I photographed this with Netta from the Andaman Islands. What I like the most about this photograph is how the sun rising is spreading its light across everything. From the soothings waves to the rocks to the pebbles, we see its light on everything. This resonates with a theme that I read recently. On a particular note, the example of sun is provided where the sun encompasses numberless things with its light. It says that a comprehensive outlook is required to behold the sun itself in the totality of its light. For the sun not to be forgotten, its manifestation is displayed on every shining object by its reflection. Further I read that all lustrous objects have a refleciton of sun’s attributes such as its light, heat and the seven colors in its light (From the Words). The sun’s attributes is encompassing all things facing it. The same allegory is extended to divine mercy we find around us in several manifestations and specifically in man’s mirror like essence. From the food on our table, to the clothes we wear to our comforts, there’re manifestations of divine mercy everywhere.
Tag: Writing
articulative eloquence.
A photograph of an early morning stroll at Kala Pathar Beach, Havelock Islands captured by Netta. Today, the theme is about words and articulation. “10% of conflict is due to difference in opinion and 90% is due to delivery & tone of voice”, says a famous quote. I’ve felt this to be true through several experiences. Articulation and tone is something that we learn through a lifetime during stages wherein we get matured. I’ve always felt that articulative eloquence is an art. I’ve been fortunate to come across several personalities who are at epitomy of this art and I’m grateful to draw inspiration from them. There’s never a benchmark and there’re heaps to learn to grow.
Reading from 2015 Toasmaster’s public speaking champion’s winning speech,
“Words, when said and articulated in the right way, can change someone’s mind. They can alter someone’s belief. You have the power to bring someone from the slums of life and make a successful person out of them, or destroy someone’s happiness using only your words.. Words have power, words are power, words could be your power. You can change a life, inspire your nation and make up this world a beautiful place. Isn’t that what we all want it? Isn’t that why we are all in this hall? Your mouth can spit venom or it can mend a broken soul.”
mind streets.
A street from Istanbul photographed in 2014. The building seen in the backdrop is a part of the famous Sultan Ahmet Mosque, also known as the “Blue Mosque”. Built somewhere between 1609 and 1616, it is adorned with hand-painted blue tiles. The upper area is decorated with approximately 20,000 hand-painted glazed ceramic in 60 different tulip patterns. The lower stories are illuminated by 200 stained glass windows. It’s filled with majestic Byzantine art elements.
“When you wander in an empty silent street, you wander within the mind of wisdom!” ― Mehmet Murat ildan
wholly alive.
There’s a toll with superfluous consistency in writing. At times, it can slither from its very intent. It’s imperative to be wholly alive.
“The most solid advice for a writer is this, I think: Try to learn to breathe deeply, really to taste food when you eat, and when you sleep really to sleep. Try as much as possible to be wholly alive with all your might, and when you laugh, laugh like hell. And when you get angry, get good and angry. Try to be alive. You will be dead soon enough.”
― The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze and Other Stories
netta’s alchemy
Netta, the first lady of this kingdom has her page released. Tagged as the “millennial experimentalist“, she’s intending to feature slices of memories from her alchemy of thoughts. She’s a trained scientific bio-researcher by profession and has an eye for exploring details and concepts beyond the novel subtleties. Can’t wait to explore, God bless.
Six months to live | Notes
Almost two weeks went in a blink. I couldn’t pen anything for the past two weeks. My mind was overly occupied with other professional and personal stuff that didn’t yield the notes of composure and poise that I specifically need when I write at this place. It’s like a small personally curated garden of thoughts at the border of my mind. I put my heart and soul into every little word, graphic and theme that you find inscribed here.
While looking at some of the old files on the network, I stumbled across this old book I read at school. This came out somewhere in 2001. So we are talking about a book that I read circa 18 years old!
The publisher Plough summarizes the theme of the book as below:
“I wouldn’t trade my life for anyone else’s. If I could choose not to have cancer, and continue my life as it was, I wouldn’t do it.” – Matt Gauger.
You’re twenty-two, in love, and just starting a career. The last thing you’re worried about is the purpose of life (whatever that means) and when you’re going to die. If you think about such things, you certainly don’t talk about them.
With his sociable personality and love of music and basketball, Matt had plenty of friends but didn’t really stand out from the crowd. Then, a month before his wedding, he was diagnosed with cancer. Six months later he was dead. But Six Months to Live isn’t really about dying. It’s the story of how Matt and his family and friends struggled to accept his suffering, and how it changed each of them. It’s about facing (rather than avoiding) life’s most important questions, and – instead of going through the motions – living life to the full.”
Among the books of similar themes, I’ve come across, what rapted me is how positively death was faced by the young man and the pragmatic and inspiring support system of his family and community he had embraced. The 13-year-old me who read it 18 years ago still remembers this takeaway. True stories like this truly inspire me. If we think about it, this sort of support system is what makes our lives truly memorable. That’s some real wealth and fortune if we are blessed with it.
Kintsugi.
I had written on this page about Kintsugi. It’s a very interesting Japanese concept. It’s widely used in art and pottery but what’s even more enthralling is its philosophic extension that’s often found to cognate with healing and history. In this concept, broken and repaired things are often regarded as much more beautiful. It’s often read in the context of Wabi-Sabi, which is basically “to explore the beauty in broken things or old things.” I have read a little book explaining this concept and I felt it was wide implications.
” Kintsugi (金継ぎ, “golden joinery”), also known as Kintsukuroi (金繕い, “golden repair”), is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery by mending the areas of breakage with lacquer dusted or mixed with powdered gold, silver, or platinum, a method similar to the maki-e technique. As a philosophy, it treats breakage and repair as part of the history of an object, rather than something to disguise. “
Barbara Bloom puts it this way: “When the Japanese mend broken objects they aggrandize the damage by filling the cracks with gold because they believe that when something’s suffered damage and has a history it becomes more beautiful“.
Omid Safi writes in his piece “Illuminating the Beauty in Our Broken Places“,
” We value success, wholeness. Unlike this Japanese art form, we don’t yet have a way of looking for what was once broken and has been healed and illuminated. How lovely would it be to find that a cracked and illuminated cup can be even more beautiful than a whole cup. How wise to realize that the broken hearts, illuminated and made whole, can be even lovelier.”
anamnesis.
/ˌanəmˈniːsɪs/. The title of this post is from the late 16th-century Greek word anamnēsis related to ‘remembrance’.
Clouds and sunset light playing a symphony of art in a winter evening at Sharjah, UAE. November 2019.
“A lot can happen in a year. People die. You outgrow old friends and get tired of mundane jobs. New careers come. New friends find your soul. But no matter what, you grow, you lose your mind a bit and most importantly you get a little wiser. Your circle gets smaller because you get stricter with your energy and time, If you are really lucky, you’ll find love inside yourself, inside of friends and family, and just maybe the universe will bless you with a lover that laughs at your really lame jokes.” .S. Mcnutt
Netta shared this recently and it resonates well. Regardless of where we belong and what we do, it’s worth to have a reminiscence of what changed in one year. Need not be always the specific things mentioned in the above quote. It can be anything and could be even related to how you respond to situations, your thought process, the way you plan things, the priorities you weight in on, people you engage and rely on, the general attitude towards events, etc. For me, personally, I believe it has been by and large about stepping back and striving to be more thoughtful in my responses, not to be too impulsive in general terms, making time for building this site by putting in more content and sharing writings, trying to be more positive, being diplomatic and to have a cohesive spirit of togetherness in responses, setting compassionate boundaries, and an earnest attempt to be more professional and objective in my professional assignments. This may be, also one of the years where some personalities whom I admire for their creative pursuit and passion had the biggest influence in me in terms of the time I spent and also the actions they actuate in all that I do. It was also the year when Genie’s cove was set up with Netta by my side, slowly building our little space and being truly grateful for the we-time. Let’s see what next year turns out to be, God willing.
Small Business – Lines of thought
A busy shopping street in Istanbul, Turkey
“When you buy from a small business, you are not helping a CEO buy a third vacation home. You are helping a little girl get dance lessons, a little boy get his team jersey, a mom put food on the table, a dad pay a mortgage, or a student pay for college.”
This is a pretty viral note on the internet about small businesses. I remember my dad forwarding this message and is definitely worth pondering.
In a beautiful article originally written for Holdfast Gear by Matthew Swaggart, he writes:
..One of the many emotions that one can feel daily is pride. No, not the ugly kind of pride that thrives on elevating the self above others, but the kind that warms your heart. The kind that you feel when you see your little boy get his first base hit. Or when you walk your little girl down the aisle. The kind that makes you feel an immense sense of gratitude for gifts, experiences, relationships that you realize you really aren’t worthy of.
Recently I’ve encountered some experiences related to my work that, as I have processed them, have caused me to feel a great sense of pride and gratitude for being among a group of individuals who are really a new breed – a group of individuals who have emerged in recent years as change agents in a new, recovering economy. I’m talking about those in small business…
If we really think about it, we can discover a lot of awe-inspiring stories around us. It’s true that many large brands have had small humble beginnings and might have gone through their struggling stages, but small businesses, in the initial states where they are filled with passion, zeal and hard work definitely resonates the above themes.
Another busy shopping street in Istanbul, Turkey
Mathew Swaggart further writes:
The landscape of today’s economy for a startup can be unfamiliar and treacherous terrain. With all of the heart and soul that is wrapped up in starting a business from the raw material of your life, researching, developing, marketing, and delivering a product becomes a highly personal endeavor
Recollecting a recent experience, few years back, I had used services from Tiny Suprise, a gifting company based in Chennai, India for sending some gifts to Netta for her birthday. Not only did the quality of the product impress me, but the entire experience from the perfect timing of the deliveries to the quality of the packaging was top notch. I have been reading about their story recently. I did have other options which are pretty big names in the Indian online gift landscape but trying a relatively new company gave a fresh experience overall. Tiny Surprise may soon cease to be a small company and may turn out to be pretty huge. The same approach even applies to smaller grocery shops near our homes serving only nearby communities and can’t afford huge online portals with their mammoth logistic empires. Definitely, these are all relative and perspectives can vary for different people, but it’s nevertheless very inspiring to see small businesses transforming struggles into catalysts for growth. The quote at the beginning of this article echoes in my mind. God bless.
A lamp shop in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
Instilling Compassionate Prudence
I always dream of this societal framework everywhere wherein, every person gives his best in whatever they do. Even if he/she’s a novice, I truly believe one can perfect his craft by being proactive, enthusiastic and passionate about what they do. This sort of prudence is something that can positively impact anyone you engage with. On a broader realm, this applies to companies and their engagement with customers and if we move further broad, that’ll change the world. For instance, if somebody is working in a customer care team, he can put in extra effort to bit more gentle and considerate with their clients. Being too gentle may not required by work scope, but that really makes a difference. Similarly, an artist who works professionally can put in extra bits and pieces to make his craft bit more detailed and enriching. Imagine a gardener charged with the task of pruning certain plants as a part of his job. Seemingly monotonous in the first instance, he can put in extra effort to make his output much more beautiful and add his personal touch to it. I had previously written something about “job from the heart“. We’re not talking about meeting customer needs, but exceeding what they expect from you. This sort of a spirit truly brings in sort of fulfillment in everything that we do. This urge of always trying to give our best, improving ourselves and perfecting our craft helps us grow internally. And the best way to be prudent is to make our best efforts to surround ourselves with people who uplift us, encourage and compliment us. This is not a motivational note or something similar, but I always thought of writing about this wholesome approach of instilling prudence in whatever we do.
Be it any work that you’re engaged in, I wish it to be filled with beauty, positivity and a state of mind often manifested in the quality of work we deliver. This sort of engagement with other people in different realms of life is what I believe defines us on a deeper note. God bless you, friends!
