Tilak Amitava Chowdhury

It is said that all of us have lived many lives. We are all very old souls, changing one body to another in search of infinity. A place where we are infinitely at peace with the universe. So doesn't it make us all nomads? Experimenting with our senses to find something that we are not sure of finding. We are all in search of the God who created us and owns us. The power that gives us every millisecond of life. It's strange but it's true. We are all born nomads to hop from one life to another in search of the divine Amen!

Just like the rocket, I leave parts of me On the sands of time As I keep moving higher Closer to God! I leave things I gathered in the material world To gain more of the spiritual world I gain momentum, I lose weight Feeling lighter, brighter and more aware Reaching towards a land of eternal glory and permenance Just me. Only me. Like a shunya, a zero With nothing but a spec of eternal dust That has travelled and got wisened  Through centuries and births of grind Fortunately, all of us are on this journey Most of us unconsciously Let's wake up the eyes of our soul To become one with the universe. Come one and come all Choose eternity over a moment The world of eternity awaits you Dont let it wait for you anymore

The Romans are all long gone And the collossiums are dead But the gladiators continue to live on Fighting for survival and bread! The wild animals in the rings are all gone The barbarians have been made to disappear But they are replaced by the loan sharks Spreading helplessness and fear Every morning we wake up to fight Wearing the armours of courage We return home scarred and spent Filled with unspent frustration and rage The world isn't fair to all The privileged have it all so easy The strugglers have to go on fighting Sweaty, bloodied and dizzy Modernization has ruined us all Making us all bloodied Gladiators Fighting a battle we die fighting Trying to escape the economic predators The heart longs for the good old days When life was easy and fun When we enjoyed the changing seasons And played and laughed under the sun There is still time, there is still chance To reclaim our nomadic lives of our ancestors To live simple, relaxed and engaged lives And die happy men, not economi

The world wants us to follow rules Created to control the common man We learn to live with those limitations As harmless and amiably as one can Buy big house, get a car, settle down in life Fuel consumption with borrowed money Work hard, postpone your dreams,  Thoughts of liberation are stupidly funny One day we sit infront of the mirror Stare hard at the face that looks back Unrecognisable and worry worn tired person Who silently complains of the peace we lack Then we die - physically, spiritually, mortally Having fought a lifelong useless war Having searched for happiness in the wrong places, all we possess is a dark cruel scar Change the story, live differently Forget what the society wants you to be Break the shackles of EMIs & corporate bullshit And embrace on a journey That sets you free!

Diversity and Inclusion seems to be a topic of discussion everywhere. However, it seems that our forefathers had found solutions to it more than 5000 years ago. The Mahabharata talks about the contribution of Shikhandi, who was born a woman and later became a man, to the war in helping the Pandavas win by slaying Bhishma. The war would not have been won if Shikhandi was not present. The same could be the case with Ghatotkach, the son of Bhima whose mother was Hidimba. If he was not causing enough trouble for Karna to use the gift of Lord Indra on him, Arjuna would have been dead and the war would have been lost. Last but not the least, if Panchali and Amba were not present, the war would have taken a very different form. They both assisted Lord Krishna in helping the word become free of the Kauravas and adharm. When we are struggling today to find answers, may be it would be a good idea to refer the age-old wisdom we have in the form of mythologies, puranas and Upanishads. They may hel

The last one and half years have been tough on all of us. The pandemic has cost us dearly - financially, physically, emotionally. It has given us scars that will remain for life. Lessons that will change us forever - for good or worse.... My one biggest learning from the pandemic is: surrender to the creator....mankind is nothing infront of nature. We can't survive a second without help from nature. Why are we trying to be God? When we are struggling to be even human? I'm getting tired of human intelligence. The mindless innovations and distractions like the spoilt billionaires who seem hell bent to pollute the space now that earth is almost totally polluted.  Why are we creating more toys? Smarter faster sleeker that makes us even more dependent on them? We need to step back a few decades. Go back to the times when we worked hard on the fields and factories. Spent time socializing with each other. Built communities and laughed together. This virtual world is so suffocating! Ar

Indian scriptures always promoted and prescribed four stages of human life: the age of students, the age of family, the age of simple living in the forests and lastly the age of seeking Nirvana theough austerities.  As we became more advanced scientifically, we ignored these teachings and chased prolonged material gratification and longievity through artifitial means. This made us more dependent on the man made recipes of good health that took us away from nature. I think it's time to reverse that. We must move back closer to nature and consume less. Infact in the book Ikigai, the authors mention a lifestyle that is simple, organised, social and close to nature.  We have been straining the natural resources and depleting them really fast. This is giving rise to one calamity after other. Most of these calamities are manmade and triggered by mindless consumption fuelled by our limitless greed for more. It's time we pause. It's time we look at and refer the wisdom of our ances

Let's shed a tear for all those trees we massacared to furnish our homes Let's shed a tear for all those animals we slaughtered in the name of sports Let's shed a tear for all the rivers we polluted In the name of prosperity Let's shed a tear for all the mountains we mercilessly chopped in the name of growth Let's shed a tear for all the pollutants we dumped in the seas and suffocated the life there Let's shed a tear for all the birds we made homeless to build homes for us Let's shed a tear for all the bees who lost their way, for us to check social media nonstop on our phones Let's shed a tear for all the forests that we burnt with the fire of our greed May be then, when all of humanity cries together for the sins we committed for generations, may quench the fire we ignited in the breast of mother nature.  Then may be she will cry for us too, like a mother who sees the repentence in the eyes of her devastated children. May be then, we will earn her forg

We all dream of the good life The big cars, the big houses, the fast life  and grand parties Fuelled by the trash society throws at us In the name of civilization. And we start running. Faster, harder like fools Chasing dreams that are irrelevant But most of us realise that too late When we are totally spent, emotionally and spiritually Then we get the wake-up call From the hidden corners of our subconscious Questioning the usefulness of the chase we wasted half our life pursuing  And, the mind wakes up to see through the clutter and trash we have been seeing since born We start looking for ways to be happy as that is not a skill we learnt at school. But we learn fast. Because we are programmed to be happy. It's in our genes. And then the life changes for the better We start living for the greater good For things that make us truly happy Little things that we thought totally useless Becomes the centre of our life. And we start living, in happiness with joy in our hearts and smiles

  As the world today struggles with the Coronavirus Pandemic, paying attention to mental health becomes of utmost importance. While public health emergencies cause a great amount of emotional isolation, stress owing to economic loss, business closure, school closure, etc., COVID-19 itself gives birth to neurological and mental complications. This is the time when psychological support has gone virtual and for all the right reasons.   GoodLives is a mental health service organization that aims at helping people find the right guidance about keeping their mental health upright. The vision is to make mental health treatment “accessible” for one and all. The idea of GoodLives was born when Sakshi Shah and Lawrence Lovedeep, the co founders of GoodLives, encountered people with emotional issues in their personal life journey and realized how essential it was to have someone you can share your problems with. They comprehended that a lot of people suffered in silence because they were hesit

I remember this peppy song from my childhood with these lyrics love is all around me, everywhere I go...I have forgotten the singer, the lyrics and everything about this song. But these few lines have stayed with me all these years.  Truly, if we look around, there is so much to love and be grateful for....from the view of the rising sun from my balcony, to the books I read, to the food I eat and the energy I feel within. It's beautiful. The whole universe is within us and there is so much to be happy about....only if we truly open our eyes and see. Life is so tiny. Today we are alive but tomorrow we may not be. So why not inhale all the beauty around so that when we close our eyes in the night, we feel the divine bliss within and cherish it, without a regret in the world. It's a beautiful life, I feel pity for thr people who waste it hating ! May God bless their souls and may they too learn to see the beauty all around, so that this earth can truly become a beautiful place to

A few days back, I finished reading the legendary book called Purple Cow by Seth Godin. It's a very interesting read, that talks about how the traditional forms of marketing are collapsing and how one needs to find newer more innovative ways of reaching out to customers and innovating everything starting with the product. I loved one statement in the book that says, we have everything there is to be had and therefore it is difficult for a new entrant to market a product. It's both true and false in context of India. When we think of India, we think of only urban India, the 3 percent that pays tax. There is also another 90 plus percent of people who are consumers. They are consuming the local brands most of the time and are keeping the Indian economy running as a self sustained economy. This helps the country against global meltdown as global meltdown usually affects the top 3 percent. Many businesses have started realising this and have started adapting their businesses a cordi

We are nothing but a grain of sand in the universe, yet, we feel we run the world. We feel we want to be God, create life and change the planet, with what? Things that nature offers us? I think we need to let the forces of nature lead us to the way of the God - the infinite energy that lights up the Sun and controls the stars & galaxies. We are a tiny broken piece of the large cosmos. We are like the spaceship in which superman arrives on earth in the film Man of Steel. And, when he activates his pen drive on that ship, other people from Kryptonium finds him. We also must possess that pendrive within. We also must connect to the cosmos and let the divine guide us as a population. We are not God but we have Godly powers being part of the cosmos. How can we use this power ingrained within us to do good? To create something immortal guided by the divine hand?  Let us first surrender ourselves to this omnipresent all powerful force and let it fill our lives and guide us to fulfil our d

I'm a big fan of Harry Potter. It's a masterpiece created by JK Rowling that actually spells out the modern times and how we could overcome it. The last year, was like the Dementors in the story. They suckedout all positivity and we all felt that we were in Askaban. But then, can we all create our own patronus charm? Remember the happiest moments of our lives and driveout the Dementors from our lives? How do we get so much positivity in our lives? Can meditation help? Can the age old ways preached by the Avatars help?  I guess we just have to find our own means of creating the patronus for else the Dementors will just gobble us up, ready to give us the kiss of death.

I just watched the Julia Roberts and Richard Gere starrer 'Pretty Woman' again.. frankly, I have stopped counting how many times I have watched the movie.  What I love about the movie is the message of positive change that can transform our lives.  The circumstances we find ourselves in in our lives and the reactions we have to them, makes us start believing that we are those reactions. However, most of the times, it's just reflex action. The prolonged exposure to these circumstances just sharpen the reflexes and the tend to become our second nature; but we begin to mistake it as our basic nature. We tend to see us through these lenses and torment ourselves. Until the moment, a positive change comes in our life and touches us at the most tender, vulnerable corners that we work all our lives to guard fearing pain. We feel that the armour we wear hides those tender points making us stronger. But, when the positive change comes in, it shatters the armour and no matter how hard

As a race, we are shamelessly greedy. I remember seeing an animated video on YouTube some time back that showed man walking on the earth and destroying everything cruelly for his own pleasure. We have changed so much in the last one million years, can we change to be kind? To be good with others? To practice gratitude? This year, when the world went through such a severe turmoil, the only thing that kept popping up in my mind is, that this is just a warning...warning by God to probably change our lives, to consume less to exercise more, to enjoy the simple things in life. After all, before this time, I never noticed the lovely pots of flower we planted on our balcony or the little birds who come flying in and sit to rest on the windows. I never saw any of it... Probably, because, me like everyone else, saw the world through the lenses of greed and not gratitude. These months that I spent at home, I really felt at home for the first time. And I realised that with my family around, a boo