Hail to thee rebels

This one's for those who challenge the norms. Those who refuse to "conform". These are the few and far between souls who choose to question before they follow, before they accept history and tradition at face value. The Howard Roarks of our dreams and the Mahatma Gandhis of our times who choose to do it their way.

I salute the audacity of the rebel with a cause. Of the man who stands up for what he believes and lives out the meaning of his convictions. It's hard to imagine what the world today might have been without the vision of these individuals. Had a man with a telescope and a fire in his belly not challenged the didactic doctrines of the church that sought to have us believe that the sun went round the earth only because they found it biblically convenient, we wouldn't have looked beyond the realm of our blue planet.

We understand the world around us by questioning. This the maxim that science is based upon. Unless we question often enough and earnestly enough, we're unlikely to find answers. And event then most of us fail to question. Because we "conform"..... and take things at face value more often than not. A society that must foster a healthy spirit of inquiry must learn to respect those who inquire. As a child moves through his formative years of education, he must be made to believe that questioning is a virtue.

An integral part of learning to question is keeping your mind open. Then again, one must learn to ask the right questions. And have the right intentions when asking the right questions. With malice towards none at all.

In the spirit of the ideas I elucidated, I quote these lines from an Apple commercial which carries the credo: Think Different

Here's for the crazy ones.
The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers.
The round pegs in the square holes,
The ones who see things differently.

They're not fond of rules and they have no respect for the status quo.
You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them....
But the only thing you can't do is ignore them.
Because they change things.
They push the human race forward.

And while some people see them as the crazy ones, we see genius.
Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world......
Are the ones who do.

Congenital Prosperity

Quote of the day: "Call me Priyanka Vadra, not Gandhi."

When the first daughter of the country(for all practical purposes) says that she doesn't want to be known by the name that got her where she is in the first place, that smells of hypocrisy. For one, Priyanka Gandhi(or Vadra, like I give a shit....) has no business being in politics. The fact that she is only goes to say that India is a "dynastic democracy".

It seems to be getting more and more obvious that this country is repeating its own history by making sure that an individual's birth decides her fate. Just like it was in Vedic India. If you're born into a political family, chances are :

1.You'll be rolling in great wealth.
2.Rules that apply to lowly citizens will not hold for you.
3.You'll continue to amass great wealth(not a penny of it your own) throughout your life.
4.The law of the land will contort under your will.

The next best thing:
If you're born into a family that was branded (under)privileged by our constitutional fathers sixty years ago, you'll never have to struggle to be among the meritocracy. Life for you shall be "reserved". You may not have learnt shit through your school years and that won't stop you from getting into the finest educational institutions in the country. And even if you flunk there, there are jobs and promotions waiting for you outside...

The bottom line: There are those of us who work our ways up through life. There are others who suffer from Congenital Prosperity.

An ode to Counter Strike

The bug has bitten us. The Counter Strike epidemic is spreading. And fast. I guess it's one of the side effects of a "wired" life. All you hear all day long now in the lobby is: "Fire in the hole!!" No one seems to be able to resist the Counter Strike juggernaut....AOE fundamentalists have converted. Warcraft is passe. In the realm of LAN gaming, CS rules supreme unchallenged. No one seems to be caring about the exams either!

So do I like what's happening? Can't say. I'm an addict too. I mean yes I'm tired of the snipes and headshots that I end up on the receiving end of, but then there's always that desire to keep playing.

Bleary eyes, aching metacarpals and throbbing temples..... no physical discomfiture seems to be strong enough to curb the zeal for the game. Servers run 24x7, interrupted only by the not-so-infrequent power cuts( that are greeted with the choicest expletives). DC++ forums are flooded with CS talk... casual banter on the games of the day and innumerable requests for CS IP's....

Wonder if this will ever end. I know for sure I don't want it to. 2 months of summer vacation may only increase BIT's obsession for CS.... So next semester when placements commence, don't be surprised if you hear a distressed call from inside the cell... I'd bet I heard something like :"Need Backup!!"

So you don't understand life?? Good for you!

There are those who spend their lives trying to understand it and there are those who spend their lives....well, living it. Now, what I'm saying is that the latter end up leading better lives. Think about it. Is analyzing life really worth it? There are individuals who keep asking themselves....So why does man lead a life? What after life? What before it? I say: Hardly matters. Your singular purpose on the earth is to LIVE your life....not understand it.

So isn't it unscientific to stop questioning the meaning of life? I don't think so. If you really want to understand life, do so by trying to understand the world around you. Two reasons why this is a better approach: First, you're more likely to get some answers and second, you're more likely to get satisfaction out of the quest....

Which is exactly why I respect Newton more than the Buddha. Newton gave us deep insight into our physical lives....he defined man's existence by unravelling the mysteries of the physical world. The Buddha did his thing too, but the answers he came up with are ambiguous to say the least and disputable by all means.

If the Buddha got saddened by some unsavoury sights of the "real world" and decided to go into penance.....well, that's his life....but I believe a better approach would be to try an d take action against the misery that's around you....not sit around analyzing it.

Philosophers will disagree, but those who believe in living life through action will corroborate my beliefs. That's what the Gita said anyway..

Just when I thought...

It's uncanny....just when I thought we'd had enough cultural policing(read previous post)....some white guy comes in and pecks out Shilpa Shetty.....I mean did he really think he'd get away with that??

At an AIDS awareness campaign??

Will Liz Hurley be prosecuted?

I'm amused. Again. We've taken the most innocuous issue and made it into national headlines.....Liz Hurley didn't take off her footwear during her "Hindu" Wedding. Someone's already filed a case against her and her father-in-law is willing to testify against the couple(or so I heard)

I have a good laugh and keep asking myself how we as nation keep raking up non-issues and making them into matters of national concern. I mean does Liz Hurley not removing her footwear warrant judicial action? And we call ourselves a liberal society?

The problem is that this is not the only occasion when such a thing has happened. It happens all the time.....every other day..... we talk about banning the Da Vinci Code without even watching the movie.....We assault unsuspecting couples in parks in the name of moral policing....and the list can go on and on.... I mean are we so jobless as a nation?

If we wish to be taken seriously by the world henceforth, we should stop acting like clowns. But the question that needs to be answered in the immediate future is: Will Liz Hurley be prosecuted? I know I won't be surprised if she will!

Losing my religion

I'm losing my religion. Don't get me wrong...I'm not converting and I'm not announcing my belief in atheism....I'm happy with the Gods, it's religion that bugs me. The thing is that in my country religion is maniacal....it's associated with a host of unwanted activities that rational people( like me I suppose) could do well to avoid. Like rituals. Like sacrifice. Like rioting. The real issues I believe have long lost themselves in the mires of the non-issues.

Religion in India, especially over the last century has done us more harm than good. It's divided us, both as a country and as a society. In an otherwise peace loving region, where hospitality is the shibboleth, religious intolerance is an ugly scar on the face of our humanity.

Religion, I believe is something deeply personal. It's your hotline to God. And it isn't something that's meant to be conducted in public. As soon as you pull religion out of the private domain and bring it out into the public domain, trouble brews.

My advice to fellow Indians....Pray by all means, worship by all means but please.....be wary of those who claim to "unite" you in the name of religion.... that's where hell begins...