My philosophical ramblings.

My apartment complex sits right at the T-junction of Route 18 and commercial avenue. Across the Route 18 and opposite to my complex, there used to be little garden and then flows the Raritan River. If you take the aerial view (Google Maps !!) then my apartment, Route 18 and garden is sitting comfortably in the Raritan river basin. When you take right turn on Route 18, from the commercial avenue, you could actually see the basin being blasted off to make the road. But for some 100 feet or so, the blasting of hard rocks formed an elaborate design akin to the grand canyon. Obviously, on the tiny level. But it's kind of ironic to see the natures beauty in human destruction. The elaborate way the caverns formed were quite fancy in design.

During the snow, the icy water would flow through the rock caverns. And, as the temperatures drops, the water would form icicles. It was an amazing picture. With old river valley being monstrously blasted off in the past to make a way for the traffic and in the midst vehicle conundrum, you see, nature's ability not only to rejuvenate but give a designers touch even to the destruction. I always thought about taking picture of that labyrinthine design, every time I pushed it for the next time. And that ‘next time’ never came.

Even though time never stops and things disappear as quickly as they appear, we humans have tendency to believe in immortality of the surrounding. It is as if we try to freeze our mind into a time wrap. We usually hate change, for good or for bad. All though, adaptability is absolutely required for the survival, we groan, we moan, we squirm and we whine, every time something change in our life or in our surrounding. We long for the past because we believe that it was better then than the present. But in the process of painting illusion about our past enjoyments, we totally miss out the rare moments of joy in the present.

The special moments in life seems to be the gift wrapped in the irony. We need to understand this irony. Unless, we discern the reality from the mirage of disappointment and contemplate for a fraction of second about the present - by firmly being in the present - we miss the real fun. And trust me the realization of missing out the real stuff is worst.
Worst than the moments you actually missed.

This doesn't mean we shouldn't contemplate about the past. We should definitely do that. It helps us gaining the perspective about the seemingly incoherent situations in the present. But we need to adapt by not getting burdened by the past. We need to live the moment by acting in the present - well enough - to actually enjoy.

As far as the fine design on the rock caverns are concerned, they are gone for good. Recent road widening construction lead them to be blasted off permanently. I ruined the chance of taking the photograph. And, I am missing that sorely.

Confused Hindus

We Hindus have very weird notions about our own way of life. I shall say we are more confused than we think we are. When people ask us about our religion, we say we are Hindus. It’s quite strange because Puran-Itihaas or Veda doesn’t have nomenclature called Hindu. What we follow is Sanatan Dharma. And, it’s more of way of life than religion. The definition of Dharma is way different than the myopic way the term religion is defined in English or in western world. The word religion is more related to Abrahamic religion and to define our way of lie as ‘religion’ is something like confining the vast and elaborately ornate nature of Sanatan Dharma into a narrow and fanatic mindset. But it seems that living in the world designed by westerners and for westerners, we have to define ourselves as Hindus.

Going into more deep self-defining traits, we can either say that we are more ‘spiritualistic’ Hindu in philosophy i.e. absolutely non-political and non-confrontational or otherwise, try to project the nature of Hinduism as cohesive political unit more akin to deal with the contemporary challenges faced by Hinduism.

Both of the above mentioned ways are correct in certain way. Sanatan Dharma is omnibus of host of the rituals, practices, festivals across the length and breadth of Indian subcontinent and South-East Asia.

But at the same time we are under attack from the Abrahamic religion for last thousand years. And, it doesn’t help much in the modern age as their expansion continue albeit in more sophisticated way. If we want to defend ourselves from getting extinct then we need to figure out who we are and what we stand for. Are we spiritualistic and don’t actually need to defend ourselves actively? Or we need to form cohesive political unit (which we failed to form in last thousand years !) and be more aggressive about defining out culture ?

General populace is wary to define themselves as a Hindu in political sense because to do so immediately put you in the comparison with Talibans. We in India follow extremely weird form of secularism. Actually, we as Sanatan Dharmis are secular by nature but in the contemporary period secularism stands more for minority appeasement and that too at the cost of weakening of our own culture.

People who say that they are spiritualistic know very little about Sanatan Dharma. What ever they know is mostly fed to them through communists and pseudo westerner’s beaks. Obviously, what is fed to us under the guise of modernism is totally crap and biased. It’s pity that we lost the touch to Sanskrit and there by, distanced ourselves from our literature. Without the proper knowledge, these people either out rightly reject and ridicule our heritage and traditions as too ‘conservative and as ‘out of time’ or be defensive about it. They basically like to cover their timidity and pitiable brains by bull shitting about the ‘liberal’ and ‘encompassing’ nature of Sanatan Dharma. The passivity with which they detach themselves from furthering the development of Dharma is surely recipe for degradation and decay

Unfortunately, the conservative Hindu nationalist suffer from the same dementia. Their gung-ho attitude towards solving the problems faced by Hinduism borderlines the day-dreaming. The root cause is lack of knowledge too. We don’t learn the real history in our class. We can’t read out classic texts. For that we depend on English interpretations penned by a foreigner. These people stick to the traditions with literal meaning without understanding the logic and scientific base behind it. When in doubt, rather than finding the truth, these people are content in exhorting the greatness of our ancestors. There by not only insulting the greatness of our heritage but they basically seal the doors for any necessary development. Their constant efforts to fit the current volatile situation in the historical format, makes it harder for them to rejuvenate themselves for the new challenges by shaking off the burden of illustrious past.

I guess, being spiritualistic or being combative can’t be different spectrums of Hinduism. It has to be two sides of the same coin. We need knowledge about our history as well as philosophy in order to gain the strength from within. We don’t need to echo our ancestors , rather, we need to understand, re-interpret and revise the traditions according to the contemporary period. If we are keeping up with the changing times then we don’t need to be defensive about it. Our ancestors were quite advanced and most of the traditions have strong logical base. We need to be innovators in every possible sense rather than imitators.

But without such cohesive efforts that is, by either showing cockiness in ridiculing our culture or being too stubborn in regards to our traditions, our culture is surely going to decay slowly. We were saved from Islamic as well as Christian conquest by the combination of Bhakti and Shakti movements in the medieval period. If we don’t further our struggle in the modern times then there is no second chance in the nature.

Hibernation

Lately, it seems that I am running out of ideas. I mean, I do have lot of ideas but they are not materializing into a blog of a page or tow. Is it a writers block? Naah.....that's funny. Because, I ain't a writer...may be...actually, Naaah !! All I wrote is few blogs and to say I am a writer is retarded. May be a bloggger but nothing more than that. Well, I don't know but I can't write anything any more.
Ok..tooo many useless and futile words to explain nothing. But again, that's precisely is my point. I need to read more stuff for further rumination. And, for that I am going to hibernate for some time. Hopefully I will be able to emergeafter two or three weeks. Let's see if I could come up with better and brighter subjects and able to put them succinctly.

Hope for the best and prepare for the worst.

p.s. - ok last sentence doesn't make much sense !! does it?

Endulkar ?

Indian cricket team was beaten convincingly by South African team in recent one day international tournament in South Africa. There is nothing new in India loosing in the foreign territory. In fact, India won extremely rarely in the bouncy pitches of South Africa, West Indies and Australia. So, I ain’t going to waste my time in talking about how India should have played and how they could win the last game. It’s pretty useless. Come next summer and we will be beaten again and the excuse will be the bouncy pitches again. I mean, for sweet mother of Moses, why can’t we make a one lousy bouncy pitch somewhere in India and let all the cricketers practice on it? But that’s too easy to do and plus, who is going to sponsor such a useful practice.

What disappointed me most was the way Tendulkar played against the south African fast bowlers. He is supposed to be the best thing that happened to cricket since Bradman retired. And, yet instead of leading by example and fulfilling his talents (and the prophecy!) he meekly surrendered himself to Pollack and Co. What is more infuriating was that none of the newspapers or cricket website minced a word against Tendulkar. He featured in none of the reason behind India’s debacle. Why? Are we biased for him? Is he still a little wunder-kid for us? Or is it is just that he is beyond the realm of mere mortals and hence, can’t be considered as reason for defeats. If that’s the case then forgive me for making such a blasphemous statement but we will be better off without Tendulkar. He ain’t making any difference as a batsman anyways, so, let’s give a chance to some talented kid and hope that he will score runs consistently or at least, when it’s needed.

He made a comeback in Malaysia tournament with a blazing a hundred. Everyone went ga-ga over his return and since then, nothing! We lost Malaysia cup. We lost mini-world cup. And we are kicked like a football in South Africa and I am yet to see a single necessary knock from Tendlukar. In the mean time, Lara is scoring runs as if there is no tomorrow and Ponting is on rampage against every bowler and Yousef Yohana, well, I hate that bastard. In all the debacles, Tendulkar is the most senior player in India team ( 17 years of experience.) and yet, he failed to lead by an example. Instead, Suresh Raina who is just 19 (i.e. two years more than Tendulkar’s international career.) is taking heat for the defeat. Comically dark ! Because, that kid lost his place in the team.

I am not against Tendulkar in any way. In fact, I am his greatest fan. His talent, his hunger for runs and his commitment to the cause definitely puts him in the rarified air of greatest cricketers. But cricket is a team game and we are talking about a team that represents India and we can’t get sentimental because it’s about India’s prestige we are talking about. But deification is just part and parcel of being famous in Indian public life. Usually, a person is deified when he is close to being a liability to the public. And it becomes hard for that person to bid adieu to his public persona. He not only hurts himself in this process but cause damage to the country in one way or other. We have numerous such examples, primarily in politics. Of course, Tendulkar was deified long ago and justifiably so. But, a century in ten or eleven matches is not something we expect from him. It’s probably adds up to his incredible statistics (I am sure he doesn’t care about statistics and is more concerned about winning) but if he doesn’t score valuable 50 or 60 in must win crunch matches then for me, his talent ain’t worth for place in India team.

He is great. No doubt about it. I still see the replays of his ferocious onslaught against Australia in 97-98. And, that’s why a lot more is expected from him. He definitely did justice to his talents and filled the vacuum in 1990’s. He surely is a real hero to the young generation. His hard work, his commitment to India, his clean image and middle class attitude is something that every one should try to emulate. But I would like to see him as hero for years to come. Even after his retirement I want to see him as an inspirational figure. But if he continued to play, even after ceasing to be a factor towards India’s victories then, it may sound too harsh, but that blemish won’t go away with all the hundreds he scored in his life.