Wednesday, December 24, 2008

Animal Farm...






















When i used to belong to the "indian youth"(yes now a days the folk with wierd hairstyles wearing T-shirt and jeans who marches on roads with candles after every 'tragic incidence' in india(and does ONLY that)), i had tremendous interest in politics. I am still young, not that i have grown 'old' :D but rather i will say over a period of time, i have grown 'up'. And while growing up, i lost interest in indian politics (I have seen lot of people dont grow up ever and growing old doesnt necessorily mean growing up :D). I still have academic interest in politics, especially international politics but i find politics in india 'boring'. I dont have any political opinions or inclinations, so if someone wants to say that i am lazy uninterested indian and 'because of such people india is not progressing' then say so, i dont mind. Now a days it has become a fashion to show that 'we are intellectuals' and also a (mis)conception that intellectuals should have opinions about everything. As most fashions are based on "show",there is a belief that it is necessory to 'show' intelligence than actually 'be' intelligent. I find so many of this class in IT. These folk are not only boring but worse, they are irritating. If you are working in Information Technology and you are being paid N-lakhs salary, does it mean that you can comment on anything and everything done by others on the face of the earth? i dont know. In this age of media, everyone around us thinks that they can run the government better than the people who actually run it and if this empty talk at tea time gives them satisfaction of 'participating in democracy(does democracy still sound 'by the people for the people?':D)' then so much the better for them.

Anyway, why i started saying all this is, i recently read Animal Farm by George Orwell. Its a short story in which animals living on a farm decide to become free. They overthrow and oust the human owners of the farm, setting it up as a commune in which, at first, all animals are independent and free. They write commandments like "All animals are equal". However, class and status disparities soon emerge between the different animal species. The story describes how a society's ideologies can be manipulated and twisted by those in positions of social and political power. Soon the commanments start evolving and "All animals are equal" becomes "All animals are equal but some are more equal than others" and so on. This book was originally written to reflect on Stalinist russia and we need to understand that we live in a society that believes 'everything under communism is bad', but my advice, dont read the book from this point of view. Read the book as a story and you will find that it gives interesting thoughts on human society and classes in general(including india where people say we have unity in diversity).

On Orwell's lines, i will say that when india became independent we had started with a commandment "all indians are free" but now, maybe , it makes more sense to say "all indians are free but some indians have more freedom than others" :D.

Yea, that pic is some flower from a bunch dad got in a ceremony :D!!

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Lovely flower! hmmmm....now get to read the book.
I guess growing-up is directly proportional to your politics interst!

Junius said...

#Neilina
hey thanks!
it depends actually...somehow i lost interest, there might be others who dont :D

Ashwini said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Ashwini said...

Hi...very well said,yeah just taking out solidarity marches and signature campaignes are not gonna change any situation,neither does the plain talking as its said actions speak more than words....

Anyway,will def read the book u've mentioned..

Thanks for reading my blog...keep posting ur comments further if possible :)

4:44 PM

Junius said...

#Ashwini
hey! thanks fr visiting :D

Ashwini said...

Hey..nps...i read ur comment u posted..I dont have membership of british library,i read novels from a local library in my area as i love to read :)

But I will try to get this book from any of the book stores if available or else if u cud get me a soft copy,that will be great :)

Thanks !!

Keep posting,sharing and commenting :)