Mundane 2...

When I admire the wonder of a sunset or the beauty of the moon, my soul expands in worship of the Creator.
- Mahatma Gandhi
Yes thats a sunset from our terrace! since we are building another floor up, I hope I will be able to get still better sunset pic than this :D

On other thoughts, ironically(ironically because i have quoted Gandhiji), SM got 8 oscars, and i wonder,"Poverty in India still sells?". By the way, if people are celebrating in the name of acceptance of indian cinema on international scale, then, have they themselves accepted the movie? I used to hear lot of protests till the very last week. Really...people forget so soon!

Trapped in an Ice Cube...

Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance.
-George Bernard Shaw

Token of good times...

Truth is stranger than fiction; fiction has to make sense

-Rosten Leo

The laughing philosopher...

Ask a philosopher 'what is philosophy?' or a historian 'what is history?' and they will have no difficulty in giving an answer. Neither of them can really persue his own descipline without knowing what he is searching for. But ask a mathematician 'what is mathematics?' and he may justifiably reply that he does not know the answer but this does not stop him from doing mathematics
-Francois Lasserre
Logic is invincible because in order to combat logic it is necessory to use logic
-Pierre Boutroux
An intellectual is a man who doesnt know how to park a bike
-Spiro Agnew
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends upon the unresonable man.
-George Bernard Shaw
All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusion is called a philosopher
-Ambrose Bierce
Lecturing is transfer of information from notes of lecturer to notes of students without anything passing through the minds of either.
-Unknown
And...yes..the plant is really strange one we have, the parent had lot of hair like leaves but the one you see in the pic has something similar to rose leaves hehe :D

Invaded...

Just for a few moments, put aside your thoughts and just imagine...there is an alien invasion (and these invaders are god-like aliens not the terrible ones shown in american movies) and these friendly aliens sign a friendship pact with humans. The aliens have hyperadvanced technology and they have their own different style of (near ideal) civilization and they are ready to share all this information with us. Now, a revolution happens on earth. Suddenly there is an end to terrorism, global warming is made nil, no recession, no countries instead a single identity called earth(hence no wars), all politicians are scrapped(instead we have just administrators)and, all cities are rearranged so no traffic jams, no housing problems, no water and food shortages. So...there is an end to all the problems!
Now; what will happen to you?
Yes, you will be happy, of course a dream has come true after all. (As time passes, maybe you will realize that you have nothing much to do, life might get boring but anyway, thats not the point). What i am driving at is, you might face with something like a loss of identity. We always keep some part of our identity as a reaction to something that is outside and exactly this is what you will lose. For example, if you are a religious person, you will no longer need some aspects of religion. Most people say, they believe in god, but very few people believe in god out of pure love and most of them do because they ‘need’ faith. They need faith to fight uncertainties of life. Their faith exists as a reaction to fear. Now, its no longer needed. Also, you dont need moral code that religion gives, as it is built into your style of (alien)civilization, hence now you can no longer call yourself a ‘good person’. We call ourselves as 'good people' because 'bad people' exist. If everyone gets included into 'good people', we can no longer have sense of being a 'good person', rather you will 'just be' and i dont know how many of us like 'just being'. Most of us will lose lot of 'content' in their life and their life will become sort of 'empty'. Now, why will you have this 'empty' feeling? because till now, the locus of your life were not 'yourself' but it was something else, it was the world outside.
When we are children, we are mentally free but as we grow up, our focus shifts to education, career, needs and survival. For most people, their thinking becomes centered around these things and slowly, over a period of time, these things become the main locus of their life and people start defining everything based on this locus. We even define what we want in our relationships based on this. For example, (this is what I hear from most people about friendship)"we 'need' friends to share our 'burdens'", is defining friendship in a negative way instead of saying that "I want to make someone a friend because I like him and because I want to". Maybe that’s why there is a difference between friendships made during childhood and friendships we make when we grow up, because we have defined the relatiohship half-heartedly. If we are thinking about everything in this fashion, then maybe we are putting forward an excuse 'the world is not a good place' for not being better ourselves.
I am not saying that there is anything wrong with working for survival but just that maybe we are overdoing something. Someone has said that there is nothing wrong in losing but its definitely wrong to become a ‘loser’, so on the same lines i will say, there is nothing wrong with struggling but its definitely wrong to become a 'struggler'.
Yeps; the pic is some leaf, but i dont remember which tree, lol, :D

Fressshh...

When i was in school, they(here "they" means teachers, children's bookwriters, elders etc aka 'the authority') used to tell us stories. The story used to begin with something like- "Once upon a time, living in some village, there were two neighbours. First one was a kind, noble, hardworking man. Second one was exactly opposite. He was a lazy, cruel, and unhelpful man...." and such stories used to end with- "So what is the morale of the story? Good always wins over the evil". I believe even now the children are being told such stories, maybe with some modifications like the two neighbours living in a city instead of a village, but i guess the core remains the same. The point is, why we teach children what is just not true? why not tell them that the fittest is the one who survives and its the law of (dear and beautiful) nature? Will it not prepare them to face hard facts of reality instead of ultimately learning them by first experience? There are two institutions which i feel are very similar, and i doubt were invented by the same person, one is school and another one? ofcourse jail :D. Yes, what can be more inhuman way of taming a (enthusiastic, bubbling with energy) child than to make it sit for 8 hours a day at one place feeding all information into its tiny brain? By the way, how many of you remember clauses of Treaty of Versoy? if you dont remember,and it didnt make any difference in your life then why did we all learn it? I learnt many things long after i graduated, things that really matter to lead a normal life but we dont even get a scent of it in the whole two decades of education.(On the lines of Treaty of Versalles, did you know that during the second world war, when Hitler successfully occupied France, he made French people sign the decree of surrender(aka Second armistice) in the same train bogie in which germany was made to sign decree of surrender during the first world war? but no, we want children to become obidient citizens and not pride individuals who fight for their rights, aint it? And in education when a person is named evil, for him, pride translate to ego and it becomes something evil.(By the way, didnt our own gandhiji say that a person is not evil but its the tendancy that is evil and we should be against the tendancy and not the person?)
Now a days i heard that there is some innovation happening in schools, especially in field of blooming creativity in children, (shall we call this PZT effect? (a deliberate mistake in the name PZT hehe i dont want to get sued :D) u know the movie, a child who is highly creative but keeps failing in exams? and then there comes AK the superteacher? anyways..:p) and now all parents want to unravel hidden(?) talents in their children. Folks watch the movie and what parents remember after coming out of theater is the shining face of a 'bright smart child' and what they promptly forget is that the movie was related to autism and doesnt apply as it is, to all children. But I guess its not fault of the parents, as every child has 'learning disability' to some extent isnt it? Okay i am being a bit sceptical here, and children really do have potential, but still, if everyone gets creative, shall we be able to call it creativity? And on the other hand, imagine, how this creativity thing gets implemented in school. There are lectures(lectures!) dedicated(fixed dedicated one hour for doing art exercises after learning "Structure of indian parliament" for one hour!) where the teacher(not superteacher AK this time but some middle class lady who does teaching just because she has a BEd (and she has BEd because she couldnt get admission to any other better course) and who has come to school today after having quarrel with her husband on grocery bills) keeps telling 'be creative.. be creative..Rohan if you arent creative enough in this term, you will lose the grade!'. And also, on the top, the "creativity homework"(aka, another headache for parents who are already doomed uncreative owing to their grown up age!). Anyways, my own schooling was highly uncreative by todays standards but(i dont like blowing my own horn but still :d) when i learnt photography, it didnt get me into any trouble. I agree that some things are best taught at a certain age but declaring all children having creative instincts is a bit overdoing it. (instincts-means something vague and fuzzy, which cannot be described in words, which cannot be accepted and cannot be denied on solid grounds, you remember the monster who cant be killed during the day, during the night....?). I believe i was fortunate that my parents let me be myself and have a natural childhood and didnt try to unravel any (hidden?) talent in myself. Now, when children have so much burden of studies, why to add another subject to increase the already excessive academic competition?
Hmmm....yea, the pic shows fruits on some nearby tree, they give a very beautiful sweetish fragrance when they are fresh!
cheers!:D!!

Musicology

Now there is a wave of reality shows(not again!), and singing competitions happen to be on the top. Now, most of the judges here are renowned(meaning whoever is popular but idle) folks giving suggestions(now that can vary depending on the judge and the episode) to "tomorrow's singers" as they are called. But even though there is so much hype, i have seen that so many of these singers came and went and now we just dont see them anywhere ("Tomorrow never dies" for "Tomorrow's singers"?). Anyway, the point is, no one, i mean no one, says anything against classical music. If there is a singer who has not learnt classical, then he is promptly adviced to learn it, creating an atmosphere like 'your career is doomed if you dont learn it!'. Now i am not against classical or something but i do happen to feel sometimes that, are we overrating importance of classical music? Yes, i agree its age old good indian school of music(and it works beautifully given that we have an amazing variety of songs in india). But again, if you see example of Kishore Kumar and since there can be a marvellous singer like him without learning classical, then maybe classical is not the only option to learn singing. Ofcourse its a matter of opinion and opinions vary from person to person but yes, i do tend to hold the opinion that, the amount of patience required in learning classical might be tiring out many people who want to learn singing and who think that singing is exceedingly difficult to learn as classical happens to be difficult and that it seems to be the only starting point if you want to learn music. I believe there can be many ways of learning and we need to put aside the religion of classical music to which we have so much stuck to, if we want to atleast explore (or lay foundation for)different schools of learning music. That might ("might" :D) help in creating new music and also in making learning more accessible to the common folk(that includes me :D)
Now, the pic is Ganesha :D (this was on the door of our guesthouse in bangalore), lord of all auspicious and sacred things. Since i have started learning music myself, let me say, lord Ganesha, Please guide me!!! :D!!

'Soap' Opera

I switched on the information feeding machine(aka TV) on sunday and everywhere i could find only reality shows. I kept flipping channels and finally got tired and settled down on one of the numbers. Now there is this particular show(name of the show not mentioned because i dont want folks pelting stones on my house!)in which a host(lets call him AB) goes round to folks' houses and chats with the family(with neighbours peeking in from doors and windows(aka-'the great indian bystanders')). Now here is a slight variation from normal 'Saas-bahu' serials, in that this is a 'reality' show, even though we have saas & bahu here as well. Now, AB is quite sober-looking-intelligent(read-cunning)fellow who could do really well in journalism. He asks something like-(this is for the mother-in-law),'Do you feel bad if your daughter-in-law doesnt listen to you?'. Now tell me is there a single mother-in-law in india who can keep quiet after being asked this question?. So the show goes on with these question-answers and whirling on tiresome household topics with AB going round to number of houses(after maybe he himself cant take it any more!).
If you watch this regularly(if you are a housewife or a monk yourself) you will find that AB always goes to only indian middle class houses('flats' they are called in general and 'blocks' in mumbai, and i am really curious to know how these two words got invented). I never saw him in slum areas(counting UN statistics about indian poverty, there is a good chance of going there) or even the super rich ones(this may agree with UN statistics as india is a 'poor-turned-developing country'). There may be reasons for not going there(mainly TRP, because indian-middle-class population is more than combined population of US and Europe), but if we are not showing reality, why call it a reality show?
Now, a few days back there was a contest in this show. Contest of finding a 'super-home-maker'. Here,the plan is, many indian (middle class) home-makers come togather and they take part in games and quizzes ultimately to find the super-home-maker. In the episode that i watched, there were two ladies, with napkins over their eyes so that they cant see anything and their aim was to walk 10 meters straight and then put one vessel on top of another! now, someone will ask, what on earth has this got to do with being super-home-maker? maybe they want to prove that if the super-home-maker goes blind someday, still she can do household chores? (remember Neo, the Matrix superhero, who fights even after going blind?). But fortunately, those who watch these shows dont ask such questions and those who ask questions dont watch these shows.
One alarming observation i had here was that on an average, housewives in india are thin. I dont really know why this is the case(unless AB deliberately chose thinner ones for the contest :D) and another is that when asked,'are you happy?' all of them say,'yes', but strangely, none of them really looks happy. Now if this is the reason we are quite high in the 'happiness index', then maybe we are not happy really but rather we have tailored down our expections.
Anyway, i hope no one from WHO watches this show otherwise there will be another report on malnutrition in india(because when it comes to WHO, the word "thin" translates differently depending upon the region. If its USA, "thin" translates to "fit" and in india "thin" might mean "undernourished").
One good thing about indian media is that most of the channels are not being used for political propaganda. If it were communist russia, then i am sure they could have used it so effectively!( Imagine a saas-bahu serial, there is a noble-minded-bahu and evil-bahu, the noble-minded-bahu makes her husband join communist party, the evil one makes her husband join democrats...and...well...we all know what happens ultimately). There are few channels i know that are being used for political reasons but most of the channels are currently focusing on advertising(and they are damn good at it, if you see that, beauty and health products are selling like soaps now a days!(yes that quote used to be,"selling like soaps" earlier and later on some american authors made it,"selling like pancakes". Anyway, i guess soap is more suitable, being another beauty product :D))
Anyway...the pic is a butterfly on some weed-flower :D, n yep, Happy New Year!!

Simple...

Few quotes by Iris Murdoch :)

-Happiness is a matter of one's most ordinary and everyday mode of consciousness being busy and lively and unconcerned with self.
-Between saying and doing, many a pair of shoes is worn out.
-I think being a woman is like being Irish. Everyone says you're important and nice, but you take second place all the same.
-In philosophy if you aren't moving at a snail's pace you aren't moving at all.
-Anything that consoles is fake.
-Being good is just a matter of temperament in the end.
-Falling out of love is chiefly a matter of forgetting how charming someone is.
-Human affairs are not serious, but they have to be taken seriously.
-I daresay anything can be made holy by being sincerely worshipped.
-Love is the difficult realization that something other than oneself is real.
-One doesn't have to get anywhere in a marriage. It's not a public conveyance.
-Philosophy! Empty thinking by ignorant conceited men who think they can digest without eating!
-The cry of equality pulls everyone down.
-We live in a fantasy world, a world of illusion. The great task in life is to find reality.
-We defend ourself with descriptions and tame the world by generalizing

Yea...the pic is a wildflower. Its some sort of propagative grass-like plant. The leaves and flowers look so simple, like from a child's painting! aint it? :D

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!!

Sunset...

I read a line in The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand that "Men develop brains when they have failed at everything else", Interesting huh? (actually... i dont agree to some of the opinions of Rand hehe). Anyway, that pic is sunset from our terrace. The tower that you see belongs to All India Radio :D)

Mundane life

This picture was taken during my last few days of stay in bangalore. There was this tiny old fashioned house with some empty space in front and lots of trees. I believe it is important to have a calm, safe and ordered routine life. Just to be yourself, without any pretense, without any obligations.

Spidermania...

Yes, that is a spider! It is a different kind I guess, I have never seen it before here. One day I went to our terrace in the morning and saw the fellow there! There was a huge net, the kind they show on national geographic. If you see carefully, the net is reinforced with small white zigzag fibres. The fellow did not find any pray for a whole day, obviously due to wrong choice of place, (aka our terrace :D)and when I checked the next morning, it was gone!
Anyways, I am in a bit low mood(blame it on terror attacks, recession, global warming, population explosion, pollution etc etc...) and want to go into years of 1980s(or still further?1970s..60s..), to enjoy relaxed afternoons in parsi cafes, to watch movies of Amol Palekar, to hear simple melodious songs of Lata(freshly done),to play carrom boards with chalky fingers, to eat Ice-golas with wet hands, to play hide and seek, games of marbles(with my childhood friends of course!), to play cards with my cousins(with worn out suits of playing cards for getting easy 'clues') and Banker, to watch Jungle book, Moglee and Ducktails, Bharat ek khoj, Baje sargam, Des raag on doordarshan(while sitting on the floor on sunday morning parallely eating samosas).

Maiden over...

Photo by - Endevourme
Every morning somewhere at around 9 o clock the doorbell rings. When I open the door I find her standing outside. 'She' is our maid.
I call out loud 'bai has come', and suddenly the house is on alert. All roomies are woken up. Beds are rolled up, newspapers are picked up and it feels like the day has really started. She washes clothes, wipes the floor and does some miscellaneous things (for which she charges 'extra'). Maids are necessary and here good maids are rare. So sometimes I wonder wheather she is for us or its the other way round.
When the first time she tried to talk to us she gave options,'kannada...? telugu...? tamil...?'and we kept nodding "no...no...no...", when we asked "hindi...?", it was her turn to say "no"! So we talk very less. She knows few words like 'paisa', which she happens to utter every month. Whenever soap is finished, she tells us with gestures that she is out of soap and then one of us has to run to gocery shop. We normally give sturdy clothes to her for washing cause she is a bit rough. Delicate clothes go to laundry. She also wipes the floor, then she puts ON the fan and the floor becomes clean and cool.
Being bachelors, all of us are tuned to universal vibes of confusion. So on some days there are no clothes to wash and some days there are too many. So she too has to adjust to this disordered nature of ours, which she does uncomplainingly. There are times when our maid becomes too sincere. We understand that it is time for increment.
She is the only feminine element in our house. Instinctively, this element brings tidiness and order. When outside, we see her many times, a small girl, her daughter walking along by her side. As per the protocol, we never smile. Her daughter looks more like a reduced xerox copy of hers. Now, when everyone is talking of young India, I am not sure what will happen to the little girl. Or she too will become what her mother is. Another maid and another maiden over for India.

...and you feel an intruder

Photo by - Endevourme

Egypt, the country of pyramids and sphinx. 4th November 1922, was the day which saw the most magnificent find in the history of Egyptian archaeology: discovery of mummy of Tutankhamun by Howard Carter.
Carter arrived in Egypt in the year 1891 and he and Mr Carnorvon, the financer, spent some 16 years in search of Tutankhamun's tomb, finally with success. But there is a legend that the tomb was cursed and Carnorvon died within few days of discovery. Eventually, there were many disputes, legal and political, putting the people involved in excavation in not so good position.
Legends apart, the discovery itself carries tremendous value because most of the other tombs were already looted by tomb-robbers and Tutankhamun's tomb was the only one surviving more than three thousand years, untouched.
So much happened in the world during three thousand years and yet the place of the dead was undisturbed, as it was intended to be. An archeologist's job is to excavate and it tells us about ancient history of mankind, but still, do we have a right to break open grave of someone? I wonder. These are feelings of Howard Carter from his own diary about the day when the tomb was opened-
"...Three thousand, four thousand years maybe, have passed and gone since human feet last trod the floor on which you stand, and yet, as you note the signs of recent life around you - the half-filled bowl of mortar for the door, the blackened lamp, the finger mark upon the freshly painted surface, the farewell garland dropped upon the threshold - you feel it might have been yesterday...Time is anhilated by little intimate details such as these, and you feel an intruder..."

Harmony...

Photo by - Endevourme
Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
-Leo Tolstoy

Baawraa Mann...

Photo by - Endevourme

Baawra mann dekhne chala ek sapna...
Baawre se mann ki dekho
Baawri hain baatein
Baawri si dhadkanein hain
Baawri hain saansein
Baawri si karvaton se nindiya tu bhaage
Baawre se nain chaahein
Baawre jharokhon se
Baawre nazaaron ko takna

Baawre se is jahaan mein
Baawra ek saath ho
Is sayaani bheed mein
Bas haathon mein tera haath ho
Baawri si dhun ho koi
Baawra ek raag ho
Ho baawri si dhun ho koi
Baawra ek raag ho
Baawre se pair chaahein
Baawre taraanon ke
Baawre se bol pe thirakna

Baawra sa ho andhera
Baawri khaamoshiyaan
Thartharaati lau ho maddham
Baawri madhoshiyaan
Baawra ek ghungta chaahe
Haule haule bin bataaye
Baawre se mukhde se sarakna

Baawra mann dekhne chala ek sapna...
Lyrics - Baawra mann from Hazaron Khwahishein Aisi

Happy Diwali!!!

All photos - Endevourme
I wish all my blogger friends a very very happy Diwali and a prosperous new year :D!!

All for nothing?

Photo by - Endevourme
A few selected quotes of Karl Marx-
-The production of too many useful things results in too many useless people.
-Religion is the opium of the masses.
-History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.
-The only antidote to mental suffering is physical pain.
-Natural science will in time incorporate into itself the science of man, just as the science of man will incorporate into itself natural science: there will be one science.

Naturally diplomatic...

Photo by - Endevourme
Few selected quotes of Winston Churchill-
-A joke is a very serious thing.
-A politician needs the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month, and next year. And to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn't happen.
-A prisoner of war is a man who tries to kill you and fails, and then asks you not to kill him.
-All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope.
-Broadly speaking, the short words are the best, and the old words best of all.
-Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities... because it is the quality which guarantees all others.
-Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.
-Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfils the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.
-Eating words has never given me indigestion.
-History is written by the victors.
-However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.
-I am an optimist. It does not seem too much use being anything else.
-It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.
-It is a fine thing to be honest, but it is also very important to be right.
-Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.
-Perhaps it is better to be irresponsible and right, than to be responsible and wrong.
-The power of man has grown in every sphere, except over himself.
-There is no such thing as public opinion. There is only published opinion.
-Those who can win a war well can rarely make a good peace and those who could make a good peace would never have won the war.
-Victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival.