INDIA ENTERTAINING UNLIMITED

Ruskin Bond, the famous British writer, living in Mussorrie, India,  was once asked why he preferred to make India his home.He replied ‘because one may die in India due to any number of reasons but boredom is not one of them’. He explained that India is a vast country of many hays and colors and something interesting and entertaining is happening here 24x7 which gives him enough material for his writings.

I think we all will agree with this. India is said to be so many Indias within India. With over 26 languages and innumerable dialects, cultural vivacity, political opinions and diverse food habits, India is a huge Corporate which I call “India Entertaining Unlimited’. Let us take a few recent picks:

Jayalaitha goes to jail in disproportionate assets case but people are talking of her 2000 pairs of shoes, 10000 sarees and of course boxful of jewelries. She was a film actress, a successful actress at that and she was also a ‘friend’ of the great MGR. I do not understand what is the big deal about shoes, sarees and jewelries. If people want to get entertained, so be it.

Take the case of another madam Mayawati,  ex CM of  UP, called ‘behanji’ by her supporters. She too has over 2000 pairs of shoes, 5000 ladies bags, 1000 diamond ear rings and tops and of course equal sets of ladies salwar suits to go with that. Once she sent state aircraft to Mumbai to fetch the imported shoe consignment to Lucknow. She was neither an actress, nor a successful advocate for which she trained but she had millions of supporters who voluntarily contributed to MBDF every year.  She was also a favorite of Kansi Ram, the founder of BSP by virtue of which she inherited his wealth. I again wonder what the big deal about her shoes, bags, ear wears and suits. She has only provided some grit to the rumor mill.

PM Modi launched  SWACHH BHARAT ABHIYAN  and cleaned the roads. So did some ministers and high ranking Government officials. Today our Cricket God Sachin Tendulkar also took to the broom. A very good start. I wish if they could clean the garbage lying for days behind the residence of our ex PM, MMS. But that would have been showing some favor to MMS and Media would have speculated if he too like Shashi Tharoor is joining BJP. No one is talking about the regular safai karamcharies who clean the garbage of these broom holders round the year.

Maharastra and Haryana are going to polls on 15^th and a good bye has been hailed to alliances. There remains to be seen who sleeps with whom after the results are out. Every one is keeping the options open. Politics is the name of possibilities and it hardly matters with whom you slept with and who really is the father of the child.

Feel free to add more entertaining news. There is no dearth of it.     

  

BURDEN OF PERFECTION

BURDEN OF PERFECTION

The other day I heard someone say that he feels uncomfortable in the company of idiots. This reminded me of William Hazlitt telling his son that if there were no foolish people around who would care for the wise ones. He also said philosophically speaking, foolish people need our empathy rather than ridicule.  This particular person, to me seemed to be one who can never go wrong as he thinks he is perfection personified.

Perfectionists are by nature tend to go into minute details before taking a decision. They take a deep breath before they speak. They do not trust people on their face value. We find them in offices and at home. They are feared and admired with equal measure. It is not that their decisions do not go wrong but they do not hesitate to own them. People in general try to be perfect in whatever they do.  Nobody wants to fail or falter.  Some of our greats, about whose private life we know little or nothing are the embodiment of perfection in public life. There are many such personalities in the field of art, science, literature, performing arts, music and even families. They are hardworking, balanced and cautious. They spend a whole lot of time in meeting the exacting standards of perfection they have set for themselves. They may not show it but they inwardly enjoy the appreciation and rewards that come with perfection.

Perfection must be a huge burden. There can be no improvement on perfection as there is nothing beyond it. The burden of not doing wrong must be keeping them on their toes all the times. They cannot go wrong is burden enough. The pressure must be killing.  Failure may be scaring them. The race to perfection may make them recluse as they may not comfortable in the company of lesser mortals. There is no wonder that some of them are not in a position to carry the burden and scum to drugs and alcohol.  Not able to hold the failure on other fronts, mainly family and relationships, they may get depressed and commit suicide.

But then the world would be worthless without these perfectionists. They have created many benchmarks we can be proud of. They have contributed in the field of science, medicines, art, culture, religion, yoga and many other areas making life worth living. It is rather an irony that many of them could not carry the burden of perfection, the latest being Robins William, the actor, who committed suicide.

  

     

Bedu Pako Baramasa - arr. Meghan Quinlan

THE PROBLEM WITH HAPPINESS IS..

THE PROBLEM WITH HAPPINESS IS..

Top of Form

Bottom of Form

The problem with happiness is that you are fine till you find it. Our whole life is a journey in search of happiness but we don’t know what happiness is. A normal life would be just fine and if fact is just fine but we are not ‘happy’ with it. We want to be happy but do not know what makes us happy. A good job, a good house, a good meal, a good night sleep, a caring spouse, loving kids- we have all of them and we are just fine with them but we want happiness. If all this is not, what happiness is? 



Okay, life is just fine but not fine enough to make us really happy. Really happy?  What is that? Oh, I need a big car. Sure enough, save some money, take some loan and have a car. Are you happy now? You wanted a big car and you have it, so you should be really happy. You were just fine with that old small car of yours, it was running, wasn’t it? You found your new car and thought you will be happy but you are just fine only. The statuesque remains. It is the same thing when we have a bigger house, a holiday to a most aspired destination or with a large Bank balance. Will having more cars, more houses, more holidays, and more bank balance help? Does not look so. People already having all these are also feeling just fine.

The so called happiness lingers for a while but sooner than later we return to where we started from. This is about finding happiness in material possessions.

Let us talk about finding happiness in spiritual journey. The world we live in is not real. Our real purpose in life is to find happiness within and for that we need to cultivate spiritual longings. We immerse ourselves in scriptures and Yoga. We visit temples and all religious shrines in search of the happiness. We do find some peace when we are in the temples or in the company of the learned saints but that is all. After a while the feeling of just fine returns. Where has the happiness gone? Will more time in the temples and with the saints help? Does not look so. People who are here for years look just fine if not bored.

The question therefore is why are we running after happiness if being just fine is what we are going get after the long race? We are already just fine, is not that good enough? 

Text Verdurian Hari Lakhera

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EXPERIENCE COMES WITH AGE (?)

EXPERIENCE COMES WITH AGE (?)

Not necessarily, I think. Then what else becomes experience? Of course age is important in the sense that as we grow in years we have the opportunity to try and observe many things in our life time. Experience as per dictionary is Personal trial; Continued observation; knowledge gained by trial and observation; Trial and knowledge from suffering and enjoyment; suffering itself. Age is the number of years a person gas lived.

Let us go back to our childhood and formatting years at home and at school and college. As a child, as we now know, everything was new to us and we asked questions and more questions. Most of these questions and the answers we got were beyond our comprehension but we took those answers for granted because we trusted the people who answered them- our parents and teachers. This experience  in the form of answers were to be tried by us in our coming life.

Let us now look at the experience we gained in our working life. We have worked in our chosen field of training or choice as engineers, doctors, accountants, salesmen, clerks, managers, actors, artists, politician, and bureaucrats and so on. We came across many events that took place during our work span. We call all these events as experience based on our observations and trials.

Let us also look at the events that took place outside our field of work.  There were many events in family, neighborhood and elsewhere.

All these trials and observations called experiences prepare us to react suitably to similar situations in future. These experiences become the yardstick for our belief. Younger generation looks up to their elders for advice in times of need because of their experience.

Many of us failed to try and observe the events that happened around us in the years we have lived so far and many of us again have different experience on similar events and therefore different reactions and solutions. The younger generation look up for answers and we have none or we have some vague answers. They start doubting us. We call it generation gap. We forget that trials and observations are ongoing processes and we cannot say this far and no more  as long as our mental faculties are in place.   

Age, therefore, has nothing to do with experience. A younger man/woman may have more experience than an old man because the former took interest in events happening around him and the latter didn’t. Some of us are tremendously gifted and have vried experience but some of us  limited our trials and observations to our field of work and family and did not bother to go beyond that. Our lack of interest in things that did not bring us money or fulfill our selfish ends resulted into a huge deficit of experience. If this is true, it is our duty to tell our children to look outward and gain as much experience as possible, develop interests other than that give them money and personally gain the experience. A little bit of experiencing sufferings will help in understanding what suffering is.

        

WHY HINDU GODS ARE DEPICTED DIFFERENTLY am at loss to understand why Hindu Gods are depicted with special features. Is it becaise they are super humans and that’s why they have many heads and hands? Is it because they all in one or one in all? I have profond respect for my Gods more so because they are beyond my comprehension. In such situation you can either love or hate or just stay neutral and I prefer to respect and that is my personal choice. They are there to preserve, protect and destroy me. It is their will. Could not they do the same by remaining just comprehensible? Or is it the product of our imagination that we have depicted then like that? Contrary to that Christian God is just as human as we are. Muslims do not have any picture of their God and they are saved from this dilema. We have some 33 million God and Goddesses and each one of them is depicted differently.

WHY HINDU GODS ARE  DEPICTED DIFFERENTLY?

It may look rather whimsical but at time I am at loss to understand why Hindu Gods are depicted with special features. Is it becaise they are super humans and that’s why they have many heads and hands? Is it because they all in one or one in all?

I have profond respect for my Gods more so because they are beyond my comprehension. In such situation you can either love or hate or just stay neutral and I prefer to respect and that is my personal choice. They are there to preserve, protect and destroy me. It is their will.

Could not they do the same by remaining just comprehensible? Or is it the product of our imagination that we have depicted then like that?

Contrary to that Christian God is just as human as we are. Muslims do not have any picture of their God and they are saved from this dilema. We have some 33 million God and Goddesses and each one of them is depicted differently.

BEING MODERATELY MODERATE

BEING MODERATELY MODERATE

Lot has changed since we were in schools. The changes are evident in every walk of life from the clothes we wear to the living standards we follow. Even the way we think and act in a given situation. The changes are more dramatic in the way we observe our religious beliefs or dictates.

Let us first talk about dress because that is the most visible. Nothing much has changed as far as men’s dressing is concerned because the poor fellow has a few choices from wide flared to narrow drain piped trousers, from full sleeved to muscle shirts or from flat heeled-wide toed to high heeled narrow toed shoes. Nothing really matters what he wears at home which can be a lungi to a Bermuda. All the designers’ wear for the females, of the females but not necessarily by the females. In those olden days the girls would come to school/college in salwar suits/lahanga kurta /sarees. The salwar suits or lahanga kurta were accompanied by dupattas (scarves). The saree were worn in such a way that only the small angle of the neck was visible. The whole idea was to cover the cleavage. In a way it was regressive because managing the saree was a job by itself and during summer times these dresses were quite oppressive. Things started changing for some good when skirt tops in schools replaced salwar suits/lahanga kurta at least. Currently there is some sort of competition among females in out placing each other by dressing as scantly as possible. The tops are moving upwards and the jeans/skirts are going downwards. So is the case with blowze and saree. It appears what is good for the west is good for us too. The good thing is that there are people liberal enough to accept the change but there are people who would impose dress codes in schools colleges and offices.

The other area is about religion. There are fundamentalists and there are liberals and moderates. There are rebels who would eat meat and drink alcohol much against the dictates of the tradition and there are moderates who would not mind this happening in moderation. There are fundamentalists who would want their women to dress in a particular way and there are moderates who accept the changes in moderation. There are people dead against inter cast marriages and there are moderates who do not put any hurdles.

Another area is the value system. These days it is quite common for men and women frequenting bars and discotheques and enjoying the fare late into nights. Not only dress codes or food habits or religious beliefs have changed but also the entire gamut of our way of living has changed. It will not be very correct to say that this change is visible only among the educated and upwardly mobile strata of our society. Even the middle class and lower middle class is not untouched. We should not be surprised if we find a jean top clad teenaged girl in some remote village of our country.

Moderation in moderation is good but the point is how moderate the moderate should be. Simply put how to define moderation.