Fly away, anyway

Early morning sometime in August, almost a wet day, drizzling, I chose to walk in my dhothi that I rarely do. Sun had not risen and nearly cloudy. I heard a flutter all of a sudden and looked around. Wow, pigeons from nowhere were flying up in the air and before I could take up my cell to click a few were far away in their flight to freedom.

A few weeks into my journey at Hinduja Hospital in Mumbai as I lay on the thirteenth floor undergoing treatment for Transverse Myelitis, a disease that parallelized me, I was looking through the window sill and a pigeon sat and after a while flew away. Seeing the flight of pigeon I requested my doctor on a possibility of getting back home, away from hospital. Actually I was seeking freedom from looking at the false ceiling of hospital.

Freedom is the RIGHT to be LEFT alone.

In relationships I heard stories where not allowing enough freedom gets entangled into rough patches. Freedom means much more than probably what the dictionary meaning convey, applies in cases involving facets of feelings.
Most keep tensed relationships under tight controls thus pressurizing to accumulate feelings. To let go is actually not to deny, but to accept a fact that if we cannot influence a situation better let go. Probably freedom helps in enhancing the status of our mind, composes our hearts. It allows us to fly with our wings of thoughts.

“You are born with wings, why crawl through life” – Rumi. Let our fears be free. Through our seventh floor windows we can listen to chirping sounds of birds. That musical sounds provide us ideas of freedom. Especially of parrots that sit on bushes around. Allow us to sing, and dance in our hearts. Free from the perils of what may be going on around. Of the many thoughts that creep in our mind every day only a couple or more need our attention. That itself is a great responsibility if we can fulfill and achieve results.

Between freedom of speech and freedom of action lies a lot. Having worked in cryogenic industry where oxygen is one of the most important gases that I dealt with, I recollect what Moshe Dayan once said – Freedom is the oxygen of the soul. Isn’t that right? That’s our right, to be left alone to wander, exploring new ways and means? That right helps us with chances to improve. To seek opportunities by being free to do what we can.

Freedom is becoming YOU without a need of permission from others. To be labeled as intentionally imperfect. We need to fly out from conventional corridors to unknown frontiers, risk being a rough estimate. After all death is imminent, you like it or not. Rewards that you receive thus are secrets, miracles.

I read a book that stated luck is not that reaches you un-expected. It comes to you when you strike in time, being ready to receive fortunes. If not ready, with homework done, we miss out royalties and rewards. Because freedom is not gifted, we need to work for it. You need to win freedom.

Let go the face masks that we wear often. Be the YOU – YOU like to be. Seek freedom from what others expect you to be; and remove the obstacle like face mask.

That scene on a Thursday evening in Jeddah where my Palestinian colleague Al Khammis witnessed his house being burnt will never ever be forgotten. Being a week end in Middle East we were on sea side when a call came stating that there was fire. Fire had almost finished all that was. Seeing him unperturbed I enquired: “Very sad, very bad”. He had enlarged silence with a smile to answer my exclamatory note of sigh. In less than one year he made up most and added more to his new apartment. I knew then that making success out of a situation is revenge. If everything is lost we are endowed with freedom to do anything. Japanese after World War did that. Recovery flights in a path of freedom. Like the way birds return back in flocks to their abode in the evening to fly out again next morning. Beyond borders, with unlimited freedom to live and move on.

“I could not imagine that the future I was walking toward could compare in any way to the past that I was leaving behind.” – Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom

Image and imagination are two different things; interdependent and a process of reaching beyond using wings of freedom.

Fjord – What’s that?

“Fjord” – I read in news paper as I passed through an article.
My God!

I having passed through a Malayalam medium high school with limited knowledge of English spelling wondered and peeped into Webster Comprehensive Dictionary. Wow, the word exists that lead me to look at the word “fiord”. There it comes, and says see even “fyord”, they are synonyms for the meaning – a long and narrow arm of the sea with high rocky banks. Then remembered a trip to Krabi Islands with my wife on our 35th wedding anniversary where there were such landscapes but never thought to check the word, then. That was 8 years ago. That shows we tend to forget small things, though they make up a lot for our hearts.

That made me curious enough to look at things that I did not know, with a pair of progressive spectacles that I recently bought. Revisit and refocus through that new lens. Yes, stumbled upon glass. Between most of us and glass there is something or other, a love affair either to toast or to buy a crystal or a tinted glass painting.

Some people amongst us are settling down, some are settling and some refuse to settle like butterflies. When life gets confused we need to adjust our focus. Vision improves when we see what is invisible. When you look at things differently, things we look at change. I see these with my new spectacle,
Long back in a program at Kolkata, I made a presentation. I never used a pair of glasses as a youngster, but later used a spectacle and a bi-focal. And at times I used a microscope for dissection to get into details and a telescope for distant viewing to look into future. Having used all those glassed items, what I loved was the use of a cheap toy on earth – Kaleidoscope, made out of broken glass pieces. A tilt and a new picture emerge; a new perspective, objective, new idea that are fresh and glowing a glittery pattern for every tilt.
Our minds should think out of the box and look differences and align patterns in our thought processes that enhance our relationships.

Glass brings back a story most of you may have heard. A newlywed wife on her first few days looks through her window across to see other side. She tells her husband that her neighbor washed clothes that were not as clean as hers. But her husband cleans the glass panes and shows that it was her window glass that was not clean. Perspectives change with introspection. We cannot assign the world dirty unless we clean own glasses. Our perception of others actually is a reflection of ours. Extending glass to stained glass windows it is said: they sparkle and shine when sun sets; true beauty is in darkness with the light WITHIN (us).

Let me turn the page of glass to mirror. In a mirror, we look for effects of time on us but cannot watch our effects on others. Mirror in a way is a true
friend of ours as it does not lie. When we are happy it shows and does not show sadness. There is a story about mirror. Someone sent his son to clean the mirror and repeatedly advised him to do so every day. He did but asked why? Father answers: “This is actually the case with the mind. Clean it every moment, because every moment, just by its nature, dust goes on gathering.” “We will be able to see God on the day on which our heart becomes like a mirror” said Osho. We can see ourselves better, when dust on the surface of mirror gets cleaned. It is the dust of our actions, ego, thoughts, desires and feelings. We need to cleanse to get right refraction of splitting white colour to its magnificent seven that forms like a splendid rainbow. After all, all of us deserve to be beautiful, to self and others. Who does not want to be?

“It is better to conquer yourself than win a thousand” – Buddha.
Mirror yourself, better, more beautiful.