Pieces of a Nation

I just watched the Satyamev Jayate episode on untouchability and i'm just angry! Bezwada Wilson got his wish with respect to one viewer at least! How?? How can things like this happen and people just push it under the doormat? How can people even think to themselves that they're better than someone else? How can they think that someone else will make them 'impure'? As if they're so pure anyway...It's just ridiculous that caste still exists and that nothing is being done to change it. It's at points like this that I think of how stupid democracy is. Politicians don't do anything because they don't want to anger the Hindu extremists and they just make caste into a big 'vote bank' and people don't matter. Classifications, labels, castes...the head/legs of Brahma, really? So what?

I really really want to do something! I don't want to be a person who just talks, but one who actually changes stuff. I'm going to study like crazy for IAS now.

Thing is, caste's never affected me at all. Though, actually, why are there no really poor people in our churches? Is it because of the English thing or is there a caste factor too? Am I playing even a small role in propagating casteism?

The small boy who didn't eat the midday lunch at school because he was made to sit apart from the others just made me cry. The way he innocently asked what 'untouchability' was was just heartbreaking.

And, somehow, when it comes to protesting against reservation on the basis of caste, there are a million voices. Everyone's against reservation. No one's for getting rid of the stupid castes!

A Clanging Cymbal

Love, love, love. Nothing compares to love! The beautifully written thirteenth chapter of 1 Corinthians  resounds with descriptions of that elusive emotion that everyone yearns to truly find.

If you had no idea what love was, though, nothing in that passage would make you think it was an emotion at all. Love, here, is all about action. 'Love is patient', 'Love is kind', 'Love does not boast' etc etc etc. Another interesting thing is that the absolute characteristics of love are defined here. There's no separate list for ways of loving your partner, family, friends or strangers. The degree of love doesn't depend on the other person at all! Here, love is active and it comes from within! It's God at work.

Is there any use my saying all this though, if I don't show love in my life either? Am I a clanging cymbal or maybe a guitar played with too much distortion?

Untitled

White light

Soft ties

Missed doors

Long sighs

Curtains of dust

Breathing air inside out

Twisting and writhing

Until the pain palls

Why do you stay here?
Eternity calls

Musicians and Tiger Mothers

I just finished reading 'Battle Hymn Of The Tiger Mother' by Amy Chua, a Chinese-American and professor of Law at Yale University. Her account of how she raised her kids is funny.... and makes one think. (It obviously got a HUGE negative reaction from the American audience, who anyway feel threatened by anything Chinese- yeah, even second generation Chinese!)


One huge theme from the book is about musical prodigies. I remember vividly how much my own piano teacher had to say on the subject. He used to tell us to look up YouTube videos to see under-tens playing pieces like ours! Check this out. Or this: (I played this piece when I was 16 or 17 and got nothing like the sounds she does!!!)

Having played piano myself for many years, I can see that it would be parents like Chua who produce musical prodigies. To excel at piano(I mean the concert pianist level of excellence), besides being musical, one needs to have technique drilled into you when you're small. It's nothing but practice, practice, practice! Even experienced concert pianists will need to break every single bar of a piece down and practise it for hours and hours together. Nothing happens by magic at all! Seeing a kid perform the way they do is lovely(notwithstanding the effect it tends to have on our self esteem) but our vantage point gives us no clue about the time that went into perfecting the particular piece.

Another question she constantly raises is about happiness. Her view, the view of the 'Chinese mother' as she calls it, is that kids will be happy once they start doing well at something, so a parent's job is to make sure they do whatever it takes in order to enable them to excel, even if it means destroying their present happiness-i.e. not letting them do whatever they want when they're younger. Mommy knows best! Haha! I certainly see her point, though, you know; for sure kids on their own will just gravitate towards appealing but mind numbing pursuits like TV or Facebook!


As she brings out, though-this method definitely won't work with all kids(it didn't even with her daughters); only those kids who(like her elder daughter)are mature enough to realise that maybe Mommy does know best!! 

On the road to Calvary

The heavy piece of wood is tied to his back. A grim, staring portent of the horror to come, I can hardly bear to look at it. He is grimy, and bloody, and looks on the verge of death already.
How did it come to this? My mind races through the happenings of the last few days. Only yesterday I was sure that he was the great Rabbi, the great Messiah, just waiting for his time, waiting for the time when he would show himself to the world and make our people great again-make us free, and rid of our mighty and cruel overlords.
Oh but look! He stumbles. I try to rush forward and let my feeble strength give him what little solace it can, but there are arms pushing me back. Strong hairy arms. My face dashes against the soldier's breastplate as I begin to wail. The sobs engulf me, shaking my body. I am conscious only of a desperate pity and a sense of despair for me and my companions as well as we follow the soldiers escorting him onward.
I long to be a man: to have armour and a long sharp sword, which could slash the evil soldiers to pieces. I want to save our good Rabbi, the way he saved me from my meaningless existence. But why should I have to? Why does he not do something? Why can't he miraculously escape? Isn't he the Son of God? Is he?
No answers come to mind.
But look again! The press of the crowd has somehow brought him closer to us. He turns and looks at us wailing and I look deep into his eyes. Instead of misery, I can see concern. 'Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me; weep for yourselves and for your children' he says.
The flood of my tears increases, instead, so that I hardly hear the rest of what he is saying. Still, somehow, it is those words that are repeated over and over inside my head, both now and during the awfulness of the next few hours.

Roses are blue, too....

Blue Valentine

Sessional time again. (adequate reason for why I'm sitting here tapping at my keyboard!)
We're in the Valentine's Day week again, (Rose Day, Teddy Bear Day? haha, no clue) so going by the name, the movie seems appropriate.
Except that it isn't.

Basically a movie about how a marriage collapses, the narrative is interspersed with flashbacks to illustrate finally the fact that the marriage was doomed right from the beginning. It starts inauspiciously enough with a little  girl calling desperately for her dog which the mother finds dead on the road, later. There are too many things wrong with their marriage; in short order: first he criticizes her cooking, blames her for the dog's death, wants to go to a cheesy motel to rejuvenate their relationship while she couldn't care less. She then meets her ex-boyfriend on the way which leads them to quarrel with her complaining he twists everything she's saying.  It's worse once they reach the motel. The sex scene is painful: it's too obvious to us that he's trying too hard and she just keeps rejecting him. In the little conversation they have in the garish 'Future Room' , we see that she seems to resents the fact that he drinks in the morning and is a house painter with no worldly ambition. (A flashback in the middle of this shows their first date, which is very cute and RomComish: him playing a ukulele and singing while she tap dances.)They can't get it together sexually and end up hopelessly drunk and in different rooms.

By this time the flashbacks show too that they were together when she found out she was pregnant, she'd had an astonishing number of partners(20!), he knew he wasn't the father but wanted to marry her anyway, he got beaten up by the ex boyfriend (and father of their daughter) for that reason, he's from a hopelessly different background from her(high school dropout vs premed student) and he feels he isn't good enough for her. In fact the only reason they got married was because they were in 'lou', she was pregnant and he was there!!!! When she gets a call to come into work next morning(she became a nurse not a doctor, another spike in the marriage I'll bet), she leaves a note and leaves, prompting him to show up at her workplace drunk, making a scene, hitting the doctor and getting her fired.

She's done, Done, DONE. And wants a divorce. Go figure!
During the final argument, a nice touch is of flashbacks that show them radiantly happy at their (court) wedding.
Falling in. Falling out.
The END.

Mobius Strip

It has one side and one edge only....look carefully! :P

The wonders of three dimensions...:D

Flipkarting!

Let's go-karting!! Flip-karting, that is!

We finally have our very own internet mega shop in the mould of eBay/Amazon. Welcome to the world of cyber shopping; of invisible money. Buy, buy, buy!

No kidding though: it's a wonder, it is- I find myself now actually in the position of looking for my college textbooks online! It's cheap, convenient and saves me the long trek up to the bookshop. I'm loving it!

No use being surprised anymore about the fact that everything finds its way online sooner or later. The fun of browsing through a bookshop, or looking through a pile of old books in a cramped second hand bookshop is now dated. In fact everything is: shopping, entertainment, socialising, dating.....Very soon, I'm sure, the whole world will be living solely via the Internet. And the rulers of the world, the Forbes people, will be hackers!