More than just abandoned machinery

...a piece of machinery, abandoned in a corner.... it had not been worn out, it had been rotted by neglect, eaten by rust... I feel a scream of protest against injustice... this is beyond just an old piece of machinery.... Ayn Rand

God must be an artist!

God must be an artist, to come up with countless variations of morning, with only a few tools at his disposal, the sun, the clouds, a little rain, on a canvas of nothingness... These are images from my window over the last week or so....

Every moment has its music

Every moment has its music. Bombay is experiencing rains of the season since the past few days. This certainly is a good spell.

Saturday mornings are relaxed, since it signals the beginning of the weekend, and despite any trouble that one may otherwise be in, there is a certain ease that takes over. I walked to the station to board the train to office. And there was a light drizzle.

I had Hosana from Vinnathandi Varuvaaya, playing on my Sony Walkman, and something prompted me to not open the umbrella. With the light rain falling on my face as I looked up, I felt the music take over, and Rahman weave magic.

En meedu anbu kolla, ennodu serndu sella  

Hmm endru sollu podhum, Hosanna  

Somehow, life felt good, meant more.

Every moment has its music - line borrowed from Sony Walkman 

A lovely morning

I woke up to a lovely morning. The beginning of the weekend, despite the fact that I have to attend office today, somehow felt good. I could see the sun's shape, like the moon, through a cloudy sky, as if the clouds were filtering out the harsh rays and giving us a view of the sun as we saw in our school drawing book.

Swami and his 'fiends'

Self-styled Swami Nithyananda (Swami is just a name, like it was in Malgudi days; its not a title and there's nothing divine about it in this case) has been permitted by the court to preach! There's no use in not allowing him to speak or preach, as he will anyway have some work to do to regain his audience. But I'm amused by the fact that he actually petitioned that his freedom of speech was being curbed. After going through so much, see the man's pluck!

Anyway, its a pity that learned judges, the judicial system has to waste its time on this despicable being. The judges have considered separately whether he could be allowed to preach and whether he could be allowed to conduct yoga and meditation classes. And the system has to be seen to be hearing him out! We've done this with Kasab, so why not with Nithyananda! But the guy seems to be unmoved. He has the arrogance of suggesting that the police visit his ashram every 15 days for verification, instead of he reporting! And he has also petitioned for his belongings to be returned to him, his laptop and his work! After all, so much effort has gone into this! I admire the guy's record keeping, something that even corporates fall short in. He has all the underlying paperwork in place!

On this issue, there are two parties affected, his devotees and himself. I'm wondering what his devotees must be going through. Those who have given up all of what they had, could have, or could not have and followed him, those who read what he wrote and were influenced and in awe, those who served under him - what must be on their mind now! After the usual denial, the hope that all of this is false, somewhere they must be thinking their faith has been compromised. We are not here to judge what happened, and the jury is still out on this, but faith once shaken, is difficult to restore. Also look at this from his point of view. After all of this, when he comes forward to give his first lecture, what will he say? And how must he position his future discourses, to win back the trust people placed in him. I'm sure of one thing, his job is easier!

As always, the system is to be blamed! The place that religion has in society today is the reason why such godmen thrive. Pain will never end in the world, if any - there'll be more of it in the years to come. This is going by how humanity is on the path of degeneration, if you believe in evolution! And if you believe in the machinations of the yugas, then we will have more negatives in this yuga to maintain the balance required by nature. So pain is not going to end. At such times, religion offers the only solace, and more so if it comes with perks of power.

Obama was not wrong when he spoke about people clinging to guns and religion. In our case, it definitely is true with religion. So with more pain, godmen will gain! They give you what you ask for: escape from responsibility, to give up your duty! But as God said in Bruce Almighty 'since when did people know what they wanted'. So it pays for them to keep the troubled class under ignorance, in the dark. And telling them its ok to not do your job, to ask for submission, allowing them an escape.

And who will tell them that such self-styled godmen have a very limited understanding of what life. They haven't read enough, and they certainly haven't introspected enough, to be able to fathom the depths of human nature and the universe we live in. Such thinkers come far and few - there's only one Bertrand Russell, and only one Swami Vivekananda!

I feel pain at this: when I search for swami on google, Google Suggest throws up Swami Nityananda before Swami Vivekananda!