Inner Metamorphosis

When a flood occurs, we deduce that an overflow elsewhere caused it. But a flood of emotions can suddenly overwhelm us without any link visible to the mental eye. For no apparent reason, I recollect a period from many, many years ago. “So, what were you doing today?” asked my friend who just returned to home. “Nothing. Nothing at all,” said I. Far from being an outlier, this was the feature of my then daily life. We weren’t the typical roomies. I had an unfinished business at the place he was working, and I called him asking if he could accommodate me. He readily agreed, and soon I found myself in a remotely located independent house in non-descript part of a small town from a crowded apartment in a bursting megacity.  People find short, unavoidable moments of seclusion during otherwise hectic schedules unbearable. But there was this time when even if I were to shout at top of my lungs, the only ears to hear it would be mine. My friend would be away at work during day...

Philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer struck by the macabre expanse of turtle skeletons probably resulting from being eaten alive by wild dogs wrote,” For what offence must they suffer this agony? What is the point of the whole scene of horror? The only answer is that the will to live thus objectifies itself.”   All creatures are thus instinctively evolved to cling tenaciously to life (both hunter and hunted), notwithstanding the tremendous odds. The book in review is one such tale of survival amid unbelievably horrendous tribulations. A published author with critical acclaim chances upon his father’s handwritten manuscript in a rusting steel trunk and discovers a “tale of unmitigated horror”*. Besides stray references, the father would never reveal the true depths of despair he underwent. For this was a job his son was destined to undertake. After lying around for 50 years, these papers are found by the son who edits and publishes them and our grand old man who has seen it all in...

Those unacquainted with this city’s ethos may find the typical Hyderabadi obsession with Irani Chai (tea) amusing. Some may even accuse them of being chai-addicts, which (justifiably, I may add) is met by strong denial, nay defensive, “ Others may as well be called air-addicts or water-addicts then .” For the younger generation the ideal venue of a get-together begins with Cafe Coffee Day / McDonalds (when hard-pressed on cash!) and might extend to any upper limit when feasible. But before affluenza took over the Y2K generation, Irani Cafes were the most popular meeting venue for the cash-strapped teens. In a bid to appear more Western than the West we have sadly abandoned efforts to modernize our traditional outlets and instead sought to westernize them. The joyous conversations and noisy ambiance has since been replaced with uneasy silence punctuated with tight-lipped formal conversations. But to my mind nothing beats the cluttered, crowded Irani Cafes that always a...

Can the flame of faith sustain the storm of helplessly witnessing one’s God’s idol smashed to pieces? Will an ideologue who witnesses the entire edifice of her perspective crumble under the weight of truth revert or revolt? AAVARANA as Bhyrappa explains in the preface is an act of concealing truth. And our intensely ideological, middle-aged protagonist experiences a catharsis of sorts when confronted with truth, a truth that shines through the pervasive deception if only one looks for it. Plot Razia, an ex-Hindu who converted to marry her Muslim college-mate, has an ‘enlightened’ view of history, thanks to the ‘progressive’ arts course at the film-institute she and her husband Amir have been through. She finds her father’s fierce opposition to her marriage with Amir dogmatic. Aren’t all religions equally regressive and fit to be thrown into the dustbin of history? Surprisingly, despite the Marxist bent of both Amir and Lakshmi’s mind, Amir insists on her conversion to I...

“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...