Non-vegetarianism and Raping 'the others'

Vegetarianism is one of the very few doctrines I staunchly adhere to. Frequently I am confronted by the question - why I dont eat meat. My non-veg friends start throwing superlatives about the sublimity of the sensual delight it produces in your mouth. Then they urge me to 'try' it. My surname encourages them to assume that I hail from a meatophobic family background. So far so good. But then a very unexpected I-used-to-eat-non-veg-but-quit-it long-back comes as a bouncer and then they are often caught in surprise. 'Why?', they wail in pain. But generally I refuse to speak more about this subject to them. I fear that would create a bad taste in their mouth.

But it was different with Akshay. I knew he is one of them who know to dive deep into meaningful discussions with full fervor without getting too much attached to it. It is a very rare quality which I rarely found in anyone else after Ashutosh.

Without any prelude I put forward my view on non-vegetarianism.

- it is like rape, equally hideous and horrible.
- Why rape? Why not murder?
- I know nothing more inhuman and repugnant than rape. That's why.

Well, that doesn't sounds convincing at first. But there are parallels between slaughtering an animal and raping a person. Let me explain my point.

1. Compare the pleasure one gets by eating the most sumptuous non-veg delicacy to the pain that the animal suffers. Is there any comparison? And any justification? (No, you dont have to justify anything to me. But what about your own conscience?)

Similarly raping a woman or molesting a child for the ephemeral sensual or non-sensual gratification can NOT be justified, in any language, under any circumstances. It is outrightly criminal, inhuman act which is unworthy of any kindness and consideration. It is one of the most shameful thing I know a person can do to another.

There are certain extenuating circumstances where muder can be justified, can be defended, can even be glorified. But I can not think the same about rape. Again, similarly, killing an animal for a fleeting gustatory orgasm is too inordinately cruel an act to allow any sympathy. Yes, doing it for survival is a different issue and a VERY special case. I dont know anyone who has been stranded on an island and was forced to kill animals for his sustainence. But it is routinely presented as a readymade explanation. This is a very dishonest argument and it exhibits nothing but a plain lack of cooperation in a meaningful discussion. You simply can not convince these type of people. They are incorrigibly corrupt.

Again, murder is not always committed by a stronger person. But rape is a power game, or more precisely an overpower game. It is primitive to the core of this word. It is DISGUSTING. Same with non-veg, you kill because you can. But I think it is extremely shallow to exercise might on meek and weak.

- OK. Cool it. They are made to be eaten by us. It is natural.
As you are made to be eaten by a cannibal. As women are made to be exploited by men. As the poor is made to be starved by the rich. History echoes in your voice my friend. As blacks were made to be slaves by Whites. As Jews were made to be unworthy of any human dignity by Germans. As the Chinese were made an object of the most atrocious amusement by the Japanese in Nanking. Anyone can be made to be anything that way.

Would you have this as a categorical imperative - a universal rule? Oh no, you want it to wreck havoc at some selected places, and affect some selected people. And those places should be far from your home isnt? Sorry my friend, you can not live at a safe island that is surrounded by a stormy sea. If you think that you can, you think pathetically. Better outsource thinking to someone else.

This is again a very insincere argument where you know that the person himself is not convinced by his argument. He even wants you to know this by letting go a smile at the corner of his mouth for a moment. Since his stance is absolutely untenable he will try to trivialize it. What else can he do anyways? Sometimes I dont but sometimes I do find this outrageously satanic. The evil seems so deeply rooted in man that every human endeavor towards the establishment of peace seems farcical.

Man! Admit it. You never wanted peace. Peace is too boring for your taste. You always, secretly, longed to see blood. Werent you there cheering feverishly for (or against) Maximus while he was fighting for his life in the Colosseum? Dont you feel the same, dont you titillate your senses in the same perverse manner, when a matador deceives (or fails to deceive) a charging bull? You always wanted to enjoy the sight of soil moist with red blood, you always craved for its sweet hot smell. And you have never tried to even diagnose this very basic problem to cure it. Perhaps you never wanted to be cured. Only when you are plundered, brutally massacred and savagely raped, then only your dormant, nearly extinct faculty of humanity gets activated. Isnt it so? It is all about sides. Which side you are at- dominating or dominated.

2. This let them die attitude has killed us. Because we are also them for them. We have never been serious about solving the real problem. Only when you fall at the wrong side, you crib and wail. Otherwise you rock and roll. And that is why NOTHING WILL SAVE US.

Our very attitude towards 'the other' is vicious and pernicious. Let me elaborate.

It is very disturbing observation that the evaluation of an act is done only after knowing who was subjected to it. For instance- Killing a Pakistani is not so bad. Raping a dalit woman is not that unpermissible. Voting for a corrupt politician is okay if he happens to be of your own caste. Thankfully the stillborn was a girl child!

This apathy (nay, antipathy) has permeated our thought process profoundly. This even vitiate our sexuality. Khushwant Singh encashes this hidden perverseness of ours by writing 'Company of woman' where he strips girls of different religions and communities and tickles the testicles of us animals. Read that book which is far worse than pornography because it tries to render sex a political act. Can you imagine anything more replulsive?

The other has always been too bad to deserve a stay here. They should either be assimilated or purged. You should seduce their girls and marry them in order to convert them. You should divide them and multiply yourself. You should save your holy land from their unholy presence. You should beat them, loot them, rape them and kill them because it is them and as long as you do this to them this is not bad.

This is our morality in practice. And this is precisely why morality is sterile. It has been reduced to academic pastime taken with biscuits and coffee but not with seriousness and respect.

Our practical morality dictates that animals are fit to be killed and eaten because unlike you they are four-footed; because they can not protest; because they don't have political say; because they are weak. They must be, therefore, subjected to wait for a sharp scary weapons to rip their flesh apart before their helpless eyes. And doing that is not crime!

But the same act becomes a crime when someone does that to you or your kid! And you think it will work for you! No it won't. It didn't. Look - the color of human history is black-red - the color of dead blood. This is because of our dual mentality. And you know what - It is abominable! Cutting throat is abominable whether if is accompanied by mantra of Vedas or verses of Quran. There is no escape from death and truth.

It is inhuman to slit throats even if the throat being slit is not human. There are two types of people - those who can slit throats and those who can not. Those who can cut the throat of a speechless, defenseless, animal while looking in its eyes can do the same to your kid as well. This is to be understood at a social level. I am not talking about any particular sections of people, all of us share that cruelty inside us. We have inherited it collectively.

Killing is all about doing it once. It is all about crossing the threshold. Then it is easy. Then numbers dont matter to us. Death doesn't happen twice. Try to understand this. Words fail to describe what I am feeling right now. All I can say is that I am ashamed to be one of us. If human being is doomed to sufferings till death, it is justified because he deserves it.

Open your eyes. Cant you see how interconnected everything is? Take the cock-fight in Lucknow or the fight of gladiators in Rome. They are same. Dont you feel chicken were a cheap substitute for men in Awadh? Wont a visit to the Colosseum would have been a dream come true for Miya Jumman, since he would get to see the REAL stuff? How can we ignore this glaring similarity? It is too seriously related to us to be taken non-seriously.

This is now when I feel that only Gandhi could rescue us from ourselves. Only if we wanted to. But evidently we didnt.

- Then why do you eat plants? Even they have life.

True. But they dont have eyes. They dont talk to us. How much cruelty do you invoke to boil a potato? And what about the Jain hierarchy of senses? Doesnt it make any sense to you?

But above all my intention is to make you realize the disasterous consequences of allowing cruelty to others. We need to wage an internal war against this. Words wouldnt help much. This is not an issue of persuasion but of realization. Ultimately humanity would find salvation through Ahimsa which doesnt just mean not killing but it means not even having a desire of killing. We need to evolve ourselves to reach this height. The evolved world will be made on the foundation of Ahimsa only.

It is not late if we start even now. Camus launched a solo, and successful, campaign to abolish capital punishment in France and the mankind took a step ahead. Lets stop consuming carcass of animals and take one more step. It is highly unaesthetic to convert a beautiful living fish into a disgraceful slab of dead flesh. Let us admire life as long we are alive! Let us respect the sanctity of body as long as we have one!

Have a heart, be vegetarian. If you dont have that at least have a mind. If you dont have that too anyways you are in hell and thats where you will go sooner or later.

My understanding of freedom

Freedom: One of a few words which has become so powerful that it even dominates the meaning it denotes. It has become dangerously and dreadfully popular among those who are awed by the words and think in terms of words rather than ideas. I believe that this type of thinking is worse than not thinking at all. And I tell you that the people who want to display their cognitive muscles through swelling words constitute the majority! The word, the celibrity is leading the majority like a herd of lemmings are led for mass suicide. Credulity kills and so a blind devotion to this word will kill us. Do I sound skeptical? Perhaps I am. But perhaps I am just being careful and I have my reasons. This word has turned into a Frankestein. This word has started to hitler our thought process now, it has become the answer of every question asked, it is now an unfailing argument against every reason. It has grown cancerously in our system. And we are there intellectually prostrated, helplessly, cluelessly, before this enigmatically misunderstood monster, a hyped product of our own elusive, deceitful intellect.

What is freedom? Is it a means or an ends? That's the main question to answer. Do we ever care to think about it? I feel a splitting headache when people use this word as if it has outgrown every possible context, as if this word means something of its own, in isolation, without anything required before or after it! What a shameless submission before sheer nonsense! This is nothing but mental laziness!

For me this word means NOTHING if not followed by at least one of the prepositions 'from' or 'of/for'. Actually it makes sense only when 'freedom for' decides 'freedom from'. Let me elucidate my point.

Suppose I say I am free or I want freedom. What does it mean? It, the word freedom, often sounds intellectually intimidating to us but that's it. It is made to be arrogant like that because it has nothing else in it. It has no content at all. Ok man you are free. Free from what?? Space? Time? Death? Life? Gravity? Market? Media? Instincts? What??????

I can very well be thrown at escape velocity into the vast limitless boundless space but even THAT wouldnt make me ABSOLUTELY free. Yes I could say I am free of gravity but, speaking abstractly, there would be many other forces which would determine my trajectory and mock at my impossible and naive quest for an unlimited freedom. What does this mean anyway? To me its a farce, an intellectual waste, nothing else. How can we be absolutely free as long as I am spacially and temporarily bound. I can not be at two places at a time. And this binding dilimits me and defines me. It gives me my identity. It makes me what I am. At a particular space and particular time, here and now, I exist. I will be lost if I somehow get scattered in all the dimensions of space and time. I am when there is something else so this I becomes meaningful. I am only when I am finite. And finite is not free, for it is bound. So, theoritically speaking, it is this very lack of freedom that gives me my existence. Any false sense (or nonsense) of freedom can only mislead us and misguide us and this is precisely what it is doing. It is breaking relationships. This inordinate longing for freedom is bound to sever every thread we are tied with. It is doing this because we have lost our wisdom, our sense of balance. We have allowed ourselves to be led astray by it. I remember a picture from a story I read when I was a kid- 'The pied piper of Hamlin', a pictute of hundreds of rats following a piper. We are also following a few hip ideas, blindly, without proper examination, we have always done so. And we have suffered a lot.

The pursuit of freedom is like preparing for some admission test. You dont do it endlessly. You dont do it for its own sake. It is unthinkable to do so. Once you are through the test you study the subject you want to. Similarly the attainment of freedom enables us to do the thing we wanted to do. Otherwise freedom has no intrinsic value of its own. In 60s, the aimless youth of US attemped to find some inherent value in freedom per se but we all know that it was a failed experiment. The cool combo of six-string and cocaine could not procure salvation to them. The hippy culture is dead. Some of them burnt themselves out and others faded away.

But it is we who are responsible for it. We have placed disproportionate weightage to this cult word which had initially a beautiful meaning and a promising role to play in our society. Again and again I've been quoting the Greek philosopher Paracelsus who made a beautiful observation and highlighted the value of balance. Let me repeat it because it is germane to do so here: Every substance is a poison. There is none that is not. It is the dose which determines whether it is a poison or a medicine. Wisdom is nothing but a sense of proportion. We must not discard it if we are serious about ourselves. But here we have allowed ourselves to be awed and led by this word-freedom. It seems that freedom has outshined wisdom in terms of popularity.

We are being told, glibly and irrisponsibly, to break every bond. Man is so delighed with his discovery of challenging conventions is that he is not thinking twice before throwing the baby with the bath water. But is it not potentially devastating? It has to be. It is too convenient an idea to be making sense. Unless you know what freedom is for how would you know and why would you bother to know what it is from. It is the for which decides the from. If the from is decided without the knowledge of for then freedom becomes not just useless but a threat to one's well-being. Without this for, freedom is a mark of curse, it's an ill-omen which would bring doom in life. It makes us wander in the infinity like a dead leaf swayed by the most flippant gust of air. It strips us of our gravity, our roots.

Hermann Hesse says the first statue a child breaks is that of his father. This is how he comes out of the shadow of his father and becomes a man. How true! But it could be fathomlessly detrimental for the future of a child if he takes this at its face value. Talking personally, I am not an obedient son. I have never been perhaps. I have defied norms, stopped worshipping or participating in puja, threw my janeu and so on. I always strove for independence. But there was an unsaid conract between me and my parents. I never disobeyed them just for the sake of it, just to be different or just because it made me feel great. Never. I freed myself from these things for some reasons which appeared reasonable to me and then to my parents too. My parents could very well have been unreasonable. But in that case also I was doing it with a clear purpose and not because someone said so. I never fell in the traps set by those who define what is in for the youth. I have always been anachronistic in my own ways.

Finally, One needs to realize, very urgently, the poisonous side-effects of the gratuitous misuse of this word. Terms like free-trade, free-market, free-will etc are floating in air in such an abundance that it chokes our imagination. Half of them are quixotic and are used as a verbal trickery, as trump cards against every other argumant, and others are ridiculous. As ridiculous like a character in Crime and Punishment who wants his wife to indulge in adultery just because he is in love with his self-image of a progressive man who allows his wife to be free.

Those who grow on me

I read. Gradually I feel my taste has become more refined. Or perhaps I feel it should be so. Under the influence of the rising demands of my elevated taste or its pressing supposition, I have started reading the works of art which are percieved to be read exclusively by the people of superior taste.

I read a few great works of prose by some of the icons of literature. It includes Dr Zhivago by Pasternak, Hundred years of solitude by Marquez, The stranger by Camus to name a few. I shared a common feeling while reading each of these books- I found each of them overestimated. I finished the last page and closed the book with a sigh of relief.

The next feeling was more remarkable. It started with Dr Zhivago. Somehow I felt that I was not able to forget that snow covered landscape that the author has painted before my mind. This was amazing because I had dismissed the book with the verdict - 'overestimated'. I read the lines again which I had underlined when I went home. I was thoroughly enthralled by it this time. The genius of Pasternak was revealing itself to my mind which is, I admit, difficult to be permeated by if not impervious to the novel ideas. I was slightly ashamed of my ineptness but more than that I was happy to discover it, though late. One of my friends used to call me tubelight. She was right.

This incident of late realization was not an exceptional case, a deviation. And for my good. Marquez made little sense to me and I rated his next book 'Love at the times of cholera' better. But my lack of understanding couldnt enjoy its stay in my mind for long and a sudden realization evicted it forever. The image of Pietro Crespi and the butterflies following him occupied my dreams and reveries. I felt the way I looked at the world changed with time. It's he who developed my sense of imagery and more than that- the faculty of olfaction. Now I smell songs, smell words... I can smell each page of Arundhati Roy's The God of small things or Rut aa gayi re (1947 Earth) because I had met Marquez in the way.

The stranger was covered in a train journey. But it look me a long to uncover it. Why this fuss all about was my unsaid response. Later on when the picture Camus created refused to escape my mind, I understood what makes things great. Unlike 1984 which gave me goosebumps every minute I read and faded sooner than later, the stranger was anything but love at the first sight. But he was not in hurry either. He took the little space I contemptuously gave in my little mind and slowly started growing making even my mind grow with him. It was extraordinary!!

Good books dont end with their pages. They start with their last pages rather. They grow within us. They sustain us. This is what i have realized and written on the last good book I have finished (if this is a right word)- Narcissus and Goldmund.

The relation between a good mind and a good book is like a friendship of two good human beings. As a subhashit(Sanskrit-word of wisdom) says - the friendship of petty people is like the shadow of first half which reduces as the day progresses whereas the friendship of noble people is like the shadow of seconds half which grows larger with time.

Dont you feel the same? With books, with music, with people?

I was relieved to find myself loving the last great piece of literature I read- Old man and the sea by Ernest Hemingway. He must be a great man to have written such a beautiful book. It is far far better than any bestseller self-help book you will see in the market. And here I am talking about only one feature of this great work - its ability to inspire. I think it is, at least in parts, one of the best explanation of the widely misunderstood shloka as I undderstand it- Karmanyevadhikaraste ma faleshu kadachana...

Ravana and Oedipus Rex

I saw 'Hanuman' a couple of days back. It's a cute movie with a few thought bytes randomly thrown to the people. I am fond of animation movies so I bothered myself to ride to the theater after around 4-5 months. I find them so beautiful! And even surrealistic sometimes!

Before I digress let me come to the point I wish to talk about. Let me first brief you about what Aristotle has said about Greek Tragedies in his Poetics. He has conceptualized it and postulated three main elements of tragedy; 1.Hubris, 2.Hamartia, and 3.Catharsis. Hubris is excessive pride and arrogance, hamartia means the fatal mistake which causes the fall of the protagonist, and catahrsis is the purgation of negative emotions.

I had read Oedipus Rex by Sophocles in my last year at IITD. Yeah he is the same Oedipus of 'Oedipus complex' fame who kills his father and marries his mother and later on gets popularised by Freud.

Oedipus is a gifted child with extraordinary abilities. But he is accursed and doomed to bring terrible disasters upon his father, the king. He is sent away to be killed in a jungle but the kind hearted servant spares him. He is raised by someone else and grows as an man of strength and values. One day he gets to know about his accursed fate that he is to kill his father and marry his mother. Absolutely shaken, he decides to leave his parents as well as the city. In the way he encounters his real father, the old king, and thoroughly disturbed he was, gets into a scrap with the king. Fuming with anger he kills the old king. Then he comes to know the custom of the city- one who kills the king gets the throne and marries the queen. See how his destiny finally catches him despite so much human protest. Terrible things follow later on..

This is representative Greek tragedy. The protagonist is a man of high stature endowed with the best qualities but one weakness- hubris. This hubris prompts him to commit an act far below his dignity, the last error which opens the doors to hell- hamartia. The simple audience, fully in awe of the man, realizes what can hubris do to them if such tragedies befall such great men. Their negative, distructive emotions gets purged, fully or partially, and they feel a cathartic experience. Also, it demosntrate divine superiority over human beings.

Now I think I am done with the background.

Lets come back to Hanuman. Perhaps our ancient philosophers were aware of this technique of purgation. But they could not theorize it as Aristotle. I found striking similarities between the characters of Ravana and Oedipus. Ravana was not a petty man, a backstreet rapist. He was a man of knowledge, power and principles. He was a devout Shaiv brahmin who could rock the Singhasan of Indra too. Let us ignore mythological details and just say that he was an elevated man. Not selected by Sita in her swayamvar, he was seething with anger and at last his hurt vanity made him do the lowliest act- abducting a woman for amorous fulfillment. (This is one of the many versions of mythology but this is what they showed in the movie.) That ultimately becomes the cause of his fall.

Can you find the similarity? I found it so amazing!!

main aisa kyon hoon!

Sometimes I feel ashamed of everything that I have written here. I am feeling so right now. And it is a very curious feeling. I dont know if I should be feeling like this. I dont even know when should I feel like this. All I know that I am feeling shameful for whatever I have done here. And as I write here, this feeling is subsiding slowly. How can the cause of a malady be the cure also?

Writing is a product of one's thought process or it takes one away from his thoughts in order to save oneself from his own thoughts?

Can thinking and writing be done simultaneously? One of my friends justified his misspellings and other errors in his essay by saying that he was too engrossed in his thoughts. Perhaps he was right. Either you stay connected and recieve signals or you disconnect. Later on you write down. But sometimes the thought bytes vanish as soon as the cognitive radar is disconnected. I dont know if I am making any sense but it happens with me. So you tend to scribble whatever comes into your mind. This leaves the essay poorly structured. The form suffers for the sake of content.

It is interesting to analyse your state of mind and try to find out the reason for your emotions. It is interesting because it is, I feel, next to impossible. At least for me it is. My mind is too muddled to examine itself. You might have noticed that I am using 'I feel' very often instead of the polpular alternative 'I think'. But the problem with feelings us that they mislead too often. Thinking has its limitations but it hardly loses its grounds.

O my mind! I am unable to understand you because I am unable to detach myself from you. I am too close to you to see you.

This sense of shame is partly because of comparison. The more I attempt to jump out of the pit of mediocrity, I admit, I see it myself sunk deeper in its jaws. It is really frustrating to realize that you can not write what you can be proud of. Why is it that we can not create what we can appreciate?

Should I forget it or come to terms with it, or fight with it?

At lunch table

Usually I don't discuss philosophy at lunch table. But today it just happened. One of my colleague was lamenting over the age old problem of loneliness.

-what should I do?
-make yourself prepared to live alone.

The first thing is to be understood that the methods of reason will not be effective when the problem is emotional. Here the solution is simple- do what you feel like.

The popular remedy was to make a girlfriend. I didnt and I still dont see any merit in this suggestion.

I vaguely remember my childhood. Like junior Phillip Carey* I was fond of this class-mate. We used to sit together in the class. We used to share our happiness and sorrow and our little childlike thoughts too. We used to roam around in recess and used to share our food too. I didnt feel like eating when he was not around. My memory regarding him reminds me to this amazing thing: my jealousy and consequent fury when some other guy used to talk to him. I used to feel terribly insecure. I dreaded if he would leave me and go away.

Today I dont remember his face or even his name. Today I realize that friendship dies with time. It is subject to the cruelty of the clock.

Love. I wouldnt say that its doesnt exist. But it doesnt exist in the way we think it does. We feel similar attachments towards opposite sex. We take time and experience to understand that the nature of this longing is very generic not specific. You realize that you CAN live without her/him(your only one) when she/he goes away. Someone else comes in the way. You live unabashedly cheerfully even after the most treasured ones leave you. Sometimes later your life runs smoothly and you even detest the prospect of their coming back into your life. Time teaches. Time trains.

Love facillitates sex, justifies sex; it runs away from sex only to come back to it, drooling and disgraceful. And given everything, love is utopian. It is imaginary, unreal, farcical

When these poetic idols are demolished, you begin to worship the real God, that is time. Then you begin to realize that companionship of a casual acquaintance is far more meaningful than the memories of your best friends. With time, friendship becomes meaningless. People use their friends only to flaunt their social status. It all becomes so embarrassing and burdensome. We go to our friends in our crises seeking consolation. But it comes costly. You pay later through your nose.

Relationships are luxury. And soon they become your necessity.

yeah... back on track :)

Well, I said, and to require the help of medicine, not when a wound has to be cured, or on occasion of an epidemic, but just because, by indolence and a habit of life such as we have been describing, men fill themselves with waters and winds, as if their bodies were a marsh, compelling the ingenious sons of Asclepius to find more names for diseases, such as flatulence and catarrh; is not this, too, a disgrace? - The Republic (Plato)

Intolerance is the word. Absolutely uncompromising intolerance towards the very thought of reconciling oneself (huh!!) with the new fact of sedentary life - the arrogant outgrowth of .. be ready for the anti-climax ... potbelly :) People tend to first tolerate the insidious intrusion of this abominable protrusion in their life, then gradually come to terms with this disgraceful sign of 'perrenial pregnancy' and finally accept it as a part of their anatomy.

The remedy is intolerance. That's the best contraceptive to combat unwanted 'pregnancy'. Dont tolerate it. Dont come to terms with it and never accept it. We need to keep the fire of intolerance burning inside us, the all-consuming and all-purifying fire. After all every battle worth fighting is internal, isnt? Oh I digressed, well this battle doesnt demand blood, sweat would suffice. And it is worth fighting.

All this bullshit means, in a nutshell, that I have re-started jogging after a long hiatus and I am very happy about it. :)

Lets exorcize the ghost of adiposity and obesity away.

Sloth is sin.

Run.

Why dont you reveal yourself to me?

I walk through a lonely lane, in the powder-blue dusk. On my left I see the sun, after its daily chore, descending the stairs of sky with heavy steps; leaving nothing but a scattered, smouldering fire fainting in the arms of steel-gray clouds. To my right is an array of huge cemented, hollowed bricks, piled up all along the way. The oppressive silence, made conspicuous by the harsh chirrup of crows, gawks ominously through the dimly lit hollows of the bricks.

Suddenly someone calls my name. I stop. I turn my head but see noone around. A hallucination! I continue. I hear the call again. I look back, only to see the black-clad shadow of gloominess unobtrusively painting everything around in its own colour. I try to wade through the air that seems to be heavy with the eager anticipation of the unknown. I remember, I have heard this call before too. I take a tentative step further. But this time the call was somewhat different. I keep on walking. There was a sense of urgency, a cry of pitiful warning!

Keep walking.

This is the last warning!

I feel the hardness of the air in my lungs.

It is just a call, not a message. Or perhaps it is a message. But I am not able to decipher it. All I sense is that this message is important.

Yesterday evening too I felt a ceaseless churning, a violent stirring in my soul. I could feel it even physically. It was a dull but growing pain in by chest, shooting from my stomach and almost choking my throat, as if something struggled to release itself from within me. But after sometime it subsided and I slept. I woke up again, in midnight. And I found that my breathing was not regular. Out of consternation I paced in my balcony, till the depressing sight of the moonless night made me bored and go back to my bed. I lied down and tried to sleep till I became tired of trying. Finally I gave up in frustration. Then I slept.

Did yesterday die yesterday or is it still living in today's body? Is yesterday's illness is related to today's illusion? Does my caller want to save me from something which is ambushing around the next corner with bated breath? Is this restlessness, this dissatisfaction a secret language in which my destiny is talking to me?

Or this is one of the many 'nothing buts'? Nothing but a product of my imagination only to be disposed of as early as possible?

Why dont you reveal yourself to me? I would not make any mistake in recognizing you. I have already figured out how you would look like. I know your eyes. There is, there has to be, a connection between our souls. Let me once peer into your eyes and I will pick out the other end of the thread. Show yourself. I'll pledge myself to you and redeem myself.

F.R..E...E....D.....O......M

Yesterday night a strange phenomenon occurred to me. I was, as usual after returning from my office, lying on my bed with a novel in my hand. Suddenly an unknown voice, as if from my within, started talking to me.

-Abhishek, imagine that... I ask you to leave this place right now, at once!

And you have to depart from here never to come back again. Suppose you can not say no to me. Or suppose you yourself feel like doing so. Where will you go? Any idea? You are not allowed to go to your family, your friends or your relatives. Nor to your organization as well. All the doors you can knock are closed for you now. Now tell me. Think for a while. You can take your time. You are standing outside of your appartment and you have to choose your path. Which path would you choose?

-What the hell is happening!!

'Hey dick! Get lost!', I was about to snap but didn't. I felt an impulse to ignore it but since it sounded interestingly challenging I let my imagination obey his directions and wander in the directionless world that the voice wanted me to see and feel. I saw the picture of the building I live in. It stood tall behind me and was ready to bid me farewell. I felt like turning back and looking at it but my ego forbade me. Bemused, I looked at the street and the shops arrayed along the both sides of it. I gazed at the various stalls of chai, pan and juice etc. I saw stray dogs who were an inseparable part of the picture. I observed people coming in and going out and doing their daily business. I felt I was seeing them for the first time though they looked somewhat familiar to me. The whole scene had a strange novelty. Perhaps I was too busy to pay attention to its mundane details. But now I was watching everything purposefully and hence meaningfully. I wanted to find my role in the grand play being played at the biggest stage of the world. I wanted to enrol myself in the institute which was better than any man-made one and which never denied admission to anyone. My future was lying at one of these ways which went through this point. And I had no clue about that. I knew as much about it as any passer by did. How curious it was! I was sharing my ignorance with people as if I was sharing my destiny too with them. How could that be possible? I vainly tried to listen to the voice of my intuition. Frustrated by the nothingness of my mind I began to look around in search of something unknown but useful. I noticed a man who took some goods from a shop, mounted on his bike and rattled away to some unknown destination. My eyes followed him till he turned round the next corner and disappeared leaving nothing but a small cloud of dust crawling at the road. 'Where would he go?', I thought. How inexplicably amazing is that I can't feel his experiences; his pain and pleasure, his small anxieties and big aspirations, his life! I cant even feel how an apple tastes to him! I can only imagine about him, but that will be my imagination, wont it? No matter how much I try, I can not be him. This thought made me a little sad. But I didnt disturb the chain of thoughts. I had right only on my experiences. And this was my only duty to live my life and feel my experiences. I was sent here to make my mistakes and learn my lessons. I was supposed to let my life live within me. I had to find myself and internalize him. Or rather I had to find myself and externalize him. But did I know myself? I had seen my face thousand times but never my identity, my self, my soul! How could I find him when I had never seen him? Who would help me recognizing him? Where would I find those eyes that would help me in seeing myself? Would any mirror guide me? No, mirrors only misguided. I remembered Dorian Gray*. This is what a mirror does to a man! A spasm of horror shook my spine. It's incredible! How often do we realize it? And what the hell was I thinking!! I had to make a decision. I had to move ahead. Do we know where to go when we are left free, completely free from every attachment and every bondage? I never ever pondered over this and now this question was demading an answer, inexorably, urgently.

I visualized myself outside my appartment wearing a T-shirt and knickers. My hair was unkempt and I was hardly looking like myself. I felt naked in the market.

- No, not this way!

- Fine. You can choose your attire and wear your confidence. See to it that it doesnt lose its luster with the crease of your clothes.

- Can I take my credentials with me?

- Aint they with you? What are you when you dont have them? Have you earned them or they have earned you all the luxuries you are having?

I again saw myself standing amid the bustle of market and beeps of cars. The sun shone over my head. I felt the heat and missed my air-conditioned office. The first drop of sweat tickled my forehead. Sweat! I had forgotten its existence long back. I used to sweat profusely when I exerted myself physically. Now it's all the things of past. I even felt like piercing my skin to see my blood too, if it still ran though my veins. Where was I living, away from my sweat and blood? I remembered I had renounced sports long back. My romantic-self rebelled against this realization. I asked myself that who the hell I was now? I had been the one who never stopped playing cricket in the evening even during my board exams!! What had I made of myself? Whose life was I living? What for?

I took a deep breath and felt the air. I opened my eyes and saw the broadness of the day with a childlike joy. I felt a strange new freshness in the air. I marvelled at a bird flying in the vast blue sky. And the clouds!! Cheerfully I imagined stuffing them into my pillow to make it fluffy! What a cool cushion it would make!! I gazed at the blue sky and felt the wind brushing my face. The whole wide world revealed itself to me, with all its immense and infinite vastness, for the first time or long after an eternity. And I realized that it's time for me to condition myself as per the new reality, infact the reality. I could not afford to feel disdainfully indifferent to its mundane business anymore. I had to fit somewhere. Yeah, fit somewhere. This is what I've been doing since I dont remember when. Still I was so confused how to do it without someone telling me where to do it.

Why was it so difficult?

First family, then relatives and friends. They formed a protective layer around me. They decided on my behalf in the various stages of my life and I comfortably played the role they chose for me. I was given healthy and tasty food without my having anything to do with farming or farmers. I couldnt live for five minutes without a fan but I was not to touch a single wire. Then schools furthered the superficiality of living. It was like sliding in a long groove without bothering anything about anything. Everything just happened. The schools took my years and gave me grades as interest, without making me face any sphinx-like question the real life poses later on. After all I had paid fees just to keep me from thinking, hadnt I? For years I had never been short of assignments and examinations, and numbers as well. And I learned nothing but numbers only. The sepoy mutiny in 1857, the production of tea in Assam is x and the GDP of India in 1994 is y and the minimum age required to contest election is z. Noone ever talked about my real face and the mirror which reflected my real face. Why would they? Now I realize that it's my personal question and I have to search the answer; it's my cross and I have to carry it on my shoulder. It's my right and my duty.

I was kept away from the real life by the many devices of society. Perhaps I was not mature enough for that. IIT Delhi, eventually the great red fort was also won. I had a strong shell around my body now. I was no more vulnerable. I was no longer at the mercy of the vicissitude of chance. By now I had subconsciously developed a sense of fear from uncertainty, from maturity, from reality. My natural desire to explore the wild world of nature had starved long back. I tethered my horse with a nearby tree and relaxed in the cool shadow in the splendid forest of Karakoram. I never had to suffer the scorch of sun.

Finally I found a niche' in the corporate world. Now I had to only follow the foorsteps of my predecessors and continue my journey in a large caravan towards a business school. Perhaps I wanted another shell around my body. And there were many social institutions which earned by mass-snailification of men and women.

Yes, all of us are snails. Safe within our shells we drift disgracefully towards a destination that doesnt beckon us. We've bartered our wings for these shells. But this sense of insecurity has pervaded our psyche so profoundly that no number of shells can make us feel safe. The quest for the next shell is nothing but an attempt to forget the loss of our wings.

The world had stopped being a huge laboratory for my experiments, my edification, my emancipation, my illumination and my salvation. It had reduced to be a playground. The shell-mongers have repeatedly said that it was a battle-field and we need their shells for our survival. Yes, we were not living but extending our survival.

God knows how many thoughts assailed my mind. I realized in the end that I have things but I am nothing! The voice had come to wake me up from my long slumber. It wanted me to appreciate the importance of being over having. I had exhausted my mind but could not imagine myself going out further than the first corner. I am still thinking about it.

I understood that freedom is coming out the these shells, these institutions, these certificates and degrees which define and delimit us. Renunciation of these shells that obstruct the sun and our growth would be the triumph of the being over having. We need to relinquish the petty rights which under-compensate the freedom we are made to forfeit for their acquisition. This is the way to humanization which essentially passes through de-snailification. It is, no doubt, a continuous and difficult process and a struggle within. But nothing of value or worth comes cheap.

* The picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde

Devil in the den of God :)

Click it to enlarge it. This place is Notre Dame, Paris.

let it kill if it thrills

* Contains black humor *

Riding a bike at a speed above 100kmph is fun even when you don't exactly hate and want to get rid of yourself. It is however a superfun experience if you do so. It is interestingly amusing if you are vaguely aware of your suicidal instincts but the amusement doesnt diminish if you don't, it only changes its colour or shade. If you have someone with you to pretend fear and lock her body with yours then nothing is like it. But it is like sleeping, its yin counterpart, it is no less lovely even if you are alone. In fact it is a very nice way to celebrate the listlessness and the loneliness in life. Speed is a nice refuge, like alcohol or books or work or whatever and it fills the emptiness of our life. It's an effective therapy too. It helps us bear the banalities, inanities and slowness of life. Whatever it is, it is fun and that's what matters.

So my pulsar dhooms at Bombay-Pune highway. My sony makes my riding more musical. She gets me drunk with ecstasy. I dont drink and so I dont know what drunken driving is like but this is too good for me. I rouse my heart from its monotonous chore of keeping me breathing. Come on! Let me give you a life you li'l fella!! I make it dance on its own beats. Beats are anyways more musical when they are not unlimited in number. How dear the life is on the verge of death! Just like land on the edge of a cliff; ever been there?

One suggestion: Never forget to wear your helmet. It helps your folks to identify you if something unromantic happens. Uncertainty kills them more than your death. So do wear your helmet. Anyways getting your skull crushed is quite an unaesthetic idea. It might disturb the scene for happy people. Why having them pretend solemnity instead of love!

*****************************************

Yesterday I borrowed two thought stimulants from this world. Let me give them back.
The ideas were already in my mind but here they are expressed beautifully, precisely and succinctly.

- "Strategy! I've had no strategy in life. I owe everything I have to serendipity."

(Courtesy:http://anksy06.blogspot.com/)

- I agree to whatever you say about India provided you agree to the fact that the opposite of it also holds true.
(Courtesy:Ashutosh Mathur)

The abhinterpretation of (anti)cheering

Perhaps it is again one of my nonsense interpretation of an equally nonsense observation. But I promise that it is an "original nonsense" and I hope you would not find it boring. That qualifies it to be packed in words and presented to you for your cerebral consumption.

*Incoherence, if you could detect, is regretted.

Statement: Connivance in (anti)cheering by an otherwise unpermissive authority in IITD is a cunning maneuver to preclude potential politicization of youth and polarization of power.

Axiom: SAFETY VALVE THEORY.

- Huh!! I am enlightened! What an insightful remark! Man it's a fossilized cliche' for Godssake. - I agree to this point. So what? I agree cliches are not very interesting but anyways the truth doesnt exist for your entertainment. And dismissing a cliche' just for its being a cliche' is not only ultra-cliched but also an indicative of mental indolence.
- But don't you think you are taking it too far?
- Please suspend your judgement for a while. And read on.

The simple idea is to get the extra-curricullar energy of the students drained by allowing nay encouraging them in shouting their throats out for/against something which is absolutely inconsequential. Moreover, this creates an illusory world with an completely erroneous sense of winning, losing and competetion. But it is exciting and it keeps them occupied with the elaborate rules of the game. The observation of these rituals provide them a false sense of integration (and not observing these rituals, in unritualistic way, results in alienation). Every IITian pretends not to know that the distribution of students in various hostels is just a matter of chance and none of the hostels is inherently superior to others. But the more blind mania a hostel-maniac exhibits in his unmitigated pretense, the more flowery laudatory adjectives are showered over him. The award system has been further devised to implement the managerial incentive-punishment trick. Our inherent hankering for glory makes their work even simpler. Lastly the grand exaltation of the purpose provides it a tinge of patriotic loaftiness and makes uttering anything against it almost blasphemous. That's IIT hostel life for you.

Positives: yes there are. This inculcates a team spirit which transcends regional and academic boundaries and provides a platform for cultural-intellectual intermixing that is conducive to the overall growth of an individual. But the reality hardly corresponds to this ideal purpose. Brotherhood developes but not in the way it is desired. Just like drinking together or doing anything 'forbidden', it is developed in the titillation of complicity. It gives you cheap kicks and highs and a misplaced sense of unity and power. Period.

Negatives: how many do you need to be convinced? I'll talk about the confusion of identity first.

To start with, IITians are talented students and they are expected to be responsible citizens and proficient engineers of wherever they choose to live. This opinion and expectation doesnt always allign with their self-images and youthful aspirations. Fine. They want to dudify themselves and blot out the stigma of nerd often attached to them by some nobodies. Above all, they are human before anything else and their individuality should be respected by all. Fair enough. But in the campus their primary identity (what are they there for?) is that of a student of engineering or of anything they like to pursue in academics. The other things come later, including their hostel identity which dominates their minds for most of the time.

My straightforward opinion (not very flattering!) about the 'confusion quotient' of those students who ostensibly got admission in IITD for the higher purposes of playing and 'pataoing' females used to enrage them. These people pretended as if their being sportsmen par excellence secured them rooms in IITD hostels and they wanted me to buy this! Give me a break! And females! Only a major hormonal imbalance in their bodies or an absence of line-of-luck on their palms could draw them to these morons.

The confusion in the identity also takes its toll in intra-departmental activities (for example-departmental elections!). As soon as the feeling of esprit de corps is attached with the hostel and not with the department, the academics loses to mass-hysteria, the significant prostrates before the trivial. This pathetic level of awareness, interest and participation of students is plaguing most of the deprtments in IITs. The young and energetic students can help re-creating the image of IITs and shape it as per the demands of the present technological and industrial environment. But I see the death of dynamism in IIT. They teach the same musty books with mythological technology everywhere. There is hardly any interface with the industry. Science, it seems, is the latest superstition, and is in vogue too. I wonder why I didnt observe this then? Why didnt we make a team and arrange seminars, presentations, trainings, projects for ourselves? No matter what your career goals are, these things always pay. Perhaps I am talking too much. Perhaps I have not said enough. Who knows? The possibilities are only limited by one's faculty of imagination. And the senile profs know it very well. But these losers! They dont want to project that what they teach is redundant or obsolete or even incomplete. I knew it was useless but I couldnt find out the right way. I didnt participate in departmental activities. There is no such thing as departmental alumni e-group or something like that. I dont know if it exists coz I've never come across any such thing. IITs have deteriorated into places predominantly for playing AOE, practising cheap politics, preparing for CAT and selling infamous MMS! Thanks to the crew the ship is heading straight towards the iceberg. And these morons attribute this downfall to the JEE and the coaching institutes (as if they are the prime threat to the national security! Read this) whereas they know too well that they are the ones who should be held culprit for incompetent managemant and outdated pedagogy. They know that sooner than later the students, who in their ignorance or naivete' take them for God, would come to know about their reality. The way out: keep them away from reality. In the rage of hostel wars the students might acquire skills unknown to them but the intentions of the authority is not beyond suspicion. My rhetorics and your credulity is not needed to appreciate this simple point that the people who know what is to be done are not doing anything what is to be done and at the same time doing everything what is not to be done. They give us freedom to fling filthy phrases at one another in the seminar hall but rigidly exercise 'thought-control' in the matters which matter, by the various weapons they possess.

Talking about cheering per se, I would say that I found cheering absolutely ludicrous at most of the places. And anti-cheering UNACCEPTABLE. But in IITs it seems that every contestant needs cheering no matter whether he is a football player or violin player. You can easily find these retarted bipods bellowing outside the debate hall too! Moreover the excessive anti-cheering changes the very nature of game being played. For an instance a match of badminton is decided more on one's thick-skinned immunity to the torrent of oral filth rather than his(sometimes her too) atheletic skills. True, psychological strength should be tested but it is anyways tested in cheering-less matches too. If the IIT- sophomores were given freedom, they would gleefully pack their bags to go and cheer for Vishwanathan Anand! And what this cheering does anyways? I remember a TT match where an over-enthusiastic player used to hit the ball so hard (perhaps with added enthusiasm) that it hardly ever fell on the table. He was not that incompetent but he did so coz he was playing in his own hostel and was surrounded by hundreds of bawling inmates. And the dude desperately wanted 'to beat the shit outta that fuckin bastard'! Only he didnt know how to do it. :)

The students of IITs would not, in my opinion, make a union and negotiate for their rights with the authority. I won't take this that far keeping the brittleness of your imagination in mind. I can contrive reasons to support my belief too. Even you can. So lets spare each other and lets not play the reason-reason game here. But we can never rule out the possibility that the students can participate more meaningfully in the things that actually matter and can subtly alter the power structure within the academic system. The recent initiative by some awakened and sensibly enthusiastic students in the placement cell highlights this point. I will attribute your incredulity, if still there, to the fact that you might be one of those who don't believe that the earth revolves around the sun simply because you have not seen this happening!

Man re..

Man re, tu kaahe na dheer dhare;
O nirmohi moh na jaane jinka moh kare..

Movie: Chitralekha
Singer: Md Rafi
Music: Roshan
Lyrics: Sahir

The poetry of Sahir, the sitar of Roshan and the rendition of Rafi! What else would one ask for? I can only talk about words here and so I would.

Check these lines out-

Utna hi upkaar samajh koi jitna saath nibhaa de,
Janam maran ka mel hai sapna yeh sapna bisraa de,
Koi na sang mare,
Man re..

You need to have experienced the life to appreciate these lines. How true! What are we but fleeting moments living and dying at the same time! Why quest for permanance when it exists nowhere except in our words? And on a second thought, would not permanace steal the beauty from everything that is beautiful?

I had to sail through many oceans to come to you

I had to sail through many oceans to come to you. The waves shoved me back. The winds almost tore my oar away from my hands. The water leapt on and blinded my eyes. The couriers of Death tried to intimidate me. But I remembered your smiling face and lo! my worn-out muscles and bleeding fingers came to life again. The warmth of your memories sustained me in those chilly nights. I didn't stop. Nothing could have stopped me as you were calling me. I let all the forces of the universe do what they could and I carried on keeping you in my mind. It was a trial of my passion for you my love! What and who could have stopped the one whose spirit has been kindled by your divinely fire! And this fire was not made to be extinguished. Finally the ocean parted and gave me way to you.


But then you denied me shore on your isle.

The bridges and walls between us

Above all, do not mistake me for someone else - Friedrich Nietzsche

It is human to misinterpret. In a conversation, the absence of misunderstanding is a rarity, an exceptional incident, rather a fortuitous coincidence when perhaps all the planets of the solar system align themselves.

While reading this you will subconsciously fill (or not fill) the gaps between these letters and words by different colours of varying shades and that'd determine the picture thus formed. So I'm just providing here a template my dear reader, you are going to be the creator. You are going to create me uniquely and I'll live for a few moments in your mind. My existence will be at the mercy of the frame of mind you will be in while reading it.

But please don't over-misinterpret me. I know it's a futile request because you are bound to do that. Often you invent me and play all sorts of games with that image of mine (For example you see me as aBhishek and the next guy sees me as abHishek and so on and so forth. I think I am abhishek aspiring to grow up and become ABHISHEK, my ideal man, my hero.). You begin to like aBhishek without my knowledge and perhaps even without yours. Then you tend to associate extravagant expectations with him and try to truncate my persona in order to fit the reality into your invention. You refuse to acknowledge the existence of abhishek and his dynamics (because he wants to be ABHISHEK). And ultimately when you relent and submit to the truth, you don't do it without a feeling of contempt and derision. Then you reinvent me (according to your will and whim and your newly discovered truth) only to punish me for your premature (mis) judgment. The irony is that it is done, frequently done, without any feeling of hostility. This is normal. I admit even I do it.

Here is an interesting catch. It's very unflattering to realize that it was not you but your falsely conceived image that was loved and honored by one you valued. It is quite insulting and can cause a severe inferiority complex to a sensitive person for a long time. At the same time it's not your image but you who are subjected to post-disappointment sarcasm and scorn. Agreed that you receive affection initially but for a person of character the life of his/her image is not very long. Sooner than later the individuality asserts itself with an 'iconoclastic' force. Again, I agree that sometimes the image work works favorably for you when the order of the events are exchanged but I guess that's not very probable. I am saying this because people instinctively want to like you because they need the warmth of your intimacy to protect themselves from the dreadful chill of isolation, a pandemic threat to the post-modern man. So they look for the reasons to like you and they think that they have found their reasons, in your image.

We live in cosmopolitan crucibles and we communicate predominantly by a common language (say English) which promises to surmount the psychological barricades or gives us a delusion of cluttering up the cross-cultural fissures. But I feel that language is a grossly overrated tool of communication. I feel this because I've had experiences which has taught me and made me realize that the meaning of words vary not only trans-culturally but also trans-personally(if it means anything :) Especially the words which contain emotions in them greatly alter their intensity and thus meaning according to the frequency of their use or abuse by various users or abusers. That way the language facilitates not communication but miscommunication between individuals which can cause disastrous consequences. Its is said that actions speak louder than words. The communication becomes further difficult when even actions display the same behaviour. Then they lie louder than words. Let me elucidate.

Till std 10th I was in absolute Love with comics and cricket. I had an enviable collection of rare comics and I used to keep it hidden and safe from the predatory gaze of the world. Not even the girl who was my teenage crush had had full access to this treasure of mine. Now I've a nice collection of books at my place and even my father can't obtain the key of my bookshelf without my prior permission. Here you might like to daub my face with a dark shade of insanity for all I care but that's not the point. Suppose I give one of my books to someone then it's an statement, an act pregnant with message. But as I've already mentioned, the real creator of the picture is one who sees it. What if my special one fails to appreciate the hidden feelings behind this seemingly trivial gesture of mine? And this does happen with each one of us. And this does not leave a very good taste in your mouth. Relationships gets embittered, poisoned and die untimely due to misunderstandings engendered by wanton nature of words, actions and their (mis)interpretations. What you consider valuable might not be of same value to me because our values differ. We ascribe different values to different things as per our sansakar(yeah! they dominate our actions not our philosophy. Don't get confused over this.). You can find myriad instances where you would have felt the same way. The notable point is that we still communicate. And as the existence of life defies the law of entropy as if it doesn't even recognize it, we communicate, royally successfully given the potential of the cumulative threats to it. It does happen, I don't know how. But the credit should not be gratuitously imposed on language.

We communicate not because of but despite language.

True friendship and true relationship sustain the post-disappointment shock, they stand the test of time. "Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art... It has no survival value; rather is one of those things that give value to survival."- C S Lewis

Love happens not because of something, but despite everything.

I don't know if it was relevant or not but it is one of my recent observations. And it fits in the same pattern(not because of but despite) which often exposes the lacuna of causality. I owe this to Prof Srinivas who taught me Language and Communication in IITD. I couldn't understand his comment (you get jobs not because of but despite your being IITian) but it struck me because of its brilliant purple colour. You didn't understand that? Hmm... I had anticipated that. Words you see.

listen to this....

This is the painting which I liked most in Louvre. I admit I have never been into paintings so I lack any technical background to appreciate them properly. But in the first glance only this one appealed to my sense of beauty as well as my emotional state of mind at that time. I had written a paragraph but then deleted it. I realized the futility in writing about it. How many words can create an effect that this painting does? So friends, look at it and listen to what it says to you. I'm sure you'ld have a different story to tell.

IIT-JEE and the skirt of Sania

Without wasting words I'll talk straight to the point.

Why IIT-JEE? Absolutely right or approximately right, this system was never wrong. Nothing succeeds like success and IITs have made their mark almost everywhere on the globe. Without world class infrastructure and faculty(Do you know any world class scientist or Nobel Laureate from IITs?) what else has made it so popular if not its students? What was so drastically urgent about the pattern of the exam that attracted the attention of our honorable human resource minister?

Why not primary education? Why not anything else like basic health? Aint they in pitiable conditions? Dont they concern millions of poor people? What else deserves the immediate intervention of govt?

Similarly why Sania? Who is she? An individual, An Indian, or a Muslim? And I've read something like "fundamental rights" and "secular nation" in my book of civics. Shouldnt those who threat the basic tenets of our constitution be punished? Instead of bringing them to books, how about curtailing the freedom and privacy of the girl whose sole folly is her being Indian and successful! Disgraceful!

Why not the thousands of bar girls and prostitutes who also follow the same religion? Dont they need the generosity of their religious leaders? Does Islam approve the exploitation of woman? Perhaps it does. And perhaps it also approves of the terrorism and mass-killings of innocent civillions. Does anyone remember these self-declared guardians of Islam issuing "fatwa" against Dawood Ibrahim who is not only a killer of thousands of his compatriots but also a murderer of already precarious peace and harmony between Hindus and his very own 'brothers'; the brothers who were made to bear the post-blast heat of riots. Isnt he a traitor to his own community? Ok let them decide this for themselves.

I can say more about the specific points pertaining to these topics but I'll abstain from it. It's a trap most people as well as media is falling in. The merits of something is examined only after the scrutiny of the intention that engenders it. Here the only purpose is news-making and nothing else. To be true the imbecile statements issued by the directors of IITs didnt shock me at all. I think they are losers, they are fallen from their ideals and are deployed where they are only beacause of these 'virtues' they have.

For God's sake let IITs and Sania leave alone. They will make the nation more respectable than all the ministers and religious leaders together.

tujhse naraaz nahi zindagi hairaan hoon main

I am no Howard Roark. I have no super-natural powers or skills. But I wished to live my life with full control in my hands. I had once seen some dreams. To fulfill those dreams I had made some plans too. I wouldnt say that my dreams went unrealized. Some of them did come true but not in the way I expected them to.

Well, I am standing dazed and shaken before my life. She has taken up my charge. Perhaps she considers me too naive to be left to myself. And I've quietly accepted her dominance coz I see her steering better than I do.

A walk to remember

Camera doesn’t capture everything that is beautiful. When I 'actually' discover (appreciation is somewhat like discovery, isn’t?) beauty, I do nothing but see and feel it. That's a moment of absolute oneness with the subject. I lose my sense of meta-reality(read meta-consciousness). For a moment I am too engrossed to feel even joy. That's when I discover; I see the beauty, our beauty. In other cases when I know that something is beautiful, and everyone knows this, I lose my interest in that (at least partially), perhaps because there is not much opportunity for me to discover anything there. I find my eyes, my subjectivity absolutely redundant there. Everything is known, studied, researched, documented, pictured, said and heard. There I take my camera out. For instance I asked my friend to take my snap with Mona Lisa in Louvre, Paris. I don’t remember myself looking at that painting even for a minute.* For me it is just famous, not beautiful. For me Mona Lisa is a symbol of this-is-what-an-artist-can-do-with-a-woman or this-is-what-a-woman-does-to-art, period.

But when I took my usual post-dinner walk along the river** in Aschaffenberg, I cannot tell you how profoundly enchanted I felt by her*** divine beauty. Wrapped in the inexplicable mystery of night**** she dynamically assumed mysterious colors and insane dimensions. I would sit and stare at the river and would rejoice in her company. I looked into her eyes. She appeared to alter her expressions according to the shades of my moods. And then she slowly engendered a whole spectrum of illusions in my poor besotted mind. God knows how many unearthly ideas sprouted in my mind. I am scarcely able to recall all of them now. But each one of them seemed to be so ineffably strange, even to me.



Good Heavens! Could reality be so beautiful? She rendered poetry, music, art, everything superfluous. She made the reality richer than the dreams. How singularly surrealistic everything seemed to me in the warmth of her tender embrace! Every sensation seemed too fantastic to be true. The experiences I had were so novel to believe and so elemental to express. My conscious seemed to float blissfully in a wonder-world where reality mingled with the imaginary. I either was dreaming or was more awake than I’d ever been in my life. Perhaps people feel this way when they are intoxicated or when they are on the verge of death, I don’t really know.

I felt a strange lightness of being, as if I was just a soul without any form, any body. And I seemed to see then what was otherwise invisible, not only to others but also to me. I saw or I think I saw a horizon slowly rising from beyond the dark curtains of the background, luminous with a dim whiteness, making everything visible in the pitch-ebony of the night.

Surrounded by an impregnable serenity she showed herself more clearly. Her contours, nebulous with mist and foliage, triggered so many imaginations. Imaginations, by numerous, awestruck and earnest eyes, curiously caressing her curves peering from behind the translucent veil of darkness. Sometimes later the quivering images of the trees, arrayed along its sides, caught my attention; trees hesitatingly bending over her as if begging her permission to kiss her moist lips, the delicate petals parted by the dark glowing nectar! And then I saw the mischievous sparkles in her numerous eyes and the million moons melting in them... ohh as if she had chosen me to know her innermost secrets, as if she had been eagerly waiting for me since eternity only to bless my ignoble life with a meaning, as if she herself had been craving for me with her outstretched hands trembling with a burning passion, throbbing with a living desire. What a flattering delusion! Or was it true? Whatever, she was dangerously, mortally charming and nothing else seemed to matter. I eagerly drank her fragrance that was generously wafted into the secrecy of nightly atmosphere. Perhaps I was getting insane with ecstasy. I held myself for a moment and pondered over the compulsion that made me go to her every night. Was it a command of my destiny, my inner longing that had brought me there? I let myself sway with the tune she played; I dropped my defense. Pouring her ethereal beauty into my hypnotized eyes she stripped me of my sanity as well as my innocence and even my sight for a while. Looking into her eyes almost made me feel vertigo. Her unexplored and unfathomed depth invited me deep within her. I was not sure how long I would be able to resist that temptation though I knew I had to pay for it by my life. But my heart felt overwhelmed with gratitude and awe; just like, I ventured to imagine, someone would feel after committing the first original sin with an unknown village belle under the mask of anonymity and in the veil of darkness.

What a celebration of unadulterated sensuality it was! An uninterrupted orgy of senses! Life seemed to be utterly vulnerable after witnessing such divinely a spectacle, and life seemed to be more worthy to be lived than ever before.

Apprehended by an unknown foreboding, I closed my eyes. For a moment everything came to a standstill. But before I could return to my consciousness I heard a soft whisper in my ear. I felt that she said something to me, perhaps something deeply meaningful, or perhaps something utterly flippant and playful. I didn’t know exactly. Perhaps she didn’t say anything at all. She usually surprised me with her moody behavior. And that's what made me her slave. I heard the lost tunes of many unheard serenades in that silence that seemed to hide so many untold tales in the inaccessible alleys of her timeless memory. I took a deep breath to restore the lost rhythm of my heartbeats and opened my eyes. Turning my head upwards, I looked above in order to escape her sight and return to normality. I didn’t see many stars in the sky. I saw a large school of white clouds swimming across the sky as though they were moving purposefully to some destination. Suddenly I felt as if I was lying at the bottom of a huge ocean gazing at the gigantic tortoises sailing at the surface. What a weird thought! I closed my eyes again and visualized myself lying on the bed of my beloved and looking up at the sky. I saw colorful fishes running over and stars dancing at the wavy screen creating delightful patterns. After a while I saw myself dead and my hairs undulating by the gentle strikes of my beloved. I narcissistically reveled the sight of my dead body but then my sense of morality reproached me. What a morbid thought!

The first one or the chosen one? I reflected on that. Now I can't and I won't say this beauty to be untouched or unseen and I am sure that many before me must have come and felt the same illusion of exclusivity. But this uninterrupted illusion seemed to be more real than reality itself. She surely knew the art of making love. She knew the indispensability of the elements of spirituality for the fulfillment of the senses. She knew the significance of unconditional surrender. She knew the importance of the illusion of unassailable exclusivity.

I saw even myself coming to her in different times, as different beings. Sometimes as an old priest, fallen in his own eyes, who sought atonement with his own stained soul. Sometimes as a young soldier, kneeling down before her, stained with tear, sweat and blood, who vowed to win his dignity back in the next battlefield. Sometimes as a frustrated poet, sometimes a confused philosopher but always as a seeker. And she had always provided the courage and strength to find the answers of the questions the life essentially poses to every seeker. She had always inspired life in my dead soul. She had always showered affection like a mother when I needed it the most. She had always sent me back more energetic, more vigorous, and more capable to face the death inherent in life. My heart felt deluged with reverence for her.

A sudden flapping of the wings of the ducks broke my trance. God knows what made them panic; perhaps I might have made some movement though I am not sure. I admit I was alarmed by the noise. My heart would have skipped a beat. I stood up dazed and shaken at the steps and watched them sailing across the river. I looked at my watch, it was quarter past one! I sat there for around one and a half hour! It was high time that I go to bed. The next night was to be spent in the bus to Paris so this sleep was very much needed.

While coming back the distinct swoosh of wind flirting with the leaves echoed, nay, haunted in my mind for long. The horror is still vivid in my mind. I felt that she was sending her envoy to keep me from going back to my world of light and levity where everything had a universally understood meaning. The world of unanimity where there was no place for imagination and multliplicity of meaning. I turned back to see the last image of my fading dream. I saw her receding with a self-assured smile. As if she knew very well that I secretly harbored a vague wish to die in her arms as dictated by my unalterable destiny. As if she knew that I had to come to her for the final atonement. As if she knew that she was the only way to my salvation.

I entered my room where my roommates were enjoying some movie.

- had your walk?
- hmm…
- took so much time? met someone there?
- yeah..
- god knows what do you see there?
- god. What else?


Next to next morning I found myself in Paris. I saw the famous Eiffel Tower. We took a lot of snaps there though none of us could remember a single minute when we actually appreciated its beauty, just by looking at it, mesmerized, spellbound. We just took pictures.



*It was this observation which prompted me to write this essay. Nobody was seeing Mona Lisa, everyone wanted to be seen with her!
**Main. Read 'Mine'. This is a tributary of the river Rhine.
***Please allow me, the 'kafir' lover, the personification of the river, the beloved.
****I love night! I am absolutely in love with it. But please, let it be clearly understood…my night has nothing to do with the night of 'nightlife' which I hold with utter contempt. What a waste! What a mindless underselling of the sublime!

musical mood:
- tujhe bulaaye yeh meri baahen (Ram teri Ganga maili)
- lag ja gale (Woh koun thi)

This is not the Pune I saw last time

Hmm... so new life has begun at old place... nay even the place seems to be new or may be even older... well dont get confused. This Pune is not the one which filled me with enthusiasm and hope and charged me with life. This Pune couldnt sustain a bad phase, a rough weather. The reality is out at the surface for everybody to see.

This is not the Pune I left.

coming back

so the work is done.... successfully...

whatever... INDIA I am coming back... HOME :) on this saturday..

redefining Germany for you

Germany: A country better known as a land of Hitler, a nation characterized by Nazism and a place infamous for the arrogance and belligerence of its citizen.

But often I find that the reality begs to differ from the media. I suppose I should write something about it coz I’ve been fortunate enough to see the reality through my own eyes during my short stay here. And Aschaffenburg is not Berlin or any other cosmopolitan city with an evolved culture of tolerance. Here we have 14 Pakistani taxi drivers and 5 Indian software engineers. That’s it.

Before proceeding with my various experiences let me tell you that this small country has given a lot to the world. As a person who has some interest in literature and philosophy I know the name of Kant and Nietzsche and Hermann Hesse and Franz Kafka. I am sure you know about Beethoven and Einstein. It is unfortunate that the English world has made Hitler as the icon of Germany. But even Hitler arguably contributed in the precipitation of our freedom.


It is a beautiful place. It is not beautiful because of its exotica or unchallenged technological advancements but because it is inhabited by beautiful people. Let me explain.


Do you know about any other country that reunited after a division? Here the people actually broke the wall of Berlin and presented the most unique and heartwarming instance of reunion.


A BMW car whose capacity to turn heads can only be competed by supermodels is zooming on the roads. Its possession can and does make a man a swollen-headed swaggering monster (and a prisoner in Tihar Jail for running it over 5 persons in Delhi) in my country. But not here. Not here because they have not just bought it, they have made it. And perhaps that’s why they stop to give way to bicycles or people who want to cross the road. And mind you, I am not writing it after one or two random experiences, this is the regular practice here. Did our elites even bother to buy this along with the car? I understand that in India your car wouldn’t budge if you care to stop it for pedestrians but what about our attitude? Any answers?


These people are great people. They are great because they do not suffer from deep-rooted inferiority complex like we do. Remember I am talking ONLY about educated Indians. I am talking like people like us, like me who need electronic gadgets to breathe with confidence. I too like electronic gadgets but not our servility. I disliked the Harley-Davidson bikes despite its formidable lineage. Whatever, I was talking about Germans. These people walk barefooted on the road without being jeered upon. The girls lie down on the pavement without being stoned with sarcasm. In my office my seniors explain while kneeling down on the floor without minding my sitting comfortably on the chair. They don’t mind. They are cool.


I don’t intend to prove them superior to us. I don’t need to. They are so. At least I have no doubts about it. All I want to do here is to say that we’ve chosen a slippery way to be like them. If we really wish to emulate them then we must learn to appreciate their attitude towards everything.


While returning from Heidelburg we met a man who was greatly delighted after knowing that we were software professionals from India. He addressed as ‘the famous Indian software engineers’!! He then waved at us after getting disembarked from the bus. Nice work gentlemen! I am proud of you all who had paved the way for us. We are not only gaining acceptance but respect too! I didn’t narrate this anecdote because I thought this to be a stand-alone incident. I didn’t know that it was a part of a thought pattern developing in Germany and may be in other European nations as well. But today its repetition amazed me. While we were appreciating the music played by a girl in the market I asked a bystander what instrument she was playing. It was harp. This initiated a conversation. He too was quite impressed by the same fact. He asked me to explain how do we manage to be so good. All I could do was smile. You know what a great programmer I am. But he didn’t know that. He invited me to his place Vittsburg. We had no pen and paper so he went to a café and wrote his name and phone no and gave that to me. What say guys? :)


This day has been great. In the morning I booked the tickets for Paris. Yeah finally we are visiting Paris next weekend. :)

Many small incidents followed but I’ve deleted them coz they might seem very unimportant to you. I wish I had brought a diary with me to note those little things, which means a lot to me.

The Castle

Saturday 09.07.05

I woke up early, switched on my laptop and played music... Deewana hua baadal.. from Kashmir ki kali. I was quite enthusiastic and I had to charge up others too. After all we were going out. After all life had started playing pleasant tunes and all we had to do was to dance and enjoy.

We had our regular breakfast at Asheffenburger Hof, the hotel where we stayed. We walked down to the main station and bought ‘weekend ticket’. You must know the concept of state and weekend tickets in Germany. The state ticket costs you 20 euro and 5 people can go wherever they wish in that state with one ticket by train.. and even by bus or tram. The weekend ticket costs you 30 euros and again 5 people can travel in entire Germany with it. If you don’t know or forget this, you screw you wallet. I did while coming from Frankfurt to Ashaffenberg.

The journey was pleasant. Watching the tilted-roofed houses arrayed along the sides of streets trigger your imagination.

We reached to Heidelberg at around 11.40 am. This place is 1.5 hrs far from Ashaffenberg if you travel by train. I don’t know how far is it geographically. I don’t care. It doesn’t matter. Physical distance never matter. Anywhere. Well, Kabby (Tejinder) had called me there. He is hell of a crazy surd and my batchmate in IITD. But he made my day. Hang on, I will tell you everything.

We had agreed to meet at McDonalds at 3 pm. As my friends(Dilip, Louis, and Nilesh) had 3 hrs spare, we decided to see the castle first. A bus took us there. We had to walk up to the castle. Now you must be knowing that castles were made at the top of the hills. Rulers controlled the people from there only. You know the political and strategical significance of altitude. Whatever, we reached there and took pics. All of us were more interested in taking pics. It’s okay but to expect the photographer to make you an Amitabh Bachchan is too much of idealism. Anyways, the view of the city from the castle was nice. We saw many Indians there, mostly south Indians. They were, not contrary to their reputation, nice but cold. But we were more interested in the castle. And visibly so were they. It is a tourist place and you can see people from many places. I saw a big group of east asian girls. They look scary with their small eyes.

I will upload these pics soon on internet for you to see.

German beer is the best in the world. I try to feel the spirit of the place I visit as much as possible and as much as permissible by my nature. Though I don’t drink (beer) but I know that it is good for health if taken in right amount. So when Kabby, and my foreigner friends J insisted I didn’t say no. PROST!

Kabby is kewl. As a matter of principle he doesn’t talk anything non-frivolous. I don’t claim to know him in and out but when I found that Jeremy had no idea about the vastness and diversity of India, about arranged marriages etc then I figured. At the table every Prost was preceded as well as followed by some lewd err… interesting comment on some passerby girl or waitress. Many were shot too… by his new digicam. His german “I don’t care” friend was no less. Yeah the French guy was relatively staid.

We all had met at McDonalds, 15 mins after the stipulated time. It is so nice to see an old pal after an year. Our interests are poles apart but still I enjoyed his company. Initially I didn’t talk to his friends. But soon I found myself quite comfortable with them. We took a train to reach the hilltop. This was even higher than the castle. This train journey was B R E A T H T A K I N G. The slope was practically 90 degrees and we witnessed the incredible technology when the train crawled along the steep rails like a lizard. There we ‘prosted’ and listened to the non-vegetarisch conversation of Kabby and Tilo. This was followed by a trek. The view was again magnificent. I tried to capture the beauty in the camera. We had already exhausted our batteries. Thankfully Kabby had his camera with him. Today he said that the snaps are beautiful. More than that my knee didn’t complain at all. I am young again. :)

As we had visited the castle before we skirted it this time. We took a long time to reach at the foot of the hill …to the old town. Ohh I forgot to tell you the most amazing thing. The old town was like a huge fair. And while going to the railway station(a special one for the hill) we passed through the old town. There I saw a lady fully painted in ash color. Her face, her clothes, everything was painted. And she was standing like a statue at a podium. Sometimes she would move to shake hands with kids. And her movements! God it was simply unbelievable! She was like a robot. I can’t explain the finesse with which she maneuvered her body. Her expressions, her grace, everything was just out of the world. You have to see it to believe it. Ok have you seen this movie, ‘Euro Trip’? Some said that it is shown in that movie. Watch the movie.

We again ‘prosted’ in the old town. This time I tried the beer of west Germany. Earlier it was of east Germany which was lighter in color. Even after gulping down a litre of beer I didn’t feel tipsy. I don’t know why these guys act macho.

Kabby had again ‘interesting’ plans but we had to choose between spending some 50 euros more or to go back. Anyways, the interesting plan was a no-no for me so we decided to come back. Our train was scheduled after 5 mins and we had to eat too so we couldn’t even say bye to our host friends. We had to change 2-3 trains and at last we had to board on a bus to reach Ashaffenberg.

I slept as soon as I lied down.

The next day we shifted to an apartment. It is beautiful. More beautiful than we had expected or imagined. I started jumping on the beds and dancing on the floor. Our life is going to be easier now. From yesterday we have started cooking too. Now bye-bye to bland food. Life is going to be spicier.

just some updates

I have no time to wite about my feelings here... I will just write some observations... I will talk in detail sometime later

Here people drink aerated water which is costlier than beer. And water means aerated water. If you want to drink normal water then hmm... they dont serve it. Well wait for sometime, return to your place and drink the tap water.

Perhaps this is the repetition, I am not sure. All the mystique around brands like BMW and Mercedes etc will disappear once you come here. We commute daily by these cars. :)

The german term for vegetarian is 'vegetasch', not sure about the spelling.. but this can be a magic word for you if you are a vegan like me.

We are gonna shift into an appartment here on 10th July, there is a pakistani shop where you can find the raw stuff for cooking. O how nice life would be then... :) I cant wait anymore. And I am tired of changing hotels.

Achtung baby!! Moi gonna PARIS on the next weekend!! Yup. Dont worry I will keep you(?) updated.

Repetition again perhaps. People are toooo nice here. Our experience with people have been more.. much more than we had expected. Throw the english trash which defame germans..

What else... well yesterday I tried THAI food... for 2nd time if I remember... it was nice.. I finished it. This asian restaurant is blessing...oasis here for us... and that girl who understands what we say...

I visited the local church this weeekend. A very old church it is... tourist come here to see it. And needless to say.. very beautiful too. This was my first visit to any church.

We went to shopping this saturday. My friends bought digi-cam. I took a winamp player. You have to look at it to believe how wonderful it is!

My physical activities have been reduced to ZERO. No sports at all.