RANDOM THOUGHTS

Life does not give us a second chance. We only live once. The eternal truth is that whoever is born will eventually die. No one is immortal.


"I will pass this way but once, if there's any good that I can do, Let me do it now for I'll never pass this way again" said Glen Campbell.

It is deeds which keep us alive in the memories of people eternally. Al-Sikander or Alexander, Ashoka, Chanakya, Gautama the Budhha, Socrates, Archimedes, Plato, Michael Angelo, Leonardo da Vinchi, Milton, Byron, Keats, Shelley, Raskhan, Tulsidas, Surdas, Mirabai, Tukaram, Gyaneshwar, left indelible marks which have immortalized them. They gave to mankind thoughts, leadership, hope and used their language to show us the beauty of nature, and the finer qualities of life, love, devotion and a fight against the strictly laid down norms of society.

We are bound by the society in which we live. We are conditioned by the rules and boundaries set up by the social norms that are in practice. Rules are made to make life more organized and to follow some common practices and procedures. Rules then turn into rituals. Some of our great Indian poets and philosophers found the need to revolt against the strict norms of society. They brought about changes and improved the lives of a lot of people.

The birds, bees, animals, and all forms of life, rise when the sun rises and go to sleep with the coming out of the moon or setting of the sun. Their life is governed by the light of the day. The bigger animals hunt when they are hungry. They live peacefully otherwise. Their life's purpose is to eat and rest. They also nurture their young ones until those young ones are capable of finding food for themselves.

We humans have evolved to such an extant that we can govern our entire life. Each one of us has the capacity and intelligence to think for ourselves and decide the course we want to take in spending the time between birth and death. We only live once. If we remember this eternal truth may be we would like to live our life in a slightly different manner.

Once we have sufficient to sustain ourselves, perhaps there is a need to look at the direction where we are headed. Changing course or taking a better path to enjoy the beauty of nature and live happily may not be too difficult. It is a wonderful world and we have the capacity to make our lives more useful and beautiful.

Time and tide wait for no one, it moves on. We have to move with it or we get left behind, and we may wake up like Rip van Winkle and not know the world at all. How fast time moves and we move from one decade to another, is visible when we see those who were born in front of us, move from school to college, to a career. That's the moment when it suddenly hits us that we have advanced so much in life. The first time I realized that time had moved on was when my son Anurag passed out from School, it hit me then that my child was now moving out in to this world, where he would fend for himself. A part of my life was going away to find a separate foothold in this world. Then when my daughter Chaitali decided to pursue a professional course and not do ordinary graduation, another part of my life went away. She was deciding her course of life. (On the left is a picture of me with my mother and daughter.)

Looking back sometimes we cannot see where the years went and how we spent that precious time. Longfellow said: “Lives of great men all remind us, we can make our lives sublime, and departing leave behind us footprints on the sands of time."

Beautiful thoughts, provoking thoughts, leaves me with the thought that there is no other time but NOW. One can make a beginning "NOW" to make this world a better place than how we found it. Finding a goal, wanting to do something new is often daunting and looks too formidable, scary and unachievable, but then it is just one step that is needed to be taken to begin an arduous journey. It is possible. One step at a time is all that is needed to undertake the longest journey.