Book Reflections : The Shattering of the Soul

How long does a good person remain good ? The true test of the goodness of a person may lie in extreme conditions that test it. They say the strongest of tyres are tested on the toughest of roads. Is your neighbour good, will he remain good to you in times of trouble ? Wait a minute, ask muslim widows who are victims of the Bosnian war. We don't get a very enthusiastic answer that we normally face. Most of us live under "normal" conditions, so it helps to assume an average goodness in the people around us. It's necessary too. However, in times of war, or war-like riots, the same human, acts differently, as if possessed by a war ghost. 

 

The book, "The Shattering of the Soul", which I just completed, captures this aspect of human nature. It captures the stories of war misery of 10 Bosnian muslim women, in a first hand account of their experiences on how the ethnic cleansing by Bosnian Serbs during 1992-95 unfolded, and how their lives were changed overnight. All the accounts have plenty of the events in common, that makes it a little repetitive in detail. They would all say, roughly, “We had a house and a farm, and we grew our food. War broke out, we were invaded and looted. We fled. We want to go back to our roots, but what is left but ruins?”. 

 

But, if you read one story at a time, during train travels as I did, you see the common thread not just of the events, but of both evil and good in man. You see that all grief is similar to the onlooker, yet each grief is different for the victim. The feelings of the common people in a typical village are so different from the ones who might have initiated the wars, but the stories of war travel far and wide to create more wars and more misery. It is as if the ethnic war ghost is a virus that spreads like an epidemic. It spreads, not through touch or food, but through the shreaks in the voices and fiery red eyes of patients infected with hysteric rage. It causes a clouded vision of the world and makes you hate thy neighbour as your enemy. 

 

The Museum of Tolerance provides an online version of the book for free : http://motlc.wiesenthal.com/site/pp.asp?c=gvKVLcMVIuG&b=394691

 

The book speaks of how the Bosnian families were protected by the Serbian neighbours of the same village, although it was Serbians who looted them. The Serbian neighbour would stand up for them, they would stop their Serbian soldiers and say, “This one here is a decent family. They don't have weapons. Spare them.” . Yet another would say, “Take my life before you touch that child”. Some others may not stand as upright, but they would smuggle cheese and other food supplies for their Bosnian neighbours. Some would warn them in time so they could go into the woods and stay for days, till the invaders came and looted their houses and went back. After the houses were devastated, some would at least call them for a coffee in the afternoon to their house. How many of us can manifest goodness in the face of threat to our lives ?

 

They also speak of how, in some other cases, the very same Serbian neighbours who were close until the previous day, would participate in the loot of the Bosnian house. Some said they had to point guns at their Bosnian muslim neighbours, because otherwise, their own Serbian clan would kill them. They would make the youth from the Bosnian families work like a slave. The victims mention how they were clueless that the very faces whom they met across the street everyday would land at their door, demanding to chase them out and loot their houses. 

 

Until then, they were neighbours who helped each other build their houses. The houses were built by the neighbours lending a hand to each other, except for the roof, which would be given to the professional. The houses that were self-built and built as a shared labour between Bosnian and Serbian families would be destroyed, looted, the doors and windows or whatever was left just taken away by the invaders. Families with children had to move over to Slovenia, leaving all property back in their village, travelling long distances, even having to bribe for their paperwork to move out. Mosques on the way would arrange some food for the children of the migrating victims. The stories distinctly recall, how it was all fine till one day when the war started and the news of war arrived in the village and neighbours become archenemies. 

 

Which of these two is true human nature ? How does one know which part of Man will manifest when ? I can't help but think of similar stories from the Gujarat Riots of 2002 or the exodus of North-East people from Bangalore in 2012. 

 

As the compiler of the stories admits, the book captures only the view of select Bosnian Muslim victims, there are no stories about Serbian or Croatian victims, which must be equally mentioned. But as the epilogue argues, that is not much relevant. "Human suffering due to mutual hatred is universal, and by presenting the suffering of some we are presenting the suffering of all". 

 

Sri Ramakrishna tells an interesting story about two brothers fighting for land. They were on either side of the disputed border and were quarelling at the top of their voice, about the patchy border. “It's mine”, one said. “No, it's mine”, yelled the other. Voices grew into arms, arms grew into bruises, bruises grew into attacks and soon they both dropped dead at the border. God, who was watching the fight from above, felt funny. “Well, whose land is this now ?” He asked. There were no owners left to answer. 

 

After I read the book, I felt like listening to A R Rahman's song from 1947 Earth : "Ishwar Allah Tere Jahan Pe". It's a beautiful song that captures the questions that would have, surely arisen in the minds of those war victims rendered homeless, with their souls shattered and their hopes killed. From the ruins of their houses and ashes of their families, some seeds of hope must have flown across the Slovenian border. They wanted to come back and they wanted to live. But they had to choose between the two. The ghost of war abandoned their villages, and now went to possess some other race, tribe or religion, elsewhere on earth. But they had to struggle, rebuilding their lives and houses in another distant land. This time, without a neighbour, to lend a helping hand. 

 

Like that song asks: 

 

So many screams, who will hear the voice of love ? 

So many dreams shattered, who will gather the pieces ? 

 

The song is verily a Prayer for Peace. 

The link is here : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ha2zTxnROJg

 

#NoWar #MusOfTolerance A.R.Rahman

The Pursuit of Truth in Medicine

The medical pond is a complex ecosystem. It's too vast in surface area, too specialized in skill sets and too uncertain in ramifications. If you are the recipient, it's also too personal. There is increased talk about alternate medicinal streams and their effectiveness or otherwise. Many seem to be singling out Allopathy (and often,  in loose reference, modern medical science), as being a dominant predator causing imbalances in an otherwise peaceful pond. So, the question often asked (and I won't answer) is : "Are you, like, Allopathy believer or Alternative medicine believer ?" Only humans are capable of these extraordinary questions, you know. They convert science into a religion and religion into science, or say something like "both are one" and confuse people, LoL.

By alternative medicine streams, I mean the whole bunch, Ayurveda, Homeopathy, Naturopathy, Siddha, Yunani, Acupuncture and so on. So, here is some of my chillar thrown into the pond, on why allopathy is not the complete picture, what's ailing alternate medicine streams and why many would find them unconvincing. It's becoming clear that my blog is for the relaxed reader, because I can't write short posts. :-) But then, it's the blog's anniversary and I haven't written since Steve Jobs, so it's the suppressed gush of a few months. :-)

Roots : To start with a very simple thing, most alternate streams of medicine rely on allopathy, their devices or the concepts for the diagnostics, even from testing the blood or measuring the BP. Allopathy itself drew some of these from ancient forms of medicine, but the original ancient forms of diagnostics aren’t even practised in their pure or correct form, and if done, too few and far between to attract reasonable attention.  Let alone being proven in favour by science in the labs and peer-reviewed journals, except for anecdotal evidence.

Research : There is probably a lean research framework for some of those alternate streams, but none of them have the research rigour, repeatability of experiments, peer disagreeability and testing techniques, of the modern era.  I am not saying alternate streams should fall in line with the western science or their research framework.  It may be that, the truths of one science cannot be validated by the framework of another science, because their underlying concepts are different. But, it’s up to the alternate medicine streams to come up with their own research and publishing  framework, where, even within their own practitioner community a certain phenomenon can be accepted, rejected, endorsed or vindicated by members of their own ecosystem. Now,  it’s all like the Mummy-Daddy kirana shop, like “Aunty got cured, I got cured, Uncle improved vastly, Try it and you’ll know, You can see it for yourself in 21 days” and so on. The "personal story" thingy, is surely an emotional and often a genuinely felt expression of a truth that happened in someone's life, it's a good thing, it's a statement of real experience. It shouldn't be discarded as imagination. But, it's one thing to share the joy and suggest it to others with fervour, another thing to start doling out suggestions based on your home-grown "expertise" and non-formal studies, another thing to conduct melas to coach people, and a totally different thing to base a science on such data.

The alternate medicine streams doesn’t have to be studied and validated by allopathy doctors, labs and journals but, at the minimum, there needs to be collation and organizing of their own anecdotal evidence. Also, if they are using Allopathy methods and devices for certain part of their work and research, like diagnosis and review, there is a need for the alternate medicine stream to evolve its own methods and devices based on its own fundamental concepts. Why would you use, Science A based principles on X, Y and Z to diagnose and then use Science B, based on principles P, Q and R to treat, particularly if you believe their principles fundamentally contradict each other ? In what sense do you think they can co-exist, whether such a co-existence has been studied and in what proportions do they mix, match or meddle ? May be some such techniques for independent diagnosis by other streams are already present, then the issue is of state support, awareness creation, publicity and wider acceptance etc. India is slightly better off in that way, in the sense that there are state-supported professional courses that support the state of native forms of medicine as an organized subject and technically qualify in those streams.


Claims: Another issue is, the often “fantastic but untrue” claims of “I have cure for Cancer”, “I have cure for AIDS”. Quacks are present in every stream including allopathy, so it's not about them. But, even among the technically qualified professionals in the alternate streams, such claims are not uncommon. Okay, assume such claims are not "claims" but, valid instances, the genuineness of which the world is refusing to see. Even for the good and qualified practicioners, it is quite common for practitioners in alternate medicine, to “give up on their patients in the last minute and rush them to the hospital”, after the situation has worsened beyond remedy. Even an intelligent modern CEO like Steve Jobs had to fall a victim of this trap, when it came to choosing a medicinal stream for his pancreatic cancer. For terminal illnesses, or for illnesses that can get fatal in advanced stages and require surgical intervention,  the alternate medicinal streams get absolutely clueless on what is to be done. They can “manage the show” for sometime and “make you feel good” for a little more time, but they fizzle out once the symptoms become advanced. Then, allopathy finally takes over, intervenes. Say, for some reason, because of the complexity and uncertainty, they are unable to figure out what's happening. At the time too, the alternate theorists might sit by the sidelines and comment on what the surgeons are doing wrong and how they can do stuff in a jiffy, but thats pretty useless unless you have a more complete alternative to handle the situation. Unless we have a complete alternate system, (or atleast as complete as it gets, as much as allopathy), the comments don't take the form of organised study.

Tradition: For streams like Ayurveda and Siddha in India, there is the argument “These were all told by our ancestors which these other guys are all exploiting today or ignoring today.”  There is surely an element of truth to it, but part of this argument is emotional, “my country”, “my mummy” thingy. Like the Steve Jobs analogy I used above.  There are a few things mangled here, their validity in terms of effectiveness, an establishment of such validity, then awareness and communication, genuineness in practice,  and then, last,  “my country ka science tha”, that brimming pride in the gleaming eyes. It's true that some ancient texts like the Siddha medicinal texts in poetry form, are not discovered, not studied enough and not publicised, but that's an access and awareness issue. I would only say, it’s an open world,  to every citizen his own country is the darling, so in a global world, let the Medicine Stream A fight it out with Medicine Stream B. Whichever works , gets accepted. Which we’ll know in a few centuries after we have messed up the whole thing, LoL. We shouldn't mix up our passion for our country with the pursuit of Truth. Brilliant minds from every land have pursued the truths in every field and struck upon original insights that aid in that pursuit. After all, till Louis Pasteur discovered what fermented beet sugar, the world was just watching people die. May be we are the pooja room of the world, but  Saraswathi Kataksham is global, LoL.

Lifestyle : Most alternate medicinal streams tend to explain their unreliability, with “lifestyle” choices of the patient. “It doesn’t work because it’s all tied to your lifestyle”, they would say. This is true, and hugely significant, and such significance is often undermined by sheer ignorance, even among the otherwise literate crowds. Unfortunately, health awareness, is like personal finance literacy. How-many-ever times people tell you the right thing and educate you on risk and return, you foolishly believe what you want to believe and go put your money in a chit fund first thing in the morning, LoL. Like the potato chips pack I devoured just now.   But the "lifestyle kills it" argument, is not true only for alternate medicine, it’s true for allopathy too. It’s common nowadays, in the light of modern research trends, for allopathy doctors to suggest lifestyle changes before medical management, and also to suggest Meditation, natural foods, diet and exercise changes etc wherever found to be relevant and helpful, but only upto a stage where these things can manage the show. So it’s not like, allopathy ignores lifestyle management. To be fair, the alternate streams should be credited for creating greater awareness in allopathy research by pointing their significance and relevance. Again, while most doctors suggest meditation where relevant, Yoga is suggested only with caution. Because, as much as Yoga done in the right way can have its benefits, Yoga done the wrong way can land the patient into fresh issues, over which again the doctor has no control, like lifestyle.

Subjectivity : Because the major part of the problem is the lifestyle, or so they believe, the problem is also prone to a lot of "customised" explanations. This is fine. But this also becomes an escape hatch, for things that you are not able to explain. If a doctor looks at two patients with a similar symptom, he may decide that their causes are different. But if two doctors look at the same patient, they might still decide that, the cause, according to their views, is different. This gap in subjectivity is better closed, by a framework that allows a peer to challenge your study and to find patterns among all the subjectivity. Given a patient, and assuming the doctors are equally qualified in their streams, two doctors from Allopathy are likely to agree on the broad causes better, rather than two doctors from an alternate stream. Now, which one is the whole truth, which stream and which of the two doctors in that stream ? Is it subjective based on the patient's condition or subjective based on the doctor's study of it ?

Adoption: One question that still remains and pertinent is : "Have you tried ? Try and then speak." . While this is a valid question, it can also take wrong directions for the uninformed. Most people, would like to have an answer to another question that arises before this : "Is it worth a try? If yes, why ?". The answer for this is either not clear, or not clearly communicated, or unconvincing, or incomplete except for the passionate appeals. The appeals are like the shouts on the Marina : "He is the only REDEEMER", kind of thing, okay for suddenly waking up from slumber, but not convincing for long-term adoption. If we don't pause to ask the question "Is it worth a try" before trying, we might as well be trying anything that anyone says, the seller of panacea with a mike on the pavement who supplies mysterious potions in minisule portions. There is always the answer :"You'll try when you feel the pinch". This is true, but it doesn't answer the question still. May be we all will turn to alternate medicine after getting frustrated with allopathy and its side-effects, just like some who do the converse.Oh, by the time, we won't have any money left, and by then, alternate medicine also would have got commercialized, so we won't even be able to shift loyalties. :-) :-)

Whatever may be said about the research, the passion of some promoters of alternate medicine is amazing and is born of a genuine concern for wholesome health of their fellowmen. Their approach is different, but the fervour with which they learn and update their study of the subject is unquestionable. Some of it, arises out of what they see as the public being misguided by the marketing giants, who mask the truth of things or the basic causes of a disease lying untreated while the symptoms are dressed up and covered up with a pill mania. The "misguidance" theory works both ways. The alternate streams believe, pharma companies are misguiding, pause them for a moment and go to the other camp, you'll hear Allopathy saying that the alternate streams are misguiding. If you are too baffled, I think it's easier for you to become a doctor yourself and not go to one. But, Oh God, medical education is costly and you'll end up misguiding others, gathering a lot more sin, because of which you will be born as a patient once again in the next birth, and the cycle continues. LoL. Not without reason it is said, 'Iha samsaare bahu dustare'.


Commerce: Of course, Allopathy and western medical science today have got entangled into a lot of other issues and maladies. Legality, insurance, Big Pharma, side effects, over-cautious and aggressive medication, trial medication under uncertainty, suppression of facts, greed, blatant promotion and mindless marketing, camouflaging of bad practices as good ones and then deep and deliberate over-commercialization. Some back-end parts of the muck is not different from organized crime. It ain't Healing that is paramount any more. It's some money, and then some healing, if it happens that is.  As I wrote earlier, Pharmaceutical research has got mangled with money, law and governance, so much so that the "intention to cure" has become an also-ran motive, rather than the primary one. But I guess, these are present in  various other streams of human life, no point singling out Medicine. As a race, we are generally doomed in many ways, and specifically “extra doomed” in few ways, LoL. I also expect these negative phenomena to happen in alternate medicinal streams whenever they hit the threshold level of wider acceptance and practice. If you are Windows, you have viruses. It's like saying, adopt other streams because Allopathy has issues. As those alternate streams grow in size and acceptance, you'll have the same maladies because the malady is there in the mind of Man, not in the tools you choose.

Effectiveness: That said, we can't say alternate medicine streams are all ineffective. It's just that, their effectiveness is not part of meticulous, unambiguous documentation and framework, that can be independently studied by others  in comparable environments, under controlled conditions and across cultures and geographies. It’s more like the beneficial effects of home remedies, native wisdom, meditation, yoga etc, effective indeed in pockets based on context, particularly in prevention and consciously healthy lifestyles, some of them supported by occasional  research, but not all and not all the time.

Completeness : There is a view that while Allopathy has its merits and relevance on the surface (diagnosis, treatment), it is hugely incomplete in its study of the roots and causes, there are entire sets of insights that it is refusing to acknowledge. Many alternate streams, (some bordering on healing techniques and not exactly Science) insist on a strong mind-body connection, and then, a spirit-mind-body connection to disease. Allopathy might appreciate it "kinda broadly", but we should credit the alternate streams for highlighting the connection, that the root of disease lies in our thoughts, foods and lifestyles, in that order. Some border work between Allopathy and alternate streams have definitely resulted in new learning for Allopathy. A Mahesh Yogi volunteering to be medically studied under trance during Meditation or Carl Jung's focussed study on Man's Consciousness have, later found relevance and attention from mainstream research, even though viewed with suspicion in early stages. Good scientists are humble when they see technical merits even if they are outside their domain of study. This has led to "Holistic" medicine. But the problem with the term is, each stream claiming it is more holistic than the other. Holisticker than thou, LoL. But the complete truth is better pursued, by each stream, acknowledging the areas where a stream is clearing lacking and adopting insights from other streams, with a honesty in approach and healing as the objective.

It’s also possible, that we are all living in a Matrix-like illusory haze, all “falsely” believing in Allopathy, where, in fact, that’s the villain. Evolved believers of alternate medicine are mocking at our balloon, filled with the gas called research, waiting for it to be pricked. We’ll tumble in a free fall, and land in their hands, and they’ll then take care of all of us with affection and succour :-) .  Then, you should know, anything like this blog post, which “clearly” re-assured the balloon is safe,  is actually warning you, that it might not be. I mean, otherwise, why would someone go to great lengths to reassure you repeatedly :-) ? Like the analysts and officials who always said, “everything is fine”, till the bubble burst on the sub-prime housing crisis. The Truth will set you on fire, and then it will set you free.

Disclaimer: 
Three specific disclaimers, in addition to the general ones at the blog footer :
1.    I have no knowledge about any medicinal science. My knowledge of medicine is lesser than my knowledge of music, which is documented earlier here.  It's an unresearched post on the importance of research, LoL.  I am just an intellectual patient, with exactly 2 cents in my pen and pocket, LoL, with which I can’t substantiate any of these claims, including your medico-legal one.

2.    I am willing to be corrected. Expect an update five years from now, when I have transformed and converted to the alternate evangelists, err... I mean, of medicine. Some of my passionate friends have already "moderated" my views on this post, a few more strokes, and they may have their way, LoL. By now, it’s well-known that  I usually adopt late, particularly when it comes to the good things of life. The more virtuous it is, the more time I take to adopt. :-) :-) Not exactly the satsang you want to be in.

3.    And please, I haven’t seen Aamir Khan’s TV episode on medicine, LoL.

On Success, death and Steve Jobs

A friend's post on Facebook drew my attention to an article about the posthumous tribute-wave for Steve Jobs. For a quickie without following the conversation elsewhere, the article says 'Steve Jobs wasn't great, he wasn't even close' . Among other things, it draws a comparison in terms of greatness, to Jonas Salk, who invented the polio vaccine and gave it free, deciding not to patent it. In other words, who is greater and, mummy, why is Steve Jobs getting all the attention ? I wouldn't have noticed if Ramnath didn't mention it, but after he did, I noticed that it was a 'sad essay, with weak arguments and too many fallacies'.

Great is a generic adjective that spans many fields. For example, a great musician, a great emperor, a great surgeon and so on. You cannot exactly compare greatness in one field with another and often, greatness in certain times, with other times.

In the field of, say, technology business, and in his times he was greater than many of his contemporaries. He did things differently. Many clicked, some didn't, some clicked later. He was thrown out of his company and staged a comeback and then staged a turnaround and rebuilt the fascination full circle. He might have been heavy-headed, but lot of creative/successful people are that. In the field that he chose as his passion, he manifested that passion into results that satisfied him and those he sought to impact. Such success was also acknowledged by others. That, in itself, is what only a small percentage, get to do.

He chose expensive style for his products, and was convinced there was a market for it. In all possibility he could have flopped, thats what the gurus would have got to say. But he defied tradition, the current market gyaan, and clicked, not once, but time and again. To have an intrinsic sense for a niche market, spot it and pursue it, entails the risk of stepping out of your comfort zone and being ready to sink in the process. You need to be grounded in your security with your own self, to be able to confront and conquer the insecurity in the world. It's the stuff true entrepreneurs are made of, or seek to be. We can't think like them and they can't think like us. They better not.

The article questions people's assumptions, success = greatness. But the article also assumes, charity > commerce. Coming from the charity bastion, I should have jumped to agree with the latter, but, sadly, not yet. Even if it were true, I guess we are too far away from that . Those beautiful times are yet to come. It requires our entire civilization, or huge parts of it, to think differently, on complexly intertwined issues: regarding our motivation, our money, our work ethic and our duty as a human on earth. And it will take lots of births for all of us to get there. Call it the critical mass for compassion or the escape velocity for enlightenment. Like in climate change, we have a reputation for refusing to learn until we get whacked thoroughly by Mamma Earth. Inner climate change is not going to be any simpler and Pappa God is going to have a tough time handling us. Hearts, take a lot more time to melt than glaciers. Questions like these are important to contemplate, but the answers need to be well-written.

Finally, think of the praises that arrived as like people attending a e-funeral. A life gone unnoticed or less noticed (say, Salk) is not any different from a life gone well-noticed, after it has gone, that is. In the former case, lives were impacted, sure, but most people may not have related to the individual, so they didn't write. In Steve's case, he too impacted and, it so happens, many people seem to relate to the individual, because the device was such. Interestingly, I noticed a billboard at the Kundarapalli Gate signal in Bangalore, a huge billboard ad by a real estate developer, saying just 'RIP Steve'. It's still an ad, but it shows people who used the devices fell head over heels for the brand. To connect two obituaries and compare their impact, would be like comparing the tears of two funerals, one with 10 people and another with 1000 people. Sorrow is the same for everyone. Death is a great equalizer in that sense.

Of course, great is different from good. To evaluate goodness is a larger call, you need to be able to evaluate the interplay of motives, constraints, values etc and in the light of the operating environment. Goodness is all-inclusive, includes personal life, relationships and even preservation of monuments :) :) , which Steve Jobs wasn't particular about . Greatness, on the other hand, is more explicit, can be segmented into streams, and therefore gets evaluated quickly and easily. You can't evaluate your goodness, because that'll be biased. Others can't, because they have incomplete information. Only God can, but He doesn't publish the papers. What to do ? :) :)

Yes, there was a good Steve and the bad Steve in the same person. Even in judgement, it's sad that someone with such business acumen, had to fall for a fatal over-belief in alternative medicine. People who praise the good Steve may choose to ignore the bad Steve. But, isn't it true that all of us suffer from the good-bad dichotomy ?

That is why the scriptural prayers say : Lead us from darkness to light, falsehood to truth. Lead us from proprietary software to open source. Trap us not into Apple, but deliver us from Microsoft. Give us our daily bread and butter, Facebook and Twitter. But don't lead us to immortality, it gets boring. Life without an end, will be like watching a terrible movie in a dirty theatre, all the time you are wondering, when will the movie end and the mosquitoes stop, and the lead jodi is still dancing around the trees and rolling on the hills , on the screen. Death, disease and dumping are part of the grand game. Sing a kolaveri song to release your stress, and move on to make your life colorful, cheerful and creative. Like a Mac.

Oops, for fair disclosure, like the author, even I don't own an Apple device or share. :) . And probably, that's why I am like this !

A story from every home

HE touched each one of our lives in little little ways at different points in time. Each one of us has a story to tell, about His Love, about how our lives have mingled with His, about His impact on us, our minds.

Sometimes they are stories told never before. Some are stories that are cherished deeply in the heart and might never be told. Some are stories that we enjoy telling, because the Love that we received, we want to share with the entire world. Some may be just little quips, short incidents, quotable quotes that happened some sunny morning in the Mandir here, but have been etched in our memories and bubble up from time to time, during our moments of reflection.

Some may be just silent moments, when He passed by us, He had this customized twinkle in His eye, apparently no word was spoken, but we got the message nevertheless. Some may be moments whose importance we realized only later, for, at that time, we let our narrow mind interpret the million mysterious ways of God. Sometimes it might have been as small as a thought that occurred to us, which we knew came from Him.

It's not just the story of you and me, it's ghar ghar kee kahani, a story from each home. Some may be stories that for others may be trivial, but for us, so sweet and so important, because they happened in our lives, not theirs. Even a light chiding as 'Dunnapotha' or a pleasant reference as 'Good Boy'. We can deny, question or argue somone else's experience, but can we deny a feeling when it occurs within us ? After all, if we aren't true to our feelings, what else would life be worth living for ? Our feelings and our stories are always deep, important and very personal to us. That is why, even though He was a Universal Teacher, He was a 'Personal' God. A personal God individually to all those millions, who shed a tear or two today in fond gratitude from wherever they are. He was the Head of this House, a silent listener in every conversation, an unseen guest at every meal. Every home must be narrating these stories at their dinner table today to others in the family and friends, and they are all little, but deeply personal stories of how He came into "my life" and what we felt about Him.

Whether story or not, whether told or not, each one of us was here, flocking here from time to time, for every Christmas, every Shivarathri and every November, because it was so wonderful to be here. He had made it so wonderful for us to be here, it’s so cool to bask in the shadow of this large banyan tree of Love.

It's these little but sure acts of love, invisible but 'I-know-it-is-true' kind of feelings, that have built our picture of how we relate to him. That picture is not of the material kind. It's a picture of feelings, built slowly like an ant builds its granary. The wishes we asked Him, might have been of this world and gifts that we received may fade with time. But the feeling we cherished when we prayed to him, that Moment of capture in the camera of our heart, it is not of this world and is timeless. Like Krishna who made a copy of Himself to each of the thousand Gopikas, the Master has made a picture of Himself in each of our hearts, each picture unique in its streaks and differently beautiful.

Education, Healthcare and Drinking water SHOULD be given free, He believed. And He set out to show the world how to manifest your belief into an example and an inspiration for others. In an age, where people are particularly insistent about their rights and cleverly transfer the responsibility to others at the quickest possible opportunity, He showed how an individual can take a personal sense of responsbility for the problems of the community. He felt for their problems, as really and as strongly as if it was His own problem.

When He said, in 1980, that a University would be completely free, and would combine modern education with character-building and human values, they mocked at him. It just completed 30 years and a few thousand lives were touched. When He said, in 1990, that a world class hospital would do surgeries for free for the poor, they jeered at him. That one just completed 20 years. Even better, 10 years into the first, for a bonus, He added one more hospital of the same scale and a few more thousand lives were touched, literally. When He announced in 1995, to supply drinking water to an entire arid district drawing water from hundreds of kilometers away, and He had to borrow to finish it, He said, 'Do good work with a good intention. Help will come.' And then He went on to add 4 more districts to the list and few thousand hearts.

He may not have been a personal God to everyone, but for those few thousand stranger lives that He touched by His Service, He was no more a stranger. For an unknown patient coming from a distant land, He was a giver. For that average, middle class young lad in his teens looking for a degree and can't afford it, He was a giver. For a parched throat in a uphill tribal village, He was a giver. In all these, the ones who received, got their cure, education and water and are grateful. But He was a giver of Love, above all, that was what He always gave, the rest were just the specifics. And for volunteers and the followers who participated in these works, He raised the bar for them further, beyond the work they did. Work wasn't an end in itself, He said, it was Love and the Attitude that accompanied it. Know your own reality, and every work that you do will be good.

It is said that He came to make a Hindu a better Hindu, a Muslim into a better Muslim, a Christian into a better Christian. But, above all, He came to make every Man, a better Man. So that Man may believe in Love and its cascading power of transformation. That Man may believe in Selfless Service and the proactive responsibility to care and share with fellowmen, to pay it forward with goodness. That Man may, one day, by the power of Love and Service, inquire into His own true nature and find Divinity within. And then find it pervading all over the place, in everyone. Some day, in a journey across lives, we may discover that we weren't any less godly than our personal God. Which is what He always said in the first place. We just took our time to get the point.

We are not able to figure out our own body, our mind, our destiny, our Gamyam and our real nature. What would we know of Him, His body and His Mission ?

As some famous quote goes, we love him, perhaps not for what He is, for we know not His Glory in its entirety. We love him, for what we are, when we are in His presence. For what we reflect in the light of His altar. For what we find out about ourselves that we didn't find otherwise. If you've been there, you'll know it to be true.

Can our movies influence our morality ?

A blog piece on New York Times discusses Vengeance movies and faintly mentions their ability to raise the questions of morality and violence to the viewers. A blogger friend buzzed it in, which set me thinking on how much our movies can influence us. Who ever took movies seriously anyway ? Or should you ? Whatever, at least it made me come back to my (now) haunted blog on its third anniversary Vijayadasami and see if I can still ruffle some dry leaves that have fallen on the floor.

I wonder if the visual media have that strong an impact when it comes to making our daily decisions that we act upon. It might happen in the case of someone who watches them all day, repeatedly the same kind, confined in a closed room and then sets out to imagine the world as what he has seen in an image. In which case, he might need a different kind of help. But for most average viewers, it's just a use-and-throw batch of inputs. Even during the watching act, we might be involved in our chores, chatting with someone, doling out our gyan, knitting a sweater or doing one's job. Like my barber does, dangerously, :) . He keeps me in trepidation as to whether all the Rayalaseema violence that he is watching on the screen while I am on the operating table, will it translate into action on my neck ? :) .

We also meet a lot of good people in the day. We do a lot of good things and some trivial things. The set of inputs from a particular sensory stream has to fight its way with those streaks of goodness and love. What we say of good things : Capture, Contemplation and Conduct (Shravana, Manana and Nidhidhyasana) will also be true of the bad things, I mean, they would need as much effort to get there, no ? Or does Evil travel faster and impinge deeper ? (maybe).

When we speak of the good teachings, we all know how much we read, out of which how much we are convinced to be true, and how (little) we practise :). Ask the teen reader of Ayn Rand and the fortywala who read her in his teens. You will know the Top 10 reasons why we don't act all that we read. Welcome to the world of linear programming. Given a set of constraints, we find the optimal solution. That old creaky furniture, we don't move them around too much, we don't turn the problem on its head and re-examine its boundaries. That job is left to the creative few. I hope we bring the same proportion of inadequacy :) and lethargy when it comes to the bad things. :) :) . For all the build-up that RGV gives on his blog to his upcoming pic on factional violence, how many of us would sympathise with the protagonist any more than we do at the popcorn vendor's oily shirt ?

This is not to condone Evil or a gatepass to be lenient at the Mind's checkpost. You still need your sense control (Or sense of control, if you want to look at it that way). If you are a sadhaka, you are reading the wrong post on the right blog, you should switch to a slightly more complicated post like this . This is just to mock at Satan's inability :) to conquer Man and to glorify man's inherent ability to figure out things which he should act upon and those that which he can ignore. After all , are we, as a Society, Goodness personified, who occasionally stray away into the dark bushes or Darkness personified, randomly remembering a faint Divinity ? Reminds me of Ramnath's blog post, once upon a time, asking Is Man inherently evil ? , after he watched Schindler's List. (See, I remembered my blogmentor on the anniversary post).

I loved Rang De Basanti for its vivid screenplay, well-chiselled expressions and upbeat BGM. I had watched it many times over at that time. But I am not sure if it has influenced me enough to even endorse the climax, let alone taking it seriously. Whether it has influenced me or not, is something others have to comment on!

Will Humble Joe become a Violent Tom, if he watches all that is listed in NYT article ? ( Phew! I haven't watched even one of those.... ) I think it takes a lot more than that to rewire minds. And only if you skip your protective armour of midnight meditation :) . Or will it seep into your roots like slow poison and displace your moral tectonic plates in the long run ? Aren't we made of sterner stuff ? Can Vengeance movies, that portray it misleadingly as righteous anger, create a long-term persistent impact on the average adult viewer ? He paid a certain amount of money to be away from his humdrum world and he won't carry tough lessons back to that world of drudgery from which he wanted an escape to entertainment. The kids' minds and their vulnerability are another thing altogether, but I think adults can differentiate rama from drama and dharma from karma. Do we live in that bad a world ? What say ? And what would you say to your kid ?