Inner Metamorphosis

“This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill—the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill—you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes. Remember: all I'm offering is the truth. Nothing more.” – Morpheus to Neo in The Matrix (film). Concurrent to the underlying theme in the said scene, there comes a point in life when we experience something so disturbing that we are forced to re-look at our most cherished beliefs that we were conditioned to believe from birth. Beneath the reality we live in, another and altogether different reality lies concealed to our indoctrinated mind. The programming started right from the moment we began our earthy career to tame the mind from wandering beyond the pre-set boundaries. The molten thinking is carefully put into a society-imposed mould with the aim of making the young minds ‘civilized’, a euphemism for calcul...

[ One of my earlier posts referred to 'the will to meaning'   here . I intended to expand upon it later, but other more intense interests sprouted to which I dedicated much of my writing energies. Later I somehow lost interest. However when I recently saw   The Shawshank Redemption , I was vaguely aware of having seen another work with similar theme. Some travel in my mind-palace brought me to that rusted corner where memories of   'Man's Search for Meaning'   lay. As I was wishing to break the ice here since long, can one ask for a better topic to rekindle this blog?   ] What if you were deprived of your possessions and freedom? What if you found yourself in a concentration camp stripped of every semblance of human dignity, working like a beast of burden? Viktor Frankl's ' Man's Search For Meaning ' is not a brainchild of mental speculation, but based on personal experiences in the school of sorrow where the earthy lessons of life are t...

Now that most of you may have voted, I find it morally safe to express my reservations about the electoral system in India and why I think our vote doesn’t matter. Yes, despite the hype by popular campaigns insisting that you lose your right to criticize and complain if you don’t vote, I think our vote simply doesn’t matter. Recollect the scenario from your classroom experience: most of us would have seen a class representative anointed by the teacher and irrespective of who he/she is, it hardly mattered to most of us. The situation barely changes even as you graduate to higher education. Most of the college campus leaders are chosen by consensus, a euphemism for anointment by faculty, instead of elections which are dubbed as bringing ‘dirty politics’ into campuses. Is a person anointed by a higher authority answerable to you? That’s the crux. But you may argue, we actually elect our leaders and we have a choice to choose from the list of candidates. Upon keener reflectio...

Some experiences are terse through a decade while sometimes a year-long experience is prolix. To my mind, 2013 is one such year. Cramped across this time-space were events pregnant with pessimism & possibilities. 2013 has witnessed changes in the politico-social power apparatus in India and efforts of various groups this year will reflect in General Elections – 2014. I seek to examine few broad trends at various levels that particularly interest me. Rise of Social-media: With organized media organizations increasingly seen as propaganda vehicles for political parties or certain classes, common-man found his voice through social-media. Long dismissed as a urban-phenomenon with no ground influence, social-media sought redemption through AAP’s success in Delhi, largely credited to its effective social-media campaigning where volunteering efforts tipped the scale in its favor. This comes with a rider though - what appeals to masses needn’t necessary be good in long-ter...

I remember a cinema-crazy friend remarking almost a decade back, that all Indian movies can be reduced to a handful of basic storylines which when appropriately tweaked at suitable positions yield a wide spectrum of diverse stories. Telugu movies, since Gundamma Katha, have tinkered with the concept of protagonist(s) entering a household (mostly antagonist’s) in disguise to bring about a change in their hearts. In Hindi we have DDLJ in recent memory. It’s a time-tested storyline, which if executed deftly, with judicious mix of déjà vu and novel elements, has nearly always produced good results. So what freshness does Trivikram-Pawan Kalyan’s latest flick “Attarintiki Daredi” bring to a much overused basic storyline? If its spectacular box-office performance is any indication, the movie has indeed struck a chord with the masses. Studying what makes a cinema click would bog down the best; any industry-observer’s speculation is probably only as scientific as modern day computer-emp...

Many quasi-Hindu sects abound in India that try to distance themselves from Hinduism to give their cult a more universal character [meditation, yoga, etc.]. Briefly such sects claim that they’ve discovered/invented a path that transcends religions and hence they cannot be pinned down a narrow categorization called Hinduism. In this post, we will endeavour to examine such claims and the historical precedents to set things in perspective. Let’s understand the position of these cults on this issue: They claim that their approach is universal – beyond bodily associations such as religion – and their method can be appreciated by people of all religions including Islam and Christianity. They’ve incorporated wisdom not only from Hinduism, but are open to receive whatever good the other religions have to offer. Being a good Muslim/Christian is same as being a good Hindu. They do not necessarily follow typical Hindu festivals with the same materialist fanfare and consumerism...

In India any form of Hindu assertion or defence is quickly labelled as being pro-Hindutva. Indeed, the term ‘Hindutva’ is clearly used in pejorative sense in media, and many youngsters who unquestioningly consume the left-liberal dominated media propaganda are prompt to affix this tag who anyone who attempts to defend Hinduism and criticize other religions. What exactly is Hindutva? Hindutva is Persian-cum-Sanskrit neologism meaning “Hinduness” or “Hindu identity”, born in late 19 th century and credited to Savarkar. Hindutva is a political movement, which argues that India is the “homeland” of Hindus, and defines ‘Hindus’ as those who consider India as their motherland, fatherland and holyland. Note that the definition is purely in cultural terms which include Indic religions like Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism. But this surely clashes with the two Abrahamic religions, Christianity and Islam, for whose followers, the holyland lies outside of India. To put it rather bluntly, Hindutv...