Thursday, November 29, 2007

Superhuman?


I normally don't like writing posts on any single person although most of my blogs are people related and more often than not they are based on experiences with a particular person.

Off late, I have been meeting people from the "other side" of humanity. So far, I saw men who could love (or something like that), hate, game, eat, game, hate, eat... Then I met Raghu, who is way up there in the homo sapien scale. Besides being extremely intelligent and kind, he is extremely loving and forgiving. Yes, there are many people like him but not anywhere close to how intense and passionate he is about life and what he does. What does he do besides being a wonderful human being? He owns a firm, runs it ALL by himself. A part of which includes making nuts, packaging and the works. You can imagine how many nut jokes from me he faces everyday! To make my work easier, the nuts come in flavours like "herb n cheese" and "hot n spicy" :D

Jokes apart, I won't be wrong if I called him the perfect human being. Well, he can't sing for "nuts" if that counts :) I only wish I had met him earlier; MANY wrong decisions in my life could have been avoided. I am very glad he is a part of my life now and I hope this nutty affair continues for eons.

Cheers bro! You TOTALLY rock.

Peace out ;-)

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Monday, November 26, 2007

More Questions...


Everytime I think about my faith in God/ Religion, I cannot help but think back of the day my views on the same underwent some major transformation.

As a kid, I was brought up the typical Brahmin way. I was made to worship numerous idols, each holding a unique, unbelievable ( mostly scary) "power". Every night, I was told that some character from Ramayana / Mahabharata would take me away if i didn't slip into slumber right away. I would dread eating cuz my mom would tell me that Shiva would punish me if I didn't finish the food on my plate which I still believe was a lil too much for a 6 year old! And back then, to me these threats were real. This was the birth of my value system and my religious beliefs.

As a teen, I'd visit the temple twice a day because my grama would tell me "Pray hard for all that you want, God will listen to you." I prayed hard to get thru in my Math tests and for all the people who mattered to me. I did not "explore" my faith although other religions fascinated me greatly. My faith grew over time but I had many unanswered questions. I answered all of them in my head by believing God knows best.

One phone call changed my life. My friend passed away. My faith shattered in a moment. The first question " Why him?" Since I couldn't even get close to finding an answering that, I thought "What happens after death?" I wanted to know he was ok wherever he was. So i read up on what different religions had to say about it. Even then, I didn't seem to get one answer that is common to all religions. This is when my mind opened up to ALL the questions related to God/ religion.

What is God?, What is religion?, Why do 2 year olds get raped?, Why do currupt people "succeed"? How would I find answers to such questions? I spoke to many religious people, i questioned them. Throughout, I had an open mind cuz my mision was not to criticize or deny the existance if God. My mission was to find answers, to find inner peace. These people i spoke to, would tell me " God always plans the best for us", "Two year olds get raped because of karma; the consequences of their actions in their previous birth" etc.

Somewhere during my journey, I started believing that we are our own God. There is nothing aboe us that controls our lives and we face the consequences of our actions ( in the same lifetime :P ). But what about children and innocent people who suffer? I couldn't consider God (if he exists i.e.,) being so merciless. I became Agnostic.

Before this point when I was god-fearing and religious, I was not leading a particularly happy life. Yes, I experienced some amount of peace when I visited the temple or thought about God but otherwise that was a pretty lousy period. Things seemed to be getting worse and finally hit a new low when I lost my friend.

For over a year, I looked around frantically for answers. Suddenly, all the pieces of my life started falling into place. I started to feel, what they call, true happiness. All this and more without having faith in God/ religion.

Is this God telling me he exists and that he is looking over me irrespective of whether or not I believe in him or is it the fact that I am thinking beyond religion/ God that is liberating me?

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