Lighting Up To Diwali

Diwali- the festival of lights has arrived again and despite the earthquakes and bomb blasts that have rocked India, there is no reason why we shouldn’t celebrate. Life’s vicissitudes shouldn’t dampen the spirit of   a festival of lights and victory over evil. To light up your hearts I have let my creative juices flow. Hope you enjoy this parody of the “Last Christmas” song.

Last Diwali
I gave you my heart
And the very same day you burnt it away
This year
To save me some jeers
I sent you a burn-proof special

Once burnt twice fry
I keep my distance
But I still want to try
Tell me baby
Will you reignite me?
(With due apologies to George Michael)

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I have let my hair down!

I have let my hair down!

Literally and figuratively. Its was a difficult decision in light of the fact that my religion, Sikhism, frowns upon doing that. Hairs of the head should be covered in public places. But there are times when you want to be a free bird, soaring with the wind blowing in your hairs. Most people took to my change of appearance with clichéd and stock phrases. I have now been branded Taliban soldier, cousin of Osama, handsome hunk, cool and crazy all at the same time. I told my mother and she was not very happy with my decision, which is fine.
For me this was just one of the ways to break the shackles of conventions and norms and find my inner creativity.

Life and Consequence

Life and Consequences

I am having a queer sort of feeling nowadays. Why can’t we live a life as if there were no consequences? Before people start misunderstanding me I would like to clarify. Many times I have a fear of consequence which stops me from doing wrong things but also stops me doing what is right. I don’t tell somebody that his hairdo looks absolutely atrocious in order not to hurt his feelings. I don’t talk to a girl for fear that she give a cold response. What if I do everything without fear. Life would not become all cream and sugar but I certainly will live and act the way I want to.  Its better to be rebuked than to lose a friendship of a lifetime. Fear of failure is bigger than the failure. Start living or start dying.

Utilitarianopia

The Govt of Maharashtra, the state in India i live in, has decided to ban bar dancing. The decision has been taken in light to "moral corruption of youth", general good of the society and protecting womanhood. RR Patil, the hon'ble Deputy CM has decide to launch a crusade against such immoral customs and now would like to turn Mumbai into Shanghai.
We live in times when the state decides for us what we can watch, engage in, work in, think about. All in the name of "greater good". Where will this paternalizing attitude of the state lead too. Today most people talk about how states like Singapore, work better because of their "benign dictatorships". People love dictators not because they are better but because they carry power. Everybody wants to be a dictator, few want to live under one. We are no different from the state we live in. We dont protest when one of the state's employee rapes a 17 year old girl. We dont raise a finger when the livelihood of thousands of women is taken away to avoid moral corruption of the youth. Because we secretly do the same with others, with our family, with subordinates and with people who dont think, behave or act like us.
In short we dont like people who are different, think different and act different. We want everyone to the same,to be a mould of the one faceless, nameless,thoughtless commune called the "greater good".
Hail Utilititarianopia!

A Humane View of Sexual Rights

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."
-- Margaret Mead

I am currently undergoing a course in Open Space titled "Gender, Sexualities and Human Rights". An eye-opener of sorts to the kind of brazen acts of violation of human rights going on in the area of sexuality and gender. The moot point, is the fact that how nicely society has bracketed sexuality under either normal or abnormal. Sexuality is not something people are born with, it is constucted. The way our society is increasingly becomig rigid, intolerant and bigoted on issues of sexuality seems frightening. The prevailing norms on gender, sexuality and sex are never questioned. I believe Huxley's Brave New World would not be mere fiction if that is how we tolerate diversity in sexual orientation and sexual choices.
The course would end with the group charting a sexual rights manifesto. We would be inviting people to read and sign it voluntarily. I would be putting it in my blog and inviting people to send their signatures by e-mail. Its going to be a small step, but a step nevertheless in making us aware of our right to expression of sexual feeling, sex and sexual orientation.

Corporate Silences

Corporate Silences

Misshapen ellipses in caged cubicles,
Stare at me in stony silences,
and I stare back beyond my grave,
a cushy swiveling chair,
designed for ergonomic comfort,
for souls in enduring pain.
Who will break their silence?
and invite the stranger within,
to the known without,
if not they, then would you?

Cool in May!

Its Maadu's birthday today. maadu the ephemeral, the aloof, the cute and the confused. I had my ups and down in my friendhip with him. but what i like most is that regardless of the bumps, the feeling of friendship and affinity remains. Maadu you are certainly cool, not only in May, but for life. Here's wishing you many more B'days to come.
Ah now i feel light! As light as your TVS without my extra load!

The Shoes of the Fisherman

Pope died but not before leaving a legacy for living every day of his life in faith. Forgiving killers after his own blood, converting cold hearts into warm beings, keeping the flock and calling for peace and harmony, which now are increasingly becoming extinct words in a harsh, violent world. Soon another one would step into the shoes of the fisherman, as the papal seat is often called, in rememberence of the first pope, Peter, the Fisherman.
I pray for the next pope who now faces new dilemmas, between faith and science, belief and non belief, peace and violence. I hope he can lead millions of my christian brothers into the new age of faith. Amen

The Dandi Walk

Imagine a puny little man, in clothes that are barely able to cover him, walking. Walking intent, not caring about the world, with a single minded devotion to walk the path on which he has set out.
Imagine that walk changes the destiny of millions of people deprived and starved of both bread and freedom. With courage in his heart and truth in his eyes he set out to do what to me is the greatest act of empowerment anybody has ever attempted. To make salt on the shores of the Arabian Sea, salt from the ocean, which was banned by the empire where the sun never set.
Salt, that white powder sometimes is the only thing my countrymen can afford as a garnish with a morsel of rice or bread, helped Mahatama to launch the struggle political and moral freedom of India.
I wish i had a thousandth of the courage and conviction that he had. I wish i was even worth the salt that Mahatama made that day. I wish i could walk the talk too.

Bitter Harvest

This blog almost died last week……
It felt it picked more than its share of life’s bitter harvest. Until inside the seeds of the bitterness, it found hope. It wished it had not found hope. The small seedling of hope now asks for food and shelter and dreams and a little bit of sun. It asks for more than that. It asks for love.
Random Harvest again picks on the dreary randomness of life and moves on with the remains of the day.
And I am scared again to meet myself on the cross-roads of love, hate, life and death.

Love, Or Something Like That

"If somebody says, “I love you,” to me, I feel as though I had a pistol pointed at my head. What can anybody reply under such conditions but that which the pistol-holder requires? “I love you, too.”------- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (b. 1922), U.S. novelist. Wampeters, Foma and Granfallons, “Address at Dedication of Wheaton College Library, 1973”.

Love is a miserable emotion. Its makes you a lice-worried,mud-covered puppy tired, wet, hungry and lonely, looking for shelter and getting kicked instead.
Until this thought that you do not need to be miserable in love. This thought might seem very obvious and cliched but if understood in its entirety is a very beautiful thought. It has energized me a lot
That's how the blog almost died............