paulo

i am done with Paulo Coelho. whats the point of reading something that doesn't question you, makes you think or provokes you? My thoughts and rationale is a bit similar to what paulo advocates through his writing. its creepy to find out that your thoughts are not yours alone, they are not as original as you thought them to be. that, perhaps unconsciously i might have absorbed these thought streams from the milieu. the whole thing in effect questions my own thoughts a lil more piquantly, cuz the simplicity and calmness of these philosophies that he tries to provoke makes them look a little less credible and almost moonie'ish.
that is perhaps one reason why i never read more than 2 books by one author. (well i read 3 of Salman Rushdie's but then again his books weren't just fantastic education, but brilliant entertainment to me as well. :D ) a book educates me, questions me and holds me in its grip for some while, when everything around me, i gaze through the book's eye. at times i have noticed my accent change a little due to this. but once you get out of it, the swirling thoughts finding their place in my head, your objectivity slicing and dicing them thoughts, the new thoughts now digested, eating the same fruit again is just not fun enough, especially when there are so many other unexplored orchards.

the butterfly

on the way back home today, i was startled with a little green and black thing flying in front of my face. i quickly jerked back with a step backwards. it took a moment for me to realise that it was a butterfly. well, it has been quite a while since i had seen one. a butterfly in this gas chamber we call mumbai, should be wonderful sight, a rarity to capture forever in one's heart n head. but, the gas chamber has made the butterfly such a rarity, that like every alien thing, our brain forgets to understand beauty and the first instinct it activates is that of killing or steering clear of the abnormality.

lessons to be learnt:
1. dont become an abnormality, atleast in other's eye. don't be a 'freak'.
2. instincts know no beauty. if you must show, educate beauty to others, do it gradually.

just a thought

just a thought..
i don't understand why all of a sudden a foreign government's election result has caused such high media hype in US. People who don't even know where iran is, are 'protesting' (cyberspace can be a playground for the utterly idiotic and gullible out-of-lifers ) against apparent rigging of election. 'travesty of democracy'.. bull crap, funny how scores of other dictatorships or rigged election elected governments with help of US never get the kind of coverage that iran is getting now.

do i see here a ploy by US to create ground for it to go for Iran? hm.. saying the obvious. free press they say..
one can engineer a thought culture just as easy these days, as perhaps it was 100 years back. we haven't become any smarter..
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Social protest as a measure of democracy

i think that protests happening at a place are a measure of democracy. well then what about Lalgarh in west bengal? what naxalites are doing, is that democracy?
fuck democracy. why should marginalised ones pay for mainstream.. and democracy is about mainstream majority. the big organised setup is shit. if anything, naxal activities suggest trend towards disintegration towards smaller entities of governing.
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every day, commuting from north to south mumbai, i see hordes of peoples climbing up the stairs to railway bridges.. the sight is surreal.. so many people going up, so many coming down. it feels kinda stupid to see people living at one place, going somewhere else far to work. well, i am talking idealistic here, but how about having one's work within 15 minutes of your home.. for everyone? well, that can't happen in market economies thats for sure. but nevertheless, with India's kind of socialist deomcracy, a solution can be developed. the costs of ever increasing infrastructure can be routed to creation of affordable houses in all parts of mumbai.
continuous increase in infrastructure is not feasible. people pouring in mumbai will always outpace rate of infrastructure. we can't go the london way, where taxes dettered people from travelling in cars in city. in india, solution should be people centric with an eye towards sustainable development.
funny enough, market economy can be saviour to this socialist ideal. i dont remember which community, but there's this place in mumbai where the ghetto will give way to highrises, where 80% of the space will be for the original dwellers, who would get better living, and the rest 20% of space will go into funding the rest of 80% in form of real estate development.
i am imagining perfectly honorable affordable houses in cuffe parade even for poor.

well.. and about outsiders like me.. we better get outta here.. fast. not because we don't like it.. i love it here, but its unviable for a metropolis to sustain a whole nation's aspiration. it will explode. lets create and find opportunities at our home towns instead. hmm.. big words. lets c.

Alone

while traveling. while sitting idle alone. while walking on the road in the middle of night. the crowd of thoughts vanish and what remains are the loose ends of life that need resolved. its beautiful the way thoughts starts untangling the commotion and living behind a crisp reflection of the chiseled self. it requires no efforts from me. they are like strong waves on the beach, which takes away the everyday trivial thoughts (to which we are wedded, beyond our control.), and uplift me into the simple domain of life (as in 'alive').
hence these days i relish the long local train travel, the road back home to Nasik, the walk on city streets after work. The tired body is not a good home for mundane thoughts. As it expels them, the nourishing self-reflecting thoughts swim in and comforts the soul.
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The excellent trip to Leh has spoiled me. i so thoroughly enjoyed the chance meetings with people, the absolute no planning, being alone at times, that i can't imangine now going for trips with some group with proper planning n stuff. Though the trip educated me about the power of faith, it also reduced the flavour of the known. I now relish the taste of unknown instead. this doesn't bode well for existing friendships and expectations of others.
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The faith trip

Before the start of the trip, i had hoped for a single thing - that i would not need to dine alone for the 20 days i would be traveling. i didn't plan anything. i didn't proactively do anything. it just
so happened that i made some great friends, met some wonderful people with whom i shared wonderful time. consequently, apart from the first day in Leh, i never was alone for dinner.
its wonderful.

:(

WTF!!! Gunmen Attack Sri Lankan Cricket Team, 6 Players seriously injured...:(

My left toe hurts :(

is racing against time! :(

(These are some random status messages)

all miseries, all troubles... of any shape and proportion.
one size sad smiley. (sad smiley! oxymoron)

i hope this doesn't make us react the same in real life as well. i hope. :)

(i am so tempted to get into one of my long winding explanations. i will skip that here though.. just go read thomas de zengotita's 'mediated' (especially the concept of 'the blob') and something about how not only is our smile a reflection of feelings, but the act of smiling can create the feeling of happiness by itself. it runs both ways. it was in one of those pop marketing books i guess, 'blink' or some such shit.)

For Inefficiency - II

The original reason I thought of against efficiency was really an empirical observation, with parallel to a natural sciences maxim.
Any system naturally degenerates to higher entropy. The third law of thermodynamics says so. The only way to continuously improve (increased order…going against disorder) is to segregate the components into an efficient system apart from a degenerate one.
For eg. Essentially it could translate to the increased cleanliness inside our houses at the cost of dirtier and infertile land outside. Think of the nuclear wastage in ocean beds that has killed entire species of fishes. All for our want of efficient energy.

So increased efficiency here means you r screwing up something else somewhere, all the more. So in Capitalism, where a select few get more and more resources at their disposal without an iota of understanding of it's cost, a third world country is perhaps paying the price through it's deforestation, increased pollution, de humanization, infertile lands, pillage of natural resources etc.

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(Pardon my naivete. Apart from reading a bit of Chomsky and a bit from here and there, I really don’t have complete understanding of world systems. This is just some loud thinking. )


Historically, India has been comparatively safer from any man-made crisis than the other countries. This is because, as a nation we are highly inefficient and as such it's nigh impossible for us to effect any drastic changes. And let’s face it, as a human; none of our big decisions have ever given desired results. It's as if complete comprehension of the world is beyond us. Look at the maddening enthusiasm with which people took to globalization and western style capitalism in the last decade, and now that the world demands a different model, everyone is responding with conservatism. Think of any polarized philosophy being adopted en masse. Communism (do I have to give examples! :P), capitalism (Capitalism only survives through huge subsidies. In US it's through military (now, more than ever, US needs a war.), in Japan through public projects. It depends on continuous subjugation of smaller nations.), anarchy… any and every system if managed very efficiently will yield abominable results. Think of ‘1984’. Democracy works only because, a certain inertia, and hence inefficiency, borne out of public participation, is inherent in it. And as such no dramatic polarization is possible.

Please do share some more examples of our decisions gone unexpectedly wrong. also, i remember a link being circulated around a year back that illustrated the workings of globalisation and its ramifications environmentally through a video. post it here if u find it. thanx.

For Inefficiency

I am against hyper efficiencies sought in these days in everything. These hyper efficiencies are being sought without an understanding of the implications thereof. Take the case of energy systems. May it be the invention of the nuclear weapons, which has made extinction of human race a possibility in immediate future. Or see how this need for efficiency is fueling our irrational want for everything. There is a chasm of understanding between how things get made and how they get consumed.

The hyper efficiencies are created by specialization of work. Vocations are getting more and more specialized. As such, human is getting distanced from the understanding of mechanisms of production of things that one consumes. This is harmful, because one then doesn’t understand the cost that natural resources, human life and flora and fauna is paying in producing something that may be totally superfluous. This drives irrational wants and creates a maddening consumerist race towards annihilation of world through usurpation of world resources and dehumanizing human labor.

Matrix I has an interesting analogy. Agent Smith says humans are like virus. We usurp and go onto other avenues to consume it. I would say that’s it's not humans inherently, but the system that we adhere to that turns us into virus. That system is called capitalism.

Digital technology actually can help us find a solution without radically altering the world system. If somehow, with every consumption the person experiences the effort gone into making it on a personal level, then there may come a semblance of equity.