Painting Nudes In Paris: A Father's Ambition for his Son.

Many years ago I remember having watched the mighty Thunderbolts in action, from the roof top of a building, at a distance that today seems like a stone's throw away from the tarmac.

The splendour of the nine Hunter Aircraft in formation, painting the wonderful blue canvas, had me spell bound. That was the day that I decided that I too would be a painter and that the sky would be my canvas.

Life went on as it did before the air show. The teachers continued to use the colour red liberally on my report cards. Like a stubborn artist, I just continued to dream on and keep painting. Somewhere along the line came along a motion picture about the Top Guns of the United States Navy, and there I was lost in it like a dedicated fan admiring his favourite Ravi Varma Woman.

I was gloriously oblivious to the fact that if I wanted to paint on this canvas, there were some absolutely necessary hurdles that I would have to get past. The numerous unit tests, term tests, pre board exams, board exams, entrance tests, interviews, pilot aptitude tests, medical tests, three years of torture (politely put) among other things.

For me the painting on the canvas was clear, though everyone else saw otherwise.

The Ejection seat of the Mig was going to be my stool, the sky my canvas, the joystick my paintbrush and the mother earth my easel.

I did finally get on to my stool. I did paint the blue with my heart for what will always be a very short time, and enjoyed every moment of it.

But today, my canvas has changed but the painter in me once again sees a canvas and the final masterpiece so clearly.

My son is my masterpiece & his mind the canvas & I have a picture in mind.

I wonder if my masterpiece is thinking about his. No, I do not want him to see it now, today or tomorrow, but cannot help wonder if he has seen his canvas & masterpiece just as I did many years ago.

No, I am not going to point him in any direction to find his canvas or his subject, just because I did mine when I was his age or thereabouts.

I do not want it to be the same as mine, but all I want is to for him to be able to see his masterpiece clearly.

I want him to love his canvas just as honestly as I did mine.

Work twice as hard or maybe not, but surely twice as smart as I did for mine.

I want him to be more steadfast in his passion, just as I did.

I want him to read about his canvas, many times more than what I did about my canvas.

Tonight; when I see him sleep peacefully, I hope he is dreaming about Painting Nudes in Paris or where ever it might be.

Somewhere deep down in me, I feel he already has seen it just as I did, but what the hell even if he does not, that .......   just might be his canvas!!!!

Leadership What I have learnt......

Human beings are considered to be one on the most successful species, if not the most successful, only because of its capability to adapt. That ability many scientists agree comes from the loosely wired brain capacity as a baby is born into this world. The brain is then capable of adapting to the various environments that humans are born into. Environments both physical and mental challenge the newly born mind to instinctively finding comfort in its mother's bosom on a cold night and from the very beginning give the famous baby stare from as early as 4 days to build a bond with its mother. Its wired to adapt.

Everything effects and marks the brain and leads to the development of the mind, something that is at the core of leadership, and therefore these ramblings on leadership.

Leadership is a trait, I believe to it is something that develops as the human grows.

Creating the perfect environment for the team.

I am here to give those in my responsibility,  the environment  to discovery... not to perfection...

Perfection is my goal,  if I follow that goal and and remember that God is perfection,  I can achieve it only small spheres in my life. If they want to achieve perfection in what they tasked to do then,  that is their self discovery....

It applies equally to my children as well.

With children, all that remains to do for me as a parent is to warn him of the consequences of falling into the pitfall for trying to force others too achieve perfection

Fighter Pilot... An Attitude in Life

Fighter pilot is an attitude in life, my flight instructor used to say this every now and then, and more so when I was in trouble.

But I now use these words to help me focus as I lead a life of an earth bound misfit.

My office has shifted from the blue yonder where never a lark flew nor an eagle soared, to the concrete jungles filled with many a scavengers waiting to feast on a small flaw.

The laws that govern my life have changed. Changed from those written by nature, to political ones written by knaves for masses to follow..

The laws of Physics, the straight forward mathematics determining the forward throw of a bomb at 950 True Air Speed, have all been long forgotten, except for lingering memories which help me recall their existence.

Today I follow laws that are based on the ever so fickle perceptions of the selfish human mind, that they can hardly be called laws.

I once used to live my life by rules that were written in blood. Rules that were so strict that if broken could easily be paid for with the ultimate sacrifice. Today I live life by rules that are framed, based on perception. So strange are these rules that they are meant to be broken in a manner that the slumbering rule keeper is not to be awakened. Never matter that the rule was in the first place inconsistent.

I rode with those, and was one who scarcely cared about what stories were woven or twisted by knaves for fools to believe. Today I live my life with crabs in a bucket. I have stories behind my back, and worse still, I have become a fool myself, believing in stories twisted by knaves. I have to choose friends carefully, not as I would chose any wingman to be my number 2, coz we all trained to watch each others backs.

I need to comfort myself in accepting the fact that laws based on human perception are bound to change depending on the susceptibility of those perceptions. A fighter pilot would create a favourable perception always.

I need to accept that some rules are meant to as consistently broken as maintaining a hundred and nineteen on a highway limited by a hundred because at a hundred and twenty, the mechanized cop will click for you an extremely expensive photograph of your registration plate.

I need to understand that it’s this nineteen extra kilometres an hour is what will make a difference between a miss and a hit. A fighter pilot will break the rule by nineteen kilometres.

I need to tell myself that even though I live among crabs, I do not necessarily need to be a crab. Jonathan too lived among souls squawking for leftovers thrown off boats carried by the tides, but continued to focus on his passion. A fighter pilot will focus despite all odds.

I have realised that very few have the courage to accept the limitations of their perception. Accepting this limitation is what a fighter pilot is trained to do, and as I was and that is what I must continue to do.

I need to remind myself now more than ever before, that a fighter pilot is an attitude in life.......

Good Morning, This is your DREAM Giving you the wake up call...

Dream is not that which you see while sleeping it is something that does not let your sleep.” Dr  APJ Abdul Kalam

Have not been able to sleep the past few nights.... 

The calling has been keeping me awake.....

Will I sleep and forget the dream or will I wake up and make them come true....,

Kagaz pe Daaru se aur Zameen pe Khoon se

An incident.

It was a dark night. Sitting on the new Kawasaki 4 stroke, outside the dimly light STD booth, in a remote village in  back of the beyond of Western India, I struck up a conversation with the  owner.

I was a regular there. Those were the  days before mobile phones and cheap STD calls. It was the only way to communicate with my parents.

However today was not a weekend, which was when I would normally call home and folks back home. Today, somewhere in the North, we had lost a MiG 21, and the pilot had been mortally wounded. Media would get a formal brief from the IAF and then it would be published, a couple of days after the  accident. I always made it a point to call home on the day of the accident, coz folks back home my parents  would know, it was not me. The IAF, would certainly have contacted them, if it was.

Anyway, the conversation with the owner, led to a line which is etched in memory.

"Kya sahab, kissi angrez ne daaru peekar  kissi nakshe pe lakir kheench diya toh aap bhai ko bhai se alag kar sakte ho kya?"

In the backdrop of the scrambles against airborne intruders, in the past few days, that line gives a whole new perspective to borders, divisions, castes creed, religion, greed and everything else that divides humans.

FREEDOM

I am an atheist or perhaps an agnostic, I cannot say.  They will label me anyway, as they deem fit.

But, 

I do not tell anyone to accept as true one face or another structure or a power.

Nor I do not tell people that they believe in something that I do not.

I do not tell others that we are poles apart.

I never feel the burden of a missed ritual, because I overslept today which was because I worked hard yesterday.

I do not tell any one that they are different and so must be looked down upon.

I do not feel weighed down, if I did not get myself out of bed, to go a congregation, and instead spend the entire morning holding my son, watching his favourite cartoon.

I do not tell other people to do something, because when they will grow old they will feel the need for it.

I do not tell anyone to believe, because if they do not they will face dire consequences.

I do not feel anything if someone told me so either.

I am happy the way I am and yet why does it make any one else unhappy.

Am I free or am I  just bound in chains that I just do not see?

So am I a good man or am I not? Not that it matters anyway!!

Madhav Nair

Hitler Moms

A PERSPECTIVE ON THE ETERNAL STRUGGLE BETWEEN DISCIPLINE AND LOVE.

Why Hitler Moms? Coz I realized, after my baby matured into a young boy, that when I was growing up, I too was surrounded by them.

Each one of us has them in our lives. "Hitlers" in varying degrees and most importantly in varying mixes at different times.

Hitler here is a representative of the values that the military stands for. A square is represented as a square. Four equal straight lines touching each other at the ends at 90 degrees on a single plane.

All of us cousins were sure we had no other way to grow up but tow the line. One inch outside the box and depending on how far out of the box we were, we found out the meaning of the saying spare the rod and spoil the child.

Some of us were lucky to collect it on our buttocks for staying out past the "street light on" time, others on our knuckles for day dreaming at study time, others on hungry stomachs for making faces at the food. The blessed ones were made to miss TV programs eternally for scoring poor marks.  Others discovered ways to dodge the cane but gained a sense of time, and the addicted were simply not allowed to watch TOP GUN for the  sixteenth time but never got home late after that.

Those were all doing of Hitler Moms. The beauty of it was in all the illogical difference severity of the punishments for the same crime, the damn thing worked.

Then there is the other end where there is unassuming display of care, the cup of coffee at two in the morning, the glass of chilled Rooh Afzaa always there on table after the bicycle ride back from school in the scorching Punjabi summers, the Friday afternoon sweet Parathas, Huge jars of homemade Chocolate, Russian Salad in quantities enough to feed an Army, Pepper Chicken Sandwiches for the 1500 km bike ride back to my station.

And of course the stoic face hiding all the fear of the child flying the 21 at a time when the media would only report with a lot of ambiguity about a crash.

And just a simple smile on getting to wear heavy tabs or on realizing a cherished dream of flying the 21. And perhaps last but certainly not the least, they become the  eternal light that never casts a shadow around the pillar of values, even when the weakened heart wants to expose all the lies, knowing fully well that the truth is out there.

So many years down the line all that comes to mind is "Hail Hitler".