Perpetually Perplexed

Though I keep repeating the quote "Cogito ergo sum" too frequently, I rarely think. In fact the quote was not told to mean that you are really alive only if you think. That is a different story. I do not want to think. Like so many other people. Because thinking makes me sad, depressed, angry, guilty and all kinds of negative emotions. How often do I think about a past event or a present situation which is not negative? Zero times. Like a cow, I keep mulling over the bad incidence where either I did something wrong, or I was wronged or some one hurt me. So to avoid thinking I take refuge in TV, childish games, eating. If you have read the book "Fountainhead" by Ayn Rand, you remember the protagonist's friend/rival Peter Keating who is hard working but not very talented. Our Roarke says "you have a bottomless pit in your mind. So you crave for others' praise always. And no matter how much praise you get, you crave for more". Some thing to t...

Karma Most popular Sanskrit words in western world. Karma is action or work. It is derived from the root kru kru in verb form is in present tense - lat lakara करोति कुरुतः कुर्वन्ति क्रॉशी कुरुतः कुरुथ करोमि कुर्वः कुमः We do recognize the highlighted words in some shlokas. To be trivial, I do work is अहं कर्मम करोमि But there are many words from this dhatu, kartavya - duty nishkama karma - work without expecting anything karta - doer of the work karmabhumi - place of action antyakarma - last rites, funeral panchakarma - 5 kinds of treatment in Ayurveda And of course the well known shloka from Bhagavadgita कर्मण्येवा अधिकारस्ते माँ फलेषु कदाचन You have a right to perform your prescribed duty, but you are not entitled to the fruits of action. Rhyming with this is another well known word in east and west which is dharma. dharma धर्म has the root word  धृ which means to hold. dharma is our duty, conduct, practice. e.g. I feel there will not be...

No matter how depressed or angry I am the previous day, I would wake with a fresh mind - comparatively, do a little coding now and then. But since last few days, I feel it is futile to get up in the morning too. I feel I am heading towards a big gigantic hell and unable to get a clear picture who is orchestrating the events. And feel I am completely helpless and will have to watch myself boil in the so called kumbhi paaka naraka. So I spend my days staring at TV or visiting flipkart or some such thing. Sad and funny thing is my SOS is heard by others as LOL and they are all laughing their heads off.

I realized that I am becoming a couch potato with rotten tomatoes for head. So to get back into track, downloaded two fictions from the net and decided to read them. One was "The stranger" by Camus and the other was 1984 by George Orwell. The stranger is so depressing. Its opening sentence is "Mother died today". So now my new justification for my non-reading and binge watching of tv or youtube is jio I bring such melancholic books to read. When these have to compete with mindless TV shows, they fail miserably. I need to find humorous but non-trivial authors. But 1984 is different. It is about dystopian times where you are not supposed even your thoughts are policed.

You could see the face of leader everywhere in the town. Below this face were the words written in big letters - Big Brother is watching you. In Winston's room there was a huge metallic screen called telescreen which was of dual purpose. It would show news and entertainment programs. It would also record all your movements. (Like our web cameras which are said to be controlled remotely) He could only reduce the volume of this telescreen to some extent - but it could not be completely turned off (Just like Google play services in my phones - God knows what all services it starts and why does it consume so much band width). So literally some one was watching every one 24X7. And some random numbers appear on this telescreen from time to time. No, no, the last statement is about my television. He would turn his face away from the screen most of the times - even when he was thinking. And if he had to turn his face towards the screen he would put on an optimistic face. In the mo...