And Here I Am...

A R Rahman’s win at the Oscar has enthused me till this day (it has nothing to do with Gulzar’s lyrics or Sukhwinder’s vocals or Danny Boyle’s Slumdog), it is however, the pure respect that I have for that man and his music – soul searching indeed. The aura of that man (and in magic in his compositions) is itself very soothing, it kind of sends out some spiritual energy. I have lost the count of number of times I saw that Oscar winning moment on news/movie channels. However, apart from the event of that man holding the Academy Award, I was enchanted by one of his line in the acceptance speech, “All my life I have had the choice between love and hate, and I have chosen love... And I’m here” (or something like that, I may not be precise here, but the essence is intact). It could be only a person of Rahman’s spiritual vocation to have spontaneously thought of that line. I have been thinking about that line for many days now, the more I think, the more I have liked it, and it pushes me to choose love, spread love, do good, and keep doing good.

Everyone, you and me, have been and will always be provided with two choices - good or bad, right or wrong, love or hate, it will completely depend on us what to choose. If I have to prove Rahman’s logic, choose love, you will obviously do good out of love, and doing good is always right. Hating someone will make you choose wrong things, take wrong paths, and that definitely is going to work out bad for you.

But then what happens, if you choose love, and it still does not work good for you? I have seen many people who have chose love, right path, and goodness. However, most of them ended up facing regrets, resentment, pain, and even abhorrence. You will be surprised that there are cases, where one primarily understands something to be love can disastrously end in hatred. The reverse is also true sometimes; we forcibly try to find hate even in something that we feel we love. Confusing it may sound, but that’s how the life is, it will always present you with forces of love, hate, covetousness, and veneration, you will never have control on what should be presented to you. However, you will surely possess the control of following a particular impulse, and that is going to be the deciding moment what you will choose next.

Today, I was having coffee with one of colleague (and a good friend now), and coincidently we hit upon a similar discussion. I felt when we give love, we will get back love. She agreed, but had an opinion that it always may not be true, sometimes you may face dislike, what to do then? I accepted her point of view too, “You still keep giving love, what is the harm, and you still don’t lose anything, do you?”

Even if you can’t give love when you are being hated, make sure that at least you don’t give hate in return, as every action that you do there after with the feeling of hatred is going to possibly ruin all of your future activities. If you are hated, treat wrongly; don’t base your actions on that, yes, indeed fight what is wrong but without the feeling of revenge, fight the wrong with passion to change it into right. My, greatest ideal, Lord Krishna, advised Arjuna, to fight the war without any hatred or annoyance or attachment. The moment we fight with hatred in mind, it will turn out to be your spiritual defeat, even if you have won the biggest battle. Feelings of jealously, anger, disgust are venomous, and it is very easy to get consumed by these. You have to make efforts consciously that you choose pure feelings of respect, worship, and affection – that will certainly reduce stressful moments from your life and add some extra smiling years of contentment.

You will meet all kinds of people, love them anyways, known ones and even the strangers. Keep your anguish, fury, odium aside, throw it away if you can, and you will always end up giving the best you have to this world. And thus was Rahman able to give to the world the best he has, his music, and just look at the way he has got rewarded.

Our immediate reflex to hate is to hate, and refrain to give back love. If we cannot choose to love, let us at least attempt not to choose hate, let us try to be tolerant, caring, forgiving. No, I am not saying that we all will stand there holding the Oscar, but will definitely be presented with a much greater reward of peace and happiness, at least we can put our head high up in front of the mirror and say “All my life I have had the choice between love and hate, and I chose not to hate…And here I am”