To God Or Not To Guard

A brilliant and brave attempt to question the idea of God through a personified idea of God. Do we live better staying united or with stronger walls built between us? A vada story gives a perspective in this clip from an old Tamil movie titled Rudra Thandavum.

Whose Life Is It Anyway

To begin with, I teach conflict resolution. This means, I get to learn more than I can possibly teach - with that fact being established, as students, we get to learn about the Johari Window - the Arena, the Blind Spot, the Facade and the Unknown before we move on to understand Conflict resolution strategies like Withdrawal, Forcing, Compromising, Reconciliation and Confrontation and further learn techniques to effectively use during conflict resolution.

And now for the confession... In real life, I suck at resolving conflicts especially in my personal life. Very often I choose the weakest technique to resolve conflicts - I bow out - I often agree to accept that that person with whom I have a conflict, does not even exist in my life anymore - in conflict resolution language, it is what one calls 'withdrawal'. 

This often oscillates with my otherwise persistent tendency by nature to break things down - something they do not usually teach in conflict resolution classes. Breaking things to a shatter being my favourite and often familiar pass time in a world where I take pleasure in wrecking things up in the backdrop of chaos and confusion. These days, I have suspended this activity since it is financially too taxing to be engaged in such a pleasure - with wife and kids and the recurring expenses you see.  

Now to the point. Very often, I get to see people choose everything else and everything less to resolve conflicts rather than choose the highest and best strategy in conflict resolution - confrontation. Confrontation is not about breaking someone's nose or to humiliate another with facts and truth. It is about collaborating and reaching a certain level of honesty to let each other know what is bothering each other and in attempting to understand the issues through each other's eyes. Psychiatric Social Workers, Counselors and other related professionals learn to use techniques to uncover and address hidden and potential threats during conflict resolution exercises and help people reconcile more effectively in a therapeutic environment.

One of the issues I find couples facing these days is in the area of trying to resolve conflicts in the presence of family and friends - usually an audience who further flame their senseless revelations and displaced excitement. Shamelessly these couples often wash their dirty linen in public and from boardroom to bedroom issues, share their issues loud and clear for the whole world to hear. This very stunt, they hardly realize, is what gets them socially butted, excluded, isolated and the reason why no one wants them to be part of any social gathering where a certain level of civilized behaviour is expected - something that cannot be expected from these kinds. The very ego of their's that they try to defend through these quarrels is the one that shatters at the end of these ugly domestic stunts - which is almost like spitting against the wind and getting it on the face in return.

Friends and families who try to intervene to resolve these ugly spats, may come in with the best intention; yet, they are not professional help providers. Finding an effective help provider is as crucial as seeking help from one.
Ideally, there are a few things that must be kept within four walls in any intimate relationship - things like discussions about finance, sex and confrontations. With city walls becoming thin and walls that divide apartments becoming thinner, people instead of becoming more conscious, have become more disgusting and better dis-reputed as they engage in unrestricted, uncontrolled and instinctive display of their mediocre upbringing not just within these walls yet also go on to tear each other's walls and face on the virtual world too - displaying their skills at how unfit they are to belong to a more controlled, conscious and civilized world to a bigger and silently judging audience who are far more disgusted than entertained by the couple's acts of immaturity in the meantime. 

Some people are born into families with bad examples or are themselves bad examples in their families -  there are ever too many excuses and ever too many people to blame when one does not get to see the log in his/her own eyes. At the end of the day, "Whose life is it anyway?!"   

Antiques And Its Familial Route

The antique market has surely picked up these days. What once was considered old, today seems to fetch gold. Recently, I was at a shop that sells antiques in Nagercoil - everything this guy sells, he buys for the price of scrap ('aakar' in Tamil) and sells them for almost their weight in gold - a cheapo in buying and a shark when it comes to selling. With a refined hobby that has been reduced and commercialized, today we get to see the market and the fellows who control it, unable to distinguish between class and crap as both get mixed into a heap.  

Recently, there was the impulsiveness in me to complete (or so I temporarily feel) a vintage watch collection with that Henry Sandoz I finally found in one of those antique corridors. Now, along with the Favre Leuba, Pagol, West End, HMTs and a few pocket watches sits the latest Henry - to be wound time to time - that springs to run all well and fine even now... some way past a hundred years. 

This fascination went out of control recently when I started eyeing the pendulum clocks too. Soon I was to understand the time consumed to preserve these pieces of art that have withstood the test of time and had to give up on not wanting to accumulate beyond my capacity to care. Trust me, reviving an antique without letting it lose its essentials or character while at the same time preserving it, is always an art that needs constant learning.  

Then I ask myself, why does one treasure what another decides to give up or throw away(?!) Would it be the delight in the ruins? Would it be the pleasure derived from seeing beauty of imperfection in art? Would it be the unsaid joy in holding something from the pages of history? Would it be the energy that passes while connecting to something that has witnessed a hundred stories and a thousand dramas in its life time and still? 

Somehow I do not have one objective reason to justify this craze and as a matter of fact, I don't know and I don't have to... hahaha.

At times, I wonder about the journey these articles must have made before making their way to the dump, the antique dealer's shelf or to a collector's home. Some of my friends who have a wonderful collection of antiques have pieces that are mostly passed on - from generation to generation within their family - or handed over to them from people who are tired of having them for long and want to replace an old, place-grabber with a more functional, compact modern equipment. 

Keeping antiques is much like holding the traditions, values, morale, ethos, culture and relationships within a family; anyone trying to keep one, will know the struggle that requires plenty of patience and lot of winding and polishing that is required just to keep it working - the reason perhaps why many give up so easily or opt for exchanging it for one that suits their life style. Very often we do not understand nor comprehend the value of the one that is often too close. 

Stealing words from Kavignar Kannadhasan, 'though the closest, the eyes never get to see the eyelids.' 

Bull$hit On The Menu

Off the Ground to the Menu

Interesting turn of events - at least in the Jallikattu front - with Tamil Nadu in the line of fire. The cow and the bull have been giving the Prime Minister quite some trouble these days it seems. From the time he tried to give a menu card - of what to eat and what not to (banning a few in the mean time) instead of abolishing hunger, diversion from issues that needs to be in focus seems to be the central theme about his moves and a stray part of the country seems to sway to his tune.

For starters let us take some hunger facts into account.

According to FAO estimates in ‘The State of Food Insecurity in the World, 2015” report, 194.6 million people are undernourished in India. By this measure India is home to a quarter of the undernourished population in the world. 

Now, add these facts too. 

• India is home to the largest undernourished and hungry population in the world
• 15.2% of our population is undernourished
• 194.6million people go hungry everyday
• 30.7% of children under 5 are underweight
• 58% of children stunted by 2 years of age
• 1 in 4 children malnourished
• 3,000 children in India die every day from poor diet related illness
• 24% of under-five deaths in India
• 30% of neo-natal deaths in India

(Source: https://www.indiafoodbanking.org/hunger) 

Does banning a category of meat solve the issue of hunger (?) or help feed the hungry (???) Well then, I would gladly spare not just the bull and his mother - the holy cow, yet also the buffalo too. Kerala rose up to roast this silly plan in its own style and platter. The moment the ban shot up, there were beef-eating fests taking place all over God's own country; so much so that even Yama Dharma's vehicle would have been at stake had he dared objected.

Off the Menu to the Ground

Then came the clipping of Jallikattu in Tamil Nadu and Kambala in Karnataka. Why bother? Why interfere? Especially in areas where mass sentiments, traditions and rituals are part of a life-style for Indians - even if it does not fit into the measure of sense, sensitivity and nevertheless - sensibility of a minority-few... 

I remember a certain ritual followed in Karnataka where more than 500 devotees arrive at the Kukke Subrahmanya temple in Dakshin Kannada to take part in its trademark three-day ritual called the 'made snana.' 

The made snana ('made' meaning leftover and 'snana' meaning bath), in which people roll over plantain leaves with leftovers of food eaten by Brahmins. Devotees, believe the practice will cure and protect them from skin diseases, infertility or a family curse. 

The religious tradition became controversial in 2010 when, pushed by social and Dalit activists, the state government tried to ban it. The progressives criticised the ritual as being caste-based, against hygiene, and against human dignity. Traditionalists have argued that the government must stay out of matters of personal faith.

The state government's ban on this practice - in a pretext to be progressive - caused a hue and cry, especially among the forest tribe community called the Malekudiyas. The Malekudiyas, who played a significant role in temple functions refused to perform their duties and demanded that the ban be lifted. In 2011, BS Yeddyurappa, the chief minster at the time, relented to the pressure from devotees, priests and members of his administration and reinstated the tradition. Ironically, the ones for whom the ban was imposed, were the ones who fought to lift the ban which followed and allowed them to roll there and here and anywhere as they please. 

Demon-itization

Recently, the one and only (or so he feels) Modi'ji used the media as his medium to announce his idea of a demonetization drive with no other consultation, parliamentary resolution or consensus required from people or their representatives - or so he felt, marking his spot and take on where he sits in the fine line of democracy quite clear to any political observer. Once again with 97% of the notes reaching the banks, perhaps the remaining 3 lying in the hands of curios collectors and those retaining a few notes for sentiment-value or with the likes of the poor tribal who neither knows about this demon-itization drive nor has a bank account to exchange his life-long savings of a few thousand crumbled old notes rolled into a small stack. Everyone exchanged their old notes for new and easier to store pink notes now available in higher denominations - the rich somehow managed to fill in their store before anyone else could - a few stray incidents showed the unbelievable quantum of pinks the sleuths could trace to the doors of rich people when most of India was waiting like beggars to draw their own money in giant queues in front of No Time Teller Machines that seemed to be always out of cash; the rich seemed to have benefited from Modiji's plan before the poor and the really ordinary middle-class - the one's like me - could even get a glimpse of those hard to exchange, girly-pink notes. 

According to a recent Indian government committee constituted to estimate poverty, nearly 38% of India’s population (380 million) is poor.

For some more relevant statistics:

• 50% of Indians don’t have proper shelter
• 70% don’t have access to decent toilets 
• 35% of households don’t have a nearby water source
• 85% of villages don’t have a secondary school 
• Over 40% of these same villages don’t have proper roads connecting them.

and still my country's representatives claim a 9% annual growth rate.
(Source: https://www.poverties.org/blog/poverty-in-india) 

So basically at the end of the day, through this demon-itization exercise, the keeper of the welfare state managed to get the sensex crashed, businesses drop, got the government to spend quite some stack to not just print yet also destroy over 15 lakh crore in cash (of 500 and 1000 Rs notes) that came back to the treasury's shelf that will be of no use to anyone anymore; somehow the government managed to recall no black money at all with absolutely no point in this exercise. Meanwhile, the incidence of poverty and its effect remains the same with no Modi-fication done in that front... history seems to record a classic Thuqlak'ian blunder once again.

End Note

Now there is an ongoing digital drive and a subtle forcing aadhar up your (whatever) drive that is going on. (Shall write about that soon.) In the meantime as I await the next ban, before the final ban on thinking happens, I think the bull is going to lock horns with the one who released it - as they say, 'the one who lives by the sword will die by the sword.' As for the people of Tamil Nadu, ironically, the biggest and best Jallikattu seems to have happened this year - where they have tamed the undemocratic beast let loose from the centre with people power at the state. Someone has to bell the cat or the bovine as the case may be... isn't it?    

Movie For The Thoughtless Or Others Likewise

A movie I watched a long time ago, provided me with a grim reminder me of where we are heading to as humanity... humanity that is forced to comply to thoughts and suggestion without a thought of its own. Often in classrooms today, I make it a point to ask the class to "THINK"-though that is (definitely) not a part of the portion the Universities want me to cover. 

Mentioning that, 'thinking' seems to be too much to ask for these days; perhaps, the loftiest idea to have even suggested something like that in the first place. Having spent most part of one's precious life conforming to authority and adhering to ridiculous disciplinary routines and procedures with unquestioned submission in school(s), at home and in religious and other related mental institutions, the essence of becoming a thoughtless human being seems too easy to reach for a depleting generation for whom the major "source" of information comes from the facebook. 

A huge vote bank success for the politicians, media and educationalists in achieving a set of thoughtless parasites who will never have the spine to stand up or question the lot. 

And a big round of applause in standing ovation to all the idiots who pile up into the making of this system...

Suggested movie to see: Idiocracy and here is a clip from that movie:

Surviving Backstabbing

'It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.' said Adam Smith.

'Self Interested, Self Obsessed, Self Centered, Selfish'-a few words with which I would associate people who I met last week. Realized that one picks enemies the moment one begins to give others the threat of being a competitor.

Once threatened, some will go as far as to stoop so low that they would resort to backsliding, backbiting and eventually backstabbing-yeah right, sports academicians-especially Indians, more specifically Indian academicians play-to compensate for their lack of actively participating in any form of real sports during their better part of life.

What do they get in this bargain?! At times I wonder would these fellows be so good as to be able to see their faces in the mirror? How would they look? Would they be able to see themselves? Would they be able to see the different person in the mirror-if they reflect-and would they like it? Would they be happy? What do they get to take home at the end of the day?

Yeah, the saddest part though is that backstabbing catches you off guard as it comes from the people who you consider as a part of your inner circle. After a while, you either become immune or become paranoid enough to avoid being prone to more of such attacks. Lessons taught over and over-yet, remains a lesson never learnt.

Also having been there and having had a fair deal of knives pulled out of my back-many stuck by those I mingled close with-those knives that I perhaps someday must hoist in a museum with a personalized note. Realized recently that there is no need to fear or respect backsliders as well. There is no need to necessitate the need to talk to the face of the ones who do most of the talking behind other's back.

What is the need to talk ill, and pass vicious and venomous comments about someone in their absence? Isn't that itself a sign of cowardice? Wouldn't the one's who sit to listen to such cowards see through that?

Have you noticed how these slithering, disgusting crawlies operate only in the dark too? Perhaps their need to work in the dark is necessary for their lack of presence at work during the day when the rest of us do.

Everyone must perhaps know that the fellow who gossips about someone in their absence, will soon be gossiping about everyone who is listening to them too. That is how they operate, that is how they are tuned, that is how their DNA runs and that is how their fathers and mother unfortunately made them the pests that they are and to be. My prayer meanwhile to the dear One above will be for pest control or maybe just a stronger back to pull me through this pest infested mold.

So How Far Are You From Home?!

Politics... organizational politics, dirty politics; where cheap, slimy, worthless slithering reptiles crawl; understanding well that they will be unfit to exist anywhere else. Given space, most work hard on trying to figure out how not to work instead of finding ways to work; if only they would invest their time to boost their productivity...

Lesser said, it is not less often that I wonder how interesting life would be if it were a little slower like in the good old days of my great granddad who perhaps toiled in the fields and the sweat at the end of the day would do to show the work rather than some silly result from an administered performance appraisal; and when HR management was seen by the way people would drop in the next day at the door for work even without having to sign a lumpy contract; and the care shown by the grandma who would make the snacks and tea for their break-time munch was seen as good enough to retain the proletariat rather than a carrot at the end of the stick the management holds out to the ever-greedy, ever-needy generation today that tries to grab it till the end of their career-precisely the way it was intended to be.

Today, I look at the speed at which the world runs for my children and am unsurprizingly amazed. A father who goes to work early and too busy focusing on what to do when he gets there that the morning drifts off just as early as it started; by late evening he gets back and with saddles of work removed after running around like a panting labour-horse,  hardly finds the strength or the energy to hug his kids; The mother who gets to know all about the dirtier side of the world through the little window of the apartment and the newspaper that is thrown in through it and who quite understandably protects the children like a jailer protects his territory; The children who perhaps made no mistake to be born in this God-forsaken, devil-breeding, "I-Hate-This" place that makes me wonder... "Why the f*$k am I here?!" in the first place.

Just as a friend to many, is a friend to none, a place that belongs to everybody belongs to none. This mixed feeling of purposelessness to exist in a particular place is often shadowed by our unjustified reason to blame it on the future of the kids which we seldom realize is destroyed rather than created. It is tempting to say, "Home sweet home is the answer"... yet again, too far and hardly reached, with identities changed and hardly recognized, home too is redefined as the place where one finds love is... It is our greed, greed for power, status, recognition, and to run-away and start fresh as a stranger in a distant land, to be free and feel liberated that makes us lose more than we could possibly gain and to end up earning to go back from where we started even if it has to begin right from the scratch. And at times, a pragmatic reminder of reality and a shaken yet not stirred dash of utopia with a sprinkle of idealism is all the concoction one needs to stay dazed in a busy, pointless world; nothing matters any more and life is just a drag to bear till the end of the grave...

On Politics And Other Related Nonsense

With election fever on the rise, opinion polls forecast, people and their opinion about parties echoing around and politicians blazing their never-to-keep promises, I just wonder, if how or who rules has any affect on me or my life...
1. Has it helped reduce my taxes (though I keep cribbing that a multiple tax system is a sign of failure of a system and is never an alternate moral replacement for money lost in war, scams and fraud otherwise)?(!) or
2. Prevented the toll charges I pay to take a road that is supposed to be already constructed in the infrastructure expenses for which they say my taxes are collected?(!) or
3. Rendered free and available-for-all quality education and health facilities in my so called "welfare" state instead of taking interest and control over state-owned liquor shops?(!)
4. Has it improved the safety and quality and reduced the cost of taking public transport?(!) or nevertheless, has it reduced my registration and stamp duties when I want to buy or sell property?(!)
5. Are my women and children safe and does the police and military safeguard them or are they still free to abuse the ones they are supposed to protect under the protective cover of state and centre-provided uniforms?(!)
6. Do court cases find an end so that I may atleast have some reconciliation to shift focus from my suburban drudgery and chronic dissatisfaction rising out of realizing the giant failure of other systems?(!) or is it still going to take generations to see the end?(!) well, that is, if my files are lucky enough and don't get buried before me?(!)
7. Has it improved the dignity of labour or has it provided security for jobs and lives or encouraged unions without calling them names or labeling them as 'grave internal threats'?(!)
8. Is the air I breathe and water I need safe or are nuclear power-stations built to show strength even if it is over the dead bodies of people who ask for safety and sustainable living?(!)
9. Once you (no matter who) come to power how is it that I am made to feel so powerless and I get to realize the true 'you' and the fool 'me'(every time) and the same story continues with a new name under the old and familiar cap?(!)
And now, even if under the influence of drugs and a drum-roll, hyper-ventilated chorus singing praises of politicians and their family and mass hysteria, do you really think that I care a damn (or a reason to feel otherwise) who or how this country is ruled?(!)

Raaman aandalum Raavanan aandalum... enak'Oru kavalai illay 

It Is Black

It is black. If one does not draw his identity, he would be forced to move into and take up an identity the world cynically yet cleverly and clearly draws for him. It is great to live in an illusion that we are all equal, created equal, born equal et al; as we endlessly justify its claim and claim for it; yet, the truth is that we are not equal, no one is; we are just similar and that's it. These lines we draw to define ourself appears dark in light. And darkness is real and into darkness we move to know what is true. 

“Light is shallow; darkness is infinitely deep. Light is always bounded, it has boundaries. Darkness has no boundaries, it is unbounded. Light comes and goes; darkness always is. When there is light you cannot see it. When light is not there you can see it. But it is always there; you cannot cause it. Light has a cause. You burn the fire, you put on wood. When the wood is finished the light will be gone. It is caused, hence it is an effect. But darkness is not caused by anything, it is not an effect. It is uncaused eternity.” said Osho.

The closer we get to reality, the darker it gets. In darkness, you are alone, closer to you, closest to you alone. In darkness one loses himself; and lost, finds himself. Darkness brings warmth like the dark looming clouds before a rain. The other mystical element-water, at its depths-the abyss, is just as dark as well. Identifying ones own darkness helps him to move away from the fake light in which he sees himself and others and the spot from which he sees others or allows them to see him. 

Immediate movement into darkness brings forth fear and shudders, the natural. Identity intends to break our comfort zone and that of others that they hold of us. It is in darkness that we usually see beyond the conditioned notions with which the world sees us... those lines of disparity, the points of discrimination and all the unnatural lines drawn to distinguish us and thus differentiate us. It is in darkness that one comes from and into the same one moves' yet, isn't it strange that man fears darkness when in light and alone?! 

In a way, it is in darkness that man is really tested face to face with no restraint-bold, raw, rustic, strong, dark and black-and he begins to see himself clear. Cleared off from all those defining lines the world had drawn for him-to contain him, to manipulate him and to convince him of his limits. In a way, it is in this darkness, the pitch black bottom, that those dark lines separating us to see us apart gets reconnected and we see people beyond differences-that otherwise we have to beg for and plead in light. True knowledge is dark,far away from the comfort of the light we are generally exposed to; that is perhaps why they insist on unlearning as more important than the learning. Light divides, darkness unites. Let the fool and the coward step out and let the others move on; into darkness let us be lost and find ourselves and others ... Let us leap into the boundless comfort of darkness. 

p.c: http://rvspeaks.blogspot.in/2011/08/darkness-important-aspect-of-life.html

Rationalizing Disconcern

For the past few months, I have been trying to gear down and have a grip over life; nevertheless, eventually, life seems to have its grip over me. Seemingly said words of encouragement mean nothing at times of despair. Everyone bothered within their own circle have no ears to listen to others who wail at the outside; ‘self obsession’ seems to be the nomenclature. Though not to be blamed. Everyone’s need his own; seldom does another know nor does bother to the pains of another. Everyone’s burden his own to carry.

A friend of mine tries to find a job to feed his family yet won’t let go his need to impress others and deliberates himself into hopeless, compulsive spending in the name of rituals-just to show the world that he too shares a part in this endless drama. How long?! I wonder.

Another friend, a mother of two, who lost her husband recently, likes to be buried in troubles that came along with the death and finds herself oft in loathsome misery trying to fight living ghosts in courtrooms over properties that are said to be rightfully hers. Till when?! I wonder.

Then there is this girl my cousin cheated succumbing to parental pressure, hoping to be their “laadla” forever and ever, after giving her high hopes of a nuptial knot. Hobson’s choice, you see, is one strange thing and the more idiotic you are, the easier the choice. And as most stories of these nuptial knots go, this too seems to be a Gordian knot that seems to have spun a hangman’s noose around this girl’s neck as the blunt impact of the episode seems only too visible with her every move ever since. On the other hand, the boy seems to be working longer hours to hide from this guilt (good for the company he works for) as his folks and his ever-loving sister (the actual spoil sport in this whole episode) once again try to engage themselves in a fake bridal hunt for one more victim. “Hey girls and parents of girls, who have advertised your kick-outs in matrimonial, watch out! The big bad wolves are here and your little red riding hoods may be taken for a ride too.” How many more like this?! I wonder. 

Then comes my own story… clueless and waiting for a confirmation that seems to be the end of the road to an interview process that started on the 25^th of May’ 2012. Turn after turn of interviews and reference checks to see if this stranger is trust worthy and round after round of excruciating waiting till this point of time. Finally was called in to join on the 31^st of last month (August’ 2012) only to be informed that the waiting needs to be extended. By this time foolish me, wound up all work at hand, shifted family and even started moving things from home to the promising wonderland to report to work when beckoned. We even had our second child in the meantime. Nothing was enjoyable as everything seems to be resting on this new found hope of a job. Now, 6 eyes stare blank at me with hope, probably trust, most probably faith as I squat like a useless, good-for-nothing, dying dog unable to face those stares and find myself staring as well into the open heavens with blind faith-my very own. The only possible mistake I have done is follow the lead and make myself available like a loyal woof. Every bit of delay and every day of waiting seems like a life time to me. It is almost like tying a noose around my neck to a newly planted tree, watering it and waiting for it to grow. Do those in the organization even know what I am going through? Most probably “No.” For them I am on the outside circle and they probably have issues their very own.

With problems my very own, how do I even find the energy, sensitivity and empathy required to feel the suffering of others in a circle outside my own? My burden by itself is too heavy for me to carry and my burden is my own to carry… now how can one expect me to carry their burdens too? Not at this moment atleast.

Sometimes I wonder too if people can be as insensitive and ruthless with the lives of others involved and everything and anything they do in the name of survival be accepted as justified?! May be so. After all every man knows best, the lessons he has learnt to do what he does, no matter how much it bothers the ones watching silently in astound surprise from the outside circle. C’est la vie and so are its people.      

p.c: http://www.catviews.com/?p=131

Read This Farmer

The humble Indian farmer has been in the NEWS for various reasons; ranging from his plight due to lack of rain affecting his crops, presence of flood due to excess and needless to say, suicides in outraging numbers due to his unrecoverable debts. The farmer has been subject to covering full pages with crisp photographs  along with his family in magazines and newspapers, which otherwise have nothing much to offer anyway and at times does achieve its pre-assumed target to gets us thinking deeply about their plight. Making us wonder where our conscience has gone. 

Watch the vegetables we buy today... they simply don't rot-thanks to the farmer who uses preservatives and knows how to inject them intrinsically into their skin. Look at all the fruits available in the stores, in excess too-thanks to the farmer who uses fertilizers and pesticides in plenty to boost the yield. Look how the produce from the farms shine-thanks to the farmer again for rubbing the skin of these chemically created yield further with wax to lure the buyers. Land, consumers, humans, ethics, sustainability-does the farmer care? Are his actions justifiable as much as the justice he cries to have been denied to him in the tabloids and ever-moving media cameras? Does he wonder, bother and care about the people who are affected by him as he asks shamelessly for people to help him out?  Is he as humane as he wants others to be? Does he think about how his actions affects the society as he constantly blames the society for his plight?

The once upon a time backbone of our country, today stands extended like an appendix-useless and causing us pain-unbothered. As we are force-fed these "bio wonders" of modern age, does the farmer or the country that promotes these care? As we have reduced ourselves into becoming test grounds for these seeds, fertilizers and pesticides, does the farmer who makes the choice to make the final decision to implement these which kill the land really care? As we consume these products and become lab rats and source out a major chunk of our hard earned and borrowed revenue for the hospital industry via paying the bills in counters where we shouldn't be and as families as we drown in deep debts, does the farmer really care about the avoidable-damage he causes? And the  farmer manages to have the nerve to ask, "Why no one cares?!" Isn't this an interesting paradoxical irony?! "Hey farmer, are you wondering still why no one cares about you? Let me ask you, why don't you care about others too?" All I can say for now is, "Get well soon farmer." And till then you cry, cry, cry... you make me cry too. 

p.c: http://debbiedoesraw.blogspot.in/2008/11/gmodead-farmers.html

How 13 Can 13 Get

It is called TRISKAIDEKAPHOBIA... and it affects many people even today; many religions attach extreme significance to certain numbers, 13 being one of them or rather the fear for it makes it so interestingly elusive.

Here are some interesting observations about 13:

1. Industrialist Henry Ford wouldn't do business on Friday, the 13th
2. Multimillionaire Paul Getty once stated "I wouldn't care to be one of thirteen at a table."
3. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt would not dine in a group of 13 people
4. Many hotel guests refuse to stay in Room 13, so rooms are frequently numbered 12, 12A, and 14
5. Some speculate that a fear of the number 13 is the reason we recognize only 12 constellations in the Zodiac, omitting a thirteenth... Ophiuchus ( the Serpent Holder) that, by its location, could be included
6. The ancient Hebrews thought 13 was unlucky because the thirteenth letter of the Hebrew alphabet is the letter M, which is the first letter in the word "mavet," meaning death
7. Some believe that 13 is unlucky because it follows 12, which in ancient Babylonia, China, and Rome was considered to be a lucky number associated with completion and perfection
8. Years ago, London bakers were subject to harsh penalties if they were caught selling bread in what was called short weight. The bakers would add an extra loaf to each dozen to be sure the sale met the minimum weight requirement. They avoided the word thirteen and the process of adding an extra loaf became known as the "baker's dozen
9. Some like to trace the origins of fear of the number 13 to the Biblical version of the Last Supper when Jesus has his final meal with his 12 disciples (making it a count of 13) before being crucified. The inference is clearly that one in the group of 13 will be doomed
10. 13 turns make a traditional hangman's noose. Anything less would not snap a neck
11. A year which contained 13 full moons instead of 12 posed problems for the monks who were in charge of the calendars
12. It is at this point that a person becomes a teenager when headache arises and fever shoots up for the teen towards the family and vice versa
13. And I just felt that there can be no time more apt than this to point out that there are 13 followers right now for this blog. Hahaha! Oh how deep this factor can make me think, not to mention point it out to the reader to follow this blog and save the group... what do we lose after all?

By the by, these 13 points above are my 13 reasons to make this statement. Hope you enjoyed it; else, I might have to wonder how unlucky and unfortunate I could be today writing these 13 points.

SOCRATES: "What Plato is about to say is false."

PLATO: "What Socrates has just said is true."

p.c: http://teamyours.blogspot.in/2011/06/adamanitum-trax-13.html

Revolution or Evolution?!

Thus read the NEWS... "Chennai, Fb 23 : Five people, including a Former Engineering Student, who were involved in the twin bank robbery in the city, were shot dead in an encounter by the police, this morning."

I wondered... if only these people had used their energy to fight against the injustices in the society, used their strength to fight for the vulnerable, used their minds to give voice for the voiceless, used their power to protect the poor and the often abused, they would have become revolutionaries. Instead they chose to follow our great toppied babu's and entered into making easy money in the footsteps set forth by them, looting and scamming money that is never their own; thus have evolved...

Evolution and Revolution all in one's hands.

Source:
http://news.chennaionline.com/chennai/5-bank-robbers-killed-in-an-encounter/8855b0da-d31e-47c4-bf30-d33cc9dafc5b.col

p.c: http://www.myspace.com/joppathezealot

It Happens Only In India (Part I of III)

In the stroke of the mid-night hour when the rest of the world sleeps my India wakes up to whimsical fiscal changes, fraudulent finance, scammed economy, political malfunctioning, curtailed civil liberties, manipulating media, privatization, illegal mining, hunger, malnutrition and rising prices of essential commodities. The great depression seems to repeat itself as the great recession of recent times; the Bengal famine repeats itself with the incidence of farmer’s suicides alongside market meltdowns, political uncertainties and silent revolutions being silenced silently, crushing the will of the people to survive nevertheless live with dignity on rights rationed otherwise.

Meanwhile, the aam-admi is subsequently fed up… fed up watching guns and lathis aimed from the shoulders of the politicians charged at the poor rather than poverty, firing at the hungry, the deprived and the vulnerable rather than eliminating hunger, food wastage and discrimination. The one’s who resist destruction of freedom are labeled as “a grave internal threat” rather than deal with real terror from external forces; we are amazed at the way the ministers we trust and elect to power get drunk with power and act nothing less than the drunk barbarian on the streets who in a state of intoxication abuses everyone passing by. The crimes that the law makers and protectors of the iron hand of the legal system accuse the citizens are dissent, disrespect to law and authority and blocking roads towards the paths of development which usually refers to building factories, setting up nuclear power plants and mining (even if it against the will of the people). Yet, the citizen is not always a fool as expected to be. The rebellion we see around whether Gandhian or Subhash Chandra Bose’ian, whether by ahimsa or weapons, it is obvious that there is a generation of people fed up and boiling beneath the skin. The crimes they are accused of are true; yet, these are derivative crimes born out of greater crimes committed against them. Remember that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal at his times and what Gandhi did in Africa was illegal.

(To be contd.)

p.c: http://www.lawctopus.com/