13/11, Paris attack.

Your thoughts become your words, your words become your actions, and your actions become your habits. After hearing the news of terror attack on Paris, this quote makes more sense. When an armed gunner engaged in mass shooting without any second thought of all the innocent people present over there and indulges in suicide bombing at several public places like cafes, restaurants and concert hall is nothing but the result of  provocative violent thoughts filled in these terrorist’s mind. This we have witnessed from time to time. Be it 26/11 Mumbai attack, 11/9 New York attack or 13/11 Paris attack.

What is now known as habit was once just a thought. A thought based on Jihad. The word which appeared many times in Holy Quran. But what does Quran says about killing other people? Quran says that killing of any human being is worst act in God’s eye. The Quran state that killing one person is like killing entire human race (5:32). Committing such an act nurtures nothing but the violence. And those who indulge in such an act have no relation with Islam.

If you see these activities under the microscope you will observe these conflicts are running along two axis. The first and major one is religion. If you look closely in Islam there is dispute between Shia and Sunni over who is the true inheritor of the mantle of the Prophet Muhammad. The Shias believe that Islam was transmitted through the household of the Prophet Muhammad. Sunnis believe that it comes down through followers of the Prophet Muhammad who, they say, are his chosen people. ISIS believes that the Shias are apostates and must die in order to forge a pure form of Islam.

Then there is ambition of supremacy. Which is just the byproduct of getting neglected and receiving the subordinate treatment from developed countries. These attacks remains the proof of that supremacy.

As per the research done by FSKN (Federal Drug Control Service of the Russian Federation) IS makes $1billion annually on Afghan heroin trafficked through its territory. ISIS has accepted funding from government or private sources in the oil-rich nations of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait—and a large network of private donors, including Persian Gulf royalty, businessmen and wealthy families. Newsweek has learned, that these donations are also routinely laundered through unregistered charities in the form of “humanitarian aid,” with terrorists coordinating geographical drop-off points for payments using cellphone applications such as WhatsApp and Kik. Not only can WhatsApp be used around the world but, crucially, it incorporates a GPS mapping tool that makes it easier for terrorists to communicate their exact locations to each other. Kik offers the added benefit of allowing terrorists to register a username without providing a phone number that could identify them. Affiliated ISIS Twitter accounts openly publish their Kik usernames. ISIS' biggest financial coup so far was no doubt the looting of the central bank in Mosul, which brought them the equivalent of about $429 million in cash. Additional banks in Mosul and other areas under ISIS control were also plundered. As per the news revealed by The express tribune on 28^th January 2015, Yousaf al Salafi – allegedly the Pakistan commander of Islamic State (IS) revealed that he was getting funding – routed through America – to run the organization in Pakistan and recruit young people to fight in Syria, $600 per person. Sex, money and ammunition are three major attractions which fascinate today’s youth and making them spread the violence.  

Now the question remains how could we banish violence and terror from the world? According to UNESCO ‘violence begins in the mind. Therefore any efforts to eradicate this challenge needs to start from the same’. If we further dig down deep we may find some of the reasons too. One of the reasons is lack of education. Education gives you the ability to decide what is wrong and right. It helps you generate your own thought process and directs you to right path. Other reason could be unemployment. Unemployment creates an idle mind. An idle mind is devil’s workshop which may result to temptation towards doing bad things and ultimately violence start sprouting inside the mind which results in violent thoughts and finally into violent action.

Is violence against violence the correct answer? Then what difference it makes between us and them. Tit for tat is defiantly not an answer. As correctly said by Mahatma Gandhi an eye for an eye will make the whole nation blind. If at all France decides to engage in to the war against any terrorist group other countries like Russia will also interfere. US won’t be any exception it will also interfere in the war, because after all they too suffered from such attacks but their motive will be different.  Initially the war which is against any particular organization will eventually become against countries like Iraq and Syria where these organizations are based. These nations are members of OPEC. OPEC is the cartel of oil producing countries. Oil is nothing but the lifeline of all the developing and developed countries except countries like America. America has huge oil reserves in Texas and they have also developed the technology called sand oil which made them totally independent that’s why US stopped import of oil from OPEC countries. This abrupt stoppage made the situation like more supply and less demand because America alone used to consume 1/3^rd of total world’s consumption. That’s the reason for the dropped in the crude oil prices.       

Once these OPEC countries get involved in the war chances are higher that they will stop producing this black gold. Nations will starve without any crude oil. Development will stop. Entire world will go back at least10 years from now. This will be one outcome of war. Another outcome will be mass destruction. Organizations like ISIS are getting support from various countries in one or the other ways. US won’t enter the war directly but it will defiantly help to continue the war with supply of arms and ammunition. As a result there will be mass destruction; economies of countries will get crippled. US will start giving loan to such countries under the name of humanitarian cause and once again it will establish its supremacy, because that’s what they have done so far, from Second World War till now. Old habits die hard. There is more than just a war its all about international politics. Therefore violence against violence is not an answer.

We need to work for this cause at three fronts. First, we need to pinpoint all the funding to such terrorist group and need to cut them and make these groups starve without the resources. Then we need to rehabilitate and make them human again. We need to give jobs to those hands which are busy in carrying the guns and ammunition. We need to occupy their minds to some constructive work. If they are capable of planning and executing such massive attacks they certainly can make some innovative constructive work. All it needs is a motive to help their country rise, a motive to make their country shine. To do this one more essential thing required is education. As rightly said by Martin Luther King Jr,“Education helps the person to think intensively and critically.” The good example of this is, a ship in rough sea. Its weight won’t sink itself no matter how deep the sea is? But the ship itself is having a hole in it then no matter how small the hole is or how strong the ship is it is bound to sink some or the other time in future. So if we made a habit of thinking good and staying away from negative thoughts then there will be less chances of happening of any negative action.

Simple is Better

It was 7:30pm luckily everyone was home early. We were enjoying prime time television shows. Everything was going smoothly, Show ended and an ad came up on regarding pulse polio Sunday. This time government took one step forward and decided to go with IPV, which is really good initiative to keep polio virus at bay. Doorbell rang, Mom opened the door, it was our next door neighbor she came to invite us for her son’s fifth birthday which was the very next day. “I have already put an invitation on our Whatsapp group, but just to give a reminder I came to you. If you are free tomorrow can you please come bit early to help me with the preparation?” said our neighbor.  My mom agreed to her invitation cum request and whole scene ended and so was the polio ad. We again went back to our prime time shows on television. Some ten fifteen minutes later, my mom suddenly asked me “Do you know Ramooshi?”, and a silence filled in with her sudden question.  

“In ancient time in village there were no Whatsapp or facebook, so people used to gather at one point to meet one another and to have casual talks. There some important decisions used to be taken, and to spread these to entire village one person was appointed called Ramooshi. For example take the latest example of inviting people over for any function, Ramooshi used to roam in entire village and used to cry out loud with some musical instrument to give the invitation to villagers. Same was the case with whenever there was any such pulse polio Sunday or any health care worker used to come in village. In short Yesterday’s Ramooshi was replaced by today’s whatsapp and facebook, with much of fine tuning.” Explained my mom.

This particular explanation kept me pondering how things changed? Yesterday’s technique was very loud and raw. But today with whatsapp and other media you can interact with anyone without much of a physical movement, but with lots of emotions and in very colorful way with emojis and stickers. Plus no one knows who we are talking to, so privacy is also maintained. But the question is, are we going in a right direction? Is it a change or an improvement? To overcome on every limitation we are improvising on our current state of living, but in the process of doing so are we going away from each other, yet coming close virtually? Is it good for us? We say Human is a social animal he love to live in a community, so why not be in community, instead of living in virtual world. Because the more you go away from the very basic nature of human the more things get complicate. To solve this complication we try to come up with solution and it gets more complicated. So why not embrace our very own natural state, and keep complications minimum. 

You gotta look up to get down

“You gotta look up to get down.” An interesting line I came up today, while rewatchign the TV series “Entourage.” It is said that rewatching movies is a comforting act that can make you feel more stable and smile remembering the past, as per the study carried out by Cristel Antonia Russell and Sidney J. Levy. In 2012. So as per them I was just getting stable and revisiting my good old past, and smiling on things which used to look to cool then, and surprisingly they still look cool if you just forget the logic and apply the possibility that this can happen in real world also.

The line I was so fascinated with was “You gotta look up to get down”. it has an interesting hidden meaning , it says you need to look up means you need to fix your target, your goal before you get down with the business of achieving them.  Many a times it happens that you are so excited to achieve your goal that you forget which is the right path towards your goal, and you end up on wrong path, need to do things which should not be done, but for achieving the goal such things happen.   

In today’s world people are ready to get down to anything but they don’t know where to go. Here is an classic example of Mr. W, who love to write. To Write something good which people will like to read carefully and think on it, is every writer’s dream, so was Mr W’s. Keeping this on mind he decides to work as corporate policy maker in a reputed company, where he would get a chance to make working guidelines which people will read carefully, think on it and act on the same. Initially it was very thrilling job for Mr. W, but as the time passed by, he got bored and got frustrate. What could be the reason?

The reason is “You gotta look up to get down”.  You need to think what you want to do before you actually do what you want to do.  

Another live example, I witnessed with my eyes. A guy recently married, having a decent job was living in a tier one city. With one added partner in his life, he thought of earning some extra money, so he came up with a magical idea, and he executed it. He switched job, it gave him decent hike in his salary, he was happy with his salary, and company was good, his wife was happy. But the thing was this job location was country side. Initially he loved the atmosphere, the slow life, limited people, and with his knowledge from the city, made him famous in the village. People started to like him, respect him. As days passed, he got frustrate. Because there was no growth in him, the slow life made him less competitive, there was no fight left in him because of his current lifestyle. What went wrong? Was the need of money wrong? Or the decision he took to satisfy the need was wrong? Sometimes we are so immersed in the problem that our thinking gets blurred, we tend to take most comfortable and easiest path. Here in this case he did exactly the same, but if he could have decided to stay in the city only and work hard to earn more money, then he would have achieved his goal and instead to getting frustrated he could have become the happy man. But he chose other otherwise. After all we are outcome of choices we make.       

Salt in the Air, Sand in my Hair!

Sometimes we are so involved in ourselves that we forget the existence of universe around us. This kind of narcissism leads into self-destructing patterns. It’s like a loop the more you get involved in to yourself the more narcissist you become and it will lead to self-destruction. Many a times it happens, people are so involved in their problems desperately seeking their way out, asking help to others. Sometimes this help works sometimes it won’t. If you see this problem from third person point of view then you will realize the solution is hidden in yourself only. Just like waves of sea.

If you observe the sea waves, it looks quite disturbing and damaging, the more you resist these waves the more it will push you away sometimes even push you two steps backwards and if you face it too aggressively it will make more damages to you. But if you see the very own nature of these waves when it reaches the seashore; it brings all kind of impurities, some ocean stuff too, making the water turbid. But if you wait for a second or two the same stuff gets settle and the water becomes transparent. Now you can see the real depth of the water. The wave is same but the nature is totally different. The incoming wave was bit of aggressive or destructive in nature while the descending wave looks quite soothing to eyes.

Same is the condition with us when we are surrounded by the problems. As the wave of problem starts it looks disturbing, because nobody likes problems in this world. We want problem to exit from our happy life so we react to it very quickly. Problem is same as that of waves. If you try to react too soon it may damage you. But if you wait for time let the things get settle and then respond the chances are less, of you getting damaged as well as other person involved in the problem. Soon everything gets clear just like the waves on its way back to ocean. Then you realize situation wasn’t that much difficult as it seen initially.

After facing lot of such problems a person asked a monk, “why do bad things happen to good people?” the monk replied, “how do you expect me to reply your question, when question itself is wrong? The question should be ‘what happens to good people when bad things happen to them’ and reply would be, ‘They become better people’!”. It is our attitude towards problem decided whether it will break us or make us. It is our thinking that decides the pace of our progress, and our thinking can be directed right if only we know how to ask the right questions.      

It doesn’t matter if you don’t have all the answers to your problems, don’t worry nobody in this world has it too. Even the greatest archer of all time Arjuna also didn’t have all the answers but what he had was right question. Because that’s what really matters to set your thought process in line.

Social Media Boon or Bane?

It is a story of human behavior and how it changes according to time. While I was waiting for someone in restaurant one middle aged couple was sitting next to me, being there for more than 10 minutes eagerly waiting for someone, I was checking my cell phone for all the social apps which were present in my cell  and getting updated with all the social events happening in my friend circle at the same time I could hear the conversation between that couple who were talking about some incident which happened in their friend circle about this social app. They were talking something ill about this thing, their tone was very negative regarding all these fads. After hearing their words I started to think is getting social virtually, that much bad? Using social app is good or bad? If I think from their perspective it is always bad because they hardly know anything about such social things and whatever they have read or seen on television, thanks to our media! Was always bad. That’s why they are so correct about their opinion. But then is it the right opinion, social media is really bad?

If you ask my honest opinion, social media is neither good nor bad. It totally depends upon you, and how you are using it. It is just like fire. You can use it to lite a lamp to spread light or you can also use it to burn down a house, no doubt it also spread light but it is mixed with fury. So if a house is getting burnt because of fire, does that mean fire is bad? Or it’s the person who did this is bad. Same is the case with social media.  Social media was created to increase the connectivity between people with good intention in mind. It totally depends on the user who is using it. It defines your real nature, your attitude towards society. But unfortunately bad things spread faster and that’s exactly what has happened with all these social media. As far as news are concern there are good news also regarding these social medias, lot of good things are happening because of these social media. It depends upon you how you look at it, if you started to look for bad things, you will always get bad things noticed first. But if you started to look for good things you will get good things in bad situations also. It’s all about your attitude.

As I was thinking about this, the person whom I was waiting for came. I said thanks for coming late. Now it was up to her whether to take this positively or negatively.