a master thief!

I've been wondering how come half the WORLD is not so beautiful as the other half? I'm just not prepared to believe that God could have been unfair in distributing beauty. You must have STOLEN half the total beauty he had! So you're held guilty of theft, and your punishment is that you should keep smiling...always, and thus return all the beauty you have so selfishly stolen and kept with yourself, back to the world.

farewell!

Perhaps no individual would go to the extent i've gone to communicate with you. and you haven't bothered to even listen. i wonder how anyone can be so fanatical. there were a thousand and one things i wanted to share. there were a thousand others on which i wanted to seek your inputs. but you remained absolutely unreachable. just because of one reason? i may have been imprudent to the extent of idiocy or perhaps insanity. but i'm sorry to say you've been uncivil. what harm could i do u in a talk? how can you be so wildly presumptuous that a person like me can ever create troubles for those whom he admires? i was with u in college for a considerable length of time. can you recall one incident when i was discourteous, disrespectful or uncivil to you or anyone? u seem to be fond of jesus. but do you think you'd have bothered to listen to wht he had to say when the whole world was against him? do you think you'd have been on his side when he was being nailed? don't fool yourself by believing so...

i'm a very ordinary individual...but i've forgiven, those who were not worthy of forgiveness, those who were outright cheap, and even those who hurt me in countless ways. and i was never dishonest to anyone. i didn't hide anything. and most brutally, i've been honest about myself. then why so much rigidity? should i presume that courtesy, honesty and truthfulness have become outdated? should i think that decency is now considered as weakness? or should i think, it was your vanity and nothing else? but remember, every time truth is suppressed, it reasserts itself with renewed vigour. only truth and truth alone has the strength to stand alone. if i survived long enough, i'll make my point one day. you have left me with no choice but to put everything i had to say, in public domain...and i'll go it alone. those who're capable of understanding will find it on their own. and as for me, i can't care for anyone's opinions anymore; perhaps not even yours.

now that you're leaving, i give you my best wishes. you're now all set to march into a larger battlefield from the smaller one. and i wish you'd win, coz even though you've treated me the way people do not treat even their bitterest foes, WE HAPPEN TO BE ON THE SAME SIDE. I hope you'd see it some day!

finally we became friends (II)

"Why did you think we could be "friends", and what do you mean when you use that term?" you asked. The question was unexpected, and hence left me pondering for a while. "That's difficult," I said, "but I'll try and reply since you have asked." I use the term "friend" to refer to an individual I have ceased to be at war with. The world is a battlefield, where everyone is at war with everyone else, and you have no choice but to fight. You can be aggressive or defensive- that's only a matter of strategy; but the fight remains inevitable.To exist is to fight. The resources in the world are limited, and everyone is a potential competitor, and hence the war. And it's a cold war, so you can't use direct weapons. The weapons used are indirect, so you can't afford to be yourself. No matter where you go, a mask is needed! A friend is an individual, before whom you can stand nude, without fear or shame, knowing full well that you'll still be accepted, as there is no longer any war between you. You're no longer competitors. I felt I couldn't fight with you; never! In-fact, I could give you my share, quite willingly. And so I felt we could be friends!

To AYN RAND, with "LOVE"

Nothing personal, but may i ask if your philosophy of objectivism was so perfect, why were you in such a mess that you had to smoke 20 cigarettes a day? You should have been happy and contented. You talked much about individualism, but would you disagree that the true merit of an idea lies in it’s impact upon the life of it’s proponent? Howard Roark himself was a heavy smoker in The Fountainhead, wasn’t he? May I ask why? I mean if he was truly at ease with himself why this injurious indulgence was needed? Understandably, the fellow must have been addicted, as you seem to have been. But then, wasn’t it you who talked vehemently about “rationality?”. So, did you mean to say, acts done out of habit, can be rational if they give you momentary respite even if they have an adverse impact on your health in the long run? To you, an individual is rational if they base their actions on sound reason. So, by that yardstick, any consideration of instinct or emotion in the process of making decisions should be irrational. Then, can you please tell me what prompted your Roark to opt for architecture as a career? Coming to you, what prompted you to become a writer? Can you justify these choices by sound reason and logic? You present Roark as a man who had no place for emotions in his decision-making. But if that was so, then why was he so fanatically devoted to his cause/ideology? Doesn’t it show he was as emotional as, if not more than, toohey? And it was that emotional attachment and devotion to his cause which made him stand firm and resolute against all odds? Let us be a little practical, i mean business you see! In most cases, unlike your Roark, individuals come from different social, cultural and national milieu. So the sum-total of all these factors has an inevitable bearing upon the thought-process of the individual. What then, is rationality if all these conditionings are removed? For example there can be arguments in favour of god’s existence and there can be equally strong arguments against it...you can talk like an ardent supporter of capitalism, and i can do the same in regard to communism, so there can believers in different faiths, doctrines and ideologies. How is then an individual to decide what is rational if his emotional leanings are discounted? Let me put it this way, why did your Roark choose to live on? That is the most irrational choice ever! No, I’m ready to prove it with reasoning as you might demand. Well, death is the only certainty, isn’t it? Now if the destination is certain and easily reachable, how rational do you think, is prolonging the journey? Rationality demands that you should take the shortest and the most effective route to reach the destination, doesn’t it? So then, suicide should be the biggest rational act. Do you get the point? Let’s not forget, he is not to be altruistic, but purely selfish. Then why does he live? “Others” can’t be the reason, (altruism stands rejected!). There can be only two reasons then: first he is a “coward”- but then isn’t that fear of something, pain or whatever? And what is fear, if not an emotion? The second reason could be “love of life”- but even then, what is love if not an emotion? So if your Roark was truly rational, he would have committed suicide, why live unnecessarily, when the end is certain? Tell me one thing, did it really never occur to you, that what is the “ought” that a man ought to pursue? This is a very rational question you see! But can your rationality answer this? You might be inclined to say- “a better life” (capitalism, individual liberty, American ways being the sure shot ways of achieving it). But then, ain’t we back to square one then? I mean if "a better life" was achievable through your ideology of "selfishness", why was your own life a total mess? srry, no offence intended, but rationality demands that i should call a spade a spade. You might want to start harping on your idea of efficiency at this juncture. But hey, don’t you know your diehard opponents have been as efficient at what they do as you, or perhaps more. Do I need to remind you, that Karl Marx has produced a greater bulk of literature than you have, and far more analytical and cerebral. And, the man was so convincing that he impressed half the world- isn’t that efficiency? Furthermore, it was a Russian named Yuri Gagarin who first journeyed into the outer space. Isn’t that efficiency? Does not it show that efficiency has much to do with an individual’s personal traits of character than with your ideology? What happened, Ms. Rand, feeling unnerved or angry? Why don’t you have a fag instinctively, as you always do, you ain’t that rational afterall!

some day when you've scaled the heights of success

...do not let the thought of those millions enter your head, who are doomed from their very birth. do not remember for a moment that there are sharp divisions in the world which exist with the backing of law! do not remember those individuals who were and are, meant to be like you, but couldn’t and can’t because they were and are not allowed to. go on talking about the noble ideals of equality enshrined in the constitution...knowing full well that it’s all theory, good only for the purpose of securing high CGPA. they’re not like you, how can they ever be? they neither have your pair of Levi’s, nor your high-class intellect. you’re now recognised by the english-speaking elite...ain’t you? and what does it matter if in your ancestral village children still struggle to speak the national language. they’re no longer yours! how can they ever be? you now hobnob with the who’s who of the high society, while they still lack confidence to look in the eyes of the darogas, tehsildars and babus. but when were they yours in the first place? you were educated in a prestigious convent school, they in sarkari paathshaalas. your hindi teachers communicated in English while not reading and explaining lessons from the textbook, their English teachers taught in the native dialect. they were never yours! you always knew there was an unbridgeable gap between “them” and “you”, didn’t you? and you wanted that gap to go on widening until not even the voices of those on the other side reached your ears. but know what, maybe you were just overestimated! maybe you too are just another brick in the wall! maybe you don’t give a flying fuck even to the idea of one humanity (though you might give an affirmative nod just to look agreeable), where every individual is nothing more or less than a precious unit of human race and respectable and loveable by virtue of their being so, and there are no divisions based on social, or regional identities whatsoever; where it is not “them” and “us”, but only “us”! but perhaps these ideas are nothing more than impractical, romantic bullshit to you. i don’t think you’re proud even of your own individuality! you’re proud of it's recognition and appreciation by the reactionary elitist ideologues who dominate humanity and shape human destiny. and though you’ll never bother to see, there’s a huge difference between the two! you were considered special for your awesomely unique individuality, not because of all the gloss and glamour of the side where you so eagerly wish to stand. there are and have always been so many out there! wht difference does it make if you too become one of them? they're a dime a dozen!

rajeev lochan- a vishnu temple??

A few months ago, I happened to visit the temple-town of Chhattisgarh i.e., Rajim. Not exactly to see the temples but for some other reason, though once in the city, I thought there was no harm in visiting the famous TEMPLE SITE. To my amateur eyes it didn’t look like a Vishnu temple at all. The statues, the sculptures, and the architectural style together cried out in unison that it was once a Buddhist monastery or meditation centre! So I walked over to the stone slab on which all the information about the temple was inscribed. “It must clarify all my doubts and affirm my gut feeling about the temple being an ancient Buddhist Meditation Centre,” I thought. How could the learned experts in history who would have put up all those historical details be mistaken, afterall ? Now my own knowledge of history is very limited, but then you didn’t need to possess the knowledge of a historian to contradict the fallacious information put up on display. A little common sense was enough. The slab lent credence to the popular theory and reaffirmed the commonly held belief that RAJEEV LOCHAN TEMPLE COMPLEX, is dedicated to LORD VISHNU, a Hindu deity. But clearly one didn’t need very perceptive eyes to see that almost all the statues installed in the inner shrines of the temples belonged to a much later era. The stone was of a different quality, and so was the architectural design. Besides, what was the life-size statue of BUDDHA doing in a Hindu temple compound? He was not sitting there in the capacity of Vishnu's incarnation, as some might want to argue, for had it been so, he would have been kept inside the temple, not outside the temple doorway as it actually was.
It doesn’t really matter much to me whether the temple complex is Hindu or Buddhist. What pains me though, is the shameless distortion of history by our learned historians. They are experts, and we want to repose our trust in them. To think that such simple things as I have mentioned may have escaped their observation would be too far-fetched a presumption. So, it wouldn’t be far removed from truth if I should hold them guilty of intentional misrepresentation of history. The question that bothers me now is, “Whom to trust?” God save a country where even "intellectuals?" have sold their integrity!
Nevertheless, it feels good to think of the distant past; what a surge of ritual-free meditation-centric Buddhism it would have been back in the 8th century, when the temple was built! If only we had at least a few masters with us even today!

where have all the sparrows gone??

One of my fondest early childhood memories is associated with sparrows- the little birds which were so commonplace not very long ago. They used to set-up their nests somewhere up the walls, in the windows or bushes or some other equally conspicuous part of the house- always accessible! So we’d pile-up the chairs or other pieces of furniture, one above the other and reach up to peep into the little birdie’s nest. And then, what we saw was some strange looking creatures- baby birdies- extremely delicate! So, we’d pick up one or two of them, touch them lovingly, gaze at them in wonder, and then put them back in their cozy little home. But to our surprise, we’d later find them lying on the floor, dead! How did they fall? We’d wonder...and then we were told by elders that sparrows are touch-sensitive, i.e. if you touch a sparrow and leave it free, it gets excommunicated by the sparrow society- they never accept it back into their fold as one of their own.
Humans don’t kill sparrows. Still, one hardly spots them flitting about in the front or backyard of the house these days. There seems to have been a steep decline in their number over the last one decade or so. Are they on the verge of extinction?