Naan Kadavul - Aham Brahmasmi

One line comment would be - A must watch.

But as far as this movie goes, this wasn't anything unexpected. The unexpected part was the comment that I got about the movie - "It is an excellent movie; but it is too raw that one can't watch it the second time". Something that you don't often get to hear about a movie.

The movie does leave a deep impact in you; but I wouldn't agree with the statement above. Put in a nutshell, the movie dwells about the concept of God, and the way He manifests Himself in the life of the poor. Bala has handled the concept so technically that you find it really hard to diagnose whether he is a theist or an atheist. The underlying message is that humans sometimes take up the role of (some aspects of) God which makes a difference in the lives of others who cross lines with those humans. It takes the Advaita concept one step further by assuming the responsibilities of God; in this specific movie, the case in point being Ahoris. A group of poor beggars exploited by a goon live in a South Indian town and an Ahori happens to come to their town. What happens beyond that is the realistic portrayal in Nan Kadavul. The scenes where physically handicapped people are tortured just move your heart; and the impact is left in you for one good hour. It takes a Bala to really combine the philosophies of life and death; with the social issues yet leaving the storyline intact.

Pluses:
Storyline,
Ilayaraja's BGM (simply amazing...),
Cast and their dedication. Arya and Pooja have done a great job; and more importantly there are just a part of the movie. Not a typical Tamizh movie hero or heroine who occupies every frame of the movie.
The natural conversation among the beggars is just amazing... They have their share of fun too; but the topics they discuss would be of their levels and understanding. That was so naturally portrayed. (I specifically loved "Aamaa ivaru periya Ambani... Yaarraa adhu? Adhellaam unakku teriyaadhunne... Cell phone vikkiravainga" :))
Vaali's lines in Picchai paatthiram and the way it has been brought into the movie... Simply mindblowing.

Minuses:
Arya's Sanskrit/Tamizh. Sometimes he talks Tamizh like a Northie and some other times he talks it like a native rural speaker.
Very poor graphics.
Some level of commercialization of the subject (come on... it's a Tamizh movie and without this the movie won't even get to B or C centers),
villain is portrayed like a dumbo. A man with that level of network comes all alone to fight Arya as if he has fixed his appointment for death.
I'm not sure if Pooja's voice was dubbed; but irrespective of who did it, I felt it could've been done better. The same holds good to her acting in the scenes she cries... But for a person who can get Laila to act, getting work done from Pooja should be a cakewalk.

Overall, if you love philosophy and the way philosophy, religion mingles with the routine activities specifically on the darker side, Naan kadavul is just the movie your are looking for.

What am I?

The good news is that there isn't much of philosophy about this post though the title tries to threaten you with a question on the word 'I'. In a week of joblessness or perhaps I should call it 'salarylessness', I've been more into movies than anything else. I got to watch some of the best movies I always wanted to watch and some other excellent movies that I accidentally landed upon. One of them has left me thinking for the past couple of days and even though I'm a movie freak and I keep recollecting good scenes (sometimes even have the dialogues by-heart); I never really 'think' after a movie especially if it is not a movie about facts, history or philosophy.

The movie's name is Rounders, more about the game of poker and how it is important to play the player than the cards. There are a lot of interesting scenes in the movie but one of them created an impact so to speak, in me. The crux of the scene is 'We can't run away from what we are. Our destiny chooses us'. Isn't that true?



Now with all the due respect for the authors, I've heard this "You can do it", "Nothing is impossible", "Follow your dreams", "Spot your talent" and all the BS being written to sell a big, fat book to you that doesn't change you a bit except lightening your wallet. But this time, the sentence was different. I mean, after all the rational analysis and logic, one could easily observe that everyone is naturally good at just one thing. Just one thing above everything else... It just happens beyond one's control and there is something with everyone that s/he does better than the (most) others. The fact is no matter how hard we work on things that we are reasonably pretty good at, it's not going to take us to heights. If there is something that could really take us to great heights, it is the purpose of our creation, the best part in us and what destiny chose us for. How many of us (including me) dare pursue it, is the question...

Where do u belong?

News news news! I'm back to philosophy... :) But I'll try to keep the dose minimal...

Recently I got a weird thought about the sense of 'belonging'. If you ask someone where s/he belongs, the usual response would be the place where they currently live in or the place where they have been living for the most part of their life. I have always believed that the place where I was born and brought up is where I belong to and in a way I'm one of the those who boast of their home towns... :) But my recent vacation to India (perhaps because I had a lot of time to think :D) did bring in a question into me... "Where do I belong?"

This might kind of sound stupid but I still feel it's an absolutely valid question. Let me give a brief background before I dwell deep into the hypothesis... About 5 years back when I was doing my final year of engineering at college (of course in my home town), the city seemed to be mine... I was so filled with the place and everything around me indicated that I belonged to that place right from my bikes' number plate to my address and the people around me. When I went home this time, I was really enjoying my time there... I mean spending time with parents and sis, having good food, enjoying the 'back home after long' treatment and all that... But the belonging with the city became a question mark. I have been to almost every street in the city (ok... a hyperbole here...) but I didn't know where to go... Mom was busy with her cooking/home management, dad with his business, sis with her studies... Almost every other friend of mine was in Chennai or Bangalore busy with his/her work... Just like the famous quote "Water water everywhere but not a drop to drink" - Madurai did have the same places we used to hangout but I was feeling out of place and the best part is... nobody is to be blamed. If this is the case with the place that nurtured me for over twenty years, I need not mention about Chennai or the US. Tampa again was a classic illustration of this... We kind of settled very well in the place, had a huge gang, loads of fun, lot of travel... But one fine day, our company was chucked out and all of a sudden the place seemed alien. So... coming back to the question, "Where do I really belong?"

The simple but tough to accept answer is - 'Nowhere'. Our priorites at any moment decide where we belong and life as I'd mentioned a lot of times before, is just a travel, a journey to a destination unknown. Love, relationships, commitments, religion, sense of belonging are all feelings that we develop so that we don't feel alienated or meaningless. Imagine a world where everyone realizes that s/he is actually an independent entity surrounded by myths... After all that is what all religions preach... Forget the bondage of relationships and just focus on the Lord Almighty. But the beauty in the preaching remains only as long as the human nature of attachment counterbalances it. If everyone starts believing and practicing it, the response would be "Yeah, I know... So what?" Reminds me of the dialog from the movie iRobot where the introductory slides say "...They are governed by the rules and the rules are meant to be broken". We are all reminded of the absolute truth by religions and our great ancestors; but if everyone starts taking that course to be out of bondage, world would come to a stand still and everyone would die of frustration. The message actually is... "Live as if the entire world is yours but keep in mind that nothing is actually yours!". That is the only way to live happily and in the process, make as many people happy as possible.

An infinitely definite journey!

The journey seems long
Perhaps, I'm wrong.

Some of us cry
Some of us smile...

An illusion of time
Or a delusion of difference

I know not
What He thought!

Friends so dear
Push us to the rear

Bringing us near
The person in the rear

Faces, they change
As do the names

Lies change seldom
And I sense boredom

It often leaves me thinking
If love's really shrinking

In this infinitely definite journey
To a destination unknown!

A life without desires!

Religions usually drill down to one simple way to happiness in their simplistic sense - being free from desires. A famous slokha in Sanskrit says "He who is addicted to desires is a slave to the entire world and he who controls desires controls the entire world". This might be true in the sense of being free from the clutches of desire and forcing yourself to do something that you don't like; purely because you have no other choice to get your desires fulfilled.

But let us look at the other side of it; from the first person singular perspective. If I start becoming free from desires, how would my life be? Will it be totally different from what it is right now? From a bird's eye perspective yes! It might be completely free from all bondage and my soul would be filled with happiness... But let's dive deep into that imagination of freedom to understand how such a life will be.

Getting free from desires is pretty much equivalent to getting out of all possible relationships because to me it doesn't make sense to have someone depend on you and ask them to believe what you belive in. If they love their lives, cherish their desires and dreams and derive happiness out of it; they are free to do so. With a major portion in a human's life viz., the social circle cut off, life is nothing more than existence. I mean, you are free from desires and you have no one/nothing in this world to be called your own. So what's left out apart from just existing as one of the gazillions of dust particles in this universe? What is the purpose of that life? Why should the creator get you into the cycle of birth? Just so you exist? That is sheer nonsense in my terms.

Let me look at the whole thing from my current perspective. I'm here at the US and almost everyone I seriously care about is at the diametric opposite end of the earth's sphere. I do some crap work all through the day, being totally unhappy about what I do and of course earn money out of it. The possible sources of happiness that one could assume in a life like this are the happiness of his parents, the so called status quo, the trips that he makes, the friends that he meets and the places that he sees. The bottom line is that everything is desire-driven. If I stop these along with the interactions with my family/social circle back in India, how would my life look like? The only filler to my completely empty life is this feeling of belonging to the world; and if that is cut out life is nothing more than pain and I'm not a masochist to derive pleasure out of this pain! Without a dream to pursue, without a plan of action, life seems as empty from both corners of the world and the everlasting illusion of things being better at the other end applies to life too. I can vouch for it because I had a feeling that life would turn towards betterment if I earn some money traveling overseas and now I feel that life back in India is much better.

Perhaps people who had everything at the snap of their fingers felt that life sucks big time and came up with the concept of shunning away everything; believing the greener grass at the other end. But here I am, saying life sucks no lesser; and the only way to make it meaningful is to dream big time and chase them. A perfect Catch 22!

Opening the closed window...

I hadn't blogged for a while now and perhaps this is the longest break between two of my posts... The world was as busy as ever and my window was open too... But like a passenger moving in a train, the scenes were long gone before I could capture, think over and express my feelings on them. I was about to write on music when I heard a lovely piece of Irish music, on digital photography as I was looking out for a dSLR, on the way guys and girls work in an office and a lot of other stuff! But somehow, I didn't get the mind and the mood to pen down those thoughts. One basic reason - lack of belonging... But where? That's a tough question to answer; but with life in general... I'd say it's primarily because of my dissatisfaction with work! The industry works as it does and as it has been; but I've stopped running with it like the way Tom Hanks stops running in Forrest Gump... I'm simply tired of it! :)

When this disjoint steps into the main stream, weekends become the definition of ecstasy on week days and home becomes the definition of ecstasy during weekends. Dreams and thoughts over crowd your mind and like a kid lost in Ranganathan street I keep walking with the crowd, with mind filled with an expectation to find a familiar face and everything else around me is blurry. Perhaps it's high time to take a break and wait till the mud settles down!

What should I scribble?

Blogging at least to me, is about inspiration... I laugh at certain things, I'm moved by a few happenings, I have a million unanswered questions in me and all these enter into the world through the libran's window (ok chill... :))

But when gloomy feelings cloud your mind, they never let the light of clarity enter through their impervious layers. I was thinking of writing about quite a few topics over this week but everytime I get to this screen, and think of those topics, they sound like the most disinteresting topics to me and my mind immediately says "what crap are you trying to put up!"! Not that none of those incidents left any impact in me but just that my mind is too loaded to think about anything else.

Given the sense of purposelessness that is consuming the maximum processor ticks, the only thing I remember is the conversation I had with one of my good friends. He was trying to say he is dead already and living makes no sense to him; and I was trying to defend the system of life and death. But cutting out religion, philosophy, soul, jeevathma, re-births and a million other things that could possibly explain the system; is there an answer to the plain simple question - "what am I doing here?". I really doubt it. When you and the society around you is filled with mortality what sense could you possibly make? Did man invent money and develop material interests just to feel important, complicate and there by make things interesting? Is this like some game that we play to wade off time while waiting for the train? If I assume that re-births are not true and my life is going to end when I perish, does it make any real sense to be forced to play a game just so that I can wade time and wait for the end? Honestly, I don't have an answer...

The Survival of the Fittest

This is not a post on Darwin's theory though it is a derivative of the theory. Darwin indeed did a great job in analysis of the process of evolution. Imagine the years it has taken for the human race to find out this naive reality^* or to re-discover this reality, to be more precise. Though there are so many attributes that Darwin explained, I like one part the most - "the survival of the fittest". He goes a step further and defines what is fitness in his own words.

"It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change"

If we try to re-define the definition given in 1859 to the current world, what would characterize a 'fit' individual? To be frank, the thought scares me. Can you smile on the front and stab from behind? You are fit! Can you get all the affection, care and advantage from someone and cut his throat with blood as cold as ice? You are fit too! Can you wait for the right time to hit the person who trusted you so much and hit straight at his weakness without the slightest hesitation in mind? You are the hero of 2008! What kind of society have we developed? What kind of believes have we developed? Have we really 'evolved' to lose all the happiness that our ancestors had? Million thoughts cross my mind before I wink.

Perhaps this process of evolution (towards artificiality) is irresistible in a system and that is why the orchestrator decides to pull down the curtains once in a while and set things back to the starting position just like a kid playing with a toy-train places it back where it started, to avoid it from getting derailed. After all if we (mortals) worry so much about ecology, ecosystems and ozone layers which are nothing more than paintings drawn by our mind with varying clarity and ambiance; the creator who made the magic happen, the eternal energy that man is unable to get to, and the driving force that keeps life going, has to think about it. Isn't it?! Though I hate Kamal for a lot of his personal traits, I couldn't help quoting a line from one of my all time favorite movies 'Anbe Sivam'.


"Only when it goes beyond comprehension, we call it God!"

How true...

^* I know that certain conservatives still consider the theory to be false. But in my honest opinion, I strongly believe (as many others do) that the theory is a reality. Further as a practicing Hindu, I trust in what the religion symbolizes. Right from Dasavathara to animal-human forms of God; the religion portrays the theory of evolution all through. See video below for a sample and I'll come up with a separate post on this pretty soon!

Success - the magical word!

One word around which the world revolves around or at least it is projected to revolve around by Rs. 599.99 only/- books, is 'success'. Everyone wants to win and be successful. But how many really know how to define their success? To dig (or digg as the word has turned into! :)) a little deeper, does the word have a universal definition?

The definition of this word can vary from getting the first rank for a school goer through reaching the paramathma (the divine self) to a saint! To a project manager, concvincing a good resource to stay in a useless project is success and to a film director, a hit movie is a success. The beauty of success lies in the variety that surrounds it. Unforunately, there is a generalized version of success that is being accepted widely off late - 'money'. This evil invention of man has corrupted almost everything known to man and success is no exception. Nobody cares anymore about other virtues/talents and the ability to make money is considered to be the benchmark on the grounds of ignorance or lack of other acceptable benchmarks. The impact that this leaves in individuals especially at their early twenties through mid thirties is unimaginable. Innovation, ideas, satisfaction, interest and all the other good stuff that the education he had thought him to nurture is being pushed to the backseat by this new factor. When making money becomes the goal and the measure of victory, the fear of being looked down upon and the desperate need to score slowly retards all the above said factors he nurtured and life starts becoming more and more unhappy but more and more 'successful'.

I spoke to a friend after a long long time and it was a surprise to see a person so happy with what he was doing and to me it was literally like watching or should I say 'hearing' a miracle. Satisfaction has become such a rare phenomenon and finding one happy person in the maddening crowd is an achievement these days. There are people who give crap saying perception is everything and if we follow our dreams we are bound to win... Well, following dreams is not crap, I'm completely for it. But as much as I'm for it, the difficulty that surrounds it is way too much unless you are already a millionaire. As long as man continues to be a social animal, his success is defined by the society and as I mentioned in one of my previous posts one success story and a million failure stories make one in a million and not every dubba-wala who has high aspirations and works smart, becomes an Ambani. How long will success continue to be defined as a measure of money? Should I have a personal definition of success and be successful in my own terms? Should I throw away even the practical fears I have and give my dreams a shot? I hope I find the answers soon... For now, it's time to meditate, assimilate and evolve!

Nature, Mathematics and Libra...

Wondering where I get these weird topics from?! They just come off the top of my head... Seriously! :)

If you ask me what fascinated you the most, I might give you different answers at different times but for the most part it would be God, the universe and one magical word that drives the whole show - 'balance'. This word forms the basis of Libra and Librans are always characterized in any zodiac book by the phrase 'the golden balance'. Let's look at this beautiful thread that connects everything, I mean everything together.

Imagine several thousand tons of mass floating here and there in the universe... The masses are not just floating, they are rotating revolving, radiating energy and what not. If you imagine the universe as a plane, what are the chances of the weights being equally balanced on either side - both in terms of mass and in terms of charge? After all, isn't that the crux of Anti-particle theory? The most unbelievable part of this whole thing is that a similar setup is also present within the smallest piece man has ever known - 'an atom'. Particles of opposite charges are kept so close to each other but they don't disintegrate and they contain so much energy that keeps the electron revolving forever and when the energy from a few grams of Uranium atoms is brought out, it is capable of feeding heavy voltage lines that serve a huge power consuming nation like India. So this goes back to the discussion on quantum theory and the illusion of space that we spoke about in one of my previous posts.

Okay... so that explains nature and libra in the title but Mathematics? Ever heard of Normal distribution? People tend to call it a bell shaped curve but to me it appears like the arms of a man/scales of a balance streched equally across the pivot. The reason it's called a 'normal' distribution is that it is the most commonly observed probability density function. Ok... I'm not talking Greek and Latin here. A simple example would be the distribution of employees in an office by character/sincerity/work. A major proportion of the poulation would be average, working when they feel like but making sure they don't overkill time (let's call them the mean). There will be some others who hardly understand anything and wade off their time in ping-pong tables, cafetaria and orkut (let's call them -sigma). There will be the other extreme who are stunningly talented and smart working; finishing off their work in a jiffy (let's call them +sigma). The presence of -sigma is balanced by the presence of +sigma and since the major chunk is already in the mean area a balance close to the median is established. This is precisely what normal distribution talks about and shunning off the mathematical aspects in it and focusing on the inference behind normal distribution, thinking for a moment about it like the person who discovered it; would lead to the eternal balance and the creator's magic...

Now do you still wonder why I'd say Mathematics, Nature and Libra are inter-woven?

As good lonely as it gets!

With a hectic work schedule ahead, I'm not sure if I'd be able to blog as frequently as I used to. For a while I wanted to blog on something that surrounds me - 'nothing'! Ever heard someone say solitude and loneliness are one and the same? Well, then I'd beg to differ. As much as I love my solitude, I hate my loneliness. So where do I draw the thin line, if at all the line is thin?

Solitude is when you let your mind fly high like a kite with the surrounding atmosphere drifting it away into distant and more distant horizons. You are not with any humans but you are with Nature. As Wordsworth puts it, you are with your mother and it is a divine moment of soliloquy where you talk to yourself but you are not alone...

Loneliness on the other hand is miserable. When your mind is loaded with pressing thoughts and stress, when everything around you seems to screw up and you keep looking and re-looking the 100 entry directory on your cell phone to pick the person you feel like talking to; that is called loneliness. You could be lonely with 1000 people around you and it's just the sense of belonging that matters. Perhaps that's the reason why God created man with desire and with so much attachment to earthly pleasures. Imagine a man born with no desires - he becomes instantly lonely. The biggest punishment that a man could get is to not get someone to talk to when he desperately wants to communicate, share and express something! That is the reason why the worst punishment in any penal code is the inappropriately named 'Solitude Prison'.

I hope and pray that the grip of loneliness introduced in abundance by the new city, new work and new people vanishes pretty soon!

What am I after?

Today I'm in a terribly philosophical mood and quite naturally this post will be loaded with philosophical blabberings... So...

Caution: Extreme philosophy ahead!

A question that I had/have for a quite long time is "Will I ever be satisfied? What am I after?" Strictly speaking this is the question that leads to self revelation and this is the question that led Buddha to quit his empire and Swami Vivekananda to become a saint (ok... I'm not comparing myself with them... Just a continuity folks... :D)! I'm not into the question of what am I in this universe and all that... I had been through it but at least now I'm not into it.

My search is for something that could keep me satisfied at least for a while. You know... giving me the feeling of having done something good! Something that I can call an achievement in life. I don't want to be a 'yet-another' in the list. I did my engineering (yet-another engineer), I joined a multinational IT company (yet-another software engineer) and I came over to US on a deputation (yet-another onsite coordinator). If I continue this way and turn back to take a look at the path I've travelled perhaps 10 years down the line, I'm sure I wouldn't be happy to see a 'yet-another' loser all the way.

The basic reason behind all this distress that I could figure out is just one thing - I never loved what I did. I mean, just because I can write software it doesn't mean that I'm the best fit software engineer in the market and in the same way, just because I didn't prefer any other Engineering departments, Computer Engineering is not for me. Somehow the IT flood has drifted me away totally and until I started my work, I always believed I did the right thing and the society gave me all the encouragement to believe so. Even today, I don't find any hesitation to introduce myself in public and tell them what I do for living but if you ask the libran in me to rank me from the achievements standpoint, he wouldn't give me anything more than a '0'. If I try to assess what could make me happy I'd say some form of creative business, some line of work that lets me be innovative and completely free, arts perhaps... But there are two important negatives there. First, is there any guarantee that I'll be happy once I start doing one of these? No idea! What is the probability of being successful in the eyes of the society? To make the lengthy question short, can I make a lot of money? There is hope and scope but no guarantee.

I saw this interesting video on YouTube that talks about risks and defeats and stressing the same old point -"failure is the stepping stone to success"



But the world has had a million unknown Jordans, Edisons, Disneys and Lincolns; and the very education that I spent a major portion of my life on, says that probability of an event is the best guide to choose a path... Now, which way am I supposed to go? Be a loser within myself but a winner for the society; or risk everything and give my intuitions a shot? The creator has decided longtime back and I'm waiting to see if it's bestowed upon me any sooner!

Is anything random?

Ok... Long time since I gave you philosophical crap! [:)] Let me talk about something that has been fascinating me for a long time - randomness.

Is there anything really called 'Random'? Scientifically and artificially we could simulate only 'pseudo random' or seemingly random behavior. Extending that to the real world, I often wonder if there is anything called 'Random' at all. The most classic example of a random sequence is atomic vibration. We call them random because we don't see any clear and observable trend in their movement. If quantum physics states that space is an illusion that we assume (see video below), I tend to correlate our daily movements to the subatomic movements. Afterall we could be as small when viewed from a higher altitude and at that altitude, we seem to move in random, without purpose and in an ad-oc fashion but we plan things and we hardly wander around without a purpose. Can it be true that sub-atomic vibrations happen for a purpose or they even plan their steps and communicate with each other; and it's just that the purpose and the equation is not really visible to our eyes? If the answer is yes, is there anything that is really random or it's just that we are yet to invent (or should I say discover) the equation behind these movements? Is the word 'random' abstract as is Mind, Life, Love and God?! There are a lot of mysteries yet to be unravelled, surrounding us!!

Good bye 2013

Wondering why I'm talking about 2013 when we are in 2008? Well... it's not the year but my (ex-)apartment number. Has been my first residential accommodation in Tampa or rather US; and it had been so till a couple of days back. Had been a nice year at 2013 and fortunately my roomies were also in perfect sync with my wavelength and I should say I enjoyed staying there except for the fact that the apartment was in a pretty bad shape (courtesy the previous residents). Ideally I should be missing the place but somehow I'm hardly having feelings of any sort about 2013.

Pondering over that justifies my stand without much of an analysis. Life in the US has largely been driven by need and demand rather than emotion and relationships. Strangers become friends because you need a ride and friends become strangers because you don't stay with them anymore. A true friend can be assessed not only at the times of distress but also during stays abroad especially when he happens to be your roomie. Friends thick as thieves part so easily after a couple of months of stay together because the adjustment factor is reduced infinite times once you start working and earn as much as the other person staying with you. More than anything else, everyone is here to save money and that being the primary factor, other factors like affection, relationship, respect to individuals and values are pushed to the backseat. Pretty naturally, one gets tuned to this environment so soon and the way s/he reacts to situations changes dramatically by this artificiality. When artificiality steps in, the sense of belonging and attachment goes for a toss just like a saint who loses interest in world and earthly pleasures.

So it's quite illogical to correlate 2013 to our ancestral house that we vacated a few years back and it is as illogical to wonder why I didn't have that sense of discomfort while vacating the apartment. After all, the ancestral house spoke to me of my heritage and reminded me of people who made and molded me. Over here, I feel that I'm like a traveler walking along the endless shore of a deep blue sea, collecting the pebbles as I go along; finding some of those pebbles worth preserving and some others not worth carrying. But whether it was a good collection or a bad collection, neither the shore nor my travel ends.

The Pursuit of Happiness

One of my all time favorite movies is 'The Pursuit of Happyness' starring Will Smith. But as the spelling for happiness indicates in the subject, this is not about the movie and is yet another philosophical crap resulting from a few hours of glare at the roof of my bedroom. Hope it doesn't get too heavy for you...

As the movie states happiness is something pursued and not something that is existing. A beggar gets happy if he gets some food to live on, while a millionaire (and a software engineer too) hardly cares about timely food. The situation is the same but the context is different and one is immensely happy about it while the other hardly considers it.

Thinking down this path to the days when man evolved from a bunch of apes, I could observe the best catch 22 situation I've ever seen. After all it is God who assembled the pieces in the puzzle and it is bound to be beautiful. Animals spend all their life roaming around, feeding and reproducing; and hardly any sense could be made out of their lives apart from the instinct to exist and preserve their species. Man on contrary claims that he possesses the sixth sense which has to question, reason and comprehend everything in and around him. This led to a lot of inventions/discoveries and the creation of the most (arguably) evil concept - money. With the mind or the sixth sense cruising in all directions, man needed a standard base akin to a logarithmic base to compare and contrast individuals and fortunately or unfortunately the standard became wealth and then money. Once the standard was established, people started running madly behind money and save a few, men keep running for generations together in search of money. But if you talk to a wealthy person, his needs from the heart of his hearts are simple - peace, health and 'happiness'. In this context, he pursues happiness as a worry free life and all the three requisites he listed were something that existed in/with humans when they were nomads living like other animals.

A nomad who wanted to satisfy his thirst for knowledge built a world around him and in the end he yearns to get his nomadic life back. Now isn't that poetic?

Top 10 reasons to be a Hindu!

Beyond the layers of spirituality, philosophy and beliefs; man* is embedded with an inquisitive mind that questions everything that he sees and does and nothing but pure reason could convince it. In trivial things, we let it loose and with religion most of us control it in the fear of questioning God and being a sinner. I couldn’t accept this difference in perspective and I’ve revisited my beliefs, practices and religion quite often. Every time I think about it, Hinduism makes me feel proud, thankful and ecstatic; and this article is an attempt to identify the top 1o reasons to be happy about my spiritual self.

10: The Oldest Living Religion

Hinduism is the oldest living religion in the world and there is no start date for the religion. Ever since the day when man glimpsed at the sun with respect, Hinduism was born.

9: Liberty

Hinduism never compels you to do anything. No part of Hinduism mandates you to go to temples and there is nothing called a ‘Hindu Costume’. The religion underlines the fact that self actualization is the ultimate target for a man.

8: Feel free to ask questions

Unlike many other religions, Hinduism lets you question everything and sincere efforts are made to answer your question with the best reasoning possible. The Upanishads and Bhagavath Gita are classic examples of this quest for knowledge.

7: Vastness

Hinduism doesn’t have one holy book though ‘Bhagavath Gita’ is usually considered one. It is essentially a collection of so many sayings, wealth of knowledge and an ocean of facts presented under one name.

6: The way it spread

Hinduism does not believe in thrusting religion on others. Hinduism discourages conversion and it has never spread itself through conquests or forcible campaigns.

5: Contributions to the Human Society

Hinduism has provided innumerable contributions to the human society beyond the religious aspect. It has been the bed for countless discoveries, inventions, ideas and practises that helps an average man to be a better individual.

4: Civilization

Hinduism has never held itself to bad ideas; and concepts like animal sacrifice which came up in the minds of metamorphosed apes were slowly replaced by non-violent alternatives that beautifully retain the rituals intact except for the bloodshed. This level of civilization is hard to find in any other religion.

3: Science

Hinduism is filled with science and every single aspect of Hinduism has a scientific background to it. Even though “God’s will” could be used as an escapism to explain the complex realities, Hinduism never does that and even better the answers are packed neatly in the religious capsule. A classic example is the theory of evolution explained by ‘Dasavathara’ (the 10 incarnations of Lord Vishnu).

2: It’s not a religion but a way of life

Hinduism doesn’t refrain itself into a religious shell and instead it offers habits and best practices which are an integral part of life. From Yoga till the Ozone inhalation in Dhanur masa (the nineth month in the lunar calendar) there are so many ways in which a Hindu is made to follow best practices without even realizing he is.

1: I’m not a sinner, I’m God

‘Aham Brahmasmi’ (I’m God) is the underlying principle of a beautiful concept called Advaita that says God and Man are not two different entities and God manifests Himself in the form of life in all of us. None could explain life or God and that makes them synonymous.

The second part is the concept of ‘sinner’. I do things good and bad, and the bad things I do make me a sinner, is the version presented by many religions in the world. Some religions even follow ‘union theory’ where the fear of being haunted by sins is used as the base to attract people to the religion. But Hinduism leaves its classic mark here too. The soul (Jeevathma) in you is the ‘real You’ and eradication of the traces that your mistakes can leave behind in it by awakening the intelligence in you, is the concept behind the Maha Gayathri Mantra. To me this phenomenon cannot be explained any better.

Should there be any incomplete pieces here that you’d like to know more on, please feel free to contact me.

|| ‘Sarvam Shivarpanamasthu’ ||

* The word Man is used in a non gender-specific way all through this article

The beautiful mind!

No this is not a review on the movie enacted by Russel Crowe. To me the very concept of mind is special let alone the endless varieties it offers across persons...

In the evening, when I had a tough time at work, I could feel sleep covering up my eyes in place of eyelids and I was almost paralyzed with tire! Indeed I came home and thought about a cat nap (at least that's what I'd like to call a 5 or 6 hr sleep :)) my roomie stepped in and asked if we could play tennis today... Like a spell cast by the snap of a Genie's finger, all my tiredness vanished and I was ready in the next few minutes and ironically we played longer than usual and I played better than usual.

Thinking about it (of course this thought in itself is a courtesy of my mind), I wonder how an abstraction seems so life like and the powers that the creator has embedded in it. Even light would take a few milli-seconds to reach my home town from US. But my thoughts can reach there any moment without any latency of any sort! No wonder man created a field called psychology to analyze this beauty within everyone of us...

A blank mind

After a long long time, I'm having something that I never had for years - a blank mind. Absolutely deprived of any thoughts, any purpose and any confusions... To me this is like riding a car at 120 mph in Times Square without getting a ticket - next to impossible!

Some kind of thought always occupies my mind - be it philosophy, spirituality, art, movies, relationships, self analysis, work, career, something... something has always been there. I always had something to write... something to share.. But today, my mind is as clear as quartz settled down like a saint in the verge of self realization.

May be a hectic day at work left it too tired to think or may be it decided to take a break. Either ways, I'm sure I'll have an undisturbed sleep and a serene mind at least for a while! Let me enjoy it before it's lost! :)

An Interesting Question...

During the spiritual discussions in the temple on the night of Maha Shivarathri, there was an interesting yet complex question that came up! "If God's will decides everything, why is it that he created me with the desire for money, making me stay in US far from my homeland and my people? If I'm not responsible for what I'm doing, can I do all sorts of bad deeds and call God as the person responsible for all that?" Since this question came up around 4 AM, not many were in a mood to answer it seriously and the question ended with a humorous answer - "I'll surely ask this when I see God!"

But a bit of thought would reveal that everyone has this question deep within. In my view, there are two parts to this question - (a) Why did God create me this way (b) Should I assume responsibility for my deeds?

The answer to part (a) is that God has His own reasons. For instance, Hinduism came back to the west through us. Now Westerners are aware of another religion called Hinduism and its great traditions. Any good thing happens only by the sacrifice of something else - physical or emotional.

Part (b) is a bit tricky. In my view, God (the paramathma) leads you through the soul (Jeevathma) in you and He has provided you with the best of gifts - Reason a.k.a the sixth sense. When the sixth sense is applied and decisions are made to the best of your interests, then even if the act results in a disaster, we cannot assume responsibility for that. But if you are denying the use of Him in you, then you are going against the will of the Lord and like a mother watching her child play around in her vicinity, God watches our activities and marks his presence somewhere to make us realize the mistake that we did!

I answered his question at least to an extent that I'm convinced... But I have a question and I'm not sure who will answer it - "Why did Lord get into the concept of creation? Why should he create the world and the universe and let the lives in there analyze the reason for their lives and search for Him? Is He afraid of loneliness? Does He want followers? Does He need some proof to prove his powers?". Will someone answer?!

Truly Untrue - Dreams

Dreams have been one of the most fascinating things to me and perhaps at least one in two would have sailed in the same boat! Whether it is the thought of holding a beautiful girl's hand and walking along a turquoise beach with white sand under the evening sun and a gentle fragrant breeze; or an adrenalin pumper like being chased by a 1000 venomous snakes and running into your worst enemy's den; dreams are just so detailed in the ambiance, the flavor, the sounds, the persons involved and even the emotional state that we are in. Some dreams are quite messy with too many cluttered thoughts that you hardly remember anything in the morning while some others are just so clear and realistic that we almost refuse to accept it didn't happen in reality!

People say dreams have scientific meanings. Some say dreams are just reflections of thoughts that we have been occupying our mind the whole day. No matter what they actually signify, to me dreams are the layers that make up a platform for someone to be himself and be what he really wants to be, without any fears of losing the reputation in the society, without real probabilities, possibilities and math that almost always end up in a negative result/conclusion. Everyone wants to be someone and after all life doesn't work that way. So a commoner needs a medium to become a super-hero a person of his choice with the people of his taste. Dreams make this a virtual reality and if not for dreams, half the human race would've died of depression and the rest would've been filled with disgust and envy! Even movies in my view are colored versions of the story writer's dream. Whether dreams turn into reality or not, whether dreams are good or bad, they let someone be real! No wonder I fascinate reality! :)