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God,Grant me a wish - Take everything away !!

I guess a week is over since I have been languishing in the bountiful lap of nature in Kerala and as I say it is one place that is disturbingly peaceful. You start so much of introspection that it gets to you after a certain point of time. Such is the peace here. The other day I was travelling in the bus when this thought of the ever clichéd unemployment aspect of the state stuck me. Kerala is notoriously famous for its high literacy rate (that is a farce anyways) and the unemployment despite the literacy. Gazing through all the natural bountifulness of the state one thing struck me, when I saw a couple of young guys sitting under a tree and smoking away their beedis.

It is said that necessity is the mother of all invention(there is something about all these adages, they might be clichéd but carry a certain level of truth).So that translates into the fact that if there is no necessity there will not be any forward thinking because one is comfortable in his/her own cocoon. Three things that stand out about Kerala any day would be the fish, rain and rice. If there is ever a word association exercise with Kerala these three would be the front runners I guess along with Strikes, communism and coconut probably. Now let’s look at the ideal Kerala family setting and I am not talking about the Kerala in cities(if there is any) where people haven’t seen a well. I am talking about the agrarian Kerala. Each home will have a comfortable number of coconut trees, banana trees, a well and rice would be their staple food any day along with fish. Even if they don’t work they can sell the coconuts, use coir, get coconut oil for normal chores, bananas for nutrition, rain is plenty in Kerala and hence the constant availability of water added with not that depleted water table. The land is fertile and hence there will be enough demand for land based factor work .Hence there is never a scarcity. Everything is readily available.

Everyone knows the story of Japanese resurgence after the world war when it was battling a tattered economy and lack of any natural resources. Let’s think of Indian states itself .Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Punjab etc .None of them are as blessed as Kerala, but then that constraint has allowed them to utilize each and every resource very well and utilize their human capital which harvests the natural resources than simply pluck the natural resources .Constraints are needed to perform at optimal level, the absence of which leads to under-utilization and below average capacity performance as there is no initiative to perform or let’s say perform that extra bit, same holds true for any aspect of life. Constraints have to be used not avoided.                                                                                                                 

Your environment makes you and hence when you have a tailor made environment, you never are motivated enough to look beyond the regular sources because the regular sources are a plenty. The peaceful environment makes one timid all the more and un- rebellious. The problem or the paradox is not that they are not using resources but using it all too often and at a pretty sustainable rate and to top all of that a communist ruled state .Ideal settings for the lackadaisical. It is not the problem of scarcity of resources but a paradox of a complete set of resources that curbs the man’s nomadic tendency to explore further. The irony of being blessed by all means and not having to struggle. Same goes for its twin sister West Bengal. Absolutely same microcosm .This my friends is the paradox of abundance .Survival might be guaranteed by natural resources but not prosperity, prosperity can be guaranteed only if there is proper human capital and technology involved with or without nature .When you stop resisting a major factor you tend to get shaped by that factor .So it’s not a surprising fact that people in Kerala have become complacent, comforting, unproductive, undemanding and over and above idle. If an idle mind is a devils workshop then it’s the ultimate parody that this place be called gods own country.

My friend - Rich, fair and famous!!

 

This one was broiling in there for a long time. We all have an inherent bias in each and everyone of us no matter how unbiased we would like the others to perceive us. There is a side to us, dark they say, that everyone tries not to project, tries to eclipse it with some façade.But how realistic is this build up is another matter of contention.

Isnt it  true that we still are discriminating when it comes to black or white? Boy or Girl?Hindu or Muslim?Many of us will not agree but we are still biased towards white is beautiful and black is ummm,well, not that beautiful and that goes even for people of the black skin or brown or leathered or tanned or dusky or whatever.  This practice is very evident in hiring proceses,selection let it be in reality tv shows or anything in general. But none wants to accept that. We fit in euphemisms to satiate our bias,dusky for black for example.Presentable for good looking.How can I forget the lovely matrimonial ads that straight away shoot off by saying that “looking for a bride who is fair,good looking and tall”.

How many times have we cracked that odd joke on Mallus(Hey,ask me how many I have heard and I love em!),sardars,north eastern brandished as chinkis to name a few.We just see a person and snap! We form an impression .Bias too.Well the point is that its not something to be ashamed off.Greatness,(well not exactly greatness because that would mean I am great)lies in accepting the penchant and working thereof.How many times have we laughed on the accent of certain people when ours itself is a far cry from perfect?

The point is that we have differentiated and selected all through out our life.Even our own set of friends too. Haven’t there been  enough instances when we have wanted to friend a person of the other sex because she /he happens to be cool and sexy and hot and handsome and all that.I don’t know how many of you will agree but I have.We all have and then we justify it by saying that we were never thinking on those lines and that you  are un-corrupt and have friended a person because of the good heart he or she had and nothing else.Bullshit.From my personal experience,I have seen several instances when a baby is called ‘oh cho cute’ and the only reason I can attribute to it is his or her color or because of the little Adidas slipper he/she is wearing that cost Rs999.I atleast am free of that bias.I don’t like or rather am disinterested towards kids in general(not that all of you who like them are paedophiles).Most of us(men) would be more than willing to help a hot girl,or any girl for that matter rather than an old woman.In a household tussle it is taken granted that it is the male who is defector(The Ghanti Bajaao campaign for instance).

Time to be practical now.Can we do away with the bias and  be open minded and profess our equality in the real manner?No we cant.It is an inbuilt mechanism and this will never go off.We will always be biased.Yeah! you read it right! The difference lies if we realize it or not,acknowledge or not.Each and everyone of us is biased deep inside us,most of us are pretty evident too.Everyone wants to be associated with a certain set of sets.There will always be bias regarding rich poor,white black,hot or not,young old.It is the biases,prejudices and habits that make a person,that decides the level of variability in a person.

Duck it or face it. 

Mirror Mirror on the wall.Who's the wisest of them all?

 Whether  you believe you can or not- you are right - Henry Ford.

 Second of my posts on why you should never just write down and believe whatever is taught to you downright.The first one being the one on atheism.Todays concept that I don’t affirm  is WISDOM OF THE CROWD.

WISDOM OF THE CROWD says that “The aggregation of information in groups, resulting in decisions are often better than could have been made by any single member of the group.”

There is an interesting book on it too by James Surowiecki by the same name.

Now lets clarify this in the beginning itself.I believe that all generalizations are false.

Wisdom of the crowd according to me is nothing but orchestration of  individual opinions.

Now,What makes a crowd,the people in it.That means that the individual person in a group is the pivotal fragment of the final outcome that is arrived as a group.That the group thrives on nothing but individual independent deduction of the problem statement.

One of the pre requisite of the wisdom of the crowd is the independence of those who are surveyed.

This itself according to me is the major pitfall of the wisdom of the crowd.In the end ,the bottom line is that eventhough it is called the wisdom of the crowd,it is necessary for it to have people who do not get influenced by each other and take independent decisions.apply this to real life situations .

 

A million experiments might prove that the wisdom of the crowd is far more accurate than the individual opinion.Like the one we had been subjected to in a class of 60,where we were asked to gauge the width of a remote control and the average of the group was more closer than the random three people who were picked.But something that the experiment failed to point out was, what about the few handful of people who have it answered more closer than the so called wisdom of the crowd?Exception but not a rule,one might say.But isn’t it true that the people who are exceptions and lie outside the normal bell curve are the people who will be more effective and influence every one more than anyone else who depend upon the whims of others,who are tied to please others and not themselves and in the process deny themselves the right to love themselves by not doing what they want,who do not love them enough.Those who love themselves are the OUTLIERS.

Does wisdom of crowd hold true in a dynamic and changing environment?The answer is No.

And lets consider that wisdom of the crowd is indeed wise.so?what is wise?

Something that tells one that the correct answer is this and it is the safest answer.where you  will be guaranteed a positive result.BORING.

I would much rather prefer an answer where not pre determined and is risky.Feel the adrenaline blow up  all along in those crucial moments and shout out loud that “I knew I was right!”,than having the herd menatality(clichéd but true).

 

I have always been a strong advocate of taking your own decisions and  if I apply WotC,it would mean that the people around me,the “crowd” is more wise than me.Come again?Absolute crass.If you think that people around you can take decisions on you much better than yourself then you,my friend,suffer from a grave disease that I will mention in capitals later.

By the way,Ever felt the exhilaration when you have gone against a crowd of thoughts,contemplations and deliberations?Ever felt the urge to prove them, “the crowd” wrong?To prove that what you do is the best for you and none can judge you better than yourself?The sensation of emptiness in your stomach that is dug in by the fear of failure and the anxiety of triumph or the feeling of being up there resting in the bed of roses after traversing through the path of thorns?Proving everyone else wrong and succeeding where people vanquished enough acquiesce  that ‘I was wrong and you were right’.The collection of all those  I’s is what formed the crowd earlier.

How many times have you gone against your gut feeling to please people and be less effective and satisfied in the process?loved yourself less at the cost of pleasing others?That is what leads to the most epidemic disease in human beings that makes their life not worth savoring .An Epidemic called MEDIOCRITY.

KNOCK KNOCK.Whos That?GOD.God Who?

How often have we heard our parents and grand parents advise us the virtues of thinking good and emulate the same inorder to gratify the gods and reserve a seat in the bus to heaven.

We all grew up listening to fairy enchanting stories of multi ambidextrous gods or godesses who stamp evil with justice and goodness.A pattern has been imprinted to accept whatever is being served by our environment.External or Internal alike.

Society forms the external environment and sets the framework within which we are supposed to function and we have our parents,grand parents,teachers and others forming our internal environment.The gushing streams of beliefs from the latter seem to be more rigid that we are not encouraged to question.EVER!

No son you dont ask such a question.Never ask such a question.Dont talk rubbish.I am never going to hear all this from you again ok?Yea mamma..Yes paapa.But why?

WHY was never entertained.

It is an interesting and demonstrable fact, that all children are atheists and were religion not included into their minds,they would remain so.

So true.

Well what is religion?

A group of people forming an association having sharing thoughts and beliefs and evolve some commonality.Churches were the first facebooks and orkuts that existed.However over a period of time as they say they transformed from a cabal to a influential coterie,power held firmly within few.ABSOLUTE power.COERCIVE power.and as they say power corrupts.They took on to become the torchbearers of each sect and then started the missionaries and their travails.(TIP OF THE DAY - Google Missionary Position)

With only one rule - no questions.Just blind acceptance.

I Believe,the only purpose that god and religion serve are to pass on a message in a form of a parable.Unfortunately it has also transited into pulverizing opposite ideals without giving a fair hearing.Unveiling the greatest innovation of all time.Religion.The process that starts from concoting terribly simple parables that require creativity and are segmented,targeted and positioned very precisely to each age group.Commercialized through scriptures and books.Here commercialisation is not pecuniary(Debatable as always) but a great market share of blind followers.Process of idolizing the natural forces into gods having human like shapes to make empathy possible among the followers was another beautiful creative spark.

Now I am not critical of the 99 % who believe in God.I dare not be.Because that goes against the principle of liberty and freedom of choice that atheism solicits but the fact of accepting everything as it was passed is something that is unnaceptable and is something like the chinese whisper.Bow your head,accept and pass on believing it to be true.Naa it doesnt work that way.It shouldnt!

Majority behold atheism as a revulsive, 'trying to be different' group.

Well.Myriad great  people who have influenced our lives have been atheists or let me be a little more bold and say Darers(Uh,is there a word like that?Well anyways you got what I want to say).Alert,I dont mean that conformists have been doing nothing.

All thinking men are atheists said Ernest Hemingway.Well I am not an enthusiast of generalisations but still atheism and genius do have some positive correlation for sure.Thomas Jefferson,Sigmund Freud,Benjamin Franklin,George Washington,Abraham Lincoln,Roosevelt,Karl Marx,Ayn Rand,Aristotle,Albert Einstein,Thomas Edison,Galeilio,Stephen Hawking and oodles of others among the distinguished lot.Well,wonder what they would have been known for if they had limited themselves by the society,the church and other religious institutions.Wonder where we would have been.

 

Lets have two famous quotes now.

 

Lighthouses are more helpful then churches. — Benjamin Franklin

 

The church says the earth is flat, but I know that it is round, for I have seen the shadow on the moon, and I have more faith in a shadow than in the church.— Ferdinand Magellan

 

However I think that people have been too tough on christianity as such because of its much more traceable roots.The church has become a generic to fallacy.

Religion is good if it is kept simple,infact thats a common rule.An open house to discuss common problems.

Personally,I am of the point of view that religion and god were created because of the human inclination to believe in hierarchy and the comforting factor that there is someone who is watching you all the time and will be there for you if you call him/her earnestly.This soothes the fear in the human mind.FEAR.The cardinal ominous antecedent on which all hopes and beliefs are built upon.Human mind has always gravitated towards safety and security.What better manifestations than God and Religion.

Todays world is circumscribed by expectations,competition and misery that it becomes all the more essential for people to blame it on circumstances and fate and thus resign to the fact that everything was according to the eternal plan.But then todays world has also made people ask as to why there is so much misery if the god stood for goodness.

''Brave New World'' sums it up aptly -

"chastity means passion, chastity means neurasthenia. And passion and

neurasthenia mean instability. And instability means the end of civilization. You

can't have a lasting civilization without plenty of pleasant vices."

Hence the need to go through the path of least resistance.Hence the vice.

GOD BLESS YOU ALL!!

 

NAMASTAY - WELCOME TO INDEEYA !!

 WHY IS SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE SO POPULAR?

a) its Fantastic

 

b) its in Oscars

 

c) its uncool to be not liking the movie

 

d) its Overrated

 

 

''Namastay''

Welcome to the world where people are dying to get associated with Brand India.Brad pitt,Angelina Jolie,Britney,Maddona,Liz Hurley (cant remember m

ore..thank god for GOOGLE)and now annex the name of  Danny 'Trainspotting' Boyle..

Well the whole big round world is going gaga over the au courant sensation The ''Slumdog Miilliionaire''..Jamaal Malik has mesmerized each and every assemblage who have seen it .Well  I saw it too..and long back ..ya you guessed it right(you didnt?)..on a Pirated dvd print(what?you dont believe in piracy?too bad)..without a hint of feeling guilt for the piracy , i was also impressed by the movie..when there was no banter about the movie that time..

but all of a sudden ..GUSH..The floodgates of Luck flowed in..the movie slowly rose level by level as Jamaal malik and was  inundated with awards and more importantly critics appreciation(An Oxymoron) all over..The list seemed boundless one after the other..

10 nominations in the Oscars(hmm..impressive)..then the American  Cinema Editors,USA(nice)..BAFTA Awards(ohhk!)..Austin film festival(Austin what?),Black Reel awards

(let me google what it is),Boston Society Of Film Critics Awards(forget it) and many others that google served me when I typed 'Slumdog Millionaire' and it swamped me with 11,900,000 and awards that one has never heard..its 

almost as if awarding

SDM(the name is dog..slumdog..well..too long!)) is the best way to advetise

your 'street and club' award organisation..

What were the aspects that according to people made it the pride of every Indian ?

Fantastic theme.India at the core.An Angrez director who was behind movies likeTrainspotting.English production house.Cinematography.Inspirography(Bad joke) and all the cinema jargons the human mind can surmise of.

All the perfect ingredients were concocted or rather  beguiled by the appreciation wave and there rose your cliched Phoenix out of the ashes.To enhance the Indian aura around the world audience and get appreciation from audiences trans border.People appreciating the real India,Indeeya.

Well what is so great about the movie escapes my attention.Movie on a novel adaptation(That would make it unoriginal or lets say 'inspired').Totally bollywoodized with Latika (would make it Normal).Guy going around for the girl whom he met when she was a child(Ubitquitous bollywood optimism ).The last few scenes of the movie,the drive from the villains house,the phone a friend option and the prima donna who is stuck in traffic  and then the Usain Bolt akin marathon(well i appreciate the fact that you would have understood it but then , for the records,Oxymoron again!) to attend the call.and Jamaal Malik becomes a Millionaire(Alls well that e

nds well)!!

Dont really know why there is so much of hoopla around the movie.Either I must be a real bad critic or  real bad art appreciaiting person.Well I am confident about myself for sure and I know that I did like the movie and even watched it twice or thrice but really dont know if it actually deserves so much of appreciation to an extent that it becomes Overrated,Over exaggerated,Over promoted,Over ballyhooed and Over (_________,fill in whatever you want,Orgasmic is what I thought but then it aint fittin.)

Before you  castigate me with the denunciation of Unpatriotism,Over criticism,Jealousy,Jaundiced and all the sins intimated in the Bible and whatever is bound out of the limit of my verbal mind,well , I am not of the same group that criticises the movie on the base that it has shown poverty stricken naked slums of mumbai(as some 6ft 1'' personality had condemned ,I have made some enemies again!).Or the  network of begging mafia.Or whatever baloney people have come out with(Making hay while the sun shines).Well ,Poverty,Begging Mafia etc is common.who would deny that such a thing doesnt exist in india.Its out there and its shown,but then , using it in a movie aint unique..

i am just of the slant that agreed its a good movie but certainly overrated,overhyped and all the stuff that I had mentioned a few lines earlier(getting sick of criticising it) .C'mon there have been much better movies than it this year.Yeah..I agree even some of the totally 100 % hollywood movies are overrated.Take the case of ''The curious case of Benjamin Franklin''

(Oh!Its Benjamin Button).Well I liked the movie till it was playing(again on a pirated CD) and when it came to an end it left me curious about Benjamin Button.Well I did not have a clue exactly  about the movie.

Coming back to SDM.The scene after which these brothers fall of the train and find Agra and all of a sudden lo!! they speak English!!Then its followed by another set of believable(use antonym) happenings.

I guess we are just getting overreactive and getting carried away ..Well nothing bad in it as long as we realise that we are gettin carried away..what?I dont know what the previous line was..see..Atleast I am honest that I dint know..but people are not..half of the people are praising it just because it  got nominated for the oscars and a quarter of people believe it would be uncool to say that they dint like the movie and another one quarter just believe that its Indian and hence appreciable whether or not it actually deserves it or not and another quarter honestly believe its a good movie..well i know the math doesnt tally but then again..what the hell..

I HAVE LOST IT.I AM BORED!! THANKS FOR NOT READING ANYTHING IN BETWEEN AND COMING STRAIGHT OVER TO THIS LINE.HIGHLY APPRECIATED.Because I knew that you people would do that.Let me end it with my honest apologies to none and a sincere appreciation of the wonderful music that AR Rahman has showcased to the world and

 given some leverage to the one of the most Overrated 

120 minutes of the modern times..

d)its OverRated

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