Sleepless

I haven't slept in two days, and I feel fine. This Active
Directory migration we are doing for a client spread
across Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra has got me totally
hammered down. On top of that, another problem with
a fax server kept our Sydney team awake till 3 in the morning.
Well, for myself, it was work as usual yesterday morning,
after starting my day at seven the day before that.
I am busy, making others richer, making companies
stronger, banks richer; at cost of my own life,
health and happiness. Dunno what's the point of
all this labor, why do I have to work so hard and still
be poor and barely surviving? While its true the rich guys
at the top work hard, they don't take vacations,
I feel I am becoming a workaholic, burning myself
out, for what, I don't know.

Well well, what's the point in whinning ? Everybody's
life is like that in Sydney.
It started to hit me, with my head going a bit dizzy.

Watched a Hindi movie called 'Provoked', starring Ash, the story
itself is about domestic abuse of a woman. But a line from it
lingers in my mind, this is when her cell mate asks Ash how
she feels about being in jail for murdering her abusing husband
by burning him alive. Her reply 'I feel, free' in a broken tone,
was just too powerful.

Sore throat with antibiotics

What a disastrous start to the long weekend.
My tonsils just elongated by an inch, and the pharynges
swollen so much I could not even swallow.
Struggled whole day yesterday, could do nothing except
watch with envy as a friend came and finished my wine.
Lucky bastard. Its a good cheap red wine, Yalumba
Shiraz, introduced to me by Raju ji back in Melbourne.

I imagine one of my colleagues enjoying is time in Hunter valley with
his wife and another lazying around with his animes - manga,
family guy, futurama..I am sitting here listening to I shot
the Sheriff, finishing boxes after boxes of tissues wiping
my nose and sipping fifty gallons of hot water, coffee and
lemon tea. Uhhh..sick of being sick, really.

I talked to a pharmacist in St. Leonards last week, she said
my sinus could be dropping off fluid down to my throat,
I have to fix that first. How disgusting is that?

My guitar lies sleeping inside the box, next to the tv,
what have i done? Finally the rain has stopped and I was
able to hang my clothes in the sun. And its sunny today.
I need some furnitures, some good racks
for lobby and to sort things out in the lounge.

ANZAC day

On a TV program this ANZAC eve, there was
a short report containing an interview with a frail
eighty something year old. His casual but humble
and honest expressions matched his watery, sad
looking eyes. On an occasion where he was explaining
how he and thousands of his mates were tortured by
the Japanese in Thai Burma rail works during the
World war, the interviewer asked him if he felt any
repulse of the Japanese today. This was at the back
drop of the event he was referring to, the Allied
PWOs, numbering around ten thousand, mainly from
Australia, UK, US and surrounding local countries,
were made to work almost eighteen hours a day, for
nearly two years thru the thickest forests. Most died
of diseases like malaria, open ulcers, hunger,
dysentery and anything imaginable that can kill.

There are picture of these POWs lying like skeletons,
resembling jews in Hitler's chambers in Auschwitz.

Thousands of mates of this old soldiers perished,
the brutality they were inflicted were
horrendous and unspeakable, like in China or wherever
Japan invaded. He came home at the end of the war,
lost and poor, shattered both physically and inside.
At the end, the Japanese surrendered, the prisoners
were now the masters.

He held back tears and remembered an incident that happened
in the jungle after the Japanese surrendered. He asked
a mate of his if he wanted to give the surrendering Japanese
the payback, the same torture and brutality, after all,
they had it all within their grasp now. He chocked for
couple of seconds, before recalling what his friend replied,
if a digger were to do the same, what's the difference,
between him and them, it was stunning, untainted greatness of a man.

Nepal,Tibet,China and myself 2

Tibet is a unique entity. Its location with world's
highest mountains as background, its plateaus that
are wonders in themselves, its beautiful skyline and most
importantly of course, its religious flair, culture,
serenity and colors. Its a land of all the peace, more
peaceful than all the peaces of the world combined.
The only living, ancient teachings and learnings about
Buddhism, philosophy, medicine, are done
in its monasteries, where oil lamps are still common.
This is the land of monks with red robes and shaven
heads, of beautiful chants and clear blue skies; of
stories of the caravans of people and yaks crossing
the mighty Himalayas in the thickest blizzards and
snow falls. Its truly, a paradise where people seem to
always smile and welcome you with their folded
hands and offer you their butter tea.

Tibet, needs to be kept alive, it needs to be saved,
from encroaching pollutions of haphazard constructions,
invasion of Han Chinese, the type of modernity it barely
needs. It needs a good standard of living, I don't oppose it.
But not at the cost of eroding its divine culture, peace
and immortal sense of higher life, something you cannot
find any where else, it seems. And like any other species,
this truly, is now at the verge of extinction. Once gone,
it won't survive long in the Dharmashala of India, and
meager Tibetan diaspora in the western world or Nepal.

Tibet is no doubt the last standing ancient civilization.
Tibet is a life, we cannot get it back if it dies.