Tuesday, December 23, 2008

War or no war?

War or no war ?

This one to address something most impending on each of us, even though I remain no accredited expert to deliver on it. My mind is a free world where any thing can click, and here is on such uncommon calculations:
The 26/11 Mumbai carnage has brought us to an unprecedented position with our western neighbours. What routes further from here? When reading about the event, minute by minute, on the Times of India news site , accessing the internet using a USB doggle from China, I was feeling the pain within. Perhaps every one of us , all Indians-- Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs-- each one of us must have questioned to himself if we were meant to die away suddenly by an unknown, un-understood bullet, or a bomb blast, while dinning in a posh hotel, or taking a tough journey in a train? What will be the purpose of our life? To suddenly die away?
And this bastard-y act from Pakistani soil has put every single mind under a mountain of self-doubts. Yes, that would contain Indian Muslims as well, whose allegiance to this nation has always been subjected to scrutiny by all non-Muslims, even myself, until the Mumbai carnage. Mumbai doesn’t settle the dust from their allegiance issue, but perhaps leaves them with no option but to side with the country they were born on, even if they didn’t like the cricket match victories of it. The ‘unknown’ bullets and the bombs have its targets quite as much unknown to itself; - it could be any --Muslims and non-Muslims - alike.
The 26/11 sent a message across to them too, that they are as much subject to the fear as the rest of us. Same fate and same Hoors or Angels wait for the non-Muslims in the Jannat or Heaven above as for the Muslims, even if the Indian Muslims are indirectly and silently intending to support the Jehad , if they are welcoming a self-sacrifice for the cause of Islam. Even Indian Muslims have families, and as much deep-rooted in the soil of this nation as the rest of us.
The question then reduces to that of life and death for all of us, A decision has to be made-- whether to break the 5000years of our history of never attacking a country, or, an as much old history of taking attacks from the outsiders. Changing times induces us to change the history from here on. It is a post independence India, taking steps for a self-improvement and struggling to make a good relations with its neighbours, unless the neighbours have some hidden agenda, like the victory of Islam, for themselves.
China is also slowly waking up to understand the inherent desires of us, even as the agendas of Pakistan become visible to the whole world. A nation created after a fragmenting of this continent, has no other purpose but to win us over, and then the whole world.
The US is as much in bad shoes as us. It may rather be seeing us coming in the same bad shoes as they already were in. The whole world criticized them, and Mr Bush, for his invasion of Iraq. This carnage leading to Indian assalut would give them a good partner to stand-by to face the bombarding questions from the whole world. The two could explain it better to the world, why they did what they did. Further it would ease the pressure, the workload in particular, from the cleansing job they are on, in Iraq and Afghan. The assault will leave us, Indians, less choice post the attack, but to become one with the US. And that is a cost much less to ask of us today, than the huge collateral damage we are taking otherwise. Repeated incursions in Pakistan by the US drone planes would not yield as much result as one single full-scale assault by the Indians.
The other Gulf states, despite sharing the common religion with Pakistan, are themselves undergoing some sort of democracy-kind of social-welfare awakening as the oil is weeding out or evaporating from their soil. The new world order, of Globalization and multi-nationalism, has taught them to start pushing the religion behind, into a closet and accept the advance of Indian Keralites with an open arm. They minght not be taken by the fact that Pakistan is Muslim state too, while the king of Saudi-Arabia takes some measures to establish the sincerity of Muslims people and Islamic religion to the whole big world staring suspicion at them. Maybe they would sense that Pakistan, now, is the one bringing a bad name to them, when India remains the home of one of the largest population count of the Muslims. SRK, Salman, Aamir, and many more belong to this country.
Pakistan seems to be cornering itself into an unperceived isolation by assuming more arrogance and denials to apparently us, but deep within, to the whole world. To the world, it is now becoming a common Bollywood story of two brothers, born of same mother, and who arrive a different fate some 60 years hence. Something like the movie ‘Race’.
In case of war, Pakistan, which is at present looking up to its nuclear arsenal will have lesser free-will to use, as many Indian Muslims over here stand along and wait for what there western brothers have kept in store for them for all the direct and indirect allegiance they had paid to the former. Nuclear bomb is an end device, meant to kill Muslims as much as the Hindu ‘Zionist’ and the western ‘Zionist’.
This becomes a question of life and death for each of us on the eastern side of the disputed border...

Monday, December 08, 2008

Open letter to a blog pal, A

In my thoughts today :
1. If there are no rules, then let there be ethics. Else, the world will go wild again.
2. Some things which can be done in stupidity cannot be done in smartness.


Dear A,
Thinking about this blog, 'Forks', of yours last night, I felt little sleepless too. “ You can choose to live to impress someone OR you can choose to live for yourself” . I also went through the SENG site which you have linked in your blog. I don’t really know if I had this of not, because unlike your case where you have undergone a proper therapy for it mine is undiagnosed. But my symptoms, which are now my memories, tell me that it was the same.
You also mention about various authors of existentialism to Raghvan, of which I have heard not a single. Thankfully, much like your background, I also had a strong academic base, particularly in the field of sciences and mathematics, when I appear to have been affected by this condition.
Also noteworthy at this point is that this crisis of self-existence is very common in people from my region of our country, I can’t really say why, but I have lots of persons, males and females, who have taken deep inquiry into the questions listed to yourself.
One such classmate, T Khare (complying my policy of ‘No Names’ ), (Orkut link :‘suppressed’ ) did his engineering, BE, from Agra and later decided to renounce everything to pursue his vocation in Astrology. On orkut he puts his ambition to be ‘working to find medical cures through combination of ayurveda and astrology’(!!). His story is that even during his school-years, Class X (ISCE) he would abandon his house to go to Haridwar, Shantikunj Ashram, of Gayatri parivar, to enrol as a pupil. In those days the Ashram did not take him (perhaps fearing) owing his underage (and thus a Police action upon T’s parents complain). He was 15 yrs old at that time. In fact, the first such attempt by ‘T’ was just a few days before the Boards. He returned home on the morning of English paper (a compulsory subject !).
T’s story gets me to think about the theories on ‘belief’, which I know not many, but assume that it must surely be having something about prodigious affect of Beliefs on humans. I myself do not accept the scientific scope of Ayurveda(very feeble chances to unraveling new medicines), and not a dime of the Astrology( a nautical astronomer, I myself am), but would have to at least give room to placebos. Some odd times, placebos have worked miracles.
Some (strong) Beliefs, I think, cannot be fought by non-believers. It is better that non-believers(a strong believers of one kind) give room to believers (strong believers of another kind). Better to settle dispute by adopting mutual respect.
Then, in my vague memories, there was also one D Choudhary, often questioning the same issues enlisted by yourself. He later did his engineering from IIT-Kharagpur, and now working (or doing something) in the US.
Such enquires are common for people of this age experiencing intense competition. It is bound to provoke thoughts within us. Most of my blogs are an outcome of the same activity within. How these queries develop an individual depends a lot on his cultural, social, domestic and academic setup. Some chose to take the path of Isaac Newton, Some of Sigmund Freud, some of Osho Rajneesh, and many others of man-killers (the terrorist).
In the light of the above I would conclude by saying that I see yourself not much different from me. I propose that formative conditions will have to be treated to contain the spread of the existential-crisis condition among people. I mean mostly people should be living happy, cheerful, debonair, not self-inquisitive.
:-)
Regards,

Sunday, December 07, 2008

Brainwashed!

LIFE IS ABOUT ADJUSTMENT, BUT NOT TRYING YOUR ADJUSTMENTS BY ADOPTING A SITUATION DEMANDING ADJUSTMENTS.
(
My cry to the arguers who put sentences like ‘what will you do when…’(so that I should start doing the emergency actions as a routine procedure).

Brainwashed!!
Reading the news reports on the terror attacks of yesterday in Mumbai, the argument went on to say how deep indoctrinated is the psyche of a suicide bomber that s/he is ready to destroy self for his beliefs. In raw words, he is brainwashed. I proceeded to think - are we all not brainwashed to some good extent in some larger sense?
The arguer would often describe the malpractices in business and governance, the helplessness of person--something or other-- to establish ‘the ways of the world’ . “ sh*t floats and it floats everywhere”-- the great scatological management thought to prove own point, implying - wrong is unacceptable, no matter where. Isn’t that a brainwashing in some other deep sense, and which eventually facilitates in the ‘brainwashing’ of terrorists. To me this same thought was given to mean that it was I who was creating sh*t-- doing a wrong by attempting to report one wrong.
The argument was primarily around whether the ship-yard will charge the ship for picking ship’s stores by its crane or not. I insisted - they would not; my reasoning being that at a repair yard, the use of crane is the vary foundation of all work. Who accounts and how does he account whether one single move was for ship’s personal work or the yard staff’s work. Then, what when the ship’s own crane is rendered unusable for n number of reasons, not distinctly known to all the yard staff involved with the crane accounting, if there be any. Also, there is no known agreement in regard to usage of yard crane - between the ship, the ship owners and the yard. All personal work of ship staff is a ship’s work only.
Arguments kept coming that money is directly involved in giving all the services - however big or small; and hence a cost would be billed on the ship’s account. Some inquires from some yard staff even sprang an amount of ¥ 500RM for this particular lift. I argued if that will show up specifically in the bill anywhere? Reply said- No, because we were as it is working in a project where million dollars are anyways involved. (exiguous amount could not be reflected in thus).
I insisted that even then the break-down has to be clear-- so that even I may delegate my staff to keep track of such cost-incurring movements, and keep them in checks to reduce the cost.
Cost-cutting was the motto gladly accepted but with words that not everything is disclosed, and that bills won’t even come to our hand anyways. (the fundamentals of ‘Transparency’ are commonly flayed like this)
I agreed that we generally remain impervious with such details, but if money saving is really intended through the means of making ship-staff use the ship crane, then such things will requires a diagnosing from us too.
We are small fishes in the big oceans-- I was made to understand. There is no such thing as free lunch, and hence I was told, I should not assume that cost will not be incurred uselessly. There are many sneak-viewer who would inform that to the owners and the yard to count the exact thing-- I was told.
My ignorance of details was admissible to me, but the same was getting utilized to poke in other more theories to, taking things away into self -willed direction.
I argued that- I would agree to the demand of co-operation, --would offer the best ‘good faith’ that can be- but the same not to be mis-utilised to mould things in own favour, and/or to create any economy pressure where there exist none.
The arguer was my senior capacity. I FELT I WAS BEING BRAINWASHED.