Life, or something close to it.

We are a culture of carbonated beverages, alcoholic happiness and high speed internet. Pursuers of evenings at restaurants on weekends after a week of sitting behind a desk in a chair that doesn't feel right. Followers of work hard (at jobs you hate) and party harder (so for one night you can forget that the job you'll struggle through for the rest of your life, exists). We are slaves to the dismal stories on the picture tube and the three hour long love affairs of people that pretend to understand the meaning of happiness. Slaves of caffeine infested eyes and head phoned ears. Ours is the time of droughts on earth and water on moon. Of greenhouse gases, boisterous hurricanes and unforgiving tsunamis. Starless nights and receding coastlines, pet boa constrictors and endangered eagles. We live in an age of Facebook friends and online romance, diminishing distances and increasing cyberspace, youtube wedding tapes and flixter family albums. High definition celebrities, satellite locations, flat screen TVs and expansive greed. Miniature cellular phones and touch-screen music. Nuclear warheads but infuriating power cuts. Advancing technology but diminishing humanity. Freshly spawned religions but the same good old racism. Ritalin induced concentration and anti-depressant smiles. Of eternal love that last for a month, of poetry that has now become cheesy and web-cam meetings. Of short message services and captured memories. Of teen pregnancy and swift abortions. Split personalities and bipolar disorders. Silicone implants and diabetic amputation. Flying wizards and vegetarian vampires. Mayan predictions, disappearing oil and exponential population. An age of glorious pasts and doomed future. A epoch of changing languages, where vowels have become superfluous and spellings are unnecessary. So welcome to 2010 where if u dnt undrstand wht u r readin' rght now, u're in a plce where u dnt belong n da ppl u want to be wid u, r alrdy chnging dere convictions to be part of dis new age. Where eider u r 1 of dem, or a hopeless old bore. We are victims of our prejudice and perpetrators of our own misery. And it’ll be a long time before these things change. Have a very happy new bloody year.
But, after all of these arguments there is one reason why you should celebrate the commencement of 2010. It is after all, a World Cup year. GO WAZZA!

I am not against god. I quite like the idea of someone watching over us all. It’s like a fairy tale a lot of grownups believe. It’s a way to shift the blames of our inherent shortcomings, because as all of us know, we would have surely succeeded if god had wanted it. The idea of heaven makes us easier to tell children why their grandparents are dead and why snowflakes wont be coming back. And we should embrace everything that makes life a bit easier. What I am against is how God can look down from his throne and do nothing about everything that's happening down here. The people that are born with defects, the deaf, the blind and the dumb, the mentally retarded and the people with missing appendages. How does god allow that? It’s to show us how lucky we are to have all of this, that's what we've been told. Yes, and I do feel lucky to be born with all my senses intact, and the victim, well he's screwed. He just drew the shortest straw. If only he'd been more holy when he was a zygote, he would have had a better life. And how does anyone explain the thousands of innocent lives lost in natural calamities? I know, we are to blame for all the climate change and everything that happens in the future is the result of our past. But god is god. He can do anything he wants. Is it too much to ask for a small wave of his hands that would save thousands of lives. And they all say, god works in mysterious ways. What mystery can there be behind all of this? So many lives lost, while the people who should die, live, and the people who deserve to live, die young. I don’t have the authority to judge whose life is worth extending and whose should be terminated. But god does. And well, he's not really good at his job. And I understand life and death are part of the existence in earth. And people have to die one way or another. And some people lead good lives and some lead horrible ones. This is not my problem with the existence of God.
The problem I have is how he allows everything people are doing, claiming it's his will they are following. Animal sacrifices, religious segregations and terrorism, they do it all in his name. Terrorism has existed long enough in this world for even god to take notice from the proud height of his heavenly abode. How does God allow all these people, to use his name to do the things they do. But can you really blame them? They are doing what they have to do to recruit people and if they can take advantage of a name that everyone thinks is right, then why shouldn’t they? Apparently he has no problems with it. And a promise of heaven for an eternity is a pretty sweet deal. And what makes it even better, is that they think they're doing God's work, that’s what they’ve been told, which leads to a clear conscience. Who are we to question god? If he wants hundreds of innocent people dead, from a device he made someone invent for this very purpose, I am but a medium of his wish, and enforcer his whimsical orders. Either the people who use this pitch are genius or the people who believe in it are idiots. You don’t have to be Einstein to make a fool of fools and even Hitler would be a saint among the demons of hell. And god just allows this to happen. Day after day, he looks down and watches and waits. For what? And I figure there can only be two reasons behind it all.
1. He’s given up hope on us human beings and can’t wait for the apocalypse so he can start it all over again and get it right this time.
2. He agrees with the terrorist and what they are doing is actually god’s work
If I were to believe in god, I’d have to believe that either he's asleep or he's a part of everything that's going on. I’d have to believe that he has empathy for those who take lives in his name. And any god who stays quiet while all of this happens. Who looks down and does nothing except sit in his comfortable cushion of fluffy clouds listening to angels play harp, while lives burn from the flames of hatred raging among the creatures he created in his image, cannot be my god. If this is the image of god that I’ll have been given, that he's a lazy deserter whose mysterious ways are too difficult for me to understand while millions become victim for the satisfaction of his vanity, I’d rather look away. I’d rather not believe he exists than to face the reality of things if he did. So, no, I don’t have a problem with god, but that's probably because I don’t believe he exists. Have a very merry Christmas.

We are fallible creatures, easily tempted, easily subdued. With unimaginable desires for things we don't need. We are pretenders. We are cheaters. We are liars. We do things, things which, were they done by others we would chastise them, burn them, stone them. Our sins are always meager when compared. We are capable of astonishing horrors. Our vocabulary describes us. We have needs for words that shouldn’t exist, but they do because we put them in practice with our actions. Why do we have words like pedophilia, genocide, massacre, rape, patricide, holocaust, annihilation, apartheid? These are all testaments of our capabilities and how we have fulfilled them. We are quick to punish, slow to heal, slower to forgive. We are frail, easily betrayed. We revel in false hopes and futile dreams. We are cowards, doing things that are acceptable in everyone else’s eyes. We are pompous, ignorant and we think they can’t possibly be right if they’re against us. We assassinate. We fight. We stab. We kill. We murder. We war. We shake with the right hand and stab with the left. We betray. We endure. We torture. We hate. We are cruel. We are unforgiving. We make the Devil proud, we shout God’s name. We abandon reason. We terrorize. We bomb. We conspire. We differentiate. We are racists. We take advantage. We get richer. We lust. We indulge. We admonish. We preach and we don’t follow. We walk past. We accept. We flatter. We mock. We criticize. We humiliate. We envy. We wait for them to fall and when they do, we laugh at them. We blame. We deflect responsibility. We point our fingers. We judge. Without mercy we judge. Without understanding we judge. Without constraint we judge. With absolute disregard we judge but we fear judgment. We condemn. We do not do unto others, as we wish done unto us. We are despicable. We are appalling. We are lamentable. We are but mere human beings. We are hypocrites.
It’s a good thing god doesn’t exist. If he did he would be burning in shame looking down upon the abhorrent digression of his beloved creatures. Or maybe he does exist and he is.

"We train young men to drop fire on people, but their commanders won't allow them to write 'fuck' on their airplanes because it's obscene! "- Walter E. Kurtz (excerpt from Apocalypse Now)

Yes, what Henry did was wrong and yes, it really is unfair that the French have gotten away with it and the Irish have to suffer the punishment for a crime committed against them. But, it’s time now to move on. What's done, is done. And all that happened, happened. There's but one definite truth in life: Shit happens. The Irish FA can't keep up these complaints every time they get up to make a statement. Bad unfair things happen. All the time. You can't keep putting all the blame on one decision that went wrong. Had the goal been disallowed, it still didn’t guarantee a place in the world cup, the scores would've been tied then. And why don't they look at themselves for failing to win in Dublin? And they're asking for a 33rd place in the world cup. I know it was cruel on the Irish, I know it’s horrible to be on the wrong end of a bad decision but a 33rd place????They want the football governing body to not only bend the rules, but make a ridiculous exception, for being on the wrong end of a single handball decision and after failing to win on their home ground. I have sympathy for the Irish FA but this is bordering on becoming a joke. When the time comes one has to do what one must, Henry did it. Maradona did it. The hand of god... well the french have Gods too. Wrong? Most definitely. But it got his team to the World Cup draw in Cape Town on the 4th of December, which is what matters. Everyone may think what happened on that fateful day on the past was wrong. But that's the thing about the past, it just doesn’t change. We should be looking forward to the draw and hoping for well balanced groups for all the THIRTY-TWO teams. Football, truly is brilliant.

"Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I will meet you there."- Jalal ad-Din Rumi

"A question that sometimes drives me hazy:
Am I or are the others crazy"
- Albert Einstein.

Originality. Where can we go to, or what can we do to become original? We are 2009years into the A.D. calendar. Counting the years before that, our civilization has spent more than 2500 years of counted time in this planet. During which it has supported more than a billion lives. A lot more. That’s a lot of different men, women and children wanting to be something. To do something original. And since they had the benefit of being ahead in generation, they did it. Leaving us with no other choice but to redo them. We were born to be followers. Do you want to climb the Mount Everest? It’s been done. Write an epic play about unparalleled love? Been done. Free a nation from tyranny? Done. There really is nothing you can do that hasn’t already been done. Even your thoughts, that you think belong to you, someone's already thought them before. It has already stirred up someone else's grey matter before it did yours. There is no being original in the true sense of the word, but like everything else in life, or like everything else in the world, the meaning we give to originality is also tainted.
To be original, means you should be able to break free from the chains of society and severe the shackles of normalcy. Think for yourself. Everyone has an inspiration. Even following on his/her path, can be considered original, though it itself argues with the definition of being original. Leave conformity. Embrace your inner insanity. Listen to the voice that tells you it’s stupid to do such things, but you should do them anyway. Forget the need to rationalize things. The things we consider normal, are only normal because we've been told they're normal. Who has the right to decide what's normal and what is not? They can tell us what is normal or not, because they have the majority of the votes. But we all know their victory is not unanimous. Be a part of the minority. Enjoy being different, imperfect, crazy. Don’t worry about the world. The only they care about results and outcomes. They will mock you for your stupidity, spit on your endeavors and ridicule your thoughts, till you reach success, and then they'll praise you for your bravery. They are fickle minded morons who can only think what they've been told think, to do what's always been done, and they’ll live and die within the security of their four walls. They are rational, secure, safe, sheltered but a bit too sane. There's a very thin line between insanity and genius. Imagine you have a beautiful wife, a castle for a home, a healthy smart kid for a son, a garage of spectacular vehicles, and a job that has the whole population of the area working under you. All in all, a pretty sweet life. Now imagine leaving all of that, to go live in a jungle! Crazy, right? But turn the clock back a couple of years. Okay, a bit more than a couple of years, the same chain of thoughts weren’t crazy or stupid to Siddhartha Gautama. He left all his possessions and went on a search for answers to questions he couldn't understand. He became Gautama Buddha, the enlightened one, eventually. Stupid, crazy and insane to a genius. The same path that made everyone think he wasn’t all that great in the head, made the same people come to him looking for advice. George Bernard Shaw wrote, “The rational man adapts to fit his environment. The irrational man adapts his environment to fit him. Therefore all progress depends upon the irrational man.”
Shaw also said, “All great truths begin as blasphemies.” Let’s say that the world is not flat, that the earth revolves round the sun. Let’s travel South America on an old motorbike. Let’s say time doesn’t move the same for everyone, that energy and mass are interchangeable. Let’s abolish slavery. Let’s make a metal machine fly in the air while carrying us in it. Let’s fly a kite in a thunderstorm with a metal key attached to the string. Let’s fight a well equipped, well armed British army with nothing but non-violence. Let’s die for the sins of everyone else. These are just some of the insane thoughts that cropped up in a few brilliant minds. And the moral of the story is stay away from conformity and think for yourself. Break free from all things normal. And let the people brand you the they wish. You know who you are, better than them. Decide what you want. And chase it.
I myself am no adventurer, and this piece of writing seems to be drenched in hypocrisy. But these are just thoughts. And a hypocrite or not, I love to write. Cheers.

No, not as a metaphor for race. Anti-racist endeavors are a lost casue. Though I am no ambassador for anti-racism, I think like so many other human frailties, racism is rather stupid. But what's even more stupid is trying to overcome it. It’s almost as futile as fighting global warming. It will never stop. The world is just too big, the people, just too many. The ignorance among the masses is the reality of life. It hides under practice, culture, prejudice and it hides well. And every effort to find and end this affliction will all be efforts in vain. The people who are racist now are more than likely to remain so. If they were capable of changing, they would've done by now. They've had enough time. And for the people who aren't racist, well there's no need explaining to them. So no, this is not about racism and how wrong or stupid it is. This is about the concept of wrong and right.
The title is in fact misleading, because wrong and right aren't as clear as black and white. Far from it. There's always the gray portion. Rather it’s a spectrum of gray with a light portion and a dark portion. Because right and wrong, like so many more human notions, is a matter of perspective. It's relative, depending on where you ask, when you ask and who you ask. My actions may be wrong to you in every aspect, almost blasphemous. But for more than a few the same thing would be acceptable, maybe even welcomed.
It's as simple as giving money to a beggar. "Is it right if I give this 5 Rs. note to this beggar?", "Of course, it's right. You can spare five rupees. You have to learn to share your good luck. Be grateful for what you have and help when you can. It's the right way to live." But then again, “Is it wrong if I give this 5Rs. note to this beggar?" "What are you? Stupid? Of course it's wrong. Do you know how hard people have to work to earn that much? Do you not understand the value of money in this life? How will you ever survive in this world?" Both answers are in a way, right, and both are in a way, wrong. We are damaged goods. We can’t even agree on what is wrong and what is right. "Is Hinduism the right religion? Is Islam? Is Christianity? Is atheism the right way?" Every question has a different answer, everyone has a different outlook. Even the vile act of murder, can be viewed on different levels. Don’t chastise me just yet. Let me explain. We all think murder is wrong. No one has the right to take someone else's life. But it's not really that. What we really think, is that murder of a 'good' person is wrong. We don’t want to punish for murder. We want to punish for the murder of a good person. Nathuram Godse killed Gandhi; John Wilkes Booth killed Abraham Lincoln. The vile disturbed lunatic murderers!! That's what we all think about them. For Nathuram Godse he did what was right by him. He couldn’t forgive someone who would allow his country to be ripped apart. And wasn't Booth right in the eyes of the confederacy? He is a murderer now because the Confederacy lost, else he would be a hero. How would you judge if someone had been able to assassinate Hitler. He would still be a murderer, but would he be wrong in your eyes? And if yes, then isn’t the Lord Rama, a cold blooded murderer? Didn't he kill Ravana? Yes, he was a horrible monster, but he had a life. And murder is murder. But whether it's right or wrong, it’s relative.
So how do you do right in this world? There are way too many people in this world and therefore way too many opinions. Too many ways to be right, and more ways to be wrong. So, in my opinion and in my perspective of what is right and wrong, we should all do what is right by us. There will always be people who judge. It's their unofficial profession. There will always be a wrong and a right. It's not necessary to be right in everyone's eyes all the time. Be right in your eyes. It’s only wrong because you live in a society that says it’s wrong. But don’t worry about society or community or religion. Worry about yourself, and be right for yourself. Sooner or later society will come around to see the wisdom of your ways or it won’t, but why should that matter. Make a mistake, but make a mistake on your own notion.

Yup, it’s true. Selfishness is a virtue. Altruism is stupid. And it’s something most of us have known for a long long time, except we don’t realize or don’t want to. To give a word to the claim it’s called ethical egoism. I didn’t know that till recently, (ignorance is highly underestimated) and Ayn Rand, who wrote Atlas Shrugged, called it objectivism. According to her, the moral purpose of one’s life is the pursuit of one’s own happiness or rational self interest. Which is just another way of saying, be selfish… be happy. We are human beings, selfish by nature. We have to learn to accept our intuition. Being selfish is within us all. But don’t worry it’s not a grim premonition; it’s in fact a full-proof path to happiness. We are selfish by disposition, it’s almost a species thing. Or so you can believe, to placate the guilt burning a hole in your heart or you can accept what I say is true.
All our actions, more or less, are guided by feelings self interest. Let me demonstrate using an example. Imagine you are a scientist with a high-tech, fully equipped, research laboratory, hypothetical situation of course (hence the ‘imagine’). Anyway, so you’re a scientist, researching and trying to find a solution to cancer. You also happen to have a rival, or rather, a peer working on the same thing. If asked, both of you would reply, that you were doing this to help the people suffering with this dreaded disease. Because, we all like to see healthy cancer free people. And, it’s only natural to reply as such, being respectable scientist, it’s what is expected of you. You might even believe what you say. The research continues for months and years, time keeps ticking away but you have to do this, for the people .But just when you are really close to a positive result, your ‘peer’ beats you to it. He somehow cures cancer. After all the drama, the eventual result will be the same, the people will still be cured, cancer will still be driven out of their ever grateful bodies and we will have more healthy cancer free people. In a way you get what you wanted without completing what you should have. This was what you said you wanted. But after all that, will you have the heart, to share the joy that is present in this human miracle? After all this years of research will you be able to be grateful that finally cancer is cured even though you had nothing to do with it? Though it’s what you said you wanted, didn’t you actually want the person to bring about this miracle to be you? Weren’t you, behind the entire philanthropic charade, actually driven by the selfish desires that dwell in the heart of every one of us? Weren’t you a selfish human being? But more importantly wouldn’t you have been happy, had your selfish desires come true?
In the give and take relationship, the giver is supposed to feel better than the taker. I find that very hard to believe. And the people put forward the argument that you feel happier when you give than when you take. If I allow myself to believe this for a moment, even then these are selfish motives really. Because you are giving, first and foremost not because you like to see the smile on their face but because it makes you feel better about yourself. You are actually using the other person’s misery to help yourself to a large helping of that much needed, much desired feel good sensation. And though it may sound horrible, it’s actually not that bad at all. If giving is what makes you happy, then there’s no reason to stop. It doesn’t become wrong if it’s based on greedy intentions. The end result that comes out of it is still the same. The ends always justify the means.
Religion, gives the bribe of heaven, eternity in paradise and the fear of fire of hell. So you don’t do this because you’re afraid of hell, or do this because you want to go to heaven. But in religion things are always done because God said so. And we listen to God because we do not want to anger him. We have to be on his good side when Judgment day arrives. And to be in heaven you have to score good marks at your assessment. Your primary interest is to get into paradise, stay happy and do everything to prevent yourself from burning in earth, sorry hell, I meant hell. Religion, more or less, uses that selfish inclination, to make you follow its path. And then there are other issues of reincarnation and rebirth in various religions that make you do the right things. Not because doing the right thing is right but because doing the right thing gets you better chance at a better life next time around.
We of course, leave out the saints and the enlightened ones from this discussion. Because well, they are pretty infallible, patient, without desires or rather suppressed desires, almost perfect and therefore boring. We, the rest of the population, are human beings, imperfect to the core. And that’s what is good with us. Being selfish is only wrong because that’s we have been told from day 1. But we know, our brain, the rational part of the body, puts self-improvement as the paramount objective. We are individuals, before we are a family, a society, a community, a city, a country. We need to look after our interests first, and if, as a side effect others too get some pleasure out of it, then well and good. If not, at least we are happy and therefore our paramount objective is complete. We can then look ahead to creating a happier society and a happier world. Anyway, this is not a rule of physics that has to apply to everyone. These are just a chain of thoughts, that some may find right, some may find wrong and some may find it right though wouldn’t want to admit it. I am not saying that you have to think only about what will suit you best, before you think about how others think or feel, or what affect it will have on others, before you decide on doing something. No, wait. That’s exactly what I am saying. But there’s a silver lining behind all this. Most of the people inhabiting our planet are pretty miserable, which can only mean most of us are leading religious, philanthropic, altruistic, selfless lives. .(enter WINK emoticon here).