Category: Flawsophy

  • Next Level

    Its a bit like games.. once we get into a game, what keeps us going is the eagerness to master the level and reach the next level.. as we proceed, it gets more and more difficult as each level is designed to be tougher than the previous one… The stakes also get higher as it might be difficult to do it all over again, and all the gains amassed would be wasted…
    And thats why its a bit like games – life… Its always a play to master the current level and thereby reach the next level.. and the stakes get higher, because it is life, and not just a game… theres a standard of living, peer pressure and so many other things that make it a must to survive and move ahead.. the only difference being that unike the game, the progress in life cannot be made to stop.. or maybe we cant bring ourselves to make it stop… for its a race and like the cliche goes, you have to run to at least stay in the same place… and the things around will not slow down to accomodate you..
    we get used to what we can get from the money we earn – most important among them a lifestyle and its accessories, and once we master one level, we are eager to move on to the next level and find out what it has to offer.. and theres no end in sight… perhaps the biggest winner is one who can will himself to be satisfied at a particular level and not move to the next level, inspite of all the pressures from within and without.. for maybe it has been rightly said that when its a rat race, what matters in the end is that whoever wins,they all remain rats…
    infancy, school, college, the first job…sometimes, its true that the grass is green on the other side… only, i am just looking back, and speaking of the grass i had been on…
    until next time, theres no level playing field…

  • FAQs

    A couple of weeks back, Sunday Times had a poll, conducted among 1000+ people across India on their beliefs about God, religion, after-life, ghosts and various other things that we think about, on starlit nights…
    I’ve just about finished Book Five of the Ramayana Series, and coincidentally also came across this article, which also raised a few questions on mythology and God…Imagine all the characters that we are so familiar with – Rama, Ravana, Krishna.. were they just characters of imagination or did they actually exist, a long, long time ago, and over a period of time the story of their lives got embellished to such an extent that they became gods and demigods… the amazing similarity between the different myths from civilisations around theworld also point to their actual existence… the remains of Dwaraka, the remains at Mohenjodaro resembling a nuclear holocaust, the drawings of Pushpak – the celestial flying machine, now believed to have been powered by a mercury based fuel, all add to this…
    And thus adds on another set of questions to our FAQs – are our myths based on actual facts, or were they made by the creators of God? the almost eternal question of whether god created man or man created god? but i also believe that it might be just a matter of time before we find the answers.. after all, its only been a few thousand years since we have been around and we had lives before and after the discovery of fire, metals, and even civilisations, and we have managed to find the answer to some questions, and hopefully will learn to tap the resources beyond our five senses sometime in the future…of course, for us, these still remain faqs with several possible answers..

    until next time, if only He had user support…

  • And that would explain a lot of things..

    “..They would return to unwanted jobs, unloved families, unchosen friends, to drawing rooms, evening clothes, cocktail glasses and movies, to unadmitted pain, murdered hope, desire left unreached, left hanging silently over a path on which no step was taken, to days of effort not to think, not to say,to forget and give in and give up. But each of them had known some unforgotten moment – a morning when nothing had happened, a piece of music heard suddenly and never heard in the same way again, a stranger’s face seen in a bus – a moment when each had known a different sense of living. And each remembered other moments, on a sleepless night, on an afternoon of steady rain, in a church, in an empty street at sunset, when each had wondered why there was so much of suffering and ugliness inthe world. They had not tried to find the answer and they had gone on living as if no answer were necessary. But each had known a moment when, in lonely, naked honesty, he had felt the need of an answer..”

    until next time, ain’t Rand right?

  • Having a Blast

    Thats definitely a sadistic approach to the entire thing, but thats unfortunately the way i feel about it… and since i am the only citizen journalist on this blog, i need to be the one to express it this way..
    From what i notice, the government and everyone else involved definitely have a machinery and a process in place for this kind of stuff.. exactly 2 minutes after the first incident, there will be a PR person somewhere busily setting the trend and in effect saying ‘Let the blames begin’… this will of course be followed by ’eminent’ personalities like Javed Akhtar and Shabana Azmi doing a song and dance about it… and then comes, as if on cue, the fitting rejoinders from the people affected… the media, all the while, is having a field day, because finally there is actual news to capture, from theories on who pressed the button to graphic visuals of the dead and injured to preventive action to astrologers who had predicted this… of course, towards the end, you will have tales of heroes… we will salute them and honour them, we will play the blame game and fix on a commonly acceptable target.. and we will do what irritates me most, Mumbai will bask in the glory of a city that can spring back to action irrespective of what happens to it… well, damn it, the reason is because Mumbai has so many people that even a few lakhs lost wouldnt make a dent onthe rest who have not been affected….
    and its not just for the blasts, its the same for the floods too.. in fact, the floods are an annual event now, like ganesh chaturthi or something.. i propose that mumbai should celebrate ganesh chaturthi when the flood happens, so they dont have to go the sea for immersion, it could be done in their houses.. so you dont waste time at all.. and someone like a makemytrip should arrange boat cruises, after all does mumbai ever let a moneymaking opportunity go by..
    why am i not happy on mumbai springing back? i would be much happier if it was declared a holiday and people were encouraged to help those affected by the tragedy.. that wouldnt be a money making proposition, but it will inculcate what used to be called compassion, and if that were around more, maybe we wouldnt have blasts, and the floods would become a bit more tolerable… no amount of money can bring back the dead, no, compassion cant either, but it definitely can help heal the wound faster…so, is the spirit of mumbai such a great thing? of course, because, the spirit is money, and the spirit costs a bomb!!

    until next time, it isnt just an alternate train of thought…

  • Bangalored…

    That was a term that became famous in the US and Uk when outsourcing was an issue that was topmost in people’s minds… Now its sort of been relegated to some tshirts that float around…
    The man who makes our mind sing, the PM himself, was in town a few days back, to discuss some issues pertaining to civic infrastructure.. apparently the normally calm guy got a bit flustered after experiencing the traffic scenario…. so he made a few telling comments on how people should learn to how to handle themselves in traffic and stop being so horny all the time :D…
    but its something i notice all around these days in the people of my age group these days, no,not the horny bit, well that also, but more importantly the arrogance and the feeling that the world exists to serve him… i see it in hotels, offices, parking spaces, malls, the blatant disregard for the rest of humanity… its the language of money, of the money thats (also)being earned by the outsourcing of jobs that i started out the post with… the misbehaviourin traffic is just one of the manifestations…
    this crowd is the target audience for all the companies thats selling things from credit cards to designer clothes to designer houses to local flavors to low cal flavours and everything in between and all around.. a wonderful economy with people who have the money and people who want to make money… is that so bad? not at all, but while we do the accumulation of currency, is it so difficult to go about in a dignified way? is it one big bag which will either hold money or decency… i somehow dont think so… but then it does take a good soul to be decent even when you dont have to be…
    and to come full circle, after the Apple fiasco a few months back, its now the turn of Intel to shut down some of its developmental operations in India… is it time now for Bangalore to be Bangalored?

    until next time, whine and bear…