Friday, October 24, 2008

You want a Drink with that?

That reminds. I cant get drunk. I can get close but I cant get drunk. I have a 2-3 drink limit. 2 drinks is half a bottle of quarter - half a quarter or 1/8th. And I cant have a kingfisher bottle of beer faster than 45mins- 1 hour.

Not that theoretically, I cant get drunk. I can! Yes, I am conterdicting myself. But I got two shots of tequilas in me (there was nothing else at home!! And it is raining outside!!!) and I am wiser now. It is just that after crossing my alcohol threshold, I feel woozy and dizzy and it is not a happy place. The 3 times I have gone too far past, I have forced stuff out with a finger pushed deep into my mouth, had a banana (cant go to sleep in an empty stomach) and woke up fresh as a blue bird.. a male blue bird... I hear they are feisty and horny all the time.

I just wanted the record to be set straight.

The funky Bangalore Weather

Bangalore can be so cold that you need a sweater, so warm that you need to be in a sweat shirt and so wet that you come home drenched.... all in the same day. I have taken to looking up satellite photos on cnn.com to figure out what to expect these days.

Some of my readers (or reader.. he happens to be my best friend) may think I blogged about the weather because there is nothing else to talk about.. kind of like "so how about the weather these days". NOT TRUE!! Not totally anyway. I had been subjected to repeated bouts of headaches and sniffles. I have been totally drenched thrice this week. I have good reason to blog!!!

Here is a good remedy that worked the last time to ward of headache. I had a shot of tequila (at 6pm) when I reached home drenched.

Sunday, October 12, 2008

To convert or not to convert.


Funny thing on news these days.. apparently we Hindus are are going out to reconvert converts!! Wow.. really? Can we convert into Hindu? When I was young, I accepted that I was born Hindu and that the cute Ganesh was savior. Today, I except the term Hindu to mean partly my ancient Indian culture, the way in which I pray (that includes praying inside the church with folded hands), traditions, the mythological stories and the philosophy of - for want of a better word - Hinduism, which is written in Vedas and summarized in the Bhagwath Gita.

For most Hindus being a Hindu stops at traditions. Few understand the philosophy of the Vedas / Bhagwath Gita, which describes nature of the universe and ourselves. If you were to ask group of 10 Hindus - how many have read the Gita? Hardly, a couple of hands would go up. Most don't even know that Gita is a part of the story of Mahabharata. On the other hand, most would have read the Bible. It is easy to read. It is available in English and most Indian languages. There are many people who will help you read it. You get to hear it in popular Movies, TV shows and specialized channels. It has stories and a simple message of peace and forgiveness and acceptance of Christ as your saviour. Hindu stories are abound but their message and philosophy does not come through in these and the traditions listed in them are found to be outdated for our modern age.

There does exist a forward movement by many fringe christian groups to actively push their faith / religion on others. You see it in Hospitals when they come to pray by your bed side, in their prayer meetings where they invite you, in subtle exchanges in charity movements, in provision of favour etc. and the outright talk of "Power of christian prayer" and questions of why we don't accept Christ as our savior. It exists. It happens. Having said that I must once again stress 'FRINGE GROUPS'. I study in a Christian College run by Roman Catholic Priests, where "Sri Maha Ganapathim" is sung as easily as a Christian Prayer song and every student is treated same regardless of their religion.

BUT CONVERSION DOES NOT EXIST IN HINDUISM!!!! Hell we don't know much about it to talk. And it cant because there is NO HINDU RELIGION. It is just a label placed upon us by people of other religions. There have been attempts to broadly classify religions such as Hinduism as animist against those borne of the holy texts in Mediterranean and Middle East. This is again going out of our way to over simplify Hinduism. It cant be done.

Seeing Hindus convert into other faiths sometimes makes me feel down. I feel number of people who do things the way I do may be reducing. A part of me wants to ask them to read the Gita (NOT ISKCON FUNNY VERSION!!!!) before converting. But this identification with my "fellow Hindus" goes against what I know about my faith. Gita is not for the faint of heart, the closed mind or the unquestioning character. You must be ready to question yourself, the world around you and the book, which is full of ambiguities. I don't know what each of you will get from that. What I got is a faith that I identify as my own which goes beyond idols, temples and agarbhatis, an understanding with almighty that is personal and a path that I am too afraid to follow.

I called myself a Hindu when I was young, leaned towards Christianity in my teens, became atheist for a short time and then I read the Gita. It is good book. I treat it as a holy relic. I don't think it is. I shouldn't mind using it as a foot rest. It is made up of paper pulp and has a publisher and a commentary that sees it from the view point of a Swami Chidbhavananda. Still I treat it as a holy relic and it never leaves my bed side table. Chubby Ganesha remains my savior and Krishna locket is constantly around my neck. You don't get it? You don't have to. I do. This is my faith. And I cant convert you to it.

Friday, October 10, 2008

Coffee and Sympathy

I attended Meenakshi Madhavan Reddy's reading at the Reliance TimeOut Bookstore. She was on the Bangalore leg of her book tour. Unfortunately, missed her talk. I don't think she is famous yet. I mean she was on time and finished on time and I was late. I thought she would come late... I mean come on.. this is BANGALORE!!! Everyone who is anyone comes late.

I had assumed that her book was an extension of her blog. But it is a fictional work and priced to compete with the pirated books sold at MG road. I have not brought it yet. I wanted to buy it when I would be in a position to finish reading it in a week. Later thought it could be a good birthday gift but I don't know. I mean I was trying to figure out if it was a good book for a 19 year old girl? Now I find myself wishing that I did buy it. I could have got her to sign it with a Happy Birthday message. That would have been cool.

I think people enjoyed her talk (which I missed) and the pile of books behind her had grown smaller by the time I left.

Thursday, October 9, 2008

I would rather have Congress loose than win with Amar Singh

After Ms. Jayalalitha, Ms. Uma Bharathi, Ms. Mayawati, Ms. Mamata Banerjee... we give you MR. AMAR SINGH. This wonderful and energetic old man has a bag full of tricks. He is so ready conterdict himself that pundits (I call them pundits bcoz I don't know who they are but I am sure they exist) have said that he has already contradicted himself over statements he is going to make for the next 6 months.

The man is a mystery - where does his money come from, who listens to who in Samajwadi Party, how much of what he says is not a bold-faced lie, will the Bachchan family ever go on anywhere without him?

The latest in the steady stream of stupid from this guy is the claim that the hero of Delhi Police was shot by his own men and that terrorists holed up in the flat were innocent. Source of his information? He did not need any. I quote whoever wrote this about Amar Singh on wikipedia.org

"Amar Singh has also supported the 2 Terrorists killed in a Shootout with the Delhi Police in September 2008. Since his party enjoyed a good minority vote bank, Amar Singh has seen a bigger opportunity to capture vote share by resorting to this National Shame policy of supporting murderers and calling them innocent. Even though the shootout in Delhi claimed the life of a Delhi Police officer, Amar Singh has degraded morally in accusing the police force."

Sunday, October 5, 2008

Why have the Nano, when you have Trams

Everyone knew. It was too early for Bengal. The state has been in a virtual shutdown in terms of Industry and business ever since communist takeover. The state until very recently was the only one in India to have rickshaw pullers. It is not surprising. The communist promise of heaven on earth is one of the biggest lies of 20th century. Of the three remaining communist dictatorships (Peoples Democratic... yeah right!), two are surviving on donors and one has had embrace free market reforms to surge ahead (turning communist doctrine on its head).

Ms. Mamta Benerjee is not a communist but she is the end result of 30 years of communist rule in Bengal. Anything somebody has, is the reason you did not get it. Forget that you never worked for it. Somebody has to be blamed. While the blame is just "playing politics" in any vibrant democracy, for the communist life begins with a blame. When they cannot find anyone to blame in India, United States is readily available. Ofcourse, they have everything we don't have. I wish they had our communists and we didn't.

Communist call foul over Benerjee's strikes. Forgetting that the ruling government Bengal has shutdown its own state several times. They have thrown the spanner at everything - every reform, every industry, every new idea... hell I am sure somewhere in the country they have thrown a spanner at a factory making the spanner. Ok, thats a bit of exaggeration. They were happy about massive pay hike to government officers, without changing terms of their employment - cannot be terminated, convicted by Lokyukta.. the list goes on.

Mind you, Mamta is no lady. Far from it. In the end she has screwed herself by hurting the farmers and workers who were relying on the Nano project, she has hurt her traditional urban constituency and Bengal in general. CPI has hurt Bengal by not being honest and open with public regarding the Nano project and with Nandigram.

West Bengal has to face more hardships before it can become better. This virus of communist ideology has to take a real beating before the people give up it and start to do an honest day's work.