Steel...

...my metal :)

The pic is back cover of moi old watch.

Shadows of light...

Lazy warm afternoons...(~sigh~)..:)

I quit…

There is noise in the media that, there has been sudden increase in cases of suicide. Discussions have started on ‘who is to blame?’ (movies?, parents?,competitive stress?), blah blah. Following are some of my thoughts.
1. Its good to discuss this in media, but media guys, please don’t generate a feeling that there is a ‘wave of suicides’. People that are under pathological depression are really suggestible to negative news and creating an atmosphere of suicides might drive some of them towards the edge. I remember reading a news few years back when I was in bangalore. It said, the number of people that comitted suicide in that year in bangalore district was close to few hundreds. Shocking, but these are the normal numbers. So lets not twist numbers to 'make news’.
2. On ‘what The Government should do for this?’, my answer would be, do nothing directly. They should probably fund NGOs that provide helplines. The Government handles most sensitive things with extreme apathy, hope they do something sensible here. Probably they wont do anything much since this is not a politically useful issue, unlike suicides of farmers. Helplines are an absolute need. Most suicides happen in the mornings and there are pathological drives when the person does an attempt. Helplines are useful here. In general, getting psychological help in india is not so easy as it appears. Most people that seek professional help are students and part of educated upper class. As with all systems, it will take time to morph these systems to suit needs of indian people.
3. Schools and parents have been going through TZP effect for past few years and numerous movies are coming that comment on our education system. Creating awareness is welcome, and necessory. But lets not make our schools psychology labs. And lets not depend on wikipedia knowledge when it comes to raising our own children. Most ‘intellectual’ parents around me talk about terms like ‘child abuse’, ‘repression’ and techniques on how best to improve emotional makeup of their children. Yes, childhood is a sensitive period, but not all children that go through child abuse get psychological problems and not all psychopaths have had child abuse. Psychology is better left to professionals and lets not bring it home to be discussed over lunch table. Most of our abilities, (including mental resilience) develop with resistance, and its better to leave children to themselves and let nature take care of things, instead of doing experiments & overprotecting them.
4. Its extremely incorrect to call people who attempt suicide ‘cowards’. I have seen a person read newspaper about a guy who comitted suicide and call him a ‘coward’ because he chose to end his life because of some family problems. Suicides are done for reasons that the person thinks are severe enough to end life and usually there are more deeper problems that drive a person to suicide than ‘failure in exams’ mentioned in the newspapers. Suicide is extremely personal thing and I think its really very immature to comment on a person without even knowing him.
5. Do I believe in right to end one’s life? I think its ‘yes’. Cronically ill patients for example, should have the option instead of spending life in pain and misery. It is a personal choice really. There should be legal and medical approval system of course. Adopting indian legal system to accommodate this is out of question for another 50 years.

The pic is some bird. Innocent little things dont really have a choice, they must always live, isnt it?
Cheers!!!

Drops of life...

Nothing lasts forever. Might it be 2009 or might it be recession. For me it is stagnation. Finally there are signs of beginning of change. Lets hope its for better.
The pic was taken sometime during the rains this year, I dont remember much :)
Cheers!!!

Remembering good times...

Relax n smile :)

Orwellism-2

Few quotes by George Orwell (Part-II)
- Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence. In other words, it is war minus the shooting.
- Society has always seemed to demand a little more from human beings than it will get in practice.
- The best books... are those that tell you what you know already.
- The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection.
- The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it.
- To survive it is often necessary to fight and to fight you have to dirty yourself.
- War is war. The only good human being is a dead one.
- We may find in the long run that tinned food is a deadlier weapon than the machine-gun.

The pic is some unknown flowers. Cheers!

Orwellism...

I am reading “Down and Out in Paris & London” by George Orwell and its fantastic. I knew Orwell as an author of “Animal farm” and “1984”, but this book is entirely different. Its more of an autobiography, about his days spent in poverty in these high cities. This is not about the upper class life that we read in many novels, but its more the opposite, its real and its honest. Here you don’t look at poor people with pity as is done in most movies and literature. But you see them as real human beings. And you see their life, not with prejudice of misery, filth and charity but you see it more subjectively, through the eyes of an author who has himself been through it. It comments about difference between how people like us perceive poverty and the real hand to mouth poverty. More than this, you see Orwell as a person (instead of a novelist) and you perceive people through eyes of Orwell. After reading this, I am beginning to feel that I am understanding Orwell better, understanding what could be motives behind style of “Animal Farm" and “1984”.
I believe, I somehow relate to ‘world view’ of Orwell, atleast as far as people are concerned. Though it is not same as ‘moral dreamworld’ view that most people today seem to be believing in, but its more close to reality and its wonderful nonethless.
All this talk of poverty and inequality reminds me of a dialogue from the movie "Enemy at the Gates", it goes - "We tried so hard to create a society that was equal, where there'd be nothing to envy your neighbor. But there's always something to envy. A smile. A friendship. Something you don't have and want to appropriate. In this world-even a Soviet one- there will always be rich and poor. Rich in gifts...poor in gifts. Rich in love...poor in love."
Hmmm...the picture is flower of some weed :)
Cheers!

Samayeechyaa Shubhrakalyaa...

Few quotes by George Orwell (Part-I)

- A dirty joke is a sort of mental rebellion.

- All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting.

- Each generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.

- Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac.

- Mankind is not likely to salvage civilization unless he can evolve a system of good and evil which is independent of heaven and hell.

- Men are only as good as their technical development allows them to be.

- Men can only be happy when they do not assume that the object of life is happiness.

- Most people get a fair amount of fun out of their lives, but on balance life is suffering, and only the very young or the very foolish imagine otherwise.

Hmm...the flowers in the pic remind me of an age old marathi song Samayeechyaa Shubhrakalyaa. I am not sure many people have heard this. You can find one version that was sung by Arya online.

Cheers~!

1984...

Those who control the past, control the future. And those who control the present, control the past.
- quote from 1984 by George Orwell.

Animal Farm

That is a stray dog, inside some sort of sewage pipe. As I later found out, it is injured. Hope it gets well soon.
Cheers!!!

All thorns have a purpose

Tender...

I have nothing important to write :)
Cheers!!!

Happy Diwali !!!

...and wish you all a prosperous new year ahead :)

And yes the pic is with 4 seconds exposure. I was worried of camera not being steady since I have no tripod, but somehow managed without that. Surprisingly (I mean with my shaky hands) I could take many more pics with long exposure but me too tired to crop resize and post them all. Maybe I will keep them for next diwali.

Cheers!!!

Ssshhhh...!!!

Remains of the last rain

Dasara...

Its dasara today and the flowers you see in the pic are 'zendu'(I dont know english name for these). Dasara time, and you see loads of these in the market.
This plant is naturally growing near my house and I am wondering about botanical question of 'how did this propagate here?'
But I like them like this better, on the plant, than prunning them, making garlands and tying them somewhere on the door and putting them in dustbin the next day.
There is also a tree nearby, leaves of this tree are exchanged as 'gold' on dasara and sometime back I saw that the tree was looking leafless and barren as it was robbed of its leaves for dasara.
I agree people cant exchange real gold on dasara owing to sky high price of gold but if you spoil trees like this, then probably you are also poor in some other sense.
I am not criticising dasara tradition, but isnt letting things grow naturally, a still older tradition?
Anyways, be it garlands, be it flowers, these are mere symbols, and meanings behind symbols are more important than the symbols themselves. Those who understand that, are the really ones who celebrate. Others are like sardarjees in that joke, you point them to something important, and all they keep looking at, is the finger!

Happy Dasara again!!! Cheers!!! :)

Introspecting...

Evening...

Durogh i musluhut amez
Bih uz rastee bu fitna ungez.

"An untruth that preserves peace is better than truth that stirs up troubles."
- An ancient saying (from Travels into Bokhara by Alexander Burnes)

Past

We've got a throwaway culture. People, plastic, pop bottles, principles.
Everything's disposable. The nation's suffering from memory disorder.
Two hundered years ago? Impossible to imagine.
A hundred years ago? Too hard to think about.
Fifty years ago? Ancient history.
A movie made ten years ago is considered old.
A TV series made five years ago is a classic.
Most books have three months shelf life.
Sports organizations no sooner build stadiums than they blow them up so they can replace them with newer, uglier ones.
The grade school I went to was torn down and replaced by a strip mall.
Our culture's so obsessed with what's new, we distroy the past and pretend it never happened.
I want to write an essay that convinces people that the past is important.
I want my readers feel it and smell it and appreciate it.
- Creepers (David Morrel)