existentialist spot

State sponsored or private violence

2012-01-03T17:46:00.004+05:30

State sponsored or private violence

Can we justify or rationalize individual or private violence? From the time of the primitive world, Governments have brought about violence in the form of war, against the civilian population, against states and countries. So why does a struggle arise to prove whose thoughts are right when an individual does the same for any political reason?

In a democratic social order, violence is accepted and even justified against persons or organizations that operate under the cover of the law. But when the legal cover is removed, the violence shock and alarm us.

Are we aware that we exist in these times where the governments in all countries are indulging in all sorts of tomfoolery and monkey business? They tax more, regulate and control more, stage manage and maneuver more. The have become more pretentious, haughty and ambitious. Governments have cut off employment opportunities of entire generations, looted the nation, their reps have bank accounts abroad, and has even made it impossible for its citizens to provide for their own savings.

The public is beginning to form its own opinion and have increasingly become aware not only of the problem but also the source of the problem. The common man’s anger towards the political and bureaucratic elite is on the rise, especially as the economic depression intensifies. In times to come this mass anger will turn violent.

So how do we solve these problems that distress us today? Well, the government needs to civilize itself and understand the realities of our times. (Is Rs 32/- enough for the BPL lives?). It needs to disband its machineries of control and regulations, harness its police and armed bureaucrats, and permit society to develop and flourish on its own. It is not complicated. So why does not the Government take this path? Well, it cannot and will not since it flourishes on domestic and international violence.

Someone had so rightly said “Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.”

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After fulfilling all their wants, needs, desires, dreams, ambitions and fascinations, what do the mega-rich do?
They can’t go out and put up pyramids these days what with labour cost, issues and other paraphernalia.

So what is the next best thing that they do? Well they put up museums with their names attached to it!

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Read the following somewhere and really like it :

Happy the man, and happy he alone,
He who can call today his own;

He who, secure within, can say,
Tomorrow, do your worst, for I have lived today.

Be fair or foul, Let it rain or shine
The joys I have possessed, in spite of fate, are mine.

No power itself upon the past has power;
But what has been, has been, and I have had my hour.

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Why Do Kids Hate School?

Parents rarely give thought as to why their children hate school — after all, aren't kids supposed to? This thought process relies on the hypothesis that children are genetically inclined to loathe learning. More likely, however, is that kids dislike the system of schooling they're forced into rather than education. What they're subjected to daily, characterized by mass-standardization and orthodoxy, is adversative to the human spirit, and is likely the source of their absolute contempt for school.

Children are cleverer than they're given credit for. They recognize bad teaching just as well as adults can. They know the pace at which they're learning is always too fast or too slow — never just right. They realize that much of the material they're learning will be of little value outside the walls that surround them. They're also aware that in the eyes of the state they are (literally) just a number.

Children are no different than adults — they will always have to do things that are beneficial to their well-being but not necessarily enjoyable. It is, however, reasonable to expect that if provided with education that is effective most kids would enjoy their schooling.

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People talk of apartheid and racialism. People talk about being leftist or rightist. People talk about god and sins and whether after leaving this earth they would settle in heaven or get thrown in hell. People discuss politics. I guess people cannot stop distinguishing between the blacks and the whites, being a communist or a capitalist, going up or down or showing interest in such trifling like political beliefs.

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We will never have enough proof that Corporate Interests, Elite Bankers, Military Establishments and Politicians are all in this together to form a country’s policy to suit them in the best and all possible means. Either you join them or shut up.

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One of Aristotle’s famous phrase is “Man is a social animal”. This phrase has been twisted and translated in as many ways as could be. Society has become so damned fundamental and necessary that trying to live in isolation has become a spectacular Herculean task and challenge. The idea of living is isolation is dauntingly one both of horror and fascination.

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War is essential to the very existence of man. It is paradoxical but rational. One has never remembered a time when there was no war in this world. The most astute and prudent of leaders, the most benevolent and gracious of kings nor any religion or religious institution has ever been able to stop war. War can never be stopped; and there is no such thing like a rational or justified war,

There will always be thousands of thousands to whom even such a war will be senseless and unjustified. Quite simply, no state can live without war, which is one of the state's essential functions. ... War is the price we pay for living in a state. Before you can abolish war you will have to abolish all states. But that is unthinkable until the propensity to violence and evil is rooted out of human beings. The state was created to protect us from evil. In ordinary life thousands of bad impulses, from a thousand faces of evil, move chaotically, randomly, against the vulnerable. The state is called upon to check these impulses — but it generates others of its own, still more powerful, and this time one-directional. At times it throws them all in a single direction — and that is war.

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Kinds Of people

2011-10-11T18:11:00.000+05:30

There are three kinds of people. One who leads, one who follows and one how neither leads nor follows. Which kind are you?

How To become Rich

2011-09-14T23:01:00.002+05:30

There are three ways to become rich

They are (either\or\and):

1. Inherit

2. Work Hard

3. Steal

If you know of any other way, please do let me know.

Modern Day Slavery

2011-05-18T18:23:00.005+05:30

• You navigate through existence and enter into nothingness. In between you sleep every night and that is probably what keeps you sane.

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• One does not have to spend the rest of one’s life fearing hell or thinking about heaven if one does not believe that there is life after death. In any case just imagine how boring heaven would be!

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• The Creature Man was created under mysterious circumstances.

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• The so called proud working class is nothing but another form of modern day slavery. The working class is always overworked by their master; eight hours of daily labour does not seem to be enough; most of their time is spent in trying to afford enough food supply, shelter, and the necessaries and comforts of life, leaving them very little time to further their education or to indulge in leisure, amusement, sleep and a little vagaries of life.

The lowest and most degraded form of human existence is the experience when the individual has to toil, labour and be depended on others for wages to pay for food, shelter and the necessaries and comforts of life.

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• The human race has no interest that everyone should be educated, fed, have access to medical facilities, or promote peace, well being, happiness to every man, woman and child regardless of their class, sect, colour, party or country.

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• There are people who believe in flying saucers, in telepathy, in astrology, in the Bermuda Triangle, in reincarnations, in gods, in satan, in Vastu Shastras, in Feng Shui, in Falun Gong, in heaven and hell, in Raelism, in black magic, in ghosts-spirits-souls,. . . . . .

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The ghetto in the sky

2011-02-04T09:25:00.000+05:30

In a city like Mumbai, with it slums, high-rises and fancy apartments, the entire population lives in a ghetto. To me a ghetto is an overcrowded, over populated urban area. There is not much of a difference between people living in a poor area and of those living in high-rises. Both are squeezed into small places and this makes them very angry, exasperated and frustrated. These people are more likely to commit crime.

In the poorer area, because of the overcrowded, social and economic living conditions, crime rates are high. In the areas where there are high-rises, streets below are unsafe. The higher one lives, the higher is the possibility of crime being committed. If one lives on the ground floor, one has more and immediate access to the streets. One’s car is much safer on the streets if one lives on the ground or the 1st floor. The higher the building, the more people are lifted from the street level.

Now the ghettos are in the sky!

The Art of Bargaining

2011-02-03T09:44:00.004+05:30

At the end, I don’t want to lie on my deathbed and wish that I had spent more time in the office with those gloomy fluorescent lamps, those countless emails & phone-calls, those colleagues stabbing you in the back, those over paid bosses, those talents going unrewarded, the countless absurdities of office life. No sir, I would not like to spend time at that frustrating and most illogical place on earth.

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People don’t take much interest on other people except for their social positions

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The Art of Bargaining
I spent sometime in Linking Road trying to understand how stuffs are bargained and purchased.
Bargaining must be an art, otherwise how do we define the following
1. The customer disagrees, bickers, squabble with the shopkeeper.
2. The customer points out defects in the object that is to be purchased
3. The customer sweet talks, coax, pursue, entices.
4. The customer displays, irritation, displeasure, annoyance.
5. The customer derides, mock and scoff at the shopkeeper
6. The customer intimidates the shopkeeper never to come to his shop again
7. The customer shrug shoulders.
8. The customer cautions and reprimands the shopkeeper
9. The customer feigns walking away from the shop displaying resentment.
10. Finally when the bargain has been won, heads are shaken in melancholy as if
defeat has been acknowledged with resignation.

So the next time you intend to purchase something, try out the above points and see for yourself the art of bargaining

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We people are a crazy lot.

2011-02-01T08:45:00.001+05:30

We people are a crazy lot.
We consider ourselves smart,
but we smoke, drink and gamble.
We fall in love.
We have morons running the offices.
We declare war on each other.
We react irrationally during the boom and collapse of the stock market.
We don’t listen to our parents and we don’t seem to have much respect for them,
but we are ready to kill or die for faith and religions which were created by ancient barbarian civilizations.
We people are a crazy lot.

Mere & More Cash

2011-01-28T08:54:00.000+05:30

Perhaps no one comprehends Sexually Transmitted Diseases and the ordeal of having to live life being infected, more than the prostitutes. Nevertheless, prostitutes live a life filled with risk in spite of the dangers, embarrassments and the humiliations of the job. Mere and more cash perhaps stimulate them to take up this perilous job.

But why the prostitutes - in fact most of us do exact that! We jeopardize our lives for mere and more cash. The construction workers who builds high rises, the soldiers who sign up for the frontiers, the office executive who keeps a highly profile stressful life and knows that this is harmful for his health - all accepts hazardous jobs in exchange for privileged salaries.

Both the prostitutes and the above set of people know what they are doing – a tough and dangerous job that offers financial compensation for doing it. They all have high negotiating powers, shrewd choices and looks at the world with a hard-hitting tougher view.

You may find this offensive, barmy, stupid, bizarre and perhaps ethically disintegrated, but this is a social problem.

Giffen Good

2011-01-26T19:05:00.000+05:30

If you travel to any city in this world, you will observe that the city is demarcated between wealthy neighbourhood and poor neighbourhood. I do not know if this is a political malfunction, but you will see that the wealthier neighbourhood has fresh coats of paints, the traffic zebra lines are clear and discernible and the traffic lights work. Both neighbourhoods have the same elected government. Why does this inequality exist? Is it that the rich have friends in the government, or am I cranky that the poor neighbourhood people are stupid and incompetent?

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We all live in our comfort zone. In fact, most of our time is spent inside this comfort zone. We like to do familiar things. By doing this familiar things, we gain experience. When we gain experience, we are less likely to make mistakes. Since none of us human species likes to make mistakes, with the passing of time and the gaining of experience, we cuddle to a corner called comfort zone, where we make less mistakes and bide our time.

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Giffen Good

Inferior qualities of potatoes, dal, wheat, rice, are some of the staple food items that is absolutely a necessity for the poor and the Below Poverty Level people. Without these, existence would become a question. In economics there is a theory called the Giffen Good. When the price of these essentials rises, demand too rises and because the price rise creates more poverty, poverty in return creates more demand.

Normally in economics, price and demand travels the opposite directions. If price rises, demand goes down and if price falls, demand goes up.

Maybe in India, onions, sugar, most vegetables, rice, eggs, chicken and of course dal are the staple food for the poor people. Otherwise, I don’t see much decrease in the usage of these food items even though prices have shot up.

By the way I wonder what would happen if the price of Tiffany Diamonds, expensive French perfumes/wines, Rolls Royce, Rolex fall. Would the demand go up or would it come down since these are perceived as exclusive or high status products?

The Bengali as supremacist

2011-01-15T15:16:00.000+05:30

Existing as a Bengali these days has become a source of embarrassment and wretchedness. The eminently intellectual and cultured West Bengal is now being compared with its more iniquitous neighbour - Bihar. At face value it does not emerge as an innocuous but an absurd thought. We as Bengalis who think of us as culturally supremacist, if not subtly racist, demean, scorn and denigrate Biharis, this indeed is a bizarre thought!

The CPM as per media reports seemed to have raised a heavily armed private army. There was carnage in the village of Netai. The Maoist thanked TMC for supporting their cause. All these have been confirmed by the Intelligence agency.

Binayak Sen was imprisoned for his association with the Maoist. The Maoist thanked Mamata Banerjee against land acquisition in Singur and Nandigram. Should Mamata be smacked with the same charges that put Binayak behind bars? Who should the voter vote for, considering that both sides have hooligans patronizing the party and being patronized in return? Do the voters have preferences, considering that both the CPM and the TMC seem to incline on criminal violence to settle disputes which should be decided legally, democratically and in an electoral manner? The questions are difficult but elementary.

Going forward, there might be a change of guard at the Writers Building but nothing much will change for the mass. The politics in West Bengal will remain more or less the same, no matter how much we Bengalis consider ourselves to be more civilized than our neighbours. No matter how much we deny it, West Bengal seems to have a history of organized violence and we apparently are doing nothing to dismantle it.

So now how can we get rid of these monsters and have some other alternative to lead us?

Theory of Relativity

2011-01-09T23:54:00.000+05:30

Most of us live a life of ignorance and surrender ourselves to feeble and childish beliefs.

I am an atheist, in and out. It did not take me long to realize and accept it. I have been an atheist now for so long that I don’t even remember when I first had this revelation. I never felt that it was intellectually unrespectable to blurt out that one was an atheist though it has to be admitted that the knowledge was assumed and one had no actual idea that god really did exist.

On one hand I don’t have the evidence to prove that god does not exist, on the other hand neither does anyone have any evidence that god exist.

In any case, with the passing of time and the adding of age, I guess it does not matter whether god exist or does not exist. To me today, it is a waste of time to even think about it.

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Existence gives an impression that most of us don’t know what we want, until we see it. When we see Shah Rukh Khan advertise a certain Hyundai car, we want to possess it. When we see and hear a certain brand of speakers, we want to buy it. The list is long and never ending. In fact most of us don’t even know what we want to do with our lives until we see someone who is doing just what we think we should be doing.

It seems that we make our decisions based on comparison with others. Whether it is cars, TVs, speakers, jobs, houses, spouses, etc, out wants are compared with the wants of others. And it seems that we cannot help it!

The comparisons also extends to choosing a girlfriend or a spouse. When you go out for a date with a girl for the first time, the girl invariably ends up confused. This is because she does not have anyone to compare you with. So if you take a male friend with you who is slightly less good looking than you, the girl immediately seems to click with you. The girl seems to evaluate you with your friend and since you are slightly better looking than him, you are compared favourably! (so perhaps you should be aware that when a better looking guy invites you to meet his girlfriend you must ask yourself whether the invitation was to just accompany him or be compared with him.)

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A woman who sells herself for a fee is called a prostitute. That is how we go about giving names to professions. Does this mean that a person who sells wisdom should be called an intellectual prostitute?

Luck, Hard Work and Intelligence

2010-12-28T16:06:00.001+05:30

To different people, the prescription for success is different. Recently the most workable formula for success stumbled on is as follows:

(Success = Luck + Hard Work + Intelligence)

Where:

Luck = 50%
Hard Work = 25%
Intelligence = 25%

To be successful one needs to have at least 75% of the ingredients, with the full load of 50% of Luck. This means that some people may work hard and may have no intelligence and still become successful. On the other hand, some people may have the intelligence but may not work hard and still become successful. There is also the combination of some people may work hard and may have the intelligence totaling to 25% and may get success. But it cannot be denied that luck plays the most dominant part and contributes 50% to a man’s success.

Otherwise how the heck do you figure out when to be in the right place and at the right time?

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For ages, the society went on. In times to come it will go on. The society keeps on breeding like rabbits. Perhaps that is what we are here for – to breed.

Increasingly I am beginning not to like society. I am trying to live an absolutely quite life. I would not like anyone visiting me because I visit no one. I would not like anyone taking interest in me, since I have no interest in others.

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Is it possible to distinguish ONLY evil people or ONLY good people? Is it feasible to separate those evil people who indulge in inhuman feats? Perhaps not, since good and evil both resides in a person’s heart. Would you be willing to demolish a part of your own heart?

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Are we independent thinkers?

2010-12-17T08:57:00.001+05:30

It is a perplexing and implausible world. People do not have what they want. Although what they want are all around them, yet everyone seems to have all the wrong things. It is incomprehensible to me. Maybe it is explicable to you?

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Most of us have stopped being independent thinkers. We seem to have surrendered our judgment. Our views, ideas, opinions seem to stem from newspapers, TVs, social networking on the net and idle talks.

We have even stopped to be independent of all the gizmos that seem to pop out every now and then. The technological tools seem to be working for people rather than people needing these technological tools to work with.

And as far as our consumer society is concerned, there seems to be two kinds of slaves. One class is addicted to consumerism whilst the second class lives in envy, struggling to get addicted.

Meanwhile our medical industry is organized not to serve the human health, but only itself. The medical world provides for itself as an institution. The idea is to make more people sick than to restore health.

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The governments of the world are indeed smart. They don’t take away everything from the people. They tax you heavily and the tax money is invariably used incongruously. (For ages and centuries, we have not been able to wipe out poverty and starvation) The Governments are prudent enough to realize that when they strip a man of everything, he is no longer in their power. He is free again. So they feed you some and also keep you hungry. This way you are under their power to be manipulated anyway they want

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Death by hunger

2010-12-16T20:37:00.000+05:30

Many moons back, when I was young, I remember my father acquainting me with what I presumed was a bizarre phenomenon: people died because of hunger. I never quite understood then. How can a person be hungry and die because he did not have any food to eat? It was somewhat shocking too. That was my first introduction to hunger death.

Many moons still have passed by, a lot of water has flowed under many a non constructed bridge and now I have a young son. I am sure he would not understand if I acquaint him with this still prevailing situation of death caused by hunger. To me, it is still shocking that we live in a country, in and at a time and in a place where people have no food to eat and where people die because of starvation!

We are otherwise proud to have a growing group of billionaires.

It is a curse to be born poor and to live life below the poverty level. More so if you are born in India. The authorities simply refuse to accept deaths due to a lack of food. There is a food ration system. People have ration cards, but no food. I have never quite understood why the rich should have ration cards. Perhaps the ration card has different uses for the two classes of people. For the rich, the ration card is a must if you want to get hold of a passport, buy properties, establish your proof of domicile or get a driving license, etc. For the poor, the ration card is a must if he wants to get food to ward off death.

There is flood, drought, man made calamities, poor crop cycles and other natural disasters which force the poor people to eat rats and roots. When the government does not seem to acknowledge deaths caused by hunger, how can it be expected to eradicate this menace? Diseases and unhygienic living conditions lead to death, but the most disgusting thing is death due to malnutrition.

We have been doing everything except providing a man the most basic commodity for him to survive - food.

Meanwhile tons of food go wasted and rot in the FCI warehouses.

Ingredients of happiness

2010-12-13T12:14:00.003+05:30

Saw Belle De Jour directed by Luis Bunuel. The film stars Catherine Deneuve (I remember her terrific acting in Roman Polanski’s Repulsion) as a young, beautiful and impassive wife of a medical student. She finds out the address of a brothel in Paris from a middle age person, who seemed to have a lot of money and a lot of time. Every afternoon, she goes there between two to five, where a series of men with unconventional taste are comfortably looked after.

An old maxim – “to judge a human is not only foolishness, but also dangerous” snugly fits in this movie. It shows how unsoiled, educated, intelligent, well to do, gorgeous and well groomed people can indulge in appalling performances. It can be fact.…… It can be fantasy. Perhaps it is more of fact rather than fantasy, since a glimpse in the past revealed that the human mind wanders to territories unimaginable.

Being impressed by Luis Buneul’s work has compelled me to hunt down and collect the rest of his works.

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The ingredients of happiness are ignorance, stupidity and self-centeredness.

ΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘ

I do not know why we place so much of significance to the views of critics. The inability to create, metamorphosis’s a creature to a critic. Critics are creatures who never created anything. When the creature couldn’t become an artist, he/she became a critic.

ΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘ

Saw someone struggling to get out of this world. Death was near. God and Satan were fighting for his soul during the last hour. The soul was subjugated. The living assumed it was not Satan. The only qualm was - which of one the two was Satan?

ΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘ

Some reservations exist whether we human beings are rational animals or just animals. Otherwise it becomes hard to explain why we human beings succumb to authorities, submit to laws, believe in obedience and do not believe in freedom.

ΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘ

The Ogre

2010-11-29T18:47:00.001+05:30

Saw the film “The Ogre” today. The film stars John Malkovich as Abel who though a misfit and a troublemaker in the society does things which can be termed as grotesque and yet remains an empathetic green character. He is the kind of idiot who identifies with children and animals and believes that he has personal power and can guide his own fate.

The fable is expressionistic and shows how young adolescent boys are drawn to German mythology and Nazi ideology

The unusual thing about this movie in general was that it was made in the English language, in spite of it being very European, crawling with references to Goethe, the German folklore and the Nazi dogmas.

The Juvenile or the Judge

2010-11-28T09:18:00.000+05:30

Looking around, one can perceive that the stomachs are full but the minds seem to be empty. Rest but for a few, the mass seems to be gorging themselves off, with nary a mind of their own.

A long time back I read a story about a juvenile, who was poor and scared. He was put into prison for something that could well be described as tomfoolery. It turned out this was supposed to be a crime. The judge detested the idea of sentencing the child. He did not think that it was the right thing to do. But he could not help it as the law left him no alternative. He was bound by the law to pass judgment. It was an awful thing. The judge was doing something in the capacity of an official. Had he been man enough, he would not have thought of doing such a thing. The judge passed a sentence without any sense of responsibility, with any discomfort, just because he was acting as an official and not as a man.

Funnily no one seemed to have been associated in it. Not the Judge, not the Jury, not the Prosecutor, not the Complaining Witness, not the Policeman or the Jailers. No one felt any responsibility. No one took any responsibility. They just went about doing their ‘job’ as officials. No one acted as Men. The most shocking part was that even the general public did not consider these officials as criminals, but rather as straight, decent and honest men.

Now whether the juvenile or the judge committed a crime becomes a question.

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Learning to Subtract

2010-11-26T16:05:00.001+05:30

Whether it is philosophy, science or civilization, our systems has always taught us to add. Add to life. We have not been taught that we must be able to subtract too. Life is a process of amalgamation and fragmentation.

Since the earliest Greek era, man has formed societies and political systems. But no societies or political systems has ever been able to eradicate human misery. We have only been able to add.

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Is it eccentric and uncharacteristic to keep asking question about the nature of the universe, about the human condition and what the human is actually doing here on earth, or on the contrary is it abnormal and weird for people NOT to reflect about it and unconsciously allow themselves to live life, as it were?

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Today we are ‘civilized savages.’ Once when we were ‘savaged savages’ and when one of the savages first saw his shelter destroyed by a bolt of lightning, he fell down on his knees and on his face in bewilderment, awe and terror. He had no notion of natural forces. He had no knowledge of the laws of electricity. He saw this as an act by a supernatural intelligent personality.

Today some of us don’t believe in fairies; demons; nymphs; sprites; elves; goblins; brownies; gnomes; Pan, the Roman god of forest; Haphaestus, the Greek god of fire; Zeus, the ruler of the gods; Juno, the queen of gods; Hades, the god of death. We interpret these as fables, imaginations, hallucinations, forgetting that once upon a time they were serious phenomenon to ancient man who ardently believed in them and whose mind explained that they were the products of some supernatural individual personality. Ancient man did believe that there was this super hero who exterminated the dragon. He represented the science of ancient times.

The unknown, coupled with ignorance brings fear. Whether it was the ancient man or the modern civilized man, his existence is based upon fear. He was born amongst fear. He was fed by fear. He will die with fear.

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Fascism = Capitalism + Socialism + Slaughter

2010-11-25T10:22:00.005+05:30

One time or the other, all forms of authority becomes predatory and all forms of authority become corrupt. At the least, in India, the overwhelming reality is that whenever people get ready to change that government, they can change it.

This is not the same in Pakistan. There is no political democracy in Pakistan. In Pakistan the state of affairs is like that of a musician who while playing, is consciously aware that there are gun totting crazy fundamentalist let loose by primordial doctrines. He cannot play in peace. He has to set aside his musical instrument, clasp a rifle and secure his own security, all the while hoping that he does not have to use it.

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Violence is the crudest and lowest form that can be used by the lowest of the lowest class of people. Paradoxically, violence has been used to acquire rights and freedom from tyrants. Perhaps once the rights and freedom has been established, human problems can then be resolved in a more refined and civilized manner by using the ballot instead of the bullet.

Ω۞Ω۞Ω۞Ω۞Ω۞Ω۞Ω۞Ω۞Ω۞Ω۞Ω۞Ω۞Ω۞Ω۞Ω۞Ω۞

Fascism = Capitalism + Socialism + Slaughter
Capitalism = Fascism - Socialism - Slaughter
Socialism = Fascism - Capitalism - Slaughter
Slaughter = Fascism - Socialism - Capitalism

{Socialism has been used keeping in mind not the classic Marxism Leninism Maoism
or communism but collectivism and/or communalism}

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On The Origin Of Species

2010-11-24T09:51:00.001+05:30

Those were the days when science as a topic was learned as part of religious studies. The scientific establishments were closely tied to the Churches.

During this period of the 1850s, Lord John Russell, the grandfather of Lord Bertrand Russell was the Prime Minister of England, Nicholas I was the Emperor of Russia, Frederick William IV was the King of Germany, Napoleon III was the Emperor of France, the 1st transpacific telegraph cable was laid, the Mughal Empire was disbanded by the British, Russia on one side and Great Britain, France and Ireland on the other side fought the Crimean War, and the western world fought the Opium War with China.

This was also the time that Charles Darwin published in 1959 one of the greatest works “On the Origin of Species”. Since that day, the creation-evolution controversy still exists amongst the cultural, political, scientific, and theological communities. Fundamentalists have thrived on both sides. The US banned the teaching of evolution in schools. Man has not come around to accept that he descended from a lower order of animals. Protestants, Catholics, Jews, Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs and other religions all have their own and different version on this subject. All in all, after many failed attempts, I finally got around to completing this difficult book. Though I must own up, the better part was beyond me to comprehend and comment. Nevertheless, with years passing by, a belief is being established that one cannot have science and religion in the same bin. Both are too diametrically viewed and going forward one does not perceive any scope or hope for reconciliation.

Old WInes, Friends and Authors

2010-11-23T17:52:00.000+05:30

Actors, Novelist, Poets and others try to live life passing themselves off as normal persons. They exist as if in a trance. Their ignorance about reality is a conscious effort. They are not in position to realize that we live in a ‘life threatening and dignity destroying’ environment. They cannot switch themselves off from this stupor and come to the actuality of the world.

Most of them live in their world of lies. They have more than one version of their autobiography and none of them are true. Even if they write fictions, people would presume that the contents were disguised autobiography.

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I am not sure that between the ups and downs of life, between the hills and valleys of life, a pattern exists in our life. There are so much of actions and catastrophes that occur in our lives, that sometimes I am led to believe that there could be some kind of pattern. Conceivably there isn’t or possibly we are inept in categorizing those patterns.

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It is said that one should drink old wines, have old friends and read old authors. Agree?

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A must before you die. . . .

2010-11-17T21:08:00.001+05:30

Consider this as social work done.

If you are in Durban, visit Point Road - Beijing, visit Dashilan – Shanghai, visit Simalu – Kowloon, visit Portland Street – Tokyo, visit Kabukicho or Roppongi or Yoshiwara – Kuala Lumpur, visit Chow Kit – Singapore, visit Geylang or Orchard Towers or Changi village or Keong Siak road or Desker/Rowell road or Petain road – Vienna, visit Gurtel - Copenhagen, visit Halmtorvet or Istedgade - Paris, visit Pigalle or Bois de Boulogne or Madeleine or Montparnasse - Berlin, visit Oranienburger Strasse - Zurich, visit Langstrasse - Geneva, visit Les Pâquis - London, visit King's Cross or Soho or Commercial Road, Whitechapel or Sussex Gardens, Paddington or Shepherds Market.

And finally before you die and if you happen to be in Agra, visit Kinari Bazaar – Delhi, visit GB Road or Chawri – Kolkata, visit Sonagachi – Mumbai, visit Kamathipura – Muzaffarpur, visit Chaturbhuj Sthan - Nagpur, visit Ganga Jamuna and Pune, visit Budhwar Peth.

Perhaps you would be amazed and shocked how we human live our lives.

Another take on . . . . . . .

2010-11-16T19:34:00.001+05:30

Like Happiness, Freedom too is a myth. Otherwise how do we explain that as long as man is a slave to desire, ambition and necessity, the effort to try and unshackle him will never be realized?

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I guess we may be able to diminish our struggle for survival, had we instead of fighting for a country, fought for the earth to make it a better place to live (and die) in it.

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“It is lonely at the top’’. Most people believe in this statement.

Let us take an unusual take. Very few people no doubt reach the top. This could be because very few people care to take a trip further than the run of the mill course. It may well be that there might be a lot of space at the top

Most of them appear to be content and pleased with their accomplishments and thus restricts themselves to the boundary where excellence starts.

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Here is another statement: “The dignity of labour.”

People keep talking about the dignity of labour and about how man is recognized and accepted because of his (hard) work.

Here is another different take on work. Work is indispensable, but only the ‘poor human earthly condition’ makes it so. The dignity is not in labour. The dignity is in leisure. Leisure is directly associated with independence and freedom. More of leisure means more of freedom. A person who does not believe in ‘The dignity of Leisure’ does not have much independence. And if one still takes another look at work, one may discover that most works are irrational, detrimental, imprudent, depraved and pointless.

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Prologue: A dream_____ Epilogue: A nightmare

2010-11-15T20:34:00.000+05:30

I first had a dream. It was then followed by a nightmare.

But 1st - the dream.

I was a run of the mill person. I use to daily go about my life in a manner which was more or less living within a budget and within my means.

Then one day, I received a call from a Bank, which put an end to my daily chores and misery. The caller from the bank asked me to meet the manager of the bank regarding some considerable fortune left to me as a sole heir by some distant relative. I was to reach the Bank and sign some documents and receive the necessary authorization to dispose of my newly found fortune in any way that I saw fit.

Obviously, I hastily reached the bank to take possession of my wealth.

The wealth ran into millions of dollars. From this point, going forward, this was to have a formidable impact on my life. It opened up new worlds to me, now enabling me to afford to buy the things that I never could dream buying before. I can now afford to buy a new home, a villa perhaps. I can now afford to buy a whole new wardrobe, travel across the world, quit my current job that I have and I do not like. I could now live the life of a gypsy, living anywhere on this planet as I please, with nary a thought about the future.

I could get on to a business or invest and speculate in the stock and real estate markets. I would no longer be terrified of losing a few million dollars and still be very rich.

This would be my boom period of my life. My life would be easy, simple, trouble free, uncomplicated. I can do anything that I want to do and my prospects would be inexhaustible. For the rest of my life I would fondly and enthusiastically look back to this period and call it “The Good Times”.

Now the nightmare_

A second letter appeared which put an end to my life of ease and plenty. The letter said that it was proved that my distant relative got this fortune through some criminal means. This meant that the fortune did not belong to my relative and thus could not be passed on to me or to anyone else.

Consequently I was compelled to return the wealth. In view of that, the bank had to freeze the account and a court order was issued restraining me from spending any more of what I thought was an inheritance. The court also demanded that I return whatever fortune was left unspent.

I now find myself covered in a mountain of debt that I cannot repay. I must now sell my home and my dream villa in distress and at a price that was almost half of what I paid for. I had to get rid at a dirt price, the clothes and the many other goods that I had bought. My travels across the world were an overall loss. Also at a great loss were all the expenses that I incurred buying those luxury items. Given my deficiency of past financial success, I also could not make any profits out of my investment in stocks and real estate markets.

All this gusto of receiving my inheritance had turned out to be a financial disaster. With a lot of certainty and by erroneously leading me to understand that I owned a massive fortune, I made substantial purchases. The fact was that I did not own any fortune. But it led me to live a life far beyond my means. I squandered most of the little wealth that I had prior to my inheriting my inheritance.

That was the period of my life when I went bust.

So during my sleep, I went through a boom period and a bust period of my life.

“The ‘Right’ to be Left Alone.”

2010-11-03T12:52:00.004+05:30

6th and 7th Nov., 2010 will see the US President Obama in Mumbai. I wonder will he ever grasp the fact that throughout the world, the US is perceived as setting less of spiritual standards and more on materialistic ones. Will he realize that the US is seen as a conceited, egocentric, gluttonous country engrossed in Guns and Dollars? Will he ever understand that the US is not seen as a country interested in people, their hopes and aspirations? Or will he be just like those American citizens who never had this opportunity to see the world and thought that the world is America?

Sometimes I wonder, has he as a US representativem come here to gloat over us? Sometimes I even wonder whether the Americans think that they are the only human beings in this world!

Anyway south of Mumbai will be closed to us mortals. The question is : Is it worth to waste so much time, money and energy on one man?

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Like the Right of Privacy - Is there a right called “The Right to be left alone?”

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The struggle to survive, struggle against poverty, hunger & disease – these are basic struggles. There is another struggle. The struggle between the individual and his sacrosanct right to express himself and ‘The Authority’ that looks for compliance, obedience and repress or stifles free thought and free expression that may determine our fate. The Authorities seek to regulate free speech, putting a limit on the range of discussions that one should or can have, censoring or limiting thoughts and subjects that appear to be taboo and reminding us constantly that holocaust is not actually over.

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I guess it simmers down to two things that one should aim in life. One is to go out and get what you want. The other is, after you get what you want in life, to enjoy it. Very few have achieved the second.

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We work our way up to own something. We work hard to own a house. We work hard to pay off the loan. When finally we own it, we don’t find anybody living in it.

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Start something of your own

2010-10-31T13:11:00.003+05:30

Like the salad, our minds are all dressed up. We believe we are highly educated. Maybe each generation has the same belief. We think we are more urbane, classy and chic than our grandparents. We think we are an open minded generation. But the question is “are we getting anything fresh?’’ It’s like the mind is kind of all dressed up but nowhere to go!

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It’s a scary and horrifying truth that we do not know who we are, why we are here or where are we going in this chaotic world. We depend on the authorities to show us direction. The political, the religious, the educational authorities, they all combine to give us orders, rules, regulations, information – in the process forming our minds, our views, our opinions, our principles and our lives. We become enslaved by the authorities’ view and diktat. It is very difficult to think for yourself. It is very difficult to question authority.

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All religions are primitive. Some years back there were many gods. Now there is only one god. If and with only one god, you no choice or option. You only submit to god. I think the word Islam means submission. In Christianity you kneel down. Each religion has its own way to make you feel small. Visit the church and the Padre says “Son, you are a sinner". The message is clear - Zip up your trousers, give the money to the church and they will give you a room up in a hotel in the sky.

I wonder why we do not start a religion of our own! Perhaps nobody wants to be a social dropout.

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Of late, I have come to appreciate that I am not too proud to have accomplished my sales target, month after month, quarter after quarter, year on year, or to have been picked by a much sought after MNC, or to have attained a promotion for my ‘contribution to the corporation’. I have come to realize that at one time or the other, I was just an anonymous institutional corporate worker who drove to work each morning in a SUV, joining the long line of commuters, getting stranded in the traffic, and drove back home each night to have whiskey. I was like the several million middle class, liberal, cerebral robots.

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Escape from Life - Impersonation - Hope

2010-10-06T11:52:00.000+05:30

Conceivably the entire purpose of our life is to escape from life. We seem to rummage around for modes to escape. We try to escape in myths, in drugs, in alcohol, in lies, in marriages, in children, building careers, making money, lusting for sex, power and fame or by any other means at our disposal.

Maybe all these soothe us and give us a few moments of comfort and relieve.

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Are we conscious who we are whilst we live our life on a daily basis? Do we develop our own personality or do we lose our character and our individuality? Do we impersonate others? Do we masquerade to be what we are not? Do we regain our awareness after experiencing such phases of life? Does our sensibility lose their sharpness such that everything like hunger, cold, fatigue, poverty, corruption, annihilation, destruction and other pains of life takes second place and we become work animals?

How do we deny these?

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I guess with the accumulation of years and coming of age, with all the revelations and experiences that we envisage or encounter, we come to realize that happiness is not only unattainable but also a myth.

Every step that we take is encumbered with piles of obstacles. It thwarts us from the state of happiness. The knowledge about our future is so inadequate that we exist with a word called ‘hope’. But in an instance the ‘hope’ is superseded again by the uncertainty of the following day. We are uncertain when death will strike us, but we are assured that death will thwack us.

Everything is so conflicting, so incongruous that it impedes us to be in a state of happiness.

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The Wrong Man

2010-10-05T23:18:00.003+05:30

The Wrong Man {1956} by Alfred Hitchcock is based on a true but bizarre story of a man who was booked for crimes he never committed.

When all the stacks for the protagonist were piled up against him, his mother asked him to pray to god for strength. God did listen to his prayers and the ‘right guy’ was caught red handed robbing a store. Our protagonist was exonerated and he went back to his normal life.

Henry Fonda portrayed a very subdued act. He does not drink, he does not womanize, he goes back home to his wife and two kids and is a devoted family man. That was the essence of the movie. Moreover his eyes depicted a range of emotions and circumstances which very few actors can perform. Vera Miles was infallible in her role as a mother and wife who cracks and lands up in a mental institution. The B & W photography was brilliant.

The only wish was that AH should have thrown some more scenes of Fonda playing with the Jazz Band as a Bass player.

Classical works – The ones I like

2010-10-04T22:54:00.003+05:30

Can‘t say finally, since the endeavor is an incessant process, but after many months and after hearing thousands of these pieces and many a composer – I have managed to shortlist the following (The list is no way exhaustible):

Aaron Copland Fanfare For The Common Man.
Aram Khatchaturian - sabre dance
Bach - Air on a G string
Bach - Brandenburg Concerto No.3 in G
Bach - Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring
Bach - Minuet In G Major
Bach - Prelude In C
Bach - Toccata and Fugue in D Minor
Beethoven - 5th symphony
Beethoven - 6th Symphony
Beethoven - 9th Ode to Joy
Beethoven - 9th Symphony
Beethoven - Fur Elise
Beethoven - Minuet in G
Beethoven - Moonlight Sonata No.14, 1st movement
Beethoven - ode an die freude
Bizet - Carmen Suite No.1 'Les Toreadores'
Bizet - Les Toreadors
Boccherini – Minuet
Borodin Polovtsian Dances from Prince Igor
Brahms - Hungarian Dance No.5
Brahms – Lullaby
Brahms - Waltz in Ab Major
Brahms_ - hugarian dance no.5
Carl Orff - Carmina Burana 'O Fortuna'
Chopin - Etude in E Major
Chopin - fantasie impromptu
Chopin - Grand Waltz Brilliant, Op.18
Chopin - Military March, Op.40 No.1
Chopin - 'Minute' Waltz No.64 in Db Major
Chopin - Nocturne No.2 in Eb Major, Op.9
Chopin - Polonaise in Ab Major, Op.53
Chopin - Prelude in A
Chopin - Waltz Op.64 No.2
Copland - Fanfare For the Common Man]
Debussy - Clair de Lune
Debussy - Golliwog's Cakewalk
Delibes - Coppelia Waltz
Di Capua - O Sole Mio
Edvard Grieg - anitra's dance
Edvard Grieg – morgenstimmung
Edvard Grieg – Morning
Edvard Grieg - Peer Gynt Suite 'Anitra's Dance'
Edvard Grieg - Peer Gynt Suite 'In the Hall of the Mountain King'
Gershwin - Rhapsody in Blue
Gershwin – Summertime
Giazotto – Adagio
Glinka - Russian and Ludmilla Overture
Gruber - Stille Nacht
Haydn - Trumpet Concerto in Eb (3rd movement)
J. Strauss Jr - Champagne Polka
J. Strauss Jr - Die Fledermaus Overture
J. Strauss Jr - Emperor's Waltz
J. Strauss Jr - Radetzky March
J. Strauss Jr - Tales From The Vienna Woods
J. Strauss Jr - The Blue Danube Waltz
J. Strauss Jr - Thunder And Lightning Polka
J. Strauss Jr - Tritsch-Trasch-Polka
J. Strauss Jr - Vienna Blood Waltz
J. Strauss Jr - Voices of Spring
J. Strauss Jr - Wiener Blut Waltz
J. Strauss Jr - Wine Women And Song Waltz
Joplin – Entertainer
Liszt - Liebestraum no3
Michael Glinka - ruslan & ludmilla
Mikis Theodorakis - Zorba's Dance
Mouskouri - Zorba's Dance
Mozart - andante elvira Madigan
Mozart - Concerto For Piano and Orchestra No.21
Mozart - Eine Kleine Nachtmusik - 1. Allegro
Mozart - Eine Kleine Nachtmusik - 2. Romance
Mozart - Eine Kleine Nachtmusik - 3. Minuetto
Mozart - Eine Kleine Nachtmusik - 4. Rondo
Mozart - Overture to The Marriage of Figaro
Mozart - Piano Concerto no21
Mozart - Piano Sonata no11
Mozart - rondo alla turca
Mozart - Symphony no 40
Mozart - Symphony no25
Paganini - 24th Caprice
Rachmaninov - Rhapsody on Paganini
Ravel – Bolero
Rota – Godfather
Tchaikovsky - March of the Toy Soldiers
Tchaikovsky - nutcracker ballet suite - flower waltz
Tchaikovsky - nutcracker ballet suite – march
Tchaikovsky - Piano Concerto no1
Tchaikovsky - Sleeping Beauty - Waltz.mp3
Tchaikovsky - Waltz of the Flowers
Vaughan Williams - Fantasia On 'Greensleeves'
Vivaldi - Four Seasons_Spring (1st Movement)
Vivaldi - Gloria In Excelsis Deo
Vivaldi – Spring
Wagner - bridal chorus
Wagner - Ride of the Valkyries
Waldteufel - The Skaters Waltz

The above are for my records only_

The Power of Human Stupidity

2010-10-01T17:56:00.000+05:30

We are too near to each other. The world indeed is very small. It is this closeness that brings about war. Had we lived in space, the distances would have been too great and unfeasible to declare war on some nations. That would be a great loss to some people (mostly who are in power), since war is humanity’s greatest and most popular distraction.

War brings purpose and colour to our otherwise insipid and stupid lives. Never underestimate the power of human stupidity

ΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘ

To most, religion is a source of happiness. One should not dispossess anyone of his happiness. Happiness blinds reasonableness. The religious person cannot judge or look for evidence and has to be engulfed in faith. He cannot choose to live a desolate life of rationale uncertainty. He does not honestly say, “I don’t know”. Hence it is not possible for him to get at the truth or gain any new idea.

ΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘ

It is platitude

2010-09-30T20:00:00.003+05:30

There is an old saying, “The early bird catches the worm”. What makes you so sure you are the bird? You can turn out to be the worm too. Wouldn’t it be wise to stay late on bed and not be caught by the bird?

ΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘ

History and religious scriptures are both written by men. One is the truth, the other is the theology. History has not recorded anywhere at any time that a religion is based on rational foundation. Religion is a crutch for people not strong enough to stand on their own feet and face the unknown without help. It’s like dandruff. Most people have religion like they have dandruff and spend a considerable amount of time and money on it. They seem to get significant pleasure from fiddling with it.

ΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘ

“Learn from the experience of others.” I have heard this phrase before, so many times. My own experience is that we human beings scarcely learn from the experience of others. Whatever we learn, that is if we do think we learn or when we ever learn, which is not quite often; we learn on our own – the hard way.

ΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘ

One day I had a dream that the purpose of this cosmos is to have sex with the woman you love and make a baby with or without her consent. In my dream I could not make out any other purpose of this universe.

ΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘ

I would term it as platitude - the thought that more or less all sect, cult or religion will enact laws upon acquiring political power. The next step would be to asphyxiate disagreements; undermining and destabilizing all education; to confiscate the early minds of the young; driving underground, the people who have non-agreeable or different opinions; by locking up or by killing.

ΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘ

I have often heard the phrase, “It is better to be a living jackal than a dead lion.” How pleasant it would be to be a living lion!

ΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘ

I am learning not to teach the pigs to think. I am learning not to argue with pigs. It is a waste of time and it also infuriates the pigs. I am learning!

ΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘ

Of Free Men, Government, Critics and Democracy

2010-09-29T11:42:00.007+05:30

We have never understood why we human beings have a great capacity to swallow nonsense and then vomit it out aggressively and exploit it. Are we still the ignorant peasant with dung on our boots?

ΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘ

I am a free man.

When the government or any religious leaders embark on a mission and sends out a diktat that I should not read this book, I should not see this movie, I am prohibited to know certain things – you may be well assured that the final consequences are tyranny and an environment of totalitarianism and repression.

It does not matter how hallowed, or divine or righteous the intentions are. Very little force is required to control the mind of a man who has been deceived. On the other hand, no amount of force can control a man whose mind is free. No prison or guns can triumph over a free man.

The most you can do is kill me

ΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘ

I try to keep my mind open. It is a very difficult task. Deep inside I am hounded by this thought that if something has not happened yesterday does not mean that it will not happen tomorrow. Shutting my mind would be opening up this idea - that everything is impossible.

ΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘ

We human beings are mathematicians, scientist, Architects, Builders, Electricians, Gas Fitters, Plumbers, Scavengers, Accountants, Advocates, Statisticians, Teachers, Prostitutes, Dentist, Pharmacist, Musicians, Librarians, Salesman, Farmers, Fisherman, Day Labourers, Drivers, Construction workers, Policeman, Army Man, Managers, Technologist, Entrepreneurs…. And beggars. Some of us are even worse than animals.

Are all men equal? Can we believe in a theoretical theory that the Mathematicians and the beggars are equal? Does democracy work under this hypothesis?

ΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘ

I have never understood the role of critics. They are held in high esteem though. People follow their statements. They adopt their criticisms. They are swayed and influenced by the critics. They move about their lives as per the critics’ directives.

I have never understood why we listen to critics, who never created anything and feel competent to evaluate, review, or judge the work of creative men.

Maybe there is parasitical rationality in this chaos. At least he is impartial – He lives off creative people and hates all of them equally

Public Polices/Public Service/Public System

2010-09-25T12:31:00.009+05:30

Burglaries happen. It is an everyday phenomenon. It happens somewhere at someone’s house everyday. Cash, Jewelry, Laptops, paintings, LCD TVs, antiques and other valuables get burgled. At times burglary happens in the dead of night, sometimes in broad daylight. Occasionally people get killed trying to protect what is really theirs.

We get revolted by this act of burglary. We find it difficult to comprehend, how these burglars could bring themselves to break into other peoples home and take away what did not belong to them. We ask, “How do they dare to do this? What makes them believe that they have the right to do this?”

This is a reasonable question. Why do these burglars essentially think that they have a right to do this? Maybe they know that they have no right to do this, but they do it anyway. Is it the desire for unearned things that has so much weight that they do not respect the properties of others? Perhaps they justify their act and blame society for this?

Why it is that burglars feel comfortable, taking the properties of others that they have not earned?

Drawing a similar line, the burglars are not much fundamentally different than most people in our society. Most of them take what does not belong to them. A person of the lowest order would believe that he is entitled to steal the property of other. Only the so called ‘law abiding member of the society would not accept such an act!

Let us presume that a person in the society formulates a well thought out feeling that some people do not have as much money as other people and that it would be good if they had more money than they do. A therapeutic treatment for this disease would be a proposal that we form a group of kind hearted patrons whose primary job would be to forcibly take other people’s money without their permission and give some of it to those they reckon to be in dire need. The group then would use the rest of the money (call it fund) as an entitlement, funding propaganda that tell the world what a great and marvelous job their group is doing, gradually building up a nice profitable little business empire for the staff in charge, who in turn becomes bandits, earning far beyond what they could have in other jobs, all the while being praised for their so called Public Service

Are the people fumingly mad or annoyed? Do they call the police to report this criminal racket? Do they call up their elected representative with calls/emails/blogs/tweeter and sms’ demanding that this monstrous group be clamped down? No, they don’t do that. In fact the reverse transpires. People actually fall in line to lend their support for this system. They exterminate all criticism and display their emotion that they really do care for the poor and the poorest of the poor (The new term for poverty).

Given this atmosphere, it is scarcely shocking that burglars are quite comfortable and have no fear or reservation about taking properties that do not belong to them. The reason is quite similar to the vast majority of people in our society who feel that they are privileged and entitled to the properties of other – WE LIVE IN A SOCIETY OF CRIMINALS.

But one can ask how could this be possibly right? Don’t most people act in accordance with the law? Don’t they fill up tax returns? Don’t they have driver’s license? Don’t they comply with environmental regulations, tax rules, and a host of other regulations?
Generally they do. But this is compliance with legislation and not to a compliance with law. It is merely a compliance of the diktat of the people in power.

Somewhere people do not believe in natural law: That he shall pay his debt, he shall return borrowed or stolen property to its rightful owner, he shall not injure another, he shall refrain from stealing, robbery, arson, murder or any other crime against the person or the property of another person.

The vast majority of people are supportive of criminal acts.
People express surprise and shock by the mentality of the so called common criminals, not realizing that the vast majority of the members of the society feel perfectly privileged to grab the properties of others. They demand that the property be taken away through the tax system and other heinously formulated public polices, or forcibly interfere through some routinely invented regulation.
The common justification for these acts under the so called Public Policies is that this is the WILL OF THE PEOPLE which has been expressed through the elected representative

People who disagree with this system are seen as uncharitable, dangerous, ideologist, radical activist and extremist.

In this pandemonium and madness, we forget that there is some difference between the common criminal and the not so very common criminal. The burglar does his own dirty work. He acquires the LCD TVs, the Laptops, the paintings, the cash, the jewelry and other valuable not through the so called Public Service/Public Policy/ Public System. He does not recruit the local politicians and bureaucrats to steal the property of others for his own use – he saves them the trouble and goes and acquires it himself.

While doing this himself, he does not have the back up to validate his actions. He does not have a democratic process, a political authorization, an endorsement or any other mandates.

So what is the meaning of the term “we live in a society of criminals”? It simply means that the vast majority of the people in our society support criminal acts committed against others. The so called law abiding citizens support robbery, assault, trespass and sometimes even murder when these acts are disguised in the name of Public Policies. It is pathetic and preposterous when we see the society scorning the common criminals and support the mass criminality.

It is a dismal environment when one becomes conscious that some members of the public may not have even realized the correlation between coercion and Public Policy and may not be aware between the policies and action of both these burglars and the Public Policy holders

We have not learnt the fact that ordinary people routinely support robbery and other crimes committed by the state but appear horrified and appalled when they watch the same crimes being committed by the common criminals.

We fail to realize the similarity between the Public Policies of the state and the acts of the common criminal. We fail to realize that support for Public Policies is actually a support for Crime.

What does deregulation actually mean? Is decentralization of power actually the breaking down of one big criminal group or agency into lots of smaller competing criminal agencies with the objective of indulging in small and competitive criminal activities so that they escape from the clutches altogether?

Can there be an absence of socially sanctioned theft, assault or robbery?

The Virginian

2010-09-22T20:16:00.002+05:30

Seeing the IPL matches confirms my views that men think in herds; go mad in herds, and only recover their senses when they are once again alone

Once again in its own small way I have seen the power lust. A man can interfere with thoughtless and insensitive egoism in the lives of his fellowmen and play the part of fate, destiny or divine intervention for others

Ω۞ΔЮΩ۞ΔЮΩ۞ΔЮΩ۞ΔЮΩ۞ΔЮΩ۞ΔЮΩ۞ΔЮ

Passing though the seasons of The Virginian, I came to discover that in Season 5, Episode 19, The Modoc Kid introduced Harrison Ford. It also had John Saxon as the other Guest Star.

But what left an ineffaceable blot on me was the existence of James Drury on the screen. He plays the title role. As the Seasons and Episodes advanced, James Drury’s charisma began seeping with his serene-cool-calm-composed and collected presence.

For my records, his son is Timothy Drury who played with The Eagles and is presently associated with Whitesnake.

Recession and Fashion

2010-09-19T12:13:00.005+05:30

I remember reading somewhere some fifteen or twenty years ago that IBM had this culture of ‘White Shirts’. Anyone found deviating a wee bit from ‘the colour white’ had to face the consequences of raised eyebrows. People at IBM would virtually look down on this poor fellow as if he had dressed up for a picnic.

Those were the days.

During the years, a conspicuous change happened in men’s dress style. With boom time, the dress sense changed. It became shabby. Workers thrived in wrinkles, T Shirts and Jeans. The guy with the shirt and an occasional tie was seen as a person attending someone’s wedding. We were encouraged to be ‘cool’. Even the billionaires looked like hobos.

The concept behind this ‘coolness’ of being shabbily dressed was to give the general notion that one really did not care what others thought. One oneself was the cutting edge, the idol demolisher, the slayer of conventions, a person who does not give a damn about what society thinks or how society judges. One’s value was one’s very own person, the fact of one’s existence on this planet. During the boom time the message of fashion was – Hey! It’s all about me guys!

Today all that has now come into question. How much value did this jean clad guys really add? How much of their coolness has evaporated? How much was illusion all along? Maybe all this hype about intellectual capital is nonsense.

Now with the downturn of economy, the sense of better fashion if one wants to survive, has once again come into being.
The free-fall economy means a boon for better fashion for men who intend to survive the onslaught.

"A suit has become something you wear when you're asking for money, monkey."
One’s clothes now need to generate a different message. Resources are few and hard to spare. Everyone wants to conserve. So the goal of one’s life too becomes different. One now is no longer permitted to pretend that one’s existence is a blessing to the world. Now one must add more value than one can take from it. The new motto now should be:
“I can add more value to the Organization than I can take from it”

In other words, “I am a willing sucker”

These days this is what every employer is seeking. It’s a dog eat dog world. A dog now has to stand out. The dog now must find ways to exhibit that it is not nonessential or dispensable and that tossing it out would do more harm to the company than good. The dog must now illustrate that the company would lose more revenue by kicking it out than by keeping it.

Employers think that clothing reflects one’s seriousness. Today dogs are under pressure to perform, to show that they are valuable, to demonstrate on sight that they are desirable commodities as workers.

We Still Annihilate

2010-09-17T08:46:00.002+05:30

We give the impression that we are so bothered and flustered over our future when sometimes I think the future of the entire human is so uncertain. We depend on few intelligent men who drive this system and we suckle onto them. Technology may have improved our life style and our quality of life, but it has also brought its own set of threats.

If one could have traveled back in time, to the past, one would have seen that the earth was more or less the same - the same trees, the same rivers, the same mountains, the same human kind who use to destroy, kill, obliterate, exterminate, decimate, demolish, slaughter, massacre…….

Since time immemorial, over the centuries, we have not much developed ourselves. We still annihilate.

We won’t metamorphosis much in the future either.

Rationality

2010-09-07T14:54:00.011+05:30

There are two kinds of people in this world - Intelligent people who have no religion and religious people who have no intelligence.

∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞

You can choose to live your life in either of the two ways –
1. Nothing is miracle
2. Everything is a miracle.

∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞

Sometimes it intrigues me how men want to go around with their thoughts trying to know more about the universe when it is quite a difficult task to go around the by lanes of a large city

∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞

I am also intrigued by the way we go around wasting our time in either attacking or defending god.

∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞

Knowledge creates problems, but ignorance does not solve any problems. We surrender to ignorance and call it god and this has always been a premature way of surviving. We are still surviving in a premature state.

∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞

We human beings have always excelled as makers of gods. It is one of the most important contributions in the world.

∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞

When you look after the poor, you are looked upon by this society as a good person. When you ask why the poor exist, you are looked upon as an atheist.

∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞

We should try hard to separate religion and politics. These two elements in our society have really screwed us. Perhaps if they are separated – we might progress a little.

∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞

I think we were all atheist when we were children. We then never had any idea of any gods.

∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞

Man will quarrel for religion, they will fight for it, even die for it – seldom would you see man living for it.

∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞

Often I have been told that a person who is religious, believes in a god and pray to her is happier than the person who is a non believer. I am trying to understand whether a drunken man is happier than a sober one.

∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞

All these holy men tell us to pray to the gods and the gods answers the prayers. I wonder if the frogs too think that when they croak, they bring spring with their croaking.

∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞

If you have delusions, you cannot have new thoughts. You must first remove your delusions from your head and then perhaps some new ideas can germinate

Fareed Zakaria’s GPS - Magnitsky & Browder

2010-09-06T13:02:00.006+05:30

I was troubled, watching Fareed Zakaria’s GPS (Global Public Square) on CNN yesterday. He was interviewing Bill Browder the Chief Executive Officer and co-founder of the investment fund Hermitage Capital Management. Browder revealed how Sergei Leonidovich Magnitsky who was a Russian attorney died in police custody generating international media attention and launching an investigation into allegations of abuse. Magnitsky, who had alleged wide-scale tax fraud sanctioned by officials before being himself arrested, died days before the one year limit that he could be held without trial would expire.

According to Browder, Magnitsky was an attorney representing his firm on charges off tax evasion and tax fraud. Browder was expelled from Russia as a national threat, though he indicated that the only threat he represented was "to corrupt politicians and bureaucrats", believing that the ouster was conducted to leave his company open for exploitation.

Magnitsky who had testified that police, members of the judiciary, tax officials, bankers and the Russian mafia had been involved in a $230m tax fraud against the Russian treasury, was illegally arrested and imprisoned in November 2008 after being accused of colluding with Hermitage.

During this time he was shifted very rapidly from one prison to another, and was deprived of even the basic amenities like water boiler. The authorities tried to break him physically and psychologically, but in a show of tremendous strength and integrity, he never cracked.

Held for 11 months without trial, he developed gall stones, Pancreatitis and calculous cholecystitis, for which he was given inadequate medical treatment during his confinement.

Surgery was ordered in June, but never performed; a week before he was to be released if he were not brought to trial, he died for reasons attributed first by prison officials as a "rupture to the abdominal membrane" and later to heart attack. Browder says that it later was discovered that Magnitsky had complained of deteriorating stomach pain for five days before his death and that he was vomiting every three hours, with a visibly swollen stomach.

On the day of his death, the prison physician, believing he had a chronic disease, sent him by ambulance to a medical unit equipped to help him, but the surgeon there — who described Magnitsky as "agitated, trying to hide behind a bag and saying people were trying to kill him" — prescribed only a painkiller, leaving him for psychiatric evaluation. He was found dead in his cell a little over two hours later. He was 37 years old.

That is authority, corruption and power for us.

Can't be Independent

2010-09-05T17:07:00.003+05:30

I guess I can never imagine myself to be independent, however much I may want to be. I may not want to have a social status and I may even want to remove myself from all those ordinary, boring, routine and dull circumstances, events or people, but eventually I find myself enslaved by the members of the society, in one form or the other.

I suppose, even the Prime Ministers, The Presidents, the Middle East Kings, the autocrats or the billionaires are the products of the ignorant, selfish, illiterate elements of the society. All of us are in slavery, the inferior as well as the superior. I am one of the consequences.

∑Ω∑Ω∑Ω∑Ω∑Ω∑Ω∑Ω∑Ω∑Ω∑Ω∑Ω∑Ω∑Ω∑Ω∑

All religions are cruel. We all are aware that religions of our world have been established on blood. The foundation of religions is on the idea of sacrifice - sacrificing animals and human to obtain or attain divinity.

All religions, with their gods, their demigods, and their prophets, their messiahs and their saints, were created on the basis of naiveté of the human race. The human race then had not attained the full development and full possession of their faculties. (Not that I say that they have attained now!).
As a result, the religious heaven is nothing but a mirage in which man still lives by ignorance and faith, and somewhere tries to find his own image,

The Mumbai Traffic Jam

2010-08-31T12:46:00.009+05:30

I was trapped in the typical Mumbai traffic with a friend in the passenger seat. I try to do something from time to time. I tried and observed the gigantic mass of cars and auto rickshaws before my buffalo car. I noticed that time was sucking us. You feel like blurting out that had this road been private, we wouldn’t have been suffering so much in this jam. We don’t wait in the endless lines at the private grocery road or private car rental. So why are we putting up with state ownership and management of the roads? The roads should be privately built, owned and managed.

My imaginary friend in the passenger seat was shocked. He was also alarmed! He probably thought that I was really zany. Roads are damned too expensive to be built by private entrepreneurs. We would be bumping into toll booths every few metres. Some over ambitious shot would raise the prices and probably also restrict the access. We would always be dependent on the rich guy with the road title and our freedom to move around would either be curbed or would come to an end. Why depend on the private exploiter when our government exists to provide us this wonderful service for free?

Meanwhile we sit there helplessly, stuck and almost motionless. Too many cars were attempting to crawl around too few roads. We spend billions of hours per year, knotted up in these congested roads.

Then there is the road construction, which the Government agency decided to undertake whenever and wherever it so desires, reducing a four lane to a one lane road in the name of expanding it to a six lane road. The six lane road comes up in the next generation. From then on, we drive in those hazardous roads.

Then there are accidents which knot up the traffic for kilometers and hours. The entire system is oddly unprepared for anything to go wrong, although something does go wrong every day. The accidents and jams keep happening and everyone just sits there waiting for the government to send its police, its ambulance, its cranes and other equipments, so that traffic can continue.

Sometime back I got caught in a traffic jam and thereby missed my flight. I had to eat my Rs 5K Ticket. I also had to buy another one on a different airline and paid another Rs.5.5K. Normally in a private market, if some service is responsible for making you lose Rs10.5K, say a CD in some software package is blank, you would have some recourse. But who am I going to charge for my losses due to shoddy road management? The BMC? Forget it!

___“My imaginary friend in the passenger seat was shocked. He was also alarmed! He probably thought that I was really zany_____..... Why depend on the private exploiter when our government exists to provide us this wonderful service for free?”___________

There are other costs. We pay through our nose for petrol and diesel so that this is funded for road construction and maintenance. Thousands, (if not lakhs) of people breathe their last on government roads every year. We are constantly harassed by policeman who hand out ‘parchees’ for doing things that hurts no one, like driving fast, changing lanes without signals. Do these really endanger others? Sometimes perhaps, but that is not the reason that we get ‘parchees’. We get ‘parchees’ because they provide a constant revenue outlet for the state and central government.

Road failures define a massive portion of our life. They influence us on where we live or where we choose to work. They gobble away our household budgets. They introduce us to the horrible tragedies of our lives, when our friends and children are disfigured or pass away on the killing fields of public road

Our Education Structure

2010-08-24T21:39:00.006+05:30

On a fine morning in one of those days our Govt. as per the Minimum Wage Act 1948, fixed and enforced the minimum wages to Rs. 100.00 a day. This was in Nov. 2009. Is this another way of saying that unemployment is mandatory for anyone who is otherwise willing to work for less? Does this mean that you have no freedom to negotiate or lower the price of your service? You are valued at this rate or you are out of the labour market. I am not referring to the fact that Rs. 100.00 is an abysmal amount to even mention, leave alone the fact what can actually be bought by that paltry sum.

Let us say that I have never been a good cook. So if I were to work in a restaurant, where the cook is supposed to churn out the best grub, the cost to the management would be more to hire me at a rate which would definitely be high, since I would not be able to bring them the revenue. Consequently I would be a sure money loser for the restaurant. So now, the Govt. has in effect made it illegal for me to attempt this kind of world. They say it was done to help me.

Teenagers who may be looking for work cannot find employment at the existing rate. This is the time that teenagers learn valuable skills and work ethic that they carry with them throughout their life. They meet a variety of people and learn to cooperate with different temperament and personalities whilst at work. They learn how to do things that they do not want to do and discover how work and reward are related. They gain experience and learn to use money independently. They learn how to acquire and how to spend.
College students are short of work experience so they don't have a pragmatic understanding of what the real work world requires of them. They acquire degrees in "management" and visualize that, with this marvelous degree - they will have the right to earn big bucks by bossing people around. A degree in "communications" will get them on BBC World News. An engineering degree will provide the opportunity and the right build cities, bridges and highway systems.

Then one day, they graduate and reality dawns on them real hard. They find out that there is no one out there who wants them for what then know. They begin to understand that they know very little that makes them useful. Their CVs are sterile lacking even a single professional reference. All they really know is how to loiter around in the college campus and mingle with peers on nights and weekends.

One would be shocked to learn that the average college guy does not have the basic software skills. In today’s world a basic software skill is a must in any professional position. Today this skill is termed as common knowledge. But the college guy graduates with skills that do not even need to manage a FB page!

I also have my doubts that these grads, somewhere down the line do not have any concept of basic work ethics and the ability to add value to an organization.

But come to think to it – Is it their fault?

Human character is the most significant thing. But our education structure cages the students and imprisons them in garbage boxes. After graduation, they are dumped outside to a world which is cold and cruel, a condition for which they are not prepared.

The consequences are in front of us.

"Adopt Industrial Revolution"

2010-08-22T21:25:00.007+05:30

Of late I have been really leading a period of my life in anguish. I see around and read about the development nations have made in the last several decades, and I experience that not so great a progress India has made, in a relative sense.

I wonder why do our rulers concentrate, deliberate and bicker about things that do not bring economical growth, benefits, freedom and happiness to us.

Instead of whiling away time and money, it would have been great, had our rulers combined an assortment of steps and taken necessary measures to bring us happiness. I am neither an economist nor a politician. Nevertheless my commonsense signals me the following:

* The Govt. should control debt, and encourage savings. Spend on the necessities of life and avoid ‘spending indulgence.’

* Concentrate on increasing our manufacturing base. Produce quality goods with an eye to export.

* Keep workers happy. Upgrade their skills. Train them. Instill a sense of loyalty and pride.

* Basic reformation like concentrating on establishing a social security net, have pension schemes for private workers too, expand health care system, increase retirement age and have a sound retirement benefits.

* Control wage prudently

* Control and monitor corruption

* Control population (like China?)

* Aggressively drive literacy. BA/BSc/BCom does not land one a job. Reform education system and have a job oriented education system

* And above all “Adopt Industrial Revolution”

With all the great think tanks that we have in our Govt. department, I think if we are able to do this little bit, I am sure we will have a better standard of living.

Pitfall

2010-08-14T19:33:00.007+05:30

If you imagine that your corporate life is a lackluster one, that you are trapped in the domestic and employment rut, that you life is already under six feet of shit, you are not thinking anything new. A typical middle class family man who goes to office and comes back home, and is actually able to time the events of the day may not exactly be a person who has his life well under control. Some may term that life as a disciplined one; others may yearn for stimulation in their day to day life.

All this was depicted compactly in Pitfall, a 1948 classic movie, starring Dick Powell, who somewhat may remind us of our very own Balraj Sahni. Somewhere the film also gives a feeling of the typical American dream of chasing the materialistic life to sustain a middle class lifestyle, to procure love by bribing in the form of expensive gifts; by hinting that all is not quite as well as it looks, the unhappiness of a mundane, boring life which even the extravagance does not provide satisfaction.

The movie though was made in 1948, inadvertently indicated a façade of the American way of life, thoughts, economy which may have resulted in periodic recession that are being experience these days.

In search of a better world, subsequently

2010-08-10T19:06:00.005+05:30

Comprising and existing in a world minus corruption is impossible. When you take away whatever is impossible – we have truth. The truth is that man by nature is corrupt and the people who we choose to rule over us are perhaps a bit more corrupt. Subsequently, all this hue and cry over whether Mr. Suresh Kalmadi is guilty of corruption or not - does not make sense. Corruption here is a way of life. We cannot have the impossible. We cannot do away with them - we cannot have any other forms of government.

Along with corruption, violence is natural to man. We humans are either physically violent or possess violent thoughts. So far democracy has been established as the best form of government for us. Whatever flaws that democracy offers, whatever name that we choose for a government to rule us, violence exist is both a democratic form of government and in a tyrannical form of government. Otherwise how do we explain the violence in the Kashmir region or the Maoist thoughts that begins and ends with violence, or the religious violence, the political violence, the caste violence, the domestic violence et al? Violence is the most uncivilized, barbaric, crudest, and filthiest form of existence.

Nazism and Fascism may comprehensively have been defeated but by no ways or by any means we have eradicated barbarism or brutality.

We human beings have complicated histories. Our present cannot in any way be disassociated from the past. Corruption and Violence always existed in a particular place or time throughout history. We cannot discard our past and start with a scratch. By the time we mature and are able to make some conscious choice, we have already categorized ourselves in terms of our thoughts, languages, and behaviors, like generations before us who reached the same extent of development

It is not a question of being proved right. It is a question of learning from others. Not learning by just adopting the views and opinions of others, but by allowing others to criticize his ideas and theories and by being allowed by others to criticize their thoughts. Criticizing ideas and theories and not the person is a good way of learning. Nobody is in possession of the truth. Sheer criticism also does not offer new ideas. You either accept or reject an idea or a theory. But critical discussion of a theory may give us the maturity to comprehend ideas from different angles and perhaps draw a conclusion.

It has become our tradition to hold great men in awe, in respect, in reverence, a custom which we are not able to shake off. Great men make great mistakes. These great men have tremendous influence over the mass, an influence which is hardly challenged. This leads to these great men continuing to mislead the mass – into corruption and violence.

Violence is a path for non-rationalist. A violent person does not attempt to reach a decision by argument or compromise. He uses violence. He is a man who wants to be successful not by convincing another man by argument, but by crushing him by force, by intimidating him and by threatening him. He might also use persuasive propaganda.

Violence, in the name of religion which professes love and kindness, cannot be forgotten or eradicated. Bodies were burnt alive; people were cut to pieces, tortured and shot. We still have not given up our authoritarian attitude or opinion. We are yet to adopt a give and take attitude. We are not ready to learn from other people. We have however tried and hoped to control violence stimulated by godliness, piousness and duty.

The main difficulty is that one cannot have a reasonable discussion with another man, who prefers to shoot you rather being convinced by you or making his own point. It is hard to create an environment where people wouldn’t want to talk anyone into anything. There is no need to convince anyone. One can be wrong and may convince someone of something which may be wrong. People do not value the intellectual independence of others, otherwise why is it necessary to convince someone? Human nature does not welcome contradiction, or else the world would have been a better place, had a man instead of convincing someone, arouse the thoughts and challenge others to form free opinions. Sometimes even trying to convince someone may and can be interpreted as a violent act.

Bernard Shaw Quotes –

2010-08-03T11:01:00.006+05:30

Patriotism is, fundamentally, a conviction that a particular country is the best in the world because you were born in it…

We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it.

I'm only a beer teetotaler, not a champagne teetotaler. I don't like beer.

The great advantage of a hotel is that it's a refuge from home life.

My specialty is being right when other people are wrong.

You're not a man, you're a machine.

The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that's the essence of inhumanity.

Martyrdom, sir, is what these people like: it is the only way in which a man can become famous without ability.

[Chess] is a foolish expedient for making idle people believe they are doing something very clever, when they are only wasting their time.

Assassination is the extreme form of censorship; and it seems hard to justify an incitement to it on anti-censorial principles.

Why was I born with such contemporaries?

As long as I have a want, I have a reason for living. Satisfaction is death.

Custom will reconcile people to any atrocity; and fashion will drive them to acquire any custom.

You'll never have a quiet world till you knock the patriotism out of the human race.

Political necessities sometimes turn out to be political mistakes.

I have defined the 100 per cent American as 99 per cent an idiot.

An American has no sense of privacy. He does not know what it means. There is no such thing in the country

The apparent multiplicity of Gods is bewildering at the first glance; but you presently discover that they are all the same one God in different aspects and functions and even sexes. There is always one uttermost God who defies personification. This makes Hinduism the most tolerant religion in the world, because its one transcendent God includes all possible Gods… Hinduism is so elastic and so subtle that the profoundest Methodist and the crudest idolater are equally at home in it.
Islam is very different, being ferociously intolerant. What I may call Manifold Monotheism becomes in the minds of very simple folk an absurdly polytheistic idolatry, just as European peasants not only worship Saints and the Virgin as Gods, but will fight fanatically for their faith in the ugly little black doll who is the Virgin of their own Church against the black doll of the next village. When the Arabs had run this sort of idolatry to such extremes ... they did this without black dolls and worshipped any stone that looked funny, Mahomet rose up at the risk of his life and insulted the stones shockingly, declaring that there is only one God, Allah, the glorious, the great… And there was to be no nonsense about toleration. You accepted Allah or you had your throat cut by someone who did accept him, and who went to Paradise for having sent you to Hell. Mahomet was a great Protestant religious force, like George Fox or Wesley….
There is actually a great Hindu sect, the Jains, with Temples of amazing magnificence, which abolish God, not on materialist atheist considerations, but as unspeakable and unknowable, transcending all human comprehension.

A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.

The road to ignorance is paved with good editions. Only the illiterate can afford to buy good books now.

The secret of success is to offend the greatest number of people.

The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.

People are always blaming circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can't find them, make them.

There are no secrets better kept than the secrets everybody guesses.
The public want actresses, because they think all actresses bad. They don't want music or poetry because they know that both are good. So actors and actresses thrive and poets and composers starve.

There are some men who are considered quite ugly, but who are more remarkable than pretty people. You often see that in artists.

I hate singers, a miserable crew who think that music exists only in their own throats.

The only man I know who behaves sensibly is my tailor; he takes my measurements anew each time he sees me. The rest go on with their old measurements and expect me to fit them.

The greatest of evils and the worst of crimes is poverty.

I can't talk religion to a man with bodily hunger in his eyes.

You cannot have power for good without having power for evil too. Even mother's milk nourishes murderers as well as heroes.

You can't be a hero without being a coward.

What really flatters a man is that you think him worth flattering.
My way of joking is to tell the truth. It's the funniest joke in the world.

The whole strength of England lies in the fact that the enormous majority of the English people are snobs.

You don't learn to hold your own in the world by standing on guard, but by attacking, and getting well hammered yourself.

Religion is a great force — the only real motive force in the world; but what you fellows dont understand is that you must get at a man through his own religion and not through yours. Instead of facing that fact, you persist in trying to convert all men to your own little sect, so that you can use it against them afterwards. You are all missionaries and proselytizers trying to uproot the native religion from your neighbor's flowerbeds and plant your own in its place. You would rather let a child perish in ignorance than have it taught by a rival sectary. You can talk to me of the quintessential equality of coal merchants and British officers; and yet you can't see the quintessential equality of all the religions.

It is more dangerous to be a great prophet or poet than to promote twenty companies for swindling simple folk out of their savings.

If parents would only realize how they bore their children!

Do not try to live for ever. You will not succeed.

Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.

The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality of happiness, and by no means a necessity of life.

I hear you say "Why?" Always "Why?" You see things; and you say "Why?" But I dream things that never were; and I say "Why not?"

Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire; you will what you imagine; and at last you create what you will.

Everything happens to everybody sooner or later if there is time enough.

GBS :Madam, would you sleep with me for a million pounds?
Actress : My goodness, Well, I'd certainly think about it
GBS : Would you sleep with me for a pound?
Actress : Certainly not! What kind of woman do you think I am?!
GBS : Madam, we've already established that. Now we are haggling about the price.

Drinking with the consent of the law.

2010-08-02T10:22:00.007+05:30

There was once upon a time some decades ago, no law for drinking. Drinking regulation was decided by the society, by what the families say, what the community say, what the religious leader say. Kids use to drink themselves silly (well you and I know {hic!} that this does not happen these days!). But seriously many kids did learn how to drink responsibly from an early age, even drinking at breakfast!

There is a national law in each country that prohibits the sale of liquor to anyone under the age of 18 or 21 depending on how developed and matured that country is. There are countries like Germany and Austria that allows even 16 years old to buy wine and beer. Meanwhile the police are busting up teen parties, rave parties, shutting down bars, intimidating restaurants, fining liquor shops and bullying people to live a life without liquor! We watch TV and read news and comment, “crazy kids, they shouldn’t be doing this!”

We see young people finding ways around these ridiculous restrictions that are hardly ever questioned, absorbing booze with contempt for the law and inspiring themselves with criminal thoughts while overindulging in drinking sessions.

Young people try about to beat the system by acquiring fake IDs, buying booze and entering restaurants and bars. It is not that the liquor store owners or restaurant and bar waiters or managers don’t know about these fake cards. The do know that students enter their premises with fake ID cards. They nevertheless pretend that these cards are real so as to give themselves some degree of legal protection if someone gets caught. The whole thing is a gargantuan sham. It’s a massively mass exercise in the open – hypocrisy - and everyone knows it.

Human beings are remarkable things: when they want to do something, no amount of tyranny, even that of jail can stop them. These goes especially for young people who as they approach the circumference of adulthood life start by rebelling against parents, authorities, systems and regulations.

Nonetheless we cannot silence the screams of the holy guys who advocate prohibition and sketch and connect every car accident among teen drivers to alcohol. Their propaganda blames alcohol for the destruction of family life, to the doggedness life of poverty, the high rate of crime, the crisis of illiteracy and the presence of sin in general. Whatever it may be, but their arguments are usually accepted even though it is a huge and erroneous mix up of cause and effect.

Is it true that liquor causes all these terrible things? Or is it that people who gets involved and exhibit in such terrible behaviors also have a tendency to drink? Abolishing or prohibiting drinks won’t solve or fix the problems of the human heart or his nature.

Thus this is so for teenage drinking. A report said that around two third people under the age of 21 have consumed some form of alcohol. This is obvious that the law is doing nothing except providing colossal excuse for illogical and atrocious police-state imposition on the liberty of human beings. This leads to young people socializing with hypocritical and law breaking section of the society. Its like – “the authorities pretend to regulate us and we pretend to be regulated.”
Still, shouldn't it be illegal for young people to drink and drive?
Only the obviously committed crime should be illegal and punished. Let us concentrate more on the act of crime and not outlaw alcohol. We then can also reduce crimes committed not under the influence of alcohol

Every year on Republic and Independence Day we hear our public speakers, including the politicians and those special TV commentators and anchors (with their judgmental views and opinions on practically everything) on the glory of India, our liberty and all the sacrifices that have been made to preserve it. Do we really believe it? Did our founders, establishers and liberators of our nation ever imagined that such a thing like a national law regulating the age at which beer, wine, port and other alcoholic beverages are to be consumed?

Do we really believe it? The founders would have never imagined such a thing as a national law regulating the age at which beer, wine, port, and other alcoholic beverages are consumed. Are we really serious about visualizing a free society? Or are we a nation of people who just utter words which are unsubstantial, rotten, hollow, trash and deceptive?

Shouldn’t we do something which is more practical and would have remarkable and immediate effects on our entire generation? Shouldn’t we go ahead and revoke the national minimum drinking age law and let the parents take up the responsibilities of their teenage sons and daughters?

Do you think this is unthinkable? If you so say so - then I really believe that you do not believe in human liberty!

To do or not to do, that is not the question!

2010-07-23T13:49:00.004+05:30

It is awful how these philosophers not only make their lives miserable, but that of the readers too! People who are not mentally strong should avoid reading Albert Camus.

Just laid down “The Myth Of Sisyphus”. Camus sets in action by laying down a proposal: “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy.”
All the rest – whether or not the world has three dimensions, whether the mind has nine or twelve categories – comes afterwards. These are games; one must first answer [the questions of suicide].”

The nucleus of Existentialism is that there is no point or reason of our existence. So if there is no rationale behind our existence then why should we go on living? But this is not the question or the subsequent answer. If this was so then all existentialist would have killed themselves.

We try to give the world a social, intellectual, philosophical and religious meaning. The stage is set for your existence. Rise, transport yourself to office. 10 hours of office work or at the factory, breakfast, lunch, snacks, tea or coffee, dinner, sleep, rise and again transport to office…. Monday, Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday and Saturday. The same rhythm, the same path followed day after day, month after month and year after year. Then one day you ask “why?”

Through this book, Camus calls our existential condition, absurd. On one hand the world is erratic and chaotic. Life comes and goes. Ideas are proven to be true and then false. One belief is as good as another. Our moods too are persistently altering. Camus on the other hand proposes our invariable efforts to obtain a meaning from meaninglessness. And this he says is absurd.
Camus surveys some probable responses. First he scrutinizes a religious answer and argues that the religious leap of faith is unnecessary. This is an escape from the fact of life’s absurdity, a “philosophical suicide”, as he puts it. Next he looks at the opening question of the essay, what about suicide as a response to the absurd? He concludes that this too is an unnecessary escape from the reality of life’s absurdity. He points out that a life without meaning does not necessarily lead to the fact that life is not worth living:
“People have played on words and pretended to believe that refusing to grant a meaning to life necessarily leads to declaring that it is not worth living. In truth, there is no necessary common measure between these two judgments.”
As Camus goes through the possible responses to this feeling of the absurd, it becomes evident that he has directly envisaged this absurdity and has spent much of his life struggling with it.

He covers just about every existential thought I’ve had and many more. Only a man who has drowned himself in existential questioning can come up with such delicate and significant philosophical points. For example he notes that philosophers like
Chestov and Kierkegaard go to great lengths to show the limits of reason and man’s helplessness in the face of life’s absurdity. This, they say, is why man must take a leap of faith and turn to God. But if this leap of faith is in fact a solution to life’s absurdity then the absurdity never existed in the first place which means the need they described for a leap of faith did not exist either. I doubt I could have ever come up with such an insight on my own.

However in the end I was not completely obligated by Camus wrapping up the book. His claim that a philosophical life is a constant struggle sounded true, but I was not able to understand the historical and literary examples he used to illustrate this “life in revolt”. I did not see the horror in the "philosophical suicide" that he attributes to religious philosophers. I have worn out plenty of philosophies on life and will probably continue to plow through many more. I have seen that a sixth sense or experience can solve an existential dilemma as well as, or even better than, the clearest thinking.

I am not a true philosopher, but the reasons I would avoid suicide would be my family, certain moments of inspiration, my freedom from being a corporate slave, my accumulated interests in music, movies and books, the choice of not choosing a choice and my consciousness of being conscious of my consciousness…….And the fact remains that like all men, I too will cling on to life. It after all happens only once. I can only experience it once! In any case we all will die eventually. So why hurry up. Let’s try and enjoy our absurdities!

Economics and Politicians

2010-07-21T20:05:00.010+05:30

Whenever you see a politician conversing about economics and economy, you should know that you are in trouble. You can be sure that some awful decision is going to take place. Providentially for us, their nosy attitudes more often than not have a sluggish, gnawing outcome on the economy. But sometimes our rulers somehow announce some monstrous decision that not only takes them down, but the whole country with them.

History has a funny way of showing our great leaders’ past deeds which on hindsight amuses us little and leaves us sour, morose and peevish with them.

Roman Emperor Diocletian
Around 301 AD the Roman Emperor Diocletian issued a circular that selling food above the predetermined price or receiving wages above a prearranged amount invited the
death penalty. It was a catastrophe decision. Sellers withdrew their goods, unwilling to sell at the fixed price. They were also afraid of being accused falsely for selling above the maximum price and thus invite death. The workers vanished or sat around idly, doing nothing. In due course the circular was ignored and was scorned and ridiculed. It lowered the prestige and authority of the Empire.

King John of England
King John of England decided to try his hands in economics. Normally we are used to experiencing a tax policy which taxes the weak and provides relief to the strong and
powerful. Our King decided to try the opposite. He ordered the Knights to pay a heavy tax. The result was that thousands of these Knights attempted to kill him. Though he signed the Magna Carta in 1215, [Magna Carta was the first document forced upon him by a group of his subjects (the barons) in an attempt to limit his powers by law and protect their privileges.] which brought him some time, but after he lost his treasure while retreating from the French invasion, he went crazy and died.

Gaykhatu - fifth ruler in Iran
Gaykhatu (died 1295) was the fifth ruler in Iran. He reigned from 1291 to 1295. During his time in power, Gaykhatu was illustriously depraved and was addicted to wine, women, and sodomy. In 1294, Gaykhatu wanted to restock his coffers emptied by royal lavishness and a great cattle plague which devastated his subjects’ livestock. In response, his vizier Ahmed al-Khalidi proposed the introduction of a recent Chinese invention called Chao (paper money). Gaykhatu agreed and called for Kublai
Khan's ambassador Bolad in Tabriz. After the ambassador showed how the system worked, Gaykhatu printed banknotes which replicated the Chinese ones so closely that they even had Chinese words printed on them. The Muslim confession of faith was printed on the banknotes as a pacifier to local sentiment.
The plan was to get his subjects to use only paper money, and allow Gaykhatu to control the treasury. The experiment was a complete failure, as the people and merchants refused to accept the banknotes. He also did not fuss too much with technical details like convertibility and capital controls. Soon riots broke out, and economic activities languished. Gaykhatu had no choice but to withdraw the use of paper money.
He was deposed and assassinated shortly after that, strangled by a bowstring so as to avoid bloodshed.

Ming Dynasty
The Ming Dynasty in China assumed a strategy of importing and buying swords from the Japanese. Their objective was to deprive the Japanese of their swords. The Japanese
were occupying some islands and the Ming dynasty wanted to buy off the weapons from them. The Japanese were overjoyed and adopted the maxim – Buy all you can, we will make more! Disastrous decision by the Ming Dynasty.

Czar Alexander III & Nicholas II
The railroad technology advanced swiftly during 1880. Czar Alexander III took massive
foreign loans and started construction of the 5,000 mile Trans-Siberian Railway (the largest venture since the Great Pyramids of Giza). By the time the corruption ridden project was over in 1904, Nicholas II the son of Alexander III (who died in a train accident) became technically bankrupt. Wars and revolts infected the Empire. Instead
of carrying commercial and trade goods, the new railway was carrying political prisoners, soldiers and supplies for them. Russia rolled over in debts. The banking system was doomed. The economy became so weak that the country did not survive the coming war. Nicholas was executed on 16th July 1918.

Mengistu
Ethiopia had a crop failure around 1984. The country was then under the Marxist Junta called the ‘Derg’. The Junta controlled the Government. The Junta chairman, Mengistu borrowed a ‘brilliant idea’ from Stalin. Under this plan the scattered rural
population of Ethiopia would be gathered together in modernized villages with all the latest civic infrastructure and amenities. Villagers did not realize that these were the ideal utopian villages, so they had to be sent there at gunpoint for their own good. Unfortunately, the expected increases in agricultural production never materialized and millions starved. The country descended into a permanent state of civil war, which only ended in 1990 after the Soviet Union stopped supplying the Derg. Mengistu fled to Zimbabwe where he became an important advisor to that nation's rulers.

Mikhail Gorbachev
Great Leader! He announced around 1991 that all existing 50 and 100 Ruble banknotes would no longer be legal tender. They could be exchanged for new notes and only in small quantities – and that too only for three days. The effect was catastrophe. This
decision deleted large share of the savings and accumulated capital of private citizens. He followed up this genius move by ordering that the police had the authority to search any place of business and to demand the records of any business at any time. The union's economic problems accelerated into a death spiral. Gorbachev resigned that year and on the next day the Supreme Soviet dissolved itself and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

Power Corrupts – Absolutely!

2010-07-16T16:47:00.000+05:30

“Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men. Unlimited power is apt to corrupt the minds of those who possess it; and this I know, my lords, that where laws end, tyranny begins." - Lord Action in a letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton, 1887

All of us love power. All of us are prone to corruption. But it does not mean that absolute powerlessness may make you an angel. Nevertheless, it is charming, and alluring, to wield power over men and to excel before others, notwithstanding that power also has the capacity to completely ruin and destroy and has its own hazards.

Look at what you learnt in your History books. The books are full of rulers, leaders, bosses and generals and commanders who began well and ended shoddily. They all testified that they pursued and strived for power for the sake of good. Subsequently they became infatuated and got anesthetized by power. They began loving power for its own sake.
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Freedom Exist! . . . . Does It?

2010-07-15T15:24:00.000+05:30

☼ If freedom exist, then it is restricted to the one distinctive act of choosing our profession. After this ALL FREEDOM is OVER!

You begin to study at the University. You try to become a doctor, engineer, salesman, management guy, lawyer, government worker or something…..anything.

You are compelled to participate in an exceptionally stiff syllabus which ends with a progression of examinations. If you pass those examinations, you then receive a degree. Now you can pursue your profession. You think you have freedom once again. But as soon as you enter your professional life, you become a slave.

You are now dependent on success, money, your ambition, your hunger for fame, on whether or not people like you. You must submit yourself to go up. You must earn money; you must take part in the ruthless competition of castes, creed, colour, families, political parties, media, etc. But yes, you have one freedom – the freedom to become successful and well to do and to be hated by the unsuccessful or vice versa
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☼ When I was young and a student, I never realized or fully comprehended that I actually had luxury and had abundant time for myself. We studied a little, worked a little, didn’t waste much time and thought that we were diligent – and we barely were conscious of what we could do going forward or what we would do with our freedom.

After finishing our student life we start hunting for jobs – suddenly we receive a call from some authority – are given assignments, missions and designations. We then struggle to move on to higher levels, and out of the blue we are trapped in a network of duties and responsibilities that squeezes us the more we try to move inside it. The duties and responsibilities are small, but each of them has to be fulfilled and carried out at its proper hour. The day then seems to have more tasks than hours.

So from classrooms, office chambers, meeting rooms to the office restrooms, our official journeys have gobbled up the freedom that we once thought we possessed. The freedom to choose tasks, to study - disappeared.

Now I yearn for those days, and imagine that if ever I had such freedom again, I would fully enjoy its pleasures and possibilities.
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Knowledge & Wisdom

2010-07-10T15:22:00.002+05:30

☼ We create gods – and struggle with them.
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☼ Suddenly I realized the difference between knowledge and wisdom.

Wisdom is incommunicado. Communicating wisdom always sounds silly to others. You can find knowledge, live in a knowledgeable environment, teach and communicate knowledge – but not wisdom
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☼ We are all afraid of death. We are all afraid to die. We tremble inside when we see the flowers droop and wither away. We shudder when we see the leaves fall. In our hearts we know that we too will wither away. We know that our life here is momentary. We know we too will disappear. So we start creating images and devise thoughts and philosophies. We want to retrieve something from death, something that will last longer than us.
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☼ Everything in this world comes in a dual format. Up or down, left or right, right or wrong, high or low, man or woman, drifter or steady, thinker or feeler – We cannot do or have both at the same time. We cannot breathe in and breathe out at the same time. We cannot be a man as well as a woman. We cannot experience freedom as well as discipline. We cannot combine instinct and mind. It is always one or the other. But it is true that the one thing is as important and desirable as the other. One cannot do without the other
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Spiritual access

2010-07-09T11:33:00.001+05:30

☼ It looks as if man has taken upon himself a significant responsibility of controlling the access of gods to other men.

Visiting the Siddhivinayak Temple on a Tuesday, where I am told more than 2 lacs devotees throng the site, I saw separate queues for the affluent and the influencers of society. They were receiving privileged treatment by the Temple authorities. There was no single queue. People were waiting in a long serpentine queue to get darshan.

Afterwards I had an opportunity of speaking to one of the rich and an influencer of society. He gave me to understand that he carried a platinum card. For me this meant that there were others with gold and silver cards! So people with plat, gold and silver cards had express access to gods!

I wonder what the gods must be thinking. Or perhaps they might not be thinking at all. It might be that they have abandoned the general human race and have catered only to those with plat, gold or silver cards.

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☼ Can we get some consolation or do we need some tranquilizers? From time to time the company of a woman may help, now and then maybe a good friend. Some other times music or a movie may help along the way. Then a time will come when all these will no longer offer pleasure. Then one may take up drinking. Very soon one may even come out of this. Thinking, talking, reading, living, feeling and other activities may not provide the contentment that we seek to see us through life. What do we do?

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☼ None of us are less ignorant than the other. But I have attempted to live my life as a seeker. I have questioned stars, books, established thoughts, religion, life, culture and whatever my inner cells have murmured to me. The story of my life is not pleasant. It is neither charming nor mellow like those stories which are invented and people believe in them. My life has been stroked with nonsense, stupidity, pandemonium, and imaginations – like the lives of all men who have discontinued deceiving themselves

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☼ A long time back, somebody asked me why I was growing a moustache. I replied that I was feeling helpless and seem to have no goal in life.

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☼ I live in my dream. That is what you think. Probably you are right.

I live in my dream. I play with them. I construct in them. Whether I can renovate the world someday, remains to be seen, but within myself, I give a face-lift to my dreams each day. But no dreams last forever. Each dream is trailed by another dream. I don’t cling on to any particular one.

Other people live in dreams too – but not in their own.

And that’s the difference.
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Thought Traveller

2010-07-08T11:12:00.000+05:30

☼ Some become conscious very early in their life that they are destined to make life more worthwhile. Others only perceive. People make a world of their own. They have an asylum, a heaven and a hell. They imagine no one can take this away from them. There is melody in their minds. They croon silently. They strive to take custody off all their strengths and emotions. They struggle to control the unexpected, the evil and their sadness.
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☼ People who are young try to experience all the pleasures of life. But along with pleasures, sorrows too stroke their lives. They merely think of themselves. They think all their concepts, beliefs and opinions are significant. Many come out of this trance while growing up. Those who find that their desires have not been rewarded, end their lives.
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☼ The instant a man starts to think too much, he stops rejoicing when he wakes up in the morning. He stops enjoying, eating and drinking. He does not find much satisfaction in them. He ceases to take things for granted. He stops seeking and hoping for moments of real life. He becomes very conscious of time and starts thinking on the meaning and purpose of everything. Sometimes he feels liberated, and life seems so intricate, challenging and repressive. Perhaps this is a consequence of traveling very far in thought and philosophy? Can we achieve happiness through suffering, pain and sorrow?
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Corporate Speculative Decision

2010-07-01T12:59:00.003+05:30

Here is a new word. I call it Corporate Speculative Decision. This is how the story goes.

Our economy keeps changing. But certain things don’t seem to alter:

1. There is still this situation of unsold inventories (which we call stock and which are conveniently kept in the warehouses).

2. There is unemployment.

3. There is this unused capacity that production facilities offer.

This mechanism will persist and we will never be able to move in that direction where we can eradicate these issues. The past has been a good alibi.

The guy who owns the stocks declines to sell at the market price hoping that he can acquire a better and higher price at a later date.

The guy who is unemployed refuses to change his occupation, his residence and work with lower pay because he thinks he can get a better job with higher pay in the same place that he resides and in the same industry that he prefers.

Meanwhile the guy who has created an unused capacity atmosphere has assumed that the market will not ask for other goods than those that these plants can manufacture.

So? So the unused capacity, the piling of excessive inventories and the unemployment are nothing but mere, pure Corporate Speculative Decisions

So much for CSD!

State emigration

2010-06-24T15:20:00.005+05:30

The last three decades, constructive people and people who had learnt something and wanted to accomplish something out of life went away in ever-increasing number to other parts of India or the world. There was an exodus to those areas where so called communism or socialism had not touched or corrupted the minds of the people and had not established it ugly head.

Architects, engineers, chemists, doctors, teachers, managers of works and mills, and all kinds of skilled workmen, emigrated from the stagnated swimming pool. These people envisaged themselves to be something better, and they could not bear the thought of getting only the same reward as the straightforward honest day labourer.

These people were in luck since West Bengal was a state and was under the Indian Constitution. Otherwise we would have witnessed an emigration ban, where a diktat would have been issued against all emigration without the permission of the State Govt. . . . . Senior Citizens, people beyond work, infants and physically or mentally challenged people would have been allowed to go away. The right to emigrate would not have been approved to strong and healthy people, who would be under the obligation of the State Govt. for their education, work and life, so long as they would be under the working age.

Under these state of affairs the State Govt. would harshly carry out measures deterrent to emigration. Troops would be employed in all exit points. The border patrols would be given directives to brusquely shoot down all turncoats.

What a revolution it would be – Not much different from the era of slaves that were deemed economical and viable – depriving the citizens the liberty to choose their profession or location, amplified work hours, strict rationing, enormous military expenditure, corporal punishment, forbidding them to quit, splitting up the family system, imposing and establishing Draco’s rigorous, harsh, severe and cruel laws.

It would have been akin to raising the Berlin Wall, where a movement was founded primarily to liberate the worker. The guns were then turned on the very people that the authorities vowed to save.

What a revolution!

The big MNC called Earth

2010-06-24T00:29:00.003+05:30

☼ Thanks to the historians, The biologists, the psychologist, the archaeologists, the anthropologist, and other branches of scientists, we are now beginning to appreciate and understand the universe a little bit with our new found knowledge, which painfully we have gathered in the last few hundred years.

The earth is like a big MNC where a CEO has been appointed. That CEO is man. Man is in charge of the biggest business – that of the business of evolution. Whether man wanted to be appointed as the CEO is not the matter, the fact remains unchanged that he cannot rebuff the job. Whether he wants the job or not, whether he is conscious of what he is doing or not - he is as a matter of fact influencing the future course of evolution on this earth. It is predestined and this providence is unavoidable. He has to realize this and start believing in it.

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☼ All existentialists are of the belief that the human life has been attached with wretchedness in one form or the other – poverty, starvation, disease, ill health, over work, cruelty, oppression, stress, strained relationship, trauma, anxiety, agony, etc. Life has generally been nasty, brutish and very short. The great majority have died young. The have endeavoured to alleviate their misery by means of optimism and their ethics.

The problem is that their optimism has not been vindicated and their ideals and ethics have by and large failed to match up with reality.

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☼ The meaning and purpose of religion in our society is to deal with the problems of fate – the providence of the human specie, of our societies, of the different countries and the world.

Religion gives rise to the concept of god hypothesis. Religion and god has been erected by man to help him understand what our existence is all about. Man forthrightly have announced that god is the ultimate reality. By doing so he not only cheats himself but also becomes very indistinct, helpless and futile.

A day will arrive when this god hypothesis will shortly draw closer to an end and will scientifically not be accepted. It will become an intellectual and moral burden to our thoughts. It will no longer convince and comfort us. Soon after disposing off the theory, it will bring us a deep sense of relief. Discarding the theory of god does not mean that we will abandon religion and morality. Once we dispose of the outdated ideological concept, we may then go ahead by constructing something more valuable to take its place

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The Road Less Travelled

2010-06-22T17:10:00.007+05:30

☼ A day would eventually arrive where non of us human species would have to labour for more than 2 days a week…It is implausible that the human specie can chomp through this much and no more.. That point would never come when the entire world fabricates goods that we require in two days and that we would have to restrict our production of merchandises and turn our concentration to a bigger predicament of what to do with our newly established freedom !!!

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☼ What is natural? And what is supernatural? With the deluge of knowledge supernatural can be flushed away when an understanding of the natural process takes place. One day, it would be unfeasible for an educated, intelligent person to believe in a god as it is now so hard to believe, that the earth is flat, the impossibility of reaching the moon……or death is due to some black magic and witchcraft. Then the day would come when the god theory would no longer be a practical way out to interpret or understand nature and even may be an obstacle to clarity when we would try to understand or interpret nature.

The god theory would then stop to be looked upon as a ruler and would fade away from the lives of people.

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☼ You will one day come to realize that one day you will come to a point just like Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” which says:

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I marked the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

You will then realize and choose in the blueprints of your thought - the path of evolution rather than revolution; that there is neither the need nor the room for the super natural; that the earth was not created, but evolved; that animals and plants too evolved like us human beings with our minds, souls, brains and bodies. And that religion did not come out of revolution, but via evolution.

You will then after reaching those two diverged roads take a walk on the road less travelled and that will make the difference between today and tomorrow

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Compliance by coercion

2010-06-20T17:05:00.007+05:30

It’s census time. I received an intercom call from the security chap below my building and sure enough a census worker arrived at my door. I was thinking of politely refusing to answer her question.

I wanted to resist the application of aggression which the Govt. has adopted. I always face a catch-22 situation on how to re-act in accordance with the Govt. mandate and how best to oppose their aggressive nature.

One may just decline to comply and face the financial and legal penalties in a way Gandhiji and Martin Luther King did. I hold them in very high regard and I am in awe when I see them as believers of such peaceful non-cooperation.

My act of non-cooperation may lead me to prison. It would be unjust, but then the true place of a just man is a prison. But then it would be a peaceful revolution.

A second choice would be to flee the country and seek refuge in a country where such obligations are less arduous. Escape has long been a popular approach of seeking to avoid the brutality of war. There is a lot of sacrifice that needs to be done though, when one leaves one’s country, including the loss of home, separation from family, relatives and friends.

A final preference would be to comply; accepting the fact that compliance may assist the Govt. in its various aggressive activities.

Believing in liberty, freedom and such other wonderful words are nothing but being naive. One has to compromise and comply with the Govt. mandates and interacting with Govt. agencies, wherever harsh punishments are meted out. There is no point in becoming a martyr. You will need to pay your tax or else…..

Not much has changed since Draco the first Greek legislator of Athens replaced all prevailing systems and enforced his own harsh laws. There is no such thing as peaceful tax protest. All Govt. actions eventually resorts to the employment or intimidation of aggression. Whenever the Govt. intervenes, it leads to violent action or a threat of such action. The Govt. has full of armed men consisting of Local Police, CRPF, BSF, Soldiers, Prison Guards and non armed guys like the hangmen. The indispensable characteristic of a Govt. body is to exert force of its diktat by beating, killing and imprisoning.

Conducting a census means using up considerable tax revenue. I am sure crores of Rupees are being spent to pay lakhs of workers, who have been diverted from their productive work conducting this 2010, snooping on our lives and on Indians such as me who wishes nothing but to be left in peace

We live in two worlds

2010-06-19T15:47:00.002+05:30

It’s a reality that we live in two worlds. One world enforced by our Govt. and the other world that we assume in our actual life.

A friend of mine one day came to my house early in the morning. I was having coffee. I offered him a cup.

He said, “thank you”

I asked a supplementary question, “Should I pour some whiskey in that coffee?

He looked shocked. He was under the belief that drinking hard liquor in the morning was inappropriate and unbecoming. It was not a social norm. It was a habit one should conceal. It was a custom of the lower class. It was dangerous. It was immoral.

But are any of these hypotheses correct? There is already a prohibition in Gujurat. Most cities and states have already been imposed by our Govt. the timings one can have alcohol in the bar. The Govt. still think we are in schools and we do not know what is good or bad for us. Meanwhile the consumption of alcohol is on the rise. It is very clear that we live in two worlds.

I am sure my friend was shocked by my offer to add whiskey in his morning cup of coffee. What may not have gone to his head was my presumption that I was among the rebels against such frivolous prevailing culture – that I have in mind to reject the Govt.’s decree and create my own custom. This would be a fantastic model to live a full life. He could not see beyond a point that just because the Govt. authorized or de-regularizes certain things and prohibits others does not mean that I must follow or even endure the official roadmap of my life.

I consider myself a bit cultivated, educated and scholarly, hence it becomes a bit of an aristocrat custom to reveal some lost history with a sense of option and freedom. I am trying to create a world that does not exist and adopting a new way of life. I am trying to live a life outside the dictate laid down by our cultural police. No wonder some of us really believe in Art which is imagining the existence of some form of possibility in our mind and then endevouring to make it a reality. Literature, movies, culture, music and the arts are cultivated and give us the education and insight to create our own world.

The fact maybe that drinking liquor in the morning could be unthinkable since this could contribute to a less productive life. But one need not be sober during weekends or if you are celebrating some occasion. What could be wrong here if I offer my friend coffee touched with some whiskey in the morning?

The Strugglers

2010-06-17T15:28:00.002+05:30

Mumbai. Bollywood. The Dream City. The El Dorado of many an Indian. They all come here either like bees attracted to their hive, or dancing, crawling, as if some Piper’s tune had enticed them – like rats.

Everybody wants to make it big here, to be glimpsed, to be heard, to be adored, to be held in awe. Mumbai Bollywood has a particular word – These guys are called ‘strugglers’. They struggle – till they ‘make it’.

The problems with these strugglers are that even after they ‘make it’ – they still keep struggling. Look at our Bollywood superstars. Some have ‘made it’ and some have aged, [while another ex superstar wants to come back to the industry and can now be branded an official struggler] – but their struggle goes on. They still jostle for their space. Or look around for those Corporate Honchos and those who have at the least managed to buy an apartment here and drive around in their cars, putting in a number of years in their office. Strugglers! You will see them rushing out of their house in the morning and coming late in the night. Struggling – (not to make both ends meet) but to get that second house, that second car, to be recognized. Not that there is something drastically wrong with their intention – but their never ending struggle is a wonder.

Why do these people struggle? Why can’t they stop even after achieving what they had set out to do? Why can’t they come out of the shackles and live a free life? Why do they have to prove and keep proving that they are ‘somebody’? Why do they have to establish their existence? Why can’t they just live their life after their achievements? How much is enough to make them stop being a struggler and live a free live? Is it insecurity that drives them on?

Obliterate the illiterate

2010-06-17T00:15:00.003+05:30

۞ Money is necessary. No one questions that (at the least) today. Everybody loves money. But love for money can be either for possession or it can be used as a means to enjoy and appreciate and realize the realities of life. And as one grows older, creation and construction reduces and the love for money and security increases.

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۞ Religion and business may be an integral part of existence. But why does man have to be subordinated by the concept and practice of religion and business? Why shouldn’t it be the other way round? Perhaps both have created classes of the masses, and hence the overwhelming dominancy of religion and business. The world could have been more delightful, had there been only 2 classes: the literate and the illiterate, and all efforts would go to reduce and obliterate illiteracy.

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۞ Someone asked me how war could ever be stopped. I felt that stopping war was impossible. There is no cure for this disease. Yet to others war is like a cleanser. Can war be avoided? Is war necessary? Can it end the misery, pain, suffering and anguish of humanity? If yes, then let there be war and let war act like a sterilizer.

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۞ What is all this hue and cry of ‘making it in life’? We are all so confused in our existence that we do not seem to realize that after our death, life will continue, as usual. Everything is this world will continue as it were. Everything will occupy the same place as it were. All the traces of existence will die out little by little and the empty space that was left behind will once again be filled up quietly.

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Of IPs, Professors and Universities

2010-06-14T21:29:00.003+05:30

Intellectual Property has been explained as a distinct category of creations of the mind for which property rights are recognized. Under IP regulation, proprietors are granted certain exclusive right to an assortment of intangible assets, such as musical, literary, artistic works, discoveries and invention, word, phrases, symbols and designs. Common types of IP include copyrights, trademarks, patents, and industrial design right and trade secrets in some jurisdictions.

That’s the legal or official description.

Now let’s mull over the case of celebrated professors in those renowned universities. Some of them will soon start taking their IP rights very seriously and will initiate a copyright claim to the ideas that they spread in their classrooms. Their take: “I, the professor own my ideas and these may not be distributed without my permission”

The elementary and indispensable predicament here on this take is how the heck do you put into effect IP rights and support the idea of a university which after all is all about teaching and distributing ideas to all. The concept appears exceedingly bizarre.

The idea looks as if one is charging for the education and not for the degree. One can either distribute ones idea freely in the classroom or enter into a contract with the students somewhat in the following lines:

My {teachings, instructions, sermons, speeches, lectures, etc.} are protected by copyright law. They are my own innovative phrases and I document/record them at the same time that I deliver them in order to secure protection. You the students are authorized to make one set of notes only for your own personal use ONLY. You are not authorized to record my lectures, to distribute your notes to anyone else, to make a copy or to use them for any commercial gains without taking any prior permission form me.

Oh! Really? There goes the spirit of education.

Our minds are not made up like Hard Drives that can be wiped off clean after the semester is over. The universities objective is to distribute knowledge, not to award a one time use for what you are taught in the classroom. The idea of an individual student is to gain knowledge which can be used in every probable way during his life span and leave behind those ideas to others.

Corporate Gifts

2010-06-10T18:46:00.002+05:30

A mind-boggling thought about what recession can bring is a practice of tightening up the business belt. Good riddance to the well paid bum in the next cubicle!

Employees actually start working instead of updating themselves in Linked In or Facebook. The world becomes less extravagant and paves a path to increase prosperity down the road. But bad habits and gestures die hard like the one that I could never understand: The concept of sending gifts to customers, which I simply cannot believe still goes on.

I don’t imagine that the customer is actually pleased with these gifts. In fact it has a contradictory effect. The customer starts wondering why does business houses spend money on twaddle rather than concentrating on increasing the efficiency and lowering the prices. I don’t think the customers are fooled by these gifts. Some even may be furious by these wastes of money.

Lets say that a diary cost Rs.100/- and an organization has somewhere around 10000 clients. The organization then decides to send these diaries, an idea engendered by some B-School guy in upper management, to all these clients. Not taking into account the sheer operational and administration exercise involved and not taking the courier charges into account, the total venture would turn out to Rs 10 Lacs. Now with this 10 Lacs one can easily fire ones imagination what can possibly be done by an organization apart from putting it into R&D, Employee safety, Services, efficiency, hiring, improving packaging, upgrading S/W or web service, etc. But no – the company decides to instead squander the money on despicable kickbacks that has nothing to do with retaining clients.

Getting those diaries via the courier services serve the customer the crucial thought that possibly business is failing and that perhaps diaries may help in keeping the customers happy – not good products and decent services. Meanwhile we live in outdated times, employing an army of fools from B-Schools, who think that business life consist of dressing dandily and gabbing glibly. In the interim, the people who actually make the business run are poorly paid and under valued. Even if the Organization is using the most up-to-date technology which is extremely doubtful, the B School grad may not put the money spent on gifts into a price break for the customer. They never realize that what the customer is actually looking for is a price discount, a better service, and a good pricing policy throughout the year. These are what make people glad and communicates true loyalty, true commitment, true service and true attachment to the concept of excellence.

Business concept is not a Santa Claus Company. Business means – Get Rid Of Waste. I call it GROW. A gift to the client sends a clear message: “We love waste and we think you love it too”

While I appreciate that if an Organization is doing great and reaping in profits, there are times for loving, sharing and gifting customers. But people should do this with their own dough and not at the expense of the Organization. Why advertise incompetence, extravagance and wastefulness to your customers?

I never understood why that B-School Grad never got through this idea that business is absolutely and totally reliant on customer for its revenue, so the revenue he spends on gifts inevitably comes from the customers. Organizations are throwing away money on freebies rather than serving their customers .

And as these freebies keep pouring in from these business houses, think of it as a symbol that this recession has not nearly been deep enough – or has not really been stretched enough!

The Quota Raj

2010-06-07T20:35:00.001+05:30

Very soon a day will come when you are in a restaurant and the order is taking a wee bit long, you will find yourself in the men’s room and see a disaster. The toilet will have a flushing issue. The waste would be spilled all over the floor. You would see the customers leaving ground zero in a rush. The restaurant owner would not even be aware of it. The customers would lose all inspiration to eat or to order food.

The natural intuition would be to hold the restaurant owner responsible. What is it with these people and why cannot they at least have a clean toilet? But if you react this way, it would be unfair. The hidden hand behind this unsanitary calamity would be the BMC. The true origin of the mess would not be when you arrived at the toilet, but an ‘act’ which would have passed a long time back. With the ongoing environmental hysteria, an act would be passed – mandatory; all toilet tanks sold in the city limits of Mumbai use not more than 5 litres of water per flush. This act will be a devastating setback in the progress of civilization. I have not done my research so I would not be able to say how much water does a conventional toilet hold. Perhaps 10 litres? This new law may be enforced with fines and imprisonment!

Very soon you will have a thriving black market for toilet tanks and a profitable smuggling operation would come into effect. In any case we would become like the good old Union of Soviet Socialist Republic with a dramatic reduction in our standard of living (not that it is high now). We are already accustomed to bare rooms, long queues, poor dental care, garbage, filth, stray dogs, dogs’ poop, slums, beggars, noise pollution, water shortages and dry taps, power failure, adulterated milk, blood, water, fruits and vegetables, corrupt politicians, bureaucrats, municipal staffs, police and court, rising prices making basic necessities transform into luxurious, stress, negligible to overcrowded public transport,

It has been observed & experienced: Let enough time pass and people forget things. We get used to things

One of our greatest cultural and civilization achievement was our ability to solve the problem of human waste. Once upon a time toilets were outside the house. Today everyone assumes them to be a part of life. Toilets are attached to your sleeping area. This has been a sign of prosperity, well being, creative power and economic progress.

Human individuals achieved something with the innovation of waste disposal. The Govt. entered, intervened and took it away from us. These BMC acts will therefore take us a step backward from mankind’s objective to dispose human waste in the best possible way

Maybe some people just get their dose of kicks out of multiplying misery and making it impossible for the common people to enjoy a clean and prosperous life. These people think that there is virtue in suffering and would like to see everyone going through their quota.

The Parable Of Happiness

2010-06-05T19:09:00.003+05:30

۞ Doesn’t matter what you think of the present world. Whatever you think or however you act, you cannot get rid of the present. Your existence is your present. When and if the present world suffers, you must suffer with it. And when the present world goes through the process of enjoyment, you will need to enjoy with it. We affect the world and the world affects us. We cannot escape and cannot be indifferent to our existence or to the world.

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۞ Happiness is a myth. It can best be described as a parable. Ask yourself if you are happy and you will immediately discover that you are reflecting with a couple of points. You will either stop asking that question or you will realize that happiness eludes you. Perhaps if you stop looking for happiness and concentrate on some other things you might discover happiness. I said, ‘perhaps.’

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Every new idea or theory goes through three stages. First, people say it conflicts with the religious beliefs. Next they say it has been discovered before. Lastly they say they always believed it.

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They say that the grass is greener on the other side of the fence. I think for thousands of years it has been a known fact that the grass was actually greener on the other side of the fence. And what has fence got to do with the grass being greener. It may be that the people may have looked after the grass better and may have provided ample water. So like the Greek philosophers who carried their knowledge along with them, why shouldn’t you carry your own water and look after the grass wherever you may be?

╩╩╩╩╩╩╩╩╩╩╩╩╩╩╩╩╩╩╩╩╩╩╩╩╩╩╩╩╩╩╩╩╩╩╩╩

Social causes, business & charity

2010-05-27T17:43:00.000+05:30

I don’t by and large go out for a walk. Some time ago I did and discovered that all species of guys dig up my nerve. A small boy came up and asked me to buy some flowers. I shooed him away. He pestered and uttered that the profits would go towards stopping child abuse. Did you notice what he did? He linked his profit making endeavour, with a social cause. Do you think a small boy can solve that problem? Maybe he is saving money to have pizza!

Every now and then I get mugged by social consciousness salesmen or schemes. I enter a mall and I am mugged by schemes which say that I can actually save the world by buying this packet of coffee and that packet of sugar. If I buy this packet of tea instead of that coffee I would save the farmers in Vidharba. Some few rupees from a soft drink purchase would be donated to cure TB. My whiskey glass is so socially aware that it actually saves trees, stabilizing global warming. If sending 5 or 10 emails I would help charity institutions that are making the world a better place to breath.

My reaction is simple. Are we looking at a socially conscious business houses or are they not able to sell their products straightforward and directly so as to take shelter in ‘save the world’ schemes?

Another reflection of mine is that, let’s cut the bullshit and the charade and let us get back to plain old buying and selling.

If drinking off from whiskey glasses saves trees, an even better way to save trees is not to swallow whiskey at all. It is also not very comprehensible whether lowering the requirement for paper used for packing whiskey would essentially save trees, in view of the fact that a lower demand would sooner or later signify less motivation to plant and refurbish the supply. And do we in actuality have to save trees anyway? Is anyone even on familiar terms with the optimal number of trees that are supposed to be alive on this earth at any given point of time?

The “drink this particular brand of whiskey and save trees” really is a bugging one. Whiskey breaks ice and you start to converse, get into a philosophic mood, brings all the joys and laughter and twinkling in the eyes, stimulates you, enhances joy and happiness and lets you forget the tragedies, the miseries, the heartaches, the sorrows and the pains in life. It pours millions as taxes in the Government coffers which are used to provide care to our children, to our blind, deaf and dumb, looks after our aged, builds infrastructure. Good whiskey is good whiskey. So why should I favour a particular brand which has taken up a cause to enlighten me and my social consciousness? I find it bizarre and scheming that some dumb marketing guy has dreamed of this selling campaign. Why should some phony tale be fabricated that some proceeds will be donated to achieve some grand social vision?

If I fancy and want to bestow some to charity, I am absolutely competent of doing this on my own and according to my own values. I do not need any industrial houses to get involved and facilitate me by showing me the alleyway to true enlightenment. When someone comes along and tries to dictate to me what my values should be, I have a propensity to push back. I just want product and services. I will take care of the rest at my own leisure. What is so knotty about it?

╩╩╩╩╩╩╩╩╩╩╩╩╩╩╩╩╩╩╩╩╩╩╩╩╩╩╩╩╩╩╩╩╩╩╩╩

Nothing is new

2010-05-26T20:35:00.003+05:30

۞ People hold a so called modern view or argue about a host of things. For example people argue that when you die, everything ends, or that it does not matter if punishment or reward is meted out.

I would like to cite the philosophy of two philosophers :

1. Ajita Kesakambali, was an ancient Indian philosopher He preached a methodical materialist doctrine which said that good deeds and charity gained a man nothing in the end. His body dissolved into the primary elements at death, no matter what he had or had not done. Nothing remained. Good and evil, charity and compassion were all irrelevant to a man's fate." According to an early Buddhist source, Ajita Kesakambali argued that:

There is no such thing as alms or sacrifice or offering. There is neither fruit nor result of good or evil deeds...A human being is built up of four elements. When he dies the earthly in him returns and relaapses to the earth, the fluid to the water, the heat to the fire, the wind to the air, and his faculties pass into space. The four bearers, on the bier as a fifth, take his dead body away; till they reach the burning, ground men utter forth eulogies, but there his bones are bleached, and his offerings end in ashes. It is a doctrine of fools, this talk of gifts. It is an empty lie, mere idle talk, when men say there is profit herein. Fools and wise alike, on the dissolution of the body, are cut off, annihilated, and after death they are not.
In short – with death everything is annihilated

Ajita lived in the 6th century BC.(that’s about 2600 years back).

2. Another philosopher called Pūraṇa Kassapa who was an Indian abstemious teacher lived around the 5th or 4th c. BCE. He lived contemporarily with Mahavira and the Buddha.

It is accounted As an illustration of Purana's beliefs, in the Samannaphala Sutta that Purana had said:

"...[I] acting or getting others to act, in mutilating or getting others to mutilate, in torturing or getting others to torture, in inflicting sorrow or in getting others to inflict sorrow, in tormenting or getting others to torment, in intimidating or getting others to intimidate, in taking life, taking what is not given, breaking into houses, plundering wealth, committing burglary, ambushing highways, committing adultery, speaking falsehood — one does no evil. If with a razor-edged disk one were to turn all the living beings on this earth to a single heap of flesh, a single pile of flesh, there would be no evil from that cause, no coming of evil. Even if one were to go along the right bank of the Ganges, killing and getting others to kill, mutilating and getting others to mutilate, torturing and getting others to torture, there would be no evil from that cause, no coming of evil. Even if one were to go along the left bank of the Ganges, giving and getting others to give, making sacrifices and getting others to make sacrifices, there would be no merit from that cause, no coming of merit. Through generosity, self-control, restraint, and truthful speech there is no merit from that cause, no coming of merit.'

In short Purana believed that any reward or punishment for either good or bad deeds are denied.

To reiterate and corroborate my belief that there is nothing new in this world and that everything is all said and done a long time back, it is only that you were naïve, badly informed or ignorant, I stand vindicated

Hence to adopt a motto like “Quest never ends” might paradoxically make us more intelligent and humble.

╩╩╩╩╩╩╩╩╩╩╩╩╩╩╩╩╩╩╩╩╩╩╩╩╩╩╩╩╩╩╩╩╩╩╩╩

David Cameron

2010-05-12T23:08:00.000+05:30

Watching the BBC today I was amazed how the new British PM David Cameron and his Dy PM Nick Clegg addressed the press so succinctly and precisely. How I wished our politicians spoke in these no nonsense approach.

They maybe idiots in their own country (the citizen always considers their very own politicians as monsters)…but to us Indians the speech and the coalition Govt. marriage depicted a sense of responsibilities, albeit it is to be seen how long this marriage last.

Édith Piaf__ Non, je ne regrette rien

2010-05-12T17:43:00.002+05:30

Today suddenly I discovered Edith Piaf. This was when I had the occasion of listening to some French songs. She was a French singer and an icon. So I called on my next door neighbour - Shri You Tube and ‘saw the song’. It is called, Non, je ne regrette rien. My eyes got misty after the end of the song. . . After translation the song came out something like this:

Édith Piaf__ Non, je ne regrette rien

Non, rien de rien [No, nothing at all]
Non, je ne regrette rien No, I don't regret anything at all
Ni le bien qu'on m'a fait [Nor the good that was given to me]
ni le mal, Tout a m'est bien gal [Nor the evil. They’re all the same]

Non, rien de rien [No, nothing at all]
Non, je ne regrette rien [I don't regret anything at all]
C'est paye, balaye, oublie [It’s all paid for, wiped out, and forgotten]
Je me fous du passé [And I don't care for what’s gone by]

Avec mes souvenirs [With my memories]
J'ai allume le feu [I’ve lit a fire]
Mes chagrins, mes plaisirs [My sorrows, my pleasures]
Je n'ai plus besoin d'eux [I don’t need them anymore]

Balayes mes amours [My romances wiped out]
Avec leurs tremolos [With the trembling they brought]
Balayes pour toujours [Wiped out forever]
Je repars a zero [I set out once more from zero]

Non, rien de rien [No, nothing at all]
Non, je ne regrette rien [I don't regret anything at all]
Ni le bien qu'on m'a fait [Nor the good that was given me]
ni le mal, Tout ca m'est bien egal [Nor the evil. They’re all the same]

Non, rien de rien [No, nothing at all]
Non, je ne regrette rien [I don't regret anything at all]
Car ma vie, Car mes joies [Because my life, Because my joys
Aujourd'hui, ca commence avec toi.[Today It all begins with you]

Another song written by Edith Piaf was La vie en rose. If means “Life in Pink.” This is the original. Despite the fact that I have heard the English version of this song sung by Ella Fitzgerald, Jose Carreras, Shirley Bassey, Louis Armstrong, Aretha Franklin, Connie Francis, Bing Crosby, Dean Martin, Liza Minneli among others, I never knew that Edith Piaf originally wrote and sang this song. It is a very famous version.

Fascism is as old as life

2010-05-11T19:49:00.003+05:30

۩ Human beings by birth are fascists, should fascism be described as an absurd reaction of a typical human temperament. This means that fascism is as aged as life (not civilization). Fascism cannot be eradicated overnight. It took hundreds of years for the human race to become civilized. In spite of this fascism can be seen popping its head up in some corners of the world, in one form or the other.

ΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩ

۩ Even when we really grow up and become old, we are still looking for playmates to share our thoughts and feelings. We are still children. A lonely man who prefers and enjoys his loneliness is a true grown man and has successfully shredded the garb of children.

ΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩ

۩ One form of depression is another form of expressing one’s regret in life.

ΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩ

۩ Is there something wrong with politics or is my mind telling me something else. Otherwise why should we shoot the small thieves and appoint the bigger ones as ministers? Why?

ΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩ

۩ Most people don’t live. They dream about living

ΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩ

۩ Some people make their way up in life, fast. Most of them though make it slow. But the majoring of them does not even make it at all. How little it is worth making it up in life! Is that all people achieve? Making money and a little bit of reputation, the latter in any case is a bubble.

ΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩ

The Day’s Dose _ 6

2010-05-08T20:32:00.002+05:30

۩ If there is a god up there – then you cannot see, hear or touch that god. But you can surely screw his creatures.
____________________________________

۩ Is there is difference between god and chance?
____________________________________

۩ I haven’t learnt much from history. History revealed how people in the past made mistakes. It tells us what we should not do. It does not tell us what we should do going forward.
____________________________________

۩ The internet suddenly seems to have become another planet.
____________________________________

۩ All people must work to live and survive. Leisure is leisure. (I mean it’s leisure to think or have leisure). People work throughout their lives and retire in their late fifties or early sixties. I don’t profess that one should not work. Work, but for a decade only and then retire with maybe fifty years of your life in idleness, doing nothing or doing the things that you always aspired to do.
____________________________________

The banking system, the political system, the, advertising world, the multi national corporation, the entertainment industries have mended, molded and controlled us, our thoughts and actions. These are the modern day tyrants. They rule and subdue us. Call it Kafkaesque or Kafkaism
____________________________________

When We Pass Away / The Old / The Wall

2010-05-01T16:21:00.004+05:30

۞ People keep advising me “have an ‘open’ mind.” The problem being open minded is that people will keep coming in and keep trying to put things in it.
_________________________________

۞ I don’t seem to understand why and how can suicide be against the law. I have often wondered if I every try to commit suicide and somehow failed in my attempt. The rope might snap or the gas may not light up. I would then be thrown in a prison and would be shown and made to feel how wonderful and cheerful life really is and how thoroughly life is worth living.
_________________________________

۞ There is a rumour going around that my friend has found God. I think this is unlikely because I have enough difficulty finding my car keys, and fancy my friend finding the almighty himself! (or is it herself?). Whatever….
_________________________________
۞ I asked someone what could be the opposite of miracle.
_________________________________

When We Pass Away

A date passes away
The day ends and brings another date
A month and then a year pass away
Ushering in another month, another year
It is becoming easier to deduce
What lies ahead
Yesterday was exhausted in world-weariness
Tomorrow will conclude just like tomorrow
A droning day
Pursued by another repetitive day
Similar things will occur again
And then will occur again
The same moments will come and go
Another day, another month, another year
Will pass away
But there is hope
Hope indeed
One day it will end
When we pass away
_____________________________________

The Old

Take a close look at the old
There bodies crumbling
How unhappy they look
Weary by their pathetic life
They live on

This is the life we live
We fear to lose our wretched life
We love this life
The life which resides in our miserable body

How contradictory is our existence
We love life
We are afraid to die
Still we grumble
And hang on to this old depressed life
______________________________________

The Wall

I am constructing a wall
Thick and High
I’ve had enough of this outside world
This bleak world, it nibbles my mind
Slowly, steadily the wall is rising
Without the world noticing it
They won’t hear a sound
I will close myself off
From the outside world
Indiscernibly_____
_______________________________

Hang On

2010-04-30T13:23:00.000+05:30

People just crave to go to another country.
They want to get away from their motherland.
They yearn to find a better city.
They suppose whatever they do in their motherland providence would roll it wrong.
They think their body and mind would rot in the ruins of their country,
Where they were born,
Spent so many years in the same street,
In the same neighbourhood,
Become old in the same house,
A life squandered and destroyed.

I think there are no flights or roads that can take you to your destination if you are trying to escape your fate

We want to shape our life the way we want
But we don’t become successful
We degrade our life
By adding contacts
In our Hand Phone, Face Book, Linked In,
And Twitter
We try to take on too much work
We talk too much
We expose ourselves
To the daily mundane of life
We try to socialize, we go to parties
We hang on____________

What do you think?

2010-04-28T16:30:00.002+05:30

Ж
I don’t know why we are here. However hard we try, we cannot enjoy ourselves. On one hand, in a one hand sweeping gesture, millions of US $ change hands, while on the other hand, we have people surviving for ages on starch and salt. I don’t think we are here to enjoy ourselves. How can you possible enjoy if you are not that dumb or selfish to look around and see the misery of life?
_______________________________________

Ж
While in a new city if you move around in only the important streets, you don’t see much. A good traveler should get lost and find himself in those side streets. You will learn much.
_______________________________________

Ж
Is death an event of life? Do we exist to experience death?
_______________________________________

Ж
When I am infuriated or enraged, I stomp the ground or hit the table with my hand. But I don’t think that I believe that the ground is to be blamed or my beating the table would help in anything. All rituals and customs too don’t contribute to anything
_______________________________________

Ж
Every morning I start my day with a lot of hope. By evening the day ends, in despair.
_______________________________________

Ж
I wonder if one can bring in happiness if the medical care and systems is widely available, houses are affordable, music, cinema and food can be ordered in your house at a minimal affordable cost, traveling worldwide is made easy, childbirth is not fatal to mother and child, you don’t have to do what you boss tells you to do, you work only one day in a week. What do you think?
_______________________________________

The Vicissitudes of humane affairs.

2010-04-27T14:46:00.002+05:30

________________________________
I am waiting for the day when man will become the endangered specie.
______________________________________

I have often wondered what it takes to be a King. Simply born to a Royal lineage may assure one the coveted position. Declaring war is another alternative. Whatever it may be, the deliberation nevertheless never escapes my mind specifically after reading Charles Mackey who stated:

The king can drink the best of wine —
So can I;
And has enough when he would dine —
So have I;
And can not order rain or shine —
Nor can I.
Then where’s the difference — let me see —
Betwixt my lord the king and me?

___________________________________________

It is the nature and disposition of mankind to seek happiness. While seeking happiness he makes supposedly some mistakes which are termed as evil. It is not in the temperament of mankind to seek and be evil.

_________________________________________

Politeness more often than not obscures truth. Polished polite behaviors are taught and earnestness is forfeited and breached. Actual politeness is rarely practiced
__________________________________________

The Day's Dose_ 5

2010-04-13T15:29:00.001+05:30

I think, therefore I exist..
I exist, therefore I think.

What do you think?

╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬

Dream your life and then live your dream

╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬

I must admit that my appearance is a bit of a shocking. Maybe lack of money and the poverty level (when compared to the West) coupled with depression and disillusionment may have contributed to it. Whatever it may be, it has helped me by ensuring the solitude that I desperately seek

╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬

Sometimes when I look away from the sun and see my shadow, I ask myself the same old question, “Who am I?” An answer more vigorously then ever hits me on my face, “No-One.”

╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬

I asked someone on his reflection in spending most of his time chasing gods, like the majority of mankind. I saw the guy in total darkness.

╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬

Time and again the same thing comes to my mind. Men if they think at all, think in herds. They no longer hold on to their sanity when in herds. Once out of the herd, they recuperate and come to their senses, one by one.

╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬

The Day’s Dose _ 4

2010-04-10T20:25:00.001+05:30

The Day’s Dose _ 4

The sea gives me a two dimension view. One can see as far as possible without obstacles. The sea also depicts a roaring and raging wild beast in its den. It tells me the everlasting efforts of the human mind, struggling to be free, unfortunately ending just where it began.

ΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏ

Mankind cannot think of right and wrong, of truth and falsehood, of good and evil. They will continue to be indifferent to them as long as they go hungry.

ΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏ

It is hard to believe that a little bit of pain and uneasiness in our finger concerns us more that the destruction of our fellow beings

ΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏ

When a man leaves this world, the world puts money in his coffin. They erect monuments in his memory, celebrate his birth anniversary and follow his speeches. When he was alive, they took no notice of him.

ΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏ

Mingling with the young substantiated my belief, that no young people think they would ever die.

ΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏ

In order to lead and become a good leader, it is necessary to follow and become a follower.

ΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏ

If I have not read a book before, it is, for all intents and purposes, new to me, whether it was printed yesterday or a thousand years back.

ΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏ

Being prejudiced is being ignorant.

ΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏΏ

Quote Einstein !!

2010-03-17T21:30:00.002+05:30

Being Happy (whatever that means) means that you are satisfied with the present and not much bothered about the future.

Happiness is an incident. Pursue happiness and it will lead you to a wild goose chase. I don't think we can ever attain happiness

Someone told me that all great writers expresses themselves lucidly and in a langauge that the mass can understand. I agree with him. Easy reading is damn hard writing!!!!

I cannot understand why people memorize when the same thing that one utters is found in the books.

Schopenhauer says that "a man can do as he will, but not will as he will." This statement has helped me many a times when I went through life’s hardship and found a Wall in front of me

We don’t live. We only dream about living. By the time we stop dreaming, it's too late.

There are dominant gods and goddesses, there are myths, men are still barbaric and obsessed with signs and symbols waiting for miracles to happen.

I am beginning to understand that it is a natural phenomenon to contradict. I have discovered a very strange phenomenon. If you hate being contradicted – quote Albert Einstein! Nobody will dare contradict you……

Questions.

2010-03-11T09:33:00.003+05:30

What to you is the most worrisome thing? What are the causes of your worries? Can any of your worries be eliminated? How? Which of them might you deal with first? How do you decide? Are there other people with the same problems? How do you know? How can you find out?

What bothers you most about people? Why? How do you want to be similar or different from people you know.
What, if anything, seems to you to be worth dying for? How did you come to believe this? What seems worth living for? How did you come to believe this?

At the present moment, what would you most like to be — or be able to do? Why? What would you have to know in order to be able to do it? What would you have to do in order to get to know it?

When you hear or read or observe something, how do you know what it means? Where does meaning "come from"? What does "meaning" mean?
Where do words come from? Where do symbols come from? Why do symbols change? Where does knowledge come from? What do you think are some of man's most important ideas? Where did they come from? Why? How? Now what? What's a "good idea"? How do you know when a good or live idea becomes a bad or dead idea? Which of man's ideas would we be better off forgetting? How do you decide?

What is "progress"? What is "change"? What are the most obvious causes of change? What are the least apparent? What conditions are necessary in order for change to occur? What kinds of change are going on right now? Which are important? How are they similar or different from other changes that have occurred? What are the relationships between new ideas and change? Where do new ideas come from? How come? So what? If you wanted to stop one of the changes going on right now (pick one), how would you go about it? What consequences would you have to consider? Of the important changes going on in our society, which should be considered and which resisted? Why? How? What are the most important changes that have occurred in the past ten years? twenty years? fifty years? In the last year? In the last six months? Last month? What will be the most important changes next month? Next year? Next decade? How can you tell? So what? What would you change if you could? How might you go about it? Of those changes which are about to occur, which would you stop, if you could? Why? How? So what?

Who do you think has the most important things to say today? To whom? How? Why? What are the dumbest and most dangerous ideas that are "popular" today? Why do you think so? Where did these ideas come from?

What are the conditions necessary for life to survive? Plants? Animals? Humans? Which of these conditions are necessary for all life? Which ones for plants? Which ones for animals? Which ones for humans? What are the greatest threats to all forms of life? To plants? To animals? To humans? What are some of the strategies living things use to survive? Which are unique to plants? Which are unique to animals? Which are unique to humans? What kinds of human survival strategies are (1) similar to those of animals and plants? (2) different from animals and plants?

What does man's language permit him to develop as survival strategies that animals cannot develop? How might man's survival strategies be different from what they are if he did not have languages? What other "languages" does man have besides those consisting of words? What functions do those languages serve? Why and how do they originate? Can you invent a new one? How might you start? What would happen, what difference would it make, what would man not be able to do if he had no number (mathematical) languages? How many symbol systems does man have? How come? So what? What are some good symbols? Some bad? What good symbols could we use that we do not have? What bad symbols do we have that we might be better without?

What's worth knowing? How do you decide? What are some ways to go about getting to know what's worth knowing?

The Art of Flying

2010-03-10T11:14:00.002+05:30

Catching a morning flight is like crossing hurdles. It's not always simple to wake up on a cold early morning, specifically when you have downed innumerable number of pegs and went off to sleep late and drunk, to struggle and get on to a flight. Packing was done the night before given that security and logistics hurdles that you must go through to make it on the plane is nightmarish.

Liquids and gels go in a one corner. Contact lens cleaner go to the other corner. Think hard on what bags to carry, now that there are regulations for bags too. Which bag should I take? And if you are a sporadic and non frequent flyer, such aspects are easy to forget.

It gets harder when your airport is a good two-hour drive away, an irritant thing, translating into an hour of lost sleep the few lucky people take for granted.

Once at the airport, there is the sensitive matter of steering through the security. Shoes, laptops, belts, loose change, jewelry watch, et all — gets dumped into containers and shoved through the X-ray machine, and we comply because we desperately want to get to the destination.

It is a marvel that the system works despite these and countless other interventions in the natural right to travel. Think of the numerous coordination problems that get solved, daily, at the major airports of the world.

My flight is a measly dot. It left at 8:05 a.m., and landed at my destination at 11:15 a.m. My plane began the day and end up at the destination without any stops. And this was just one of the hundreds of planes operating that single day at a single airport.

Before my boarding, the plane was loaded and unloaded with food and drink, fuel and garbage, cleaning crews and airplane mechanics. The pilot, copilot and stewards were exchanged for new ones. When determining its schedule, the airline must consider the time necessary for taxiing the plane, something that differs from airport to airport. My plane taxied for what seemed like 30 minutes, but when it was finally in the air, intricate computations helped it to arrive at the predetermined time.

Multiply this by hundreds of flights an hour going in all routes; and reflect on the synchronization of stacks of decentralized workers attached in some way to the airport, to say nothing of the paying customers whose desire to fly justifies all of the activity. How does it all get done?

It happens in spite of the Govt. or its lapse, no matter what our Aviation minister tells us. It works because of the interaction between property rights and prices. Property rights, when well-defined and cared for, generate motivations for self-interested owners to exploit resources in various ways that encourage the social good.

Market prices guide property owners to arrange resources in different forms: wages for pilots, baggage handlers, airplane mechanics, and airport bartenders; loans that help fund training facilities, airports, and aircraft themselves; ticket scanning machines and automatic-flush toilets; and even the food that you are served once up in the air. No authority could pull off such an astounding accomplishment of harmonization, and yet it occurs day in and day out.

Sure, there are hiccups, but they are so odd that they make the lead story in the evening news when they transpire. In spite of the Govt. control of so many facets of modern commercial air travel, I made it to my destination with no problem and with much help from thousands of people I didn't know. What's remarkable is that it is still considered, by so many as, unremarkable.

The satire of Decimus Iunius Iuvenalis

2010-03-06T15:45:00.002+05:30

I was reading Satires by Juvenal otherwise known as Decimus Iunius Iuvenalis .. He was a Roman satiric poet. I couldn’t but marvel at some of his lines and wanted to keep some for records and reference:-

Travel by night in Roma is fraught with danger from falling tiles, thugs, and robbers.

Since there are so many poets wasting paper and everyone’s time anyway – why not write?

Begging is better than being treated disrespectfully at a patron's dinner.

An invitation to dinner is a social exchange for your services as a client.

Different wines and goblets for different social ranks.

Different water is served by different grades of slaves - and different breads served by arrogant slaves. The patron gets a lobster, and you get a crayfish; he gets a Corsican mullet, and you get a sewer-fish.

If you had a fortune the patron would respect you; it is the cash that he really respects. Different mushrooms and apples.

"throw the bolt and lock her in.” But who is going to guard the guards themselves,

The urge to write is an addictive disease.
Wrong Desire is the Source of Suffering

Lust for military glory has ruined countries, and time will destroy even the graves of famous generals.

What did Hannibal ultimately accomplish? He dies of poison in exile.

The world was not big enough for Alexander the Great, but a coffin was. Xerxes I crawled back to Persia after his misadventure in Greece.

Long life just means ugliness, helplessness, impotence, and the loss of all pleasure.

Old people are deaf and full of diseases. Dementia is the worst affliction of all.

Many men would have been thought fortunate if they had died before a late disaster overtook them: e.g. Croesus, Marius, and Pompey.

Now rich people get no enjoyment from delicacies unless they eat from tables decorated with ivory.

It takes no philosopher to realize that there are many worse wrongs than being defrauded. A financial loss is mourned more than a death, and it is mourned with real tears.

Become a lawyer, join the army, or become a merchant. Profit smells good, wherever it’s from. Nobody inquires into where you got it, but you have to have it.

The anxiety of protecting wealth and possessions is a misery. Alexander the Great realized that the cynic Diogenes was happier than himself while living in his pottery home, since Alexander’s anxieties and dangers matched his ambitions, while Diogenes was content with what he had and could easily replace.

How much is enough then? As much as Epicurus or Socrates was content to possess is best, or - in the Roman manner - a fortune equal to the equestrian order. If twice or three times that does not suffice, then not even the wealth of Croesus or of Persia will suffice.

But these days there is greater concord among snakes.

In Egypt they worship bizarre animal-headed gods, but not the familiar Roman ones. Similarly, they wont eat normal things, but do practice cannibalism. Ulysses must have been thought a liar for his tale of the Laestrygonians or the Cyclopes.

Compassion is what separates humans from animals. The creator gave humans mind (animus) as well as life (vita), so that people could live together in a civil society.
______
Many of us may think that management writers and authors have contributed many a maxims and have proclaimed some of these as theirs; but facts reveal that some of Decimus Iunius Iuvenalis’ lines are the source of many brilliant, familiar and memorable aphorisms today.

Oh! By the way he existed between 60 AD to 140 AD1 AD to 2 AD. That is nearly 2000 years back. Time and again my views have been substantiated that there is nothing new in this world. All things have been said and done………its only that you don't know or are not aware of it___

So much for your thoughts!

They say,” Keep smiling!”

2010-03-02T17:32:00.001+05:30

How do you react to a person with a perennial smile on his face? Do you identify him as a good natured person? Do you call him, a man with a lovely face? Do you feel he has a pleasant personality with a constant smile on his face? Do you call him a being with a smile in the face of all adversaries?

What do you make out of him?

Do you label him as a man with no feelings for the sufferings that he perceives around him? Do you describe him as a moron, that in spite of seeing hunger, pain, misery, poverty and homelessness, he continues smiling? Do you dub him as a selfish human being when he sees so much of injustice, discrimination, prejudice, bigotry, chauvinism and you see him smiling? Do you term him as a dunce, when you wonder, as to why these things are not affecting him? Is his smile a symbol of ignorance, or doesn’t he care?

Do you think it is less of a smile and more of a smirk?

I am puzzled to see a man with a persistent smile on his face.

A Life Ended

2010-03-01T15:29:00.000+05:30

A vivacious young woman concluded her life
She might have been somebody’s wife
People saw her in a dismembered state
Why she died, nobody could ever state
The rail tracks have no blood traces
A problematic life without braces
It did need guts to end one’s life
In the hope of ending her strife
While life laughs at death
Death smiles at breathe

The Day’s Dose _ 3

2010-02-26T08:10:00.003+05:30

Human nature is such that our approach towards life is filled with disagreement. We cannot avoid disagreement. We disagree with society. We disagree with other individuals. We even disagree with ourselves. It is a natural phenomenon. Only few of us have transcended this basic, primitive instinct. Those who have, respect others and approach disagreements with a different view. They express their points of view and feel good, if these are added to the others’ World Wide Views.

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You cannot study, take a degree in philosophy and turn into a philosopher. A conscious attempt to develop into a philosopher may not help, unless you are guided by philosophical queries. You cannot just decide to ‘become a philosopher.’ Philosophy is the man’s concern of human beings. A philosopher apart from other things, does not seek status through possessions and conspicuous display of assets
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People raving and ranting on the genius of A R Rehman makes me wonder if these fellows have ever discovered, heard (if not understood) Louis Armstrong, Art Tatum, Ben Webster, Dave Brubeck, John Coltrane, Art Blakey, Bill Evans, Ahmad Jamal, Django Reinhardt, Art Pepper. . . . .

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They say______

2010-02-25T20:25:00.001+05:30

They say the grass looks like emerald
And the roses like ruby
The sky infinite, with a tinge of sapphire
They say that mountains don’t stir
The oceans, seas, rivers, lakes don’t dehydrate

But the world doesn’t look so good
When thousands of ill-fated fools pass away in cyclone
Or perish because of earthquake
When hunger, pain, misery, insecurity & deadly diseases strike
When animals and men bloat and float
When children lose their childhood
When people become homeless and senseless
When war is still waged
When fear lurks in every corner
When the world’s gods does nothing
But plays a mute invincible spectator

Meanwhile the suffering continues
And for some -
The grass still is green
& the roses still red
The sky still infinite, with a shade of blue
The mountains still don’t move
The oceans, seas, rivers, lakes still don’t dry
The world still looks so good

The silhouette of death

2010-02-24T11:31:00.001+05:30

There is nothing in this world
That could be termed as significant
Life, money, power, fame and beauty
Are nothing but mere games

Man loves to act
Some portray riches, others rags
Man is a marionette
Moved by an indiscernible force
That can’t be comprehended
Nothing seems more important
Than Death!

Sweet Death
Like the shadow
It pursues man, since his birth
Man’s only friend, Death
People weep when they should rejoice

Oh Death
You alone can bring peace
In this hell
A hell without mankind
Without problems, without worries
Without desires, with hopes and ambitions

Ode to a Zero

2010-02-23T10:21:00.001+05:30

Ode to a Zero

Life has been nothing but a mystery
Since the time we were up on a tree

A lots been researched on it
But no good has come out of it
They can’t get out of the orbit
The can’t get out of that shit

They go round and round in circle
Vaguely looking for some miracle
Living and hoping for a tomorrow
Forgetting, a circle embodies a zero

It’s distressing but and it’s no illusion
Life’s a Zero and that’s the conclusion

Remembering Satyajit Ray

2010-02-22T12:26:00.001+05:30

Out of the blue I recall Satyajit Ray speaking about an Individual. He held that an individual cannot be treated as an isolated entity. When we talk about an individual we attach with him a certain class, his problems, his ideas and his struggles. You cannot isolate an individual. I don’t know if this was one of Ray’s original ideas or quoted. But I do surely see eye to eye with him. Hearing him, I remember one couldn’t help but sense that the man creates a profound impression upon his immediate surroundings, if not at a distance.

Another thing I observed about Ray: I have never noticed him smile. There is no vestige of cruelty on his face. It is calm and sober and his head is fixed on his shoulder. His expressions are eloquent and I have never found any words wasted. It seems as if he clutches on to each word, assesses it, and if found appropriate, lets it out. The more you think about the man, the more you begin to think about him. Destiny took another route otherwise I would have loved to meet him and know his World Wide Views.

Hello there Mr. Woods!

2010-02-21T10:40:00.003+05:30

The other day I saw Tiger Woods apologizing on TV to the world for his conduct. He acknowledged cheating on his wife and said sorry innumerable times to the world. I fail to understand why should a billionaire sport man put pressure, stress and pain on himself and deprive the desires and temptations that life offers to him. After all he did not go out, outraging the modesty of any one. He just succumbed to the most accepted human desire. If any admission of guilt was needed to be expressed, it was to his wife and not to the rest of the world. Be true to yourself Mr. Wood and don’t get bothered being ridiculed by others. It is better not to be false and be ridiculed by yourself.

Golf is an individual game. It is not by sheer talent, hard work, grit, determination and a little bit of luck he became the king of golf and a billionaire. He is a prodigy! He should be living his life and do what he feels like doing, even cheating on his wife and submit to natural human desire and temptation. There is no need for you Mr. Woods, to come out and scream for your deeds or misdeeds to the world. Half the people out there would give anything to be in your shoes Mr. Wood! Don’t bother about the world. The world is nothing but a mass that lives in delusion. You have worked hard to be where you are. Now just go and chill out. Do what your heart tells you to do and fulfill all your temptations. It’s your life and your money. But then people want to become famous and crave to be a role model to the world.

If you have such thoughts, then Mr. Woods, you need to pay for it. What is more important, life, happiness or civilization?

PS: And stop this pretence of going to the clinic for treatment. Most of us can’t even get aroused these day, let alone be rich and talented. We would give anything to be in your shoes Mr. Woods!!!

The Day's Dose _ 3

2010-02-20T20:17:00.000+05:30

The ultimate spectator sport is human accomplishment. Look at the way we take pleasure when an athlete breaks a record; a tenor singer reaches a high; a footballer puts the ball in the goal from an impossible angle; reading a profound philosopher. Accomplishment stimulates and awes us.

We know we cannot reach those levels. Those who accomplish these achievements do not get fermented and they do not hold other accomplishers in awe. They are in a sort of eye to eye contact like performers on the same stage. Whoever heard of Schumacher seeking an autograph from Brad Pitt, Tendulkar from SRK, Zubin Mehta from A R Rahman, Federer from Beyonce, Tiger Wood from Maradona, Sartre from Pele, Michael Jordan from Sergey Bubka?

The Conspiracy Theorists

2010-02-19T11:26:00.002+05:30

Sometime back I wrote on propaganda. Another word which aroused my curiosity was conspiracy and subsequently ‘conspiracy theory.’ The Oxford English Dictionary describes as follows:

Conspiracy theory: The theory that an event or phenomenon occurs as a result of a conspiracy between interested parties; spec. a belief that some covert but influential agency (typically political in motivation and oppressive in intent) is responsible for an unexplained event; so conspiracy theorist.

Some conspiracy theory are serious : The Tatas were involved in causing accident to Sanjay Gandhi’s airplane, The CIA was to blame for assassinating John F Kennedy, scientists consciously manufactured AIDs virus, the theory of global warming is a premeditated fraud, Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose was still alive a few years back, the Govt. covers up the existence of aliens, etc,.

Some conspiracy theories are quite harmless. Like there are clandestine groups of elves working in inaccessible locations under the guidance and management of the mysterious Santa Claus, distributing presents on Christmas.

The serious conspiracy theories cause immense harm. They generate and stimulate violence. There are conspiracy theorists that create all these theories, there are people who read and talk about these theories and there are those who promote these theories. I suppose most conspiracy theorists conceive these theories quite intentionally. Some do it with an earnest effort while others have some self-centered social objectives and are after money and power.

Some theories are phony while some are later found to be true. They are historical truths which may have been suppressed. It is as one would expect a very complicated task to differentiate true or false conspiracy theories. Not much of substantial information is ever available. There are journalists who write on a particular theory and there are historians who write books and teach in colleges and universities who explore minute details and take testimonies of witnesses to reach a pertinent conclusion. Whatever be the conspiracy theory, sometimes it is best to let history decide the conclusions. The dilemma is that there have been known instances where the political party in power readjusts, fudges or suppresses historical facts by assigning ‘official’ or ‘court’ historians, committed to providing the rulers’ outlooks and exploits.

Since the last 2000 to 3000 years the human mind has maneuvered in poetry, drama, agriculture, philosophy, architecture, history, philology, astronomy, politics, medicine, theology, geography, etc,. The mind has thus not only become much disciplined but also experienced. The mind having delved in so many subjects launches thoughts which are otherwise and many a conspiracy theory evolve.

I wonder how much is factual in whatever we read and learnt in the history classes during our school years!

The Day's Dose _ 2

2010-02-18T17:02:00.000+05:30

The explosion at German Bakery in Pune which recently killed around 11 people had its share of some miraculous anecdotes.

One such was that of two friends who went there for a cup of coffee. The impulsive urge to light up a cigarette compelled them to go outside the bakery premises, given that smoking was not permissible inside. No sooner had they stepped out, lit a cigarette, the bomb went off, saving them.

Here are two guys who I don’t imagine will ever give up smoking. Who says “Smoking Kills?”

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It does not mean that a fact is true just because the majority believes in it. It is a very narrow minded approach to think that the mass, because of its majority, is right. Truth is truth and does not change. It does not matter even though the majority or the mass believes, or does not believe in it.

ǾǾǾǾǾǾǾǾǾǾǾǾǾǾǾǾǾǾǾǾǾ

I keep hearing that nature is our mother. We call it Mother Nature. I wonder why? Had Mother Nature been our real parent, she would have been arrested for child abuse and murder, not solely considering what happened in Haiti recently.

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We all have a little madness in us; otherwise tell me how do we go about living the life that we live?

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Nothing else, nothing more

2010-02-17T23:38:00.001+05:30

There are times I wish I could disappear from this mundane world with its dilemmas and strains and scamper away to a remote and secluded place, where I can survive a peaceful life, alone and far away from this hustle and bustle.

It is revolting to see the contrast between the riches of the rich and the poverty of the poor. The sentiment is one of frustration and helplessness. Look at me just now (it is 11.30 PM). I had a sumptuous dinner, consisting of rice, vegetables, meat and custard and there are countless who do not have anything to eat. I feel awful. I have enough attire to cover my shame, while many move around naked. It is a heinous crime. I cannot pacify myself. No matter how hard I try. No matter how logical and reasonable I may be, since time unmemorable, there have always been the filthy rich and the filthy poor, and it will continue to be. It is not right. Why should some have a lot of wealth and some, none? Money is indispensable. This is a harsh fact.

There are people who believe that Mary gave birth out of virginity, that Jesus was resurrected, that Hanuman could fly, that there is a heaven and there is a hell, in spite of this naked truth. How could the world believe in all these yarns when most of us live our lives in utter misery? I tried hard but could not believe in the existence of god. Then I asked myself,” Am I a misfit or is it that the world is not a fit place to live.” I increasingly began to unconditionally agree with Tolstoy’s view: “My mental condition presented itself to me in this way: my life is a stupid and spiteful joke someone has played on me. Though I did not acknowledge a "someone" who created me, yet such a presentation - that someone had played an evil and stupid joke on my by placing me in the world - was the form of expression that suggested itself most naturally to me.”

Thirty years of my life is over and done with, gone! It had been a wasted exercise. Another thirty years (maybe) will see me in a grave or burnt. Youth has passed me by and looking back I see nothing but burnt grasses. What did I do? What did I achieve? Was these thirty years fruitful? Did I enjoy it? Retrospection! Nothing else. Nothing more. Death comes to all men, not that I am afraid. It has been a good and constant companion. Humans have never been my friend. I shun companies. I have never liked people and I don’t think they like me either. Most of the time, I am indifferent to their thoughts.

Many things in this world once shocked me. But now they don’t. I have got used to it. Prostitution, infidelity, adultery, homosexuality, drugs addicts, lames, blind, deaf, dumb, pain, suffering, misery, hunger, flood, earthquake, famine, war, murders, births, loneliness and deaths used to shock me. I use to question the existence of gods with the existence of these ‘shocking’ things. I was told that god is good and kind and I wondered how he could have allowed these to happen.

The Day’s Dose _ 1

2010-02-17T13:36:00.000+05:30

What is right and what is wrong? What is ethics? What is philosophy? With an empty stomach, these are but mere words, irrelevant and futile. The first priority and responsibility of civilization is ‘Feed the hungry’ (then preach).

ΨΨΨΨΨΨΨΨΨΨΨΨΨΨΨΨΨΨΨΨΨ

I don’t want to plunge into society, keep swimming and eventually sink. I’d rather be stranded on an island.

ΨΨΨΨΨΨΨΨΨΨΨΨΨΨΨΨΨΨΨΨΨ

There are certain things in a man’s mind which he would not reveal to anyone, except his closest friends. There are still further things which he would not even convey to his friends, but only to himself. Yet there are things he would not even reveal to himself.

ΨΨΨΨΨΨΨΨΨΨΨΨΨΨΨΨΨΨΨΨΨ

I don’t know how to become ‘something.’ I live my life in my corner jeering, sneering and consoling myself that intelligent men cannot become ‘something’ and that only the fool becomes ‘something.’ I am an idle chatterer and I cannot help it if this is the only way to pass time on this earth. Talking nonsense differentiates man, from other forms of life.

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self education

2010-02-16T07:53:00.002+05:30

One of the best ways to educate oneself is to familiarize with these_________

Woody Guthrie, Ramblin’ Jack Elliot, Hobos, Huntington Disease, Aesop's Fables, Adam Smith, Arthur Schopenhauer, Emphysema, American Civil War, Bolshevik, Bertrand Russell, Cold War, colonialism, Akira Kurosawa, Leninism, Dixieland, imperialism, David Hume, Federico Fellini, iron curtain, Nazism, Leon Trotsky, Sherlock Holmes, nihilism, Frédéric Chopin, October Revolution, Roman Empire, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Shinto, Jazz, Utopianism, Dust bowl/Dirty thirties era, Communist Manifesto, Mughal empire, apartheid, holocaust, Transcendental idealism , Vietnam war, WWII, existentialism, Bible, Koran, Bhagavad-Gita, Ramayana, Mahabharata, Buddhism, Confucianism, Guru Granth Sahib, Taoism, Nuremberg Laws, Rastafarianism, Surrealism, Scientology, Capitalism, Marx, The Cynics, Gestapo, John Ford, Charles Darwin, atheism, dogmatism, Friedrich Nietzsche, rationalism and empiricism, Pythagoreanism, the expressionistic, Leo Tolstoy, the fascist, fatalism, Sigmund Freud, Gnostics, Woody Allen, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Immanuel Kant, Marxism, The Industrial Revolution, Fyodor Dostoevsky, The French Revolution, Yves St.Laurent, The Quit India Movement, Guy de Maupassant, The Chinese Revolution, Berlin Wall, Voltaire, Tiananmen Square protest, Bangladesh Liberation War, IRA, The Naxalite Movement, Franz Kafka, The extermination camps, Mahatma Gandhi, Glasnost, Elvis Presley, Fidel Castro, Slavery, KGB, The Fabian Society, George Bernard Shaw, Ghettos, anti Semitism, LGBT, Albert Camus, Greek Mythology, Speakeasy, Alcoholism, Mughal Empire, Nato, Phenomenology, Pythagoras Theorem, The Stock Exchange,

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Propaganda

2010-02-14T13:13:00.000+05:30

Man easily falls prey to propaganda

The English Oxford Dictionary describes the word propaganda as follows

1. Any association, systematic scheme, or concerted movement for the propagation of a particular doctrine or practice.

2. The systematic propagation of information or ideas by an interested party, esp. in a tendentious way in order to encourage or instill a particular attitude or response. Also, the ideas, doctrines, etc., disseminated thus; the vehicle of such propagation.

3. propaganda campaign, propaganda chief, propaganda film, propaganda fund, propaganda leaflet, propaganda meeting, propaganda play, propaganda poster, propaganda raid, propaganda technique, propaganda war, propaganda warfare, propaganda work; propaganda machine :- an organization responsible for the dissemination of propaganda.

Propaganda attempts to envelop human being by all possible means whether in terms of a man’s feelings, his ideas, his needs, his consciousness and unconsciousness, his private or his public life. Propaganda supplies him with a comprehensive system, for explaining the world, goading and enticing him to action. Through the myth that it generates, propaganda imposes a whole range of instinctive knowledge, capable of only one interpretation, unique and prejudiced, preventing any disagreement. This myth becomes so powerful that it assaults every area of consciousness, leaving no sense or motivation in one piece. It arouses in the individual a feeling of distinctiveness, engineering a predisposed outlook.

Here is one for the road: Before I was born, I was a dino, a mermaid, a plant and fruit. After I die I will go on to become the great white shark, a Swiss and then an eagle before returning to be an Indian once more!

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Metrosexual

2010-02-13T18:12:00.000+05:30

I don’t know if there are any other reasons for the existence of human, except earning and spending, and trying to save his miserable money for his children and old age.

I have realized that I am of no use. I have done nothing in life except worked in different organizations and have survived with the sole intention of “Getting & Spending”. I have not created anything. I have not contributed anything. I have not produced anything. I have not invented anything. So if I have not created, contributed, produced or invented anything – what am I? Am I not wasted? Am I not useless? Am I not irrelevant? Am I not worthless? Am I not immaterial? Am I not irrelevant? Isn’t my existence meaningless? Am I not of any consequences?

ΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘΘ

You don’t get better, but different and older. You undergo more of a psychological development. At each level or stage of development, you see the world in different ways. You have a different belief and a different World Wide View. Everything appears to you as a consequence of the development

For example the view on a gay person changes when you undergo psychological development. First you are embarrassed, and then you become uncomfortable and awkward when you meet a gay or a topic on gay emerges. Then you begin to ask, why do people have to point out a gay. Nobody pointed out that I am heterosexual; although now most might refer to me as metro-sexual (I never had sex with a metro though)

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High Frequency Speculation

2010-02-12T09:31:00.002+05:30

First the financial industry sank us into this present economic catastrophe. Then the Obama govt. virtually bailed out these Wall Street sharks with the tax-payers money. The economy is still stifled. And the industry is paying itself gigantic bonuses. Don’t be outraged. This is the modern, legal bank robbery. Why are you so surprised that the politicians and regulators allow their billionaire buddies to steal from the tax payers? If you are smart, you crash the economy and fleece the tax payers.

Some institutions use modern technology and super fast computers to get the jump on other investors – buying or selling stocks, at ‘nanoseconds’ before anyone else can even react. Profits are then made from real high frequency trading and record profit earnings are register. Investors lack access to those super fast computers. Then there is the speculation of information not available for the public at large. The privileged few indulge in high frequency speculation and the rest suffers. Why are you so upset?

Is there a social benefit to inexorable stock speculations?

ФЮфЮФЮФЮфЮФЮФЮфЮФЮФЮфЮФЮФЮфЮФ

"Waste Bengal"

2010-02-11T23:18:00.003+05:30

I am profoundly and actively uninterested in cricket, politics and world affairs. Though cricket and politics are supposed to be an integral part of our life, I prefer to stay away from these two religions. I don’t like writing about cricket and politics. In fact I don’t think much about cricket and politics. I like to surround myself with music, movies, playing the guitar, thinking about the uselessness of life, reading, writing and traveling.

I however got a little bugged when Jyoti Basu died and was called a son of the soil, a great leader, Beloved leader, leader of the people, a man of high principles, an ideological and ethical man.

I know we are all wretchedly two – faced, deceitful human beings. We are afraid to talk, criticize or disparage someone when the person exists on this earth, and scrutinize and evaluate his existence behind his back. We all have only pleasant, agreeable words to say when the person dies. But from time to time, we break this self implemented rule when we speak about Julius Caesar, Benito Mussolini, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Gen. Jorge Rafael Videla, Idi Amin, Francisco Franco, Che Guevara, Saddam Hussein, Indira Gandhi and others like them. I suppose I can break the self imposed rule and try to express my feelings for Jyoti Basu

Jyoti Basu contributed a great deal by taking Bengal back to 20-30 years behind the rest of India. There was a popular aphorism once: “What Bengal thinks today, the rest of India thinks tomorrow.” That was effectively changed to “Bengal’s constipated thoughts.” Progress came to a halt. We jokingly referred to West Bengal as ‘Waste Bengal.’ Recurrent trips would be made by him to London and surrounding cities, naturally during the summer season to flee the city heat bringing back ‘huge foreign investments.’ We never saw those MOUs out of the papers. All major and small organizations vamoosed from Bengal. Entrepreneurship died. People were afraid to open up business. There were lockouts. Strikes and bandhs became common. Every other day the comrades and cadres were on the streets, slowing or closing down business. Thanks to the communists, poverty increased and became a habit, so much so that I even was a bit embarrassed to move around in my car. The man on the street used to give a dirty look at car owners!

I never knew why we followed Mao Zedong or Stalin. On even and every trivial pretext, the cadres used to spill blood. No one dared to speak out. A slightest opposition to the party thoughts meant that you were either beaten up or you were cut to pieces. Individual thoughts were frowned upon. I remember the time when I use to speak out against socialism, communism and herd mentality, my communist friends used to threaten me by saying “From today you are our political enemy.” Let me explain by what they meant by ‘political enemy.’ If you disagree with their thoughts or ideology, they had a right to exterminate you. You could not go to the cops. They were filled up with cadres, top to bottom. You could not trust them. I felt like we were living under a ‘stasi establishment’ or the Argentina’s Military Junta and SIDE regime. The cadres were everywhere, in schools, colleges, universities, in the teachers’ society, legal world, panchayats, govt. officers, bureaucrats, everywhere.

We sat, studied, worked, slept and grew up without power for several years. The concept of Load Shedding came into being while Jyoti Base cooled himself in his AC environment.

While he got his education from Loreto School, St Xavier’s School, Presidency College and the The Honourable Society of the Middle Temple, he prohibited English in Govt. Institutions, taking back Bengal by several years. Meanwhile the communists’ sons and daughter attended the elite English medium schools. Double standard was the characteristic of the communists. He encouraged strikes and bandhs while ensuring that his son’s business never had any problems.

He managed to stay in power and became the longest serving CM, because the Party had introduced a way to meddle with the voting system. It was called ‘scientific rigging.’ He was once known to have refused saluting the Indian Flag. Politics is cheap and dirty in India. Compared to him, these goons like Laloos, Mulayams and Mayawatis are saints. He never looked after the poor as they claim and still he managed to stay in power for more than 2 decades just because be was more hardnosed and merciless than all those thugs combined. His was a class which could be compared with Mao, Stalin and Francisco Franco. It was a reign of terror.

Whatever it may be, but we Indians are idiots enough and do not have it in us like those who brought down the statues of Saddam, Lenin or Stalin

Overall his reign and regime placarded a sentiment of “Shit Happens.”

Because of him, I am a displaced man from Kolkata.

"SHIT HAPPENS" LIST

2010-02-10T16:06:00.004+05:30

Ravi and me were chatting along on messenger when abruptly and customarily the theme changed and in some way or the other we discovered we were talking ‘shit.’ Ravi swiftly ‘googled’ and here we are with some ‘Shit Happens’ excerpts (we even reflected on co writing a book and calling it ‘Tatti Happens’) :

Hinduism:
I've seen this shit happening before.
This shit is not a religion, it is the way of life.
This shit happening is you.

Catholicism:
If shit happens, you deserved it.
You were born shit, you are shit, and you will die shit.

Islam:
We don't take any shit.
If shit happens, it is the will of Allah

Sunni Islam:
If it happens to be shit, it's Allah's will and you'd better submit!
Shi'ite happens.

Shi'ite Islam:
WE WILL DESTROY YOUR SHIT!
If shit happens, take a hostage.

Darwinism:
Survival of the shittiest.
This shit was once food.

Atheism:
I don't believe this shit!
Shit doesn't happen. Shit is dead.
No shit!
It looks and smells like shit, so I'm damned if I'm going to taste it.
I haven't smelt, seen, touched, or tasted it. But it's shit.

Agnosticism:
It looks and smells like shit, but I haven't tasted it, so I'm not sure whether its shit or not.
What is this shit?!
I don't know shit!
How can we know if shit happens?
You can't prove any of this shit!

Sikhism:
Leave our shit alone.

Jainism:
Don't step on that shit, it's alive!
When Shit happens don't step in it.

Employer:
Shit happens, and rolls down hill.
You may only shit during coffee breaks.

Employee:
I've done my shit, so can I take the day off?
This shit's not part of my contract.

Communism:
It's everybody's shit.
Let's spread the shit out equally among every one.
The Imperialists cause shit to happen, Comrade!

Marxism:
The rich shit exploits the poor shit, but deep down all shit is alike.
Dictatorship of the shit.
The workers take all the shit, but they're gonna dish it back out again.

Socialism:
The same shit happens to everyone.

Capitalism:
Shit happens, and it'll cost you!
If you're gonna sell that shit, at least make a profit.
That's MY shit.

Democracy:
Everyone has the same opportunity to make shit happen.
Republic:
We elect others to take care of shit for us.

Libertarianism:
Hands off my shit.

South Africa:
No more white shit.

Japanese:
Americans will buy all our shit.

Americanism:
Who gives a shit?

Egoism:
I am the shit!

Existentialism:
Shit doesn't happen; shit is.
Shit happening is absurd.
I shit, therefore I sit.

Einstein:
God does not shit on the universe.
Shit is Relative.
Reaction to Seeing your Mother-in-law: Relatives are Shit.

Newton:
Why did that shit fall on my head

Julius Caesar:
I came, I saw, I shitted. (veni, vidi, shitti)

Stalin:
The state treats you like shit.

Socrates:
What is shit? Why is shit?
The truly wise do not claim to know shit...
Know thy shit.

Descartes:
I think, so why am I in this shit?
I shit, therefore I am.

Sartre:
Shit is meaningless!
What is shit, anyway?

Shakespeare:
To shit or Not to shit, that is the question.

Computer Science:
There's a bug somewhere in this shittttttttttttttttttttttttttttttt

Database:
Where did I put that shit?

Engineer:
I hope this shit holds together.

Economist:
I hope no one figures out that I don't really understand this shit.

Lawyer:
For a sufficient fee, I can get you out of any shit.

Psychologist:
Shit is in your mind.
Everything that happens is shit; some of it is just repressing its subconscious shittiness.

Marketing:
This shit could sell, if only it came in different colors.

More on these sites:

http://www.spunk.org/texts/humour/sp001523.html

http://www.thejaywalker.com/pages/shit_happens.html

http://aman.members.sonic.net/shit-happens.html