continue to do so. No wonder then that Aids is a growing problem because of contaminated needles and because of woman succumbing to flesh trade to feed their drug habits.

According to the U.N. World Drug Report for 2005, Iran has the highest proportion of opiate addicts in the world -- 2.8 percent of the population over the age of 15.

ARE YOU SURPRISED? ARE YOU SHOCKED?
I was, I am.

Naïve and ignorant me couldn’t guess the reason behind such a massive and seemingly exponentially growing drug problem in the country. The answer though was so obvious.

Most heroin sold in Europe and elsewhere comes from Afghanistan’s poppies. Drugs cross the permeable border with Iran on their way to Turkey and Europe despite Iran’s desperate efforts, costing many lives, to combat trafficking at the border. Europe doesn’t help Iran with the cost of policing, and does even less to finance Afghan farmers to plant alternative crops. On this route the drugs get leaked into the country thus giving easy access to people.

State of woman in the world, Value of human life, Pseudo social morals, World drug regulations, War against Afghanistan, Imperialism – all these issues get raised within this one example.

There are so many disturbing and unjust things happening around this world we call our own. I don’t want to sound idealistic but I honestly feel no longer is any country’s problem just its own. Specially through this revolution called ‘Globalisation’ we are more interconnected than ever before. The fact that there is a drug problem in Iran only reflects the greater realities of this problem elsewhere.

A time is due to come when ‘Globalisation’ would be truly economical, political, technological, ecological and social. A time when the whole world truly would be one big family!

Meanwhile, I feel for this pitiful state of a country with valuable natural resources, potentially intellectual citizens and a strategic geographical position. A country which gave so much to the world through its rich cultural and literary heritage. A country which gave us great Persian poetry through likes of Rumi, Omar Khayyam et al.

A country which was to be magnificent and palatial but which now is an edifice in shambles.

THE MAN

My life is my message – the man thus spoke. Words like these can only come from a person who led his life truthfully, humbly and with the confidence that he did become the change he wanted to see in the world, a man who practiced what he preached.

The Man, Father of my Nation none other than Mahatma Gandhi. October 2nd was the day this great man was born who was to bring freedom and much more to my country, the man who was to influence another great man Martin Luther King to bring liberation to an entire race, the man who with his gentle ways was to shake the entire world.

On the eve of his birth anniversary, I think of him and of what is left of him in me.

Gandhi was never a hero to me, he never captured my imagination as say my heroes Che Guevara or Lenin did. On many levels you romanticise your heroes, you try and form an image of them in your mind which more often that not is far from real. Gandhi on the other hand, is real and you can only view him in his reality and his reality alone.

I read a few books on him, by him in my school days, thanks to my grand father who was a freedom fighter who at later stages of his life worked at a library dedicated to Mahatma Gandhi. I tried to learn many of his quotes by heart. Now though I think I just had respect for the man because he was considered a national hero and also because one was supposed to. This was to change and I was to grow to be truly respectful of him and his life.

I mentioned his quotes because many of his quotes starting coming to me in a much brighter, illuminated light. I would recollect his quotes from real incidents. His quotes like ‘An eye for an eye will make the whole world blind’, ‘Prayer is a confession of one’s own unworthiness and weakness’, ‘When what you think, what you say and what you do are in harmony, you can be happy’, Hate the sin and not the sinner’, ‘Be the change you want to see in the world’…..started coming to me to become my life commandments.

Though all his quotes and writings give simple yet great messages, in my opinion the message of non-violence is his biggest gift to the world. Unfortunately people today question non-violence as a virtue and its practicability in this present world of terror, threat and tension. I would like to share a quote on non-violence by the man himself, which might be our first step in trying to find the answer.

“Non-violence requires a double faith, faith in god and also faith in man” – M K GANDHI

So then, who has lost our faith-God or Man?

Risky Business

An Inconvenient Truth - Interesting title for what seems like an interesting documentary featuring Al Gore, who for a while was touted ‘The Next President of United States’

Saw a review on telly about this film which is about global warming. Al Gore seems to have quite a grip over the issue and makes his arguments very strongly and convincingly.

What captured my attention though was not just the movie but the man himself. Never paid much attention to Mr Gore earlier but this movie review made me stand up and take notice. It is quite a drastic change of paths, from running for Whitehouse to being in Hollywood. We usually have people travelling the other way around so I think it was a risk he took.

I have always admired people who listen to their heart, follow their true calling and challenge themselves. For I know its not easy. When one is able to meet certain benchmarks in their life it would be quite daunting to make a shift and enter the world of unknown.

One can’t make it big, actually one can’t make it to anywhere and to anything without taking risks. No matter how calculated a risk you take, it is after all a risk. What you are willing to risk tells you what you value in life.

Thinking of all the significant events in history it only becomes more evident that ‘Great deeds are usually wrought at great risks’


What are you prepared to risk
Is it hope or going down a slope

What are you prepared to win
Some hearts or just some bucks

What are you prepared to lose
Some sleep in the night or knowing you did right

What are you prepared to find
Light at end of the tunnel or a treasure at rainbow’s end

Paused....

I have a lovely Spanish lady as my colleague who works in the other wing who I keep bumping into. Not only do we seem to be pee partners but we also seem to be hungry at the same time.

Yesterday during one of our lunches together, she was having some lovely Spanish food. While talking about the cuisine she mentioned her husband doesn’t have any particular fondness for Spanish food. Nosy me, I asked her where her husband was from.

She hesitated and paused….then replied he was from Middle East. I said Ok. She paused again and then said “He is actually from….. Iraq”.

I feel sorry for such pauses. Pauses not to prepare for answers, pauses not to think how to lie but pauses to say the goddamn truth.

This incident reminded me of an old conversation. Once while travelling in the tram, I was greeted by a rather cheerful and chatty co-traveller. We got talking and he told me he was from Libya. We had a lengthy discussion about social/political situations in our respective countries. When it was time to alight, I asked him for his name.

He had paused too…similar pause…but it was longer and heavier. He finally looked at me dolefully and said his name was ‘O..OO..OOOsama’

The mere thought of being judged is intimidating. We all have some or the other attribute which we think exposes us to be judged upon. But some people have to live with the fact that they will be judged as the very part of their existence, no matter where, when and who.

Hence this pauses……….