saint

But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. - 1 Peter 2:9

Here is a question - What are the first thoughts that come to your mind when you hear the word Saint ? Here are the thoughts that come to my mind - an exemplary model of Christian virtue, a wonder worker , a person who possesses selflessness and ascetic qualities in his/her character.I am also reminded of all the martyrs,mystics and all those super crazy followers of Christ who have changed the face of the Church and the world in general.

With all these thoughts also comes a realization - I can probably never become like them.When I compare there lives with mine,I realize the difference is just huge...extraordinarily huge.I believe all of you too share my feelings...but yet we know God has called all of us to be saints.One of the biggest roadblocks to sainthood is the desire to do big things for the Lord.Don't get me wrong,its an awesome desire  but the fact in this very mundane life of ours with its cares and worries most of us may not achieve great things for the Lord.So,what shall we do ? Why don't we do this - just do small things for the Lord or as St.Therese said "do small things with great love". Dearly beloved today,lets find God in the mundane.Rather than aiming for really huge things,lets find satisfaction and fulfillment in the things we do daily.Those boring meetings,the tough commute to work,the nosey colleagues - lets find Christ in all these and more.Lets aim to be a saint rather than a Saint.Maybe a saint with a small 's' is not a bad idea after-all. 

Review of a movie poster - ‘Lifeu Ishtene’

This is not a critical review of a movie but rather of a movie poster which in itself gave me so much to write about!

A new Kannada movie released this week called ‘Lifeu Ishtene’ ….. Walking through the streets of Koramanagala (in Bangalore) I could see many posters of this movie stuck at various vantage points and anonymous walls. Kannada movies may have lost their past glory but the current makers are not willing to concede the same and with all pomp and glory promote it as if this is the next Oscar winning movie nevertheless two catch phrases on this movie poster caught my attention. One goes this way ‘Food, Clothes & Girlfriends’ and other says ‘Move on Sucker’. And the synopsis of this movie on one of the review site is this – “Lifu Ishtene is a romantic comedy about how young boys express their love to so many girls. True love happens again and again to them.”

I pity on the movie watchers who are fed with such total crap in the name of entertainment. Having one or two good songs doesn’t make it worth a watch and what really hurts the society is the message that is hardwired into the hearts and minds of people through such movies. A message of desperation, which says that it is perfectly fine to be disloyal to people whom you love in your life for the sake of the other – and as they say that’s how you will experience ‘true love again and again’.

What is true love? And if it’s really true how we can have more truer one in some one else? So what do we do if we really find the true one; turn to the truer one then the truthest one? Just like those words don’t exist so too this rubbish concept. True love is true and that’s it. It works very well in movies since the hero supposedly locks down finally to the girl who is supposedly his real true love (while other guinea pigs are lost in various intervals of the movie) and they lived happily ever after. Oh did they? We don’t know? They don’t make many movies for that phase which involves sacrifices and adjustments… which involves the trueness of love in which self denial is a must… which involves the trueness of sacrifice for your true love ( if you could relate to what Jack did in movie Titanic…he layed down his life for his only beloved one).
Now coming back to the phrase itself – ‘Food, Clothes & Girlfriends’, what an apathy that we have reached this level of cheap thinking. If you don’t find it cheap or close to it then I guess you have been already silently brainwashed. Food and Clothes are commodities which can be bought from our nearby super market at our own will with our own money. So when did they start selling girlfriends as commodities and when did it become a necessity for boys that which we cant live without? Now to make this more insane will any forward looking political party put it in their electoral manifesto – Roti, kapdaa or ladkiya? Gosh – where are we heading? Not only such brainwashings attract people but also entice people to look for the same on the streets and may be in every women they see….Don’t blame the eve teasers – we live in an hypocritical society where eve teasing done by an hero is perfectly acceptable since she is supposedly going to fall in love with him anyway – wah! The end just justified the means ….

Now we need to ask ‘is this all to life? Lifeu Ishtena? (in Kannada – and yes that’s the movie title!!!) ….Absolutely No! Life is much more than these.....may be as I see life is in finding one’s true love even at the cost of losing one’s own life. And some find it totally in God and some in their spouse or in a good friend and in poor & so on…but certainly if we can’t find it in one I doubt we will ever find it in many…. .