You might have noticed a little bit of change in my blogs. I have not been able to keep up with my initial planned-schedule of blogging, partly because of lack of time and moslty because some good old laziness. Sometimes, I feel like there is nothing that is just good enough to write about. So I had wandered into writing about movies I watched here and how I felt about them. It appears as though I am watching just too many movies these days (I have seen all the summer releases) and so may be I'll write what I thought of them. Then I felt, since I seem to travel quite a bit, thanks to some very good friends of mine, may be I can write about my experiences in those vacations. Try those links to the right of your screen and as always, if you want to say something about anything let me know. As you might have already noticed, I have moved my earlier blogs about the San Francisco trip to the new travel blog. Anywhoo, a slight re-arrangement of things is always a good thing, no; it presents us with different ways of looking at the same thing and may understand them a little better. So that's that.
Since watching 'The Dark Knight', which by the way is totally awesome, my super hero fantasies have come back alive in my mind. I would make a great super hero, don't you think? I mean, I can fight crime, make fun of the bad guys, and help the grandma cross the street and ofcourse save the damsel(s) in distress (crossed-fingers). Right from my childhood, being a super hero has been my dream. May be I didn't like the costumes that most of the guys wore (Im looking at you Captain America!), but I most certainly loved the fact that they had those supernatural powers, like shooting the web out of your wrists, spidey sense, excellent sense of humor (You probably guessed by now that I am a spider man kinda guy!!) and to an extent the bullet proof body. This was before hitting puberty so, I guess I didn't really notice all the beautiful women they saved but once that became apparent, I realized the ultimate truth – the super powers are 'a gift and a curse' – a curse I would gladly accept on any given day of the year. Oh, how I wished that 'genetically modified super spider' had taken a sot at me; I still do.
Anyways, those dreamy days have passed, and I have moved on- moved on to dream about other things. Things like motorcycles, space travel and bug free programming codes. But more importantly I have discovered some ways of being the super hero that may be not as spectacular like the ones you find in comic books, but are guaranteed to make a difference in some fellow humans' life. A few months ago I came across this charity organization, for not wanting to be solicited, let's call it – The Smile Train, and I have to admit that I feel like my super hero dreams are coming true (not entirely. Still no damsels!!). It's related to the cleft palette (Wikipedia entry) surgery that fixes kids with deformed lips and nasal passage.This charity aims at providing the surgery to patients in disadvantaged countries and this organization is at the verge of driving itself out of business (See The New York times Article). More importantly it has made me realize that I do have super powers. Just didn't know it until now. All you have to do is to think how many kids' lives you want to change forever in a given year, month or even a week. I personally liked it, since this is not a make shift donation, but one offer can change the life of a given kid forever.
Beyond satisfying my boyhood dream, this has answered some of the questions that have been lingering in my mind for a long time. Questions like 'what would happen when we die' have always bugged me, since the day I can remember, but my inner concerns were more earthly than something hypothetically outside. I never cared about heaven or hell, since the fact that when not alive we won't exist within the realm of the laws of physics that we follow while being alive. I was more concerned about other things. Things like, 'when I die, would any one, other my family and friends even notice? ; Other than some insignificant physical objects and (hopefully priceless) human relationships I collected since my birth, what would I leave behind? ; Would it even matter that I have ceased to exist?'; The answers were most definitely not obvious and for some still are.
In my teens I used to think about all the people who die without ever getting to see the 'Taj Mahal', since, to me, it was something that no human can or should ever miss. I felt those people had lost an opportunity of a life time, since there is no guarantee that we will be re-born again and even if we did, there is no certainty that the Taj Mahal will still exist. But now when I think about it The Taj Mahal is nothing but insignificant when compared to human life. I have come to realize that the real question I should have been asking myself is, 'How many people die everyday without ever changing some stranger's life for the better'; How many have perished oblivious to the fact that they did nothing but satisfy their personal cravings and their immediate circle of family and friends' desires and never spared an act of kindness that resulted from selfless thought.
More important question ought to be – "Will I become one of them?"
As it goes, 'When a stranger misses you at your death, you have lived richer than kings'.
