I had a bad incident this morning after which I decided I am going to eat good food today. I conjured up a simple South Indian meal, had my fill in the afternoon and went to sleep. I ate rice at home after I don’t know how long. The thing is I have been on this “high-protein” diet for longest time. I admit I am about 30 kilos overweight and probably even need it. But I felt good today after a long time, not cheated after a meal. The truth is, we let symptoms decide how we live.

If you are fat, avoid rice, do not eat butter. Do not eat carbs. What are we trying to do? Relive atkins. Just the classification of protein is much wider. Strangely, I have not felt this free in a long time.

It made think. What is freedom really? If all I have is choice between 2 types of low fat ice – cream, is that real choice. What if I have a choice between 22 different ice-creams – would that be freedom? I can never be totally free if that is the kind of choice I would make.

I always had this argument with my aunt, when she would con her daughter into doing what she wanted. But her daughter (my cousin) was only 3 when she picked up on it… Her mom would say – do  you want Idlis or do you want curd (yoghurt) and rice? She would reply unfettered – I want dosa. And I would applaud her for making a choice she wasn’t offered. (Well its a different issue, she never got her way – but atleast she chose).

ZIzek (I don’t know much about him) changed the way I think about freedom. The true freedom comes to people like my cousin – the 4 year old, who looked beyond and refused to get tied down. Zizek says real freedom is today an illusory concept. Every step of the way there are social dogmas that govern your reaction, your thought processes, your behaviour and your choices.

What really interested me about what Zizek said – was about passive aggressive parenting. I don’t agree with you or like your behaviour. You are free to choose to do what you wish but I will not approve and will be disappointed in you. Does any kid, whose parent says this to him, call himself free? It set me thinking. We all wield power in our relationships. We sort of, begin to own the person we are with. Couples do it all the time. At what point in time do you of your own volition cave in to your partners thought process, your partners way of life and your partner to yours.

Anyway that’s about relationship. Actually I have no topic in mind but I still feel like I am digressing from the topic.

I woke up and made french toast. It felt lovely. No egg yellow… It was I think a year! May be more – since I had had french toast. I said – Screw – No egg yellow. I will make and eat french toast the way its supposed to be made. It felt good.

I saw two movies today – back to back. Midnight in Paris and Fairgame. Both movies although diametrically different from each other, pretty much make you think about the same thing.

Midnight in Paris is Owen Wilson, a novelist in the making who somehow manages to go into a different time. He loves Paris in 1920s and every day at mid-night has an adventure which transports him back to the 1920s. He loves it in that era. Then somehow, he and his beau move further back into 1890s. Woody Allen is funny as funny can get. It was then that Owen Wilson’s character realises that he was living in denial. A character from the 1920s felt they were happier in 1890s. The present was dull. The future is unknown. The past however is known and familiar (we read so much about it). Therefore the comfort of being in the past. Denial – that is our generations biggest problem. We love Anna Hazare but forget about him when the IPhone S4 launches. Steve Jobs death is a bigger news than the 2G scam. Denial.

I live in denial too. I do not read newspapers (only the yellow ones on finance). Newspapers depress me. I feel hopeless and like a useless twit on this planet, in this universe. What do I do? I stop reading newspapers. I hate the mindless politics in India. I don’t think our politicians are even worth criticising. Even dumb George Bush is better than Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh. George Bush went after Iraq (we all know why) and then fought to keep that down. Our guys, don’t care. They don’t care what the people think because they know that the people are easily distracted. They know that if they keep quiet on all issues, people will soon stop asking questions. What do you do with that kind of arrogance?

Fairgame is a movie where Sean Penn and Naomi Watt fight the White House for waging the Iraq War on false pretexts. Truth of course is stranger than fiction.

Now I need to sleep as I have to wake up tomorrow and make scrambled eggs and hash brown. Soon I am going to be jobless and I will fill up more and more internet space with my nonsense.

So adieu till then.

]]> http://booksandmusings.wordpress.com/2011/11/27/musings-on-a-non-working-saturday/feed/ 0 booksandmusings http://booksandmusings.wordpress.com/2011/07/08/reversal-of-ratios/ http://booksandmusings.wordpress.com/2011/07/08/reversal-of-ratios/#comments Fri, 08 Jul 2011 08:27:33 +0000 booksandmusings http://booksandmusings.wordpress.com/2011/07/08/reversal-of-ratios/ ]]> When I was growing up, I heard that our criminal justice system is based on the premise that the State may let 10 criminals go scott-free so long as even 1 innocent does not suffer. I believed in it, believed in our criminal defence system.

But now lets rethink what has been happening in the recent past. It is shocking how the Supreme Court has been repeatedly pushing the government to investigate (not even punish) Hassan Ali Khan and the Tapurias. It is not the job of the Supreme Court to do this. But in the system today, the Supreme Court needs to step in and direct the elected representatives to their job, for they are too busy making money – through prostitution of the polity.

In sharp contrast to how Hassan Ali is not yet been prosecuted (though the ED did seemingly arrest him in March this year), Binayak Sen goes to prison.

Wonder if any of this makes sense. Wonder why I am surprised, had I not seen it coming.

The real criminals are running the nation while the people who stand up against their persecution ar treated as criminals and gunned down. It won’t be soon till I am termed as a leftist – for that has what the left has become – the voice of dissent.

In the midst of all this, the Supreme Court judgement of July 4, 2011 comes as huge wave of relief and re-establishes a waning trust in the judiciary.

The media has not reported this judgment yet. Not surprising anymore.

These are apparently words of Mohammed. I myself do not know Arabic or urdu so I have to believe the translations. By Mohammed, I mean the Prophet, of course, who brought Islam into being. “Islam” means “surrender to God”. Mohammed therefore preached surrender to God. In fact, the sentence above, appears to be translation from the Quran.

Karen Armstrong, has written a most compelling biography of the Prophet and in my opinion has managed to write it without any prejudice or bias. She has in fact discounted the aspersions cast on Mohammed by the Western critics of the religion itself or his character and critically examined the compilation of the Quran, the birth of Islam and Mohammed’s success in light of the predicament Arabia was in at the time.

It is difficult for me as a common person or lay man to assess the historical veracity of this work. But Mohammed is the best introduction I have read to Islam and its birth.

I believed that and still believe that a religious ideology becomes intolerant in its execution. It is not the ideology itself that is intolerant. I may get the best potatoes in the world, but the dish I have made out of it, may be ruined. Why? Is it because it is in the nature of the potato to be ruined, or is it my bad cooking? Islam appears to suffer from this problem too.

It is not hard to believe that everything in the Quran applies to unique problems – socio-economic-politico problems/issues faced by the multiple states forming what today is largely known as the Middle East and parts of northern Africa. To take that principle and blindly apply it to life or issues today is not just foolish but also fatal. What started, as a religion of peace, is today a religion of terrorism of violence and of hatred.

“Jihad” the term used for the struggle which a true Muslim needs to face to overcome affection for a material life, has become synonymous with terrorism. What is a war that kills innocents in the name of religion – but terrorism? I wish that the groups like Al Qaida and Lashkar of the world read this book. I wish the manner in which 14 – 15 year olds are brain washed into taking to arms, the militant groups could be brain washed into looking at their roots, the rich philosophy that Mohammed left for them.

Mohammed had a unique role, probably a greater responsibility than that of Christ. Christ preached love. He was hailed as the Lord, as an incarnation of the Holy Spirit. Christianity it is widely known sprung out of the dream of Constantine and was a political agenda. Mohammed on the other hand, lived so long as to gather people unto his faith, his way of life and provide for these people. His followers were outcasts of society and he needed to provide for them, make political alliances, economic decisions and wage wars.

His actions, must be seen in light of the task that faced him at his time. He truly was the messenger of God. His faith united the peoples of Arabia and helped restore peace – for a while.

The book describes how Islam was a polytheistic religion. She goes on to explain the significance of erasing idolatory in the Kabah. Each incident in Mohammed’s life leads to revelation, which has become a part of the Holy Quran. Literal interpretation or even misunderstood interpretation has led astray the peoples of today. Prayer to God is essential – how the prayer is made is not.

The truth is Mohammed wanted to open the eyes of his people to the reality that no established faith can restore peace to humans unless there is surrender to God. But unfortunately, he was surrounded by people who followed him blindly, without paying any heed to what he was really trying to convey. Many of his followers, appeared to be interested only in being part of the political order that would become really powerful in future – for material gains. The results are showing today.

An interesting insight into that which I being a woman find most derogatory as far as the religion is concerned – the veiling of a woman – is provided by Karen. The origin of veiling a woman is but a simple protection offered by Mohammed to his wives who were subject to teasing and taunting by the community. He did not veil the woman but kept her behind a curtain so as to protect her. This applied only to his wives and was not meant to be forced upon all the women of this world uniformly.

I had long ago read a book called “Roots”. Of course, Roots is about a man who tries to trace his African origin. The book depicts the Islam of the tribal people, the villagers in Africa. It also throws light on communism and nature worship which is all mingled into Islam. This was my first exposure of Islam as a religion of God versus the Islam of today which is reduced to a religion of tenets. People shared everything they had, there was no divisive property and people all prayed in their own way to Allah.

After very long, I have read an equally soothing account of Islam. Media also has a role to play in all this. Skewed portrayal by the media of certain religions or religious sects or political groups has flared this hatred. I have been around during the riots in Bombay and Gujarat and each of these has affected me and hardened my insides. I find it hard to justify a fight in the name of religion. What is religion at all? Why does it push one to kill? How can you justify the fight you call “jihad”? I feel terrible about the bombings and terrorist attack at Bombay. I was one of the affected – stuck in office all night worried that some terrorist may just come into the building and take us hostage. I couldn’t imagine what those boys had against us or any of the others who were killed that day!

Is it so difficult to see through all this? Is it so difficult to understand that the perpetrators of the violence only want political gains?

My conviction in Islam has only been strengthened by what I read in “Mohammed” by Karen Armstrong.

Mohammed did not see what his people were doing in his name. I am sure if Mohammed were to ever see what is happening in this world in his name, in the name of Islam, he would not be able to rest in peace. Similarly, Christ had nothing to do with all the forced conversions and all the wars in the name of Christianity.  An intriguing account of Jesus’s life (purely as a work of fiction) can be found in the book “The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ”.

It saddens me when educated people I know justify the killings at Godhra. If that is not genocide we need to redefine genocide. What Babur did or his predecessor was over long before any of us reading this were around. Razing down a mosque is not justified under any circumstances whatsoever.  If we are so against any external invasion, what are we still doing displaying all the pretty and gothic Victorian structures. Anything that suits we let stand – is that how it works? Do we pelt a Britisher when he comes to India because 7 generations or even 3 above him may have flogged to death an innocent Indian? No! This is because we dismiss it as misplaced anger. Then why was the mosque razed to the ground.

The Hindu fundamentalists are definitely as much to blame as the terrorists of the 26/11 attacks.   Anybody who wages a war under the garb of or in the flimsy pretext of religious equality or religious freedom or true religion or any such thing requires to be shot. Any educated person who justifies the killing of innocents, irrespective of the religion they profess should also be shot. I know that the Hindu fundamentalists are not the same as the fanatics who have wreaked terrorism. I am not even saying that they are justified in doing what they are doing because there was an aberration in the demolition of Babri Masjid. Yet, no violence is right. Whoever is responsible for it.

As educated people let us unite against this misplaced anger. Let education be a religion. By education I do not mean a certificate and an English education as left to us by the British. Let us rise and state that we will not give into this misplaced hatred or anger. Everyone of us will silence the voice that speaks ill of the religions or faith of the people of this world. We must reserve this anger for the factions that ruin our peace, kill innocents and our soldiers. Let us live in surrender to God and abandon this possessive manic love for the established faith.

I sometimes see, Jesus, Mohammed and Ram sitting in the heavens and looking down upon us with dismay and resignation – upon the people who in the name of love – hate and in the name of peace – make war.

This is what I received today. All three books have been written by Devdutt Pattnaik. Anyone who has read these, please share your thoughts:

It occurred to me that the reason I don’t go to bookstores anymore is because I just order whatever I need online.  The books do take their own time coming, but I am not in a hurry. This way I also save money from buying everything that I don’t read.

I have been thinking for sometime now that reading as a habit is going to change. The kindle will change it sooner or later. The kindle is not just easy on the eyes to read but the lightest manner possible of carrying over a hundred books and periodicals. You can virtually carry your entire library with you.

I first read about the Kindle being launched with an India compatible version sometime in October 2009. I was so thrilled. I had no idea what e-ink technology was but I just knew it would better than reading on the computer. Everything about the Kindle was fascinating. The fact that – as you read you could get word meanings; you could highlight important passages and also make notes.  The biggest disadvantage with the Kindle was that you need external light to read it. But, the silver lining is that when the external light is not available the book can be read to you.

Clearly the kindle is a more eco-friendly way of reading books. But it would take a huge paradigm shift to move entirely to the kindle. As human beings, we find it difficult to break away from the way of life we are used, to break away from tradition. I wouldn’t say the Kindle today can entirely replace books. Definitely as gadgets go, it is just one gadget and therefore cannot be shared or preserved the way we can regular books. But the time has come to go paperless. The time has come to save the trees.

Are we willing to make this small investment? Are we willing to move away from a tradition and take to this new form of reading? As a person who loves the feel of new books, old books, the feel of paper whether original or pirated, I am willing to change – though just not as yet.

The most common perception is that this movie is about the struggles in Bihar of labourers i.e. farm labourers. The labourers peacefully demanded higher wages. The landlord (played by Utpal Dutt) had political aspirations that failed, thanks to a candidate of the lower caste who won the election.  There is a benevolent school teacher who helps the labourers think and educates them about the minimum wages fixed by the government. Of course, the landlord would not even pay the labourers the minimum wages due.

The labourers in keeping with the school teachers’ instructions are not violent and make quiet demands, go on strike etc. Losing the election is the last straw on the camel’s back for the land lord. His son decides to get rid of school teacher and kills him in a road accident.

Our protagonist (Nseeruddin Shah) is enraged by the death of his mentor and chooses to kill the landlord’s son. After this all hell breaks loose. The landlord is set to kill all youngsters in the village who may have caused the death of his son. People are murdered within the village temple. Its a gory bloodbath.

Politicians and the government offer some support at the time. Om Puri, plays the village mukhiya (head of the village) and narrates most of the story leading to the blood bath.

So Narangiya and his wife escape from this mayhem and reach the house of the benevolent school teacher’s wife. She gives them some money and an address of a friend to whom they are referred. The friend sends them to Calcutta to work in a jute mill factory.

The rest of the movie revolves around Narangiya and his wife’s struggle to cope with the huge monstrous city that Calcutta is. There is no job in the jute mill and many labourers are out of jobs. Finally they get a job worth Rs. 20 (which was a lot of money in those days) after commission. They need to get some pigs about 3 dozens across the river. The entire struggle of getting the pigs across is the essence of Paar. Paar literally means crossing or across in Hindi.

Throughout the movie, the wife is pregnant and thinks this time she will lose her child. But the movie ends on a happy note.  They get Rs. 20 and some tips. The baby is alive. Everyone is happy.

Paar – also has a philosophical meaning. “Nadiya paar” literally means deliverance by God. A literal depiction of symbolism. All actors are brilliant.The cinematography is bleak to match with the reality of the persons the story revolves around. Many of the scenes are shot in darkness and in silhouettes. Even Calcutta is shown as seen from the perception of Mrs. and Mr. Narangiya.

On the whole a worthwhile experience. It was 2 hours well spent.

The first argument I ever had with this person who went on to be my best friend and now my husband is – whether suicide is okay.

He argued for the right to kill oneself as being a part of, a sort of sub-sect of the right to live. I was 18 then. I couldn’t grasp what possibly life could become, how intolerable it could be for some people and how some people just live life because its there.

Animals have self-preservation in their instinct. But humans, we are capable of a rational choice. This is not a justification for every child who fails an exam and hangs from the fan. But I am speaking of a calculated choice.

What if something happens in your life, which makes living or continuing to live, meaningless? I know of one such thing in my life. I would not want to live if the thing I dread the most happens as it would have belied everything I stood for and everything my husband stands for and what we i.e. me and him represent.

It would not be out of failure or dejection or depression, so much as it would be out of not wanting to live beyond.

I am not advocating suicide or escape from life. My proposition is simple. I should be able to take a cold, rational choice to end my life. Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami keeps coming back to me.  Now that I think of it, the female protagonist in the novel, tries hard to live, to justify her living and her life. But she is unable to sustain it. After her boyfriend killed himself, she tries to live life, but cannot.  So at some point she ends it.

I, as a living being, breathe. I, unfortunately cannot stop breathing when I feel like and therefore, if I wish to stop living a gruesome intervention is required. Is this the reason people abhor suicide – because it is an external intervention. Is it only the goriness of it all? The means of death are not natural and trouble the minds of those left behind, is that why suicide is shunned? Can the means of doing something justify the desirability or the undesirability of an end?

What if I were to go into a forest and end my life there? (I am vegetarian. So in all probability I would starve to death.) What if my body became one with the earth, then would I be hailed as a saint?

What about soldiers? Don’t they choose to end their lives when they go into a war? Is that not a rational choice? I can fully imagine what the consequence of allowing people legally to end their lives would be in the world today – total anarchy. But it still does not make it an illegitimate demand.

Suppose I am 65 and find out that I have cancer. Well, I am not going into the euthanasia debate. So, if at 65 I find out I have cancer, and I am a doctor lets say. I know death for me is going to be a long painful affair. I am happy with my life and choose it be a peak of my life. I die.

In India, the saints and yogis and all the great spiritual masters have attained high stages of meditation. The ultimate stage is the Samadhi, where the saint or yogi, chooses the time and place of death (in common man terms). They go into a deep trance from which they never come back. Is that suicide? No.

So why, if I should choose to end my life, I shouldn’t be allowed to. The state like in the case of most other subjects has no answer to this. I would probably be shot for asking. That should serve my purpose, but that is not how I would want to go.

The movie is shot as an ensemble of lives of people in Gujarat post the Godhra riots. The lives of a Gujarati woman who is subjected to violence in her own home, a woman who cannot get over the violence in the city. A woman whom the riot had shaken up, she could hear people knocking her door crying for help, at her window asking to be let in. People whom a mob was chasing to slaughter. Women and children who were burnt because they belonged to another religion.

The story of a muslim couple, an auto rickshaw driver and his wife, whose house was burnt down by Hindu fundamentalists. An old muslim singer, played by Naseeruddin Shah. A man older than independent India whose love for music does not leave any room for hatred. His music survives the attacks. But he is anguished by humans killing other humans.

A muslim businessman married to a Gujarati girl, whose shop is looted and plundered by the likes of the husband of the Gujarati woman I mentioned earlier.

A little muslim boy in search of his dead father.

These are all people whose lives are changed forever. Why? Because a mob decided that people of a religion should be killed. The Hindus decided the Muslims should be killed. Muslims decided Hindus should be killed.

Why? Why? Why? Ask them why and no one can give one concrete answer. There is none! The truth is no one knows why they have killed or raped. No one understands the anger or the hatred. What is the difference between gods that have form and gods that don’t. Haven’t Hindus been taught that God is omnipotent and omnipresent? God is present in everything. If God is present in everything, how come your belief allows you to accept that God is absent in a muslim?

Politicians are using this mob mentality and what do they gain – 5 more years of power. In the name of religion? Isn’t religion a private emotion? Isn’t my religion sacred to me? Why is my religion superior or inferior to yours? Do singers persecute all people who cannot sing? Do dancers persecute all people who cannot dance? What about painters?

What is this religion for a mass? Is it not my liberation as an individual? I don’t understand.

I was not in Gujarat. But I can hear the screaming, I can smell the fear of people. Why? What are we killing each other for?

After the riots in that defeaning silence, stench of blood who is happy? No one. Everyone has been affected in some way or the other.

When I finished watching the movie, I was shivering. The movie ends on a positive note. But leaves the reality clinging to your skin. The fact that murder was committed at such a scale. Is this not genocide? How come the international forces have turned a blind eye to this? Is it not genocide? What does it take for it to be declared a genocide? Why isn’t India being condemned?

Why is the leadership in India not being condemned? The international community doesn’t care. India is profitable and therefore no one is raising any hue and cry. Is this the country I live in? Is this the world I want to bring children into.

I don’t even know what happened at Godhra. I was hardly 18 when it happened. We wanted to believe that there was reason for the violence, there was none. I only saw burning trains, screaming reporters and crying women. Who knows what the truth is? The truth is what the media paints it to be. Can one hear over the noise of the media. Its all unintelligible sounds. Its cacophony. I don’t even want to know anymore what happened. Can I live with the fact that it did happen? I have to live with the fact that it happened.

There are some who confidently will tell me who actually started it, which is the best magazine to believe. Tehelka seems to be the most reliable account. Yet. It doesn’t explain the desire to burn human flesh, to massacre, to drink blood. I don’t think anyone can answer this question.

I began to read not knowing what its about. (I am one of those people who like to read the end after reading less than 20 pages of the book.) But somehow, it didn’t greatly appeal to me. I thought it will be one of those books which I pick and don’t finish (which off late have been quite a few).

The books smoothly takes you into the setting. It is a very unique setting. Pre-world war I – New Zealand. Being part of the commonwealth nations that were at one time ruled by the Great Britain, its easy to ignore the far east and far far south east while thinking of World War I.

Amidst the changes that world was going through in the first two decades of the new century, there was a love story brewing somewhere. The story of two people who find themselves alone. Two people who are capable of civility and humanity and who are drawn to each other despite the differences in their physical appearance, colour of the skin and greatest of all – language.

Yung till his end aspires to speak English. Did I say till his end? Yes. The story unfortunately does not end happily. Alison Wong, the author, does provide perspectives. The most frightening being that of Katherine’s son, Robbie. He is the sum of all brain washing that society can do to a child to make it believe in caste and difference in the class of two human beings. Being from India, casteism is something I have seen and grown up with. But somehow, never been able to accept it. I was shocked at the age of 10 when my father told me that untouchability in India was an offence under a special legislation for that purpose. Why should there be any untouchability? Who declared us high and mighty? But my dad just shrugged and said, that is how things were in India.

For a long time I believed that the reason India was not progressing at a pace the western world or its contemporaries have progressed, is because of this blind belief in age old systems. However, at the time no one told me  that this is not something that is true of India but is true of every place in the world.

Reading this book has only affirmed that thought process of mine. The holocaust gives me shivers everytime I think of it. In some form or the other people have found excuses to kill each other. I am not advocating that China is not trying to be a super power or that I am not scared of Chinese infiltration into India through the commercial world. But Yung is not China. Yung was not the reason that money was being “squandered” to China from New Zealand. The 5 pounds that Yung sent his sick wife and son he never saw cannot topple the economy.

The anger of people is so misplaced. To systemically teach children to hate on the ground that someone is a lower form of a  human being! That’s not an education! Even the one moderniste, feministe, character in the book admonishes Katherine for thinking that a Chinese man was capable of being loved.

It is an extremely well written book. Although I wonder if it only portrays a lop sided picture. I cannot be sure.

Recently, while I was attending a very dear cousin’s wedding which had an attendance of over 1000 people, we wondered why there were so many people invited to the wedding. I also thought about a simple wedding at a temple with very close family and friends, wouldn’t that be better. Can the money not be put to better use? Then we got into this discussion on how in every culture a lot of money is spent on weddings. Now that I think of it, weddings are about people witnessing the joy of two individuals and two families. I am sure the feeling of love or togetherness of the couple is a private emotion. But the larger the weddings and more the people attending it, the more it feels like the universe is witness to it and has blessed it.

I guess it is the same with marriage. Kahlil Gibran has said a lot about marriage, but he has also said that children are ‘life’s longing for itself’. It’s true. Marriage is life’s longing for acknowledgement and children are life’s longing for itself. They carry the imprints of their parents and pass it on to the next generation.

I guess marriage is the answer to the question on whether if a tree falls in a jungle where there is no one present – it can be said to make a sound? I guess, the fact that I have lived my life and each day as it unfolded is witnessed by my partner and the same for him.

Right now, my husband is away studying. Everything in life feels unreal. The house feels empty even though I am in it and there is so much stuff in it. Eating feels like a chore something I do mechanically. Life itself feels like it’s on pause. But life goes on as usual. I wake up and go to work. I work (and sometimes blog when I am too bored). I meet people and friends. But something is missing. Something definitely is missing.