I am in a quandary. How can I justify switching on a light bulb?

This isn't the question that the philosophers in the past had had to face. But before you can ponder upon it, let's just consider what all goes into lighting the bulb. The task itself doesn't consume many calories or rattle brains.

The process of reaching out and pressing a button produces a reaction wherin electrons are hurtled headlong into the filament of the bulb, where they get excited and climb up an energy shell in their atomic structure. These electrons are being pushed by another reaction taking further off in a generation unit somewhere where coal is burnt and the heat used to drive a turbine which excites a magnet which propels these electrons.

Further back, the coal is taken out of mines by digging out earth and the vegetation that lay above it. The process of turning on the bulb represents just the last stage in the process which spans from the absorption of energy by the organism that was turned into coal and the eventual liberation of it through our light bulb.

By turning on the light, we are taking part in the process wherein the forests are cleared, earth is dug up and the smoke released. If we can't see it happening in front of our eyes, we don't see the process as it is. We see only the part of it which we accept.

The chicken that you eat, ultimately comes from the bird that once lived. You can't deny that. You don't care about the feelings of the bird, it's dreams, aspirations and happiness. You don't because all you've ever seen is the animated bird that wants you to eat it. The advertisement, who's role is to remove the guilt of the wrong being done in the process and give to you the final product as a gift, which you are made to think you deserve.

The mobiles in our hands in this manner constitutes several trees that stood over the land that must have been dug to pull the minerals that are essential in its hardware, the earth that must've been violated, the animals that must've been driven out and the insects that must've been killed. If we had the perspective to see all of this simaltaneously,we wouldn't have been able to carry on with our lives for very long.

The point is we don't even consider the norms that have been set in the society. It's a slavery that we have accepted.

                                                                 Freedom

The concept of freedom is a complex one. It isn't the mere freedom from the overt controls of others. A person might be in chains for a revolutionary cause and yet be more free than any of the 'free' men slaving under an oppressive regime.

The mind, determines how free you get to be. The modern man has submitted his mind. Literally bowed without being able to realise that it has done so. The cleverness underlying the consumerist culture is making the consumer think that he is the king, while in reality the tiny threads of enslavement emanate from every and each one of the product that he uses.

THE SIMPLE TRUTH

What did I just Blabber in the paragraph above? The simple truth.

Imagine the phone. We were alright without the smart phone. Infact the marginal productivity that it does add is decimated by the amount of time wasted by us on its several distractionary features. We continally have to spend time updating, recharging, searching for apps and n other things. We are on a lookout for newer models, for newest features, fawning over every new stripe of metal added to the plasticky screen.

EVEN if you were a slave bought by a 17th century english baron, you wouldn't have spent this much of time and attention for your master. True, we do it out of our own self will. But then, how much of our self will is our own?

The action of a DRUG ADDICT who conciously makes a decision to consume a drug isn't an action of free will. He cannot, EVEN if he wants to, get clear of his habit. The habit drives him to not only consume more of the drug, but also to find new ways to finance his 'habit'. The habit has extended its tentacle into every sphere of his life, moulding him, his actions and ultimately him in the apparent process of serving him. Clever.

CLEVERER still is how we fall prey to advertisements subtle messages in films and the peer pressures of social media. We emulate others, without analysing how or why we do it. IF the hero on the screen smokes, we automatically integrate the action as being cool in our inner self.

NO one has to tell us that the sleek puffing of the cig is a cool thing to do. Since we too want to do the cool thing, we too buy the cig and get hooked. The society has absorbed many such assumptions. These are passed on and adapted. Its like PASSING on the chains on our individual thought process and extending it to the entire humanity. Every one is forced to think along the same lines.

THE globalised world has set its standards of happiness, deteremined by products. You cannot be happy if you don't have a certain product. That is happiness in so many advertisements, movies, shows and what not..... and finally you start to beleive. Happiness is using old spice deodrant, happiness is using apple computer, riding lamborghini..... what not.

Each of these products represent a part of the mother earth cut out brutally out of her breasts. The cars that we ride in with the petrol extracted from polluting drills, built with the iron which had been lying in the pristine jungles, with the coal who's extraction destroyed an entire ecosystem.

LIVES

EVERY PRODUCT that you use has cost some lives. It would squirt blood if the metaphor could be translated into reality. It would also squirt the chains with which it has enslaved your mind into accepting that product as the barometer of your success and happiness.

HUMAN mind cherishes and values object with the social criterion over all else. We like gold because everyone wants it. A tulip mania occurred breifly in Netherland in 17th century. Everyone wanted a tulip, because everyone wanted it.

OUR present mania has gone on for a long long time. Industrialisation created the inevitable need for a way to sell the overproduced products without regard to needs. Terms like Nationalism, patriotism, duty were used to force people to accept the order. Workers had to leave pristine natural setting and work in dirty factories because their "NATION" required it.

ALL of the nations used the same SLOGAN, the incessant chorus of enimity with other nation. We had to work for that imaginary idea of nation, to preserve it, to help it grow. Every dissent was crushed by a machinery of law. Armies sprouted to ensure that the "NATION" functioned.

What is this "NATION"? A naiton is a society united by a delusion abou tits ancestory and a common hatred of its neighbours. It is an idea exploited by the powerful classes to maintain its control. It is a perverse exploitation of the majority of the people, in which the people themselves let themselves being raped by the industrialists, politicians, bureaucrats and what not.

WHAT CAN we do.... ?

Take the red pill (previous post).

What the f**k are we doing? Destroying everything for the things we don't need. Hypnotised by the ads... we are killing the animals, environment.. and our own souls......

I don't know what the right way is.
But this isn't it.
We are digging our own graves with the kind of society we have.

We have to pause and look at the branch beneath us that we are senselessly chopping off with an ever evolving technology.

Do you know the way? Because I am in a quandary, if you get what I am saying....................

Red Pill

THE most important thing in your life.

What does this sentence mean for you? Does it conjure the image of a car, a bike, your expensive mobile perhaps. It might be a relative, a friend, a mission, an idealogy or even a memory.

Increasingly, the sentence just refers to the quest of achieving more money, power or even a status. The funny thing about it is that all of it makes sense, but only as long as you are in the process of acheiving these. When you have a hope of making it big in your life, these words mean everything. When you have an education, support and opportunity, then it would be ludicrous for you to risk it all for something stupid. That is how a law abiding citizen is made.

IF..... we wonder about the grass on the other side of the fence, not the other side really, but further off into the unkept lawns of the people who really don't have grass, but really a few patch of brown mould that they pretend is grass. That grass is definitely not greener. What I am referring to in an inarticulate manner are the millions upon millions of people who have been left out of the dream.

THEY don't retaliate, can't fight. They work in the lowest levels. Forever filled with self hate and pity, they roam the dirtiest parts of the world, beleiving everything that the rich have to say about them. THEY are more than you can realise. THEY are invisible. THEY are not part of the dream.

The dream of the modern life encompasses the quintessential house, car, corporate job, shopping and as many products as there are almost a part of the identity of the successful person. We don't consider it wrong to live such a life. There is nothing immoral in buying unnessary things that pile up in our house, that line our garages, that drain our credits and yeah..... also destroy the environment.

If I am not the part of the dream life and cannot even pretend to be somewhere near that, then what does that make me? I am definitely not the model citizen that the corporates want. I cannot afford to spend on an overpriced cup of coffee in a decked up environment, just because I need to feel good. I need food more than I need to satisfy my artificially bloated ego.... hehe... that sounds mean. But i didn't mean that. I was actually talking about the artificially deflated ego, that can only be brought to bear the pressure of modern life if enough money is pumped in keeping it running.

Blah.. Blah.. What is the solution to the problem you point out.


GOOD question, if you asked it. GOOD enough if you read it with an avid interest.

This so called problem has been around for as long as we began to communicate in broken sounds that seemed like a language. The solution has been quite a simple affair as well. Untill we lived the life of a nomad, consumerism was limited to extraction of required resources and that too sustainably so that you can take that resource again next time.

Living like a nomad is a bit impractical I understand. So what we need to do is to first to know our own minds. It is akin to realising the source of our inner conflicts, complexes, desires. You need to know your enemy before you develop a strategy to take on your enemy, (not that your mind is your enemy). But surely the adverts, social media, songs and the digital world takes advantage of our weak control on our own selves to modify our behaviour for their own interest.

SHITT...

I know its nothing new. You probably know that it's happening. Billions of dollar on behaviour of consumers and means and methods of controlling their behaviour are not spent on merely creating banners.

HOW TO KNOW YOUR MIND

So far, meditation has served as the most effective tool for this. Staying without any stimulation allows your innermost thoughts to softly float to the surface.

Religion does allow the same thing, when you converse with God in prayers. That process is like talking to your subconcious self, but using a round about method. The danger here is that you fall under the influence of the so called leaders of your religion and forget about your own mind, thougts, rationality.

Talking, well really talking..... a heart to heart conversation with someone who understands you can perhaps help too. But then, that is what has been the biggest victim of our hectic lives, the ability to be able to really bond with others. TV being the most important member of the family (or mobile, Xbox, PC, Music player) makes the intimacy of family a pipedream.

George Orwell wrote about this in his seminal work 1984, where government spies on its citizens through TV and controls their thoughts through a thought police. Reality proved stranger and perhaps more advanced than his fiction. We are controlled by private multinationals through media, to buy buy buy buy buy buy and die and leave descendents who buy buy buy buy.

Wake up ... HERE is the red PILL

- Have principles in life, carefully thought values which constitute your inner ethical code
- Be true, if not to anyone else then atleast to your own self. Absolutely, unbiasedly true.
- Take time alone without any tentacle of digital world and then meditate upon your thoughts.
- READ READ READ... books, thoughts, blogs. Read the meaningful, the thought provoking, the insane and then you can place a framework of what constitutes reality, the constructed world or the real one
- Reduce the space for things, energies attatched to longings for things and spend time developing the most important resource that there can be...... Your own self.
- Be Critical of any advice, command or subtle message given to you. Think about it, even about the sentence you are reading now. What could have been my purpose in writing these lines? Why should you listen to me... Should you?

Take the Pill Neo. BUT think before that.


PS> NEXT blog deals with the subtle ways in which we allow our mind to be enslaved. 

Why did the muslim men attack the french magazine ?

It seems strange. Not that strange well if one were to consider all the attacks that have been going on anyways around the world by radicalised Jihadis, that another one would eventually take place.

What is strange however is that these attacks were undertaken by men who were raised in France and received its bountiful public assistance and were infact the citizens of a country that is perhaps the most disinterested in religion! ( At least officially) 

They were not mutilated as children, their homes weren't destroyed by conquering forces and neither did they witness a pogrom against their community. Then why in the world would they go on a killing spree?

The answer is befuddling. Their was no reason on the surface. But perhaps, if we were to look a bit deeper into the lake of muddles... we would our own face. 

SOCIETY

This society is based on consumerism and globalisation. Twin arms that emanated out of the business houses after the Second world war ended and some way had to be found to keep on selling goods to people. 

Edward Bernays (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays) was the nephew of Freud, the very same Psycho analyst who inserted sex into everything. Bernays however did learn something very useful from him. He learnt that people were driven by unconcious desires and that this unconcious can be played with to acheive any result. 

The result that he looked for was the selling of products. It was a simple game after he made people think that the product would make the person more desirable, less hated or simply more happy. 

What was different in this from the previous advertisements that there was no need to show the usefulness of the products being advertised. Feeling Good  became the sole utility of shopping. 

Sadly, those who couldn't buy were potrayed as loosers. The values, ideas and skills of a person fell flat before money. The cultural ideal was the rich white man who kept on buying and buying and buying. Nazis  used the same idea for a very different reason and were successful in their holocaust. But consumerism was better, it was sneakier. Playing with the mass psychology was done in such a subtle and powerful form that no one could gather what was happeneing to them, while the attitudes of the people changed for the industry desired one. 

BUT.....what has this to do with the Radicalised, modern, Rational muslims shooting down people in centre of France. What it has to do with them is that they couldn't fit into this culture. They despised the extreme unhappiness that it caused them and they also despised the fact that the entire process is hollow and draining. 

Living for the sake of products and working for creating the products to earn money for buying more of products. That seems like a receipie for a spiritual and religious collapse. Another thing, religion doesn't always happen to be a delusion. It is a legitimate force of biology as much as sex drive is and would express itself in one form or the other if the people aren't allowed to practise it. 

(http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/psychology/biological-psychology/neuroscience-religious-experience)

What happens in France like society is that a vacuous hole  is left in the individuals where the benign teachings of a sane religion should have been. The frustation of living in a nazi inspired culture and not having the proper avenues to gather the love, understanding, compassion aspects of their religon, they were ensnared by the hideous form of quasi religion that was set up by vested interests. I am talking about the Jihadis ofcourse. 

                                                              The final solution

No, it's not in obiliteration of any community. The final solution is in realising the fact that we are living a strange life. We are consuming in plates made half way across the world by virtual slave labourers because we are too lazy to do our dishes. 

We have been hypnotised by the advertisements that can now set the social norm. This norm incidentally also doesn't allow us to reach our maximum potential of creativity that we could have. We can't think. As a society, our thinking prowess has been limited to the 10 seconds of the advertisement that is displayed on the TV screens.... for an animal almost, consumara defecta the latest evolution of the homo sapien. 

The solution is to shun the life of excess and start connecting on a real level with the people around us. People spend 150 billion each year on booze and cigarettes in EU and US alone. That despite the fact that both of these aren't good for health.10 Billion is what is needed to give clean water and sanitation to everyone aroudn the world. (BTW US citizens spend 17 billion on pet food).

Isn't it almost like the scene in Matrix, where you are Neo and I am Morpheus offering you the red and the blue capsule? If you are really happy living in the carefully crafted virtual world, then bbye. 

IF you want the red capsule, if you want to wake up, then read on!

How can we wake up ?

(next blog)

Nation and Kids

                                                 Comparing nations with kids

Countries across the world are engaged in a never ending squabble for leadership. Attainment of power, resources, sweet fruits of trade and commerce. The true purpose of this struggle is perhaps unknown, and it might be that there never is any purpose at all, in spite of which the struggles go on.

The complex forces that determine the behaviours of one country towards the other are no different however than those operating between the group of boys that play in a park. If we draw comparisons, then indeed there would indeed be many commonalities that are surprising at first and then on later thought would go on to make more sense.

We might have to figure out who’s who, but once that is done…. It’s all a kids play.

Let’s say that the biggest, baddest bully at any time is the largest country that rules the world at that point of time. The bully also has a couple of friends of the same stature and strength with the help of which he can rule all the others. Some years ago, the world had two of these bullies, Sam and the Bear.

 Sam was a kind of extroverted and a spendthrift. He had golden hair and a perfect smile. Big powerful muscles supported his frame and his experienced friends like Aunt Victoria and Lord Louis, who taught him the ways of the world. He always remained cheerful and had a big farm in his backyard which gave him ample amounts of fruits.  He had a carrot and a stick which he used to make the other kids listen to him.

Those who listened to him got the carrot and a light tap, those who didn’t … well they too got the stick and the carrot but not through the usual route. He and his group of friends would snatch the pocket money of the smaller, poorer kids and then shared the spoils on cigarettes, fuel and bling. Sam and his friends constantly worked on devices with which to kill the Bear, whom they were secretly afraid of, considering the fact that he was after all a big, nasty bear.

The Bear was a quiet, stout fellow. He had a large brood of kids to look after, who had considered him their father. He protected his kids from Sam and his friends, but for that the kids had to work hard for the Bear. The Bear was wary of external influences too and thus prohibited his children from looking at the other kids. So he kept all of his kids indoors and spanked any of them who tried to peek outside. The house was cold and comfortless, but it was practical and slowly most of the kids were becoming stronger than before. Some of them sulked that they were getting less food than the sick ones, but they put up with it for the sake of brotherly love. Inside the house, he treated the kids more or less equally. Secretly however, he kept taking their pocket money for building slingshots to hit Sam and his friends.

Now both Sam and the Bear had obtained a gun. But, since using the gun would result in the park being closed down forever and also and eminent danger to their lives, they only showed it off. Sam had fired two shots at Mr. Nippo and had injured his testicles… both of them. Everyone was so alarmed by the gun that, they would from time to time get bigger guns and show them off, creating tensions and maintaining their fear. No one however would fire them now. Since the guns cost them a lot of their pocket money, Sam and Bear simply snatched the money of the poorer kids.

The poorer kids however were too small to figure out who took away their money. For a long time , they had been kept blindfolded and constantly fought amongst themselves to vent their anger.

Some of them were so weak and emaciated that they had to be fed artificial milk, which in the long term would make them sick… but for the while would allow them to stand up again. Now, whenever one of the smaller kids fell sick, either Sam or the Bear would tend to him. You could go to either one of them, but then the other would get angry and try to get wherever he could.

One day, a lot of the kids who had been blind folded, decided that they no longer wanted to play the unfair game. Sam and his friends never wore the blindfold which they had to wear and also took away their food and clothes. Grudgingly Sam and his friends removed their blindfolds

Amongst them was a girl called Indira. Since she was a shy girl who had been beaten quite badly at home and had trust issues. She decided not to go with either one of them. Some other kids also came along with her and they went and sat in between  the park. A sick kid called Chin-Lee also entered the park and went straight to the Bear for help and support. India had a small brother called Paki who went to Sam as he wanted to beat India with a stick of his own.

Now many kids who had entered the park recently were quite unsure of what to do. The black kids were beaten black and blue by both the Bear and Sam in order to win them over. One day a poor Sheikh’s son found a big box of energy drinks buried under his toilet. Since he was in Sam’s gang, he sold them to Sam for merely his carrots and promised that he would only accept Sam’s carrots as a payment for the energy drinks. Since everyone wanted the tasty, energy drinks, Sam’s carrots became pretty popular and Sam quite wealthy.

Since Sam had a lot of big sticks and brass knuckles,  Sam decided to pick on Viet Phu, a weak kid who sold rice on the pavement. Viet Phu however was not easily subdued. He hid in the small ditches in which Sam couldn’t crawl in and started poking at him with twigs given to him by the bear. Eventually, Sam had to leave red faced.

Sensing a weakness, Sheikh’s son tried to excuse himself out of the tidy arrangement. Sam got very disturbed at this and let out his vicious dog called Dollar against him. The Sheikh’s son was easily subdued and the arrangement continued.

The Bear meanwhile had a hearty laugh about the misadventure that Sam had. He finally ventured out of the house ( after locking it from the outside) and started bullying the Mohammad Afghani, a poor shepherds’ son. Mohammad proved to be a staunch fighter and hid in the bush while the Bear tried to find him out. In the meanwhile Sam stirred the hornets’ nest near the bush, which got the Bear. The Bear had to run back to his hut, red faced….very red faced.

The bear went inside and started weeping. His children were surprised and angry at their father. They had looked outside and seen the other kids play in colourful clothes, while they had to remain inside and wear the same simple set of uniforms. A little girl called Tirana went out of the house to seek better opportunities…all the others followed and even the Bear. They went to the Sam for help.

Sam had now become Uncle Sam. He assured all of the Bear’s clan that they would be taken care of. He gave them toys on loan and started collecting rent immediately. The dreams with which the kids had left the house were shattered. Their warm house was broken and sold piece by piece, while they sat with their plastic toys and cried.

Uncle Sam in the meanwhile had quite a good time. Unopposed in the park now, he started giving the carrots and stick to everyone. He brutally smacked those who didn’t listen or wouldn’t give him their toys.

The only problem was that the hornets were still roaming about in the park and stinging everyone. Uncle Sam’s butts were enflamed by a particularly nasty bite and he couldn’t help crying. He tried to get rid of the hornets by beating Mohammad, but his bush proved to be too dense and prickly.

Meanwhile, Chin-lee being very laborious and disciplined, had worked day and night. Slowly, he started gaining muscle and became powerful. Uncle Sam in the meanwhile had reached middle age and was starting to think of his own future. Increasingly, he was getting scared of Chin-lee who had now earned more money than him.

Aunt Victoria and he began to formulate a plan to give Indira, who had become an engineer through an unregistered, poor college some vocational training. Her job paid very less and her children were many and couldn’t be fed through her paltry job.

The Sheikh’s son had for several years slept on their energy drink store. Recently, a strong jasmine scent strolled through their house and woke them up again. They’re now trying to figure out what they want to do next in order to maintain their status.

The park is again churning. A new boss might emerge anytime and the old ones collapse. There are many promising kids, some of them teenagers now. The older bullies are gradually becoming too old to stay in the fight, but they won’t give up anytime soon.

 Indira shows rays of brilliance sometimes and at others, a sense of betrayed potential. Perhaps she was married off too soon, had too many children too fast…. But she has held her own for the past many, many years. Perhaps, if she takes care of her household well….. she too might become be able to raise a good family.

 But her house too has some problems with her 7 daughters constantly fighting and her gay son Kash trying to elope with Paki. Some of her sons called Mao and Nax even hit her, and are angry at her for ignoring them. But then, she’s trying to make amends, and now with Mr. Nippo, Aunt Victoria, Uncle Sam etc guiding her…. She might just pull off an absolute stunner.

There are only a few really strong kids in the park at a given time. The group of aged white, rich men with their sharp walking sticks are holding out together and are thus powerful together. Their union has been formed after a lot of infighting. But, their current inability to carry on indefinitely with their high maintainance bills on only their pensions is a worrying aspect for them.

Uncle Sam has a big dog to his side and a stick too, which makes him the biggest bully now. But Dollar hasn’t been feeling so well recently and Uncle Sam too is feeling weary and aged. Chin-Lee meanwhile has been working out a lot and has become quite brash recently. He has started learning the ways of the bully and has already made Uncle Sam worried.

Paki had meanwhile gone insane after being beaten by Indira quite a few times. Some latest drugs were helping him some sense of himself. He had taken a fantasy to the Hornets and had kept a part of nest in his own house. Paki had for many years tried to survive off Sams money, but it has become difficult now with the hornets driving him away.

The black kids, or atleast most of them had grown up to be malnutritioned and weak. Some of the stronger ones had been taken ill. Their farms had been taken over by the other kids and they had been given a pittance out of the bountiful production that their farms produced.

Many small kids who play in the shallow ends of the park are scared because the constant running around of the other kids has destroyed the grass and nearly broken the walls of the park. Their end is near a vicious gutter which might break in at any time. Already, the ground is all mushy and watery. They tried to scream and call for everyone’s attention, but no one has the time from their games to seriously consider them.

Most of the kids in the park have realised that Uncle Sam has been too wanton in his lust. His exaggerated pouch is in contrast with some of his nephews that live below him in absolute poverty. They tried to wave a pink flag to grab his attention… but well who listens.

Nowadays, Sam is worried about his own health. His motions aren’t passing well and his wife is clearly getting an upper hand on him. He still is the strongest guy in the park….. but the tide is set to change.

So, largely… a park scene can convey an international story …from cold war to now….can’t it?

LEGENDS

Chin-Lee=china

Indira = india
Paki=Pakistan
Viet Pu= Vietnam
Mr. Nippo= Japan
mohammad afghani = Afghanistan
poor kids = developing countries
Black Kids= African nations
Tirana= Albania.. which broke off from USSR first
hornets = terrorist
sams butt attack= twin tower attack
Sam= USA
Sam’s nephews below= latin america
Bear= erstwhile USSR and Russia today
Aunt Victoria= Britain
Lord Louis= france
black kids = African states
Jasmine scent= Jasmine revolution in arab world
pink flags     = pink revolution of latin America

kash= kashmir

mao= maoists

nax= naxalists

7 sisters= northeast states of india
small kids   = small island countries

urban living

Urban living

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Living in closed empty spaces

When humans first had to live in caves, it was not that they enjoyed the comfort of reeking, compact spaces. Rather it was the sense of protection that was contingent upon their living with their backs to each other that made them live in the peculiar manner.

Uncertainty was looming deep in the air, which meant that no one could truly say that he/she would survive the next day. But, more often than not the next day did come, as we can see their progenitors running all around. And they did in the glorious sunshine venture out to seek whatever means of nourishment that they could derive from their surroundings. Can i eat that, should i .... what the heck, let's just give it a try... they couldn't have cared less. life was so precious, the spirit of surviving stronger still, in spite of which they took risks that you and i in that situation would never take. don't beleive me?

well you might have in your minds the carefree risk junkies who jump from buildings, motorcycles and sometimes both... which is impressive but irrelevant to our arguement. but what about sneaking in front of the lion's den to get the fruit from the tree just beside it. And do remember that there are practically no ambulances to take you to the magic place where every wound can be undone. So, why did our great adventure junkie forefathers experiment? Or I mean how could they, knowing that the odds were so adversely against them...

given the limited amount of choices that they had, risks were inevitable part of life. and death was always looming there, so was life and a promise of having discovered something that worked, worked wonderfully well..... since no one can perform with pressure constantly hanging by the edge of your nuts, its always better to ignore certain uncertainities and live hopefully  and to your fullest. Life is short, life is beautiful.

Each one of us, apes, are born with our own special eccentricities. A chimpanzee realises pretty early in its life that every one of its mates is infact going to be irrefutably black and hairy. What sets apart one of the great evolutionary product from the other is their behaviour, attitudes and how that is reflected in their dealings with others. Early humans dressed up to show up those differences, as we do today in a less poignant manner with our subtle makeups, dresses that are inherently the very same....differences in the logo, the list goes on. Someone might disagree, but then I'd ask them to look at the subjects in any party, in any part of the world. Official parties all over contain as many suits as there are men and as many dresses as there are women. None of the subjects is too different from his neighbouring one. Not essentially, not in a big way.... why's that?

For the apes, for the our forefathers, these differences meant a lot more than what they do to us. Fashion sense is just a derivatory offset of what it meant to conciously choose and build up on your peculiar nature. Your attitude determined whether you survived or well got eaten by some tiger. It was something to be cultivated and something that was connected at the deepest level of what you really are, what the workings of your dna machinery wants you to be.

Lacking a well organised culutural delivery package meant that the field was wide open for you to choose any sort of culture that you could dream up of. Then you could hope that the one you chose helps you survive. Even as late as a couple of decades ago, people lived with their hearts out in the nature... which means they would in their daily life follow their instincts with no pre built roads and gps maps guiding them to the nearest burger outlet. They had a knack of realising that there was meat out there, the rest was matter of a good run and a throw that could peirce the very heart of the matter.

Inevitably though, not too many people made it through in the fish eat fish world. Only some very potent combination of genes could endow you with the potential to survive in tough world. A tough world, open end to end and yet conjined ( continents were joined sometime in our past). A world truly filled with the opportunities of discovering somethign really new... a new mate? a new enemy? and the uncertainity of all could drive anyone crazy in the first instance.

Today I might have all the facilities of any well endowed tribal cheif, yet I can never have the one thing that he had..... He was the absolute king of the world around him. His personality had the power over each and every thing in the environment. Quite ironically he was powerless in afflicting any large scale change. But there was no one to tell him what to do or what not to. It was he, his particularities and quirks... with every one of its fallacies that could guide him through life.

And since no particular model existed prior to him, it was wide open world for the taking.

Over the course of time, more specifically nearly 10 or more milleniums ago, some of our forefathers started farming. Rudimentary, as it was... it was well suited to the individuals whose propensity to risk taking was the least. They could stay at one place for as long as they liked. And since they had to ensure their own survival in the old age, they raised as many children as they could. All of them were disciplined to live under the constraints of agricultre and their behaviour modified by physical punishments and later as the growth of religions shows... through mental punishments...because remember, it wasn't the tribal society that wanted the homogneity... monodirectional slaves were the requirement of the agricultarists. Any deviation from the successful profile of the farmer wasn't taken kindly to, and curbed. Life had changed to closed spaces, in huts that pitted their idiosyncracies too harshly to escape unschathed.

The adventorous spirits never did remain in an agricultural setup for long. They took to the wild with all its glory.Which ultimately meant that there were well... only less of the brave spirits in the agricultural societies. The cowards did overtake the courageous finally and the spread of organised society spread far and wide. Every farmable peice of land was utilised to get the very last drops of nutrition. Hunting graduallly was reduced to a suppliment and in the past 10 centuries or so, it has dwindled to an irratic practise..... or a pastime. We prefer the herded flock far more for we get a far better chance of getting their meat, than say a strong beautiful animal in its environs.

Our mating rituals are a very good example of what happened to our societies. A premodern man could in the spirit of his youth go all around and win with his strenght the fairest maiden that he could. As many as he could, provided he could sustain them. Those men and women, pure and untouched with the needs of cramped living would live under the free sky which they could call their own and a world that was a constant source of wonder. Like a child they would explore the experiences and colors of the world, til their youth was burned with time and they would die fairly in a beautifully mean world.

With all due respect to the improvements of modern age, variety has dwindled today. As the stock of the farmers who captured the world, we are perhaps more predisposed to ape than the apes we derive from. The rules of society aren't the only things forcing us to behave in a more or less set of uniform behaviour. Petty differences of tastes not withstanding, the globalised culture has put a certain set of values enshrined in our global conscience. Today, more than any other time in our past, we live in a similiar fashion, have the same sets of thoughts and have the largest collection of common knowledge. Ubiquitous media devices, mobiles and whatnots seem to be like the fine edged scapel that is shaping us more and more towards that amalgated common identity.

urban living pitted the individual differences too severly to be allowed to survive together. Everyone had to agree on a common behavior to be followed for the peaceful, dense co existence. No longer were there wide open spaces to go to, unexplored worlds waiting to be explored where you could take your exquisitely crafted set of attitudes and hope to survive. Its a meaner world out there today than anytime in the past if you want to be your own king. Men have taken over any and all peices of earth that they were able to and filled them as far as possible with concrete structures of thoughts and behaviors.

Little by little, men had come out of the wild. And then suddenly in the last 10 decades, there was no in. Everyone was out in the common civilisation. Today we seek to iron out all the little differences that do exist in different parts of the world. From Chinese to Belgian to Peruvian, all the cultures are loosing their inherent pecularities. The rich and famous world over don the same attire, eat the same food and act in the same conceited manner. ( There are non essential differences, but nothing as powerful as that existed between an Inuit and Negro...)

Infact, aren't we trying to follow an ideal behaviour, goals, individual ? Christ, Mohammed, Rama, Lady Gaga, Beiber are people on which millions of others base theirs. The same sets of role models throughout the world preach the same values and inspire the same attitudes.

The first men setting out of their houses, in the glorious sun peiricing its way through the untamed jungles, went about in a world that was in its every part as much of a wonder to be discovered and in an equal part a wonder to be built. I download new apps to feel the same joy.

I feel a hollow, joyless hole in my being, that needs to feel the earth beneath its feet. Not the concrete that has for too long hidden the forests, the wilderness that shoud be here. Better off though I am in my warm blankets and a laptop to convey my thoughts world over, this hole shall remain.

A part of me is still roaming around with the first men, flushed with adrelaine at the discovery of a whole new world behind the mountains... animals that seem to be a part of a dream, fruits whose taste I would know only by getting past those animals.

My thoughtless existence, without the slightest concern for my next meal is far more comfortable, but I have with the most of others closed my heart with stopgaps. Movies, novels, trecks, religion.........and yet in the innermost recesses of my mind, behind the heavy locked doors lies a part of me, frozen in urban life.

war, saws and tigers

As the last remaining Sumatran tiger would glance up through the wounded canopy of Indonesian forests, he would under perhaps with a certain incredulity as to what happened to the green cover that had so beautifully protected him for as long as he could remember.
And mind you, tiger memories are not merely those which he learns in this world, tigers like all animals are blessed with a certain disposition, neural pathways and millions of years of evolutionary history that has allowed them to get a deep, almost ethereal link with the natural environment in which they live and are intrinsic product of. Deep down, it knows in its bones that this wasn't meant to be.
Its not that tigers dropped suddenly from the sky, in a quirk of creationism. Tigers are perhaps as much a part of the jungle and its lifecycle as the trees, the plants and the climate. Their development right from a single amoeba to a specialised, differentiated animal fine tuned to its very last atom to adapt in its environment is a marvel of heredity, chance and the forces of nature at work. Its recreation in the later history of this entire universe might not even be possible as far as we know. So, when this last tiger dies, it takes with itself a very fundamental force of nature with itself.
But then, no one is interested in the poor tiger who can barely afford the high rates of rent that “nature based” properties nowadays command. Had it a bare idea of the process at work, he might have hunted some prized goats and brought them in order to reach some kind of compromise. Sadly, the goats too have been hunted quite a while ago. It must sell its own fur to ensure its survival, quite ironical if you think over it.
World leaders are considerably annoyed with the economic downturn to give their sympathies to the striped cat.The Warsaw meet that concluded recently, gave a very fuzzy outcome. The fact that the world cannot come to any conclusion regarding the emission reduction plans gave a rude albeit expected shock to environmentalists all over the world. In this world of competitive economics, no quarter can be left. Jungles will keep on burning, tigers will burn bright only in the poems that we have. Sympathy, love and empathy haven’t been effectively monetised as of yet, so we cannot expect these from the world leaders.
At the present rate of human growth, the resources that we consume are going to be more difficult to come by, especially for those who cannot afford to buy them. The animals are going to be the most affected in the global war for extracting the last drops from the fields of earth.
Environmental protection or conserving wildlife at the cost of human settlements or potential real estate gains has started becoming more and more difficult to ignore in the global downturn of economies. It has to be noted however that the economies will recover one day but the environmental scars can never fully heal.
A time might come when only the humans are left. The only trace of the animals are their stories and the genetic materials stored in museums which is used to clone some animals for a weekly show.

we the people

Vacuum, scientifically defined is a space where nothingness exists. A paradoxical term to define nothing of something. But there is nothing paradoxical about the power struggle going  at the vacuum of centre.

The moral vacuum at the centre of our nation is strangely conductive to sound waves and a lot of name calling has been heard passing through it lately.

A decade or two earlier, a protagonist of Indian politics had been called rather pre-emptively a “ gungi gudia” or a dumb doll. That the doll later turned out to be the most powerful Indian Empress is another issue.

The labels and stickers should be given only after the career of the politician is over rather than at any earlier time. Rahul Gandhi has been often seen as too immature for politics and Narendra Modi has been referred to as a ‘chai wallah’ and a dictator. Both of them are only starting in their careers as candidates for prime ministership and we might be proven entirely wrong about our assumptions and therefore I won’t therefore venture out to call anyone a ‘wimpy boy’, or ‘mr. t’ ( from rocky 3 fame).

There were others too, who had taken up obsequious titles and later had to back down from their stance. “The Iron Man” apart from being an entertaining flick is also the name that a septuagenarian of Indian politics took up. The only part of him that was made of iron was the walking stick that he had to use to move around. That Indian superheroes in arena of politics often fall flat, is a sobering reminder of the fact that fiction is different from reality.

The Silent Man is perhaps the only prominent superhero who has been able to fully utilize his superpower to thwart every attempt of his enemies to put him down. Shri Tusshar Kapoor had been the progenitor of ‘silent’ class of superheroes, so we must pay due credit to him for Silent Man’s success.

A lot of other characters have propped up in the Indian scene to further develop the character line up. Kejriwal is foremost amongst the lineup of emerging superheroes. If we were to give a sobriquet to him, the competition would be between “ The Exposer” or “The Cleaner”. But given the propensity of giving fancy names to our heroes, it would have to be something else. ( Fauladi Jhadu?)

The people of our nation have since time immemorial harboured the keen desire to have a ‘saviour’, who would by waving his magical wand lift the masses out of their desperate conditions. The bollywood movie ‘Naik’ would be a very accurate description of what the people want. An honest man rising out of the masses and taking over the mantle of saving the country all on himself.

With a rather unimaginative name,  the AAP party seeks to project itself as being the only party concerned with the welfare of the common man. Their movement to weed out corruption however is not new in the Indian scene. BJP too had in its heyday been ‘the saviour’. The movement by the venerable JP had been directed against the “the tyrannies of authority”. Today, no one would vouch for their saintliness. Indistinguishable they lie with the rest, wallowing in muds of Indian polity.

Western countries, to which we often look up for setting our own moral compass, haven’t evolved their strong institutes overnight. The Americans once had powerful nexus between the immigrants and their politicians, the French had their corrupt aristocracy, the British barons had to defeat their king to get their bill of rights or Magna Carta. In short, a strong grassroots movement had resulted in masses becoming aware of their rights, duties and had to fight to get them. No self respecting despot would have handed over the power to the people.

The gift of democracy that the people got in 1947 wasn’t attained in the same step by step manner. Neither were people ready to handle the responsibilities that suddenly came with freedom. Such institutes take decades, if not centuries to perfect.  They cannot be thrust upon a nation in the same manner that a seed cannot be expected to sprout fruits the very day it’s planted. A lot of nurturing and a lot of inputs are required for both to grow healthily.

In the coming months, elections would run rife once again in our landscape. Arvind Kejriwal for all his politician bashings, expose’s and the array of degrees and certificates that he has, is going into a pig sty. And by going into politics he has to realise that the politicians are uncannily similar to the pigs in at least one way, they both enjoy a dirty fight and you cannot win from a politician in a dirty fight. Neither can you defeat a pig, especially if it enjoys the mud.

For all the euphoria that Anna campaign had generated, the transformation of a nation takes the intense will of its own people. An educated, politically aware and morally strong populace would select an ethical leader. Would we?

Anna/Kejriwal efforts to transform India might not bring result the next summer, but what is sure to happen is that more and more candidates are going to prop up against the morally defunct parliamentary wall to sprinkle their own colors on parliamentary walls. Parliamentary walls are already a grotesque mix of different yellows, a legacy of some of the earlier leaders who too sought to leave their respective marks.

Most of the times, election is reduced to a long drawn tv show where the erudite scholars of field come on the idiot box and the disinterested audience grunts and huffs and puffs and then switches off the tv to sleep. Why should anyone care about politics? It’s all dirty and I am too high in caste ladder to do the cleaning.