Big Jan and the TdF

Something I stumbled across -

Associated Press
July 11, 2007

Jan Ullrich criticized former teammates Rolf Aldag and Erik Zabel for "acting like saints" once they had admitting their doping past.

Ullrich, who won the Tour de France in 1997, was one of several riders kicked out on the eve of last year's race after being implicated in a Spanish doping investigation. A sample of Ullrich's DNA was later matched to one of the blood bags in the doping affair. Several former riders of Team Telekom, including Zabel and Aldag, recently admitted they used erythropoietin in the 1990s while riding with Ullrich, who has retired and denies any wrongdoing.

"To carry on working, they need to confess their error," Ullrich said in an interview with L'Équipe, the French daily. "It makes me laugh, because I know they spoke about my case while acting like saints."

Ullrich was particularly angry over Aldag.

"When I heard Aldag talking non-stop about me on radio or on television, I was really outraged by his attitude," Ullrich said. "He made a lot of money because of me. If he found it so dirty, why did he never give it back?"

The former Olympic champion says he just wants to be left alone. "I've nothing to say, my career is over." he said.

Ouch.

The emphasis is mine. Its an unfair unfair world.

Vino is riding with 60 stitches in his knees and elbow, and most people have written him off. Kloden ought to replace him as the team leader for Astana (if logic prevails), but then I dont think he will. When Vino rode with the T-Mobile team for Ullrich with Kloden, he was always a bit of a loose gun, especially in 2005. When there was bitterness in the German team, Vino was alone and understandably, Kloden was with Ullrich. Its a Kazakh team now (along with a Russian or two), people Vino rode with in his youth - for Kazakhistan and the USSR - and Kloden is the outsider. He is way ahead of Vino in the general classification, and surely surely with 60 stitches Vino cant now claw back eight and a half minutes over the yellow jersey in the Pyranese and the two big individual time trials ! and yet all his teammates are faithfully clustered around him while Kloden rides a lonely race. Kloden fractured his tail bone too on a crash on the same day mind you, but he seems to be in good form all the same, seems quite comfortable on his bike. Vino was with the race doctor during the flat 10th stage to Marseilles today, getting the dressing on his wounds changed while still on the bike, hanging precariously on to the doctors car, his leg off the pedal, in tremendous pain. He ended yesterdays big Alpine stage in tears of exhaustion and disappointment.

"I couldn't even feel my muscles," he said. "But the worst thing was to be left behind while there were still 60 guys in front of me... It was a humiliation. I have never liked showing that I was suffering, but there I just couldn't do anything else."

Tough guy. Proud man. 60 stitches.

Logic and Limits go flying out the window.

Raireshwar, Kenjalgad and a jolly good weekend !

I reached S's mama's house in Poona late on friday night (after hitching a ride with a man who turned out to be a newspaper editor fighting for superstition !) only to find that M and N had not reached yet and that nothing had been decided for the weekend ! After assorted arrivals (everyone seemed to be surprised that nothing had been decided) a plan for the next two days was sketched out (hatched ?) with the help of an excellent book called "The Sayhadri Companion". We (four of us) slept at 1.30 and woke up at 5.30 saturday morning and left immediately for a village called Korle in Poona district in the Bhor region. The plan for the day was this - we climb up from Korle to a place called Raireshwar, traverse the ridge to Kenjalgad, climb to the top of that, climb down to Korle from there via a different route and then drive to Mahabaleshwar for the night.

We parked the car in Korle and after a bit of haggling with a local who was to show us the way, we sent him off and were on our way up at 9.15. The weather was cloudy and pleasant at this time and the path was more of a jeep track, so we were all a bit disappointed, having hoped for something rather more adventurous. We reached the top of the ridge at about 10.30. At this point the path went to the left towards Kenjalgad and one to the right to Raireshwar. By now the wind was quite strong and clouds were billowing all around. We walked along the top of the ridge for some time (and took a few photographs and videos - my last for a long time on this trek) and reached a sudden steep ascent upon which cement stairs had been built. Along the razors edge of the mountain, the wind was quite scary and the steps were a comfort. Soon, the steps gave way to 2 flights of rickety steel steps/ladders in a very steep and exposed rock outcropping. The mist around us was very dense now and we could not see much at all. The last part of the ascent was a steep but well marked rock patch with a thick rope fixed to the side. Once on top, we walked along a misty, windy and rainy plateau ( picture below) for quite some time beside lakes, through paddy fields (rice seems to be the main crop of the entire region) before stumbling upon the village temple of Rireshwar. It was a temple and location with a very unique atmosphere which I would dearly have liked to have captured on film, but the weather was foul and it was all we could do to find some shelter and have something to eat. In fact, there are no pictures in Raireshwar and no pictures till we were almost down from Kenjalgad. The most exciting parts of the trek I was unable to photograph because of the rain, I did not want to risk my camera. The temple, (which was a bit like the temples one sees in the villages of Konkan but made of black stone and looked more rugged and weather beaten and less refined - a frontier temple perhaps) as well as all the buildings around it were open and empty. Rows of houses, another temple of similar size, all seemed abandoned. We shared the shelter of one of these with a few dogs (who N felt very sorry for and she wanted to shower them with food but was prevented from doing so by vehement protests from S and me) and had a bit to eat.

The boards written in marathi in the area near the temple (which was dotted with remains of old buildings here and there) informed us that it was at this unlikely but beautiful place in this strange old temple that Shivaji with a few of his companions first declared on 22nd October (I think) 1645 that he would fight for Swaraj. I wondered what the people felt then, what did swaraj mean to them ? Did Shivaji ever return to tell the simple village folk of the swaraj he had fought and earned ? Did he really give more freedom to the common people of the Deccan ? The Cambridge University history of the Marathas rejects the notion of Shivaji as a 'Hindu King' saying that he was a maratha nobleman who did what he had to do to come to power and whose armies were a mixture of religions, locals and pathans and villagers from all over which was common to all powers on the Deccan at the time. The author says that all references to him being a 'hindu king' are later additions by hindu revivalist historians and stories of him being influnced by Ramdas Swami and Dadoji Kondev (who were both brahmins) are later brahminical additions made in order to capitalize on the popularity of Shivaji. Possible and fair enough. But then one begins to wonder if Swaraj could have actually meant anything to the village folk of the Deccan. Shivaji was a fort based king, his armies harried his enemies from high inaccessible forts and he did not have a large standing army which could protect the territorial integrity of his dominions. Invaders would regularly sweep through his lands without being able to take all his forts, and be beaten back after periods of harassment by small skilled troops riding down from his mountain strongholds. So he never really provided the majority of villages on the Deccan - the ones which did not lie in the immediate vicinity of one of his more powerful forts, any degree of security but did levy heavy taxes. So what Swaraj did he provide if not a vague religious one ? The notion that one is oppressed by someone of ones own religion and not another although it made little or no difference on the ground. It is a question that the author of the Cambridge University Press History of the Marathas needs to answer.

There were a couple of other boards, one of which told us that in 1642 a poojari named Shiva Jangam was brought to the village to perform ceremonies at the temple and was present when Shivaji made his declaration and that the family still performs the poojas at the temple, while the other board was a reproduction of an edict by Shivaji for the villagers telling them to use the resources of the forest carefully and never to rape it (literal translation). It was still raining heavily and the fog was thick when we started on our way back. We roamed the plateau of Raireshwar for 40 minutes, dashing hither and thither looking for the path by which we had come, wet, muddy and in good spirits. The photo below is a burnt hut (with the bed and everything still in place) we saw while wandering around on the plateau. After we had finally located the right path we ran into a man tending his buffaloes (with the typical protection of a sack/plactic looking like a pointy hood thrown over his head and back) who asked us if we had had food and if we wanted to stay. He had a large house near the temple apparently (which we did not see) and could accommodate 15-20 people. His name was Shankar Jangam from the family of the temple priests. I began to wonder if - in the three fifty years since Shiva Jangam - the family had only progressed as far as Shankar. Shiv, Shankar, Shivshankar etc etc.

We got down from Raireshwar fairly rapidly to the spot where the road led towards Kanjalgad. For sometime the road let through dense insect infested jungle but we reached the village through which the path leads up towards the top of the gad. It was immediately obvious that this was going to be a stiff climb. A lady in the village told us that it was a clearly marked path and that we must not leave it and go into the jungle. "Payakhalchi vaat sodu naka" she said. Bur the path bifurcated into equal halves every 10 steps and we were quickly on a very steep, muddy, slippery patch struggling to pull ourselves up, and it was very obvious that we were lost. After some exploring and scrambling around we spotted the right path which led us fairly smoothly to the top of the shoulder of the mountain from where we could see both sides of the 500 foot cliffs that protected the top of the gad. This is a formation very common in this part of the range, a forested hill with a sheer vertical outcropping of rock protecting a large plateau above. There are generally only one or two possible routes to the top and so these are ideal locations for forts. I wonder if these are entirely natural (they seem quite unlikely) but then, for someone to have hewn them out at that hight seems incredible. We went along the path towards the cliffs facing the side we had climbed from and after a small rocky patch the stunning sight of rock steps hewn into the cliffs, 2-3 m broad, and very slippery. All this while the weather had been merciless and we were all tired and hungry. We reached the top along those steps and found some shelter in a old structure whose roof had partially caved in and had the excellent excellent theplas M (who is Gujju/Kutcchi) had so thoughtfully brought. After a moment of panic in the dense impeneterable fog, we found the steps leading down again and were quickly to the village. The path leading back down into the valley was found after much exasperated shouting from a large troupe of ladies and girls who had gathered to watch us leave (I guess we were quite a sight, muddy and shabby with M and N being highly incongruous in the surroundings) and among them was the lady who had told us the path when we set off to the top. "Ranat gele na tumhi. Sangiltla hota na, ti vaat hitun an hitun ashi ashi jaate te !" We said yes, we had made a mistake and thanked her. The photo above is of Kenjalgad taken on the descent, it looked quite imposing. We climbed down to a village called Yeli and then walked across the pretty pretty valley to Korle. S carried N on his back for some time much to M's (and my) surprise. We reached the car and borrowed a news paper to spread on the seats to protect them against us.

A scenic drive to Wai (which has some old and pretty riverside temples) and then to Mahabaleshwar (we gave a couple of garrulous villagers a ride to Bhor too). Some excellent sandwiches and pizza at Mapro and some very average rooms in the MTDC resort. The next day started comparitively late with a brilliant breakfast of Makai patties and frankies at Hirkani dhaba and then a walk to Arthur seat (3 hrs, and for much of the time we were convinced we were lost). It was raining heavily throughout and we waded through calf/ankle deep water at regular intervals. The jungle was dense on all sides and the mist added a lot to the atmosphere. (In the photos where its misty, nothing at all can be seen ! so none of those are put up here) Mahabaleshwar was very misty overall, making driving tricky. After much walking we reached the parking lot for Arthur seat, and found that we had been walking along "The Lady Willingdon Gallop". We started walking down the main road back to where we had parked car and were given a lift by a chap playing Himmesh songs very loud. We reached the car and started back, and had excellent Pithla Bhakri at a place near Poona. Then we dropped the girls to their transport back to Mumbai, while I went to S's mama's house, freshened up and then S and me went out for dinner like old times after which I took the 11.00 Asiad back to Aurangabad and was home at 4.30 today morning.

Ideal weekend.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Moshin Hamid

I finished the book in one sitting. The narrative is fast and often subtle, but overall, the book is slightly disappointing. The characters are not as consistent and well fleshed out as they could have been and the author does not tell us anything new about ourselves. The plot and the setting too are fairly ordinary, and only interesting because of the prevailing political and cultural climate in the world. The book is raised above the common by its form (which is flicked directly from Albert Camus' brilliant and disturbing novel The Fall) and the portrayal of how Pakistanis view themselves. The viewpoint is quite unabashedly Pakistani (which is one of its assets) and the author's longing for his homeland can be clearly discerned in the various slightly boastful references and idealizations that are bound to creep into the writing of a proud man living in a society that does not give his roots their due.

The entire book is a monologue, one side of a conversation between an American and a Pakistani at a roadside restaurant in old Lahore. The Pakistani man is telling the American his story and most of the novel is a flashback, with occasional charming descriptions of the market around and the passage of time and one particularly gruesome description of the food that they order. The American's responses are to be inferred from what the Pakistani man is saying - exactly the form Camus used in The Fall.

The story too borrows form The Fall insofar as it describes how an outwardly successful and happy man is drawn by his mental daemons to give up the life he has built and choose a completely different existence. The main character, Changez, is a young, Princeton educated star employee of a elite valuation firm and the novel is the story of how, post 9/11 and all that quickly followed it, it became impossible to separate the personal from the political and public. Hamid's protagonist and his reasons are nowhere as subtle as Camus', and thus are easier to appreciate. The author strikes a chord when he describes family life in Lahore, and Indians will easily understand how the protagonist feels when his country is slighted by a successful New Yorker. In his concern for his people when war with India looms after the attack on the Indian parliament, for the first time, I saw how 'they' see us - bigger and always threatening to swamp them and their identity. The response - a mixture of bravado and anxiousness - rang true. The picture the author builds through small descriptions tinged with regret of his once wealthy family slipping slowly but surely into relative poverty in the new economy will resonate, and somehow reminded me of Agatha Christie's post war novels with their descriptions of old families in rambling houses which have seen happier days and are now difficult to keep up.

However, the author never really displays the depth that would have given the reader an insight into the events shaping his country and the mind of his protagonist. He does not build a compelling enough case at the intellectual level though perhaps at a purely emotional level one can understand why his protagonist does what he does. The book is a tightly constructed saga of the symptoms of a complicated global malaise and their effect on one man's life. It owes a lot to the suspense the author builds surrounding the two men in the restaurant and how the tension in the atmosphere increases as the story nears its conclusion, night falls, the market empties and the the two are quite alone - almost.

I think the author wanted the two threads - the one in the present in lahore - and the one in the past to meet at a point with interesting results. Both narratives are quite interesting in themselves, but they dont come together compellingly enough. All in all, the book promises a lot but does not quite reach the heights it could have, it does not cut deep enough.

Certainly worth a read.

Contrasts

I could not sleep that night. In that remote, impossibly beautiful place, with my head throbbing painfully every time I moved, cold, uncomfortable and overawed by the sheer scale of everything around me - the mountains, the sky, the silence - I walked slowly around camp, alone, (which is when I took the photo that accompanies this post, the only star in the sky) with my puny headlamp, thinking about a city I have never lived in.

I grew up in a medium sized industrial town in the underdeveloped interiors of the Deccan plateau where the roads are broad, the houses large, things are well spaced out and the people gentle - the very definition of respectable middle class suburbia. But the city I missed that day was not the city I knew so well and liked so much, it was a city I actively detested and avoided, like all those around me. The old town, with its tiny gullies and overcrowded, overflowing garish shops, the open drains, the thick smell of chaat, gutter, cowdung and sweat gathered over years and years, the food, the temples, the burquas and the chatter ! The vibrant, colourful, bustling city full of verve and dash and spirit and devoid of the antiseptic snobbery I have always practiced.

In that moment of cold loneliness I longed for the proximity to other human beings that the old town enforced, the impossibility of ignoring the outside world, it bombards every faculty one has with insults, invitations and paradoxes. From beautiful handiwork to the cheapest chinese goods, from the ultra conservative to the inextricably mixed up, it has everything. Cows and horses in houses smaller than my room off a street narrower than my bed, a colony of temple brahmins under the wall of a white mosque, a girl looking wistfully far away into the distance from a window overlooking 10 feet of road and a thousand people.

Uniformity is the curse of the modern world, the sheer life that one can feel coursing through the tiny unkempt streets of the old quarters of even the smallest towns cannot be matched by the myriads of sleek cars that whizz - in all their air conditioned arrogance - along the eight lane highways we are taught to be proud of.

I'll take some photos and see if I can convey what I mean, if I can capture some of the atmosphere on film. I'll try.

Lies

A word which describes everything. What we accept as the truth is only what we want to believe and what follows (through meaningless sophistry also of our choice) from what we believe. The basis as well as the structure of all arguments and discussions about people, ideas and the 'real' world are fairy tales which we seem unable to escape. Even the most trivial, unnecessary statements are falsifications, very often deliberate. Every thought we think about anything external to our minds is a gross simplification which has no connection to anything that 'actually is' and is designed to fit in with all the other mental illusions and constructions we have already manufactured in the past. And so we painstakingly build our castles of delusion, walls and rooms and halls and corridors infused with joy and loss and pride and tears and jealousy and faith and laughter and everything we ever felt, with the power of our agile minds we place stone upon carefully fashioned (unreal and arbitrary) stone, join and reinforce them with the mortar of our (imagined) relationships and satisfy ourselves that we have lived.

Write again

I wrote something on another blog not so recently, and this is the link.....

http://hivaatdoorjaate.vox.com/

I'll dump "lit" stuff here, and write more of a personal diary sort of thing there. Lets see, I have not written in such a long time, I no longer know if I can. I find it impossible to write without some target audience in mind, and the person who was always the audience in my head, who always (inside my head) judged my writing, a person with impeccable taste who possessed the beautiful economy and elegance of expression I yearned for, that person has overgrown blogs and writing of this sort. I dont think anything I write, however good, will make any impact on the lady (for I must confess that the person is a Lady) in question. Writing well is just not an accomplishment that has any value in the world we inhabit now. In college, second year, it seemed terribly important to be articulate and be noticed for it, now its just irrelevant. Achievements are larger now, and are metered in Rupees (and present value of future cashflow is taken into account too). No longer is a tightly constructed, evocative description enough to impress anyone. Nothing short of a successful published book will draw any but the mildest response. And anyone who reads the painfully garbled, neverending and boring sentences of some of the posts preceding this will know that I will never (without strenuous practice and study) attain the grace and lucidity that a good author must possess.

The early posts on this blog, the first 7-8, showed some promise, I still think one or two of them to be good and enjoy reading them again. After that the writing became labored and contrived. It lacked flow and direction and cohesion. It lacked purpose. I only write well when I write for her, and not always then, but I'll try and write anyway because it is something I enjoy doing, and who knows, perhaps - after many days and hours of editing and rewriting - I might be able to produce something that would once again entertain her, give her something to smile about, perhaps a nice way to pass the time or take a break. Maybe I'll grow to write well enough to write to her again someday, and in that hope, I'll write again.

I'm finally home and as a consequence am feeling more peaceful and comfortable than I have in a long, long time. With peace and comfort comes a strangely easy and wonderfully pleasant lucidity. Take away physical discomfort and let a chap feel removed from the turbulence, the trauma and the wild moods and extreme views brought on by the skewed perceptions, lonely unfamiliarity, unnecessary discomfort and exaggerated pressures that seem to go with hostel life and what you are left with is the only healthy kind of philosopher - the kind who finds philosophy stuffy and redundant. Take away the emotional biases and duress - mental as well as physical - that cause opinions to crystallize into sharp weapons causing injury to oneself as well as others, and it becomes remarkably difficult to decide one way or the other about most issues of note. The clarity bestowed by peace makes it possible to perceive just how astoundingly complex and subtle the world is. People turn out to be multi layered and faceted, geographies more intricate and histories more interesting, the past difficult to judge and the future a lot more varied and promising.

Thus, everything having become an object of infinite wonder, it becomes next to impossible to write about anything.

I'm still around - struggling, thinking, searching, happy, miserable, ill, worried, looking for peace, for reassurance form a world that's built to disappoint, getting things done, keeping it afloat, excited sometimes, bored mostly, appalled that the universe is unkind enough to exploit every weakness, every anomaly, every mistake one ever made and extract the market price. That is the only universal law I've experienced. No one gets away with anything. You been a bad boy ? Whether you knew it or not, whether you accept it or not, you will suffer. So will I.

We pay for the things we defile and degrade - including ourselves - and we pay for believing too much and we pay for believing too little. A price is extracted for every happy moment experienced, every good day, every piece of fortune, every favour taken, every minute spent wallowing in self pity, every dark thought, every task postponed and every promise broken.

To appreciate beauty in peace and languor without losing vigour and valour, to feel free without having to rebel, to be happy without self deceit, to face a just universe and see oneself reflected in it with a steady, unflinching, critical and honest gaze . . . . . . . .

And therein lies a tale.

To be blank inside
With the remnants of promises made
Dreams woven
Lingering uncomfortable shadows
Tugging persistently
Like ghosts that wont let go
Reminding, painfully painfully
Of a world that had meaning
A life that had faith
Smothered by thought
Textures so subtle and fascinating
Flattened by knowledge
The magnificence of the universe
The insignificance of man
The arbitrary nature of decisions
The vagaries of fate
Textures erased by the flamboyance of creation.
Leaving serene emptiness
A long life to be led
Sleepwalker in a marathon
Saddled with baggage
Cheered by friends
Called ever forward by spirits
One more step one more step
One more step
And therein lies a tale.

The beach.

Its a lovely 'ol place is our campus beach, about two kilometers of white sand, fringed with a large variety of palms and other trees, with some very charming approach roads and our very own lighthouse on a hillock with a temple.

The vast sea with its slow but intense moods, its constant overbearing rhythm, the sky sometimes tinged with the most delicate, tender and wispy pink and othertimes heavy and angry with dark clouds of a vulgar and overly demonstrative purple, the superb contrast between the two temperaments, one inertial, more circumspect and deliberate, mostly harmless but with the potential of immense destruction, always giving generously and sometimes taking with limitless fury but ever respected and even loved, While the other more fickle, breathtakingly beautiful on occasion and impossibly fragile, and then suddenly and apparently without reason, ominous and menacing, cajoling her more phlegmatic but more effective mate to do her bidding, for her airs are impotent without him. Like a base beauty manipulating a just and powerful prince to her own petty ends. The winds blow madly and scream their mindless hate in our ears, but the waves rise with a slow roar and the firm and heavy restraint of the vast wise ocean behind them and almost always, stay their hand. That is the way of the strong.

I have always wondered why this splendid drama played out constantly before me did not free my mind and raise my spirit beyond the twilit shadows that plague it. I always thought, after watching many a magnificent sunset, "I must come here in the morning". I've done that now, and its very depressing. The sea is calm. Not a breath of air. A strange dead light illuminates the world. There is none of the freshness and hope that one associates with mornings. This vast body of water does not have it in itself to illuminate, raise or edify. It cannot inspire bold strokes or infuse strength. It cannot awaken a man to freedom or peace. It has about it an aura of decadence, temptation and painful beauty. Its domain is the charm, allure and turbulence of starry skies and stolen kisses, of desperate thoughts and lonely walks, of clenched fists and limp heads, of crumbling lives and trembling lips, of last stands and bloody massacres, of glory tainted with darkness, of joy twisted by pain, of lonelyness trying to escape itself, of books snapping shut, friends leaving and curtains falling to the absolute silence of an empty house.

Then, yesterday while reading Kiran Nagarkar's "Seven 6s are 43", I stumbled upon the answer.

"The sun does not rise in this sea you know, it only sets here."

I wait

for Silence and Solitude to fill the emptiness that curled up and settled inside me so long ago



the emptiness that has no business being here

the emptiness that causes reasons and feelings to implode and explode alternately


the emptiness that makes words lose meaning and conversations hollow


the emptiness that leads to doubt fear and defeat




She speaks in a soft cajoling sympathetic voice

She spouts the velvety philosophy of decay in lilting perfumed double edged words


She carefully nurtures all that is vile and base within us




She's the devil's favourite whore my friends, and far more dangerous !
Crush her !



crush her i say



Emptiness and the devil





I'll tear her out if I've to cut myself open to do it

they shall not prevail that venomous pair emptiness and the devil



they shall not prevail



It has been a losing battle most of the way comrades and now I rest awhile


And while I rest, I wait for Silence and Solitude

Sachin's 35th.

I walked into the TV room of a nearly deserted hostel when he was on 77 and settled down on the floor there in the hope of watching him create history, regain his lost form and most important of all, become once again a beacon of hope to millions, a source of pride and a good enough reason to be a complete, absolute and unhesitating fan.

His appeal lies in the fact that he has become what he has, not due to any special circumstances or because he has been arbitrarily gifted by god with inhuman talent, though of course he is extremely talented, his success and his wizardy and his persona on and off the field - one gets the feeling - owes more to his doing the simple things right, listening to his parents and practicing everyday than to reasons exotic and mysterious. There is that about him which reminds us of the uncomplicated good things that we were told about as children and which we all too often forget or ignore as adults, especially young adults. He always chases the ball to the boundary, never contests the umpire's decision, never says anything untoward, never throws tantrums, always gives it everything and does not crib and make excuses about failure.

He is that incredibly rare thing - a man whose greatness owes itself to values and ideals purely middle class. The Great Indian Middle Class. The back bone of the nation, its work horse. Everyone who becomes successful and famous seems to have to change his/her way of life, and 'break the shackles' of the 'common man's' way of thinking. People talk so often about 'thinking outside the box' and what not. Here is a man who did not see the basic values of truth, hardwork and simplicity as 'limitations', who did not see the need to change anything about the 'naive' ideals and aspirations of the educated common man. A man who is the very embodiment of all that is straightforward, decent and solid and that is so often mocked at by others who have supposedly 'made it'.

Thats why I am a fan of his. He is proof that all I have been brought up to believe actually works. One does not have to modify, stoop, distort and defile to succeed, even in this world.

What a man !

Take yourself away

Disappear, fight, conquer, observe, smile, live and don't give a damn.

On Culture and Liberalism. Part 1

This is a world in which geographical distances are fast being reduced and a world which is becoming 'smaller' in a very real way. It is remarkable that this process has not - in general - made different cultures and races more acceptable to more people. On the contrary, it has resulted in more people being insecure about their own identities because of the unexpected proximity to a large number of others. Exposure has resulted in increased paranoia rather than increased open mindedness and acceptance. This is a strange, unfortunate and unexpected phenomenon the causes of which I will try to explore in this article.

The crux of the matter lies in the subtle but powerful distortion that has crept into the modern left liberal definition of the term 'open minded' . It has come to mean not just that one accepts and appreciates other cultures and civilizations but also that one must suppress one's own culture and civilization in order that one might not inadvertently 'offend' others or make them uncomfortable. Once one has accepted this, it is not a very long distance to "since its difficult for everyone to be comfortable with everyone else's cultural identities, everyone must suppress their own identities so that everyone is comfortable."

It sounds perfectly preposterous when stated that way, but it is what the current definitions of 'equality under law', 'open ness' and terms like 'the global village' etc imply . It is only to be expected, under such circumstances that there will be an opposite reaction from conservative religion with sees in these ideas a possible erosion of its power and field of influence. The insecurity naturally felt by human beings towards anything new is definitely heightened and accentuated by this quite senseless idea that being open minded implies being able and willing to hide one's identity. The idea, as one can immediately perceive, is quite absurd. If one enforces - through deciding what is 'politically correct' and what is not - a degree of uniformity among the public, that does not make them more open minded, it merely removes the need to be open minded.

These ideas have been taken to an extreme by the communist philosophy which denies and seeks to suppress (note the inherent paradox there, Communism is littered with them) any and every expression of individuality. Much of liberal philosophy has is roots in or has developed parallel to and has had close links with communist and socialist thought. A lot of the most disgusting tenets of communism are extreme extensions of ideas that are commonly considered 'progressive' and liberal.

A reasonable and possibly more acceptable definition of a healthy liberal or open minded society would be "A society whose members can accept and appreciate without prejudice people who are different culturally and racially from themselves, and do not feel the need to modify their own behaviour in order to appease anyone else."
The last clause helps allay any fears that conservatives within the society might have about interaction with aliens, and thus in effect, furthers the cause of diversity and liberalism not by suppression but by consolidation and strengthening of indigenous culture. Also note that 'assimilate' does not imply (as it seems to do in modern terminology. A melting pot of cultures is where everyone loses their cultural identity !) that the newcomers mix and 'fit in' culturally with the existing populace, rather it implies that they are integrated into the socioeconomic as well as political fabric of society without having to modify their behavior significantly. This is possibly what the definition was, and doubtless formally still is to many people, but it has been modified in a very fundamental and powerful yet subtle and hence more dangerous way by distortions and mutations caused by extreme left philosophy and ideas.

I have in essence implied that liberal thought, through the corruption that it underwent and the disfigured form in which it exists today has contributed heavily to the rise of religious and cultural extremism all over the world. Whenever a way of life is threatened or is perceived to be threatened, the people who follow it will naturally stick to it more than ever, view outsiders with suspicion and any suggestion of change with hostility.

Not all of what is said above applies as it is to India. In India there are further complications and nuances involved in the evolution of 'secular' thought (its a word that has completely lost its original and intended(?) meaning in our country). I will deal with the Indian scene in the next post, and maybe further develop ideas expressed in a slightly unorganized manner in this post.

Happened to notice this....

"People's Democracy" - the weekly organ of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) on the subject of Savarkar.

"...For the major portion of his life after making peace with the British his politics was oppositional to the Congress and the Left led movements rather than the British. As leader of the Hindu Mahasabha, he made sure that movements like the Quit India movement of 1942 passed without any participation from members of the Hindu Mahasabha or the Sanghathanists. He categorically called on the Hindus to give no support to the movement' (see Amba Prasad, The Indian Revolt of 1942). ...."


Innocuous comment on Wikipedia.

"The Hindu Mahasabha, under Savarkar's presidency, did not support the Quit India movement launched by Mahatma Gandhi in August 1942. The Communist Party of India and Muslim League were other parties which did not support the Quit India movement."


I have a lot to say about Commies. At last, I have something to go after :)

Sunder Kavita.

How much should I give, and how much should I take
The Sky has come to an end
The moon comes into the cup of my hands
With softly shut eyes.



I'm trying to traslate this, but as you can see I'm terrible at it.

Please help !

Its a poem by Mangesh Padgaokar from his collection "Oonjhaleet Swar Tuzhech"

"Servant of God, Well done ........."

Yes, times are bad and I'm in a really really tight spot.

The huge inertia of a dismal position, the months of indolence, the opressive sinking feeling in my stomach and the crushing weight of seemingly inevitable disaster which I feel upon my heart is fast taking me inexorably towards the end I'm so desperate to avert. The tension which makes action impossible, the fear which precludes clear thought and a mind too nervous and twitchy to calm down and concenterate are the three insidous foes I have to overcome if I'm bite the bullet and face this like a man.

I do not aim to undo the damage already done, nor do I wish to perform any heroics. My ambition is remarkably modest for one in my condition. I just want to do the best possible thing in the time remaining. Thats all. There is not much of the game left, but whatever there is, I want to play well.

If I can say to myself, that from this point on, there was nothing more that anyone could have done, I will have put my ghosts to rest. The shadow of doubt that darkens my life will lift a little, and my friends and allies of old - impossible hope, ridiculous optimism and lofty dreams - which presently lie weakened, mute and scared in the deepest caverns of my mind, will once again emerge strong and smiling, once more will they lift my spirit and bring a twinkle to my eye, "Thank you friend" they will say "We are back."

"..........for thou hast fought the better fight."

Diwali.

I'm not even sure what I would like to write about.

I could write about how the festival has been celebrated in my little city, and how things have changed over the years, how the euphoric and blissful diwalis of childhood under the watchful eyes of grandma seamlessly gave way to the daring deeds of boyhood when parents and elders were viewed as needless nuisances to be kept away from the festivities as far as possible and the comfort of grandparents and legions of cousins was ignored and forgotten in the heady daredevilry and the innocent competition that accompanied it and how this strange but happy state of mind quite suddenly turned into the surly disinterestedness of the teenager when the whole thing seemed silly, the rituals a huge pain, the smoke a disgrace, all relatives were bores and everything was pointless and why, after all that, this young man now feels that the diyas were brighter and more colourful, the houses more brilliantly lit by hands more loving, the sounds of crackers exploding were more civilized, the smoke was less pungent, the faces were friendlier, the smiles were wider, eyes sparkled and twinkled like stars, the air was suffused with happiness, minds were more willing to care and the world was a better place . . . . . when he was a child.

But whats the point ?

What sort of a person am I ?

I genuinely do not know.

I have deliberately forgotten.

Because then I would not have anything to be melodramatic about.

Tear away the cobwebs !

The years of inaction and directionless meandering come back to me and attach their long sticky filaments to my person. The minutes, hours, days, weeks wasted in pointless dallying and sordid wallowing all shoot fine and persistent threads that effectively imprison my mind and consign it to an existence of shallowness and fear. They weave a stifling cocoon around my heart, deadening it, unable to feel, to be inspired, to fly. The cobwebs I've neglected too long, they hang in thick bundles and clinging curtains all around me, making movement impossible, turning every effort into further entanglement, completely shutting off the world, smothering me, burying me alive.