A Memorable Victory

These days, I do not follow Indian cricket(or cricket, in general) as passionately as I did a few years ago. Many a time, I won't even be knowing when is India's next match. Despite that, that I am writing a post on the Indian cricket team's win over South Africa today, is because, this was not just a test match win for the team. It was much more than that. It was victory against unsporting, manipulative tactics. It was a victory against ugly arrogance. It was a victory for fair play. It was victory for the gentleman's game. It was a victory for the Indian people.

It's a universally known fact that pitches are prepared to suit the home team. But what the South Africans did was doctoring the pitch in the worst possible way. They watered the pitch on the evening before the test match in anticipation of an Indian batting collapse on a wet pitch. On the contrary, not only did the match start late due to this misadventure, but also it was the South Africans who surrendered to a high quality Indian pace attack and that too after India managed to put up a respectable total. It was a sort of poetic justice that the South Africans were bowled out for their lowest score in test cricket since their readmission to international fold.

As if all this was not enough, the South African team showed arrogance that did no good to the game. Andre Nel, who looks like a pussy cat against the Aussies, tried to intimidate Sreeshanth by sledging. Sreeshanth's reaction(which did not include verbal counter-attack), is now of course, well known. The humiliation on Nel's face when Sreeshanth hit that famous six and did that famous bat-dance, is something that I can never ever forget. Players like Nel are a shame to the game.

On the other hand, Indians played it fair. They maintained their calm. They did not get into ugly things like sledging, true to their indian nature. They instead, let their cricket do the talking. They did not crib about the pitch even on day one(If it had happened in India, the whole world would have joined to condemn the curator and the Indian board to hell.). They made the most of a wet pitch.

To sum it up, it was a victory for the good. Congratulations, team India. You did all of us proud.

What a movie, ya!

A few months ago, I watched Nayagan - one of the best movies in India in my opinion, which engendered in me, a love for Tamil movies, especially those by Mani Rathnam and Kamal Hassan. Although, I do not understand Tamil(I can only understand very basic Tamil), this new foumd interest enabled me to see such good movies as Anbe Sivam, Kannathil Muthamittal and a few other movies(Thanks Arjun, for giving me those DVD/CDs). The latest in the list of Tamil movies I have watched is, Iruvar, which I viewed today.

As with all other Maniji's films this too was brilliant. Yes, I could not understand Tamil poetry which was in full flow in that movie. This, I am sure, would have taken half the sheen off it. Yet, it was a great watch. This was because of the simply amazing storytelling combined with A R Rahman's music composition that was perfect to say the least. Mani Rathnam's direction ensures that, a film, that could have so easily slipped into a documentary, is transformed into a must-watch-movie, one that has used Tamil political saga to perfection.

'Equitable Development'

The 'secular-politics' played out in this country, reached it's nadir, when our Prime Minister said yesterday, that 'Minorities, particularly Muslims, should have the first claim on national resources'. You need not have to be a social scientist to realize how dangerous this proposal is. 'Equitable development', which this Government claims to swear by, cannot be achieved by any particular group having a 'first claim' on national resources. Dear Prime Minister, you have made the most appalling statement of your life.

Why you should not give me your mobile phone number

As is evident from the copious amounts of crap this blog contains, writing long, uninteresting, insipid posts, about my 'ideas/thoughts'(which are always ones that have zero utilitarian value) is something that I like. This extends beyond this space of mine on 'blogosphere' to scrapping on Orkut and SMS.

The SMS version of 'me boring people' is the latest. Traveling an hour by bus to office, gives me a lot of scope to do this. 'Concisely expressed profound thoughts about life' is usually the theme of such 'invaluable' SMSs of mine. But, people, to whom I send such 'invaluable' thoughts using the medium of text messaging via cellular telephone, do not see these messages of mine in that light. They usually ignore it. ( But this is not unusual in history. It happened to Krishna, Gandhiji and many others like me.)

'Giving analogies between life and vehicular traffic and between real life and virtual world, you try to bring out the essence of life, Harish', is something that not even a single reader of my messages has said. Anyway, I am undeterred by this and continue to do my 'good work'. I am tempted to end this narcissistic post of mine with an example of the kind of 'thoughts' I normally send through SMS. Here it goes,
"Life is similar to driving in traffic. Disappointments, like the red signal, can frustrate you. But you have to take heart from the fact that, happier times, like the green signal, are surely round the corner".
'No doubt, people ignore your messages', is, I am sure, your opinion. Isn't it?

This Blood Group Is Backward

"Letters to the editor" is a part of any newspaper that I would not miss reading. You can judge me on this alone, but it is a fact. It is very interesting, for me at least, to know what people think about the news and views expressed in the newspaper. Today, in Deccan Herald, one reader had written to the editor, his strong views against reservation for minorities proposed by the present United "Progressive" Alliance Government. In that, he said, "No sensible person can think of reservation based on religion, colour of skin, blood group etc. ". Now the last bit, about blood group, struck me. This, I thought, was an avenue not yet explored by our reservation-hungry politicians.

Reservations based on blood groups. How to achieve this? Simple. All that needs to be done is first establish a committee; this committee will be entrusted the responsibility of conducting nationwide blood tests, determining the blood group which has the least population.(For the first time in the history of committees, this one will generate revenue for someone outside the committee. And that someone is hospitals conducting blood tests.), then proving officially that, that blood group is a socially and economically backward blood group.

Then the Government has to announce special reservations for those belonging to the oppressed and backward blood group. The opposition will then come out strongly saying, "This is nothing but blood-group politics. ". This will lead to polarization of polity on the basis of blood groups. We will then have 'A positive leader', 'B positive leader', 'O positive leader' etc instead of 'Dalit leader', 'Brahmin leader', 'OBC leader', 'Muslim leader', 'Hindu leader(if there is any)' etc that we have now. Consequently the number of types of leaders will decrease, which is really good.

This blood-group politics will enable us to overcome caste system and politics based on it and politics based on religion. This, to me is the biggest positive that will come out of all this apparent nonsense. And this positive, has come out of that seemingly innocuous "Letters to the Editor" space of the newspaper. Now, I hope, you understand the significance of this oft ignored part of newspapers.

Left to paagal hai!

"As long as the left has any future in this country, this country has no future left", was a pithy and witty remark made by Cho Ramaswamy, editor of the magazine Tuglak. How true this statement is, becomes very clear when we look at how the left has conducted itself after propping up a weak Congress led government led by a remarakably spineless Prime Minister two and a half years ago.

First came their demand to scrap the anti-terror law POTA enacted by the previous government. It was a necessity for them in their ideological warfare with the right. It doesn't matter to them if the nation loses because of that. Then they wanted the Government propped by them and headed by one of India's weakest Prime ministers, to have a relook at the improving Indo-US relations. How can you become friends with a 'Capitalist' state like US! If it were in their hands they would have even gone to war with US.

With their minds warped in an ideology that is definitely past its time, they wanted India to not even say 'Hello' to Israel. It doesn't matter to them that Israel is very important for our defence needs. Again if it was their own Government they would have probably derecognised Israel as a nation, thinking that this will teach Israel a lesson.

Then they used their new found powers in helping Maoists in Nepal to overthrow the Hindu Kingdom in Nepal. This was again a stupendous ideological victory for them. Then one day the Chinese ambassador says "Arunachal Pradesh belongs to China". When all political parties condemned the remark and reiterated that Arunachal Pradesh is an integral part of India, the loony left fell way short of doing so and said that "This was a historical dispute". This can only happen with the Indian prototype of a communist.

Their obsession with China is so insane that, they were complaining that the government was not allowing investments from China. This is also blatant hypocrisy as they are the ones to show the red flag(pun intended) whenever the Government considers increasing foreign direct investments. Any other country other than China, will invest in India with the sole intention of curbing India's independence is what the Indian Communists strongly believe. J P Narayan, once said that "the communists are Soviet stooges". Now the only difference is they are Chinese stooges.

The fact that they can condescend to any level was evident when they wanted India to strongly condemn death penalty to Saddam, a person who had killed millions of people during his tenure. What US is doing in Iraq may not be the most appropriate thing, but that does not necessitate India to condone the heinous crimes that Saddam did. But these are things beyond the scope of the Left's anachronistic ideology driven intellect. But the country cannot sufer because of them. We have to get rid of this loony left menace as soon as possible. Otherwise far greater dangers than we have seen are definitely in store.

Will Afzal apologists now campaign for Santosh Singh?

Today's 'New Indian Express' carried an article by Gurumurthy on the subject of the contrasting approaches taken by the media and the secularists towards the death sentences to Afzal the terrorist and Santosh Singh the murderer. Excellent articulation. In our media, its rare to find articles like these, that expose the mindless, outrageous, harmful 'secular discourse' happening in our country. Please, please read this article if you haven't already done so.

Kannada, Kannadiga, Karnataka

Today, is a special day for Kannadigas. This day marks fifty years of Karnataka. Ironically in this fiftieth year, in this state formed to promote Kannada, Kannada finds itself in very miserable situation. Kannada is increasingly being neglected and Kannadiga is facing a big challenge in preserving his identity. But, the reasons for the plight of Kannada as well as the Kannadiga lies in the Kannadiga himself and not anyone else. Unfortunately this realisation has not dawned upon people who can make a difference.

Particularly, a majority of the people(not everyone) among today's Kannada literati, I dare say, should take the major blame for the ills facing Kannada. Whenever they are asked as to what should be done to improve Kannada consciousness among Kannadigas, their one and only answer is to make Kannada the medium of instruction in schools. This response is so inane and lacking in maturity that I, although being a Kannadiga, seriously doubt their ability to produce creative works. In a globalised world of today where good English knowledge has become imperative, making Kannada or for that matter any other regional language the medium of instruction would make children handicapped right from the beginning. Also it does no good to Kannada. Instead, have Kannada as a compulsory language in schools. Not only that, discard the current Kannada textbooks full of same old history lessons and omnipresent Ambedkar stories (the same story about Ambedkar appeared in all the ten years of our schooling) and replace them with textbooks containing chapters that can make students eager to read more of Kannada literature(which , I admit, I haven't done till now but I am determined to change that soon).

Another knee-jerk reaction of these militant kannada activists is to stop theatres from showing other language movies and blame those movies for the sad sate of Kannada movie industry. They are not ready to admit that the Kannada film industry, that once was adorned with men like Rajkumar, Narasimharaju and Balakrishna, is so pathetically lacking in talent that its only resort these days is remaking Telugu and Tamil films with the less than mediocre acting talent available in Kannada cinema today. Despite this, if any good movie is releaased, people have received it well as it was in the case of "Apthamitra" or for that matter "Jogi"(this film had a good story but mediocre cast in my opinion).

Non-kannadigas are also the target of these bellicose self-proclaimed saviours of Kannada. Even in this case it is our fault that we do not market our native language well enough to them. One simple thing you can do to market Kannada to non-Kannadigas is to tell them about BeeChi and Master Hirannayya and give them a peek into the works of these master satirists.

Popularisation of "Kannada Sugama Sangeeta" is another way to promote interest in Kannada.
I haven't read Kannada poems other than those few we had in our schools. But for laymen like us, people like Mysore Ananthswamy have composed music and sung them in the form of "Sugama Sangeeta"(light music). They are not only well composed and pleasant to listen, but they also familiarize us with Kannada poems. If you understand Kannada and you haven't listened to these songs please do listen and enjoy. Thats the least service we can do to Kannada.

And last but not the least, what we all Kannadigas can do is to speak Kannada and do so without feeling apologetic about it. Remember, only we Kannadigas together can save Kannada. Neither the Government nor the bearded-bespectacled men in the Kannda literary world like Anantamurty offer us any hope. The only hope lies in awakening the Kannada consciousness in every Kannadiga in a peaceful, dignifed manner that befits Kannadigas and without antagonising our own countrymen in other states.

Gandhi Pataki

In this great country of ours, we pay tribute to people who have done a 'worthwhile contribution to society' by such gestures as using their names to rename roads, circles, flyovers, garbage-collection-vans, urban extensions and more. But somehow, in this Deepavali season, I feel we have left out crackers from this 'renaming-gesture'. Added to this, is the irony that crackers have been named after animals and not eminent people. I think we should give this a serious rethink. Probably we can have a nationwide discussion on this. It's the need of the hour. I think its practical to set ourselves a goal of completing this renaming process by next Deepavali, so that we can have the previlege of bursting 'Maulana Abdul Kalam Azad pataki'(Pataki is kannada word for crackers. This is for those who do not know Kannada.), 'Gandhi pataki', 'Anil Kumble Kumble pataki' etc next year. Ok, I will stop this piece of jejunity here. Wish you all a 'Happy Deepavali'

Upcoming sequels

Wih sequels to every other film being made in Hindi cinema these days, these are the sequels that you can expect, according to me, in the next few years.

Film: Maine Gandhi Ko Nahin Mara
Sequel 1: Maine Nehru Ko Nahin Mara
Sequel 2: Maine Maulana Abdul Kalam Azad Ko Nahin Mara (English title: MMAKAKNM)
Seqeul 3: Maine Mujhko Nahin Mara (English title: I did not commit Suicide)

Film: Don, The Chase Begins
Sequel 1: Don - Chase In Progress, Please Maintain Silence And Remain Seated
Sequel 2: Don - This Chase Will Definitely Go Down To The Wire
Sequel 3: Don - Chase Completed, No Threats Found.

Film: Anthony Kaun Hai?
Sequel 1: Anthony Woh Hain?
Sequel 2: Nahin. Anthony Bhagwaan Hain.
Sequel 3: Anthony Kaun Hain? Mujhe Kya Maloom Hain?

Film: Krrish(This, infact, was itself a sequel)
Sequel 1: Krrrish With 3 R's
Sequel 2: Krrrrish With 4 R's
Sequel 3: (Sequel 3 will be kept as a mystery without releasing it.)

Film: Rang De Basanti
Sequel 1: Dubaara Rang De Basanti - Another minister's assasination? Another radio station taken over by assasins?
Sequel 2: Teesra Rang De Basanti - Radio station renovated
(Fearing that it would be impossible to repeat the success of these 3 films, Mehra decides not to shoot the third sequel, "Kahaani Har Radio Station Ki").

Film: Mangal Pandey - The Rising
Sequel 1: Mangal Pandey - He Has Risen
Sequel 2: Mangal Pandey - The Curtains Come Down
(Sequel 3 would not be shot. Reasons will not be divulged.)

Fim: Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna (KANK)
Amused by the abbrevaition KANK, Karan deicides to makethe following sequels with similar acronyms.
Sequel 1: Tum Alvida Naa Kaho (TANK)
Sequel 2: Hum Alvida Naa Kahenge (HANK)
Sequel 3: Bhai, Alvida Naa Kaho (BANK)
All these 3 films by Karan, will deal with 'complex relationships'. This is very obvious.

Well, that's it for today. Any other ideas for sequels? Do tell me.

No Magic, Only Pure Logic

As I have told time and again in this blog, many problems world over are nowhere near a solution mainly because of a complete lack of innovative thinking. Narrowing down the scope of the above statement, makes it applicable to the boundary dispute between Karnataka and Maharashtra that has been the central news-item over the past few days. It was complete lack of common sense, let alone innovative thinking, on the part of our leaders of the Nehruvian era that led to creation of states based on language. This has time and again raised many totally avoidable controversies between various states. "Belgaum Boundary Row" is the latest in that list. But all these controversies can be solved only if some creativity is invovled in the thought processes(if any) of our 'esteemed leaders'. As always I will give my solution despite the knowledge about the infinitely insignificant nature of this blog.

As is cliched, you need to get to the root of the problem to solve it. In this case it is the language. Only because people of that region speak either Marathi or Kannada , all these problems arise. So what if the people of Belgaum had spoken the Zulu language? Then they would have demanded that they be part of South Africa (where it is spoken). Since geography, which we can all agree is very cruel, wont allow that, this demand will be a non-starter(unless there is someone like the erstwhile Nizam of Hyderabad who wanted to join Pakistan sitting in the middle of India). But the problem is majority dont speak Zulu in Belgaum. Having identified this we move on to the next step.

Now people should learn Zulu, speak Zulu, write Zulu but be Indian in their hearts. But for people to learn Zulu they should be given incentives. We can give them money, land, forest, talktime, simcards, free television sets, free access to cable television that feature Rani Mukherji, Preity Zinta in peppy item numbers all day and has no programs that have anything to do with Rajdeep etc. Also we can have up and coming tennis players from Belgaum improve their rankings by making them play against Sania Mirza continuously. Sania will agree if she is monetarily rewarded well. We can also have some tax incentives(like zero tax on incomes between 0-1 billion, above it 0.97%) worked out provided they agree to speak Zulu and forget about any other language. If these were the conditions, I would have agreed to speak Zulu even in my sleep. This being the case, people would switch over to Zulu. No more border disputes. But Karnataka retains Belgaum by default. Maharashtra can also feel happy that these people do not have the previlege of watching their proud son Rajdeep. Win-win situation for both.

See, I told you no, idu tumba simple anta? What do you say?

State of my blog poll - Exclusive

Its unofficial now. Barely 5 months and a handful of posts into this blog, it has been rated as the number one blog by everyone, including people who haven't read this blog, those who haven't heard about it, people travelling in trains, a person named KrishRao(he is from the days of the British Raj) and many others. Frankly, I did not want to publish the results of this poll since I do not believe in numbers. But pressure from people who have helped make this blog a reality and also from KrishRao forced me to publish it.

This was a poll conducted by "AC Ramachandra Rao - Guruwrites", a reputed and reliable agency for opinion polls of any kind. The poll interviewed 5483 people from 17.32 states in the second half of the third week of August. The poll interviewed people from urban as well rural areas, people moving in trains, children above one year and also the one and only KrishRao.

One clear truth that has emerged from this poll is that, people feel that this blog has kept its promise of producing only nonsense. This is a feeling shared by not just by people across the north-south divide but also by me. Another likeable feature of this blog for the people of this nation is that they do not know much about it.

Let me get into some numbers now. Nearly 7.32 percent of the people polled(including those who don't know about this blog) say this blog is one of its kind, hillarious, informative, thought provoking, never-before-never-will-be-such-a-blog. This number can be a bit more than this, if we take into account the volatilities of the stock market, failed monsoons and high prices of vegetables.

People who feel this blog is not good is a negative 0.32 percent. In other words there are no such people. People who said this blog can improve were later found to be invalid voters and hence their votes were not taken into account. But we have accepted their invaluable feedback. The rest of the people felt, this blog, especially its name - guruwrites, is very good and innovative.

Children, who were an important part of the people polled, say this blog has helped them in ways that cannot described in simple words. So I will not describe it. KrishRao says , this blog reminds him of the days of the Raj. Since this is a feeling, KrishRao says, cannot be reasoned out, I shall not attempt to do so respecting the opinion of this octogenarian.

Many people say, such fantastic results are because of people's love, affection and faith in this blog. But I strongly believe, it is because of having conducted this poll we have had such good numbers. Otherwise how would we have known that this blog is at the top.

I would conclude this post, by giving details of some of the questions asked in the poll and people's answers to them.

1> Do you know about this blog?
Yes : Undisclosed percentage
No: Only invalid voters said no

2> Do you feel this blog has helped bring peace in the middle east?
Yes : 97%
No: 3%

3> Do you feel this blog can help the nation to become a superpower?
Yes: 98.79%
Partially Yes: 1.21%

4> Do you feel that the posts on this blog have made train travel more enjoyable?
Yes: 88%
I dont have words to describe my joy: 12%
(Here the gap becomes wider in the semi-urban areas with good bus service)

5> Will you believe the results of this poll as and when thay are out?
Yes: 100%

Disclaimer: This post might not contain facts.

Vande Mataram

Setting apart the controversies, the centenary celebrations of the adoption of "Vande Mataram" by the then Congress has done a lot of good. It first of all made more Indians aware of this beautiful national song. Secondly we were able to listen to the melifluous tune of "Vande Mataram" quite a few times on television today. Set in the very pleasant Des raag, Vande Mataram song gives you a kind of joy that can only be described as transcendental. It stirs up the patriotic feelings in us even today, a good 130 years after its publication. No wonder this was the theme song of our independence movement.

With due respect to"Jana Gana Mana", Vande Mataram, to me is a song that treats the nation as a whole without individually referring to states and provinces. In this way no state can feel left out in this process.

Vande Mataram is also indicative of our culture. This is a nation whose time tested culture puts the mother on a high pedestal. In accordance with this, Vande Mataram offers salutations to our nation in the form of bowing to Mother India. Being in devanagari, it is also in the language of our great epics Ramayana and Mahabaharata which undoubtedly are an invaluable contribution of India to not just world literature but also to humanity.

At the end of the day, irrespective of how high the nation scores in secularism, the national song of a nation should reflect the culture and traditions of the nation. If it invovles a bit of religious touch, so be it. A national song should be one that can spur on the nation, not one that is the product of consensus or compromise. Vande Mataram undoubtedly qualifies on all these accounts. Yet it stays religion neutral.

O Bharata Mata!, Salutations to thou! Vande Mataram! Vande Mataram!

Oh God! Save This Nation!

For a significant part of the freedom struggle, Vande Mataram was a song that inspired our freedom fighters to give up even their lives for the cause of liberating our nation. It continues to be one of those things that can unite Indians across the region, religion, language barrier. But unfortunately and to the dismay of every true Indian, such a truly national song is being made a victim of the tyranny of "Indian secularism", a euphemism for "vote-bank" politics.

Singing of Vande Mataram, according to the ground rules of Indian "secularism", is not above the communal interests. Regardless of it being a national song, Vande Mataram is still subservient to the sentiments of certain sections of our population. Freedom of religion, say secularists, permits one to not sing the national song if it hurts their religious sentiments. This is a very dangerous argument. Certain things such as singing the national anthem or the national song, respecting the national flag and abiding by the courts of the land should be non-negotiable. This is natural if we are really serious about putting the nation first ahead of the individuals or communities. Otherwise, what if, tomorrow, another community says it will not salute the national flag citing that it hurts their religous beliefs or what if they do not adhere to the judgments of the courts saying courts are below their religion. Such arguments are real dangers to our national unity. But the all-knowing secularist, fails to comprehend this.

For the secular-wallahs, who rant the whole day about keeping religion seperate from politics, who preach us about how everybody is an Indian first irrespective of religion, who always claim themselves to be the keepers of this nation's "secular conscience", nation comes only a distant second to the sentiments of certain communities. I am sure such secularists only succeed in embarassing the very same communities, because these communities too want to put their nation ahead of their religion. Ultimately these secular loonies only divide the people along religious lines. This is what they want as it helps them to be in the limelight preaching their secular bullshit. Oh God!, Kindly save this nation!

Pluto

Scientists of the International Astronomical Union have suddenly decided to redefine what constitutes a planet and as a consequence, poor Pluto, which was sincere and honest in its revolution around the Sun, will no longer be the planet it used to be since 1930. It takes some time to come to terms with this disturbing news of our own Pluto being left out in this redefinition. One can only wonder if Pluto could have approached Rajdeep. He would have certainly brought Pluto's plight to public notice. "Has Pluto been given an unfair deal by astronomists? Are we, as a society, becoming intolerant?" would have been Rajdeep's question Facing the Nation (pun intended). Rajdeep would also have delved into other aspects of this path-breaking decision, such as reprinting of school textbooks to indicate this change and also the sense of deep isolation felt by the youngest, now former, member of this Solar system. But these are just hypothetical. Things have to move on. We can only hope that the remaining planets continue to stay as planets and co-operate with others.

Today, I successfully completed the fourth week of my "corporate" life at SAP (rightly pronounced as Ess Aa Pee) Labs. Life here is pretty good except for the travel. If you have to travel 25-27 kilometres to your office everyday, you know that the situation is not ideal. People have told me both directly and indirectly(indirect version is generally immediately followed by a direct version for my better comprehension) that such travel everyday wont permit you to "lead life to the fullest". But I answer all of them by decisively saying nothing.

That's it then for this post. Good Bye.

Temples - A Corporate Plan

While some of the temples in Kerala are busy purifying the respecive temples's deity because it was touched by women 20 years ago, India's richest temple, Tirupati, has really come out with an innovative idea to decrease the rush at Tirupati. They plan to open a similar temple in Bangalore. When I read this in today's newspaper (which, these days, has been infested by "moles"), I was really delighted at their thinking. But, then I thought, they can do better.

What they can do is, they can select a temple and certify it as meeting Tirupati standards. They can also have an organization called Tirupati Temple Standards Organization (TTSO) to do such certification. This saves them the trouble of acquiring land and building new temple. In such certified temples, everything, starting from the deity to the Prasadam, will be standardized.

Another benefit of such certification to the Tirupati temple group is that they can have temples, not only in Bangalore but across the country very easily.

The other important benefit of having such certification has got something to with the marketing of the certified temple. The certified temples can market themselves as having been certified as TTSO 1000, TTSO 2000, TTSO 5000, TTSO 4568 etc. Higher the ranking, higher the blessings of God.

Now, whenever there is such a healthy competition, the devotee is the beneficiary. He will go to that temple where he can get more blessings and also more ladoos. And here is a sample, albeit homo-erotic, conversation about visit to such a temple.
Raju: Hi, Ram, where had you been?
Ram: I had gone to TTSO 4000. Nice temple.
Now they are going for TTSO 8000. Then I can reduce the frequency of my temple
visit to half becuase I can acquire double the blessings in half the visits. Raju: Very efficient.
Ram: Ya ya.
Raju: Ok, bye. See you in TTSO 4000, next week.

With the implementation of such standards, the temples can also get listed in stock markets. Then we can see ads that tell us something like,
"TTSO 4000, Bangalore is offering shares at Rs 30 each. Hurry, offer closes on 15 August. For more details refer the Sacred Cow prospectus".

With commercialisation of temples happening at such rapid pace, these ideas may soon become a reality. What do you say?

Silence

On Tuesday, 18th July 2006, a week after the Mumbai blasts, the whole nation or atleast some parts of it, observed a minute of silence in the evening to "show solidarity" with the victims. The fact that we are in general a very emotional population, this event helped the media to not only increase its TRP but also to exaggerate the import of the gesture. It was a gesture aimed to tell the victims that, "All of us are with you in this moment of tragedy". That's it. But to say that it was a gesture that gave a "strong message to the terrorist" is simply ridiculous and this was what our media did.

Each time a bomb blast takes place injuring innocent men, women and children, apart from the politcal rhetoric about winning the war on terror, these sentimental-solidarity-expressing gestures have become a commonplace in India although neither the government takes any concrete action against the terrorists and their networks nor do we demand that from the government. I believe the only way we can offer some consolation to the victims of terror is by hunting the terrorists down, putting a freeze on their activities and accounts and convicting them for all the heinous crimes they have so far committed.

The power of silence can neither stun nor scare the terrorist. A mere expression of solidarity cannot defeat terror. The sooner the media, the government and we the people realize it, the better it is for the nation.

Insanity unlimited

As a solution to the ongoing "temple scandals" where a number of women (at last count three) entered various temples (at last count the number of such temples was two) they were not supposed to enter according to some medieval rules of the respective temples, the liberals with all their intellect suggested the same old solution of making entry to all temples open to both men and women. But this hasn't quite been implemented. Hence, logically, we can safely assume that this solution doesn't work. So why not try something different?

That different solution entails having entry to temples exclusively to either men or women and in some cases to both. This isn't discriminatory because neither men nor women are allowed access to all the temples. This also promotes the concept of unity of God because more than the temple's deity, the gender of the devotee will be more important. Hence more than being a Shiva temple or Ganesha temple, the temple would be a men's one or women's one.

Further extending this concept to children, we can have children's temple where only children are allowed. Also we can have temples based on age groups. For example, an under-19 temple will allow only people under the age of 19. This will allow temple authorities to market their temples better by providing the facilities that their temple's devotees (or shall I say visitors) would desire. An under-19 temple would not normally need a meditation hall. It can instead have a big internet parlour.

Well, I think I should end this post here. Otherwise I would be allowed only inside an asylum.

We the people of India...

Last week, I had the "Constitution of India and Professional Ethics" exam, hopefully the last theory exam (I said hopefully, since it all obviously depends on the results) of my engineering course. While studying for this exam(this act of studying normally happens on on the day before the exam), I realized an important truth; and that was the fact that our Constitution can be used (or shall I say amended) tactfully to solve most of the problems facing this great country.

Although the solution is simple, somehow we haven't even attempted it yet. Only Indira Gandhi came near it. She included the word "socialist" in the preamble to our constitution and made this nation a socialist state - a goal accomplished through bloody revolutions in China and Russia. Similarly, she made this nation "secular" officially, again by the mere addition of the word "secular" to the preamble.

What we need today is a further extension of this concept of amending the constitution tactfully, purposefully. The problem of corruption ceases to be a problem if we simply include another word to our great constitution - "Corrupt". The preamble would then be something like, " WE, THE PEOPLE OF INDIA, having solemnly resolved to constitute India into a SOVEREIGN SOCIALIST SECULAR CORRUPT DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC..". Simply put, this will have a significant impact on this nation not just economically but also w.r.t. literature, arts, cinema and many more. We will have books like, "Seven effective ways of highly corrupt people", "The Corrupt Indian" and the like. We will also see a genre of movies where there will be no evil since corruption (against which many movie stars have fought, although in movies)would no longer be an evil.

Another fight of present day governments is against people who do not pay tax. This can be tackled easily. All you need to do is abolish taxes. This, when done with the previous move of making corruption legal, will not have any bad effects. While corruption increases the sources of livelihood for people , tax abolition will increase their savings and thus people can themselves spend on building roads, toilets, schools, swimming pools and basketball courts. Such in-house(literally) sporting facilities like basketball courts can nurture young sporting talents in the country and help us realize the dream of winning more than a medal in Olympics.

As I told in my previous post, we can also declare our nation as "obscenely backward class" nation. This avoids the need to bring periodic legislations to enhance reservations.

As I said these are very simple moves (simpler than reserving seats in IIMs) that have to be taken by the government. Only thing is we don't have people in the government who are bold enough to execute these measures.

How to make India number one in cricket

Today evening, me, Arjun, Arvind played a game of cricket. But with a lot of innovation. You were out if you were unable to make the bat meet the cricket ball twice in a row and also if you made that bat-ball(cricket ball, I am making this clear to avoid unnecessary misinterpretations) contact more than four times. This led to a lot of funny ways of getting out. The game ended. But the innovative thinking (or stupid thinking, perhaps) continued.

We sat down to take some much needed rest after a not so tiring game of cricket. The issue of reservations came up for discussion, but in a lighter vein. We have heard about how reservations can be introduced in cricket team selections. We applied this concept more fully in that discussion(Doesn't this word sound very bureaucratic?). In the following passages, I shall explain how.(Doesn't this sentence sound like one from a textbook?)

The basic assumption is that the backward classes do not have access to quality primary net facilities and coaches. Consequently they will have low batting averages and very few number of wickets to their credit. So they need affirmative action to compete with upper classes who have obscenely high batting averages and who have taken a lot of wickets. ("Survey on batting averages of upper castes and wickets tally of upper castes - 1947-2006 by Yogendra Yadav" shows that all upper caste batsmen, on an average, had a batting average of 15,234 runs and had, on an average, taken 23,456 wickets).

In order to bring about social justice in cricket, the Government therefore, has to bring about some rules. One of them is giving 27 runs extra for every 100 runs scored by an OBC batsman. This can help the team as a whole because, if all batsmen are OBCs , then the team has to score only 73% of the target if batting second or the opponents have to score 127% of the target. That's why noted social scientist Yogendra Yadav says, "Reservations and affirmative actions help the country achieve higher glory". But there is one catch here. Other nations might not accept to this. Then we can simply pass a terse ordinance saying, "India is an Obscenely Backward Class Nation. Non compliant nations will have nothing to do with this new OBC nation".

Well, this isn't enough. We have to help our "oppressed brethren" even more. For every wicket that an OBC bowler takes, 3 more wickets will be added to his tally of wickets also resulting in 3 more batsmen getting out without facing a ball.
I can't emphasise more on how this will catapult India into the top slot in every form of criket among the cricketing nations of the world.

Also, all appeals by an upper class bowler against an OBC batsman will be referred to the "Committe (17 members) to look into oppressive appeals made by upper class bowlers against poor OBC batsman who have no access to quality primary nets". After the committe decides on the issue within a day or two that the OBC batsman was not out, the match proceeds.

Also, we can have shorter wickets for OBC batsman and longer ones for others. By all these measures, we can become the number one cricketing nation of the world. Our sucess will then be tried out by different countries. But since the competence of our politicians in this field is unmatched, they will always remain a step ahead in bringing about more such rules. Then, the other countries would have to just keep trying without the kind of success that we would have achieved.

Stuck in an elevator

The one thing that frightens me in a building is, elevator. Particularly, the automated one. Not that the old fashioned manual ones, that you dont find these days, didn't frighten me. But, atleast there you had more functions of the elevator, like opening and closing the door, under your complete control. Whenever I use an elevator, nightmarish thoughts like, "What will happen if I get stuck in the elevator for several hours? Will I be overwhelmed by claustrophobic feelings? Will I survive in the lift without food for hours?" never cease to cross my mind. Because of such apprehensions, I had hardly used the lift until I joined my engineering college.

Even in my engineering college, initially, I used the lift very rarely. But somehow I concealed my fears. After some time, due to sheer laziness to climb the stairs, I started to make use of the lift despite my innumerable fears about it.

For three years, my fears about the lift hadn't come true. So with only a couple of months remaining for my engineering course to complete, I had thought that these fears wont come true in my college. This was significant considering the fact that the lifts in our college (there are 4 of them) dont work properly all the time. But last month, the unthinkable happened, albeit in a smaller proportion.

On that evenful day, we (three of us - myself and my friends Guru Anandh and Satish) entered the lift in the fourth floor. This was a lift that was not in the operational mode very often. But that didnt deter us. As soon as we got in, I made sure that the lift would stop in all the floors that we would come across on our way to the ground floor by pressing the relevant keys for all the floors.

Unlike the Cyrius Cybernetics Corporation elevators, this one obediently stopped as expected in the third floor. Since no one was willing to use the services of the elevator at that instant of time in the third floor, we closed the door and proceeded downwards. Strangely, it didn't stop in the second floor. It started moving to its next stop - first floor. At this point, Guru (not me, my friend) wondered aloud, "What if the power goes off now?".(He just told this in a lighter vein, not out of any fears of the kind that I have). As soon as he finished saying this, the power went off. We were three fourths of the way down from the second floor to the first floor. The lift stopped since the generator wasn't turned on that day. The inner door of the lift was half-opened (though you will see only one door opening when it is functioning normally) with the outer one in the background closed fully. Fortunately, there was a small gap between the outer doors that was sufficient to communicate with the outer world. The upper part of the inner door was covered by the wall. To say that this was a frightening situation for me, would be an understatement. My legs were trembling. My heart was pounding in a way that it had never done before.

But the other two in the lift, far from panicking were amused at being stuck in a lift. My panic only added to their amusement. This, needless to say, added to my tension.
Anyway, all of us started screaming for help. Because of the strange position of the lift, not many realised that it was stuck. Finally someone came to our rescue. He called the lift operator who was conspicuous by his absence till now. By this time we had managed to open the inner doors completely by pressing the key normally used to open the door in toatlity. The lift operator, then did as simple a thing as turning a screw to open the two halves of the outer door completely. The sense of relief that the opened doors brought to me is something that cannot be described.
Since the lift was stuck quarter of a distance from the first floor, we had to jump out of the lift onto the floor below that was at a short distance. With this final act performed, this whole drama, that lasted for about ten minutes, came to an end. But its memory will remain with me for a long time to come.

Are we argumentative?

"India has always had an argumentative tradition", argues Amartya Sen in his book Argumentative Indian. He strengthens his argument using anecdotes from our epics and other incidents from our history. But looking at how this nation has reacted to some of the issues in the recent past, would raise some serious doubts about our argumentatitve nature.

Take for instance, the recent assembly elections in Tamil Nadu. Karunanidhi, won the elections based on promises like Rs. 10,000 for every woman below poverty line and Rs. 2 a kilo rice. These are promises that can never solve the problem of poverty and only help in keeping the poor, poor. This in a cynical way ensures that the "poor votebank" is intact. But how many of these liberal progressive thinkers came out strongly against such promises? Where was the counter-argument to expose the hollow nature of such promises?

Today there are protests going on against reservations in higher educational institutions. Barring a few informed discussions, all we hear about reservations on television is how the police lathi-charged the peacefully protesting students or how these protests compare with the mandal protests of the 90s. Let alone political parties, let alone the progressive liberals, even the media doesn't seem to have the courage to enlighten the masses about the counter-productive nature of reservations. Where is the counter point to the politics of Mandal?

Sometimes, to add to the lack of informed and healthy debates, what we get to see is vandalism. From Salman Rushdie to Khushboo, many have faced the wrath of such vandalism. Such vandalism is the result of intolerance to the opposing view.

Although, you might dismiss these as few aberrations, these surely do not reflect well on our argumentative tradition.

Harish is Guru, Guru is Harish

The blog name might suggest that this is a blog where you can get the latest spiritual news.But that is not the case. This blog's name has its origins in an incident that happened in my high
school.
One day, in my high school, I had a quarell (a verbal fight, not a physical fight) with one of my friends, Arvind. Consequently, I got a bit angry. Arvind, never missed an opportunity to create a ridiculous story about me. My anger presented him one such opportunity. According to the story he made up that day, I would, in my anger, go and sit on top of an overhead tank that was in our school and do tapas on a single leg. I would then get enlightened and become the Guru. Thus I became Guru.
This story wouldn't have become well known but for the propoganda of two other classmates of mine. They ensured that on most desks of the class, "Harish Is Guru, Guru Is Harish", was inscribed. One among these two, Arjun, ensured that the "Guru" saga became well known in college as well.