Alright, here goes another…

Onam is a state festival of Kerala. Onam is supposed to be the time when king Mahabali comes back to Kerala to visit his people. He was kicked out of Kerala once by the fourth avatar of Vishnu (god of instantiation like wabbit would say)  for being nice.  Its the first instance of suppression by a nazi god against the south indians, the second being rama kicking ravan.

However I hold a point of view that some stories are misinterpreted by people despite the writer making obvious clues for better judgment on the readers part. At any point of time, the story teller has good faith. Its the people who are dumb.

These so called stories are told to explain ancient indian wisdom called the Vedanta in contemporary scenes. The actual prose in esoteric Sanskrit goes like

“Yada yada hi dharmasya glanir bhavati Bharata; Abhyutthanam adharmasya tadatmanam srijamyaham. Paritranaya sadhunam vinasaya cha dushkritam; Dharma-samthapanarthaya sambhavami yuge yuge.”

which literally translates to,

“Whenever the balance of the universe is disturbed by external interference from any of its parts, then I reveal Myself as the Power of eternal balancing. For the protection of those who are in harmony, and the rectification of everything disharmonious, I incarnate Myself at every juncture of time.”

But I like Swami Chinmayananda’s explanation,

“From time to time an ancient philosophy needs an intelligent reinterpretation in the context of the new times; men of wisdom, prophets and seers must guide the common man to effectively apply the ancient laws to his present pattern of life. Whenever such a great Master arrives to re-establish the old truths and teach his generation to efficiently face the present with the values of the old ideals, that great person will be considered by his generation as a God-Man or an Avatar.”

However the Irony is most of the time, every “intelligent interpretation” is miscommunicated by second level teachers for political and religious benefit; a popular one being attributing Vedanta to extremist Hinduism, which in fact is just general wisdom of people of India. I feel that this is exactly what the philosophy means; every misinterpretation is ought to be corrected every time. Someday, we’ll have a super distilled model where theres no loophole like those refined law statements. :P

So in essence, I feel its the story teller or interpreter who is the avatar than the protagonist of the story he writes. I think Wachowski Brothers in that respect is the latest avatar, because they were trying to interpret this very same Vedanta too. But then again, most who’ve seen the movie just think the Matrix is cool, and forget the point. Guess we still need better interpreters :P

Fuck this world anyways, Happy Onam :)

He was too old to cry. Wisdom they say. An attribute of the old. His mind was rather as calm as the sea, yet not without the waves, a turbulence that is constant as long as the sea remain. They say, the sea has the power to wash away all worries of living, just being near it, watching it. Rhythm. Teaching the mind to resonate as you watch it rise and ebb away. Rhythm. Like learning music. Like being trained in the army to march. Like an athlete’s footwork. Done again.. and again… until you look like you were born that way. It is easy for the world to pass it of as a natural talent. Lazy world, what do they know about hard work. About life’s destiny. About dedication to commitment.

It has been 6 long hours since that destined hour since his love of life orbited past his skies again. An orbital path never expected to cross again in his lifetime. Across the same skies he’d look up to pray for peace every night. Damn. Pagan skies. He wondered if early christians were love lost.

She’d been there briefly. Scrolling around the beachside with her new family. A conversation of confessions. About how her girly confidence was long lost and she thrown into the world of womanly uncertainty. Ah.. the days of confidence. He was just one of the flowers the frolicking girl who ran around the fields plucked to beautify her hair. How innocent is growing up, one would write about. But the flower was young, not a drop of honey broken, not a full days sunlight relished.

Was it enough to let her find life her own way. Was it enough to save her when she got lost? He wondered if every person were to learn everything from scratch and repeat history in his own world, how can the world pass of anything as common. Earth turns. Sun rises. Everybody falls in love. Everybody dies. History by design is bound to repeat itself. He wondered if extraordinary was just happenstance or calculable only in fiction.

And then his phone started ringing. Jasmine.

“Hello Jasmine.. Have you landed?”

“Yes, just now. Damned fog, an eight hours delay. Were you sleeping in the car waiting?”

“No I’m at the beach side”

“What are you doing there? Getting drunk seeing crabs hanging out having late night parties in their underground joints?”

“Hmm I wish… I was rather just missing you”

“Yes. Me too. It is very hard to be married and be away like this Vijay. I only wish I could get this course over with fast, so that I can be with you all the time”

“Alright, I’ll come around to pick you while you check out”

“Ok… See you soon David”

“Who is David?”

“Oh sorry Vijay, its this friend of mine whom I met briefly while at the airport waiting. I just accidentally spilled out his name for you.”

“Ha.. Alright. I thought you met him briefly”

“No actually… he came to drop me too to Chennai airport. You know he sort of works with me in the labs sometimes, so we are just friends”

“Yeah ok. Come fast Keerthi, I’m waiting for so long”

“Who is Keerthi?”

“Hah hah.. I was just kidding”

“Bad boy!!! Fine, I’m walking over Kerala now. Come over fast”

“Ok. See you soon…” Click

He was bored. Looked at his watch. 5AM. Day Break. His wondered if loyalty was just a perception. He couldn’t care less. He walked back to his car singing- “Sunrise… sunset… sunrise… sunset… simply flow the days…”

A crowded cafeteria. White spots in the vision afterwards.

Boredom.

She was looking at her friends talking over lunch talking something. She asked herself if she was having problems with memory these days that recent events seem too vague as if they’d happened too long ago. Is it her body confused from all that chemical imbalance induced from all that frequent drinking lately? She wondered lazily.

She had difficulty in breathing well… a sort of suffocation as if she was depressed. She wondered why she was overcome with such intense a bout of boredom. Was it a craving? The precursor to habitual addiction? She tightened her lips while her mind drifted into a resolution to try and restrict drinking only to friday nights.

She was woken up from her reverie from the natural change of scenes as notified by her vision, being in a busy workplace cafeteria. She was amused how visual notifications can also wake a person from a day dream, the eyes being open unlike that of a sleep dream. She lifted her head and looked around , lips still tight , releasing a breath that she didn’t know she was holding. People talking. Flirting. The happiness in the faces of people as in from a tinge of adventure of the attempts at being casually unfaithful. Her mind drifted again into its dark miserable existence. She had a fear for such tendencies exhibited by people. Wondered if her love of life felt a similar sense of adventure and happiness when he tried to play what he wanted to be just a casual attempt at what many pass of as fun. Was he a weak heart? Or was it a physical need for variety in living? Wondered why such memories remain so etched unlike the rest. Questions she feared would remain unanswered to her grave. Grave. She feared old age. Wished she died young.

“Alamel!!”, she heard Karthik shouting, “Come, lets go back, its been too long a lunch break”

Karthik. Hmmmm. Somebody cares. She felt important. Wondered when her human nature would conveniently choose to forget such good done by him. She despised human nature.

“Alamel, how are you feeling after all that happened yesterday night?”

Yesterday. She strained to remember. Felt very odd why she was so forgetful lately.

Distributed storage. She broke a smile as the phrase occurred in her mind. She always believed that human beings don’t really have to remember anything, because of their abilities to social interactions and utilization of tools, information could be stored in different places or in people. She always performed malpractice in exams with small pieces of paper, following the very same philosophy. At this point she reasoned to retrieve aid from his memories.

“Karthik”, she lazed to outsource reminiscence, “I only remember the part were we got drunk too much and while we were driving back, you wanted this chewing gum…. which I took from my pocket…. and it fell down…… and I was distracted from driving, and I nearly hit a garbage truck… ha ha.. It was so dangerously adventurous. Cant remember a thing. How did you people sneak me into my room without waking that crazy landlord?”

“Ha ha.. interesting… funny how physical abuse can affect the mind so much”

“Oh-no. Not another complex metaphysical discourse. At least, not in my dazed mindset.”

“What? Are you kidding me? I was just joking about getting back to work after the break. Wondered if you’d subconsciously walk back to our workplace when I said that. You see, I’m experimenting with this new thing we are into”

“Hmm. I guess I’d so much to drink yesterday; I can’t even decode your surreal jokes. Can you believe it? So you meant the bill? I thought you’d paid, I was about to ask you that anyway”

“Alamel…this is going to take a real while getting used to. Lets see how lost you are. Try and answer this totally simple, non-surrealistic, general awareness question.”

“Okay, shoot. But don’t ask me who the vice president of India is. I hope you know I don’t really read news papers that much”

“Hmm”, he shrugged, “it’s a much simpler question actually.” He’d a sudden strange concern in his tone and expression with the brows, as if he was a doctor about to inform his patient about childbirth or death, “What do you think you are now?”

Let me quote from the movie

Dewey Finn: Give up, just quit, because in this life, you can’t win. Yeah, you can try, but in the end you’re just gonna lose, big time, because the world is run by the Man. The Man, oh, you don’t know the Man. He’s everywhere. In the White House… down the hall… Ms. Mullins, she’s the Man. And the Man ruined the ozone, he’s burning down the Amazon, and he kidnapped Shamu and put her in a chlorine tank! And there used to be a way to stick it to the Man. It was called rock ‘n roll, but guess what, oh no, the Man ruined that, too, with a little thing called MTV! So don’t waste your time trying to make anything cool or pure or awesome ’cause the Man is just gonna call you a fat washed up loser and crush your soul. So do yourselves a favor and just GIVE UP!
Dewey Finn: [on sticking it to "The Man"] Yes! But, you can’t just say it, man. You’ve gotta feel it in you’re blood and guts! If you wanna rock, you gotta break the rules. You gotta get mad at the man! And right now, I’m the man. That’s right, I’m the man, and who’s got the guts to tell me off? Huh? Who’s gonna tell me off?
Freddy: Shut the hell up, Schneebly!
Dewey Finn: That’s it Freddy, that’s it! Who can top him?
Alicia: Get outta here, stupidass.
Dewey Finn: Yes, Alicia!
Summer Hathaway: You’re a joke, you’re the worst teacher I’ve ever had!
Dewey Finn: Summer, that is great! I like the delivery because I felt your anger!
Summer Hathaway: Thank you.
Lawrence: You’re a fat loser and you have body odor.
Dewey Finn: …All right, all right! Now, is everybody nice and pissed off?

Pretty confusing as it may seem, Dewey is trying to define to little kids, what Rock music is all about. It’s a mental unleash of frustration to the Man. Some like Buddha might go crazy and run away to a forest nearby for “answers”. But Rock music expresses pretty much the same. It’s a form of art that is more explicit and verbose that many people from all walks of life can appreciate and correlate to. Again, this form of art apart from getting you larger from being expressive, guides a larger part of the, say western youth, into taking things more sarcastically and ironically, thereby nurturing a more tolerant civilization.

This is where Bengali rock comes in. Many of the Indian and Bangladeshi bands have been trying to create verse in Bengali. This might seem funny for some, but try to zoom out. Apart from the few elite among us, who are privileged to empathize expressive art forms like western rock and the crap that I’m writing among other things, imagine how many of the general population of India lack such capacity. That’s a huge number with so many digits. If a nation is about its people, and not the land :P, then I’d like you to evaluate the effect of localization of rock music! I’m not talking about translation, we aren’t that desperate. India like any other populace has a great pool of poets who can sing better in their native tongue.

The king used to cry imagining Auto Rickshaw guys in rock persuasion. Now that is radical? Ah… It’s already happening. I think its really cool. Now one might say, ah crap… we’ve our own forms of art, like erm… Hindustani and Karnatic? Well, maybe, but then there are two forms of art. One appreciated by the trained and ardent and the other appreciable by the general public. The general public is defined as people, who don’t have a literature or art degree, nor can afford extensive amounts of time in scaling complex forms. So the latter, is simple and has greater penetration. Such is Rock music. Artists who aspire to inspire fellow contemporaries, revolutionaries who wish to awaken the nation, visionaries who wish to surrealistically present complex ideas piecewise etc, can do so with greater reach and faster effect with such forms of expressive art.

In the words of AC/DC: We roll tonight… to the guitar bite… and for those about to rock… I salute you.

He was basically referring to life’s difficulties and that the wings of wax symbolizes our hopes, our aspirations, the dreams,the illusions; and we search for the sun. That is the truth. But the irony is that, if we ever actually find the sun, the wax will melt and we fall like Icarus, but we still are on that quest. Icarus represents the metaphysical rebellion within us, like he himself put it.

However I find this a pessimistic approach to take resort in such philosophy during hard times. This modal represents the “no point” desperation of individual entering life’s realities. Installing philosophy in this perspective is sheer misuse of biological processing/imagination. That is, to think that life’s all messed up and desperately trying to think above the system. Desperate because others around us cant think in our shoes. They seem not to get the point, our “point” rather. Philosophy apart… why didn’t Icarus be smart enough to get down, get a proper wing made and try flying higher? Like Wright brothers! :P We are thinking using complex systems. Instead get down to the basics. If you can analyze… our “thinking”, feeling of “aham” or the feeling of “me”, comes from the processor called the brain. The brain is an organ system, if interconnected neurons. Neurons are simple basically and its their complexity in wiring that makes “us” intelligent to “think”. Getting down… We realize that its nature at play. In this respect… go back in history. Why did simple cells decide to evolve into complex systems? Or why didn’t they, in some other way? Why didn’t they get desperate and philosophical? Because that wasn’t just the right way to do things! Nature… “selects” to the right way of doing things automatically . It’s like Lego building blocks that snap in place only one way! So my point is, the human psyche is just another of nature’s chaos seeking order. We are still evolving or permuting towards “order”. It’s wiser to move on… and try something else… and be cautious in the tread or be selected out. Just like cells are nature, thinking is nature… society is nature.. “life’s difficulties” are natures challenges. So.. Icarus died… Because he couldn’t adapt. Stories of Icarus are pointers to lessons that have to be learnt so that similar mistake is not made again. Stories of Icarus do NOT describe “no point” whine, but rather tell us to be wiser in our endeavors.

So where should one place philosophy? The thing is philosophy is not about sitting and whining. It may help you understand about social difficulties , about the social fabric or the non existence of it, about the pretensions and all that. It’s just that sometimes, some things inspire people. They see stuff in stuff and come out with stuff. That’s why you have artists and painters and poets. That’s how you have culture. But sometimes philosophy is needed to understand things and to find a way out of it. First you have to define something and why that is… before u can find a solution. Actually there are a lot of things that defy human logic.