Bohemian

live for immortality or survivability

2010-12-25T16:02:00.001-08:00

There are 3 types of people ..one who are passionate about their work, they somehow somewhere know that they are best in it and prove themselves to be immortals in chosen field, second type are who somehow somewhere know what works in the world and their works/passion keep drifting along with changing world to accumulate mundane things and are known as survivors and the third type are never sure what they want to do and are never able to figure out what works best and they are known as mortals...

I have never been impressed by people whose only achievement has been making a family and gaining wealth in an illusion of leaving a legacy. I believe these both are easily achievable and fall well within human limits. What impresses me the most is working and then excelling in your chosen field to become a known name in the limited circle of achievers and not for fame but for your passion and legacy you never knew you would ever leave...

Why Devil win over elitists?

2010-11-03T02:26:00.000-07:00

Today's election results where Democrats lost their majority to Republicans (including Tea Party) has given me enough reasons to write this article. ...But...you have to agree with me to go through the remaining part of the post i.e. "Devil always takes over the the Elitist". If you disagree you are one of the characters in the blog so keep reading to figure out which one.... :D
Before going to the details let me define the main characters here "Devil" and "Elitist". As the name suggests the 'Devil" are self centered (of course self motivated because of this peculiar characteristic), jealous type, possess less or below average intelligence, clever and wicked people whereas the "Elitist" (as in this article) are people who are intelligent (above average), wise, shrewd and of common good to the society.

One major difference between devils and elitists is the former are always found in larger numbers compared to the later class. This is interesting even though I talked about the average in terms of intelligence, since there are large number of people who stick to devil class are not necessarily devil but are part lazy to get along elitist given the history and track records of devils accomplishment and their confidence that always throws away the elitists. Dated back from the documented ancient world of Indian and Greek elitists to the Galileo most of them lost their life as they were opposing the devils within the society.

The prime reason the devil are always good in whatever there motive is because they are self centered and hence self motivated, not that elitist are self motivated but their motive always gets a set back. It is so as the theory is they are always busy thinking of society and things they cannot control which leads to loss of self motivation. Working for ourselves is much easier than working for whole bunch of people. Now this same self motivation of a devil creates a zeal in achieving the objective and since they are ready to pay any price as they are much more determined to get to their goals compared to the elitists.
Another reason of the success of devils is that they are more connected with the common people unlike the elitists. The prime reason is that devil know their strength lies in the numbers and more people agree with them (or made to agree) the better off they are. Moreover they can use this as a weapon against their enemy "elitists". In the contrary, the elitist things since they are thinking of common good, everybody will relate to them and come in their abode (which is their biggest mistake by the way). The people are not easily able to discern between between common good and self good given the nature of human beings and evolution supports the survival of the fittest i.e. self centered human beings. So the belief of elitist that they are reaching out to large number of people while thinking of their common good is just an illusion.
One more primary reason the elitist loose out to devils is communicating their ideas to the common masses. Just because the nobel purpose is in your mind does not necessarily means it is that everybody understands it. It is just there, that's it. In order to people to relate to the good things they need to be told and made to understand what is good for society and what is evil. Now the devil with their self motivated spirits are very good in creating an illusion of gain to common people while serving their own purpose.
To add to their advantage the devils have exact idea of who wants what? In this category the elitist uses the limited theoretical knowledge rather than real world experiences (which devil has much more than the elitist) to get to their nerves. The knowledge (this is different from intelligence that separates elitist and devils) of what people want is very important is laying the foundation that may change their behavior towards certain things. A hungry person wants food at any cost while elitist may be feeding them with peace, the devil will get them piece of bread. I can't get any simpler than that.....To be continued

Mard ka Dard

2009-03-13T03:20:00.000-07:00

When all of the movie stars are going under the knife (plastic surgery), I am also going under the plier(dental surgery)..u c i am sophisticated a little but..
...Well to cut short I have to say good bye to my wisdom (tooth). Tommorow is the operation whe we both will be torn apart..

I still remember the when i felt some itch in my jaw in my early 20s and my mother told may be wisdom tooth might be coming, I was happiiest under the earth..as a hostelite. All of the things were good and had a cubicle those days...daily trips to market with staring almost all girls in a group of 4 -5 and teasing every creature of opposite gender including animals :P ..I was at the top my wisdom. I used to get a feeling those days that God has given me pair of extra teeths so that I can eat chicken easily ..since it was just out of competition (only herbivorous when all friend were carnivorous in all parties); i a son of brahmin family started enjying the non veg feast. Initially it was difficult but then peer pressure made me enjoy it :).

and now in my late 20s when once again I felt a little itch in the same place i went to doctor only to hear that a well has been dug by some micro-orgasim possibly coming out of one of the chicken i ate and staying there since early 20s till date. The dentist said it was as deep as the roots and asked me to take x ray which further proved the hard work of the micro thing as leonardo did in shawshawnk redemption. what else can i do other than removing ther is no way it can be kept since it is interior most tooth and yes it should go know since i have finally decided to get married and am married now ..so of wat use is wisdom to me now!!!! :)

The things might be more complicated once i get through the doctor who was last time showing me his pliers .....

********************************************************************************
After Surgery
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Very interstingly the surgery went Ok ...i was taken to reclining chair (reminded me of me and meri woh watching Taare zameen pe in Red Lounge and doing coochie cuuu) but the situation was differnent dr d souza (read the sooja (swollen)) and dr shruti (chutki with soft hands) opening my mouth wide open and putting all the instruments available in their lab inside....they opened my mouth as the joker in The Dark Knight has been doing to his enemies and made me smile to 200% possible. The extraction started with an anaesthesia which was given to me felt like i have no left side left to my jaw...when doctor started punching the tooth with sort of hammer. I wasnt sure if he is trying it on the right one and as i was already numb in that part i thot of not taking any chance. I gave gesture of vomiting ;) and took out all the things from my mouth :P .. i was releived and then i asked wisdom tooth na!!!
he said yes my dear we know which one!!
and then out of anger he asked girl doctor to put suction pipe, drilling pipe and all whatever seems to fit in the mouth of this joker ans started grilling and drilling. I wasnt in pain but then Bijli rani thot How come they forgot me?? and went off and then the drilling machin in my mouth whispered GRRRRrrrr..r.rr.r. and the light which enlightened my joker face also went off. I understood things are not easy for wisdom to go away u must pay in all senses....the doctor assured me kuchh nahin hua...and i was thinking abb aur kuhh kya nahin hua??? and they both continued operating me with manual toools of 10000BC when after 20 mins of tooth almost giving up the power came back...I thanked Bijli for taking such a revenge!!!I heard two noises one tang (like something being thrown on steel plate) and then tanggg another one.. i wasnt sure that doctor pulled one tooth or two..so i sneaked a peek but couldnt see.
Since i was already in confusion they didnt let time fly and stitched whatever part they cut. Doctor asked me to get up and sit in the chair and while i was relaxing looked at me with a very serious face as if he doesnt need anything else but the final word came ahhhhh...2000 rs only . Well since i wanted to run away before he changes his mind and starts telling me about another infected teeth i gave whatever came out of purse and promised in mind to never visit the place again ...even for the bill (which was collected by my dearest saala no.1 later) ...
And now after two days of rigorous seva by both salal no.1 and saala no.2 . i am here in office writing this blog.... (Happy Me)...and u know what i have learnt the less the wisdom the more happy you are..don't believe me ....then go meet sardar tara chand and his blonde wife..they live happily ever after!!! :D

The Thriller, The Healer and The Dangerous

2008-08-30T06:34:00.001-07:00

---------------NOW A TRIBUTE TO THE MJ --26-06-2009------------------------------

If somebody would have asked me who's ur God in my teens I would have replied "Michael Jackson"no further questions ..most of these pics were in my room when I was in my teens and this was the guy whom i used to c and pray toooo.....This is a tribute on the Golden Jubilee Bday of Michael Joseph Jackson (born August 29, 1958) and his follower (ME)!!!!

For me MJ was not only a name but an era of my boyhood...I first got to listen him when i was in 8th standard but fell in love with him by 9th..... well this much time bcoz , u know love takes its own time hehehehe .........no it was bcoz i bot the first cassette in that time DANGEROUS, the day it appeared in our home and music system started pumping my mother knew that is going to be long calamity and yesssss it happened :D....I used to behave crazy as soon as i used to play the songs my hands and my legs started to move as a paralyzed crab in all the possible direction , although for me in mind was the MJ ghost performing live inside my body but for observers (mom n sis) preferred to stay far given to the movements and ready for hospitalizing as soon i get myself injured. My mother often used to remark it as Khel chaddi hai !!!! It was then that MTV sometimes used to show his videos whom i used to think that I will copy as it is and bcom the legend myself, of course the whole world use to come standstill for me as i used to watch my GOD performing TANDAVA (i feel this is what shiva God used to do, that enchanted all gods and devas). I often had hallucinations that MJ is a part of Shiva tooooo!!!

Well the real things started when we shifted to our new home and their i got 4 walls looking at me asking me y are we so gloomy and i replied with 4 mega size posters of my MJ GOD in two months. This confused my whole family as the madness took to the peak 5 albums and 4 posters and 1 crazy son was enough for declaring to Amritsar Mental Asylum. The days moved when i had to protect my GOD from all of my family members ...My father always used to ask why does this guy has to scream if he sings so (well if u say).... my mother was always bothered about and wished if i will put the pic of this GOD of mine with proper haircut and my sister was always asking one question Are you sure MJ is a man????(or might be in her head it will be R u straight my bro?) .
Often i used to be a wall and defensive to save my GOD and improve my faith is his abilities when HISTORY released and along with that the 50 foot long Giant Statue of GOD MJ!!!and then pulling of his pants as in child molestation cases and then his high (Lisa Preseley) and low profile weddings and Then I realized now after me gone crazy its the GOD turned crazy !!!
and i slowly lost my interest in his abilities and fell in love with others like MLTR , Bryan Adams, Bonjovi.....but nobody still has the capability of making me go to my teens as this guy!!!!

And I still I believe there is no other popstar in history as much high as the my moonwalker GOD who has sold a record album {THRILLER largest number ever sold}... His songs and performances still leave and Awwwwwwwww and mouth open stance to the watching people and it still make my hand move as if again the same soul dwells in me of The GHOST in The Thriller!!!

God Realization and Love

2008-08-27T03:09:00.000-07:00

Another one written in diary somehere around Dec 2003 or march 2004 !!

Neither realizing God nor loving someone has its reason still they both exists. Nobody knows why he is smitten by someone , one he does not know , one who is so inconsiderate about the feelings of the other. Love just happens and it is a need why it happens with somone special there is no specific reason to it. In the same way seeking towards God or truth is there who knows does he exists or not in almost a similar fashion as one loves other unconditionally without knowing if other will response to same feelings in same way or other. The difference is only that of human beings and ether i.e God since i can't say of shape . But in case of love since both are real and existing at least in physical senses so there is a possibility of going through trauma or sufferings whether the feelings is true or not. But in case of God since feeling is one sided and other side might seem to be indifferent but still love exists for God and never ends even if one does not get what one seeks even if he is seeking God for mundane desires.

coming up...
Hoping you stay the same
Existence is the motive or survival is the need

The Philosophy of Gita

2008-08-27T03:01:00.000-07:00

This was in my old diary once written by me in 2004 i think anyways jotting down

" U have to fight anyway the only choice is from which side - Good or Bad" The fight may be for survival, for moral, for principle , for anything . It is sure that one can be clever in his struglle to defeat the opposite. The use of instincts of enemy (anybody other than you) is must . This will be the true nature of yours if you wish to get whatever you desire and at the same time you haveto realize God who is doing all this and everything is due to him. Only that person will conquer who knows and keeps learning and fighting and in the end the person who fights for right is winner only to realize who is the supreme winner i.e. God!!!
So take abode of that God and realize him to be free from that fight. The Karma are in nature of man he can't cease to to act !! The withdrawing force (i.e. Alas ya) only makes him stubborn static and stagnant which starts leading to disaster so try to act as Karma in positive form of energy in your life to get what you seek and don't stop.!!!

God and Jerk at Yale

2008-08-19T00:15:00.000-07:00

Came across this article in The Chronicle and just for the sake of reading keeping it here but this one is worth reading. The link to original work is provided in the title

God and Jerk at Yale

Parents and high-school students take note: A controversial article misses the point

By RACHEL TOOR
My friend Carl, an academic, likes to say that he would never let his kids go to Harvard, Yale, or Princeton because those colleges turn people into jerks. A recent, much-discussed essay in The American Scholar by William Deresiewicz, "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education," seems to provide fodder for his argument. Deresiewicz claims that his background (as a student at Columbia and a former associate professor of English at Yale) rendered him incapable of a few minutes of small talk with the plumber who came to fix his pipes. He didn't know how to converse with "someone like him," a short, fat person with a goatee, BoSox cap and accompanying accent, and "unguessable" values and "mysterious" language. Deresiewicz stops just shy of complaining about butt cracks.
The plumber-averse author goes on to rehearse a familiar set of arguments about the entitlements, anti-intellectualism, and careerism of students in the Ivy League and its peer institutions. An elite education "inculcates a false sense of self-worth," he says. It fools you into thinking that academic success means something, and it takes away "the opportunity not to be rich."
Well, then.
With the ongoing admissions frenzy, I, too, have been wondering if people really know what they're aspiring to. Certainly for less-affluent students, a name-brand college provides access to the power elite. But the costs can include rifts within families and scarring blows to self-confidence. Sure, when you arrive, you're told you're the cream of the crop. But you feel like skim milk. Most students, no matter their achievements, think they're admissions mistakes. They pad insecurities in a blanket of bravado. For legacies, or development admits, a sense of having to prove oneself can lead to a passion to excel or to indecorous behavior. Kids from North Dakota may as well hang a sign that says "geographical distribution" around their neck. Football players — well, they know the score.
Who feels at home in a place like Yale, where your roommate has already published a novel and the person down the hall performed on Broadway? How do you explain that now, when you turn on the television or open a newspaper, you see someone you went to college with? It sounds like bragging.
People who didn't attend elite schools want to hear about the dummies. They point to certain Yale alumni in high government positions to say, See? These places are overrated. That's probably true, but unless you were there, it's hard to know in which ways.
What Deresiewicz gets wrong is that, as a faculty member, he didn't know what it was like to be a student at Yale, where, I would argue, much of the intellectual exchange and competition goes on in the dining hall or the dorm rooms, not in the classrooms. Students know who the scholars are and revere them. They pay attention to who writes the books, but tend to talk about the authors most often to their friends.
They do, however, look for adults to connect with. An acquaintance told me that he had felt most at home at Yale with the librarians behind the checkout desk. When I was an undergraduate at Yale, in my work-study job in the French department, I photocopied for Paul de Man and talked about boy problems with the administrative assistants, who took me to their homes for dinner and a dose of normalcy.
Even those whom Calvin Trillin, 50 years later still trying to make sense of his experience at Yale, calls the "package people" — the ones whose family names grace grocery-store products — are struggling to fit in. No one feels sorry for Richie Rich, but the truth is, those entitled students have their own battles and often emerge wounded. For years I denied that; my own class rage was nurtured at Yale. When I later worked in admissions at Duke University, I resented the kids whose parents bought their way in — until I got to know them. I began to sympathize when I listened to their stories and stopped assuming I knew who they were. At elite universities, students from vastly different backgrounds are thrown together. On the surface, it looks like the world is their pearl-studded oyster. In reality, the experience can be bruising. Those of us who are taught to value critical thinking can get schooled out of a capacity for empathy. In conversations with academics, I am often struck by how little generosity of spirit informs the critique of their students.
Just as Deresiewicz never bothered to try to see under the cap of his plumber, neither, it seems to me, did he know his Yalies. At elite colleges, the student parking lots may be filled with precision German automobiles while faculty members drive Hondas. They believe that they are the products of the meritocracy and complain that their students are pampered and coddled, too much alike, and insufficiently intellectual. Class rage rules.
What if parents understood that the people who teach their children disdain them and what they assume to be their values — whether the sons of plumbers or the daughters of captains of industry? Would folks paying $50,000 a year be happy to find out that the most important person in their kid's college career might be a groundskeeper or one of the cafeteria ladies, not a Nobel laureate? One of the ironies of elite-college admissions is that with all eyes on the prize, no one looks closely at the object of desire, the actual elite-college experience.
From working in admissions, I know that Deresiewicz's assertion that "diversity is almost entirely a matter of ethnicity and race" is an overstatement. The class picture is far more complicated than he makes it seem. Kids from families who make less than $60,000 now can go to Harvard free. More lower-income, first-generation, and traditionally disadvantaged applicants are getting in, while the children of the wealthy continue to fill slots and plump endowments. In time, class-based affirmative action may become more effective, if not more visible, and the middle may continue to be squeezed out. Social Balkanization will become even more entrenched. When package people share dorm rooms with the financially aided, the latter may end up wearing borrowed Prada, but the differences remain. And the people who are teaching them may not notice.
The mainstream media have made much of the dangers of the "tenured radicals," the political disparity between faculty members and their students (although recently The New York Times assured us that the old lefties are aging out). We've gotten better at talking about race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality on campuses, but we're still stuck when it comes to money. There are multiculti organizations, women's centers, and race-specific places to go. Can you imagine a forum where students and faculty members meet to talk about their own class issues?
It's unseemly to ask for sympathy for having survived Yale, but the truth is, I'm still recovering from my experience there. Perhaps only the self-deprecating sense of humor of a Calvin Trillin can get across to the non-Ivied public what it was like without sounding boastful about answered prayers.
There are disadvantages to an elite education; I'm just not sure that they're the ones that Deresiewicz mentions. When I meet someone who went to Yale, I search for the haunted recognition beyond the Boola Boola. But no one wants to reopen old wounds. When pushed, some of my friends confess that Yale made them feel rotten and insecure, and they continue to judge themselves against the extraordinary achievements of their classmates. Others claim they have spent their lives disappointed to never again find such a rich intellectual environment.
I teach at a regional comprehensive university. While I have close relationships with some of my students, for most I am just a professor responsible for teaching and grading them. But I know something about their lives.
Their lives are hard. Many understand that education is a privilege and not a right. Most are sacrificing a lot to be the first in their family to graduate. They work 20 to 40 hours a week to pay for college, and often have to take years off to be able to afford to continue. There are many "nontraditional" students, so the younger ones don't need university staff members to be life mentors; they have their classmates. Many of my students have children. Many are married. Some may even be plumbers. I work hard to understand what their lives are like because I know that I can make a difference. I strive to see them for not only who they are, but who they can be, and I try not to make assumptions about them that lead me to view — and teach — them in limiting ways.
It's a chestnut of academe that students get in the way of the faculty's "real" work, and an even more tired move to complain about the questionable work ethic and values of students. Deresiewicz's essay, beautifully written and critically smart, flattens the variety of his students' lives into the kinds of generalizations we try to nudge first-year composition students out of making. When I asked a student now at Yale what he thought of the essay, he said that he agreed with a lot of it, but he felt that it was "sour grapes." I'd love for Yale to send copies to newly admitted students as a kind of informed consent: This is what the people who will be teaching your classes think of you. Still wanna come?
The difference between having a college degree and not having one is far greater than where you go to college. But where you go can determine, to a large extent, who you become. Some of us become jerks. And others spend our lives trying to figure out what it meant to have been there — and how to get over it.
Rachel Toor is an assistant professor of creative writing at Eastern Washington University. Her latest book, Personal Record: A Love Affair With Running, will be published this fall by the University of Nebraska Press.

http://chronicle.com
Section: The Chronicle Review
Volume 54, Issue 49, Page B4

How do we go about nation-building?

2008-07-20T22:29:00.000-07:00

This is one of my life's live and mesmerizing speech by the eloquent speaker and charming personality Shashi Tharoor during PAN IIT 2006 ..It is definitely worth reading and if you find a video do see it.

How do we go about nation-building?

Shashi Tharoor speech at PanIIT 2006 - December 23, 2006
Source : http://www.iitmumbai.org/info/news/shashitharoor122306.htm
Text of speech courtesy of:
Nostaljigs.com - http://www.nostaljigs.com/index.php?p=57

Video of Shashi Tharoor speech ... Still To be made available
____________________________________________________________________

It is an honor for me to be asked to address you today. But though Purnendu Chatterjee introduced me as a United Nations official, I should like to stress that I am speaking today purely in a personal capacity.

I am delighted to be here to address so many IIT alumni in the hope of getting you "inspired to get involved in transforming India." I am not going to cover the same ground as your other speakers today. I will try not to even mention the word "technology". Instead, I want to take literally your overall theme of nation-building. Over 59 years ago, at midnight on August 15th, 1947, independent India was born as its first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, proclaimed "a tryst with destiny — a moment which comes but rarely in history, when we pass from the old to the new, when an age ends and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance". With those words he launched India on a remarkable experiment in governance. Remarkable because it’s happening at all. "India," Winston Churchill once barked, "is merely a geographical expression. It is no more a single country than the Equator." Churchill was rarely right about India, but it is true that no other country in the world embraces the extraordinary mixture of ethnic groups, the profusion of mutually incomprehensible languages, the varieties of topography and climate, the diversity of religions and cultural practices and the range of levels of economic development that India does. So how do we go about nation-building?

Well, India is more than the sum of its contradictions. It is a country held together, in Nehru’s words, "by strong but invisible threads…. She is a myth and an idea," he wrote, [he always feminized India] "a dream and a vision, and yet very real and present and pervasive."

But even thinking about India makes clear the immensity of the nation-building challenge. How can one approach this land of snow peaks and tropical jungles, with 23 major languages and 22,000 distinct "dialects" (including some spoken by more people than Danish or Norwegian), inhabited in the sixth year of the twenty-first century by over a billion individuals of every ethnic extraction known to humanity? How does one come to terms with a country whose population is over 40% illiterate but which has educated the world’s second-largest pool of trained scientists and engineers, whose teeming cities overflow while two out of three Indians scratch a living from the soil?

What is the clue to understanding a country rife with despair and disrepair, which nonetheless moved a Mughal Emperor to declaim, "if on earth there be paradise of bliss, it is this, it is this, it is this…"? How does one gauge a culture which elevated non-violence to an effective moral principle, but whose freedom was born in blood and whose independence still soaks in it? How does one explain a land where peasant organizations and suspicious officials have attempted to close down Kentucky Fried Chicken as a threat to the nation, where a former Prime Minister bitterly criticizes the sale of Pepsi-Cola "in a country where villagers don’t have clean drinking water", and which yet invents more sophisticated software for US computer manufacturers than any other country in the world? How can one determine the identity of an ageless civilization that was the birthplace of four major religions, a dozen different traditions of classical dance, eighty-five major political parties and three hundred ways of cooking the potato?

The short answer is that it can’t be done - at least not to everyone’s satisfaction. Any truism about India can be immediately contradicted by another truism about India. It is often jokingly said that "anything you can say about India, the opposite is also true". The country’s national motto, emblazoned on its governmental crest, is "Satyameva Jayaté": Truth Alone Triumphs. The question remains, however: whose truth? It is a question to which there are at least a billion answers - if the last census hasn’t undercounted us again.

But that sort of an answer is no answer at all, and so another answer to those questions has to be sought. And this may lie in a simple insight: the singular thing about India is that you can only speak of it in the plural. There are, in the hackneyed phrase, many Indias. Many of you have come from the US, and are all familiar with the American motto, "E Pluribus Unum" — out of many, one; if India were to borrow it, it would read "E Pluribus Pluribum"! Everything exists in countless variants. There is no single standard, no fixed stereotype, no "one way". This pluralism is acknowledged in the way India arranges its own affairs: all groups, faiths, tastes and ideologies survive and contend for their place in the sun. At a time when most developing countries opted for authoritarian models of government to promote nation-building and to direct development, India chose to be a multi-party democracy. And despite many stresses and strains, including twenty-two months of autocratic rule during a "state of Emergency" declared by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1975, a multi-party democracy — freewheeling, rambunctious, corrupt and inefficient, perhaps, but nonetheless flourishing — India has remained.

One result is that India strikes many as maddening, chaotic, inefficient and seemingly unpurposeful as it muddles its way through the first decade of the twenty-first century. Another, though, is that India is not just a country, it is an adventure, one in which all avenues are open and everything is possible. "India," wrote the British historian E.P. Thompson, "is perhaps the most important country for the future of the world. All the convergent influences of the world run through this society…. There is not a thought that is being thought in the West or East that is not active in some Indian mind."

That Indian mind has been shaped by remarkably diverse forces: ancient Hindu tradition, myth and scripture; the impact of Islam and Christianity; and two centuries of British colonial rule. The result is unique. Many observers have been astonished by India’s survival as a pluralist state. But India could hardly have survived as anything else. Pluralism is a reality that emerges from the very nature of the country; it is a choice made inevitable by India’s geography and reaffirmed by its history.

So the first challenge is that we cannot generalize about India. One of the few generalizations that can safely be made about India is that nothing can be taken for granted about the country. Not even its name: for the word India comes from the river Indus, which flows in Pakistan. That anomaly is easily explained; yet each explanation breeds another anomaly. Pakistan was created as a homeland for India’s Muslims, but — at least till very recently — there were more Muslims in India than in Pakistan.

Nearly ten years ago, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of India’s independence, I wrote a book called "India: From Midnight to the Millennium." In it I focused on India as a country standing on the cusp of four of the most important debates facing the world at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

The bread vs freedom debate: can democracy literally "deliver the goods" in a country of poverty and scarcity, or do its inbuilt inefficiencies only impede rapid growth? Is the instability of political contention (and of makeshift coalitions) a luxury a developing country cannot afford? As today’s young concentrate on making their bread, should they consider political freedom a dispensable distraction?

The centralization vs federalism debate: does tomorrow’s India need to be run by a strong central Government able to transcend the fissiparous tendencies of language, caste and region, or is that government best that centralizes least? The pluralism vs fundamentalism debate: is the secularism established in India’s constitution, and now increasingly attacked as a Westernized affectation, essential in a pluralist society, or should India, like many other Third World countries, find refuge in the assertion of its own religious identity?

The "coca-colonization" debate, or globalization vs self-reliance: should India, where economic self-sufficiency has been a mantra for more than four decades, open itself further to the world economy, or does the entry of Western consumer goods bring in alien influences that threaten to disrupt Indian society in ways too vital to be allowed? Should we raise the barriers to shield our youth from the pernicious seductions of MTV? Since the East India Company came to trade and stayed on to rule, were our nationalist leaders right to be suspicious of every foreigner with a briefcase, seeing him as the thin edge of a neo-imperial wedge?

These are not merely academic debates: they are now being enacted on the national and world stage, and the choices we make will determine the kind of Indian nation we can hope to build in the 21st century. And since the century has begun with Indians accounting for a sixth of the world’s population, our choices will resonate throughout the globe. But in my remarks today, I do not have time to do justice to all these debates. Instead, I will focus on your central theme: that of nation-building in today’s India.

At that famous midnight more than fifty-nine years ago, the British Empire in India came to an end amidst the traumatic carnage of Partition and the sectarian violence that accompanied it. In these nearly six decades of independence, many thoughtful observers have seen a country more conscious than ever of what divides it: religion, region, caste, language, ethnicity. What makes India, then, a nation?

To answer that, I’d like to take an Italian example — not "that" Italian example! Amidst the popular ferment that made an Italian nation out of a mosaic of principalities and statelets in the late 19th century, one Italian nationalist (Massimo Taparelli d’Azeglio) memorably wrote, "We have created Italy. Now all we need to do is to create Italians." Strikingly enough, no Indian nationalist succumbed to the temptation to express the same thought — "we have created India; now all we need to do is to create Indians."

Such a sentiment would not, in any case, have occurred to Nehru, that pre-eminent voice of Indian nationalism, because he believed in the existence of India and Indians for millennia before he gave words to their longings; he would never have spoken of "creating" India or Indians, merely of being the agent for the reassertion of what had always existed but had been long suppressed. Nonetheless, the India that was born in 1947 was in a very real sense a new creation: a state that had made fellow citizens of the Ladakhi and the Laccadivian for the first time, that divided Punjabi from Punjabi for the first time, that asked the Keralite peasant to feel allegiance to a Kashmiri Pandit ruling in Delhi, also for the first time. Nehru would not have written of the challenge of "creating" Indians, but creating Indians was what, in fact, the nationalist movement did.

Let me illustrate what this means with a simple story. When India celebrated the 49th anniversary of its independence from British rule ten years ago, its then Prime Minister, H.D. Deve Gowda, stood at the ramparts of Delhi’s 16th-century Red Fort and delivered the traditional Independence Day address to the nation in Hindi, India’s "national language". Eight other Prime Ministers had done exactly the same thing 48 times before him, but what was unusual this time was that Deve Gowda, a southerner from the state of Karnataka, spoke to the country in a language of which he did not know a word. Tradition and politics required a speech in Hindi, so he gave one — the words having been written out for him in his native Kannada script, in which they, of course, made no sense.

Such an episode is almost inconceivable elsewhere, but it represents the best of the oddities that help make India. Only in India could a country be ruled by a man who does not understand its "national language"; only in India, for that matter, is there a "national language" which half the population does not understand; and only in India could this particular solution be found to enable the Prime Minister to address his people. One of Indian cinema’s finest "playback singers," the Keralite K.J. Yesudas, sang his way to the top of the Hindi music charts with lyrics in that language written in the Malayalam script for him, but to see the same practice elevated to the Prime Ministerial address on Independence Day was a startling affirmation of Indian pluralism.

For, you see, we are all minorities in India. A typical Indian stepping off a train, a Hindi speaking Hindu male from the state of Uttar Pradesh, might cherish the illusion that he represents the "majority community," to use an expression much favored by the less industrious of our journalists. But he does not. As a Hindu he belongs to the faith adhered to by some 81 or 82% of the population, but a majority of the country does not speak Hindi; a majority does not hail from Uttar Pradesh; and if he were visiting, say, Kerala, he would discover that a majority is not even male. Worse, our archetypal UP Hindu has only to mingle with the polyglot, multi-colored crowds (and I’m referring to the color of their skins, not their clothes) thronging any of India’s major railway stations to realize how much of a minority he really is. Even his Hinduism is no guarantee of majority-hood, because his caste automatically places him in a minority as well: if he is a Brahmin, 90% of his fellow Indians are not; if he is a Yadav, a "backward class", 85% of Indians are not, and so on.

Or take language. The Constitution of India recognizes 23 today [and the number keeps going up, but you can see fourteen scripts on our rupee note], but in fact, there are 35 Indian languages which are spoken by more than a million people — and these are languages, with their own scripts, grammatical structures and cultural assumptions, not just dialects (and if were to count dialects within these languages, there are more than 22,000). Each of the native speakers of these languages is in a linguistic minority, for none enjoys majority status in India. Thanks in part to the popularity of Bombay’s Hindi cinema, Hindi is understood, if not always well spoken, by nearly half the population of India, but it is in no sense the language of the majority; indeed, its locutions, gender rules and script are unfamiliar to most Indians in the south or north-east.

Ethnicity further complicates the notion of a majority community. Most of the time, an Indian’s name immediately reveals where he is from and what his mother tongue is; when we introduce ourselves we are advertising our origins. Despite some inter-marriage at the elite levels in the cities, Indians still largely remain endogamous, and a Bengali is easily distinguished from a Punjabi. The difference this reflects is often more apparent than the elements of commonality. A Karnataka Brahmin shares his Hindu faith with a Bihari Kurmi, but feels little identity with him in respect of appearance, dress, customs, tastes, language or political objectives. At the same time a Tamil Hindu would feel that he has far more in common with a Tamil Christian or Tamil Muslim than with, say, a Haryanvi Jat with whom he formally shares a religion.

Why do I harp on these differences? Only to make the point that Indian nationalism is a rare animal indeed. [reminds me of the American and French diplomats in the Security Council arguing about a problem: "it may work in practice, but will it work in theory?"] It is not based on language (since we have at least 23 or 35, depending on whether you follow the Constitution or the ethnolinguists). It is not based on geography (the "natural" geography of the subcontinent –framed by the mountains and the sea — has been hacked by the partition of 1947). It is not based on ethnicity (the "Indian" accommodates a diversity of racial types in which many Indians have more in common with foreigners than with other Indians — Indian Punjabis and Bengalis, for instance, have more in common ethnically with Pakistanis and Bangladeshis, respectively, than they do with Poonawalas or Bangaloreans). And it is not based on religion (we are home to every faith known to mankind, and Hinduism — a faith without a national organization, no established church or ecclesiastical hierarchy, no uniform beliefs or modes of worship — exemplifies as much our diversity as it does our common cultural heritage). Indian nationalism is the nationalism of an idea, the idea of an ever-ever land — emerging from an ancient civilization, united by a shared history, sustained by pluralist democracy.

So in building this nation, our land imposes no narrow conformities on its citizens: you can be many things and one thing. You can be a good Muslim, a good Keralite and a good Indian all at once. Whereas in the former Yugoslavia, people who looked alike and even shared common surnames and a language massacred each other, leading Freudians to speak of "the narcissism of minor differences", in India we celebrate the commonality of major differences. To stand Michael Ignatieff’s famous phrase on its head, we are a land of belonging rather than of blood.

So the idea of India is of one land embracing many. It is the idea that a nation may endure differences of caste, creed, color, culture, cuisine, conviction, costume and custom, and still rally around a democratic consensus. That consensus is around the simple principle that in a democracy you don’t really need to agree — except on the ground rules of how you will disagree. The reason India has survived all the stresses and strains that have beset it for fifty years, andthat led so many to predict its imminent disintegration, is that it maintained consensus on how to manage without consensus.

Now I realize some of you will see this as an excessively rosy pricture, and I will deal with their cynicism in a moment. But let me admit straight away that India offers plenty of scope for misunderstandings. [Tractor story.] So what you understand depends on what your assumptions are!

I’m here to share my assumptions about the nation we are trying to build. My former wife and I have twin sons, born in June 1984. Though they first entered the world in Singapore, and though the circumstances of my life have seen them grow up in Switzerland and then the United States, and they are now living in Hong Kong and London, it is India they have always identified with. Ask them what they are, and that’s what they’ll tell you: they’re Indian. Not "Hindu", not "Malayali," not "Nair", not "Calcuttan", though they could claim all those labels too. Their mother is herself fhalf-Bengali, half-Kashmiri, which gives them further permutative possibilities. They desire none. They are just Indian.

Yet in recent years they have seen an India in which that answer no longer seems enough. Political contention has erupted in violence: the destruction in December 1992 of the Babri Masjid by a howling, chanting mob of Hindu fanatics, and the massacre of perhaps 2000 innocents, mainly Muslim, across Gujarat in early 2002, were both emblematic of this tragic development. Headlines spoke of riots and killing, Hindu against Muslim, of men being slaughtered because of the mark on a forehead or the absence of a foreskin. This is not the India I had wanted my sons to lay claim to.

My generation – and there are so many of you here whom I’ve met years ago at your IIT campuses — grew up in an India where our sense of nationhood lay in the slogan, "unity in diversity". We were brought up to take pluralism for granted, and to reject the communalism that had partitioned the nation when the British left. In rejecting the case for Pakistan, Indian nationalism also rejected the very idea that religion should be a determinant of nationhood. We never fell into the insidious trap of agreeing that, since Partition had established a state for Muslims, what remained was a state for Hindus. To accept the idea of India you had to spurn the logic that had divided the country.

This was what that much-abused term, "secularism", meant for us. Western dictionaries define "secularism" as the absence of religion, but as you all know, Indian secularism means a profusion of religions, none of which is privileged by the state. Secularism in India did not mean irreligiousness, which even avowedly atheist parties like the Communists or the southern DMK party found unpopular amongst their voters; indeed, in Calcutta’s annual Durga Puja, the Communist parties compete with each other to put up the most lavish Puja pandals to the goddess. Rather, secularism means, in the Indian tradition, multi-religiousness. I remember how, in the Calcutta neighbourhood where I lived during my high school years, the wail of the muezzin calling the Islamic faithful to prayer blended with the tinkling of the bells accompanying the chant of the mantras at the Hindu Shiva temple and the crackling loudspeakers outside the Sikh gurudwara reciting verses from the Granth Sahib. And St. Paul’s Cathedral was just round the corner.

Throughout the decades after Independence, the political culture of the country reflected these "secular" assumptions and attitudes. Though the Indian population was 82% Hindu and the country had been partitioned as a result of a demand for a separate Muslim homeland, three of India’s eleven Presidents were Muslims; so were innumerable Governors, Cabinet Ministers, Chief Ministers of states, Ambassadors, Generals, and Supreme Court Justices. During the war with Pakistan in 1971, the Indian Air Force in the northern sector was commanded by a Muslim [Lateef]; the Army Commander was a Parsi [Manekshaw], the General Officer Commanding the forces that marched into Bangladesh was a Sikh [Aurora], and the General flown in to negotiate the surrender of the Pakistani forces in East Bengal was Jewish [Jacob].

That is India.

The irony is that India’s secular co-existence was paradoxically made possible by the fact that the overwhelming majority of Indians are Hindus. It is odd to read today of "Hindu fundamentalism", because Hinduism is a religion without fundamentals: no organized church, no compulsory beliefs or rites of worship, no single sacred book. The name itself denotes something less, and more, than a set of theological beliefs. In many languages — French and Persian amongst them — the word for "Indian" is "Hindu". Originally Hindu simply meant the people beyond the river Sindhu, or Indus. But the Indus is now in Islamic Pakistan; and to make matters worse, the word "Hindu" did not exist in any Indian language till its use by foreigners gave Indians a term for self-definition.

"Hinduism" is thus the name others applied to the indigenous religion of India, which many call "Sanatan Dharma". It embraces an eclectic range of doctrines and practices, from pantheism to agnosticism and from faith in reincarnation to belief in the caste system. But none of these constitutes an obligatory credo for a Hindu: there are none. We have no compulsory dogmas.

I grew up in a Hindu household. Our home always had a prayer-room, where paintings and portraits of assorted divinities jostled for shelf- and wall-space with fading photographs of departed ancestors, all stained by ash scattered from the incense burned daily by my devout parents. Every morning, after his bath, my father would stand in front of the prayer-room wrapped in his towel, his wet hair still uncombed, and chant his Sanskrit mantras. But he never obliged me to join him; he exemplified the Hindu idea that religion is an intensely personal matter, that prayer is between you and whatever image of your maker you choose to worship. In the Hindu way, I was to find my own truth.

I think I have. I am a believer, despite a brief period of schoolboy atheism (of the kind that comes with the discovery of rationality and goes with an acknowledgement of its limitations). And I am happy to describe myself as a believing Hindu: not just because it is the faith into which I was born, but for a string of other reasons, though faith requires no reason. One is cultural: as a Hindu I belong to a faith that expresses the ancient genius of my own people. Another is, for lack of a better phrase, its intellectual "fit": I am more comfortable with the belief structures of Hinduism than I would be with those of the other faiths of which I know. As a Hindu I claim adherence to a religion without an established church or priestly papacy, a religion whose rituals and customs I am free to reject, a religion that does not oblige me to demonstrate my faith by any visible sign, by subsuming my identity in any collectivity, not even by a specific day or time or frequency of worship. As a Hindu I subscribe to a creed that is free of the restrictive dogmas of holy writ, that refuses to be shackled to the limitations of a single holy book.

Above all, as a Hindu I belong to the only major religion in the world that does not claim to be the only true religion. I find it immensely congenial to be able to face my fellow human beings of other faiths without being burdened by the conviction that I am embarked upon a "true path" that they have missed. Hinduism asserts that all ways of belief are equally valid, and Hindus readily venerate the saints, and the sacred objects, of other faiths. Hinduism is a civilization, not a dogma. There is no such thing as a Hindu heresy.

How can such a religion lend itself to "fundamentalism"? That devotees of this essentially tolerant faith have desecrated a shrine and assaulted Muslims in its name is a source of shame and sorrow. India has survived the Aryans, the Mughals, the British; it has taken from each — language, art, food, learning — and grown with all of them. To be Indian is to be part of an elusive dream we all share, a dream that fills our minds with sounds, words, flavours from many sources that we cannot easily identify. Large, eclectic, agglomerative, the Hinduism that I know understands that faith is a matter of hearts and minds, not of bricks and stone. "Build Ram inyour heart," the Hindu is enjoined; and if Ram is in your heart, it will little matter where else he is, or is not.

But the twentieth-century politics of deprivation has eroded the culture’s confidence. Hindu chauvinism has emerged from the competition for resources in a contentious democracy. But why blame just the Hindus? Politicians of all faiths across India seek to mobilize voters by appealing to narrow identities; by seeking votes in the name of religion, caste and region, they have urged voters to define themselves on these lines. As religion, caste and region have come to dominate public discourse, to some it has become more important to be a Muslim, a Bodo or a Yadav than to be an Indian.

This is why the development of what has been called "Hindu fundamentalism" and the resultant change in the public discourse about Indianness is so dangerous. The suggestion that only a Hindu, and only a certain kind of Hindu, can be an authentic Indian, is an affront to the very premise of Indian nationalism. An India that denies itself to some of us could end up being denied to all of us.

The reduction of non-Hindus to second-class status in their homeland is unthinkable. It would be a second Partition: and a partition in the Indian soul would be as bad as a partition in the Indian soil. For my sons, and for all the reasons that I have described, the only possible idea of India is that of a nation greater than the sum of its parts. That is the only India that will allow them to call themselves Indians.

And so the Indian nation that I want to encourage all of you to build, imposes no pressure to conform. It celebrates diversity: if America is a melting-pot, then to me India is a thali, a selection of sumptuous dishes in different bowls. Each tastes different, and does not necessarily mix with the next, but they belong together on the same plate, and they complement each other in making the meal a satisfying repast.

Less than two months ago, I addressed the Wharton Business School’s India Forum on "realizing the Indian Dream". And I told them that the Indian dream must be a dream that can be dreamt in Gujarati or in Tamil, dreamt by a Muslim or a Parsi, dreamt by a Brahmin or a Bodo, dreamt on a charpoy or a luxury king bed. India’s founding fathers wrote a constitution for their dreams; we have given passports to their ideals. Any narrower definition of Indianness would not just be pernicious: it would be an insult to Indian nationhood. An India that denies itself to some Indians would no longer be the India Mahatma Gandhi fought to free.

I have already transgressed on the time available to me this evening. We are all like Egyptian mummies, pressed for time! But I do want to say I have great hope for the survival and success of Indian pluralism. I believe no one identity can triumph in India. Both our country’s diversity and the logic of the electoral marketplace make this impossible. And the sight two years ago, after the awe-inspiring experience of the world’s largest exercise in democratic elections, of a Roman Catholic (Sonia Gandhi) making way for a Sikh (Manmohan Singh) to be sworn in as Prime Minister of India by a Muslim (President Abdul Kalam) – in a country more than 80% Hindu — has affirmed, as nothing else could have, the shining example of Indian pluralism. But if your political tastes are different, it doesn’t matter, since in leading a coalition government, the Hindu-inclined Bharatiya Janata Party had already learned that any party with aspirations to rule India will have to reach out to other groups, other interests, other minorities. After all, there are too many diversities in our land for any one version of reality to be imposed on all of us.

Equally, democracy is vital for India’s future. For there is no easy way to cope with such diversity, but democracy is the only technique that can work. What is encouraging for the future of democracy is that India is unusual in that democracy is not an elite preoccupation, but matters most strongly to ordinary people. Whereas in the United States a majority of the poor do not vote, [in Harlem in the last Presidential elections, the turnout was 23%] in India the poor turnout in great numbers. It is not the privileged or even the middle-class who spend four hours in the hot sun to cast their vote, but the poor, because they know their votes make a difference.

So a democratic nation is being built. No one speaks seriously any more of the dangers of disintegration that, for years, India was said to be facing. In my view, the experiment begun nearly sixty years ago has worked. Though there have been caste conflicts, linguistic clashes, communal riots and threats to the nation from separatist groups, political democracy has helped to defuse each of these. Separatist movements in places as far-flung as Tamil Nadu and Mizoram have been defused in an unsung achievement of Indian democracy. The formula is simple: Yesterday’s secessionists become today’s chief ministers, and (thanks to the vagaries of politics) tomorrow’s leaders of the opposition. The explosive potential of caste division has also been channelled through the ballot box. Most strikingly, the power of electoral numbers has given high office to the lowest of India’s low. Who could have imagined, for 3000 years, that a Dalit woman would rule as Chief Minister of India’s most populous state? Yet Mayawati has done that not once but twice in UP. Nine summers ago, K. R. Narayanan, a Dalit, — a man who was born in a thatched hut with no toilet and no running water, whose university refused to award him his degree at the same ceremony as his upper-caste classmates even though he came first in the university — was elected President of India. He led an India whose injustices and inequalities he had keenly felt as a member of an underprivileged community; yet an India that offered — through its brave if flawed experiment in constitutional democracy, secularism, affirmative governmental action and change through the ballot-box — the prospect of overcoming these injustices. He was succeeded by the extraordinary man we have heard today — a Tamil Muslim, who as a boy peddled newspapers, and who happens to be the father of India’s missile program. If the Presidency symbolizes the Indian State, it is still a remarkable symbol of India’s diversity, and of its democracy.

I have written in my books of the many problems the country faces, the poor quality of much of its political leadership, the rampant corruption, the criminalization of politics. And yet — corruption is being tackled by an activist judiciary and by energetic investigative agencies that have not hesitated to indict the most powerful Indian politicians. (If only the rate of convictions matched the rate of indictments, it would be even better…) The rule of law remains a vital Indian strength. Nongovernmental organizations actively defend human rights, promoting environmentalism, fighting injustice. The press is free, lively, irreverent, disdainful of sacred cows.

On my annual visits home, I discover that India is anything but the unchanging land of cliché. There is an extraordinary degree of change and ferment. Dramatic transformations are taking place that amount to little short of a revolution — in politics, economics, society and culture. In politics, we have gone from single party governance to a coalition era. In economics we have gone from protectionism to liberalization, even if is with the hesitancy of governments looking over their electoral shoulders. In caste and social relations, we have witnessed the convulsive changes I have just mentioned. It’s still true that in many parts of India, when you cast your vote, you vote your caste. But that too has brought about profound alterations in the country. And in a sense in cultural affairs, with the notion of Hindutva being proclaimed, and argued and debated from the rooftops in recent years, we have had a searching re-examination of identity. Now, any of these transformations could have been enough to throw another country into a turbulent revolution. But we have had all four in India and yet we have absorbed them, and made all the changes work, because the Indian revolution is a democratic one, sustained by a larger idea of India, an India which safeguards the common space available to each identity, an India that remains safe for diversity.

I have not touched on economics today, because so many speakers better qualified than I am will do so during your conference. You are all familiar with the forecasts that at least in GNP terms India could be the world’s fifth-largest economy in the next 20 years, after the US, China, Japan and a united Europe, and we could move up to third place a decade later. This is quite a change, since for more than four decades India suffered from what I call the economics of nationalism, which equated political independence with economic self-sufficiency and so largely isolated India from the world economy. The political choices made by successive Indian Governments meant that for over four decades we put bureaucrats on top of the commanding heights of the economy rather than businessmen, and we spent 45 years regulating stagnation and trying to distribute poverty. Economic reforms have changed India irreversibly. You IITans have contributed hugely to the new image of India: your success in Silicon Valley and elsewhere meansthat India is no longer seen as a land of poverty and snake charmers – though both exist – but as a nation of computer geeks and software entrepreneurs. You have replaced the idea of the Indian rope trick with an Indian hope trick – and thanks to you it is not a trick but a reality that most Indians have reason to hope their tomorrow will be better than their today. And I urge the NRIs amongst you to play your full part in building that hope – since, as I’ve written, "NRI" could stand for "Not Really Indian" but it could also be "Never Relinquished India", and I think the NRI IITans here are in the latter category.

Yet many Indians still fear that economic liberalization will bring with it cultural imperialism of a particularly insidious kind — that Baywatch and burgers will supplant Bharatanatyam and bhelpuri.Instead, India’s recent experience with Western consumer products demonstrates that we can drink Coca-Cola without becoming coca-colonized. Indians will not become any less Indian if, in Mahatma Gandhi’s metaphor, we open the doors and windows of our country and let foreign winds blow through our house. Our popular culture has proved resilient enough to compete successfully with MTV and McDonald’s. Besides, the strength of "Indianness" lies in its ability to absorb foreign influences and to transform them — by a peculiarly Indian alchemy — into something that belongs naturally on the soil of India.

But in any case the winds of globalization must blow both ways. The exports of Bollywood are reaching beyond NRIs to new foreign audiences. And Indian food has gone global. In England today, Indian curry houses employ more people than the coal, iron and steel and shipbuilding industries combined. So the Empire can strike back.

I believe in an India open to the contention of ideas and interests within it, unafraid of the prowess or the products of the outside world, wedded to the pluralism that is India’s greatest strength, and determined to liberate and fulfill the creative energies of its people. Such an India can make the 21st century its own.

So, to return to the kind of nation I’m supposed to help inspire you to build: For observers of India across the world, wary of the endless multiplication of sovereignties, hesitant before the clamor for ethnic division and religious self-assertion echoing in a hundred remote corners of the globe, there may be something to think about in this idea of India. It’s a deceptively simple idea, familiar to developed democracies but few others — of a land where it doesn’t (or shouldn’t) matter what the color of your skin is, the kind of food you eat, the sounds you make when you speak, the God you choose to worship (or not), so long as you want to play by the same rules as everybody else. If the overwhelming majority of a people share the political will for unity, if they wear the dust of a shared history on their foreheads and the mud of an uncertain future on their feet, and if they realize they are better off in Kozhikode or Kanpur dreaming the same dreams as those in Kolhapur or Kohima, a nation exists, celebrating diversity, pluralism — and freedom. That is why India can face the new millennium with confidence, if not with optimism. But then I define "optimism" as "regarding the future with uncertainty"; a pessimist says "everything will go wrong", whereas an optimist believes "everything might go right". I believe I have given you enough reasons to imagine that everything might go right.

So that is my idea of the Indian nation we should build: a pluralist land that celebrates its diversity and makes it a source of strength rather than weakness, and that enables each Indian to fulfil his or her potential. That is a nation which we are capable of building. Since Purnendu mentioned that I am an Indian writer, let me tell you an Indian story — a tale from our ancient Puranas. It is a typical Indian story of a sage and his disciples. The sage asks his disciples, "when does the night end?" And the disciples say, "at dawn, of course." The sage says, "I know that. But when does the night end and the dawn begin?" The first disciple, who is from the tropical south of India where I come from, replies: "When the first glimmer of light across the sky reveals the palm fronds on the coconut trees swaying in the breeze, that is when the night ends and the dawn begins." The sage says "no," so the second disciple, who is from the cold north ventures: "When the first streaks of sunshine make the snow gleam white on the mountaintops of the Himalayas, that is when the night ends and the dawn begins." The sage says, "no, my sons. When two travelers from opposite ends of our land meet and embrace each other as brothers, and when they realize they sleep under the same sky, see the same stars and dream the same dreams — that is when the night ends and the dawn begins."

There has been many a dark night for India in the century that has just passed. By preserving the diversity that is its essence, and our democratic values and traditions, I believe India can not only build a great nation but ensure that its people can enjoy a new dawn in this century."

Don’t Quit!

2008-07-05T03:00:00.000-07:00

Good poem even if u r not quitting or struggling!!!

When things go wrong, as they sometimes will,
When the road you’re trudging seems all up hill,
When the funds are low and the debts are high,
And you want to smile, but you have to sigh,
When care is pressing you down a bit,
Rest if you must, but don’t you quit.

Life is queer with its twists and turns,
As everyone of us sometimes learns,
And many a failure turns about
When he might have won had he stuck it out;
Don’t give up, though the pace seems slow -
You might succeed with another blow.

Often the goal is nearer than
It seems to a faint and faltering man,
Often the struggler has given up
When he might have captured the victor’s cup.
And he learned too late, when the night slipped down,
How close he was to the golden crown.

Success is failure turned inside out -
The silver tint of the clouds of doubt -
And you never can tell how close you are,
It may be near when it seems afar;
So stick to the fight when you’re hardest hit -
It’s when things seem worst that you mustn’t quit.

Writer - Unknown

Reader - Known :)

PhD lene ki tamanna abb humare dile main hai

2008-06-25T12:02:00.000-07:00

Image Source : www.cse.iitb.ac.in/aru/PhD-ComicStrip.html
[From "Resonance" Journal of science and Education (published by Indian Academy of Sciences)]

Presyn likhne ki tammanna abb humare dil main hai
Dekhna hai jor kitna apni research work main hain

Waqt aanay dey bata denge tujhe aye RPC (resrearch progress commitee)
Hum abhi se kya batayen kya ke kitne paper review main hain
Khainch kar layee hai hum ko PhD khatam karne ki ummeed
Presyn likhne ki tammanna abb humare dil main hai

Hai liye correction guide tak main khada hua
Aur hum taiyyaar hain draft copy hath main liye hua
Khoon se likhenga agar ek aur corrected report mang li
Presyn likhne ki tammanna abb humare dil main hai

Schol jo band ho jati hai to uth jata hai PhD ka junoon
Sir ko koi yeh samjhaye kya humare dil main hai
Roj yeh sochta hun ki abb acknowledgement hi likhna queue main hai
Presyn likhne ki tammanna abb humare dil main hai

Hum to ghar se nikle hi the sochkar yeh baras
Degree hatheli par hogi tabhi chale rehte the ye qadam
Deptt ke mehmaan lagte hain sab mehfil mein hum
Presyn likhne ki tammanna abb humare dil main hai

Yun khada chamber main guide, nalayak kah raha hai baar baar
Kya tamannaa-e-hoshiyar, kehlwane ki humare dil mein hai
Dimaag main ideas ki toli aur dil main noble pane ka inqlaab
Hosh RPC ke udaa denge humein roko na aaj
Duur reh paaye jo humse dam kahaan PhD mein hai
Presyn likhne ki tammanna abb humare dil main hai

Wo research bhi kya research hai jismein na baha ho khoon-e-junoon
Toofaanon se kya lade jiska guide uski side mein hai
Presyn likhne ki tammanna abb humare dil main hai
Dekhna hai jor kitna apni research work main hain

Mouse traps the Net

2008-06-22T10:16:00.000-07:00

A weiry night its raining all over the IIT campus most of the nocturnal creatures (mice, bats, PhD students) are enjoying the solace they like....but no..... see the bigger mouse and his son as usual busy with getting food. "Hey dad!!", said the kid looking from the outside of window of lab "Did u ever see these morons talking like us people in groups?" Dad said, "No dear these people sitting in front of boxes rarely like to talk but yes i remember, i made them do that once".... "When ?" asked the son surprisingly as if his fathers heroic feat was something he wanted to do....
Dad replied proudly, "When I was young almost three years ago?"....and then the story started it was His Story or History ....
He said," In fact i had been always trying to do some social service and good of deprived and poor human beings. I had asked the same question to ur grandfather and he told me all was well eight years before when there were less number of these boxes in front of them. He also shared with me the story of his journey through the box and how one of his friends met his death while passing through such a box (printer) which accidentally started and he came out along with a A4 sheet.
These boxes have made them forget to converse like us, so one day just a thought occurred to me, why these people don't talk among each other or most of them listen to only one as Profs in under-grads classroom or guide of grads. In fact they all hardly converse.
I thought of doing some research into the root cause of this virus spreading among human beings we friends even named it "NCV i.e non-communication virus" and sad thing was it was observed that this was a communicable virus and was spreading fast. My friends even held a closed door meeting to kill or somehow avoid this virus before it spreads into our community, by eating their infected food. We volunteered the act of figuring out what and how does this virus spreads and how much have already been affected within the campus? Teams were divided and we all parted our ways in hostels,labs,admnin blocks,deptts and schools. After a long survey we found that this strange disease has already affected a large population and root cause was the box as whoever had the box was found to be suffering from same symptoms.
In fact we ended up finding out we cant cut through this virus as it was being generated through boxes and it was impossible to destroy all boxes as number seems to be more than number of humans in campus. We had to give up this whole project as we hardly cud ever imagine to do so. This thing kept me bothering for almost months and since none of us was being ever affected by it we seem to drop the idea. Something in me always wanted me to go for better good ,"What if we are not being affected , at least they are (humans)getting affected? Y shouldn't we help them?"
So I decided to find out the cause of it by me alone. I started from a lab and walked all over the wire to enter the place where they ended and then followed another bunch to a place where that one ended. Every day I kept on following the wires till I reached the final destination of only few such wires. The building was full of boxes and for some matter my intuition said this is the one. The place i was looking for is here. I started by reaching a room full of such wires and two three boxes. I understood the root cause of everything if there is any is this one so I need to do some repair here. I took the task of eating the wires and i just had some of them. Next day I was amazed to see more people on the streets and talking. I found lot of them were having a lot of gossips many taking tea together and many having a good old laugh. Friends meetings, and lot of crowd everywhere. I was able to understand within seconds that i have destroyed the virus in one time.
I was so proud of me that night till i broke this news to my friends. It seemed to me none was happy with that, I was told y i needed to do that. I was surprised as for me this was discovery a way of getting human out of virus and self-satisfaction. Later next day, I was told that there had been a massacre , lot of my friends got hurted or lost their life's when same people had a talk of our growing numbers and they got time to give a rat-poison. I was blamed for it all, in fact i was told the problem was that i had cut some main internet cable which was necessary for the boxes to make human stick to it. The situation became worst in next few days when we lost many of our friends and for humans things started becoming again the same as it was. I was held responsible for helping humans and deceiving our community leading to death of many friends.....and thats y my son I will advise u please look for satisfying your desires and let the remaining things to humans only...." and there goes the fatherly advice to a son who also had anthropological interests.

PS: The mouse are still less-educated to understand and differentiate between box and computer (as its of no use for them) and the mouse we use and the one they are. So the box word used in this post is their interpretation of computer.

Regeneration ? (Not Complete yet)

2008-06-22T09:39:00.000-07:00

Well this post of mine is a bit late and when i have many different ideas in my mind to write about . It all started when i started to wander whether we are still in dream or is it real. Why sometimes u feel hallucination that the same event or moment that has happened or is repeating or u have seen it before. Is it that we have lived these moments before and now its just a controlled playback of all the events or is it that we had been in same situation before and our brain correlates and make us feel its a repetition.
What if we all are in a dream world and its a long long dream which cannot be measured in time or space. Well then i start thinking of what and why they say we are in a circle of life and death almost all religions say so. So that means we are just in a cycle ? or is there reincarnation ....ahhhh
and here where my third little thought starts to germinate from. Do the souls stay in the universe ? they just change the body. No wander its not a great thought but let me add to it now which i have thought by myself and later was confirmed by non believers in reincarnation that they are thinking the same too. If the souls which were initially a constant number but how does that number fits into the ever changing number of bodies ..yes I mean if population of the world has been increasing ever since ...Where are the new souls coming form. Is it that souls are generating from the animal kingdom?.....Not Complete yet

Boy's Do Cry!!!

2008-05-27T05:10:00.000-07:00

She told me I can't write that , I said why and she said crying you shouldn't and i told her crying I should and then started the boys too cry. In this article I am not talking about emotional cry but a pretty intentional cry.

I am not a feminist and neither a misogynist. Do u know there is no proper antonym for feminist. Y bcoz they won't let us make it :D.

feminism : A movement to promote women's interests at the expense of men
Antonym for Feminism Not defined Yet :P

Who thinks of men's interest their interests are quite obvious (3 words ;)) and since they are pretty understandable women think misery is their company not men. They are happy out there . No my sweethearts boys and man have grown, they have grown to the extent that they no How to Cry ? When to Cry? How to manipulate with Cry? Which were all woman's domain once.

Once masculinity used to get melted when femininity used to shed tears and now what I am seeing is vice versa. Its evolution and slowly slowly men also geared from cave men to polished men. They are also carrying the weapons of destruction and know how to use them no not the Tear Gas but the Tears. They know when and where it perfectly works and they have learnt the art of crying. The art of crying , I have to learn it ,even i said to myself when I found its working all over, it was such a most happening thing of a day and must be learnt to be a better evolved species.

When did u last heard

Men/Boy cried after beating wife/GF and then asking for forgiveness, after openly committing a public disgrace to women in form and then apologizing for it, after ditching a girl and saying he was helpless because of parents, after filming GF/wives/girls in compromising positions and then when its open in public apologies mixed with drops as shield. Even the biggest of biggest offense now men also know how to use the power of tears. As if now its not the crocodile tears but men tears!!

During my childhood a girl sitting next to me put me in trouble by telling her friend that i whistled in class (which i had not , i still don't understood Why?). And when her friends brother was interrogated for same cause I was blamed. In the whole class when teacher claimed my name in that mischievous act and the false witness sitting next to me. She started crying and I had no Idea!!! :O what to do!!! Infact i ended up apologizing to her as if it wasn't her act. But now I know I should have cried with my heart out and then turned the tables :D. The irony was this that in this whole episode my mother too didn't believe me as she said u would have done it otherwise u cud have cried and I was still believing that i am a boy and i shouldn't cry which she herself told me (beta ladke nahin rote as if right to cry is only for Women) .

I saw Kapil Dev, Sreesanth , Vinod Kambli (Indian cricketers who cried in public) crying and they got a fairly good publicity, they could prove their points much better to opposite sex as they started defending the cause with them sheding the tears. Infact tears are working for getting or luring women . In my campus i know a guy who got the girl of his dreams buy constantly taking her to lake side and shedding tears to get the prey :P. All of us knew that personality of guy was far beyond to impress and woo the lady. But worked marvelously that girl felt how a sensitive person he is . Let me tell the same senstive person ignored to give a helping hand to the same girl when she started falling downhill during one of their famous trek (reported by all primary resources). But now its a happy couple with tears in all four eyes .

I am nowadays advocating Boys to try cry as this is the inn thing when girls are sleeping in their dreams believing that Boys don't cry and when they cry they are in intense pain.

PS: Please don't generalise this as it might be pretty harmful for guys who are used to do the same. I am not a feminist and neither a misogynist i repeat.

He died the very day he started to live!!!

2008-04-20T07:39:00.000-07:00

the day was moron as was his last night, not only nights but last days and not only days but weeks but not only weeks , years too. He was struggling for getting a better life since long ...nothing seems to work for him , no excitement in work, no hope in life, no peace of mind yet he didn't know what is missing. He had all mundane things with him, loving people around him ...still some emptiness,

"Why is it so??" he asked himself while driving in his convertible Porsche through freeway near the sea.
"I have all what should be there"...."No" said the inner voice , "You don't have all ".
so he said "Whats missing ?" while speeding and enjoying his holiday while blue sky and sunny e day was all over him.
He didn't hear anything . He repeated again "What is this hollowness for??" , the inside voice is still quiet. He again said while thumping his wheel with hands, "I have fullfiled my ambitions , i am doing good in career, I enjoy night out with my friends... I have been having one night stands, i have all what a man of my age can possess. So whats it then?? "
No you don't have everything , the inside replied "You have money not happiness; you have body not health; you have sex not intimacy; you have acquaintance not friends; above all you have lust not love ....and thats why its hollow!!!"
"None of these are close to your heart , they might be close to your senses." ..it added while a cool breeze was blowing through his head, perturbation inside were leaving him cold from inside
, he was numb on such a thought.
"So" he said "what can I do , its difficult to find love, infact rare to find it. Its not alive anymore "
"Did u ever try?" the inside was rebelling against him "Do you try to be close to anyone? share dreams, aspirations, blunders, open up and be free soul to anyone?" He said "No, people are shrewd and especially girls they are always? and anyways i believe love is nothing but a way to sex . At last the love is all about sex, this is how the world is moving, Anyways you either fall in love with someone and marry him/her and have family after a good sex. So love is nothing but a lust feeling which stays inside and when expressed with one it is called love , and its only our prime need to copulate that govern us to have it".
"Such a mean idea, so you mean to say Its all about sex sex and sex. People love each other because they love bodies of each other???. "from inside came the voice.
"Yes , and lets cut this crap , and let me enjoy", he said to himself.
"No , and that what explains why you feel so hollow!!!" a pause....
"Means?" he exclaimed with eyebrows touching together as if his idea is being challenged by himself. "Because you had been keeping this belief you have all the stuff but no matter in life"
You mean to say he replied to himself "money not happiness, body not health, sex not intimacy, acquaintance not friends and lust not love??"
"Yes" inner voice
"I don't believe it " he attacked
"So where's your belief taking you, You are stagnant in life. Aren't You? "
"Okay I will try this and lets see!!" He said to himself although disbelievingly but anyways he thought of trying the option to get in peace with himself.
He looked out and found a beautiful sunset, thought of stopping by, he parked the car.
It was a cliff and a beautiful small hill near it , so he thought of climbing it to see the sunset down in the sea clearly. As he climbed he found it more invigorating and got more enchanted by the idea of his own of let go his own views and start living all over again (not sure although). As soon as he was finding solace he heard a sharp voice nearby somewhere, somebody screaming .... He ran to that side , he didn't see anything, and thought must have mistaken , no he hasn't it repeated and he ran towards the place it came from. A man was trying to throw a woman below the cliff while she was struggling.
A second he felt he should save her and then the saw the strong man, that woman was already on the verge of falling. He told himself, " No No!!, I don't want to get into trouble, the man might kill him also as the only witness".
But then , he thought, "No I should, may be I can feel happy after saving one life and no need to believe my inside thoughts then". he was still thinking to prove himself to his consciousness.
And he ran that way with the loud shout "Leave her or I will shoot", pretending a gun in his pocket. The other man saw him and with more thrust threw the women away.
He thought that she was gone but a moment he reached there he saw her hand on edge of cliff. The other man thought first to handle the witness , so in no time he pounced upon him and both of them started a tussle.
The woman was still shouting and this gave him a zeal... a zeal to prove himself. He started knuckling down the strong man till he heard a bang punch on his face.
He was slight unconscious but he took with his keys which he was pretending to be gun and gave a knuckle to the man. 1 ....2......3 he said to himself the other man got hurt and felt unconscious .
The woman was giving a lame cry, so he just ran and reached out for her and tried to pull her up, by the time he pulled her up, he felt pushed by someone.
And then he felt all , he was diving deep into the sea and it was for first time he himself was watching himself setting down in sea than the sun.
He felt a complete life as he was falling down , all moments he was treasuring at that time, he could feel love of mother, intimacy of his first love, good health, friendships of dear friends he had left long ago...but no desires.
In a vague attempt to prove himself right (his beliefs)... he proved himself (inner self) right. His thoughts were as he was able to pull a life out for someone but he himself was going to die the very day he started to live!!!!

Foul-weather friend

2008-04-18T04:41:00.000-07:00

The Urban dictionary suggests the meaning as :

The opposite of a fair-weather friend, a foul-weather friend only seeks you out if they have a problem, need a shoulder to cry on, a ride to town or someone to watch their dog, but otherwise they act as if they don't even know you. They're only your chum when they're glum.

A foul-weather friend will never call you to go out with other friends, go to a show or just go hang out, but the minute trouble comes, your foul-weather friend knows you are good old reliable you, the one who will listen when no one else will, and they act like you're their only friend. Don't expect the same in return either. When you've got a problem, they'll usually tell you not to bring them down.

Yooooooooo I find how to describe one of my cousin's , I said to myself ...yup this suits him . Whole of our family describes him so but hardly knew there is a word for such people too. Unfortunately we all meet such people at least once in our life. They deserve to be known as something and they do. The best characteristics of such people is they become predictable and later you have to do nothing but to somehow ignore them or if not possible then face them . Well what kind of inherited qualities these people have to become so , i am not sure anything other than being mean in initial phase of life they become our foul weather friend , since they resemble mean-ness in all their acts they tend to behave like this .....isn't it going like a negative blog .......well shall i go ahead n describe such people or give solution to avoid such people or just mock about their behavior.

I ain't no GOD ...(is it, i can believe??) so lets go ahead....more adding to their characteristics is whenever in trouble they will be find you no matter which corner of the world you are in, and start pitting about their conditions .... and once it comes to their happy days no matter even if you are juggling in front of them they will ignore you. In their happy days you will find them sharing their happiness with everyone other than you and the moment of your sadness, you will find them with least possible time for you. Well you are most reliable for them and at the same time they are least reliable for you .
Of course they continue to haunt you with their deeds but then you have to carry the misery of friendship / relations to bear upon your shoulders.

Curse to be Woman In India

2008-04-13T22:36:00.000-07:00

Click on the picture above to see what I wanted to say , its quite self explanatory and its form in five cities out of eight, that too in a single day newpaper published on 14th April 2008 in Times of India ;
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Cities/cityarticlelist/-2128932452.cms
The date of writing th blog is 13th April since its according to US timings , this blog is written from India.

Pretty girls, unattractive men gel well

2008-04-13T11:09:00.000-07:00

This one I am writing when i have been haunted by an attitude ghost which stays inside me, this blog might be discriminatory or harmful for those who either have no or bad attitude or sensitive people....so kindly read with big heart n no brain n emotions....

The tile of the blog is the headline of todays most of newspapers..its a outcome of some deep research carried out by some researchers and published in Journal of Family Psychology, After seeing this i said to myself isn't it should be common sense ...and such obvious things gets published in the Jounals!!!!! a pity as I say Research is nothing but common sense endorsed by statistics.

A very insightful explaination to it was given by Dan Ariely, a professor of behavioural economics at MIT's Programme in Media Arts and Sciences and Sloan School of Management, said, "Men are very sensitive to women's attractiveness. Women seem to be sensitive to men's height and salary."

Yes they do !! Men prefer beauty and women height and salary , because one looks for a fairer and competitive gene and other for strong and stable partner. These choices had been there since 10000 BC...... or should I say Adam and Eve...no they didn't had choice. Women had always been looking for a better hunter (in todays language salary) and tall and strong man and similarly men's choice as caveman till today has not changed its Beauty!!!!

Well the topic now is whether pretty woman and unattractive men stay better in relationship then both attractive and vice versa. I will definitely say yes , Y????????????

Is this what you are asking ..ok no need to read anything , lets take it like that you possess which everybody desires , what amount of care will you take to preserve the thing from others and if the entity is not an object a human and that tooo a pretty women wont you be on your toes to woe her!!! You will obviously be most insecure in heart for the world and open hearted for her. You will be most secluded from world and caring for her (Remember he is unattractive man) and now he has turned into insecured one too.
And what does a woman desire other than care, respect , attention, and single minded devotion ..thats it. ..
Now the question arises why unattractive men only??? well the attractive one will equally create the same insecure woman but the attractive one hardly looks for those things. He might be looking for great night stands and care with least amount of attention he has to give. He will be looking for something called space then lots of attention.
What if both are attractive yes I will like to say it will only create jealousy for people around and a great combination in initial years of relationships but later stages there might be a trouble as beauty might have developed a attitude among both and the one who loses the beauty first will be the one who loses the game first. An unattractive combination might led to male being dominating as he will obviously think that he is not got his share.

Although there might be different shades for different couples these laws are not generic these float on the surface at the bottom its what in the heart and as they say and I repeat....

Beauty lies in eyes of beholder..... but not when the eyes are of man ;)

Money never made a man happy yet, nor will it. The more a man has, the more he wants. Instead of filling a vacuum, it makes one. ..... but what about woman??? :D

Where have all the men gone???

2008-03-26T05:50:00.000-07:00

Well was planning to write this from a long time and see when I am at peak of my work I felt like writing it.....Of course murphy law of work..Anyway I am a dedicated blogger so I will scribble

A thing that spins around my mind while a lady passing by me exclaims..."Where have all the men gone"...No she wasn't infact talking about the male creature roaming all around but the concept of men in her head. The Knight with shining armour who was supposed to sweep her feet away from earth on one glance and kill the beast in second to win her....Well the first quality still seems to be there a little but the other ones called manliness, bravery or courage has vanished very quickly.

In golden era of Manhood, the word Man was itself manly...a tall figure with strength of body and character used to appear in mind but now whenever I say man a quick glance of Alpha Male or Meterosexual Male comes into mind which has a false sense of crafted body in gym and same crafted character to be opportunistic.

The Man I tend to compare with are Maximus, Spartans, Chanakya, Akbar, Bhagat Singh, Guru Gobind Singh, Mahatma Gandhi, Mangal Pandey. They ofcourse were legends and some mythological that showed the character of Men. Infact I dont mean the manliness is in virility..No absolutely no but the six qualities are BALANCE , CONFIDENCE, INDEPENDENCE , DISCRETION, DETERMINATION and LETHAL.

Infact on a closer look to man today, I will say a womanly man, (ladies no offence intended). He will grew long hair on head or tonsure, shave himself all over, put tatoos and piercing anywhere and look more close to opposite sex. Strength of character which is most important also seems to have been gone a tremendous change all over.
Not so long ago a man was supposed to be a one with character and brave enough to fight for his family, country etc. The now creature will ofcourse either surrender to the mightier one or run away. It might be possible he pisses off seeing the enemy. So what is this Alpha or Meterosexual male creatures and how they are being created or nurtured to become such a mockery of one entire sex that there is a possibility of mankind left being one sided sex to be distinguished by genitals only !!!

Well it has a deep down cause and that is upbringing which makes them overly senstive, emotionally unstable and infidel too. In olden days a child was nourished and protected upto a certain age and then was left out to develop all the manly skills of bravery, character of leader and then survive. The domination of woman in upbringing of children often leads a step towards such development. The mother taking more care of their sons brings this doom of him becoming a coward, world fearing and pretentious or too sensitive male. Well it is in nature of woman whether mother,sister, girlfriend or wife to care, but the one who keep enjoying it believing it as the world always falls prey. More sensitive, more feminine part starts growing into himself as he forgets his gender role. In recent times when men need not to fight for his food and kind of work he does is non physical. Infact most of the young men in early and tender age are mostly at home whether its study or play time. Thanks to the era of Computers Xbox and Internet and later IT and Software Jobs. This develops firstly a reserved personality and then a coward body. Of course these are the men who slowly to overcome the lack of manly qualities take course of cunningness and false preying. They begin with such and then delve into much more horrendous acts of drinking, drugs, abusing and fighting (of course mouth to mouth mostly). More darkness they move into more grasp them leaving to a confused persona and unstable or unbalanced life. They don't have confidence to face the world turning them into selfish and traitors. Yes I believe its quite possible to get into this loop of lasciviousness whether its wine or woman, but to able to discretize and live above it is the virtue of able men. A man is supposed to make his own independent decisions, no matter how much clever or wicked men/women surround him. He is supposed to take care of all beings around him with a determination of good will prevailing within his family, society and country. He should be somebody whom his next generation should try to emulate.

The alpha male might be able to show off his six pack abbs develop in the gym but where are the six pack of qualities which constitude to make a man , THE MAN and which is missing will keep real women guessing and craving for ......

PICTURE : Shows how Meterosexual man is trying to grab over "The Real Man" picture from movie 300.

NitiShastra - Translated

2008-03-11T12:25:00.000-07:00

Wisdom from Kautilaya or Chanakya's book. This is just for my personal reading . Source is unknown but I had collected it long back and is worth reading.

Conciliate a covetous man by means of a gift, an obstinate
man with folded hands in salutation, a fool by humouring
him, and a learned man by truthful words.

Conciliate a strong man by submission, a wicked man by
opposition, and the one whose power is equal to yours
by politeness or force.

The wise man should restrain his senses like the crane
and accomplish his purpose with due knowledge of his place,
time and ability

To wake at the proper time; to take a bold stand and fight;
to make a fair division (of property) among relations;
and to earn one's own bread by personal exertion are the
four excellent things to be learned from a cock.

A wise man should not reveal his loss of wealth, the
vexation of his mind, the misconduct of his own wife,
base words spoken by others, and disgrace that has
befallen him.

One should feel satisfied with the following three
things; his own wife, food given by Providence and
wealth acquired by honest effort; but one should
never feel satisfied with the following three;
study, chanting the holy names of the Lord (japa)
and charity.

He who has wealth has friends and relations; he
alone survives and is respected as a man.

Low class men desire wealth; middle class men both
wealth and respect; but the noble, honour only; hence
honour is the noble man's true wealth.

My dear child, if you desire to be free from the cycle
of birth and death, then abandon the objects of sense
gratification as poison.

Drink instead the nectar of forbearance, upright
conduct, mercy, cleanliness and truth.

He who desires sense gratification must give up all
thoughts of acquiring knowledge; and he who seeks
knowledge must not hope for sense gratification.
How can he who seeks sense gratification acquire
knowledge, and he who possesses knowledge enjoy
mundane sense pleasure?

He who possesses intelligence is strong; how can
the man that is unintelligent be powerful? The elephant
of the forest having lost his senses by intoxication
was tricked into a lake by a small rabbit.
(this verse refers to a famous story from the niti-
sastra called pancatantra compiled by the pandit
Vishnusharma 2500 years ago).

Generosity, pleasing address, courage and propriety
of conduct are not acquired, but are inbred qualities.

He who is engrossed in family life will never acquire
knowledge; there can be no mercy in the eater of flesh;
the greedy man will not be truthful; and purity will
not be found in a woman hunter.

The student (brahmacari) should completely renounce
the following eight things --his lust, anger, greed,
desire for sweets, sense of decorating the body,
excessive curiosity, excessive sleep, and excessive
endeavour for bodily maintenance.

O Raghava, the love of virtue, pleasing speech, and
an ardent desire for performing acts of charity,
guileless dealings with friends, humility in the
guru's presence , deep tranquillity of mind, pure
conduct, discernment of virtues, realised knowledge
of the sastras, beauty of form and devotion to God
are all found in you." (The great sage Vasistha Muni,
the spiritual preceptor of the dynasty of the sun,
said this to Lord Ramachandra at the time of
His proposed coronation).


It certainly is nature of the demigods, men of good
character, and parents to be easily pleased. Near and
distant relatives are pleased when they are hospitably
received with bathing, food, and drink; and pandits are
pleased with an opportunity for giving spiritual
discourse.

Excessive attachment to sense pleasures leads to
bondage, and detachment from sense pleasures leads
to liberation; therefore it is the mind alone that
is responsible for bondage or liberation.


We should always speak what would please the man of
whom we expect a favour, like the hunter who sings
sweetly when he desires to shoot a deer.

We should always deal cautiously with fire, water,
women, foolish people, serpents, and members of a
royal family; for they may, when the occasion presents
itself, at once bring about our death.

If you wish to gain control of the world by the
performance of a single deed, then keep the following
fifteen, which are prone to wander here and there,
from getting the upper hand of you: the five sense
objects (objects of sight, sound, smell,taste, and
touch); the five sense organs (ears, eyes, nose,tongue
and skin) and organs of activity (hands, legs, mouth,
genitals and anus).

One single object (a woman) appears in three different
ways: to the man who practices austerity it appears as
a corpse, to the sensual it appears as a woman, and to
the dogs as a lump of flesh.

A wise man should not divulge the formula of a
medicine which he has well prepared; an act of charity
which he has performed; domestic conflicts; private
affairs with his wife; poorly prepared food he may
have been offered; or slang he may have heard.


There are two ways to get rid of thorns and wicked
persons;using footwear in the first case and in the
second shaming them so that they cannot raise their
faces again thus keeping them at a distance.

A bad action committed by a great man is not censured
(as there is none that can reproach him), and a
good action performed by a low-class man comes to be
condemned (because none respects him).

Just see: the drinking of nectar is excellent, but
it became the cause of Rahu's demise; and the drinking
of poison is harmful, but when Lord Shiva
(who is exalted) drank it, it became an ornament to his
neck (nila-kanta).

A true meal is that which consists of the remnants left
after a brahmana's meal. Love which is shown to others
is true love, not that which is cherished for one's own
self. to abstain from sin is true wisdom. That is an act
of charity which is performed without ostentation.

There are many ways of binding by which one can be
dominated and controlled in this world, but the bond of
affection is the strongest. For example, take the case
of the humble bee which, although expert at piercing
hardened wood, becomes caught in the embrace of
its beloved flowers (as the petals close at dusk).

The heart of a woman is not united; it is divided.
While she is talking with one man, she looks lustfully
at another and thinks fondly of a third in her heart.

The fool (mudha) who fancies that a charming young lady
loves him, becomes her slave and he dances like a shakuntal
bird tied to a string.

Who is there who, having become rich, has not become
proud?
What licentious man has put an end to his calamities?
What man in this world has not been overcome by a woman?
Who is always loved by the king? Who is there who has
not been overcome by the ravages of time?
What beggar has attained glory?
Who has become happy by contracting the vices of the
wicked?

The good habits of charity, learning and austerity
practised during many past lives continue to be
cultivated in this birth by virtue of the link (yoga)
of this present life to the previous ones.

Men have eating, sleeping, fearing and mating in common
with the lower animals. That in which men excel the
beasts is discretionary knowledge; hence, indiscreet
men who are without knowledge should be regarded as
beasts.

O ketki flower! Serpents live in your midst, you bear
no edible fruits, your leaves are covered with thorns,
you are crooked in growth, you thrive in mud, and you
are not easily accessible. Still for your exceptional
fragrance you are as dear as a kinsmen to others.
Hence, a single excellence overcomes a multitude of
blemishes.

Destiny

2008-02-14T13:34:00.001-08:00

More complicated is the world then the word!!!!. It often leads to intense thinking Are we all destined??Is everything already fixed ??? and thus it adds more to curiosity, If it is so then What are we here for?? of course talking about Purpose of life???...and if it's not destiny but we ourselves can control our future...then its more interesting....Anyways I believe that most of the part of our lives is destined as we are not given choices by God to chose our parents, our environment, few situations that happen in life n much more , but at the same time I agree God grants us a choice of friends, spouses n various decisions good or bad to make. He often put us in the situations where he checks our intellect and gives us a lesson based on our choices and then we realize , that If we had not gone through that worst situation or made that wrong decision?? would we have ever learnt what was wrong or right??? So was the situation also destined to bring us to righteous path or atleast apply our intellect to understand What went wrong??? and then never repeat the same.
My personal belief is that, every situation and every decision right or wrong is on us and we suffer or enjoy because of it. If we suffer we understand better and then the lesson we carry is invaluable for us such that it carries with us for eternity. There might be few things destined, on which we look ,seems like bound to happen , no matter how intelligent our choices or how wise we would have been ??but I believe that is so that Human should understand his role is only specific not in whole. The one who controls the things is much above him and he has to understand his play. Of course we are destined and journey is pre decided but how well we craft our journey is based on the fact how much faith we have in almighty and how much we learn from our mistakes...so i can say the journey is fixed but the path we follow and stops we pass is all on us and how we perceive life and God!!!!

...

The Spirit of Living

2007-11-10T10:33:00.000-08:00

Undying are the efforts and unconventional his ways lives the worthy wanderer to embrace the Grace .....This is the one the dedicated to two close friends Spirituality and Religion and their journey through my understanding.....(Dedicated to Almighty) ....
Lastly when they remember they left the his kingdom (his who???GOD), both knew who they are , but as soon they landed on mundane world they got misinterpreted and then both tore apart ....While as were the last instruction religion was a path to reach spirituality...but as usual younger brother took over to the manipulations and started looking for different directions rather then following the one made to reach the elder one.
As religion lost the path he became them, and them became those all, pointing fingers to elder bro whom still no one knows. Disturbing are the thoughts inside elder sibling, disturbing are the images as elder still stays one o one, and younger fight each other to reach his Grace