The Expectations and the Society

I recently cam across a Godman, like all the other Godmen, telling people that the entire problem with their social lives was that they were expecting things out of their society. They say that the social animals that we humans are, should be indifferent to the needs and anticipations of the self and of the society. That is the key to happiness.

I, on the other hand, find it astonishing how they can create such misleading theories. This thought and the preachers of the thought are dividing humanity and hindering mankind's progress.

If you look at a mechanical device, the parts of that machine are related (attached) to one another becuase there is an expectation that each part will do its job right. If one fails in that expectation, the entire machinery breaks down. So, is the solution here that we do not attach the parts together at all?

Failure will cause the machinery to temporarily break down, but if there is no attachment between the parts, there will be no machinery at all. The whole foundation on which every kind of relationship is based upon is expectation; be it social, economic, regional and what not. The human society is of a similar nature, two or more people come together as accomplices, as friends, as relatives, as lovers, because they expect a greater good out of that relationship. If there is no expectation, there is no binding them together. They will work like two independent machines.

A machine runs because it is made of numerous parts working together, the levers expects the screws to hold them together, the screws in turn expect the bolts to hold them steady. This interdependence keeps the machinery running, in the mechanical world and the human world.

A friend expects another friend to be there in the hour of need, to celebrate joy, to share sorrow, to tackle hardships together. We expect our mothers to feed us, our father to direct us, our kins to help us on that path. Every bond is based on an expectation, a husband, a wife, a friend, a lover, a kin, or even an occomplice in a crime. It is this expectation that brings in interdependence and it the interdependence that makes us stronger.

We face challenges in everyday life, which we are quite unsure if we can handle alone, but because we expect the society, that we have built around us, to be there for us, we are sure we can handle bigger challenges everyday.
Rome wasn't built in a day and it wasn't built single-handedly by one man, it was built by multitude of engineeers, architects, masons, stone crushers, and many more unnamed artisans. They depended on each other to complete the marvel that they were constructing. This interdependence is what Rome represented, a society, a glorious example of collective effort.

Shunning out expectation is to shun out that dependance, the strength that unites us, that helps us work as one. It would mean that mankind stall its progress and each man pull the chain of progress in a different direction.

I rather say, expect a lot, expect from everyone but be sure to return back in multiples what you expected, because let us not forget it is a society built on mutual dependence. The bigger the society, the stronger it becomes. Sometimes expectations fail, just like the mechanical parts; but we overcome those failures and continue to grow with stronger bonds. The human machinery does not fall apart.

We are just pieces of a puzzle, one piece alone makes no sense, together we represent a greater entity..

The Elusive Omnipresent

Kasturi kundal basai, mrig dhoondhe ban mahi |
Aise ghat ghat Ram hain, duniya dekhat nahi ||

                                                                              - Sant KabirDas                 

Since the dawn of history, Man has spent a considerable amount of time and energy searching for the eternal truth; some for it renouncing all material pleasures, some wandering the world in its search, while some embracing death with the hope of finding it in the after-life.

Failure at it does not deter him, rather, his zeal to achieve that inachievable is further strengthened by the past failures. One seemlessly assumes that 'this' failure was solely because he was not committed enough to the cause. He continues the search further with a renewed and ever resplendent zeal. This unadulterated ardor does not even stop with death. Death is seen merely as a pause to this splendid crusade, that commences again, upon rebirth.

We search the world and beyond it,  read every bit of literature by the fallen predecessors, beginning from where they fell and from there taking this campaign further. However, just like little kids who forget to count themselves while enumerating the gathering, we forget to look inside the self.

That god, that creator, that omnipresent who is present everywhere and nowhere resides in the most consummate form in the self. To better the self would be the best form of offering one can make to his god.
The search ends with me.

An Attempt at Poetry

Do aankhon ki drishti se

Saanjh ki bela chupke se hole hole aaye,

dheere dheere suraj ko sagar mein milaye,

ab tak kahin chupa baitha tha chanda jo,

azad ghume aasman mein ab parinda wo.

suraj ki dhoop ne dhak li thi chandni jiski,

dharti par beh rahi hai ab som ragini uski.

alsaya samudra hai ut tha suraj ko nigalne,

taron ka ek jhurmut chupke se laga hai nikalne,

sharmayi aankhon se woh tim timate gagan mein,

hazaron phool khil uthe hain jaise kare chaman mein.

raat ki chadar jab dhak leti hai is jahan ko,

dulhan ki tarah saja dete wo sare aasman ko,

dekh us sundar gagan ko matvala hota main,

bhool khudi ko, un taron ke ganit mein khota main.

hazaron deep jagmagate is nabh ke aangna mein,

aah! yahan hoti hai diwali har sandhya mein,

dekh us adbhut drishya ko mastishk hai kehta,

aa ae aasman! chaloon mein tujhe in do aakhon mein samet ta.

7 - The Colours of the Rainbow or The Deadly Sins

Perception of a thought is the key to the analysis of a 'statement or scenario' by the human mind, while how we perceive a thought is completely dependent on the instantaneous state of the mind when that thought incepted.

For years, I'd always thought that the ability to perceive a situation varies from one individual to another and depends - on their way of life, on their cultural, ethnic backgrounds, on their upbringing, or their genetic heritage. However, with a little more insight on a recent nondescript event, this illusion of mine was shattered and held me astonished in revelation. For it is all not as complicated as we all think it to be, in fact, its as simple as, let's say, pronouncing your own name.

I watched the movie "Se7en" and since then every time I come across the number seven, all I can think of is the seven deadly sins. It made me wonder what the number meant to me earlier, before I knew of the deadly sins. There were different answers from all the various phases of my life, and each one completely unrelated to the other. 7 - the wonders, 7- the continents, 7 - the dwarfs, or 7 - the colours of the rainbow.

Each time a different state of the mind, each time a different answer, each time a different perception of the same thing by the same person. It shows how easy it is to deceive an individual through his own thoughts, to procreate only the inception of an illusion inside the mind, while the actual mirage is created by the mind itself. The highest form of self destruction but at another mortal's will.


From time immemorial, master manipulators have used this one weakness in the human cerebrology to menticide their victims - creating the imperius curse, but without any conjured magic. Mark Antony, the astute orator, never called Brutus a bad man, all he did was accentuate the fact that Ceasar was a good man, which did the trick just right. The crowd went ballistic, lost in the ambience created by their ventriloquist.

The brain lets its guard down on a train of thought created by the own self, and will believe what it sees because it is from its own brood, ignorant of the fact that this is what is its nemesis, which will annihilate all that  it is no more guarding. A Trojan Horse that strikes the bastion that you call 'Self'.

Is it God or Hobbes?

"Oh Lord! give us unto this day our daily bread".

"Lord! Thank you for giving us your love"

"Lord! Help us in times of need and grief"

These and a milloin other forms of chants, with the names of Lord, Bhagwan, Allah, Jesus substituting each other, are a part of all our daily lives. So what is this prayer, is it a conversation with God? Is it a request for more? Is it a way of expressing gratitude? Is it to praise the almighty?

We all chant a prayer in joy, in pain, in grief, in triumph, in love, in hate, in fear, in anger, and in every other kind of emotion. There is a prayer for every situation, in every language, of every race and for every cult.

But how sure are we that our prayers are being heard, how sure are we that our prayers will be answered, how sure are we that there is someone above us all looking after us, providing us in our endeavours? None of us billions who pray every day can be certain about this, there are a few who would claim to be, to have seen this almighty or that they meet him everyday in their dreams or through other modes of-lets say-heavenly communication. Yet with no solid proof, the only force common amongst all our diversities is this conviction in the existence of the unknown.

Prayer is more of a psychological phenomenon than a spiritual one. The point of a prayer is not to convince someone far above us to hear our pleas but to make believe that there is someone else who will help us succeed if the need arises. When in grief, one turns to God so that he can find someone share his sorrows; the omnipresent knows it all, so it’s not embarrassing to tell him about one's misdoings; God is the almighty forgiver, so you can turn to him to ask forgiveness and relieve yourself from the curses of your conscience. When in fear, pray to God which gives us the confidence that there is someone stronger who will save us from our perils. He is the punisher and will guillotine the tyrants.

All these drive me to sometimes think if God - the creator of the universe, creator of the earth, creator of all life, nature and man, is he something synthetic, a figment of man's imagination?

A soldier on a battlefront prays to God for triumph, there is a similar prayer being chanted on the other side of the same battle field. Now who do you reckon would God listen to? I guess to the one who comes out of his mental block first and fires a bullet on the target in front.

We have created a kind of illusion around us, of the existence of this comforter, given him all the traits that a young boy ‘let’s call him Calvin’ finds in his soft toy. He looks onto him for help when in a problem, for support when in fear, to share his grief, his anger and his joys.

Similarly as we grow up, the figment of our childish imagination Hobbes is broken, and we move on to start believing in GOD.

PS: I am not an atheist; I point here to a slight variant of the Advaita theory.

The tragedies of travelling in a Rear Engine Bus:

The public bus service in Bangalore is certainly the most popular travel mode among the daily commuters who travel long distances to either offices, schools or colleges. The BMTC is one of the very few profit making transport organization run by the government.

Today after a long time I used the BMTC services to travel to office. I waited for sometime at the stand for a Volvo(ah! extremely comfortable for long journeys) but seeing none come by I decided to use the first general bus that came by. turned out my luck ran-out today and the bus was a 'dreaded' Rear-Engine-Bus.

It looks no different from any other bus on the BMTC fleet, and this one rather looked like one of those well-maintained buses which would offer you a comfortable journey altogether but as I entered the bus and purchased the ticket from the conductor, the engine roared and it took me little time to understand that alas! I have been fooled by the wolf in a sheep's clothing.

I had a long distance to travel and recited my prayers hoping to find a seat soon. And then (mis)fortunately I found one: in the last row. Five seconds were quite enough for me to understand what my fate today was going to be. The engine roared right under me to a start and every part of the bus danced to the tunes of the engine, including the people who were shaking in a steady motion which looked similar to pack of animals shivering on a cold winter night.

The noise of the engine thump the brain like a million hammers striking together, half a million trying to explode it and the other half trying to implode it. Its just this balance that keeps the skull in one piece. The neck muscles take extra care to keep the head steady in the fear that if not, they just might disturb this balance and cause the disaster they've been trying to hold off all this while.

Just when I thought this was all, the smell of the half-burnt diesel emanated from the engine underneath my seat reaches my nose. Now, the brain though half consciousness gathers all its energy like a sacrificial goat in the final attempt of escape. A thought begins to flow if I should abdicate the seat I had been holding so dearly, wondering if going a little far from the bellowing engine would help my case. Finally a decision is made and the legs are commanded to move, the hips to support them in the endeavor and finally joined by the hands to support the stand. When I got up and stood a little ahead, my fellow back-seaters looked at me with dazed eyes and wondered if they should be doing the same. Probably a telepathic wave hit them all at once they all stood up to vacate that seat of death.

Ah! This was probably the first time in my life that I felt more comfortable standing than resting on a chair. The bus then halted at the next stop and more commuters joined it. Some of them pushed to the back by the crowd behind them saw these empty seats and I could see the glorious delight of a victory on their faces. They glanced at us with a look of question and we all replied back with a smirk, like that of the enlightened looking at the bustling ignorants.

It took them little time to realize what we meant and and travel back in time to find themselves in our chairs and then the entire tale reiterated. The tale of the Rear Engine Bus.

Google:An evil company which wants to take over the world??

Google has emerged today as leader in web services and slowly also expanding to offline services. They have been the biggest supporters of free and open source software, sponsoring almost every event that endorses open source, supporting every open source product based company financially as well as technically. Also itself has been conducting a lot of events to bring together developers of the open source community. Most people are now under the impression that Google is the Messiah that has been created to save the world from the "evil" Microsoft. Their premiere argument being that Microsoft does not give enough rights to the user and they're evil and they are hacking into all your data and they're evil and they dont give you code and they're evil, though I appreciate the fact Google has been able to sideline itself from 'directly' making these alligations.
Almost every computer user uses Google's tools for any kind of web service used by him and as an icing on the cake these services are completely free of cost. We love everything that comes to us for free, and why not, we work hard to earn that money. Now Google understands that well, doesn't it? Thank You Google.
Now where my understanding of Google beats me is why doesn't Google release the source code of its own products. To start with, well i'm using the search engine am I not entitled to have the source code for it, if the code for my operating system happens to be my birth right.
Now have we seen an open source version for googletalk with all its features for Unix based systems?Shouldn't they give the code for gmail to its every user.
Web services certainly are different but again they're being used by me, take my private data and run mostly on my PC. Why must I not view what data is being captured from my system or the application I have opened using these services.
Another point I would like to specify on these web services by google, how many of them have been Google's own creations and have made it big except for the search engine.
Orkut, google's socializing site was made by someone else, bought by google.
Blogger, this very site was bought by Google not released by them.
Youtube, again bought by Google.
It certainly is quite honorary to be taken over by google. Every start up dreams of it. Why, because they've done a lot of hard work in creating the start up, and if they're getting a hefty reward for it right at the moment, why reject it.
I would say Google was lucky, it wasn't taken over by any major comapany during its time of creation. They tried but Alta Vista was too snobbish for that. Now Google does not want to see a repetition of 'The Google Story'. They buy every possible company which emerges as a possible competition. It certainly is the Emperor of Internet ruthlessly conquering every small opposition in the most nascent stages.
But the emperor's insatiable thirst for power also has its eyes set on the offline services. Their biggest competition is Microsoft, "Well, they're bigger than us. We can't buy them. Hmm!! so my enemy's enemy is a friend. Hence, it befriended the open source community. All they have to do is pump in some money from time to time and Microsoft is busy parrying off the open source guys. Now they've come up with android(which was not introduced as open source) to enter the phone markets, and another mentionable feat by Google, CHROME. I don't understand what were they thinking, we put together the open source brilliantly built browser in the market, replace it with our label and reintroduce and with a privacy policy that we can use any data that you open with chrome. Wha ha wha!!!
Oh! and another thing I forgot to mention why are none of the open source products by Google(of the very few) that I know of GPL licensed?? Why do they go for something else like Apache Software licenses? Why do Google's products fail to provide the Four Kinds of Freedom?

Now Google I'm sure is just waiting for the right time to release its own OS though not very soon I'm sure. Just as soon as they can get enough from the open source community on Microsoft which could take a while because I think now its time People understood the Evil that is GOOGLE.

I hope the open source community realizes this before its too late.