Unputdownable

Books are anathema to me. But this one is just unputdownable. A few excerpts:

An empire is like a bull market. It grows, it develops . . . often it passes into a bubble phase, when
people come to believe the most absurd things.
We don’t know what stage the American empire has reached . . . but
we look around and see so many degenerate and absurd things, we guess:
We must be nearer the end than the beginning.

This kind of madness is hard not to like; it is like an aging woman who thinks she becomes
more fetching with each passing year. The gap between perception
and reality grows wider every day, until finally, the mirror cracks.

They went to the polling stations in November 2004 and believed they
were selecting the government they wanted, when the choice had already
been reduced to two men of the same class, same age, same schooling,
same wealth, same secret club, same society, with more or less the same
ideas about how things should be run.

Each generation seems to think they are the f irst to stand upright, that
their mothers and fathers walked on four legs and howled at the moon!

Another dead man, James Madison, made it even clearer: “Democracies,”
he wrote, “have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention;
have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of
property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been
violent in their death.”
So, we leave you “a Republic, if you can keep it,” added Ben Franklin.
Well, we couldn’t keep it. Now, we have a curious empire, with a
constitution as flexible as its money.

Distilled information tends to be expressed as moral interdictions.
Don’t steal. Don’t lie. Don’t buy expensive stocks or sell cheap ones. Don’t
expect to get something for nothing. Don’t neglect your spouse. Don’t forget
St. Patrick’s day. Don’t spend too much. Don’t eat too fast. Don’t drink
before 6 PM. Don’t mess around with the boss’s wife. Each don’t represents
lessons learned by previous generations. For every don’t, there must be a
million sorry souls burning in Hell.

American spending created a boom in China, where the average person
works in a sweatshop, lives in a hovel, and saves 25 percent of his earnings.Meanwhile, in the United States, the average man lives in a house he can’t pay for, drives a car he can’t afford, and waits for the next shipment from Hong Kong for distractions he can’t resist. He saves nothing and believes the Chinese will lend him money forever, on the same terms.

Lesser mortals

When asked to drop them for the vittaldas bhajan I shrugged a bit and then agreed to, and ended up sitting through it. It was not my kind of thing to be doing- or so i thought. I felt external manifestation of devotion is a farce, till I realized that it was the safest thought to help lead a selfish life without being accused of irreverance or blasphemy. I still do not buy the logic behind some orthodox beliefs and practices in the name of god. But at the same time, I have grown to realise that I have been taking Him for granted. One should either be an atheist or a believer and there are no two ways about it. Seeking His help when need be and assuming that the other conscious acts of sin during the 'not so needy' times will be pardoned, shows how small a man can be ... and yet he is forgiven. I have been attending the morning Harinamasankeertanams - bhajan like (for those who are not aware of the terminology) during the December music season at Chennai. What began as an involuntary participation turned out to be quite blissful as time passed. I still dont believe the thousands who gather there, physically absolved of all dirt, are pure at heart or even anywhere close to it. But when He (vittaldas), not a singer from any plausible angle, renders some pieces and has the crowd rechanting the same after him, he sure does make an impact on even the least mortals sitting out there, pretending to not be affected by the ambience- like me. For that 60 odd mins, the world around me seemed like ether. No sooner did I proclaim staunch disbelief in such public devotional discourses than I realised my lips had already started singing after him. I am not pious.. I dont think I will ever be.

I dont know what reason each one has to offer when they gather there at 6am every morning. For me, its simple. When I sing aloud along with the million others, I feel I vent out all my sadness, happiness, frustration, pain .. joy.. no matter whatsoever. Amidst the crowd I enjoy my solitude. I do not know what bhakti means to others. For me it is starting to define a new trajectory. The more I spend time in such activities, the more i start respecting my inner conscience. Sometimes I feel I should stop it, for I have started to fear my inner conscience. Dont really have the guts to take it 'for granted' anymore. I have been selfish all through. I still am.

Following has been borrowed from another source:

'the only kingdom that runs on right and wrong is the kingdom of heaven and the kingdoms of the earth run on oil.To know the truth is one thing. To live it ..to create the kingdom of heaven on earth is another. How many times in a man's life does he do things that are repulsive to his morality in order to exist? How I have admired those few men in this world who would stand up for their convictions in the face of shame, torture and even death. What a wonderful feeling of inner peace they must have. Something that we ordinary mortals can never have.'

RIP

Just felt like writing this.

I don’t know if it was their fault or the lorry driver’s fault . or was it just fate that it had to happen… I don’t want to sound like a nanny by writing what I am going to write below.

All of us have been there.. done that. Those rides.. that speed.. the josh the ripping and racing. Probably it was the age.. or no matter anything for that matter. Not that we are any older now. Just that we don’t get the time and chance to do many things we did some time back. The impulse to just go on a long at the wee hours.. the impulse to rip it – just because you felt like it- the impulse to touch the 3 digit in the speedometer… the impulse to just try out something that your heart says… the impulse to listen to the heart over mind. We were glad we did it. We were glad we listened to the heart because we lived to experience it and cherish it later on. Had it been otherwise… you never know.

I still am one of those impulsive natured people… do it because I feel like it. But I am starting to realize.. that may be sometimes in life we need to learn to put a speed breaker.. we need to realize what’s really worth it and what’s not. Guess its time we start valuing our lives and start loving it. because its not just our lives that we risk by being adventurous, its all the effort put in by our near and dear ones into our upbringing. We put so much at stake.. so many people’s happiness at stake by doing something that we feel is cool and out of the box. We can be adventurous, but not beyond a point where we blind ourselves to reality. Personally I feel it’s cool to drive by myself when the office offers a cab facility after I work late hours. I feel it’s cool to just go on a long after a sleepless night and keep going, oblivious to your destination and return back on the same day not realizing it might take a toll on your system. Sometimes when there is already a warning about the weather, I feel it’s cool to take a plunge in the ocean or risk the rains in the dark. Sometimes when I see the green arrow slowly fading into the amber ball, I feel the urge to rip it and make it before the amber turns red. All, or at least most of us would’ve felt similar things and done similar stuff.

These incidents happen. They shall pass. We shall return to our original state of bliss in no time. Not that we forget them but we don’t learn from them.

When our parents or any others prevent us from doing something, I know we feel so cocooned and so damn tied up. May be they do it for a reason. It’s probably because they value all the time effort energy and love that they have invested over these years. Let’s start valuing it before it’s too late. It’s not a big thing to do. It’s not a mammoth task. All we need to do is to love ourselves more . . . because when we do that we value everything associated with us.

By refraining from doing whacky stuff there is no guarantee that things will change. There is always ‘fate’ and ‘destiny’ to blame when some things beyond our control happen. It’s the safest haven that most of us resort to when things don’t happen the way we intend them to. But we can always try. We can think twice .. just twice before we do something. All we need to do is convince ourselves that what we do is really worth it. If there is a safer and better option , go for it. Remember, we are not chickens just because we choose not to be impulsive.

After one such incident 2 years before I decided not to do risky things… but the decision was short-lived. This time again, it comes as an indirect message to me and many others who were and are spared of such tragedies. I have not made a decision or resolution yet. I do not want to make any. I just hope my mind wins over the heart the next time life poses a chance or opportunity. Because it’s very easy to sit inside the safe protected walls and make resolutions. When the real moment arrives, all of us are driven by temptation and desire. I hope I’ll love myself to the extent that I don’t risk it for the so-called dares that chance might pose. We have all been amazing creatures so far. That many lives become miserable in our absence stands testimony to the statement. Let’s not be selfish.

‘When I was 20, I thought my mother knew nothing, when I turned 26 I was stunned to see the amount she had learnt in the last few years”