BlissTarang

The clouds kept pouring some billions of litres of water over suburbs of Mumbai last afternoon till evening. And I had the opportunity of spending time with two wonderfully learned and experienced souls. First it was Uday Tara Nair who is currently editing the Autobiography of Shri Dilip Kumar [Indian Cinema Legend] and then it was Zafar Iqbal [former IAS officer and former CEO of Shapoorji Pallonji Realty]. Taraji has spent her entire life in the Bollywood Industry and is one of the most respected journalist having spent a long time as Editor of the Screen Magazine in India. During our conversations, we traversed several topics but the one that I really enjoyed were her anecdotal accounts of humane experiences in Bollywood. She narrated the hows of sensory overload in this industry which keeps its people absolutely on super-anxious zone…the way how each movie’s success is a metaphoric EMI paid for staying in the industry or how it turns out to become a repossession case in ca...

  “   ”Heat” Check-Out please. “Cloud” is Invited” buzzed Bangalore conversations in the afternoon of 22 nd . Laya Raja, a mid-forties auto-rickshaw guy, despite the torching-torturing heat seemed to carry a patented Smile on his Face…even when things awry everywhere else and most other selves as if losing the patent for Smiles. I quite liked the way he was driving his auto and hence curiously asked as to how come he was managing to ride with such calm and gentle speed where everybody else was trying to only overtake-honk-outsmart- outsignal-outglare-outabuse- outperform-outdo each other…as if every other vehicle on the road was a compulsory competition for survival. He said very beautifully, “Sir, it is true I am driving on the same roads as others are. It is also true that the rules are the same as for others are. This is the system as so for others are. But I chose to drive in a manner that is peaceful for me and doesn’t hurt anybody. If somebody is poor in his vision...

11th April was another day having access to great learnings. Being a Holiday in many offices in Mumbai on the eve of GudiPadwa [New Year], I started late at 10 am and jumped into a Meru Cab parked in the neighborhood. When smiles greet each other, the day has a different meaning. Ashok Shukla is this mid-forties humble cabbie who readily sports his thoughts with passengers. He opened the innings by mentioning that he was reading a Hindi Novel “Mein Banoonga Kalyug ka Abhimanyu” (I will be the Abhimanyu this Dark Age). He went on to describe the protagonist in the novel who resolves to fight despite limited wherewithal-knowledge because he knows that challenge-and-response is central to human life. We volleyed the discussion around the analogy in finer details. It’s a great coincidence that Great Epic Mahabharata’s “Chakravyuh” has similarity to “Labyrinth”(Unicursal Maze…One Way Movement) described with Greek Mythological characters Daedalus-Minos. Both ‘Chakravyuh” ...

Life is moving so fast that I don’t realize when the day switches on the lights of the night … when the week is inaugurated to give the final departing vote of thanks of its weekend…when festivals appear in foresight of the brisk passing of the hindsight…when the calendar turns old to the just begun new year”…I quipped to myself while conversing with a dear friend last Friday morning. At 140km/hour speed or perhaps more, the social being inside of the car can only focus and experience a few degree of sight/sense at any given moment during the journey. He also sort of cannot afford to attend the scenes passing by. My friend added that the life for most people have become more of this car…the world is the road, worldly life is the car and we all it’s passengers.  The speed of the world life has a strong tail-wind from technology. Number of decisions people make today, number of SKUs as in the product categories that most people use in their life today, number of inte...

Bittu lived in a suburban neighborhood. Growing up on street cricket, economical nukkad, religious mornings, lazy evenings, rationed public utilities, parroted curriculum…time whisked past witnessing one World Cup Win in 1983 to another in 2011. What seemed like a Tourist Visa for relaxation, fun, carefree, indulgence, idealistic thinking as a child gave way to the prisons of dogma, race, fear, insecurity, power. Then  a phenomenon happened onto him over a period of days, weeks, perhaps few years…his questions changed from that of his circle of sentiments…his gaze became curious and yet steady…his speech started becoming stirring and yet soothing…he changes his role for most part of the time to one that of witness than of judge-advocate. He started realizing that the reach of reason is the breach of reality. The Gap between Eternal Right and the Emerging Right is ever widening. Bittu is now romancing sometimes with Solitude in Himalayas and sometimes addressing s...