Aging gracefully

Beauty might not be as objective (size zero) as it is made to sound. It is defined as the quality of a person or thing that gives pleasure to the mind or senses. (link) This essentially points to excitation of senses: more of a sudden spurt in energy. Well, that part is pretty is easy to understand and relate to. Particularly because we feel it quite often as we have too many things to make hormones run like mad across our bodies. There is a obvious bias in such a view as this confines beauty to pleasurability. Is beauty just a matter of titillation?

Beauty, IMHO, could be much more just that. Apart from the mass marketed carnal aspect of beauty, there is still more significant spiritual face to it. Well, that aspect which lifts your spirits
up rather than just your you-know-what. It is that which you makes you feel calm/at peace rather than jumping around. It is that which leaves you feeling more energetic rather than drained. It is that which makes you feel relaxed rather than tense.

We see such beauty in a child's smile. Where do we lose our sense of such beauty as one grows up? While losing the innocence is essential part of growing up, it seems more often we lose our capacity for life/happiness along with that. Certainly, the spark of hope in our eyes continues to lose its brightness as we come across the dryness of reality. For most of us, it flickers now and then, leaving us shortly with a sense of disappointment. For few, it dies too early. However, quite a few of people around us manage to keep it alive.

You can see such souls around you in more numbers than you can imagine. That is, if you care to. If you can keep your open and see through the blinds of your own 'linked list' of problems. Yesterday, I met one such at Sankara Netralaya. A successful manager doctor , a doting mother and a caring grandmom. She was one of the few I have seen who have aged gracefully.

And aging gracefully is not about botox or any anti-aging miracle drug. It is about keeping the light of life alive despite all the hardships that drain your hope. She might have added a few wrinkles after all those hardships, but have managed to keep the spark alive. Not surprisingly, it seems the spark gets clearer, stronger, with each hardship.

Being young at heart is nothing but keeping the spark alive in your eyes. There are two things that make them stand apart from the rest: 1) Intelligence - to see ahead and not get bogged down by problems, and 2) Love - to spread life/hope to others. And, it really helps to borrow a little light from such beautiful souls. Better search for those eyes' twinkle among the wrinkles! ;)

Possibly related post:
On mom (link)

Matter of choice ;)

What is maturity? Intelligence overcoming instinct? It essentially implies exercise of your choice as opposed to just being a victim of circumstances. Well, yeh, maturity sounds like that for the major part. But, what constitutes intelligence? Does making a choice necessarily imply the existence of intelligence? I am afraid it is not the case.

The choice per se is fluid: it changes with the information that comes in. It is responsive to the stimuli. That said, the processing of the stimuli for generating a response depends on the system. The response can be just one out out of a fixed set of responses, which has been handed over to you. With this option, you have the safety of doing something that has been already tested and approved, even though you may not totally agree with it. In this case, the process of making the choice is more mechanical than intelligent. One may argue that even though the response set is already fixed, there is indeed a certain level of intelligence that is required to select the appropriate one (or the appropriate as you think). Well, I am talking about the making of those very responses in the first place.

Instead of the previous ‘mechanical’ option, you can make your own rules. But (and that is a big BUT), if you do so, you have to bear the responsibility for your choice. And that is not easy, if you have to satisfy too many people. Even if you are trying to satisfy just a few, it is going to be hard, given that people are unpredictable. Not unpredictable because they are so by nature, but their responses to same stimuli might be mightily different than you can guess. So, if it is so hard to make your own choices, why make it at all? The answer for that is – simple. Just to know how it feels to live your life your way instead of living it the others’ way. And of course, it takes a lot of brains to make your choices and guts to stick to them.

In sum, choice is good. Letting the others make the choice for you is easy; may very well earn you respect. ;) But making your choice by yourself is hard on your brains as well as guts. That said, you may feel it is practical to not overwork your brains and better keep your guts in. Well, you bet!!!

P.S.
Intha mokka matteruku ivlo periya post konjam overa thaan irukku. But, mokka poda yaarum illathappa, you dont have a better choice, u see.

Culturally bankrupt

After all the cries about the “rich culture” of India from the “self-declared watchmen” like Rama Sena’s Mutalik and in equal measure, from those against him, I really wonder what that creature is all about. I believe culture is, at its roots, attitude towards life, and towards fellow men and in particular, women. It reflects what do we, as a bunch of people, value in our lives most of the time. And all I can think of that thing called “Indian culture” is that it is decaying (not in the sense the cultural watchmen use) and at best, messy: decaying, because there is no one to inject little new life/thoughts into it. No one bothers to, at least in the mainstream media. One might argue that there are quite a few who bother to talk sense and you got to keep your eyes and ears open. But voices of those few who bother to think are hard to be in the deafening noise of the advertisements. The absence of such dialogue/ discussion is alarming. And the state of such 'apparently well-meaning' social discussions more often like Arattai Arangams, which are emotional, tear-jerking kind or mud-slinging. When intelligence is on the fringes, it seems really hard to have hope.

As a nation, we might have been culturally bankrupt for much longer than we think. We have been carrying the ‘cultural symbols’ for too long after they became useless. And to carry them without knowing or even attempting to know what they were really meant for is sheer foolishness. While the watchmen live in a time warp, hailing Ram and Sita as the “Perfect Symbols of India” conveniently forgetting the pranks of Krishna, the dickheads of MTV generation are not any better. They just pass off arrogance as intelligence. They are just as, if not more, arrogant as the watchmen. If you look at it, their arrogance is much more dangerous than that of the watchmen. They proudly wear their arrogance as crown of intelligence. Just wearing a Che t-shirt, they think they are revolutionaries/men of action. Well, let’s not get into whether all that is just a little muscle flexing to get a few brownie points from the fairer sex.

What is most frightening is that as a nation we probably are thinking less and less, despite the intelligence we claim to have. This is not surprising as we have let much of our time to be ruled by idiot boxes or silver screens. Well, what follows is just based on anecdotal evidence and not any statistics. Nonetheless, the trends are obvious almost everywhere to for us see. Going by what is on the mainstream TV, dancing your way to the top is made out to be sexiest thing to do. “Want to be happening? Want girls over you? Put on your shoes and dance. Leave the thinking stuff to out-of-the-world, irreparable nerds, who often are stupid in the ‘worldly’ matters.”

While this might seem like a petty issue of just mindless entertainment to relax after a hard day, the massive scale at which it is happening is alarming. There is not much time left to think after you drain your energy dancing to tunes of Simbu or Vijay (that $%&(@&^& donned Bharathiyar makeup and mouthed the most intelligent piece of dialogue of the year “Villu, power… Fullu!!” Etho milli adicha rangeku dialogue, @#@$#$%). Many of us had reservations against Slumdog Millionaire making money showing the ugly underbelly of India. As if the body-show in Bollywood trash is more Indian! Seems more like it is we who are in denial. There is a difference between sincerity and sinisterness. Probably Danny Boyle was sincere in his attempts to show things as he saw. But, can we be sure that things are the same when we talk about our movies? When you sell sleaze knowing well what it is, you are not sincere but sinister. Better we boycotted our movies! Let the Vijays/ Simbus/ Ajiths/ Dhanushs/ Rajnis/ Kamals go bankrupt. Teach ourselves to think a little. Spend it on books.

But the literary scene in Tamil Nadu is in a pitiable state. Landmark in Spencers Plaza has at most four racks for Tamil books, of which most of the space is taken by Sivagami and Ponniyin Selvan. Of course, with Tamil being the family property of Kalaingar MK, it is no wonder that not many people prefer to play there. Or rather the few rare trespassers who dare to jump over the fence can’t claim any ownership to Tamil. If the state of Tam novels is such, better do not think about the social commentaries. News channels are nothing but ways for pulling cover over our eyes and mongering votes 24x7. And more importantly, slinging mud at each other. There is apparently no voice other than those loudspeakers of parties. They used to have news service on Vijay TV. God... oopppss forgot I am in rationalist state! MK only knows what happened.

Our movies are full of depressingly ugly stereotypes and falsities. Novels of even some passable quality have stopped long ago. Such bankruptcy in literature/arts, though apparently harmless, can do more harm in the long run. It is not that such ‘entertaining’ dreams are by themselves harmful. But the enormous scale they fill our lives is overwhelming that we are easily blinded to reality. I don’t mean that all of this trash should be changed into some moral preacher stuff. Definitely not. But all this trash invisibly repeated over time has de-sensitized us to life at large. But we can change the way our cultural output reflects our lives. At least in our personal lives. How? We better switched our TVs off and did a little thinking about it.

Possibly related posts:

Kids???

Is Rama Godly?

The Original Sin

நின்னை சரணடைந்தேன்

A rather long prelude to even longer post

This post is probably first of its kind in this blog. Now that I have got your attention or rather lost it like the dud tam channels when they say “ulaga thollai kaatchi varalaatril muthal muraiyaaga…”, let me go on with the background of this post, which I believe is very essential to relish this post. This post was written listening to “Ninai Charanadaindhen” by Bombay Jayashri and Illayaraja for the film Bharathi. You would find sentences from Bharathi’s song interlaced with the post, to add “weight”. ;) This is broadly about the concept of surrender. Of course, there are bits, here and there, of things that man can’t live without: sex, philosophy and traces of doubts about himself, the world and life at large. 

Mind you, you might find a few too mushy statements that might cause envy in even Karan Johar. A lot said here are debatable; but before you argue, make sure you read and understand. The description of certain qualities and states of mind like love in this post might seem to suggest that the author had indeed been under heavy intoxication of love for too long. The author would just like to point out that it is not exactly true. That said, he would love to get intoxicated if it is possible, and for forever. ;) And this post might seem to be an anti-thesis of my old post (here). But, it certainly is not. Try surrender ;) to the author of this post! Now, let's begin.

பொன்னை உயர்வை புகழை விரும்பிடும் 

என்னை கவலைகள் தின்ன தகாதென்று 

நின்னை சரணடைந்தேன் கண்ணம்மா நின்னை சரணடைந்தேன்

Being in love is being blinded (note it is not blind, for the other sensors of a blind are extra sensitive), to reality, how much ever badly constructed by the mind. Being blinded makes you lose your capacity to doubt and makes you do things that you wouldn’t ‘normally’ do. And that makes you beautiful/dumb, depends on where you see it from. It is beautiful/dumb, because it is out of the ordinary. So freshly different from the mundane that you feel like you ARE LIVING.

Then, there is sex. I make no moral judgments about it, premarital or even extra, if all the other partners agree. The question is whether it is out of an urge to relieve, just like the one you feel when your bladder is full, or an urge to share the probably the most intimate of your moments with someone out of love. Again, nothing moral or otherwise about it. Just that, if it is an urge to relieve, you are blinded and would not care about where/with whom you get it done. The focus is on the act and not the person. Or rather the focus is on the ‘best’ person you can ‘buy’. This, IMHO, is likely to slowly weaken your capacity to value another human. And, most likely, leave a vacuum inside over time. Apparently, Gandhi was just doing exactly that, when his father was on deathbed. I say this not to point out the need for discipline or any such stuff that Gandhi had spoken about, but just that how sex can so easily blind you to things around you. No wonder, in Mira Nair’s Kamasutra,  towards the end, Maya chose to make love to Jai, her lover, and ask him indulge himself in the memories of their lovemaking to help himself not feel the torture.

That said, sex can make you ugly. Not in the physical sense. When sex blinds you so much that you don’t care for the other, not even the one whom you are doing it with, you are obviously ugly. Am I being sissy/prudish here? I think I am not. I would say the litmus test for the beauty of an act of sex would be the quantum of solace that both feel after sex. Well, this measure is a lot dicy one than the Bang Brothers’ kind of hard measures such as how long and how many etc. But, there is a high likelihood that you might stay with a person IF and till you feel peace after sex with him/her. It is about the awareness in sex: about not being blinded by the urge. This is probably what Vigyan Bairav Tantra and Kama Sutra try to do. While Tantra does it by focusing on breathing, like yoga, KS makes you explore many possibilities, at the end of which it fondly hopes you would realize the peace. And this, I believe, would probably increase your capacity for happiness, which just hopping across organs cannot give you. 

Ask me why? Simple. Man is weak for emotions. Or rather, the thoughts that bring emotions, for that exactly is what makes him unique. Yeah, each one has one’s own bin of garbage, which is full of such ‘personal emotional thoughts’. And it is exactly this garbage that makes your life unique and beautiful, if you  chose to call it that. Or else, if man is rational, life will be more of theorems than one of tears, whose beauty we seldom understand. ;) More on that sometime later. Probably after I get to shed them a lot, hopefully out of love and joy. ;)

தன் செயல் எண்ணி தவிப்பது தீங்கென்று

நின் செயல் செய்து நிறைவு பெரும் வண்ணம் 

நின்னை சரணடைந்தேன் கண்ணம்மா நின்னை சரணடைந்தேன் 

Now, on a slightly different note, a bit of symbols. When does a guy feel at peace with his lover? Holding her after great sex? When making her sit and cocoons her with himself, protecting her like his little daughter? Or when he rests his head on her lap, holding as much of her as possible with his hands? So much in love with her so that he wants to be part of her? To be as deep inside her as possible? To be born out of her? To be her son?

Well, if that appears hard to digest, just know that the last one, IMHO, is probably the most loving/respectful statement that she might hear from him. It is all about surrender, a complete one. Bharathi did that to Krishna: he considered Krishna to be his lover, his consort and at times, his son. (I don’t know about the songs where he considers him to be his parent.) 

மிடிமையும் அச்சமும் மேவி என் நெஞ்சில் குடிமை புகுந்தன கொன்றவை போக்கென்று

நின்னை சரணடைந்தேன் கண்ணம்மா நின்னை சரணடைந்தேன்

Now, a lot of subtleness here, so much so that you might miss the point. So (t)read carefully. How often have you experienced the feeling of total surrender? Not in the sense of an act out of fear or force, but out of love. Mind you, surrender is not an act for the weak. It is the act of beheading oneself. If a weakling does it, it is suicide not surrender. The surrender I mean is out of love. Again, surrender is not about being a slave. Rather, it is the opposite. It is about liberation. The one who you surrender should be so that he/she liberates you. Surrender is so dangerous that you better carefully chose a better person to surrender to. It will help to contrast with the ‘religious surrender’: more often, it is out of fear rather than love. The ‘object of love’ there is god, who is perfect. I know absolute is an illusion. ;) Rather than fearing/doubting the absolute, I would better love the imperfect. Love dissolves your doubt and makes surrender very much natural. Philosopher’s stone is nothing but love. ;)

துன்பம் இனியில்லை சோர்வில்லை, தோற்பில்லை 

நல்லது தீயது நாமறியோம் அன்பு நெறியில் அறங்கள் வளர்த்திட 

நல்லது நாட்டுக தீமையை ஒட்டுக 

நின்னை சரணடைந்தேன் கண்ணம்மா நின்னை சரணடைந்தேன்

Ecce Homo!

Note
This post is better left unread. This article might appear to be full of snobbery, dropping names all over and everything that can apparently provide evidence for my "refined artistic tastes". So be warned. This is just about my observations and not meant to be any study/guide for appreciating art.

February 9, 2008.

Probably today was the best day in my trip here to London I guess. I visited The National Gallery near Trafalgar Square. Spent about 4 hours over there gazing at quite a few paintings from different eras. After the first half hour, I had a slight doubt whether I had taken too bad a decision, in a vain effort to just to prove, if not to others at least to myself, that I have "refined artistic" tastes and "unlike the masses" I can appreciate art. Which anyway is just BS, I know. Except for Da Vinci's most revered "Madonna on the Rocks" and another of Da Vinci's pencil sketches, I did not find anything quite interesting. In fact, I was kind of put off by most of the paintings especially because of their painstaking detail and bright colors that you find in calendar pictures. Most of the paintings were about Christ - different variations of Virgin Mary, Adoration of the Kings and Lamentation of dead Christ.

And that was until I reached the room 16, a pretty small room which had Early Rembrandt and other Dutch Landscapes. After a distasteful garishness of the previous paintings I saw, it was a delightful relief to see a few early Rembrandts. And the work that I fell in love at first sight and for which my awe is still growing, was Ecce Homo (Behold the Man), which is supposedly Rembrandt's full-scale study for an etching. Again, Ecce Home is also based on a scene from Bible, where Christ is presented to the public before his crucifixion. I couldn’t have enough of the painting even after gazing at it for about 20-25 minutes from different angles.

The striking difference between the others and Rembrandt is the amazingly sensible use of 1. Lighting 2. Space/composition 3. Subtle harmony of colors. You can see that in The Woman Taken in Adultery, A Woman bathing in a stream, Anna and the Blind Hobbit and The Lamentation over the Dead Christ.

One of the few things I wanted to do in life was to see some Van Gogh masterpieces for real. AND I HAVE DONE THAT! It was so terribly unfortunate that The National Gallery didn’t have all the pieces that I wanted to see. But, anyway... Gosh! I had goose bumps just entering hall 45 which had the Van Goghs! Among them, there were a few of his famous works – Van Gogh’s chair, Sunflowers and A wheat field, with Cypresses. It was terribly sad that I couldn’t see Cafe on Terrace or Wheatfield with crows. To me, Van Gogh is The Artist. Somehow I seem to have irretrievably fallen in love with his works - particularly because of the way he uses his brush strokes to create a sense of flow/life into his paintings like Wheatfield with crows or A wheat field with cypresses.

So what is that art does other than literally add colors to the bland walls of our houses? And given that so much subjectivity goes into creation of art, in the first place, and that we all tend to see ‘the truth’ through our colored lenses, appreciating art is, not surprisingly, even more subjective.

So, how does one say one artist is better than the other? I know I am not equipped enough to answer that. But when I just try to understand why I love one painting over another, it appears to be largely dependent on how much the viewer understands or rather identifies with the work, which I think is a better word to use here, given that almost all artists, genuine or otherwise, have always been asked “So, what do you intend to communicate in this painting?” by stupid viewers, most often in an effort just to “intelligently” tackle the artist and make him uncomfortable instead of a real wish to understand. All in the name of “understanding art”! As if the artist’s answer to their “intelligent” question would make their understanding of the painting any better.

To me, it is all about your experience. What you experience when you happen to see the work. It may appear to be too simple or plain stupid to say this. But, most often, in our efforts to “understand”, we miss the real experience. For me, art is a key. A key that opens the doors to your own experience. It is all about increasing your sensitivity or awareness. And all this might make it sound too complex, but, it is not.

P.S.

Couldn't think of a better title than what it is now. Even Nietzsche named his autobiography- Ecce Homo! Btw, the zoom function in the National Gallery website links that you would find in this post is pretty good to have a close look at the paintings...

Tale i love the most!

One fine, sunny day. On his way to take over the world, Alexander just sees a naked man sunbathing on the banks of a river. He was just swept off his feet by that man’s radiance (Well, this is not to imply anything about Alex’s sexual orientation).

So much so that, Alex went straight to the man and said “Sir, I am immensely impressed by your being, and I would like to do something for you. Is there something that I can do for you?”

And that man, most probably the only one whom Alex, the haughty prince of Greece, himself called “Sir” was Diogenes.

Pat came the reply. "Dude, just stand to the side. You are blocking the sun! That's all. Nothing else do I need."

Alex sighed, "If I have another chance to come to the earth, I will ask God, instead of making me Alexander again, to make me Diogenes."

Rolling over on the warm sand, Diogenes laughed, "You can become a Diogenes right now, right here. Who is preventing you right now? Where are you going?"

“I am going to conquer the whole world."

"And then what are you going to do?"

And Alex said, "Then I will rest."

Now, sitting up, Diogenes laughed again.

"Are you mad? Can’t you see that is exactly what I am doing right now? Who told you that before resting, you have to conquer the world? And I tell you: if you don't rest now, then you never will. Something or other will always remain to be conquered... and time is fleeting. You will die in the middle of your journey. Everybody dies in the middle of the journey."

And poor Alex died in the middle on the way back home from India.

Dude, Where's Your Engine?

I have always been intrigued by tales of people who have an absolute disregard for the disconcerting prospect of death, how much ever short lived their disrespect for death is. Mind you, this doesn’t in any way refer to those sick souls with suicidal tendencies, who are driven by fear. Rather this post is about that rare breed of people who have an exactly opposite mindset. While the first lot is those being chased to death by life, the latter is those who chase after life.

When you are able to give a nasty look at death and have a good laugh at its inevitability, it just bloats up your ego so much big that you feel like God. In his final moments on the cross, Jesus was just a man when he asked “Father, why me?” But, the moment he realized “Sorry Father. You can’t be wrong”, he was one with Him.

This is all about those who have consciously tried to delete the very word “safety” from their dictionaries. I would rather say it is a deeper exploration of the theme of my previous post – travel. The most intriguing part of the story is the reason(s), if at all there is any, that drives such thirsty travelers to take the road less traveled or rather the one never traveled. If there is any such reason(s), is it worthwhile to think about it, leave alone follow it? Is it wise enough to leave the known confines of family/society for that apparent foolishness? What sets an adventurer apart from a madman? Or is it just that absolute adventure is misconstrued as mere madness? While I can’t say for sure that theirs is the best way to be/live, I certainly feel they who seek the unknown “live” more than those who settle for the comfort of the known.

What drives such souls? What makes them go after life, the search which ends not till the last breath, unlike the others who morbidly wait for Mr Yamadharmaraja to visit them? Are they pulled by the lure of the unknown rather than driven by the boredom of the known? A passable answer would be that they have got so much energy inside them that they find “the known” severely lacking to provide them with satisfying ways to expend it here and now. So the search for the alternative channels becomes inevitable for them. The hardships of the search make the explorer realize the unexplored terrains both within himself and without. The more you explore, the more you feel stronger.

How do you find your own internal engines and kick start them? Probably a bit of madness might help to prime the engine. Once it gets started, I believe it can be made to keep running with minimum effort, for it seems to be a virtuous cycle. The more you expend the energy, the more you create it inside. Yeah, I know it goes against the conventional wisdom of the law of conservation of energy. But it seems to work that way. Probably, it is not so much about the creation of energy per se. Rather, it is all about the alternative utilization of energy that might have been wasted in other boring conventional ways. (Hopefully, more on this some time later in another such long drab post.)

But, how is this very search justified? Do we really have to start our engines, if at all we are able to find them? Well, as I had said earlier in the tailpiece of this post, what we go through is more important than where we end up.

Aside
This post was inspired by the movie "Into the wild", which I am dying to see. Hope it lives up to my expectations! Please don't forget to read the synopsis at the site!

Travel = Living?

Have you ever at least observed, leave alone thinking about it, that more often than not, we tend to feel closer to people after going on a trip with them? I am pretty much sure that you must have come across quite a few instances during your college days, where new “pairs” form or old pairs break up for new partners, leaving some poor souls in lurch. All after THAT college tour! Apdi tourukku approm thanni adikka aarambicha pasanga/ponnunga ethana ethana!!! ;)

Not just romance, but also friendship also takes a different color and strength after an outing. Have you ever wondered why? They say relationships take time to build. Speaking relativistically, what happens during a tour is that you are accelerating that process. Remember? According to relativity theory, time is another dimension of space. By traveling across physical space, you make up for the extra time that would be needed for the relationship to grow.

What essentially happens behind this common phenomenon has got a lot to do with our inhibitions. After multiple years of mind-numbing education, we tend to seek reasons to let go of ourselves; we need "reasons" to break the invisible barriers we have built around us. And given a different setting/background, it is easier for us to let our guards down. A different place helps us to let open the windows to our own selves. That helps us to see more of ourselves as well as others.

Come to think of it, all that makes the difference is how much we observe. When we travel, we tend to observe a lot, particularly because we are not in a mad rush as we have “apparently nothing worthwhile” to do.

If you have ever felt your life “richer” after a trip, it is all because of the simple fact that you have literally “filled” yourself with so many things that you observed.

Observation is the best antidote for the numbing grayness of life. In fact, that very grayness is due to the lack of observation. Typically, when we travel, we tend to carry the “cozy cubicle” along with us: stay in star hotels, travel first class or at least 2 tier AC and drive in AC vehicles. And when you are in the same “cubicle” of your life, you tend to lose your skills to observe, which made you look at everything with wonder in your eyes when you were a child.

Being a addict of the Travel & Living stuff (especially lonely planet/globetrekker – Ian Wright, Justine … ooohhh Shapiro and Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations), I am all for venturing out at least a bit out of our cozy cubicles, if not outright break out of it. Instead of eating that dumb buffet, get out and have a chaat on the street; briskly walk through the bazaars instead of lazing around in the well-lit showrooms; get the flavor and taste of the place you go to. Damn sure, you would feel “full” of life! ;)

In fact, you don’t have to go too far to break the tedium of your life! Just stop and have a tea at that corner tea stall on the way that you have been riding through every day but you never bothered to stop at. Mind you, the grayness is due to the “been there, done it all” attitude, which essentially is out of the “very predictable routine” of your life.

So, plan chaos.

Aside:

Interesting movies based on travel: Motorcycle Diaries (fantastic one on Che Guevara's early days) and our own "anbe sivam"! Please let me know of your other recommendations! ;)

Dump ur memories!!!

I had originally thought of calling this post “The science of forgetting”, which would have been as deeply meaningful as all that follows but so drab that it probably would have let you continue in your blissful ignorance. So the new title – a call for action like that of Ulysses’ call to his men “To strive, to seek, to find and not to yield.”

The most oft repeated yet least understood philosophical tagline is Carpe Diem – Pluck/seize the day. Live the moment! It seems impossible to do that when you have your memories intact, for the simple reason that you or rather your mind, your personal database management system (pDMBS), is loaded with so many GBs of old, dusty memories which are instantaneously retrieved based on the tags generated for the current situation and compared with ‘now’, to make you miserable. To put it in simple terms, you are overloaded with your past! Though your gurus wouldn’t ask you to be a ghajini, remembering not more than 15 min of your past, they put it rather more poetically and beautifully - “Be like a child”.

Becoming a child is one of those successfully marketed philosophical sutra. More often than not, we tend to fondly romanticize the “good old days of our childhood” and go gaga over the “absolute bliss and freedom” that we enjoyed then. Were we really “happy and free” children? An utterly honest answer would be “No” and a workable one would be “Not always”. This apparent bliss of childhood is rather a result of selective filtering and processing of the data that was available. Basically, we tend to remember the “good/emotionally pleasing” memories of our early days.

So when do we lose “the child inside us”? It is when our memories start working full steam and when we lose our control on what we choose to remember. To be precise, it is when we unconsciously choose not to actively control what we remember. In the pursuit of “reality”, we cram our minds with all kinds of memories – more often, we store the most unpleasant ones, that too indelibly by consistently reinforcing those memories.

Life would be a lot simpler if we know what not to remember and choose to forget them. Sounds too simple huh? Yeh, most often, truth is so simple that its very simplicity leads us away from it. Let me explain.

Human memory is not as efficient in storage as those that man himself created. Unlike your computer’s hard disk, the data-write speeds of your brain are pretty low. Probe deeper, you will find that your memory acts more like a volatile storage device, particularly in the short term and thankfully so. It needs be powered/reinforced to move the short term data to the dusty archives, where it is stored for a longer time.

Reinforcement – there lies the key. So forgetting is all about choosing not to reinforce. You can choose what to reinforce and what not to. So you can choose not to reinforce the memory of how unceremoniously you were turned down by that horrible female when you finally made yourself propose to her. Or you can choose not to reinforce the cold reaction from your darling when you went out with a new friend of yours.

But, you ask, Why at all should I make that choice? Better make it for yourself, before your faulty pDMBS makes it for you.

As Abraham Maslow put it elegantly "We can consider the process of healthy growth to be a never ending series of free choice situations, confronting each individual at every point throughout his life, in which he must choose between the delights of safety and growth, dependence and independence, regression and progression, immaturity and maturity."

So where’s your progress report?

Caste: Experiment in Evolution? 2

As I said before, evolution is essentially every being's response to the environment. So to seclude the superior gene, it is essential to keep the laboratory conditions under control. By providing the signal with as low noise as possible, varnasharama tries to create the conditions for the "superior gene" to evolve.

While the effect of geography on physiology is pretty obvious, the effect of caste on psychology is not so apparent. More so after it had become laughing stock, particularly because of the distasteful dialogues in tamil/Indian films: "Kavundanukku maanam thaanda perusu. Kudutha vaakka kaappaatha uyira kooda viduvaan." But, consider this: caste and attendant customs/culture carries subliminal messages that form an important aspect of our learning and hence, our attitudes too. Now, seemingly absurd statement like "Enna verum 38 kilo thaane nu paakkuriya? Verum body weighta vechu thappaa kanakku podatha di. En odambula odarathu Thevar raththam di." acquires a different color.

In a sense, casteism is broadly in sync with Frederick Taylor's Principles of Scientific Management and Division of Labor. Broadly, the castes have been defined based on the work the people in that community do. It is very important to remember that the defining feature of castes is the work. By imposing strict rules, the system tries to maintain the environment as constant as possible and tries to keep the noise out, all in an effort to create "the better worker". Viewed through this paradigm, the water-tight compartmentalization of castes acquire unforeseen ground for their "imposed" sanctity.

Thus, marriages within the caste ensured a minimum workable compatibility between the couple. But, all this is not relevant, once the public school started replacing the family (read caste) as the source of "education". Now, armed with new knowledge, people are employed outside the definitions of the work according to their caste. With this, the caste should be changed as the work has changed: so we have TCSian, Wiproite and Infosyian. Again, the compatibility between two Wiproites is moot. Even if the compatibility is great, it is better not to get married, unless you want to ruin your not-so-spicy office life even further. Probably, the "perils of marrying your colleague" requires another long post.

Now, most of you would have realized the hopelessness of the situation you are in. No matter how hard to try to find the "best" partner, your signals to genes are going to get distorted by the information deluge around us and the odds of getting a "better" offspring are stacked against you. Pray to probability.

George Bernard Shaw was approached by a famous actress.
"Mr.Shaw, we should have a child. Wouldn't it be wonderful if it was born with your brains and my beauty?"

"But have you considered, Madam," he replied, "how terrible it would be for the poor creature if it were born with my beauty and your brains?"

A little longer disclaimer...

This is NOT to justify, in whatever little way, the atrocities committed in the name of caste. I know there is a big fallacy in attributing such "superior, scientific meaning" to anything, let alone casteism, post facto. Also, I have conveniently avoided a look at the innumerable subdivisions in the caste system.

That said, this is in no way to provide any reason, however flimsy it might be, against inter-caste marriages, for the simple yet unavoidable fact that the evolution cannot be done in vitro: the lab conditions cannot be replicated in the real flesh and blood world. To keep the environment constant is impossible.

Caste: Experiment in Evolution?

Was Varnashrama Dharma a quest for a super gene? Was it to create our own indie versions of Superman or X-men? What if Varnashrama was a countrywide mega experiment in evolution gone haywire?

The varnas are more about psychological tendencies of man than anything else says Osho in one of his discourses. It is based on broad classification of the elements that man tends to seek satisfaction from: while a Kshatriya seeks power, a Brahman runs behind knowledge, a Vaishya craves wealth, and a Sudra seeks bliss from creation/work. Call it our own Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. Mind you, this categories are not cast in iron, they had gates in between one another, albeit very narrow and tightly guarded.

Before we go on, let me state whatever little I understand of evolution in my own simplistic way. So, Evolutionary Biologists out there, please keep your complex theories to yourselves. I very well know you are intelligent enough to guess that I am politely asking you to shut your traps. ;)

Imbarrmaeshion is wealth. And much more. Evolution is all about information. It is essentially "our response" to the information we get from the environment. Genes carry the blueprint for our bodies - how tall I should be, how fair my complexion should be or in short, should I like Keanu Reaves or Koundamani. But regarding the intelligence levels being determined by genes, I have my own doubts, because I believe the IQ is more about learning ability, which again I believe is not solely determined by the genes.

Learning brings about a lot of observable psychological changes in a relatively shorter time span, but physiological changes takes eons to come about. That's because the information has to be routed through genes. And basically, genes are dumb things. Probably dumber than your managers. Remember? It took several centuries for our ancestors to tell their own genes that their tails are useless, so shed them and start growing that mushy grey thing inside their skulls.

When we have such dumb things as our bosses, I don't think I have to overemphasize the need for CLARITY in communication. The caste system tries to pass on the signals to our genes with minimum distortion possible. These signals carry information about the environment we are in, the nature of work we do and a lot more, which prods the genes to decide whether we should have webbed feet or bigger lungs. So, the caste system is essentially a high-fidelity communication system.

Inter-caste marriages are against evolution, as they distort the signals to the genes. You said BS? Read on.

To be continued...

Is Rama Godly?

We call Rama, the ultimate God and the paragon of virtue.

What did he do? He killed Ravana, who stole his wife, the beautiful Sita. And there is nothing on record to indicate that Ravana even touched Sita, when she was in his custody. The claim to Rama's fame was that he was the "ekapathini virathar" - the king who was a monogamist among the polygynous maharajahs of India. I think it was not much out of choice. Probably, no girl was ready to marry him after knowing what he did to Sita.

Most of you would know about Akalya, who was turned into stone by her hubby and later emancipated by the touch of Rama's feet. And what did she do? She was the dutiful and beautiful wife of sage Gautam. She was raped unaware (sexual assault) by Indra, who was in the guise of Gautam (forgery). Sage Gautam comes to know of that and turns poor Akalya into stone, to be later freed by Rama kicking her with his feet. Why didn't Gautam have the balls (or boons if you will. After all, he was a sage right!) to petrify Indra? Probably he was a poor human victim of the system. But, what did 'divine' Rama do? Should not he have killed Indra for raping another man's wife, when he could so "righteously" kill Ravana for just kidnapping? Is kidnapping an offense of higher order than sexual assualt and forgery? Probably, Rama was a mere human avenging HIS WIFE's kidnapping. Nothing more, nothing less.

That said, he readily takes the life of Vaali, by stealthily shooting an arrow into that poor guy, who was busy fighting his brother, Sugriva. Why did Rama, the great warrior, climbed down so low to kill a monkey king? They say it is because Vaali coveted his own brother’s wife. Would he have done the same if a normal monkey citizen had done that? Or would he have done that to his dad, Dasaratha, who supposedly had 11k wives, at least a few among them would have been other’s wives? After all, Dasaratha couldn’t have done anything with the diversified portfolio of his wives, if he really were spending time to validate the virginity of all his wives. The simple reason for Vaali vatha was to ready the logistics to get his wife back from Ravana, whom obviously Rama cannot fight without some help. Rama can’t get Vaali to help him, for he had nothing to offer in exchange. So, by taking revenge on behalf of Sugriva, he ensures he gets an army of monkeys to fight Ravana.

After killing Ravana, he asks Sita to walk through the fire to prove her "purity". They say this part of the story should be taken in an allegorical sense. But even then, how does it justify subjecting Sita to such a mental torture that is equivalent to walking over fire?

Sita was undoubtedly better off in Asokavana than Ayodhya. Just think of what all Sita had in Asokavana. She was more than a queen with a host of maids to take care of her. And a mighty man who loved her more than his own wife. She came back to Rama just to be banished by him to the jungle again, this time all alone. Just because Rama heard a dhobhi expressing his doubts about the “purity” of Maa Sita.

Regarding this episode, it is said that Rama banished Sita because his dharma as a king came before his duty as a husband. Now, doesn’t sending the pregnant Sita away so blatantly expresses the doubts that Rama himself had about Sita, even after she proved her purity by walking over fire? He keeps setting new records of insecurity and doubtfulness. If he was so much worried about public opinion, why did he not give up the throne to one of his loving brothers and keep Sita with him? Didn't he have faith in his brothers? After all, as I said in my previous post, a chair is a chair is a chair. Why keep blaming today's politicians when the 'divine' Rama himself was so much tempted by The Chair?

Sita gives birth to Lava and Kusha in the jungle and after she unites them with Rama, she just goes back to her mom, the Bhoomadevi, who is more than ready to just swallow her. After all, she knows how much Sita had suffered because of Rama. And as a king, he had the duty to provide the heir to the throne. If allegation against Sita was true, how can he crown her sons, as he did later?

Now, which girl in her right senses would want to get married to someone like ever-doubting Rama? Yet, he is being marketed as the perfect husband in India. Rama! Rama!

Next: Is SK Godly?

Is God Godly?

Who has more power? God or Devil?

Think for a moment before answering. Did you say God? BAM!BAM!BAM! Wrong my dear reader. Who needs God if there is no devil? What good is God who has nothing to do that a man can't? God needs the Devil, without whom God has no purpose. In fact, it is the Devil that makes God what He is - God.

If you believe in God, you have to believe in Devil before you place your faith in God. So, obviously God derives the reason for His existence from the Devil. God markets Himself based on his ability to beat the Devil. That says it all.

Of all religious baddies communities, the Hindu system of villains is pretty complicated than any other. And the one that comes the closest to today's scenario. You got three layers to that - the Devas (who dwell the upperworld), Nara (human race occupying the middleworld) and Asuras (who live in the underworld). And then there are generations and generations of Asuras.

Devas are the laziest buggers who do nothing except to get drunk and keep staring at the heavenly, perfectly shaped beauties (and these bloody satyrs have not just one but four of them!!) dancing all the time. And you have all sorts of cases filed against them - from civil to criminal. Stealing other's wives, gross misuse of power and authority, forgery and what not. Pedophilia was added recently, I heard. Especially against the head of them all - Indra, whose sexual appetite never seems to be satiated. He has a particular weakness for married women. He devours any form feminine - not only the deva kannigas, but also rishi patnis, nara kannigas. Of his asura kanniga preys, I don't know much. Probably, the Devas bureaucracy was effective in brushing it under the carpet. Or probably the media at that time was not as eager and able as today "to seek justice and equity". Think of how CNN IBN would have covered such a story with "intelligent investigations and meaningful discussions"!!!

Now, to the Asuras. They are the hard-working ones, who work their way up, by doing yogas of varying levels of difficulty to get "power" from the Lords. In fact, most Asuras are more devout than most Devas. With their new "powers", they try to restore some sense in the system that has been utterly ruined by Devas. So, they challenge the Devas to bring justice and peace not only to them but also the mankind that suffers at the hands of Devas.

Obviously, how can you expect those lusty loafers, Devas, to save themselves, let alone fight and win the mighty Asuras? Always, they lose their wars to Asuras and then go on begging to the Lords to save them. But, it seems merit has no place in this world and That world, whatsoever. Forgetting or rather ignoring the right of Asuras, the Gods, who are assigned to specific type of complaint or a particular asura, just like we have surgeons for specific ailments today, go and kill that poor asura, who asked for nothing but justice. Seems we don't have communists among Gods!!!

Or rather, is it a preemption of Darwin's "survival of fittest"? Gods helping the morally weak and powerless Devas survive against the mighty, fittest Asuras. After all, Gods seem to be security guards or goondas if you will, of the dirty Devas, saving their chairs from Asuras. After all, a chair is a chair is a chair. Be it, loksabha, rajyasabha or the heavenly devasabha.

They say "Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely". Imagine how corrupted the devious Devas would be, given their powers - they are immortal, they can get away with any misdeed and they have their faithful guards - the Gods, to save them if somebody bullies them.

Why would someone with a shred of common sense have faith in a safety system full of saviors who seem to be so utterly biased against a specific race - Asuras? And have you ever thought about the typical depiction of Devas and Asuras - Devas are fair, slim and almost effeminate and live up north; Asuras are dark, fattish, with a bushy mustache and live almost always down south and down under. Does it mean anything to you?

Next: Is Rama really Godly?