Two days in oblivion

I made trip into oblivion recently. i didn't have to travel too far. just a couple of hours drive from Bombay and you reach Pardi. Pardi is a village on paper,living into quagmire of government schemes and non-schemes. Pardi is recognized as a village so it must have a gram panchayat, a school etc. as it turns out pardi has 20 odd homes which are quite obviously inadequate for running any meaningful institution administratively. Thus the village is now in no-man's land. actually managed by a panchayat which has no representation from the hamlet and thus no obligation towrads this small stretch of road andfew outliers.
I visited one of the better schools in the area. saw all that was there to see.
two desktops in office,
classrooms for all standards.
Jack of all trades faculty members`who have been surviving on on a salary which was revised in early nineties, that is about twenty years ago... now just think about no getting a single raise for 20 years....
kids feel embarrased speaking english. girls giggle and hide if you ask them. apparently that's an equivalent of 'acting white' .
-all the kids sleep on the classroom floor during nights , too much to afford the travel back home which are typically few kilometers away.
-as i was talking to teachers and kids i was not-too-unhappy about things.
I admire the trouble these kids and teachers are taking.
At the same time i am saddened by the chasm these kids are going to face when they come out of their school and discover that they have missed the bus that every citizen of 'superpower of 2030' is supposed to take.
i do not want to be there to face the anger and exasperation of these kids for i fear the ground is going to shake when they choose to stomp their feet. yes i am scared somewhere deep down, scared of the beast within, the savage who refuses to live by laws of brave new world....
yes the development has reached the place, in form of a Bolero(an SUV/MUV of hinterland) parked in front of hut of sarpanch of the village. an interesting study tells me a tale of the shining/poised india where villagers buy SUVs all by cash-they do not need the car loans, they prefer cash deals, there are hoards of these cash rich farmers, typically sarpanch of the village for whom india is indeed shining, with consumer comforts to be had with abandon.
this india lives within feets' distance of other india where education is luxury, where means are celebration, this india lives in spirit as it cannot afford to live in flesh...
I do not know what to make of our wonderland, maybe it isn't right to sit in an armchair and comment. but somehow it seems criminal not to even acknowledge the right of this other indian to exist, to share even a tiny part of the destiny we professed so loudly so many years ago.

On a Good Day

just a week to go to November, the winters that rarely turn up on time, i decided to blabber for an hour in the least. this decision was due for some time,maybe overdue, a lot depended on it. what lot? we'll see maybe.
what does a depend on? when do we we say it was a good day and otherwise? having fun, achieving something, starting something new, winding up on time, quiet and serene day, lack of work, or huge amount of it? you would say it depends!
degrees of goodness or otherwise? what separates a good one from bvery good ones? wouldn't it involve a heartache to relegate a threshold very good day to a good one? do we want meritocracy here or a soft comforting handholding for those days which just couldn't make it?
there are so many question involved here- the kind of tea, if any you had to what kind of value system you have.if i was working somewhere uninteresting, no work would mean a good day, on the other hand if i wanted to get somewhere, it will e a wasted day. it's all subjective, too much for mortals who bunk all the subjects..
So, i decided to start the monitoring, pondering process today's as it's a good day with bright blue sky and sunshine with glasses and cooling to protect me from the results of such days, and there are books and music and coffee to keep company..
Have a Good Day!

getting wise-old-white haired

I keep reminding people that i'm getting older these days. It becomes an excuse for all the follies and fancies that i commit ever so often.
how did i come to know that? It happened one fine morning-Quite by chance.. i woke up and didn't remember where i was, was it at my Home, or my home, or somewhere else.
Getting old means you fossilize your values and perceptions, you trust yourself maybe a bit too much, you inadvertently resist change, you lose the hunger for learning, you walk through the day in trance induced by intoxicating memories.

I have been wondering lately if i fit the bill, who do and who do not. quite a fruitless exercise i guess.
there are many thing that warrant my wonder. where has the good old probity in public life gone, why manipulating people has become a new virtue. why i feel angry when i look around and yet i do not lift a finger? why have the hope been adulterated with sneer and contempt? in short why has the world gone bad?..which brings me to another question- has the world gone bad or have i started seeing it differently?
i see little kids begging at signals and do not feel pity, I feel disgust. I see our leadership zooming by and i feel contempt.
i lull myself into waiting for a perfect plan before i act on any of it.
I have become risk-averse. I can see myself becoming Real/Normal instead of hopeful/alive..
Do i Hate myself? No I do not. Do i hate anyone? i dig into myself and get no for an answer. there is another word that comes up, indifference..
For Yudhishthira the biggest wonder was how every mortal believed in earnest that he will not meet the same fate as others...
someone wanted to die for life was not worth living, i wonder if it's worth dying for...
All these years, i have been fighting each day, fighting myself, goading myself into walking the path if there aren't others around to do the needful..
Now I sit on a park bench.. and close my eyes........

All the right things, and the wrong ones...

It's been quite some time since I have tried a story...plenty of WIP around i guess.
I read a famous quote a few days back, Martin Luther King Jr says even if we're not popular, not politic, too much in a hurry to stick our neck out in some views, we must pursue what we feel is right...
I do not like these times, to be honest. We have a bad government, erratic weather, opportunistic people, far too much of uncertainty almost everywhere, except where we have fatalistic resignation or paranoid euphoria...I like to believe this time will pass, we will back to good times; and then i see how the bad today is suffocating the good tomorrow, makes me apprehensive.
I think like old men these days, nostalgic, full of reverie, sometimes too eager to turn away from wasted today and distant tomorrow.

anything goes, being the old man, being the child, the race for cope-outs is relentless...here goes the overcrowded last local for cope-outs, I run frantically to grab the tine shred of foot-hold, the vast stinky warm air rushing past me annihilates the reasons, gives me purpose till the train stops at the last stop..
Cope-outs are wonderful, dreams sweet-sad melancholic addictive...
Where does the series of trains take me? It leads me to death, full of life, full of life full of regrets and anger and tears-all so interesting if I step aside and watch me go under...

So what is the right thing to do? Take the train or wait at the platform? Or take a different train to same destination? How easy is it? How much of effort will be just right for Mill's wise-man?
Do I always keep self-interest in mind? we all do I guess, but then it takes so many connotations, so many shapes, vague and undefined to the wise-man, the unwise man does everything for his own "good”.
What the quote refers to, is dangerous that way, it allows too much freedom to too many people in hope that they will converge, find a greater common good for all... And of course it originates from fierce individuality, distrust towards collective wisdom...
I don't know which right is right, maybe I do, I have my locus standi somewhere (we do not go to extremes, we the sane, remember!) but of course it's easier to ask questions, and essential too, for us workaholics sometimes..
Maybe the Speaking aloud will go on sometime here.for now, it's life back to mundane, to the world I do not like, back to the world where I belong, which makes me sad with all that is wrong with it, which fills me with hope with that which might be good in it, which makes me apprehensive with its impermanence, and thus keeps me hooked... to the mundane we return.

Kabir

It's late in the night. Kabir says to reach truth i need to stop searching for it in external world, stop looking for escape routes.. let my eyes be opened to what's there to see.. right there..
i see you opning eyes, afraid of the first rays, unaccustomed, tentative.
Do not run away from life i say, as if i know..

on the last day..

On the last day god rested after creating man and giving him the reign of all things alive and inanimate..
I have no pictures to show on what he missed out, though he knew .. there are things you just do not finish to perfection..
I leave without doing many things, fulfill many pledges, into uncertain future..this life is a monster i created, which love and tenderness, and with regrets..
The monster survives the amphitheater sometimes.. well, games never were for faint hearted..
I saw many things and couldn't pull myself away enough to draw what it was like.. thus i am a bad painter, a bad historian, my account contains many errors,innumerable fallacies, the beautiful parts i missed, and others i never knew untill after..

I know many would grow to love these imperfections, treating them as lovers treat the scars of their first nights..Imperfection make us individuals, they give us a niche to call our own..
That's not how i wanted things to turn out, but, now it's there, and it works, makes good recipe for drama and nostalgia.
So i watch, and what's visible, sometimes dig into what wasn't out of curiosity.. sometimes i have this great ugre to put things right, and i give up midway as i get engrossed into something fascinating unravelling from mundane..
I leave thus

In limbo

For millania i waited full of faith..and then god said i did not exist..i took my bow and vanished..he says i do not exist and i protest with muted voice..words illegitimized..unseen to naked eyes as the are lowered in shame and guilt.. Yes i am angry. I want my right to death..

In limbo

It-s been a long journey. 26 hours and 14 odd more to go..it-s happening after so many ifs and buts and whens..as the senior citizen snores n huffs n puffs downstairs i decide to put the journal for myself..my cellphone being the only standing mate, i write hence..i started with all the usual melodrama. No confirmed ticket. No confirmed train turning into two confirmations..did not have time to rue the moolah as the scene turned into the something from srk movie sans encouraging amrish puri..righl now it-s more like a reality show with this rather unfair endurance task...usually i like long train trips.. Maybe i have a secret thing about these forlorn stops where life survives around these trains..not unlike the trains to macondo or devli if one is romantically inclined..the truth is there are many unknowns about the trip..i do not know why i need to make this trip..this is something i need to find out..life is strange many times but it-s beautiful still ..one week seems like too small a time but i hope i will make the return trip with more of sun

in the desert

it's been long since it has rained. morninigs bring some moisture though, being enough for those aclimatized for these parts, or for those who have never seen those days when the village lived as a miracle amid punishing desert.

then there are those who live in memories, too deep in love to care about life that changed around them, or rather life choses to let them be.

as children of the town, we've grown up feeding on these stories of immortality. Some think memories keep you alive.others think it's love, then there are many who think it's it's the the refusal to wake up to the desert that has kept this town alive. i cannot say which one of these is true, as a story-teller, i am not supposed to 'know'. it's you who decide, each to oneself...

Keeping It Simple & Stupid

I think I am getting towards mastering the art, having been helped in no small measure by the inborn talent.
Sometimes I savor these moments of intellectual laziness. I let the words flow in, into my eardrums, or eyes’, feel them sailing in, fighting desperately for a little crack to open inside me. They want to be let in...Well some of them, others don't bother. Sometimes I decide to let a visitor in. I like the sweet sensation of beads of sweat on my forehead as I try to pry open the sensible self ever so delicately. The effort is designed to fail.
I like glow of stupefaction and wonder, the nod of understanding- the revelation. Yes they must act now... something needs to be done . Thus I need to sit and decide for an action plan to understand it. I need to brood in peace with this slight pressure of pointless purpose.
I absolutely love the valor of Kamikaze . Yes it's glorious to fail.
I see the world through eyes or a serpent. lithe and lively and murderously colorful creatures with all the color or general blindness..I see the fuzzy, shapeless world that extends up to five feet,little world bubble with cold death outside. Inside, it's a long wait. Occasionally I venture out so far as four and a half feet, mostly I keep my memories and snapshots at a handy distance, not too far away. (Someone might argue that a snake doesn't have hands..or is it that for you and me the eyes and the fangs define the snake so much so that we never bothered to see?.. the archeologists ( read grave-diggers- the old wise men) say the serpent did have hands once upon a time..in this little five feet world the hands kept getting sorrier and angrier and smaller till the day when eyes could not see them and then they dropped away from the world..but that's another story) ( The eyes became the favored slave of the fangs, they learnt to spot moving prey and incoming predator, waiting at the doorsteps as a slave should be at other times, until they to realized they were too small to be the only one.. and then they felt sorry and teary and foggy, but they stood by.Thus we have the serpent with fangs, and then eyes and rest of the body...but that's another story)
The trick is to keep it simple and stupid... Thusi finish with a stupid god -knows- for -what- reason grin
Exercises for practice
Q who won in the end?
A the Fangs
B the eyes
C- the hands
D the question is out of syllabus as the relevant text is within parentheses
E it's a farce so no one wins,
Hint- its either A or B or C or D or E,
*Answer only is applicable

confessions of a reluctant workoholic

Working late in the evenings means one is left pretty much alone. The AC goes off, after a while the coffee machine ditches you, the chats on communicator dry up, you recieve calls not necessarily related to work, you reach home late and you feel at peace as pretty much everything that was to be done can't be done for now.

When you work late you become open to bonhomie among fellow seafarers. You start to get your share of workoholic firends, you figure after a while thatwork is much more important than anything else, even though you get exactly the same moolah if you didn't stay late.

Thus the proposition comes, workoholism is an acquired taste, unknown and unpleasant to innocents, pretty much like all good things

exile

on the last day of the nascent world, rather long time after that, last night before Adam and Eve got expelled from the garden of Eden, they felt ashamed of their nakedness, they felt dejected, aggrieved of their fate, their mortality.
they felt ashamed of their curiosity to reveal what they must hide, the sin they must commit if only to fulfil their destiny...
It was a uncharacteristic/sad night in the Eden or so they felt .. the devil smiled on them that night and carved out a home for them, a scar on the full moon.

on the last day of the nascent world

On the last day, the God rested for it was sunday and he had created man as master of all things alive and inanimate...Adam and eve lived in the garden ,naked and they had no shame.. it's after eating the forbidden fruit they came to realise their nakedness... Eve was cursed with pain and suffering for all the times to come as also with the responsibility for giving birth to the human child...
random strands from the famous story.. i just wonder why He took this much trouble when God could just rest happilty, watch cricket played by Angels,(or Demons or a match between two teams), have his wine, have his fairies.. All he needed to do was to simply write a book and ask someone to read the story and add to it all the complications and wars and loves stories.. it would all have been a big fat epic that might have surved the purpose..
But then like Tolstoy said once-God sees the truth,but he waits..

being creative

main doon bhi to kya doon tujhe ay shokh nazaron
Le de ke mere paas kuchh ansoon hain kuch aahein..
I am not very sentimental type, or so i like to believe..at least no one has accused me of being one..people have often told me about the firm icy handshake they get instead of the eulogised warm and firm one..yes i have been selfish, narcissistic since when i can recollect..I have my reasons, I have so many stories to tell, so many reasons to put forth, and i know- no one is interested in that, just as i am not in the least interested in learning the crib stories of others and myself by extension..i live in a glass (Palace?) with magnificent cold, hard walls, ornate lighting, trophies and souvenirs hanging on the walls, staring all the time with their brilliantly dead eyes, listening to every movement however slight, relishing the dreams where the history turned the other way round.. each of my trophies is magnificent, a never-to-be seen-again dream killed and frozen and preserved, my trophies are tributaries that feed the great river and the sand and trees and the oasis. I have other tributaries as well, but let's get back to the couplet before i get carried away..I decided to write this, this very night because there is a grave danger that i never will otherwise.
Living in a glass palace is difficult, once in a while you long for the soft mud Walls where you could scratch your and you lover's name, where you might try and wash it away with your tears once she's gone. ( yes that gives you a clue about my gender).
Once in a while you get scared of your trophies as you see these looking increasingly like each other and yourself. ( interestingly, in glass palace you don't have mirrors, or have mirrors that lie except when you want them to, so that you do not have to pursue the snow-white of your kid stories and kill her. the snow-white to be put in another glass coffin so that a prince might see her again and...mirrors in the glass palace do not like their stories to end, there is no khattam-sud a mirror can accept.) The palace,as indeed the river exist in the realm of half truth..
In my book of learning i add another bullet- Do not believe or disbelieve anything you see in glass place, ( or from it by extension). it's this disbelief that keeps you alive in the realm..
Someone knocks on the door, wants to come in, i welcome the guest, knowing he (or she) never came in, ask them to sit, have a breath, have little coffee. we start talking and tell each other stories, we admire and judge each other ,and then i murder them and put them on my walls before i usher them out with my warm smile and handshake..
the blood washed out from our severed heads keeps the river beautifully red even though i suspect sometimes if the river even exists..just as the guests never did. no certainly the river is just a fanciful idea, merely a trick to keep my glass palace clean off all the blood spilt..
I recollected this couplet just as something unusual happened- a guest came looking for me.. she remembered my face, could still believe it was the one on my body and not among those hanging on wall.. I remembered severing her head after we were done with our stories.after we had played our little games... but doesn't that mean she couldn't have come back? or this one the Scheherazade who didn't finish hers?
The guest wants a cup of coffee and the end of story i started last time. i suddenly discover i have no more stories to tell...the walls begin to blur and turn opaque as i ask her to finish hers..

an avarage day

after eons i received a message with said good morning in so many words, loaded with hopes and wishes.
what does a good morning feel like? well they all feel the same really.. rushing to work half-asleep, blabbering about things done and undone the previous day, rush for snacks and emails to be answered., before you realise the morning is gone and it's now an average day. endless rounds of coffee and stolen (not kisses but) goodies from some cubicle to munch, work in between and all around, mails to read and mails to write, these are bad-sinful times .
it's difficult to judge good from bad..yeah we need our next messiah, maybe he could do some mailing and things will become peaceful once again.People will know their station in life once again, there won't be this mad rush to move up the ladder, there will be (not glass but) ceilings for everyone concerned and everyone will be happy. we want our shepherd to guide us to the (butchery?) holy destination. we want no war , we want love and faith to prevail.
yesterday i met some executives drawing plans for refurbishing their new workplace, with everything that should reflect class, being (rather unfortunately) in the know, to an extent, of how things stand for the enterprise, i couldn't help but admire the serene calm on their faces. I remembered the noblemen on titanic preferring to sink in dignity rather than debase themselves with lifeboats and ilk which promised them not much anyway, admittedly.here these are, the calm sheep led by a know-it-all shepherd, to somewhere at least
maybe i am mistaken here though, maybe the sheep have lost faith in shepherd but they don't want the first ones to cross the line, or they wait for alternative routes to open up till the heard breaks up, so many permutations and combinations before one must lose hope.
It's supposed to be an average day with a good morning so i guess gloom has had more than it's share. on a happier note, my elderly colleague decided to mend ways and be of some use at home during the weekend, and i of course decided to cut down on my alcohol quotient on weekend evenings, why wait for whole day anyway..
And of course WI finally showing some mettle after so many years of being the ruined castles-of-the-great-roman-empire ,primary and manufacturing sector in general picking themselves up from the dungeons of December etcetera.
someone said the spring won't be far away if this is autumn, i just recollected Sisyphus and decided to nod anyway. It's really difficult to get good mornings and good days really.
i blame it on the world and absolve myself for now, and quote this rather defeatist couplet from Sahir Ludhiyanvi
Hum ghamzada hain laayein kahan se khushi ke geet
denge wohi jo paayeinge is zindagi se hum.
(how may i recite the songs of happiness when all i get from this world is suffering)

These days

I prefer nights, more than days, and thus I often end up stretching my waking hours beyond what I'd call sensible or sustainable. Lack of routine is the routine beyond ones imposed by breadly-butterly considerations. I often chastise myself and take a vow to make amends but for some things, I am incorrigible. Sometimes I recall the 'lord of flies' - the microcosm of the world woven on the island, all the instincts of the so-called innocents running riot. There is a religious subtext of the saner one watching us, there is re-assurance, there is a license to run riot. That is for people who want to see that subtext. However, people on the other side might ask why the almighty wait for does so long. Is he preparing us to learn to live without him? In a famous story by Tolstoy, it took a lifetime of a poor farmer in Siberia for god to see the truth-or rather reveal it, that the farmer was wronged. Why do I mention god? Maybe because it gives me for-or-against situation, be deviant and repent, say no sin is done and rebel. It gives me a second player for the game I am pining to play... I want to rage, I want to fall in love. I want to be passionate. It is the kid rooting for some fun-gay or macabre, the color matters little. There is one god I can believe in, there only one world I can live in, There is just one little piece of glass to be had. I need fire for cold, and I need fire for my rituals, my bonfire around which I could wrap up my little world. I want to save the piggy. I need to judge which on of 'them is right... and ofcourse i need to forgive the kids for their innocence. Innocence of a kid is endearing as much as it is scary. You do not know where you will be led. Which one of the bonfires you'd choose? Nights make me recollect my old I-Spy games, being woken up for a surprise gift I wanted badly. I sometimes remember standing waist deep in river Ganga and praying, saying words that didn't mean a thing a moment ago, words that won't mean anything like the supposed meaning ever after. Or some night in the sea when I felt I had done my days' work and I could rest until the dawn comes. Of course, the inevitable adult comes and shows you the stupidity of the exercise. What do you feel then? Anger? Disappointment? Guilt? Or relief that you've found and excuse to get down from the tiger (or horse, donkey etc) you were riding. Or sometimes the adult(s) doesn't come. I like nights and I like stories that end well... So dear friends, in all my stories, the adult always comes at the end...

The (k)nights in suburbia

i am searching for god, or Satan or whatever that could break the monotony, create excitement, give me anecdotes to tell etc.
about an year ago, sitting by seashore one early breezy morning, all we thought about was getting back to some warm nestling place. we stayed there for quite a long time nevertheless.. one year hence the memory is sufficiently hazy to feel nostalgic.
lets go another year backwords..what was i doing then? sitting on terrace, thinking aloud, discussing RDB, discussing the not-so-interesting test for masters, scandalizing and scaring few as we decided to test our vocal chords, and our capability as different species..and finally scampering to our rooms almost by early morning when the 'security' people decided enough was enough..
Memories are comforting, though sometimes they make one sad, reflect and say those were the best days etc..why do peole want to change world? leave legacy? is it so that one evening they could fall back in reverie, tell stories of lost worlds and wonderful nights.. do you think that's what god does in his free time? well there are three options, yes/know/ don't know.. but you must respond otherwise nothing will happen.. maybe another insgnificant moment will be past when you chose to be aloof even though you had a chance...

why write?-An old post

(Originally written in 06 on another blog,this post quite obviously displays my fetish with full stops..retained taking a cue from Ambassedor vitage we might see soon on roads)

it is difficult to keep remembering....that you exist...you become an eye, an ear, a summation of senses on either side of a hood.. and you forget to feel how you feel...the realisation somehow seeps away from sensation...things happen and it does not matter...they do not and that does not matter either... i do not know how it happened to me..how my life became a story...just another of so many stories i write...about my life...about how i feel... it's difficult to know actually! and it is no surprise that i fail to realise just when i transmutate from one character in a story...to other in another one..sometime masks and makeup cling...sometimes i do not need then ; just changing color of my skin is sufficient... it is meaningless to change from one anonymity to another... sometimes i have to just twist my lips a little...and i become another person...i am my Jeanie then....why this seems so meaningless then? what makes me sad when in the middle of the play i remember that i cannot fly...i cannot disappear coz I'm not a Jeanie in this story?..... do i like my characters? do i know them?....or is it a pretence...of knowing it all...understanding the incomprehensible....? i do not know...they say that ignorance is a bliss...and i do not want to know sometimes...coz with wings i can fly...it makes sense if i ignore the incongruities of my stories...that they never end.... how do i feel between the characters?...i do not know as i am busy weaving new ones to fill in my emptiness did god create us?...worthless beings just like this?...to run away from senses...not to realise?... i do not know coz i am on to a new story...another part of me...another part that will not fit, never, to make the complete me...its corners will not be ground-they will remain-.sharp edges,incongruous, they remind me of myself.When i hurt my fingers on one of these, i know that they are part of me,that my quest is still unfinished,that there is a face besides the mask.i have never seen it, but i know its presence when i hurt myself over me....

Xyloed

We are Xyloed. Fresh from the much awaited product launch yesterday, the classic ' to buy or not to buy' is the constant buzz I hear around me.Many were directly involved in the project, many by association, the excitement is certainly in the air. In a way it's a breather from the hottest commodity around-the bad news. Sinking economy, sinking automotive industry in particular, terror strike, transport strike, you name it and we have everything on platter.

It's amazing how people have gotten so involved emotionally with what is meant to be essentially a commercial offering.

People who made it, people like us who examined and did the nit-picking down to almost every nut and bolt and wire,people entirely unconnected in theory, everyone has some strong sense of passion about Xylo, be it the general effusiveness or the rare brickbats; Xylo is our version of Indo-Pak cricket match where everyone is an expert, everyone has seen some facet that others did not..

Another interesting thing i sensed was the amazement so many of felt when we got hold of the finished product even though in bits and pieces they where who made it. call it success of information management, maybe a reflection on how little we look around our immediate task at hand, or maybe some element of what Arjuna felt when he was targeting the bird's eye- the world is beautiful, but, all that mattered for the moment was the best he could give to his job at hand..

As they say, all is well that ends well, despite the inevitable rejoicing and heart burns that go into making as complex product as a car

..Nothing has captured our imaginations more through this century then these metallo-mechanical beast with so much sweat and grime inside and style and grace and charisma for all the world to see..

To the beast go the honours for the day!

revisit

Second posts are important as they re-affirm the commitment for the next one, not unlike what second life does- nine lives are the upper limit says my cat, already in its third life. why third? the cat has been mourned over twice by a over-afflicted cousin of mine, only to reappear again to every one's delight, turned out that the cat was merely taking the usual catty nap..
how many lives do we want to have till we say that's enough? not too bad a question for we. the believers in re-incarnations,some stories are special though. there is one about a great king in pre- mahabarata period who kept evading death for thousand years, each time sacrificing a son to extend his life by a hundred years, the older he grew, the stronger the pull of life became for him just as you want to win desperately the more you lose in a card game.
this lasted until he managed to ask his last son, just out of his teens why he didn't flinch when death was coming any moment.
His son could see the absurdity of life & of death, what interested him was if the king could escape the inevitable, live to die 100 years hence, could achieve anything that he could not in his 1000 years. if he could, we might have created some sense out of the farce we live in.
Life isn't a transferable asset, but what if it was. the young prince chose to take the offer, what would others do?
interesting experiments to explore, only that we have no multiple choice questions here and none of these is not a valid answer..

musings of infidel

Have been planning to have a new place exclusively for random writings, musings, blabbering etc. it's essentially an urge to write as myself, unlike fiction (or fiction of fiction) where the character becomes another little being.
Interesting thought- did god create us just as we create all these words and stories and verses and the so-called non fiction? never realising where this new being will end up, how will this play out.
Einstein thought god didn't play dice, Stephen Hawkins thinks he does, so did Heisenberg, not that the speculation matters in the end, we all end up at same place- some have better idea on why, some don't or maybe the latter are humble enough to admit, does he play dice with no rules decided beforehand, a game to be established when it's already over? not much unlike our lives i guess..
Many think god does not exist, many more know that he (or she, to be politically correct) exists and speaks to chosen few, and for so long that they write books out of it. why were the chosen few the chosen few? this becomes really baffling when chosen few tell us that everything is predestined...maybe these were chosen as they had the patience to listen to millions of verses and the ability to remember all of it after the ordeal, correction- revelation.
or maybe ability to remember that others didn't have either of it and they are more likely to believe him/her than listening to it for themselves.( another question-the mode is like a radio or a phone call, what are the chances of getting on the wrong line? many questions in fact)
in any case, if one remembers this, and it's very likely given their enormous power in this regard, it's easy to see what will happen next, some will believe, some would not, some will resist, most will not be bothered until such time that the story becomes a legend, people start believing just because they've heard it ever so often, and because its novelty..
one such a leader has enough people, he can start saying we are better, and eventually that others are worse, they don't deserve their place in society, their money, their life indeed..
if the leader says it often enough, forcefully enough, we will have people on the sidelines joining in, thus starts a cult..not necessarily on same principles as what the god told the preacher..
the religion in individual capacity is very different in it's nature from the religion we profess en-masse..
did god want this? did he not? maybe i leave it to another day coz it's time to catch grub, watch TV, read a book, wait till a brand new day comes with all its banality and nothingness..
runnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn...