'...apne hone pe yakeen ho gaya'

every journey outside my zone of comfort serves two-way, stretches the boundary of comfort and makes me reevaluate the elements causing the supposed discomfort.

There are readers - indifferent, random. And there are readers for authors – for Dickens, Naipaul or Amitav Ghosh et al. And then there are readers like me disavowed by either – for defecting fronts brazenly. This indiscriminate reading particularly did make me read some of most fascinating writings in my life so far. And that fact more than justified my being and remaining an unpatterned reader forever!

I believe in serendipity. Sometime when I was experiencing the fabled reader’s block, unsure of what to pick and what not to, a well-read friend lent me ‘Jonathan Livingston Seagull’...something that launched my lifelong association with rebel Seagulls and humans. Until then I neither knew Richard Bach nor his great Gull!

Book Review, being a subjective exercise, liberally allows the prerogative to share one’s stand however weird it may sound. And that’s what made me take a bottom-up view of this timeless classic...and reflect if it were the sheer juvenile urge to revolt against authority or some other lofty idea, that couldn’t be realized having conformed to norms, which made Jonathan an outcast, though a glorious one...and eventually return to the ‘Breakfast Flock’ to forgive…and leave a legacy. He knew how a Rebellion varied from Insubordination. 

The business of freedom does not flourish in haste, brooks no compromise. I feel the reader needs some handholding around the storyline. It’s about Jonathan the Seagull who, seized with a passion for flight, defies the limitations of seagull life what eventually leads to his expulsion from their society. Undaunted Jonathan continues his flight to soar higher. He, an outcast, joins a society where every gull enjoys flying as much. Here he tastes the ‘unlimited idea of freedom’. Jonathan then returns to the Breakfast Flock to forgive and share his immense experience. Jonathan leaves his legacy through Fletcher Lynd.

I would have merrily agreed to Roger Ebert’s stamping this novel as ‘banal’ had it ended with Jonathan’s departure and his aspirational joining of the new flying club. But it didn’t. What startled me more than anything was his conscious return to his flock to share his wisdom. Forgiving was an obvious ‘Passing condition’. His conversation with Fletcher, his protégé, starts with ”Do you want to fly so much that you will forgive the Flock, and learn, and go back to them one day and work to help them know?” – a lesson he learns through life and vigilantly passes on cased in a query. Almost everyone is Jonathan – but in parts. Some revel in knowing they can fly, some really fly, some fly beyond and some fly beyond to return to root. And those who return consummated become Jonathan the Seagull. The breakfast flock would always be around!

Read the novel…and if you have already, be Jonathan!

Death is theraputic.It seems through 'Death' Rajesh Khanna could reclaim the fabled stature he lost long back - something that made people bury legendary professional hatred, estranged acquintances return...and a nation cry. 

I've always been more fond of the ladies he danced with than him...specially Mumtaz. Ransacked papers for some byte from Tina Munim (his cure during mid-life-crisis) but didn't find.

Enlightenment happens on Treadmill - on a surreal aimless walk when the endless stock of music shuts you out of the noisy without...you keep on treading an unending path yet stay stationary, anchored...that's what enlightenment is...funny!

The vision of 'the woman' varies irreconcilably across men (being a masculine thought I suppose and I don't mind being wrong)...took a closer look at Billy Joel's lyrics of '...she's always a woman to me' or Holmes' unusually unflinching deference for Irene Adler ('To Sherlock Holmes she is always the woman') and surprisingly found them to be hardly different. One always looks for matching unlikeness. Interesting! It is always wise to keep 'the woman' and 'the beloved' apart...is it?

Meditation is a journey within. Wonder how does it help when done in a crowd. Is it a meditation fair where all can put up stalls? Or is it all about saying that 'hey, I can do it alone and with some thousand others too'? What a funny feat! 'Cos when you are within, you become your sole company and that's what meditation essentially aims at - aligning one with 'oneself'. 

Can we think of a world without excesses...emotional, material or physical? Is not Beauty a creation of physical excess, is not Art a fallout of creative excess, is not love the prettiest manifestation of emotional excess? 

People desire a taut frame and magazines abound with tricks on shedding that aesthetic flab. Centres are erected to prune curves...and ground fantasies perforce!
What a pity! Doesn't it render the world flat, flabless, unvarying, dull? Conceive of a world where people only execute and don't dream - as dreaming is a luxury, excessive, prohibitive pattern.