War is never an answer

I haven't read a more eloquently written argument against war,

“We shall never end war by blaming it on ministers and generals or war-mongering imperialists…It’s the rest of us who build statues to those generals or name boulevards after those ministers…the rest of us who make heroes of our dead and shrines of our battlefields…” (Paddy Chayefsky, The Americanization of Emily)

Yes, some wars are necessary. Vietnam was not; neither is Iraq. But even a necessary war should be entered into as a last resort; it should be waged with the understanding that war itself is a failure of reason; and it should be concluded - even in victory - as a solemn occasion.

Forget the honors. Forget the glory.

A soldier’s medals are merely seeds for the next conflict.

Ambition

“Enakku thevayelaam ettu mani neram thookam, poo pola naalu idli, pudhina chutney, manssukku niraivaana vellai, appa ammavoda oru kai rummy, pooncholai gramathilai oru azhaghana rakshasi .. sunday evening titanic .. saravana bhavan tiffin”

It is a line mouthed by the middle class hero in the Shanker superhit, Mudhalvan. A line which underlines Sujatha's astute understanding of the Indian middle class.

There is one quote which I use whenever talk centres around India. It goes something like this,

The rest of the world has the “haves” and the “have nots”. Only India has the “have but did not wants”.

The dialogue from Mudhalvan best illustrates this. To be satisfied and be happy with the simple pleasures of life is a gift which adversity has bestowed upon the Indian middle class.

Capitalism is fueled by ambition. The great american dream has its roots in the ambitions of the immigrants who set foot in the land of oppurtunities with dreams of making it big.

India is, ofcourse, well known for its “chaltha hai” attitude. A casual approach towards work indeed towards life itself is what best charecterises India. You don't get to find a lot of perfectionists, go - getters, people bend upon conquering the world from India. Occasionally, a raw talent like tendulkar comes around and suprises the world. But people are still searching for the Steve Waugh from India.

Why is this ?

Can it be something as simple as the fact that oppurtunities were simply not available as a result of which lethargy set in at a national level ?

Or is it simply a lingering legacy of the british rule which left behind an absymally poor country and people shorn of ambition ?

Or is the fact that knowledge/art and not business was what was encouraged during the ancient maharaja days.

Or is it the fact that from a long time back, we have had a history of renunciation where people realising the meaninglessness of the material world have given it up and found comfort in the spiritual ? The idealogy behind the matrix, that the world that we see around us is an illusion, is something widely prevalent in local literature and nothing new to us.

In any case, the new wave of capitalism is changing the way India functions. National research instituitions which for a long time worked under the “knowledge is free” principles are actively patenting their ideas and defending their IPs. The IITs are getting more and more concerned about their industrial collaborations and profits.

Capitalism definetely has its pluses. But it distorts the moral fabric of the country. Americans are just waking up to this fact.

Should we be worried ?

I dont know. Change is as always inevitable. Clinging to age hold traditions will take us nowhere. Looking back and glorifying the past is something Indians are good at. Something which I regularly indulge in.

But I can't be oblivious of the fact that poverty is rampant. Money, however ugly the word might sound to be, is what is needed to take us forward.

Let us take an example which I am best qualified to talk about. Me. Here I am, doing everything in my wherewithal to earn more. There was a time when I used to write simply because I enjoy writing. Now I try to think of ways in which I can increase my traffic and earn more.

Still, I console myself by thinking that I am doing this with a short term goal of earning more to meet a long term goal of early retirement and social service.

The sheer fact that I am ashamed of thinking up of ways to earn more shows the deep seated guilt in the middle class minds associated with earning more than what is reasonable.

Maybe, I am a hopeless romantic or an idealogical fanatic or an emotional fool.

But here is what I hope,

I hope to see an India where money is seen as a means to an end and not as a lifelong quest. I hope to live in an India where people have all the money in the world and are still able to give it up if needed.

A return to the time of the Budha, someone who had everything yet gave it up all and embarked on a search to find the true meaning of life. The only worthwhile quest that life has to offer.

Ground-breaking work in understanding of time

“A bold paper which has highly impressed some of the world's top physicists and been published in the August issue of Foundations of Physics Letters, seems set to change the way we think about the nature of time and its relationship to motion and classical and quantum mechanics. Much to the science world's astonishment, the work also appears to provide solutions to Zeno of Elea's famous motion paradoxes, almost 2500 years after they were originally conceived by the ancient Greek philosopher. In doing so, its unlikely author, who originally attended university for just 6 months, is drawing comparisons to Albert Einstein and beginning to field enquiries from some of the world's leading science media. This is contrast to being sniggered at by local physicists when he originally approached them with the work, and once aware it had been accepted for publication, one informing the journal of the author's lack of formal qualification in an attempt to have them reject it.

In the paper, ”Time and Classical and Quantum Mechanics: Indeterminacy vs. Discontinuity“, Peter Lynds, a 27 year old broadcasting school tutor from Wellington, New Zealand, establishes that there is a necessary trade off of all precisely determined physical values at a time, for their continuity through time, and in doing so, appears to throw age old assumptions about determined instantaneous physical magnitude and time on their heads. A number of other outstanding issues to do with time in physics are also addressed, including cosmology and an argument against the theory of Imaginary time by British theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking.”

Read more.

I just had to post this on the main page. I mean, with a title like Indeterminacy vs. Discontinuity, how can you ignore it ?

Redesign and an explanation

Not much of an original design, I 'm afraid. But a functional one, I would think and hopefully would help in cutting the bandwidth usage of this site. With over a thousand visitors everyday and growing, there was a serious threat of breaking the 5GB banwidth limit that I have.

As you would have noticed by know, ads are all over the place. Many have mailed in their concerns about how itismylife.com is full of ads and how tamizhan is slowly moving in that direction.

I guess, it is a valid concern, one which I should have addressed long back.

It all boils down to one word, as it always does, money.

Over the last year and a half, I have blogged many a time, about what I really want to do with my life. Now unless and until, I have money backing me, I cant really throwup everything that I am currently doing and go on the path I want to be. Dreams aren't always practical.

In short, I want to retire early. I have always had this nightmare of waking up one day and realising that life has slipped past me. I have far too many dreams simmering inside me to allow that to happen.

So what do I do ?

The internet offers me a unique chance of earning without really breaking into a sweat. About a month and a half back, I decided to do something about it. I have seen in the past few weeks, it is indeed feasible and I have decided to go ahead.

Hopefully, the advertisements would stay in the background and wouldnt come in the way of whatever you came to do on this site.

I would really appreciate your understanding of the whole situation ( there isnt one really :) ).

Feel free to comment on all of this.

Who am i ?

“Who are you ?”, You ask me.

Not used to answering such blunt questions which probe the reason for my very existence, I try to pretend that I never heard that question. In an attempt to divert your attention, I point to the poster of the upcoming Rajni movie,Baba and start off on what was supposed to be a long monologue on the star and how he might represent a new hope for a state tortured, indeed mutilated, by politicians taking advantage of the gullibe, simple and loving folk. Something in my actions, ( the fear of the question or the ignorance of the answer showing itself ? ) makes you repeat the question.

I realise with a sinking feeling that today, I will not get away unless I answer that question. I ponder the various approaches to take. Should i do a straightforward name address occupation recital ? Something in your manner shows me that you are not interested in such a superficial understanding of who i am. You show with your questioning glance that today what you are interested in is knowing who i really am.

I turn away lest my face betrays my true emotions. I lock my eyes on the horizon which inevitably leads to looking inside.

“Who i really am ?”. Now that is a question which has teased me all my life. Every now and then, I get glimpses of the answer. But then Time has always stepped in to prove that what i thought was an answer, was an illusion. Illusions that my mind makes up in attempt to pacify my heart. Deception of the heart by the mind to justify a mundane existence in a mediocre world which has seen only a few flashes of brilliance. I check myself before i go into a loop. I inadverdently go into an infinite loop of self loathing when that question comes up. My mind not able to control itself goes off on a tangent.

There are dreams waiting inside my mind. They have only seen the dark of the night when i let them loose inside in my mind. They complain of being afraid of the dark and want to come out with me in the day to see the world they have heard so much about. I lock them behind doors lest the world sees and laughs at them. I carry on with my ordinary life doing not what i want to do but doing what the world asks me to do. Doing not what gives me hapiness but doing what gives me money.

Money steals away from you what you could have been and in return decides who you are and what you would become. The purpose, the motive of life has become to earn money and more money. Money is happy only when it sees more and more of itself and in turn makes its owner feel the same.

When a few sheets of paper decide who you are, that is when you want to run away from life.

All these thoughts flash past my mind as i struggle for my answer. In a sudden moment of inspiration, i hit upon a way to answer your question. I take out a few scenes of your life and scratch away the superficial motives with which your mind was deceiving you.I show them to you and return the question, “Maybe, you could tell me who you really are ?”.

You realise that some questions do not have answers. Maybe, The answer to this one will be a consolation prize God gives you when you die. Or maybe, He himself is searching for a reason for his existence beyond that of a support system for a man too weak to live life on his own.

A conversation with Dr.Muralidhar Pai.

An interesting conversation with Dr.Muralidhar Pai in Malayasia,

Sir,

I am not afraid of using my real name. It is just that I like to sign my mails with the more personal nickname of mine, which is /.\ n a n d. I hope, that clears your confusion. I had given my complete personal details to rediff.com. They chose not to publish it.

Now let me answer to your colleagues comments,

{All throughout the story you say there is a god, everywhere in everybody who (The god himself) is teaching us love.You choose to end with- I want to live in a world where there is no God (Is it not contradictory).

Yes, Sir .. It is contradictory ... Not by accident ... It is meant to be ... I and you, *intelligent* guys of this world can understand to a certain extent, the essence and meaning of the word God. But put yourself into an uneducated man standing on the soil of Ayodhya. What is going through his mind ? His views of God are influenced by the epics and the various (mis)interpretaions of God by people who want to twist the mass opinion in their favour. So although God is a noble notion in itself, It is not practical in a world like ours. That is why i say, until each one of us have the sense to understand God, let there be no God. And everyone knows that to expect all people to be sensible is impossible. So I wish to be reborn in a world, where there is no God.

You say, let there be no religion (You claim to understand true meaning of religion and then deny it).

Same as above. I understand Religion. Others dont. Others are a majority. So I dont want religion in order to have peace.

You say, let there be no believers. For, every believer (Have you lost faith even in yourself, have you lost faith in the world. This world is so beautiful because majority of people can think rationally not because of handfull of fanatics) can turn into a fanatic with the right amount of provocation.

The sensible people of this world are always the passive observers. And the fanatics, even though a minority, are the more active and hence dangerous. In India, while the intelligentia shun the politics, the ignorant and the *gundas* take control of the government and decide the way we live.

Until man has the sense to understand God (After writing so much about understanding how can you say that man does not understand god. Or you think you are not man), let there be no God. Indeed, a Krishna, Jesus or Allah would be willing to die a thousand deaths if that would bring peace to this world.

Yes, I am a sensible man. But I am also a minority. No use what i think. It is the *mass* thinking that needs to change. and it wont. So I dont want a God.

Let us kill religion (Do not borrow words from the same fanatics whom you denounce in the name of decency)so that humans can live. Yes, I want to live in a world where there is no God.

Fanatics understand tough words. Only by shocking people with tough words can i hope to change the status quo. If i had used any lesser words, I would have got far lesser impact.

Is it not just to show yourself as god or you believe you are equal to god}

I have no pretensions of being God or showing off. I am just a concerned citizen who refuses to see India burn and keep quiet. I have written what I thought is right. To take it or leave it is your perogative.
Thanks and Regards.