Religion

My girlfriend asked me what i was looking for when i told her that i was looking to read Chosen( a book that deals with the second coming of Christ and how people would react to it and whether anyone would believe it, with a nasty surprise ending). Considering that my favorite comic was Lucifer it was perhaps a loaded question to answer. But it did cause me to pause and think about my beliefs. When I was younger, I stayed with my grandmother, who other than lighting a diya at 7:00 p.m. sharp showed no other religious activities (that and making the dosa with the sweet milk and insisting we eat it at gokul ashtami). It was ofcourse more fascinating for me to watch the diya burn down. School was the first time i think i was exposed to a different religion. With the inherent curiosity of if we had moral science and they (look the religious divide begins) didnt , what did they do in that time?.Most friends were reluctant to answer what exactly was different or what they were taught. But Stanislaus was a good place. I remember a friend who carried one image of each religion he could find in his compass box, it helped him pass the exams he said. My first brush with the problems of religion came when The Satanic Verses were banned. I and everyone at home were against the ban and going up the stairs i casually remarked about it to a friend , who replied "rushdie should be kicked out of britain ,how dare he etc. etc" to which i kept mum. My friend was a muslim. It did make me think at that time is it better to treat every religion equally or to simply ignore it altogether?.But those days it was more important to run to the playing field at recess time than to ponder glumly over philosophical topics. We always went to bandra fair. And my grandmother leg got into problems because of a wound and she was diabetic. So instead of putting the two wax children as offering (meant for my brother and me) we also started putting a leg. My grand mother who would always have come with us , couldnt anymore , but she would say put the leg for me. I believed. I believed it would cure her. And i prayed as much as i could. It never occurred to me that i was praying to some other religion, God was one i knew. And then they were the TV serials. The never ending ramayana and its successor the dont take your eyes of the TV set Mahabharata. I guess i owe thanks to ramanand sagar for my profound dislike of the ramayana. I always wondered what was godly of some guy trying to rescue his wife from some powerful guy who wait for it is powerful because of boons granted by the other gods? Oh and before i forget all this to kick out his wife. It did start me thinking.It also raised the questions that if it was right in the mahabharata to go to war against relatives for kingdom why wasnt it right in the ramayana where instead banishment is accepted meekly? And how could a god say it was right to go to war , when it also means killing up 1000's of those rounded up extras in the shower of multiplying arrows? The Mahabharata was much more fun to watch. Its successor the bible ki kahaniyan however wasnt (more to do with the production quality than with the stories themselves). My knowledge of christianity however came earlier due to an amar chitra katha'ish comic bound up with phantom and mandrake and flash gordon which i read and was impressed and was angry that the hero died at the end. Islam was something followed by the people in the building. The ladies in the building didnt wear a burkha at home , but did when they left the house ,i assumed that was because they liked dressing up. It was strange for me because one set of neighbours were boris(burkha wearing) and the other werent. But noone cared. So i passed out of school with my feelings towards religions mostly of the sort , all religions are equal, you dont bother me , i dont bother you sort of attitude. And then i moved on from mostly detective mysteries to reading some scientific material, Asimov, Sagan and their ilk. Reading about the idealistic way to doing science, the continuous questioning of data, the rationalist thought and philososphy, The everything is a hypothesis , when you get more data either the hypothesis is reinforced or it is discarded. But a hypothesis it remains. It came to me that while science doesnt preclude faith, it does say that when you question it , the faith grows stronger or you have to discard or atleast change some aspects of faith when you find information that contradicts your faith. Whereas religion believes that if you question your faith , your faith grows weaker. You must just believe!.Supremely egoistic i believed that i had been given a brain so that i could understand god's plan than merely be a part of it. And given the choices i'd rather believe in the scientific way. And so i questioned everything. I wouldnt read an out and out religious book so i would only read something that dealt tangentially with religion which essentially meant that i would end up reading about matters related to Christianity. But it wasnt a problem. all religions are similar so what would apply to one should in someway apply to the other. So therein started the journey of "if thou shalt not kill doesnt it apply to god as well" "if an earthquake is god's doing why does it kill indiscriminately" "if we are to be judged eternally based on life spent on earth what happens to infants who die?" "if god is our father why would there be a hell even if we sinned" "how can god be most forgiving and condemn us to hell" "if god is all powerful then why do children suffer due to no fault of theirs" "why did god show himself 2000 years ago but doesnt do so (atleast not directly) anymore" "if god is in all of ours whats the need for holy places and holy men?" and so on.And then i realised that a lot of what we heard and attributed to "god" was really hearsay. Who says the ramayana occurred as it did?certainly theres lot of material saying that what we read is a cleaned up version. Same too for the mahabharata. Ditto for the old / new testament. Its then that i believed that religion is a man made structure and like every other man made structure it protects itself first and foremost. I also realised that while there may be a lot of good in all the religions , there is material that may be bad or atleast open to interpretation or illogical even if harmless (like the jains who cant eat onions). And that i would respect the brain i got and follow what i deemed was right. that i would pick and choose what i wanted to follow from any religion.So where does that tie in with the things i read?The ability to choose brings with it one responsibility. That you should make sure you have enough information to make that choice. And while im too old now to read the bhagvad gita or the bible or the torah i dont mind reading other peoples opinions of it. Its surprising sometimes how when the point of the story has religion only as a side issue , the observations you can make.In chosen the most important part is the writers conversation at the end. In it peter gross is asked by his 4-5 year daughter that if he draws stories about the bible , are the stories true or false? And he says he replied that it is the stories and what you learn from them that are important. Whether they are true or not isn't. And he says as a story teller , stories are his religion. Something to think about , found in an unlikely. Mike carey in lucifer makes other important statements.And heres the secret good authors write and it makes you think. That it may deal with religion is unimportant
So what am i looking for? A good story that makes me think and question my faith

Pride

It feels good to take some credit for the existence of this

Rickshaw corruption

One of the things that keeps occupying my attention these days is the price of a rick fare from my home to office , which should be about Rs 48. Occasionally some crooked rick guy would charge 55. But these were few and far between. These days however the situation is the opposite. More ricks show up with meters of Rs 55 and a few exceptional one’s Rs 60. The one’s which show the correct fare are now almost non existent. Perhaps the correct question is how come that there are still some ricks with the correct fare instead of how come everyone is becoming so dishonest. I think it’s a sign then of where we collectively as a city are going. The common man is not above cheating the other common men. The rich , well they always bent the rules. Its funny then seeing the various articles stating how Mumbai has had enough of people praising it for its resilience, they want funds and an end to the corruption that exists. It won’t.
Was this city always this way? Who knows.

Current Controversies

Its been a month for controversies starting with Da Vinci Code, Aamir khans comments and the subsequent banning of fanaa , the OBC quota, the pope’s comments on anti conversions laws. If you look at it closely almost none are debate worthy. All of the controversies above have a relatively straight forward answer and do not need any moral hand wringing. But controversies they are and the debate rages though everyone I know seems to have the same view and so does the media so who’s the debate against? That probably speaks more about the people I know than it does about the controversial aspects of the issues. So for the record
Da Vinci Code - Its fiction, free speech and all related stuff. If you don’t like the movie don’t see it, if you don’t like the book don’t read it. If your faith is shaken by the book then you don’t have much faith, if it isn’t then wheres the problem?. All the controversy does is increase the number of Mary Magdalene books that are popping up.
Free speech again. As Aamir has reiterated, the government must rehabilitate the farmers , that’s its duty. Everything else is silly ego battles
No reservations on basis of caste,religion,community ever. Economically backward or in other ways handicapped, reservations may be possible but cannot be a number (what is the meaning on 10 or 25%?)
The pope can say whatever he wants, free speech again. People should be free to choose always whether its what they believe , what they watch , what they do so long as it affects only them..
And it’s a wonder how in a so called democracy the peoples views are mostly ..irrelevant. Theres not a single party opposing reservations so that you could say , fine , next elections we shall show you. Why is there no liberal , progressive non votebank oriented party in India?. Ok fine for that matter the world?. What is it about the nature of governance that forces good people to become stupid? Or is it the nature of governance that attracts only stupid people to begin with? Did you also try coming up with a politician who is not stupid? Hard task right?

Reservations

The Government decides to have 27% reservation for OBC’s in IIM’s and IIT’s as well. Everyone has reacted as expected. The parties are all in favour. No one wants to lose out on the vote banks. The students and industry are in uproar.
The tragedy is that there our constitution writers screwed up. Reservation in any form was always bad. Reservation based on caste and not class is worse. Reservation once given cannot be withdrawn with the affected parties screaming murder, discrimination and the works.
I remember I had colleagues in engg way better off(monetarily) than I was but in engg thanks to SC/ST/Sindhi quota. And I wonder how reserving seats for already uplifted people is helping. Which is not to say that there aren’t people deserving of some concession (id rather it be in the form of scholarships and monetary concessions though).
Its not an easy problem. And perhaps the attitude of most Indians can be summed up by the answer of one student. “What can we do about it. I can only hope it will be implemented next year”
There doesn’t seem to be a single party in India which is capable of thinking beyond the next election.
The last time VP Singh, champion of the masses , champion of stupidity(it is disconcerting how often these are the same thing) imposed reservations , people died but the reservations remained. I hope it doesn’t happen this time. But I wouldn’t bet on it.

Rang de Basanti

For change there has to be a catalyst and sometimes the catalyst needs to be violent. Close your eyes and think who might say something along the lines. Now tell the truth did you think of bhagat singh? Or are you thinking of some more contemporary character probably holding a machine gun?And perhaps that’s the biggest problem with rang de basanti. Its based on a flawed premise. But brilliantly executed with a rousing score and with all the actors being top class. Of course there are the expected clichés , a bunch of teenagers college bunking , boozing , wild driving and ofcourse their hearts are pure gold. With a foreigner who along with the death of their friend awakens something in them.The movie is good and worth watching. The only thing negative is the end which is a very bollywood in style and the message that the movie tries to send out, is frankly out of place in these times. As always I think I could’ve done a better job , so here goes. Tone down the the young generation is always out having a party thing. Either the end has to have more of the diary or the character has to be dropped. You cant start out with emphasis on the brit female and suddenly drop her out of the picture. And enhance the lathi charge scene and end the movie there. For e.g. the bjp character meeting the muslim point is made as effectively in the lathi charge without needing the melodramatic holding hands and dying sequence. However the movie makes you think. And in these days such movies are few and far between.

Googling

Its quite interesting to see the current uproar against google for censoring its search results in return for being allowed in china. In a purely practical sense google is of course correct. The Chinese government suppresses information anyway (the great firewall of china), you can atleast make a buck this way. In idealistic terms this is a sellout. Especially after google took the moral high ground when the US government asked for its data. I remember msn took a lot of heat when it censored subject lines in msn spaces. What is right? Obviously telling the Chinese government to take a hike. China has a lot of smart people . Hopefully they’ll find a way to access the information they need.
Is it that easy? Obviously not.
Id guess id be much more comfortable if google cooperated with the us government and refused to do so with the Chinese government. Googles motto is Don’t be evil. Perhaps it is time to change that to Be Good.

News Round Up

This was meant to be an obituary of Indian Hockey. Playing a champions league match at home , after having already lost the first to Spain 2-1, India were down 2-0. The playesrs looked listless and had just wasted penalty corner after corner. And then the Indians struck. To level at 2-2 and finally in the last two three minutes the Indian struck the third and we had beaten Pakistan 3-2. Time for celebrations an Indian team showing grit to come from behind and beating arch rivals? Unthinkable!. But all is still not well with Indian hockey. The audience doesn’t support it. The game is run by an autocratic dictator and the same regionalism that dominates everything in Indian life is pervasive in Indian hockey as well. That India still manages to win some times is laudable. I wonder what we could do if sport was free from petty politics.
And Armaan Ebrahim finishes 14th in the A1 grand prix. You’d think with a level playing field we’d do better instead of just going up a couple of places because our neighbour from Pakistan knocks out a couple of cars?. Atleast narain had an excuse , his car sucks. But both karun chandok and armaan seem outclassed by most drivers. Perhaps because this is an exclusive sport. You have to be a rich mans son to have experience driving fast cars!.
Which is one of the beautiful things in cricket. Anyone can play it anywhere and does. We played in the small lane after almeida park. Football needs a proper ground. Cricket has no such restrictions (much to the chagrin of car owners and people with glass windows on the ground floor). And India has dragged Sri Lanka back thanks to Kumble and the umpires. It looks like a result is assured in this test match. And heres hoping that with the record out of the way the old Tendulkar will return. A brilliant 40-60 with the odd century rather than a painstaking labored gavaskarish 100.
And noone watches Ms World anymore.. yeah!

News Round Up

Well I was wrong (wasn’t the first time , wont be the last time). The mid-day has indeed published a know your candidates half pager. One bit about the hutments and slum , Priya Dutt supports protection of all hutments before 2000, Sarpotdar(who is shiv sena and not BJP as I thought, but there really isn’t that much difference I guess) all hutments before 1995. I wonder why the justifications of these mostly illegal dwellings stops at a particular date?. What next , all criminals with crimes committed before 2000 go scot free?. It is perhaps harsh to equate the people living in the illegal slums with criminals, but allowing them to essentially get away with it is not the answer. India needs a more balanced form of development where places like Mumbai etc do not grow disproportionately. And of course we have to do something about our population.
And Mr Thackeray wants to get back to cartooning. Its fortunate that hes built his fortune (I can still laugh at him when he says he is honest he only has Matoshri) using other means. Otherwise he’d starve.
And Jyoti Randhawa and Arjun Atwal are intent on shooting themselves in the foot. They have just run themselves out of the reckoning on the last day of the golf world cup after starting 1 stroke behind leaders. Typical Indian sport behaviour!
And heres hoping that the Indians win in Bangalore. South Africa are on the verge of breaking the Aussie record for unbeaten one day victories. So the law of averages and The choke factor should catch up with them. But India does have the better team I think (and the pitches ofcourse)
And now I can regularly solve SuDoKu. Wonder if theres any algorithm to solve it other than brute force. I remember the days when I tried to solve the Knights problem by recursion and almost cried when the program spat out an overflow after recursing12 times.
  

The wedding bells toll

ISchmuck is married (read the man from mars, or marsboy)
I wasnt there to witness the proceedings though XSchmuck was . Read it in his own words
Oh and i thought cigars were for when the kid is born , not on the marriage day!
I wish the couple Happiness and a Long Life Together

Votes

It was so easy when you were in school. There were rights and there were duties. The consitution gave every citizen the right to vote and it was every citizens duty to exercise it. You were taught the importance of voting in a democracy and as a student deprived of voting rights due to age constraints you looked forward to the day when you would be able to vote.
Fast forward to , your name is on the electoral rolls , the election is on saturday. Hmm who are the candidates. Uh well one's this lady who is asking votes in the name of her departed father, ably assisted by her brother who is under suspicion for possessing arms during the times of the blast. Atleast Ms Priya Dutt seems clean , though people say she does as she is told by the other MLA Baba Siddique. It would have been so much better if she could have said whats shes done and what her qualifications are rather than allowing her to continue to do the work her father started. On the other side we have Madhukar Sarpotdar, whose party disqualifies him from being considered by me, not because of their communal stance( all parties in India are either communal or casteist) but because of a certain Mr Murli Manohar Joshi who insisted on screwing with the educational system. Its one thing to incite grown men to riot, who are adults and must take responsibility for what they do, its quite another to force your version of history down an unsuspecting childs throat.
And should you vote for a person or for the party?
Who else are the candidates no one knows. Our esteemed newspapers would rather carry page after page of various society parties than publish these details. Who would read this after all?
I think id vote for Priya Dutt. If nothing else atleast the proportion of women in legislature would increase. Our parties who actively champion reservation seem to shudder when it comes to reservation of seats for women. Not that i support this form of reservation.
I remember this Busybee article of him going to vote. He made this list up of who/what qualities he would not vote. And concluded that if anyone remained after these eliminations he'd vote for him/her. I suspect that he probably didnt exercise his right.
I think it should be mandatory to have a I dont think anyone is worthy of my vote option in any democrarcy. I think politics should be made a profession where some minimum education / training is required. As long as this education/training is made freely available to all, it doesnt violate anyones right/. Its too much seeing uneducated thugs with no experience whatsoever being ministers. You wouldnt hire these guys as employees in any company, why do we feel they are fit to run our country.

Gender Inequality

In The Argumentative Indian , there is a chapter about gender inequality which reveals some highly upsetting figures. These figures concern the natal inequality present in India , i.e. the fact that foetus’ whose sex has been determined to be female are sometimes aborted , an act which cannot be appropriately described without using the choicest four letter words available in the vocabularies of multiple languages. There exists a South-East v/s North – West divide. With the north – west coming decidedly worse as ardent followers of this abhorrent act. Maharashtra unfortunately comes in the North West region. It should also be noted that this natal inequality may also be evidenced in the south particularly Tamil Nadu. What is equally shocking is that the average females born per 100 males is lesser in the urban areas than the rural (This is probably because the urban areas have the technology). And more so that is sometimes the mothers themselves who are responsible.
Yesterday was childrens day.  

Dev

Watched the end of Dev , and again the feeling that this could have been a great movie, but that in the end you come out feeling dissatisfied with the movie. Here’s what I would change.
The dialog between Om Puri and Amitabh has to be better. The scenes between them should be similar to Pacino- DeNiro in Heat. Or something like that. There has to be an underlying tension, which is only kept together by their friendship. There must be enough to make the audience think with whom they stand.
Om puri’s motivations and actions should be changed so that he isn’t an out and out villain. In the current script he is too much of a villain for you to feel any sympathy.
Replace Fardeen Khan with someone who can act and look vulnerable, not look drunk.
The realization that the Big B considers Fardeen his son , should come to Om puri gradually and by himself , for his suicide to make sense. Otherwise the suicide seems out of place. The end drinking scene is amazing and has to be kept.
The pace of the movie isn’t present in all places. That needs to be improved as well.

Intelligent Design

There is a recent ruling in Kansas to allow the theory of Intelligent Design to be taught in the classrooms, not just Darwins Theory of evolution. The theory is along lines the lines that Darwin’s theory does not adequately explain how a universe as complex as ours could have evolved and therefore needs an intelligent designer.
At first glance it looks like a victory for the Creationists, but it isn’t.
Science demands alternate theories to be considered and either proven or disproved. No theory is sacrosanct (e.g. darwins) and debate is good. Too often scientists fall for the trap of laughing at the alternatives suggested instead of simply producing proofs and letting people draw their own conclusions. This is of course not to say that I believe Intelligent Design is right. I don’t think so (and certainly the term intelligent shouldn’t be applied to any theories describing humans)
Carl Sagan had the same views when it was suggested that humanity was given birth by Alien races who intermingled with the whatever native species there were on earth(Highly liberal races I must say), and examples of old Indian tribes knowing stellar constellations. Sagan said most scientists simply laughed instead of proving that this theory was flawed(Broca’s brain is the book I think)
There were some funny cartoons though -God to a creationist, I gave you a brain , now use it!
On a related point I believe Stephen Hawking once said it didn’t interest him whether god created the universe or not, its only whether there was a choice. Could life have happened under any other circumstances (creator or no creator). Or if there was a god did he create gravity or is he bound to work within the boundaries of gravity?
Id say let the theory be taught so long as the alternatives are taught as well!. Otherwise we run the risk of becoming like the creationists!

Im Back!

So after a long hiatus, the internet connectivity is there and i have time on my hands to resume my quest to write 100 paragraphs. Does this count?
I think the last time i wrote was just before the floods hit mumbai. Speaking of which , everyone blamed the current government for the way it handled the floods, they seem to have forgotten we live in a democracy. we deserve the governments we get. And the newspapers gushed about the spirit of the average mumbaikar(As opposed to say a new orleans resident). I was stuck out during the floods and got to see 2.5 examples of goodness and 1.5 examples of harshness. Still its good enough i guess.
And the Indian team is back in everyones good books, though one lost game and the questions are already being asked again!
And it is ironical to wait and buy the special extended dvd edition of all three lord of the rings and fast forward to just see the war sequences.

On Writing

So i read this short story by a colleague (With the warning that i will tell her my truthful opinion about it but i wont criticise!). Luckily i wont have to lie , its pretty good and funny in places. Which brings me to my own works (Everything is always about me!). The first short story i wrote was in the 4th or 5th standard. It ran upto 42 paragraphs and was a detective story with such a twist that i feel embarrassed now. I think i felt embarrassed immediately after i read it and it was subjected one afternoon to the harsh flames of self criticism. Ashes to Ashes.
The second one was for TSEC's story writing event in Avalanche. You were given 4 titlkes and had to choose one and make up a story. I chose "And they lived Happily Ever After" and wrote the continuation of what happens after Prince Charming marries His princess. Including a brief look at their honeymoon, the princes refusal to slaughter any more dragon's thanks to their endangered species listing, and other events that gradually led to the prince becoming the beer bellied couch potato and the princess a middle aged nag. Oh yes I'm a cynic , but i still think that some parts of the dialog were funny. I won second place which was enough to please me , were it not for the fact that the organisaer came up to me and said my story was good was the one that won was far superior!. Sometimes i think only two of us actually submitted in the papers when the time was up.
I Then Teamed up with another (i)schumck we wrote an essay for the crime fighting vehicle of the future Dina -Mite ( which was basically a dinosaur chained to a bullock cart) with fearsome capabilities of excreting tons of materials to entrap fleeing felons, text by me , illustrations by my colleague.
Another attempt to participate in avalanches story writing competition came to naught. This time you had to spin a story around six words (treasure , princess ,sand, jewel) and i concentrated so much on the ending that i didnt such a poor job on the start and beginning that i almost didnt want to submit it. Didnt win any honours this time!
And so what makes a good story?
It should entertain
It should make you think
It should make you change your mind about an opinion you had (for the better of course)
Any writing that can do all the above is priceless.

Nature and Beauty

No this is not about Bhoomika or Gracy
A colleague once remarked to me , when i showed marked unenthusiastic for seeing the beauty of a waterfall , that i had probably not seen any.
Not quite true i think i have seen a couple, but that's not the point, the implication was i had no eye for the beauty in nature, whereas i was trying to make the point that nature is beautiful everywhere , and the waterfall is not so much better looking than say a tree on the roadside, though most people would not notice the tree. There is right outside my window a plain tree on which a crow has made its nest. The nest is probably ugly made of Long twigs haphazardly arranged. But its ugly only till you think of the effort and expertise that went into making it. The nest rests on a Y shaped branch and how The crow has managed to successfully balance the nest ill never know. Now a leaf flutters down from the tree twirling into the breeze before resting softly on the ground. The crow is joined by its mate. There don't seem to be any chicks but i guess they will be coming . I'd throw some food but I'M afraid my mother will shout that next the crows will be in the living room, so i resist(atleast till my mom's not present)
And i still wonder do i need to go to pune to see some natural beauty?

Opinions

If we assume for a moment that something called the right opinion exists, then does it also matter why we have that opinion? Is doing the right thing for the wrong reasons acceptable
What brings on this issue is a book im reading about the Srila Prabhu somethings views and opinions and included among them are whether we should be meat eating or not, abortion is right or not. Now the end result is the same, Im a vegetarian by choice and i dislike the practice of abortion(except certain cases like rape,or the mother's life being endangered). The srila whatisname has the same end opinions but the reason he has these opinions are very different from mine. It irks me to think that if it came to a debate , said specimen would be on my side.
But is he a lesser evil than perhaps those who would disagree? I think not.

Books and Movies

While reading Pather Panchali , I could not help but compare the average Indian Novel with the average Bollywood movie. Ok so average Indian book is a misnomer. The books are certainly not average. Perhaps I should be comparing Art movies with the Bollywood potboilers. Anyway the best Indian books by Indian authors mainly deal with typical Indian lives. Typical as the authors know it. But the books are almost always devoid of happy endings. The book normally ends at some point of the life of the major character with some things left unresolved. Certainly i can't remember a they lived every happily ever after ending. On the other hand , the movies almost always have a happy ending. The poor villager overthrowing the zamindars. The angry young man getting rid of the oppressors. Deaths of only minor or supporting characters. And while i accept unhappy endings in books, I know that i too would not accept unhappy endings in the typical Bollywood movie. The good guys must win and if it involves some fight sequences so much the better.

Giving the US the Middle Finger

I was reading Miss Indra Nooyi's remaks about the 5 continents being equivalent to the five fingers (lets leave aside the USA not being a continent , left to themselves Americans believe the USA is the entire universe) and stating the US is the middle finger!
The speech is somewhat humorous has some lessons , but of course it would be too much to expect Americans to think rationally or logically. They have reacted as expected, Pepsi Co. have published an apology , Miss Nooyi has made all the appropriate noises. So much for free speech.