You are the best thing that has happened to me after a long long time.
The less I say, the more I express.

जीव घुसमटला कि अस वाटत कि कोकणातल्या एखाद्या निर्मनुष्य किनाऱ्यावर अमावास्येच्या रात्री जाऊन जोरात किंचाळावे. इतक्या जोरात बेंबीच्या देठापासून ओरडावे, कि खोल समुद्रात, अमावास्येच्या अंधारात एकांकी पोहणाऱ्या मास्याला हाक ऐकू जावी.

एकटा त्याचा जीव, एकटा माझा जीव.
अंधार आणि घोंघावता वारा.
उसळत्या लाटा आणि माझी कर्कश किंचाळी.


त्याला पण कधीकधी वाटत असेल कि कोणाशी तरी बोलाव, त्याच्या अंधारमय हताश आयुष्यातल्या गोष्टी कोणाला तरी सांगाव्यात, कोणीतरी त्याच्यासाठी कान बनाव.

माझ ओरडून झाल कि मी शांत राहेन त्याच्यासाठी, त्याच्या व्यथा ऐकेन. तो गोल गोल फिरत राहील आणि बोलत राहील. बोलून झाल्यावर विचार करेल कि हा कोण मुलगा आहे आणि माझ्या आयुष्यातल्या निराश गोष्टी का ऐकतोय म्हणून. मग तो मला विचारेल आणि मी त्याला उत्तर देण्यासाठी हळू हळू पाण्यात जाईन. चेहऱ्यावर मंद हास्य ठेवून.

पाय, ढोपर, मांड्या, कंबर, छाती, हनुवटी, नाक, कान, डोळे, कपाळ, केस. मागे पुढे होण्याऱ्या लाटा. खारट  ओलावा आणि मनशांती.

जिथून आलो, तिथेच संपेन. तोही आणि मीही.

There is no such thing as a happy philosopher.

The God who looked like a man

I was unsure of what to feel while watching him walk down in heavy steps with a stump in his hand, for the last time. Never thought it would happen to me but now that I am reminiscing and playing the videotape in my mind of last 16 or so years that I have watched cricket, my throat is having this seldom pain of choking, eyes are just a little bit more moist than usual and a feeling of hollowness is creeping in my mind. I know it's temporary, but what is not.

It's officially over; my childhood, my younger years, the days of standing by the big glass windows of TV shops in school uniform while on the way back home in order not to miss watching him play, the days of continuing the interrupted work after he was out, the days of sadness after he failed to deliver our unrealistic expectations, the days of euphoria after his glorious drives and centuries. Aaah, those precious days. How can one man, whom I have never ever met and probably will never meet, fill my heart with nostalgia and sadness?

The game must go on, in fact it will, maybe with more grace than ever in the footprints of the legend. Coming generations will look at his numbers and might acknowledge his mastery. Maybe these numbers will be surpassed, maybe the records will be broken, maybe new legends will walk the crease but that divine aura, that sheer joy of watching a little humble man wearing those fat pads, that helmet with the flag of a country which I so deeply love and carrying that heavy wooden thing, will be blatantly missing. I will still watch the game, I will sometimes still have those foolish and baseless superstitious rounds of holding my pee, blinking my eyes five times in one second, keeping my fingers tangled in particular constellations and alike, until we win a tense match or while someone special is in the 90s; but certainly that someone special will never be there, he retired today. Sachin is retired. The feeling will take months to sink in, maybe more than that and when it has, I will look back and realize with a sense of unexplainable feeling "I lived in the times of Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar".

Thank you very much Tendlya, for being so greedy to play all these years and for giving us a truly memorable childhood and moments. Those memories will be cherished. Thank you so very much from the deepest of my heart.

(Photo taken somewhere from the internet.)

The Good Brahmin by Voltaire

"I wish I had never been born!" the Brahmin remarked.

"Why so?" said I.

"Because," he replied, "I have been studying these forty years, and I find that it has been so much time lost...I believe that I am composed of matter, but I have never been able to satisfy myself what it is that produces thought. I am even ignorant whether my understanding is a simple faculty like that of walking or digesting, or if I think with my head in the same manner as I take hold of a thing with my hands...I talk a great deal, and when I have done speaking I remain confounded and ashamed of what I have said."

The same day I had a conversation with an old woman, his neighbor. I asked her if she had ever been unhappy for not understanding how her soul was made? She did not even comprehend my question. She had not, for the briefest moment in her life, had a thought about these subjects with which the good Brahmin had so tormented himself. She believed in the bottom of her heart in the metamorphoses of Vishnu, and provided she could get some of the sacred water of the Ganges in which to make her ablutions, she thought herself the happiest of women. Struck with the happiness of this poor creature, I returned to my philosopher, whom I thus addressed:

"Are you not ashamed to be thus miserable when, not fifty yards from you, there is an old automaton who thinks of nothing and lives contented?"

"You are right," he replied. "I have said to myself a thousand times that I should be happy if I were but as ignorant as my old neighbor; and yet it is a happiness which I do not desire."

This reply of the Brahmin made a greater impression on me than anything that had passed.

Excerpt taken from a book which, I am more than delighted for that, have opened the heavy doors of dark fathomless well of philosophy for me. The book is a fun ride explaining with exceptional clarity and a skilled writer's prose gems like Spinoza, Kant, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Greek dudes (and other significant ones) playing their genius minds with ever confusing metaphysics, unsolvable ontology, delusional epistemology, society, morality, truth, reason, belief, beauty, instincts and the "lovely elusive God". The greatest success of the book is that amidst this chaos of thoughts and ideologies, it fathers sheer fondness for philosophical spaghetti and unleashes the hunger within for true wisdom. The book is called as The Story of Philosophy by Will Durant.

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