Not just a Pick up Line!

I know you from before - How many times have you met someone for the first time and felt that instant connection? I don't mean in a - I've got a crush on you - cheesy kind of way,but a genuine connection of the soul.

Vibes from a person or place can tell you a lot, that is if you take the time to feel them. There are some instances however where within the first few seconds you take a liking or dislike to someone rather inexplicably- they say your soul knows.I even read somewhere that the concept of speed dating actually capitalizes on this concept, in fact this is also mentioned in the book Blink by Malcolm Gladwell.

The point however is that while we may want a logical explanation for everything sometimes the illogical one is more interesting.

If you've read Many Lives, Many Masters by Dr. Brian Weiss you will relate much better to what I am saying.

The natural state of the soul is harmony they say and I have come to believe that it is true. I feel that loving comes much more naturally to human beings than hatred. I feel that hatred takes effort and so does dislike.

As a trainer with IBM, I dealt with several people and spoke about the concept of contamination related with transactional analysis and somewhere down the line realised that being judgemental stems from an insecurity of being in control. What I mean is that as children we didn't really think about casting aspersions on other people or even the way they lived their life, however as we grow older our instinct gets clouded by the list of do's and don'ts.

I realised I was convincing people more about acceptance of other people and cultures as everyone seemed to have an opinion about the life of everyone else! We were battling stereo types, preconceived notions and acquired beliefs and hoping a non-judgemental mind would triumph with acceptance. Acceptance which came naturally to all of us in the beginning of our lives.

Somewhere along the way we get so caught up that we end up losing the plot!They say the soul carries ancient wisdom however very few of us ever scratch even the surface of the reservoir.

We have been so much more than we know, that we have been to so many more places than we remember visiting and yet we feel limited by physical manifestations - of our own body and also the globe.

The soul is like a genie in a bottle, make sure you don't love the bottle more than the genie, else the plot of the story may change completely!

Sanchita Johri

My Soul is a DJ

I can’t believe they played that song on the radio today. It had been so many years since I had heard it… or maybe not. I think I probably heard it almost everyday, some part of my soul had gotten used to humming it. Then I realized that there were so many songs that my soul hummed to itself almost like a background score to my thoughts. Every song had a little memory attached to it. The images seemed distant but the song as fresh as sipping a hot cup of tea on a winter morning!

There was this song that our Rickshaw puller used to play on his little black radio making a remix version of it with the water bottles and tiffin boxes clanking away all the way to a school called Tender Hearts in Lucknow.I can’t believe I still remember the name Chitrahaar – The MTV of those days ;) and even the Aakashvaani that happened before the Mahabharata started( Main Samay hoon), then the Pop era with the Philips Top Ten, the boy bands, the songs played at socials in school -all of it now seemed like a medley in my head!!!Then there was these MJ songs my brother played several times on his “oh so new disc man”! The Tamil songs our Van Driver Raju Uncle played on our way to school in Muscat, the songs of the several Antaksharis played in the garden with my dad and songs that we practiced hours together on the school stairs with “my gang of friends” to just see who remembered the lyrics more!Then there were Christmas Carols we learnt at choir and my dad played them for a month before Christmas every year at home, in the car and any other place where we could hear them. The sounds of the aarti during Diwali sung by different members of the family and also songs sung during the weddings of cousins getting married.There were songs that I had begun associating with different people like a song that one of the teachers sang in school ( it was the same song every year- lest we forget), songs sung by people in college as performances in college fests, the song that spoiled the walkman for repeat play during the first break up and of course the song that we thought would play in the background when we met the person of our dreams!

There were so many songs in the past and there will be so many more in the future, but for the fear that the DJ in my head takes over, I paused to hear the song playing outside the window- The song of a little bird on a tree!

Sanchita Johri