Innovation Without Disruption

Crispy Roomali @ The Great Punjab, Koregaon Park

The Man Who Wasn’t There

"Yesterday upon the stair, I met a man who wasn’t there,
He wasn't there again today, I wish, I wish he'd go away."

Everybody has a story. At least everybody likes to believe he has a story. The story is born – little by little – from his experience and from his imagination. His belief in the story grows and grows and he folds everyone into it. The fold is sometimes like two palms together that make God listen to a prayer. The fold is sometimes like the leaves of a book that delicately hold a flower forever. The fold is sometimes like the waves of a tsunami that take away entire towns with it. And the fold claims that which enters it. The prayer is held on to, till it’s granted. The flower suffocates till it lives forever. The town drowns till it’s etched in history. And the story consumes whoever plays a part in it.

His story is born – little by little – from his experience and from his imagination. Truth and fantasy mingle. Who knows what’s what, not even he who owns the story. He basks in the glory of his tale and gathers together everyone who he wants to play a part in it. He assigns roles, replacing people with others, but the roles must continue. He builds a character for himself and sure enough everyone plays his or her part to further his image of himself. The story is his and he will let others be only what he wants them to be. He will color his canvas himself and others must accept the hue he offers them.

As his story moves on, a person steps out of it. After all the person has her own story to relay and many other stories to live in. But she remains a part of his life forever. She remains a character from his story forever. Even when she no longer knows him. Even when she does not know how the story has gone. For she has been colored in a color only he knows and she sees herself through the colored lens he gave her.

As she collects new colors from here and there, she sometimes opens the closet in her conscience and brings out the carefully stored away red lens that he gave her. She sees herself through the lens, she sees herself through his eyes. And she does not see the red of love for she sees the red of guilt. The color is the same, the lens is the same, yet how the meaning of the color has changed. She thinks of him, as yellow as ever. But she sees ego and self-centricity in what she had imagined to be happiness and energy.

Surprised, she steps back and drops the lens he had given her. She tries to save it, she cannot let it break, she has held on to it for too long. But it falls hard on the floor and breaks into seven pieces. She gathers the pieces and starts to put it back in her conscience when she chances upon her image in the mirror. There she is, mauve and loved. There she is, mauve and magical. There she is, mauve and balanced. And she knows that red was never her.

She has the broken red pieces with her. Color she would not be colored into. She hopes to return it back one day, when he is ready to see her as mauve - as mauve as she was, as mauve as she is and as mauve as she will always be.

What will I do with what I find in me?

"for whatever we lose (like a you or me)
it's always ourselves we find in the sea"

- E.E. Cummings

I must lose my envy and let my mind fly free .

I must lose my anger and not be snappy.

I must lose my hangups before I am beyond recovery.

I must lose my ego and look beyond you and me.

I must lose my fears of ridicule and mockery.

I must lose my shyness and open myself to discovery.

Only then will I find the actual me.

Only then will I be truly happy.

But if I lose all those that is me,

What will I do with what I find in me?

Shantaram - Titbits Of Wisdom & Wit

"Men reveal what they think when they look away, and what they feel when they hesitate. With women, it’s the other way around."

"Anything that can be put in a nutshell should remain there."

"Fate always gives you two choices, the one you should take, and the one you do."

"The truth is a bully we all pretend to like."

"Optimism is the first cousin of love, and its exactly like love in three ways; its pushy, it has no real sense of humor and it turns up where you least expect it."

"Most loves are like that ... You heart starts to feel like an overcrowded lifeboat. You throw your pride out to keep it afloat, and your self-respect and independence. After a while, you start throwing people out - your friends, everyone you used to know. And it's still not enough. The lifeboat is still sinking, and you know it's going to take you down with it."

"Indians are the Italians of Asia and vice versa. Every man in both countries is a singer when he is happy, and every woman is a dancer when she walks to the shop at the corner. For them, food is the music inside the body and music is the food inside the heart. Amore or Pyar makes every man a poet, a princess of peasant girl if only for second eyes of man and woman meets."

"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 them."

"The past reflects eternally between two mirrors - the bright mirror of words and deeds, and the dark one, full of things we didn't do or say."

"If fate doesn't make you laugh, then you don't get the joke."

"Nothing grieves more deeply or pathetically than one half of a great love that isn’t meant to be."

"Lovers find their way by insights and confidences; they are the stars they use to navigate the ocean of desire. And the brightest of those stars are the heartbreaks and sorrows. The most precious gift you can bring to your lover is your suffering."

"At first, when we truly love someone, our greatest fear is that the loved one will stop loving us. What we should fear and dread instead is that we won't stop loving them, even after they are dead and gone."

"A dream is a place where a wish and a fear meet. When the wish and fear are exactly the same, we call the dream a nightmare."

"A good man is as strong as the right woman needs him to be."

"Silence is the tortured mans revenge."

"There is nothing so depressing as good advice, and I will be pleased if you do not inflict it upon me. Frankly, I am shocked at you. You must know this, surely? Some years ago I suffered such an offensively gratuitous piece of good advice that I was depressed for six months afterwards. It was a very close call - I almost never recovered."

"Wisdom is just cleverness, with all the guts kicked out of it."