The Truth Behind the Myth

Whenever you get a new pack of cigarettes, you must first unwrap the pack and flip the lucky. The lucky is the first cigarette removed, which is turned around and replaced in the pack, destined to be the last cigarette of the pack smoked. The lucky is just another one of those signs that bond seemingly different people together into a sort of 'cigarette' club. This is because, in all the world there really isn't anything as beautiful as smoking. Why is this done???

I've been trying to find the answer to this for a long time.. So here, I'm asking you all the following questions:

1. Do you follow this custom?

2. If you do then what is the reason you do it?

3. Where did u think this custom originated from and why?

My theory:

Some Asks: "can i bum a cig?"

I answer: "um...well, all i have left is my lucky"

Someone then says: "oh okay, that's cool dude. i'll ask someone else."

Would really love to learn where this tradition/custom started..

P.S. - I'm marking smokers/Non Smokers/ Quiters/ Druggists/ rocknrollas/ people been in rehab/Not been in rehab etc etc.. Just to get mixed view on the topic..

Guzishta, Guzare Zamane Ka Ehsaas

Theme - Film on the history of How Hyderabad got its name.
Muhammad Quli Qutb Shah, a ruler of the Qutb Shahi dynasty, was the founder of Hyderabad City. In the year 1591, he laid the foundation of a new city which he called Bhagyanagar after his beloved queen ‘Bhagmati’. Bhagmati embraced Islam and took the name Hyder Mahal and consequently Bhagynagar was renamed Hyderabad after her.
(We got approx 4 hours to write the script, Get costumes, write the screenplay, shoot the film & Post production was a long 11 hour job)

Hands wrapped around

A small baby in your hands.. How does it feel? The tender hands, when they get hold of your finger. It’s a eternal feeling. It’s a feeling of responsibility, a feeling of pride, a feeling of extreme joy. You are being trusted, trusted as if you are God. You are responsible for the life of the little one. He/ she is comfortable in your arms, and you are ready to do anything for him/her.

I am travelling home in a 9:53 fast local from Bandra to Churchgate. And sitting right in front of me is a man carrying his little daughter in his arms. She is sleeping peacefully. Her little hand wrapped around her father’s index finger. It’s a moment to capture and hence I am now going to ask him if I can click her daughter.

These little ones are the greatest gift to us animals. They are the ones which make us humans. So keep loving them throughout your lives. :-)

15 Moments of Darkness

Today I re-discovered Bombay. After staying in this city for almost 3 years. I realised that there is a whole part of the city which I had never seen. I don’t know if you all have seen this part as yet, or even if you’ll have I don’t know if you have thought about this part. Its 12:35 am right now, and living on the 12 th floor I can see the whole of south Bombay in darkness. No lights, no sounds, no movement, it almost feels as if there is no life.

Yes it is one of those rare power cuts in this part of town. And it’s been there for the last 15 minutes. But these 15 have been good enough for me to see the other side of the city- DARKNESS.

The cool breeze still hits me and still gives me the chill, but it is different, I am enjoying it. I have been standing on the window for the last quarter of an hour and enjoying what I am seeing.

It is the first time in Bombay that I can see the stars, And more importantly make out the constellations in the sky. I can see the Orion, the warrior showing itself after a long-long time. It’s as if he has come out of the ashes, as if it has been dead all this while. It has been hiding from the city, in fear I guess. Or was it that it was just too illuminated in here to see it.

It difficult to pen down this moment but it is an eternal feeling which I get as I stand.

Perhaps living in second largest cosmopolitan in the world, we have forgotten about such experiences. It like we have forgotten of the life before Edison. Today we can just not live such a life. But today it’s very important for us to see what lies on the other side, the darker side. We need to realise how our ancestors had lived throughout there live without all this technology, without all this illumination present in our every day lives. It’s very essential for us to at least think about what it would have been for them, how they must have managed their living. Its like we have taken all this for granted. And our future generations will take us for granted for different reasons but they will never think about us and just say in their minds – Thank You.

It’s essential for every single individual to see from the perspective of others, others who are living without what we have, others who cannot afford it, others who did not have it during their age, others who have not experienced what we have. So from today onwards everyday lets spend some time and think about such a life. Today I thank all the greats for whom we are living the way we are- THANK YOU. J

Living

We consider living to be a positive action. Doing, thinking, the everlasting bustle, conflict, fear, sorrow, guilt, ambition, competition, lusting after pleasure with all its pain, the desire to be successful-all this is what we call LIVING. That is our life with an occasional joy, with its moments of compassion without any motive, and generosity without any strings attached to it. There are rare moments of ecstasy, of a bliss that has no past nor future. But going to office, anger, hatred, contempt, enmity, are what we call everyday living, and we consider it extraordinarily positive.

The negation of positive in the only true positive. To negate this so-called living, which is ugly, lonely, fearful, brutal and violent, without knowledge of the other, is the most positive action. Are we communicating with each other? You know, to deny conventional morality completely is to be highly moral, because what we call social morality, the morality of respectability, is utterly immoral; we are competitive, greedy, envious, seeking our own way- you know how to behave. We call this social morality; religious people talk about different kinds of morality, but their life, their whole attitude, the hierarchical structure of religious organisation and belief, is immoral. To deny that is not to react, because when you react, this is another form of dissenting through one’s own resistance. But when you deny because you understand it, there is the highest form of reality.

In the same way, to negate social morality, to negate the way we are living- our petty lives, our shallow thinking and existence, the satisfaction at a superficial level with our accumulated things- to deny all that, not as a reaction but seeing the utter stupidity and the destructive nature of this way of living- to negate all that is to live. To see the false as the false- this seeing is the true.

Love

Is it possible to be responsible for the whole mankind, and therefore responsible for nature? That is, is it possible to answer adequately, totally to your children, to your neighbour, for all the movement that man has created in his endeavour to live rightly. And to feel that immense responsibility, not only intellectually or verbally, but very deeply, to be able to answer to the whole human struggle of pain, brutality, violence and despair? To respond totally to that, one must know what it means to LOVE.

That word love has been so misused, so spoilt, so trodden upon, but we will have to use that word and give to it a totally different kind of meaning. To be able answer to the whole there must be love. And to understand that quality, that compassion, that extraordinary sense of energy, which is not created by thought, we must understand suffering. When we use the word understand, it is not verbal or intellectual communication of words, but the communication or communion that lies behind the word. We must understand and be able to go beyond suffering; otherwise we cannot possibly understand the responsibility for the whole, which is real love.

So to understand this responsibility for the whole, and therefore that strange quality of love, one must go beyond suffering. What is suffering? Why do human beings suffer? This has been one of the great problems of life for millions of years. Apparently very few have gone beyond suffering, and they become either heroes or saviours, or some kind of neurotic leaders, and there they remain. But ordinary human beings like you and me never seem to go beyond it. We seem to be caught in it. And now we are asking whether it is possible for you to be really free of suffering.

To be sensitive is to Love. The word love is not love. And love is not to be divided as the love of God and the love of man, nor is it to be measured as the love of the one and of the many. Love gives itself abundantly as a flower gives its perfume; but we are always measuring love in our relationship and thereby destroying it. Love is not a commodity of the reformer of the social worker; it is not a political instrument with which to create action. When the politician or the reformer speak of love, they are using the word and do not touch the reality of it; for love cannot be employed as a means to an end, whether in the immediate or the far-off future. Love is of the whole earth and not of a particular field or forest. The love of reality is not encompassed by any religion; and when organised religions use it, it ceases to be. Societies, religions and authoritative governments, sedulous in their various activities, unknowingly destroy the love that becomes a passion in action… Love is not sentimentality, nor is it devotion. It is as strong as death. Love cannot be bought through knowledge; and a mind that is pursuing knowledge without love is a mind that deals in ruthlessness and aims merely at efficiency.

Unconditional Freedom

I don’t know if any of you have noticed, early in the morning, the sunlight on the waters. How extraordinarily soft is the light, and how the dark waters dance, with the morning star over the trees, the only star in the sky. Do you ever notice any of that? Or are you so busy, so occupied with the daily routine, that you forget or have never known the rich beauty of this earth- this earth on which all of us have to live? Whether we call ourselves communists or capitalists, Hindus or Buddhists, Muslims or Christians, whether we are blind, lame, well or happy, this earth is ours.

Do you understand? Its our earth, not somebody else’s; it is not the rich man’s earth, it does not belong exclusively to the powerful rulers, to the nobles of the land, but it is our earth, yours or mine.

We are nobodies, yet we also live on this earth and we all have to live together. It is the world of the poor as well of the rich, of the unlettered as well as of the learned. It is our world, and I think it is very important to feel this and to love the earth, not just occasionally on a perfect morning, but all the time. We can feel that it is our world and love it only when we understand what freedom is.

The problems of the world are so colossal, so very complex, that to understand and so to resolve them, one must approach them in a very simple, direct manner. And simplicity, directness, do not to be found through conferences, blueprints, or the substitution of new leaders for the old. The solution obviously lies in the creator of the problem, in the creator of the mischief, of the hate and the enormous mis-understanding that exists between human beings. The creator of this mischief, the creator of these problems, is the individual, you and I… We are the world, and our problems are the world’s problem. This cannot be repeated too often, because we are so sluggish in our mentality that we think of the world’s problems are not our business, that they have to be resolved by the United Nations or by substituting new leaders for the old. It is a very dull mentality that thinks like that, because we are responsible for the frightful misery and confusion in the world, this ever-impending war.

To transform the world, we must begin with ourselves; and what is important in beginning with ourselves is the intention. The intention must be to understand ourselves and not to leave it to others to transform themselves or to bring about a modified change through revolution, either of the left or of the right. It is important to understand that this is our responsibility- yours and mine- because, however small may be the world we live in, if we can transform ourselves, bring about a radically different point of view in out daily existence, then perhaps we shall affect the world at large, the extended relationship with other.

We as human beings separated, isolated, have not been able to solve our problems; although highly educated, cunning, self-centred, capable of extraordinary things outwardly, yet inwardly we are more or less what we have been for thousands of years. We hate, we compete, we destroy each other; which is what is actually going on at the present time. You have heard the experts talking about some recent war; they are not talking about human beings being killed, they are talking about destroying airfields, blowing up this or that. There is total confusion in this world, of which one is quite sure we are all aware; so what do we do? As a friend some time ago told me: “You cannot do anything; you are beating your head against the wall. Things will go on like this indefinitely; fighting, destroying each other, competing and being caught in various forms of illusion. This will go on. Do not waste your life and time.” Aware of the tragedy of the world, the terrifying events that may happen should some crazy person press a button; the computer taking over the man’s capabilities, thinking much faster and more accurately- what is going to happen to the human being? This is the vast problem we are facing.