What is in a name...

People who had a chance to take a close look at the TN assembly elections last time (2006), two new parties got a lot of attention - DMDK (started by actor Vijayakanth) and Lok Parithraan (formed by a group of IIT passouts). DMDK had a state-wide popularity and Vijayakanth is not a new face to the public. So I'm shifting focus towards Lok Parithran - a party that contested only in selective areas in Chennai!

If we carefully analyze the base on which the whole party rested, we could eventually drill it down to three letters - IIT. So many voters in Chennai decided to vote for the party just because it is formed by IITians!! I have no second opinion in the fact that IIT is one of the best educational institutions in the country. But does that suffice to form a political party and contest in elections? My honest reply would be a strong NO. A party that relies on emails, website and sms alone for its campaigning; a party that never really understood the problems of the constituency, a party that placed a guy from North India who studied in IIT and stayed in the US until he came back to contest in this election at a constituency like Mylapore and Triplicane (just examples) in my opinion is unfit to be called a party and voting for it is out of question. If the person wins there, will there be any advantage offered by him to the commoner, the poor and the down-trodden? Will he/she at least be able to converse with him in fluent Tamizh? Absolute question mark!

Education exposes a person to different things and the way the person grasps it and really applies it to suit the needs of a commoner is completely subjective. Voting for a person because of good looks, caste, education (alone), craze is all the same in my view and it results in very poor selections at least a vast majority of the times.

In my opinion, a man like Vijayakanth who knows the problems of the society & has the guts to fight is better suited to be a MLA despite the fact that could hardly pronounce the word English or Tamizh correctly; as compared to someone who speaks English with the perfect diction without knowing the constituency and the people there!

Congress, India, Election and Budget

In 1947, India was brought under a worser rule in the name of transferring the beautiful land into an independent country from a British colony. Ever since Jawaharlal Nehru sworn in as the Prime Minister of India and for a 50+ year span from then, Indian National Congress, now termed Congress (I) has been ruining the country inventing and introducing problems from nowhere. At the end of 50 years, American dollar's value went up to 45 rupees per $ from a point where INR had a better value than US $. A whole lot of the nation's unsolved problems could be attributed to Congress, its corrupt ministries, incapable leaders, senior citizens who hardly know anything but stage speaking in favor of an Italian lady and the legal heir system they introduced in raising to power.

Today, the finance minister of India brings in a budget that reduces the nett revenue of the Government just to make sure that the party performs better in the elections... If this attitude is continued, I would never think India can report a profit/surplus budget. The worst form of this betrayal comes in the form of waivers. I really couldn't comprehend the concept of waivers till date. Let us take the farmers loan waiver as an example. I completely understand that Agriculture is dependent on a lot of natural factors and there is a good possibility that a poor farmer suffers in poverty after all the hard work. But when the Government offers a loan to improve their status, shouldn't they take any measures to help the farmer improve the yield? That'd never happen... The loans would pile up. The farmers would end up in a loss and finally they'll waive all the loans just to please them and get their votes. A country that pioneered in arts, science, maths, medicine and so many other fields is now believing that all the valuable contributions to these fields came in from the west and we crave to live our lives like the Westerners. But in the name of corruption, mismanagement, vote bank politics, poor planning and incapable politicians all we are achieving is a bigger and bigger hole in an average Indian's dream to live in a country that he could proudly and comfortably be a part of!

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! :)

It's farewell time -- Writer Sujatha expired!

Writer Sujatha - An Aeronautical engineer who graduated at a time when Engineering was considered an honor in India gained extensive knowledge in computers, Tamizh literature, mechanics, biology, history and a wide range of fields that made him intellectually unique. His writings were filled with versatility, packed with style and loaded with a casual touch that gave him millions of fans and some of them even named their children after the characters in his works. He also wrote dialogs for a lot of Tamizh movies in various genre adapting to the story line so beautifully that one wouldn't believe it is the same dialog writer who penned both of them.

The death of the genius is a real loss to the Tamizh society and I could hardly imagine anyone else taking up his position in the near future. Some people are forgotten even when they live. Some are remembered even after their death. Sujatha is surely a man in the second category and I'm sure his works would stay evergreen proclaiming his contribution to the modern Tamizh literature.

May his soul rest in peace!

An Abstraction called Love...

Courtesy sixth sense - humans always provide a lot of importance to abstract things than reality. As Hitler quotes in Mein Kampf, do not ask a person to fight for his bread because none will risk death to save their life. But the same person would fight for his beliefs for a man is nothing without his beliefs.

Mind, God and Love are the top 3 abstractions of man in my opinion. Whether you call it the chiasma of Frontal, Temporal and Parietal lobes or mind in simple terms, there is something inside us which characterizes us and we call it mind. In the same way the only answer to the universe's unanswered questions is God (for theists) and Energy (for physicists and Atheists). The third and rather interesting abstraction called Love deserves a special attention.

Unlike mind and God, this abstraction is a bit too polymorphic (note the usage of OOP concepts and believe that I'm a Java programmer). To make a long story short, a person can fall in love with anyone/anything ranging from a chameleon with its skin resembling a freshly erupted volcano in color and texture to a stunningly beautiful girl. So let's ignore the other meanings of love and focus on the most common usage of the word 'love' - the divine (as characterized by many) feeling between a man and a woman/a boy and a girl (usually) not from the same family who (less commonly) intend to share their lives with each other forever.

The concept of love is two dimensional - physical and mental. The possibility of someone falling in love with someone physically unattractive (as per the individual's view since beauty is completely subjective) asymptotically tends to zero. If it is something physical that keeps the individuals together then the whole divinity of love is lost and the definition of that becomes lust or infatuation as the case may be. Let's focus on the less probable more divine mental portion of love. Person A falls in love with person B purely because Person B's characters are just too good and fitting without even 0.01% consideration on the physical appearance of Person B. Isn't this divine? I'd like to quote Chanakya here - "There is some self-interest behind every relationship.
There is no relationship without self-interests. This is a bitter truth." As pessimistic and anti-social as it sounds, that is the bitter reality. Every human being is in want of something and the one who feels he's got everything becomes a Yogi. When this need is fulfilled by someone else, the company of that person makes him/her happy and that is comfortably termed love. The need may vary from a trustworthy person to provide audience to someone to fall back on for anything and everything.

So am I saying love is bad? Not at all. In fact if the belief of love never existed, world would be filled with hatred and perhaps we wouldn't have had many of the wonderful dramas, paintings, literature and sculpture that we have today. In fact, a normal human is designed this way and at one point or the other he/she considers himself/herself a better person in the company of someone from the opposite sex. But the fact remains that none is dependent on the other for existence and in the end every single person is an individual who keeps building his/her own world and the members in that world. As long as the company of someone makes me a better individual and that relationship doesn't uproot my other relationships, beliefs, esteem and tradition; I'm bound to fall in love for I'm not a saint but a normal human designed to live like a billion others. To me this means a life partner given by a inherently beautiful system called arranged marriage. I know not all would agree with this view but all said and done, that is my individual perception.

When Prakashraj was asked how could you fall in love with so many women he replied - "People often believe that I loved an individual. But I've loved and I'm in love with the concept of love". Could it be any shorter or any sweeter?

From Ignorance to Elegance

When I try to visualize the days when mankind came into existence (from a group of apes or in a jiffy by the snap of the formless God's finger along with light, trees and birds), I couldn't visualize anything more than a group of apes that underwent metamorphosis to have a better appearance and increased curiosity. It is when the sixth sense was put into place, a whole new dimension of thought process originated. One of the first things to strike a fresh inquisitive mind with awe, surprise, question and respect would've been the origin of earth and the presence of such a wonderful ecosystem; and that is precisely when the concept of Religion would've come into existence in this world.

An excellent and in my opinion 'the best' by-product of this thought process is Hinduism - a religion that transformed into a way of life and removed the ignorance in man and brought him the elegance of a spiritually balanced scholar. The collection of different perspectives, the blend of science and religion and the civilization it has undergone are the best and unique features of the world's oldest living religion.

A Hindu (Madhvacharya) said "Things in this world always come in pairs like sun and the moon, like man & woman and so are God and men" while another Hindu who came in after the former (one of the most revered saints Adhi Shankara) said "A day and night make one full cycle of rotation, man and woman make the human kind and in the same way God and Man are not two different entities but God's scattered across every organism in the form of life".

The ten incarnations (Dasaavathaaram) of Lord Vishnu beautifully portray the concept of evolution while concepts of Siva, Vishnu and Sakthi have a wealth of information on matter, Vacuum energy and dark energy. The construction of a hindu temple in itself is a resemblance to the human physiology and the social engineering behind the concept of construction of temples is simply outstanding.

The civilization part of this religion is the most outstanding feature and the level of maturity in Hinduism went to such an extent that Hindus are always thought to respect that there are alternate views in every topic and that the real devotion in one's heart matters more than the actual way it is shown. Animal sacrifices were replaced by alternate non-violent ceremonies and Yoga, breathing exercises, control of mind, socializing with people, Mathematics, memory power improvement were all gradually included into a Hindu's normal lifestyle. The average age of a man/woman in the good old days was 120 and those 120 years of complete health were what was considered to be a long life those days.

Sadly, the degree of flexibility, freedom and maturity in Hinduism is being misused by Hindus as an excuse to stay away from the wonderful values and without even realizing where they belong to, some of them even convert themselves as followers of other religions and to top it all, they start accusing Hinduism. This ignorance brought in by the inability to remain elegant provides opportunity for pseudo-secularist politicians to abuse and slander Hindu beliefs. May the omnipotent and omnipresent Lord bestow people with maturity and the ability to remain elegant. Shambo Mahadevaa!

It's not easy being green...

Men may come and men may go... But only a few leave in us an impact so deep that you start following them unconsciously. In this post, I'm planning to talk about a few celebrities who left a deep impact in me not just by the virtue of excelling in their field but by being good individuals and people of character.

Swami Vivekananda
A man with a constant thirst for knowledge who re-discovered and reiterated the fact that Hinduism is not just a religion, but a way of life. I couldn't imagine the will power it takes to hand over a turban and speak with compassion to a stunningly beautiful girl deprived of any dress trying to seduce a man! An excellent orator, a great thinker, a man of values and a role model for so many youngsters who are impregnate with the thirst to achieve something in life.


Narendra Modi
A man who proved that it takes just the spirit, strong will, interest, inspiration, motivation and perseverance to really make an almost worn-out engine like an Indian state Government to come back to its full swing with a complete throughput. His guts, planning, versatility and dynamism has become a moral boost to the patriots and a nightmare to corrupt politicians scattered throughout the country. I've already spoken about him and Cho in one of my previous posts -
http://libran-mind.blogspot.com/2008/02/democracy-cho-and-narendra-modi.html

Adolf Hitler
It's quite a surprise to so many that I admire Hitler a lot. Thanks to the allied press - a tyrant, despot, ethnocentric, mass murderer is a common man's view of the Fuhrer. Personally, I believe in weighing everyone on a neutral scale. Hitler's mass murders could never be justified and it's true that so many innocent lives were sacrificed to please his animal instinct. But beyond that Hitler had just so many qualities that are almost absent in any other leader I've seen till date. This tee-totaler, monogamist, vegetarian, patriot who revolutionized the life of a German commoner who suffered horribly after the unreasonable miseries imposed on Germans by the first world war, is blessed with excellent oratory abilities, photographic memory, unbeatable strategy and so many other qualities that are mandatory for any great leader. I've always been amazed by the insight he had on so many topics that were of social, political and economical importance to Germany given that he was a high school drop out who started his life as a painter who marched his way to chancellorship of Deutschland. If alone, he had been blessed with some more humanity, he would've been the best leader of all times and who knows if Germany had won WW II, the heroes and villains would've interchanged positions.

Mother Teresa

Ha ha ha :) Accuse me of being crazy but still both extremes never failed to impress me. Mother is someone who proved humanity alone can elate a human being to Godliness. I couldn't imagine the empathy and the motherliness in someone which can go straight to a leper near a ditch and clean the wounds and worms on the exterior without a sign of embarrassment or revulsion! I'd be surprised if someone's heart doesn't carry this mother who carried every human in her heart.

Prakashraj

A surprise entry in this list and I'm not sure if I can compare him to the great people mentioned above. But nonetheless, he surely has impressed me. Beyond doubt he is a good actor but that's not why he is mentioned here. The way he takes life and lives it is a poetry in itself and when you read his narrations about his life, he justs carries you away with him and the clarity of thought & speech and the whole attitude he has towards life. His interviews, his choice of directors, his movies and every single move of his speaks for him. Even though I don't completely agree with all his ideologies (like atheism for example), I should accept that he really made me admire him. Even the way he explains atheism sounded just so good that for the first time I didn't feel the argument as nonsense.

There are still a few more in the list but this post has already grown a bit too long... May be some other time! :)