MY DIGITALIZED NONSENSE

As I, the archetypal couch-potato that I am, continue to watch on TV and the internet, the recent massively spontaneous mass protests over ageless abuse of women, gender inequality and moral policing of unwanted social fringes over new age cultural pursuits by young artists, I wonder in awe about the Collective Strength of us, Common Men and Women. It is a calming reassurance for cynical minds : Yes, It Can Be Done. Circumstances can be overcome.

I'm sure that against the backdrop of the internet 'renaissance', the eager anthropologist and the social observer didn't miss to neglect this definitive pattern in human behaviour that had been theorized by scholars decades ago, but was not believed in entirety.
This is because an ever- accelerating process of technological evolution (and thus enabling technological advancement) in the late 20th century had ensured one definitive sociological phenomenon -- our society got segmented into smaller (in size, not necessarily so in relevance or importance) institutions -- small and essentially Isolated, that allowed the same basic diurnal activities of the human species to be carried out. We call them Families, which provide the stage for the same 'acts and activities' to be carried out, to this day, to this very moment. (Well, the 'modes and modalities' in which the activities are carried out are quite different, but that, being a subtle variation, is not relevant to the present issue at hand.)

This 'isolation', in the context of quality or quantity, subjectivity or objectivity, shall always continue to vary, sometimes drastically. Though neosociologists claim that these  trends seem to indicate that this concept of 'isolation' shall wipe itself out, I have a point here to argue about and disbelieve it for good reasons.

I feel that the 'neo--sociological isolation' shall perennially continue to exist over turning pages (or e-pages) of geography and across slides (or pps) on demography, well at least till geography and demography shall cease to exist themselves.

I do agree fully that technological evolution did lead to the present social structure where glaring differences within mass or collective actions of human behaviour are much less prominent or directly observable in any given situation because the homogeneity of mass perception prevails over the heterogeneity of individual behavioral patterns (which dominate to affect our senses on any single day, anytime and anywhere at family levels). Yet I find it a paradox that it is technological advancement that is throwing exploring lights on community behaviour at the moment. We just cannot ignore the role of the internet in all the recent changes the world has witnessed.

There seems to be a new air of hope all around. One barely expected to witness the way people changed systems in the Middle East, from Tunisia to Egypt, where freedom of expression had been usurped almost as a historical tradition. Man shall continue to dream and new ideas will always flow in, as they had done over the last 50 years. What clearly stands out is Absolute Intent and the way people used it, the practical execution to bring down everything that is stagnant and decadent.

One of the strongest factors behind this is the Internet -- the way people have used it for healthy communication, in e-forums and social networking sites as they fought to dream and thus to fight on. Awareness has spread all over the world rapidly in its most unadulterated form. I think India's fairytale is a very strong pointer about how we should proceed tomorrow, to qualify governance and administration at any level and in any office being amongst the foremost priorities of them all..

The Egyptian revolution and the 'mould' its socio-politics chose to be impressed by, are not Causes. They are the Results (which I choose to perceive as unavoidable) of the Collective Consciousness of a group of people present in every cross-section of society, driven to secure unison by a variety of factors that they felt to prioritize in the same bracket. We all heard the barely audible pitch of voices accelerating to a crescendo, causing audible cracks in the glass that shattered away noisily in the palaces of the feudal elite. It was this Collective Emotion that spread digitally and was shared all over the world at the speed of light that hastened and strengthened the movement.

The prominent context which I'm trying to point out is the 'form' in which informations were dispatched and received. Almost a century ago, a similar need to spread and share valuable information had become absolutely imperative in European battle-fields where the First World War was being fought. Spread they did, in a hitherto relatively unknown technology which constituted of a manual exercise that printed a meaningful sequence of 'dots' and 'dashes' on a piece of paper, in a remarkably simple way that allowed transfer of information in incredible speed, zipping to and fro across continents and oceans, from one station to another in forms of electromagnetic quanta.

While the SPEED of 'actual' transfer (the physicality of the process) has remained almost the same, the time taken for the information to reach the recipient's brain and get registered to be comprehended in its fullest form has come down drastically. More important is the FORMAT. Through the world-wide-web, ideas are shared in virtual audio-visual forms which incorporate the factor of 'EMOTION' (which I believe you are fitter than yours truly to attempt to conceptualize) to the data -- and that affects the result in an entirely different scale, the parameters of which are not digitally controlled in concrete digit units - a factor which man dreams to control with more authoritative volition some day,

And THAT is exactly why the process cannot be withdrawn by itself or be self-controlled. Dreams and passions are shared now in the most elemental forms, the question of when or where exists no longer a question, and the echoes continue to reverberate to be manifested later, someday and somewhere else. So we have to Got to Continue to speak, listen to, learn, share and adapt to one and all, NOT ONLY TO SURVIVE. BUT TO LIVE .

But again, That is what Life is all about, isn't it? I shall be keen to know what YOU say...

Note : **(the concepts of androids, humanoids, avatars are beyond the current issue. Though it would be interesting to observe when overzealous fertile brains shall tinker about anti-corruptoids, fanaticoids, or nihilistoids, agnosticoids, even jihaditoids, over super-conductor receptacles containing hybrid consummables of siliconised caffeinoids)!!!**

PYAASA - PATRIOTISM

Days back, during a casual online hit chat, I and my recently introduced lady friend came to the extremely relevant to our contemporary times, now oft-trodden pasture of Patriotism. I am an Indian and live in Mumbai,(my dear friend resides in a foreign land) and so it wasn't long before Bollywood movies were invited into the virtual dialogue.I'm still feeling bad because I guess I startled her big time by replying, "Pyaasa", when she asked what were my favourite movies on Patriotism.

During any interaction of mine about country, pride, patriotism, idealism. (etc..you know the drill) elements of loud (and empty) rhetoric and jingoism frequently rush in fast which soon make it center-stage, pushing the actual topic off it. I'm trying hard and am hopeful that soon I'll fully realize the futility, the futility of playing host to vices like these,) and grandstanding should follow Content, and not precede it.

I'm disappointed that I couldn't succeed at least this time as the nonsuspectingly poor lady showed strong expressions, of shock and disbelief. Since then I am trying hard and since morning I've been doing that only. It's a tedious job - making a refreshed list which should contain national flags, wars and sacrifices and soldiers and firepower and bazookas and car pert-bombings..
Certainly not "Pyaasa'.

Old habits die hard. I am a bit disconcerted, so here I am once again having a problem in problematic times, searching an answer. Pleading for Help as always. This problem compels me to go back in time so that I remember a few things.

I was 9 years old. Our recently purchased television was in a wooden cabinet, which had a wooden double-door entry. Movies shown on Door Darshan on Saturday afternoon, had a crowd of curious audience, overawed and revelling in the magic monochrome melody that came out pof it..

One Saturday afternoon, it was 'Pyaasa'. Ma was visibly excited and happy, ready to watch an old favourite, and songs that perhaps used to make her reminisce of her emotions during her teen years...(she was frank about that trait with me in privacy). I didn't feel very deep though. But yes, what classics used to be composed in Hindi movies! The gems were immortalized - as we see around us today. Sometime during the movie, I went out to answer nature's loud call. On my way back, nature silenced for now, I was still outside the room when I heard a song coming out of the TV.   
It was Mohammed Raft's voice, lipped by Guru Dutt, his soulful eyes and his thin yet prominent and deep furrows that looked over frowned brows, eyes that were fatigued and sad, trying to hide an intense fire that raged on till his death. still don't know. At that age I could understand Hindi to an extent that could cover day to day demands of survival. I hadn't  understood many sequences in the movie, particularly why sad expressions persisted even after the saddening causes were taken care of (I was completely ignorant about complexities of the human mind, of  things fine and nuanced, if unchecked would  result in complications.) 

" KAHA HAIN,
JISSE NAAZ HAIN HIND PAR,
WOH KAHA HAIN,
KAHA HAIN
KAHA HAIN.......?....."

I still have goosebumps. It was an overwhelming wave of previously unthinkable courage, of Hope  that told me that there are many things of interest outside the world of books, paint brushes, cricket and school. It told me that one day I have to think deeply which shall direct the script of every day of the life I'll live.

Patriotism is not meant to be instilled in times of war and bloodshed. It is already there during Creation, it is there when a child is born, so that it can identify it as an intended suggestion already put so that no war and bloodshed take place. 

VIVEKANANDA , THE FEARLESS INDIAN

The photograph of the letter posted as "BLESSINGS TO NIVEDITA" reads :

"The mother's heart, the hero's will,
The sweetness of the southern breeze,
The sacred charm and strength that dwell
On Aryan altars, flaming, free;
All these be yours, and many more
No ancient soul could dream before --
Be thou to India's future son
The mistress, servant, friend in one.

With the blessings of Vivekananda"

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WHAT DID VIVEKANANDA MEAN BY  "MISTRESS" HERE?

What I am going to write should sound sacrilegious  (But the nonconformist devil that I am, can't be defied, after I discovered long back that my alter-ego cannot be de-ified).

Narendranath was fearless, (the reason why Ramakrishna, who had always advised the common mortal to avoid Kamini & Kanchan as far as possible, felt The Spark in him, the one who could and eventually would carry forward His Message to the furthest confines of the universe ) - he doesn't care a hoot to write MiSTRESS here. I just think he didn't have an alternate word to put. 

In his times, the relationship of MISTRESS / Rakshita was well known in society (specially in houses bearing blue-blooded lineages of timeless financial abundance).

**I was born in a middle-class family, but coincidentally my great great paternal grandfather, ingloriously blue-blooded and may his soul rest in Silence, "maintained" one. I am congenitally red-blooded and stubbornly so. No shame here.** 

The relationship wouldn't be formalized by institutional auspice, and hushed voices whispered Adultery, and it was a vice - it meant a woman suffering at the expense of another if you get what I mean. It was a VICE, and  I'm sure Narendranath didn't mean Rakshita here (even when he describes relationships elsewhere as JOUBONER UPOBON & BANOPROSTHER BARANASI - ** please correct me here, I don't think I quote him correctly here) 

I don't believe in ways Good or Bad. It's been my personal choice to look at things and evaluate them in my own incomplete, unfit, ill-endowed capacity in relevance of Correctness. 

It's Right or Wrong for me - I don't have the audacity to even sermonize on the issue. I can only say - there seems to be a constant process of extrapolation of the two abstracts of Good and Bad with time, rather with "the times they are a'changing" and relevant issues even exchange sides of the fence where Judgment of Morality is seated. 

A woman suffering at the expense of another woman is Incorrect. Wrong. In any age or era, it shall be wrong Forever. 

Yet there have been relationships , and there shall be, not formalized FOR society's peace, and flies on the wall keep humming to the tune of which we (me included at times) tap our toes over coffee. I am not putting illustrious examples here with names of minstrels, poets, writers, artists for that's not my purpose.

In such a relationship not vetoed by Society, no other woman suffers at the expense of another, no family disintegrates as collateral damage, no soul betrays the trust and respect of another. Even if such a relationship bears unblemished Love and spiritual exchanges of two egos and evolves in consciousness, nothing GOOD seems to come out FOR the society to glorify it. And if it's not GOOD, it has to be BAD - such is the dictum the "vociferous section" of our society follows.

Nothing lies in such a relationship for me to cry foul. It's just that I find NOTHING INCORRECT here.

It's difficult to look at things which are shaded black and white by a colour-blind society, where the shade is controversially Grey. 

While I await my share of brickbats, I will just reiterate that this is what I understood by the word MISTRESS here, and Narendranath was definitely and simply at a loss of coinage of terms. He didn't mean the traditionally vilified RAKSHITA here. He just fearlessly put his affirmative stamp on affairs perhaps with a fearless causticity for future circumstances where Society becomes the moral judge. Perhaps by default?? 

OUR PRIDE



Isn't she beautiful? The grace and the gentle waves along which she dances in the wind, breath-taking and reassuring -- Our Tricolour, the mother of our inspiration, the holy garment which India drapes around herself.

The spiritual strength of India that keeps on evolving showing us all the way to a Saffron sunrise of Wisdom : A pristine unblemished Truth in White, that tells India is Peace, the Wheel carriying India's movement forward, towards a predestined horizon of Life, Hope and Security.

The tricolour that brings tears to my eyes and gives me goose bumps - what a reassurance that India means unity in mind and spirit..I bow to you. 

There seems to be a magical captivating aura around it. It might be that our 'worshiping' attitude is a conditioned reflex -- what we have been exposed as kids, at home, in the neighbourhood, in school, in the air of the city we were born, and newspapers. But whatever be the "mode" in which we express our pride, it's the end-reaction that is significant and the only priority. (For me, it's one of the few rare things I'll never want to be explained about..).

India needs young people for advancement in rapid pace if we want to keep pace with that what elevates  the "third world" socio-political  status to the "developed" group. We need fresh and passionate minds so that we can look at things with clear vision and fresh perspective. 

It is the active and passionate participation of young generation to process its demands and ask with authority, in the international arena, for her legitimate rights.. A new India is being born and we are the ones who'll keep her on track. And we better not make the same mistakes....