The world, how it works, surroundings, myself, etc.

Tuesday, February 22, 2005

Imposter Indiatimes on Sex Sells


I landed to this article titled "Too much sleaze spoils the song" on Times
of India, Indiatimes.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/msid-1025714,curpg-1.cms

Though yet another count+1 for an article in this
preserve-society-and-heritage category, the article shamelessly vomits out
the gossip, quite (conveniently) ignoring its own pages (www.indiatimes.com).

The author (VINITA A SHETTY) talks about the changing face of the Indian
music videos, that they get raunchier and sleazier day by day, and that
since nothing sells like sex, these upcoming music videos belittle the
already tiny clothes their cute ladies put up to harvest more are more.
Interesting however, is the fact that on the very same page where
authoress preaches DJ Doll being sleazy in Kaanta Lagaa and Sanober
gyrating provocatively to Meri Beri Ke Ber, the very same "sleazy" and
provocatively gyrating pictures are posted. Oh, they are just for
reference? I see. That's why the article had to span 3 pages so as to
envision the world with the sleaziness of all these girls!. And did we
forget that www.Indiatimes.com itself opens with a new semi-nude picture
enchanting your eye every day? Or did we miss the provocative pictures
that practically every page on this site displays? Now, don't tell me all
of your articles need a back-reference to the likes of Sanober's hips!

Grow up. Don't preach just for the sake of it. At least, follow as you
preach.

Monday, February 21, 2005

Indian ancient discovery and heritate: an example I found.


Often, unconsciously, we dismiss our ancient tradition as superstitious
and ignorant, but there do occur several instances when this view is
shattered.

I was going through some bioinformatics essay on Diabetes at nih.gov and at
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/bv.fcgi?rid=diabetes.section.5 I found
that the symptoms of Diabetes was discovered as early as 400 BC by the
Indian physician Sushruta. He described the sweet taste of urine from
affected individuals lending to black ants and flies attracted to the
urine of diabetics. This sweet taste of urine was key to its diagnosis.

Friday, February 18, 2005

The sparkle of diamonds


I landed myself to a diamond jewelery shop yesterday evening. Tanishq,
the shop, bore the enchanting dim of an exotic place. The ambiance was
just right. Several small counters were segregately placed at a number
of places. Soon we were attended by the salesperson at one of these
counters. He showed us an earring, 22 carat gold studded with diamonds
in the middle. I held the diamond earring in my hand and gave it a look
and that was it -- I was mesmerized. The diamond shattered light into so
many sparkling colors several of them into my eyes and I was sure that
I'd buy it. The only pinch was -- it cost Rs 6600/- I know I'll have to
invest several months of my TAship money to fork that amount but the
thousand watt smile that'd light up the person to whom I'll give this is
totally worth it. Now I just need the money.

Truly enough, Diamonds are forever.

Tuesday, February 15, 2005

World: Big or small


Sometimes we feel the world is so big and huge that we can get lost so
easily. There's scope for so much randomness and anonymity and
haphazardness that nothing at all can be predicted; nothing can be
relied upon.

However, equally probable are the surprises that so often greet you.
Quite often you feel that something magical has happened and you knew it
happening; randomness wasn't truly unpredictable. I just had one of
these feelings. I had sent a mail to my professor Dr P J Narayanan and
was sure that I'd be getting a reply but when -- I could never tell. And
all of a sudden I felt as if a mail had just dropped to my mailbox and
so I fired up my mail client and lo and behold there it was. It wasn't
there for long. I somehow came to know that the reply had come.

WoW! -- the human instincts.

Sunday, February 06, 2005

Love

Love, the divine feeling, the inexplicable sense of being that surrounds
everyone of us, the one thing everyone really craves for, the one
language everyone unanimously comprehends unobscured. Love, the feeling
whose medium of expression we do not understand. Love, the word which
fetches 149 million Google results.

I won't be utterly surprised if it's discovered that love is the
ultimate cause that keeps life moving; that it is for love that one
lives, works, eats, dances, cries, laughs, or does anything else for
that matter. It could be quite possible that it is love that answers the
cause for existence.

A newborn baby cries. Why? Admittedly, it's all that he/she can probably
do. And a gentle hug from his/her mother suffices to calm it down from
the unrest. A lover yearns for his darling, impatiently, heart beating
loud. Why? A gentle sight of his beloved extinguishes all speculations
and serenity condescends in his heart.

To talk of historic stories and epics, several deeds and misdeeds have
been done for love and we all know about it. Taj Mahal, the singular
monument of love for a wife. Imagine how much grit it must have taken
for ailing Shah Jahan to create something in memory for his darling.
Nostalgic the presence of love is. Why does one want to remember things?
Isn't there love in that?

A single thought of a gentle kiss on the forehead from one's mother
spreads the lips in way of a smile and further thoughts sure elongate it
to a grin. An eye-closed remembrance of the first time one saw one's
beloved sends the heart doing several beats faster than normal and a
strange but soothing calmness and serenity looms large in the mind and
heart.

Love, the whatever which has a presence in everyone and everything
however small of big, however busy of unemployed, is yet so little
understood. Poets try to replicate the soothing feeling in words. They
sure know how bitterly words fall short of expression in their composition.

Love reigns supreme.

Tuesday, February 01, 2005

Who are we? --Sankrant Sanu

I've just now returned from a singularly distinct and existentiality
provoking talk by Sankrant Sanu at the Seminar Hall in the institute. He
had been one of Dr Sangal, our director's, students. As a consultant and
freelance writer he has this website www.sulekha.com

It was befitting what he talked about..totally.
He began with how the West world chooses to study us Indians and dictate
terms, history, rules, vision, for us. And how carefully manipulated
their-presented facts have been as the once rulers of India to shatter
the self-esteem of the people. They, through their historians,
propagated that India, per se, didn't have any solidarity or the sense
of Indian-ness by itself and that it were the Britishers who
consolidated all the fallen pieces into one India. How more untrue could
they be when the West, England and United States included, themselves
have hardly a history to boast about. They themselves are hardly
one-and-a-half century old to boast about the solidarity of their nation.

Sanu went on to bring out the need to realize the latent talent amongst
the people and that our system, most of it a follow-up of the British
system forcefully huddled on our back, needs to improvise into a
confident and sustained self. We hardly need to blindly follow their
ideals and dismiss all our traditions as superstitious just because we
don't understand their relevance. This exactly had been deliberately
maneuvered.

The closing sentence from Lord Mccauley's proposal on their colonial
efforts revealed that the damage or loss of ownership to our traditions
and thereby the self-esteem had been clearly proposed as the necessity
to achieve what they wanted: a dominion colony. It's bewildering.