Death: A Pictorial

Death. I recently lost a loved one recently. I have seen death coming.

Below is an attempt to say it in pictures.

Death is insidious. It comes suddenly when you least expect it. It is terrifying. A lively, living person suddenly ceases to exist. One who has seen death, has nightmares every night as I have been having.

Death is inevitable. Unstoppable. For the last few months I had been hoping against hope that my ailing  mother would live longer. When death came, it came swiftly and silently. I could do nothing. It drives one half crazy.

When sees death from near, one sees the utter worthlessness of everything that seemed so important in the past. Death is so meaningless. The quote above tries to give some meaning to death but I fail to see it.

If death is meaningless, is there any meaning in life? Birth, love, sex, work, emotions......Everything seems so trifle and so meaningless.....

One wonders..... What is the meaning of life.....Is there anything more in human existence that is different from animal existence?

Doesn't help much, does it? It does not answer any questions.

Perhaps the answers are there to the meaning of life and death. But we are yet to decipher them, see them.....

The 'Hindutva' Indian Guy

RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) is a rightist Indian organisation that believes India should be based on Hindutva (Philosophy of Hinduism). How it is going to convince the nearly 20% non-Hindu Indians about that beats me. I thought secularism is the best bet for a pluralist country like India.

Anyway.

I don't know many RSS guys but I have seen one of them who lives nearby so I will write about him

The man had picked a fight once with a neighbour who had fallen on bad times (he had to rely on charity to cremate his father who died without medical attention). The RSS man really rubbed it in on the poor guy. I guess Jain piety must have passed him by (The RSS guy is a Jain by religion you see).

During the Gujarat riots in February-March 2002, this man in Khakhi shorts had gone to see Muslim shops burning in the neighbourhood. With his wife and two daughters. Nothing wrong in that. Everyone has this ghoulish curiosity. But the way the family stood watching. The man stood arms akimbo, with a defiant, satisfied expression on the face was what was remarkable.

I would any day go for the pot-bellied corrupt men from the Indian National Congress party.

Anti-Islam Video. Muslim World Wide Protest. All Fools.....

Voltaire said religion was the opium of the masses. He also said if there was no God it was necessary to invent one. To keep the Hobbesian hordes in check, I guess.

Thomas Hobbes was a British political scientist who said that man was basically very much like an animal. If there was no tough central authority (called 'Leviathan') the life of man would be "short, nasty and brutish."

Reiligion and the concept of God help keep the brute in man at bay. They are nothing more.

But for many it seems religion is everything. A Jewish bigot rants and raves against Islam in a documentary and many Islamic bigots all over the world take to streets and burn and destroy. Some of the fools kill an American envoy in Benghazi, Libya.

These men are of  narrow outlook, limited intellect, insecure by mind (why else would they get so worked up about religion?) and a malicious tongue and dirty mind.

It seems there are many such men belonging to all religions. Sad. Man is capable of so much more.....A smarter man has better things to do in life.

Image Credit: New York Times

Freaks. Geniuses. Why Do Individuals Bond Together?

Sometimes we realise how alone we really are. Relationships are basically alliances of convenience. Friends in school. Friends in college. Girlfriend. Wife. All relations that fill  needs at different stages of life.

Why these relations? Firstly because there is security in numbers. In belonging. Man alone is weak. Bonding with others gives strength.

Or security. When one is too weak and confused to stand alone.

It is the freaks who are different. Gifted. They will not fit in within society. Because fitting in necessitates a certain compromise which the genius of freaks will not allow.

It is the ordinary, common persons who form groups and bond well with society. Because alone they have little to offer. Security in a group.

Each member of a group is unsure. Aware that individually he is common. So such persons bond together to try and gain strength. In fact they are running away from their ordinariness.

Politics Is Only About Power

The level of morality in politics depends on how moral a leader is. And of course, the leader should be strong enough to live by his personal ethics and strength of character. Rarely a leader has both. Sad.

Politics amongst countries is no different than relations between individuals. Animals. Out to feed on weaknesses of others. Take World War One and World War Two for instance.

Some countries hunt in packs. Like present day Britain, Germany and France. As they are too weak individually.

Some countries are strong enough to stand alone. Like the USA and China today. But even the US is beginning to fear the growing beast called China. So it is trying to form a pack with India and South east Asian countries.

Democracy is a subtle form of dictatorship.  Lull the masses into believing that they have a say on how the country is run. It is illusory. People in a dictatorship and people in a democracy are hardly in a different position.

The news media is one of the tools of a 'dictator' in a democracy to make people believe in the illusion that they count. The dictator might be the Prime Minister, President,the law-makers, the judges. Collectively.

In a democracy the dictator is not a person. But a collective. If the media is independent and powerful, it becomes part of the ruling collective. If not, it remains a tool by the collective to 'manage' the people.

Hence the eternal fight for independence and freedom of the press. The ruling collective which includes a powerful media is more stable and "legitimate".

Similarly an independent judiciary. A powerful judiciary becomes part of the collective that wields power, makes it stronger and 'palatable' to the masses.

The masses in the feudal times. The masses in a modern democracy. The only difference is that the more able, vocal and ambitious, amongst the masses, have a chance to move into the ruling collective. By becoming judges, lawyers, members of the Senate, editors of newspapers. Otherwise they would turn 'rebels'. Against the ruling collective. It happened in Russia in 1917. The ruler was overthrown. A new system made by the 'rebels' was put in place.

  Russian troops firing on demonstrators with machine guns, corner of Nevsky Prospect and Sadovaya Street, St. Petersburg, June 4, 1917 ( Image by Karl Karlovich Bulla)

Britain and France were smarter. They turned democratic and socialistic. A double whammy. There remained no possibility of a rebel remaining dissatisfied.

Democracy is smarter than dictatorship. The ruling elite absorbs the ambitious and able into its fold thus obviating any possibility of a revolt/revolution.

A dictatorship survives by making a fool of the masses. By convincing them that the ruler has a divine right to rule (Kings and rule by the Church in olden times). Or that the ruler knows what is best for the masses and the country. Hitlerite Germany. Present day North Korea is a combination of both.

Democracy was born because dictators found that it was not possible to bullshit the masses into letting him rule. That power had to be shared amongst many. The judiciary. The elected legislators. An independent media.

The masses are lulled into compliance even in a democracy. For a common person on the street, in reality, the king of yore is no different than a Senator, a judge or an editor of a big newspaper.

Editors and reporters who get too close to elected representatives lose their membership of the ruling collective. They become subservient to it.

Each member of the ruling collective in a democracy is out to lessen the power of other 'members'. This is because lesser the power is shared, the more one gets of it. It is all a game of seeking power. Hence the President tries to run down the legislators. The legislators try to rein in the President. The judiciary tries to check both. The President and the legislators try to weaken the press. The press tries to pick at the weaknesses of the President and legislators.

Basically it is about power. Politics is nothing but naked pursuit of power.

Nafissatou Diallo Said "NO" To Dominique Strauss-Kahn!

"I said no."

This is what the rape victim character Sarah Tobias played by Jodie Foster in the film The Accused said in the courtroom.  Sarah was what is widely called a "loose" woman. Flirtatious, willing to sleep around. One night at the bar she is gang raped. In the ensuing rape trial the defence says that since Sarah had lax morals; she in fact invited the gang-rape. Sarah said, "I said, no." She won the case and the rapists were convicted.

Then why all this talk about of dropping the rape charges against Dominique Strauss Kahn? Nafissatou Diallo, the maid at Sofitel Hotel, is hardly a woman of loose morals. She is a poor woman from Guinea, (who was raped by two soldiers there) who came over to the USA for a better life. She is illiterate, she lived in a lousy neighbourhood and had unsavoury friends. Does it mean that she can be raped at will by powerful men who can then just walk away?

But she was sexually assaulted by the all-powerful DSK. Is it not a crime? Then why all this talk of "weak case" and dropping charges against DSK? Is Diallo not a woman? Who felt deeply traumatised when she was forced upon by a powerful man? When will the case go ahead as it should? If Diallo had been a woman of influence in society? Or if DSK had been a no-body?

Justice is Justice. It should prevail. That is why we admire America. When a poor hotel maid is sexually assaulted by a very powerful man, he is whisked off a plane and arrested and thrown in jail. That is why we admire America.

Sarah Tobias said "NO!" in the film The Accused. Nafissatou Diallo too said no.

I quote from Newsweek....

Diallo is about 5 feet 10, considerably taller than Strauss-Kahn, and she has a sturdy build. “You’re beautiful,” Strauss-Kahn told her, wrestling her toward the bedroom. “I said, ‘Sir, stop this.”


Diallo kept pushing him away: “I don’t want to hurt him,” she told us. “I don’t want to lose my job.”

Diaollo said "NO".

Laws are meant to protect the weak from the excesses of the rich and powerful. When they are not followed the foundation of society begins to crumble.

The way the case progresses will determine whether my esteem for America decreases or increases.

Amy Winehouse: RIP

Amy Winehouse. To most of us who are less musically inclined, we knew her for the supposedly stupid, insane antics that she did. The funny, sometimes frightening faces she made, which the gossip media readily lapped up and dished it out to us. And we morbidly chuckled.

If most of us reading about the death of Amy Winehouse, say, "The mad, weak woman was asking for it." Then it sets off alarms bells ringing. We are becoming too dehumanised. Worse still, too ruthless and "tough" for our own good.

Amy Winehouse was a drug-addict. True. May be she was weak. May be true again. But when her father goes on national TV telling the world that the doctors have told her to quit drugs or die; it leaves a bad taste in the mouth. One expects a father to be more caring. And if he couldn't do be that; at least shut his mouth and not crave publicity.

What else happens when one has such heartless, insensitive parents? Many of us have such fathers. And mothers. And families like that. They will understand what I am saying.

Amy Winehouse craved love. She did not get it from her parents. Nor from her lovers.

The seeds of destruction  perhaps lay in the genes since her birth. Or or as homeopaths say she had too many of the destructive miasms in her. May be she had a bad upbringing. A very unhappy childhood. Childhood casts long shadows on later life.

Amy, we are sorry if we laughed at your misery when you lived. May you rest in peace. And may God make us a little kinder. So that many more Amy Winehouses do not come to a tragic end in the future.

Anders Breivik: Hitler, Laden Cast Long Shadows

Nazism is still alive. The recent happenings in Norway proves that.

A guy called Anders Breivik (blond hair, bluish-grey eyes; Hitler would have nodded in approval) first explodes a bomb near the building where the Norwegian Prime Minister has his office. Then he goes berserk with a gun and shoots scores of people at a youth camp.

Why?

Because he hates Muslims, the commies and folks who advocate a plural Europe. Same as what Hitler and his buddies said in the 1930s and 1940s. It was the Jews, communists and Slavic Untermenschen (Russians) then. Sounds the same, doesn't it?

Breivik was once part of a neo-Nazi outfit at the age of 17. Hardly surprising.

OK. He hates Muslims, communists and multi-culturists. But why shoot down innocent people who are neither Muslims, communists nor multiculturists?

Breivik mighty be a white Nordic but he is like Osama bin Laden. The Al Qaeda's terror attacks have killed innocent people. Many of them Muslims. For a greater cause the shedding of blood of innocent people is necessary. Blah. Blah. Blah.

Breivik like Al Qaeda wants to use terror to undermine governments that allow people of different religions and races to live together.

Only white superior Anglo-Saxon people. So said Hitler. So says Anders Breivik. He would have prospered seventy years ago in Europe.

What Breivik did is alarming, not only because innocent people have died but because it shows that Osama Bin Laden is succeeding in what he wanted. To start a war between religions. Between Islam and Christianity.

Finally, why are people like Breivik being made? I mean why are some people being drawn to extremist ideologies? The answer is the vacuum that exists in today's world. People want to belong. To believe in something. What? Families are breaking up. Even nuclear families. The love and emotion is dying in today's personal relationship.The recent reports of Christian priests sexually abusing little children is leading to folks drifting away from religion. The death of communism perhaps spelt the end of  age of ideologies.

What else is left? Capitalism? Hah! The religion of money and profits lost its sheen with what happened in the mortgage crisis. "Greed is good," said Gordon Gekko. He was wrong. Greed has led to a massive crisis that the Greeks and Irish are desperately fighting. And has the rest of the world nervously biting their fingernails.

What else? Good ole Hitler! Pick on Muslims. Pick on commies (if there are any still left). And pick on liberal governments. Like the Nazis attacked the German liberal Weimar governments in the 1920s and early '30s.

Hitler was bad. Were the Russians, Americans any better?

Hitler was bad. Nazism was bad. That is what we are hammered with since we first go to school. OK. That is true. Hitler was bad. I mean  a nice guy does not call his neighbour subhuman and goes and tries to occupy his house, just because he needed space! Nazism was bad. (Is bad). Because it's very existence depends on bang, bang, bang. War. Attacking others. I mean many folks say that is the rule of nature. Strong will eat up the weak and what not! But that is not a state of affair that can last for long.

Too much anarchy and rubbing someone the wrong side invites retribution. The other guy is not going to forget that you had mauled him up once. The first chance he gets he is going to clobber you.

Look at what happened to Hitler and Germany when Russia was attacked during World War Two.

Moreover living with the motto, "strong eats weak" has another problem. How does one know who is weak? A seemingly weak guy when strongly provoked is liable to kick you in the balls when cornered.

Dicey, eh?

Coming back to Hitler and Nazism. Agreed both were bad. But how did such a unbalanced guy like Hitler come to power in Germany? Because the allied powers really rubbed it in during the Treaty of Versailles. Especially the French. They wanted Germany to be crippled and weak so that they could stay secure.

You can fuck around with a banana republic but not with a big country like Germany. Not with such proud aggressive folks as the Germans. France forgot that. And what happened? France got even a bigger hammering in 1940 than it got during the Great war. If there had been no Russia probably France would have remained another German province for many many years.

America was equally to blame. It watched Germany getting screwed badly during Versailles, said not a word and sailed back home. I mean it should have told the Brits and French, "Kicking the guy hard now in backside now that he has fallen is alright. But don't tie up his hands and legs and make him crawl. The first chance he gets, he is going to untie himself and then kick you both in the balls".

America said nothing. Wilson spouted some platitudes but did nothing.

The point I am trying to make is that it is not enough to keep saying Hitler was bad. Hitler was bad. We all are bad.

What happened when Germany was defeated during WW2? The Russians, Americans, Brits and the French cut up the country into bits. The Russians raped every German women they could lay their hands on. The Americans turned away their faces.

The Germans are not thinking of revenge only because they are still so ashamed of what they let Hitler and his buddies do to the Jews, to the Russians, to everyone.

One wonders who were the bad guys. Who were (and are) the good guys. Life stinks; when you sit and think deeply.

Friends...

Folks who will oppose you the most when you try to be more of yourself.

Folks who turn green with envy (But do not show it) you achieve something  and feel great when you are in trouble.

Friends are a bunch of people you hang around with so that you don't have to think what an asshole you really are.

Having friends is like having opium. You live in a happy state oblivious to the harsh real world.

Friendship is that vague name given to a relationship where you get whatever you want with no responsibility needed.

Your best friend may turn out to be your biggest enemy. Strangers are much more harmless.

Friend is that relationship where one can sleep around without either partner feeling like a slut/gigolo.

It is better to have no friends than to have an idiot as a friend.

"Friends" has become synonymous with "contacts".

Indian Middle Class

Got a call from my elder brother today. he is going to come here for another trip to try and sell the ancestral land we have. The news of his coming always depresses me. Because he has always bullied me since childhood. And I am the type who hates quarrels. It drains me of my energy which could be used elsewhere for something more positive work.

In fact this brother of mine is the one who psyched me into go in for engineering or medicine in college since they are more paying professions. he passed on his middle class Indian insecurity onto me. With disastrous results. I hate mathematics and pure science. I wasted my time and energy trying to secure admission in an engineering or medical college. It left me a wreck for the rest of my life. It gave me a inferiority complex as an bonus. And I did not take up further studies in arts, like politics and history which I have always loved since childhood.

Talk of brain-washing that is worse than Goebbels could have ever thought of! And what were my parents doing all this time, you may ask? My mother is an illiterate woman and knew nothing about academics. She was too small a woman to advise me to do what I liked. My father was too busy in his world to worry about the insecurities and confusion of a teenage son.

The Indian middle class is a sick institution in many ways. It boasts of having morals, which in reality they do not have. Hypocrisy is the norm. And the new India has lost all sense of value. I saw an old woman living in a flat opposite to where I live die alone. Her only son son lived in Dubai and was too busy making money to take care of an old woman. One of her daughters live in the city but she too did nothing. The kids and young men in the apartment complex used to laugh and taunt at the old woman. She was too sick to walk so she crawled about on the floor and yelled obscenities at the children playing cricket in the parking area. The children only used to laugh more.

When the woman fell too ill, her daughter put her in old age home run by Christian missionaries. The lady died three months later.

Insecure Pradeep

The first time I saw Pradeep, he stood behind Sunil nervously. Sunil would do all the talking. Pradeep would interrupt into the conversation in a jerky manner. If this got a cold response he would slink back to the safety of Sunil's back like a street dog kicked by a passerby.

I do not think they were homosexuals but the relationship was intriguing, Sunil was the 'mother'. Pradeep was like the 'baby'.

Both came from Bihar from quite well-to-do families. Otherwise they would not be studying in one of country's best colleges in Mumbai. Pradeep's family, I learnt, had the dealership of a leading paints' company.

All the time Pradeep would be be Sunil. He would not go out with anyone else. He would go out only if Sunil was there too. It was a strange dependency.

One could detect an extreme insecurity in Pradeep. May be it was engendered by a dominating family. This I confirmed when once his father came visiting the college hostel where Pradeep stayed.

His father was a practical dominating kind of character. Another time I happened to meet Pradeep's elder brother. The man was like his father. I shuddered at the thought. The father would at least have some parental concern even for a weakling son. I doubted a brother would have similar scruples. A hunch that sadly turned out to be true.

Pradeep was erratic. Sometimes he would be overtly and excessively affectionate towards someone and would be inevitably snubbed.  This happened often. Other times he would lose his temper, turn aggressive and pick a fight with someone. Like a little boy.

Years later I learnt from a common acquaintance that Sunil had got a job, got married, and had children. Pradeep was alone in Patna without his protective 'mother' Sunil. After his father death, Pradeep's hard-nosed businessman brother had grabbed all of the family business and thrown Pradeep out of the house. Pradeep presently lives in extreme poverty today.

The Importance Of Sanjay Leela Bhansali's 'Guzarish'

The film Guzarish was going on in the cinema theatre. Someone guffawed in the row behind. Out of exasperation. His friend moaned the waste of money. "What a lousy movie" was the refrain.

How heartless and insensitive many of us have become.

 But I don't blame the two men in the row behind. Guzarish is not entertaining. Suffering is hardly  entertaining. Perhaps the fault lies with Sanjay Leela Bhansali. He did not market the film as smartly as Aamir had promoted Taare Zameen Par.

The point is Guzarish throws light on quadriplegia. The suffering without any hope of relief or cure. Very few directors have the guts and the sensitivity that Bhansali has. He deserves a pat on the back for making Guzarish.

Guzarish is about suffering and love. There is a lot of the former and too little of the latter. But it seems even love is not enough to endure some types of suffering. The character in Guzarish receives a lot of love but even that wasn't enough for him to desire to continue living.

Guzarish is important because it focuses attention on the extreme suffering a quadriplegic has to endure. The suffering shown in the film is heart-wrenching. The helplessness of the character played by Hrithik Roshan as he has to endure the steady drip of water drops from a leaking roof. This is a form of severe torture. The harmless pit pats of little drops of water after some time sound like maddening blows of a huge hammer.

Or when he screams in agony when Aishwarya Rai's (the woman he loves) evil husband beats her up in front of him.

Nothing could be more demeaning than this.

The film rightly raises the issue of euthanasia. The right to die in dignity rather than live in unending humiliation.'That is why Guzarish is an important film which all of us should watch.

But are we that human and sensitive? I doubt it.

Going to watch a movie

I went to watch a Bollywood film at the local Girnar theatre. Girnar is a single screen theatre. They do not make them anymore. Maybe the multiplexes make more money. I do not go to multiplexes. Tickets are too costly. A popcorn costs double or treble than what it costs in a single-screen theatre. Waste of money, I feel.

Anyway I am babbling now. back to Girnar. The movie was 'Golmaal 3'. A stupid juvenile flick as I found out later. But the janta a loved it. Indians always love escapist fare. they have a lot to run away from.

The guy at the ticket counter was rude. He had one look at the slightly soiled 100 rupee note and pushed it back at me. " Change it," he muttered gruffly. Indians I think will never develop  professionalism. I mean things like being polite to customers. They always assume it is a sellers' market. The consumers always get a bad deal. An old habit from the bad old days of socialism under Nehru and Indira Gandhi.

Coming  to Golmaal 3. An inane silly comedy, as I said. What hurt me most was the pathetic state that an actor of Mithun Chakravarti's calibre was reduced to in the film. One has to adjust with the times after swallowing one's 'pride'. Capitalism is a hard task master. But it made a sensitive guy like me wince.

The other day I went to Galaxy theatre (another single screen theatre) to watch the Hollywood flick, Skyline (Dubbed in Hindi). There was a massive crowd at the booking window. It seemed likely that all the tickets would be sold out soon. As I waited patiently in the queue (ready to go back home disappointed), I saw another lousy Indian trait. Jumping the queue. Some very nonchalant characters sidled up to the booking window, looked around innocently and then bought tickets. This happens everywhere. Whether it be a railway booking counter or at electricity bill payments centre. Jump the queue. Break the rules and get what you want.

It seems Indians seem to have no respect for fair play, for rules, for common courtesy. The mantra is "break the rules and get what you want." The sad part is such people are looked up as role models to be emulated. The honest are considered as simple or fools.

Coming back to Skyline. Seeing that the show went house full, it is high time Bollywood woke up and brushed up its special effects. Or it will merely remain a country that churns out song-and-dance films that only Indians watch.