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 :)

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.