Love!

A beautiful and complete definition of love, I found this at CMC, Vellore.

Love is patient and kind;
love is not jealous or boastful;
it is not arrogant or rude.
Love does not insist on its own way;
it is not irritable or resentful;
it does not rejoice at wrong,
but rejoices in the right.
Love bears all things,
endures all things.
Love never ends...
 - I Corinthians 13:4=8

India of Rabindranath Tagore's dreams

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

- Rabindranath Tagore

Risk it all!

All the great achievements of technology and science, or mankind for that matter have been possible only because someone had the courage to rise to the occasion. Someone was brave enough to venture into the unknown, challenge the impossible, determined to work around failures, ready to be outcasted and called a lunatic. Most importantly, he had the single minded goal to find the real truth and went after it with all he had. Someone somewhere was adamant enough to challenge the possible, be dissatisfied with the present and forayed into the dark to find his own light.

This burning desire in man to challenge the impossible differentiates him from mere ‘animals’. It is the vanguard of our dominion over nature’s hardships. Imagine travel if the Wright brothers wouldn’t have risked their first flight. Imagine our wisdom if Galileo wouldn’t have challenged the belief that the earth is flat and the whole universe revolves around it. Imagine freedom if M.K. Gandhi, Bhagat Singh and Subhash Chandra Bose wouldn’t have fought for it. In short imagine our present if we didn’t explore the unexplored, challenge the norms and even for once take the path not taken.

Sure there is always a chance of utter and full failure in taking risks. But, then again what’s the fun in living the same boring and safe life until the moment you die. It's high time to break out of the shackles of idleness and mediocrity. In the words of T.S. Elliot, “You have to risk going too far to discover just how far you can really go.” After all our life is an experiment, so we can just sit back and relax while others do their experiments on us; or we can take charge and trailblaze our way to a deeper satisfaction of achievement. This quote by Woody Allen is my guiding light, “If you're not failing every now and again, it's a sign you're not doing anything very innovative." India has progressed only in the able hands of visionary leaders, entrepreneurial businessmen, invigorated youth and a knowledge hungry scientific community all ready to pounce out of their circle of comfort. For those of you who are still not ‘shaken up’, in the words of Soren Kierkegaard, “To dare is to lose one's footing momentarily.  To not dare is to lose oneself.”

Simplicity

So simple is to live,

so simple is to love,

so simple is to smile,

so simple is to win,

but so difficult it is to be simple