BEING WEAK IS NOT AN OPTION!!

In one of the first lectures of Sanskrit in 8th class, our teacher told us a story. I remembered it quite recently for no reason but that story is worth sharing with you.

In ancient times, the ritual of sacrifices was very common. We already know from many stories of Mahabharata and Ramayana that practice of Ashvamedha (horse sacrifice) was quite popular and prestigious among kings at that times.

Practice of Ashvamedha was popular but was very rare. Only powerful emperors were doing it to show their strength and to impress Gods for prosperity of the state.

Common people were also doing rituals for sufficient rainfall, for getting more produce in agriculture, for having a baby. Have you thought that which animals they were sacrificing while these rituals? Mostly goat, lambs and similar animals.

So, our teacher asked us, why do you think only lambs, ships were offered as sacrifice and not strong, powerful animals like lions, tigers and elephants.

In very next day, he taught us this subhashita (wise sayings through poetry in Sanskrit):

This sayings is much relevant in today's time. Being weak is not an option for many of us. We have to stand our ground no matter what. Our history is all about perseverance. Those species adapted according to the situation and preserved themselves are remained on the planet. Those who didn't, are vanished. Every other species is trying to snatch each others bread.

We are living in the era where we might be feeling bogged down by competition around us. But we have to keep this in mind that, we have the sole responsibility to preserve ourselves and emerge victorious. It is up to us which option we choose. Either stay on the ground for eternity after getting hit by a powerful punch or again stand up for fight. Some people will surely guide us on the way, but actual task of doing thing is solely on our shoulders.

So, adapt to change, seek competence, empower yourselves and do nothing short of the best that you can do.

Peace...

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IS SUBRAMANIUM SWAMI A CANNIBAL?

I have been following many debates, discussions and writings of Dr. Subramanium Swami. And I must say, his debating skills are extraordinary. Swami might be vegetarian by diet, but when it comes to debates, he eats people alive. He tears their arguments in pieces. He can make Arnub Goswami to lower down his tone and bite his head off. He gets applaud of audience by defending most unpopular of beliefs. (Not that all people agree with him, but way he makes his argument makes you nothing but appreciate)

Few months back, I watched the movie called Thank you for smoking. In the movie, protagonist (Nick Naylor) is lobbyist for big tobacco company. He is a spokesperson and defends tobacco companies on T.V. channels and debates. He is the face of cigarettes on T.V. channels. His debating skill and convincing power to people about his thoughts (mostly unpopular) is astounding. In his own words,

"I don't have an MD or law degree, I have a bachelor's degree in kicking ass and taking names. You know that guy who can pick up any girl? I'm him, on crack."

In context of Swami, he could use this dialogue differently.

"You know that guy who can piss of any politician by making petitions? I'm him, on crack."

Whether it is A. Raja in 2G case, National Herald case or Jaylalitha in disproportionate asset case, he is the man behind it. Not only he targets people from other party, but when India-France deal was to signed to buy Rafale fighter aircraft, he told his party men that he will go to court if such deal happens.

Arnub Goswami is known for bossing his panelists, interruptions, stuffing words in mouth of panelists and many other nasty things. In one of the interviews on Sri-Lankan issue, Arnub was feeding words in Swami's mouth without reading a letter he wrote to Sri-Lankan President. Swami repeatedly asked him to read the letter instead of quoting it out of context and even when Arnub continued his own business, he called him "You're a laughing stock of this broadcasting world, with the amount of lies you tell. You are asking a question, you liar? You are such a dumbo! Mentally retarded you are".

Even going further, "You're a liar! You're an ignoramus. Don't be stupid. You're an ignorant man. Read the letter. Where is the letter? Why don't you read the letter? Why don't you use your brains? You're such a liar."

Who dares to call the editor-in-chief of top news channel a liar and dumbo who cannot hear a single word from anyone. (Remember never ever in case of Minakshi Lekhi?) But for Swami, case is different. When you have your facts ready, who cares what Arnub Goswami is?

Whether I agree with him or not? On some occasions, NO, I don't. But should that stop me from appreciating his skills and intellect? Surely not. He is mathematician, professor, politician, rebel, crusader, orator, lawyer and much more. Quick wit adds to his charisma. He is continuing the great ancient tradition of logical argumentation which India has. His quietly smiling visage graces just before tearing apart opposition argument, is the most fun part to watch. After going through his debates and speeches, many would think, isn't this TamBram (Tamilian Brahmin) a cannibal?

Reference:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=9&v=FykqCkDDrW0

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Let's not play this game (poem)

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Government is literally playing with words!!

Recently a lot has been written about the Modi government. This Government believes in banning, it is spreading communalism, it makes more promises than delivery, and much more. Amidst all criticism and applaud for the new government, media and most people did not notice that this government is much more innovative than previous governments. What makes me think that this government is more innovative?

See the names given to government schemes, authorities and foreign plans. Names of all these are very innovatively formed.

NITI ayog: National Institution for Transforming India

This government body has replaced planning commission and it is a policy think-tank. See the abbreviation is cleverly put as NITI, which directly means policy.

MUDRA bank: Micro Units Development and Refinance Agency Bank. (Mudra = Currency)

From name itself, it is clear that it provides loans to micro-finance institutions at low rates. (It is government bank, so of course provides at lower rate)

AIM: Atal Innovation Mission

AIM will be an Innovation Promotion Platform involving academics, entrepreneurs, and researchers drawing upon national and international experiences to foster a culture of innovation, R&D in India.

AMRUT: Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Development

SETU: Self Employment and Talent Utilization Scheme

PRASAD: Pilgrimage Rejuvenation and Spiritually Augmentation Drive

HRIDAY: Heritage City Development and Augmentation Yojana

SATYAM: Science And Technology of Yoga And Meditation

Earlier government had JNNURM mission for urban development (Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission). You will surely have to remember this full form to get idea of what it is. But when government gives names to scheme such as AMRUT, we can clearly form an analogy to link it with urban development like safe drinking water for urban households will prove to be AMRUT for them or self-employment will be the bridge (SETU) for poor people to come out of poverty.

From PRASAD, we can confidently say that it is linked with pilgrimage.

From doing this, government is also promoting Sanskrit-Hindi words in everyday language use. Which is a good stimulus as our language is becoming more and more westernized. Many times we do not find Hindi equivalent words.

I will not say, it is promoting Sanskrit only. Safety operation in Yemen was named as ‘Operation Rahat’. (Rahat = Relief)

2 days back, Prime Minister Modi has announced $150 million BHARAT fund, aimed at creating and providing support to disruptive start-ups in impact areas.

BHARAT to stand for ‘Better Health, Agriculture, Renewables And Technologies’ Bharat Fund derives its name from the ancient and also official name of India. Many people do not know this but it is our country’s official name. Article 1(1) says, “India, that is Bharat, shall be a Union of States”.

So, all criticism is at their place, but I liked the way that government (or bureaucrats?) is playing with words cleverly to make it look more attractive and even rural people can relate to it very easily.

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Racial discrimination in India? Really??

Yesterday, I read a news in Firstpost that –Union home minister Rajnath Singh was addressing to students on the eve of Teacher’s Day in Pune and a student from South Sudan complained about racial discrimination faced by him. He said, “Whenever we go out in public places, especially in some college campuses, people call us ‘Aye Kaalia or Blackie’.” 

I was not shocked to know about this, but it concerned me. Thousands of students, graduates from India are going to western countries daily for education and work. Thousands of laborers are going to Gulf countries, Europe, America to earn their meal. Many of them are already victim of this racial discrimination.

Many times Indian government shame these countries for not treating Indian citizens equally. We get frustrated when we hear the news like some doctor or engineer is killed out of racial discrimination. I will tell you one incident. Four months back, one of my friend got internship in Australia and when we came to know about this, we mocked him, “don’t get killed, we don’t want to hear your news from television.” 

Conversation like this happens in fun mode, still that shows the deep impression of those news in our mind. Racial discrimination in India is surely not that extreme. It is just limited up to mocking someone about their color. But why this also should happen?

This is the huge loss for India on economic basis. As tourism industry get affected by such news. Also students from foreign countries would not be enthusiastic to pursue their higher studies in India, if such news popping up very frequently. More than economic, it is also enormous loss for India on moral grounds. 

I can see, poisonous seeds of British colonial legacy germinated in here. We have to remove them completely. And this will not just happen by changing names of Bombay to Mumbai or Madras to Chennai, or changing names of Connaught and Curzon road to something else. We have to address this ‘obsession of paleness.’ (I will not use word fair here)

_Digvijay Patil. 

'People call us Kaalia': Foreign student questions Rajnath on racial discrimination 

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Again

I again want to fall in love
With myself
I want to redeem myself from
The graveyard of doubt


I again want to compose myself
As a whole person
Not just the scattered personalities
I wanted to be.


I again want that freedom of mind
Before choosing an option
I just don’t want to be that kid
Who is still in confusion
Whether to order chocolate or ice-cream
 

I have learned cost-benefit analysis
Way too much
Now, I am afraid whether to invest
Such big sum or not.


This atheist is now seeking the god
To come out from his situation
I wonder, isn’t his insecurity
Going to give birth to the god?


Oh mighty lord, you should worship
His doubt of failure,
Because you’re nothing more that
Its incarnation.

-Digvijay Patil.

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Religion, you don’t have power to daunt me anymore!

Don’t bother yourself with the religious theories. You already know what is right and wrong. You are the sole decider of your actions. You are the best judge about what is right thing to do. Whenever you are not finding answer to the questions you have, you don’t need to look at the books which many people would tell you that are holy. Your inner conscious is the best mentor you have. Ask him and you will get an answer.

Believe in basic principal this mother earth taught you. Be humble, be selfless and be consistent.

You don’t need to be getting told about things which you already know in a fancy way by these agents of salvation. There is already good and evil present inside your soul. It’s your call who you want to win in every decision you make.

You are too smart to do cost benefit analysis. But it’s not always about cost benefit. Sometimes you have to consider about universal good. Don’t ignore it with your personal ambition.

So religion, I don’t fear you and most importantly I don’t need you anymore. Your agents taught me the idea of sin, heaven and hell. I have got nothing but fear.

What good these holy books are, if ten people are reading them and all are getting different meanings? One becomes extremist and one becomes saint. At the end it’s only my inner conscious that is guiding me.

I pity those supremacist people, who believe that their religion is greatest of all. Every religion tells us to be humble and supremacy is the not a characteristic of humbleness. Those who are preaching the religions haven’t learned this basic thing.

If some religion is imprisoning my personal freedom, then I will abandon such religion. If some religion is discrimination on the basis of my gender and not allowing my personal growth, I condemn such religion. If I know something wrong with the religion and still I am trying to defend it to prove my religion is great, I condemn myself for doing this.

_Digvijay Patil.

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Urge to share

If there's any kind of magic in this world, it must be in attempt of understanding someone, sharing something.

-from movie "Before Sunrise"

We all have feelings and as a normal human being we all have need to share those things with someone. That someone may be your friend, sister, brother. Maybe be it’s your girlfriend or boyfriends, if you are lucky enough to get one. Even the strongest persons have this urge to share his feelings at some point of time. Many times strength is just pretence. But what about the people who don’t have any such precious relation? They are so busy around themselves or with their career that they don’t have anyone to tell what their problem is. Not only problem, it could be anything like- what I am going to do in this week or which girl I am attracted to in my class and how I am terrified to speak to her, or just a plain discussion on the recent TV series I am watching or book I am reading or what are my weird fetishes.

We normal people generally do these discussions. But what about the group of people I was discussing? This ‘Not having anyone’ syndrome has some critical symptoms like antisocial behavior, doing weird things in middle of night, loudly taking to yourself (even if people noticing you), shouting on phone for no reason, living in the room where full of shit scattered around (I don’t mean literally and even if I do, that doesn’t change anything).

I fell that we should be helping such people to get over their ‘fucked up’ situation. There may be such sociopaths around you.

Everybody act crazy or do some mad stuff sometimes. The word ‘sometimes’ is very important in the previous sentence. If this madness becomes way of life, people call it ‘psychosis’.

So the main point of writing this blog was that- Do share your feelings whenever you need. Make at least one friend with who you can chat about yourself, who is genuinely interested in you. Sometimes hollowness inside our brain gives birth to suicidal ideas. Try fill out this void inside your skull if you have any. And mainly try to be social and care about people around you.

Good luck!!

-Digvijay Patil.

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Spontaneous

 On a very fine day, somebody asked him, “What do you want to be?”

He quickly said, “Spontaneous.”

You must be wondering what that means.

He wants to burn asses of those who try to be smart without a reason. He wants to come up with the wittiest comebacks possible.

If somebody asks him what his views on a particular issue are, he wishes, he would be coming with a very different dimension, a very different angle which normal person wouldn’t have thought of.

He doesn’t want to be unarmed in the battle of wits. He wants his contender to surrender in front of him just by seeing his arsenal.

He wants to be Spontaneous.

~Digvijay Patil.

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Why fear debate?

It’s been a hot topic now-a-days – Freedom of speech and expression. I have already written about it one year back. But recent events have sparked my curiosity to know more about it. AIB roast videos, killing of Avijit Ray in Dhaka, Charlie Hebdo magazine case, fringe element’s glorification of Nathuram Godse, ban on India’s Daughter documentary, and frequent threats to writers who challenge the ideas of religion and many more events happened in recent past.

So what is my idea of freedom of speech and expression? Should there be any limit to it? Should government be interfering in every public matter? How ban is justified?

I think basic concept behind healthy democracy is debate. Let debate happen. People are very well educated today to decide what is right and wrong. A person (or society) who believes in banning has something to hide. That government who believes in banning has surely lost faith in peoples’ decision making capacity. (The very people who voted them to power)

It’s India, so let’s talk about the religion first. I would like to discuss about where banning is necessary and where free thinking should be allowed?

If somebody is challenging any religious idea and religious philosophy with reasoning, it should be welcomed. No religion is perfect and every religion evolved over period of time. All social reformers challenged wrong ideas of religion or thinking of society. Mahatma Phule, Raja Ram Mohan Ray, Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, Mahadev Ranade all these social reformers were critic of wrong things inculcated in religion and they tried to change that. Without these free thinkers, women still would not have been any place in society, education would have been neglected to them, and practise of ‘sati’ still would be there. Should we say these great people betrayed their religion?

But there is another group, who just want to mock other’s beliefs, religious ideas. Hate speeches against other religion is one of such things. Drawing obscene picture of religious deities would definitely offend people. In that case, you are not giving any message to people. This kind of mocking should be banned. Making fun of others ideas without reasoning should be banned. It is my idea and understanding and it may not be correct.

Now-a-days, there are many comments from self proclaimed religious leaders about how many children one should be producing to sustain the religion’s population or comments inciting clashes between groups of people, so what should be the extent of banning in this case? If there is no harm to people or property, there is no need of ban but if there is possibility of clashes between people then banning is justified. I feel, these debates make people aware about their leaders and if they are worthy to represent them.

What bothers me about hate speeches is not the person who is delivering such speech but the mob of people who is applauding to such outrageous comments.

Another point I would like to discuss is – Don’t try to protect your leader from debate. It is surely going to happen. Let me give you a example- right wing people are asking for thorough investigation of events happened before assassination of Mahatma Gandhi. They believe that Godse was not an assassin by choice but the forced to make decision to kill Gandhi due to circumstances created. Mahatma Gandhi was surely the greatest personality of 20th century but if he was so innocent them why fear investigation and debate? Let it happen. People will decide by themselves.

Another incident which disturbed me was - attack on a Tamil news channel Puthiyathalaimurai. The attack by some fringe elements to intimidate media which was planning to telecast a debate on need for married women to wear a ‘mangalsutra.’ This is cheap example of religious intolerance.

Instead of protesting on roads for somebody’s idea, make a counter argument by writing a blog, sharing your counter views on social media or make a video with your argument. Why there is need of violence?

We are living in India and we have glorious history of argumentation. We need to protect and continue that legacy. Without it, we are just a banana republic.

See you in next blog.

_Digvijay Patil.

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Swachh Bharat Abhiyan - A Further Perspective

There has been huge buzz about the “Swattch Bharat Movement”, the campaign by our honorable Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Advertisements on T.V., photos on social media like Facebook, twitter are roaming around. Everybody is now somehow aware about cleanliness (we are actually following it or not is real question), need of dustbins in public places, not spitting on roads and public walls, not to urinate in public places and so on. There are number of NGOs supporting this campaign. But my point is what happens to that garbage after? All kind of garbage we put in single dustbin. There is no system in India. In many countries, there are different dustbins for different kind of garbage or different schedule of garbage vans for picking rubbish from houses for different kind of garbage. Types of garbage like – burnable, non-burnable, cans and glass bottles, plastic trays and packaging, paper and cloth.

Few months back, I was in Japan. I would like to tell you about their system. There is special kind of plastic bags called ‘gomi-bukuro’ in which only, you can collect the litter and throw it in government dustbin for your specific area. And there are days defined to throw this waste material according to its kind. Benefit of this system is government does not need to sort further this waste material and process would be simpler and safe. Industrial garbage (hospitality garbage, business garbage, office garbage, factory garbage) is not permitted to be placed with domestic garbage in the same collection areas.

It is very much risky to put hospital garbage, agricultural garbage or industrial garbage with domestic one. Agricultural chemicals put in domestic garbage and given same disposal system as of domestic garbage would be very much risky. Same applies to industrial one.

I would also like to give one another example. In trains, what we normally do is buy food or cold drink or water bottles and after finishing we throw them outside. Government could not help us in everything and we should not be crying all the time that I would have put garbage in dustbins but there were no dustbins. So what can we do is, always carry a plastic bag with you while travelling so that we can put all our garbage in that plastic bag and after getting off train, we can throw it in dustbin.

So my concern is while we are educating our population the need to use dustbins, we should also encourage them to put garbage according to its type and government should be first making such system. Writing on every public places that –“do not urinate” has no use if there are no urinals available. Mainly women are victim of this system.

Good thing about most of us (Indians) is- we do not throw things unto there is sure need of throwing it. We are even careful in unpacking the gift wrap or using old knickers for cleaning purposes. This is actually good thing but now-a-days it’s changing.

This mission would be successful only when masses would be enthusiastic about waste management and would refuse live in filth.

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