The Car that should be a Steering Wheel

Ego is just an instrument called Steering wheel. But Ego thinks of itself as the Car and makes one believe that this Car is special and there is nothing beyond the needs and fancies of the Car that is better.

Ego is devastating when you don’t watch it, But Ego is so funny and weak when you begin watching it.

Begin watching your Ego and see how Funny and weak it is.

Ego is a tiny little force that you use to move around this universe in this life.

Ego grows and identifies itself with a person’s desires and needs – of wealth, of hunger, of sex (male or female), of creativity, of religion, of profession and in fact everything down to what underwear you are wearing at the physical level and to the thoughts and emotions at the mental level.

Funny thing is if you say I don’t have ego, your ego grows by saying that.

If you remain identified with your ego, you will be pulled wherever your ego wants to pull you working through your senses. This is the only way the ego can feel alive and strong, by fulfilling its desires.

Now let’s say you have concluded that ego is bad and you can kill it and control it by suppressing your desires and shall we say “skillfully letting it go”. Ego doesn’t go away. Ego now plots different other ways to make itself feel strong and wanted.

Ego tries the negative way. It uses anger, jealousy, lust and emotions to keep its identity (People who say are on a diet, are usually vulnerable to such emotions). Because once it begins to bring out the negativity in you, you begin to feel guilty and that guilt is so strong an imprint that Ego will hold on to you using that force. You feel horrible while the Ego feels awesome because now it is revived in a different way.

Everything conjured by the mind as thoughts is the work of Ego, just to keep itself as the master.

Don’t do anything. Just be yourself. Begin watching the Ego. When someone glorifies you, see that your ego is getting massaged. When someone hurts you, see that your ego is getting hurt. The beautiful thing is that if you just remain and identify yourself as that witness, you will see that the ego is the one that needs all of it. It needs praises to grow, it also needs hurts to grow. Ego doesn’t care whether it is praises or hurts. It will use anything currently available for the sake of its growth.

But once you become the pure witness, completely detached from the ego, you will see that the ego will slowly let go off its hold on you. Ego will bow down and just become the instrument called steering wheel. You are no longer elated by praises and hurt by emotions. But beware, ego will try to use your weakest moments to come back up and gain its strength. But as long as you know that it is just your weakest moment (like you are feeling sleepy) then you will awake inside.

All you have to do now is find out the driver and request that to take hold of your car and live life in love.

Ego’s job was to just write this. The essence does not belong to it.

The Journey of Life

It is interesting when you look back at your life. 10 years back you were in a state that is completely different from what you are in right now. Every moment you are changing. Life offers various opportunities at various times and you make use of it, you make good, you make bad, you fall into a trap, you get lucky. It all happens. This journey of life is not the same for everyone and we all experience different things. But at some point during our life, we begin to question the purpose and want to know where does all these ups and downs lead us. We are happy when we are up and we are sad when we are down and we have no clue why we can’t just be happy all the time. When you start questioning deeper, the door opens up for you into the answers of life. This particular part of the journey will be the most exciting and completely surprising. Every single moment you will see something new that you never thought about before.

The funny thing is the door opens up to you in strangest of the places in strangest of the situations. The Universe knows where to get you started. This is why I am always surprised that my journey into the world of truth and spirituality started with a simple cartoon TV show. Can you believe it? Neither can I! The show is – Avatar, the Last airbender. I got curious. The philosophy and concept behind the show was extremely intriguing for me and even though some of the names of concepts were familiar to me, they were totally new because I had not gone any deeper into those. Nevertheless, it happened and the door was opened out for me. I chose to step in. This was 2 years back and I had no idea what I was stepping into, but looking back I am glad where I am and I am glad that I stepped in.

I chose to read about Zen Buddhism and the associated Eastern Philosophy. I picked up a simple book on Zen from the library – Zen, the Beat way by Alan Watts. It was a compilation of Alan Watts’ Radio commentary on Zen. It opened up to the world of Eastern Philosophy and I actually felt ashamed that I, coming from the east, had to travel all the way to a small town in the west to read about the history of the region I come from. Interestingly, Alan didn’t say anything about the religion as such and he covered various Eastern beliefs and how each of them conveyed the same exact underlying meaning. It was a great learning happening on that day. A 100 page book did kindle a lot of curiosity in me. I started searching on what all these meant, I wanted to know more because I believed there is something in this that will offer solutions to me. There was some unknown attraction towards this, I didn’t force myself into this but it was just happening and I was being pulled into it.

I like science. I like to question the logic behind everything and see if there is scientific proof to those. I love science fiction stories and movies. Quantum physics had also fascinated me for a long time. Not at the deep level, but at the high level of knowing what it means. Any show on the Universe, Planets, stars I was there watching. Knowledge was the great thing that was happening to me. But knowledge was causing a tussle within me. I come from a city in south India that is full of temples. I had been to a lot of these temples and Hinduism is a very important part of me. Obviously, when knowledge got to my head and fueled my ego, I was beginning to question all of the religious beliefs. One part of me was becoming the atheist and the other part was the born theist. They were pulling me apart. It was my very own Personal Kurukshetra.

Well now, the war is quitened. There is no more tussle. They are both there, but they don’t fight anymore. They are quietly residing in me doing their own part. Spirituality is not related to any particular religion alone. It caters to everyone, it includes everything. It is the coexistence of the opposites to become the whole. What does all this mean? I will will write about this more and share my expeiriences on various levels. I will try to be as simple as possible because my aim is to not provide multitude of information, which you can get from books and internet (and I will mention them once a while when I can), but my aim is to provide you a simple peek into all of this through my experience.

Silence

This blog has been under a long silence. It is not surprising to me because there are breaks in life and sometimes they are short and sometimes they are long, very long. But what really is Silence?

Is it that you don’t speak any word and that means silence? Or is it that you don’t express anything and that is silence? or does silence mean no noise or no sound? So is that the way this blog has been under silence? But if that is the case, why do I still get hits and some people read it and even leave comments? Just because I didn’t blog for a while, did this blog stop expressing? It was silently expressing. It had nothing new, but its past has been reverberating the walls of blogosphere for a while.

Why am I saying all this?

It is difficult to explain and express Silence in a few paragraphs, but I am attempting this here. I don’t care if this attempt fails miserably, because I have already agreed that it is difficult to explain silence.

When you stop speaking for a while, you slowly start seeing and feeling your body even more than when you speak. You start performing activities with your body by paying attention to your body. But a lot of times this attention span can fluctuate. Sometimes you concentrate very well, like when you are out on the street to take some photographs, but sometimes you just do certain things for the sake of doing like filling a document at work.

Why is this difference?

The difference is our mind. Our mind naturally tends to move towards something that we desire, something that we like, something that we love. So if you love photography, you work with all your senses, mind and heart that your body responds to it automatically. But when you do something that you don’t love, you leave it to the brain while your mind wanders. Mind is a thought machine that can keep running infinitely like a never ending Indian Soap serial. Your mind will think about anything from next meal to the next movie that you will watch.

So if your mind keeps working after you stopped speaking and after your body is done with its activities, is that really silence?

No, if your mind is working out thoughts constantly, it means it is not observing silence. Mind is a part of you that also needs to rest like any other part of you. Mind has to be silenced as well. So, we sleep and we feel great the next day. Sometimes even as we lie down and sleep we keep having dreams and nightmares and we are not really in a sleep state. We end up waking with a bad headache or perhaps wanting to curl back and sleep more.

Silence is thus the state when all of your words, actions and thoughts completely stop.

What would that feel like? For a person like me, it is very difficult not to think. I just keep thinking one thing or the other. How else do you think I come up with such stupid blog posts! A lot of books and resource on the internet can help you find the definition but Silence can only be explained by experiencing it.

If you go by the definition for Silence that I gave above, you can look for it within you and try to find it. Because, in silence there is peace. Your mind is not working, especially not working conflicts of decisions coming from head and heart, which is probably the worst battle that Humans ever fight. The fight within.

How do we stop it and how do we experience it?

The answer is you don’t try to stop it. Because if you try to stop it will come back again with more power and more variations. It is practically uncontrollable by your force. So the answer is find the gap between words, actions and thoughts.

- When you speak, take a pause between a sentence or a few words and enjoy that pause. There is silence in it. Because when you pause your speech there is a tiny moment of blankness before you restart your thoughts, form the words and speak.

- When you perform an action, pause between steps and relish that pause. There is silence in it. For when you stop your action, there is a tiny moment of blankness before you work your mind again and go to the next step.

- When you think, pause between thoughts and meditate on that. There is absolute silence in it.

That is real Silence. The Silence within you. And when you experience it more and more you can feel the silence lengthening and it will give you new thoughts that give answers to your problems and probably a solution to put your thoughts to rest, probably a solution for the problem you were thinking about.

Ever wonder why you feel so great when you listen to some great music? Your conscious mind stops having thoughts and starts loving the music. The silence in you lengthens causing you to be more at peace. This applies to all things you love. When you do what you love, you do it with very less thinking because everything that you want to do just comes to you with no effort. You exert no additional force to think, you just let it flow. You only think that you are thinking while in fact your mind is actually allowing free flow of creative thoughts through the gaps of silence.

A lot of answers can actually be found by feeling that gaps of silence. Experience that silence, that is real silence. External silence is temporary, internal silence is with you all the time even when they are playing loud devotional songs with jarring speakers in your street.

Silence is indeed Golden.

This is just a summary of message that I inferred by reading from a few resources. This is not mine, but this is everyone’s!

Zen and the art of Cooking

Is Cooking an art?

Cooking is just cooking. Cooking starts of as just a process to learn and then It becomes an art in the hands of an able master. A master chef would say that the best food is not made by its ingredients, but the way it is made with it. There is a lot of philosophy associated with Cooking than just following recipes. Recipes are mere guides. The universal truth about cooking is:

“The same dish cannot be made the same way, again!”

Even master chefs would agree to this. They would make it tasty every time, but it may not look or feel or even taste the same every time.

So what has Zen got to do with Cooking? Everything!

There may be a lot of aspects to cooking, but according to me there are 4 aspects that will make a particular food, the best product of art ever.

HOSPITALITY

Hospitality is not just about how you treat the guests. It is about how you bring your guests and set them free in the confines of your environment. The guest can be anyone – a new friend, or a relative or even the family in the house.

This is an aspect of cooking that happens before the chef even enters the kitchen. We can refer this to ambiance in a restaurant to an extent. We always have some anxiety in a new place. Hospitality is about letting that go away and making them comfortable. Only a relaxed mind, a mind that is free, a mind that is sure about its environment, will be able to taste the goodness in a good food. Even Wolfgang puck would need this for his food to taste good.

I know this is abstract, but a little prior knowledge about the guest will help you make this happen. This is where the non-cooking member plays an important role in cooking (see the paradox here?). They can make the person feel comfortable by talking things of their interest or indulging in simple activities of their interest that can free their mind.

This is what they call it as – ‘BE AT HOME’

COOKING SPACE

How would you like to have your food? In a Clean Plate or In a plate that is not washed?

If you answered Clean plate, then why should you start cooking in a dirty kitchen? Space is precious. According to Zen, Space and the Material world go together. They are different entities, yet they cannot be separated and hence they are one. Would you know how to define space if there was nothing but space in this world and vice versa?

So it is very important to start cooking in a space that is clean, that is devoid of anything from your previous stint of cooking. Just like how the universe appeared from the void or singularity, your cooking should also start from nothing or Shoonya (Zero) or empty space.

A Clean space will indicate a clean mind, a clean mind with no prejudices and hence the cooking will start with no silly assumptions from before. You will be creative each time. Why do you think programmers like to write the code from Scratch? Why do you think Mothers clean the kitchen space before hitting the bed every night?

Start with a Clean Slate everyday!

SPONTANEOUS

When Arjuna was learning to shoot the arrow, he was asked what he saw through his eyes, as he aimed. He said he saw the eyes of a bird. When he shot the arrow after that, he didn’t think even for a second. He just shot it.

So if you know what to do and figured out how to do, just do it. The moment you think as you do, you will likely be derailed from the original plan. You may end up spoiling the dish. But at the same time, if you think you can add a pinch of salt more than what the recipe says, then just add it without thinking. That will be spontaneous. Your alterations to the recipe should also happen in a spontaneous way. Also, the alterations you did today, may not work the same way the next day, so don’t bother to take notes of those alterations.

Just feel the flow, and be spontaneous. Why do you think a Mother’s food tastes the best in the world. It is because she knows you more than you think she does and she cooks the food in a spontaneous way which will make you love it! That is why it is called the Mother’s touch. It is her spontaneous alterations that suits the needs of the family, makes it taste the best in the world.

COOKING MIND

What is on your mind today? Happiness or Sorrow or Jealousy or any kind of emotions? Your food that you cook will reflect what is in your mind. So what is the best emotion that should be on your mind when you cook? Is it Happiness or should we not have any emotion at all?

It is Love that you should have in your mind when you cook. When you mind is full of love for your family and yourself , your food will taste fantastic. You can’t hate yourself and still love others, only when you love yourself (which is not the same as self centered) you will be able to love others. It flows from the inside to outside.

A Mother’s food tastes the best because of the love she radiates from within herself to the whole family. We fail to see that in her most of the times, but we sure enough love the food that she cooks. What we like is not just the tasty food, but we indirectly feel that love. And when you tell her that you enjoyed the food very much, that is all the acknowledgment she needs, to know that her love has reached you.

Cook like a mother, with all the love in your mind.

Here is an Imaginary Conversation with the Wife:

Wife: “You don’t cook much or often. All you did was a silly Rasam when you were a Bachelor! How can you even write an article on the art of cooking?”

Me: “Why not! Did Vatsayana, before writing his book, ever …” (Wife Interrupts).

Wife: “Enough, I got the point. Now, Let’s keep your blog at PG!”

Happiness from iPod and a Water Fountain

It was a cloudy saturday evening and we decided to go off on a mission to get some groceries done for the week. After finishing the ordeal that is called Grocery shopping, we thought we might want to check out the new Apple store in our area. This store has been opened up recently and we never got the time or need to drop in, until now. Apple has released a new iPod Nano and iPod Touch and we thought we could test drive it at the store. We drove around looking for the store for a few minutes, our eyes lying on several different things trying to locate a big Apple logo. My 1.5 year old daughter saw the big Apple logo sign first and said “Apple!” and that’s how we found the store. The store was slightly bigger than the one at Country Club Plaza in Kansas city.

How thin can an iPod be?

Apple has put iPod Nano on a strict fat free diet. It has squeezed the jelly out of it using a sugarcane juice maker. Then using a Chappati rolling stick, normally used by wives to beat the crap out of husbands, they have rolled the iPod Nano sideways to give it a thin oval look. This thing was so thin and light that if someone stood upside down in the store on his index fingers, I would have said “huh! Big deal!”.

The screen was brilliant and bright and the interface response time was quick. The colors were fantastic and I loved the Orange, Yellow and Silver of the lot. The screen is too small for playing a video, so it is probably just for occasional peeking and wouldn’t be usable for full length TV Shows or Movies.

The new iPod Nano shuffles beautifully. You just shake the iPod and it plays the next song in the shuffle line. Remember the days when you used to beat the top of your radio to get a clear reception, well this is sorta like that. This is a cool new feature, I don’t have to look at the screen and just have to shake it to listen to a random next song.

Available in 8GB for $149 and 16GB for $199.

Me: “I love it. I want it one now, honey! Can I buy this 8GB one? It is just $149″                                                                     (Picture: http://www.apple.com)

Wife: “You already have a perfectly good iPod Nano!”

Me: “But this is new. Owning this will make me the happiest man, please, pretty please! See even the daughter is loving the iPod.”

My daughter was getting all curious and attempting her minority report stunt to grab hold of the iPods lying on the table. She was very curious looking at all the colorful ipods.

For Bargain Hunters, I saw the older iPod Nanos at 4GB- $99 and 8GB – $129. Just put a word to your relative in US heading to a vacation in India, but don’t point them to this blog!

iPods are also Touchy!

(Picture – http://www.apple.com)

When you get rid of the phone component in the iPhone, you get the iPod Touch. The new iPod Touch is even more thinner than it’s predecessor. Thin is becoming a feature now, a fashionable demand. Whenever you think how much thinner can it get, Apple shows it in the next version of the iPod. iPod touch has WiFi and can do email, Web browsing, Games, Applications and YouTube. In the first version of the iPod touch it was difficult for me to type on the touch screen, but this new version seems much more easier to type and I was quite surprised by that. I wonder what changed, perhaps the software.

YouTube is the key here. It can be very addicting especially due to the simple and cool YouTube user interface on the iPod Touch. So I searched and watched this song and it came out really well on the device.

I also played this song, one of my daughter’s favourite. She always laughs whenever she sees Rajinikanth on the screen. Perhaps, she thinks that he is a comedian and he is always funny, especially due to this song.

She smiled wide as she saw Rajinikanth dance for the Style number in Sivaji.

Me: “This is a cool iPod. I think we can buy this. I don’t want the iPod Nano, I will have this one. It is just $229 and it will make me very happy.”

Wife: “You keep changing your mind!”

My daugther concurred with me as she was now all stimulated to grab hold of the iPod touch playing Rajinikanth’s song on Youtube.

We finished our window shopping and then came out of the store. It was a cool dark evening and the fountain just by the store was glittering beautifully in the halogen light coming from inside the fountain. We stood there for a while to enjoy a calm moment, a gentle breeze, sound of the water flowing in the fountain. It was a happy moment to just look at the fountain in silence.

I didn’t want to buy it and have it for myself, but it made me happy. It wasn’t a cool iPod with cool features, but it made me happy. My daugther was agreeing with me as she smiled wide looking at the water and the light and making attempts to try and catch the flowing water.

I realized two things:

1. Happiness is a temporary feeling that shifts from one thing to another that you like.

2. Happiness is not just in buying cool things but Happiness is in the way you like something around you.

It is amazing to see the wisdom that a child brings to you.

CD in the bathtub

Our daughter loves to conduct experiments. Her field of specialization is to perform a regular act of a toddler and examine the reactions of two fully grown adult species of Homo Sapiens, one from each sex – Me and my wife. She likes to improvise and hence her experiments have been more offline which means she does what she wants to do stealthily without our knowledge and then when we see it with our eyes we react and she takes down the readings, more like scribbling with a black ball pen on the Telephone directory.

In one such experiments of the toddler, I was stepping into the shower on a lazy saturday morning (No, Please don’t picturize this unless you want to suffer from Flu for the entire winter) when my feet stepped on a flat hard object. It was a CD. A CD in the bathtub. I went “arghhhh …..no……”. I then took a deep breath and said “it’s ok, it’s just a CD”. One close look at the CD and I was actually quite relieved. It was a Sony CD-R that I had used to copy some photos from my friend’s laptop. The photos were already added to my iPhoto library and hence this CD can be actually thrown away with no harm done (except occupy some square inches in the landfill and let it sit there for several decades).

Little did I know that I was going to be the subject of the toddler’s experiment and open my mind into self realization. I picked up the CD and wondered what other things it can be used for. I was feeling itchy on my back and used that CD to slowly scratch my back (Again don’t picturize). It felt great, tremendous. All of a sudden, an object whose primary use was to store some seemingly important data, was led into one of its possible other uses – Scratching my back. This CD could very well be doing it’s job of displaying photos on a  computer or a DVD Player but it perfectly worked its way comforting me from the itch. This was the moment of enlightenment.

Are we all CDs in a bathtub? Are we in the right place doing the right job we are capable of and not just the one we are qualified for? Could I have done better as a doctor saving lives rather than sitting in front of a computer all day and working through spaghetti of lines of programs? Perhaps a courageous Journalist? or a Sportsman? Or a Car Designer? Or a musician?

Was MGR a better actor than a Politician? Would Aishwarya Rai have been better off doing Modelling than acting in Bollywood? Didn’t Kumble and Srinath do great as Cricketers rather than Software Engineers? Don’t we dance to the tunes and voice of Shankar Mahadevan rather than do nothing with the Software that he might have written? Didn’t Bikerdude kick IT recently and enter Arts? Is Arnold better being a Governor than the Terminator?

Life doesn’t allow us to do everything at one time. We get to choose and when we do, we don’t know if we have chosen to be the CD on the player or a CD on the bathtub. But what we should do is we should remain truthful and good as the CD and shouldn’t mind being in a player or the tub. Who knows, being in the tub might perhaps make the CD feel better than being in the player.

I have to tell my daughter that her experiment was a success, she is a genius, after I change her diaper.

The Toy Music Story

Last year we bought a Rocker for our Infant daughter. It had a nice little bar toy which when pulled, plays a sweet soft tune for the baby. Our daughter got so fond of that toy she used that to develop her motor skills by pulling it. As days went by she started pulling it so hard that we just decided to unhook it from the bar and give it in her hand.

This toy went through a lot during its life. It plays on a Lithium ion CR style battery and it has been playing on and on. We used to lug this toy around everywhere we go. It became a standard accessory for my daughter and a favourite play toy in her car seat. After she started crawling and moving around she would carry this and drop it somewhere in the apartment. No one can find where it went and only she can crawl around and find it. She does this with other things and we have been unsuccessful to find things like her Sippy Cup, my Watch, an iPod Shuffle and the list of tiny things goes on. She finds it herself when she likes and returns them to us and that is if she wishes.

This music toy went through the same game of hide and seek throughout the apartment and must have visited every room and every corner that my daughter did. We also took this toy with us when we were on our vacation to India and again this toy visited several places there – Our home, in-laws home, Uncle’s etc. Among these places, there was one important place that caused a turn around in the usage of this toy – The Bath tub. Yes, One fine day she took it with her to the bath tub and before I could snatch it off from her, it slipped and fell into the water filled tub. When an electronic item gets immersed in Water, well you can forget the water. We had no hope that this toy would come back alive and replay its soft tunes. We let it dry and tried to pull the handle and No, It didn’t play the music.

We thought it was end of life for the toy and put it aside somewhere. One night, when we were watching the TV, we heard the same familiar soft tune. Was it coming from the TV? Nope. Was it the old music toy? It sounded like, but we couldn’t find where it was coming from. Our daughter was giggling and playing in a corner and no she wasn’t holding it either. It was a mystery. It then started to go off randomly once a few minutes and it was kind of like the toy asking us to find it and recover it. We did try hard and finally found it inside the closet, somewhere in the corner. We pulled the handle but it still wouldn’t play the music. So it was still broken, but now it works randomly. The battery for the toy was not replaceable either.

The Toy went on and on for several weeks playing the music randomly at odd times, scaring the guests, scaring us at night and it finally gave away its last music. The music reminded us of our great times with our daughter as an infant. But the music has now stopped, perhaps it is its way of indicating that our daughter has grown up and she no longer needs that toy. Perhaps, it was the love from the toy towards my daughter that made it play randomly even though it was broken. Perhaps it wanted to and tried to stay back in music with my daughter. Time had its last say.

Everything in life keeps moving, but we don’t want to. We like our old things and we stick on to it as much as we can and as long as it can go. It is hard for our human mind to know that for everything there is an end, there is finality. We don’t get over things as fast as we should. This toy has taught us a lesson. We love and have to love the things that we have in the present, but should also know that it cannot go on forever. When it stops, we shouldn’t. We should expect new things and move on with life. That toy played nothing but the same music over and over again, but it brought me this wisdom.

So long Music Toy and thanks for all the music.

Oh Negative, Be Positive!

Take a look at this picture:

1. If you say you only see a circle, then you are divine.

2. If you say you see a circle with a black dot, then you are a normal human who sees both positive and negative and knows to differentiate between the two.

3. If you say you see a black dot in a circle, then you seem to be a kind of person who sees a negative factor amplified.

(This idea is not mine, it has been already projected in an old K.Balachander Movie, I don’t remember which one)

Now one would assume that a lot of us will fall under the Type 2. I am not a psychiatrist or a scientist or a zen monk who knows about such things, but it takes only a few observation at the blogosphere that we have a lot of people who are Type 3. One controversial post by a blogger is enough to get a flame war going in the comments section. Let me show a few examples and move on to what I want to say:

- My blog post on a song from Sakkarakatti: I am an A.R. Rehman fan. But it doesn’t mean that I will take everything coming my way from him. This album seems to have featured 2 songs from his older albums – Meenaxi and Rang de basanti and ARR is known to do that. So I put a big positive note saying that I loved the song “I miss you da” from that album, but I also made a slight pun by drawing a recycle logo for A as in A.R.Rehman. I got 2 comments saying I did a bad review and I didn’t know what I was reviewing. Well, I wasn’t reviewing at all, I was merely saying I loved a song, which was not commented.

- Hawkeyeview, recently reviewed the movie Dasavatharam. He gave a pretty bad rating for the movie since he thought so. He had the right to not like a movie based on what he saw. Well, for the most part I didn’t like the movie either and I came with something that was not a review. Hawkeyeview was bombarded with about 147 comments and I saw a lot of them like a huge blog post themselves, justifying why the movie is good. These are one timers, fanatics and when you are blinded by fanaticism you will not know where you go. Obviously, they might not have read any other blog posts that Hawkeyeview made, the fact that he disliked a movie out of several other things got him a shower of negative energy.

- 12th man, makes a humble post “Truly Indian” where he makes a statement and wishes that South Indians be learnt and respected for what they are. Well, I am not sure if he got a flame war or not, but I saw several comments that were like essays on his blog post. I am guessing some of them atleast were flames, as I didn’t read all of them.

Update: Here is one more example from the recent happenings in the blogland. The Paratha Wars!

This is what I want to say:

- Learn to see both positive things and negative things and try to differentiate.

- Destroy your negative feelings by breathing in and breathing out. Then, go home by picking the positive things that you read.

- If possible, convert the negative energy into humour or replace it by humour and laugh out loud.

- If you think something is good, there might be someone who thinks it is bad and that is ok. Learn to respect their opinions. Because ultimately what matters for you is what you think. If you liked something so be it, do not go around trying to convince others to like what you liked.

At the end of the day, we are just common people who blog about things that we think. Nothing more nothing less. Our intentions are not to hurt anyone, but to project what we feel. So, treat it light, treat it positive and move on in life, because there are lot of big picture things that we need to worry about or be happy about.

I am not perfect myself at this. Now if you excuse me, I myself have to go back and read what I wrote and try to practice it. Wise people say “Easier said than done”