Category: philosophy

Categories
philosophy sports

My running escapades

This has been the route since last couple of days: Narmad>>BT Building>>Hospi>>Main Gate>>Super Market>>GC>>Narmad (main road). I guess it’s slightly more than seven kilometers.

There are two specific instances I would like to describe.

A boy who should have been about twelve years old, suddenly decided to chase me as he saw me running. I had already run about two kilometers, and wanted to maintain a consistent speed. I liked to see him leave me behind and win. It made him feel proud of himself I guess. He would run for some time, realize he had left me far behind and then start walking. I kept running at the same pace. He did that for a couple of times but soon realized that I was going to keep running without ever slowing down. Poor kid. He soon gave up! Last, I could hear his foot steps as he tried his best to run faster than me. But by then he was too tired to reach me. I soon left him far behind. I am sure he didn’t feel bad about it. I hope he learned the difference between winning in short term and winning in long term. 🙂 I felt good about making someone run, just by looking at me.

The second incident (if I may call it so) happened a day before or a day after the boy episode (it could be the same day, I am not very sure). I had just reached the main gate. As I was walking back towards GC, I saw a yellow wheel chair being driven by an old lady in red sari. She was quite ahead of me for some time, till of course I left her behind. I don’t know what exactly I felt, but I guess seeing her made me realize how lucky I was to have legs. I got senti for few seconds. I realized I certainly had more reasons to smile and be happy about my life than that old lady in red sari who probably would never be able to even walk, leave alone run, on her legs.

Whoever said, running is boring, should change his/her mind. You get to learn about life, and teach others about it, as you run. I love it.

It’s another matter that yesterday I ran rather too fast and ended up hurting my right ankle. I’ve been limping ever since, though the pain is coming down slowly. Wish me good health and happy running. Marathon is close. Very close.

Categories
general philosophy

End of Fag Break

‘Uru King lights’, my face was expressionless as I asked the lady at the Tarams fag shop to give me a cigarette. Today was a bad day. I didn’t get up early. I didn’t go to any of my classes (only two to speak of). I didn’t mug (it was necessary because I have a quiz tomorrow). I didn’t have my breakfast or lunch.

Half a fag. It was enough to break open the self imposed chain I had entangled myself with. The end of fag break happened two days before the planned day. I could have waited for two more days but failed to see the point.

When I play, there’s no game over. That’s for sure.

Something that hasn’t been missed since a hell lot of days is running. I shall run today too. So what if my stomach’s hurting with lack of food. So what if my mind is lost. So what if I need to mug for tomorrow.

When you are fucked up, keep running. When you are doing great, keep running. Run, not to win. Run, to keep yourself moving.

Categories
IIT philosophy

Homophoebia justified?

Debate topic: The house believes our Society is justified in being Homophobic

I spoke against the house. And the following is what I spoke:

Good evening men, women, gays and lesbians (if any).

The moment you are told that the guy or the girl sitting next to you is gay, you start feeling uncomfortable. Oh, don’t you? Talk about homophobia! I ask you one thing, just have a look at the person sitting right next to you, right now. Yeah do that. What if he/she really IS gay? Should that fact change anything? He is not a psychopath who is going to rape your mother and then leave you a mail, saying he enjoyed every moment of it. She is not an insane criminal who will shoot your entire family in cold blood and be proud of doing that. He is just gay and she is just a lesbian for heaven’s sake. These are normal people whose sexual preferences don’t match with the so called normal majority.

I am a man, you can see that. I don’t have to unzip my pants to prove my gender. I AM a man. I am man coz I act like a man. Like say, drool over those big sized curves that are supposed to excite every man. But lemme ask you this: how did I become a man, when did I become a man? The moment I took birth, is it what you say? No, you are wrong. My birth determined my sex, and your birth determined yours. After that society took over. It was ready with two broad categories where it would throw you into. Be a male or a female, merely based on your sexual organs! Now, I grew up to be a great man, and most of us fit into these two categories. But not all of us! And those who don’t fit should not be blamed or feared of!

You call homosexuality disgusting? You wanna know what really is disgusting? Unfair discrimination based on sexual preference is DISGUSTING my dear friend.

So far, nobody’s been able to show that homosex causes harm or is unnatural or warps the fabric of society, or whatever. All that people are able to show is that some people don’t like it, and think that God thinks it wrong. But that’s not good enough for winning an argument in a multi-cultural, democratic society committed to constitutionally protect individual rights. In such societies, you can do what you want as long as you don’t cause harm to others. Everything else is a matter of taste.

And as I end my debate, here’s my last bit on those who say it’s not natural. Bruce Bagemihl’s 1999 scientific study, Biological Exuberance: animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity lists down all kinds of animals which display homosexual behavior. Go read it, the list is endless: African Buffalo, Australian Sea Lion, Asian elephant, Sperm Whale, Vampire Bat, Indian Rhinoceros, Wild Goat, the long tailed hermit hummingbird, the side blotched lizard, the speckled Rattlesnake, the fruit fly, the house fly, red ant. (In hush voice)- I myself have seen gay monkeys having a blast right there sitting on the parapet wall, in front of my room.

Give them a chance to be happy and gay. Thank you.

PS: My two member team (myself and SDK who spoke for the topic) cleared the prelims, waiting for the final. (This was an inter hostel debating competition held in IIT Madras for which 18 teams turned up. 8 of them made it to the finals, which shall be held some time later)

Categories
philosophy

Indipendence

No I didn’t misspell independence. I prefer calling today the Indipendence day. My country became free sixty odd years ago, and ever year since then, we had an extra holiday in the list. A holiday! To celebrate indipendence! Weird!

A better way to show respect to the nation would have been to work for few extra hours on the 15th of August.

I shall remember this day for a long time. It was past midnight and I was high on booze. I was with an interesting bunch of folks. They were high on booze too. Those were the few minutes before I totally lost it when I started playing the Indian national anthem on mouthorgan. And guess what? All the guys stood up. Boozed up, drunk and shaking. But they stood up. I don’t know if you call that respect but at that very moment, I felt proud to be an Indian. We were people from different places, out there on the terrace, united together to let ourselves escape to another world. We knew each other because we were in the same college. The common thing about us had always been the fact that all of us were IITians. And yet, at that very moment, there was just one uniting factor that hit me. We were Indians. And we weren’t just another bunch of Indians. We were guys who could decide how India would be doing few years down the line. India definitely needs a li’l more than just respect. It needs us to work for it.

I guess this is what the day is all about. It is about the celebration of being an Indian. Wish you Indipendence Day.

Categories
philosophy senseless

Guys, gays, trains and the connection

The words written below were scribbled while Vatsap was still in train few hours ago:

What makes a guy a guy? A guy is a guy if the first thing that he notices in a girl are her boobs. To me this is a genetic characteristic of a man. And before I break the heart of any gay reader of my blog (if any), when I say a man or a guy, I mean a regular straight person. Gay people are men (if cock is all one needs to be classified as a man) but they belong to a category which has not clearly been defined by the society. Birth determines the sex but that’s all about it.

The society defined man and woman and then assumed that those born with cocks should be men and those born with cunts should be women. The society never bothered much about those who lacked either of these organs. More so, it almost totally ignored those who though were born with a known sex, found it stupid to clinge to society’s definition of the way they should live. And the fact that they were ignored (and still are) was that they were very few in numbers.

Ah, I had no intentions of drifting in the direction in which I landed myself upon in the above lines. So, let me make a quick switch off. Let me talk about trains. This coach moves continuously as I type in these letters. And it is excess of sleep during the day that has pushed me to pull out my sleeping Dellruba from the bag and convert the signals being generated in the brain to words that can be typed, read and appreciated (or disliked) by those who bother to come to Vatsap.com.

Train. It moves. From A to B. From B to C. And on and on. It stops too. At known locations. They call them platforms. It stops so that passengers can board in and leave it. The train.

There have been movies. And stories. And poems. And I am sure, blog posts. Most of us have used train at some point of time. Does a train mean anything more than a vehicle which can move and carry passengers?

Yes. A train connects. As it moves from A to B it connects them. I rememberer my school days when History was a part of the curriculum. I remember reading about the British Raj when trains where introduced for the first time in India and how they helped in connecting people all across the country.

But if train was about physical connection, the whole meaning of ‘connect’ has evolved in today’s world. Connection is more about mental connection and for most of us it happens on phone and internet.

Sometimes it is cool to drift from one topic to another. Sometimes it’s cool to flow freely. 🙂

Categories
events philosophy

The sin and the sinners

Hate the sin, not the sinner. Gandhi used to say this. Jesus used to say this too. If you try analyzing what this sentence means, you might appreciate its significance.

It was past ten in the night. I got down from bus. I started walking towards home, very close to the bus-stop. Tired, dreamy, limping. I walked. I saw.

I saw a TV today van parked on the road. The inside lights were on. The van had a big transmitting antennae on its roof. Someone was there to cover something; so close to my cousin’s place. The place where I have been staying in Bangalore. What could the event be? I wondered. I peeked inside the van-window. It had the kind of gadgets that one typically finds at a regular recording studio. The van was a recording studio. A mobile recording studio.

As I passed by the van, I saw yet another vehicle-with-antennae-on-roof parked on a connecting side-lane. There was crowd there in that area. At this hour in night, I never find so many people standing outside. But yesterday wasn’t just another day. News Channels don’t send their live coverage crew to an otherwise non-happening place like this for no reason. What could the event be? I wondered.

There was hardly any noise. A dull, almost inaudible murmuring, was all that prevailed in the otherwise calm, cold and peaceful night. People were quiet. It appeared as if somebody had died. But someone so big, that media wanted to cover him/her? How could I have been so unaware of anyone so big, living so close to my place, for such a long time? And why would someone so big live in a non-posh area like this? Something just didn’t fit in.

I reached home. Guys there weren’t aware of the media vans. They were busy discussing something else. They were talking about a terrorist whose father lived so close to their house! What? A terrorist? I reported to them what I had just seen and then I was told that it was all over the news. In fact, related coverages had been all over the news since quite some time. I guess my office timings left me with very less time to be in touch with the updates. So, well, the media was there in our area to cover and question and listen to the father of one of the terrorists accused to be involved in the recent failed UK blasts.

How can one study so hard, become a doctor or an engineer and give up everything to become a terrorist? One of the guys wondered! And then he generalized; the way Hindu’s mostly do. He blamed it to him being a Muslim! Human beings love generalizing, and especially when statistics support what you say. But generalizing has a very big disadvantage. It ends up affecting all those who are supposed to fall under it. Hindus like me can conclude that he was a terrorist because he was a Muslim. Britishers might conclude that he was a terrorist because he was an Indian! And then the feeling of fear, hate, repulsion and so on and so forth emerges. Against an entire community. Against an entire nation! Not fair. Not fair at all.

The only way to prevent generalization is to start looking into finer details. Not all Muslims are the same. Not all Indians are the same. Unless and until a very specific narrow sub-category can be pointed out, one should hold down the temptation of labeling an otherwise large community as terrorists. But cummon, who has the time to do all the looking-into-finer-details job? Do you?

So far, I talked about sinners. Accused sinners to be correct. So far, everyone talked about sinners. What no one, and absolutely no one, seems to be talking about is the sin! Talk about the terrorists, hunt the terrorists, punish the terrorists. Alright! But aren’t we missing something here? Are we sure that talking-about, hunting and punishing them will solve anything at all? Jesus or Gandhi would have had something to say on this. I don’t have. Do you?

Update: Some time back today evening, I suddenly spotted today’s Bangalore edition of TOI. And the picture shown below was on the cover page.

toi headline

Below is a clearer picture of the house that you see in the above newspaper clipping:

the docotrs house

This house is on the same side-lane that I was talking about. I pass right across it daily. So the crowd that had gathered yesterday in front of this house was there to watch all the tamasha that media was there to create!

I will be crossing this side-lane  even today. But from now onwards, every time I walk past this side-lane(which is like within a hundred meters from where I stay), I will be reminded of a guy who lived here and then went to UK and then created terror. Eh! I guess I am thinking too much about it. Should stop doing that.

Categories
general philosophy

Remember your school teachers?

Remember them? The guys who taught you English, Chemistry, Physics, Mathematics, History, Geography, Computer Science, and what not? And remember, most of them sucked at teaching? But then there were some really good teachers who were loved by the entire class! I am sure that like me, you remember a lot about those days. Those days, when we had to dress up in uniforms; when we were not allowed to grow our hairs long; when we used to sing a million songs in the morning before the classes began, standing in the assembly lines; when we used to share tiffins and discuss about which mam was hot, and which sir was despo for that mam. Oh, school days; I wonder why I am getting nostalgic all of a sudden.

This post could have been about the memories of those past days. It isn’t. What I wonder after so many years is what made those teachers teach at school? I mean, what fun can someone have by teaching Maths to a sixth standard kid, or even a tenth standard kid? How much money do these school teachers get? I am sure much less than what you can earn by doing so many other jobs. And if Mathematics is what interests you, you should go ahead and become a Professor of Mathematics.

But I guess that the answer to this is simple. There are so many schools and not so many colleges. So not every person who likes mathematics can become a professor. He/she will have to be slightly better at the subject than the average guy or he/she will at least have to get certain higher degrees to make sure he/she can crack some college instead of being stuck up in a school. And I guess this explains why most of the teachers back in school sucked. Had they been good enough, they would have moved on! The fact that they were still teaching science and maths and history and geography to small kids proved that they were not good enough.

But ever wonder, what made those special teachers who actually taught extremely well, so special? What was it about them? Were they really good enough? If yes, then what were they doing at school? Why didn’t they move on? I can try to explain this as well. Your knowledge and your teaching style have no correlation. You could be a PhD in Maths, but you still could be a teacher who sucks. Sucks big time. On the other hand, you could just be B.Sc in Chemistry, but you might have the ability to teach sixth standard students the concepts of acids bases and salt in a way they can remember all their lives.

Some people are good at doing certain things, and they are lucky to get into a profession where they end up doing what they are good at. And people love them for what they do.

Categories
Gyaan philosophy

Why you should smoke

Let me begin with a quote.

If you give up smoking, drinking and loving, you don’t live any longer, it just seems longer.

There was a time when I was sure I would never ever smoke. It was a time when I could post something like this. But I am so happy that certain things happened in my life a couple of months ago which albeit very indirectly, did make me take up smoking. I lost something that I never wanted to. But then, I got something in return (which I doubt could have happened otherwise). And since then, I have enjoyed each and every fag that I ever dragged. Pure bliss! It might never be able to compensate for my loss, but if there had to be a next best thing, fagging was it.

Before I talk about why you should smoke, I should take up the strongest point thrown to any person against smoking. In two words, they say “smoking kills”. But doesn’t every smoker know that? Then why does the world need to keep on repeating it? Smoking kills appetite, smoking kills brain cells and smoking kills erection. Alright smoking kills! We heard it. We heard it loud and clear. So? Why does one need to take life so fucking seriously at the first place? Jesus died young. Didn’t he? And his death was way too cruel. So please. Don’t tell us again that smoking kills. A lot of other things kill too and I don’t even want to get into that.

And now let me come to the point. Why exactly you should smoke. Don’t smoke because smoking is cool. Don’t smoke because someone wants you to smoke. But, smoke, because there’s only one life and you never know if they sell fags in heaven. Hell, you don’t even know if you will end up in heaven. Smoke, because it will help you connect to your soul. The body will decay sooner or later. Fagging might cut short your life by few years (but believe me there are people who end up living 122 years on fag). But why should you care about those few years? Why do you want to pretend that you have a control over your life? You don’t. So get a life. Say yes to smoking.

Statutory warning: Smoking is injurious to health.

Categories
Gyaan philosophy

How to make money from blogging?

I have a very straightforward answer to this. If you really want to make money, there are better ways. Stop wasting time. Go out, create a job or do job and make money. But for heaven’s sake, stop blogging. Because if you can make money by blogging, you can make ten times that money by not blogging. Grow up.

There should be only one reason to blog. Your passion for sharing some info or thought that you have with the rest of the world. This is what the new dimension of internet is all about. We call it knowledge-sharing. There was a time, before the net came, when learning things was not cheap. You had to find the right teacher and then pay him. And you had to pay him because, you didn’t know there already was a person who was willing to teach you what you were looking for. And you didn’t know about him because he was sitting somewhere in another corner of the world.

Web unites. It brings us together. It makes us learn together. Blogging is a part of that process. Be proud to be a blogger. Be proud of the fact that others bother to read (listen, watch) what you offer, and may be learn something new from you.

There is absolutely nothing wrong if you are also able to make money. I will repeat, “if you are also able to make money“. But the moment the very purpose of blogging gets money-oriented, it all becomes a waste of time! So use your time wisely and blog from heart. If money has to flow in, it will.

Happy Blogging.

Categories
philosophy

Patience

If you read the last post of mine, I have talked about how powerful time is. We can win against anything, but not against time.

Patience is that quality which makes us respect the above mentioned fact. It makes us respect the importance of time. The only way to not let time defeat you is by making friends with it. And the only way to do that is by imbibing patience inside onself. Once you have done that, you can win everything. Anything.