Confidence - is it needed??

There are talks about confidence building everywhere. Everyone is asserting to be confident. Confidence building is probably a multi-million dollar industry in itself. But let us pose a question to ourselves. Is confidence an essential thing to live? My answer would be an emphatic NO. Let me give my explanation.

            Confidence is required only when the person is in the state of diffidence. The state of diffidence is a kind of negative state. To negate that state, confidence is required. In other words, both confidence and diffidence are not realities. Both are a kind of beliefs. If knows about oneself properly, in that state of being, there is neither confidence nor diffidence. In that state, there is self knowledge.

            Knowledge should be placed higher than belief. No doubt, belief can do wonders. But, knowledge is always more potent than belief. Because knowledge is always about NOW, always facing the reality. But belief evades reality.

Be Like WATER!!

There is one scene in the movie “Enter the Dragon” in which Bruce lee preaches a kid. One particular dialogue says ‘be like water’. If one contemplates upon this, this has a lot to teach us.

            Water doesn’t have a shape of its own. It takes the shape of the container in which it is present. That’s its inherent quality. It doesn’t distinguish between the kinds of the container. It just takes the shape without any pre-judgment. Once it is out of the old container and placed in the new one, there will be no traces of the old one.

            This principle can be applied to our personalities. The personality should not be rigid. It should be fluid-like. In fact, it is better to have no personality! In life, we face gamut of experiences. If we don’t have any personality, we can act completely to the challenge at the given moment. If the personality is strong, the action will never be complete because, personality is always of the past. One can never act completely in the present if he/she is burdened by the past.

            It is time for us to leave the burden of the past and act completely at the present.

The 'Nice Guy' problem

Some of us have this desire to develop and cling to the ‘nice guy’ image, to be good to all and so on. First of all, the very idea is flawed. I am beginning to see the truth of it of late. It is impossible to be nice to all. However you are, there will always be a set of people who talk nasty about you. So, trying to please everyone is really futile. It is better to be haughty than to ‘try’ to be meek.

            I can talk with some amount of authority on this because I am a victim of this disease of pleasing everyone. Today I had to encounter one of my class mates who thinks himself intelligent (he’s an atheist, I think most of the atheists have this problem!!) in a verbal feud over some matter. I was dominated. These days I am dominated quite easily I thought. Then suddenly truth dawned upon me and I decided to document it. This was all the problem of ‘nice guy’ image I judged.

            In his famous book, 7 habits of highly effective people, Stephen Covey has written quite well about this. He classifies the people of above image as lose/win people. To quote him” win/lose people love lose/win people because they can feed on them. They love their weaknesses- they take advantage of them. Such weakness compliments their strengths. But the problem is that lose/win people bury a lot of feelings and the unexpressed feelings never die: they’re buried alive and come forth later in uglier ways”

It is time to strip the image and come clean!! 

Another name of arrogance: Bangalore autowallas

Everyone living in Bangalore has at least once experienced the arrogance of the auto drivers I believe. I have had the ‘privilege’ to experience it many a times. I don’t say all are like that, but at least more than 70% are like that.

Some of the malpractices that they do: say the meter is not working and demand the money as they like, rig up the meter so that it shows inflated readings, demand one and half the amount even before 9:30 or 10 p.m, or the most common one: give an odd look at you and reject to take you to the destination which you wish to go.

I had been in many places like kolar, chickballapur, tumkur, mysore but, nowhere did I see this much of arrogance and indifference towards passengers. If you ask them to take you to the place that they don’t wish to go, they see you as if you have committed some crime and reject to come outright.

A few months ago, on an evening I had to go from srinagar to vijaynagar to meet a famous personality. There were no direct buses in that route and I did not have our bike that day. So I had to resort to the autos. I had asked at least 8 autos before I got one. All of them rejected to come. Some of them gave an expression as if I was asking a part in their property. Even the person who agreed to come asked more money. I had no other choice but to oblige.

Today also I had a similar experience. We came from mysore to satellite bus stand. We stay in Kalidasa Layout (srinagar ) which is not even 2 km away from the bus stand. Many autos declined to come. Those agreed to come were asking 40 rupees. The actual amount would be at max 19 rupees. This is just an example how the autowallas of Bangalore are looting people.

This is not my opinion alone. If one does a survey of opinions of people about the auto drivers, I am sure that at least more than 90 percent would not have a good opinion about them. There should be some authority to regulate the autos something similar to the pre-paid system exists in mysore and/or some better parallel system should evolve. Otherwise, there will be no end to their own-made rules.

CBI : Congress Bureau of Investigation!

CBI,as we all know is an autonomous body.But there is no denying of the fact that, it will be controlled to some extent by the party which is in power at the center. But the congress handles CBI in a way that makes mockery of the very institutional existense. If ever people had complete faith in one investigating agency, that was CBI. Now the CBI out of that belief, people are not in a position to trust any investigating agency.

Congress, time & again has used CBI to meet its selfish ends.We can take innumerable examples like those of Lalu Yadav,Mayavati etc. They are using the CBI literally like dogs. The latest entry to this is Mr.Shah of Gujarat.I am not commenting about the role of Mr.Shah in Sohrabuddin murder case but just observe the timing of this.

When Indo-Pak talks have failed miserably and when the prices have reached the peaks, congress had this old weapon of CBI.They wanted the whole attention of the Indian people to shift from those burning issues to the issue which was less significant. And they made that insignificant issue to look like a very significant very successfully. The "SICKular" English media always backs up congress without any exception.

If one looks at present day India, one can say even god would find it difficult to rule it!!!

The greatest hate : Indifference!!

Ever hated anyone?I bet, you would have, at least at some point of your life.What happens when you hate a person intensely? when you hate a person, he/she occupies a very prominent place in your mind more than a person whom you love. This looks strange.But, it is really so.

The very purpose of hate is defeated when you actually hate a person.He/she occupies the center stage of your mind. If the hatred is very strong,then you take most of your decisons based on this central position. In a way, the person whom you intend to hate will actually be in charge of your life!what a tragedy!!

Instead of this approach, if you are just plain indifferent about the person whom you hate, these problem would not arrise. Over a course of time, hatred will die a natural death.

THINK before you hate anyone next time!!

English media does it again

If you observe these sardesais,& burkha dutts you will observe one thing in common. These people wear the mask of secularism and by default fail to understand the essence of being secular. This is not the problem of only these kinds of people. This is the problem of most of the people who think themselves as the paragons of secularism. In India secularism means appeasing the so-called minorities and not giving a hoot to the majority.

Let’s take a very recent example of what happened so-called god’s own country kerala. A group of religious fanatics cut the arms of a professor. But this incident did not become big news at all. This incident found a place in the news channels for a day or two. But just remember when Varun Gandhi spoke that he would cut arms of those who try to harm Hindus, it became a prime news for the channel for over a month. For that, he had to spend some days in jail as well, even though he came from the most influential family of Indian politics.

This is the disadvantage of being a Hindu in India. You can’t speak out your mind. No matter what atrocities others do to you, you are bound to be tolerant. If you react, it is branded as 'saffron terror' and the English media has mastered the art of branding. I conclude by saying there are no enemies to Hindus except Hindus.