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Indu Muralidharan Quotes

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Famous Indu Muralidharan Quotes

“A great Tamil poet, given to decadence and debauchery, once said that the story of his life could serve as an example to the youth on how one should not live. Having lived, or rather, having sleepwalked for ten years through the desolate wastelands of depression, I survived to reach the other side. I believe that this validates my claim to write this book for you.”

“Did you know that Bharatiyar used the pen name “Shelley-dasan”? He admired the poems of Shelley so deeply that he wrote under the name “Shelley’s servant”. Wasn’t that a wonderful gesture of humility by someone who was such a great poet himself? And later, Bharatiyar had his own dasan, the poet Subburathinam, who took the pen name Bharathidasan. Subburathinam’s poetry inspired yet another poet who wrote as Surada, short for Subburathina-dasan. And to think this long chain of inspiration spans centuries, going back to the poets who inspired Wordsworth, who inspired Shelley, who inspired our own Bharati.”

“Become aware of yourself. Everything will come to you, Chinmay, when you are in that most wonderful place on earth, the centre of your being. If you learn just one thing from this book, let it be that once you are aware of yourself, depression cannot hold you back any more than a tiger can be trapped in a spider’s web.”

“I had fallen into the pages of the book. Time stood still and I lost sense of my surroundings. Siddharth’s words were all that I was aware of. They were a drum beat in my being. A part of me understood instinctively then that the purpose of this adventure had been to bring me to this book. I did not doubt for a moment that it was addressed to anyone but me, and it was not only because it bore my name on the title page. The surreal dream, the kidnapping, the rescue, my saviour’s easy familiarity … It all seemed to fall into place somehow. I sensed this book held all my answers. Even so, the words in the book frightened me like nothing had ever done before. Anu and Sabi were laughing, their heads bent together over a page. I tried to say something but my voice was stuck in my throat. I felt like a hook was being pulled through my heart. I tried to breathe. Then, out of sheer habit formed over fifteen years of my life, I did what came naturally to me when I was scared, upset or unhappy. I turned to the book in my lap and began to read.”

“Beware of ‘god men’ and ‘god women’. Even people who have not been depressed for a day in their lives get sucked into the seductive delusion of spirituality. If you must seek, seek by yourself, sitting in an armchair at your desk after office hours. For while Buddha saw the light, we do not know how many of his disciples did. If you must get guidance from a living guru, take it and move on. Gurus are no more than the teachers we had at school. You may find them when you need to learn, but you have to outgrow them in order to grow.”

“Real gases behaved like ideal gases as long as they remained in stable conditions. When the environment changed, either with increased temperature or mounting pressure, they began to deviate from their regular nature and at some point, crossed over to the less-than-ideal state. If deviating form perfection was the law of nature, why were children expected to be perfect in an imperfect world?”

“I have often thought that Walter Mitty had it in him to be more than a hen-pecked loser. Instead of living it up as a flamboyant daredevil in his dreams, he could have chosen to be a responsible man in real life, going about his work with dignity, and people may just have treated him with respect. Did his failures in life lead him to seek solace in daydreams or did his wandering mind stand in the way of his potential success? One must have triggered the other, and then it would have been both working together. An empty life drives you to fantasies of fulfilment, which then form a deadly, vicious circle which can turn you into a cartoon, as it did poor Mitty. Or lead you to ruin like Madame Bovary.”