Thursday, June 19, 2008

Life in Europe


As the clock is ticking, the time to return back home is coming nearer. I feel like sharing my experience of being in Germany which has indeed been quite important in my life. In a series of few blogs, I would try to summarize my opinion and insight about the people; I have been living with since last 2 years. I am a little bit amazed; to see how quickly these two years have passed. In a nutshell, these can be claimed as the most calm and soothing years of my life, yet full of happenings and packed of action on daily basis. I feel like I had just arrived in Germany few months back, when the world cup 2006 just started. It seems like a co-incidence that I am packing my bags exactly when the next major event in football, i.e. european championship is going on with full swing. Football seems to be like opening and closing ceremony of my stay here :-)
I have lived a completely different life here, something which gave me enough time to understand world, and even more importantly, myself. If you ask me what happened to me in these last two years, I would say nothing important, really. Rather shocking is the fact that even for most of friends and colleagues back in India, things have not yet changed so much. On even stranger note, everybody is just now seems to be gearing up to get married, change job, build house etc. It feels like as if time in India had been waiting for me !

My experience in Germany and Europe has been quite diverse, yet very repetitive in nature. I visited almost all popular destinations of Europe, except UK and portugal. To my surprise and rather a bit of disappointment, as I continued my journey, I felt more and more of commonness rather than difference in people and culture across this continent. Thanks to a rich Roman heritage, I hardly feel any difference in buildings and architecture when I browse through my gigabytes of photo collection. Most of the time I can’t recall which building belongs to which place. And about people, well its impossible to tell who belongs from where, unless they show a very specific pattern in their style and characteristics i.e. hair color, build, dressing senses.
Despite being so harmonious in culture, Europeans retain their acute vividness in terms of language, people’s thinking and their social interaction in life. I would rather like to classify people by their region, instead of their nationality. After historic implementation of European Union agreement, Europe has now having very fragile boundary between countries and mostly you don’t notice when you cross a country while travelling; unless you really see the signboards and equipped enough to differentiate between Dutch and Danish and Deutsch! So friends, here I present the first of these blogs, which is about the country I like so much… i.e. who else other than meine Leibe Deutschland, Germany ...... Lets talk about the Good Germans !

The good Germans

I would like to name this starting blog after one of the not so popular, yet very important movie which hollywood has ever produced for Germany. So far, hollywood director's favourite theme about Germany has always been the second world war. Perhaps they are always eager to cast a blond German speaking evil guy, who looks more like a machine than a man, as their main villains in world war related movies. Mostly, these movies always end up showing how bad Germans had been, and how stupidly arrogant they were to loose wars after wars despite their obvious strengths. I am not trying to be a judge of historical facts here, so I cant comment about what happened wrong and what was right. But from my opinion, audience around the world would always like to see their own national hero fighting against an imposed war from a bad foreign guy and finally win the game despite all the odds.

Germans, sadly, have always been at the fore front of bearing this projected hatred, as far as the world war II is concerned....

Wouldnt that be interesting to know that where this entire civilzation of cold hearted warm blooded dumb soldiers, who dont know anything except to follow the orders of their superiors to shoot and kill, has disappeared in recent Germany? Has this nation changed so much during last 60 years that all of such species of people are virtually vanished from their own soil, dear to them as their holy Fatherland? Where has this strong Germanism gone which had causes so much fear and hatred around the world; that all of the world's major powers came togather to defeat a single country and its not so important allies? Has that evil Germany along with its barbaric Germans been completely swiped away from the face of the earth?

I think not..

As far as I believe, it never existed even before...

I believe the Germans were only as bad, as at some time, the Britishers or French had been. Germans were the last civilization of the modern world to wake up and stretch their muscles, to claim their own pie of colonizations. English, Spanish, Portugese, French, all of them had been equally cruel and fanatic when they expanded on their journey to capitalize the whole world. Germans probably were sleeping at that time. But when the woke up, much of the world had already been looted up by these great and greedy naval powers. Had Germans been quicker to start 50 years back, modern world could have witnessed a completley different political power map. But unluckily, till the time they realized it, the world of colonization was already at its fall, and the so called great Nations of the world were very very afraid, that they might not get tossed away from the same evil, that they had created centuries ago. They came togather to fight a single nation and its not so confident allies, and the rest as they say was...

The history....


Coming back to this movie, those who have seen this, probably might have felt how the Germany was crushed to its knees after the world war was over. Those who havent yet seen it, would probably like to know that this movie revolves around the post worldwar Germany, in Berlin, where everybody was interested in taking out what little has been left with poor war-torned and ashamed nation. The story revolves around a American journalist, George Clooney who is somehow related with the wife of a poor German Rocket Scientist. The Russians and Americans are very interested to find this scientist to develop their own Missile programs. In his short role, our spiderman Toby Maguire potrays a typical German chap who is confused and doesnt know what to do with what the War has brought to his country...

Overall, a touching movie, but probably not so entertaining....

Germans, as other europeans, are as human as anybody could had been. They have been as sympathetic, tolerant, peace loving and dedicated as most of the other civilized nations. In fact it is pretty interesting to see that during my trip across Europe, I found Germans always to be more civilized and organised than any other country. Yes, you feel a typical coldness in their behaviour, yet they have the most of the human quality which anyone could expect in a nation.

Otherwise what could have justified the immense productivity of a small country like Germany, which makes it Number 1 exporter of the world, even as of now, surpassing USA, China and Japan. How could a small nation, reduced to almost rubbles, has become so much powerful in 60 years that it still produce worlds finest and costliest machinery, chemical and heavy industries ?
Isnt it fascinating how they did it, while even after 60 years if independence, we are still struggling to adjust our fiscal deficits and curb inflation ?

The things I like most about the Germany are also the things which people hate most about it. Germans are very mechanical, practical, sometimes too much immersed in what they do, and feeling too responsible for what they do. The sense of duty is followed very strictly, and still Germans treat their parents and ancestors as their role models. The country has a very solid foundation which was built by a dedicated and hardworking generation, and which would continue to propel the growth of the country for coming years.

Saturday, September 1, 2007

A new day has come !


Just today, I completed 25 full circles around the Sun, along with the mother Earth..
And so I grew perhaps much mature, much experienced and much wiser...At least this is what people said in their wishes..And I am now looking inside myself.. Did I?
Did I grew much mature? Did I understood the new lessons of life quite well? Did I live upto the expectations of my friends, family..n parents? Did I grew up in something which I was supposed to be? Or is that had been yet another year of existence without a goal or motive?
I look back.. and I think .. and I ponder upon it..

Why do we celebrate our Birhdays? What is so good about completing a full calendar year, which is not so good, when we complete a full calendar month or day of our life? Why everybody comes and wishes me a wonderful new year ahead, year after year, while nobody wishes me a beautiful day the very next morning? Whats so good about an year, which is not so good about 6 months, or 10 years, lets say? An year I think is neither long enough nor short enough span of time.. But anything can happen in even a fraction of a second ...So whats so special about these 365.25 days ? (write your comments plz if you can think of a nice reason :-)

Whatever might have caused our ancestors to choose this time gap to celebrate a Birthday, I am sure about at least one thing..This is certainly meant to be a day to spend with your own self ..Time to be what you are.. Because what I understand is people, in this very race of life, are running so fast that they care about everything, except their own self.. And by this own self, I did'nt mean this body..offcourse many of us take care of it very well..but what I am talking about is the real self, which is hidden inside the layers of flesh, and which is what you actually are..and without which, you are nothing but a non-recyclable un-disposable trash...Do we take good care of that? Do we know that does it really need ?

People might say I am a happy man/women.. I dont have worries in my life except a few.. I dont have tensions in my life except some very little topics. I am always happy, and enjoying myself.. I am good to people, and people are also good to me... Then why do I need to worry about this little crap called soul ? What purpose would that serve ? I appologize but such an existence is corrupted by an overdose of happiness, and engrossed by thick layers of pleasure of senses.. and thats why we often find people complaining..."You see Akash..I have always been good to others.. I have always been truthful to people.. I never did anything wrong to anyone even in my dreams...Then why God did this to me ?" Well... If you think I am being insensitive, irrational and too much critical about those people, dont worry...
Friends, I am writing about none else other than myself here..
Because just like that Alice in the wonderland, I had been living in such a fairy world, where everything seems to be almost perfect..I had everything I wanted in my life, except very few.. and that made me complacent.. I became ignorant.. It started solidifying...And then at last, nature sent a cruel blow for me ..which shattered the castle of the wonderland into mere pieces..and I felt like a gloomy asteroid crashing into the vast desert of real world..and someone came and smiled over me..

Welcome to the real world Neo !

And today I realize what was the reason...The Golden rule always says, everything changes.. To change and evolve is the nature of everything...And if you dont follow this very nature, nature will remove you from the ladder of evolution..Every shape which doesnt fit into this mould of evolution, is discarded and melted again to get casted once back..And so this gigantic furnace of evoltion keeps on blowing, emitting fumes, and producing better and better products, known as living beings..And for me, this day called B'day, which basically reminds us of our manufacturing date, and a warns about the incoming expiry, is a day to reflect upon my condition, ask myself few questions, and to gather the answer for none else other than myself.. It iss a day when I try to be what I wanna be..and thanks for the lovely people all around, who never forget to remind me about it every year..

It had been something special today.. Not just another common day of life...And as I finish this blog, Winamp started playing the beautiful song from Celine Dion..

A new day has come...

Wednesday, August 22, 2007

We don't know what we are looking for.. Do we ?

Many time in life I have felt a strangest pain inside my heart. A huge void, wanting to be fulfilled by something which I don’t know. I started filling it up with anything I could find. I used all my happiness... It went all in vain.. I used my tears, they couldn’t even soak it up. This undefined, unmanaged pain grew like anything till the time I slept under the shadows of meditating tree… And then it subdued for a while.. But promised to come back again… and soon…

And this phenomenon, I found in many other people.. In some or other way. Everyone suffers from this never ending vacuum coming every now and then. There are many times in everyone's life, when one seeks the true meaning of his life, his relations, his expectations and try to retrospect the way he has been living so far. This is a time, when we realize importance of some relationship, vagueness of some other ones. Some try to cover this vacuum by pretending(?) to be happy with friends all around. Some try to forget it in liquor, whims and fantasies and fool their own senses… But I am sure.. Everyone of us has got it.. Little or more…That’s why everybody seems to be searching for the happiness… Isn't it ?

While this inherent motivation to seek a source of happiness is as true as the source of the sorrow, or this vacuum, one may wonder why these things exists in our life in such a form. Why do we feel devoid of something..and entire life we spent in just a hope to find this thing back.. Why this game of loose and win and then loose again is played over and over.. Was God a fool to create this world with so much imperfection and then allow us to correct it ? Why weren't all of us equally happy, equally content and satisfied with each one's life and never try to interfere with each other, making this world a perfect heaven ?

Spiritual wisdom gives us the answer that world is imbalanced because it was supposed to evolve. Things don’t evolve when they are balanced. Its true, also in chemistry, where two radicals don’t interact if they are inert. Only active and oppositely charged radicals attract each other and try to become stable.. And more stable…until they find the perfect equilibrium. In the similar way, spiritual teaching compare the strong will power of God and Soul to meet with each other, causing all the activities of the world…

Coming back to the topic of seeking happiness once again, It seems that our goal of happiness is itself a mirage. Once we find our most sought source of happiness, we immediately start looking for the next. We never find contentment in the things which we were looking for, but still we keep looking. As one philosopher has truly said, "All that is achieved, has to be lost so that you can achieve the next thing." So we end up in an endless loop, looking for something, which we think will make us happy… Finding it.. Keeping it by side..and then again aspiring for the next… Wouldn’t it be worthy to say that we never know what we are looking for ? Or do we know it but just not yet ready to accept it, realize it?

Sunday, August 12, 2007

Mozilla Firefox Startseite

Mozilla Firefox Startseite

Sunday, May 20, 2007

My first attempt



"Its better to be late than never ..."

I am not new to blogs. I have been interested in this new philosophy of bloo...go...logy since long. In fact, where else one could find a clear reflection of one's mind towards his own selves, except in their own words..

The idea of blogging always approaches me as to write something which people want to tell others. Offcourse there are personal diaries.. There are close friends... But idea of posting something in a blog for the whole world to see is clearly intended to speak out the unspoken to all of us. Afterall, there are many things in life which are often unsaid, even after being said so many times.. People sometimes dont listen to what is being said.. In fact, one of the strage observation I have made in my daily experiences is that people listen only to what they want to listen.. Not what is being said .. Isnt it ?

I am feeling quite happy with this new dimension to speak myself out to you and all other so called Netizens of the world. I wish I can make these blogs more truthful, balanced and fair than what they are supposed to be right now. There are things I can write about pages after pages.. But there are something which I am not so comfortable to write about. Its not something which I would like to hide from others... Its simply those chapters of life, where I feel I havent learnt as much lessons as I should have done.

Looking forward to see your comments...

Welcome to my small little blog-world :-)

Cheers
Akash