When I was in class 8th or 9th, our Hindi grammar book used to carry few essays so that students can learn art of essay writing. Well, one such essay I remember reading was on 'Dowry System', and the way it started was something like this...

"All the socials ills rooted in traditions have their beginning in traditions which were noble and good, but as time changed those traditions remain rooted in past and therefore they turned into social ills"

I liked something about this reasoning and so usually whenever I come across some illogical social evil I try to map it to what could have started it.

But there is one tradition that escapes any sense how much ever I travel back in time - and that is the way women are treated after widowhood.

I guess few thousand years back, few wise men would have gathered and sat together to decide on customs to follow, but what and i seriously wonder, what on earth could have made them come up with such cruel customs for widowed women. I actually saw this movie - Dor today, a nice movie - actually a very nice movie. And one of the central character is a widow. And that somehow get me thinking on this whole concept of widowhood again today. But there is just no logic how hard one may think. Why women just need to do away with all color, all joy, all happiness of their lives because their man dies. Come to think of it Sati system prevalent earlier was plain inhumane but is life a widow expected to live any less inhumane. In sati, a widow was burnt to death on the pyre of her husband but the current traditions are just no better, we burn everything that represents life - laughter, colours, freedom, friendship, desires. ambitions - burn everything that's life and just leave the body - Can we call a person living such life - ALIVE?

Cruelty of these traditions is just too much to bear. And bigger problem is that they don't bother us. Are there more AIDS victims in India or wretched widows ? Which is the bigger problem? Will a generational shift make their lot better ? Can we as a society grant our fellow people their right to live life on equal terms. Can we grant our fellow beings status of an adult and therefore right to make decisions. Can society stop being judge ?

There is a dialogue in Dor somewhere in the middle, " Why men in our society is expected to get remarried if their wife die and why women are expected to mourn death of their husband all their life ? ".

I don't think anyone can answer this question, what we can do is to work towards making this question a thing of past and I hope that happens sooner than later.

-sid

Today I spent about 20-25 mins searching for a review I posted on some site after I had finished reading 1984. And reason I took all the trouble was because I wanted to notice the difference between experiencing what you read and being a detached spectator to what you read. There are books which you become part of when you read them and 1984 has been one such book for me ( among a long list) and then there are ones which may be equally great but you still just feel distant from them. And that has got nothing to do with the author or the quality of book etc. I think it's very personal, just like making friends, if two people are given same set of people to make friends with, depending upon their personalities, they would connect with few and will not connect with few others. Books are same - a book's beauty lies in the eyes that read them and mind that experience them.

I actually finished reading a novel today - "The Brothers Karamazov" by Fyodor Dostoevsky. It may just have created a record for a novel to have stayed longest on my desk before being completed. I picked a copy sometime in middle of the June while in Chennai. And this novel has stayed with me since then. More than 6 months have passed since the first page was turned in that room at IFMR till today when last page was read in my living room. Karamazovs sat next to me as I saw World Cup Soccer in June in Chennai & Mumbai, they travelled with me to Singapore, they put up with me at service apartment, then shifted base to my present place, they did get left behind as I went back for Diwali but were pretty much with me rest of the time. They saw me get up late in the morning and rush for the office, they woke up to find my returning back at crazy hours, they kept mum as I preferred to spend an evening watching some movie, come to think of it those 1000 pages bound in a blue cover are there in so many of those scenes of my past 6 months but always as a silent spectator at the corner..

We didn't meet too often, which explains why it took me 6 months to finish the novel. There were stretch of weeks when I hardly picked the book. And then sometimes on a lazy Sunday noon I will read few pages and then the book would again go back to my desk waiting for next Sunday. But having said that, I must admit we were aware of each other all this while. It's like one's new neighbours that have just moved in, you invite them for a dinner at the beginning and an acquaintance is made. But after that, while you notice when they come or go, what they do over weekends , who visits them and who don't but unless you stuck it really well in first few meetings you just meet those neighbours of yours only once in a while. So while 6 months may be a long time, but both me and Karamazovs were just neighbours who noticed each other but were never friends.

And that's why I looked for that review today, coz most of the times - the books I read are my friends rather than neighbours. I tend to live them but today as I finished the novel I felt like one of those Dostoevsky's spectators in the court room waiting for something to happen, who just wanted to see Mitya let go, yes I used to applaud a clever collection of words put forth by Fetyukovich just as others did, I used to nod with satisfaction whenever an interesting deposition was made by one of the witnesses but that's because by then I had started reading the novel as a story rather than a work of philosophy. But this happens when you don't connect with the main plank on which an Author is trying to build the whole structure - the theological treatise being explored by Dostoevsky in the novel somehow didn't connect with me. Theology comes deep down my list of things that I look in a work of literature, so while there were times when Mitya's raw passion, Ivan's internal struggle, Grushenka & Katya's jealousy and Alyousha's sincerity interested me, there were times when bond between Ilyusha and his father touched me but overall I just couldn't get myself to become a party to Author's expedition to unravel the existence of God.

And so after I completed the novel and sat by the window think about it, I was reminded of that line from Alyousha's final speech at the stone "...there is nothing nobler, stronger , healthier and more helpful in life than a good remembrance.." and so I decided to turn back and look for a remembrance, of times when I felt being a part of what I read

-sid

PS: Given that I did spend around half an hour looking for my review for 1984, let me save it for future use right here, who knows when I may just need to look for it again and you don't always have 30 mins to spare. isn't it ?

I finished reading 1984 last night & am thinking of it since then. I went thru all the comments above but none of them was able to come near what I felt after reading it.There has been a lot of words written above to find out present day telescreens, oceania & Big Brother. But when I finished the novel last nite it was none of these things which occupied my mind. Only thing that occupied my mind was those haunting last lines.The irony contained in them."But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother. " The struggle was finished , yes the struggle was finished,the struggle of a man to stand up for his beliefs 'coz he believed in their righteousness. He had won the victory over himself. It is this use of word 'won' & 'victory' to represent loss & surrender, irony contained in them,the utter hopelessness coined in those cheerful words which haunted me all through the day. The most dreadful aspect of oceania was not scores of rocket bomb falling or the continuous war or the poverty or the mutability of past, What scared me most was impossibility of calling, what Orwell called, 2+ 2 = 4. The final surrender of Winston in believing 2 +2 =5 is what made me dread the Oceania & then dawned upon me the realization that in various walks of life almost all of us chose to believe in 2 +2 = 5 rather than confronting our private "Room 101". So for me 1984 represents the inner fears & private guilt of betraying our beloveds, our ideals , our principles & our beliefs in the face of adversity.

Sea-sides have always enchanted me, I don't know why but there is something in that combination of white sand, unlimited expanse of water & waves running up and down the beach that brings an immediate smile as soon as I reach such a place.

Tonight, I was at the beach at ECP for few hours, we reached only after 10 in the night, but dark of the night only added to the charm of the sea. A little walk by the beach took me to a rocky ridge and as I sat at the far end of the ridge and stared at the dark sea, for a while I just forgot about everything else in the life. It's such a pleasant experience when we can just get away from concrete high rises & neon-decked shopping malls to places like these. ECP, from what I have heard is actually a very crowded place on holidays during the day but may be we just chose the right hour today. There were not many people around at that hour and whoever was there was wrapped away in the dark of the night. As a result, we were left with just a cool breeze and waves trying to run up the rocky ridge. It was such a joy, those moments. I could have actually sat there all night with some music playing in the background. I can still hear sound of those waves as they run up to the shore and then run back after kissing the sand. It's a charming game they play. While sitting there, for a moment my thoughts wandered to asking myself, what is it in a sea that makes sitting there such a joyous experience but soon I decided that I shouldn't adulterate those moments with questions and reasoning, and so I left myself to enjoy those pure moments of bliss , moments of ease and moments of peace.

And that's how I will end this post today - no questions, no answers but just a smile :-)

-sid

Yes this is what December mornings used to look like for all these years. It's so easy to yearn for something while not realizing worth of what you have. Winters are a special time of year, but they are not the same in Singapore. I don't even think they have winters here. All they have here is rains, which are beautiful in their own way but will save that discussion for some other day. Today i just gonna talk about winters. Back there in India, a day off on winter morning is best thing that can happen to you in a month of December. I usually like the sunny mornings more, coz in winters as you get up in the morning and get out of quilt, you just wanna go out and get a glimpse of that morning sun smiling on you. And to have parathas & sabzi in breakfast while reading newspaper in the morning sun is - trust me - "pure bliss". And talking of eatables, how can I talk about winters and not talk about gud and moongfali - you can have them whenever you want but to have them in winters is just great.
If you get up a little early on one such morning, you could catch the engaging game of hide and seek that sun and the fog play. Sometimes just when you thought that there won't be any sun today, fog gives way to the sun and on other days just as sun is all set to make his grand entry, fog would quietly appear on the scene and drown the sun somewhere. And its just not mornings, winter afternoons are specially created by God for people who just wanna lie lazily on their back and do nothing and also for them who just need an wanna go out, find a group of friends and then spend rest of the noon gossipping about rest of the world. Where winter lose out to summers are during evenings, while evenings in summers are like a invitation with open arms - winter evenings are quite opposite, they somehow signal end of the day but yeah bonfires are never better but in cold winter nights.
Nature has just so much to offer. The beauty that nature offers is just unparalleled. But somehow lives spent on 50th floors of high rises trying to assess the financial strength of a cement manufacturer just fail to notice all this. In last few days, as it rained persistently here, when in passing I caught a glimpse of outside world from huge windows of my office, I just couldn't help being "wowed" but not for once could I just stop and look at that for a while coz there was always something urgent waiting for me. May be next time, Mr. urgent may need to wait just a little longer coz I deserve my moment with nature. What if i can't shake hands with the nature, i can always wave a hi from behind those glass walls :-)

-sid

Song recommendation for the day:
Great lyrics from Gulzar and an equally brilliant music from Madan Mohan, this song from Mausam is a gem

Dil dhoondhta hain fir wahi ....fursat ke raat din
baithe rahe tasavvur-e-janaa kiye huye !!!
Jaado ki narm dhoop aur...aangan me let kar
aankhon pe..... kheech kar tere..... aanchal ke saaye ko
aundhe pade rahe, kabhi.....karwat liye huye !!!

It's amazing how things which seem so trivial till yesterday become so important today. People who meant nothing to you till now, suddenly matter so much to you. All that which you included in "etc." at the end of a sentence is now the central idea of your new essay. That's life !!!
Unpredictable, uncertain and ever changing. A friend of mine wrote to me the other day that while we spend most time fearing that present would never change but things always change and then give way to something which we had never expected. She was so right. But then is that change sudden or do we just fail to notice the change ?
Do we resist change ? Do we romanticize the idea of a sudden change? There are sudden changes like the change that 9/11 brought in life of a mother who lost both her sons who worked in twin towers. But am not talking about those changes, am talking about the changes that we experience in us, they are never sudden....they are always building up but we just don't notice them and then one day we just wonder how and why have things changed?
Sometimes we do it, to avoid few uneasy questions, coz there are reasons that cause change and those reasons are not what we would like to explain at times. Sometimes there is a truth waiting to be discovered, waiting to be faced but we just wanna brush them under the carpets and call it SUDDEN.
And sometimes actually nothing change, but we want to convince ourselves that there has been a change. But since there are no reasons that can explain why should something change, we just take teh easy way.....we say, it JUST changed, JUST LIKE THAT and now we can just live with this fake change - JUST LIKE THAT.

And one thing about blogs, sometimes they start somewhere else and end at some entirely different place.

Unpredictable, uncertain and ever changing :-)

-sid

Why do men make wars ?

I saw Kabul Express last night and when u see those beautiful landscapes of Kabul and think of devastation that years of war have brought there, u just can't stop wondering why men do it. I had felt something similar when I was in Kashmir early this year, its the prettiest place on earth no doubt but when u think of it all the blood in recent years , u just can't help feeling sorry for inhabitants of taht place.

When we used to read history in school, we were taught that man created first arms to hunt animals for food. But no book ever tell what made men use those arms against fellow beings And today we don't use stone tools, we use laser guided nuclear warheads that can wipe out entire towns in a split second .....human life has really become so cheap isn't it?

Each bullet that finds flesh change a few live for ever, each bomb that hits the target kills more than men and women. They kill dreams, smiles and hopes.

And what makes man kill another man ?

Is it few square miles of land , religious madness , OIL ?

Or is it just human nature , a will to dominate other's will ?

I wish there were no armies, bloody politicians that make these wars should have been expected to go and fight these wars. So if a certain Mr. Bush or Mr. Musharraf or Mr. Saddam Hussain would have had no armies and their lives (and not just political careers) were dependent on dodging the bullets flying all over, then may be they would have thought twice before declaring wars for greater human good.

Words just freeze when I think of all those bustling lives that have been lost to war and terrorism in recent years. When those twin towers came down in NY or when local trains in mumbai were bombed or when those car bombs in Baghdad went off, I don't know how those people who had planned all this would have felt. The blood, the gore, the violence....can those people live with it.I don't think any man or woman can live with so blood of so many on his or her hands. How do they sleep in the night ?

IF I ever meet a terrorist, I would ask him if he ever think beyond the flames of the blast?Could he see the burning lives, charred dreams and mutilated hopes? When they plant a bomb on a bus, do they ever think that that bus might be carrying several fathers who have their kids waiting at home, that bus will have several sons & daughters who are the only reason for their parents to live on?

Do those devils think that thick skinned politicians who drive bullet proof cars will care a damn about these incidents ? No Mr. terrorist, those politicians would do nothing apart from throwing chairs on each other in parliament and announcing cash compensation.

I would like to meet a Mr. Bush, to ask him if before declaring a war against Afghanistan or Iraq, did he give a single thought to those little kids whose playgrounds were converted to graveyard. Did he ever think that a litre of oil may not be worth a gallon of blood ?
I just can't forget that image from Kabul Express as this kid stands right against a blue clear morning sky , supporting himself with a crutch to make up for the lost leg and that look in his eyes that questions everyone, what did he do to deserve this ?
Will anyone, who plant bombs in moving trains or drop bombs from moving planes, answer that ?

-sid

Song recommendation for the day:

This song from one of the most fantastic movies ever made - "Dhoop"
Lyrics by Nida Fazli & music by Jagjit Singh

Benaam sa ye dard, thahar kyun nahin jaata
Jo beet gaya hain, woh guzar kyun nahin jaata

Can people be classified depending on their behaviour?...like should we form opinions that someone is a outgoing guy, someone else is a snob, this third guys is so carefree and other your colleague in office is just so happy-go lucky.

These perceptions are based on our opinions, opinions we make through our interactions - but catch is - do we spare a moment and wonder if human beings so uni-dimensional ?

Can someone just be happy soul always ? Would he not get hurt, get sad, get disappointed ever?

Would someone always like to have people around? Would he never want a moment of silence?

Why everybody has to be like this or that.

Why I need to identify him or her with some specific emotion and not all the emotions.

Why do we fail to understand that he is just like me , with his moods defining his moments.

We form opinions based on our interactions and then club a person on the basis of that perception. What we don't see that in our interactions that person is reacting to me. So if he is like what he is , it is because i am like what i am.

Our eyes always look out, they always see people around me but never at look at my own self.

We are like those men in that story who crossed a river and when they reached the other end they decided to take a count to see if everyone has crossed safely. But every time they count there was one man short coz they each guy forgot to count himself.

And when we wud have read the story , we wud have wondered who cud be such a fool. But ain't all of us are just like that. We judge a person on how he reacts to 'us' but we conveniently forget the 'us' part, we forget that his actions are actually a reaction.

I might think some guy is aloof but forget that He is so because I couldn't build a bridge to make him open up.

I might think someone is just plain short tempered but i don't bother to check what do i do that make the other guy lose the temper when with me.

And then lot of times we just get too centered on us. Coz i wanna react to a certain situation in a particular way, everyone else should do the same and if they don't well then i wud make unfounded opinions about them.

If I wanna party so everyone else shud or else they are bores.

If I liked a painting, everyone else should or they don't have an eye for art.

If I found a joke funny, every one else should or else they don't have a sense of humour.

So either we forget 'I' completely or just can't forget the 'I' but our interactions somehow swing to these extremes and never balance out.

Somewhere, we forget that a we can never tell what a person actually is like, we can just say what he is like with me. We forget that I is central to hIm. That other's behaviour is as much a reflection of their being as it is of mine.

-sid

Past has its ways of catching up with the Present or to put it in other words, Present never succeeds in getting past the Past.
In mathematics there is a concept of Markov process, it means that state of a process in future will depend only on its current state and not on its state in the past.
How often I wish life should have been a Markov process, Life will only be dependent on what it is now. All those who say live life as if this moment is the only moment in your life that matters are no philosophers but just mathematicians who loved Markov.

But in real life Present is always a function of past. You can't just clean a slate and start afresh. Every scribbling at the corner of the slate, every drawing made while you were thinking something else, every story that you started but could not end....they all are just there on that slate and u can never wipe it clean.
And difficulty is if you are aware of this , then you just keep thinking before putting chalk to the slate.....and that makes you overcautious. It just takes away that spontaneity out of one's life. And if you are not cautious then it may just leave little space on the slate for making something pretty in future.
But isn't it our past that we treasure most, why do we keep telling everyone that best moment of life is one I have already lived. Why what is no more in my control, is something i want to control most?
Maybe if life was like a Markov process , people would have enjoyed the life more but might have treasured the life less. While life could be looked forward to but there wouldn't have been anything to fall back upon.

And that reminds me of one of my favourite lines from Hugh Prather's "Notes to Myself"

Problem with me is that I analyse life rather than live it.

So let me stop my analysis today.....will resume it some other day.

-Sid

Song Recommendation for the day:

From movie (Hazaaron Khwaishen Aisi)

Baawra mann dekhne chala ek sapna....
Baawre se mann ki dekho, bawri hain baatein
Baawri si dhadkanein hain, baawri hain saasein !!
Baawri si karvaton se neendiyan kyun bhaage....
Baawre se nain chahe, baawre jharokhe se, baawre nazaron ko taknaaa!!!

There are tears of joy,tears of pain and tears of sadness.
But when it come to smiles, there is one for almost every emotion and situation.
Just think about it for a moment !!!
There is that self assured smile of achievement and a sorry smile of failure.
There is that relieved smile for a job well done and a lame smile for a job spoiled.
There is that inviting smile when we want to start a conversation and a distancing smile when we no more want to continue one.
Sometimes we smile to bring someone near and sometimes we smile just to keep someone away. There are smiles that tell you a thousand things and then there are smiles that hide much more.
We smile to hide our irritation and we also smile to show our enthusiasm.
We smile when we like someone and we also smile away when that someone like somebody else.

We smile when we meet a friend after long and we also smile while waving a bye to a friend whom we may not see for long.
There are smiles that make strangers feel at home and there are smiles that make you a feel a stranger in your own home.
There is that playful smile when you are with someone you love and that regretful smile when all you have is her memories.
And then there are those thousand of smiles, which would just quietly slip onto your face as you watch a kid play ,a bird fly or a rainbow decking the sky.

-sid

Song recommendation for the day :
From the movie Arth...lyrics by Kaifi Azmi & music by Jagjit Singh

Tum itna jo muskura rahe ho...........
kya gham hain jisko chhupa rahe ho
Aankhon me nami, hasi labon par.......
kya haal hain, kya dikha rahe ho !!!

Best part about being a child is that someone can decide for you - what's right and what's wrong. What ought to be done and what not to be done? It's like driving with a GPS system telling you the directions....so much easier.
But then life and easy don't go together ....do they ? Even though all of us like to make our decisions and have enough reasons to justify our decisions to other but there are times when brave face we put to the world is just for benefit of others and deep inside we are as unsure about things we are doing as some complete stranger would be.
I think it's reluctance to face the ghosts deep inside us that make us act as strangers to ourselves. And one thing I have learnt over the years is one moment of silence with oneself is all we need to put those ghosts behind. It's strange but as long as you don't acknowledge their presence they keep haunting u & the moment you accept they are there.....they just disappear.

May be best part about driving is to find out the directions by your own self, may be losing your way once or twice heightens the joy of finding the right way, may be best part about being a child is knowing that soon you can decide for you....

-sid

Song recommendation for the day : bebasi, dard ka alaam....... (Baabul)

Saw Baabul today !! Given the show we were slated to watch got cancelled and we had to wait for 3 hrs to catch the last show and also since i have not really liked previous ravi chopra movie - baghban much, so when the trailers finally got over and the movie started I was a little apprehensive that I might be going back at 3 in the night from the hall cribbing abt the movie. But I actually ended up liking the movie....No it's not a great movie but still a nice one....and apart from few minutes in the middle where it got a little ordinary and inspite of entirely predictable storyline it was a good watch. But no i won't be reviewing the movie here....that's for everyone to decide on their own. if they got their money and time's worth.
What interested me in the movie was teh central theme of rigidity of traditions that has plagued our society for years. Now many of the people who would watch this movie would say that this movie don't belong to this era. After all, teh youth today is not really bound by rituals and traditions of yore isn't it? Agreeed.
And so am sure that if i ask them so you think widows should get remarried? 99 outta 100 people gonna reply " Do I look like I care if they do or they don't ? " And that's why I think the movie pretty much belong to our era. Because what I see around me is not a breaking freee form rigid traditions but just turning one's face the other way. It's not the sympathy but apathy which keeps people away from raising any noise about these things. We are turning into an apathetic society....coz " Do we look like we care a damn ? " and problem is No, we don't look like that we care ?
But what if someday we have to ? What if someday we can't brush all these questions under carpet ? Will we see see the cruelty and insenstivity of lot of our rituals and traditions then....What if our apathy is shaken off......Will we be sympathetic ? What if we can't look the other way?.....Will we look into eyes of those traditions and tell them they are wrong ?

And what this movie do is try and phrase such questions for us ..... i said 'phrase' and not 'ask' coz to be frank the movie was a commercial one and it never tried to unlayer the emptiness of a widow's life and futility of traditions, it just penned down the question and stuck it somewhere in the corner of a collage of all bollywood masala.

Now it's for each one of us to pick that question and check if we have a answer. And even if we don't have - no prob- something tells me when u look for an answer for a question at the right places...u generally end up finding the right answer.

-sid

PS: Don't go to movie with high expectations, I walked in with none so I kinda liked it. But of 5 people i know who have seen it ....apparently I am the only who have liked it ;-)

It was a good day today overall, but only thing that frustrated me during the day was a the news item that Indian Cabinet has passed the bill to provide reservations to OBCs in institues of higher education without taking off the creamy layer.
Now I am no fan of this reservation business but still sometimes it's tuff to miss the argument that to corret the wrong of many centuries few steps may need to be taken which are seemingly unfair. But blatant politics in such matters frustrate me.....any sane man with two pieces of sense can say that stretchers are meant for sick and by giving reservation to people in creamy layer - all this stupid government did is to deprive few deprived.
My first thought after reading that articles and cursing all those buffons sitting in delhi is to say chalo thank god am sitting here in singapore away from that centre of stupidity, but immediately i felt is this the right attitude. May be buffons are running our country coz others chose to Thank God.
Everyone around me is talking of start-ups and being an entrepreneur but i feel the real need for a start up is in area of Politics. Few sane men need to come together and say let's start a Political party...there's so much to be done in our country....Education, Power, roads but the best brains are busy trading Australian dollar against USD or helping a beer company buy a scotch firm.
And what gives me power to say all this when am sitting few thousand miles away, making money for me and hoping ruppee depreciate so that every dollar i make brings me more value on conversion. What have I done to undo the wrong? Nothing - absolutely nothing.

But then there are two facts - One - political stupidity in India frustrates me and - Two - I am not going to do anything about it but complain.
And these two are like two ends of a river and India is drowning coz me and so many others like me have not yet found a way to bridge the river.

-sid

PS: But i wish luck to those IITian guys who started some political party. I sincerely hope they succeed.

I don't claim to have seen lot of mornings. But this pic is of one of those days when i got up to see the morning walk by me. This was in Kashmir may be few month back. But I was reminded of this coz i had a chance to meet the morning today, i say chance coz while morning would have walked past me today but i was in too much of a hurry to take a note. Let's hope tomorrow I do.
But come to think of it, mornings are the most beautiful part of the day ...that breaking morning before the sunrise next to a lake or the morning sun shining on a hill on a winter morning ... Somehow my most beautiful imageries are associated with mornings.
I think that's simply the charm of a new beginning - which a morning is - fresh and enthusiastic. Now the question is whether this morning brought any new beginning for me or was it just an aberration like so many other mornings had been in past ?
And I think answer to that question lies in the day-break tomorrow. So till then let me sleep over this !!!

-sid

PS: I have finally started this public blog and have made my other blog private, but I donno how regular I will be here. But as i said before let me sleep over this !!!