The news clearly showed that the man, Pramod Mahajan was critically wounded in the most confounded parts of his body. A few frames later, they have already killed him.
Our wonderful media is so obsessed with the damn TRP that the news content has become redundant. They will take one little story and butcher it till the carcass begs for mercy.
The way NDTV and CNN-IBN (not to mention the others) showed his past life and what a "great" man he was and what a wonderful father he had been to his brothers and children alike. It was apparently clear in their little heads that the man is dead. And every day, he is just proving them wrong. It is the lack of this pathetic quality that makes BBC the best news channel around. Our chaps are just too pro-entertainment value; news content, variety is secondary.
This kind of poor quality results in a biased media that the masses cannot relate to. Its
good enough having to read the morning papers for his medical condition, rather than watch a full blown biography. Blast!!
Like some sort of nut, I tried jogging on the highway whilst returning to hostel from Madras. I figured I wasn’t getting enough exercise so, I decided this would be helpful. I had a back-pack so balancing it as well was bugging me a bit. It finally got to me and I tripped and fell right on my face (well… the hands got in the way). Bruised my palm pretty bad and it was quite obviously burning. The tar road was hot. The weather didn’t help either. I did not realize that even if I did continue with the jogging and reached the main gate of the campus, there still was about a half a mile that I must walk to get to water and my room.
And so, in my wonderful disposition, there was very little I could do, but walk with sweat trickling over the wound that was now wide open and I pushed and I pushed. For those thirty odd minutes, my brain was behind time. Usually the brain, or the mind is a little ahead, I mean, it is already concerned about what I must do once in hostel. This is what keeps the feet walking. But now the feet were rescuing the brain….
Good for me, none of what I typed so far ever happened! But it got y’all this far into the post… So this is the stuff everyone wants to read about; worries of other people, some excitement, something to keep ‘em gripped…Hmmm. I am so deep into the subject of metaphysics, I should probably get up to date with some human psychology as well eh?
I am a regular fella at the library and I sometimes think the staff knows when I come or am going to come. I have just been wondering what this unemployable library staff is supposed to be doing when there are no folks there. They seem utterly jobless and walk around like zombies.
There are three floors–ground, first and second. The ground floor has all the magazines and that's where the air-conditioning is saving lives in this menacing heat. When students are around, the staff is generally trying to keep them as quiet as possible. This is fine as long as there are people around. I have been in this section alone a couple of times and these fellas just find a chair and sleep.
First floor is the reference section. Its another story that folks going there are usually found reading the papers. There is this old balding fella at the table reading some magazine, or at the shelves just arranging the books and journals. This blighter is found sleeping most often. Why does the college need this guy….hmmm. On the second floor is the main library with the books. There are as many as 40,000 technical books here and about a shelf and-a-half of fiction. You must have a pair of binoculars if you are around here looking for fiction. Not a great collection either. The idiots here are so jobless, they won't leave you alone. They will come and ask if I found the book I was looking for, or if I was wondering where to look. This constant nagging just gets on to my nerves. I know my way around the library, especially after they put up sign boards all over the friggin' place! Do I need this fella….hmmm.
The next time he came, I sent him to some far-away section and did not bother to follow him. Must have made him quite mad eh? I did hear him calling, but I was already at the door with the book I needed. Some job these guys have.
Let's be very frank. How many of us knew of a genre called 'Industrial Metal?' I just found this out two days ago on Wikipedia, thanks to a couple of songs that I heard by Rammstein. These guys are just some freaks from Germany playing some really wild music. I have heard these three tunes– Engel, Du-Hast, and Amerika. They appear to be very beats oriented and the music is meant to be played really loud to feel the effects. They have the most unusual of influences. One particular song I haven't heard is called 'Dalai Lama' has lyrics inspired by some poem by Goethe.
I am beginning to like this 'metal' genre of music. The sensitivity is missing ofcourse, as is the case with most bands of this kind. I love the rhythm and superbly distorted guitar tone. So, what have I been listening to? Queensryche, Dio, Firehouse, Thunder, and Van Halen. Not too much though, I still like Jethro Tull. Nobody this far has come even a lightyear too close to them yet.
The end of the semester inches nearer and so do deadlines; for record submissions and the round of patching up with the professors (you would like them not to screw your internal marks!). All the time that I usually spend playing the guitar, reading fiction, watching movies, and generally hanging about will all be channelized to finishing these pointless record notebooks. What a way to make you an engineer…
Meanwhile, during the time between sleep and brushing my teeth, I am reading this spectacular book I picked up from my grandfather's place. I visit them weekends when possible, because I am 45 kilometers away in a hostel trapped inside my college. Coming back to the book, its titled- "Mind According to Vedanta" written by Swami Satprakashananda. It has this brilliant insight into how the mind works, how we are able to talk about the mind, how the mind is actually an instrument and how we are more powerful than the mind since we are able to analyze its functions. The Self.
I am only halfway through it, but it is simply fascinating me in every single page. I can't believe I didn't spot this one sooner. I am usually hunting for books to read and managed only to pick up a Wodehouse or two, some Arthur Haileys etc.
I think the world needs books like these. We are so thoroughly jobless individuals always looking for ways to give the next man something to suffer with. Its really sad.
The moment a book like this opens the mind up, it does miracles. We forget these sense pleasures and move on to moral purity and further to intellectual delight. We become relaxed, more compassionate, more composed, and very calm. Its simply magnificent. And suddenly, I am not worried about those record notebooks I am to complete, I just understand that it is possible, not stressful.
I am very disappointed with the new Rock bands that have emerged in the last 5 or 7 years. They seem to only do love-songs. Have they been falsely classified under "Rock"? I am not against love-songs, but I do expect some subject variety in Rock music. This is probably the reason that I am still listening to Jethro Tull and Pink Floyd, Credence Clearwater Revival, Queen, Wishbone Ash etc. That are primarily categorised under Rock, be it Progressive, Psychedelic, Blues. And of late, I have also taken a liking to the sounds of - Thunder, Status Quo, Van Halen, Megadeth, System of a Down, Oasis and the likes.
The new bands I particularly refer to are Coldplay, 3 Doors Down, Nickelback, Creed etc. What has happened to subject variety? Its all about fantasizing a woman in their lives, or the fact that some woman left 'em heartbroken. We haven't seen a movement, like the one in the sixties and the seventies. I do not expect the same one again but the new generation of people that I too am part of, must also witness a musical revolution. I thought Nickelback had good sound, but then they are getting monotonous, quite unlike the genre of Rock. The music sounds Pop-ish and for this reason alone, Pop audiences are beginning to fancy these new bands.
The way I see it, this is however not a bad thing. These bands are probably trying to get the attention of Pop audiences and when they have enough, will revert to their rock origins. Atleast so I expect and hope. Its good to be optimistic at times.
I had wandered off to deep, deep space. In search, in pursuit of an image unimaginable. He watched me as I covered another light year. He wasn't very happy with what he saw. "Its pointless," he growled, for he realised that after coming this far into space, every light year that I covered resulted in the same familiar picture- a few hundred billion galaxies around me.
He just could not tolerate what I was doing."You are only avoiding work. Look around. Everyone is working, working hard to be somebody."He further pointed out the only reason I was able to come this far in the first place. He says I had seen pictures taken by the Hubble Space telescope, the Voyager, the Nimbus and all other machines built by man for that purpose alone. The brain had very intricately spun out what appeared to be a real time motion picture using up those images. Man's work was responsible for what I was doing and, unless he built a better machine, my pursuit was pointless. He believes what every man over thousands of years has been made to believe. The plants, the animals, humans, and each and everything that breathes are all cells, units that comprise of a more massive organism. An organism no one has seen. An organism he calls God. All the work that these do contribute to the working of God. A mistake receives punishment…the system. They all must work.
"What's the point of that?" I argue. "No point apparently, but God likes the better man. We compete. We are quite willing to destroy and disturb others just to be number one."
It still does not convince me. There will always be people who are better, more reliable, more efficient, more intelligent, faster, stronger, till they all become like machines. They won't be any spontaniety. We will have one big solid, rigid world. When will they turn to me? When will they be what they are meant to be-part of nature? That ever so spontaneous being whose movements nobody can predict.The funny part is every time I surface, I am suppressed. I only surface when good music's playing, when he is burdened with work and when solitary. But all it takes for him to take over is one unstisfactory performance in a routine test. Will I always be suppressed like this, never to be wondered about?I am never too far away, I am he; he is I and we coexist. The trouble is, that they'll all see him, observe what he does and appreciate his accomplishments. They will never see me.Its a coup, I tell ya. A coup, that's what it is. Sadly. In the words of Ian Anderson of the Jethro Tull, from a song titled -'Inside'
"…All the places I've been, make it hard to begin, To enjoy life again on the inside, but I mean to. Take a walk round the block, and be glad that I've got, Me some time to be in from the outside, and inside you.
I am sitting in the corner feeling glad. Got no money coming in but I can't be sad.That was the best cup of coffee I ever had,And I don't worry 'bout a thing 'coz you've got me, Here on the inside, outside so far away.
Take a walk in the park, 'coz the wind in the dark, Sounds like music to you while I'm thinking, it does to me.
Counting lambs, counting sheep, we will fall into sleep, And awake to a new day of living, and loving so…"
Isn't it time we had a round of physical adaptation? The real idea of evolution was based on physical adaptation, and we have not had that in a long, long time. Since the dark ages (let me not go too far back in time), we have seen only mental adaptation. Intelligence, argumentative capabilities, analytic thought and understanding in and of relationships; these are the changes we have seen and felt.So, when is that phase of evolution going to resume? Geoffrey Miller said to Newscientist earlier this month that in the next thousand years, humans will be more beautiful, intelligent, symmetric, and virtually disease free, thanks to 40 generations of genetic shielding from mutation.We still remain humans then? When are we going to become a different organism? It sometimes occurs to me that we could become just thought entities, like the mind only… no physical form. Like God? Perhaps… that could well be the next step in evolution. I'd like to think that. I think I read about this or heard this from someone, I am not very sure if this is an original thought. A new one nevertheless We are able to accept and relate very well to movies with ghosts in them, maybe somewhere in the mind, we expect to be one. A little Freudian psychoanalysis can spice things up a bit, I am sure it can. Or maybe I require psychoanalysis. My intention is not to form a theory, just bring up some of my thoughts that are not entirely crackpot…marginally perhaps but not entirely. I refuse to think so.More on this when it occurs to me…as it precipitates. I'll just draft this one under Maturity…
It feels nice to be finally out of that annoying teen age as I am now. All that confusion, all those changes, the talk of maturity, and breaking some rules now and then. What was all that about? I think now, that the problem was information. There was just too much information shoved on to me. Trying to figure out which was a good philosophy and when things didn’t work out that way, I always had to adapt and change my opinions. There was always a clash of emotions and work and the tireless struggle to think how both could be one, not to mention the thought of utopia. Clearly, the missing ingredient was— Clarity.
When I say maturity, I actually mean to say clarity. To get a break in life, what is more important than any philosophy is, how you prioritize activities. There is a need, and let’s face it, to form a distinction between work and emotion. These always were two different things. There is no potential for a mix. I am in college pursuing mechanical engineering and 80 percent of the student population is either interested in bunking lectures or looking for a person of the opposite sex to talk to, or both of these. Do these things have to be done during class hours? Did these people join an intensive program such as this to pursue these activities? Why does it appear to be so? Such is the reality around here that some of my peers wish me to do the same. I don’t. It can wait. I can wait. Its a matter of four years, a time well spent preparing for life and its pleasures.
Is it such a crime to have financial independence as a primary goal…A battle between work and emotions in my current disposition is a lost one as far as emotion is concerned. Not that I am a rock; I just think there is a time for everything…prioritzing is key. I do admit that yes, I probably do crave for the company of a girl I love. It is bound to happen someday. Its not something I can escape.
It is only because someone understood this, that there are workplaces and there are recreational centers and there is home. They are different in all respects except for the fact that there is a biological life form called a human being involved. The atmosphere, the furniture, the decor, the mental disposition is different. If work and emotion could mix… it is but a teenager’s dream, a premature one. Clarity of thought is, maturity.
