Category: Flawsophy

  • Across time.. universe

    I’ve never claimed an understanding of poetry and have never had any affection for it either, but once in a while some bits catch my attention. Verse, lyrics, any other form…

    The dawn rouses one man to acquire wealth
    Another to earn food, another to achieve greatness
    Another to sacrifices, another to his own (pursuits)
    Another to activity, and lights all men
    to their various means of maintaining life
    Ushas (dawn) has given back all the regions

    People say I’m crazy doing what I’m doing
    Well they give me all kinds of warnings to save me from ruin
    When I say that I’m o.k. well they look at me kind of strange
    Surely you’re not happy now you no longer play the game

    For how long a period is it that the dawns have risen?
    for how long a period will they rise?
    Still desirous to bring us light Ushas (dawn)
    Pursues the functions of those that have gone before, and
    Shining brightly, proceeds with the others (that are to follow)

    People say I’m lazy dreaming my life away
    Well they give me all kinds of advice designed to enlighten me
    When I tell them that I’m doing fine watching shadows on the wall
    Don’t you miss the big time boy you’re no longer on the ball
    Ah, people asking questions lost in confusion
    Well I tell them there’s no problem, only solutions
    Well they shake their heads and they look at me as if I’ve lost my mind
    I tell them there’s no hurry
    I’m just sitting here doing time

    Gone are the men who in the days before us
    Looked on the rising of the earlier mornings
    We, we the living now, behold her brightness
    And they come nigh who shall hereafter see her

    I’m just sitting here watching the wheels go round and round
    I really love to watch them roll

    Now the fun is, most of you would have realised that stanzas 2, 4 and 6 are Lennon’s classic ‘Watching the Wheels‘, and the rest? Stanza 1 is the Rigveda Mandala 1 Sukta 113 verse 6; stanza 3 verse 10 (both translations by H.H.Wilson) and stanza 5 verse 11 (translation by Ralph Griffith). 🙂

    until next time, more per verse 🙂

  • Speech Disorders

    Arundhati Roy’s ‘God of Small Things’ is a book I found underwhelming. It could’ve been my maturity as a reader, or the hype that surrounded the book then, but all said and done, Ms.Roy was not an author who influenced me. Unlike a certain Mr.Tharoor, an author I deeply admire, and whose books (mostly) have given a lot of perspective, even the works of fiction.

    But when he had this to say about Roy – commenting that she’d gone too far to the left and her writing about Gandhians with guns, I wasn’t sure whether I could agree, and I asked on Twitter (not to him) whether his stance is necessitated by his political affiliations. A feeling that was mirrored when I read this post by Anil Thakraney. To give you a background on Anil, I think his insightful (inciteful isn’t a word, or it would’ve fitted well too) articles and interviews are amazing, and his posts often find resonance with me, because the issues he talks about and the way he talks about them gives  abundant perspective. I don’t think Anil is compelled by any external force, a possibility that can’t be ruled out in the case of Tharoor. And so I wondered, why I wasn’t in agreement.

    Could I’ve been possibly influenced by her articles on tribals that were written a year back – Outlook (which caused the first wave of outrage) and Washington Post (about the outrage) or even this excellent post titled “The Economics, Politics and Ethics of non violence” or just the history. It was human, and I could identify with the view on  the human sacrifices that are made for the sake of progress. A purely bystander perspective.

    Or did it only play a marginal role when I considered Roy’s latest remarks on Kashmir? How can you be objective when on one side, she writes a moving article on why young boys are pelting stones and on the other side, you have almost an entire nation outraged? It doesn’t help that its fashionable to hate Roy, and even more fashionable to support her.

    So in the end, I’d go beyond the freedom of speech debates and the notional boundaries. I only say notional because, if we look at a larger timeframe, the transience of these boundaries will be more evident. Empires of the past, in their time, would have thought that their boundaries were unassailable, even by time. But they are history. One of the ideas that have remained unchallenged for long is that of the nation state, maybe its time that came up for an overhaul.

    A mass of humanity that make up a nation state makes laws that are agreeable to the majority. That’s the way civil societies have been built. The fun part is that, in most cases, the majority are mere bystanders with a notional stake. So at some point, the minority is pushed to such an edge that they’re forced to retaliate. What is only an inconvenience to the majority is a matter of survival and basic rights for the minority.

    And three people do it, three, can you imagine, three people walking in singin a bar of Alice’s Restaurant and walking out. They may think it’s an organization. And can you, can you imagine fifty people a day,I said fifty people a day walking in singin a bar of Alice’s Restaurant and walking out. And friends they may thinks it’s a movement.

    (Alice’s restaurant by Arlo Guthrie)

    Meanwhile, for some, these boundaries might be sacrosanct, some might believe that Roy is doing it just for the popularity. But, even from the armchair, the hurt sentiments of the first and the (alleged wrong) intention of the second pale when compared to the human condition.

    until next time, longish posts are charged with sedation? 😉

    PS: Found later that Shoma Choudhury has articulated this well

    httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuXFIfb7cnY

  • A small matter of life and death

    There’s this wonderful scene in ‘The Hurt Locker’ in which James talks to his baby son who is fully engrossed in playing with his toys

    You love playing with that. You love playing with all your stuffed animals. You love your Mommy, your Daddy. You love your pajamas. You love everything, don’t ya? Yea. But you know what, buddy? As you get older… some of the things you love might not seem so special anymore. Like your Jack-in-a-Box. Maybe you’ll realize it’s just a piece of tin and a stuffed animal. And the older you get, the fewer things you really love. And by the time you get to my age, maybe it’s only one or two things. With me, I think it’s one.

    Its probably a generalisation, but I’m sure many people can identify with that. Figuring out at some point, that all the things and people they cherished, or they themselves, have moved on. In fact, there are many who might be even more unfortunate and realise that have nothing to love, going through the motions of life, as a job to be finished. But it could be even worse.

    Quite a morbid line of thought, but one that I felt compelled to share, because it made me think about so many things we take for granted. Sometime back, I had written about the ‘alone’ people I see in many places. Well, there’s another kind of people I have seen – sometimes during daily commute, at other times, when I travel.

    The kind of people who make me wonder what it is that makes them hold on to their life. The easiest example I could give are the beggars – no, not the ‘professional’ ones who haunt our traffic signals, but the ones that frequent obscure places, where there’s hardly a chance of them getting anything, the ones who don’t even ask. They sometimes look too old or invalid to move out of there. There are other examples too, ones that need not be at such levels of despair, but you probably get the drift.

    So what makes them plod on? A hope that things will become better? A dogged belief in the sanctity of life? A dull notion that life has to be lived on unto its natural conclusion? Or maybe they are in a state where they’re okay with what they’ve to live with or what life will dish out next? Or maybe they’re afraid that the experience after death will be worse.

    I’ll end where I started from – ‘The Hurt Locker’. To quote James again ‘Everyone’s a coward about something.‘ Sometimes it’s life, and sometimes it’s death.

    until next time, alive and clicking 🙂

  • But what do I know?

    Unlike in my other blog, Seth Godin is rarely referenced here. But when I read this post (rant, he says) from him titled “Deliberately uninformed, relentlessly so“, I sensed some vague connection with something I’d written a while back.

    Unlike other posts of Godin, whose blog I religiously follow for its ‘food for thought’, I found a smugness to this post – perhaps the rant provides the liberty. But as always, he manages to make a point. However, for a second, I wondered about the irony of this post coming from someone who does not allow comments on his blog. And thus this post.

    It is to be noted that he did not switch off comments just like that, he has valid reasons. Even if one just looks at the scale (1858 people retweeted and 2373 ‘Like’s) and considers  only a certain % commenting, it would tend towards chaotic. But whatever the reasons, he has chosen not to use comments as a channel.

    Ok, lets move on to me now. 🙂 I don’t read business books, however I follow several blogs in my line of work and otherwise. I rely on my Twitter, Reader and (occasionally) Facebook connections to point me to interesting reads. I also use Wikipedia extensively, despite the accusation that crowdsourced content can only be so trustworthy. From all this consumption, I have ‘superficial’ information on a lot of subjects, which make good conversation. This is also because I have way too many interests, and I’m forever in awe of things I don’t easily understand. My interest sometimes wears off after I’m able to bring a subject to my horizons of understanding. Sometimes, a more knowledgeable person corrects me/points me to things he/she thinks might interest me further and whenever I need/want to know more about a subject, I try and use the web’s sources to the fullest.

    But here’s the thing. Once upon a time, I could remember websites in context and add to discussions (offline), but increasingly I rely on delicious, among other things. I’m forced to prioritise my memory thanks to the ton of information out there that I process daily. Ok, that, and age.  🙂 And this is not a problem that will end soon, and its something I keep bringing up here. (Read)

    Time is the new currency, and I increasingly feel that people now react mercilessly to an “I don’t know”. Is that an excuse for people to claim knowledge of things they know nothing about? Maybe not, but perhaps like many other things, it is one of the ways for them to feel accepted and have a sense of belonging. So yes, it might be easy to label it as being deliberately uninformed, but in judging people so, without context and more understanding, we might be falling into the same trap ourselves – about people this time, as opposed to subjects.

    until next time, judge mental capabilities?

  • The wonder eras

    The Lanka trip earlier this year, and specifically the Day 2 visit to Sita Kotuwa was quite an experience. Like I said in the post, its difficult to describe the feeling when one sees evidence that points to the actual existence of characters who were  considered a part of stories and mythology. Its one thing to theorise about what our gods really were, or read  historical perspectives, and another to come face to face with the reality of it. Of course, we could debate that Rama was human, and only considered an incarnation, but if the events in the Ramayana did happen, there is enough ‘godness’ in it for us to still wonder.

    I read ‘The Rozabal Line’ by Ashwin Sanghi recently, which is a fictional story based on the Jesus in Kashmir theory. The author has done considerable research on this, as evidenced by the notes, acknowledgments and references section of the book that spans more than a dozen pages. The domain the book operates in meant that these trails were fascinating, and I plan to follow them online soon.

    Meanwhile, in the book, the author draws parallels to the various messengers of gods who shared a lot of commonalities with Jesus, mostly in terms of events in their lives. They belonged to various cultures and eras before Jesus, thus ‘a great deal of material available to create a story around the historical Jesus Christ’. The existence of Jesus has probably never been in question, as opposed to say Rama/Krishna, but the above, and other things I read in the book, does make him much more human.

    Cut to the present. I read an actress’ comment recently – that she wasn’t on social networking sites because it took away the mystique surrounding her. Fair point, and I had to agree, considering how most actors and ‘celebrities’ in general use the sites to showcase feet of clay. I’m not comparing celebrities to gods, not yet, but in the eras before hyper communication tools, and further back, before ubiquitous magazines and television, there was probably more fiction than fact built around celebrities. The persona overshadowed the person. But now, they seem to be just regular people. Not that they aren’t that, but its more in-your-face.

    And thus I wonder, about the gods of yore. In those times, news got around much slower, and it was perhaps easier for legends to be born and for facts to be coated liberally with fiction. It was also perhaps easier to believe. So when I see images and statues of Jesus these days, I wonder what the real story and who the real person was.

    Ashwin Sanghi took 2 years of reading and 18 months of writing to complete this book. You see, the other thrill of ‘The Rozabal Line’ was having a conversation with its author, while I was reading it. Wonders never cease. 🙂

    until next time, acts of faith