Why Some Writers Change the World…

Well reading is my hobby. Such a relaxing activity to forget about the the stresses of life. At the same time you can learn life lessons and get a lifetime of experiences by reading few pages of a good novel.

So what makes some writers immortal and what makes some books timeless? I think we can get a clue from this famous saying of one of the greatest writers world has seen- Ernest Hemingway. ” In order to write about life first you must live it” says Hemingway.

A writer is a one who live a common man’s life and experience the life in it’s basic level. Happiness, sadness, love and cruelty. There are no white characters or black characters in a good story. Rather the characters are different shades of grey. Just like us.. the common men and women.

Within couple of sentences a good writer can grab attention of a common man. So what is the benefit of addressing the common man rather than an elite literary crowd? Well if somebody among millions who are suffering without understanding the true essence of life can grab a one great idea by reading couple of pages what you wrote, isn’t it great!?

If somebody who could not see a future in their mundane life , after reading a good story, can cultivate some hope, isn’t it an achievement? Famous writers who ” lived the life” can write with their heart. People can feel their heart beat…Those words echo through whole universe and ultimately will change the society.

Entertainment is the way to wisdom. I believe that should be the purpose of a great story teller.

A Poet’s Insights In To Life

It is not a secret that lot of so called educated in this world are a frustrated lot. What makes this so?

Looking into the above quote of great poet Tagore would give us some insight as to what went wrong. Work of great poet is full of harmony with nature and day to day life. If somebody is in harmony with nature- that is accepting the natural causes and effects the life has to give, that is a good begining.

So think twice before you plan your next PhD and before sending your child to the best school which everybody think is best! Is there a real meaning to all that?

Not So Strange Feeling in A Mountain Top

Launching Winyu Blog and Winyu Media Web for 2022

Searching New Horizons ( Photo credit- Prakash Luitel)

I was standing in an elevated place some where in Mount Kosciuszko National Park Blue Lake Walk.

Adventurous things come to mind in elevated places . This time it was during a hiking trip with family and friends. What a memorable experience and what a good new year’s resolution I could come to afterwards.. ” Winyu ” ( meaning Sun in the Aboriginal language of Ngunnawal people) is my newly re-launched blog and web media site.

Strangely the mountains prompt this bold, adventurous feelings, Re- launching of my blog came to me during the Blue Lake Hike. I was thinking about it for sometime, after abandoning my blog some time back. Strange this came as a new year resolution to my mind. Good times, natural environments and strange talks… That is what makes life’s new adventurers.

When my friend Prakash-A deep rooted mountain man, lover of visual cultures and places, an off beat anthropology and film maniac(sorry buddy!), and guess what a Nepalese oozing out mountain breath, talked me over to make this family get together and hiking trip to mountains, I did not think twice.

It was a well-deserved trip for two families -My family and his-whom shared a lot of things together over the years while settling down in this beautiful country Australia, where we live in the bush capitol called Canberra- originally in the home of Ngunnawal people.

The hiking trip was partly planned to celebrate my success finally in to the writer’s circle in Australia as an Emerging Writer- as my short story- ” Rosy Dreams and Rubbish Bins” was selected for publishing after getting through the SBS emerging writers competition in 2021 as one of the 30 selected entries to be published in an Anthology ! It was a surprise and a joyful thing after a long but on-and-off writing journey,

My writing drive has always amazed me as it comes back to me again and again. I have journeyed through print and web media especially writing on environment and science topics in my early years. I have experienced a life of a journalist and a writer as a freelancer. lt was truly rewarding as I always did it partly as a hobby and partly as a side profession whenever time let me in. My effort in this web media is to share my ” fun” and ” good time” in writing and journalism for a wider public and like minded people.

So Welcome to Winyu blog.. In which I hope to share stories about .. say life experiences and perceptions specially about books, writing, people, places ..and…what not. Also , it will be an initiation of a media web, in which I would like to invite my fellow writing enthusiasts and journalists to be guest writers as well.. big dreams in a mountain top.

Here comes 2022!… New name in air Winyu Blog

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Dear Mother…

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Dear Mother,

A rare full moon in a wintery night sky. Sweeping a ray of light over the gloomy night through my foggy bedroom window. My eyes suddenly became wet, when warm tears rolled over the pillow in this lonely night, suddenly a familiar hand soothed my hair and I am in your bosom as your little boy. It has been a long time. A long time after I drifted away from you in my teenage years and now as a full-grown man for everyone else but for myself. When I saw my little son draw a picture for my wife today for mother’s day, I remembered you, mother.. because I have never done something like that for you in my life…

We grew up as shy children in a culture where the expression of feelings was a taboo… Hugging in a public a place is insanity and young lovers chased away from parks by police to keep the culture clean! We found expressions of love, hidden bottled deep inside through our creativity in our later life. I wonder whether it is too late now. Too late for me to tell you that, my love is a hidden one, never died,  never found expression in words or hugs. For those are rare in our culture and especially in my boring years of growing up as an only child. A loner always lived in his own imagination, feelings expressed only for himself.

Mother, now I know where my creativity comes from… I have to confess this after all these years. Seeing my son when he is an infant suckling my wife’s nipple greedily as if nothing in the world can separate them from each other, I wanted to tell him that one day all will change. His mother will never complain that he had to drift away from her as a grown-up man and abreast a cruel world to fight for a living. His mother would never complain that he went for another woman to search for love and build a family. But his mother will always know, deep down her heart, the love given to her little boy will manifest in multitude and pay tribute to her by infinite ways of expression.

Now I know that every kind and loving expression in this world is a creation by a caring mother given as a seed to a man or woman when they are helpless infants. It is the mixing of sun and moon, Yin and Yan, and masculinity and femininity in Yogic expression, which drives the universe. When Jesus preached  ” Loving Thy Neighbor”, and Buddha guided his disciples to delve in loving kindness in meditation, hasn’t that unconditional love was given by our mothers when her blood became milk to flood the world?

Every time I put my words in writing whether those are prose or poetry, I know that those come from your love. Every time I do a painting in an empty canvas and when femininity finds expression in my male being, I know that is the grounding for all the creative work I did for this date. When this world became cruel for me and when the people treated me as if I am nothing, when I cry my heart out in a lonely place because society thinks that grown-up men never cry, I become your little boy for a moment.

So, mother, I know you will never read this letter as your feeble eyes are so weak now and can not read and nobody there in our country will read this aloud on a mother’s day, as it is not celebrated there… I write this to express my love for you after so many years roaming in search of gold and happiness in a strange world to get rid of my feeling of guilt.

Let this letter be an invisible hug from a radical son who escaped not only from his mother but from his mother-land altogether to live in a foreign country searching comfort of strangers. Let the tears rolling over my pillow in this moonlit night mix to the ocean and reach you there and let one mother know that her little boy is thinking about her.

So long mother…

Expectations and Shunyatha(Nothingness)

Well ..theme of my painting here was ” Expectations ” . I wanted explore the expectations of a lonely soul by mixing and freeflowing these lonely but expectant colors in a canvas ..

But then it made me think about a unique concept of some of eastern religions called ” Shunyatha” which we can roughly translate as ” nothingness “.

But concept is not ” Emptiness ” . Because detachments lead us to experience “Nothingness” which is not empty! But filled with pure life…

We tend to live on Expectations .. Expectations lead to attachments , which we all live. Will it not be wonderful to live understanding that if you loose something you are not empty. But you experience Nothingness .. which is the fundamental nature of life..

We come with nothing and go with nothing… Took me bit of time (and this painting ) to understand that!

Lost Souls In A Connected Wourld

Welcome to the jungle of a networked wourld where people become close but emotionally disconnected ! Isolation is a norm and a habit.

I am talking about the century we live in , a century where some time back media philosophers braged a lot about.. this is a century it all happened in a click of a button and with the speed of light. Where networks socialized the media and dugitized social sphere which became medium itself..

Yet more and more we find ourselves isolated from each other .. Gone are the days we relied on each other for emotional fullfilments. Everyone seem close their heart’s door unless you have an apointment!

We never observe the path we travel and as we busily focus on destination. By doing so we lose the touch of our loved ones and ultimately become individualistic, goal oriented , alienated and seperated souls..

What can you see in the couple in my artwork above ? Arn’t they close as well as seperated ? Lost souls in a conected wourld .

Cry For The Wourld Guernica…

I gazed at Guernica because she shocked me and I am still trying to understand her…. I see her in my mind when someone brags about the patriotism of war.. ” Guernica ” the brainchild of Picasso and my angel of pain and shock…

My blog “Nirmana”(an oriental word symbolizing creativity ) is here for celebrating the creativity of the world. If an artist, a writer or a filmmaker can be creative enough to shock the world and give strong message creativity goes a step further .. Let me talk about Guernica which did the same.

Looking repeatedly at Guernica, the famous 20th-century painting by Pablo Picasso always reminds me of what a chaotic world we live in. Also, it reminds me of the end results of human conflicts leading to war between races, religions, and nations.

In 1937 innocent civilians of small-town Guernica in Spain were killed by German bombers. Picasso showed the aftermath tragedy of a fruitless civil war to the world by his famous mural painting.

Guernica is a long story told in shocking parts to a thoughtful observer…The most shocking part of the painting to me is part I show here..this woman crying holding a dead child.

The lifeless body of a child in her arms, this woman wails looking at the bull- common cultural symbol in Spain.. the bull here depicts the brutality .. Does Picasso trying to tell us the many faces of “cultural bull” which lead to brutality in this world… Does this wailing woman accuse the cultures and ideologies which led to the killing of her innocent child?

This is creativity at best… Let’s think about the ideologies of the world today … be it the Islamic state… be it the domination of nations for nuclear and economic power .. Do you hear the cry of Guernica?

Dance and Glow Frangipani

Hugging the shine of sun..

Shredding the clothes of dark

Tuned to birds of love.. Swaying for passing breeze ..

Adding to dreams of life..

Dance and Glow Frangipani .

PS- Trying to celebrate the life looking at the blossoms of Frangipani… my art work “Frangipani” just finished acralic on canvas.

Bright Side Of The Life

That misty morning, edge of that lake, when mist was blurring my vision and playing it’s marvel on the water, those trees told me a secret…

I visited that place near this lake in Canberra for a reason. It was a house dedicated to people who were at the end of their lives. The death was in their doorstep.

They could see it coming but they were calm. Some were uncouncioous ofcourse. The people i saw that day were in palliative care.

I came out and went to the edge of this lake to reflect back what i saw and connect with life.. then i saw those trees. Then they showed me what it means to be alive in every single moment..

Those trees were spreading their branches towards the lake.. Also they reached out to each other..In the chilly breeze they hugged each other to keep warm as life is so precious . As life is not to be wasted..

Those trees always swayed towards the misty lake…They never lost their hope..one day they will touch that precious water and will celebrate the life as it is…

Yes “The Life as it is” ..not the achievements.. as nothing to achieve wasting a life… Life itself is an achievement being alive.

Why can’t we see the bright side of the life?