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What Is Luxury?


What is luxury?

I think luxury is not being surrounded by what money can buy to help boost our ego.

In its barest essence, luxury is heritage. It is what you build from scratch. It is the humility with which you bow your head and greet your elders. The devotion you bestow on your youngsters. The selfless goodness with which you perform your duties, and without a murmur. The memories you assimilate as opposed to articles. It is certainly not the fancy car that adorns your driveway, or the art that hangs proudly on your wall. It is the euphoria you see on the faces of the ones you love when you make for them a home and money that brings them genuine joy. It is your legacy that you hand them over by your behaviour.

The maturity of the human mind is luxury. The happiness of everyday experiences is luxury. Making art is luxury. Using skills to the closest level of perfection is luxury. Responsibility is luxury. To uphold and maintain traditions is luxury. To feel pain and hurt is luxury. To feel itself is luxury. To thank the creator for two lovely eyes, limbs, arms and genitals in optimum condition is luxury. Luxury is respect. It's love. It's what you leave behind, alive, in the ones that live, when you no longer are.

Luxury to me is my Chotu addressing me as Bhaiya with all his love. The people who constitute my core. Who enrich and enlighten me. My parents who have given me birth — I might not agree with them, but to not discredit or disrespect them is luxury. It's my culture.

Luxury cannot be sold across a counter. It doesn't have a price tag to it. What can be sold across there albeit are icons of material superfluousness. Something that showy and shallow egos lap up.

LUXURY - every human being is born with it. We don't need the world to tell us what luxury is. It is in our blood.



Image: This image does not belong to me. I have sourced it from the Internet. I do not own it, or claim copyright to it. If it is your image please do let me know if you are fine with me adding your name to it. I shall add credits to it. This is not a site for business. The images have been used for representational purposes only. If you wish, I shall take it off in case of an objection do let me know and I shall take it off. Thank you.



Die Slowly or Take Charge


He who becomes the slave of habit,
who follows the same routes every day,
who never changes pace,
who does not risk and change the color of his clothes,
who does not speak and does not experience,
dies slowly.

He or she who shuns passion,
who prefers black on white,
dotting ones "it’s" rather than a bundle of emotions, the kind that make your eyes glimmer,
that turn a yawn into a smile,
that make the heart pound in the face of mistakes and feelings,
dies slowly.

He or she who does not turn things topsy-turvy,
who is unhappy at work,
who does not risk certainty for uncertainty,
to thus follow a dream,
those who do not forego sound advice at least once in their lives,
die slowly.

He who does not travel, who does not read,
who does not listen to music,
who does not find grace in himself,
she who does not find grace in herself,
dies slowly.

He who slowly destroys his own self-esteem,
who does not allow himself to be helped,
who spends days on end complaining about his own bad luck, about the rain that never stops,
dies slowly.

He or she who abandon a project before starting it,
who fail to ask questions on subjects he doesn't know,
he or she who don't reply when they are asked something they do know,
die slowly.

Let's try and avoid death in small doses,
reminding oneself that being alive requires an effort far greater than the simple fact of breathing.

Only a burning patience will lead
to the attainment of a splendid happiness.


Brazilian poet Martha Medeiros


Image: This image does not belong to me. I have sourced it from the Internet. I do not own it, or claim copyright to it. If it is your image please do let me know if you are fine with me adding your name to it. I shall add credits to it. This is not a site for business. The images have been used for representational purposes only. If you wish, I shall take it off in case of an objection do let me know and I shall take it off. Thank you.

...BUT (Oh, never mind!)


I watched a film last evening that portrayed a rather stark reality about two countries, and how the people from each, end up shooting each other most illogically. Although, the premise was something one cannot ignore, I quite seriously think that the more we inject violence into the world in form of words or visuals, the more the same violence will come back and not just stare us in the face, but bite us in the face. In order to avoid finding ourselves embroiled with our minds in a space of utter discomfort what we each need to do instead is practice peace, peace in our minds first, and then amid our immediate surroundings. Sagely banter might not meet with great success, and neither my thoughts are quite the solution to the growing restlessness the world over, yet I think it might just be a leveller, and a leveller in times of whipped up emotions is far more a service to mankind than showing people images of blood and guns and producing in them an imagined dread that this might possibly happen. One cannot escape the fact that each of us is violent, and when dared, do we resort to using that violence without thought or reason. Similarly, the more one tries to supress, the more one resists, and resistance, as we are aware only ends up in destruction. But my question is – must we push ourselves to such a situation? And my answer is: Not really, and I say so most confidently because not everything is as awful as it is made out to look.

However, I feel as creative people, people armed with skills, authors, artists, filmmakers, whoever one may be, we must strive to bring positivism to the world by playing our part in it quietly. We must remember it is only the fearful who scream, and screaming attracts unnecessary attention. It lets others peek into our fears and allows them to have a better grip on us, and it is not uncommon knowledge that people are constantly exploring for an opening to exploit our weaknesses, first against us, and then quite obviously for their own benefit.


Let us be cool. Let us be calm. Let us not forget that when something harsh is being said about someone, or something ill is being planned on someone, it affects everyone. Let us all live in peace. Together. As human beings rather than those divided by faiths and creeds, regardless to whatever degree the provocation may be, and from whatever quarters. 

 Let us keep peace. Let us be peace.
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