tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-63200910011368184092024-03-12T13:14:19.635+05:30Sarath's BlogAnd Now for Something Completely Different..Sarath Sominahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06777894196812381168noreply@blogger.comBlogger34125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320091001136818409.post-39673726355615432582017-03-08T23:12:00.000+05:302017-03-08T23:20:39.290+05:30Women and Society<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<i>"Your mother is a woman, your sister is a woman, your wife is a
woman, your daughter is a woman. Without them your life is not complete.
Celebrate women, happy women's day to all the awesome mothers, sisters,
wives, daughters, working women, etc.,"</i></div>
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<br /></div>
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This regressive attitude of identifying women in terms of their relationships with men, family
and society is fundamentally the reason why women's emancipation is so
important.</div>
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<br /></div>
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A woman is just like a man in terms of free will, agenc<span class="text_exposed_show">y
and individuality. Social structures and norms put women into the roles
of daughter, wife, mother, etc., which diminish, if not rob the agency she is
entitled to as an individual. Women's rights movement (aka Feminist
movement) is all about giving women the agency to the same degree that
is enjoyed by men in the society. </span></div>
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<br />
Even in the 21st century, it is very difficult for most women in India
to live a life of their choice if it goes against the expected gender
and societal roles. When women dare to exercise their agency in these
lines, men, families and society will react in the forms of counseling
by elders , slut shaming, emotional abuse, physical violence and
sometimes killing for honor. <br />
<br />
This regressive and conservative
culture is hailed and preserved by religion, tradition and orthodoxy
that normalizes social oppression and political inaction. Considering
such archaic cultural baggage as valuable is at odds with today's
rapidly changing society.<br />
<br />
So thinking about women in terms of
their relationships with men, family and society is a vicious seed that
needs to be thrown away if we want to build a culture that is sensitive
towards individual's free will and agency. Not to mention women's rights
movement continues to enlighten society (and men) and is fighting for
rights of other oppressed groups too.<br />
<br />
If we are to instill into
ourselves the spirit of International Women's day, we should strongly
keep in mind that women need to be recognized not for their gender
roles, not for their caregiving, not because they are beautiful, not
because they bear children, not because they cook and clean after us,
not because they are successful in their careers, but because they are
individuals and because they need to be emancipated from these roles
that restrict their agency and individuality.<br />
<br />
PS: This argument also applies to those who aren't women.</div>
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Sarath Sominahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06777894196812381168noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320091001136818409.post-34878169861856178112016-04-15T04:35:00.001+05:302016-05-04T19:25:42.952+05:30Travelog: Dubai trip<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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We toured Dubai City and Abu Dhabi between 6-Apr and 11-Apr this year. Here's a travelog of the trip:<br />
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<b><i>Cities covered:</i></b> Dubai City, Abu Dhabi<br />
<i><b>Travellers:</b></i> Four<br />
<i><b>Duration:</b></i> 5 days, 4 nights<br />
<i><b>Airline:</b></i> SpiceJet (not recommended, better go for Emirates)<br />
<i><b>Hotel:</b></i> <a href="http://dubaialrigga.place.hyatt.com/en/hotel/home.html" target="_blank">Hyatt Place Dubai/Al Rigga</a><br />
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<u><b>Day 1: Wednesday, 6-April</b></u><br />
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Once we landed at the airport and finished immigration procedures, we walked into the Airport Terminal 1 metro station and took a Silver Nol Card (Travel card in Dubai). You can travel in the metro, city buses and trams only with this Nol card. Cash payment is not accepted in public transportation.<br />
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We made an early check-in to the hotel and went to the Dubai Mall. This mall has an entrance to Burj Khalifa as well. We initially planned to go to the <a href="http://www.burjkhalifa.ae/en/the-tower/ObservationDecks.aspx" target="_blank">top of the Burj</a>, but all slots for the day were already taken. So we booked one slot for 9:30 AM the next day.<br />
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In the mall, we visited the Dubai Aquarium & Underwater Zoo, SEGA Republic, Dubai Mall Waterfall and musical fountains. This suspended aquarium is one of the largest in the world and hosts around 30,000 marine animals of over 140 species including Sand Tiger Sharks and two King Crocodiles. They also have a marine life conservation and breeding research facility which we can visit in a 'behind the scenes' tour.<br />
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In the evening, we found a 24x7 Indian restaurant called <a href="https://www.zomato.com/dubai/landmark-restaurant-al-rigga" target="_blank">Landmark</a> near our hotel. This restaurant is owned by Keralites and serves decent Indian food. I personally liked <a href="http://www.gharanarestaurant.com/blog/indian-parathas" target="_blank">Kerala Paratha</a> and Egg Masala the best.<br />
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<i><b>Places covered:</b></i> Dubai Mall.<br />
<i><b>Admission fees:</b></i> Dubai Aquarium - 100 AED.<br />
<i><b>Travel details:</b></i> </div>
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Metro train Red line from Al Rigga to Dubai Mall station, 15-minute walk from station to the mall.<br />
<i><b>Food details:</b></i> </div>
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Breakfast at <a href="https://www.tripadvisor.com/LocationPhotoDirectLink-g295424-d1490970-i158235375-Avenue_Hotel-Dubai_Emirate_of_Dubai.html" target="_blank">Avenue hotel coffee shop</a>, Lunch at the mall, Dinner at Landmark restaurant.<br />
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<u><b>Day 2: Thursday, 7-April</b></u><br />
<br />
We started this day early to catch up with the Burj Khalifa slot. After that, we went to Jumeirah mosque at around 12 PM to find it closed. Originally, we planned Burj Khalifa on Wednesday and Jumeirah Mosque at 10 AM on Thursday to attend the mosque tour. But we had to change plans to accommodate Burj Khalifa and found the mosque closed when we reached there. However, we took pictures of the mosque from outside and returned to the hotel.<br />
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In the afternoon, we took the Desert Safari tour. <a href="http://www.arabianteamadventures.com/main/excursiondetail/MQ==#ad-image-0" target="_blank">This</a> is the package we took. We also visited Zabeel palace on the way to the desert. The driver picked us at the hotel at 3:30 PM and dropped us back by 10:30 PM<br />
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<i><b>Places covered:</b></i> Burj Khalifa, Jumeirah Mosque, Zabeel Palace, Desert Safari.<br />
<i><b>Admission fees:</b></i> </div>
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Burj Khalifa - 125 AED.</div>
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Desert Safari - 160 AED (We got discounted price due to a friend).<br />
<i><b>Travel details:</b></i><br />
Burj Khalifa - Metro train Red line from Al Rigga to Dubai Mall station, walk to the mall and to the tower entrance in the mall.<br />
Jumeirah Mosque - Bus from Dubai Mall to Jumeirah Mosque.</div>
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<i><b>Food details:</b></i> </div>
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Breakfast at the hotel, skipped Lunch (I had a banana and a cup of tea), Dinner at Desert Safari camp.<br />
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<u><b>Day 3: Friday, 8-April</b></u><br />
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Friday and Saturday are weekend in Dubai and Metro trains start at 10 AM on Fridays. We started late at 11 AM this day and went to Palm Jumeirah. This is an artificial island built in the Persian Gulf. The main attraction on this island is 'Atlantis the Palm', a resort that has a big water park and other water adventure activities. I visited the Lost Chambers Aquarium in the resort, which is an ancient-ruins-themed aquarium.<br />
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From Atlantis, we went to JBR beach where we took a stroll along the shoreline and watched the sunset. From the beach, we went to Dubai Marina Mall and returned to hotel.<br />
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<i><b>Places covered:</b></i> Palm Jumeirah, Atlantis, JBR beach, Dubai Marina Mall.</div>
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<i><b>Admission fees:</b></i> Lost Chambers Aquarium - 110 AED.<br />
<i><b>Travel details:</b></i><br />
<i>Atlantis:</i><br />
Metro train Red line from Al Rigga to DAMAC properties.<br />
Walk to Dubai Marina Tram station, Tram to Palm Jumeirah.<br />
Walk to Palm Gateway monorail station, monorail to Atlantis the Palm.<br />
<i>JBR Beach:</i> </div>
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Tram from Dubai Marina station to Jumeirah Beach Residence 2. Walk to the beach.<br />
Dubai Marina Mall: Tram from Jumeirah Beach Residence 2 to Dubai Marina Mall station.<br />
<i><b>Food details:</b></i> </div>
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Breakfast at the hotel, Lunch near JBR beach, Dinner at Landmark restaurant.<br />
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<u><b>Day 4: Saturday, 9-April</b></u><br />
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We started much later (10 AM) than we planned (7:30 AM) and reached Abu Dhabi by 12:30 PM. We met our friends there and they drove us around the city for the day.<br />
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We reached <a href="https://ferrariworldabudhabi.com/" target="_blank">Ferrari World</a> in Yas Island by 1:30 PM. This is a theme park that hosts the fastest roller coaster in the world (240kmph), another roller coaster with the tallest loop in the world (52m) along with other rides. We took this fastest roller coaster twice, the loop coaster once, and a bunch of other rides in the park. Luckily, the crowd was sparse on this day, and we managed to finish everything by 5 PM.<br />
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After finishing lunch, we reached Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque by 7:30 PM and checked it out for a couple of hours. Then we drove back to Emirates Palace for a quick look and headed back to the bus station. We reached Dubai by 12:30 AM and took a cab to the hotel.<br />
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<i><b>Places covered:</b></i> Ferrari World, Grand Mosque, Emirates Palace.<br />
<i><b>Admission fees:</b></i> Ferrari World - 290 AED.<br />
<i><b>Travel details:</b></i><br />
<i>Abu Dhabi:</i><br />
Metro train Red line from Al Rigga to Union station. Change to Green line and reached Al-Ghubaiba.<br />
Took inter-city bus from Al-Ghubaiba bus station to Abu Dhabi.<br />
<i><b>Food details:</b></i><br />
Breakfast at the hotel, Lunch at Abu Dhabi, Dinner at Landmark restaurant.<br />
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<u><b>Day 5: Sunday, 10-April</b></u><br />
<br />
One of our friends left in the morning to India and the remaining three of us planned <a href="http://www.ladyandhersweetescapes.com/2014/04/old-dubai-do-it-yourself-walking-tour.html" target="_blank">this walking tour</a> of Old Dubai.<br />
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We checked out of the hotel by 12 PM and visited Gold and Spice Souks. From there, we took an Abra (wooden boat) and reached Bur Dubai. There we visited Old Souk, Heritage village and Sheikh Saeed Al Maktoum's house along the creek shore. To be honest, we didn't enjoy much this tour and the Dubai Ferry ride caught our attention. So we ditched the walking tour and took the 6:30 PM ferry from Al Ghubaiba to Dubai Marina. <br />
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In this ferry ride, we enjoyed Dubai cityscape, sunset and a good view of Burj Al Arab. We took metro from Dubai Marina Mall station, returned to hotel to collect our luggage and headed to airport ending the tour.<br />
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<i><b>Places covered:</b></i> </div>
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Gold, Spice and Old Souks, Dubai Creek.</div>
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Heritage Village, Sheikh Saeed Al Maktoum's house.</div>
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Ferry ride.<br />
<i><b>Admission fees:</b></i> </div>
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Sheikh Saeed Al Maktoum's house - 5 AED.</div>
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Ferry ride - 50 AED.<br />
<i><b>Travel details:</b></i><br />
<i>Gold Souk: </i></div>
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Metro red line from Al Rigga to Union station. </div>
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Change to Green line and reached Al-Ras. Walked to Gold Souk.<br />
<i>Heritage Village: </i></div>
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Abra from Old Souk Abra station to Bur Dubai. Walk along the creek to Heritage Village.<br />
<i><b>Food details:</b></i> </div>
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Breakfast at the hotel, Lunch at an <a href="http://www.gharanarestaurant.com/blog/indian-parathas" target="_blank">Indian paratha</a> joint in Old Souk, Dinner at Landmark restaurant.<br />
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<u><b>Final comments:</b></u></div>
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<ul>
<li>I enjoyed Desert Safari, Ferrari World, Grand Mosque, Dubai ferry Ride, Dubai Mall Aquarium the best.</li>
<li>Burj Al Arab was breathtaking in the night view.</li>
<li>JBR beach had practically no waves (We visited it on the day after new moon).</li>
<li>Abu Dhabi Grand mosque is the finest structure I've seen in my life. I found its beauty amazing.</li>
<li>Don't miss the fastest roller coaster in Ferrari World. It is an unbelievable experience.</li>
<li>Alcohol cannot be bought easily in the city. We were told that a buying license is needed for it and only residents can get one. So if you want alcohol, better buy in Dubai airport or look for shady shops willing to sell alcohol without license (at your own risk)</li>
</ul>
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<u><b>Media:</b></u></div>
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<i>Photos:</i> Check <a href="https://www.facebook.com/tejasomina/photos_albums" target="_blank">my Facebook albums</a>. </div>
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<i>Videos:</i></div>
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<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQ5tDN1TXaA&index=1&list=PLzsrKoJga_mSz6dshRPgJ0DbKKaFFp9bQ" target="_blank">Desert Safari - Sand dune bashing</a></div>
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<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MhZsjkrcfQo&index=1&list=PLzsrKoJga_mTdq6_odPgnqzReLKSXWqIi" target="_blank">Desert Safari - Belly dace performance</a></div>
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<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_3lpA9R3jM&index=1&list=PLzsrKoJga_mRyPNS9g2gAB7I67yhS30k5" target="_blank">Atlantis the Palm - The Lost Chambers Aquarium</a> </div>
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Sarath Sominahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06777894196812381168noreply@blogger.com168tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320091001136818409.post-40885401482613533812016-03-08T22:47:00.001+05:302016-03-08T22:48:44.681+05:30International women's day<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
On this international women's day, I think it is blatantly superficial to just wish women around us and let it be. Of course I am thankful to all the women in my life - from my mother, sister, teachers to friends and colleagues.<br />
Along with that, a few thoughts:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Where young boys are not programmed to refer women as <i>maal</i>,<br />
Where society doesn't make women flag-bearers of family honor,<br />
Where rape culture is not normalized by silencing and shaming the victims,<br />
Where jokes objectifying women are not considered funny,<br />
Where religions that discriminate women become irrelevant,<br />
Where everyday sexism is routinely called out,<br />
Where those who are proud of not being feminists are non-existent,<br />
Into that modern society with free thought,<br />
Into that culture of parity may my country awake!</blockquote>
<br />
I hope we achieve this in our lifetimes for a better society :) </div>
Sarath Sominahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06777894196812381168noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320091001136818409.post-31384568512660919332015-07-18T20:40:00.001+05:302015-07-19T11:09:45.112+05:303 things you didn't notice in Bāhubali: The Beginning<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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So, I have finally watched the most expensive film ever made in India, B<span class="Unicode">ā</span>hubali, in Telugu. Since I had the chance to watch it on the largest IMAX screen in India at Prasad's, I happened to look at the "bigger picture" and observed a lot of things which for those who watched in silly theaters could go over the top of their heads. </div>
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Here are some of those, starting from the most shocking ones:<br />
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<u><b>1. Sivudu may be hallucinating the entire plot</b></u></div>
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To those who forgot the names of characters due to the overshadowing war episode, <i>Sivudu</i>, whose birth-name is <i>Mahendra B</i><i><span class="Unicode">ā</span>hubali</i>, is the son-Prabhas who, obviously, is the son of the father-Prabhas, <i>Amarendra B</i><i><span class="Unicode">ā</span>hubali</i>. The father-Prabhas is again, not so obviously, the son of a grandfather-Prabhas, <i>Dharmendra B</i><i><span class="Unicode">ā</span>hubali</i> (The name was to appeal to Hindi audience). The confusing part here is that all the 3 roles are played by the same actor, Prabhas. However, we can distinguish them by their body weights: son-Prabhas is leaner than father-Prabhas, and grandfather-Prabhas is only seen in a painting (at least for now).<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Hd25erIj2cA/VarADK44uYI/AAAAAAAABXY/GYWc89usGW0/s1600/Prabhas.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="212" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Hd25erIj2cA/VarADK44uYI/AAAAAAAABXY/GYWc89usGW0/s320/Prabhas.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sivudu, with both his nostrils expanded to their fullest capacity</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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Now that you are reminded of who <i>Sivudu </i>is, you should also be reminded that he is a very naughty boy: <b>He wants to see the world beyond the waterfall bordering his village.</b> The catch here is that, he cannot climb up the waterfall (or can he?). So, he tries to climb a slippery rock hill on one side of the waterfall, and jump across the breadth of the waterfall, to land on the rock hill on the other side, and then climb over to wonderland. </div>
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But, we see in the introduction scene that he cannot make the jump, and falls some 40 feet into the water. The reason for this is his lousy group of friends who are douchebags enough to discourage him, thereby stopping the plot from advancing.<br />
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However, to those of you who failed to see the "bigger picture", here's what I observed: <b>Because of his 40-feet fall, Sivudu damages his skull, goes into psychosis, and starts hallucinating the entire plot</b>. This idea can be illustrated by the following events that seem surreal, but subsequently unfold anyway:</div>
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<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>Sivudu detaching a seemingly heavy Shiva <i>linga</i>, balancing it on his shoulders and head and planting it under the waterfall. </li>
</ul>
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Under normal circumstances, he would be killed by his tribe for hitting the idol with crowbars and insulting god. But since it's a hallucination, nothing of that sort happens.</div>
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<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>Just when he finishes the above task, he sees a wooden mask falling from the waterfall. </li>
</ul>
Come on, what are the chances that you happen to find wooden masks dropping from the sky when you go visit a waterfall, after you carry a Shiva <i>linga </i>on your head, unless you are chewing <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psilocybin_mushroom" target="_blank">magic mushrooms</a>?<br />
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<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>He sticks this suspicious wooden mask into sand, and Tamanna's bust (head, not breasts you pervert) comes up. </li>
</ul>
Too bad, Spiderman is an idiot trying to keep his identity a secret. If someone gets hold of his mask, they can go to beach, take a sunbath, and in the return trip get Toby Maguire arrested. Oh sorry, Toby Maguire is not Spiderman anymore, it is that guy who got screwed by Zuckerberg in the facebook movie.<br />
<br />
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>He 'actually' starts hallucinating Tamanna (what was her character name again? Oh yes, <i>Avantika</i>) and her dance moves. </li>
</ul>
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Now, this is where Rajamouli gives you his Nolan-esque touch: putting clues in scenes so that you can decipher the "bigger picture", just in the way I did.</div>
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<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>Sivudu finally manages to jump across the waterfall looking at the imaginary Avantika. </li>
</ul>
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This happens in the hallucination which Rajamouli shows you, which happens inside
the actual hallucination that Rajamouli doesn't show you, but leaves clues in
the hallucination he shows you, to decipher what's really going on. </div>
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<br /></div>
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The key thing to note here is Sivudu's pose while jumping: it's a Superman-style flying pose. And, I remember another film other than Superman, where such pose is shown: <i>The Big Lebowski</i> where 'the Dude' <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04P3H9XRLy8" target="_blank">dreams after being hit on the head</a>.</div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-LFngDbIVztM/Vappj_0PhaI/AAAAAAAABXI/5JV7W3WeztI/s1600/2015-07-18_20-26-45.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="172" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-LFngDbIVztM/Vappj_0PhaI/AAAAAAAABXI/5JV7W3WeztI/s320/2015-07-18_20-26-45.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">That was some lovely lively dream, man!</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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See? That's Rajamouli again with a Nolan-esque touch: giving you another clue as to tell you what's actually happening. You didn't notice that, did you?<br />
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And lastly,<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>Sivudu manages to pull off the least-cost path algorithm of seducing a woman </li>
</ul>
I think he did this with the inspiration of K Raghavendra Rao BA. This is why you should do a BA, so that you can also come up with such techniques and change the world.<br />
<br />
Coming to seduction, another thing I observed in the film is that:<br />
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<br />
<u><b>2. Female comrades wear sexy lingerie inside</b></u><br />
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I understand that Sivudu became a make-up man for Avantika, but he didn't become the costume designer, i.e., he didn't make her lingerie out of leaves and twigs. So, it follows that she was wearing it from before. Why? There may be 2 reasons:</div>
<br />
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>Her masked revolutionary group prescribes sexy lingerie as part of uniform to all its members.</li>
</ul>
Why? Probably because when you become horny and want to have sex with your comrade in a dense forest in the middle of the revolution, the least your group can provide is some sexy lingerie and a chance for role-playing.<br />
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<br /></div>
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If this were true, then this would also be one of the hidden clues Rajamouli puts in the film for us to decipher and expand our understanding of revolutionary groups. He certainly did a lot of research while writing the script.</div>
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The other reason could be<br />
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<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>When someone rips her sleeves and armor off, washes her, applies make up, and finally strips her down to the undies, she wants to look pretty, and not turn-off the guy. <b>This is for the greater good: To advance the plot</b>.</li>
</ul>
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But then, why would Avantika think in such a way, unless she is either recruited as a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Femme_fatale" target="_blank"><i>femme fatale</i></a> or is a closeted nymphomaniac? I would favor the former.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-dmM4C51pV2E/VarCDGCu_mI/AAAAAAAABXk/nDUyCFhMoaM/s1600/2015-07-19_2-44-48.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="238" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-dmM4C51pV2E/VarCDGCu_mI/AAAAAAAABXk/nDUyCFhMoaM/s320/2015-07-19_2-44-48.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Avantika, before joining the revolutionary group</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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However, speaking of Avantika being mental,<br />
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<u><b>3. Almost every character in the film suffers from a Psychological disorder</b></u><br />
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Now, I am not pulling off some Freudian psychoanalysis shit where every aspect of your behavior has got to do with either <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penis_envy" target="_blank">your genitals</a> or <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oedipus_complex" target="_blank">your mother</a>. My idea is that, <b>if you pull any of the characters in this film out from the screen to the real world and take them to a psychiatrist, they have a good chance of being diagnosed with a clinical psychological disorder.</b> </div>
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Here are some:</div>
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<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>Sivudu: <b>Hallucinations</b></li>
</ul>
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He may also be eating magic mushrooms for all we know. You can't deny their supply where he comes from.</div>
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<li>Devasena: <b>Sadistic personality disorder </b></li>
</ul>
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Boy, she really wants to see Bhallaladeva getting tortured real bad and being severed, and wishes to dump him on the funeral pyre herself. She even meticulously picks up twigs and tree branches and prepares it for 25 years. </div>
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<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>Sivagami: <b>Delusional disorder </b></li>
</ul>
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Well, she has unusual faith in her lactating capacity. Even mothers with twins find it difficult to produce enough milk for both. She is also humorless and sensitive, and shows a taste for unusual sadistic revenge when the barbarian threatens rape.</div>
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<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>Kattappa: <b>Stockholm syndrome </b></li>
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He doesn't want to get out of slavery, and he is actually sympathetic towards his captors.</div>
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<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>Avantika: <b>Borderline personality disorder</b><b> </b></li>
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She shows all its classic symptoms: Impulsiveness, unstable behavior, idealization and devaluation of others. We may get more information in the second part.</div>
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<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>Bhallaladeva: <b>Antisocial personality disorder</b>, <i>aka</i>, <b>Psychopathy</b> </li>
</ul>
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Symptoms: Cruelty towards animals, disregard and violation of others' rights, lack of remorse, false charisma</div>
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<li>Bijjaladeva: <b>Sexual frustration </b></li>
</ul>
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Now, this is open for interpretation. This fellow has a wife who is busy with ruling the kingdom and lactating for 2 kids. His right-hand always holds a wine glass, and his left-hand is useless, so he can't have one off the wrist. Also taking into consideration his appearance without a shirt and with a walrus mustache, he is the prime candidate for a sexually frustrated old guy.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-CPCzrLJoapk/VarDxCix06I/AAAAAAAABXw/i_U14oJTcZs/s1600/2015-07-19_2-51-36.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-CPCzrLJoapk/VarDxCix06I/AAAAAAAABXw/i_U14oJTcZs/s320/2015-07-19_2-51-36.png" width="241" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Bijjaladeva, showing both his hands and the walrus mustache. He is wearing clothes to appear less creepy</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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And finally,<br />
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<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>The headless dude who walks for a mile: <b>Cougar fetish (preferably with bondage) </b></li>
</ul>
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Well, this cannot be classified as a psychological disorder, but I think it's worth mentioning.<br />
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<ul>
<li>All the soldiers guarding Devasena: <b>Selective blindness disorder</b></li>
</ul>
Come on, what were they doing when a prisoner is suspiciously collecting twigs and branches and pooling them together for 25 years? Are they thinking she's doing her part for <i>Swachh Bharat Abhiyan</i>? </div>
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<u><b>Conclusion</b></u><br />
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Since Rajamouli is a genius, I think he wanted to put a sane character, B<span class="Unicode">ā</span>hubali (the 2 of them) into a world of nutcases, including his foster-mother/grandmother and wife/mother, and see how these characters take the plot forward. If he were not a genius, we can say that <b>all he can think of are blandness and clichés from films of the 70s while writing characters and doing character development</b>.<br />
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In conclusion, I think some of these observations can be more evident in the second part of the film, which I am expecting to contain another ample dose of character development and plot advancement in the most astonishing way, with Rajamouli dropping us more clues and Easter eggs to provide insights into revolutionary groups and psychological disorders.</div>
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<b>PS:</b> This piece is only about the bad writing of the film touted to be the pride of Telugu/Indian cinema. I liked the war sequence in the film, and I wish Rajamouli chops off junk like the above in his second part and in the international cuts. No one wants to go through half of the film with scenes establishing clichéd characters in the most annoying way.</div>
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Sarath Sominahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06777894196812381168noreply@blogger.com28tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320091001136818409.post-8326319411012068752013-08-04T13:24:00.001+05:302013-08-04T23:11:23.839+05:30Friendship day<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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So we have lots of "days" in an year, thanks to scumbag greeting card companies and a society that will buy even <a href="http://www.ebay.com/bhp/boyfriend-arm-pillow" target="_blank">this</a> and <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Deluxe-Comfort-Girlfriend-Body-Pillow/dp/B0050VN77C" target="_blank">this</a> with the correct type of marketing. Now what's with friendship day specifically?<br />
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Take your mother. She takes care of you, and you ask her anything you forgot where you've put, you get an answer. She remembers extreme details of all types of stuff, and you get mad at her when she couldn't find your things. And what you do on Mother's day? You wish her, appreciate all the things she does for you, sleep tight and wake up to another day of forgetting your shit and yelling at her.<br />
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Take your father. He pays. He pays for your food, your clothes, your school, your dates, even saves something for your goddamn children. And yet you ask him for a 350cc bullet and get mad at him when he says no. And what you do on Father's day? You buy him some gift (probably with his money), appreciate all that he does for you, sleep tight and wake up to another day of shopping list.<br />
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Take your girlfriend. She.. hmm.. you know what all she does for you. And you basically think you deserve all that. And again you try to be funny saying things like why women are dumb, and why peanut butter is better than a blonde, and such sexist jokes. And what you do on Valentine's day? You stop the stupid jokes, buy her something romantic, appreciate her for sticking with an asshole like you, listen to her that day hoping for a surprise in the night.<br />
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Take your boyfriend. He basically pays for your shopping. And you bear his stupidity. And what you do on Valentine's day? You do some shopping for him instead, make him listen to what you say at least on that day, finally give him a surprise in the night by literally sleeping tight.<br />
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Now take your friends. You hang out with them, say mean things about other people, discuss sports, clothes, shoes, Katrina Kaif, Salman Khan, Anna Hazare and Sunny Leone with them. And what you do on Friendship day? You hang out with them, say mean things about other people, discuss sports, clothes, shoes, Katrina Kaif, Shahrukh Khan, Anna Hazare and Sunny Leone with them. Is there anything else you would do on this "special occasion"?<br />
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You don't appreciate someone for letting you be her/his friend, you may even not remember why you both became friends. It's neither planned, nor you both might've made much effort to become friends. May be you both like the same sport or hate Karan Johar with the same intensity. That's all sufficient for becoming friends, and peer-pressure takes care of the rest. </div>
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But still, you long to be in their company, making it one of the best times you have, and you don't need a greeting card company to remind your friends that they're friends with you. A lifetime relation itself is a reflection of the depth of friendship you share.<br />
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And you don't really have a break-up rite for friendship. That's why <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZNvNEnhAeI" target="_blank">this</a> is funny.</div>
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Sarath Sominahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06777894196812381168noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320091001136818409.post-46387952279310682732013-07-31T00:29:00.003+05:302013-07-31T01:35:49.711+05:30What I wish to happen to the Telangana state<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Finally, the partisan and political movement bore a fruit by declaring a separate Telangana state. This is indeed joyful to the people here (I am writing this from Hyderabad), as there is a history of over half a century to this movement, seeing a rise and fall due to various reasons along this period. This post is how someone coming from outside the region, and whose immediate ancestors haven't experienced any of the feudalistic oppression or the exploitation that happened in this region, looks at the separatist movement, its implications and possible future.<br />
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I justify this separate state movement, indeed as a matter of pride, but economic pride rather than a political one. The state of Andhra Pradesh was formed with an intention that capitalistic classes from the Coastal Andhra and Rayalaseema regions would invest in Telangana, and hence the region would see an economic upliftment of its masses who have been subjected to the extent of slavery during the Nizam rule. A political voice to the people wasn't provided until the first separatist movement in 1969, after which many economic and political solutions were tried in the region for a better and faster upliftment of the people here.<br />
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None of these political solutions gave good results, and the region started to improve, mostly due to the purchasing power of the immigrants, rather than that of the natives. Though post-liberalization saw growth of the middle-class, the weaker and poorer sections in the region were never equipped well enough to make use of the economic situation. Although this happened all over the country and is not limited to Telangana, it's still a problem looking specifically in a regional context. Even the "Hyderabad boom" that happened in the late 1990s helped mostly the privileged sections of the region, but not the ones whose upliftment was deeply necessary with the growing economic inequality. As a matter of fact, post-liberalization period destroyed the lives of the bottom sections, increasing farmer suicides which hit Telangana badly due to its small-scale peasantry.<br />
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Coming to the present movement, although the political exploitation of the cause cannot be ignored, this is indeed a people's agitation to end the oppression they are being subjected to and to become empowered. Note that I am talking only about the underprivileged, weak and poor sections of the region, and NOT about the capitalistic and privileged sections of the same region. There have been <a href="http://www.tehelka.com/snuffed-out-by-t-politics/" target="_blank">student suicides</a>, whose deaths were pigeon-holed into martyrdom, but the common element in every one of those is poverty, unemployment, despair and inability to get out of financial problems. Hyderabad, with its income and infrastructure, couldn't uplift any of these students from their economic situation and improve their lives in this whole period.<br />
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So, what is the future of these people now, after a state is carved with Hyderabad as its capital (in the next few years), with its income going to be spent within the region itself? Would the income distribution be favored towards the ones who are in a desperate need for it? Will it improve the chronic indebtedness of farmers in the region? Increasing Government jobs, are in fact, a burden to the state, and will impair the spending power of people, as their salaries cannot be adjusted to inflation, maintain purchasing power over a period of time. Unless people get equipped enough to jump into the competitive market economy and have their share in generating revenue for the state, the situation cannot improve as a whole.<br />
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On the other hand, we have a capitalistic and political class from the region, who are eagerly waiting to jump into the market and grab their share, and selling the notion of "development" without addressing the real issues. This type of economy without trying to uplift the masses will further increase the income inequality, and will not improve the suicide situation. The popular reasons of the present agitation - Water, Employment, and Pride will not be addressed just because a new state is being carved and more income is pouring into the treasury. Economic policies targeted to improve people's living conditions and equip them well enough to make use of the economy to get out of poverty and unemployment are desperately needed now.<br />
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So, what do I wish to happen to the new state? I would wish people would continue this revolution until their lives get improved, turn it into a class-revolution instead of a political one, make their representatives put this in priority and empower themselves. This is a good opportunity given they have a city like Hyderabad to make use of. On the other hand, what I don't wish to happen is a Crony capitalistic class getting emerged in the region making use of the same Hyderabad, increasing the oppression of the natives, and creating destructive political causes like stopping migrations, building propaganda with distorted history and culture, and persecuting people from other regions.<br />
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Sarath Sominahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06777894196812381168noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320091001136818409.post-74077174712746802052012-08-17T00:37:00.002+05:302012-08-18T12:07:05.594+05:30\m/ Hare Krishna \m/.. and still a Naturalist!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<i><b>Note:</b> This is just a part of the experience I had, which I tried to put it as concisely as possible. Also, I haven't stopped reading scriptures after these incidents. In fact, they helped me to develop an eye on what's good interpretation of a scripture, and what's not.</i> </div>
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I've been lot into reading from my childhood as far as I can remember. I used to read everything whatever I can understand from - books, newspapers, pamphlets, even the <i>samosa </i>and <i>pakora </i>wrappings (they used to be wrapped in old school textbook pages back then). This reading interest made me to wonder what's in the scriptures (of all religions I heard about). I never had a good source for Hindu scriptures, but I managed to read whatever I could find in my home and at relatives' and family-friends'. I even did one Bible study course from some Christian Evangelical Institute based in New Delhi to know what's in the Bible. Well, it proved to be futile as the course was too focused on appreciating Jesus as personal savior rather than discussing the scripture's content.</div>
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In the course of my inquisitiveness in religious scriptures, I used to go to <a href="http://rkmathrjy.org/" target="_blank">Ramakrishna Math</a> at Rajahmundry. They had lots (believe me, lots) of books, predominantly Sanskrit, English and Telugu versions of Hindu scriptures and some books on comparative religion. I never really realized earlier that there's such a huge amount of literature in Hinduism. I found the translations to be pretty straightforward and read some (minor <i>puranas</i>, not the huge ones like Mahabharata). The Math had some programs (reading programs, social programs) specifically aimed at teens and young people. They used to talk about meditation, importance of acquiring knowledge, etc., I was a teenager back then, and I didn't really find those to be intrusive or abhorring me to stop thinking or indoctrinating me to take their preaching for granted. May be since it was a youth program, they didn't do it - I'm not sure. I actually remember them advising to develop a scientific outlook and help the society with our knowledge. I'm giving them a benefit of doubt due to the following experience I had later in my life.</div>
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All went well and I landed in NIT Warangal after a few years. In my freshman year, a talk was conducted by <a href="http://www.voicepune.com/contactUs.html" target="_blank">VOICE</a> (it was called BACE back then), a youth spiritual wing of ISKCON. The reason most of us attended it was that the speaker was an IIT alumnus (We NITians were always envious of IITians, you know). He was not a <i>sanyasin</i>, and was working in Motorola (We electronics folks actually cheered when he mentioned he's from the same background). The talk was mainly about nature of God, what Science can/cannot understand and God filling up the gaps of science. He showed us slides of religious quotes by scientists like Einstein, superposed on pictures of galaxies and stars. Finally, he ended up mentioning that it's Krishna that's the Godhead or whatever the hell it is, and He's the way to salvation. It reminded me of that course I took which used to rant and rant until I purged my intestines that Jesus is the only way to salvation. Itch towards comparative religion, eh? Well, I felt a twitch in my stomach here too</div>
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In the Q&A session that followed, I asked him why we should brand this 'God' with a name called Krishna, when we can say God is an abstract sense of some entity that's guiding the universe. He didn't answer my question, but simply said that I should start coming to VOICE sessions as I'm inquisitive and I would eventually figure out the answer myself. I was like 'what the hell', and everyone looked at me as if they are wondering why I ask questions all the time. I even heard later that some actually placed a bet if I would ask a question or not :-)</div>
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Now, there are certain ways in which VOICE operates as I observed :</div>
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<ul>
<li>They don't publicly preach in the way other religious missionaries do. You actually have to make time and go to their sessions</li>
<li>They neither publicly invite people to all sessions, nor announce their schedule. They notice those who ask questions or who seem interested and send their student members to their rooms and give books and info on upcoming sessions</li>
<li>The food they serve in the VOICE hostels is ultra-hyper-super-delicious (<a href="http://sarathteja.blogspot.in/2010/12/uncle-messkzp.html" target="_blank">Uncle Mess</a> is no match)</li>
<li>They don't give anything for free, which is a really good practice. They charge, however nominal it might be, for the food (10 bucks), or books (10 for small ones, 20 for big ones), or merchandize (10 typically)</li>
<li>They have weekly sessions, typically on Saturdays, by a <i>sanyasin </i>who tours these premier colleges to give talks.</li>
<li>When they don't know the answer to a question, they reply saying, "You start chanting, you'll figure out the answer yourself" and offer the <i>tulasi-bead mala</i> for 10 bucks</li>
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Naturally, I got a knock-knock on my door one Saturday morning (when I was still in bed), and one soft-spoken fellow (I think he's a senior year guy) came in and gave me 2 books to read and an invitation to the evening session. He was very persuasive, those were the days of my poverty and so I borrowed money from my roommate and paid for them. He greeted 'Hare Krishna' and left. I read them and found them lame. No offense, but one was on science and it was pretty twisted. Believe me, I had a good 'eye' to read scientific material back then as I've been busting pseudoscience in my own way since school days. As it follows, I didn't bother to attend the session.</div>
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In my senior year, I got a knock-knock again, and this time it was a semaphore year fellow. He tried to give me 2 books (one of which I've already read) and the invitation. He tried to be persuasive, but you know, I was the senior and I didn't buy the books and even gave him a review of the one I read. His face had gone pale, and I accepted the invitation for dinner. Well, I had actually started some theology study a few days before, and was interested to listen to the discourse.</div>
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I came to know that a couple of my classmates were also attending the session, and I joined them. The <a href="http://nitaaiveda.com/Soul_Science_God_Philosophy/Discover_Your_Self/Bhaktivedanta_Academy_for_Culture/BACE_Youth_Centers_managed_by.htm" target="_blank">VOICE hostel</a> in Warangal was outside the campus, unlike some IITs where they typically have a block inside the campus. They combined 2 four-room rented portions of a house and were using it for some 10-15 students as hostel, which was pretty decent (way better than our hostel). In the portion where the session is held, there was a verandah, followed by a big room with floor mattresses, a cushion for the speaker, a book-stand in front of it, and a large beautiful idol of Krishna to a corner painted in white, decorated with peacock feathers, a wig, clothes, with some fruits, milk and cooked food offered as <i>prasad</i> at its feet. The speaker, a young-looking <i>sanyasin </i>(they look much younger than they actually are, presumably due to their dietary practices, life-style, thin-frame and also partly due to the head-shaving), who was another IIT alumnus, has come already and they started Harekrishna <i>bhajan </i>swaying their hands in air, with one fellow giving rhythm on a <i>dolak </i>and another giving <i>taal</i>. </div>
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The <i>bhajan </i>was followed by dinner, and then began the discourse in which the speaker looked up 1 verse from the <i>Gita </i>and gave a 20 minute speech on it. He was saying all-obvious stuff like we cannot understand the world with our senses (of course we can't, that's why telescopes, microscopes, spectroscopes and other stuff are invented), we need to control our senses (yes, or else we might end up as rapists, murderers or criminals), etc., He also mentioned how our ancestors (the Aryan ancestors) lived in great times and we are in an age of sin and so need to seek Krishna for salvation.</div>
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Well, it was never my intention to attack him, as it was pointless and uncalled for, so I politely asked him a few questions when he was alone after the session was finished and everyone left. I was interested to know what status ISKCON gives to Adi Sankaracharya and <i>Advaitha </i>(I was born in a <i>Shaivaite Brahmin </i>family, so I was interested). I also asked him whether we (I used a generic 'we') need to rely on archeological evidence and data to map history, whether ISKCON uses it to analyze Hindu scriptures and if Vedas were there before Aryan invasion, and some other related questions. He was pointing to me that we need to trust our scriptures no matter what academia says, as scientific knowledge changes and the scriptures don't change. I didn't want to debate him in any way possible, so I came out</div>
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I attended some later sessions also, primarily for the food (I'm shameless, you know). He never really went beyond 1 verse of <i>Gita </i>and always picked out the lamest ones. I regularly asked him dharmic queries from <i>puranas </i>(no mocking, I really <a href="http://sarathteja.blogspot.in/2011/02/gods-that-used-to-be-crazy.html" target="_blank">like mythologies</a>) and ISKCON's positions on various issues. One thing I liked in him was that he was very open and honest while answering and I could see that he was being sincere in his answers and opinions, however irrational they might be. Once, I asked him how he can simply reject evidence without any reason and at the same time rely on an out-dated, unedited set of books for no reason; He simply smiled saying I would know once I start chanting Hare Krishna and realize the truth for myself. Another time, he asked me to consider joining ISKCON as I'm inquisitive, analytical and would really be a good teacher; I smiled and thanked him for the offer, and said I have duties of looking after parents, etc., (I'm not bragging, I really said it)<br />
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I can say that he kinda liked me for my honesty in inquiry, politeness in refuting his arguments from authority, and not trashing away scriptural answers but actually pointing out the flaws in them and asking open-ended questions. I never really told him that I'm more of a critical thinker and that I would prefer evidence and uncertainty to faith towards scriptures</div>
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Summarizing my visits, what I understood was that in ISKCON, there is a lot of preaching compared to the actual reading of scripture, and that it is an evangelical organization to its core. They target premier colleges and try to indoctrinate the students asking them not to accept Science as it's limited (as if a set of books written 4500 yrs back is infinite and absolute), stop thinking Rationally (because then people start asking questions like me), accept their preaching at face-value (or ask only those questions that actually add to the indoctrination). Their USPs are no rituals (compare offering food at feet of an idol, chanting Hare Krishna and a <i>mahanivedana </i>ritual), no complicated sanskrit verses to recite, easy-to-follow religious lifestyle and IIT-branded preachers for students. At one stage (very initial, not even deeper stages), they suggest people to become monks and join their crusade, and it helps a lot if they have premier college degrees and have quit a 6-digit salary job to join the organization</div>
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However, it is always saddening to see elite-educated people <a href="http://sarathteja.blogspot.in/2011/01/wealthy-peasants.html" target="_blank">leaving rationality behind</a>, training themselves to getting indoctrinated, and joining these kind of organizations thinking they could seek truth in these practices</div>
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Sarath Sominahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06777894196812381168noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320091001136818409.post-90283728783742285332012-05-01T20:03:00.000+05:302012-07-29T23:02:02.162+05:30On Love - Its forms, history and present<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<i>An excerpt from AC Grayling's book <b>'The Meaning of Things'</b>. Very interesting analysis of Love in human society over a period of time:</i><br />
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It is no surprise that the feast dedicated to amorousness, St Valentine's Day, anticipates the onset of spring by a few weeks, as if to help rouse human sensibilities from their winter hibernation. Romance perfumes the air in spring, flowers appear for the express purpose of being bunched into lovers' tributes; chocolate manufacturers count their profits. Yet despite appearances, the kinds of love that are most significant to us are not those that fill novels and cinema screens. They are instead those we have for family, friends and comrades; for these are the loves that endure through the greater part of our lives, and give us our sense of self-worth, our stability, and the framework for our other relationships.<br />
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Romantic love, by contrast, is an episodic, usually short-lived, and often scorchingly vivid turbulence in our emotional histories. To judge by the attention it receives - not least in poetry and song, our parliaments for discussing the heart's essentials - it is one of life's profoundest experiences. Yet paradoxically, the official line is that apart from a few experimental feints in early adulthood, love's true heights should only be experienced once, with lifelong bonding as the appropriate outcome. Anyone who claims to fall in love frequently is deemed irresponsible, and with some justification: for it is such a time-consuming, exhausting, ecstatic, painful transforming business that it requires a long recovery - in some cases, indeed, whole lifetimes.<br />
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Sober folk claim that falling romantically in love is not a good way to get to know someone, for Stendhal’s reason that we cloak the beloved in layers of crystal, and see a vision rather than a person for the whole period of our entrancement. On this view it is a delusional state, and the fact that it is short-lived is therefore good. Others think that romantic love is the only thing that allows us to burn through the layers that conventionally insulate people from one another, baring the soul of each to each, and making true communication possible – the kind that speaks the language of intimacy, not in words but in pleasures and desires. <br />
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This is far from the only difference of opinion about romantic love. Another debate rages over the question whether a propensity for romance is an essential human trait, or whether it is a social and historical construction, present in some periods and societies but absent from others. As this crucial question shows, romantic love is a scarcely understood phenomenon, not least because in modern times we have conflated it with features and expectations drawn from other kinds of love, which latter we have ceased to reflect upon as if their naturalness exempted them from consideration. <br />
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The Greeks had different words for love’s different manifestations. They spoke of <i>agape</i>, altruistic love (in Latin <i>caritas</i>, which gives us – but with what a cold ring – our word ‘charity’). They spoke of <i>ludus</i>, the playful affection of children and of casual lovers, and <i>pragma</i>, the understanding that exists between a long-established married couple. They spoke of <i>storge</i>, the love that grows between siblings or comrades-in-arms who have been through much together, and of <i>mania</i>, which is obsession. And they allied the latter with <i>eros </i>or sexual passion. They thought that love in all its forms was divinely inspired, in the case of the last by Aphrodite. But divine inspiration was not always welcome; manic eroticism, they said, was often inflicted as a punishment by the gods, and its unreasoning and distracting character interfered with what they most valued, namely intellect and courage. Both Plato and his pupil Aristotle, in their different ways, therefore placed friendship at the summit of emotional life, and consigned the love that craves bodily expression to a lower plane. For many Greeks <i>ataraxia</i>, which means ‘peace of mind’, was a great good that was always under threat from sexual love and its obsessions and jealousies, and that is why Sophocles applauded old age for releasing mankind from what he called the ‘tyranny’ of sexual desire. <br />
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In making these distinctions the Greeks showed an alertness to the fact that close relationships subserve a variety of ends. People need emotional satisfactions of many kinds, but chiefly those that stem from giving and receiving companionship, affection, and the affirmations of being liked and approved. People might occasionally enjoy solitude, but never loneliness; they need to feel connected and valued. All of the six loves of the Greeks are connections, and all but mania bring a sense of self-worth. In the Greek ideal, the best and strongest emotional bonds are those of friendship between equals. Romantic and erotic passion might be felt by a man for a boy or (not quite as acceptably) a woman, but this was a distraction, and too much of it was regarded as weakness. <br />
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The downgrading of relations with women had a long and unhappy influence in the West. In the Christian era – despite what is suggested by the medieval side-show of ‘courtly love’ as celebrated by troubadours – most marriages were economic and practical arrangements, with disparity in age, education and status making companionate marriage rare. It remained so until recent times: Thomas Hardy remarked that the reason men and women were unable to establish a genuine camaraderie even in his own day was that they associated with each other only in their pleasures, never in their labours. <br />
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In saying this, Hardy presaged a new ideal of love as a combination of romance and comradeship. This is something really new in Western civilisation. Both romance and friendship have always been ideals, but quite separately; and romance has taken very different forms at different times in history. Romantic-companionate love as we now view it received its definitive statement very recently indeed – in fact, at the hands of Hollywood in its golden age, between the 1930s and 1950s, in thousands of films of every genre. Of course, progress towards the acculturation of its ideals and norms had already begun in nineteenth-century literature, which established the now-familiar pattern: a couple fall romantically in love, and therefore commit themselves to an open-ended venture of exclusive cohabitation (marriage, or in more recent times its surrogates), with children in the garden and roses round the door. The standard denouement for a Victorian three-volume novel is the engagement of the hero and heroine in the last chapter. In Jane Austen earlier in the century, this terminus is reached by more reflective and sober means; not with high passion, not even with palpitations and breathlessness, save for a faint simulacrum of these in an early phase of each novel’s development, to show that Elizabeth is not indifferent to Darcy, say, or Fanny to Thomas. The courtship of Emma and Mr Knightley is quintessential Austen: a matter of mind and morals, of character and decision. <br />
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Not so by the time of Hardy. Love here takes the form either of mania or mature sexual passion. In Hardy’s prophecy of the newly emerging pattern, romance is not an end in itself but a step towards love of the other kinds – it becomes the porch to friendship, comradeship, the equal or near-equal partnership in life’s adventure. ‘When I look up, there you’ll be, and when you look up, there I’ll be,’ says Gabriel Oak when he has gained Bathsheba at last, in a summary that would have curdled the passion of a medieval troubadour for whom romance was all in all, and domesticity its nemesis. <br />
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In opposition to the view that romantic love was invented by the troubadours, some argue that it is a universal phenomenon. To claim this is to take sides in the debate between ‘essentialists’ and ‘constructionists’. The former claim that romantic love is one of the four great, intrinsic, inescapable upheavals which define the human condition (the others are: being born, having children, and dying). The latter claim that although loving, in all its variety of objects and modes, is one of the central human emotions, how it is expressed is an historically determined matter. Both are right; for people have always fallen in love – which is to say become infatuated, desirous, obsessed in some degree; usually enough to lose sleep and to forget mundane tasks – but the expression of that state, the other forms of love it has been allied to, and the expectations nurtured by the parties to it, have been very variously conceived. <br />
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A Greek of classical antiquity might become passionate about a boy, but sex was not the only point, for the lover’s task was to educate his beloved in military and political ways, and help him in the early part of his career. In the love stories told by Plutarch the point was to illustrate the destructiveness of sexual mania – showing, for example, how the girl Aristocleia, and in another tale the boy Actaeon, were physically torn apart by competing suitors trying to snatch them away. Shakespeare’s lovers are also sexually manic; they can scarcely restrain themselves before a priest is found. Fielding and Richardson divide between them the uproarious tumble in the hay and the unremittingly threatened rape. Only with the increased education of women does the idea of a companionable love-life after erotic mania – indeed, initiated by it – come into focus, bringing other models to mind. Some are, once again, drawn from our earliest literature, as with Hector bidding his last farewell to Andromache – a scene touchingly drawn by Homer, who says the hero had to remove his helmet because its nodding plumes frightened his small son in Andromache’s arms. Another example is the marriage of Penelope and Odysseus, the pattern of sustained fidelity. Modern sensibility took these comradely marriages and added them to romantic infatuation as its proper sequel, and a kind of emotional economy was born: the passion, the friendship, the companionship, the partnership, the nurturing and the needing, that were once offered by different relationships, could now come in a single handy package marked Spouse. <br />
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But the modern combination of romance and comradeship which has thus become our ideal often proves an unstable mixture. The obsessive character of romantic and erotic love cannot be understood without reference to sex, nor sex without reference to gender. Sex is about physical urges and action, gender is about social and psychological categories; their failure to pair neatly is a fruitful source of trouble. Companionate love does not exclude sexual love, but its premises and aims are very different. It is about the shared project of what is in effect a small business – which is what a home, a household, is – purchasing and budgeting and managing other (usually small) people, and transporting and storing things, saving and spending, and dealing with problems, like illnesses and burst pipes. Gender differences, shaped and enhanced by social pressures, were thought to provide an apt division of labour for these tasks: the husband goes out to work, the wife tends the children and home. But that division, and even the gender differences themselves, have in recent years been bitterly questioned, the more so because – against feminist hopes and principles – science seems to suggest that in the competition between nature and nurture the former has an insistent and irreducible role in determining sexual behaviour and gender characteristics. Irenic feminists say that this does not imply strict determinism: as rational beings we can adjust biology in the direction of justice, as we do when we control our aggression and selfishness. But others accuse science of bias, saying that it tries to conceal behind statistics an historical conspiracy against women. There is a measure of truth on both sides. <br />
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On one crucial point, gender determinism has seemed to some men to explain a major source of trouble in monogamy. It is, they claim, that heterosexual relationships have always been shaped in the interests of women, who control and ration the amount of sex in them. If this is true, it would be natural enough; women have to be mindful of the fact that, in the form of pregnancy and childbirth, their potential investment in sex is far greater than a man’s. Safe and effective contraception is a very recent amenity, and old habits and needs die hard. It is for this reason, perhaps, that prostitution has been such an effective and long-standing friend to marriage, despite the hypocrisy that has usually surrounded it. One measure of the generally unsuccessful nature of modern romantic-companionate love is the high rate at which the relationships based upon it fail. Divorce in the contemporary West runs at forty per cent – for unmarried couples the rate is higher – and many of the marriages that survive do so at a high cost of compromise by one or both partners. Blame is variously assigned, often to causes that come down to maleness. Some writers extrapolate from Freudian theory the view that men suffer a psychological ‘wound’ caused by separation from their mothers and their inability (in some writers, notably Sheila Sullivan in Falling in Love, their ‘humiliating inability’) to give birth and suckle. They claim that this alleged wound explains everything women deprecate in men, chief among them emotional immaturity, lack of communication about feelings, proneness to infidelity, latent or active misogyny, and – at the extreme – aggression. And they cite these, in turn, as what derails the project of equal romantic comradeship. <br />
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Even without its dubious Freudian underpinning, this is improbable stuff, and no man will recognise what has been called ‘the harsh anomie of masculine existence’ as accounting for his behaviour in relationships. The problem, far more plausibly, lies elsewhere: in society’s endeavours to manage, constrain, deny, re-route, prohibit, channel and manipulate sexual passion and romantic love. It is the dead hand of oppressive institutions – principally religions – which explains why love can be a problem: which it only is when rationed and starved, as it is in the ‘family values’ dispensation of monogamy and restrictive attitudes to sexual expression and variety. When rationed and starved, <i>eros </i>becomes destructive, prompting the moralisers, in their wisdom, to ration and starve it more. And thereby hangs many a long tale, as novels and films in their thousands show. If the modern experiment of romantic-companionate love is to succeed, it has to be freed from the institutional arrangements made centuries ago for a quite different kind of relationship – the practical-economic model of Christian monogamy – in which neither romance nor companionship was the most important thing. <br />
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It is both a pun and a truth to say that the subject of love has always been left to amateurs to explain. There is no science of love because it is too various and protean to fit a theory. People attempt love as climbers attempt Everest; they scramble along, and end by camping in the foothills, or half-way up, wherever their compromises leave them. Some get high enough to see the view, which we know is magnificent, for we have all glimpsed it in dreams. And that is what the feast of St Valentine is about: the dream of love. Life would be bitter indeed if the dream never became reality, or if the main experiences of love in our lives – <i>storge</i>, <i>pragma</i>, <i>ludus</i>, <i>agape </i>– were not enduring and stabilising enough to save us when the storms of <i>eros </i>and <i>mania </i>sweep over us – bringing bliss, and leaving havoc in their wake.<br />
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</div>Sarath Sominahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06777894196812381168noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320091001136818409.post-46083298554137751552012-01-08T22:33:00.002+05:302012-01-08T22:34:46.144+05:30Consciousness raisers<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<i>An excerpt from one Richard Dawkins's book. Amazingly sarcastic but factual:</i></div>
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In a science-fiction starship, the astronauts were homesick: 'Just to think that it's springtime back on Earth!' You may not immediately see what's wrong with this, so deeply ingrained is the unconscious northern hemisphere chauvinism in those of us who live there, and even some who don't. 'Unconscious' is exactly right. That is where consciousness-raising comes in. It is for a deeper reason than gimmicky fun that, in Australia and New Zealand, you can buy maps of the world with the South Pole on top. What splendid consciousness-raisers those maps would be, pinned to the walls of our northern hemisphere classrooms. Day after day, the children would be reminded that 'north' is an arbitrary polarity which has no monopoly on 'up'. The map would intrigue them as well as raise their consciousness. They'd go home and tell their parents - and, by the way, giving children something with which to surprise their parents is one of the greatest gifts a teacher can bestow. </div>
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It was the feminists who raised my consciousness of the power of consciousness-raising. 'Herstory' is obviously ridiculous, if only because the 'his' in 'history' has no etymological connection with the masculine pronoun. It is as etymologically silly as the sacking, in 1999, of a Washington official whose use of 'niggardly' was held to give racial offence. But even daft examples like 'niggardly' or 'herstory' succeed in raising consciousness. Once we have smoothed our philological hackles and stopped laughing, herstory shows us history from a different point of view. Gendered pronouns notoriously are the front line of such consciousness-raising. He or she must ask himself or herself whether his or her sense of style could ever allow himself or herself to write like this. But if we can just get over the clunking infelicity of the language, it raises our consciousness to the sensitivities of half the human race. Man, mankind, the Rights of Man, all men are created equal, one man one vote - English too often seems to exclude woman. When I was young, it never occurred to me that women might feel slighted by a phrase like 'the future of man'. During the intervening decades, we have all had our consciousness raised. Even those who still use 'man' instead of 'human' do so with an air of self-conscious apology - or truculence, taking a stand for traditional language, even deliberately to rile feminists.</div>
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</div>Sarath Sominahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06777894196812381168noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320091001136818409.post-24455580042166135742011-04-04T04:43:00.011+05:302012-08-17T00:39:07.817+05:30Value added Tradition<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<b>Note:</b> I have hyperlinked some words for a better understanding of the content</div>
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Some months ago, I read a <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1347140/Horoscope-change-2011-Sidereal-astrology-reveals-13th-OPHIUCHUS-zodiac-sign.html" target="_blank">news article</a> stating an addition of a zodiac sign and a shift of the existing zodiac sign periods by one month from 2011. Simply put, this change is due to a relative wobble of earth's axis in the earth-moon system. So all the sidereal astrological systems would be affected due to this wobble. Vedic astrology, which your next-door astrologer practises, is a sidereal system and so your zodiac sign would also change due to this wobble</div>
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This was a regular news item for me, but I saw it was some sort of question of existence for some (actually, many) people around me. One fellow was discussing how his zodiac sign would change and was frustrated about how one could become a Virgo all of sudden while he/she was a Gemini till the day before. I couldn't stop my enthusiasm to know how the fellow thinks and asked him what difference could a change of zodiac sign do to in his life. He replied that a change in zodiac sign would change his horoscope and so the predictions of his qualities, life and marriage would change. And his entire life was changed just because earth-moon system had a wobble. He said that it was unfair as it affects people's career, marriage and lifestyle.</div>
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So I told him that he should switch his belief system to <a href="http://sarathteja.blogspot.com/2010/10/palmist-effect.html" target="_blank">palmistry</a> which won't be affected due to this wobble, instead of astrology which might change anytime when some cosmological event happens. His answer was that he doesn't believe in palmistry. Then I asked him why he would believe astrology in that case. He replied saying he has absolute faith in it as it's part of Indian tradition and it's by his tradition that how he is defined and made.</div>
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Yes, he's correct. Every person is built out of his own tradition. I'm what I am due to the tradition in which I was brought up. We get many things from tradition. Our language, dressing style, food habits, social norms, customs, ethics (to some extent), way of looking at human relationships (to some extent) and many more come from tradition. It is a template in which we get raised and it is marked by a long chain of history and civilization that flourished and paved way for our existence. Some aspects of tradition are purely sociological, whereas some are religious. Throughout our life, we really cannot change the way how some aspects of tradition influenced us in our childhood.</div>
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And as he said, astrology is part of the contemporary Hindu tradition. And going back in history, <a href="http://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/wyv/wyvbk23.htm" target="_blank">Ashwamedha</a> was part of the Hindu tradition at least during the Mauryan dynasty (185 BC). But the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Ashvamedha/archive1#Translations_of_TS_7.4.19" target="_blank">exact ritual</a> is not a part of contemporary Hindu tradition. Most of us don't know the exact ritual of Ashwamedha as mentioned in the <a href="http://titus.uni-frankfurt.de/texte/etcd/ind/aind/ved/yvw/vs/vs.htm?vs023.htm" target="_blank">Yajurveda</a>. So, why is it not part of contemporary Hindu tradition anymore?</div>
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Ok, let's suppose Indian government now starts performing Ashwamedha in the truly Vedic way for supremacy in the world and to make India the No.1 economy in the world and to eradicate poverty in the country. Would anyone welcome it with their share of support? Of course no one would. This is because people are enlightened enough in animal welfare and women rights to oppose this and draw a line. But again, Ashwamedha is one of the most powerful and pleasing sacrifices to the Gods as mentioned in the Vedas and every other Emperor in Hindu mythological epics performed this ritual and it worked well for them in bringing success and supremacy.</div>
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So, is it fine to discard insensible and irrational aspects of tradition as times change? Or we would be betraying the holy texts of canon composed by people in 2nd century BC if we leave some of them as nonsense and not applicable? If the ritual mentioned in Yajurveda was a divine revelation to the Aryans, then that should be the exact and only way to perform it to please the Gods. Who are the 21st century people to discard or change it just for a whim of animal welfare and women rights?</div>
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Now coming to astrology, it's the alleged "science" (people often forget it's astronomy which is science) that explains the effect of a handful of stars and planets on the the entire 7 billion world population, to the level of individual human behavior, luck, marriage, career, health, children, success, earning, expenditure.. and so on.. Physicists (who don't know anything the Aryans knew 3500 years back) have discovered some <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Forces_of_nature" target="_blank">fundamental interaction forces</a> till date in the entire universe. None of those explain the effect claimed by astrology. Even though some physicists claim these are the only possible forces present in universe, if there is any other force present in this universe (the astro'logical' force), it should hold good to a statistical study. </div>
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I'm giving reference to one study conducted in India <a href="http://cs-test.ias.ac.in/cs/Downloads/article_43842.pdf" target="_blank">here</a>. It was a double-blind trial to verify the statistical success of astrological predictions. The results showed that the astrological predictions were as accurate as that of a coin toss, around 50%, whereas statistically meaningful predictions would be 70% or higher. If one would do the same experiment to check electromagnetic force between a pair of charge carriers, the success of predictions would safely be above 99.99% (It would be 100% if any applicable quantum mechanics is included)</div>
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So, next time, if you are about to consult an astrologer for a match-compatibility, hold on and toss a fair coin. Look up as yes for heads, no for tails, check the result and proceed accordingly.<br />
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<b>Even if you consult the astro-guy, the probability of a successful prediction from him would be the same !!</b></div>
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<b>P.S: Be a follower of my blog if u like it.. the button is to the right of this page..</b></div>Sarath Sominahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06777894196812381168noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320091001136818409.post-27532066384015246282011-02-28T23:56:00.010+05:302012-08-17T00:39:28.093+05:30The Gods that used to be crazy<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Another one month, and I'm back with a new one.. Read on..</div>
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We used to wonder at many things in our childhood. Many of us used to wonder what happens in the skies every night, why the moon changes its size every night, where the stars would go in the day, how some objects show magnetism and why the sea roars with waves. We also used to wonder why medicines are bitter, why doctors are always fond of syringe and needle and why parents, unlike us, don't go to school and get beaten by teachers. We reason out at some, and experience some, providing answers to our questions and thus stopping the intrigue within us. Even then, there are still many wonders lying out there for us to ponder and rejoice.</div>
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During the summer vacation after my fifth standard, I got this book "Trojan war" from my senior batch. This book was the supplementary reader for the sixth standard english. Not to mention my fascination towards mythologies, I started reading it right away and re-read it some 6-7 times during my vacation. I loved that book. It's an epic. The men were audacious, women were blonde, hot and sexy, the Gods were crazy, the Goddesses were jealous of one another and bribed men with chicks. I used to get dreams where I would watch Ulysses coming out from the trojan horse, Achilles killing Hector and Paris running away with Helen. </div>
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But one thing that fascinated me the most was their pantheon. Zeus, Neptune, Aphrodite, Poseidon, Apollo.. the list has no end. I would get introduced to a new God in every chapter. He would screw up the war by favoring one side till the men on the other side offer princesses and maidens (I dunno what's the fetish of virgins in every faith) as slaves to him. He accepts them and keeps quiet. Warriors like Achilles would also ask for maidens as they are children of the Gods. And when they don't get the maiden slaves they withdraw from the war. I think this craziness of mortals and immortals brings good element of surprise to Trojan war and makes it an epic mythology.</div>
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Now coming to the real reality, I used to think that the ancient Greeks were mad praying to those Gods. I would rather not welcome Zeus, Neptune and Venus into my life (even though Venus would offer women like Helen to my disposal) as I had my own set of Gods whom I felt were more sensible and realistic. Yes, I thought my pantheon was "realistic" and "divine" and I still dunno the reason for it. Even though I used to compare some of the Greek pantheon to the RigVedic pantheon, I felt the latter was more divine and realistic. I think the reason for not questioning why I thought so might be the fact that I'd been following this pantheon since my childhood without asking any questions.</div>
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Later in my schooling days, I visited some churches as I was interested to know how a church would look like from the inside and how a mass would be performed. I loved cathedrals with all the paintings, sculptures and stuff. I used to stare at the ceiling, walls, hangings, candles and decoration in the church when everyone else was busy praying deeply and some crying in ecstasy. Sometimes, the bishop would bless people who were sick and some would weep bitterly taking a cross into their hands.</div>
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All that time, I never understood what made them so ecstatic when english verses (I used to think it was some poetry written by Jesus Christ) are read loud from a neatly bound big book. I never understood how the sick could believe that a simple english verse from the big book and water smeared in the shape of cross on their forehead would heal them. But one thing, I never thought these people are crazy doing all this stuff. I think my reason behind this was that since many people follow this faith, it must have some sort of divinity or something.</div>
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And on the other hand, I never wondered why I would recite the same "suklam bharadharam", "saraswathi namastubhyam" everyday even though they're simple verses. Well, the only difference is that they're written in sanskrit. I also never wondered why people would wear talismans and walk around a tree 108 times just because it's in the premises of a temple. The reason for this might be the fact that I'd been following this faith since childhood without asking any questions</div>
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Now coming to ancient Greece again, why should one think the Greeks were mad? Or their entire pantheon was silly and stupid? Is it just because Zeus and his entire lot are jobless now? Zeus and co., is no ordinary lot. Some of them are notorious (read as miraculous) enough to stop winds when Agamemnon's army was sailing. Their mercy and grace favored Greeks and made them win the war. Their wrath and curses apparently caused tornadoes, hurricanes and famines all over Greece and Rome. One would be very cautious not demean any one of them in those days. Such was their might, will and power. It's irrational and senseless to claim they don't have divinity just because there's no cultural, traditional, social and political significance to any of them in the contemporary world</div>
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Alright, now one might agree that the Greek pantheon is great, divine, realistic and can be worshiped. Now what about Amun-Ra and co., from ancient Egypt? What about Thor, Balder and co., from Germany? Why should Greeks have all the fun? Even though Hitler was from Germany and Germany had Thor as God in the past, is it fair that the entire German pantheon shouldn't be respected? Does unemployment and failure in wars and politics make these Gods worthless of even acknowledging their existence?</div>
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So what can we say about this? One thing is for sure. All these were the Gods that used to be crazy. And even today, the God(s) are crazy, but their name(s) and the civilizations that worship these God(s) are different from those in the past. And as the comparative theologians always say, all the religions are qualitatively one and the same, and all the God(s) are also one and the same. Hence following the assertion, the contemporary faiths are also crazy (BTW I really hate to deduce things out of theological assertions)</div>
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If this is the case, then why are we so keen, sensitive, religious and devoted about the God(s) that are in our pantheon? I would say it's just the authoritative indoctrination and self-assertion over a period of time that makes us have blind faith in many things around us, including religious faith. It's this very lack of indoctrination and assertion that makes a christian not to have faith in hindu Gods and it's the same thing that never made me realize the sacrifice of Jesus Christ for sins of the entire humankind starting from homo antecessors to those who are gonna live till the next doomsday event.</div>
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And ironically for most of us, it's sheer accidence that we get born into a family of a particular faith that chooses the doctrine with which we get brainwashed all through our life. We never get a real choice in deciding this for ourselves.<br />
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<b>And most of us remain in that sightless vision (as I call it) for the rest of our lives rejecting anthropology, history, reason, logic, and sometimes even common sense !!</b><br />
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<span style="font-weight: bold;">P.S: Be a follower of my blog if u like it.. the button is to the right of this page..</span> </div>
</div>Sarath Sominahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06777894196812381168noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320091001136818409.post-41227987814643853612011-01-30T13:15:00.013+05:302012-08-17T00:39:28.103+05:30The Wealthy Peasants<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div style="text-align: justify;">Another 1 month and I'm back with another post. Read on..</div><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;"><b><i>Note:</i> </b>To avoid comments like "An argument wins over the situation but loses the person", I shall be using the word 'argument' in this post as the logical points of view two persons were trying to establish in course of a friendly impersonal discussion, after which there's no screw-up of the relationship between them.</div><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">Lately, I'm not able to restrain myself from refuting people's arguments whenever I find them nonsense. Earlier, I would never bother how everyone else is thinking as far as it doesn't affect me directly. I dunno if I'm getting philanthropic or over-assertive gradually, but I'm not able to let go if people have an opinion that doesn't make any sense and I'm trying to give them counter-arguments from various points of view refuting the rationale on their opinion. This is definitely not the typical white-man's burden and I don't really have any metaphysical motivation for doing this. </div><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">When I started these arguments, I observed that people were not able to get convinced by some points of view and they get persuaded with some points of view. Some get convinced by analogies, some rebuke analogies as fallacies in the strictest definition of the argument; Some get convinced by scientific argument and some completely discard scientific argument; Some need further references to get convinced and some don't even try to look up other references. I would be discussing the reasons I observed why people don't get convinced for various arguments</div><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;"><b># Bad Analogy</b><br />
I dunno what the deal with people and analogies is. Most of us don't agree to anything unless we find some analogy for the argument. These people get convinced only by analogies. They just want a familiar story with a conclusion logically agreeable to the argument. They cannot comprehend the logic behind the argument, and they would rather get convinced by a story with hypothetical scenario. This is the case with most of us. One must use creativity extensively to discuss with these people</div><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">May be that's the reason why mythological epics are so popular compared to philosophical works. I would say analogies help us understand the basic argument, but we shouldn't confine ourselves to learning from analogies. Analogies are overwhelmingly persuasive, but it's really difficult to derive a proper analogy for many arguments.</div><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;"><b># The Scientific Argument</b><br />
I think scientific argument is the most convincing argument for any disagreement. Philosophical arguments rely more on the way the argument is articulated whereas scientific argument is persuading without the need of any smart articulation. In spite of this, I observed many people not getting convinced by the scientific argument. I might classify the reasons behind this as follows</div><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;"><b><i>1. Unable to apply general science:</i> </b>I think, to understand most of the scientific arguments, one needs to have a basic knowledge of how things work. A higher-secondary school level knowledge of physics, chemistry and biology would do the job. Even though many of us have studied these subjects and got good grades, we have a tendency to forget them when we drift to a different field of profession. </div><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">I have seen many engineering grads who believe in "Cosmic vibrations (nice word) emitted from gems affecting (non-existent) human aura" and "Undetectable (non-existent) forces exerted by distant planets effecting human psychology on earth" in spite of their IIT-JEE standard knowledge on heat transfer and fundamental forces in the universe. Also, many believe that "1 <i>molecule</i> remedy diluted in 10<sup>30</sup> <i>moles</i> of water homeopathic remedies" work in spite of good knowledge in chemistry. Medical stigmas on aids patients in general public in spite of basic knowledge in biology is another example</div><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">The problem here is that, we try to separate everything as distinct entities and we don't apply our general science knowledge in our beliefs/opinions. When we practise this everyday, we gradually tend to refute any scientific argument, however obvious it might be.</div><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;"><b><i>2. Quasi-scientific arguments:</i></b> In addition to the conclusive factual scientific arguments, we also have an equal (in fact, more) number of arguments that "sound scientific" but necessarily are not so. For eg., I can say the reason why we have seasons is due to the elliptical orbit of earth, and summer comes when earth is closest to sun and winter comes when it's farthest. This argument is considerably persuasive, but most of us (ironically, not everyone) know that that's not the reason why we have seasons. "Water memory" claimed by homeopathic doctors is another example of a quasi-scientific argument. </div><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">Generally, people get confused by these contradicting scientific arguments and fail to understand which one's evident and which one's not. This is also one reason why people stop getting convinced by scientific arguments thinking they are not reliable.</div><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;"><b># The Wiki Taboo</b><br />
Whenever I give external references to people rather than hear the argument from me, most of them go through those and verify their argument. But there are some who think it's totally "uncool". They would refute encyclopedias and stick to their non-evident and non-referable argument. They say they would google it themselves if they ever want to verify. I would say if they ever googled it, they won't be sticking to the same irrational argument they have now. </div><div style="text-align: justify;">So, they never googled/wikied it, and when I give an external reference, they say "I'll google it when I wanna verify". Hence the bottom line is that they never want to verify.</div><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">It makes me conclude this as a typical "resistance to change" behavior and unable to shift from their comfort-zone.</div><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;"><b># I simply don't care</b><br />
Saying "I simply don't care to know what's the fact" is really a powerful defense to stop the argument from further proceeding. I would say we really don't have a choice to care or not about the fact. It's a fact, and we <i>have</i> to know it.</div><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">If we don't care about knowing that earth is round, we might make a fool out of ourselves by joining 'Flat earth society'; If we don't care about knowing that gems and stones don't affect human behavior and luck, we might be spending hard-earned money on getting the gems and wearing 2 rings on each finger. If we don't care about knowing homeopathic remedies are not medicines but just plain water/alcohol, we might end up using them for long periods of time and getting chronic for our ailments.</div><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">So "I simply don't care" means "I don't wanna verify and I don't mind getting screwed up for my belief"</div><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">Finally, concluding the post, I think this constant refutation of logic and evidence to change our opinion/belief would make us, as Noam Chomsky calls it, "a bunch of shattered wealthy peasants". There are many things which we inherently believe without reasoning to ourselves why we do it or just because of authoritative indoctrination. We tend to assert those beliefs/opinions to ourselves by false conclusions from what we observe without questioning it and without thinking if an alternate evident, logical argument exists for it. After a point, we stop changing our opinions, however irrational they might sound, as we don't like to realize that we spent the rest of our life believing in nonsense.</div><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;"><b>I hope most of us won't become these "Wealthy Peasants" over a period of time!!</b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
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</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">P.S: Be a follower of my blog if u like it.. the button is to the right of this page..</span></div><br />
</div>Sarath Sominahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06777894196812381168noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320091001136818409.post-88311281801795023942010-12-25T01:00:00.009+05:302010-12-26T13:39:01.830+05:30Uncle Mess @ KZP<div style="text-align: justify;">It has been one month and I'm back again with an interesting (for all the foodies out there) post. If you are not a food lover, you can stop reading this post and go to my older posts. Just kidding.. I always wanted to use this "If you're blah blah blah, then stop reading this book and go screw your gal friend" disclaimer.. Now read on..</div><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">The person who said "We cannot appreciate light unless we know darkness" is really a genius. Personally, I've never been a food-lover until I came to NITW. The messes we had in NITW are the one and only of a kind and they are the worst of that kind. Here the regular menu is bad and the special mess menu is worse. The curry combos in NITW messes can be seen nowhere in the rest of the world. Can you ever think of a Bhindi-Aalu-Tomato combo? Or a Brinjal-Aalu-Tomato combo? Or can you ever think of eating a curry wondering what veggies might be in there? All the 5th mess (Narmada mess) boys were exposed to these kinds of bewildering experiences every other day. And I am one of those lucky bastards for the entire 4 years of my engineering</div><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">Hence the reason for becoming a foodie after I joined NITW. It's not just me; I'm with those hundreds of foodie-converted boys from NITW hostels, whose number is increasing exponentially every year. And we all were desperate for a food-joint on that NH-202 that would satisfy our taste deprived taste-buds. News about new food-joints, restaurants, messes near NITW used to spread like pandemic in the campus and the NITW faculty faced competition from the students in those joints. Personally, I started getting jealous of the people staying near KZP leaving for home during weekends.</div><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">Amidst this chaos and desperation, some day-scholar fellow told us about "Uncle mess" one day. This uncle (I dunno his name) had his small mess running at his home. His wife (we used to call her "Auntie") cooks the food and this guy manages the business. But this place is a bit far to walk from the campus. The first time we went and tasted the food there, we were "Oh my God.. where was this place hiding till now? And who are those lucky bastards eating here regularly??" I'm not a fan of KFC, but the food at this mess was really finger-licking good. Actually, it was neighbor's-finger-sucking good (I'm not gay, for the record). But there's the drawback: far to walk from the campus. So only the day-scholar lucky bastards were enjoying auntie's recipes and we were stuck again in the Narmada mess</div><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">Many people from our class stayed in the hostel itself during the summer after my second year. The best (and the worst) thing about NITW in summer is that the messes are closed. It's best for obvious reasons and worst as Warangal scorches up with heat in summer and we will get roasted like tandoori chicken given considerable time spent outside. And we don't have any alternative for food in the college, except for the canteen fellow who rations the lunch quantity as if he's serving holocaust and war prisoners. Anyway, we used to manage the lunch in canteen and would visit Uncle mess for dinner</div><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">The best part about Uncle mess is that he charged 18 bucks for the dinner. And no need to mention, almost everyone staying in NITW during summer would come there. Even some faculty (whose family were out of town, I guess) used to come there for lunch and dinner. Around 6 of us would go together and have dinner in one batch. We were not gluttons or something, but we would have a hearty meal and return to the hostel</div><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">I still remember that one day when 6 of us (I, KD, Madhu, Rajesh, Shravan(not sure), Kishore) took one table and started eating. The curries were so good that the 6 of us have finished 3 basins (big ones) of rice and gave the empty basin to uncle for another round. He was surprised by this and didn't return with rice until we understood the situation and told we would have curd and finish the dinner. That was one funny (and embarrassing) incident I recall whenever I find myself gluttonizing over food</div><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">Sometimes, Uncle and Auntie would visit their native place and inform us about the closing of mess for a few days. We used to feel disappointed and think about the other food joints for dinner. And as it happens, they all sucked and we would go to Uncle mess again when they returned. Who would prefer restaurant/fast-food to home made delicious food??</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
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</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">P.S: Be a follower of my blog if u like it.. the button is to the right of this page..</span></div>Sarath Sominahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06777894196812381168noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320091001136818409.post-31187977867213894852010-11-27T02:18:00.004+05:302010-11-28T17:45:35.597+05:30The "Eco-unfriendly" encyclopedia<div style="text-align: justify;">Hello everyone.. not much delay this time (only one month).. I'm back with some "stuff"..</div><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">Today, I saw this board in my office wash room.. it says "We are Eco-friendly organization, please co-operate in this regard". Well, I see that board everyday, but today I was rather observant. I see many individuals, organizations, companies, industries, factories claiming themselves as "Eco-friendly" (btw I still cannot figure out how factories can be eco-friendly). This eco-friendly fanaticism is becoming much popular lately.</div><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">Now, facts aside.. It just occurred to me today if there's any organization which claims itself as "Eco-unfriendly".. This hypothetical organization says "We are Eco-unfriendly, we hate the Eco, Eco's totally uncool, The last person with whom we make friends is Eco". And what might their wash room boards read? "Use the toilet paper as much as you want, We have lots of bamboo around" or "One paper might not meet the requirement, think again.. With a shit-smelling ass on your back, saving trees is not really your problem right now" or "Couldn't solve the su-do-ku on this square? Try another puzzle on the on-coming toilet paper, we have 4 difficulty levels".<br />
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And in the printer room, something like "We encourage one-sided printing, We actually regret why HP made two-sided printers and micro-printing machines".. on the paper-boxes "I'm desperate, use me pleeez". And in the email signatures, "Never think twice before printing this e-mail. Have printing problems? Click here" or "Our organization is committed to the best practices in order to become the biggest customer for paper industry"</div><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">In this "Eco-unfriendly" organization, every goddamn notification would come as paper circulars with people delivering them to each employee. And there would be much clarity if the circulars have captions like "Our vision 2012 is to hire the largest facilities staff in the business" or "Take a photocopy and share this with your colleagues, A combo of HP photocopier and paper really makes life simple". Also, PPTs won't be much encouraged, and chart presentations would be applauded saying "Why Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V when you can write and draw?" or "Use your hands, buddy.. Ask for marker pens and charts, we have the largest facilities staff in the business to serve you"</div><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">Now, enough with this hypothetical stuff, let's speculate what if some companies we have in the business now start this "Eco-unfriendliness".. Kimberly-Clark would start making "120 GSM toilet-paper" and "Executive-bond toilet-paper" with captions like "Loo-paper for the executives, comes with an executive touch" or "Thicker, cleaner, much better and lasts longer". Microsoft would have to give MS Office free with Windows as no office buys the software. Adobe can stop its work on Acrobat reader. </div><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">Wonder what would happen if Wikipedia goes "Eco-unfriendly"!! I think after that, some final surviving pieces of bamboo would be kept in museums under the "fossils" section..<br />
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<span style="font-weight: bold;">P.S: Be a follower of my blog if u like it.. the button is to the right of this page..</span> </div>Sarath Sominahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06777894196812381168noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320091001136818409.post-18773482758846012512010-10-28T00:47:00.015+05:302012-08-17T00:39:28.077+05:30The Palmist effect<div style="text-align: justify;">OMG it's been two months since I posted on my blog. In fact I couldn't select a topic to write. It's like there are so many items on the menu and I'm pondering over each dish forgetting that at EOD, eating is all about pacifying hunger. So I was enlightened in a restaurant 2 days ago and here I am, back with some "stuff" to post.</div><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">The first time I read a book on palmistry was when I finished my intermediate and was writing these engg entrance exams, one after the other. I happened to find one "Palmistry for beginners" book at my aunt's house and I went through it, without contributing much memory to it. Actually, I was trying to read my hand based on the book and I couldn't find many lines on my hand to get a proper reading (For eg., my destiny line wasn't properly developed back then). Well, I don't remember much about the self-reading I did that time.</div><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">In my engg final year, I happened to read that book again during one of my Weekend+Monday visits to hyd. This time, I went through the book pretty seriously and I even prepared a notes on the important points and some illustrations (I still wonder what made me do that). After this somewhat serious reading, I took a self-reading and astonishingly found some points, which I thought were uncommon in people, matching close to my personality. And when I returned to college, I started reading others' hands just to check the correctness of palmistry. I've been with this habit of accepting many things only after a satisfactory first-hand verification since my schooling days.</div><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">My experience in reading others' palms in college was exciting, memorable and amazing. I was rather surprised at the level of enthusiasm people show to get a reading. And they found the readings strikingly close to their personality (I call these "hits") and this encouraged me to read other books like Cheiro palmistry to get a better understanding on the subject. I've been developing palmistry more like a hobby since then and I still give readings if someone asks.</div><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">Coming to the topic, I observed some points while I was reading others' hands. One is that people try to think about even the most general of predictions as specifically tailor-made to themselves. For eg., If I tell someone "You have good intuitive power", they talk about it positively and lo, I have a "hit". In fact, I told many people that they have good intuitive power, which is an attribute found in everyone. Everyone has intuitive power, and the "goodness" of this intuitive power is entirely subjective. Everyone thinks they have "good intuitive power" and that they have a hunch in discovering hunches. That's the reason why we have lot of gossiping and conspiracies on every other damn thing around us. </div><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">Other good examples for this general-but-misleading lines are "You are a cautious person" (Everyone is cautious), "You are independent" (Everyone is a mixture of dependent and independent nature), "Your family has effect on you in choosing your career" (90% of people in India have this situation). All these lines become "hits" for the palmist for obvious reasons.</div><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">Another thing is that people accept some things which they really don't know if they have those or not. For eg., If I say something like "You have difficulty in choosing friends"; Even though the other person is not sure whether he has that difficulty in choosing friends, he doesn't really find it difficult to recall some goddamn incident in his life where a friend pissed him off real bad. And now, since he recalled it successfully, he nods and the palmist has another "hit". To be honest, we really don't know about ourselves deep within and we would become saints or god-men if we really knew properly about ourselves. So, after a considerable number of general-prediction "hits" from the palmist, the other person starts doing this ignorant "hit-giving" business.</div><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">Well, the lines given by the palmist like "You have a good intuitive power", "You have difficulty in choosing friends", etc., are not supposed to manipulate the person taking the reading. In fact, some lines on the palm actually refer to those qualities. These references are so obviously general but on the contrary, the other person deludes himself thinking they are specific to him. When I look at my hand now and try to decode the lines, I see myself laughing at the generality of the reading.</div><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">All this stuff I discussed now is only from my observations while giving readings. I validate these observations whenever I read a hand and every time they fall right in place. I find this "Palmist effect" so amazing that I sometimes wonder why people even bother to get a reading of their hands just to delude themselves.</div><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">It's really a weird world we live in !!<br />
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<span style="font-weight: bold;">P.S: Be a follower of my blog if u like it.. the button is to the right of this page..</span> </div>Sarath Sominahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06777894196812381168noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320091001136818409.post-11883552281678545392010-08-30T02:00:00.012+05:302010-08-30T11:50:57.905+05:30Some "stuff"..<div style="text-align: justify;">So I'm back again with some stuff. Stuff, ha.. this word "stuff" is a really a tricky one.. I've been seeing it getting paraphrased very creatively I could never imagine. I have seen people giving the word "stuff" as an alias for many things depending on the situation. For instance, during my school days, "stuff" meant the normal stuff, like papers, pens, pencils, sometimes chits during exam and sometimes snacks. Well, I still wonder how people started "stuff" for paper chits and snacks.. hey wait.. why the word "stuff" for snacks? As if you were not supposed to eat snacks and hence coded it into "stuff"? I think some heavily pampered fat-ass school kid fellow might have started this "stuff" word for snack. Anyway, we used it in that way and sometimes I still use it (for unknown reasons.. may be childhood really has a profound impact on us throughout our life.. Hey, this is Sigmund Freud's "stuff".. not mine)</div><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">And when I came to college, "stuff" meant many things. Hey, it's not what you are thinking, at least in this stage. In college, "stuff" meant intelligence, talent, etc., (If you studied in an AP intermediate college, you could know that I'm not faking) For eg., some lecturers used these kinda statements "This boy has stuff", or "Mm, this girl has stuff" (intelligence, talent here also.. I too was confused at dat "Mm" initially.. but I believe people meant that way). So in college, everyone has this "stuff" up to some extent and after that only some people had this "extra stuff" (like extra talent, luck) that pushed them much forward than the rest</div><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">Now comes the graduation. I can think what you are thinking. And buddy, wait for some more time, it's not the same thing again. During my graduation, "stuff" initially meant movies and stuff... What, did I use "stuff" just now? Ok, it meant movies in the beginning, and after some days, it was you-know-what kinda movies. And then, "stuff" meant drink: alcoholic and non-alcoholic except water and fruit juices. Also, many people used "stuff" for money and dope.. "Do you have some stuff?", "Can I get some more stuff?", "Which stuff, Desi or American?", "Nah, I am bored with regular stuff", "This stuff is making me crazy, man", etc.,</div><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">These statements mean differently in different situations. But you ask anyone this "You have stuff?", they know what exactly you are asking for. This word "stuff" is like the words "God" or "devil".. even though there are many look-up values, the other person would know the exact thing you were referring in that context. It's a magical word, it need not be explained, just a "stuff" is sufficient and no confusion. I would say it's the most effective way of communication I can think of. For eg., I have this kind of chat many times</div><br />
Person A: <i>Stuff?</i><br />
Person B: <i>Yep</i><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">Person A: <i>Send, pl :)</i><br />
Person B: <i>Yea, sure :)</i><br />
And, sending.....</div>See? Simple, plain and yet, effective<br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;">Well, I was telling here only the look-ups used by men, I dunno how and where women use "stuff". Sometime back, I heard (actually I eavesdropped) some girl saying to another "We kissed and stufffff".. I was like "Wtf.. girls use 'stuff' this way, I never saw a man who used 'stuff' in this context". And what's that "stuffff" with multiple f's? She meant the "stuff" went for a long time? Or she was hinting it's the f-word she's referring to? Hmm.. I really cannot understand women</div><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">Anyway, nice "stuff" on this "stuff", eh?? </div><br />
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<span style="font-weight: bold;">P.S:</span> Lately, I've not been able to decide on which topic I should post next. It's like that rat joke where the rat, shaking its head not able to decide which nut to eat, eventually breaks its neck. <span style="font-weight: bold;">Can you folks suggest me some topics?</span></div><span style="font-weight: bold;"></span></div><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">P.P.S: Be a follower of my blog if u like it.. the button is to the right of this page..</span><span style="font-weight: bold;"> </span></div>Sarath Sominahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06777894196812381168noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320091001136818409.post-50227338538558529432010-05-28T02:32:00.010+05:302010-05-28T03:03:57.048+05:302nd post of the month<div style="text-align: justify;">Yes.. this is 2nd post for this month.. of-late, every fourth person is asking me "Why are you not posting?", "Is your blog dead", "So when is the funeral service? Shall we bring flowers".. no limits to sarcasm.. and when I check my blog now, I can see only one post in April and May. This is not the way a blog should be maintained.. I need to post at least once in ten days or so. Well, I take resolutions.. and no one knows if I stick to it or not.</div><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">It is really easy to take resolutions and give suggestions. On the other hand, following those resolutions and taking the suggestions is hard. I won't be talking about following resolutions now.. tell me who criticizes himself in his own blog?? So lets talk about giving suggestions and how people might react to the donation.</div><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">Some suggestions given by people are really stupid. Take for eg., when I had this fever and cough, many people have suggested "Go to a doctor", "Go and see a doctor", "Why are you not going to doctor?". The tone of these suggestions sounds like "Go to hell", "Go and see the devil", "Oh you are still alive, why don't you go to hell?". Some advise as if the patient doesn't know who a doctor is and when to consult him. They don't even ask if he has visited one. Honestly, how do you respond to such suggestions? I usually point to the medicines beside my bed to them when they give such kinda advise. And I dunno how they feel about my reaction, but many say "Oh.. nice.. so what medicines did he prescribe?" and they check those medicines. The funny part is that, they cannot even pronounce the medicine's name properly. And some, instead of checking the name, check the expiry date !! I think only in some 70's pharmacists might have sold expired medicines.</div><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">Another kind of suggestion, is regarding the present market, especially, IT industry. Even your servant maid comments on IT industry as if she had some 10+ yrs industry exp and freelancing now. I dunno if its the half-baked stories by local news papers or some kind of "personal hunch", but many people have their own "mark" in expressing their opinion on IT industry. Some people frown on the mention of growth in IT, some shake their head in disagreement and say "IT industry is hopeless. See Ramalinga Raju for eg., IT industry is hopeless". I cannot infer the logic in their statement. Some say "These days computer can be learned in any training institute (What the hell is "learning a computer"?). You can even learn at home by yourself. On what skill-set are IT companies hiring?" I think these people have picked up a word "skill-set" and are using it wherever they need to fill a void. </div><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">I agree that these people do not have any slightest idea on what they are suggesting and why they are doing so. If they really dunno about the topic, why are they advising in the first place? No one asked their opinion. Moreover, this advising stuff is not out of empathy or philanthropy.. this is just to show us that they have "some knowledge" on the topic. I think they know that they are becoming fools by saying this crap, but they cannot resist themselves from advising.</div><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">I have mentioned only a couple of scenarios. We find many instances where people give us really silly suggestions that have no logic and common sense. And I cannot figure out how to react to such suggestions.. whether to simply smile and ignore them, or to answer them in such a way that they would not be daring to discuss on that topic again.. no idea. I have come across many of such people and nobody ever tried to discuss the same topic for the next time. Well, I dint react in the same way to everyone, but I dunno what changed their attitude towards me.<br />
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May be as Paulo Coelho says "When we want to achieve something, the universe conspires in helping us to achieve it"?? The universe is conspiring to help me?? What the **** !! And why did I put those asterisks?</div><br />
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<span style="font-weight: bold;">P.S: Be a follower of my blog if u like it.. the button is to the right of this page..</span>Sarath Sominahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06777894196812381168noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320091001136818409.post-56649293129958943802010-05-08T01:20:00.002+05:302010-05-08T01:31:28.245+05:30Airs of clarity??<div style="text-align: justify;">Airs of clarity?? Really?? The wondering itself is full of confusion, where is the "clarity" now? I guess I need to stop questioning now and start some "Causal Analysis and Resolution".. wow.. QMS seminar is working on me at this hour.. </div><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">After reading my last post, a friend of mine asked me if I was drunk when I was posting it. Honestly, I wasn't.. and obviously not now.. that post was the words which popped up into my mind when I laid my hands on the keyboard.. may be it was just the reflection of my mind.. confused, dazed.. even I was surprised looking at my post that day.. </div><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">You might ask me if I have a different mindset now. I really don't know the answer, but many things have happened after later that made me feel lighter. Much confusion has cleared out, had some confessions and ruled out some impossibilities, that "chaos" thing has almost disappeared now. Last week, I got this sata-usb adapter and connected my cpu's hdd to my laptop.. I almost cried after it was successfully connected.. I was badly missing that hdd for some 8 months. Surprisingly, my mind has become fresh and clear after this episode.. I really cant figure out whats my voodoo with hdds and laptops..</div><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">So whats so special about that hdd?? Come on, it was my 4yrs collection.. movies, sitcoms, songs, what not.. it was my entertainment channel for 4 yrs. One fine day.. actually it was a very bad day.. my monitor had got repaired and lo !! my motherboard bios rom got screwed up, and hdd got separated from me.. could not get a sata-usb connector even after searching rjy entirely.. shopkeepers were pleading under oath that they never heard of such an adapter.. Welcome to RJY.. here supply runs the demand.. u need to buy what is available.. u cannot really get what u want.. </div><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">I would not say I missed my hdd completely, but missed that carnatic music collection I had in it.. listening to BalaMurali daily is making me cheerful and is keeping my spirits high.. I really missed it all these days.. BalaMurali will definitely get BharataRatna one day.. he already has the next civilian honor PadmaVibhushan.. he is a genius..</div><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">Hold on.. What am I doing?? I really wonder at myself.. now I am speaking like any other person.. dry, nonsense in sense of humor, where has all my 'knack' gone? This dry person is not me.. definitely not me.. definitely not me.. I am not some horse or ass (not arse.. donkey) to cover myself in stripes and become a zebra (phew.. bad one).. I am a human, and I dont need some skinny skin to cover my ass (not donkey).. proud to be different.. yes.. Definitely.. Maybe (I added that 'maybe' coz it sounds like a film title.. dont take that part literally).. aha.. now back to form.. </div><br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">P.S: Be a follower of my blog if u like it.. the button is to the right of this page..</span>Sarath Sominahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06777894196812381168noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320091001136818409.post-67496628773353456572010-04-09T02:45:00.011+05:302010-05-08T01:31:28.246+05:30Non-musings<div style="text-align: justify;">This is really crazy.. I am not able to acknowledge the fact that I didn't post anything since October. Actually I posted one in November and my good friend Irfan advised me to delete it !! Not really a controversial one, it was regarding some soft-skill training I had at Oracle during my incubation. Any way, I deleted it within 2 hrs of posting. This shows how fast people were getting updated with my blog ;)</div><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">In fact, I almost forgot to update my blog.. Hail KAL (Korean Airlines) for keeping me busy. I think I got some kind of "Writer's block".. I always wanted to start writing on something, then I do this musing, musing and musing on that and finally end up reading wikipedia at odd hours like this. Then I started to realize I am really confused.. and the movie "Deconstructing Harry" made me worse.. I was successful in identifying myself with Woody Allen's character in that flick. Oh my God !!<br />
Thanks to Arun, my classmate and colleague, I saw some link of his blog 3 days back and got inspiration to resume posting in mine.</div><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">The funniest thing is that, when I clicked on "new post" button now, I had this strange weird feeling.. its like telling sorry to your girlfriend when you came to know that she came to know that you had banged another chick who never came to know that you have a girlfriend.. Don't think I am sick or paranoid, but sorry my dear blog, forgive me for being unfaithful (!!) to you.. Oh my God.. wats this.. I gave some stupid comparison earlier and I am now asking forgiveness from a 'blog'.. I really need some medical help..</div><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">I think this genius(read as silly) movie "Leader" is the reason for my craziness at this moment.. what a sensible(read as senseless) film.. CM having a girl friend, meeting her daily for date, even proposing to her, and giving speeches in assembly.. this is the 4th film of Kammula I dint like(he made 4 films till now).. watching this film sacrificing the elixir of life(sleep) at this time is really sensible(read as senseless).. the only thing I liked in this film is the heroine.. Richa Gangopadhyay.. what a beautiful(read as beautiful) girl..<br />
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No musing to muse upon.. no topic to debate upon, my brain is now half-empty (read as half-filled).. I am feeling as if I am in metamorphosis since May 2009.. dunno when I would become a frog from this tad-pole avatar.. and speaking of avatar.. no.. we will talk about it some other time.. </div><br />
See how I am drifting from one topic to another.. if I dont stop now, I might end up reading wikipedia till 5 am.. so good night.. Subha ratri.. Shabba Khair.. hmm.. I think I will read about KBC in wikipedia now.. then Amitab may be..<br />
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</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>P.S: Be a member of my blog if u like it.. the button is to the right of this page.. </b></div>Sarath Sominahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06777894196812381168noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320091001136818409.post-63986972189956321042009-10-12T00:22:00.005+05:302010-05-08T01:31:28.247+05:30No, we can't..<div style="text-align: justify;">I am getting really astonished these days.. Barrack Obama getting Nobel peace award, Oracle giving joining date, and the most important thing.. my blog not getting people's attention.. I dunno if google has stopped concentrating on google analytics or what, but my blog's google analytics hasn't recorded a single page visit since the last 9 days !! But you see, the page visit counter on the blog page is still being incremented.. that's why I'm doubting google analytics..<br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;">Coming to the point, one of my friends commented in my blog saying that I need to post some funny posts so that many people might get bored reading my history stuff (see how much self-centric people are.. they generalize everything they think as a public/unanimous opinion.. may be that's why geo-centric theory has evolved first).. seems he is correct.. in any case, I myself am fed up posting this history stuff.. so giving it a break, I wanna post some funny posts (see how self-centric I am.. if I feel something 'funny', it doesn't necessarily mean everyone would find it the same way.. seems I too belong to the 'typical human nature' sect.. at least I'm human.. see again.. I can't help being self-centric)<br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;">Coming to 'self-centrism', we find many instances where people say they are not self-centric and at the same time quote self-centric examples to prove themselves as 'non-self-centric' (now I'm inventing a new word like Bush invented 'misunderestimate'.. even the blogger proofing tool is showing red line when I'm typing it.. ha ha).. If Barrack Obama also invents some words (not the phrases like 'yes, we can'), I can be sure that I am eligible to contest for US senate (what to do.. I can't contest for presidency.. I need to be born in US for that.. but for Nobel peace prize, there's no such rule)<br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;">See how self-centric I am.. I even went to the heights of getting a Nobel prize while proving that I am non-self-centric.. again.. I had created a word and I am using it now.. I really am self-centric.. Let's see the self-centrism of general public.. We hear people saying very commonly that "Our times were golden times.. lifestyle has degraded of late, people are learning their lesson and are following yesteryear's lifestyle now.. earth is round and the past lifestyle comes again".. if we don't agree that this is the peak of self-centrism, we can safely assume that we don't have a head with hair on a neck..<br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;">Now let's see what they say.. "The earth is round".. so their lifestyle will come into the picture again.. so they think that their generation's lifestyle is the starting point.. isn't it.. they don't know that their yesteryear generation used to comment on them in the same way.. and now they are commenting on us like this.. and even we will comment like that in the near future.. some of us are commenting now itself.. Oh my God !! whats up with the world and self-centrism?? Is that a bond like 'fevikwik'? (Seriously, I haven't seen any other adhesive like fevikwik.. once I wanted to test it and glued my thumb and forefinger like in the way they used to show in the ad.. what happened next I don't think needs to be mentioned.. I don't wanna recall those moments)<br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;">I shall start posting funny posts from now until people get fed up with fun and want to shift to history stuff.. If you think this post is funny, lets try not to be self-centric from now onwards.. can we do it??<br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;"><b>Yes, we can..</b> (I request the Nobel award committee to consider me for the next year in the 'literature' category.. I wanna write awesome literature in the future and I think giving this statement is sufficient for a 'Nobel'.. well.. for a 'Nobel', I think I need to tell this to some 300 million people and a couple of universities in the middle-east)<br />
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<b>P.S: Be a member of my blog if u like it.. the button is to the right of this page.. </b>Sarath Sominahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06777894196812381168noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320091001136818409.post-52846540468615789152009-09-30T17:19:00.006+05:302009-09-30T17:54:30.805+05:30What if?? St.Constantine - Pagan or Saint? (Part 1 of 2)<div style="text-align: justify;"><b>#2. What if Saint Constantine the Great had lost the battle of the Milvian Bridge?</b><br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;"><b> </b>It is amazing to know that many eccentric historical accounts of some Emperors have resulted in the propagation, governance and strengthening of certain religions in the world. And it is really surprising to find out that even the ritual structure of some of these religions has been changed in accordance to the Emperor's interests. The funniest part I observed is that in spite of knowing all these things, <b>the 'created and modified rituals' that were formed by priests from the command of some Emperor are still being followed by people today as culture and tradition attaching to them a tag line of 'sanctity'.</b><br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;">Coming to the story of Constantine I the Great, one can understand why I started off this post mentioning eccentric historical accounts. Actually, Constantine I is being regarded as 'Saint' only by some Eastern Orthodox Churches. For the remaining Christian community that accept sainthood of mortal people, he is considered as 'The Great' for his contribution to the religion of Christianity.<br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;">Before discussing the history that led me to ask the above question, I think we need to discuss the administration of the Roman Empire. Before Diocletion established Tetrarchy in the Roman Empire, there was dictatorship by the emperor and the emperors were considered as incarnations of the Roman pagan Gods. We all know that the Roman empire was founded by Romulus and Remus who were the sons of the Roman mythological war God, Mars. Also, the Roman pagan Gods are related to one another and so the Emperors used to have their own lineage from the Gods. Hence, <b>it was the Emperors, not the Gods, that used to be crazy !!</b><br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;">This establishment of a Godly lineage was much regarded by the Roman emperors as well as the public. Why we need to stress on this is that Constantine was the son of Flavius Constantius with Helena, whom Constantius did not marry. Hence, there had always been an illegitimate lineage associated with Constantine and he had done many things in his life to mask it. The magnitude of his eccentricity is so much that <b>he changed his lineage from the Roman pagan Gods twice in his life to mask this illegitimacy.</b> Well, the controversy and confusion in his personality comes when one considers the time line in which he did all these things.<br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;">We all know that Constantine abolished Tetrarchial administration, established monarchy and Christianity in the Roman Empire and hence became the founder of the Holy Roman Empire and orthodox Roman Catholic Christianity. He summoned the first council of Nicaea and his efforts were also spent on bringing out the 340 Bibles for the Constantinople church. It is not at all a controversial statement when it is said that these early 340 Bible versions are the basis for the present day Holy Bible versions, let it be the orthodox Catholic Bibles or the popular King James version of the Holy Bible that we see today.<br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;">What makes Constantine, the very founder of the Holy Roman Empire, who established Sunday as the sabbath day for orthodox Christianity, elevated the Cross, convened the Christian councils that formed the ritual structure of Christianity (that are even followed today), an eccentric and controversial person is his Paganism itself!! I am mentioning a couple of them in this post. <b>He declared himself as a Christian at the age of forty but he was baptized on his death bed!! He had kept his lineage of the Roman Pagan Gods even after the establishment of Holy Roman Empire!! </b><br />
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I shall be discussing the historical events in the necessary detail that led Constantine establish the Holy Roman Empire in the part 2 of this post. We shall also try to look at the controversial personality of St.Constantine in the next post.<br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;">When one tries to understand the motives behind all the things Constantine had done to Christianity, one really wonders at the <b>hard and bitter form of truth that history carries with itself even though a label of 'sanctity' is associated to many of these things today.</b> Honestly speaking, I am not criticizing the rituals or the doctrine of any religion here. As I have stated in the "What if?? Prologue" post, I was rather amazed by the contrasting historical accounts that led to the propagation and acclaim of different religions and wanted to share them in my blog. Moreover, I am of an opinion that <b>no person in this world is eligible to criticize the Doctrine, Rituals and Revelations of any religion. It is similar to criticizing the path of one's life and hence should be strictly forbidden.</b><br />
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Any contradicting comments? <br />
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<b>P.S: Be a member of my blog if u like it.. the button is to the left of this page.. </b><br />
</div>Sarath Sominahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06777894196812381168noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320091001136818409.post-28478092390651646092009-09-20T15:55:00.012+05:302009-09-24T13:35:41.356+05:30What if?? Asoka and Buddhism<div style="text-align: justify;"><b>#1. What if the empire of Asoka the Great had not expanded from Iran to Assam on one extreme and from Tajikistan to the peninsula of Tamil Nadu on another extreme before he waged the Kalinga war? </b><br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;">The history of Buddhism in the world is really fascinating. May be it is the one of the few religions in the world that had been propagated without the means of persecution, crusades, violence and bloodshed.<b> </b>And the most important thing in Buddhist kingdoms is the parliamentary democratic social system employed by the rulers. It is not at all a biased statement when it is stated that <b>"Asoka is definitely comparable to Alexander, Augustus Caesar, Genghis Khan, Timur and Napoleon I except that Asoka was not extra ambitious and did not employ persecution and crusades"</b>. Any way, we need to study the both sides of Asoka- his life before the Kalinga war and after the war.<br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;">Asoka had several elder brothers and was always envied of his valor and impeccable warrior general qualities. He, in fact, was blood thirsty and successfully ended many military uprisings within the vast kingdom of the Mauryan dynasty. After the suppression of military revolt in Taxsila (East Pakistan), he was sent into exile by his father for the fear of Asoka's murder by his brothers. He was later summoned to handle the uprising at Ujjain. During this battle in which he won, he was badly injured and was treated in hiding in a Buddhist monastery. It was the first time when he was exposed to Buddhist teachings and principles by Buddhist monks and nuns. He had even married a Buddhist woman during his hiding.<br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;">Due to his marriage to a Buddhist which was unacceptable that time, Asoka was sent away from Pataliputra and was made the governor of Ujjain. One of his brothers tried to murder his new born son at Ujjain but in vain. In a fit of rage, Asoka attacked Pataliputra where his brother was hiding and executed him. He became the emperor of Mauryan empire. He later went to Kalinga where his another brother who was also involved in the murder plan was hiding and tried to capture him. Due to the resistance offered by the king of Kalinga, Asoka waged a historical battle against Kalinga and took his vengeance. In this Kalinga war, some 11 hundred thousand people were killed and Asoka repented for this bloodshed caused by him and adopted Buddhism.<br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;">Before waging the Kalinga war, Emperor Asoka expanded his kingdom from Iran to Assam on one extreme and Tajikistan to Tamil Nadu on another extreme waging many wars. After adopting Buddhism, he stopped violence and sent many monks to China, Cambodia, Sri Lanka, Egypt and the Middle East to spread Buddhism. One thing we need to consider here is that the neighboring kingdoms of the Mauryan Empire were no match to the Mauryan warfare tactics and were afraid of the bloody history of Asoka and hence did not dare to wage wars even after his adoption of Buddhism. Moreover, it is evident that Mauryan empire was too vast an empire to conquer in a swiftly timed war.<br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;">Now what if the empire of Asoka the Great had not expanded from Iran to Assam on one extreme and from Tajikistan to the peninsula of Tamil Nadu on another extreme before he waged the Kalinga war? Many wars would had been waged by the neighboring kings and the Mauryan empire would be destroyed. Then there would not be Teravada Buddhism and its other derivatives in China, Tibet, Cambodia, Sri Lanka. There would not be Taoism from whose principles many martial arts like Kung fu, Ninjutsu, etc., are evolved. There would not be the 24 spoke Asoka Chakra on the Indian flag !!<br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;">So, has Buddhism sustained in the world today only due to the vast empire and bloody history of an emperor who ruled some 2300 years back? One thing here, <b>the only reason Buddhism is not predominant in the world today is that the Buddhist emperors</b><b> did not resort to persecution, crusades, holocausts and bloodshed for its propagation</b>.<br />
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</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Any contradicting comments??<br />
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<b>P.S: Be a member of my blog if u like it.. the button is to the left of this page.. </b>Sarath Sominahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06777894196812381168noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320091001136818409.post-61607158347757893442009-09-05T03:36:00.020+05:302010-05-08T01:31:28.248+05:30YSR.. the visionary??<div style="text-align: justify;">Well.. I m not stopping the 'What if??' series.. I shall continue it by providing discussions to the posted questions..<br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;">As we all know, it was a major tragedy for the AP state Congress yesterday. YSR has been missing since Wednesday. After 24 hrs his track on air was lost, the chopper was traced and his body was recovered. By that time, a long night in the jungle along with a deal of rainfall sufficiently heavy to decompose the burnt body has happened and the body was eventually wrapped up in clothes for display.<br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;">I've been rather bewildered at the media's (all regional news channels) remarks about YSR for the last 3 days, to be honest. First of all, they started off with quotes like 'The visionary leader missing', 'Our beloved CM missing', etc., As time progressed by and finally when his death was declared at the crash site, the quotes were changed to 'The greatest visionary leader', 'Apara bhagiratha', 'The best CM till date', etc., Keeping this aside, even after 9 hrs have passed after the chopper had gone missing and search operations were going on, they were still debating during the night on the reasons why "YSR has not communicated yet".<br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;">This shows how much ignorant the media (regional news channels) are about chopper crashes. First of all, its not the duty of the 'Visionary CM' to communicate if there has been an emergency landing. It is the protocol of the pilot when an emergency landing really happens and he will definitely stick to it. Secondly, when a chopper has gone missing without any 'distress signal', after some time of no communication from pilot, it can be safely assumed that it is not good news. Of all the TV channels that did an exclusive coverage on this search mission, only CNN-IBN was pointing to these really significant points. In contrast to this, the regional channels were simply encouraging the innocent average viewer to pray to God that YSR would return safe and continues to hold the office !!<br />
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In addition to this, the very news channels, that discussed about the failures of YSR's last term and stuff a week before he died, started regarding him as 'The greatest visionary CM', 'Apara bhagiratha', etc., Now I ask this question, <b>"Does a person really become a hero after he has died?"</b> It is not any kind of rule that we need to regard people by false praises when they die. A person's deeds, whether they are good or bad, will always remain the same even if he dies. No one needs to mask either the good things or the bad things. It would be sheer 'unintelligent hypocrisy' if one does so.<br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;">Talking about YSR in particular, many people who offered their condolences on-screen regarded him as 'The greatest visionary leader'. I could not understand how he was visionary. It is true that YSR did not care about creating wealth in the state in his term of 5 years. He simply distributed and increased freebies like Pensions, Fee reimbursements, Houses and the highly regarded Arogyasri, etc., Its a hard fact that he did not even bother about losing huge projects like Volkswagon and Tata Nano which would increase the productivity of the state, boost the economy of AP and create some lakhs of jobs. Lets not forget how much passive he has been in the KG basin issue recently.<br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;">Coming to the aspect of agricultural focus which, according to YSR, was given the highest priority in the last term, we have seen a complete U turn. Even the much awaited 'Polavaram project' has seen nothing more than a foundation stone that was laid some 4 years back. In spite of the good rainfall for the last 5 years, the agricultural productivity has not increased much. The price of rice has got tripled now and no comments on the price of Red gram (its around <b>120 INR per kg </b>in AP presently). And YSR recently in an assembly session advised the people of Andhra to take 'sturdy rice' and 'mattar' instead of the above foods !!<br />
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In this way 'The multi-faceted YSR' has also become a nutritional expert giving senseless diet charts to people instead of giving a subsidy on food items in the recently proposed state budget. Even the state budget was ridiculous. Only 26 crores of capital expenditure were allocated for Energy and industries whereas 15,361 crores were for agriculture and irrigation. 532 crores were allocated to health, uplift of scheduled castes and housing. Only God knows how many crores in these 15361+532 would be misused in the single year of 2009.<br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;">I did not mean that increasing pensions, giving fee reimbursements and freebies is wrong. But at the same time, much focus needs to be given on the 'wealth creating schemes'. The Government cannot simply allocate its annual budget to distribute freebies. The tax money needs to be used for these welfare activities. Increasing employment opportunities creates wealth and increases the number of tax payers. This in turn needs to be allocated for the freebies and stuff. Simply ignoring these things and running the state will definitely increase the 'vote-bank' for the party. But it would simply destroy the state's economy somewhere in the near future. <br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;">YSR was definitely 'The greatest visionary' in the perspective of AP congress party. But he is 'One of the worst Administrators' in the perspective of AP state welfare. One thing here, he does not become a 'great leader' when he gets elected for the second term by means of freebies. Even if common people embrace him, the facts speak for themselves and it would be totally the stupidity of someone who ignores these things.<br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;">I thank myself for not presenting the scandals in which YSR faced several allegations in this post. Its ironic that YSR is finally buried at 'Idupulapaya' which has become the biggest land scandal in the beginning of his previous term.<br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;"><b>May his soul rest in the very magnitude of peace that he created in the state !!</b> I think this is a fair statement.<br />
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</div>Sarath Sominahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06777894196812381168noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320091001136818409.post-42421791510213778822009-08-24T06:19:00.015+05:302009-09-30T17:51:31.089+05:30What if?? Some questions<div style="text-align: justify;">So now I am back with some questions regarding some social and political events in the world history which had dramatically changed the fate of certain religions in the later period. The impact of some of these events can be seen even in this modern times. I am presenting only a few questions right now. I feel that getting to know in detail about the circumstances that may lead to the answers of these handful of questions itself changes our perception of many things.. for e.g., I myself have seen my opinions change about politics, wars, society and religions, while reading all the stuff that I am going to discuss in the subsequent posts related to the questions. Since the discussion will be based on objective historical evidence, it is worth giving a try.<br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The questions I am going to present are simple and plain. Some questions have an answer while in the case of others, the answer-seeking process goes into a study of the corresponding history and the final answer might turn out to be subjective. Even though the questions sound childlike, let us all recall the fact that a better learning and understanding of things always comes from the answers of simple questions. We all have been learning everything since our birth in the same way.<br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Now without wasting time anymore, let us get acquainted with the questions. The questions are being presented below in chronological order<br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>#1. What if the empire of Ashoka the Great had not expanded from Iran to Assam on one extreme and from Tajikistan to the peninsula of Tamil Nadu on another extreme before he waged the Kalinga war? (264 BC)<br />
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</b><b>#2. What if Saint Constantine the Great had lost the battle of the Milvian Bridge? (312 AD)<br />
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</b><b>#3. What if Salman the Persian had not converted to Islam before the battle of the Trench? (627 AD)<br />
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</b><b>#4. What if the Pala Dynasty (8th-12th Century AD) had not ruled India for 4 centuries?<br />
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</b><b>#5. What if India has not seen the three remarkable philosophers Adi Shankara (8th Century AD), Ramanujacharya (11th Century AD) and Madhvacharya (13th Century AD)?</b><br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;">From a careful look at the questions, you can understand that all the above questions are related to one another in the order of presentation and also that 3 questions are related to wars. Well, these are not just some wars off the record. They have a significance in the world history and which I shall be discussing whenever needed. Any way, war is a clash of civilizations and the one which wins / dominates would be the civilization / culture that gets established / propagated later.<br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;">Before signing off, I want to mention one thing here. The above questions discuss the early strengthening of certain religions. Their social and cultural impacts may or may not be felt in the present society. I shall come up with more questions later regarding some events that shaped the society we see now.<br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;">We shall be discussing the questions one by one and try to seek the answers in the subsequent posts.<br />
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</div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>P.S: Be a member of my blog if u like it.. the button is to the left of this page.. </b><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div>Sarath Sominahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06777894196812381168noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320091001136818409.post-19728019859462302942009-08-15T13:21:00.019+05:302009-09-24T13:35:41.357+05:30What if?? Prologue<div style="text-align: justify;">From this very Independence day onwards I want to fetch myself some answers (not like Woody Allen character in 'Hannah and her Sisters'). The answers are not religious / spiritual but regarding the social circumstances leading to the uprise / downfall of various religions. I shall be discussing some arguments in the subsequent posts leading to the answers for the questions.<br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;">These days (from the last 2 months) I am spending most of my time reading extensively about (in alphabetical order) Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam and some aboriginal religions. My curiosity in Christianity has led me to read The Bible. I have also read Srimad Bhagavatam and I am reading Mahabharata and Qur'an in parallel now.<br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;">Now the questions I mentioned about previously popped into my mind. Well, going through the canonical scriptures, I found that I was drifting in a different direction in which I might not get my answers. So I started reading the historical accounts of each religion (not regarding the 'historical existence' of the founders of religions) and I think I am in the right path of finding my answers.<br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;">My questions do not seek answers regarding the philosophical consciousness / spiritual depth / historical validity or any metaphysical explanations of a religion. I think that seeking such answers would lead us to nowhere since I have an opinion that a practice of any religion needs the following<br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">#1.</span> <span style="font-weight: bold;">The commitment towards the Myths presented in the canon</span><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">(I think 'belief' is more of a scientific term. So I used 'commitment')<br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">#2.</span><span style="font-weight: bold;"> Accepting the Doctrine presented in the canon into our way of life</span><br />
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#3</span>. <span style="font-weight: bold;">Following the rituals presented in the canon with a commitment that certain revelations occur by following the prescribed rituals</span><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">(This is not emphasized in some religions for e.g., some divisions of Christianity in which you need to accept Jesus Christ as your savior and is not necessary to get baptized in a Church)<br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;">So I feel that the concept of commitment towards a religion is highly subjective depending on the above factors and discussing the historical validity of any religion is of no use since it leads to the primary question about the existence of God/The Creator from where the discussion becomes subjective again. And moreover it is universally accepted that the Doctrine oriented religions (e.g., Buddhism, Christianity, Islam) and Ritual oriented religions (e.g., Hinduism, Judaism) cannot be discussed on a single platform. So the questions do not deal with any metaphysical or spiritual elements.<br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;">I should say that I was rather amazed by the social circumstances and events in the history which transformed the magnitude of propagation and the governance of these religions that are being followed by millions of people in the world today. Many of these interesting events happened in India itself. The role of Individuals, Emperors, Kings and Governments in those events has got elements of intrigue and surprise actually.<br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;">Hmm.. this post has become lengthier than I expected (and still I don't think I've written completely what I wanted to express). I shall be presenting the questions in my next post. This is not any Zeitgeist kinda conspiratorial documentary stuff and is not at all controversial, I assure you.<br />
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<span style="font-weight: bold;">HAPPY 62nd INDEPENDENCE DAY TO ALL !!!<br />
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</span><b>P.S: Be a member of my blog if u like it.. the button is to the left of this page.. </b>Sarath Sominahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06777894196812381168noreply@blogger.com2