*From To Sathish* - Thread 3 - Page 81

Two places are MOST VALUABLE in the world:
1. The NICEST place is to be in someone's Thoughts, and
2. The SAFEST place is to be in someone's Prayers.

Life is similar to Boxing game..
Defeat is NOT declared when you fall down;
It is declared when you refuse to Get Up'!


A Deaf child says: "For all of you, I am deaf;
But for me, all of you are dumb..."
Moral: Life differs in each perspective. Live the way you want to.

Do you know why God didn't give us the gift to read others' minds?
So that, We could have the chance to "TRUST",
And privilege to be "TRUSTED"!

We have solutions to all the problems,
When they are not ours !!!

Trust is like a STICKER.
Once it is removed, it may stick again,
But NOT as strong as it holds when you first applied it..!
Always take care of relations.

Our HOPES should be like Hair & Nails.
No matter how many times they get cut,
But they never stop growing.

"F-E-A-R" has two meanings:
1. Forget Everything And Run...
2. Face Everything And Rejoice..!
Choice is ours..!!

Memories are always special...
Sometimes we laugh by remembering the days we cried;
And we cry by remembering the days we laughed...!!!
That's Life!

Life is very complicated...
When you have standards, people call it ATTITUDE;
When you are simple, people try to CHEAT you; &
When you cheat others, people call you SMART!

REDEMPTION-169

"Life is all about choices. Choices define us, sculpt us. What will your choices say about you?"? Sheena Hutchinson


Everybody stood aboard their new ship that had just hours earlier belonged to the pirates who were now food for the fishes and stared back as their own ship that had sailed from their native lands burn itself and slowly sink into the water.The whole area was littered with dead bodies and their belongings and it was like watching a nightmare unfold before their eyes and not one soul remained unmoved at the sight and all of them felt fear and their limited mortality wash over their souls.

But the group of women and their few children stood watching with relief and happiness for the impossible had been made possible and slowly one by one came to the bow of the ship where Thenmozhi stood calmly staring at the sea.

They fell to their knees and remained there and waited for their savior to say something for they now were tied to her with the unbreakable bonds of loyalty and gratitude.

Thenmozhi turned and with a kind smile asked them all to stand up ' you do not owe me anything and are under no obligation of any kind.You are all free and if there is something you can do for me,then it is all of you living your lives as you wish to do so.'

A few of the women were of tamil origins and a petite woman who had a suckling baby on her hip stepped forward
' mother,yes i address you as mother for you are the one who has given us a new lease of life and even more importantly saved us from hell where we had been languishing for a long time.You have breathed new life into all our bodies and have breathed new spirit into our souls.We are all ready to die for your sake at this instant for that would give us more happiness than being alive and enduring all that torment that we had to go through.'

Thenmozhi raised her right hand and gently stroked the woman's head and touching her baby's cheek smiled at all of them ' As long as i live and breathe no harm will fall on you.I promise you this.Please go and rest and tend to yourselves and we can decide later what happens to all of you.'

But the women stood nervously looking at each other and then one woman mustering courage ' Mother,we want to be like you.Strong,bold and fearless and with skills to protect ourselves in case we have to face danger again.'

Thenmozhi looked at them ' but i am here and will always be here to watch over you.'

The woman replied ' no mother.we want to learn to fight not only to protect ourselves but to protect you and fight by your side.once we are trained,you need not fight alone on your own but look to us for help and support.'

Thenmozhi nodded ' so be it.But let us reach land safely and then once we are settled in our new destination,i will begin your training.But until then,rest and take care of yourselves.'


long after that,yeshe slowly came towards thenmozhi and gently took her hand and both stood watching the sea.

Yeshe looked up at Thenmozhi ' why do you cry mother?'

Thenmozhi was overcome with grief and wiping her tears ' yeshe,each time i am called mother,i am reminded that i am not even eighteen years old and already i am a mother to all of you while my own blood is lost to me.I just thought back to the few moments in which i glimpsed his beautiful face and it hurt so badly.Sometimes i wonder what the real purpose of this life is and what each one has to achieve before their time is over.'

Yeshe gently held her hand and his thoughts were full of his own mother and how she wept as she handed him over to the older monk and old and young souls stood crying salty tears on a salty sea.

Far behind them the danger that was after yeshe took shape in the form of ten ships and their sails filled with wind as they followed the tracks of their quarry.

I am Thenmozhi.These are the stories of my voyage to a new life and a new destiny.I am heaven and hell.I am fire and water and i will bring peace to you.


"But sometimes when I was starting a new story and I could not get it going, I would sit in front of the fire and squeeze the peel of the little oranges into the edge of the flame and watch the sputter of blue that they made. I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think, 'Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.' So finally I would write one true sentence, and then go on from there." Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast

6 Vayathinilae 17 Pillayamma

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GISQ_qO2OU

Just as i finished posting the last chapter of mother and bhikshuni thenmozhi, i stopped and went into her world and thought how a young woman could cope with so many responsibilities and just as i was deep in thought, a song came to me from my childhood memory and it was so fitting for it was song picturised on our own late Amma,puratchi thalaivi and this song is from the film Annamitta kai.


The following videos are dedicated to all you women and most importantly our heroine Thenmozhi and her new army.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7EPmZa3CdWE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXBZ7r6_0-c

This is an article by paddy aka paddu or padmaja my classmate where she writes about our late Amma and what her feelings are.

The iron butterfly


How easy is it to be me...

When I start my day with my morning cuppa, the most pressing thing on my mind is planning my schedule for the day - juggling school/football pick ups, deadlines, meetings and of course, the day's menu.

A tough day for me, is a clash in my schedule or a tantrum-filled day with my tween.

But however tough a day is, a spontaneous hug from my little one or a kind word from my spouse will be all the pick-me-up I need.

I've also been lucky in having a father who lived to 75, providing with solid emotional support and a mother who was and always will be my conscience.

Still, I'm on edge most of the days, juggling schedules, handling irate maids, unresponsive customer-care, annoying telemarketes and so on. So many times in a day, I wish for some peace so I can just curl up with a good book.

*****

I have no political affiliations whatsoever, but in the last few days, during the wait and watch game on TV, which was followed by mourning of the iron butterfly, I couldn't help feeling ashamed of all the cribbing I've done about my everyday life.

Here lies a lady who faced only trials and tribulations throughout her lifetime. Insults, injuries, court cases, imprisonments, were all part of a single day for her.

People ranted against her, enemies plotted against her, others waited eagerly for her to stumble and fall, but she held her ground through it all.

Without a family to support her.

Lost her father at 2, her mother in her twenties, no husband, no child to warm her heart.

She faced tough challenges on her own. And not just faced, but fought back with courage and determination.

Her only emotional support probably was the adoration by the masses.

Now, I don't know, nor do I care, if she died of natural causes or was slow-poisoned by her trusted aides. But whatever it was, she'll always be an inspiration to me and many other women of this city.

I suppose till now, we, the educated & supposedly worldly-wise women have been openly jeering her autocracy and winning elections with freebies.

But we did have a grudging admiration for her grit.

The same men who pulled at her sari and tried to shame her in public years ago were prostrating at her feet now.

The same arrogant men who threw her out of the cortege all those years ago were now reverentially carrying her body in one.

The feminist inside each one of us cheered. She won us all in the end.

I saw the sea of people milling about, tearfully seeing her off on her final journey,waving two fingers that symbolises victory to the two leaves.'

But on this solemn occasion, I felt it was more like they were saying "Victory to you, Amma! In death, you conquered all!"

Rest in peace.

So many thoughts,so much outpouring of grief and here is one article i found that was so beautifully written that i had to share it with you all.

A life long disagreement. A lump. A void

I cant remember the last time I had a lump in my throat when a politician died. I do today. I surprise myself because I have never voted for the person, hated her brand of leadership and rarely agreed with her for the most part of her career. But her career also panned my entire adult life and I realize today that the battles we fought together and against - me as a citizen and she as my representative, have defined a large part of my life. A part that ended today. So it is difficult to differentiate the personal from the political, when it comes to emotions on this day.



The Misfit

I felt for her as a ten year old boy watching the live telecast of MGR's funeral, when she was man-handled out of the gun carriage carrying his body. Amidst hardened coterie men, she was an odd one out in that picture. I couldn't help thinking that she somehow just did not fit in. If you had told me that day that the same cadre will fall on her feet willingly and worship her only a decade later, I would have been very happy with the World's justice mechanism.

I had to take 25 C to my school and every time it crossed church park, there will invariably be someone whispering "that is Jayalalitha's school". I was proud of her. There is no country man outside my state who had / has a Chief Minister who topped the state in the Matriculation exams. She just seemed to never fit in! Years later, I would Love to show off her interview with Simi Garewal (1999) to my friends from elsewhere. I even bought a collection of short stories by Somerset Maugham, because she mentioned it as her favourite book in that interview.

I did not root for her in the first election that ensued. It was also the first that I actively followed in my life - a time when the term "Amma" referred to someone else in TN politics. An election that fascinated me as a boy because at barber shops and family functions - my biggest source of political discourse at the time, it was pitched as the battle of the wife Vs the lover. And marriages have always won in this part of the World. As she would point out in an interview many years later, almost all of the female leaders in Asia have been related by blood or marriage to a male leader. Though on this occasion, both lost.

The walking tragedy

What happened in the TN assembly in 1989 shocked me even as a boy. Probably the first of many incidents that would disillusion dravidian politics as a concept for me.



When I read about her in those years, her loneliness drew me to her. The child who lived away from family, the girl who was forced into an acting career she did not like, the man who took her entire youth as hostage, a lover and a political successor who was just left to fend for herself...her melancholy was not just sad. It was mythical, somehow. And magnetic.

The Hatred

I protested against her and got lathi charged during the 1996 elections. That campaign involved morphing of her images onto photos of goddesses and religious icons. It had outraged all of Loyola College at the time for some strange reason and we walked down Sterling road in protest. In that phase of my life, my political views were being shaped more by anger than by inspiration. And those were not her finest years. That made it easier.

My Mom spent her entire career in the state government and when their union strike in the late 90s was met with an unprecedented iron fist, my anger against her found a new high. I was still too young to fathom the concept of decisive governance. But that notwithstanding, she was at that point more a despot more than a democratic leader.

I hated her for the hours I spent at traffic signals on my bike, under a scorching sun, so that her never ending entourage could cross. They usually stopped traffic about 30 mts before it crossed a spot.

It was around this time that the corruption allegations surfaced as well. But the TN polity has always been comfortably numb with the concept of corruption. The hero worship which is the base of politics in this state, almost justifies it to a certain extent. But nothing justified THAT wedding! The obscenity of wealth on showcase during that week was probably what alienated her forever in the minds of families like mine.

The resurrection. Of sorts.

In 2001 when she won, I was heartbroken. But something had changed. There was a pronounced objectivity in her actions and even a cynic like me started to believe in her intent. It was as though she suddenly realized that time was short. Most importantly, she started fitting in. Or may be we just reconciled to her norm. Either way, my views also matured from the personal to the objective. It was becoming less about the entourage and more about the economy. We profited from the real estate boom around the IT highway, but I could also see a vision of some sort taking shape. What happened from an industrial perspective in that term was unprecedented for the state. It is also the reason why I later found humour in the so called Gujarat story, which was a much lesser product (on most indices) compared to Jaya's, except it was marketed better.

I admired her when she banned religious conversions in the state in 2002. I cannot think of a more decisive and rational move at the confluence of religion and politics, made by an Indian leader.

I admired her for being the ONLY politician in the south to have a consistent view on Sri Lanka throughout (pro Eelam but anti LTTE). This, while I disagreed with her vehemently on the subject.

I always felt secure with her representing my state's interests with the central government. Whether it was Kaveri or GST - no one could mess with her. No one did, until the end.

I am not a fan of welfare politics but I could see that behind the megalomania of self branding across the canteen, pharmacy, salt and water, there was an agenda. I don't buy into that agenda but I respected the plan. I have eaten at Amma canteen and the food was great! It is an administrative gold standard that she was able to maintain the food and the premises at such high levels of quality, even after many years. In a country of great ideas' and bad executions', she was miles ahead as an administrator.

In many ways, that is the real void she has left behind. We have so few of such managers left.

Her legacy. My lump.

I hate her brand of leadership. I loathe her for creating a party and a government with no second line. Not even a spine. I find it insulting to the intelligence of the entire state. But that is also the tragedy of Jayalalitha. This is evidently not her chosen career. But one she stuck on because of her bullheadedness - one that she handcrafted for survival. In many ironical ways, hers is the antithesis of a tamil cinema script - A leading lady, a hero who is also her villain and an ending where she has her revenge but somehow still manages to eke out a tragedy.

I hated how she treated my city's icons. She converted a 450 Cr structure meant for the legislative assembly into a hospital and was threatening to shut down my favourite city library as well. Why? because she could. Because they were created by her rival. I hate her for making my city's street corners into filthy wine shops.

I hated her party men for what they did during the Chennai floods when hundreds of relief volunteers were forced to stamp her stickers on supplies. I hate her for never speaking about it.

I am scared by the leadership void she has created in my state. I fear for the future of my city. But as I see her last procession to the burial ground, it is a strange love that rises up to my throat. Because I know that person. I know her story. We were in this together. I know her mistakes but I also know her injuries. I know what she had to endure. All I want to do is to hug that 15 year old girl from church park, before she was pushed into the tumultuous world of fame that will eventually consume her and tell her that it will be all be OK. We will all be OK.

Breathe


He and she entered their teens with wonder and dreams of magic
Both waited,eagerly for first love to shoot its arrow
and that magical first kiss that sends shivers down your marrow
lips touch,lips brush,lips breathe and it is just that
one kiss that you should never miss,first and it maybe the last
for the moment goes,time travels and even memory fades
but it lingers in your soul long after age has dried your lips

She and he entered their twenties,magic of the first kiss
still a strong bond and so they both say I DO
and he and she get hitched

time goes,hair goes,youth goes,skin goes
and yet that first kiss still binds and glows
she looks at him and he looks at her
and they ask each other are you happy
and then they wonder what next

he and she are now well and deep in the forties
busy battling life,priorities and its many bills
health goes,wealth goes and they sneak away in stealth mode

he looks at her and she looks back
lips touch,lips brush one another
and she breathes into him and he breathes into her
and the magic is back and it is still strong and it still glows

All of you who sat glued watching the last journey of Amma would have been surely moved,touched and even cried as i did for the music that was playing was so hauntingly beautiful and it was so fitting for the last part of ammas journey to the other side or where ever it is we all go when we die.The music piece is by a and american artist called Thao Nguyen.
Thao Nguyen (born March 19, 1984)] also known as Thao, is an American singer-songwriter originally from Virginia and now based in San Francisco. She is the lead musician of the band Thao & the Get Down Stay Down, and has collaborated with Joanna Newsom and Andrew Bird.[ Outside of the band she has collaborated on projects with several artists including Merrill Garbus, The Portland Cello Project, and Mirah. Her music is influenced by folk, country, and hip hop

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u69CkyLJUKU

Thao Nguyen Xanh - Sad Romance

Introspection


waking up is becoming so much easier
rising to see first light is sooner than later
it is a beautiful transition
as light slips between the folds of darkness
as love slips unseen into the darkest and deepest corners of our soul

dark one moment and then gray next moment
and then light all of a sudden
no words for poetry,no colors for painting
for none can capture or do justice
but then how can you for the moment is magical
just as how each one of us feels love and its coils

so near,so far is how you can describe,express and create
and it remains unblemished and unreachable

i sit after my warm up run and sweating and breathing heavily
i wait in the darkness as light glimmers,shimmers far away on the horizon
and sometimes i have dogs nudging me with their cold noses
and cocking their head seeing me in rapture
and whining and questioning what i was feeling

i close my eyes and i am back to my childish,childhood days
and there i see myself at the window waiting for light
to break free from the darkness of the night

members of my family lie sleeping in rows
as if laid as dead bodies after a traumatic incident
and i wonder what the drama was all about

oh how i wish i had begun to run,walk and fade into the morning light even then
back to the rising sun and back to redemption
i rise and it is a brand new day and the sun breaks free
of its anchor in the east and starts swimming towards the west

the crows take wind into their wings and take flight
caw,caw,caw they cackle and argue outside KFC
and i wonder if the chickens that went in
went cluck,cluck or bak,bak
the caws alert even the doggies around me
and with a grin they slip,slide and hurry
as the feast of last night is brought outside

birds,dogs gather around the green container
and wait as the koravan is on time
and he empties what was thrown in and soon
there are growls,threats and even ugly fights
over the bones of deep fried chicken

a couple of cows bully their way in
and ignoring the bones that goes against their bones
bury their wet noses to root out anything green,edible
and vegetarian and soon lose interest and amble away
but not before dropping dung bombs on the bones
leaving the dogs wondering and very frustrated

i rise smiling and wondering the same
life,beautiful life and yet sometimes
god does drop dung on our plate
and even when it is filled with food

Ae Dil Hai Mushkil


Govinda,Govinda were the words whispered by my lips as the movie faded with Ranbir still leant over as the director decides to spare the audience of her imminent death due to cancer.

Rendu mottai heads'a paartha ' govinda,govinda sollama vere enna solluvaanga.The movie starts with ranbir talking to the camera and taking us back to where it all started and at one point i thought ' ranbir,mike,singing' and again muttered another mike mohan,sorry mike ranbir' for it is getting a bit stale watching ranbir holding and crooning to a mike.

You are left wondering what the purpose of this whole film was and you conclude that love can happen anytime and to anyone and that is regardless of whether they are already in a relationship or worse married.

If you sing enough,cry enough you will get your lover although Karan johar took the safe route of cancer to kill and separate the lovers.Googly by the director telling us that life and love too can bowl a googly at any point in ones journey.

Beautiful,gorgeous are the people who play their characters and all of them as is the norm in hindi films are dressed in even more beautiful clothes.

Aishwarya rai remains drop dead hot and sexy and yet her face and expressions remain so near yet so far.

There are some good moments where every actor displays his or hers acting skills and yet are often let down by the story.

I grudgingly accept that great story telling in indian films is more or less gone and now the stories are all about living in the moment stories and covered by glamor,great locales and one or two great songs and last but not the last,hype,publicity and marketing.

See,as i can understand it,even bad films recover their money in the end for people will flock to them if they are given enough youtube spots and are dragged in by one great songs or scene.

Take Kabali for instance when the whole world mesmerised by the fantastic trailer and soundtrack flocked to see the film and the majority came back scratching,shaking their head and many cursing that they had been duped by the trailer that had millions of hits on Youtube.

I actually smirked and enjoyed the performance of lisa haydon who i think had the toughest role but did a great job as a vacant eyed and voluptuous lisa.See,crying and bawling is easy but comic timing and performing comedy scenes is tough,mighty tough.

In the end it is Ranbir who stands tall and carries the film with his range of expressions and body language and i am sure he is a lot more to offer in the coming years,but only if the roles and stories are good or otherwise they will flop massively like Besharam,bombay velvet etc.

Maybe it is time Ranbir did a real masala action film.Just for a change of image and away from the mike and close up shots of his baby brown eyes.

Some great english love songs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=450p7goxZqg




https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaKr9gWqwl4

Only Love Can Hurt like This-Paloma Faith
Your kisses burning to my skin
Only love can hurt like this