Check.

check.

I do not which prejudiced category I fall into - a sexist or a racist.

When in the west, I hardly notice people's clothes. If at all they dress in a manner that is totally out of place/inappropriate, I take that for a kid who is trying to find his/her equilibrium. This was not restricted to the natives - I once found a desi woman walking in downtown D.C. with only a bra under her coat. Yeah, that is no exaggeration, just a bra for a shirt and a semi open coat. I really did not feel anything different, I swear.

But when the streets of Madras or Bangalore have men/women in clothes and attitudes that I do not associate with the geography, I instantly look down upon them with the contempt and disgust that I reserve for Raapi. I understand it's my failure to come to grips with the fact that India has been "growing" in my absence and I cannot expect to see intact, the city that I had left some years ago. But on other times, I get annoyed when most aspects remain third world.

I do not know if am a sexist, racist or plain stupid.

vindhu kavidhai

anniyan:

vaan mazhaiyil nanaindhal payirgal uruvaagum
aan mazhaiyil nanaindhal uyirgal uruvaagum

roja:

pudhu vellai mazhai ingu pozhigindradhu

poonthotta kaavalkaran:

sindhiya venmani sippiyil muthachu en kannamma

Dravidian Movement -1

This blog will attempt to provide an analysis of the Dravidian Movement and it's present day avtars, with the least bias.

Tamil Nadu has had a Dravidian Party in power since 1967. The simmering anti-Hindi movement that had for long been beneath the surface(the first registered anti-Hindi protest was in 1938, in front of Rajaji's House in Madras) exploded with a vengeance in the period 1965-1968. The start of the political phenomenon was on Jan 26 1965. This was the date that the Constitution had set for ending the "transitional" use of English. The DK and DMK had organized the typical 'black flag waving' protest which also resulted in the now familiar - painting the Hindi signs in Government establishments with tar.

The police had actually pre-empted and taken almost all of the top leadership of the two parties into preventive custody. What followed was something that has set Tamil politics ablaze - literally.

Ayyampalayam Veerappan
Kellapaluvur Chinnasamy
Keranoor Muthu
Kodambakkam Sivalingam
Mayavaram Sarangapani
Satyamangalam Muthu
Veerukkambakkam Aranganathan

immolated themselves for the "Tamil Cause". After this self immolation protest, the student unrest across the state against Hindi grew into a phenomenon that had more following than there was to overthrow the British(source : Tamil Tribune). The State supposedly destroyed all records of the hundreds who were shot dead during such demonstrations. (Whether that is true - I do not know and have not found evidence to the contrary so far). But the fact that can be verified is this : There were large scale student demonstrations and the police did open fire.
With such demonstrations holding the state in siege, the Charismatic C.N. Annadurai took control of the situation. He gave speeches that filled even a completely apolitical dud with a passion and rage that drove him into the streets. Eventually, the movement resulted in the overthrow of the Congress rule since 1947 and installed a DMK government in the state.


The next post will be on C.N. Annadurai and his ascent.

What in shit's name is going on with all the News channels?

They are reporting the death of an 84 year old man who was terminally ill for a looong time, 24x7. I shit you not - CNN & FOX are covering the Pope's death 24X7. (Well it's been just 3 days, but exaggeration does work - doesn't it?).

What's worse, am now learning that Pope John Paul II is the only reason for the fall of Communism, for the spread of democracy, for the understanding of human rights all across the world, for establishing a path to freedom in the Middle East and basically for every damn thing that did or did not happen in the last 30 years. Also he supposedly has magical powers and can talk to God and stuff.............I wonder why he could not save his own ass then.

I wish I could just get on some channel and cry out loud that the world has freed itself of one sexually frustrated 84 year old man.

Degrees of freedom

Thoughts and how they lead to some theories - serious or otherwise, I cannot say.

I try to imagine John Von Neumann or Erwin Schrodinger or even Albert Einstein as a kid in school. The kid enrolls in school. Mathematics, analysis, reducing the seemingly complex to the trivial - all these come easily to his mind. While the moderates and not so moderates bite their pencils,scribble furiously or scratch their heads vigorously when the maths/science teacher asks the class to solve a problem out of their scope of knowledge, the young Albert/Erwin/John looks at the problem and sits unassumingly/decides to blurt out the answer. Surprised looks as all glances turn to this unlikely responder. Albert/Erwin/John tries his best to ignore the looks of surprise from some astonished kids in search for idols early in their age, the sneers from the backbenchers who would never solve that problem for another few lifetimes or even the teacher who stands there thinking - maybe the kid's really good or he read the same book I read that gave the solution.

I now try to imagine Rahul Dravid. Or a Sunil Gavaskar. These names come to mind because the word "focus" is what I am thinking of. Dravid is at the crease. He's been there for almost 2-3 hours now. There is intense chatter from behind the wicket. The wicketkeeper,slip catchers are trying their best to distract his concentration. Someone screams a personal remark, the other guys join in the laughter. But Dravid is in what cricketers like to call "The Zone". He does not hear a thing, or if he heard it, the words pass by through him. There are no oscillations - the stone hits the water but there are no ripples. Dravid can hear nothing - there are only two things in this world for him at this point of time. Him and the ball that will be thrown at him. Nothing else matters. The rest of the world is non-existent.

I try to imagine a Jimi Hendrix or a Jimmy Page playing the guitar. The audience watches agape as Page/Hendrix strums the chords without so much as a care as to how the notes will sound like. The music flows, melodious, perfect in every which way imaginable. There are no discordant notes, no jarring chords. Jimmy does not know if that is even possible - the bad sound I mean.

I finally try to imagine a Buddha or a Jesus or a rishi or a Prophet meditating. People pass by and see them sitting in immaculate posture, eyes closed - thinking nothing, but thinking everything. Attached to nothing, yet very much existing within the scheme of reality. A mischevious passerby decides to test the enlightened one. At first some sounds, then a stone, eventually a last ditch attempt to dislodge the one from his posture. The one slowly lets it all happen. The body moves on force, but the mind - stays where it is,was and always has been looking for. There is no reaction,not even a response. The passerby loses motivation and with a resigned look - either decides to ask for forgiveness if regret is the dominant emotion or slips away from the spot. Neither makes a difference to the seated one.

What is it that made me imagine all these seemingly uncorrelated events? The mind. The mind is a beautiful thing. It can be one's worst enemy and one's best friend. If I'd sat beside Einstein in class, I'd have been too immature to understand the way his mind worked. But maybe today, I'd have given anything to sit a lifetime and watch that mind work. That mind which knows not what limitations are. A problem comes up. While I work furiously and analyze approaches within my limitations, the "free" mind takes it and reduces it to as trivial a question as 2+2. The free mind is unburdened or ignorant of its own limitations. It is unfettered and does not know where the limits lie. And that is precisely because there are no limits. A mind like mine knows there are limits, there are fears, there are boundaries. And it takes time to overcome these. Sometimes I do, sometimes I do not.

A Dravid in "The Zone" knows the exact way a spinner will turn the ball on seeing it release from the hand. Or when a 130kph bowl is directed at him, the feet move without the mind telling them to. The mind knows where the ball will eventually arrive and the bat involuntarily goes to meet the ball at the exact moment, at that exact instant where the impact will impart the ball the greatest force. A cricketer in "The Zone" is a joy to watch - because it is a free mind at work. A mind that does not know where it should stop. And it cannot stop.

A free mind as the Buddha or a rishi is unperturbed. It just acts without oscillations - if actions are involved. There is no emotion involved, no reason to. The world moves and the ripples are absorbed like a sponge - and one does not know where all of it goes. They come and they go.

As I write this I am quite aware perfection is unseen or unheard. Perfection in the truest sense is perspective. Every one has their notion of it. And perfection,if seen by our perspective, is transient. It does not last forever. Again idealism and practicality are two sides of the coin. But every now and then, there are glimpses of the sublime when "free" minds work. Minds that do not know anything, that are empty,devoid of conditioning and yes - perfect because of this emptiness.

Reading my own post from the past(as in the previous post), I realized the question which used to haunt me as a late teen has still not been answered. My question was...

Why is it that an individual is subjected to the collective stupidity of his/her place of birth. Or in other words, why does citizenship become automatic by birth? - To think that I would not want to choose The Netherlands over Saudi Arabia just because my parents chose not to, is the stupidest argument that Mankind has come up with.

This really used to bother me so much that I had to make a conscious effort not to think about it. And how successful have I been at that - before I read this old post of mine, I had totally forgotten the question. What's worse - am no closer to the answer than I was as a stupid 12th grader in PSBB KK Nagar. But , 7 years and 12,000 miles later,I can take some solace from the fact that I now have a vague understanding as to why mankind rests on it's stupidity.

And now that am seriously considering a stint at Dravidian politics, I would probably propose a system analogous to the Free State Project - just to answer that. I would also want to make sure the project does not become an amateur high school crap as it has in FSP. This system would have it's origin not in the fringe elements of radical psychopaths, but would be proposed as an election plank.

What I propose is this -

• For this purpose, let us consider Tamil Nadu again. The reason for choosing that state is that am relatively unfamilar with the politics of Maryland and more importantly - I do not have an intention to run for an office here. Wheras in Tamil Nadu, I am both familiar and quite willing to run for a public office. Though my purpose of running for a public office is to abolish it, working within the system does extend a sense of sanity to it(comparitive scales here).
• The people of Tamil Nadu, would be given the choice to to either accept the existing laws of the land and be as is, or have a choice to totally reject the local law.
  
• This would essentially act as a backdoor approach to the abolition of all central influence as I had wanted here. The idea is to start an experiment that is so limited in scope that people would interested purely for academic reasons if not anything else. The reason they would is because it feeds their curiosity and is still so tiny in scope that they would have no "fears".
• There would be a small geographical area(say a really small village to start with) demarcated "free". The "free" part will have no government control whatsoever.
  
• The reason I am choosing a nondescript village is this : a considerable part of my childhood was spent in one such village. I have never ever seen a single government influence in the village but for electricity. Practically the village is self run and receives "0" assistance. The roads that exist were paved my Chola Kings and even the bankments in the local river date back to the Chola age. The nearest Police Station is 12km away, and I have never seen a single policeman - ever, in that place.
• The reason I list those out is that - removing government influence in such a place would be merely a technical aspect as far as practical issues are concerned. Well, this does oversimplify matters - but trust me I have a point here. Only when you go to Semangalam in Napattinam Dist will you understand what am talking about.
• What would further give legitamacy to such a scheme would me yet another "back-up" plan promise. This would be a fantastic election promise and stay that. The fact that this is being done through electoral politics would also lend a lot of weight in the eyes of the "mob".
  
• There can be freedom of movement and trade within these areas, subject to an agreement that crimes committed in the other parts of the state by the "free" folks will still be crimes.
  
• A child born in either part would be given the right when old enough (when would that be - no answers) to choose.
  
• Other messy details will be worked out.

How about this??

Maggi 2 minutes noodles pack: (Recipe)
Step 1: boil one cup of water
Step 2: as soon as ganguly goes for batting, put the noodles in the boiled water and add the tastemaker.
Step 3: stir till ganguly is on the field.
Step 4: As soon as ganguly is back in pavilion, your noodles r ready to eat

hehe...

Pratap
P.S: sorry for the mokkai.i meant to say that Ganguly should be SACKED.