The Holy Sex

There are not many words in English language that can match the range of emotional reactions evoked by or outnumber the adjectives attached to the word ‘sex.’ Lip smacking, fascinating, fist pumping, anticipation, ecstasy, joy, winking, smugliness, curiosity, eyes opening wider, agape, surprise, shock, denouncing, shame, hatred, satanic, sacrilegious to list a few. What is it about sex that evokes so extreme reactions from different factions, genders, age group and so on?

I always wonder what is it about sex that human society has always tried to keep it under wraps but it still resurfaces? Why the values like honesty and integrity taught everywhere but found nowhere? Ironically, sex is not taught anywhere but is found everywhere. Why is this multi-billion dollar porn industry thriving in-spite of so many moral, statutory, technological, societal curbs around the world? Why were Indians – who pride themselves on their spirituality – the people whose most googled word in 2007 was ‘sex?’

I was convinced that there is more to sex than its physicality; that it is not as abominable as our society has made it out to be. On the contrary, I felt there was something divine about it – why else would sex be the source of creation of new life? My search led me to Osho and his book ‘From Sex to Superconsciousness.’

Osho says that our apparent yearning for sex is not actually a yearning for sex. It is a yearning for something way beyond. Sex is one of the channels to reach there. Sex culminates into an orgasmic climax. This orgasm we experience for a fleeting moment has two innate states that we actually yearn for. They are Egolessness and Timelessness. In the moment of orgasmic ecstasy, there is no ‘I’ or ego and no sense of time. It is in that condition that our consciousness is closest to God. Any wonder then that we can create a new life only when we pass through that state wherein we are closest to God.

Osho adds that it was only in the moments of love making that human beings realized for the first time that so much bliss was achievable. Those who introspected on the phenomenon of sex saw that in the moments of love making mind becomes free of thoughts. For a moment, all thoughts disappear. And this emptiness of the mind, the no-thought, is the cause of showering of the divine bliss. What mankind has all along been calling ‘the original sin’ was actually the first doorway to divinity. Man also discovered that if through some other process the same no-thought state could be achieved then the same bliss could be attained. This was the origin of the idea of yoga and meditation.

God is that orgasmic ecstasy multiplied many times. Imagine this: with a fleeting experience of this bliss we can create a new life. What would happen if we can practice and learn to be in blissful state for as long as we want? Self realized saints live in this state and hence can refrain from sex. That condition is true celibacy. Celibacy is not avoidance of sex; it is rising above sex.

Sex is no less a truth than hunger or thirst. At our current level of existence, God is still far away. By not accepting the existing fact of our life, we are not getting any closer to God. An average human being cannot pray to God if he is denied water and food for days. So it is with sex. Only when we accept sex will we open a doorway to rise above sex. If we force a person to stay hungry, someday he will steal food. Similarly, when sex is denied to someone, the person 'steals' sex from any source - resulting in sex crimes. Our own society is the real creator of sex crimes. By denying the naturalness of sex, we are denying the design of God. There is no bigger sacrilege than calling sex anti-religious or sinful. This world will only be free of sex crimes when we become capable of having a normal and healthy dialogue about it. Only by accepting sex as a natural phenomenon we will be able to understand it. Only by fully understanding sex, we will be able to transcend it. Only by transcending sex, we will be able to knock on doors of divinity.

Think of the contradictions we have built within our lives. From childhood we are taught that sex is sinful. Girls are also taught that their husbands are their Gods. So when the husband tries to have sex with his wife, she is confused; how could her God lead her into sinful act? We are also taught that children are a gift of God. This complicates the contradiction even more. God is leading her into a sinful act and giving her a divine gift. All these contradictions hinder a wholehearted acceptance of sex. These contradictions might not matter so much, if not for a deeper truth. The kind of soul that chooses to take birth through you, depends on your state of mind during the sexual intercourse. The more accepting, serene and positive you feel about sex, the more evolved soul will choose to experience its life with you. Similarly, the more negative you feel during sex, the more negatively oriented soul will choose you. Do we now see why, generations after generations, we have only given birth to same type of men? Do we now see why there are so few spiritually evolved souls that visit earth? Our sexual contradictions do not create an inviting atmosphere for them to uplift our own experiences. Hence, resolving this contradiction is very important.

Lightning in the sky is a wild force capable of killing people. But we did not antagonize or try to stop its power. Rather, we befriended that power, tried to understand it and now we have used it so wonderfully to light our houses. Similarly, only when we understand sex, we will be able to realize its true potential.

Our antagonism to sex is so deep and widespread that the recovery has to be gradual. The first and the foremost step is to drop this antagonism to it and develop an acceptance. Accept your children’s sexual curiosity as normally as you accept their hunger. Nothing in nature happens without a reason and before time. A flower blooms when it is ready to pollinate. Children get curious about sex when nature wants them to. Treat their sexual discovery with acceptance. Once the coming generation befriends sex, there will a downpour of spiritual evolution in the generation thereafter. There is no peace in this world in-spite of so many revolutions: industrial, technological, social, renaissance. This is because we have not allowed a spiritual revolution. Only after a spiritual revolution, the world will become a much better place to live.

Gandhi - a Sublime Failure

The title of this article is inspired from the book of the same name written by S. S. Gill. I have yet to read the book but what attracts me to it is the title, which so succinctly packs the contradiction that Gandhi’s life was.

Not many Indian leaders have done as much for the Muslims as the Mahatma did through the Khilafat movement and during the post-independence riots; yet not many Muslims rate him highly as their leader.

Not many Indian ‘upper caste’ leaders have done so much for eradicating untouchability and fought so diligently for the upliftment of lower-castes; yet the so called ‘lower-caste’ communities have completely ignored Gandhi as someone who contributed to their wellbeing.

As a saint who loved humanity beyond the divisions of religion, caste or race, he did so much for entire humanity – which benefited the Hindus as well – but the current Hindu youth hardly consider Gandhi their benefactor. In fact, they consider Gandhi almost the sole reason for India’s partition and the strife that followed.

What could be the gap that explains his lack of credit-worthiness in the minds of those he fought for? Why doesn’t a single community, caste or religion accept that Gandhi was with them?

The answer to this is two-fold. Firstly, the humanity as we know it has deep rooted insecurity and secondly because Gandhi – the Mahatma – was spiritually way ahead of the times we still live in.

The insecurity has evolved from a deep rooted fear called ‘survival of the fittest.’ Man has always been fighting a battle for supremacy because of his inherent fears that he will be killed if he doesn’t kill, and trampled if he doesn’t trample. He wiped out forests and built civilizations to lessen his fear of animals. Concomitantly, his thoughts and concepts developed into religions and castes and various other forms that divided man from his fellow-men. As he outgrew the fears of basic security from animals, his mind started feeling the threat of a different race, religion and so on. And hence the religions and castes started the battle for survival. Some of the biggest conflicts in the world have been fought for such supremacies. The human mind is so insecure that anything good you do to a man’s adversary is not good for the man himself. There lies the inherent contradiction of Gandhi’s life.

Everytime he helped a Muslim, the insecure Hindu felt the pinch. Everytime he toiled for an untouchable, the upper class Hindu became circumspect. Not to mention that the Muslims could never accept Gandhi over someone from their own religion (Jinnah) and so did the lower-castes that gave him the boot in favour of Ambedkar; Gandhi, to them, was still the significant ‘other.’ The fact that none of these communities could make Gandhi their hero due to the limitations of their own insecurity remains irrelevant.

Secondly, not many true saints have made politics their bastion. In a field where ‘winning’ is the only thing that matters at any cost, it ran in a direct conflict with a man to whom the means mattered as much as the end.

To him, Independence as an end had no value if it was attained through blood-shed. Independence with partition was like freeing a person from jail after amputating his limbs. To us, no price was big enough to achieve independence. So what if we had to stain hands with the blood of the perpetrators if that ensured a quick freedom?

He was against the British rule but had the capacity to love the British. To most of us, the British deserve as much hatred as their tyrannical government. He was capable of separating the real bad from the real good and was not scared of praising the good in the aggressor while denouncing the bad.

We have always believed in ‘tooth for a tooth.’ It is anybody’s guess what a common man would advise a Hindu father whose child gets killed by Muslims in riots? When approached by one such man, Gandhi asked him to find and ‘adopt a Muslim boy orphaned by Hindus in the same riots’ so one Muslim’s faith in the goodness of Hindus and vice versa remains intact – and love gets a chance to bloom again.

He was the messenger of unconditional love – we are very far from there yet. Hence Gandhi can never be our hero. Inspite of his subliminal love, he will remain a failure for all of us.

It wasn’t Gandhi that failed us, but mankind that failed this Mahatma.

Ramadan in Gulf Countries

‘On Sep 16th 2008, a salesman and a female visitor who publicly drank juice during daytime in Ramadan were each fined Dh1000 for breaking article 313 of the Federal Penal Code of the UAE.

A Public Prosecution source explained that eating or drinking in public before sunset during Ramadan is classified as a crime, which offends religious faith and rituals. "

The punishment against such a crime is a maximum one month imprisonment or a maximum Dh2,000 fine... it depends on the judge's discretion," said the source.

An Arab witness, identified as T., spotted the couple drinking juice in a station. He reported them to the police, who referred the duo to court.’

That was a news report on Gulf News, a leading newspaper in the UAE.

Saudi law goes to the extent of terminating work contracts and deporting the Ramadan law violators. All this because they believe that Non-Muslim residents must respect Muslims' feelings by refraining from eating, drinking or smoking in public places, in the streets and in workplaces.

During Ramadan, in all the Gulf countries, restaurants are closed during the day time. They cannot serve food, only supply take-away parcels that people eat in closed rooms. The only exception to this rule are the best and the most expensive hotels that house the VVIPs who pay a fortune.

Ramadan is the holy month for muslims when they’re supposed to self-abnegate, introspect, lead a simple life – renouncing their indulgences – and observe a month long fast wherein they’re not supposed to eat or drink between sunrise and sunset.

Gulf countries observe the month with a lot of fervour and faith. In these Islamic countries, the government enforces a strict observance of these fasts through an honest police, an efficient legal system and religious zealotry of the citizens.

However, these countries have grossly misunderstood the spiritual commandments. Shouldn’t fasting be a call from within rather than be enforced from without by the government, the police or the legal framework? Shouldn’t fasting be a free choice over a coerced and pompous ban on eating and drinking outdoors lest you tempt those who observe the fast? And wouldn’t a fast that is ‘truly’ a divine inspiration from within be impervious to the temptations from the display of foods which is banned to cover for the imperfections in the self-control of the fasting people? Only a vacuous and shallow law can force the non-muslims to not eat or drink in public. A truly spiritual call doesn’t need collusion with the governments, the threat of imprisonment or monetary fine for its observance. A true fast would not want to control the external display of foods or drinks much less control the behaviour of another person only to bask in the false glory of a strict observance of fast. An honest introspection would command controlling oneself before controlling others. True spirituality should be a free choice. In the absence of that choice, there is no spirituality. Sadly, in the enforcement through the law, they cheat the spirit of the fast; in punishing the law breakers, they kill their own spirituality. Spirituality is no slave to any law and yet the misinterpretation of the same necessitates a law to begin with. The non-believers (Kafirs) are made to suffer because of the imperfection in their own self control.

If you want to see a more free and unforced environment of fast observance then visit India. I want to stick my neck out and say that the fasts of those Indian muslims are much purer than the pompous fasts observed in the middle east.

In the open streets of India,
my Ramadan fasts are truly tested.
In the enticing display of sweets at shops,
my tongue is tested.
In the heat, dust and non AC ambience,
my perseverance is tested.
In my donations despite poverty,
my sacrifice is tested.
In the people eating around me,
my determination is tested.
In my not forcing heathens to stop eating,
my self-control is tested.
In my acceptance of this difference,
my spirituality is tested.

Let the World Celebrate your birthday

We know that the population of the world has crossed 6 billion recently. More than 70 percent of the world’s wealth is with 5 percent of the world’s population. That makes for around 300 million very rich people. It’s a long forgone conclusion that the wealth is not equitably distributed around the world. But there are reasons to believe that such people are equitably distributed across space (in different countries) and time (born round the year). Hence there would be an average 821,918 of those rich people born on any given day. On their birthdays, they spend copious amount of cash throwing parties, dining, holidaying and in many other ways that are commensurate with their image in the society. Instead, if these filthy rich people and the rest of us who are better off decide to donate a certain percentage of our earnings to charity only on our birthdays then we would have atleast a million donations happening across the world every single day. The beauty of the idea is that no single person will have to donate too much (just once a year) and yet the NGOs the world over, the UNICEFs and the Greenpeace, the PETAs and CRYs that strive to protect our environment and support the world’s underprivileged will have cash-flows coming in to them constantly.

Since I believe in practicing what I preach, on my birthday my wife and I donated a certain percentage of my salary for a good cause in my hometown. The institution I donated to engages in a lot of social service activities of feeding the poor, educating the young, teaching them skills that make them self sufficient and so on. Scriptures suggest that donation should be confidential and should not be bragged about. With all due respect to the scriptures, I, however, believe it is high time we changed the way the world looks at charity. It is time charity is discussed openly so it becomes a way of life. It is time now that we not only dream about being rich but also about being a rich person that donates, that changes lives, that inspires humanity. Chances are that some of us are already doing this and a few might be doing so more frequently than once a year. If you do, then let us join our hands in making the world celebrate our birthdays. All the interested people may contact me and we’ll see how we can take this forward. The aim is to let all the aforementioned organizations try this idea as a marketing campaign for getting funds. My mail and effort would be successful even if just a few of you can be inspired to do so. But the idea as a whole will not meet its success unless it becomes a way of life the way partying on birthdays has become today.

Let us all strive to give more meaning to our lives. Let us all not just celebrate the number of times earth has revolved around the sun since we were born. For what could be the reason for our celebration if one more stomach can’t be filled through our efforts, if one tree can’t be saved through our donations, if one more drop of water can’t be prevented from getting polluted, if one orphan can’t study due to lack of funds, if one heart can’t melt and feel inspired seeing how we celebrate our birthdays? A birthday that does one of these would truly be a birthday that the world celebrates.

If this doesn’t inspire you, this poetic rendition of my experience might just help.

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The Realization

I took an obscure bylane

to reach a nondescript building.
Met my colleagues and friends,
who were already there - waiting.

Together we all waited
for the kids to come out.
About a dozen of them came,
with a hope that would never fade out.

God hadn't been too kind to them.
The kids were bequeathed with misfortune.
They lived, in an orphanage,
a life that played to a discordant tune.

Today was a special day for them.
On schedule was "once in a blue moon" shopping.
They all reacted differently in anticipation.
Some did it by tickling and some by giggling.

We took them all to a shop
to the discomfort and surprise of many shoppers.
But the kids could only have basked in the moment
with a shine on their face that was misfit for paupers.

Unlike other kids, these were a well-behaved lot.
They wouldn't even touch the things they were to shop.
For a long time, I couldn't hear their voices.
Perhaps they never thought life would give them any choices.

I wondered why two kids were very quiet.
What I found made my heart go numb.
As if being orphan was not enough,
those kids were also - deaf and dumb.

We finally droppped them home.
Their hands full with stuffs they had taken.
They waved us a mirthful good-bye
as we left with a soul that was stirred and shaken.

Not long thereafter did I realize
that this was the best day of my life.
I had done something for someone,
who couldn't give back anything tangible in return.

I realized what joy is there in giving,
helping these kids in their fight against the odds.
And since kids are closer to HIM,
this was a subtle way to realize the Gods.

I realized how lucky I am,
to have parents for all the love I need.
Oh Lord, I won't whine again for not having shoes,
for I've seen someone without feet.

Rise and fall of Religion

Inspiration and excerpts from "Conversations with God" - the book that occurred to Neal Donald Walsch.

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Lose your faith in yourself
so you may have faith in me.

Don’t question my doctrine
for I have all the right answers.

Don’t question, for if you do,
you will start thinking.
If you think, you’ll go to the source within.
The source would answer differently from
what I contrived.

I filled your heart with fear of God
and replaced the everlasting love for Him,
lest your love preempt my success.

I ordered men to bow down to God
where once man rose up in joyful outreach.

I burdened man with worries of God’s wrath
where once he sought God to lighten his burden.

I told man to be ashamed of his body and its most natural functions
where man once celebrated them as greatest gift of life.

I ‘commanded’ man to adore God
where once you adored God for it was impossible not to.

I made myself an intermediary to God
where you once thought of reaching Him in simple truth and goodness.

I created disunity everywhere,
for, in division – I survive
and in discord – I thrive.

I separated man from God, man from man and man from woman,
who I even made secondary spiritual being.

I made you learn from other’s experience
rather than seek your own.

In your doubts and fears,
I saw my rise;
in your doubts and love
I shall witness my fall.

For in making you doubt yourself
I train you to doubt my ideas.
For in my dogmatic enforcements
I create agnostics.

I made Him a jealous God;
But who would be jealous when one has and is, everything?

I made Him a wrathful God;
But why would He be angry when He can’t be hurt?

I made Him a vengeful God;
But on whom would He take vengeance, for all that exists is He?

My Reservations against Reservations

Every now and then, the Indian government keeps pulling out the reservation rabbit from its magic bag. This time they're gunning for reservations in IITs and IIMs; that too for an appalling level of half the seats. This divisive politics –in the name of secularism and socialism- is getting too hot to handle now.

Unlike most of the writers criticizing the proposal, I'm going to deal with this in specifics rather than generics and cite instances out of my personal experiences to show how reservations are not only detrimental to the so-called general class but also to reserved categories – the very people in whose favour the whole policy apparently is. Not to mention, India is paying through its 'bleeding' nose for this.

I'm an engineer from one of the reputed National Institute of Technologies (NIT) of India. I belong to the general category of students for whom there is no reservation. I completed my engineering in the allotted four years and passed out in 2000. I know some of my batch-mates and seniors who're yet to clear all their papers. Almost all of these people are from our so-called 'reserved categories'. Every year during the university exams, the hotels surrounding the colleges fill up with all such candidates once again trying their luck at clearing the exams. I marvel at government's ingenuity in boosting small scale hotel industry at the cost of large scale industries that are crying foul over lack of skilled engineers. Consider this incident. One such 'privileged' senior, who had failed to become an engineer even after a decade of taking examinations, urged one of my friends to help him clear the exams, for he felt ashamed when his kids asked where he was going. The difference between the open and reserved category students is obvious from the very first exam. Since they lag behind in their grades, they end up developing an inferiority complex over their abilities. Over the years, this complex worsens to broaden the psychological divide between the castes. Scratch the surface and chances are you might find a caste-fundamentalist in the very person apparently benefited by the reservations. Not to mention the growing resentment among the general category students when they see some worthy individuals losing their seats to someone totally undeserving in a merit based selection. Our caste based reservations are thus dividing the nation psychologically, while they're not reaching anywhere close to the apparent aim of social upliftment. Although there are students from the reserved category who do well academically, they are more of an exception than a rule.

The reservations do not end with the education. These candidates have reservations for jobs and promotions as well. My dad used to work for the Railways. During his working days, he wasn't promoted only because one of the reserved category candidates had to be promoted to be his superior. Now this gentleman didn't have the prerequisites to man that post. He couldn't do a single important task without asking my father. We frequently used to get his calls from office and my dad guided him even when on leave. An inspection or audit would see him malingering through sick leaves. Already, corruption has eaten into our work ethics, reducing our efficiency way below acceptable limits. To add to our woes, our flawed and illogical policies are not letting honest officials make the most of remaining work opportunities.

If reservations are so justifiable, why don’t we have a fifty percent reservation in our cricket team and the film industry in the name of social upliftment? How many of us would then go to watch the matches we won’t win or movies with mediocre performances? A simple truth of market is that customers want their money's worth. When companies go to the IIMs or IITs offering high salaries, they demand nothing short of brilliant work in return. Can the reserved candidates, chosen inspite of less than desirable credentials, do the needful? And when the companies find that they're not getting their money's worth, wouldn’t they stop visiting the brands we're so proud of?

My sincere question to all those politicians - where are we taking our nation with all these? It has taken years to build the brands that IITs and IIMs are. They demand high standards. How could we enforce reservations that dilute these very standards and favour mediocrity over meritocracy? Our policies make economic backwardness look wholly irrelevant while that should be the only criterion for reservations - if at all. We should rather ensure that everyone gets equal opportunity. A deserving candidate, irrespective of caste, should not remain deprived of higher studies for lack of funds. A specific number of seats should be reserved for such candidates.

It is only human not to value things you get for free. When people realize that they get the best without much hard work, they’d, but naturally, be inclined to relax. And only a fine line separates relaxation from laxity. Standards of performance are lowered and promotions reserved for them inspite of mediocre performance; who wouldn’t relax under such a luxury? The sad thing about the whole policy is that in the guise of reservations we’re inviting the socially backward classes to become lackadaisical and non-performing. Is it really going to benefit them or our nation in the long run? The answer is anybody’s guess.

I don’t hold anything personally against anyone from these reserved categories. Some of my very good friends are from these castes and I try my best to help them in whatever way I can. But when such policies on the whole negate our nation’s progress, I’m forced to speak up.

While Cadbury's Dairy-Milk might do great business when a not-so-good-at-studies 'Pappu' passes the exam after many trials and tribulations, IIMs and IITs might run out of business very soon, forcing brand India to nosedive, if we allow such Pappus to proliferate.

When Cricket lost to Patriotism

The ongoing India Pakistan cricket series was touted to be the mother of all rivalries. The media spared no stone unturned in cashing in on the hype. The Indian and Pakistani scribes went gung-ho glorifying their respective team's credentials and analyzing the rival team's weaknesses. They went overboard putting the tournament at the top of cricket's pyramid while relegating the Ashes to a second rate competition. Reviews, previews, talk-shows and in-depth analysis gave some long-forgotten-heroes and some not-so-successful cricketers a second chance to recognition. On the ground, the two teams are arch-rivals; outside of it, the two nations are sworn enemies. Cricket thus becomes a virtual war as bats and balls replace F-16s and Sukhois.

A much-abused cliché calls cricket a second religion in the subcontinent, a religion very unkind to losers. History is a proof that the losers in India Pakistan matches pay heavily. At times players' careers were ended; they felt unsafe returning to their own countries and hometowns after their teams lost. A win in these matches could put you on the peak of fame and adulation while a loss would take you to the depth of lifelong ignominy. Ask Chetan Sharma and Javed Miandad to describe what it means to be on either side. The sword of job-loss swings tantalizingly close on top of everyone - from the pitch curator to the coach. The mentality is thus to be safe than sorry. So the captain would rather be safe and not lose than go for the kill and invite public wrath if the plan fails.

A look at the statistics reveals how brazenly biased the wickets were in favour of the batsmen in the first two tests. 1089 runs were scored for the loss of only 8 wickets – a whopping 136 runs per wicket – an ignominious world record. In the second test both the captains delayed their declarations until they made sure that the other team can't even hope to win, an ample evidence of their defensive attitudes. Batsmen broke world records; captains saved their resumes from smudges of defeat, but cricket was the loser. Their focus is how not to lose and not how to win.

Compare and contrast this to the recently concluded Ashes series. England beat Australia after 18 years; nail biting test match finishes brought a lot of lost fans back to cricket. South Africa's Captain Graeme Smith surprised Australia by his sudden declaration and brought the dead test and the lost series to life. Can this be expected from either of India-Pakistan captains? Not until we give them the freedom to lose following a daring gamble to win.

A deeper look at the evolution of sports would help separate sports from its misguided connection with patriotism. The evolution of sports lies in man’s need for entertainment. All the sports started of as simple fun acts and evolved into community events before businessmen saw opportunities and expanded the scope of these sports. As the earning potential through sports grew along with the fame factor, more and more sports personalities emerged. But playing a sport is still a personal thing. A player is happier if his team wins because of his pivotal contribution than when his performance is forgettable in his team’s win. The sport is his means of livelihood no less than our work is for us. And we don’t go around doing our daily job with a streak of patriotism running in our veins right? Nor do we always succeed in doing our job. And when we fail, we don’t fear a public backlash. So why should a cricketer’s inability to do his job invite crowd demonstrations and violence against him?

What happens when a simple act of playing a game is wrongly associated with patriotism? Losing a match makes you a traitor who deserves to be lynched. Let cricket between the arch-rivals be played like a sport. Cricket was meant to entertain; so let us allow our cricketers to be players and refrain from making gladiators out of them. Only then we’ll see test matches between these two nations yielding results and drawing crowd due to their result producing ability and not just the hype. Let us not dump our brand of patriotism on their shoulders. Let us give them the freedom to win or lose. For as Walter Reuther once told, “If you’re not big enough to lose, you’re not big enough to win.”

Trilogy part 1: Demystifying Fame

My vacillating mind gave me all kinds of ambitions in life at various stages of childhood. I wanted to be an actor after I saw heroes pulverize the baddies to dust. A heroic inning by Kapil Dev left me yearning to be a cricketer. During a visit to a doctor, I was impressed by the plush interiors of his clinic and the respect he commanded from my parents; I then wanted to be in his shoes. Other times saw me dreaming of becoming a scientist, a contortionist, a circus joker and God knows what else. An overwhelming similarity in all these ambitions was a feeling of being recognized by others and of becoming so good at my work that people come to see me perform and appreciate me. Money, until then, wasn’t quite a parameter for the ambitions. Finally, I took up engineering. It was something I never dreamt of or understood as a child and doubt whether I still do. I am not an exceptional engineer. Other than my superiors, nobody comes to see me do my work. So do I sulk that I’m not living any of my dreams? Not quite. For I know better.

Fame is but a simple arithmetic. Simply put, it is a subtraction of the number of people you know from the number of those who know you. People spend their entire lives in pursuit of making this difference positive, and once there, they sweat to magnify this positive difference.

The problem with fame is that its entire perspective revolves around ‘others’. Fame ceases to exist the day these ‘others’ become inexistent. While the entire inspiration or idea that leads to an invention or a masterpiece comes from within, it invites problems when the fruits of the act are sought from without. Fame is like a sweet poison. You taste it once and you’re hungry for more, but at your own peril. You get addicted to it before you blink. Shahrukh khan, the Bollywood superstar, is a self-confessed addict of adulation. A beautiful and sensuous Indian actress of the 80s was so enamoured by the fan following she had that she became eccentric when the fickle fans dumped her for younger actresses. She couldn’t get out of that comfort zone. She then ended up ‘demanding’ compliments from the washermen, milkmen and other vendors. Fame is good to vie for, especially when it is a by-product of success, but it needs a mature head to straitjacket the mind from over-indulgence.

At times, people go to any extreme to achieve this. A teenager called Saurabh Singh took the whole of India on a flight of fancy by claiming that he had topped a NASA exam. The shrewd boy added a pinch of realism to the whole story by saying that even the current Indian president Mr. Abdul Kalam had taken this exam during his student years. And the Indian press went gung-ho glorifying this teenager’s unsubstantiated achievements. It was only later when the president himself denied having taken any such examination that sleuths woke up and burst the balloon. This was the boy’s quest for becoming famous in his country and a nation’s quest for becoming famous in the world. Both of them were in a hurry. While this might sound like a harmless April fool game, such quests often take ugly turns and ruin people’s lives when their lifetime’s work is plagiarized by treachery.

So is this quest for fame and recognition such a bad thing? Not quite. Historically speaking, fame, as an ambition or an incentive, would not have existed until the development of human civilization. Nomadic man probably had more similarities in lifestyle with the animal world than differences. And fame has no value in the animal kingdom. So, the earliest discoveries of fire, agriculture and primitive weaponry were more out of survival instincts than anything else. But having formed the civilization and having mastered the survival instincts, man probably would not have progressed further had it not been for his quest for fame and recognition, among other things. The later discoveries and inventions had fame as one of the pivotal incentives. True, from time to time, rulers waged bloody wars and mercilessly killed millions when greed combined with this quest for fame. But the entire process was a churning to reach an end that we see today. The churning is still on - for fame and greed still rule the psyche of quite a lot of us.

Fame is but a necessary evil for humankind. It needs to be nurtured with the right moral fabric within the society, for, after all, it is one of our primary causes for progress. A good way to start would be to develop an emphasis on ethics during early education of children. Success should be emphasized; fame should be exemplified, but the innate human tendency of taking vanity too far should be nipped in the bud.

One Day Mataram

The hair-raising patriotic rhapsody sung in the immortal voice of Mahendra Kapoor goes “Mere desh ki dharti sona ugle, ugle heere moti.” Translated strictly, it means, “My country’s land produces gold, diamonds and pearls.” This song always fills me with a sense of pride for being born an Indian. My chest spreads twice as much; fists clench themselves and I get restless with almost an insuppressible urgency to do something worthwhile for my ‘great’ nation. The song gets over and the goose bumps settle back to slumber. Suddenly my ear starts itching. So I pick up a ear bud, use it and throw it out of the window only to hear an uproarious expletive from an unintended victim of my can’t-care-less attitude. With the bud, I also threw my wish to do something for my nation “out of the window.” My Patriotism existed for the duration of the song. Once the song got over, my sense of urgency evaporated into thin air. Forget about doing something for the nation, I changed things in my immediate neighborhood for worse.

Every year, we Indians celebrate 15th of August as our Independence Day. People show their love for India in various ways on this day. Government offices, schools proudly unfurl the tricolour on their buildings. Individuals stick the flag on their vehicles. People wear ‘Patriotism’ on their hearts and sleeves. The national flag becomes so valuable a commodity this day that it sells like hot cakes. The day gets over and by evening all the excitement gets petered out. By the next day, you can find flags wallowing in dirt like waifs and on manholes, being overrun by the same vehicles that still proudly bear the flag on their embodiment. The previous day’s pride becomes the very next day’s burden. Three cheers to our “One Day Patriotism.”

Our whole idea of Patriotism needs some revamping. Is it actually enough to stick the tricolour on our peripheries and sing the national anthem with gusto while standing in attention? Even here, there are so many prejudices playing their hidden roles. Those who stand in attention while singing the anthem deride those who don’t. But the former are blissfully unaware of the fact that by doing so they’re actually approving the very act that they choose to disapprove. Independence Day, then, stood for freedom. Freedom, not just from the British rule, but also from our pique of being ruled by ‘others’; freedom from everything that was ‘phoren’, be it product or system, to things that were more Indian. Standing up in attention, as a mark of respect, is a British relic we’re unable to throw out of our psyche even today. Eastern culture, be it Hindu or Muslim, doesn’t decree the same. Unlike the western culture, it allows us to stay seated while praying. Reciting an anthem being an act of professing your allegiance could hence be done staying seated. Ironically, the British left India long back, but they still rule our psyche. This knowledge does nothing other than further deepen our prejudice against the British. While that is one aspect of patriotism, elucidating that is not the purpose of this write-up.

Why have patriotism at all when all it does is divide humanity into superior, loveable, smarter ‘us’ and inferior, hate-worthy, uncivilized ‘others’? Why should one man’s fight-for-freedom be another man’s terrorism? Technology, especially Internet, is erasing the borders. Politics needs to open-up to embrace this development. The world is at a crossroad now. Terrorism has never been more powerful and is threatening to engulf most of the world. It knows no boundaries of nations and is bent on destroying the same. Technology is also doing the same but is the obverse side of the same coin. The solution doesn’t lie in guarding our borders even more zealously. The solution lies in melting our borders and making ourselves more inclusive of the ‘others’ than we’re now. We need to wisely use technology to send across the message that we care to the nations that feel relegated. Foreign policies of nations need to be more ‘foreign’ sensitive from now on. The Independence Day should now symbolize freedom from ‘Patriotism’. Pablo Casals put in succinctly, “The love of one’s country is a splendid thing. But why should love stop at the border?” Let us aspire for a world order where patriotism is not haute. I won’t be very comfortable when my kids would ask, “Who draws lines around the countries?”

The Editorial

I am a member of the editorial committee of an internal magazine of Oracle. It's an online magazine we plan to release soon. This is the editorial I wrote for the inaugural issue which was accepted wholeheartedly. I think it's an honour I want to share with all. There you go.
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A wise man once proclaimed that man’s greatness lies in his relentless quest for improvement. First he does things well and having done them well, he tries to do them better. This quality of his ensured that he ruled the earth and every being on earth.

His quest for improvement started with his primitive survival instincts. None of the rival flora or fauna, no matter how fit they were for survival, could use anything other than what they were physically and instinctively endowed with for protection. Man, on the other hand, turned stones into weapons and invented fire. Having developed reasonable defenses, he gave up nomadic life to settle for an agrarian one. The discovery of agriculture led to the development of human civilization. Societies developed and with them took shape man’s wants and necessities. Inventions were made to increase comforts for man; processes were streamlined. Barter system gave way to monetary exchanges. Money, in turn, gave a totally new dimension to man’s existence. It started making the world go round. Soon the pursuit of money became the aim of many a lives. Industries evolved to design new tools for comfort and entertainment of man. Corporations spawned and competed for the market share. Companies, through their employees, started working harder and harder to increase their bottom-lines. In this complex society, any given person became a customer to someone and a vendor to someone at the same time. The increase in options made the customer more demanding while every increased demand meant someone had to slog at work someone. The vicious circle ensured that almost everyone worked harder, as a vendor, to meet those never ending deadlines. Man’s progress – that started as a creative streak has brought him to a point where the very existence of this creativity is threatened.

We, at Oracle, are contributors to and at the same time victims of this phenomenon. Have we not questioned ourselves in the recent past as to where have we lost that creativity? “EBUZZZ” is a modest attempt to invite all of you to search your soul and rekindle that creative fire of yours. It is an attempt to unravel that undying human spirit of yours that has been buried under work pressure. It is an attempt to help you express yourself in ways more than one. It is an attempt to help you stand up, be counted and get known for things other than your good work. Let’s raise a toast to this endeavour.

If Only: The Perspective

Its a new thing I've tried and I'm not sure if I can call this a poem. But until my creativity helps me coin a name for this, I'll call it a poem. This poem is about events and a perspective look at those events from different, especially opposite, angles.

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If only I get God's grace
from this benevolent act,
I'll be a millionnaire.An aspiring millionnaire giving alms to a beggar.
If only he gives me a Rupee,
I'll have enough money for a morning tea.The beggar.

If only I cut him in the right places,
I'll succeed.A surgeon in an operation theatre.
If only he cuts me in the right places,
I'll survive.The patient in the operation theatre.

If only they select me,
I'll stop existing
and start living.An orphan girl in an adoption queue.
If only we select her,
we'll have a live-in maid for free.The adopting couple.

If only you knew that you have what we lack,
you could've been happier.An adult observing kids at play.
If only you knew that you have what we lack,
you would cease to be kids.Another observer.

Gibberish so Desultory

What girls want?

I'm a diehard party animal who attends atleast one party in two years. Almost a year ago when I attended the last party, a good-looking girl accompanied me. While we were enjoying the party together, I noticed she caused quite a few heads to turn. I managed to read the thoughts behind those 'turned' foreheads. They were all  wondering how lucky the girl was. Later, quite a few of my friends enquired about that girl. Needless to say they were all impressed. However, that silly girl was more bothered about the 'more beautiful' hair of another girl at the party. Whatever party it is, boys look at girls with 'varying' degrees of appreciation while girls look at other girls with 'superlative' degree of jealousy. In either case, no one looks at boys unless there is a queer in the crowd. English, in all its grandeur, has also not been very kind to men. Of all the adjectives that exist in English, ninety percent can be used to describe feminine beauty and ninety percent of the rest are derogatory. No wonder  men are hardly the subjects of poetry. Harking back to the party, I wonder what is it about girls that prevents them from seeing the good in themselves that boys so effortlessly see? They always seem to be on a lookout for things they lack rather than discover the things they have. If only they could look at themselves from the eyes of boys, they'd fall in love with themselves.

Fun with Failures

I am known to be an all-rounder. My school teachers acknowledged me as the most complete student who participated in everything under the sun, sans studies. I learnt invaluable lessons in teamwork at school when my team won the first prize in a group drawing competition. I had passed chalks and colours then. I also learnt early lessons in leadership when I became the President of the 'Rotary Club' in the school. Under my able leadership we had so many social service events that we missed the century by a mere hundred. I also participated in a city level athletics competition. In an 800m race, I crossed the finish line seconds before the other participants did. Yet, I wasn’t awarded the first prize. The rest of the participants were crossing the line for the second time. I have been a pretty good swimmer as well. I once came fourth in a swimming competition that had four participants. My penchant for learning new things has kept me in good stead. A friend once suggested that if I wanted to hold any beautiful girl's hands, I should either learn palmistry or learn to lie about it. I didn't know either of the two then. A couple of months later I held the first of the several soft, silky hands I've held so far. I am yet to learn palmistry. I always thought I was a pretty good student as well. I wrote all my exams pretty well; unfortunately, my marks would almost always beg to differ from my opinion. Needless to say, I'm a strong supporter of the spirit of participation over the philosophy of winning the event you participate in.

The Business of Marriage

I'm the most eligible bachelor in my family of five, consisting of, besides me, my parents, my younger sister and a younger brother, who is too young to marry. I'm an unhappy single and hence ready to mingle. I'm looking for a girl for company so we can both be unhappy together. Almost all my friends are of marriageable age now. If looks could kill, a friend of mine would end up at the gallows. I almost died of a heart attack the first time I saw him. He'd easily get the role of a starring ghost in a spooky movie without wearing any make-up. He may have had a bout of somnambulism when God was distributing looks but he has a heart of pure gold. He is by far the most perfect person I've ever come across. And yet, he can't find the girl of his life only because his face doesn't comply with the conventions of physical beauty our society has built for us. Wonder whether it is he who is abnormal or the world he lives in. Whether you like it or not, the truth is physical beauty matters. My circle of friends consists of doctors, engineers, chartered accountants and MBAs amongst many others. My doctor friends wouldn't want to marry anyone other than doctors. When it comes to spouses they think anyone other than doctors is not human. Some of my engineer friends also think on the same lines. They claim that their thought levels wouldn't match with those of an arts graduate. A slightly deeper investigation would reveal as to what primarily separates doctors and engineers from the rest. It's probably their analytical ability and I.Q. Beyond a certain limit, you don't need either for marriages to succeed. Academic qualification of a person is mistaken here for the proof of his character. How many of us have become the good persons that we are because of the education we've received? In our being good, it's not our education but our family values that play a much bigger role. Our family is where our roots lie. Marriage happens between two individuals but it bonds two families. That is why our Indian forefathers laid so much stress on finding better families. Somewhere in the deep recesses of our hearts there is a hidden desire to see the reactions of envy, pride and happiness on the faces of others when we introduce our spouses to them. Unfortunately, it is this overriding desire that guides our choices more than anything else. It is almost as if we're marrying that someone special for others.

From Bollywood to Cleaners

I've never traveled out of India. However, thanks to our Bollywood movies, I've had many vicarious experiences in cosmopoliteness. Come to think of it, so many of the Bollywood movies are conceptualized, planned, and shot outside India that the name Bollywood is as apt as the the label of 'Eternity' for celebrity marriages. They then make a big bang release in India only because the foreigners would've seen the whole melodrama unleashed on their streets and so wouldn't care a hoot to watch it again; more importantly pay for it. Their gain now becomes our loss. Probably the only gain of those movies is the eye candy of salubrious and clean locales. Talking about cleanliness, Bangalore was once known to be the cleanest city of India. My recent visit to Bangalore was an eye-opener of sorts. If what I saw were the cleanest then it would be a euphemism to say that Indian standards of cleanliness are abysmally low. Personally, I'm extremely finicky about cleanliness. For instance, I change my bed sheet after every epoch. The epoch may be anything from the bed sheet getting torn due to shameless overuse to someone fainting on smelling it or from someone complimenting me on my olfactory immunity against foul smell to the bed sheet changing colour; in case of the last eventuality my ingenuity inspires me to use it as a darker new bed sheet until one of the first three epochs materialize. The maid who finally washes the bedsheet is then forced to take a two-day sabbatical due to backache. Cleanliness is divine as long as it is the responsibility of others.

From POMS to US pranks

The Americans have been so prejudiced against the British that they tried their best to turn upside down every ritual originated or followed by the British. They thought that cricket was too boring and lengthy so they developed baseball. They thought soccer lacked the cruelty they wanted so went on to conceive "American Football". The right hand drive, so widely accepted in commonwealth countries, was changed to left hand drives for the same God forsaken reason. They even went on to the extent of reversing the process of "switching on" of the lights. I'm glad some processes have been irreversibly designed by nature.

Critique-ing Swades

Success is a sweet poison. It smoothens the rough road ahead and then as the person prepares for a smooth ride, it dumps him by disguising itself as the unexpected pothole of others’ higher expectations. Even more so, if success is as humungous as that of Lagaan. Lagaan, Ashutosh Gowarikar’s oscar-nominated mega success, not only ensured that Swades began with a full house but also that eight out of ten people came back dissatisfied, thus ensuring a lower turnout in the days that followed. The damp squib that Swades turned out to be at the box office would’ve left Ashutosh Gowarikar feeling like a snake that has bitten its own tail.

Swades, unlike most of the contemporary movies pitted against it, is smeared in honesty. Lets start with the names. The ‘h’ in Swades(h) is conspicuous by its absence, and yet that is precisely how the rural Hindi populace pronounce it. After an eternity, we came across a mainstream movie that didn’t have seductively named lead characters such as “the Raj Malhotras and the Rahul Srivastavs” but chose instead to give them largely unglamorous and yet much more quotidian names.

Kudos to Ashutosh Gowarikar for restraining the unruly horse called Shahrukh. Shahrukh, who needs dramatics to survive and emotional catharsis to thrive, was completely subdued and yet gave arguably his best performance ever. The actor has done an amazing job even without his characteristic K-K-K-K-Kacophonic lilt of overacting. Be it the presentation scene at NASA or his argument with ‘Geeta’ (Gayatri), he has hardly shown the kind of restraint and right emotional expressions to boot in any other movie as he does in Swades. Arguably the best dressed Bollywood actor ever, Shahrukh restrains himself here as well; he dresses like a mortal in Swades and rightly so.

Gayatri Joshi ‘Geeta’ has a refreshing screen presence. Her confidence gives an impression that the role was tailor-made for her. The debutante manages to hold her own against Shahrukh, which is a good start to have. But a tad less make-up on her would’ve done well to augment the authentic theme of the movie.

Rahman’s music makes subtle transitions from the foot tapping and the hummable to the mellifluous. One wonders how easily he flows from folk to pop and back. He just can’t stop inspiring awe.

The songs, although good, are a tad too long. This affects the overall length of the movie; an aspect the director needs to improve upon. Unlike other movie songs though, songs in Swades don’t hold the movie to ransom. They are situational and the story continues to flow through them, which is a welcome relief.

Ashutosh needs accolades for not succumbing to commercial pressure. The movie breathes nobility and sincerity of purpose from start to end. Any individual who is not able to serve the cause he so dearly espouses will share Mohan’s sense of ennui. The dialogs are simple and yet effective. He rightly shelved the unwarranted ‘filmy’ rhetoric, especially the ones on patriotism, which in some movies border on jingoism. Lagaan was about winning over your adversary. Swades is about winning over yourself. The analogy is akin to what Buddha, Christ and more recently Mahatma Gandhi had preached. “If someone slaps you on one cheek, show him your other cheek”. Doing that is a distant dream; we’d rather punch him on both his cheek and bludgeon him to his handicap. Showing your other cheek requires winning over yourself and is not a cowardly act as is so often made out to be. This is precisely where Swades failed. In our failure to win over ourselves, to see beyond our immediate benefit for the holistic good and to dare go beyond the expected and ‘pragmatic’ reactions to events, Swades was doomed.

Swades they say is too preachy. But the movie is far better than the much-abused good-wins-over-evil gibberish, senseless romantic melodrama and the forced-to-laugh comedies that Bollywood dishes out ad nauseum. It shows us a way out of our rut. The least we could do is watch and appreciate the effort. Our failure to do so makes me think we’ve reached the wrong end of societal cul-de-sac and yet seem to enjoy it so much that we even fail to appreciate a sincere effort to take us out of our self-imposed predicament.

Swades is a flop. Not because it was deemed to be so by the box office. Box office is too insignificant a measure to measure the depth of this movie. Swades will remain a flop until it brings out a “Mohan Bhargav” from atleast one of the Indians who earlier chose to blame ‘others’ for or to gloss over the rampant malaise that plagues our society. One “Mohan Bhargav” for any village in India is worth much more than the millions a hit Swades would’ve generated. The day that happens, Swades will meet its success. Box office is a nonentity. It always was.

Is it Swades that has failed us or is it ‘We, the people’, who’ve failed ‘our’ Swades?

We, the people

Forbearance we trivialize,
passion we idolize,
wars we ratify
and then pique we pacify.

Verity we transmogrify,
anger we mollify,
beauty we sanctify,
faces we beautify,
but thoughts we don't purify.

Vanity we gratify
pelf we glorify,
hypocrisy we dignify,fame we exemplify,
rumours we amplify,
vices we justify,
love we mortify,
humanity we classify
and then unity we diversify.

Innocence we petrify,
achievements we magnify,
rules we defy,
truth we falsify,
success we personify,
complexity we simplify,
faith we mystify,
Gods we deify
and then prophets we crucify.