Life's never so bad that...

Posted by Anantha | Posted in , , | Posted on Friday, October 30, 2009

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A dear friend of mine called me up from UK last night to say that he is returning to India this weekend, as Doctors treating his mother have told that she is having breast cancer. It was evident from his tone that he was broken by that. I tried to fill in some hope and courage in that conversation.
After hanging up the phone, pondering over, I thought that was another whiplash this time for another friend's family from the BOSS above. I say this as another family because; all my buddies have received at least one each in the recent past. A friend's father is suffering from recurring slip-discs, another one's father is living on anti-depressants after some feud with his siblings over some realty, another friend's father is a cancer survivor, a colleague's mother underwent knee cap replacement surgery recently.... And as you know my father is not well from past 2 years. Sorry to say, I am not able to find a single happy and healthy family around.
They say Life is not just about chasing happiness and being happy.. Happiness and sorrow are two sides of the same coin blah blah.. This is all best said and heard in some Satsang. But for a person dealing with all this every day, it is nothing but misery and only misery.
So at this point of time, I can't agree more on the saying, "Life's Never So Bad That It Can't Get Worse..."

Shantaram - quotes 2

Posted by Anantha | Posted in , , , | Posted on Saturday, October 17, 2009

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Any Indian man will tell you that although love might not have been invented in India, it was certainly perfected there- pg 393
Mistakes are like bad loves, the more you learn from them, the more you wish they'd never happened - pg 402

Prisons are the temples where devils learn to pray - pg 404

Hate strangles a man, that's why hate has no great literature - pg 414

The only victory that really counts in prison is survival. Survival is not just about being alive. It's not just the body that must survive a jail; the spirit and will and the heart have to make it through as well - pg 415

People say that money is the root of all evil, but it's the other way round... Evil is the root of all money - pg 444

Pumping iron is Zen for violent men - pg 452

It isn't a secret, unless keeping it hurts - pg 454

Wherever you go in the world, in any society, it is always the same when it comes to questions of justice, We concentrate our laws, investigations, prosecutions and punishments on how much crime is in the sin rather than how much sin is in the crime - pg 472

People haven't stopped believing in love. They haven't stopped wanting to be in love. They just don't believe in a happy ending anymore - pg 504

There's nothing so depressing as a good advice - pg 545

Depression happens only to the people who don't know how to be sad - pg 546

It's better to have a weapon and not need it, than need it and not have it - pg 585

If we envy someone for all the right reasons, we're half way to wisdom - pg 607

A good man is as strong as the right woman needs him to be - pg 645

When the student is ready, teacher appears - pg 708

Wars can't change things. It's peace that makes the deepest cuts - pg 728

The best revenge, like the best sex, is performed slowly and with the eyes open - pg 805

Fate always gives you two choices, the one you should take and the one you do - pg 858

Old habits die hard, lie harder - pg 918

It is always a fool's mistake, to be alone with someone you shouldn't have loved - pg 921

Every human heartbeat is a universe of possibilities - pg 932

Following are the lines with which Shantaram ends:
I'd always thought that fate was something unchangeable; fixed for every one of us at birth, and as constant as the circuit of stars. But I suddenly realized that life is stranger and more beauitful than that. The truth is that, no matter what kind of game you find yourself in, no matter how good or bad the luck, you can change your life completely with a single thought or a single act of love - pg 933


Though I love each and every one of the quotes from Shantaram, following three are my personal favorites.


3. Fate gives all of us three teachers, three friends, three enemies and three great loves in our lives. But these twelve are always disguised and we can never know which one is which until we've loved them, left them or fought with them - pg 632

2. Personality and personal identity are in some ways like co-ordinates on the street map drawn by our intersecting relationships - pg 632

1. We know who we are and define what we are by reference to the people we love and our reasons for loving them - pg 632

Shantaram - quotes 1

Posted by Anantha | Posted in , , , | Posted on Wednesday, October 14, 2009

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I finished reading Shantaram! This mammoth autobiographical fiction is penned by an Australian born writer cum armed robber cum heroin addict cum prisoner cum Jihadi soldier cum slum dweller cum doctor in slum cum Mumbai mafia member cum charity organizer cum screenplay writer, Gregory David Roberts!! Yes, you read it right; all these roles/professions (?) are of a single person in the very same incarnation. Shantaram is a rechristened name for Lin (which again is his name in fake passport) or Linbaba, as fondly called by most of the people in slum of Mumbai. This novel was written over a period of 13 years!, literally in blood and sweat as Gregory Roberts himself says. Twice the manuscript was destroyed by the police when he was being tortured in jail.

After escaping from high security Australian prison in broad day light, Lin travels to few countries holding fake passports and lands in Mumbai. From there begins this inspiring and vivid tale of Shanataram. This book brims with one liners and quotes. I am sharing a few with you guys... Hope this inspires you to take up this must-read-book.

The simple and the astonishing truth about India and Indian people is that when you go there, and deal with them, your heart always guides you more wisely than your head. There's nowhere in the world where that's quite so true. - pg 35

The only force more ruthless and cynical than the business of big politics is the politics of big business - pg 52

The truth is a bully we all pretend to like - pg 62

It is the mark of the age in which we live that the style becomes the attitude, instead of the attitude becoming the style - pg 91

The real trick in life is to want nothing and to succeed in getting it. pg 96

Sometimes you have to surrender..., to win! - pg 115

It's a fact of life-on-the-run that you often love more people than you trust - pg 156

We can compel men not to be bad, but we can not compel them to be good - pg 184

The worst thing about corruption as a system of governance is, that it works so well! - pg 186

There is no believing in God, we either know God, or we do not - pg 194

Suffering is the way we test our love, especially our love for God - pg 214

I think it is a part of growing up, learning to control our suffering. I think, when we grow up and learn happiness is rare and passes quickly, we become disillusioned and hurt. And how much we suffer is a mark of how much we have been hurt by this realization - pg 294

Like most things and most people, slum is not as bad as it seems - pg 329

I dont know what frightens me more, the power that crushes us, or our endless ability to endure it. - pg 336

You are not a man until you give your love, truly and freely, to a child. And you are not a good man until you earn the love, truly and freely, of a child in return - pg 353

The contours of all our virtues are shaped by adversity - pg 379

One of the ironies of courage, and the reasons why we prize it so highly is that we find it easier to be brave for some one else than for ourselves alone - pg 381

Im tagged..

Posted by Anantha | Posted in | Posted on Monday, October 05, 2009

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Sum tagged me..
Below is a list of things that irritate me... that tests my boiling point:
  1. Untidiness and untidy people
  2. Lazy bums
  3. Loud TV volume of my neighbor
  4. Public festivals
  5. The Pop-up ads in websites. They irritate me more when they keep the Close Window button on top left corner. They irritate me to the most when there would be no Close Button for the window and I am just told to wait by a count down timer, stating Ill be redirected to the site in N seconds. What makes those guys think that I visit their news website and get impressed by their forced-upon-ad and will end up buying an Audi!
  6. Poor interpersonal skills
  7. Poor listening skills
  8. Egoistic people
  9. Half baked pots boasting themselves as next Einsteins
  10. Bullies
  11. Plastic smiles
  12. Guys who try to impress any and every girl/female they come across
  13. Reality TV shows and all the daily soaps
  14. Auto drivers
  15. BMTC bus conductors
"Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves"
Carl Gustav Jung
This was mentioned as the GTalk status msg by my friend Suksy. I could not agree more with this saying, as all the above things listed and lot many which I've not listed here, have helped/have been helping me in understanding myself better.

I love people:
  1. Who trust me..
  2. Who have helped in my bad times..
  3. Who are intelligent..
  4. Who understand me
"If you judge people, you have no time to love them"
Mother Teresa
This is another gem of a quote that I admire the most. I have experienced this thing literally happening with all the withering relationships I’ve had in the case of some of my friends, acquaintances and some special people. I make my decisions by mind and not by heart. I am a ‘mind guy’ and not a ‘heart guy’. I wish I could change this virtue of mine… :(
Though these are the things that surface my mind at this point of time, but to see only four entries in the second list against the 15 in the first is surely disheartening. That says I have more things around to hate than to love... :((

I tag Shashi, Saravanan, Suksy n Anonymous aka Deva :)