We are free !!!

This is the least I can do towards celebrating the 60th year of my Free India - spare a few minutes, take pride in our freedom and cherish a few patriotic moments.

I enjoyed the ARR 'Jana Gana Mana' revival again on Google Video. Here's a link - Jana Gana Mana. The instrumental pieces followed by the vocals of artists that we all respect revere and praise, enriches the experience. It doesn't feel merely like a national anthem. It feels like a song that boasts our pride and greatness and reminds us of our glorious past. This rendering is truly a masterpiece !!! I loved the 2 seconds of D K Pattamal; would have loved to see M S Subbulakshmi as well.

In all these wonderful years, I must have sung this song at least 4000 times - 12 full years at school (not counting weekends or holidays). It never felt any more important than a ritual prior to a day of school. I wasn't bound by a "moral duty" to rise or stand in attention when I was not required to. I've watched military parades a few times. I can't recall the last time I cared to feel proud about any of that.

Call it waking up to the fact or identity crisis, it sure feels a lot different now.

We are probably the most diverse nation in the world. We are home to more than a billion people (1,129,866,154). We speak more than a hundred languages (see !!!). We have remarkable religious diversity (here). We were ruled, robbed & ruined several times over.

But hey - we're going great guns !!!

Compassion - A precious gift

Albert Einstein :

"A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."

I think it's a precious gift to be able to rise above all reason and experience a desire to help a total stranger through even a small gesture of kindness. To adopt such a great virtue from adversity is just marvellous compassion. It takes a lot of selflessness to empathize when you are on the verge of being consumed in self-pity over misfortune.

The story of Larry Stewart - who was all this and more - greatly inspired me. Inspired by the kindness a diner owner showed him on a cold winter night, Stewart inherited the virtue of random kindness and practiced it for 26 years - dressing up as Santa and giving away money to strangers on Christmas nights. His kindness and generosity grew each year with his prosperity to an estimated $1.3 million.

"I see the smiles and looks of hopelessness turn to looks of hope in an instant," he says. "After all, isn't that what we were put here on Earth for — to help one another?"

Here's some news on him - Secret Santa

Pema Chodron :

"When you begin to touch your heart or let your heart be touched, you begin to discover that it's bottomless, that it doesn't have any resolution, that this heart is huge, vast, and limitless. You begin to discover how much warmth and gentleness is there, as well as how much space."