IF YOU LOVE A FLOWER, DON'T PICK IT UP



















“One is never afraid of the unknown…
 one is afraid of the known coming to an end.”

- Jiddu Krishnamurti



I was a school boy when I first saw Vinod Khanna in the movie ‘Mere Apne’. He never ceased to fascinate me – challenge, inspire and even confuse me – ever since!

Like most around me, whatever I know about Vinod Khanna has come only through whatever I have read in newspapers and magazines, or watching television and his movies … or through pure grapevine. This Post, therefore, is not about Vinod Khanna, the glamours Greek God, that he had been on the silver screen, but about the fallible and vulnerable human that he came about to me from my own perception…

I always admired Viond Khanna’s looks… He looked stunning, a Greek God! But, I was aware, that what I was admiring was just an outer body of a mortal… It would wrinkle with age, look frail with sickness and age… The other day, when that picture of Vinod Khanna in the hospital was getting circulated on social media, like so many around me, I, too, couldn’t believe my eyes!  For a few days, I was in a denial mode… till the truth dawned upon me: “Hey, that’s how we all are going to be… simply mortals!”

When, at the height of his stardom and popularity, Vinod Khanna left his wife and  boys and went in search of his personal peace… trying to seek answers to his inner quest… about insecurities and emptiness in life… about love, relationships, fear, and ego… yes, when he did that, I remembered the night prince Siddhartha leaving his kingly palace… seeing the sick, the flailed, the dead and the blissful... Vinod Khanna sought answers to his questions in OSHO’s ashram.

In Osho’s ashram, Vinod Khanna spent several years as a gardener and a dish-washer… Yes, I can only imagine, all that was to drop the weight around him caused by the illusion of success and fame… and, maybe, to find peace at the heart of turmoil called relationship and love…

I am just guessing!

Let me unfurl a few pearls from OSHO:

 “If you love a flower, don’t pick it up. Because if you pick it up, it dies and it ceases to be what you love. So, if you love a flower, let it be. Love is not about possession. Love is about appreciation.”

“Experience life in all possible ways, good-bad, bitter-sweet, dark-light, summer-winter. Experience all the dualities. Don’t be afraid of experience, because the more experience you have, the more mature you become.”

“Drop the idea of becoming someone, because you are already a masterpiece. You cannot be improved. You have only to come to it, to know it, to realize it.”


Vinod Khanna has been an enigma to me! From the epicenter of show-business to the oblivion called ashram… again to the show-business, then, to the hardcore politics for almost a quarter century… a divorce and estranged family… a new-found love and marriage, a new family… and, then, the cancer in his bladder comes to intimidate him and take away even the last flicker out of his belly… Yes, when he is barely 70…

The Greek God was laid to rest, yesterday!






OSHO was an outspoken and controversial spiritual guru. On the other side of the spectrum, there was Jiddu Krishnamurti, who stripped everyone of their gullibility for a spiritual guru. OSHO would be blunt about many spiritual teachers, but not about Jiddu Krishnamurti. Despite Krishnamurti teaching all to be free from clinging to any gurus and seek truth directly… yes, despite this, OSHO considered Krishnamurti to be a true teacher. It was on OSHO’s advice, that Vinod Khanna got interested in Krishnamurti’s talks and teachings…

Let me pay my last respect to Vinod Khanna, with these two quotes from Jiddu Krishnamurti:

“We all want to be famous people, and the moment we want to be something,
we are no longer free.”


“In oneself lies the whole world and if you know how to look and learn,
the door is there and the key is in your hand.
Nobody on earth can give you either the key or the door to open, except yourself.”


GERALD D’CUNHA

Pic.: 1) Vinod Khanna in 'Mere Apne' (1971)  2) The last pic?
Courtesy: Internet

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