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The Fear of Philosophy

2010-08-08T13:15:00.001+05:30

I have been contemplating this colossal edifice for some time now. Though philosophy, philosophical discourse or philosophical debate does fascinate me; I find far more intriguing the sense of fear I feel among most of the people I have come into contact with whenever this topic is broached. I am fascinated by how people treat this branch of knowledge.

Many a time, I have had this thought that philosophy is inextricably linked to science, technology and life in a way that I can't even begin imagine. But I feel I have a faint glimmer of a grasp on this relationship. It stems from my first understanding that life depends on technology. Now, before you disagree with it, remember that even the clothes you wear come under the purvey of technology. Without technology we wouldn't be any different from the animals we so romantically consider ourselves superior to.

Technology in turn depends heavily on science. Rather, I'd go so far as to say that without science there'd be no technology. For in order to be able to manipulate the elements of our environment and use them to fabricate various devices (technological innovation or invention), we'd require considerable knowledge about the elements of our environment; a collection of facts if you will. Now, facts are collected first by searching for and then analysing phenomena that occur in our environment. Ergo, I feel I can safely categorize science as a search and analysis tool.

But a search in an arbitrary manner would end up being sub-optimal to the extreme. Ergo, this search and analysis tool requires directions of where and how to search for whatever is being sought. But this presumes that one already knows what one is looking for. This is the purvey of philosophy. Philosophy analyses the environment, and conveys to science the location (in the field of knowledge) where the solution being sought is most likely to be found. Ergo, science depends on philosophy.

In order to facilitate philosophy's search for a place where that which is sought is most likely to be found, one has to be able to determine that something ought to be sought. That can only be determined via the sense of some kind of shortcoming. Life's shortcomings alert us to the absence of something that would reduce the difficulty of some aspect of our life (perhaps one of our daily chores). This shortcoming would alert us to the presence of a problem that ought to be solved. Ergo, life tells philosophy that something ought to be sought: philosophy depends on life.

Assuming the accuracy of the above mentioned relationships, one can come to the conclusion that philosophy is a very important link in the cycle that facilitates the growth of our knowledge of our environment. Assuming the accuracy of the preceding statement, why do some people still fear philosophy? Philosophy does alert us to the absence of absolutes. Some people acknowledge and accept this absence, some people do not accept it, yet others refuse even to acknowledge it. The two latter categories tend to live in a varying measures of fear. But I have seen that people fear philosophy irrespective of their attitude towards the absence of absolutes.

I have invested quite a lot of my time in the study of philosophy and I find that there are five kinds of philosophies. I make no claims as to the exhaustiveness of, or the mutual exclusivity of the elements in the following list.

Philosophy of science.
Philosophy of society.
Philosophy of space (or matter or the tangible universe).
Philosophy of mind (or soul or god or spirits or the intangible universe).
Philosophy of time.

I have differentiated the various philosophies into these five categories on the basis of the concepts dealt with within their domains. E.g. the philosophy of science conducts discourse on the concepts of (among other things) optimization of process, efficiency (or economy) of operation, and so on. Philosophy of society mostly conducts discourse on the concepts pertaining to the functioning of a society.

The formation of a social structure by say the division of society into various strata could be seen as the result of a mild influence of concepts falling under the purvey of the philosophy of science onto the concepts falling under the purvey of the philosophy of society. This could be ascribed the natural tendency of man to attempt to bring order to chaos. But when this tendency gives way to obsession, and the philosophy of science is imposed on the philosophy of society, cruel social doctrines and inhumane practises come into being. The most apt examples I can think of are ethnic purges, experiments in eugenics and our own caste system (which I consider a failed experiment in eugenics).

These phenomena notwithstanding, the use of concepts from one kind of philosophy to obfuscate the nuances of concepts or even whole concepts of any other kind of philosophy is not inconceivable. Ergo, it is my hypothesis that the fear of philosophy stems from the fear of the absence of absolutes among those who find cause for fear in this absence. And those who accept and acknowledge said absence, do fear philosophy because they realize that there is ample opportunity for the employ of insidious tendencies within philosophical discourse.

The Return to Darkness.

2010-06-22T09:13:00.002+05:30

This happens to be the latest album recorded by the Indian Metal band Demonic Resurrection. When I heard the songs for the first time I remember saying to myself that this is not the same as their earlier creations, there was something that conveyed the suggestion of perfection in them. Then in the early days of 2010, I received the package from Sahil (the lead singer), it contained a Tshirt, a CD, sticker and other merchandise. I immediately popped the disk into my drive and sat back.

The first track of this album, their intro which I figured they'd use whenever they'd take the stage on one of their concerts, sets the stage and prepares you for what lies ahead. Every track of this album gleams with genius. Then it dawned on me that these tracks seem to continue from each other. No, this is not a euphemism for “they all sound essentially the same”. They are as different from each other as can be. What I meant to imply is that these tracks when stitched together cause a subtle narrative to emerge. Its kinda like conveying an image without drawing one. It seems to me like they have actually used the mood of each song to depict a different stage in a journey. There is little suggestion of a saga in the lyrics of the songs, its subliminal, and that is what I absolutely relished about these tracks.

In a conversation after one of their concerts, Daniel (the lead guitarist) told me that this was their intention all along. They wanted to tell a story, and they did. But what I consider a stroke of genius is that the first song, the instrumental, conveys a feeling of foreboding and is akin to the kind of premonition one gets before something momentous begins. All the succeeding songs have endings that don't tie things up, they leave some things unsaid, they are like cliffhangers that leave the listener wondering “what next?”. They have done it with such subtlety that the revelation just adds to the pleasure brought on by their musical creativity.

The last song, Omega I, ties things up sweetly, and the way in which they wrap up the song with a kind of homage to what is in my opinion one of their best songs (Beyond the Darkness) is amazing. In an interesting way, this adds a feeling of finality to a song that suggests the end of a journey or a saga. This album, after all things are considered is a quantum leap from their previous ones. They seem to have mastered the art of album making with this one, and have (inadvertently or otherwise) set the bar pretty high for their next albums.

I still feel unable to express my appreciation for this album. Its not just one thing about it, I guess that is why I am writing this post. It is a great album on so many levels. The musical creations themselves are orgasmic, I haven't any other word to describe them by. The ordering of the tracks in the album is what I have been ranting about since my first word. The way the mood of each song suggests a stage in a journey takes your breath away. Then there is this aspect, the lyrics and even title of the tracks they seemingly skip on the surface of this emergent narrative like a stone skipping over water, only, unlike the stone, the lyrics never sink into the narrative. On one level, you can enjoy these songs as individual entities, but when you become aware of this narrative that emerges out of the continuity between the songs in this album, you get thrown into a maelstrom of pleasure at a level you never before knew existed.

I could fill a couple of paragraphs with my interpretation of the story which is told in this album but I feel that would be a major spoiler. I suggest getting the album and basking the the brilliance of its creation. I don't care if I am being redundant but I'd like to say that this is the most complete album I have had the privilege of listening to. The ordering of the tracks, the way the mood changes from track to track, the way they have been crafted, this is a band that has arrived, and I feel we can safely look forward to more works of musical genius from them.

I am not going to talk about the individual tracks, for if I do, I might end up sounding like a schoolgirl admiring the object of her affection.

Non-Possessionism.

2010-05-14T18:05:00.001+05:30

This is one of my thought experiments. I have been toying with this idea for the past couple of years.

This universe and everything within it, are yours to protect, yours to care for, to have feelings for, yours to love. But, each and every sentient entity in this world is NOT yours to own or yours to take. And, when one talks of the non-sentient, the concept of ownership is an ill-defined one. One can "own" a sentient being, if that being gives one that permission, that authority, that right. And that right is that sentient being's to take away from one.

Just because one loves another, it does not give one the right to expect much less even demand love in return. Similarly, when one gives one's all to another, firstly one cannot expect the other to accept the gift of one's all and secondly, one has no right to expect or demand the other's all. In other words, one cannot impose a quid pro quo.

This thought experiment follows from the philosophies of Khalil Gibran, from his book "The Prophet". He says about children:

"Your children are not your children... They are the sons and daughters of life's longing for itself... Thought they are with you they do not belong to you..."

One soul cannot "own" another. This is not a very well defined concept because we have barely skimmed the surface of the concept of "being". During my explorations of the concepts associated with Embodied Cognitive Science, I came across a particular problem known as the Frame of Reference problem. Basically the problem stems from the fact that it is not possible for a person (the designer/programmer) to understand and see the world as a robot would see it. In other words, it is not possible for a person to comprehend or even imagine the perspective of a robot that s/he created.

This concept can be extended out of Embodied Cognitive Science and into Sociology or whatever the study of people in general can be called. It is not entirely possible for one person to see the world exactly as another person would see it. Ergo, when one cannot see the world in the exact way that another does, how can one hope to control another in such a way as to facilitate the other's meaningful operation in the world? Ergo, one cannot own the other, no matter what relation exists between them, no matter how long they have been related.

In your care, your love, your feelings, the only degree of control one has over the other is that one can decide whether or not to care for, feel for or love the other, and whether or not and how much of one's all to give to the other.

Wanting control over or ownership of another being is a natural thing. It is a natural tendency of the human psyche to want to be in control of situations and others. Fantasies are harmless as long as they remain fantasies. Fantasies of control over and ownership of other beings is a natural craving. But it is not fundamentally acceptable to act those fantasies out.

I have titled this Non-Possessionism and not Anti-Possessionism because in order to oppose something you have to first acknowledge its existence.

Well... C'est la vie

2010-03-13T01:57:00.002+05:30

Here I sit. In my lab. Knowing not what to do. They say that when a research scholar defines for himself the exact niche in which he wants to work, he feels this unprecedented sense of upliftment and belonging. It is made out to be almost like a miniature nirvana. I have known the general area in which I would like to work for some time now (since about 2004). That is almost six years. When I mentioned it in its entirety to my professor, he told me that to work that entire field to perfection would take something life fifty years. Okay, I set myself the task of narrowing down my perspective. And I don't really know where that got me.

Initially, when I took my first few steps down this road, I dreamt of inventing AI, artificial intelligence, the thing that will either enable us humans as a species to reach heights beyond our wildest dreams or lead to our extinction (that depends on which brand of science fiction you read and choose to believe in). I believe in the latter but don't completely dismiss the former. I still do dream of inventing AI. Don't ask me why, but I am not really bothered by the gravity of the latter of the two possible eventualities that I mentioned in the preceding sentence.

Well, anyhow, I started marching down this path with steadfast resolve. My aim was not just to write a gazillion lines of code and somehow hope that it would behave intelligently. I know that is what AI has come to mean in the last couple of years and to say I disagree with that approach would be an extremely polite transcription of my thoughts about that philosophy. My aim was to study and try to understand how the human brain (and of course the brains of other animals) works, not at the cellular level, but at the functional level. When my professor came to know of my intentions, he introduced me to the works of several other pioneers in the field of cognitive neurology. Among them were Dr. V. Ramachandran, Prof. Rodney Brooks, Dr. Oliver Sacks, etc.

I became acutely interested not in the work but in the philosophy behind the work of Prof. Rodney Brooks. He had founded and pioneered a field called Embodied Cognitive Science. I was completely taken up by the entire concept of embodiment. Based on that I built a whole theoretical framework to guide my research work. My professor then told me that if I wanted to do this sincerely in its entirety, it would take about fifty years. Then I set about narrowing it down to one single atomic sub-topic which I could research for my dissertation.

It was while I was engaged in this narrowing down, I stumbled across a concept known as the two stream hypothesis. This gave me a further idea about the construction that goes on in the human brain. That is how when we see parts of an object we see it as the sum of the parts and not the parts individually. i.e. how we construct a version of reality in our heads for ourselves.

This to me was like being Alexander the Great, it was that exhilarating. I kept surging forward from revelation to revelation. I was discovering my own little universe and it was not all that little after all. That is when I drew this diagram which hangs on the wall of my lab, right above my desk, in which the two stream hypothesis sits sweetly inside one of the stages of the framework I created. It bifurcated that stage into two separate categories. One for object classification, and the other for sensorimotor control.

There are several existing structures that fulfil the requirements of an object classification architecture. I created one of my own to add to that assortment. And so far, to me it does not pose any problems. But sensorimotor control, that proves to be a different matter altogether. I am pretty sure that once I have that figured out, the rest will practically be a cakewalk.

So that is what I have chosen as the topic for my dissertation. This is where it gets hairy. Its kinda like I have spent all this time digging a tunnel and surging forward with unrelenting force and I suddenly find myself in a medium I do not identify. Digging furiously straight ahead and now I am in a place that causes me to lose my sense of direction. It is as if you had seen a light at the end of the tunnel and raced toward it with speed that matched your enthusiasm, but instead of finding your destination, at the end of the tunnel, you find a junction and another set of tunnels to choose from.

Loss of direction is a really crippling thing. Once you have a sense of direction, you can work. You can do something or the other and go ahead... progress. But when you don't have a sense of direction, you are left completely helpless, as if all alone in the vast empty expanse that is space. All alone, marooned. That is what you feel.

I have always been cursed with this obsession to find my own direction. Something that I can call my own and in the absence of such a sense of direction all the other inadequacies of life seem to get amplified. Just when you feel that life cannot possibly get any worse and that you have reached the ultimate low point of your entire existence which in itself seems to pale in significance compared to almost anyone you come across. You start to slip and slide along the slippery slopes that form the rim of the edge that leads to the oh so familiar depths of depression.

You are in this area which seems somewhat like a junction of the sewer system of some large place. The gaping mouths of the pipes which surround you spherically are the different paths you can take. But the tragedy of the whole deal is that you do not know which one you can take. Then as you are wildly flitting about, seemingly aimlessly, staring deep into the yawning mouths of each pipe as you contemplate it and try to figure out whether you could possibly succeed in your quest by going down it, you see a faint glimmer in one. But, you thought you saw a light at the end of the tunnel that led you to this place.

At first you seem inclined to believe that it is just your eyes playing tricks on you. Maybe all that wishful thinking has resulted in your seeing light at the far end of the tunnel. You move on to the next tunnel, the next gaping maw, you see nothing. You look back at this one and you again see that barely discernible flicker of a suggestion that this path might lead you to somewhere, somewhere past this impasse. You repeat this several times, contemplating several different paths, each one of them as dark as the abyss that stared back at you. You begin to feel paranoid that this should come prancing into your eyesight just when you are about to descend into the depths of despair, when you are teetering on the edge of self loathing and depression.

Finally, after much deliberation that seems to have taken an eternity in itself, you take a leap (much rather a dive) of faith into that tunnel at the end of which there seemed to be a faint suggestion of light.

And the journey begins all over again.

The Best Day of My Life

2009-10-31T11:49:00.002+05:30

The day didn't start like any other day. I awoke at half past six in the morning, about four hours earlier than my usual wake up time. I had to meet Prof. Navjyoti Singh and we were to go to a temple nearby. To me he looks a lot like a wide-eyed Albert Einstein. We had to meet and go to a place nearby called Nanakramguda. We met at the mess, we being Prof. Navjyoti, two of my colleagues, a wise man who was visiting us- Ravindra Sharma (affectionately known as guruji) and myself. We set off after breakfast.

Prof. Navjyoti and guruji went together on my colleague's bike and me and my two colleagues were to get there, the three of us on my bike, Thumpy. Thumpy is more than capable of carrying three people but the problem was that all 3 of us were fairly big built so I had to make two trips to take both of them there. Once all of us were there, we proceeded to enter the temple. I usually do not enter temples, this time I don't know why I felt compelled to enter. And we had a chat with the head priest. He told us that the temple we were standing in now was the new one, they had to change it cos the old one had gone into disrepair. And the new structure was approximately 400 years old. We got blessings and we put on our footwear and walked into the temple garden adjacent to the well. There we sat, lit up and talked about society and the caste system and the problem of untouchability.

The place was serene, and full of greenery. Here and there through the trees we could see the glass and chrome of these really tall buildings that housed multi-national corporations- software companies. The contrast was bordering on irony. Here we had this sanctuary of serenity, spirituality and sanity amid this hustle and bustle of “modernity”. This was the first time I had been to a temple that my family was not connected to. Even the famous Tirupati temple had on its board of trustees a member of my extended family. All these factors, my being an outsider to this temple, it being more than 400 years old, my being there with two men of great wisdom and the contrast between this temple and its surroundings, made it feel really surreal to me.

When the clock struck 10, we decided we had to leave as Prof. Navjyoti had a class to take and I had a class to prepare for. At half past eleven, I headed off for my class. A friend of mine, Devansh was to make a presentation on Searle's Chinese Room Experiment, an experiment in artificial intelligence. The presentation was under the auspices of my professor and research guide Prof. Bipin Indurkhya.

The night before, I had a conversation with Devansh about the presentation and suggested a minor change that would enable him to get his point across slightly more lucidly. That did help to a certain extent, but a point after that again let the class descend into a non-terminating loop of question and answers, to me the questions that prevented the loop from terminating seemed naïve. For some reason I glanced back from my position in the front row of the class and I saw that the director of our university Prof. Rajeev Sangal had also come to listen to what Devansh had to say. I would like to think I had a premonition of what was to come.

Seeing that the class had entered a non-terminating loop, Prof. Bipin came forward and pointed out a few lacunae in our arguments and our understanding of certain things. He split the class into two groups- the Dualists (those who believe that the mind and body are two separate things , and some of them believe that the mind can never be understood), and the Monists (those who believe that the mind and body are indistinguishable and inseparable from each other, I belonged to this group). During his talk, Prof. Rajeev said he wanted to bring a point up, he took Prof. Bipin's place at the chalkboard and started speaking about the gap that sometimes exists between theory and observation.

We observe phenomena, and based on our observations, we formulate a theory. But if we ever encounter an observation that does not fit into our theory, he said that if we choose to ignore the observation for the sake of maintaining our theory we would be acting unscientifically. To elucidate, Prof. Sangal talked about seeing the external world and understanding it and that external data comes from our senses and that data is used to observe the world. At this point, Prof. Bipin countered by saying that there is no seeing and that there is not external world, it is all a representation within our own minds, furthermore it is not the sense organs that perceive the world but it is our brain that does all the perceiving.

This argument sparked of a scientific-philosophical debate of a magnitude that dwarfed my premonition like a planet dwarfs a person. I was watching two philosophies collide. Prof. Bipin is a monist, and Prof. Rajeev's talk was leaning towards dualism. I had become unaware of every other person in that class. Even their attire, Prof. Rajeev in a traditional kurta and trousers and Prof. Bipin in his usual shirt and shorts had an effect on my perception of this debate

Prof. Rajeev then talked about a hypothetical robot that can feel pain. And then he asked that when the robot's limb was pricked or subjected to some other stimulus, and the robot felt pain, which part of the robot felt it? This added a whole new dimension to the philosophical argument.For some reason, I felt that this was in invalid question.

Imagine watching a tennis match between Roger Federer and Bjorn Borg (the two greatest tennis players in my opinion). Only they were not human sized, they were super giants of astronomical size with unlimited reserves of energy and stamina, and instead of a ball, they were hitting at each other the 10 dimensional multi-verse. That was what this debate was like.

It was a clash between what seemed to be the sum of the classical theories in AI and the radical new theories championed by Cognitive Science. The class started at half past 11 and was to end at 1 but it overshot that time by half an hour and only that much because the professors said that the time is up. We wanted it to continue. We were hungry, some of us were tired, but we wanted to continue listening to this debate.

Were were talking about robots and computers, programs and circuits, but the real issue on the table was whether it is possible to understand what it means to be human. Whether it is possible to understand the human condition. Whether we are justified in approximating the function of the human brain to that of a highly complex computer. This was a debate on whether it was possible to understand the nature of the ultimate truth about ourselves.

I left the class shell-shocked. I had just been witness to a once in a lifetime event and I was reeling from the effect. I headed to lunch, where I met Prof. Navjyoti. I told him that he should have been part of the debate, as he is a professor of philosophy. The next class, after lunch was creative writing, I usually enjoy this class but today, because of the magnitude of the events that I had been through, was unable to involve myself in the class.

In the evening I only remember taking bath because my mind was wandering. I had had only 2.5 hours of sleep the previous night, I was not fatigued but I was totally mentally preoccupied. I was completely unaware of what I did till dinner time. This was the first time I had a lapse in memory without having to take marijuana.

After dinner, there was yet another meeting with guruji, I was waiting for 2030 when the meeting would begin. The first people there were Prof. Rajeev and his daughter Sapna, a good friend of mine. While I was trying to recount to her the events that transpired in the class today, Prof. Rajeev asked me what I liked about the class. I remember saying that I liked the philosophical nature of the debate and also that it showed us how people argue in academic circles regarding theories and philosophies.

Prof. Navjyoti, Prof. Sangal, guruji, two other professors, and five or six of us research scholars were part of the discussion that evening. It was mostly about society and how modernization is not always good and how traditionalism is not always bad. We talked about a few cases where certain tribal societies had been ruined because of modernization and how how traditionalism had helped keep the society intact, safe and vibrant. And how certain traditions are in place only to make sure that all members of a society have a sense of belonging and involvement.

An evening spent in the company of wise learned men, in conversation about the matters affecting today's society and life in general. We also talked a little about how the resources afforded us by modernity (technology, knowledge, etc.) could be used to make a better society.

The conversation on sociology, and the philosophical debate earlier that day and the visit to the temple at the start of the day, all three of those events are sure to leave lasting events in my mind. Each of these events enabled me to understand each other event in a way I have never seen them before.

The meeting began at 2030 and ended close to 2300. However towards the end of the meeting my sleep deprivation caught up with me and I dozed off for a while. But all in all that day the 28th of October, 2009, yesterday, was the best day of my life so far.

I will die in...

2009-10-09T00:33:00.003+05:30

I will die in peace in the mountains
While riding along their slopes
I don't want any perfumed fountains
Don't want to live with false hopes
I will die doing what I love most
Wandering far and wide
I will not be denied
That which I want most
Dearly
Just me, the road, my bike
A divine menage-a-trois
An orgasmic, long ride
And in my repertoire
The skills for every road
Every street that runs beneath
The wheels of my metal steed
And as part of my last rites
I want not lamenting cries
For I died at my chosen time
In my own chosen style
A metallic riotous fest
Should celebrate my death
Akin to Wacken Open Air
No weeping is needed there
For I have finally gone
To the place where I belong
And I finally am
At peace.

Truth?

2009-08-21T17:00:00.000+05:30

The science of cognition. Cognition, as far as my analysis of the word goes, shares its root word with the words recognition and precognition. Following this line of reasoning and analysis, I have defined cognition for myself as: “the act of realizing that the observed object (it could be tangible or intangible), and the model in my mind, are the same thing”. This observed object could be something that can be touched and felt like a chair or a computer or a person, or it could be intangible like an idea or a thought or a concept or a spoken word.

I wouldn't use the word “know” to describe cognition, since I feel that it is an overloaded and ill-defined word and I am not comfortable using it to define something else.

We can argue that “to know” implies a notion of truth, and that it is not really possible to know truth. This sounds to me like another version of Meno's paradox in which Meno asks Socrates how he can know when he has arrived at the truth when he does not already know what the truth is? (Courtesy Wikipedia) In other words, in order to know anything, one must know everything.

I find that I can neither agree nor disagree with this stand. One one hand, I can see the logic and rationale behind that statement, whereas on the other hand, I can also see that no one ever tries to know everything. It is more like a progression. Our method of cognition is more like a progressive series of theories. When we don't know much, we observe the world around us and formulate a theory or a belief set T₁, then we observe something or discover something that contradicts something within this belief set and we incorporate that new knowledge into T₂: a new theory, world view, belief set, call it what you like. Carrying on like this, we continue to form a long series of theories: T₁, T₂, T₃... and it is our hope that this series will converge one fine day somewhere in the future onto the truth (if such a thing exists).

The funny thing about this process is, an intermediate theory T{T₁, T₂, T₃...} satisfies all the requirements of the believers in that epoch. They are able to interact meaningfully with the relevant environment (whatever subset of the environment their life depends on). For example, at our current belief state, we are able to do everything that our autopoietic instinct commands. Our theories about the far reaches of space may be grossly incorrect, but those reaches of space and our theories about it have little effect on our lives.

Among the various phenomena discussed in class were the interesting cutaneous rabbit illusion , the blinking dots thing, the phantom arm thing and things of this sort. I have not learned enough about them to make any comment other than that to me they are mysteries pertaining to the way our brain processes information. My best guess right now is that those phenomena are the result of the brain's mechanism of compensation for the faultiness of our sense organs. The brain knows that our senses are imperfect and prone to missing out information, hence tries to figure out what was missed even when there was nothing missed out.

As far as the concept of consciousness goes, I have an emergentistic or holistic view of the concept. I do not believe there is a consciousness center in the brain or heart or spleen or any other organ. I believe it emerges out of the various interactions that various parts of our body have with each other. No doubt, the brain is the main information processing organ in the body, but I do not believe that it alone is responsible for consciousness, it is partly responsible in the sense that it has a certain degree of control or governing ability over the interactions of our body parts with each other.

I believe that thought experiments do work, but they will work if and only if the conceptual model we have (of whatever we are contemplating) is precise or as close to precise as humanly possible. Only then will we be able to predict the outcomes of our contemplated actions with a certain degree of accuracy. But when there is a situation which we know precious little about, thought experiments will most likely fail. The best thing about thought experiments is that when conducted in tandem with physical experiments, they can lead to a much better understanding of the world.

Hope

2009-06-27T15:59:00.000+05:30

When the systems of yore have been purged
Whern all pathways have been broken
When into chaos we've all been merged
Something there is that still enables us
To stand
To land
Softly
Sans damage
Through carnage
Escape
Unscathed
Or fight
With the might
Of infinite heroes
Or die
With Heads
Held high
When all the lands seem infertile
And we see no avenues along our path
When the oceans of isolation surround the isle
Something enables us till the very last
To hang on
To the last
Tether
To pray
To hope
When all hope seems
Lost
Distraught
Distressed
With the last drop of blood
Fuelling the heart
Enabling us
To go on
Even while facing
A sure fall
In the face of failure
We strive on
Push forward
Bash on regardless
Hope to steal a win
From te jaws of
Defeat
Hope to stand tall
In the face of a fall
When the bastions of our ideals have been overrun
We still look forward to our day in the sun
And as long as we trust in the view of our minds eye
We stand a decent chance of making it through the night

NAUGHT

2009-06-26T13:50:00.000+05:30

What know'th the man that know'th not loss
What know'th the man that know'th not naught
Why doth he cry when he doth not know
How life was when life was naught

How doth one love when one loves not
How doth one cry when one cries not
Why does the sky seem so near
When the sky is not, the sky is naught

In a sea of mirth one is submerged
In the river of sorrow doth one bathe
The sky of rage teaches one wrath
But does it, or does it not, all come to naught

When is naught not naught
But is naught not, naught but naught
Then how does one, that once was
Come from naught, return to naught

As one goes from naught to naught
One leaves behind marks on the path
Those are seen by those who follow
And one does not end up as naught

Life?

2009-05-11T16:41:00.002+05:30

This is one of those things that every living entity on this planet has in common. Yet we seem to be at a loss when confronted with the question, “What is life?”. I mean, it is not like a non-living entity would walk up to one of us ask with a tap on the shoulder, “Er... excuse me, but I couldn't help but notice that you have life, and I was wondering if you could enlighten me as to what life is”.

Though that situation may never arise, it would do us well to attempt an answer. It would do us well as it would enable us to see life from a new perspective. Maybe we could notice something that had remained unnoticed before. Then there would be many fundamentally different explanations and theories, we could debate them, these theories could grow in magnitude and become religions and we could go to war over the matter of “Which one of us is right?”.

On a more serious note, the answer to “What is life?” or the method of arriving at a suitable answer to it would enable us to analyze life in detail and answer many personal questions. For example, I have always asked myself why it is that we consider our kind of life the only kind of life there is (you know, carbon based, oxygen breathing organisms). Apparently the oxygen breathing part is not a sufficient condition for life as is evident thanks to the many anaerobic bacteria that have been found. So is reproduction.

No one would consider a eunuch to be a non living entity. It is no secret that eunuchs are incapable of reproduction; yet we count them under the living. Ergo reproduction too seems to be a necessary but not sufficient condition for life. So what are the sufficient conditions for life? What condition or group of conditions, which when present guarantee the presence of life?

From my currently limited perspective, I can see one thing. Living things are born, they lead a “life” and then they die; they have a life cycle. They are self sustaining; either they consume certain resources from their surroundings to ensure their own existence or they have all the resources they need for existence within themselves and they die when the resources within themselves are depleted. A partial example for the latter would be insects in the pupa state, hibernating animals, etc.

Life cycles have been ascribed for seemingly inanimate objects too. Stars seem to have a life cycle. They are said to be “born” in a nebula. They live out their lives by running nuclear fusion reactors, first by fusing hydrogen into helium, helium into carbon, carbon into neon, neon into silicon, and finally silicon into Iron. Finally they reach the stage where their core is made up of Iron or some other heavy metal, which they cannot fuse into something heavier profitably, they collapse on themselves and their “life”ends. Their “death” results in either a white dwarf or a neutron star or a black hole (depending on the size of the original star subject to the Chandrasekhar Limit).

If we think of birth as simply a kind of creation and death as simply a kind of destruction, everything around us seems to have its own cycle of creation and destruction. Therefore it does not seem too big a stretch to try and ascribe life to everything. Even man-made objects; tables for example. Tables are created (birth), they serve their purpose which is to say that they support many things on their surfaces, they get damaged and we repair them(life), they eventually fall into disrepair and we discard them, then they are taken apart. Their useful parts are recycled, their combustible parts are incinerated and the rest are discarded as waste (death). This does not seem too big a stretch.

Many living things appear inanimate when observed for just an instant. Sure when observed for prolonged periods of time we can see evidence that suggests growth, self repair and so on. My point being this: what gives us the right to classify anything other than ourselves as living or non living? There are so many things we do not know. The extent of our knowledge of the universe is grossly limited. We do not even know everything about ourselves. We still do not completely understand the workings of our own brain. We still do not know why each and every single strand of DNA on earth is a left handed helix. Well as far as we know there is no physical, structural, functional or chemical explanation for why there do not exist any right handed DNA helices. The only conclusion I can draw from that is that there seems to be some way in which right handed helices are deficient, but we do not know enough to ascertain for ourselves what that is.

When there are such serious lacunae in our knowledge; why do we consider our definition of “life” so true? It is but an assumption. An assumption that we have made based on our limited knowledge which is based on our limited view of the universe. For all you know, some time in the future, what we consider to be nonliving may very well turn out to be a living entity.

IIIT

2009-03-01T12:11:00.002+05:30

I am living on the IIIT campus in Hyderabad. This campus is situated near a part of Hyderabad known as the “HITEC City”; where all the offices and office campuses of major software MNCs are situated. The IIIT campus is not large, spanning just about 62 acres. These 62 acres are the closest I have come to finding a haven for researchers and aspiring researchers (like myself) in the chaotic city of Hyderabad.

Do not misunderstand me, I love Hyderabad; its the city I was born and brought up in. I love the culture of the place. But lately it has become extremely chaotic. Those who are on the road have no respect for the rule of the road (if indeed they know what the rule of the road is). Other than that there is the usual chaos that is associated with life in any city, town, village or settlement ie national politics, local politics, the politics of sharing basic amenities (water, electricity), th chaos associated with someone getting married/ deceased/ engaged in your locality, etc. Hyderabad is full of it, more so for Hyderabad has the distinction of being the capital of Andhra Pradesh. But the IIIT, offers a campus where you are sequestered from this chaos.

In the IIIT, you have the option of not being bothered by all these chaoses. Here they are not “in your face” therefore you can choose to ignore them and concentrate on your work, your calling, your passion- your research. Of course, if you choose to be bothered by these chaoses, there are television sets that are accessible and the whole campus is plugged in to the Internet. I choose not to be bothered by these chaoses. And whenever the climate permits, I like to take a walk through the campus on the wonderfully paved roads. There is a certain electricity you sense here. As I said in one of my pensive and poetic moments:

“on the lonely campus roads, if one is sensitive enough, one can just about sense the beginnings of something truly great.”

You get the sense that great minds are at work here. Busy solving various conundrums. Busy trying to make life a better place to be for their fellow human beings. Or just trying to understand the world around them and working to expand the boundaries of knowledge, and the universe.

The bottom line is, this place seriously is a strictly no-bullshit place. If you have the passion for research and the required skills, a place for you here will be created and those in charge will make sure to do everything in their power to see that you are able to reach your target.

This place is ideal for thinkers to dream up great things and endeavor to realize those dreams. One gets the sensation of swimming in the vast ocean of knowledge

We need more places like this in India where young innovators and aspiring researchers are encouraged and motivated to achieve their goals and help expand the boundaries of knowledge.

Brain Jacking

2009-02-27T00:22:00.000+05:30

I read an interesting article today, in the “Scientific American” magazine (November 2008, Page. #34). It was about something called “Brain Jacking” or plugging into the brain. What this basically means is creating an interface between machines and the human brain such that we can control them by the means of thought alone. This concept is not entirely futuristic. There are bionic ears (cochlear implants) available which enable the completely deaf or those extremely hard of hearing hear normally. This is achieved by implanting a device into the cochlea that stimulates the auditory nerve.

The author (Gary Stix) explored this concept a little further. Researchers in the University of Pittsburgh have been doing many experiments with controlling machines with the power of thought alone. They (the researchers) trained a monkey to use its thought to manipulate a robotic arm to grab a morsel of food. Though this is far from the science fiction tales of storing many megabytes of data in one’s memory (a la Johnny Mnemonic), it is real enough to be experienced by anyone who wants to experience it.

The next level of this would be to reverse the flow of information, i.e. from machines into our minds. Much like our eyes, ears, tongue, and skin do. Such technology could help us develop things like night vision and help us enhance the power of our sensory perception. But this requires technology we do not have at our disposal today. This requires something that has yet to be invented or discovered. Now, let’s say that we did have all the requisite technology. We would still be unable to send information into our brains unless we figure out exactly how it is that the different neurons that make up our brains communicate with each other. In other words, we have to learn the language of the brain something known as “neural code”.

Unravelling the neural code is one of the most imposing challenges in neuroscience. There are many theories as to how neural codes work, one of them is that the code corresponds to the rate of firing of the voltage spikes generated by a neuron. More recent work has focused on the precise timing between each spike (temporal codes) and the constantly changing patterns of how neurons fire together (population codes).

A collaboration between the University of Southern California and the Wake Forest University has worked to fashion a replacement for a part of the brain known as the hippocampus which is responsible for forming new memories. The hippocampus is the part of the brain which sustains damage in stroke or Alzheimer’s. This project is funded by the National Science Foundation and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

They hope that this research work may pave the way to a stage where a person can be taught how to fly an F-15 fighter jet just by downloading the requisite literature into their brains.

They have successfully created an artificial hippocampus for consolidating a rat’s memory of pressing a lever to get a drop of water. Normally the hippocampus emits signals that are relayed to the cortical areas responsible for storing long term memories of an experience. For the experiment, a chemical temporarily incapacitated the rat’s hippocampus. When the rat pressed the bar, electrical inputs from the sensory and other areas of the cortex were channeled through a microchip, which, the scientists say dispatched the same signals the hippocampus would have sent. A demonstration that an artificial device mimicked the hippocampal (sic) output would mark a step towa4rd deducing the underlying code that could be used to create a memory in the motor cortex.

Though these are giant leaps in their own right, they are small steps towards our ultimate goal of understanding how the brain works. Would the neural code for the sentence “see spot run” mean the same to an English speaker as it would to a, say, native Tamil speaker?

“Complex information like the contents of a book weould requite the interaction os a veru large number of brain cells over a veru large area of the nervous system,” observes neuroscientist John Donoghue, of the Brown University. “Therefore you couldn’t address all of themgetting them to store in their connections the correct kind of information. So, I would say based on current knowledge, it’s not possible”

Therefore we can take it for granted we are light years behind what they showed in “The Matrix” when Trinity downloaded the manual for flying a helicopter into her mind through her cell phone. But what if that were possible? What if it were possible to download information directly into our brains? That would change everything from the way we learn to the way we look at the world.

The optimist in me imagines a world where less time is wasted in learning things and the time saved is utilized in gaining practical experience by applying what is learnt in the real world. People could just download the required information into their brains. Scientist working together can collaborate even more by sharing their thoughts and intuitions with each other. This would also give rise to new forms of art.

The purpose of art is to convey one’s feelings, sensations and emotions through a medium. Now an artist would be able to do just that. A painter could encode in his painting certain devices that would convey to the observer exactly what he was feeling while painting that. An author or poet could encode his feelings and emotions into the words that (s)he writes to convey them to the reader. And then maybe an entirely new form of art could be born out of this. Eventually, instead of writing on a medium, an author or a poet could directly record his feelings and emotions as a package combined with his imagined imagery. Anyone who downloads that package could feel what the author or poet felt.

Cyber-sex would also become a wholly new and greatly enhanced experience. And telepathy would become the basis for a new form of global communications network.

On the darker side, hackers would now be able to induce a variety of disorders in people through downloads. A hacker could induce Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s or any other disorder. One could induce dementia, depression, insanity or other psychological disorders in people by hacking into their brains.

Even without wrongdoers, the proliferation of telepathy could render physical contact obsolete. We would become a race of beings who seldom come into physical contact with each other.

But, all this is at best in the distant future, we have more important things to worry about. For example there is this quandary of whether or not to be able to jack into the human brain it is required to implant the device surgically into the human skull.

Once this is done, the next step I guess would be to modify the human genome such that we are born with these devices in us.

**All Scientific Data and direct quotes courtesy Scientific American Magazine**

The Greatest Duet Ever Sung

2009-02-02T12:33:00.000+05:30

For the first time, I feel compelled to write about a single song. Not about an album or an artiste but a song. I consider this song the greatest duet ever sung. Its so great that I don't think that even the original artistes (if the guy was alive) could repeat the performance. And that is a huge thing to say considering that the original singers are the legendary Kishore Kumar and Asha Bhosle. These two have sung some of the best duets in Hindi cinema. But none of them comes close to their best: “Jaan'e Jaan Dhoondtaa Phir Raha”.

To begin with this song as multifaceted as a diamond. The way the two singers' voices dance with each other creates an ethereal feel. When one singer sings the song, the other singer provides a melody with his/her voice. And they cease being two separate voices. This is a love song. And I must say that this song successfully captures ever aspect, every nuance of every emotion and feeling between two people when they are in love, be it the intoxication that both feel when they are in each other's company, or the lust that they feel for each other.

This song effectively conveys the feeling of the togetherness people feel when they are in love. The feeling that the two lovers are no longer two separate entities but have coalesced into one single entity. The ecstasy that one feels when one is in the same general are as one's lover. The sudden feeling of helplessness and vulnerability one feels when one looses sight of one's lover even for a brief moment. This song even entails the orgasm from a sexual union that does not feel sinful because it is between two people who are deeply in love with each other.

Back in the days when this song was sung, the tune and the lyrics usually did match up with each other but in this case t he match is perfect. The words, everyone knows what the words mean. But the tune is yet another deal. The tune is pure ecstasy, it is bliss. It gives you the feeling of floating in mid-air and everything is right, you have not a single concern in the world for your beloved is by your side and you are basking in the warmth of your lover's affection.

Its a dream like state that is so real you have no clue whether it is real or a dream. It feels too good to be true but it cannot be anything but true.

It depicts the state where the satisfying of one's desires entail the satisfying of the other's desires and one derives pleasure from satisfying the other's desire.

This song successfully and superbly encapsulates the feeling of blissful intoxication and the absolute ecstasy that comes over a couple in love.

A book could be written to describe how superlative this song is, and even that would come nowhere near sufficing as a description of the excellence of this song.

Not Flogging India

2009-01-29T22:39:00.001+05:30

They have made a new movie. Slumdog Millionaire. It has won a couple of Golden Globe awards and has been nominated for a cartload of Academy awards. It has been hailed as one of the very best Indian movies. I am not going to watch it. I will explain why, and no this post is not about me bashing this movie.

One of the people involved with the production of this movie said with quite a bit of pride, “there has been a general trend to glorify India or sanitize India, in Slumdog, we have done neither”. Whether showing India's stark and filthy reality is a matter of pride or not, I am not going to discuss. (And to the patriotic ones who are going to mail me about “India's stark and filthy reality”, the garbage strewn back alleys of Mumbai and the heaps of urban refuse can hardly be called anything other than filthy).

I wrote this post to focus on an aspect of India that has been pushed to the sidelines thanks to our infatuation with crime, grime, corruption, destitution, failure and everything else that is negative. Yes our politicians are corrupt slobs, yes almost all the governmental systems are saturated with corrupt cockroaches. And thanks to a certain Mr. Raju from Andhra Pradesh, we have come to “realize” that the corporate world isn't all that clean either.

But look around you, we are progressing; and not by a small margin but by leaps and bounds. This country of so many contradictions of so many different kinds of diversities is not only managing to stick together as a coherent entity, we are actually working together. To paraphrase a dialog from a movie called “Namastey London” or something to that effect “India is the only country in the world where a Catholic lady stepped aside to let a Sikh gentleman take the oath of office of Prime Minister from a Muslim President in a Hindu majority nation.” Come to think of it, which country can boast of such acceptance of diversity?

The USA immediately comes to mind, but the point to be noted here and the question to be asked is this, would Mr. Barack Hussain Obama have been elected to the office of the President of the USA if he had not converted to Christianity? Would the people of the USA have elected a Muslim president?

Yes we have had pogroms in our country, the most recent being the Gujarat carnage, orchestrated by Narendra Modi, in which a tragic number of Muslims were killed, some of them brutally, I will spare you the details which are a mere Google search away. The point to be noted here is that the carnage, though tragic, remained confined to the state of Gujarat (certain parts of Gujarat if memory serves me right). It was not like the whole nation of India got divided among communal lines and erupted into civil strife.

Wherever there are differences, there are bound to be conflicts, they may be communal in nature or ideological or something else. The point is, that so many years after independence, we are still together as one single nation, even though we have been through events that should have torn this country apart.

Lets change the subject. Communal togetherness is not the only feather in our cap. We have several others. The space program for one is a huge asset. Sure, we haven't sent anyone to the moon or anything to Mars (yet), but there is one thing we can boast of that no other country or conglomerate can boast of. Our maiden voyage to the moon, the first time we ever tried sending anything that far away from terra firma, succeeded.

No country other than India, no space agency other than ISRO (Indian Space Research Organization) can boast of succeeding at their first ever moon mission. How is that for a feather in our cap?

Let us talk about the military. It is no secret that we are not the most powerful nation on the planet. But ours is one of the largest armies. And if memory serves me right, ours is one of the most successful armies. The only time one army enforced a complete and unconditional surrender on another army was in the war of 1971 when the army of Pakistan (under Gen. Niazi) surrendered to the Indian National Army (under Gen. Sam Manekshaw) in Bangladesh (East Pakistan back then).

Anti terror and anti insurgent forces around the world are seeking the expertise of the corresponding commands of the Indian National Army in terms of training. Thanks to Pakistan our defense forces have become experts in matters of combating terrorism. Many would hold the 26-11 Mumbai attacks to mean the contrary, but on close examination reveal that the cause of the carnage was negligence on part of the civilian authorities as they disregarded the Intelligence reports provided by the RAW and IB (our intelligence agencies).

I am not denying the fact that its not all hunky dory in India, but there is an awful lot of good that is going on as well. Instead of concentrating on the bad news, working up a temper and coming down with blood pressure and other tension related disorders, we should concentrate on the good news. We should take pride in whatever successes our country can boast of, and use that pride to fuel our progress, while keeping the bad news in mind so that we do not repeat our own mistakes.

I take pride in being an Indian, and I know most (if not all) of you do, ergo its time to show it by working for the betterment of our country, after all, the government is not solely responsible for national development, we all are, whether we like it or not, so why not start liking it?

I am not going to watch Slumdog Millionaire because I do not want the image of gargantuan garbage dumps and back alley slums thrust in my face. Yes they are a reality and I will do my part in bettering that aspect of India. But I do not want to have the bleakness and precariousness of that society thrust into my face.

The Robots of Asimov

2008-11-26T20:41:00.001+05:30

I plan to make a career for myself as a scientific researcher (I have already embarked on that endeavor). The domain I chose for myself is Artificial Intelligence. Many people have had many interesting things to say to me. The most disconcerting fact is that most people I have come across have said negative things to me in this connection. They did not insult me or do anything of that sort; they expressed their fears (some of them quite justifiable) about the act of empowering a machine with intelligence. They have given examples of movies like “Terminator”, “The Matrix”, “I, Robot”, etc as what could go wrong if we did (empower machines with intelligence). I myself can think of a far better example which is easier to imagine than the examples they put forth.

The story of HAL the computer from the Stanley Kubrick movie “2001: A Space Odyssey” comes to mind where a computer which is in charge of a space ship kills the crew because it calculates that the crew would be a hindrance in its functions. This to me is easier to imagine because I do not see the possibility of being able to replicate the human body using mechanical devices in the near future.

When faced with these facts and the (silent) accusation that I might be working to bring about the “end of man” or the “extinction of humans”, I turn to the works of Isaac Asimov for solace. He, in his books had formulated the 3 laws of robotics to prevent the confrontation between humans and robots. The three (slightly altered) laws are:

1. No robot shall ever harm a human being;

2. No robot shall, through action or inaction allow a human being to come to harm, except where
doing so conflicts with rule #1;

3. A robot shall protect itself from damage, except where doing so conflicts with rule #1 and
rule #2.

These 3 laws effectively prevent a robot from “hurting” its human “owners”. Then Isaac Asimov wrote two other books; one was called “Bicentennial Man” where he explores the possibility that an intelligent robot would acquire a certain level of sentience that would allow it to experiment with the ideas of “freedom”, “family” and “society”. This is depicted at many points in the novel where Andrew Martin the intelligent and sentient robot tries to buy his freedom from his master. In yet another scene, he embarks on a mission to seek out others of his kind.

The other book of by Asimov, “I, Robot”, explores the darker aspect of his “Three Laws of Robotics”. In this book, one super computer which controls all the intelligent robots uses them to stage a coup and “take over the world”. When confronted by the principal protagonist, the computer “VICI” explains that “she” decided to stage the coup because that is where a series of logical deductions starting from the 3 laws of robotics ended. I do not remember her deductions, but I definitely do remember my deductions based on my inferences from that movie. Her deductions, were because of the ambiguity of the word “harm” in rule #1. It seems that in his first rule, Asimov took the word “harm” to mean only physical harm and not emotional, psychological, mental and (maybe) spiritual harm. If all these are taken into consideration, I believe that the situation that arose in the book would not arise in real life.

Let’s say that these three laws are enforced and hard coded into the brains of each and every robot ever created. The truly pessimistic will still argue using the “what if” clause or stay just plain adamant that the events that folded out in “Terminator” and or “The Matrix” will also fold out in real life. I have the following to say to them. The hand that started the war would be human. Western philosophy is a philosophy of control. And what cannot be controlled should be feared according to western philosophy, and thanks to the proliferation of western media in the form of movies and songs and the like this ideology is spreading all over the world.

The act of empowering a machine (a robot or some other device) with intelligence is the result of an endeavor to take some responsibilities off the shoulders of humans. In other words, the creation of artificial intelligence is an act (either explicit or implicit, depending on your perspective) of relinquishing control.

Furthermore, the act of creating and AI, is the result of an endeavor to create an entity equal in intelligence to us. And once we create it as our equal, expecting it to acknowledge us as its superiors would be immoral to the point of being hypocritical. The poet Khalil Gibran once said:

“Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of life’s longing for itself. They come through you but not from you…”

Though he said this about the way parents should treat their children, this can be extended to pertain to AI if we humans are prepared to treat AI as the child of human intellect. AI will be created, whether we humans like it or not, we can either accept it and live with it (and I can assure you that life will be enriched beyond anyone’s wildest dreams). Or we can reject it and live a sub-standard life. There is a good chance that AI will not drive us to extinction. No truly intelligent being will cause the extinction of a species. But our lives will be filled with so much regret, hatred, animosity and depression that they will just not be worth living.

We humans definitely need a change in ideology. The concept of war is obsolete; weapons should cease being an instrument of war and start being an instrument of peace. The sooner we realize that, the better it will be for our whole race. AI is just the next step in our intellectual evolution, preventing its invention for fear of its consequences would be akin to advocating that a child should commit suicide for fear of puberty and the complications it would introduce in life.

The ramifications of AI depend heavily if not solely on the way we humans perceive it and the extent to which we are prepared to accept it.

Wall-E

2008-09-09T16:55:00.000+05:30

Wall-E, I wonder if I can say much about this movie without gushing. For one, it’s one of the few movies (perhaps the only movie, if memory serves me correctly) that has completely won me over, charmed me. Ever since I saw this movie for the first time, the images have left a permanent imprint in my mind. I cannot stop myself from watching it over and over again. If I don’t watch it over and over again, I tend to see it in my mind’s eye. The limited dialogue plays over and over again in my head like a broken record. All this, despite the fact that it is an animation and despite the fact that it is a romantic movie; what is it that makes Wall-E so endearing and charming?

Firstly, the animation is superb (which isn’t a surprise as it was made by Pixar, and everyone knows that their skill in animation is superlative). Secondly, it is a love story set against the backdrop of an Earth so polluted that all humans are forced to evacuate. There is a male character who falls in love with the female character and he does everything he can for her, even putting himself in harm’s way for her. Finally, the two lead characters of the movie are robots!

Wall-E, pronounced “Wally” (an acronym for Waste Allocation Load Lifter – Earth class) is one of a number of robots left on Earth by the humans who have evacuated the planet to clean up the trash. Over the centuries, he has developed a sense of sentience and he collects things he finds among the trash that capture his interest (e.g. a light bulb, a Rubik’s cube, cigarette lighter, a plant, etc). He also finds a video cassette of an old movie called “Hello Dolly” which he watches over and over again, this enables him to learn emotion and the importance of holding hands, a gesture which he understands as an expression of love. But having no company other than his pet cockroach, he is forlorn.

Enter Eve, an ergonomically designed probe which has the task of finding evidence of ongoing photosynthesis on planet Earth so that the humans can return. Wall-E falls in love with her at first sight, but she does not reciprocate this; although she shows interest in him and finds him cute. He takes her to his bachelor pad and shows her the interesting things he collected from among the trash. When he shows her the small plant he found, she stores it within her and deactivates. Wall-E is sad; he goes to great lengths to try and revive her and to protect her seemingly lifeless body. One day when he is at work, the ship that delivers Eve to Earth comes to retrieve her. As the ship is blasting off earth, a distraught Wall-E clings to its outer hull for a ride through space after which he ends up on the Axiom. The Axiom is one of many ships in which humans have evacuated Earth. On the Axiom, he meets many robots and humans. Their encounter with him changes their lives drastically for the better. Because of Wall-E, Eve is able to fulfill her mission to deliver the plant into a part of the ship that enables the ship’s return to Earth. After they return to earth, humans and robots start working together to revive the Earth’s biosphere and make it habitable again. During their ordeals to get the plant to its destination despite the ships autopilot (who is the “bad guy” of the movie), Eve comes to know of the things Wall-E did for her while she was deactivated and she too falls in love with him.

Wall-E has a box like body, a pair of caterpillar tracks for locomotion and two arms for doing his work. Atop his box of a body he has a pair of eyes. The designers at Pixar have designed this simple construct in such a way that every minute emotion is clearly, intelligibly and precisely portrayed. The absolute selflessness with which he helps Eve (whom he calls Eva) is endearing beyond all limits. She never tells him what her directive is or why the plant is important to her, but because it is important to her, it’s important to him. He goes to great lengths, even risking his life to help her complete her mission. Thanks to the intonation in his voice, his body language and most importantly his eyes, the audience has little or no difficulty understanding what’s going on in his “mind”. Every single aspect of this character, right from the way he explores his surroundings, to the way he interacts with other characters is endearing. I feel compelled once again to get back to his expressive eyes that convey every emotion, from awestruck bewilderment, innocent wonder, to being love struck and a plethora of other emotions; the most charming of which is the innocent wide eyed wonder with which he takes in the world around him. His attitude is similar to that of a child but has elements of adulthood in it. Kudos to Pixar for the design of this character.

Eve on the other hand can be described as beautiful and girlie. Her design was inspired by the seamless design of the Apple IPod and Apple Computer Inc’s Jonathan Ive had a hand in her design. She has expressive eyes and the ability to fly. Her vocabulary in the movie is restricted to a few select words such as “Wally”, “Directive”, “Come”, “Plant” and “Earth”, each recorded with different vocal intonations to indicate various feelings and emotions. Initially she is interested in nothing but her directive but towards the end of the movie falls in love with Wall-E.

Well, I have said quite a lot about this movie (hopefully without giving any spoilers) without gushing, but I fear I haven’t been able to express the reason why I find this movie incredibly charming. I guess the charm lies in the perfection and attention to detail that is evident in each and every frame of this movie and Wall-E's child-like characteristics.

As a closing statement, all I can say is that if you haven’t seen this movie, you most definitely are missing something wonderful.

To A Special Someone

2008-05-22T11:39:00.000+05:30

Darkness descends upon me.
I cant find my path.
My mind is clouded by rage.
My senses never relax.

I am constantly reminded
Of the failure that I am
I am always expected to fall
At every place one possibly can

I am treated like some kind of investment
Without a soul of my own
I have always been an embarrassment
To everyone I've known

But then I see your face
Something inside me calms
I can think straight again
And you set off no alarms
Whoever I meet
Triggers an alarm in me
Alerting me to something not right
Alerting me to a judgmental mind
But I sense none of that from you
And for this I am grateful

I guess I just wanted to say thanks
But that seems barely sufficient
Though this life may be ephemeral
My feelings for you are permanent

P.S.: This poem is not dedicated to any real person. Though she is real to me, the rest of the world will deem her a figment of my imagination.

We have screwed ourselves

2008-02-28T21:13:00.000+05:30

I break down
My knees buckle under my own weight
But I gotta keep going on
Its not about looking good anymore
Its not even about living
Its about staying alive
About surviving

The will to live surpasses all else
But this urge doesn’t numb the pain
It just makes it easier to live with

Cry out for help
But none comes
Reach out in despair
But there’s nothing out there
To hold on to
As you find yourself sinking
Into this quagmire

You gotta run as fast as you can
To stay in the same place
They say
The “they” is the omnipresent collective
They tell you what to do
What is right and what’s not
They dictate your life
They own your soul

There are those who crumble
They turn to drugs
They fall apart
And sink into oblivion
They are the ones who
Are inherently weak
They are the ones who
Nevermind…

It’s a dog-eat-dog world
It’s a rat race
Its almost like saying
We are all dogs in a rat race
No wonder the world is such
A messed up place
For dogs do not belong
In an event meant for rats
Yet they are thrust into it
Like square pegs in round holes
Or round pegs in square holes
No matter how you put it
It makes no bloody sense

Re-enforce your knees with steel
You’ll need it to bear the pressure
Of a million dreams that do not belong to you
Weighing down upon your shoulders
On second thought
Re-enforce every load bearing joint
Your shoulders, spine, ankles and all
Lest you fall under the pressure
And get crushed by the dreams
That weren’t yours to begin with

One hears the adages
About dogs and rats
And one begins to wish
That one were a dog or a rat
For their lives seem far more uncomplicated
Compared to ours

We were meant to live
But we make do with existing
I have no idea what’s wrong with us
But something definitely is wrong

“Screw the world”
One is forced to shout
But that is hardly possible
For we need the world to survive
And the world ain’t to blame for this
Sorry state of ours
It is us
We are the ones who have
Confined ourselves in this metal coffin
And unlike wood,
One can’t even claw one’s way out of it
There’s only one conclusion to draw from this:

We have screwed ourselves,
And who can “unscrew” us?
We.

Taare Zameen Par

2008-01-15T02:20:00.000+05:30

Up until now I have commented only on the film industry. I have berated it and the movies coming out of it at a pretty harsh degree. But this time, for the first time I feel compelled to write about a movie I have seen. The name of this movie is “Taare Zameen Par” which loosely translates into “Stars on the Ground”. This movie was produced and directed by Aamir Khan, he also acted in it. The lead character is a eight to nine year old dyslexic boy who has been in the notorious Indian system of education which shuns everything except the robotic pursuit of “perfection” that is displayed by the majority of the masses. In short, it is a system that ignores genius and harbors mediocrity.

Darsheel Safary plays a young boy by the name of Ishan Awasthi who suffers from the rare and often misunderstood disability known as dyslexia. Dyslexia is characterized by an abject impairment in the ability of a person to read or write as a result of not being able to identify the characters of the alphabet. As a result of this condition, the boy is ridiculed, insulted by almost everyone except his parents and sibling and labeled as an unintelligent, lethargic, good-for-nothing boy. The father is in fact so vexed by what he sees as his son’s unruliness that he packs him off to a boarding school. There too, the teachers treat him in the same way that the teachers treated him in his previous day-school. But then, a chance encounter with a substitute art teacher (played by Aamir Khan) changes his life and brings out the genius in him when he ends up winning a painting competition.

The acting in this movie was superb. Each emotion and feeling, so clearly and lucidly portrayed that anyone in the audience could feel the most subtle emotional undertone. But by far the best thing about this movie was the way in which the subject of dyslexia and the mystery surrounding it has been dealt with; mystery in the sense that not many know of the existence of such a disability. Most people in India recognize only two types of people: normal and retarded. The idea that an intelligent person and a possible genius could suffer due to a debilitating disability is virtually unheard of. I applaud the maturity, subtlety, artfullness and sensitivity with which this was portrayed in the movie.

Two of the more laudable sections of the movie were the two parts where the art teacher confronts the parents. The first part being where the teacher tells both the parents about dyslexia and how it doesn’t imply unintelligence; the second part is where he tells the father the difference between mechanically bring up a child and making the child feel loved and cared for without hurting his ego or treading on his toes.

If it were up to me, I would hail this movie as a masterpiece of Indian cinema.

Banality, Thy name is Tollywood.

2007-12-28T09:36:00.000+05:30

The first few days of the Telugu film industry were great. The movies that were made were either based on the great epics (vis-à-vis Ramayana, Mahabharata, etc), or on wonderful Telugu plays. They were truly artistic films and people enjoyed watching them. Those were the days of great thespians who were highly skilled in the art of dialogue delivery. They could fit into any character, any role seemingly effortlessly. The only thing is since they were theatre artists before joining the film industry, their actions were a little over-emphasized. The entire country has come out of that mould. I do not think anyone is making “pauranic” films anymore. But that doesn’t mean that the quality has stayed the same. In the transition from pauranic to modern, the movies that roll out of the film industry have lost all sense of originality, they have become completely banal.

One can easily surmise the story of almost all the new movies coming out: boy meets girl, they fall in love, calamity strikes either boy or girl or both, boy and girl overcome calamity individually or together, boy and girl are either shown getting married or engaged, boy and girl live happily ever after.

And invariably almost always the boy and girl are in college. Any deviation from this scenario is so subtle that it almost escapes ones attention. Even the name of the industry “Tollywood” stinks of banality. The Hindi film industry is called Bollywood (I am not a fan of this moniker either) in an imitation of “Hollywood”; the B being a reference to “Bombay” which is the old name of the city of Mumbai where the Hindi film industry is situated. And imitating that, the Telugu film Industry has been named Tollywood.

Despite its shortcomings, Bollywood has managed to produce impressive and path breaking movies such as Rang De Basanti, Taare Zameen Par, Lage Raho Munnabhai that are capable of touching an emotional/patriotic chord in the heart of the audiences. The Telugu film industry on the other hand seems content making superficial movies that leave the audience completely dissatisfied.

Frankly, it seems as if the imagination of the film artists of the Telugu world has gone dry.

Metal

2007-12-01T23:20:00.000+05:30

Rock sets you free
Metal is all about ecstasy
Classical is all about the soul
Music makes you a complete whole

Rock is all about pleasure and pain
Metal sets you on a higher plane
Rock makes you open your mind
And makes you forget the daily grind
Metal fills up your senses
And neither of the two has ever been
About false pretences

Classical connects with your soul
It gives you the gift of happiness
Metal too connects with your soul
But it takes you to a darker place
That is if you associate
Carnality with darkness

Metal and classical both
Enable one to tap one’s own
Primal energy
Its an energy that nature’s provided
To every beast it has spawned
It is something primordial
It is something spiritual
And it brings out the animal
In people

I see no difference
Between metal and classical
To me metal
Is just a more aggressive version
Of classical
For both these styles of music
Transcend your physical being
And touch the life force inside

To me metal is more than just music
It is a portal
A portal that takes me to a place
Where everything is the way I need it to be
According to my specifications
A place where I can think
A place where I can meditate
And conceptualize
And develop a better understanding
Of life
Metal and classical both
Put a lot of power in your hands
And that power
Is yours to channelize

You can use it to better your life
You can use it to ruin your life
You can use it to control your mind
The choice is yours
And that is the way it ought to be
For, of what use is it to be alive
When you don’t have charge of your life?
But a catch in that there is
For, to have charge of your life
You need to be able and wise
Or you might take your life
With your own hands
Crush it into oblivion

This is a power that can’t be explained
By science or any known knowledge
Except by the ancient wisdom that
Has been passed down to us through generations.
Immaterial of where you have originated from
Your folklore is filled with such things

This power can’t be otherwise explained
And that which can’t be explained
Cannot be controlled
And it is the neo-human nature
To fear that which cannot be controlled
And that is why metal has been deemed as evil

Many have taken advantage of this
And written blood-curdling lyrics
To metal songs
But
This music has always existed
In places of worship
It has been used to draw your concentration
“Dhyaana” as it is known
Towards the deity being worshiped
It is just the modern open-mindedness
That has brought this musical style
Out of the temple
And into the studio
And given it a name,
Metal.

Rock sends you
Soaring across the sky
Metal sets you
On an orgasmic high
And that empowers you
It can enslave you
But you have to make it
Empower you
You have to be its master
It should not be yours
You should tap all its power
And make that power yours.

The Indian National Flag

2007-11-30T09:25:00.000+05:30

Certain people, out of ignorance or otherwise have read a communalist meaning into the Indian National Flag, i.e. they have wrongly said that the Indian National Flag or some part of it refers to one community or another. That is not true.

My idol, the great Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishna said the following about the Indian National Flag in his address to the Constituent Assembly:

"Bhagwa or the saffron color denotes renunciation of disinterestedness. Our leaders must be indifferent to material gains and dedicate themselves to their work. The white in the centre is light, the path of truth to guide our conduct. The green shows our relation to soil, our relation to the plant life here on which all other life depends. The Ashoka Wheel in the centre of the white is the wheel of the law of dharma. Truth or satya, dharma or virtue ought to be the controlling principles of those who work under this flag. Again, the wheel denotes motion. There is death in stagnation. There is life in movement. India should no more resist change, it must move and go forward. The wheel represents the dynamism of a peaceful change."

The official website of the High Commission of India in London states "The saffron stands for courage, sacrifice and the spirit of renunciation; the white, for purity and truth; and the green for faith and fertility.

In a nutshell, the meaning behind the Indian National Flag is:

Saffron: Courage, Sacrifice and the Spirit of Renunciation;

White: Purity and Truth

Green: Faith and Fertility

Ashoka Chakra (Wheel): The wheel of the law of Dharma.

“Our leaders must be indifferent to material gains and dedicate themselves to their work.”

That was the sentiment of the people who helped build this country. Nowadays, it is far from the truth. I hope some day we can realize that dream.

Courtesy: CRW Flags Online Cagalogue

Democracy sans Education

2007-07-17T19:51:00.000+05:30

My idol, the great Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan once said, “Democracy depends for its very life on the high standard of general, vocational and professional education.

“Dissemination of learning, incessant search for new knowledge and, increasing efforts to plumb the meaning of life, and provision of professional education to satisfy occupational needs of our society are the vital tasks of higher education.”

Source: “New ideas to invigorate science education” – D. Balasubramanian, The Hindu – page 17, Thursday, 12-07-2007.

This was said by the great man back in 1948; and now with the passage of nearly 60 years since that date, the situation has become all the more dire if anything. Anyone living in India, among our public can easily notice that education in the sciences is being forsaken as the public moves in favor of professional courses. And that too we aren’t doing sincerely.

Our response to an incompetent workforce is that instead of working to improve their standard by improving the quality and/or reach of education available in the universities of our country, we attempt to lower the standards of educations by introducing political gimmickry in the form of useless and often detrimental ordinances. A prime example of one such ordinance is the reservation bill.

Lots of people have expressed their opinion as to why exactly the reservation bill is detrimental to our country and society, I am not going to do that.

Let us take into consideration the “elite” institutions of our country. These are the institutions that are a focus of much debate – the IITs and IIMs. Though they are exemplary institutions and are way above almost all other Indian institutions in their respective fields, they fall drastically short of the international standard. No Indian institution figures among the top 200 universities in the world. You can clarify my claim on the following website:

Top 500 World Universities

I believe I mentioned this in one of my earlier posts, but I sincerely believe that the matter is grave enough to warrant a repetition. The way I see it, the universities themselves are not to blame; for I have heard from reliable sources that we do have pretty good people working in the faculty of our universities. I believe that these universities are ranked so low because the students who enter them are sub-standard, and even if all forms of reservation were to be abolished, the students entering these universities would still be sub-standard. Here’s why:

The students who enter these universities are the ones who have been through our “lower-education” System i.e. they have been through the classes 1 to 12 in either CBSE or the syllabi of the states. Therefore, they have been through a System that has systematically wrung out and eliminated all imagination from them.

The imagination I am referring to over here is not artistic imagination, because every human being is artistic at some level, no matter how mundane. It is scientific imagination that they are seriously lacking in. It is scientific imagination and creativity that allows one to innovate and invent. We seriously need to improve the quality of education at the grass-root level.

Now, as far as the “elite institutions” (the IITs, IIMs,NITs, etc.) are concerned. Their quality can be improved immediately by incorporating a few changes in the structure of examination. The current structure is pretty good, but almost anyone who has been to the training centers where they make the students study 12 hours a day and practice the questions till they have been burnt onto their brains can get through.The change I suggest is to make it mandatory for every student aspiring to enter the institution to write a statement of purpose, an essay on why they want to do a particular course in a particular institution. Once the results come in, feed them into a computer and match them against the essays that have been printed in test papers and/or guides. Eliminate the ones that match the pre-written ones and then rank the others and qualify only the best ones for the written exam. This should bring about a quantum leap in the quality of people entering the universities.

Now, what does all this have to do with democracy? What do the IITs and other elite Indian Institutions or even primary education for that matter have to do with democracy? The way I see it, they have everything to do with democracy. Democracy, can be defined as “a political system in which the supreme power lies in a body of citizens who can elect people to represent them”.

http://wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=democracy

In other words, the general population of a country elects certain citizens of their own country to represent them and to take decisions on their behalf. Therefore, the quality of the people elected for the task of decision making depends directly on the judgment of the people who do the electing. In order to elect able and just “leaders”, the people who do the electing (a.k.a the electorate) should be fairly good at analyzing and reasoning out the pros and cons of each of the contestants in the election and then make the unbiased decision of voting for the best person for the job.

Thanks to the low standards of our education System, the electorate (except for a miniscule minority), lacks those analytical and reasoning skills. Therefore, the majority of the people in our country believe all the bullshit mouthed by the politicians while campaigning even though they have heard of the misdeeds of the same politicians and proceed to vote for them. Therefore, in the absence of a System of education of good quality, democracy turns into a System of government which brings the most corrupt, incompetent, inept and unworthy people to power.

In the absence of a System that imparts quality education, democracy, what was once a noble idea is transformed into what can be termed as (thanks to the Hindi film industry) a Goondaraj. That is why, improving the quality of education in India, and making primary education compulsory in India is of paramount importance.

Caste and Meritocracy in Ancient India

2007-04-29T19:06:00.000+05:30

In one of my earlier posts, I had put forth my theory on the evolution of the caste system as it is in modern India.

My Theory on the Evolution of the Caste System

This is my theory on how the caste system came into existence in the first place. A few days ago, I came to notice that its not only the Brahmins who wear the sacred thread but even Kshatriyas and Vaishyas do so. Then I heard someone tell me that they are ranked in the order Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaishya and Kshudra as per the descending order of intellectual aptitude. For some time that had been bugging me for I knew that there had to be more to it. To my scientific mind, the idea that intellectual aptitude was restricted to certain lineages seemed grossly ridiculous.

Then I remembered something that I overheard as my father was conversing with the priest who performed my thread ceremony. The priest said that the thread ceremony should be performed either at the age of seven or at the age of eleven, failing these two times, the thread ceremony could be performed just before marriage. I also heard somewhere that the thread ceremony marked the entry of a person into the life of a student.

All these facts seemed disconnected till I finally stumbled upon the significance of the ages of seven and eleven. This I gleaned from my memories of one of ma all time favorite television serials – Chanakya. In ancient India (I mean really ancient, that is before the time of Christ). It was a custom among the people of India that a child when born would remain with his/her parents till the age of seven or eight. Then the child would be sent to the Gurukula, which is basically a large group of teachers (gurus) living in an ashram mostly in a forest or densely vegetated area of some sort. There they would have to undergo a test of some sort. Those who passed through the test were made to undergo a thread ceremony as a kind of admission ceremony. And the thread ceremony marked the person’s entry into the Gurukula. Those who didn’t pass the “entrance test” did not go through the thread ceremony and hence did not wear a sacred thread. It is my assumption that these people were the ones who came to be known as the Kshudras.

As is common in all institutions of education, the students could be classified broadly into three categories. The first category, and also what I assume to be a small minority among the students were those who had intellectual and philosophical inclinations. These students I assume were classified under the category name “Brahmana”. The literal meaning of the term “Brahmana” in Sanskrit is “the one who can realize the Brahman” where the Brahman is another word for “supreme spirit”, in other words, Brahmins were highly spiritual and philosophical people who became the future ministers, priests, and accountants and the crème de la crème of this group became scientists, philosophers, future teachers (gurus) and spiritual leaders.

The second category, and what I assume to be another minority among the student body of the Gurukula (I make no attempt to compare the sizes of these two minorities) were those who showed distinctive leadership qualities. The students in this group may or may not have had higher intellectual abilities or an inclination towards physically demanding activities. This category would have been labeled “Kshatriya”. They were leaders capable of leading common folk in times of peace as well as at times of strife. They commonly joined the armies of various kingdoms as commanders or commanding officers and the crème de la crème among them became monarchs.

The majority of the student populations of the Gurukulas were those who neither had the higher intellectual inclinations of the Brahmins nor the leadership qualities of the Kshatriyas. But they were reasonably good students. They made up the general society. They became artisans, craftsmen and traders. They were the people who enabled their respective kingdoms to function as economically independent social units. This category of people was labeled the “Vaishyas”.

If I am right in my assumptions, I believe it would be safe to say that ancient India was a true meritocracy where merit of each and every individual in their respective fields was given paramount importance.

If you would notice, I have tried to leave out gender specific pronouns in this text of mine. For, it is my belief that Gurukulas used to cater to students of both sexes. Maybe this can be passed of as an author’s idealization of the past, but I do have the beginnings of a deduction to back my assumption. The Aryans were a nomadic tribe of people who invaded the Indian subcontinent. The Indian subcontinent was inhabited by Dravidians. It is my belief that the Gurukula system is a remnant of the Dravidian system of education which was copied by the Aryans and thus passed down to the Vedic peoples. Dravidians followed a religion which now forms a part of modern Hinduism, some call this religion tantra, and call its system of philosophy yoga. And one look at the tantric pantheon is enough to convince any person of reasonable intelligence that theirs was a matriarchal society. An examination of any matriarchal society, for example the pagan/wiccan society described by Marion Zimmer Bradley in her book “The Mists of Avalon” shows that although importance was given to the woman, men were not as subjugated as women are in our modern patriarchal society. Therefore I feel it is safe to draw a conclusion that Gurukulas catered to students of both genders.

Therefore, when the Aryans invaded India, it is likely that they copied the Gurukula system from the Dravidians but made one minor change – they excluded the girls. One major drawback I find in the Gurukula system is that, all control was left in the hands of the Brahmins. It is always unsafe to leave all the controls in the hands of one person or one particular elitist group. The result of that small folly is the modern hereditary caste system which provides advantages to nobody except power hungry and uncouth politicians.

Back then, the caste of a person was a measure of his abilities and aptitudes. But this modern abomination of the once useful and beautiful system is absolutely meaningless. In this day and age attempting to use the caste of a person to judge his/her aptitude would be akin to using the cubit (distance between tip of thumb and tip of little finger) as a scientific unit of measurement.

The only way in which we can abolish this system is by promoting quality education and providing it to even the poorest of the poor. Unless that is done, India can never become a truly developed nation.

DISCLAIMER:
I, THE AUTHOR OF THIS POST, DO NOT IN ANY WAY SUPPORT THE CASTE SYSTEM. I DIDN’T WRITE THIS TO OFFEND ANYONE, I WROTE IT WITH THE SOLE PURPOSE OF SHARING MY VIEWS ON ONE OF THE GRAVEST SOCIAL EVILS PLAGUING OUR COUNTRY.

Glorious India.

2007-03-26T07:17:00.000+05:30

The hour was midnight, on the fifteenth of August, 1947. It was a great day for the people of India. It was the hour of victory for the people who lead the freedom struggle. It was the day that their efforts bore fruit. From that day on, India would be a free country. We still celebrate that day, every single year. But looking back from now, I see that day more as the day we began our fall; a day that marked the entry of our people into our own version of the dark ages. That was the day the Indian people began to descend and turn into the corrupt, mediocre, sentimental, narrow-minded, selfish, arrogant, pathetic and ridiculous people that we are.

Shocked? Well then, name one thing that was either invented or discovered in India ever since 1947. Alright if you don’t consider that criterion for a nation’s greatness, name one Indian who has contributed so much to his own field that he has improved the quality of life of those around him. If that too doesn’t satisfy you, and you still think that the Indian people are the greatest in the world, then I guess you can take pride in the fact that over three million Indian children do not have enough to eat and lead a life of malnourishment. Or maybe it may be a matter of great prestige for you to know that even though your country has the largest university campus in the world (Shantiniketan in west Bengal started by Rabindranath Tagore) and the oldest university in the world (University of Takshashila, 7th century BC to 460 AD), none of our universities is among the top 100 universities in the world. Or you could take pride in the fact that the people who once were the original discoverers of the speed of light (by Sayana 1315-1387 A.D) and the inventors of the number zero (by Brahmagupta in 628 AD) are now nowhere near the cutting edge of development in science and technology. And we have no respect what-so-ever for merit and neither do we truly know what merit is (most applicable to the Telugu people).

I have dedicated my previous post to ranting about how “The System” is to blame for our pathetic status. This post is all about us, the ordinary people of India or, “India ka aam janta” as they say in Hindi.

We have sunk so deep into the quagmire of mediocrity that we have become mediocre in almost every field, including cricket. We insist on retaining players just because they once were good even though we keep going through defeat after crushing defeat. And I needn’t go as far as the Indian cricket team. I wonder how many Indian citizens still are proud to be Indian. Because I know a lot of people from a wide variety of social/regional backgrounds who would happily sell their souls if that would enable them to buy the citizenship of another country (mostly the United States of America).

The state of affairs in India is pathetic, and matters have deteriorated so far that Indians aspire to become millionaires even though they do nothing. We expect people to give us things for no reason, we believe it is our right to avail free stuff, and sometimes we even demand it. In that sphere we have lost our sense of dignity and self esteem. We have deteriorated so far that some kid goes on national television and says that “cricket is our religion”, some other blighters say that the Indian cricket team has “betrayed” us. They talk as if they own the Indian cricket team. I wonder if any of those people who rail against the underperformance of the Indian cricket team have ever done anything in their lives with any degree of dedication; that is something I seriously doubt. One newspaper (national) has this to say about the Indian cricket fan:

“The cricket fan is a lazy, pampered know-nothing who thinks he owns the cricket teams that he supports…”
They then go on to say thus about the Indian cricket fan while comparing them with England's barmy army:

“They are different from our couch potatoes who never leave their rooms, never exert themselves except to find their remote controls and yet treat every Indian defeat as a conspiracy.”

This above quote can be paraphrased to apply to all the Indian people, and I am not going to do that. We Indians go about bitching that this is not right , or that is not proper, this politician didn’t deliver on his promises, or that person is corrupt, etc. Why the devil are these people thriving? It is because of our not-so-benign negligence. “I will not bother about it unless it directly affects me.” That is the attitude of the general public, if not that, it is, “leave it all to the government, they will take care.” We have to kick ourselves out of this lethargy and into action. Otherwise we will end up a land of zombies who are exploited by the smart few.

The only inference I can draw is that this trend is because almost every Indian aspires to become a millionaire without putting any effort into it. And that leads to corruption. And when a person indulges in this dastardly act, despite knowing that it is a dastardly act, it kills his soul. And when a person’s soul dies, this is exactly how he acts. Therefore if you have any humanity left in you, learn to work for what you wish to achieve.

I will not end this tirade with a screaming “jai hind” like a pontificating politician. Because no matter what I say, India will always remain a great country, for this land has given rise to many great souls like Mahatma Gandhi, Gautam Buddha, Akbar (the Mughal Emperor), Chanakya, etc. as I said, India will always be great, it is we Indians who have to live up to that name.

Swastika

2007-03-14T10:04:00.000+05:30

History of the Swastika
The swastika is an extremely powerful symbol. The Nazis used it to identify themselves as Aryans and to unite Bavaria, Prussia, and Austria under the German banner and instill a sense of national pride, but for centuries it had positive meanings. What is the history of the swastika? Does it now represent good or evil?

The Oldest Known Symbol

The swastika is an ancient symbol that has been used for over 3,000 years. (That even predates the ancient Egyptian symbol, the Ankh!) Artifacts such as pottery and coins from ancient Troy show that the swastika was a commonly used symbol as far back as 1000 BCE.

During the following thousand years, the image of the swastika was used by many cultures around the world, including in China, Japan, India, and southern Europe. By the Middle Ages, the swastika was a well known, if not commonly used, symbol but was called by many different names:

* China - wan
* England - fylfot
* Germany - Hakenkreuz
* Greece - tetraskelion and gammadion
* India - swastika

Though it is not known for exactly how long, Native Americans also have long used the symbol of the swastika.

The Original Meaning

The word "swastika" comes from the Sanskrit svastika - "su" meaning "good," "asti" meaning "to be," and "ka" as a suffix.

Until the Nazis used this symbol, the swastika was used by many cultures throughout the past 3,000 years to represent life, sun, power, strength, and good luck.Even in the early twentieth century, the swastika was still a symbol with positive connotations. For instance, the swastika was a common decoration that often adorned cigarette cases, postcards, coins, and buildings. During World War I, the swastika could even be found on the shoulder patches of the American 45th Division and on the Finnish air force until after World War II.

A Change in Meaning

In the 1800s, countries around Germany were growing much larger, forming empires; yet Germany was not a unified country until 1871. To counter the feeling of vulnerability and the stigma of youth, German nationalists in the mid-nineteenth century began to use the swastika, because it had ancient Aryan/Indian origins, to represent a long Germanic/Aryan history.

By the end of the nineteenth century, the swastika could be found on nationalist German volkisch periodicals and was the official emblem of the German Gymnasts' League.

In the beginning of the twentieth century, the swastika was a common symbol of German nationalism and could be found in a multitude of places such as the emblem for the Wandervogel, a German youth movement; on Joerg Lanz von Liebenfels' antisemitic periodical Ostara; on various Freikorps units; and as an emblem of the Thule Society.

The Origin of the Swastika

The ubiquity of the swastika symbol is easily explained by it being a very simple symbol that will arise independently in any basketweaving society. The swastika is a repeating design, created by the edges of the reeds in a square basket-weave. Other theories attempt to establish a connection via cultural diffusion or an explanation along the lines of Carl Jung's collective unconscious.

While the existence of the swastika symbol in the Americas may be explained by the basket-weave theory, its American presence weakens the cultural diffusion theory. While some have proposed that the swastika was secretly transferred to North America by an early seafaring civilization on Eurasia, a separate but parallel development is considered the most likely explanation.

Yet another explanation is suggested by Carl Sagan in his book Comet. Sagan reproduces an ancient Chinese manuscript that shows comet tail varieties: most are variations on simple comet tails, but the last shows the comet nucleus with four bent arms extending from it, recalling a swastika. Sagan suggests that in antiquity a comet could have approached so close to Earth that the jets of gas streaming from it, bent by the comet's rotation, became visible, leading to the adoption of the swastika as a symbol across the world.

Bob Kobres in Comets and the Bronze Age Collapse (1992) contends that the swastika-like comet on the Han Dynasty silk comet atlas was labeled a "long tailed pheasant star" due to its resemblance to a bird's foot., and further suggests that many swastika and swastika-like motifs may have been representations of bird tracks, including many of those found by Schliemann.

Barbara G. Walker, author of The Woman's Dictionary of Symbols and Sacred Objects, claims that the crux dissimulata, an early swastika, represented the four winds. Concerning the short-armed version of this symbol, known as the gammadion because it is made up of four Greek gammas, Walker says this symbol was an emblem of the ancient goddess and probably represented "the solstices and equinoxes, or the four directions, four elements, and four divine guardians of the world."

The Man on the Indian Street

2006-12-30T06:55:00.000+05:30

It is with great pride and gusto that we have entered the 21st century. On the fifteenth of august 2007, we will proudly celebrate the 60th year of independent India. Politicians will stand on the podium at the Raj-Path and watch defense personnel march past them. Many people will appear on many television channels and speak highly about the progress of our nation and the glory of our nation. After the party has ended and the high and mighty have gone back into their castles, the man on the street is left standing where he always was, on the street. The hype and the glamour have brought no change to his life, except maybe the confetti that now clutters his street.

The man on the street was there even in 1947, at that fateful midnight hour, when India was declared a free country, a sovereign state. His eyes were full of hope, hope for a better future, but now he is still standing there and the hope is fading from his eyes. He harks back to the past, a broken man he is now, "if only", he thinks, "if only I was an only child, and not one among twelve, if only I had a job, if only..."

Such is the plight of many a youth in our allegedly glorious country. Though employment has improved over the years thanks to the IT industry, the number of unemployed youths has shot up. This is because of our booming, burgeoning population. Yes, I did call ours an "allegedly glorious country". And yes I do believe that the glory is an allegation with little truth in it. How can a country be glorious, if the people who grow the country's food- the farmers commit suicide? How can we be glorious, if on one hand we raise the image of a simple man by the name of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi by using superlatives like "Mahatma" and "father of our nation" and on the other hand exhibit an open and blatant disregard for his ideals?

The blame for this lies on two systems, one is our system of administration, the other is our system of education. Fine, both are huge systems, both are shouldering an immensely large burden fairly well and they are producing results. Lets tackle the system of administration first.

Our system of administration is what one would call a "top-down" administration. That is, there is one person at the top, he/she has some people under him/her to assist him/her and these "minions" have other people under them to assist them, and thats how it goes down all the way to the bottom. What does this mean? Well, it means that the man on the street has no real power. Oh yeah, this is a democracy, and that means that people rules themselves, and we have the wonderful lines written in the preamble to our constitution (borrowed from the constitution of the USA) which starts with the words "...for the people, by the people, to the people...". Pardon my insight but that is a fairytale that every Indian is made to believe. A caption that would say "by the politicians, for the politicians, to the politicians" would be more apt for whats happening in our country today.

Is there an alternate system that can be put into place? Oh yeah there is. That would be whats called a "bottom-up" system. Basically that puts all the power in the hands of the people at what Mahatma Gandhi called the grass-root level. There will be a person above his level and he will have control over only those matters that fall under 2 or more grass-root administrators, this system goes on to the top where the head of state has control over generalized things like national security, the economy, foreign affairs and so on. This system puts real power in the hands of the man on the street.

If this system is so good, why isn't it already in place? Well, when India got independace, and Nehru became the first Prime Minister of India, he didn't think it was necessary to change the system of administration that the British had set up, so he let it be. And the British had set up this for one purpose alone, to loot this country. And Nehru's successors, saw that this system was beneficial to their own power hungry and money hungry needs, so they too didn't change it.

Now lets tackle our education system. Yes, we think we have the best one in the world. Then why is it that none of our Universities (even the much hyped and overrated IITs) aren't in the top ten or even the top twenty Universities of the world? The reason- they are all seriously overrated. Take a peek into any of the schools in India, in Andhra Pradesh in particular. The first thing that is drilled into the head of the student is "don't use your head, learn whats in the book by heart and write only that". It is this edict that stifles and throttles any creative spark in any child, and snuffs it out. If there is no creative spark, there is no avenue for innovation, and a graduate without any avenue for innovation is a substandard graduate.

Furthermore, the Indian education system in general places emphasis on Mathematics and the Sciences, Social Sciences, especially History take a back seat and are often brushed aside as being useless. The result of this is a batch of students who have no national pride. The historians of our country are partially to blame for this. They write their history books with such high flown language, and in such a boring matter-of-fact manner that all the thrill and excitement is taken out of them. The Arts are another casualty of this system. Languages and fine arts take a serious beating, and English and Hindi and other languages like Sanskrit and so on are learnt "just because they are in the curriculum". And fine arts like painting and music aren't even taken seriously. Why? Because they don't carry marks. The result is a gaudy society with no sense of art or style what-so-ever, ugly buildings that make any international tourist want to puke, and many other things that cant be mentioned for sake of decency.

The result is a society that hankers after wealth and nothing else, their attempts to appear modern, open-minded and cosmopolitan often result in vulgarity and garishness and they have a total disregard for anyone but themselves. They have very shallow ideals, and they are easily swayed by politicians and god-men who are seldom true to their word.

Therefore we think we have to blame the system of Administration and the system of Education for the plight of the man on the street, but ultimately, the blame lies with us, because we have allowed these flawed systems to exist for the past 59 years.

The Speed of Light as in an Ancient Indian Text

2006-09-30T06:41:00.000+05:30

The Speed of Light

The speed of light was determined by Roemer in 1675. Recently it has been pointed out that an ancient Sanskrit text of 14th century contains the value of the speed of light that is identical to the modern value. Sayana (1315-1387 A.D.) was a very famous Vedic scholar. He was the prime minister in the court of Emperor Bukka I and his successors of the Vijayanagara Empire. In his commentary on the following verse in the Rigveda he gives the value for the speed of light.

"O Sun! You see all, create brightness and travel very fast. You brighten the whole sky." Rigveda 1.50.4

Sayana comments: "It is remembered that Sun traverses 2,202 yojanas in half a nimesa."

It is to be noted that Bhatta Bhaskara (probably in 10th century) made the same statement in his commentary on Taittiriya Brahmana. He says this to be an old Puranic tradition.

Yojana is an ancient unit of length. Arthasastra defines it as being equal to 8,000 dhanus(a dhanu is approximately equal to 1.81 meters), which is equivalent to 14.481 kilometers. Nimesa is an ancient unit of time. One nimesa is equal to 16/75 seconds. Thus 2,202 yojanas in half a nimesa is equal to 298942.143 kilometers per second after conversion. This is very close to the value of 299792.458 kilometers per second for the speed of light. Why would Sayana call this the speed of the Sun? The speed of the Sun calculated by Indian astronomers was very small compared to this value. It turns out that Sayana was following the ancient Indian tradition of codifying the knowledge. In this code Sun represents light. The discovery of this code is described in the book “Vedic Physics: Scientific Origin of Hinduism”.

This subject has been discussed in detail in a scholarly article ("The Speed of Light and Puranic Cosmology", Subhash Kak, "Computing Science in Ancient India", editors T. R. N. Rao and Subhash Kak, 1998, pp 80-90).

I HAD COPIED THIS INFORMATION LONG AGO FROM A WEBSITE ONTO A PIECE OF PAPER. THEREFORE I HAVE NO WAY OF MENTIONING THE SOURCE OF THIS INFORMATION. ALL NUMERIC DATA IN THE ORIGINAL TEXT WAS EXPRESSED IN TERMS OF THE BRITISH SYSTEM OF UNITS WHICH I CONVERTED INTO THE SI SYSTEM FOR EASE OF READING

The Origin of the Algorithm and the Arabic Connection

2006-07-09T19:59:00.000+05:30

In the modern world one would associate the adjectives of “backward”, “fundamentalist”, “communalist” and maybe even “militant” with the Arab world. And one would be labeled a maniac for even entertaining the idea that it was the same Arab world which gave us our so called modern system of counting. In Arabic, their number system is called “arqa-m hindiyyah” which loosely translates to “Hindu-Arabic numerals”. Whats even more puzzling is the fact is that if it weren’t for one person belonging to that region, we probably wouldn’t have had computer in this day and age and you might not have been reading this article on this blog.

The name of that one man is Mohammed Ibn-Musa al-Khwarizmi. He inhabited the exact place where we have almost created hell on earth: Baghdad, on the banks of the river tigris. It was in Baghdad where this man worked as a faculty member of the House of Wisdom between 800 & 847 CE (common era; a period previously referred to as A.D.). He even wrote one of the first books ever written on algebra in 830 CE. The book, back then, was called “al-Kitab al-mukhtasasar fi hisab al-jabr w’al-muqabala”. The title of this book loosely translates as “the condensed book of calculation by restoration and comparison”. The preface of this book reads something like:

…what is easiest and most useful in arithmetic, such as men constantly require in cases of inheritance, legacies, partition, law-suits, and trade, in all their dealings with one another…

Students who deal with x, y, z and variables of the like in their algebra textbooks would hardly believe that they are studying what was once created to deal with such complications of daily life. But before he wrote this book, he wrote “On Calculations with Hindu Numerals” in 825 CE which was part translation and part explication of Indian Numerals as expounded by Brahmagupta.

Brahmagupta was a court astronomer in Ujjain like al-Khwarizmi, and he wrote the Brahma Sputa Siddhanta in 628 CE where he used and defined a new concept in mathematics, the ZERO for the first time. If it weren’t for this concept, there wouldn’t have been any calculus, nor any theoretical physics, nor any advancement in mathematics. He also wrote the Khandakhadyaka in 665 CE about astronomy. The Arab world learnt about the Indian system of counting when the second Abbasid Caliph invited a scholar from Ujjain called Kanka. Kanka introduced the concept Zero to the Arabic world.

This was then translated into Arabic by Al Fazaii around 770 CE.

Khwarizmi used these concepts in a book. The book itself was lost but its latin translation exists, and this translation is called Algorithmi. The name changed from Al-Khwarizmi to Algoritmi and is now called the concept of the algorithm.

Therefore, if it weren’t for this one man, Mohammed Ibn-Musa al-Khwarizmi, from the city of Baghdad, we wouldn’t have had the computer. For the fundamental idea on which all computer theory is based is the algorithm.

Courtesy The Hindu Young World Page 6, June 23, 2006. Original article by Serish Nanisetti

The Pendulum of Religion

2006-05-06T20:55:00.000+05:30

Ok, I was reading the book called "The Mists of Avalon" by Marion Zimmer Bradley. The book is laced with references to pagan religions and what I assume to be Wiccan lore. This book also is set at such a time in Britain when Christianity is trying to make its presence more solid and its authority more totalitarian. That’s when the starkness of this contrast struck me in the face. Here is paganism, which gives more importance to the feminine. And as an opposite is Christianity which proclaims that the feminine is the root cause of all evil in this world. This started me thinking.

Maybe, there was this religion where the woman played an all important role and is given the symbolism like she is the embodiment of the divine goddess and what not, and the man is only needed for the act of procreation. Through time, maybe this idea became more and more extreme and the people ended up with the idea that men are useless except for procreation. And men were looked down upon as lesser beings. We must remember that before Christ, paganism was widespread throughout much of the western world. And this extremist idea must have cheesed off certain very shrewd people who got this idea into their head that women were the root cause of all evil and so on.

Then a further idea struck me, we all know that the masculine gender is more given to physical strength and aggression. It may be that since the dawn of time, men started ruling the roost and subjugating their feminine counterparts on the basis of physical strength. then, to reinstate their importance, some people put forth the theory that the feminine was closer to god than the masculine because after all, women are the one who give birth to the next generation, and that is the creation of new life, and it is almost difficult to overlook the similarities between the lunar cycle of waxing and waning, and women's menstrual cycles.

Hindu scriptures indirectly speak of a civilization that existed before ours and that it was destroyed in a sort of "end of the world" scenario that is called the "pralayam" in Sanskrit. Maybe, that was a male-centered civilization, which ended up being so full of aggression, unrest, war and strife, that the thinkers of the time decided that its time that the focus shifted from the sacred masculine to the sacred feminine. And maybe this "end of the world" is actually a symbolism for something like a change in ideology. And this change lasted till the dawn of Christ and Christianity which turned the tables again. Now, 2000 years after Christ, with talks of women’s rights and "equality of the sexes", are we again heading towards another "change in ideology"?

I would like to think so.

Ghatasthani

2006-02-24T22:52:00.000+05:30

This is one of the many names of the goddess Kali. She was a tantrik goddess adopted by the Hindus. Her name means "pot breasted" but let this not fool u. She is said to be one of the most fearsome avatars of kali who is also called Maya meaning "deception or illusion".

She has huge breasts, a garland of human skulls and stains of human blood on her lips. She is naked except for a skirt made up of severed human arms. She is the goddess of death and destruction.

She is otherwise known as Smasana Kali, Smasana meaning cremation ground. I have not been able to deduce the central idea behind this avatar of hers, but she is supposed to be a personification of the raw power that fuels this universe. And yeah, her seat is the corpse of her dead consort whom many say is actually the god Shiva.

Now it is known that Shiva loves his partner or wife if u may dearly. This whole thing about the corpse is meant to symbolize the ultimate sacrifice for the sake of love I think.

Kali has been viewed as a mother and some have even called her a lover. There is one I know of who calls himself her consort. She requires sacrifices. But most of all, more than sacrifices she needs u to have the spirit of sacrifice. Those who did consider themselves her consorts sacrificed their bodies to her and killed themselves. But this one I talk of sacrificed his soul to her and waits for her to come accept his sacrifice.

Ghatasthani is not common among the normal folk. It is used by the aghori. Aghoris are the practitioners of aghora which is a more severe form of Tantra.

Tantra is mistaken as plainly sex, but it is a system of meditation which involves everyday activities as its constituent rituals, sex is just one of them.

The aghori perform various rituals either using human remains or sometimes even human corpses to appease this goddess. Just because her name suggests that she has a large bosom doesn’t mean that her fury is gentler. She is supposed to be very scary and hideous in appearance, but to her true devotee she is the personification of beauty. Those who have claimed to have been granted a boon of being able to see her have said that at first they were alarmed by her ugliness, but later she transformed the personification of beauty.

A lot about kali and the tantrik traditions can be gleaned from the site

SHIVASHAKTI- A GOOD RESOURCE FOR TANTRIK LITERATURE

this is a site that contains a lot about the tantrik ways, but just like any other resource about kali, it suffers the inherent flaw of being incomplete. For the amount of literature compiled about kali is too large to be consolidated into any one resource.

Actually the fearsome image of kali is so that the common folk who are at times very fickle should not forget to pay their respect to the raw power of the heavens. For that’s what kali represents, the power that feeds the universe.

There is actually a verse in Tantra literature that says that a person can see kali in any form he/she wishes as long as he is able to respect that form of hers.

The Gist Of My Novel - DIfferent Epochs

2006-01-26T21:49:00.000+05:30

The year is 2084, humans have been contacted by an extraterrestrial life form, and they are all set to make a landing in the Indus delta region, the site of one of the oldest civilization in the world. A space ship appears and descends to the ground where a battalion of Indian troops await their arrival.

They watch with bated breaths as one of the extraterrestrial creatures makes its descent and starts moving towards them. Then suddenly one of the soldiers fires a weapon at both creature and ship destroying both. This soldier turns out to be an emissary of another race of extraterrestrials who in fact are humans.

The leaders of the earth then realize that there is an empire of humans spanning thirty-five galaxies, and that the earth had been quarantined off from it as the outcome of a war fought over ten thousand years ago. They also learn that there is currently a war brewing between the humans and the race which spawned this creature which attempted to land on earth for the possession of the earth.

As it turns out, the milky way galaxy is said to be a border galaxy on the border with the alien species called the Ghaik. Amid all this, there is talk of the inclusion of the earth into the human empire as it is called. The emissary then takes with him a member of the Indian secret service called the RAW. She explores the facets of the complex imperial government which is in fact somewhat a semi-monarchical democracy and is a capitalist society of various communes as opposed to a capitalist society of individuals.

This agent then discovers that this emissary is not a human being but a member of an order of supernatural warriors called the yativikrant who once were human beings. This revelation shocks her a little but being a trained espionage agent she hides it. The warrior by the name of Ajayaxara then offers her a chance to join the order which she accepts after some thought. As soon as her training is done, the war between the human empire and the Ghaik commences. The humans on the earth also play a part in this war and the war is won. As it turns out, the enemy is helped by a rogue member of the yativikrant. Ajayaxara fights the arch villain and kills him. After which he ascends to a higher level of the universe.

After the war is over, as a run up to the inclusion of the earth in the human empire, the leaders of the ten most powerful and influential countries on the earth decide to send two teams of scientists one after the other to study the empire and its citizens. The first team is meant to do the basic ground work and as the calculated culture shock is too large, the information they collect is meant to act as a means for the second team to brace themselves. They discover that the humans of the empire have modified their bodies in such a way as to make it completely robust and capable of survival in the harshness of empty space. They are all biomechanical, in other words they are all cyborgs.

The second team goes more in depth into the sociology and other aspects of the human empire. One member of the second team gets into an emotional relationship with one of the members of the host team of scientists from the imperial university and discovers the similarity between the earth humans and the humans of the empire despite the physical differences. He even volunteers to have his body engineered so that he too could be made a cyborg.

The earth is successfully inducted into the human empire and life returns to normal but not without incident as some people found out that they had spent their whole life studying something that turned out to be a well constructed hoax, an act of deception.

Endnote:

My first novel took me approximately eight years to complete. I am currently researching material for my second novel which is based in the period during the invasion of the Indian subcontinent by the Aryans.

The Myths and Legends About Ramzan

2005-10-24T10:55:00.000+05:30

Ramzan or Id -Ul-Fitr is a Musilm festival celebrated at the end of the Ramadan, the ninth lunar month of the Islamic Calendar, the day following the appearance of the new moon. The holy month of Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting, is very auspicious to the Muslims the world over.

It is believed that the holy book of the Islamic faith, the Quran, came into existence during this month. Prophet Mohammad who was an illiterate person was chosen by God to be His messenger to compile the holy book. The last ten days are specially significant as the faithful watch for Lailathul Qadr (the Night of Power) during which the revelation of the book to the Prophet was completed. Apart from bringing the Muslims face to face with the hard realities of life like the pangs of hunger, thirst and deprivation, Ramzaan is an annual training period inculcating discipline and declaration of subservience to the laws of God, enumerated in the holy Quran.

The gist of this charming myth goes somewhat like this:

One day Muhammad was sitting alone in the wilderness near Mecca when the Angel Gabriel appeared to him. The Angel commanded Muhammad to read. Muhammad responded "I am not a reader." The Angel Gabriel then taught Muhammad some verses from the Quran, which Muhammad memorized

These revelations continued for 10 days. Islamic scholars believe that the first revelation occurred on the night of the 27th day of Ramadan. This night is called the Laylat-al-Qadr (Night of Power). And according to the Quran, this is when God determines the course of the world for the following year.

The receiving of the Holy Quran is to the Muslims what the receiving of the Ten Commandments from Mount Sinai is to the Jews and Christians

During the Fast of Ramadan strict restraints are placed on the daily lives of Muslims. They are not allowed to eat or drink during the daylight hours. Smoking and sexual relations are also forbidden during fasting. At the end of the day the fast is broken with prayer and a meal called the iftar. In the evening following the iftar it is customary for Muslims to go out visiting family and friends. The fast is resumed the next morning

According to the Holy Quran:

One may eat and drink at any time during the night "until you can plainly distinguish a white thread from a black thread by the daylight: then keep the fast until night"

The good that is acquired through the fast can be destroyed by five things -

the telling of a lie
slander
denouncing someone behind his back
a false oath
greed or covetousness

These are considered offensive at all times, but are most offensive during the Fast of Ramadan

During Ramadan, it is common for Muslims to go to the Masjid (Mosque) and spend several hours praying and studying the Quran. In addition to the five daily prayers, during Ramadan Muslims recite a special prayer called the Taraweeh prayer (Night Prayer). The length of this prayer is usually 2-3 times as long as the daily prayers. Some Muslims spend the entire night in prayer

On the evening of the 27th day of the month, Muslims celebrate the Laylat-al-Qadr (the Night of Power). It is believed that on this night Muhammad first received the revelation of the Holy Quran. And according to the Quran, this is when God determines the course of the world for the following year

When the fast ends (the first day of the month of Shawwal) it is celebrated for three days in a holiday called Id-al-Fitr (the Feast of Fast Breaking). Gifts are exchanged. Friends and family gather to pray in congregation and for large meals. In some cities fairs are held to celebrate the end of the Fast of Ramadan.

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I am the Dark Lord

2005-10-24T10:46:00.000+05:30

Ok this aint an original work of art. I took the basic sketch of the guy in the armor with the sword from a site called artgeek, but I put my face in there myself. And I didnt have any fancy softwares to do it. The only thing I used was MS Paint that comes with your windows Operating System.

What Happened to the Saraswati

2005-10-07T23:09:00.000+05:30

It was purported to be one of the great rivers of the Indian subcontinent, yet no trace of it exists. Well yeah there is a channel in the ground which s said to be a dry bed of the river but the river itself does not exist and it lies a bit to the south west of the Sutlej. It was said to flow from the Himalayas, or the siwaliks to be exact into the Arabian Sea. And there have even been rumors saying that the Rann of Kutch (the vast wasteland that covers the most of north eastern Gujarat) was its mouth into the Arabian Sea. It was said to have supported many ancient cities belonging to the Indus Valley Civilization.

LANDSAT PICTURE OF THE SARASWATI CHANNEL

The channel shown in this pic is about 6-8 km wide this might have been the width of the river (from Siwalik thru Kalibangan and Anupgarh to Marot); present Shatadru (Sutlej) takes a sharp turn at Ropar.

THE SARASWATI IN PUNJAB AND HARYANA

the dotted lines in this picture are the river saraswati. by the looks of it seems to have been a very large river. so the question arises, how such a large river can just disappear seemingly into thin air.

Now we know that this river was very important as it shares its name with the Hindu goddess of knowledge and music. Clearly this river did mean a lot to those who did inhabit its banks. So where did this mighty river disappear?

That remains one of the archaeological mysteries of India.

All material taken from

HINDUNET

The Gayatri Mantra

2005-10-01T14:59:00.000+05:30

The most revered mantra in Hinduism is the Gayatri mantra. Said to be composed and written long ago by a sage by the name of Vishwamitra, the mantra is personified by the goddess Gayatri, or Savitri also known as Veda Mata (mother of the Vedas, the Vedas are the holy scriptures of the Hindu religion). This mantra is taken from the Rig Veda (the Vedas are four in number the Rig, Yajur, Atharva, and Sama, in chronological order) and is considered to be the essence of the Vedas. It is a sacred prayer to illuminate the universe and describes the unity of the multiform universe. The mantra is indicative of meditation, praise and prayer at the same time. The reigning deity of the Gayatri mantra is the Sun and the scriptures enjoin the Hindus to recite it morning noon and night to cancel out evil and bad tendencies.

While praising the Supreme Being, the chanter of the mantra meditates and prays for the rise of real intelligence within to understand creation and transcend the worldly preoccupations and attain union with the Brahman (otherwise known as nirvana or Moksha).

The Gayatri mantra is as follows:

Aum Bhurbuvaswaha
Tat Savitur Varenyam
Bhargo Devasya Dheemahi
Dheeyoyonah Prachodayat

The meaning of each word in the mantra:

The first 3 lines or the first nine words describe the nature of the supreme being

Aum: The sacred symbol which is said to describe the heavens in totality

Bhurbuvaswaha: This is the compound of the following three words
• Bhuh: The earth or the physical plane of existence;
• Bhuva: The atmosphere or the ethereal or the astral plane of existence;
• Swaha: Heaven or the celestial or the causal plane of existence;

Tat: It means “that”. The supreme being is simply referred to as “that” for it evades all attempts at explanation;

Savitur: The divine powers of the sun; equated to Savitri, one of the forms of the mother goddess;

Varenyam: The best

Bhargo: Radiance, Effulgence, Illumination;

Devasya: Divine Radiance or Grace (of the supreme being)

The rest of the verse (the last line) constitutes the prayer:

Dheemahi: We contemplate or meditate upon

Dheeyoyonah: This is the compound of the following three words
• Dheeyo: The intellect
• Yo: Who
• Nah: Our

Prachodayat: Requesting, Urging Praying.

English verse form:
Aum;
We meditate on heaven, sky and earth
On the supreme spirit
Whose divine radiance and grace
Like the sun are most excellent
Constantly urging and praying
To guide and impel our intellect

The first line starts with Aum which is the sacred syllable or word as a benedictory prelude and sanction. Scientists world over have associated this age old Hindu belief that this is the sound of the universes with the background radiation that is picked up by radio telescopes. They have speculated that this might be the remnant of the big bang. Bhurbuvaswaha refers to the three planes of existence- the physical, astral and celestial.

The second and third lines describe the Brahman supreme spirit and it various attributes and qualities. It invokes the supreme spirit as an embodiment of knowledge and light. The fourth line implores the Brahma- the supreme spirit to guide, impel and enlighten us as humans.

The Story Of Lord Ganesha

2005-09-09T07:29:00.000+05:30

Before narrating this it would be helpful if I introduce some of the gods of the hindu pantheon.

Brahma:
The hindu god of creation

Vishnu:
The hindu god of sustenance, he maintains righteousness among us humans. Whenever we did stray too far from the path of righteousness he came down on earth as one of his avatars (yes avatar is an Indian word). They are Matsya, Koorma, Varaha, Narasimha, Vamana, Parasurama, Rama, Balarama, Krishna and Kalki.

Shiva:
The hindu god of destruction, he is the one who dances the divine dance called the tandav, which is the eternal dance of creation and destruction.

Nandi:
Lord Shiva's steed, an ox.

Ganesha:
Also known as Vinayaka, Vighneswara, Gajanana etc. He has 108 names and is known in the west as the Elephant God.

Well. It all started when Gajasura (a demon with the head of an elephant) did pennance to be able to see lord Shiva. And since Shiva is easy to please, he appeared in front of Gajasura and said, "Demand whatever you wish for and you shall have it." To this Gajasura said that he wanted Shiva to live forever in his stomach. Thenceforth, Shiva started living in his stomach.

Then, Shiva's wife, the Goddess of beauty and health, Parvathi, went to lord Krishna (one of lord Vishnu's avatars) and sought his help to facilitate the return of her husband. Now, Krishna took Nandi, and decorated him as a show animal and went to Gajasura and set up a show for him. At the end of the show Gajasura was so pleased that he told the showman (lord Krishna in disguise) that he would grant any wish asked of him. To which lord Krishna replied, “This is no ordinary ox, he is the great Nandi who seeks his master who happens to be trapped in your belly.” It was then that Gajasura realised that the showman was actually Krishna, and that his death was inevitable. He then spoke to Shiva who was in his stomach and said, “I will set you free, but I want one favour in reurn. I want you to make it such that my head is worshipped in all three worlds (heaven, hell and earth). Then, Nandi tore his stomach open with his horns and freed his master, lord Shiva. Shiva collected the head of Gajasura and went on his way to Kailasa which is his abode.

Hearing of her husband’s return, the overjoyed Parvati decided to bathe. In those days, when this story was written, the husk of several edible pulses and gram were used to bathe with in lieu of soap. She had already applied this powered mixture on her body, before She went to rinse off, She took some of the dired powder off her body and made a small figure of a young boy. She breathed life into the figure, and left the child to guard the door while She attended to herself.

While she was bathing, Shiva returned. But the guardian at the door didn’t let him in. So he took his trishool (trident), and decapitated the kid. When She heard of this, She asked her husband to bring him back to life. So He attached the head of Gajasura to the body of the child and rekindled the life that he had taken. Thus was born their first child by the name of Gajanana (the one with the head of an elephant). In the due course of time Gajanana grew up and acquired as his steed a mouse by the name of Anindya. It is this comic and affable picture of him that has made him close to many hearts. Although many hindus have ishta devatas (favourite gods), there are very few of them who do not worship Gajanana.

Sometime in between Shiva and Parvati had their second child by the name of Kartik who is the Hindu god of war; he has for his steed a peacock. One fine day, all the gods decided that they needed one of them to exclusively see to it that no one faced any hurdles in her/his life. Kartik said that his pot bellied mouse riding brother would be unfit for the task so it should be given to him.

Then the gods decided that whoever would bathe in all the holy rivers in the three worlds (heaven, hell and earth) and return the first would be given the task. Then the crestfallen Gajanana realised that he would be unable to complete the required test, so he recited a mantra and circled his parents in a clockwise direction (this is called a pradakshina and it is an expression of devotion). As a result, whenever Kartik entered a river to bathe, he would see that Gajanana had finished his ritual and was leaving the river. It was then that he realised the greatness of his brother and withdrew his claim to the position.

On the fourth day after the new moon in the month of Bhadrapada, Gajanana was conferred with the title of Vighneswara (remover of obstacles). His devotees world wide prepared a feast for this occaision to congratulate him. He visited each house and gorged himself on all the sweets and other items prepared by them and fed some to his steed. As he was undertaking the long and arduous journey back to his abode, he cast a very very comic picture and the moon could not help himself so he laughed out loud.

Overcome by embarassment, Vighneswara failed to notice a bump in the road and tripped and fell, his belly burst and all his innards were scattered all over the ground. Parvati blamed the moon for her son’s death (the gods later revived him) and said that anyone looking at the moon would be mowed down by unfounded accusations. So all the righteous people in the world, whoever saw the moon incurred heavy sins. When requested by the other gods, She decreased the curse saying that whoever saw the moon on the fourth day after the new moon in the month of Bhadrapada without listening to the story of Vigneswara, would incur unfounded sins.

On one such day, lord Krishna (one of the avatars of Lord Vishnu, the god of maintenance) saw the moon in a reflection in a milk platter while he was drinking. He then realised that he would have to go thorugh some unpleasant ordeal or the other. And he did:

A king by the name of Satrajit had in his posession a Mani (jewel) which used to create a lot of gold each day and Krishna asked for it. Quite obviously he refused. One day Satrajit’s brother Prasena took the Mani and went on a hunting trip. In the forest, a lion saw the Mani and mistaking it for meat, killed Prasena and took it. Later, a bear by the name of Jambavan killed the lion and took the Mani from it and gave it to his daughter. The blame for Prasena’s death was laid on Krishna. So Krishna vowed to find out what happened of Prasena and the Mani.

In the forest, he found Prasena’s corpse, and a little further he found the Lion’s corpse and from there the footprints of Jambavan leading up to his cave. In the cave he found Jambavan’s daughter Jambavati playing with the Mani. When he snatched the Mani from her, she started crying her heart out. And Jambavan came there immediately to find the Mani in Krishna’s hands. Jambavan and Krishna started fighting. Twenty one days later, they were still fighting and and Jambavan’s strength started waning. He then remembered that when he helped lord Rama, he asked of him the boon to fight him, he then realised that Krishna was an avatar of the same. He begged for Krishna’s pardon, and gave him the Mani. He also realised that he would not be able to find a better man than Krishna and so he offered him his daughter in marriage.

When he returned to Satrajit’s palace with the Mani, Satrajit was so overjoyed that he not only gave the Mani to Krishna, he also offered to him his daughter’s hand in marriage.

So, Krishna, even though he was a god had to go through all that trouble just because he looked at the moon (accidentally albeit) before hearing this story on the fourth day after new moon in the month of Bhadrapada.

Disclaimer:
To some of you, this story might come across as being male chauvinistic. I have no hand in it being so. This story was originally written in sanskrik on the far side of two thousand years ago. During this period it had gone through many different translators some of whom might have been male chauvinists. It is my firm beleif that the original text was not of this nature at all.

Who Am I

2005-06-17T12:11:00.000+05:30

WHO AM I
You wanna know
My name is Vedant
Thats all I've been told
For my knowledge of my family
Ends two generations ago
My grandparents and my parents
My parents and me
Thats all I've unraveled
Of my family tree

But is that all I am
The dead end of a lineage?
Oh no I am more
An individual in my own right

What means then
the capitalised question
the answer for to which
I haven't the faintest suggesion

Am I Just
Another name to burden your memory
Am I just another
Adition to general suffering
Or am I a person
With a purpose in life
To give and to take
All that I feel is right
How do I know
What I am for
For that I haven't been told
Prior to entering this world

Hell! I dont even remember
The time time when I arrived
How then would I know what
Those then there did profesize

Or is there a person
Behind all grand purpose
Waiting to emerge
From anonimity's darkness

I cannot answer
The question you asked
The answer will appear
When my life forms the past

Don't think that you
By me have been smitten
For I cannot read
What hasn't yet been written

Strengths, the Human Mind and the Mahabharata

2005-06-13T11:32:00.000+05:30

I had written a rather bland morose and uninteresting article on this topic in the month of december simply titled 'STRENGTHS'. That was the result of a random tangible idea that had come out of one of my ritual tussles with insanity. That idea sparked off a chain of thoughts which when impregnated with certain inferences have transformed into the following theory:

It is true that a human being is a multifacetted creature. There are many different levels on which the human being operates. And for each of these levels we possess a separate strength. There are five different strengths that each one of us is equipped with. There is the most obvious, the physical strength which enables us to do mechanical things like lifting and moving. The greater the magnitude of this strength, the greater the ease of those operations. Then we have the slightly more subtle psychological strength which enables us to concentrate on one particular object, be it an action or an artefat. The third would be emotional strength or the ability to control ones own and at a later stage of greater magnitude, the emotions of others. Then would come the mental strength which is the power of deduction, this strength is directly linked to the level of intelligence of the person. The last and arguably the greatest of the five strengths is spiritual strength. This is the most difficult to obtain and the most difficult to practise and ascetics in India (and around the world before the christian invasion) have spent their entire lifetime in the search of this strength. At the most mundane level it entails the ability to amplify the magnitude of the other four strengths by using the energy of the soul. And at the most lofty level it entails the ability of the soul to remain alive without the help of the body for short periods of time and even space-time manipulation.

These strengths are also linked to the five elements, each one of them representing one strength. air-mental, water-emotional, earth-physical, fire-psychological and ether-spiritual.

Ether has often been interpreted as being the stuff souls are made of. But I would like to go a step further and say that ether represents quantum foam (quantum foam is the nature of space-time at the subatomic level). I can't yet explain why I make this assumption.

The five strengths are also linked to the five pandavas (the principle protagonists of the Mahabharata) in the sense that they represent the five facets of a single man. Or in more mundane terms, the five pandavas represent a single person who had multiple personalities that were bound into one integral whole. Yuddhishthira, represented the emotional strength- he never gets swayed off the righteous path by his emotions. Bhima, obviously represents physical strength. Arjuna reprensents spiritual strength, Nakula represents psychological strength as Sahadeva represents mental strength.

Then what does the relation these five have to each other have to do with the strengths? Sahadeva and the other four are not born of the same mother, thus Mental strength is not related to the other four strengths (namely physical, psychological, emotional and spiritual) as deeply as those four are inter related to each other. Mental strength, or intelligence is a direct consequence of the physical connections made between the neurons in the brain, they can be manipulated by the soul, but the connections are very much physical, tangible and material. Whereas the other four strengths pertain to the soul alone.

Then one would be compelled to ask about Karna, he being a genetic brother to the Pandavas, what strength does he signify? Yes he does signify something but definately not a strength. Karna signifies weakness. The only weakness a righteous person can fall prey to is 'obligation to the unrighteous'.

The epic called the Mahabharata is a thorough study of human behaviour told in the form of a charming story by the means of metaphors.

Antagonise the Crime Not the Criminal

2005-06-04T10:24:00.000+05:30

I used to think that this was just another piece of philosophical bullshit. The title is a literal translation of a saying in Hindi (India's national language) which goes like 'paap say ghrina karo, paapi say nahi'.

Then I started thinking,what is a crime? Basically, a crime is an act committed by a person. Any act by a person which causes harm and/or physical discomfort, pain, suffering to one or many persons which may or may not include the perpetrator of the act which if it satisfies some or all of the conditions mentioned above constitutes a crime. So what is the root cause of a crime? Let us exclude the criminally insane from the section of people we base this discussion on for they are a small minority of the human race.

A criminal act, or any act for that matter starts as a chain of thought processes in the mind. These processes are more often than not triggered by external stimuli, and if the stimulus is negative or painful the chain of thoughts is accompanied by a desire to cause pain/harm to the person or object which is percieved as the source of the stimulus. How often have you seen a person getting angry at an inanimate object just because he/she has either tripped over it or banged some body part against it?

Then there is the case of international terrorists who more often than not are perfectly sane people. But why do they do what they do? For some reason they feel wronged by the world in general and more often than not their claim is very legitimate. When an elephant steps on the tail of a mouse it the pachyderm might be completely oblivious of what it has trodden on, but the mouse is the one which might be in excruitiating pain. The same can be said about big countries and small. The big ones might not even notice that one or a few of its actions are detrimental to a smaller country, and even if it notices, it may consider the damage done to be insignificant, but the smaller country might have lost a lot in the deal. This is what spawns terrorists. They truly believe that they are fighting for a just cause. But the case is not so when we consider fanatics, whether religeous or otherwise.

So what we need to battle global terrorism is not a gargantuan military campaign, but a hell of a lot of understanding of why those who are doing what they are doing are doing it. Once we eliminate the reason for which people wish to make war with the rest of the world, there would not be any terrorists.

I hope I am right....lol...?!

LOVE, HATE AND AWE

2005-05-29T14:52:00.000+05:30

The problem with this world is not about the widespread nature of hate. It is the lack of love. These days in the era of gobalisation, what we feel towards our fellow humans is very much of consequence. Walk out into the street and you see people trying to rule over those around them through hate and fear and the absence of hope. But those who have really succeeded throughout history were those who ruled through love, kindness and hope.

Recently I re-read a novel by Alistair Maclean called 'The Last Frontier'. The story was set in communist Hungary which was ruled through the medium of hate and fear of the iron curtain. Their secret service called the AVO used to pick up people who did not believe in the communist ideology and dispose of them after the usual torture. The principal protagonist of the story was a British secret agent who is in search of a man called Major General Illyurin. This man who had experienced torture of the worst kind throughout his life was hell bent on peace. He headed an organisation which saved innocent people form the clutches of the AVO. He had his share of dangerous people working for him, but he ruled with love and kindness. Seeing how those under him swore by him through thick and thin started me thinking about the power of love. If hate and fear can make people work for you can love and kindness not do the same thing. Love and kindness should bring out better better results from those whom you give a task to. Fear is negative but there is a similar positive feeling it is called awe. The facial expression of those in fear and those in awe are almost the same. But those who fear try to run away from the object of their fear and hate it but those in awe tend to approach the object of their awe and love and respect it. The object of which would you like to be? I prefer awe.

Although awe is more difficult to establish, it draws people closer to you but not too close, and it also yields better results. Awe can be looked apon as a special case of love. Awe could be approximated as being an amalgam of respect and love.

Every human knows what love is but can not say as the languages lack the words to describe it, especially love to a fellow human. But love for that special someone can not be generalised since it is unique to each and every individual couple.

Pornography and the Human Race

2005-05-20T17:33:00.000+05:30

These days it seems the idea of romance has long since made an exit from the human psyche. All the porn that we find on the net is to serve one purpose alone- to satisfy the human carnal need no matter what the cost. This notion of taking all that is available and giving as little as possible (if not giving anything at all is out of the question) has permeated well into our outlook on sex. This fact is well evident when encountered with the fact that the number of adult sites on the internet catering to BDSM and related themes is on the rise. It is this kind of outlook that has lead us to this deplorable state of affairs we find ourselves in. To realise just how sorry the state of affairs of out supposedly advanced 'civilization' is consider the fact that we now have to purchase drinking water and eventually will have to purchase water for all needs. There are even establishments in certain cities that sell oxygen rich air. These commodities that should have been free to begin with and are abundantly available on the earth are unusable thanks to none other than ourselves.

The great Mahatma Gandhi once said "Nature can provide for mankind's need but not for its greed." Rightly said that was. There has been a recent study which said that the amount of free energy available to the human being at present is unprecedented. Another study said that we are going to run out of supply of fossil fuels in the hear future- as near as 30 years hence. All these separately do not say much. But when put together and viewed as a whole they say one thing alone. WE ARE PAVING THE WAY TO OUR OWN DESTRUCTION and god forbid- extinction. Want more evidence to the way the actions of one section of our society can obliterate the ways of life of others? Read the blog called crazylaks.blogspot.com then you will see what our blind actions do to the human race.

So what does all this have to do with pornography? Very simple. We can take it for granted that porn is the medium that reaches out to the largest section of the human population. Aye, this is because by its nature pornography caters to the most primal desire of the human animal- lust. So as a medim, the makers of pornography have a duty to see to it that the human race doesnt get reduced to a tribe of selfish and greedy individuals who will hold onto their greed obstinately even in the face of inevitalbe destruction. This they should do by stressing the importance of giving along with taking. It is the least they can do for the sake of humanity.

AN ATTEMPT AT INSPIRING

2005-03-13T12:22:00.000+05:30

I WROTE THIS FOR A VERY SPECIAL FRIEND OF MINE, GOD BE WITH HER

let not your courage fade
you have put up a good fight till date
it is such things that separate
the pretenders from the contenders
you are the latter i know
the one ahead of you is a long rough road
but this road must be taken
for going back is not your style
you will emerge victorious i know
and i will be right by your side
ignore all who tell you to stop
although they dont mean ill
but use your own powers of discretion
you will not fight this war alone
for we'll fight and we'll win

CRY OF DISPAIR

2005-02-05T17:03:00.000+05:30

THIS IS A SONG I WROTE FOR MY ERSTWHILE BAND

MAKE SOME USE OF IT IF YOU CAN

Turned on the news today

But didn't wanna hear a word they'd say

What's goin on in the world these days

Isn't makin any sense anyway

Chaos is rulin the world

Everythin is lost in a whirl

The dark sides of our Psyches unfurl

Nuclear bombs at people they hurl

Chorus:

Tryin to make sense of this nonsense

Walkin through streets of Violence

Stop this mindless distruction

Tryin to find peace within my soul

People lookin on in dispair

As war cries fill the air

Tryin to make sense of a cold hard stare

Wonderin why n what went wrong n where

Dileneation of boundaries

As friend n foe territories

Electrified wire n heavily armed sentries

Constant reminders of the absence of peace

Chorus X 3

THE DARK LORD

2005-01-17T18:32:00.000+05:30

The dark lord inspired
Nothing but fear
And fear for reason none
He was a kind of a recluse
And nothing of his past was known

He was called dark because
He arrived on a black moonless night
And bought the manor house
But none of those who did see him
Had ever seen his face

But those close to him knew
That he was a kind man
Though given to strange habits
That none could understand

He never had to fight a war
Even though he went in alone
The sight of his black armour and horse
Froze the hearts of his foes
With each inch of his advance
The enemy troops receded
When he'd had a word with the attacking lord
He and his troops retreated

Rumours there were of his being evil
But his subjects swore by him
For they knew in hard times as before
He'd lend a helping hand

One day as he was riding through
A forest in his domain
He'd heard the sound of merry laughter
Whose source he went to ascertain
He spied a lady of about one and twenty
About the same age as him
Sharing a light moment with some of his subjects
Though she was not one of them

When they saw the dark lord
They ran as though in fear
But she turned her steed to face him
And smiled at the hooded intruder

"Leave my land, outsider"
He wished to say to her
But the malice that he could summon at will
Wasn't anywhere near
Such was the effect she had on him
As he there defenceless stood
The only thing he could do voluntarily
Was to remove his hood

It was her turn to be surprised
As she did recognize his face
From a portrait in a book about
A mysterious long lost race
A race of lords which was long thought dead
When twelve years ago a king was betrayed
By his own general
It was said that the king was killed
Along with his whole family
And their remains burned
And ashes thrown into the sea

This was a race of kings and lords
Of which the dark lord was sole survivor

She turned and galloped as fast as she could
Back to her own domain

The dark lord went the next day
To the exact same spot
Hoping to see her again
As if by magic her heart beat faster
For she was already there

They alighted and moved toward each other
Nothing was said for over an hour
"I know your face." she said at last
Said he, "I wear a hood to hide just that."
"I ran" said he in answer to her
"I ran for days on end
I ran as long and as fast as I could
When I was a lad of nine
I dared not stop for more than a breath
For I knew I was being hunted
When I was in the dark forest
I ran out of energy and fainted
And awoke to find myself in a hut
Surrounded by worried looking people

They knew who I was but they
Had no affinity for wealth
So they decided not to hand me over
To the traitor

There I lived for eleven years
Learning all the dark arts
Of controlling peoples minds without
Their knowing of it
And putting mortal fear into peoples hearts

I came here to recalaim my rightful throne
I wear a hood so that I am not known
For who I am
Till the last moment"

They met in the woods everyday
For over a month
During which he'd added to his palace's defences
But once he brought her to his abode
And her presence
Banished all the gloom once and for all
Now this is a palace fit for a lord
But you my lady are a goddess

But one day she failed to come
He began to worry about her absence
As he was leaving his palace one morn
To go to her domain and see her
Three lords, his neighbours
Came for his help
They had lost in battle against the traitor

The dark lord's domain was small
Controlling just one town
But he was all that stood
Between the traitor
And his lady's land

The dark lord rode into battle
With his neighbours and their troops

The two armies were within sight of each other
The dark lord's forces were outnumbered
By a factor of ten
The battle began
But the dark lord rode out alone
Suddenly storm clouds gathered
Lightning bolts fell on the enemy troops
And the survivors were sucked into the soil
No one survived

Then he learned of his lady
She was the traitor's prisoner
He crushed the golden goblet in his hand
And his rage melted the gold
His breath came out as steam
He set off on foot
His lady to redeem
Np creature on earth
Moved as fast as he

As he approached the fort
The defences and ramparts
Were blown apart
By huge torandoes
And all the guards were struck by lightning

He walked in
There was his lady
And there was the traitor
With sword drawn and ready

The dark lord advanced
Looked the traitor
In the eye
And froze him
In fear
The traitor fell
To the ground
And stopped breathing.

He took his lady to his palace
They were married
And he to all
His identity revealed

He ruled for long
As a righteous king
His darkness wasn't gone
But merely hidden

HOLY F@#K

2004-12-29T14:47:00.000+05:30

Did you know why in Indian language there is no equivalent for the above exclamation or for any other phrase that contains the word f@#$ ? Well take a long hard look at the picture above, this a picture of one of the sculptures on the khajuraho temples. These sculptures depict gods and goddesses in all the coital positions described in the kamasutra. Ancient Indians used to consider the act of sexual intercourse to be sacred. What is the outcome of this act? The birth of a person who never before existed. So they considered it sacred and so there is no epithet in any Indian language that directly refers to the act of sexual intercourse.

TO MY LOVE

2004-12-26T17:27:00.000+05:30

This universe is smaller in magnitude
Than the crush i have on you
When you are near
I feel I can conquer the world
When you are near
I feel complete
one look into your eyes
and i know i can achieve
all that i want to

you are the reason
i strive to become better than i am
you make me want to be a better man
as close to the best as i possibly can

when i am with you
i feel i can drop all my facades
i think, nay i know
that i am falling in love with you

i wait for the night
for the stars so bright
but they can never be compaired
to your brilliant eyes
one thing i will say
disregarding all advice
i will always love you
till the day of my demise

you are devine manna
to my soul
you are the only one who
makes my spirit a complete whole

in your presence i feel
like i can write an international bestseller
yea, compose and sing a global hit
in your presence i feel
like i am a winner

off late you are the reason i am alive
i begin the day with the thought of you
i retire for the night
with you on my mind
and in my heart

i have but one heart
please don't doom it to burn
i beg of you to please
love me in return

but if you chose not to reciprocate
i would love to remain your friend

whatever the outcome of my attempt
i must thank you for all that strength
induced by you into my spirit

THIS IS MY THEORY ON THE EVOLUTION OF THE CASTE SYSTEM.

2004-12-25T10:18:00.000+05:30

As we walk around in out towns, what do we see? People. But these People are segregated into various groups. Engineers, scientists, artists, artisans, labourers, etc. What is this segregation basd on? Our occupation. We live in a society that is segegated based on what we do for a living. The society of india too did have this segregation of its society. We percieve the remenants of that system these days in what we call the caste system. But the standard argument against that theory is that its is based on heredity.Now, if a person would come into a crowded market square any place and at any time and say that certain types of people were to be considered to be of high birth and then define the hierarchy based on this, he would have been torn apart by a very angry mob.

Here is my hypothesis as to how the caste system came into being:

The creators first took into consideration the policy makers of the kingdom. They were ministers, royal councillors, village heads, judges, architects, engineers, in short those who used their brains to work. Now these people had immense scholastic aptitude which took atleast a decade to hone. This was a very difficult task as they had to live in gurukulas in forests and abstain from creature comforts. These people were given the highest position in the hierarchy of castes as the brahmins. Next came those whose scholastic aptitude was not all that great but had immense control over a perfectly coordinated musculature. These people were the warriors, martial artists, wrestlers, boxers, master swordsmen, kings, commanders of the royal army, etc. They too did not have an easy time getting to where they were in terms of physical aptitude. It did take the better part of a decade to develop a fair degree of coordination between mind, body and soul. So they were given the second place in the hierarchy as Kshatriyas. But taking into account the approximate equivalence in vitality to the kingdom of both these peoples, there isn't a clarity in discerning who exactly held the first and second position at the time of the creation of his system. Next came the traders, merchants, and anyone who bartered - and later when the concept of currency was discovered - bought and sold anything for profit in the markets. These people were given the third place in the hierarchy of the castes as the Vaishyas. Then came the Sudras, the people who had neither the mental aptitude nor the physical aptitude to be eligible for anythig other than labour.

I myself am a brahmin, and when I look about myself I do not see many of the so called Brahmins as being eligible to be in that caste. So I have drawn the hypothesis that the Brahmins of those days made their position at the top of the hierarchial order definite by making themselves indisposible in almost everything that they did. This they did by complicating all the procedures they were involved in and creating concepts of 'madi' which means the conncept of being spiritually clean and by excluding all the other people from the sources of knowledge. The next thing they did was to make this system hereditary in order to ensure that their progeny enjoyed the same respect and honour that they did irrespective of whether they were worth it or not.This last move was the most damning of them all as there can be no guarantee that if the parent has a high I.Q the offspring will too. The same goes for those with parents with low I.Qs. But this move was also the most difficult because it is one thing to create a system of segregation of people. but it is another to aspire to change the outlook of the entire population of life towards their fellow human beings and infinitely more importantly towards themselves.

MUSIC AND ME

2004-12-23T14:14:00.000+05:30

To me, music is not just a mixture of various sounds that actually end up sounding good. Music is much more. I read a piece of music like you or anyother person would read a newspaper article or a book. The way a person sings to himself/herself when alone or when in deep thought distinctly reflects the type of person he/she is. Music is a glimpse into the person's soul into the emotions that he/she is experiencing. Music can comunicate more than words since you don't listen in a cursory manner but you listen to a piece of music with your heart. It has been scientifically proven that the same region of the brain that is responsible for you appreciation of music is responsible for your ability to think logically. And i found out that this is true since I can concentrate better when i am listening to music at a low volume.

Music is a way of communicating without letting language impede the flow of your emotions. Plain music is much more transmissive than music with words.

Yes I do listen to metal as in metallica and death metal as in sepultura. But there is one factor which allows me to listen to only these bands. These bands have the most balanced songs in the industry.By balance I mean that all the negativity they propagate through those songs, they have a sense of hope in either the words or the tune to balance it. Emotional balance is what is needed in this world of heightening tensions. That is propagated by these bands even though they are said to create 'negative' music.

THE DARK SIDE OF ME

2004-12-17T13:44:00.000+05:30

Somewhere

Deep inside a lair

A demon sleeps

A sleep not too deep

The lair is dark

With some faint light

Filtering through the deep dense gloom

Somehow it becomes awake

And moves through the lair like a wraith

Ever searching, a way to find

Out of the lair in which its confined

The bog on the floor doesn't bother it

Neither does the heavy fog engulfing it

Whenever I pass by

It looks me in the eye

Always threatening, but never strikes

Me it will never attack I don't know why

Its sole motive is to destroy

All that is made by the world

It can be destroyed by me alone

But I do not want it destroyed

Cos when push comes to shove

And battle lines are drawn

I choose a weapon for the fight

But I have neither guts nor heart

To put the weapon to any use

It is the demon who wages war

On our behalf

I keep him alive at times of peace

As he does me at times of war

And then the truth I realise

The lair is my mind

And the demon, my dark side.

ALMOST A SUICIDE LETTER

2004-12-17T12:57:00.000+05:30

I don't know why off late

I feel like i am trapped in a cage

I know i am strong enough to break free

But there is something stopping me

I feel like an albatross that is meant to wander

But is locked behind golden bars

I want to set forth into the wild blue yonder

But everytime I try I get new scars

I talk to imaginary people

I argue for cases proven wrong

I dont know what is hapenning to me

And those who matter dont seem to understand

I know i will never commit suicide

But i did think of it more than a couple of times

I do want to take on the challenge called life

But i do too want to be given a fair chance

I am an optimist cos that is my nature

But i know an impossible situation when i see one

I am recognized as unusual

But still am measured against the stereotypical

I am no longer what i used to be

So please take into consideration the new me

When i had the heart to pull out yours i had no guts

And now when i have the guts i have no heart

I know i am in need of something but i do not know wha

tIt is you who should be helping me in finding that

But instead you have an illusion of me in your head

And you try to fulfill sthat illusion's needs in me

Do you know how much happiness writing this gave me?

How can you ever know you barely even know me.