Moral Rejig

Morality. The word that scares the youth, confounds the old, confuses the middle-aged and pricks the wicked. The meaning of it depletes at the passing of time. And it is unfortunate that morality is judicially considered to be adding indignity to the intellectuality and abstraction to the prevailing clarity - with regards to the framing and practise of the codes of law, hence kept away from its purview or simply struck down.

On the social front, high-minded behavior of the modern urban upper class has brutally killed morality in all its pure sense and the trend is being passed on to the middle class and the classes down under. The famous Cole Porter song 'Anything Goes' composed in 1934 has riveting lyrics that captures the entirety of the issue in beautiful words.

As for re-jigs - yes, they do occur - sometimes to mend things or generally to break things, and when they occur they are a very interesting phenomenon. Books from the authors - Henry Miller and DH Lawrence - were once banned, but eventually (after years) the ban was lifted and those tabooed books were then accommodated into the social stream of things. The name of the Lord, Jesus Christ, is now listed under profane words in the IMDB - and appears in the parental advisory column. Old meanings deplete and new meanings develop. Roles exchange. Controversies trigger. Scandals mysteriously solve by itself, saints become devils and devils venerated as gods. Time is the smirking villain of the whole endeavor. Loss of conviction, dirt in polity and the proud adulation of the Machiavelli, and no to ideology and no to principles - is the new morality. This whole package comes under the false hood called liberty. To the dismay of all our hopes, liberty eats away our liberty. 

We are like the dead fish taken away downstream. The release of our minds has been our fall headlong. No one wants to question 'this' convention. Well, I'm not praising the bohemian or counter-bohemian way of life. How does a bohemian lifestyle matter if it only promotes disharmony and adds to the moral erosion? When the social conventions deplete, a true bohemian does not add to the dying down by hiking the ultra-regression index - but tries turning the scenario upside down in favor of peace and harmony.

What is missing is the balance! We either produce rapists or fanatics, terrorists or hypocrites. The ones that do not fall under either of these binaries have no idea why they live their lives. They allow themselves to be sucked into the vicious cycle of life and then, sadly, are thrown into their graves. We have enough religions, cultures and states. What we need is a reformist ideal - and no more dividing themes and the ever-increasing demi-gods. Jesus was a social reformer. But once this love movement called Christianity took to religious dimensions, the surrounding sheen in its entirety worn out all too quickly - in the twinkle of an eye.

Moral rejigs are bound to happen and are not in our control. Yes, we need rejigs that benefit. Rejigs, that do not corrupt the sanctity of our minds. We need new designs to dissolve hypocrisy and not fuel it. However, not all the rejigs could be termed right, because populist notions could go awfully wrong. When populism drags the society towards the wrong, we need upright people to courageously confront the mistakes of the majority. It is a paramount necessity that we end our lip service and contribute to the society in real sense. The wounds our societies have borne due to the continuous jigs-and-rejigs need to be healed. We need morals and values, as much as we need love and freedom. We need to be people whose progressive belief system does not sway at seductive immoral moments. We need to be like those brave men in the battlefield who would take a stance and stick to it to death. Voice out for the weak and the poor. Shoulder them. Stand firm. Establish harmony. If it has to end in death, let it be so. Smile and die a noble death - proud in knowing that you have been a part of the love revolution, and that morality - in its profound sense of purity - has not died out.

Post-Ceremonial Belongings!

She is sitting all decked up in her marital attire - all glowing, all shining. Dreams upon dreams. Fairy tales and fabulous fantasies. Her mind is in that lovely drizzle and there is sweetness dripping out from her liquid-jaggery of thoughts. She sees images. Less-than-three symbols everywhere, love birds pecking each others' beaks all the time, there are stars, candle lights, roses and one large bed. And ah, the moon. Yes, she beholds the crescent beauty of the moon - not knowing - that at the arrival of daylight and when the greater light rises in its majestic grandeur, the glowing lesser light that rules the night would soon hide itself in shame.

One day of ebullience. Momentary fascination. Price paid for ritual significance. Lights and crackers. Yes, those glittering CEREMONIES! Some intended to display pomposity, some are obvious fund-raisers, and there are some more that bear sadistic overtones to bore people to death just for the pleasure of it. However, few done with modest uprightness - though rare - could not be ruled out.

One might raise an emotional argument saying - ceremonies have primordial leanings. When caste and religion are tied to it, they seem to look like one frivolously important package of umbilical necessity. 'How important and relevant are they?', if you happen to ask someone - please expect no reasonable reply.

My intention is not to undermine celebration on the whole or ask you to wear the puritan mantle and become monks. No, do not get me wrong. Am I targeting festivals here? A swift nope to it - if your thoughts have those trailings. Festivals and ceremonies are not the same, though they both could have those seeming effervescent moments of joy in common. Because Diwali is a festival, but wedding is a ceremony. Christmas is celebrated round the world, but christening a baby is a family affair. The whole of Tamil Nadu bubbles with Pongal, but very few parents bother to call a sage home to conduct poojas.

Its perfectly fine to jump and shout, and to resound with songs of glory. Who has lived a humane life without having any fun! So, celebrate. Make merry. Share happiness. Spread smiles. Dance. Hug people. Exchange kisses. Pose for photographs. Do all of this in full vigor. Enjoy every moment to its fullest measure.

But where do we belong after the ceremony gets over and people pack for home? I have seen only happy weddings. But I cannot say with conviction that all the couples I have known are happily married. I have seen babies christened bearing names of great saints, but there is no assurance that they would grow up to become saintly in nature. I have seen poojas conducted at various houses but I also remember instances when the whole family split asunder in fights over property and other menial things - right after a pooja.

Time validates everything. We would need to wait to understand how our beings are placed (or misplaced) after the ceremonies. Do we instill the same spirit of happiness in our lives for real or do we act in front of the cameras - thinking a few photographs and some video clippings would make things appear real?

I would prefer register marriage (and take her home the way she is - with no adornment or other materials attached) to a grand wedding (having also shamelessly obtained dowry - by demanding or expecting). I would like a father holding his baby in his very own hands in prayer and naming the child in the Lord rather than making a big scene out of it in the church. I would like sons and daughters to come together, share a meal, sit and laugh - than to have a pooja and then build prejudices that create fissures. In the end what matters is how we have lived our lives, and not how others thought we lived our lives.

The Hilarious Dispensation of Truth!

  

The divine ordering of worldly affairs. But where is the divine, I wonder! Well, that is where the blatant comic of the affair lies. To everyone - what he/she thinks is the divine. Ask any parent about how they got their daughter married to that guy, they would say - 'Oh it was from the Lord!'. But we know the domestic realities of the households - the Lord, here, usually works through hordes of brokers, matrimonial websites, dowry and caste/denomination based arrangements. Have they no shame at all, I ask, to use the name of the Lord in vain?

There was a female donkey that sniffed at the desert air wanting to mate with just anyone. For her, ah if only she could speak, she would say - the male organ with all the vigor in the world piercing through her vaginal tract is the divine. Orgasm, surely, is divine for some people - and the learnings from some of the aboriginal civilizations nod to this assertion - with naughty moans.

Almost the entire world behaves like those in the freemasonry cult. They believe in apotheosis. Oh no, that is truth diminished. They already are gods covertly, according to the evil works of their minds. Everyone is an Aghori of sorts. Just like those naked flippant mongrels who would not hesitate to have a taste of the corpse burning on the cremation stage, the sexily clothed English-speaking mongrels belonging to the modern urban class do not hesitate at all to have a taste in that glib smirk that smells like illuminating spice but arrives at the inflicting of the poor and the weak - with their blood and sweat spurting in all possible directions.

Do you know where the problem lies? Not one wants to show any remorse to their ill attitude. They are all happy. Happy to lick those at the superior league from boot up - to get what they want. Happy to falsify facts. Happy to taint the good to feed their egos that are ever swelling and gluttonous like their bellies. This has created a very ugly jigsaw - which nothing that is divine could solve. It has all the more terribly complicated things. 

Try doing something good, and they would say - mind your own business. Try to un-complicate things and make them understand the truth of the matter, ah - don't you try teach me lessons, they snort like pigs that are real happy about taking that divine dip in that drainage filled with slug and blackened human feces. The snag of truth, that gives leeway to these born of many men, is that it can have versions - the world in its entirety believes in this. To me, the 'real' truth is one. And that could only be arrived in all its plausibility when all the versions are put together and congruency determined.

But unfortunate, as it would always be, no one would like that moderation. They take unnecessary offense if the right questions were asked that would unsettle their assertions - because everyone wants to believe what they believe is the only truth. Issue not only lies when they try to impose this onto others, but also on the very practice of their divinity. Whatever the divinities they claim - be it in all their incapacities - had efforts been put to transform them from mere lip service into real action, the world must have reaped atleast some love. We could have seen atleast a few genuine smiles.

What people say and believe contradicts with what they do and make people do. An Aghori who claims himself to be god would get a hard-on that goes sky high if the one who sits at his foot in humble servitude happens to be a woman. The female donkey that experiences its divinity in having orgasms would enjoy the same theo-blisters if penetrated by multiple donkeys and the puss of the seeming forever-joys cups out. The divinity in the thoughts of the parents would fade out when they come to know of the impotency in the groom that married their daughter and she resorts to external means to keep her sexually satisfied.

If God is one, truth is one too. And that could be understood in its full form of impregnating content only if a chord of convergence is struck in the divergence that mangles it. And the truth that is real - hurts - as much as it has the power to bring justice and make people happy. The way of the truth could be narrow - but it would always lead you to the right destination and bring you eternal joy.

Insomnia and Peace

Insomnia.

I come home and when I settle down after dinner it is already 11 pm. And this restlessness creeps in. I question pretty much everything and find no proper answer. I think about my existence, work, society, culture, dogma, religion and the whole construct of humanity. Then comes reality's deadly sting and I wake up to the shocking realization - that we have all been living lies. Oh, it pains really hard. My mind reels back and forth, tossed by a wave of powerful thoughts. Then I comfort myself sitting in the quiet and start contemplating ways to do something good in a more organized manner.

This has pretty much become a habit. I know this is leading me to something big. I might either start something (an NGO of sorts) soon or quit everything - job, family, friends and my own identity, and disappear into the oblivion never to come back again.

I am unable to sleep. Not that I want to become a Superhero and save the world from aliens. No, I am no savior. I do not give room to fanciful imaginations. I try to think of things that do not fade away with time. A thought is only valid, if in course of time, it converts itself into positive action. I'm concerned about the current situation our worlds are trapped into, about the filth we have adorned ourselves with and think of simple ways to mend these broken meanings of life.

I call my parents. I talk to my Dad in the dead of the night. My Mom is much worried. I want to know what they think of this world. Then I pour myself out. I tell them what I have been seeing. Greed. Injustice. The poor being oppressed. People begging. Prostitution. Child trafficking. Immoral lives of today's youth.

They are worried. Yes, they are worried - about me. They think I would fall apart. And they ask me if I have any plausible solution to this. I go blank. I tell them, I am waiting for credible substance. A grip. A workable notion in all its practicality.

Then, I go to the books. The Scriptures. And I pray.
I play my guitar. I lie down. I think. I write.
And I start reading again.
Without my knowledge, I close my eyes into sleep.

Peace.

Yes, momentary and lo, morning comes.

Back to Facebook!

Against my decision of last December to quit facebook for good, I have chosen to come back. But not with the same intent. While I stand by all that I had mentioned in my 'Ta-ta Facebook' article about how facebook is and the people who dwell in it, I have decided to make a come-back again, but on a different note.

It had been 7 long months. I had lost touch with so many of my friends. Not everyone would call. Neither can I call everyone. Some are near. Some far. And some very far, overseas.

I open my account and see some have left for gulf and elsewhere, some are engaged and some married too. Some are now in Bangalore for months and I haven't met them yet. No updates at all. Not even from the ones I have been in touch over phone. I could have gone ahead valuing my decision more, losing them all. But you see, these are your friends and you need them.

So I decided - Let me come back. But not get involved in any godless chatter be it any discussion or even the topics I would love to debate on. Let me be back, for friends who have been my life all this while. Let me come back, not to prove anything to others or to see what others do in their private but to be in touch, give some likes and ping a few smiley's.

Aggravated Pimping

While the 2011 sex-scandal surrounding him is still in the courts, the Ex IMF Chief Mr. Strauss-Kahn is now charged with 'aggravated pimping'. This is quite a phrase! Investigations reveal that this gentleman had also been participating in a prostitution ring at luxury hotels at Lille, France.

Two years back, before all these scandals came to light, he clearly was one of the greatest minds, most revered, for the way he steered the nations out of the recession that struck the world in 2008. He was the most sought-after economist, a flamboyant lawyer, and the ex-Finance Minister of France under Prime Minister Lionel Jospin.

 Mr. Strauss-Khan also had connections with 'Manhattan Madam' Kristin Davis and her escort agency Emperor's Club VIP

It is sad to know that this great man had such an inflicting thorn in his flesh - lust. Even in his 60s, he was consumed by his lust for women. He trod cheerfully on this path without any shame of being found one day, that he went on to be actively involved in sex-trafficking. What must have he thought? - I have power and I can buy anyone in this world. But the world proved him wrong. We humans are empowered folks now.

But what really shocked me was the statement made by Mr. Strauss-Khan's lawyer Frederique Baulie two days back. He came out to the media and blurted out - " We should be focused on the law, not morality ! "

What crap was that? What is law if it does not assimilate the moral codes!!

My dear Mr. Lawyer, would you divorce your wife and marry your consenting adult daughter in an incest-friendly nation? Perfectly legal, ain't it? I'm sure you'd be getting all excited now. But tell me - if your daughter conceives by you, how would you like the baby call you -- Daddy or Grand-daddy???

It is saddening to know that people in power and those who aide them are becoming so insensitive these days. It hurts. Yes, it hurts us all. Tomorrow, the victim could be you or someone from your family. Justice has to be meted out to everyone equally.

Nafissatou Diallo, the 32-year old maid who was sexually assaulted by Mr. Srauss-Khan at MidTown Sofitel Manhattan Hotel in May 2011 :

" Me and my family, we are going through a lot. We cry every day. My 15-year old daughter had seen me crying recently. She said: ‘Please stop crying. Be strong for me.' I told her, ‘I will be strong for you and for every other woman in the world.'  "

Bald! Hell Yeah!!

                            

I am bald. Gleefully yes. But I am bereft of any shame or embarrassment. 'Cause that is the way I look. Why should I belittle my very own personality and feel inferior to others. I am a confident man.

Four years back, this was not the case. I had good hair. Then this hair loss began. I couldn't do anything about it. I have, at times, sulked at all the hair I used to lose. Started going for trichology treatments and have spent nearly a lakh on my hair till now. Did it help? Not one percent. If I have to tell you the truth, it only worsened things. Okay, I am not going to the 'worsened' part.

May be this is the way I am destined to look. If God decides something, can you contest it? My good friend Joshua used to encourage me saying, "Machan, in Australia bald men are considered sexy! So dont worry!! You'll get an Australian wife!!!". I used to laugh at this. Two days back, Audharsh pings me in whatsapp, "Being bald is the new trend. Mike Tyson is bald, Zidane is bald, Agassi is bald. Now Isaac is so!!" What can I do much about such positive remarks at my loss! People want to appreciate me and I say thanks. Haha. : ) Tyson had Robin Givens, Monica Turner and Lakiha Spicer for wives. Zidane married Veronique Fernandez and Agassi - Brooke Shields and Steffi Graff. All beautiful women! :D

Those days when it all started - the heavy hair-loss, I was definitely not worrying about women. It was only my depleting looks that bothered me. While I had just enough time to worry about myself, why would I think about girls who themselves would generally grow plump within months of marriage. Now I have gathered all the courage to cope with this. I might look 5 years (or more) older to my real age. What's the big deal? Some would laugh at me and crack some jokes. So what? I would take all the fun and whistle at them. Haha. :)

Yes, I am bald. And happily bald. :)