Saturday, February 28, 2009

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!!

 

Monday, February 2, 2009

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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