Some more musings.. Attitude series

Before the Dawn

Just before the dawn

Is the darkest hour

To withstand

That hour

Is the real test

That hour may seem like eons

And just when you thought you

Had lost all hope

The first rays were out

Shining brightly

With a rare warmth ..

Focus

A phenomenon that happens

After intense wavering

Of the mind

In directions which

Seemed important

Yet not so important

Now as compared to the

Coming together

Of this phenomenon

Where all the energies

Are concentrated one at a time

To accomplish what is possible now

And yet seemed impossible sometime back

Positive outlook

A mind

Which looks at all questions

And then the fooling around stops

As the next step is towards the answers

Wading through all kinds of situations

To arrive at solutions

Which may be whole or partial

A bright shining light

Or a glimmer of hope

Despite the questions

Whatever the solution type

The probing and striving continues

An Honest Q

An Honest Q

The innocence of childhood

And the idealism of youth

The experience of growing up

Where all three carried forward

In the journey

Called Life

Then was ever  Innocence +Idealism +Experience = Life ??**

**PS- Especially if you decided to walk the sterile corridors of the corporate world

Lucerne.. Switzerland

Business trips take me to Lucerne at times -  small town near Zurich .I had a few peculiar observations ..

-There are more hair salons in Lucerne as compared  to say grocery shops.  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucerne‎
-This could also explain for the fact that most people are so well turned out on the roads
-All shops in general close by 630pm or 645pm but you will see cafes and lounges open till the wee hours of dawn
-My colleague observed that even the swans on the lake Lucerne seem to be disciplined and orderly and move around or sleep in the water in a very very disciplined way..
-There is a Swiss precision  look on everything the buildings, the gardens , the lake ..Everyone follows the rules and that too wholeheartedly  .This is something which we can certainly imbibe in India - rules related to crossing roads, hygiene etc
-And the food -even for a vegetarian : it is amazing . Though dripping in cheese and other carbohydrates it is really tasty ..
-Most importantly all citizens seem to be very health conscious - they are walking, cycling or running ...
-The hotel where we stayed called The Hotel  had an amazing interior design idea-all the rooms had posters of important films on the roof !! Needless to say  this was mentioned in the hotel brochure ie that the architect was a great film buff esp European cinema ..

That's Lucerne for me along with the long meetings and" no time to stand and stare  " kind of a schedule !!

Learning and Discovery Series

The nothingness in the  busy-ness matters.

  It's a journey into some sort of a hidden treasure hunt .

 To land into the emptiness and search for ways of filling the space that takes you to newer destinations despite the terrible busy- ness

 the screaming timelines, urgent mails .

To discovery of the self

 uncovering of the layers

 to shaping a New you replete with the newness despite the busy ness

Learning-part one 

Learning as a continuous journey

But it is learning while living

That will remain etched forever

In the crevices of the mind

Etched so deeply

That it smoothens  the rough edges

Learnings could be varied

From learning to live with ambiguity

And balancing dichotomy

To understanding motives and yet not understanding them at the same time

To understand what is just and strive for it

 Yet learn to live without it a times

Quite happily

To reconcile, change yourself and others  and at times ignore

To find a way thru the maze and reach your goal

Which again seems to be a moving target?

That is learning while living

And living as you learn

  

Overwhelming

The overwhelming thoughts

When things seem unsurmountable

For the while

The dark clouds gather

Only to scatter

After the heavy downpour

Washing away the darkness

Followed by the sunshine

The journey continues

 Learning-part two 

The learnings

That happen

Knowingly and many a time unknown to you

Only to be learnt later

When the crazy times

Have past gone by

And some silence creeps in

To reflect on the moments gone by

Which fill so many moments later

With a unique richness and texture

Granting a new hue to life 

Discovery

The discovery that is Life

Of meeting the unexpected

Of doing the planned and the unplanned

Of looking at the same view thru different lens

Offered by this strange help called Time

Of scaling new heights

And yet being in the dumps

Of lying low and yet feeling high

In preparation of the climb ahead

To reach new heights and yet discover

The unique in the ordinary and

The mundane in the extraordinary

Some musings

Am back .. sharing my thoughts is an endless process as the thoughts themselves can be endless .But here's giving a bit of a rigor 

Last push

The efforts required to take the

Goal to the last step

Can be daunting at times

To remove all

Obstacles real and perceived

And move towards the finish

Cross it to move towards

Another destination

The last push is equally

Important like the first one

WIP

I am a grand work in progress

Work that started ages back

Progressed  to create a beautiful edifice

And still progressing

Built with the cement of harsh and soft experience

That was cast in many mixers

Of planned and unplanned events and incidents

Many hands contributed to further building

The structure and adding it various colors ad hues

Sometimes there was an excess of flow of the supplies and building blocks

And at times a shortage .. yet the work never ceased

At times many hands , at times none

But one constant contributor

And that’s me the grand work in progress itself

Adding the varied elements that came my way

And creating something new

Sometimes based on the old

At times based on the new

The work has to go on

And  progress is measured with each passing day

So the WIP is inevitable

Relationships

The changing hues

Of relationships

But built on the solid foundation

Of either care or mistrust

Longevity or transience

Hence the changing hues

As the foundation itself 

Can be So wishy washy

At times

Or  so rock solid

That nothing can shake it

This one on the Corporate world..

The Corporate World at  Times

The  grandeur associated with

The trivial

The importance given

To the insignificant

The apotheosis of the mediocre

To rise above all this

Is sanity

And this one on the mindless violence which is our day to day news companion

A Democratic Answer

Sounds of silence from us

Or sounds of firing and triggers

Are the answer to the

Well-orchestrated cacophony

That is democracy

Where have we come to

In this borderless world

If it is not best practices, wealth, ideas, natural resources

That are easily transferred from one border to another

But a culture of violence , hatred, destruction , guile

Crosses all borders very seamlessly

Using www effectively

With many still wondering

Where we went

And from where have we come

We thought the Walls of the past were forever broken

But the foundation of new ones seems to be coming

Up on the  www on a daily basis …
(ON THE PARIS DESTRUCTION)