I am a dreamer..

"Perhaps it is good to have a beautiful mind, but an even greater gift is to discover a beautiful heart." ~ from the motion picture, A Beautiful Mind

Fair World?

Yesterday I was browsing thru a couple of news channels when this one picture caught my eye and I just froze. Channel: Times Now. Location: Bhagalpur, Bihar. Description: A man being brutally beaten up by a mob for good half an hour and later tied up with a police bike and dragged by the cops while world around him just watches. Crime: Tried to snatch a chain.

I was so terrified to see the pain and humility the man was made to go through. I was disgusted to watch the people flocking around him urging other to join, I was sad to see the media and the police being a part of this brutality. I was also shameful to be a part of the same world…..

I was wondering how the news channel had the audacity to record the entire event without trying to stop the barbaric act. I agree it is important to bring these things out in the open, but the better way could have been that a team of reporters (considering that even they feel that it was wrong) could genuinely try to stop this savage act while another team could record the event for the awakening of the nation. Is it always a question of TRP’s?

That man did something wrong by stealing, but why cant one see that no one becomes a criminal by choice. This 20 year boy is an orphan; he has a young sister and is the only bread earner in the family. He is a cart puller by profession -- I am sure it is not difficult for us to guess how much dignity and money his work offers him. Is it so difficult to understand that he is already poor, frustrated and depressed -- he needs money and it is not surprising that he is urged to steal. Not that I am saying it’s okay to steal, but it is important to see the bigger picture. Without any thinking we go any buy clothes which may never wear, we go to fancy places and eat royal meals, we go for weekend outings and spend hundreds of bucks – hardly do we realize that there are some people like the Bhagalpur victim who perhaps earn less than what we just spent in one day.

I feel bad when people honk like crazy at hand rickshaw pullers – most of them painfully old having weak hands, thin legs wearing torn clothes with sweat dripping from their pale faces - struggling to pull the load behind them in busy roads. I have seen many people doing that -- people sitting in t he comfort of their luxury AC car, feeling irritated about what the boss had to say about their work, about the state of the roads, about the low increments, about not getting the promised phone call from a loved one...

Why are people forgetting to spread the love? When the world around us need to be cared for and needs us to be compassionate, all that we are doing is getting into a rat race of winning our space, even if it requires us to crush others around us. The lessons of sharing and of helping others taught to us when we were children have long been forgotten or worse even, practiced selectively.

Why is the world becoming uncivilized? Why is it so difficult for people to stand up against wrong doings? Why doesn’t our heart ache to see cruelty around? And why can’t we take a step forward to stop these wild acts? Why is it that we think that 'It is none of my business' when it comes to protecting and suddenly 'everything becomes my business' if we are participating in a wrong doing or something which directly affects us?

The problem is the also the abject poverty prevailing in the country. There is a huge gap between the rich and the poor. The problem here is also the corruption. I read in the papers a couple of days back about the 800 some crore Rupees grant that the government had announced for the poor in Orissa -- According to the scheme, atleast 75 days of employment per year was promised to be provided to one member of every family in 7/10 villages in Orissa, but that of course did not happen. The progress report said that some 700 crore Rupees had already been spent and 55 days of work were provided to the people, but investigation by independent and politically uninfluenced people showed that the families were not even given 5 days of employment and that too not every family was fortunate to avail this scheme. The employments cards were fraudulent; all records were fallacious and fake. An estimated 200 crores were spent and the rest 500 crores were pocketed by immoral and unethical officials - the civil servants who are supposed to work for the people - who have pledged to take India forward.

Solitude and Forlornness

It has been almost a year since I am staying alone and I would want to write about how it feels to be alone and independent.

Freedom is the first thing that comes to my mind when I think of people who live by themselves. I know many people who stay away from their families, but I don’t know too many people who are totally living ‘alone’ -- by that I mean, I know people who live with friends or their lovers (in shared apartments) but I have met very few people who are really staying with no one but themselves. It is not same. Even if you try to argue that it is and I am sure all people staying ‘alone’ will assert it. It’s not as easy as it looks from outside. Freedom comes with a price - doing the household chores - cleaning, cooking, keeping the house neat, buying stuff for the house, paying the bills, paying the newspaper man, the cable guy, disposing the garbage and the list goes on. It doesn’t sound difficult does it? But trust me it is not easy. I am not complaining at all, because I love staying by myself -- I love doing things for the place I stay. It’s nice to come back home when you feel like and go to the gym or take a nice shower. Make yourself some coffee and sit by the window pane -- enjoying some music or thinking or doing anything that you feel like, for instance roaming around naked in the house – that is what I call total freedom.

But then, sometimes the solitude gets to you. Sometimes you don’t want to come home to an empty space. Sometimes you feel too tired to cook. Sometimes you crave to eat something that you mum cooks the best and you cant even make it half as tasty, sometimes you feel sick and if you need a glass of water to take a medicine, you have to move your ass to get it for yourself, when you wake up all untuned because of a bad dream, you find no one around you to comfort you - we are humans - we all need some human touch -- some assurance that we are cared for and that we are not alone. There is a difference between being alone and being lonely.

I have many friends, a lot of activities to indulge in (which I do), many things to look forward to, many things that can easily keep be busy -- but then there are times when you feel the emptiness.

Yesterday a friend who is one of the very few people staying 'alone' sent me an sms saying "If you stay alone you tend to speak to yourself a lot." Correct -- Now the intellectuals would spring up justifying why it is nice and important to speak to the self. I agree. BUT, when you speak to yourself most of the time because you don’t really have a choice (for whatever reasons - you may be too bored to talk to anyone, or you may not find the right person, or any other thing..), that is the time when it becomes not so nice and not so positive. In fact, it makes you feel lonely and left out. You feel lost. And when you try looking into the future and see that there is going to be no change -- nothing better and nothing worse that will happen, then it gets frustrating. No one likes stagnation and doldrums -- something should happen be it good or bad -- It gives you a sense of being alive. Please don’t take the liberty of trivializing this by calling it "self inflicting sadness/injury" because it is not as simple as it looks. I must admit that even these huffishness don’t last too long -- because none of us want to be sad -- it gets hidden behind something else and then re emerge some other time.

Staying alone however teaches you a lot of things -- just like bad relationships, bad experiences etc.. It teaches you the value of a cooked meal, of finding washed and ironed clothes when you are out from a bath, it teaches you the importance of someone handing out a glass of hot water to you when you are unable to sleep because of a sore throat, it tells you the importance of money, it teaches you the importance of having a person with whom you can discuss the news while having a meal....

Anyway, I don’t really know if I made any sense to anyone and if I could convey what I had set out to write. Its time i should leave for home. My house is waiting for me.

Deepanwita

She was 16 then and would have been 28 now.

24th August!

Giving a title everytime I post sucks bigtime!!!!! I am feeling sleepy. Woke up at 7 in the morning. Made myself some Oats and rushed to the gym. Burnt some calories and rushed back home. Caught some glimpses of the headlines in the newspaper -- Gosh, Sanjay Dutt looks so worn out -- with the half grey beard and bald head and tired eyes.. I also noticed the shackles tied around his wrist. Anyway, he sure is luckier because of his celebrity status. Anyway, after that I went in for a quick shower and rushed my way thru terrible traffic and reached office at 10.30. And still I don’t seem to get over the drowsiness. Oh! The good news is that ever since I resumed my gym (it has been 7 days of continuous mehnat) I have lost 600gms :). Ok. Don’t laugh. It does matter to me. :P Today someone told me about Aamir Khans blog, and I read it -- its nice. You can see it via the AK Blogging link on the 'Recommended' section. Tomorrow i have the Hi-Tech (special children school) visit. We have planned a clay modeling activity for them. I have feelings that it should be nice as usual. Fuck! I am still yawning away to glory. I was all sad and low in the morning. Was actually missing my people – my mum and others. My gym instructor Avinash also noticed it. He came to ask me if everything was fine. Many people have said that my face is very transparent -- it tells exactly what I am feeling inside. Just a couple of minutes back I was thinking of a Great Dain that lives in my block and that’s when I thought of my sweetheart - Archie. That cute doggie of mine :). Dogs have a strong sense of hmm.. of everything. Archie doesn’t like any sadness. He doesn’t like to see anyone crying. If you cry in front of him with your hand over your face, he will shove his face to yours and manage to move your hand off your cheeks and then snuggle up close to you. Yes! he is that lovable and caring. I am missing Archie. Sniff sniff :(

Lion.. The king of the jungle. Big Deal !!

Check this out. You will know what I am talking of. Its hilarious :)

Thats what I call power :)

Leopards mate 70-100 times a day and that too for 7 days at a stretch. :) Unbelievable ?? Check this out. .. Now can anyone beat that :)

This Bulb

For all those people who thought they could hardly do something for our planet, check this out.

Small Pleasures

I am promoting the group blog 'Small Pleasures' in this post. A couple of wonderful people have got together and are writing about things that make them smile and gives the engine of their lives the much needed choke start. (If you remember cars of the bygone years, they had this knob which says 'Choke' which was needed to start the engine in cold days. I guess they still have this concept in chilly places.). Anyway, do visit the blog and drop me a mail if you want to be a part of it too :).

Buddha

Nikkon - D200

Saving the best for last?

Today I was speaking to someone and there was a funny problem. Let us not discuss the problem; nevertheless, I want to talk of a story which I had read long time back when I was a teenager.

Okay, the story goes like this. One day a man gets his girlfriend a present, it was a set of pretty satin undergarments and an expensive perfume. But as soon as the she got the gift, she packed it up and put it in the closet to use later – on a perfect and special occasion.
Days passed by, and one day the woman died an untimely death. Just as the man was going thru her things, he found the gift box that he had once gave her – it still had those things which she liked but could never use just because she was waiting for the right time.

I learnt from that story.

Its raining cats and dogs in Mumbai

I hold it true, whate'er befall;
I feel it, when I sorrow most;
'Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.
~ Alfred Tennyson

Holocaust – The Final Solution

Holocaust – comes from the Greek word: "holos" (completely) and "kaustos" (burned sacrificial offering), but I don’t intend the same meaning now. It is far more horrifying than this.
Just before the onset of World War – II history witnessed the largest gruesome mass genocide. I am talking of the destruction of the large Jew population along with gypsies, homosexuals, Soviet POWs, and prisoners of all nationalities.

Train loads of unaware innocent people were brought to concentration camps. Unaware of their destiny, these people were told that they were being taken for a disinfecting bath and in turn were streamed into large gas chambers where they were killed in a matter of a couple of minutes. This is not all, there are many more atrocious evildoings that the Nazi’s inflicted upon them.

I had been to one such evil place during my recent trip to Europe – Auschwitz concentration camp in the outskirts of Krakow - the old capital of Poland.

From the heart of Krakow, we took a local transport bus to Oshwiecim, which is the polish town where the Auschwitz camps were located. When I saw it from a distance, it looked like red brick factory houses rowed in a vast barren land. Till that time I did not know what was in store inside.

When I walked inside the iron gates of the premises, I could already sense a strange sadness in the air. Everything there appeared still and lifeless. Gravel sand pathways were there with black notice boards indicating what is what. I wish I could publish a couple of the notices here on the blog, but I don’t yet have the pictures with me.

There are somewhere around 14 blocks in the area. Each block had an evil story to tell. Children, women, the aged, the diseased – everyone was subjected to an unbelievable level of torture – so much that dying seemed to have been a better alternative. To site some of the horrendous tortures, there were doctors who used to perform medical experiments of unimaginable horror on men, women and children. One such cruel doctor was Dr. Josef Mengele. Starting from experiments like performing operations and dissections without administrating anesthesia, to injecting chemicals into the eye of children in an attempt to change their color, to stitching twins together back to back just like Siamese twins and leaving the wound unprotected. There is a record which says that the mother of two such unfortunate children could not tolerate seeing her kids cry in pain and to free her children from this suffering, she stole some morphine from the clinic and killed them by over dosing them. The thought itself runs chills down my spine – it is so difficult to imagine the pains of the people trapped in the cruel place and punished for nothing that they had done. And to add to the cruelty, all this was done by first pampering the little children with candies and clothes. Can you imagine that the ignorant children used to happily shout ‘Uncle Mengele’ when they used to see him coming towards them with candies and goodies.. Unknown of what this undeserving uncle would do with them, they used to go with him in his personal car or in cars labeled with Red Cross to his death laboratory in Block 10 of Auschwitz and get subjected to dreadful treatments. You must be thinking that these scientists must have been crazy psychopaths, but this is not true either, there are reports which say – “….. Josef Mengele and the other camp doctors - masterminds of the horrors of Holocaust - were found to be psychologically normal. They were men of fine standing, cultured, husbands who morning and night kissed their wives, fathers who tucked their children into bed ...” .

That’s not all, there used to be roll call sessions of the inmates which would last for days and the people were not allowed to move for the entire duration – many people supposedly died during this wait. People who tried to escape were subjected to torture along with his/her entire family in the courtyards – so that no one else dared to run away.

There is a room in one of the blocks which have a whole dump of the personal belongings of the inmates. Things like toothbrushes, combs, feeding bottles, shoes – they are heaped there and they yell back at us asking us of their fault. Why did they have to meet a destiny as terrifying as that.

After WW1 in 1920, Adolf Hitler joined the National Socialist German Workers Party known as the Nazis. He called for all the Germans from all over Europe to unite and form a strong central government and fight for the cancellation of the Versailles Treaty. He reserved the brunt of his vituperation for the Jews, whom he portrayed as responsible for all of the problems and evils of the world, particularly democracy, Communism, and internationalism, as well as Germany's defeat in the War(WW1). Jews were the German nation's true enemy, he wrote. As such, they were not a race, but an anti-race. His hatred of the Jews was always known, but it took this ugly face soon after he empowered Austria. And from 1933 onwards, till about early 1940’s around a total of 6 million Jews, Gypsies, Blacks, Homosexuals, Communists and others were killed. Once a population of a couple of millions, the number of Jews have been reduced to a couple of thousands.

If you are thinking that this is something of the past and not being done now, then think again. Similar treatment is being levied onto people of Baghdad, Afghanistan, Iraq and other Middle East countries by none other than American troops. Saddam was labeled as cruel, look at what better America is doing. In fact it is shameful and surprising that how America is engaging itself in terrorist activity under the veil of reform and purification. All of this is really happening and how easily we pass judgments about wrong and right and who deserves what. A couple of days back I had a discussion with a couple of my colleagues and I was surprised to see that they are moving with the masses without exercising their ability to think and love. Without even having to face a personal attack they have such strong views about a community. Studies show that out of the entire community population, only 5% of its people are involved in extremist activities, and we should understand this and not penalize the rest of the 95% of the population because of them. Its important to remember that what we give reflects and comes back to us.

For long I thought why is there so much of hatred in the hearts of people. How do people gather enough courage to kill the innocent? Today, 3 out of 100 accused in the 1993 Mumbai Blasts have been announced a death sentence. The 7 serial blasts in Mumbai which took almost a thousand innocent lives and unaccounted loss of property and livelihood, was it all worth it? Why is it that terror spreaders justify their evil doing as a cause of something else? Was the Babri Masjid demolition worth the aftermaths it had caused? People can’t understand the value of life and keep looking for a reason to hate one another. It is so difficult to break free from the bonds of hatred? Is it so difficult to love? Someone needs to stop. And it is not a shame to be the first one to take the little step of brotherhood.

Perspective

As a teenager, I remember doing this exercise at a summer camp in which the team was shown a picture (a geometrical design) and were asked to share what they thought it could be. Alongside is the picture that was given to us. And I remember imagining this to be : 1. An poached egg . 2. A top view of a dancing girl :) and.. 3) An eclipse and 4) A tyre.. .. You tell me, what comes to your mind..

Mausam

Yeah I had planned to write about auschwitz . But right now I don’t feel like :) .. In fact I feel like talking of good things -- :) The weather is really nice this evening :) .. Feel like taking a walk in the lonely roads of IIT Powai and taking the little trek to the hill there.. taking deep breaths while watching Mumbai from the height. I desire to feel the wind touch my face make its way thru my hair :) .. And if i can get a little floaty floaty with you know what .. :) .. The thought itself is making me feel nice..

Auschwitz

I want to desparately write about this place called auschwitz in Poland.. Have alot in mind.. Maybe by next week, i will be able to find some time for this ..

Tallest and Shortest

I am sure, you know one. The other one is called Kitti's hog-nosed bat. Doesnt really look cute but how much can actually fit in 1.2 inches :)

Wonderful animated film

This is an animation film showing how Italy, inspite of being a part of the European Union, is dictinctly different from the rest of Europe. I have not been to Italy ever .. maybe I would have liked the place :)

Look who is listening :)

Europe and Me

Ever since I was half way through my recent vacation (well, only if I can call it a real one), I had this desperate urge to blog, i was literally wishing if i could lay my hands on a computer .. And when I did get one in Slovenia, I hired it for 3 Euros for a half an hour slot, and by time I finished checking all my emails, the session timed out.

I travelled from south Europe to the central Europe moving towards the west and finally to the European island (UK). And if I have to sum my feedback in one word, I would just like to say that it is 'Bland'.

At first sight Europe looks beautiful, particularly the country side. I was staying in the bay region of Slovenia and that place looked as if a scene from Cinderella had suddenly come alive -- beautiful small wooden houses with bright flowers peeping out from the balconies.. Trees all around, wooden benches scattered in plenty, little ponds with sparkling water, wine yards and the soft sunshine. Completely picturesque. I was there for 3 days. I would say, I liked the place. Then I moved north to Wien (Vienna, Austria), was not in the center of the city -- slow moving traffic, curvaceous buildings all around -- all huge crème n gold colored, the city center square, Mozart statues every where, busy people walking around in haste -- and then is when I realized that I am not liking where I was. I was thinking that that the place could be beautiful, clean with a great infra structure and connectivity, clean roads, everything in place, the law and order seemed perfect but then there was something so obviously missing. It appeared so unnatural and plastic to me. Who would want to be in a place where you need to wait for the traffic light to turn green so that you could cross the road even when you see that there is no sign of any running engine -- everything is so mechanical -- there were cycles securely parked for the public to use -- but the catch is that all you see is a box which would ask you to swipe your credit card, but no one to explain the terms and conditions -- I might sound like a 70 yr old person who is still skeptical about using an ATM to draw cash, but that is where we come from.. Let’s face it, a man less gas station (petrol pump, as we call it here), is not something I am comfortable about. Getting into the tube (metro) / bus / tram and paying thru the funny looking machines there.. I just think that it’s not just about the mechanical style of living which had put me off, it was may be also my rigidness and resistance to change and the people who I felt did not radiate warmth.

Just like its not enough to have four walls and a ceiling to make a home, same way, a well maintained infrastructure is not enough to make a city beautiful – I think the most important entity of a city is its people – and I was not happy being there.. I may be wrong, because you may argue that I might not have met too many people or, I did not stay long enough, but then I do believe that a place filled with compassion radiates energy and I was thinking about how Indians would react to foreigners, per me, I think most of the Indians are nice to outsiders (Indians as well as foreigners), we can see that even when we move within the country (for instance when I moved from Delhi to Bangalore or, Delhi to Mumbai). There was a young man I met in the bus on my way to UK from Belgium. The bus driver was a hilarious man – I was rolling laughing at the remarks he kept making on the speaker off and on.. Ok, coming to the point, we were stopped just before we were about to enter the English Channel for the immigration check & visa stamping. The driver warned us against the French guys saying that they were difficult and he advised us to ‘hug them, kiss them and if required, sleep with them’ to get through the interview and baggage check with less hassles :). So we (all the passengers) were kind of ready for a nightmare, and we queued up in the rectangular room like they show how prisoners of jail wait for grub. The man in front was the same person I was talking of a little while back. He was from Albania, and as expected, the French police was acting nasty to him – then was my turn, and the I was treated the same was, bombarded with questions, one of them asked where in UK was I going, and I said ‘Northolt in MiddleSex’, he asked me to repeat Middlesex some 4 times -- he asked me to do that while the 3 other cops sat there giggling -- i thought it was cheap humor, then he made me open all my baggage and checked the luggage really well -- just like they show in movies(I wish the Indian cops could do half of what they do..).. Anyway, the matter of fact is that we (my family) and that Albanian were the only people who did not belong to France/ Brussels/ UK and who were interviewed the longest and whose luggage was raped. The Albanian fellow told us that the French hated Albanians. And so seemed to be true for Indians and the Africans.
The same kind of thing happened when I was on my way to Krakow (Poland) from Vienna (Austria) by Euro Rail. The polish cops came with an Alsatian dog who went around sniffing us (the dog was wearing a jacket which read ‘Narcotic Detection’). This was not all, the same team (the same polish cop and the same dog) came knocking violently at our train cabin door at around 3am in the morning and repeated the checks -- re checked our passports and of course the dog did his job!! If you look at it, the security is great but then why was this happening only with outsiders, and why did this have to happen twice? I wonder if cops here behave the same way.

Apart from all this, I would also want to talk about my uncle who stays in UK. My uncle and his wife had moved to London 40 year back with a vision of giving a good life to their children and also to themselves. Now when I look at them, I feel sad. Both their children are grown ups (38 yrs old and 27 yr old) – they are staying separate and come to see their aging and ill parents only when their parents call them and if by co incidence they have time. Of course it was not bluntly put that way to me – but that was very apparent in the way that they behave with their children. They are all alone – hardly any social life, both of them have retired from work and are not in good health, but have got so used to that place that they cant even break free from the arrangement. They kept talking of how nice they feel there and how comfortable it is to stay in a high tech place like theirs, but in all their conversations I could just sense a strange effort by which they are convincing, justifying, condoling and reassuring themselves that they are in a good position and that they are happy. My Aunty almost treats herself like a British and that bugged me a couple of times – especially when she went around complaining about India and when she asked me things like ‘Do you have English style toilets in India – a W.C to be precise..’ .. I mean what the fuck.. What does she think about India!! Not that she hasn’t been here ever since she left, in fact if I am not mistaken, I think she was in India last year itself. Imagine, if Indian still hold this view about India, why should we complain and feel bad when people of other nationalities still think of India to be a land of snake charmers, black magic, bullock carts and over crowded matadors.

It is sad that people are unaware that India is advancing, it is witnessing a growth of 8.6% in its last years GDP and for this quarter the rate is 9.4%. India and china would soon be a superpower. Studies prove that by 2020, there will be 3 superpowers in the world, 1. US, 2. China and 3.India. Even today India is no less than any other place in the world. Considering the constraints of its size, population and history (India being under British rule), India is advancing at a high rate. Even today, India is the place where there are the maximum numbers of people who can speak English; India is the place where multi nationals come to get specialized as well as unspecialized labor. The mall concept, high tech flyovers, underground metro, state of the art airports.. Just about everything is being developed. The problem of India is in the reform state – it is the penetration of these amenities to the whole of India is a matter of concern and that is where we are lacking – and this is primarily because of the numbers and the after affects of what the british colonization did to us. But by talking about this the NRI’s, Indians or even outsiders are doing no help. Especially the affluent NRI’s, they are escaping their duty as Indians for getting a more comfortable life for themselves and then sitting over drinks and coffee and acting like concerned Indians.

I am actually a little lost now – wonder what I had set out to write. Will just end this with a happy note by writing about the attribute I liked the best. At a party I met a couple of learned men and got an opportunity to speak to them (actually it was a world congress of IPMA) and there were a couple of things I observed, a) Indians are much smarter than Europeans (I guess to Americans as well). b) Even Europeans happily accept, joke and fear a blond woman behind wheels  and, c) The Europeans are quite direct and open while conversing – Imagine there was this French man with whom I was talking, and towards the end of the conversation, he asked me if he could kiss me (don’t start having ideas, it was just a peck on the cheek)..

So, by what Buddha says, there are three ways of learning – 1) By reading, 2) By Listening and 3) By experience. And he has also stated that the most supreme way of learning by the third method. So, you may want to visit these places yourself and see how you feel about it. Actually maybe my perception of the place also reflects the kind of person I am and so your views may be distinctly different from mine.. But then again who says we have to think alike!

Wo-men

I was reading this book called “The Second Sex” by great feminist Simone de Beauvoir and I was surprised to know that learned people like Aristotle had said that : "The female is a female by virtue of a certain lack of qualities; we should regard the female nature as afflicted with a natural defectiveness."

I wonder how these people managed to get respect and acceptance in the society by large. Aristotle seems like such a big misogyny. Yuk !!

Men with like views should be made to live in isolation or for that matter in an island of only men – and then maybe they would know what is it about being a woman – that its not merely about a uterus – there is a larger picture.

On second thoughts, if I really sit to dramatize this entire thing, i would like to say a couple of things, did anyone notice that even in English, 'Wo' had been prefixed with 'man' to get 'Woman' :).. Sounds Clichéd and duh!! Hmm.. Not that any of these learned and wise men are saying some great things :D. And the other equally duh thing i want to say is (actually i read this somewhere): "First Nature thought of creating its biggest wonder, then he created man. Later he looked at it again and said he could do a better job, and then he created Woman" :) .. What pleasure it gives me <|:D.

Before men make comments like this on women, I guess are unaware of the essence a woman holds within herself. More surprising is the fact that there are so many women who take this thoughtless and absurd judgment about them.



Read this article below, made me damn angry::

The Inferior Sex
In ancient Greece, Aristotle expounded on the "natural inferiority" of women in all spheres of activity. "The female is a female by virtue of a certain lack of qualities," he wrote. "We should regard female nature as afflicted with a natural defectiveness."[16]

The Renaissance in England -- an era when women reigned as queens -- was characterized by a spate of diatribes which employed the concept of female inferiority as a foundation for castigating the "unnatural" and "monstrous" phenomenon of the female ruler. Political reformer John Knox's The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women (1558) was a "declaration of the imperfections of women, of their natural weakness and inordinate appetites." A sampling of its many degrading references include: "the inferior member," "weak, frail, impatient, feeble, and foolish," "in her greatest perfection woman was created to be subject to man" and "all woman is commanded to serve, to be in humility and subjection."[17]

During the same period in English history, the acceptance of female inadequacy served as a basis for the subordination of women in the marital relationship. From 1562 onwards, the British Crown directed that The Homily on Marriage be read in church. This statement portrayed the woman as "a weak creature" who was "prone to all weak affectations and dispositions of mind, more than men be."[18] In 1619, a guide to proper conduct in marriage offered the following advice to wives: "Set this down with thyself: mine husband is my superior, my Better; he hath authority and rule over me; nature hath given it to him . . . . God hath given it to him."[19]

The notorious Marquis de Sade, who in the second half of the eighteenth century terrorized and brutalized scores of female victims to satisfy his insatiable appetite for violent and degrading sex, resorted to the most demeaning terminology when referring to women. He called woman "a puny creature, always inferior to man, infinitely less attractive than he, less ingenious, less wise, constructed in a disgusting manner entirely opposite to what is capable of pleasing a man, to what is able to delight him."[20] This imagery dominated his perceptions and constituted a major factor in motivating his abominable behavior.

Various authors, thinkers, and philosophers are found in the forefront of endowing the vocabulary of female inadequacy with considerable respectability. Joseph Addison, a prominent English author during the latter 1600s and early 1700s, thought women "incapable of logic and not amenable to reason."[21] The phrases "no sense of justice," "defective in the powers of reasoning and deliberation," "that undersized, narrow-shouldered, broad-hipped, and short-legged race" and "the unaesthetic sex" comprise just some of the many derogatory characterizations of women in German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer's "Essay on Women" (1851).[22] These views led him to the conclusion that "they [women] form the sexus sequior -- the second sex, inferior in every respect to the first" and are "by nature meant to obey."[23]

A milestone in the relentless war of words against women came in the work of another German philosopher, Otto Weininger. His Sex and Character (1906) represents one of the most extreme defamations of female character ever published: On imagination -- "women are devoid of imagination." On memory -- "A being whose memory is very slight, and who can recall only in the most imperfect fashion." On morality -- "with regard to women we can talk only of the non-moral, of the complete absence of a moral sense." On genius -- "the female must be described as absolutely without the quality of genius . . . . A female genius is a contradiction in terms." On thinking--"a woman is without logic . . . The absolute female, then, is devoid not only of the logical rules, but of the functions of making concepts and judgments which depend on them."[24]

Weininger's assaults on female capability knew no boundaries: "However degraded a man may be, he is immeasurably above the most superior woman." As the result of a "long analysis," Weininger asserted: "There is no exception to the complete absence in women of any true, inalienable relation to worth."[25]

Listening??

What do I have to do to get your attenton ?

Take out an ad in the newspaper??

Is'nt it Ironic

The darkest hour of the night is just before the dawn breaks, but then sometimes the sun just forgets to rise.

Just when you think you are safe, you get hurt in places where you least expect to.

Is funny but its true that we hardly know the road on which we travel everyday.

It’s ironic that when you acquire that one thing that you craved for since a long time, you don’t need it anymore.

It happens so often that you never find what you are looking for in the most probable places.

Though unfortunate, but the person you madly love doesn’t love you back.

You just almost always fall short by just an inch.

In spite of knowing that the most precious of relations can not be defined, we spoil the beauty of it by trying to name it.

Is it not incorrect to expect life to be simple when we ourselves can’t help but let our heads behave the way it does – completely absurdly complex..

“A No Smoking sign, on your cigarette break.” : )

Do I need a title everytime I blog :(

Heard its snowing in New York. I love the snow. Dec 2005 I saw snow in the hills of Himalayas, but never witnessed a snow fall. Would like to stay in a cold place for some time. :) ..

I used to always wonder why people in India are so excited about US and living/visiting abroad. I never was and still am not. Because of papa, we have had many opportunities to go vacationing abroad, but I was never interested, and so I never used to go. The money / lifestyle / picturesque but very plastic beauty – all that never excited me. My carefree nature may be a subtle but strong, consequence of the economic security I have because of my family. But I have great respect for people who have struggled in their lives. I have struggled too – not on economic grounds but on life – and slowly I have grown to be a iconoclast, a person who stands up against wrong doing completely fearlessly – my parents call me a dare devil :) .. Of course for they are worried about me. I don’t like to live a regular illogical life. I don’t like to do things just because everyone does things that way – and I definitely don’t like doing things because otherwise ‘someone’ in the family/society will talk non-sense about you.

I live my life in my terms as much as possible. I want to experiment. See life, feel alive. I spend a lot of time with the less fortunate – I look at the miseries they go thru and feel bad being what I am – suddenly all the comforts I have look meager and small and unworthy. I feel content if I can make a person smile. And if the person really needs the smile, I am happier. I believe everyone needs a smile at all times. A couple of days back I went to an old age home, I loved it. I loved each and every angel there. Beauty at its best. They were miserable (that’s why they are there), but they still took time to smile and talk to people like us with open hearts. Apart from that I love reading good books, I love to write, I love to appreciate beauty, and I love to contemplate and interact with learned people.

Those are a couple of things which I like. But alas, that can not fend for my bread :) -- so I am doing what every regular person does – work.

About me finding what I came to look for in Mumbai, Well, I have not, seemed to have landed up with more questions. :P

Now I want to go to the US and see what people are running after. I want to experience that now. Maybe I come up with some answers, or land up with more questions, :). But that’s also life, and life is unpredictable :) .. It knows no logic, that’s why it is life.

Someone recently asked me if i found what I came looking for in Mumbai, and this is what I had to say.

Hurt the Pain

Its ok to fall out of love.

Has it ever happened that sometimes when you pursue something / someone for so long that you eventually start feeling that you don’t need it anymore?

Slowly the truth seeps in, though quite disbelievingly, that at one point of time when you thought that there was no way you could do without this one thing in your life, now does not affect you.

That sometimes a tiny gesture or even the feeling of possessing it gave you an adrenalin rush but now slowly you cease to feel it.

Not that you don’t feel any thing about it anymore, but its just that it hurts more than it feels nice. Not the thought but the retropection still brings goose pimples on your skin. You feel the slitting pain - like blood gushing out of a deep wound when your skin is pale and cold. Like its drops of blood on a satin white sheet. And you see your life dreams shatter away.

You get disillusioned – you are not sure if you would want to have the desire again, if you would feel the same child like excitement for it again, ever in your life.

But the only constant part of life is that it moves on. It goes on and on, irrespective of how wrecked you feel – how weak you think you have become.

As Robert Frost wrote in a very famous poem of his, “And I have miles to go, before I sleep”.

Whatever happens, happens for a reason - LoL

More on the teachings of the Bhagwat Gita,

It says,

“"You have control over doing your respective duty, but no control or claim over the result. Fear of failure, from being emotionally attached to the fruit of work, is the greatest impediment to success because it robs efficiency by constantly disturbing the equanimity of mind." A farmer is responsible for working his land yet has no control over the harvest. But, if he does not work his land he cannot expect a harvest. "The boundary of one's jurisdiction ends with the completion of one's duty. Do your duty to the best of your ability, O Arjuna, with your mind attached to the Lord, abandon worry and attachment to the results. Remain calm in both success and failure. Such selfless service brings peace and equanimity of mind." (2.48)”

Now, I would take the liberty to question it by asking if it is that we are told not to think of the result and act that would mean that we don’t have a vision and that we don’t know what we are getting into. It means we are doing something with no love/desire for the goal. And is it not human that if we are not passionate about what we want to do / what we are doing, we would not do it well.

It means about accepting whatever we get – even if we do or do not deserve it – that again disillusions the concept of “a fair world” of the “reap what you sow” concept. Why is it that we are treating ourselves like children? Its like we are giving ourselves some condolence by telling ourselves that ‘whatever happened for good’. God damn it!! Is it so difficult to realize that its one of the grossest thing someone can say? No tragedy can be condoled by saying that it happened for good and that one day we will know that even this tragedy had a reason. Oh come on!!

Cut me and I wont bleed?

"A disciplined person, enjoying sense objects with senses that are under control and free from attachment and aversion, attains tranquility. (2.64) An uncontrolled mind distracts the intellect as a storm sways a ship from its path. (2.67) A person who is not disturbed by the incessant flow of desire, that enter the mind, like rivers into an ocean which is ever being filled but is not disturbed by the rivers, can alone achieve peace, not the one who strives to satisfy such desires. (2.70)

Self-realization is to know one's relationship with the Supreme Lord and His true transcendental nature. A Self-realized person does not need rituals to reach God."

The above is picked up from the 2nd chapter of the Bhagwat Gita. Time and again I have been told that the road to peaceful existence is about renunciations – about giving up your desires. If one needs to give up desires that means he has to design himself to stop feeling and if that it what the wise have to say, then what good would be a human being vs a robot?

I am really not convinced by this style of living. And talking of ‘Nothing can move me’ attitude, well I can’t believe that for any normal human being, that there is absolutely no one that he loves. Difficult to even contemplate, forget practicing it.

And we talk of Discrimi-n.a.t.i.o.n

So we awe and make a hue and cry about a fellow Indian being ill-treated and belittled in the country of the whites, are we forgetting something that we practice ourselves in our very own lives. It’s like talking of cleaning the streets when your own house is filthy.

Ok, wondering what I am talking of?? I can be more than sure that almost every Indian has a little something for a fair skin. Come on now; don’t nod your head laterally. If you have not done it yourself, you must either be on the side where there is shade or you may be the kind of person who has the right to flex your neck muscle just till you read the next few lines. Ok, so u don’t lust at the fairer skin and you don’t take a second glance at the lighter tone – lemme believe you. But now think a little more and tell me if anyone from your close circle of friends mocked someone for the way god made him/her, or your mum thought a prospect alliance was not suitable enough for you because she was not light enough for you. And when that happened, what did you do? Did you whack your friend or did you take the pain to correct your mum? I think, NO. So, now can I see those oscillating heads slow down? And if you are still nodding your head left and right, then its nice to have you in this planet, for people like you make this world a better place to live in.

Discrimination is there everywhere. Discrimination is to an extent necessary – but then again it depends what you are discriminating against. Intelligent discrimination is about choosing the company you would like to keep on the basis of mental frequency, intellectual compatibility and definitely not based on skin tone, appearance, wealth, profession and definitely not because of nationality.

All of us learn – I cant say that I never discriminated ever since I was born – ofcourse I did. May be I still do at some places, but what I am learning is that baseless, unnecessary, absurd and cheap. It’s a disgrace to your own intellect and humanism. A man is known by the company he keeps. And if the company is colorful, it yells back aloud.

I hate Love??

Have u ever been in love?
Horrible, isnt it.
It makes u vulnerable, it opens up your chest and it opens up ur heart and it means someone can get inside u and mess u up.
You build up all these defences. You build up this armor for years, so nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life.
You give them a piece of you, they don’t ask for it. They do something dumb one day like kiss you or smile at you and then your life isnt your own anymore.
Love takes hostages, it gets inside you. It eats you up and leaves you crying in the darkness, so a single phrase like “its over” or “I don’t love you anymore” turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart and gut.
How picturesque.
It hurts. Not just in the imagination, not just in the mind. It’s a soul-hurt, a body-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain.
Nothing should be able to do that. Especially not love.
I hate love.

---- Niel Gaiman