Rumi Nations

So you think you've found your soulmate -> the guy who has the exact same crazy hobbies as you and wants to spend time doing the exact same goofy things as you do. You were always looking for a partner who was into reading classic literature and now you are sooo looking forward to spending the next months, years, and the lifetime itself together reading wonderful books to each other. But what if your interests doing quite coincide? You are sure you can reconcile your differences? So you're both into Hemingway and Faulkner and not into maudlin romances. But what if one of you suddenly develops a liking for 50 Shades? No gray areas? Well, you never know. You haven't spent 30 years talking about your interests. Indeed, your interests might change as you grow older and who knows, two people might grow old differently. They might be possessed of different demons. So you're both ornithologists. But what if one of you is interested in migratory birds while the other is ...

In a nation where millions of children have to work to 'earn' a living rather then going to school, the banality of discussions about 'God' and temples is breathtaking. Also, it baffles me that the so called 'educated' youth of India continue to believe in outdated ideas such as 'God.' I wish people would attempt to WAKE UP from their deep slumber and realize that this is the 21st century!! God and religions are responsible only for too much trouble, hatred and bloodshed in the world. What good is God? I do not see anything 'good' about God. If anyone argues that we get our moral bearings from God/religion, well, then there would be no need for an IPC and a criminal justice system and police.

Well, it will be a good riddance to the Commissioner if it turns out that he's being "fired." Is it my false impression that Neeraj Kumar is mostly busy currying favor with the political masters to ensure a "cushy" posting post-retirement ... or a transfer to a next high-profile job posting? Let me share a "personal" perspective about my dealings with the Office of the Commissioner of Delhi Police. I have sent umpteen emails to his office over the last one year complaining about incessant noise from loud speaker in gurudwara next to where I live. It's a daily problem. The only response I get to my emails is that the mail has been forwarded to the Jt. Comm. of Pol. of the relevant locality. When I call up the JCP's office, I get informed that the mail has been forwarded to the relevant DCP's office. I sometimes call up 100 frequently and even then the local police refuses to respond. Just a few days back on "Vaishakhi...

Honestly, I got thinking about this after reading this article in the New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/15/fashion/the-challenge-of-making-friends-as-an-adult.html? So we make friends when we are younger. Well may be we are less choosy and have more time. Let's face it, we are not very smart when we are just KIDS! We do not choose our school or classmates. Our parents decide those based on their economic circumstance or their religion or whatever. We do not choose our relations, our cousins. If even after we grow up, we continue to confine our lives to a small circle of family relations, we prove that we are pretty antiquated in our mindsets. As we grow older, we have less time. We do less exploring. I think that's our loss. And how do you RETAIN those old friendships if and/or when you discover that the paths you have chosen in life diverge rather than converge. Just because you happen to have studied in school together, you cannot ov...

No well-known person or personality would perhaps say what I’m going to say here. It’s merely stating the obvious to say that the world of Kabir Bedi does not exemplify the life of the average Indian. I am all for live-in relationships. Some talked about ‘blowing the brains off’ of the perpetrators. It’s worrying to see such over-the-top reactions. Is it too much to expect that people react calmly and in a measured way? What gave the incident prominence was clearly the fact that it was caught on video. We do not have video footage of those incidents of rape in moving cars and elsewhere. Imagine what the reaction would be if there was. Much killing of various sorts happened in Punjab in the 1980s and in Kashmir in the 1990s. But none of that was captured on video. Unmarked graves and skeletons are all that still give mute testimony to some of the chilling reality of Kashmir. The lack of video footage from inside the death chambers of Auschwitz and elsewhere do not...

When I happened to be hospitalized six months back, I got to experience firsthand all the aspects of privatized healthcare. I opted for one of those premium hospitals to avoid having to wrestle with the long lines and the general all-round madhouse atmosphere of a government hospital in India. I experienced the enormous cost of private healthcare which would surely be un-affordable for a vast majority of Indian families. I experienced the tricks of health insurance -- I had 2 or 3 policies but had to pay the entire cost out of pocket [in advance]. Very clever of profit-minded insurers. An example: I happened to be in the hospital for only one day and that was the deductible for one of the policies I was holding. Clearly I was not sick enough. But those are specific problems of the healthcare industry. What struck me was a personal experience which I feel I can extend and generalize.

Disclaimer: this is a personal reflection. As I observe a generation grow up in front of my eyes, I marvel at the choices they make. The lure of groupthink, the overwhelming herd mentality leaves me perplexed. I witness the astonishing tenacity of meaningless customs. People grow up in conventional households and acquire some sort of a degree and land some job or the other. Then they fall back on some age old method of finding a wife or a husband as the case may be. When I consider the absolutely inverted logic of arranged marriages, I am flabbergasted that anyone in the modern age would opt for it. And the youngsters are supposed to be educated. Why do they do it? Clearly the desire for sex outweighs the possibilities for pitfalls. Arranged marriages are above all safe choices … as safe as a choice of this sort can be. The alliances tend to take place among people who are already related to each other or belong to the same caste and district.

            There are people who believe that a river is a god. Or a goddess. It’s called the Ganga. The believers are the Hindus. They think it originates out of the head of a god called Shiva. BTW, that god also has a snake wrapped around his neck. There are other gods in Hinduism one of whom has four hands and holds specific stuff in them. A god with four heads is there. And a goddess with 10 hands. You won’t think with these sort of imaginative creations (or creators) being part of its collection, Hinduism might put up a fight with the major monotheistic religions of the world to claim the title of being the most rational religion or the one that makes the most sense. But I think these folks notwithstanding, the overall religion makes more sense than other religions. If you look at the other religions (I have Islam and Christianity in mind specifically), they propose that specific humans were representatives of an unseen god. In the case of Chris...

Every Monday morning, there's a universal outpouring of groans — that it's MONDAY again! It's as if everybody's mom-in-law AGAIN was about to come to visit them on Monday. This deafening noise is heard in specific parts of the world. It comes from the office-going class of people. In India, the young generation of IT and other professionals make this noise through all available means such as Facebook and Twitter. I suppose it's the same in the developed world where people have been caught up in this vicious cycle for a generation or more now. I don't know about rural America or rural Europe, but in rural India, villagers don't start groaning on Monday mornings. There's hardly any difference between Mondays or other days of the week. Their life-cycle is not a weekly one. Conversely, there's invariably an exuberant outpouring of joy come Friday. It starts in the morning itself and rises to a crescendo by the afternoon by when the youngsters i...

Clearly that brings together two important topics. Greta Cristina writes wonderfully about a report that has come out that shows how atheists have it better in matters of sex. Good to hear. But the survey is clearly confined to Western nations with their (already) rather liberal cultures and the three monotheistic religions. I want to bring a bit of a different perspective to it. Here in India, I have observed an entire generation grow up during the 30 odd years of my own life. It has been quite bewilderingly disappointing to see the way the younger generation deals with the existing cultural and religious value systems. To be sure, while growing up, kids in India are incessantly bombarded with the idea that it's important to respect the elderly, that they are great storehouses of knowledge and experience and wisdom. Clearly, the matter of respecting one's elders would have made sense in agrarian societies where the elderly would really have in fact mo...

Werner Heisenberg [in Physics and Beyond , 1971] recollects a friendly conversation among young participants at the 1927 Solvay Conference, about Einstein and Planck's views on religion. Wolfgang Pauli, Heisenberg, and Dirac took part in it. Dirac's contribution was a poignant and clear criticism of the political manipulation of religion, that was much appreciated for its lucidity by Bohr, when Heisenberg reported it to him later. Among other things, Dirac said: "I cannot understand why we idle discussing religion. If we are honest — and as scientists honesty is our precise duty — we cannot help but admit that any religion is a pack of false statements, deprived of any real foundation. The very idea of God is a product of human imagination. [...] I do not recognize any religious myth, at least because they contradict one another. [...]" Heisenberg's view was tolerant. Pauli had kept silent, after some initial remarks. But when finally he was asked for his opinion,...

It's lazy thinking mostly. As anyone who has seen Hitchens obliterate the illogic of religion will say, it's a crazy situation why anyone can continue to believe in this nonsense. Again, anyone who has seen the elegant Dawkins beautifully explain the logic of evolution will wonder how anyone can be left untouched by this beautiful tale. But how many people will have heard of Dawkins to begin with. And so this ancient hogwash endures. There are many more reasons for the endurance of religion of course. People are mostly poor — that's the unfortunate reality as it applies to most parts of the world. That being the case, people are mostly busy worrying about how to put food on the table and into their tummies. Intellectual queries are a luxury that only a few can afford to indulge in ... It's odd to see how people regress when they are faced with personal difficulties. Even in prosperous societies such as America, one sees people finding solace in religion when they are in...

I am wondering about this "relevant" issue as an Indian. For Indians, life is basically doing things as per predefined "rules" instituted by "sages" and "wise men" from time immemorial. Baiscally, it's a load of crap of course. What is truly saddening is to observe the young generation that thinks it's so "modern" and "hip" behave in the same old asinine ways as their ancestors. I pity this pseudo-modern young generation ... it's of course frustrating as well to see these young chaps so unquestioningly accept such half baked ideas. "Tradition" is this catch-all phrase that is used to include everything including religion and marriage rituals and birth rituals and death rituals and everything in between. I would be truly amazed if youngsters really think that all these hand-me-down stuff must be correct just because everybody else is doing the same thing ... Einstein did not propose his theories of relativ...

The other day, my boss referenced a speech by Prince Charles wherein he talked about 'cabuncles.' That was a speech the Prince had made in 1984 - as I later found out. I didn't know about that speech. I have fascination for the decade of the sixties. The reason for that being that the 60s were a tumultuous decade. That decade saw a lot of turbulence but turbulence is often the fountainhead for human creativity. People need to have tumult in their lives for them to question conventinal wisdom and accepted truths. Every generation should try to 'reinvent the wheel'; indeed, think of it as a sacred duty to do that. I am thinking of the values of life or what is handed down to us as revealed truth. In the India that we live in today, there's too little of the kind of questioning that took place in the United States during the decade of the sixties. So, we see this younger generation of Indians so at ease with their cellphones clinging on to some very old and meaning...

This day marks the end of a tumultuous life … I was thinking oddly enough about whether MJ will be part of the In Memoriam section on Oscar night next year … The extraordinary levels of fame that accrues to people in the entertainment industry is a strange and new phenomenon of the 20th century and beyond … the extraordinary power of music to touch people in the deepest possible way is something quite mysterious. Bob Dylan talked about people listening and liking a song that he had written and thinking that they knew him … but really, of course, they didn’t. That’s true for all music and all musicians. Unlike Bob Dylan, most musicians revel in the public adulation that they get … indeed, it tends to be the primary purpose of their music to gain that public acclaim. But what’s it in a person’s ability to sing well or dance well that makes them so appealing to so wide a spectrum of the population? Are humans so fundamentally a species hardwired to ‘like’ these talents? From an evoluti...

President Obama was in Cairo recently and addressed students of Cairo University. Egypt is of course one of the oldest civilaztions on the planet with the pyramids having been built some 5,000 years ago — the human mind with a human lifespan of 60/70 years is certainly incapable of making sense of a timeframe that long. A city like Cairo must have seen so much through the thousands of years of its history. Today, it stands at the crossroads of the 'Clash of Civilizations' debate between Western and Islamic civilizations. President Obama sought to 're-connect' with the 'alienated' Muslim world by this speech. He addressed some central issues: Iran's march towards acquiring nuclear weapons, Israel's right to exist, the right of the Palestininian people to a homeland, the threat of Al Qaida and Taliban in Pakistan/Afghanistan, the plight of women ... or, the 'right' of women to live the way they want to ... whether they want to get educated and purs...

Time to ride my hobby horse ... Nothing perplexes me more than people's extraordinary level of faith in the almighty ... or, should that be Almighty? I always wonder what are people's motivations for holding on to such an archaic structure ... Anybody with a modicum of common sense and a rudimentary knowledge about the history of the world would appreciate that all of these major world religions were 'invented' about 2,000 years ago ... Christianity and Islam were founded by prophets belonging to small settlements or kingdoms in what is now known as the Middle East while Hinduism and Buddhism were started in the region that was home to what is broadly known as the Indus Valley civilization ... Why were no religions invented elsewhere? Well, the answer to that is simple — couple of millenia ago, planet Earth wasn't home to 6 billion humans ... or a billion humans. The Americas were probably entirely dominated by wildlife ... Some might ponder as to why it is that all...