Perpetually Perplexed

"Center may grant Bihar backward status soon." "Indian IT firms double market share in 6 years." Two news side of side in yesterdays Times of India front page. This tells us everything about two of the most talked about and most loved/hated people in our country. IT firms work day and night, treat their employees well and take the competition as a challenge and we all know the result. Politicians squabble day and night, struggle very hard to save their place and act and talk in the most irresponsible manner. And we also know the result. So now you have to decide, which model YOU want to take.

Julia is a writer. Her books depict the domestic difficulties of women. But her daughter and husband feel that she complains about them- a lot - in her books. Her sister Cassandra is a don at Oxford. She is leading a strict, academic, nun like life with little contact with people.  The sisters meet at their home when their father is sick. They try to revoke childhood memories and friendship. Cassandra was a difficult sister to grow up with. She was bossy almost tyrant with Julia, who was submissive and weak. For any misdeed Cassandra would punish her so much that even now, after all these years Julia can not come out of the fear of her sister. To make things worse Julia had got involved with Cassandra's friend Simon. When Cassandra came to know about this, she completely severs all ties with both. This guilt always haunts Julia. To break herself lose from her sister, Julia write a novel, about a lady don of a university. She portrays many friends of Cassandra in the book. ...

Once we know what makes us really happy, guiltless happy, we should do it as often as possible. As Krishna said in Bhagavadgita, we should just do our karma, never with any expectations. Do the work for the pleasure of it. So day 1 was searching for online lessons for Latin and Sanskrit? Why two languages at a time? Because when I opened Latin lessons, I realized how much it resembles Sanskrit. At least the grammar part. So google for online Sanskrit lessons. But  I am still puzzled over the fact that why people wanted to learn Sanskrit? ( I have heard that people used to learn Hindi just to read the book Chandrakanta) So that they can write books in it, or so that they can read and understand veda, upanishad and vedanta etc. But that is as bad as saying that you know the alphabets of some language, so you can read and understand one of its largest epics. Anyways people learnt it and left us some great works to read and enjoy. Little had they realized, as civilization reache...

If I am bored and still have the will power to resist the TV (read it as no good programmes on TV), what do I do? I know you would say, I don't care. But still let me tell you, I paint the bottle. Do I mean a bottle? No I do mean the bottle, the same bottle again and again and again. I painted a sauce bottle with some waves, then decided it did not look good. I painted the whole thing in green. That did not look good either. So I scratched of the paint. This time I painted it red with zig zag lines in between. Yesterday I painted different colors in the patterns formed. Yellowish red, whitish red, greenish red etc. In my mind's eye I had bright array of colors. Today I painted the glittering white in the lines in between. Now it looks ..... red. Did I not mention reading. Am I not reading anything after snow? Lack of books? It will never be lack of books because I have a backlog of around 6 novels including a Toni Morrison. Somehow my laptop and books seem to be enem...

Have watched 3 programs related to religion and secularism on 3 consecutive days. Day before was a speech by Modi to some elite audience in Delhi, yesterday I watched "oh my god" for the second time. And today it was Barkha's discussion program  about secularism in Indian politics. By the way, many of the audience in Burka's program were saying the same thing. "We Indians are deeply religious people in private spaces- in our homes. But we are irreligious in public spaces unlike politicians". Hear, hear!!! That is how we should be. Our god is our private matter just like our family. Our God does not interfere once we leave our home. He does not get to decide how we interact with our neighbors, or our colleagues or friends. He definitely has no saying in whom we are going to vote. I was not disturbed by Modi's speech. I was disturbed by the open admiration in the eyes of most of the audience, young and old alike. Today's youth especially the middle cl...

I had almost decided that this Orhan Pamuk is like most Indian authors writing in English. Out of touch with the reality of the country, and never faced any serious difficulties in life and hence writing would be somewhat shallow. Well, again that is changing as English is the language of middle class, not only affluent and we middle class people are anything but shallow. Why didn't keep away the book "Snow" a. because I am almost losing touch with reading completely which is not good for me at all. b. the book is not boring unlike many serious non-shallow books. Normally the kind of books I have been reading recently (or trying to read) had just one rasa in them, melancholy. OK, according to some traditions, a good literary work must have nava-rasas in them. kaarunya rasa, shringara rasa, veera rasa, hasya rasa , bheebhatsa rasa etc, etc. (ie. kindness, romanace, thrill , comedy etc, etc). I think old Sanskrit plays had all these nava rasas. They had a Vidushak (com...

 If only I put into practice all the positive thinking and inspirational and motivational advice I google up!!! Instead of searching for more of it. Like once I read in I think Atlas shrugged, my mind is like this endless abyss. Always seeking others approval, others opinion and others validation. 

Now you are saying I must be really stupid for uploading sick looking tomato plant. Then you do not know the proverb "Hettavarige heggana muddu" which broadly says for parents, their baby is always cutest.   I have not given birth to these. But still I have spent equal amount of restless days and worries on this plant. And I very well know that I am in no way going to win "Best gardener in Bangalore" award. Am happy with participation certificate.  And it is not my fault that the plant is not healthy. I can not give it for some fair and lovely cream. Nor can I make the plant drink bournvita. Nor can I whisper grow, grow, grow to it. I water it daily and pour diluted curds whenever the curd has become too sour. Tomato is having many drawbacks to grow in your kitchen garden. The seeds rarely germinate. And even if the plant is born, the moment it grows a half a foot tall, it will bend due to its own weight and unless we provide proper support, will eventua...

We keep saying so many things we don't mean.  ಪೆಣ್ಣಲ್ಲವೆ ತಮ್ಮನೆಲ್ಲ ಹಡೆದ ತಾಯಿ ಪೆಣ್ಣಲ್ಲವೆ ತಮ್ಮನೆಲ್ಲ ಪೊರೆದವಳು ಪೆಣ್ಣು  ಪೆಣ್ಣೆ ನ್ದೇಕೆ   ಬೀಳುಗಳೆವಿರಿ ಕಣ್ಣು ಕಾಣದ ಗಾವಿಲರ said Sanchi Honnamma around one thousand years ago. यस्य नार्यस्तु  पूज्यन्ते रमन्ते तत्र देवता says a Sanskrit saying ಮನೆಯೇ ಮೊದಲ ಪಾಠ ಶಾಲೆ ಜನನಿ ತಾನೇ ಮೊದಲ ಗುರುವು ಜನನಿಯಿಂದ ಪಾಠ  ಕಲಿತ ಜನರು ಧನ್ಯರು Ya, all these are just sayings. But women are ill treated, exploited, abused everyday and everywhere. Inside the house and outside. What is the point of celebrating women's day when a woman is treated as an object, a slave and a punching bag?

You t hink that I am a nobody. But do you know that I have joined the elite group to which Pranab da - the respected president, Arun Jaitley leader of opposition party etc. belong to. Yes, I belong to this group. Because I think our phone is tapped. By now, everyone thinks I am a paranoid bordering lunatic, who thinks people spoil  my computer, they stop me from accessing certain files etc. And I was on the verge of believing it too. See, I am a nobody, with absolute non-existance and no importance. Who will get anything from hacking into my laptop. But real strange things would happen. My android projects would suddenly stop executing in the middle. No, not because of bugs, I am not as dumb as you think. Then certain websites which I visit frequently would not open in my lap top. And then the crashing of OSs. If I disable guest user, who can login without a password, the screen would not come up. If I remove a user with name as 'nobody' there will be problem with the syst...

.... barbadi ki taraf aisa moda ek bhale atheist ko hypocrite bana ke choda ...

You see many ads in newspapers and net regarding work from home and earn a lot. But how genuine are these ads? Here are few pointers to check if they are genuine or not? Here are few pointers If they are asking you to pay a deposit for the work , then they are just collecting money. Forget that work If they have a website advertising such work, try to get reviews of that site from places like mouthshut. Or just google about that site and dig little deeper. Chances are you may get some reviews from disgruntled people who did not get paid. If the work is from a person or a company, it is preferrable that they are in same town as you. And when talking to them over phone make sure that you ask their address. So that you can give them a call, if you are not paid. Ask and get a clear picture of what are you typing and for which purpose. If you feel the work is not right, just leave it. You do not want to do any unethical work or illegal work - like sending spams to hundreds of peopl...