Who Am I ?

I am always torn between choices whether to seek the light or sink into the darkness. I tend to swim in different directions and many a times both ways.

Being well liked for my kind and sympathetic nature, my charm of manner and carefree nature has impressed many. I am compassionate, and unless pushed to the wall, will rarely hurt anyone. I will rarely hurt anyone even when pushed to the wall, because I’m not exactly the kind with big muscles. I apparently am very caustic, but the sarcasm is not always direct, so it generally goes unnoticed. However, it lands me in a spot every once in a while.

I find it difficult to conform and follow rules or to cope with discipline. When the going gets really tough, I don’t get going. Instead I may try to flee down river and hide amongst the vast schools of fish swimming lazily around. However I’m not weak-willed enough to indulge in alcohol and drugs to escape. Alternatively, I pour out my emotions in creative arts. I put my emotions in music, short stories, idiotic writeups, some unnoticed blogs, or ridiculous ramblings and sometime poetry. None of them stands to any standards to artistic proclaims, but I don’t care.

I find myself in knowledge of almost everything in the world, but strangely stand dumb on what I should know. I have my values to life and none but me only can alter and play with them. People find me introvert, but I find me rebellion.

I seldom open up to those around me on a personal basis. My world is very secretive and confined for anyone to peep in. Although I might be impractical and somewhat uneasy with the real world, I’m brave and prefer a lot of independence. I like to delve in spiritual matters and I’m fascinated by the occult, especially the connections it has with Quantum concepts like entanglement and teleportation. I can argue lengths over any of them. I tend to think that I’m psychic, because my dreams can be strange and portentous.

I always remember one thing even if I get amnesia and forget everything else: I am the culmination of all that has gone before, I’m the symbol of death and eternity, I am the distillation of all the other signs. I am the best there is, the best there was, and the best there ever will be. Yet I’m not Bret “The Hitman” Hart.

I nicked it from Astroyogi(reasons that you might encounter unbelievable raise in vocabulary standards) and added liberal amounts of masala to it.

Weekend Escape :Aga Khan Palace

I have grown LAZY.

And probably for the same reasons I have neither being neither traveling nor writing for long. Probably this lazy IT culture is taking a toll over me. Today, fortunately I have some time and mood to write. So here it goes.

Aga Khan Palace, though being is the heart of the city, is hardly visited. Off the busy Pune-Ahmednagar Highway, as you move into the compound, you will feel like being taken back good 50-60 years in history. Strangely the entry gate of the palace is locked and you will be entering from the Exit. It is a beautiful sunny Sunday afternoon and the place is occupied by few lovebirds, a family out on a picnic and me.

As you move close to the palace and you carry some sense of architecture, you will surely be scratching your head as to under which architecture to place it. The pillars are typical English-Roman type, the roofs have dooms giving it an Islamic touch. As you walk a little closer around and look around, you might spot a Rajputana style fountain, making you more confused. Anyhow I and my confused mind moved into the palace and were greeted with this information that Aga Khan Palace was an act of charity by the Sultan Muhammed Shah who wanted to help the poor in the neighboring areas of Pune who were drastically hit by the famine.

I smile spread over my face appreciating the fact that the city which today feed people from almost all part of India, didn’t had enough to feed its own people some 120 years back. Well this is life for you. There are only three rooms made to display for public. Rest all are out of bound for commoners. The first two rooms stations some of the poorly managed photographs and hand scripts of Gandhiji. The frames were missing, there were whitewash stains over the photos. It was a total mess here. Arguably it is a national heritage structure. Thankfully there was a photo exhibition by Maharashtra Tourism Board which saved the day for me.

The third room had some of the personal belongings of Gandhiji and Ba. One thing that kept with me was a hand weaved saree of Ba. The amount of dedication, hard work and believe that must gone into it was so very clearly visible in every thread of the saree. I actually stood for a good 5 min just looking at it. This was the best part of my visit to this place.

Leaving all this aside I moved toward the Samadhi Sthal and paid my homage to Ba and Mahadev Desai who breathed their last here. The campus today holds a Khadi Gram Udyoug Kerndra and a play school, all to help poor and needful women around the city.

The campus has some really spacious and well maintained lawns (a good place for a family outing). It’s been more than 3 hours around, and I’m seating on a wooden bench outside stupidly staring at the building. The sun will soon call it a day and streetlights will take over. It seems like I have moved into a third world, where life still runs at a pace it should. Allow me to take one last deep breathe of this world before I move back to my “World”.