lissome's blog

The Mumbai blasts provided more salacious space for the media to celebrate some more “breaking” stories. This time it was live  cover - drama for 48 hours. They had not had such an ongoing performance since little Prince fell down that tube well a couple of years ago. Except that, this was a dedication of unbelievable AK 47 totting, impeccably trained, committed, young and awesomely misled terrorists like none we have ever seen before. As I write this I am not sure if this is the end of the beginning of a new genre in terrorism and if the cliché "we live in fear" that lot of people mouth hasn't indeed come true to haunt us.

We do not live in fear. We live in awe of fear. Those of us who lose loved ones grieve and are angered at a personal level against a faceless enemy. Others merely move on clicking their tongues, without a thought until the next set of buildings or markets or malls come under siege. Then it is back to the media circus of visuals, non-stop chatter, the same clichés, the same chest thumping declarations of 'the terrorists shall not beat us'  and the accompanying blather.

The truth is they do beat us.. every time and laugh at us with their willing deaths. And we helplessly give in to defeat everytime we lose our lives. In the ‘us’ and ‘them’ battle, I am afraid we are more vulnerable and weaker. But do we admit that? No. We talk big. We talk brave. Anchor Pronoy Roy was almost shouting in some kind of outraged righteousness at the unidentified terrorist on how we are going to be indefatigable and unfazed. From Obama to the lowly blogger we constantly aver that we will beat them by not giving up. Tell me does that mean anything at all? It can only mean something if we were to take precautions like the USA or Isarael in preventing them from ever getting to us. Otherwise, it is empty words. They have in fact shown us audaciously that they can walk in anywhere anytime and get us all gunned down. Shame!  

Srinivasan Jain of  NDTV could not contain his glee as he reported live from the Taj, Rahul of Times Now sounded like he was giving us a cricket commentary outside Nariman House and Bak bak Barkha nearly jumped and clapped when her bak bak was interrupted by a blast from behind her. Goswami had a panel of commentators, I recall Gerson Decuna talking ‘twice’ on two shows,  about how India would fight terror. Arnab then went into some kind of aggressive fit where he jabbed the air with both his fingers in an attempt to find answers and accused people of hypocricy. The gall of the man!! He had Sanjana Kapoor who I think can’t talk without dramatic acting anymore due to her Prithvi association. In her Brit accented English she dragged words like hugeeeeee as if to make an impact…  he had Arjun Rampal who loved the sound of  his voice and mouthed a few vague solutions but none of them said the most obvious thing ' Intelligence. It was only ex top cop Rebeiro who mentioned Intelligence as the key to prevention of terror.

Their attack was on how our security forces did  not know how to handle a crisis hostage  situation. The politicians had done nothing for us (yawn)  How brave our police were coz 11 of them died.. mera bharat mahan and I am thinking ..  why would the chief of the ATS go in guns flashing like John Wayne? Whatever happened to bullet proofs and helmets? Is there no such thing as checking out suspects? Someone said this morning he did have a bullet proof that he had removed thinking that the encouter was over when he was shot!!!  Hello? And we call this our finest cop???? I am truly scared. Khamte is supposed to have died trying to drag this chap out of the jeep and got rewarded with point blank heaven!! Now that they are dead we can go into eulogies, and ask no embarrassing questions. Modi can compete with Vilasrao and offer one crore every politician can show his bald pate and demand z cover from the depleting police force who are promptly deployed to 'save' their derrieres even in a time of crisis.  After all the only safe place is under the Gandhi cap Where O where is our Marati manoos Raj Thackeray and his vanar sena?

This is not about the commandos not flushing the terrorists out in half a day. This is about not having an efficient intelligence network. This is  about not collecting enough information to make sure there were  no hostages in the first place.  How is it there is no vigilance on sea or air or land and these men could transport weapons that were so huge and heavy? Why is it terrorists give up their lives to kill the common man but never a politician? Why?  Why is it the media that barks loudest and fastest when the crisis hits is never seen after it is over? Why do they never question the wretched ministers on what action they have taken to redeem their stinking chairs? Why is there so much self -congratulation in the face of so many dead? Why do we have a soppy sentimental fascination for survivor stories?

 By the way people don't blame our police ok? Large contingents of police have in the last two months spent their meager energies on more pressing needs:

1. Arresting bar girls
2. Arresting kids at rave parties
3. Subjecting night drivers to breathalyzer tests.
4. Making sure no one smokes in public.
5. Other sundry stuff like covering MNS chief for security

Terrorists? Ha bhai yaad hai par itna bada shehar bhala ek police ki toli kya kar sakti hai?

A VIRTUAL ENCOUNTER ' LISSOME AND JOHN

This is an excerpt from one of my virtual encounters on the net where I had a discussion on philosophy and language with one John Wallen on the Ryze site.  I regard it as one of the best examples of an  intelligent, cogent and civil argument.  Sharing this with you for your views on the subject and on the arguments.

Lissome Lady: The Descartian ‘I THINK therefore I AM’ is often seen as erroneous by those who believe that the 'real self' is the observer of the mind because we humans have metacognition ' we can think about our thinking. Some call this the "soul" - the ghost in the machine.


Speech and reason are inextricably linked. George Orwell demonstrated the connection between word and thought and therefore action, brilliantly in 1984 where ‘newspeak’ in the totalitarian regime was about forbidding vocabulary that would incite revolt and thereby providing an infallible instrument of political control. Humans are the only creatures who can talk with reason. The other animals do not even have the range of sounds required to produce speech. Reason is only given to Man and it has been his boon and bane.


Man in search of self enlightenment or God, seeks sources of previous knowledge that is found in religious texts, philosophies, wise men, experiences of other men and of course his own experiences. To claim that any of these is the sole repository of wisdom is to shortchange oneself of the multitudinal avenues of knowledge available to the resourceful Seeker.

There was a thought provoking Simpsons episode of Bart or Lisa claiming to have seen God in a Church, as a prank, begetting reactions of disbelief from the family and the neighbourhood. The whole thing snowballs into hysteria. Accusations of witchcraft and madness and ostracism and the whole line of enquiry into questioning our rather plastic faith were the issues explored.


When it comes to Ganesha drinking milk or the statue of Mary shedding tears or blood, there is this instant and instinctive disbelief even amongst the most reverent. It is probably the devout, who are seen by the majority as gullible and succumbing to the "con". When put to sudden test, the conviction of the faithful about God, may well be suspect and fragile.


It makes one wonder at the romantic narrative of religion that is convenient, pleasurable, bonding, socially sanctioned, easy to extol and celebrate and dutiful to be passed on to the next generation. When this is disturbed by an "abnormal" incident, skeptics and believers, both, are up in arms. The 'convenience' of religion contributes to the hypocrisy that its followers subscribe to in parroting faith without qualms or self denigration when put to test. This is fodder for the non believers in turn to condemn aggressively.

The function of religion in social order and peace is undeniably true in its intention, paradoxically religion has caused some of the worst atrocities and destruction. Even today terrorism stalks us in the name of God. The irony of it!!!


John Wallen : Yes, lissome lady…humans can think about their own thinking–but they can only do it with the mind. Of course, some religions might see the mind itself as a kind of illusion and hindu and buddhist meditation, for example, suggests that we should get beyond identifying the mind with the real “us” and learn to differentiate the mind from the “soul” or most essential part of what we are.

However, this argument subtly takes us back into the realms of faith. This is achieved by starting from a scientific point of view before moving back into the mystical realm. In a nutshell, there is no more proof for the idea that anything other than our own minds is observing thinking processes than there is for more usual statements of faith (”God is good”, “the devil is bad”, etc.).

Perhaps it is a false dichotomy, as mind thinking about itself may not be so different than an egotistical person thinking about his own egotism (that is to say, it’s merely a linguistic paradox and not a real one). We can think about mind and how we come to know things–yes. But this is probably just an everyday feat achieved by the material mind: it thinks about itself in the same way that it thinks about anything else (”that idea is wrong”, “I like him”, “my mind is really weird”).

Also, we don’t know how accurate this type of “thinking” might be (thinking about the mind, I mean). In the end it is a way of by-passing scientific thought and coming back to the assertions of faith from another angle (the real me–not the mind–is able to watch my mind thinking!) Of course such ideas may be true–but they cannot be scientifically verified and so must come under the category of faith.

I think it’s a very linguistically naive idea of Orwell’s to believe that because certain words are excised from the language, particular emotional states can be avoided. Will a mother not love her child because the word “motherhood” or even “love” is excised from the language? I don’t think so. Furthermore, the animals don’t need language to be combative. Body language is enough. Our most primal instincts (including violence) exist beyond concepts and ideas about language.

Lissome Lady: Thank you for your response John.

I disagree with both your arguments.

The first on metacognition being a trick of the mind observing its own observation is an easy one to suggest.

Meditation is the only way in which the true self can be “found” There are levels of meditation which require very strong asceticism and discipline. The ability to free the mind from the body and senses is not an easy thing. So I wouldn't dismiss off lightly what I know little of.

Secondly, science is that which we observe with our very limited senses and our nascent instruments and technology. To presume that these findings are the foundations of truth would be completely ridiculous in its arrogance.

The ‘this’ is not “me’ is a philosophy that is not just oriental. Plato’s cave and his Ideal are reflections on the illusionary nature of worldly experiences. The possibility of parallel dimensions and time continuums cannot be ruled out because our current science cannot measure them.

So I would be very cautious in dismissing the theory of the mind, body, and consciousness as separate entities. Faith comes in the realm of blind belief and is one way in which one may approach the truth. It is called bhakti yoga in Hindu philosophy as opposed to gnana which is the route of knowledge or science.

I would say our scientific instruments and strategies are not advanced or mature enough to examine all of the phenomena that exists within and without our states of being.

The next argument you have disputed is words and their function in thought. Experiments have been conducted on this by several scientists to show how loss of words retard thoughts and emotions.

You have chosen very simplistic examples of maternal love and animal instincts to state your case. When we speak of religion, which in the form of philosophy, is one of the highest states of sophistication in human thought, we can hardly use the base common denominator in emotions and instincts, to prove the function of language in thought.

If vocabulary does not exist thoughts and emotions would be mutilated and to a large extent be without wings to fly into the realms of imagination, revolt, or ex-pression in any passionate form. When we speak of humans and their rationality, we need to go way beyond the primal functions of love and violence and need-based signs of body language ex-pressions. Language is the very basis of thought if not emotion. There is a difference between the two. But I dare say if thought is controlled, emotions lose colour.


John Wallen: Fair enough lissome lady..you have made it very clear where you are coming from on this (a faith based, spirituality based–call it what you will–conviction) and we can agree to differ (though please do notice that I did not say your ideas were wrong, just that they have little to do with the way scientists like to do science).

As for the linguistic argument, I’d suggest that the Orwell example was a bad one. George Orwell was essentially a journalist and no great shakes on philosophy, linguistics, ontology, or philosophy of language. His books have acquired such popularity for the most blatant political reasons–and his reputation since the fall of the Soviet Union, has suffered as a consequence. Language is clearly a derivative of mind–and whatever one thinks about mind (and one DOES think about mind as one thinks about the weather or the result of tomorrow’s football match!) will clearly influence the POV about language.

Lissome Lady: Thanks John. I am not coming from a postion of faith vs science.I am taking an umbrella view.

I am saying science is limited in its reach as we are not this all-knowing species with the best of instruments to gauge something as complex and amorphous as the human mind.

That when it comes to thoughts and emotions, the measuring instruments of science fall short. You may care to read the four yogas in Hindu Philosophy that speak of knowledge, faith, and action as ways in which to interpret God.

I am saying irrespective of what my convictions may be, science is not adequate to prove/disprove everything in this world. A hundred odd years ago we knew nothing of the atom or nanoparticles or quarks or even micro life or the wave particle or tachyons or parallel galaxies as we do now because we now have instruments to measure them. We have the mathematics to speculate on them. For someone a couple of hundred years ago to insist that these do not exist or indeed sound and light cannot be harnessed to proximate time and distances, would now seem absurd. Similarly, when we evaluate anything we need to posses the humility to say we don't know at this point but it could be so.

On the linguistic bit I think Orwell is a terrific example because the ‘newspeak’ in 1984 makes imminent and proven sense. Even if his alarmist book was proven faulty, even if he fell short on a whole heap of knowledge, he stands tall on the horizon of thinkers as does Huxley with his conditioning idea in Brave New World.

Language is not a derivative of individual minds, language needs a social context. It has a history of collective practice in all areas of observation, experience and study. It has a developmental history. If words fell into disuse for any reason, their contexts would erode as well.

Innumerable scientific experiments on groups have proved that if words are taken away emotions are affected. The lesser hate words there is in a tribe the less pugnacious they become. Some tribes have deliberately limited negative words to manage and control the emotional fallouts.

You and I will have to approximate to a point where language is scarce to actually experience the effects, which ofcourse is hard to do, going by the number of words you and I are using right now to further our arguments and perhaps creating emotions simply by their use.


John Wallen: Thanks lissome lady. To me, the “umbrella view” is a bit like having your cake and eating it and I’m not at all sure about its ethical and philosophical probity. You seem to assume that I know little about Yoga and ideas on meditational techniques. In itself, this is not really important, but it is somewhat typical of the frantic enthusiast of any religion (or system of “spirituality”).

The general idea would seem to be:”If you understood what I’m saying then you’d believe the same things as me. The fact that you don’t believe is indicative of the fact that you don’t understand them very well.” No doubt a Muslim or Christian would tell me exactly the same thing: “You have the same opportunity as me to understand the veracity of this way of seeing the world–and the fact that you don’t accept it, as I do, is a sign that you haven’t really understood it.” For what it’s worth I have studied Patanjali’s original Yoga aphorisms with interest. I understand very clearly the differences between Bhakti, Jnana, Raja and Karma Yoga. I have even personally practised Hatha Yoga for some years with a teacher from India. Of course, my inability to accept the Christian tenets of faith involves a far more hopeless condition as far as my Christian compatriots are concerned, for in this instance I am rejecting my own heritage. However, this is not really so. Let me explain…

I do not insist that only science can provide the answers to important questions for us. I do not deny that there may well be a shaping pattern or destiny to our lives and the universe in which we live. However, I am unable to glibly start talking about Yogic enlightenment or the fact that Jesus was the son of God (a harmless enough symbol in itself) with the same level of certainty that I talk about the weather or my job. These are areas of doubt and when one speaks with assurance and certainty about inherently unknowable things, one is saying and asserting more than can be truly known. In this sense, I would agree with Wittgenstein in the “Tractatus”: everything that can be said with language can be said clearly and well (statements of a scientific and factual kind).

On the other hand, when we attempt to talk about metaphysical matters, we are failing to give value to certain propositions in our linguistic equations and so, more often than not, we end up talking nonsense–and therefore, these matters are often better passed over in significant silence. (”The rest is silence” as Shakespeare’s Hamlet says). Of course, we may still speculate insofar as we are able to, but for a person who lives in the real world rather than in an imaginary one, assertive statements about religion or faith will never carry the same certainty that factual and scientific statements do.

I totally disagree with you concerning your view of language–and the examples you give, for me, merely point out the inadequacies of your position on this. One cannot truncate a language by leaving out certain words (in addition to everything else, one would have to consider the ways in which language constantly reinvents itself by combining individual parts into words with new meaning).

Language follows experience: when the experience is there, words will develop to express the experience. For example, the ancient Sumerians had many, many words for “dam” and “irrigation” because their whole society was built on the safety that dams and irrigation brought. It would have been impossible to simply leave these words out of their lexicon and fly in the face of reality.

On the other hand, other peoples who did not rely on dams and irrigation for their survival might have only one word each for these ideas. It would be absurd to believe that by cutting out the words for “dam” and “irrigation” from the Sumerian language one could have gradually destroyed the civilization itself, as without the words to describe these processes, the practical ability to survive in that particular environment would have withered away. Human beings are more robust than that!

Lissome Lady: If I presumed you had not read the Yogas I profusely apologise.

I feel like we are missing one another with this dialogue. I can see you shaking your head as you read my post as surely as I am shaking mine You are not even on the thread of my argument because you are on yours :)) It is not enough to say ‘you dont understand’ you need to convince me about what you are saying or if that is too tediuous we can simply leave it be by agreeing to disagree:))

I think your statement ‘ I do not insist that only science can provide the answers to important questions for us.’ closes the argument, because that is what I am saying. I believe no particular system we have with us now, have all the answers and that includes science. To refuse to indulge in the metaphysical or to deny it because it cannot be scrutinised under a microscope is in my view, an escape.

‘The rest is silence’ were the words of the dying Hamlet, for those of us who are alive, we must continue to seek and by on our journey leave milestones for those who will seek after us. Speculation, hypotheses, serendipity, dreams, wild imagination, have all spurred the ambition and growth of science as we know it today.

I am not coming at this from a religious or sectarian perspective or point of view as I do not follow any. I am an atheist of sorts. But I believe in human fragility of senses and intellect to concede that we do not know a lot.I do not subscribe to the view that because I am weak there must be a strong guy out there!!! The possibility of nothing out there is equally strong.

Your example on language is the same as mine. We are talking at cross purposes. I spoke of the excision of hate words and you have given the flip side of necessary words as dam and irrigation. No one will ‘leave them out’. The mutilation of language will naturally occur in a coercive regime that forbids the transmission of the known to its progeny. Example: Red China under Chairman Mao. Indonesia under Suharto. The banning /imprisoning/ killing of poets and writers throughout history for their ‘mighty pens’. So theoretically, and in isolated historical eras and events, the importance of language on thought and vice versa is undeniable.

I am almost tempted to graphically trace our arguments to see how we are not intersecting even as we travel parallelly on similar routes claiming difference

John Wallen: This has grown into a very long discussion with heart-felt opinions being expressed on all sides. I guess this is something to be desired on a board which prides itself on being a cut above the others in the quality of its debates.

On the other hand, in every endeavour there comes a point where it is best to call a halt. Most of what needs to be said has been said and, as lissome lady pointed out, there might not even be much difference between her view and mine when it comes right down to essential beliefs. We both think that science isn’t everything, both believe there is a destiny shaping our affairs, both believe that there are little understood forces that have a shaping influence on our lives.

NOSTALGIA

A melancholy ache lurks,

Hovers on the brooding borders of the mind,

Echoes the bitter-sweet melodies,

Ricochets on the walls of pain.

Arid. Abandoned. Alone.

The miasmic silence begins to hum

A long-forgotten haunting lore

It moves to waiting wanton spaces

Where nerves huddle in arching quest

Eager. Expectant. Emotional.

A nameless desire clamours in a mutiny of haste

In a menace of longing, in a mayhem of moaning.

Soon an impudent conflagration ravages

Self-begotten flames of ardour and agony

Pawing. Potent. Plosive.

Tumbling down the precipice

In tumultuous spirals

In ecstatic whorls of forgetfulness

That momentary sense of peace

Is shadowed by fresh broodings - old and new

Circular. Complex. Continuous.

Recently I read a news item on the white population in the UK opting for arranged marriages. I remember a time when the West constantly gasped in horror at the sheer blasphemy of Indians who married men or women they hadn't even seen. It was as retrograde as the other pet myth they had of Indians riding to school on an elephant. Now I wonder how blind dates or dating agencies or friends setting you up with this great guy/ gal was any different from your parents/ friendly marriage broker setting you up for an arranged match?

From arranged marriages in purdah to meeting after engagements, finding one's own man in rebellion to hooking up with various men before deciding on one man, Indian society has come a long way.. The dating scence is now part of the Indian youth, at least in the cities and a lot of Indian parents are actually concerned that their growing children have not got a steady boy/girlfriend. They are not keen on 'finding' a suitable groom or bride anymore, unless the kids specifically ask them to.

The history of the West on the dating scene has been a chequered one. The arranged matches were part of pre-twentieth century times of landed gentry and labour classes seeking women for land or dowry. Then came the post-war woman who found freedom and there was the need to 'attract' the man. The advice then was: Keep thinking of yourself as a soft, mysterious cat.. . .Men are fascinated by bright, shiny objects, by lots of curls, lots of hair on the head . . . by bows, ribbons, ruffles and bright colors.. . .Sarcasm is dangerous.

The suddenly in the 60’s, flirting went out of fashion, as did ironing boards, and along with it makeup and the idea that men needed to be “trapped” or “landed” were jettisoned. The way to approach men was to be forthright and without games, artifice or frills.

Tired of pandering to the man as some kind of demi-god and tolerating his condescension was abhorent and Women's Liberation became a revolution. Overnight the appendages of slavery were thwarted ' Mrs abandoned the Mr. and took on the neutral Ms stance, the bra was burnt to cinders as the symbol of shackles and sexual vanity or enticement, women glared at men opening doors for them with barbed reprimands and they paid their restaurant bills with equal disdain. More importantly they took up jobs, earned their own keep and exercised the right to vote and be heard. The women had finally arrived on an equal platform or so it was then perceived.

But these feelings of power were short-lived when the men began leaving, these newly-hatched women of strength, alone! Soon the upwardly mobile woman found that her boardroom successes left her bedroom cold and lonely. The growing discontent of successful women who worked, was assigned by surveys to higher education, bigger IQs and better jobs, all of which intimidated and distanced men. So much so that men sought to marry down while successful women still wanted to marry up or upper than their present status.

The fear that the more they accomplish, the more they may have to sacrifice, brought on cold feet. The worry that men might veer away from the “challenging” women because of a male atavistic desire to be the superior force in a relationship, was used as anthropological evidence to explain why the situation had turned against women.

'How to Hook a Man' became the Western woman's mantra. She might travel alone around the world in brief denims but when it comes to men, there is a helpless anxiety and a clawing need to land the fish in holy matrimony. Paradoxical. Innumerable books have been written on the subject. This schism is most obvious in the protagonists of the tele-serial 'Sex and the City', where even as the women are free and frank with their favours, thoughts, language and emotions, there is the pall of the loser forever stalking them like phantoms of loneliness and low self worth, giving the lie to all the bravado and panache they profess.

The 1995 publication of “The Rules,” a dating bible encouraged women to return to pre-feminist mind games by playing hard to get. It told them all a few tricks: “Don’t stay on the phone for more than 10 minutes.. . .Even if you are the head of your own company. . .when you’re with a man you like, be quiet and mysterious, act ladylike, cross your legs and smile.. . .Wear black sheer pantyhose and hike up your skirt to entice the opposite sex!”

Many women had to revisit and brush up on the venerable tricks of the trade: an absurdly charming little laugh, a pert toss of the head, an air of saucy triumph, dewy eyes and a full knowledge of music, drawing, elegant note writing and geography. It would once more be considered captivating to lie on a chaise longue, pass a lacy handkerchief across the eyelids and complain of a case of springtime giddiness.

The pundits told them that for men, biologically, the thrill of the chase was a necessary part of interest and roles must not be reversed where the quarry chases the hunter. If unheeded, women with bigger IQ would sit on the shelf. Female power was a turn off for men. Evolution was finally lagging behind equality.

According to Helen Fisher "The whole point of the game is to impress and capture. It’s not about honesty. Many men and women, when they’re playing the courtship game, deceive so they can win. Novelty, excitement and danger drive up dopamine in the brain. And both sexes brag.”

Money is a big area of attraction, conflict, breakups, ego clashes. Who pays the bills in a restaurant escalates to who pays the bills at home. I once had a Canadian colleague who used to pay half the house bills with her husband and her logic was that she needs to feel equal. I used to maintain that all my money was mine and all his money was mine also

Women routinely struggle with career and home options. They lay lots of guilt eggs over not near-perfect meals, failing children or uncared-for apartments. The men sail through - sometimes in total oblivion of their surroundings and at other times with distracted frowning brows or in scathing sarcastic judgements. The libber urged all women to be their own mistresses and earn 'woman money'. Some decades of disenchantment with the mushrooming problems of the ‘endangered husband syndrome’ has brought it full circle with the women happy to settle in the comfortable organic existence of robotic domesticity. The outraged libbers would be turning in their bra-forbidden graves in disgust.

Many women now do not think of domestic life as a “comfortable concentration camp,” as Betty Friedan wrote in “The Feminine Mystique.” w Losing their identities and turning into “anonymous biological robots in a docile mass” does not seem so outrageous. Now they want to be Mrs. Anonymous Biological Robot in a Docile Mass. They dream of being rescued - to flirt, to shop, to stay home and be taken care of. They shop for “Stepford Fashions” - matching shoes and ladylike bags and the 50’s-style satin, lace and chiffon party dresses featured in InStyle layouts - and spend their days at the gym trying for Wisteria Lane waistlines writes a NY columnist.

Then there is the popular culture of movies, magazines, advertisements and books where the subtexts and the messages ' overt and subliminal, indicate attraction between the macho powerful male and the poor but pretty woman as being the most romantic of all situations. Money is what one sees poured around in popular soaps, where the women just look pretty and float from room to designer room, given the tiresome labour of having to lug around several kilos of gold and diamond jewellery.

Among Indian women, dependence on men is legendary in the way in which they leap into marriage ' love or arranged. There is a frenetic hurry to tie the knot and wear it around their neck as black beads or around their writs as white and red bangles in symbols of coy and submissive bondage. The Western counterpart, being on her own at the tender age of 16, where the need of the child to be cuddled is barely fulfilled, begins to run into the arms of men to seek that thwarted comfort and the sense of loss continues till old age where they can't function without a man at several levels. The East does meet the West clearly, although the ways in which they meet may be seen as fuzzy.

Thus, a lot of literature has filled shelves on 'How to Land a Man'. The main rules seem to be: flatter him, nurture him and make him feel like a demi-god even if he is a near loser. There are also rules on what to do with his mother, what not to do in bed and how to make him propose, how never to criticize him, how to care for his fragile ego, how to kiss his car etc. advice from the sublime to the ridiculous. Women devour these and are sorely disappointed when what has been promised by these gurus don't happen to them even as they bend backwards to please the belligerent and bellicose male specimen. Why is that?

I believe the basics are at fault.

Here are my views:

Anthropologically, women want to attract men who are great providers, and that means men who are strong, intelligent, hard working, go-getters, protectors and team runners. Nowadays money has replaced strength of the neolithic hunter of yore. Hence, one is not looking to attract any or all men. If you love yourself you will not settle for less. You will seek men of substance and they will find you attractive. If you are desperate, you will grab anything that comes your way.

Hooking a man is not the same as holding on to him. Dating is not the same as commitment. A steady boyfriend is not a husband. A husband is not a permanent fixture in your life. In the face of this impermanence, quick fix solutions fail because the focus of these thinkers seem to be on ‘what to do’ as opposed to ‘what to be’.

I believe the way to attract, hold, keep a man is by making yourself attractive, holdable and keepable first. Let me hasten to add that this is not done with make up and hourglass figures, much as popular fiction may have you believe. Women who believe this, might be devastated to find their men looking at other hour glasses soon enough. If the physical is the answer, then it will fade and the dangers of the man moving on to the newer model are very high and probable. This is happening a lot in the our world where trophy wives are becoming more and more common despite the presence of decades of marriage and kids.

You probably heard people say unless you love yourself, you can't love others, unless your respect/control/lead yourself, you can't do that to other people. The same goes with attraction. If you don't find yourself attractive no one else will. You need to have self worth to become worthy to men.

Attraction is bound to self worth. It is about thinking of oneself as significant and beautiful both inside and outside. This is a woman who is aware of her body and cares about it. A woman who is sensual in the way she dresses (and this means wearing what suits her body and her age) and the way she talks and carries herself. To be feminine or traditional does not take away from the attraction at all; it is how she feels about herself that matters. If you feel beautiful, it communicates.

It is about strength. I think men love a strong woman. A strong woman is not necessarily the CEO of a company, she is one who is emotionally strong, one who does not cling and claw, who has independent interests, who can hold a great conversation, has a sense of humour and the absurd, who is feminine and yet not submissive, who lives in magic because she is alive and well and can contribute to life.

It is not because she is going to make him the center of her universe. Although on the face of it, that is a romantic thought, it has a kind of focus that would scare a lot of men because it carries with it a bondage and an implied responsibility. The books would tell you the men love it and the men themselves think they do!!!

Men who matter love women who are curious about life. Curiosity keeps one engaged and occupied with life. It fills you with wonderment about the endless energy that goes into everything you experience. It fills one with appreciation of life and people. It makes you an interesting woman.

Men love women who go and get it and are non- hysterical in crises. There is a comfort in not having someone hanging on to his coattails, even if he has been trained to flatter his ego by being led to believe that he is the provider supreme and his manliness lies in it. Women who by nature demonstrate independence at an emotional level, not economic, create a sense of relief and pride in the man.

Men of substance love women who are achievers in a way where the achievement reflects the persona of the woman and her aspects of intelligence, skills, talents, organization, management etc. Their appreciation escalates with the growth of the woman and their love deepens.

Men love women who are women. Women of substance celebrate their femininity and the men worship that about them. To be feminine is to be nurturing and giving, generous and plentiful, forgiving and wise, loving and compassionate, strong and sensible, graceful and gracious and therefore with a sense of timeless possibility and mystery. And those are not traits of a doormat. They spring from an irresistible well of inner beauty.

Women need to be in love with themselves first. When that happens, they value themselves and are not automatic, knee-jerk, desperate in their responses to men. The attitude of self-worth emanates from them and communicates to the person they are connecting with. When you are in love with yourself, you invest in yourself. So there is learning, thinking, reflecting; entertainment for yourself in finding activities that you enjoy; the expectations for and from yourself; the deliverance from depending on others for your entertainment and happiness; the acknowledgement of your real needs for love and comfort and security; the understanding of the need in others for similar comforts; the ability to give another those very freedoms and worth that you recognize as your needs etc. These traits multiply as you age and like wine, they gets headier.

The woman will then not only have hooked and landed but also held her man in a trance forever. In addition, she will enjoy the admiration of a stream of men all her life. Like a multifaceted diamond, a woman of substance not only continually attracts men but increases in value as the years roll by for the lucky one who wins her.

Hence a terrorist whose acts are those of moral depravation and cowardice may well abscond from those realities and see himself as a pious, morally upright and even holier-than-thou defender of faith and therefore the champion of all that that faith stands for at an abstract level. The realism of that abstract level that translates to harmony and peace does not trouble him. He is overly concerned with justice in isolation and that gives him a moral mandate, which is impervious to reason. The voices that defend these isolated islands of self-righteous idealism are often articulate and eloquent, drawing from an education fed on the very tenets of social justice that they blatantly thwart for their narrow purpose. Such is the schizophrenia of the terrorist's ethos. It is not clear whether it is Jekyll within Hyde or Hyde within Jekyll.

The enemy is not targeted as a person or a group but everyone. So it is not a duel of honour or a clash of ideals but a war where civilian causalities are a given. The war, however, is unannounced and fought on one's own soil on targets that are random. The methods are covert, stealthy and delivered with such violence that the only message delivered is one of mayhem and wanton destruction.

Very soon by the sheer nature of its activities, the targets become the goals. The means become the ends. Once the end blurs, the means which are innumerable take over and an ethos, a culture is formed around them. Now they are not serving a God or religion (end) but the next blast, subversion, chaos, bomb, terrorist boss. This shift in loyalty is latent and imperceptible. Satan has replaced God. Such a shift is also likely to be happening amongst us who are their victims and who see ourselves as separate from their malaise.

Violence is condemned and yet we are fascinated by it. We justify it as necessary when it does not affect us personally. Our empathies are often for our own kind. Children are the first victims of this fascination. All of popular culture in the form of films, songs, advertisements stories, reverberates with ideals of courage, manliness, strength, conviction, pride and self-sacrifice. Pugnacity is the answer to most conflicts and our heroes bear testimony to it. The bespectacled weakling transforming into a fighting machine is our ultimate fantasy. Narnia and Harry Potter fuels our children's sense of justice and endorses war against evil. Definition and analysis of evil itself remains nebulous as a white and black education of morality. Nuances and complexities of 'evil' are not even part of high school deliberations.

Compassion on the other hand is seen as tame. It is associated with Buddha, Gandhi, Jesus and Mother Teresa and is seen as the realm of the Mahatmas who are so lofty and difficult to emulate in their spiritual heights that they are forever condemned to be respected from afar in their ivory tower sanctums. Furthermore, the paths that these saints advocate are cumbersome and rather unexciting as a means to attain justice in the world. In the competition between the Justice of Now and the Peace of Tomorrow, the winner is a foregone one. Compassion and Justice sit on distinct compartments and are not inter-related in the minds of our children. Compassion is seen as weakness and belonging to the ideal preaching of spiritual hopefuls.

What kind of influences are our children under?

In the name of fantasy and imagination, kids are into wizard and vampire heros, all fighting the undefined archetypal Evil ofcourse. They are fascinated by bombs and bombings and wonder what goes into them. They find people who hack, break into places, blow up faceless targets awesome in their guts to beat the Establishment. Heros are Batman and Superman who have super powers. Magic is big, mainly because it is easy, effortless, and effective. The games they play have to do with shooting cars, robots, guns and violent episodes of victory. Films made are violent in the name of either mirroring society honestly or fighing injustice with solutions in anger and violence. The songs are fast-paced, rap, rough-n-ready and deafening, where one swings to an escapist primitive rhythm. Karate is a part of most children's educational agenda.

Our propensity for violence is natural and plenty and it resides in the id state. Our inclination for compassion is a higher order state and that too is natural but needs nurturing and protection from the violence of the id.

We also know that repeated violence can numb our compassion centres and when they react in helpless pain, our defense mechanisms create a cloak of apathy to protect the mind. These close ties between Compassion and Violence makes our responses to the pain of others as heartless as the terrorist's Jekyll and Hyde games with Justice and Violence.

But, if we are more aware of how these different areas in our psyche operate, we can perhaps find ways of teaching our children to respond better to stimuli that will shun violence, promote compassion and regress hatred.

The question is are we balancing the value of justice with agents of compassion or is there an overload of justice in our lives? Justice can lead to anger and anger to violence and violence to more violence and its aftermath to a call for more justice. Self fed, self-begotten, the legacy of Justice can be destructive and cyclical, spiraling downward towards collective annihilation.

We need to draw up an education of compassion on an emergency basis at all levels. And how does one do that? Non-violence. But in practice not speech. Children should be 'celebrating' Gandhi Jayanti' with a non-violent week, starting with saying no to foul language, anti-bullying, put-downs, fights etc. Adults too should be looking at more self control and less acrimony, turning inwards to examine our own states of social lethargy and apathy to begin with.

Much beleaguered and much abused, Gandhi's non-violence seems to be a ray of light, of hope. But, it needs to be interpreted first. Unpacked, so that it is not used as jargon, as a buzz-word and bandied by all and sundry criminals in the guise of politicians, as it has been done in the last six decades. Lack of analysis, remains our most urgent problem. To look at a concept, to think, to understand its factors, to debate its flaws, to translate it into behaviours rather than platitudes, all of this needs patience, deliberation and intelligence. It is time we began to think along these lines.

There is a crusading zeal in the way they ask questions of national import, almost as if they are the new fangled messiahs who will bring answers to the tricky questions facing us in times of uncertainty. Their panelists are the same all the time. The same handful of men and women who seem to be on hold on a daily basis to comment on anything and everything. Even worse you see them on every channel. Like Lata Mangeshkar, Amitabh Bachchan, Sachin Tendulkar, it appears they will never retire and we are doomed to hear them forever.  They have become mini media celebrities in their own right. It's like the page three of television talk time.

The questions are predictable, so to drive home the blunt point, the hosts are pugnacious. This new freedom has translated into a terrible shrill and strident shrieking that they have mistakenly interpreted as being 'bold' and 'fearless'. Everyone from Arnab Goswami to Rajdeep Sardesai to Karan Thappar to the new babe on the block is doing it. The decibel levels rise and the gestures are threatening and there is drama and performance in the smugness with which they seem to 'attack' the invitees on their panel. This new found confidence also makes their questions ad hoc, their points-of-view one-sided and their investigation rushed and hollow. Homework is a luxury that requires   time  and as they are flitting from one show to the other in the same way there is  not much gained by way of experience that changes them and as they are all the same, there is  no peer learning curve either.

There always  seems to be a perpetual lack of time and an unholy hurry to get in at least 50 questions. At the end of the show one is not left much wiser, but bombarded with a barrage of random information on the topic that serves no end or gives no solution. On the contray one is left with the after taste of more confusion and an all pervading sense of harsh sound bytes still hovering in the air.

The modus is to be aggressive and impatient with the speakers. Ten seconds into the answer both the respondent and the audience are both on tenter hooks as to when this media tiger will lunge and tear at the hapless speaker mid flow with either an acrimonious reiteration of the initial question or consistently bleat out the victim's name over and over in an attempt to stop him.  If the person is in the midst on an interesting point or revelation then this angst of imminent interruption is more acutely felt as soon as he begins talking.  Repeated requests, reprimands, insults by some panelists on not being allowed to complete what they are saying either falls on deaf ears or are conceded to by a sheepish shamelessness.

Indians do have a habit of stating the same thing over and over. Once they get attention they do not let go. They do need to be stopped. In many cases I have wondered why they are not gently faded out. However, the problem is this. The anchor seems to have no idea whom to allow to talk and whom to cut. So it is one chop for all trees.

The anchor somehow never asks the question that is uppermost on our minds, especially on issues that demand that question in retaliation to nontruth or temporary amnesia that the respondent  has just blatantly and shamelessly established. The anchor never seems to be able to pin the person on a statement with an obvious example that a lay person reclining on the proverbial couch can see clearly. The anchor will midway through a discussion focus suddenly on the findings of some vague sms survey that he holds up as gospel. His voice has a table-thumping quality about it, which he perhaps sees as passion but is mere self-aggrandizing noise and dramatic fury that sets your teeth on edge.  That is, if you are not embarrassed about being the passive receiving component of the diatribe he calls investigative reporting.

Often he/she does not know what to ask. Some questions are so ridiculous that a school kid could have framed it better. Much to our discomfort, as if the voice were not a booming assault, the entire screen is filled with the person's mug. Taking turns in speaking, being able to stop his guests from bickering or getting at each other's throats, a definite scope and sequence for the interview, the permitting of serendipity and impromptu questions and so on are not a part of his creative oeuvre.

ANATOMY OF A UNION CALLED MARRAIGE

Marriage is necessarily a union of two bodies; luckily a meeting of two minds; rarely a union of two souls; materially a tie-up between two families; happily a merging of two cultures and sadly and increasingly has become a skirmish /an abuse / an ennui / a resignation of two unmatched people.

Marriage is a personal union between individuals. Yet, the decision to be united is left to the whims of an infatuation or a declaration of love born of an often irrational attraction. If the match is arranged it depends on the status, education, commercial and cultural tokens exchanged between the families of individuals and their agreement to trust the judgment of their elders. If it is a match that values the inputs of the bride and groom there could be more interaction and sometimes attraction that follows the path of a love marriage.

In cases where the choices belong to the individuals and they have the freedom of ex-pression to make this choice, the initial testing ground is always the physical, as it is clearly the source and repository of pleasure. So, anything ranging from harmless flirtation to mild or moderate sex could result in an attempt to 'know' the person. On the mental level, there could be talk of books, movies, people, jobs and the rest to check out compatibility. Humour and tolerace could be high on the list. Couples often state and opt for furthering or rejecting a union by expressing their religious affiliations, their familial orientations in terms of place and closeness.

They rarely talk of essentials like how to handle, share and more importantly on what to spend money, assets and wills, thoughts and values on how to bring up children, freedom to choose friends and maintain existing relationships, tolerance to interference from spouse and families in personal preferences, ability to withstand a crisis, pet fears and phobias, how transparent they want to be, how big a role does trust play, what are the mutual expectations for care and intimacy and how they manage anger. These are topics that are considered "serious" and they would potentially spoil the fun of the courtship period. It is only in recent times that couples are open to a health check and result sharing. Political affiliations or lack of it would speak volumes too.

Marriage is a social institution born of the need to have stable relationships and to protect children through these stable unions. It is also a way of furthering one's position in society by forging bonds that increase wealth, influence and status of the two families. This takes the form of gifts, dowry, ritualistic feasting and presents where money exchanges hands legitimately and by force. Such matches are an insurance that protects the tribal instinct and keeps language, communities, cultural practices, religions and their values in tact. Social connections also provide a support system where there is a perceived responsibility on the part of everyone to ensure the success of the marriage, although they may all point a finger at a nebulous destiny when the unfortunate moment of strife arises. Social pressures to 'control' the couple and their broad actions cannot be ruled out, whether it is a dress code, the birthing of children, friends they choose to have, lifestyles they want to pursue or similar choices they choose to make.

Marriage as a personal bond makes the choice of partner more than just the business of being a unit. It calls for intimacy of a physical kind that impinges on personal space. It demands for the purposes of being happy, the existence of chemistry and excitement between the two people. This translates into emotional well being. The mind being a big component of pleasure that is one area that should not be neglected and it is only when all things are in proper measure of compatibility that the union can have a fair chance of success.

Often when trouble begins in paradise there is a lot of denial. The reasons being fear of being seen as a failure. People often hang on hypocritically to the relationship in the hope that things may improve and fearing the backlash of critical judgements from society. Economic dependence in women forces compromises. The conditioning of minds to see familial 'duty' as a virtue to be pursued is reiterated by popular culture which includes literature, religious texts, movies and tv serials. This is a factor that makes people opt for righteous and often sanctimonious stances in a loveless marriage to stoically and valiantly solider on. Onlookers have little empathy and are more in favour of protecting the social contract than the individuals in it. When communications break down and aspirations are not vocalized, there is blame and anger.

Marriages need to be worked upon all the time. A big component of success is the ability to be in a state of child like bonding. To talk and joke, to relax into a state of comfort that can only happen in the child dimension, to be able to reach out physically and emotionally as a child does, without judgement or pride, to be able to love with the same spontaneity. When these are in place the bonding mimics the same familial bonding of a sibling or a parent- child union. The feelings are strong and deep even when the conventional expectations are not adequately met. The caring becomes unconditional. It follows the reverse path that drifting apart takes, in creating an unbridgeable rift.

A lot of people grow out of the child in themselves, they deny the child in their partners and so the interactions remain at an adult level where reason rules. When that reason, which is our critical and cold side finds flaws, those are unforgivingly studied for rejection. As no bonds have been forged the rip in the fabric is easy and painless, except at a conceptual level of failure or regrets as to what might have been.

Marriage is the only bond where we continue to stray because we are not monogamous animals and it a convenience we have adopted as a species to stabilise our survival. All other family bonds are based on unconditional love. We would never give up our mother because she is not good looking or even if she were a virago, we never would give up a child because he is a slow learner or love the neighbour's one for his better grades. Yet we would eye the neighbour's wife with lust and cheat on opportunity, or separate from husbands of many years without compunction, as the drift has been so complete that it is more compassionate to leave than to stay. Therefore, marriage is one bond that is unnatural and paradoxically the most intimate.

To naturalise the bond therefore requires a set of behaviours that are not in practice now, going by the increasing number of failed marriages. What do you think? What success strategies would you recommend to people who are either thinking about marriage or already in it? Some say it is a dying institution, do you agree? and if yes, do you think it is worth saving? Should the institution be modified in keeping with new knowledge and changing times?

I like this one. Khalil Gibran recommends independent individual growth within a shared infrastructure:

Love one another, but make not a bond of love:
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.
Fill each other’s cup but drink not from one cup.
Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf.
Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone, Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.

Give your hearts, but not into each other’s keeping.
For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.
And stand together yet not too near together:
For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow.

A Case of Murder

By Vernon Scanell

They should not have left him there alone,

Alone that is except for the cat.

He was only nine, not old enough

To be left alone in a basement flat,

Alone, that is, except for the cat.

A dog would have been a different thing,

A big gruff dog with slashing jaws,

But a cat with round eyes mad as gold,

Plump as a cushion with tucked-in paws ?

Better have left him with a fair-sized rat!

But what they did was leave him with a cat.

He hated that cat; he watched it sit,

A buzzing machine of soft black stuff,

He sat and watched and he hated it,

Snug in its fur, hot blood in a muff,

And its mad gold stare and the way it sat

Crooning dark warmth: he loathed all that.

So he took Daddy's stick and he hit the cat.

Then quick as a sudden crack in glass

It hissed, black flash, to a hiding place

In the dust and dark beneath the couch,

And he followed the grin on his new-made face,

A wide-eyed, frightened snarl of a grin,

And he took the stick and he thrust it in,

Hard and quick in the furry dark.

The black fur squealed and he felt his skin

Prickle with sparks of dry delight.

Then the cat again came into sight,

Shot for the door that wasn't quite shut,

But the boy, quick too, slammed fast the door:

The cat, half-through, was cracked like a nut

And the soft black thud was dumped on the floor.

Then the boy was suddenly terrified

And he bit his knuckles and cried and cried;

But he had to do something with the dead thing there.

His eyes squeezed beads of salty prayer

But the wound of fear gaped wide and raw;

He dared not touch the thing with his hands

So he fetched a spade and shovelled it

And dumped the load of heavy fur

In the spidery cupboard under the stair

Where it's been for years, and though it died

It's grown in that cupboard and its hot low purr

Grows slowly louder year by year:

There'll not be a corner for the boy to hide

When the cupboard swells and all sides split

And the huge black cat pads out of it.

AN APPRECIATION:

Dark poetry is not very common. Psychology, because of its analytical nature, is more a subject of prose than poetry. Again because poetry is the spontaneous outflow of feelings, the accrued emotional embankment of dark poetry is heavy and not easy on the mind.

Vernon Scanell  captures the darkness of guilt in this poem and yet it is also the vanquishing of a fear that ironically haunts and does not go away. The lingering that goes on in the mind where dark deeds are concerned. It becomes complex when it involves another life and demarcates the limits of what one might be permitted to do with one's phobias. Seen in a larger symbolic context, this simple poem about a boy killing a cat but its ensuing guilt takes on a more complex and multi-dimensional aspect.  

Because the protagonist is a child, the menace of this sinister emotion is all the more poignant and heart rending. A graphic account of the making  of the skeleton in the boy's cupboard expressed in the omnipresent voice.  This not only gives an objective evaluation of the boy's predicament, but also allows   the reader a peep into his state of mind through his responses.

We are invited to take an overview of  the boy's situation at the very beginning where the blame is laid on the adults who had left him with a cat by the poet's shocked stance and comparison of a dog with 'slashing jaws' or a 'fair sized rat' as better choices. This softens the action that follows which is murky in its cloister and of sustained violence. It  symbolically conveys the very texture of dark and hidden sins effectively.

Mark the menace of the cat in the choice of words 'mad gold stare' and 'hot blood in a muff'. Left alone the boy decides to attack the stimulus of fear than cower in helplessness. His single minded purpose in demolishing the target of fear is well known to anyone who has killed a roach with a passion of hate notwithstanding its size. The emotion is for the fear rather than the object under attack. (In an irrelevant aside to this poem, one wonders if it is the size of victim’s life  that actually causes it to be called ‘murder’ as opposed to ‘pest control’.)

In many ways it is the size of the fear that pervades the boy’s consciousness through his life and transforms as guilt. The  'the wound of fear gaped wide and raw' and  is never quite vanquished. The huge black cat lives with its 'hot low purr' ,grows and ‘pads out’ in triumph.

The diction created by the choice of words is relentless in its heavy and sharp action words denoting violence of an overt  kind in  'cracked', 'dumped' ,'thud', 'shoveled', 'split' and so

on. Even the softer sounds  like ‘buzzing’,  'crooning', ‘hissed’,'snarl', 'squeal' and 'purr' or the action in 'swells' and 'pads' have the low menace of a latent suggestive reticence that precedes danger.

The poet literally and figuratively captures the fear of 'skeletons in cupboards' and their power, where although the events are dead, they exert immense brooding and horror on the minds of the living. The universality of this predicament and our understanding of its implications in our own lives, is what make this allegory so powerful. The conflict, rather the  struggle, is between the fear for self-preservation and the moral call for equitable justice at all times.

This is my interpretation and that is one interpretation.  If you can find other levels or different takes on this poem do write in.

For a poem like this, one cannot say 'enjoy' .one can only say read and be fascinated by the poet's skill and talent in dealing with two of the most complicated of emotional and mental afflictions- Fear and Guilt.  

I often use this poem as a warmer before doing Shakespeare’s Macbeth. It sets the mood like nothing else for Lord Macbeth’s dark tragedy and his cry: “Full of scorpions is my mind, dear wife!”

My husband has coined a term for a syndrome that affects most Indians, especially the young. It is the opposite of "grapes are sour". Grapes are sour is a proverb for those who don't have the grapes and declare it sour as a consolation to themselves for not getting the grapes, or, having no hopes of ever getting them. "Grapes are sweet" is when the person happens to have or is given a bunch of grapes and he declares them sweet, knowing that they are sour but not admitting to it. I call it 'empty optimism.'

Empty optimism is not so much about not having any hope for the future, but about the business of being smug about things the way they are and assuming that somehow everything will fall into place and get better. It is also the belief that unless we do this and prop ourselves up, things will get worse. It is a state that stops us from thinking cogently. For example, at how our policies in the domestic and foreign areas must be formulated. It stops us from looking at our burgeoning population, our congestion, our enamoured tryst with the knowledge industry without knowing where we are going to place them, our short-sighted protectionism of our manufacturing industry, our definition of education as white collared, our ridiculous reservation policies at the university level and neglect of quality free primary education, our unchartered and unregulated growth in certain sectors. The exposure of rural populations to unrealistic material aspirations through increased communication instruments without giving them the opportunities to achieve them. Our declining spirituality except in commercial terms.

Empty optimism is when people do not take the reality into view, do not use facts and stats to support their optimism and when comparisons are found odious because they give the lie to what one fondly hopes to believe.

I used this term in my conversations with Alf when we began the debate of Amit's blog 'Independence.' Let me reproduce the dialogue as this is of vital importance to see the way we view issues. Alf is not alone. A lot of people think this way.

Alf : I feel it is Paranoid thinking to consider India is on death bed. I know, situation is bad, but it is not out of total control. We need careful improvement of systems and not the military style solution similar to one being practiced in Bangladesh now. It will kill the other vital organs of the body. Therefore, I still have optimism on our education system, economy and capability of people. Let us not become pessimistic and end as hopeless as some!

LL: Paranoid? Situation is not bad? Let me give you some facts. There are 456 million or 42% of India living under the poverty line of 1.25 dollars a day and constitute 33% of the global poor. 75% or 828 million live under 2 dollars a day. This figure is greater than sub saharan africa. Those, in my view, is a state of extreme and fatal disease for a country. Don't go by the Bollywood and nuke deals and Ambani and Mittal being amongst the world’s richest. Tanik ek nazar hamare besaharo par dalo ' cry, cry, cry, the beloved country! Pessimistic? Check out all your fancy words like optimism, capability etc against the scenario above and hang your head in shame. Mine is hung.

Alf: Let us (not) make issues clash each other and make every issue weak. My points are addressing the corruption issue, neither its after effect nor its origin. Corruption is bad for whatever reason it is. We have to find solutions to overcome it. It is method of finding solution. Optimism or pessimism, I leave it to individual. As a teacher, I am sure you must be telling every day to children, "Pessimists reach nowhere".

LL: Do you realise that these issues are inextricable? If there were no corruption, the poverty levels would plummet? That we would be a country of haves not have-nots? Our country is blessed with climate, soil, beauty, intelligence and spiritual and cultural wealth? What more could any country ask? So let us not pretend that we are poor coz nature has given us little. Corruption cannot be viewed with a different lens and poverty with another. If you are a human being worth your salt you blood must boil for those who suffer, you must be their voice. I do not teach my children “empty optimism” Last week when I took a class of 12 year olds and spoke of corruption, not only were their mouths open, they wanted to know if they can activate the right to information act as kids and protest? I want to see anger not submission in the future generations. It is this crappy ‘oh things are not so bad’ attitude that has been our bane.

Alf: I agree, all social issues are related. My point is, while addressing one issue, if we highlight another which may also be related to another issue, it will become "Run in circle, scream and shout”. No solution will come out on any issues. Empty optimism. I don't know, what is it all about? Anger to find solution? Anger to remain against submission? Hmmm Spare me

LL: Think about it. Anger as an instrument of change. Look across history - reflect and get back to me . We don't run in circles, in fact solutions become easier because we are not wearing rose tinted glasses and fooling ourselves that all is well when it is not. Empty optimism is a dangerous thing. It is what makes us say Mumabi will be Shanghai without a thought. The idiocy of it is only now dawning on some Indians after the Olympics. Also if you find examples in history of benign change do bring it to my notice and I will stand corrected.

The starting point in change must begin with an acknowledgement of where we are and where we need to go. Anger, agitation, resentment are good points to begin action. Despair is not. Optimism and inaction is a lethal combination. The problem is if we decide that we can compete with China but we have not even taken a good look at where we are. Now we can go on to say 'oh we don't want to be China they kill people there.' That is called running away from some base facts and taking the route of distraction to avoid facing the ugliness we are in.

When the Kosi is flooding and the Bihar government says we are in control - that is running away. They need to say this is a disaster, we can't do it alone, please everyone help us and that needs to be said in the first hour. Not after you have experimented for a few days and killed a few thousands. When aid materials begin to trickle in and we hear reports of corruption - that is a criminal offense and needs punishment on the scale of China because it is akin to the gas chamber crimes of Hitler. We are not even capable of thinking like this. This chalta hai, hota hai, kya karen? hum to aise hai bhaiyya attitude has brought us to the present below sub-saharan poverty levels. Ab toh jaago dosto be optimistic in your efforts to make it better, but don't indulge in the empty optimism of saying things are not so bad . They are!

Night comes mourning the death of the day and sits brooding over the huddle of the forests and undulating fields. It embraces treacherous mountains and settles on the babbling brooks, it ravishes the gigantic seas that cower beneath it and complain in a mutter of waves.

Night comes in a silken caress and strokes the aching limbs of swollen lovers, who arch one more time to the heaving music of its velvet shadows.

 Night comes in an arrogant stride and falls back as the lighted streets cast neon glares on empty streets and drives it back to the edges of the barren plains and misty hills.

Night comes in blotches of pitch to hide the murky shame of nocturnal haunts, the cracked laughter of audacious whores, the blessed inebriation of compulsive drunks and the diseased wounds of homeless waifs. 

Night comes like an avenging messiah to protect its minions, the army of life that crawls and creeps and glides and hops to its celebratory tunes and toasts.

Night comes as an inky accomplice to shroud the dark deeds of those whom the light indicts as anti-social, criminal and base. They transact in cloaked cunning, sharpen their tools, and sell their wares in stealthy glee.

Night comes howling with storm and rain to applaud the witching hour for ghosts and ghouls and their companion  bats, rats, cats, owls, snakes and roaches. It greets the netherworld of vampires, voodoo men, banshees and jasmine laden yakshis in placid moonlit groves.

Night seeps in, casting cobwebbed shadows of fatigue and fitful smudges of sleep on minds weary of the day's sore labour. Night soothes the ear with the music of crickets and the rhythmic croak of toads, relieving the mind of the clamour of the day's plastic sounds.

NIGHT! Black as ink, as ebony, as pitch, as despair, as guilt, as sin, as death.

Guy Fawkes Bonfire Night. Krystal Nacht.  The Parting of the Yamuna. The Burning  of Holika. Halloween Night. The Trojan Horse. Nav Ratri. Alexander kills Poru. Silent Night Holy Night.

Night the only Mother of the New Born Day. 

I have had so much negative crap in the last two days that I need to heal. And the only way to heal is to give. Let me share with you all something that I had devised recently to help the reluctant child writer. Those of you who have children or know of people who have children, might want to use some of these ideas. This, after all, is who I really am.

I dedicate this post to fellow blogger Sarath Chandra despite my many differences with him, he remains a person I have enjoyed knowing.

Love me or hate me, my blog page is the only one that consistently generates discussions amongst my ilander friends who enjoy a good discussion/debate. I am proud of the fact that these men and women are great thinkers and we share a great comraderie despite our many differences. Difference is often the key to a good discussion, not consensus. Consensus is the larger good that happens when we have trashed out all our differences. It is generally a mindset that has altered because it has been exposed to other angles. It cannot go back to being the same again.

What happens on my blogs may be unique but it is not particularly praise worthy, because it is just an extension of one of the things I do in life with children and young adults. A discussion is meant to see all sides of an issue and is based largely on facts and valid supportable opinions. A debate that crops up from the discussions where two different people take opposing stands is fought to win. The rules of debating are very different. The side with the best arguments, and the most powerful way of expressing them, wins.

But a debate is a civilized argument. Its first rule is politeness where one may not indulge in name-calling, personal insinuations, sulking, making blanket judgements, or harbouring feelings of rancour and enmity after the duration of the argument.

Debates help us see all sides of an issue, organize thoughts and express them clearly, listen attentively and argue politely, take turns and allow everyone to have a say, use language as a powerful tool, convince and persuade, think quickly on our feet for rebuttals and get a powerful sense of team spirit.

Debating is a life activity. Whether it is about what to order in a restaurant, or who will be Cricket captain, or why India should do the nuke deal, we argue all the time with other people when we have to make group choices. Advertisers, politicians, salespersons and lawyers are some professionals who use arguments to make a living.

Debates are not always benign. The opponents do provoke a counter argument, they do slight and nudge the other team to clarify, explain and defend their points of view. As a structured activity, it is not for the faint-hearted or the fragile. Intellectual alertness, quick thinking, resourceful argument, and tenacity are expected traits to win an argument. You also need to have a way with words, to be sharp and slicing without resorting to foul language or getting personal. Wit is a great aid in this.

A lot of children whine after thy lose and accuse the other team of cheating, bullying, personal grudges etc. These are a result of their immaturity. The way to deal with these problems would be to point out to the opponent the flaw as they see it during the debate and not afterwards. For example: You are being personal, your argument is targeted at slurring my personal image and not at the issue on hand, you are being facetious, your arguments seem to be hollow you need to support them, dismissing my argument is not enough, please supply us with more facts etc. Once you teach them the fallacies of argument they are empowered to say you are resorting to ad hominem or you are slippery sloping etc. Anyone leaving the platform in a huff is not likely to win the gold. And so it is in life, folks. Anyone leaving the arena is not likely to make any changes. If you leave the battlefield, you become a non-entity.

Debating is not part of our school and growing years as part of a life- skills curriculum and therefore as adults we Indians, often do not know how to debate. You will often find people taking umbrage, indulging in vituperative battles, abandoning the issue in favour of personal mudslinging and violence. This happens in the parliament, in any meetings where Indian adults congregate to discuss an issue, we fight like cats and dogs and all of us talk together on TV interviews and chat shows. And shamefully, we carry grudges after that. It is ridiculous.

A good discussion tempers debates. When the format is of a discussion, with debates within, it allow the debators to move out of the ambit of the debate and accept the views of others, or even if they win, to acknowledge the contribution of thought of the other. As adults even if we are in a pure debate we need to do this.

A debator never leaves the field at a loose end. So in my debate with Sarath (Pro-Life Or Quality of Life blog) where the scale of destruction on the planet due to global warming was the issue, this is my clousure. My understanding was that 2/3 or 66% of the population was at stake, which to me is what it must be if what we hear of 'catastrophic' gw consequences is true, and Sarath's was that it was only 'fraction of one percent'. Two extreme and opposing numbers.

Sarath asked me to look up the site:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPCC_Fourth_Assessment_Report

Amit supplied the original IPCC site:

http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/syr/ar4_syr_spm.pdf

Then the debate turned sour and personal with Sarath ready to resign and crying 'unfair' and feeling judged.

But, armed with these sites, when the debate began to turn sour, I did a good read of both sites, especially the 22 page IPCC report. To my surprise, there was no mention of any of Sarath's arguments in these two documents.

His claims were:

1. GW not “anywhere near as catastrophic as you seem to suggest here (2/3rds of us die?)”.

2. Food production increase for 4 degree raise.

3. Many disadvantages that are well known and overblown.

4. GHGs stabilizing in 2050.

5. 1% in casualities (not “affected”, but “deaths”).

6. Talk about disadvantages of GW to reduce emissions, and not use “against nature” argument.

Not one of these 5 points is mentioned in the report. The sixth point is linked to the larger debate of nature vs science and is irrelevant to this context - though it is the original thrust of the blog.

On the contrary, the report takes the opposite view.

The report said exactly what I had read randomly several times. I have also read reports where the writers dismiss gw as 'gw my arse .', so its not that I am unaware of a lobby that says gw is all bunkum and alarmist.

However this one speaks of:

Agricultural land aridity, shrinking and water logged forests, water resources, heat, flooding and droughts, malnutrition, diarrohea, cardio reperatory illnesses, morbidity and mortality, ocean acidification and marine life destruction, heat waves and overload on health services, coral bleaching, eco system imbalances and species lost, low produce in agriculture and fisheries, storms and 30% loss of wetlands, flash floods decrease in snow cover and glacier retreats, polluting megadeltas and escalating aridity. The ill effects of over population, urbanization, economic crises in this web of natural disasters following climate change is predicted throughout the document.

World hunger is a big concern. In fact a 50 % decrease in food in poorer countries by 2020 is predicted. Water stress is a major problem with either flooding or droughts that will be widespread.

To my mind, this kind of interconnected disaster scenario is more likely to see deaths and damage in the vicinity of 66% than 1%. As I said, at the first stage of this argument, rising sea levels will leave people nowhere to run. (Nature punishments are likely to outrun human ingenuity and science) We have not colonized mars or moon to send people out there either. I reckon fraction of 1% which Sarath says is 100million is presumably at 12 b population which is double our present population. 100 million in our 6 and a half billion, is probably lost even now every year to disease, old age and wars. Can those be the death figures post GW disasters?

To clear my doubts and support my hypothesis, I researched global poverty to see how many of our present population could be at risk.

The global poor constitute 80% of world population that is a whopping 4 billion who have less than $ 5 a day as disposable income. (Harvard Study) http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/5529.html

Given the damage to the environment and the various disasters, waiting to happen, these 4 billion will be the first ones to go. When pushed to the wall, where Nature does not discriminate between the rich and the poor, I do not see a lot of altruism flowing. In fact, when put to a crunch, men have a tendency to be most selfish, pugnacious and defensive for their own survival and comfort. This is often witnessed in post earthquake areas, before aid begins to trickle in and order is restored.

So, I conclude that none of Sarath's claims hold water. Debates, I reiterate must stay with facts and issues and not deteriorate into emotional parts where we accuse one another of skullduggery and bullying in order to avoid research, deliberation and debate. That would amount to intellectual laziness and avoidance. To defend one's stance with proper evidenced backup is to truly honour the spirit of debating. Not having any rancour afterwards is to be able to say we are not merely grown up but truly mature.

Indian law needs to be amended. We have problems that must not be given a verdict on the rules laid down in 1820. The world we live in is not the same. Technology has progressed at a rapid rate in the last 100 years and each year has add-on dimensions to this that are mind-boggling. For example, we had no surrogate motherhood or test-tube babies then. We now have a surrogate baby whose Japanese parents are divorced, the mother has disowned the child and the father (now single) cannot adopt a female child. The baby stuck in a Jaipur hospital is all set to be India’s first surrogate orphan.

We now have a battery of tests to detect fetal defects and such knowledge of deformity can be devastating. One would imagine that the testing itself precludes the opportunity to make decisions as opposed to earlier times when we just prayed for a healthy child. The age of the foetus when it can be legally aborted is 20 weeks. The basis for this is not clear. By week 6 the baby has even grown rudimentary eyes, ears and digestive tract. It is only in the first two weeks that it is a clump of cells with potential life.  By the 13 weeks called the first trimester, when abortion is legal, the baby has all vital organs and a brain to respond to reflexes. So what exactly is legal about killing that life as opposed to 25 weeks when the child has a face and nails and a more developed brain where it becomes worthy of a court battle on the national stage?

The right to life lobby argues that any feticide is fetal homicide or murder. The Pope extends this to the ban on contraception in the assumption that the egg and sperm are potential life. One can then extrapolate to a ban on male masturbation as sperms are lost in ejaculation. If they could control the unconscious reflex of nocturnal emissions, I wonder if they would make a anti wet dream pill mandatory for men?  The problem is always about where we draw the line and whether our reasoning is in tune with the laws of nature.

Then there should be a right to ‘quality of life’ for which there seems to be no group fighting the cause. Ironic. You fight for the foetus and abandon the child. If one were to look around at beggar children sniffing glue and in a state of complete neglect, malnourished, diseased and abused on a daily basis and reflect on the complete lack of groups like the Greenies and Pro- Lifers or even Animal- Rights or Save the Tiger or Global Warming activists to help them,  you again come to the question  of what moves us and what does not move us as human beings.  There is no ‘Save the Child’ campaign, no opposition to the Pro- Lifers by a group of Quality of Lifers, who demand the right for children to basic roti, kapda, makan or the duty to not have them at all. I have discussed this before in my blog 'The Parent Trap' under Parenting.

Once again if we were to pick up the issue of euthanasia or mercy killing there is tremendous reluctance for legalizing this as we see it as a tool of abuse and extortion or corruption by relatives who might bump off an oldie who is ill but not fatally so. In our earnestness to protect a few we end up putting a large number of terminally ill people who are not only too old but also in great pain from terminating their agony. Again, we choose the rights of some over others. Who gives us the right to do that?  On what basis can we as humans stand on judgement over someone else's problems when it is not our own?

Hence, the suffering of humanity goes unchecked and unabated. Our amazing capacity to ignore their pain allows us to shake our heads, click our tongues in mock sympathy, and move on. Farmers commit suicides, the girl child is raped, the anemia of  multiple pregnancies in women, horror stories are told of unsupervised orphanages, unrealistic adoption practices keep babies in emotional want even as childless couples yearn to love them, hole-in-the-wall clinics make a killing and corrupt administrations bless them and we have no lobbying, no placards, no sustained media page, no Rights movements to protest.

Actually when I am on the subject of neglect let us look at more killers out there who Protest groups have missed. Passive smoking, noise pollution, road rage, pesticide poisoning; anger, isolation and depression, unbridled urbanization and loss of values, speed and obnoxious economic growth ' they are all killers. Anyone heard of groups for these causes?  Sure we fight their end results which could be anything from food poisoning, global warming, infrastructure shortage to terrorism at a bleat level.

We enjoy looking at symptomatic cures like Alcoholic Anonymous, anti 'tobacco campaigns, Ban bar- girls groups, anti prostitution laws etc. We are reluctant to look into the deeper malaise that lies at the heart of problems which are given our quick-fix solutions because they are difficult truths to face and require more work than words to be yelled out.  And that, is the essential difference between a Pro-Life and a Quality of Life Activist.  There is a  difference between giving birth and bringing up a child. The difference between an automatic right and an earned privilege.

When I introduce the topic 'Law' to 8 year olds I often ask them, if there was anything in the world you could do and no one found out and there were no consequences to your actions,  what would you do? The answers are often innocently mischievous and sometimes out-of-the-box and amusing.

On chat, I find some real answers with real people to that question. Chat is action without consequence and so you can indulge in any form of verbal banter, abuse, diarrhea and slander without anyone finding out who you are.
And the results are amazing. What fascinates me is how this adheres so closely to life.

The community of faceless, nameless people base their words/ moves/ actions on the basic premises that all human communities use: Power ' Sex ' Clan. The transient nature of the chatroom where a click of the mouse gets you out and away forever, or the ignore button allows you to hide the a person even as he/she  exists for everyone else, (like in science fantasies) adds dimensions to this fundamental areas of human engagement.

Masks allow the person beneath to be of any form or hue. He/she could be snarling, amused, lecherous, bored, wily, conniving but he could put forth a face that is the opposite. The lack of body language and voice allows for gullibility and for misunderstandings galore. In between these, creeps in attitudes and stances that foster groups of dominant and submissive chatizens who prey and are preyed upon. Personal slander, intellectual snobbery, cowardice in appeasing the bully, kowtowing to the verbally astute, envy of those who appear unfazed by the rest, relentless, unbridled propositioning, and brazen soliciting go on with such in-your-face candour that the whole narrative of reticence and self-restraint is written in a new script.

The chutzpah of chat is outrageous and shrouded in cowardice. This gives free rein for every tall claim to be made. Graphic details of what a man is going  do to a female chatter as abuse is spread out before a numb-to-shock audience. The irony is that these are everyday people who are  characters in a charade of make believe. However, the anger, lust, frustrations, envy are palpable and real. Because these nicknames bond and form cliques there is the 'us' and 'them' syndrome that is operational in chats. Newcomers or purposeful chatters, in order to be noticed and engaged with at a sustained level, therefore dole out more outrage.

There is a reputation to be maintained as personal slander, especially where say-what'you-please is the norm, can amount to grand scale calumny. The irony is that no one really cares. The vain avenger therefore brandishes his whip, uses his caps lock in a shout mode and virtually draws blood to no avail. For people who watch helplessly, what we have here are masks and  handles to cover the real people, who then have virtual identities and  reputations which they attempt to protect by playing safe and avoiding confrontations.

Not even a mask can get the man/woman to be honest about a bully. Fear of bullies is so endemic that there is no hope in real of anyone standing up to obvious evil. Don't we know that!

Chat is obsessed with age and looks. 'Old' and 'ugly' are terms of abuse as if such people have no place there. So then, is it a pick up joint? Most men and women would deny that about themselves till they are blue in the face, considering they are there most waking hours,  but still use it as a put-down amongst themselves. The 'I am Ok but everyone else is a whore or pimp' is rampant. Many people in life have this problem. The hypocrisy of it is disgusting at worst and amusing at best. The truth about chat is it is not a pick up joint. It is just a place where a lot of bored men and women take a break and yes some get picked up, some actively look to pick up and still others hope there is more to life than their present stations.  

There are serial abusers who are often put on ignore. These men and some women come to vent spleen. They are perhaps marginalised people either in their workplaces or homes who desperately need to be vituperative. Their abuse is like a man standing in the middle of a busy square and screaming  out loud. The strange bit here is those who indulge in this manner do not respect the rights of others to kick them back. They expect the other to be 'decent' even as they flaunt their malice. I see such double standards in public and political life.

The power game is played out by the intellectually superior, by those who live abroad and talk down to the desis, by those who are 'perceived' to be all male or all female kind, the young against the old, the educated against the not so educated  and so on. Power games with masks are lethal. Most often it is just an obnoxious rant and often pathetic despite the apparent advantage.

Finally men and men and women women in stereotypical contexts. Exceptions to these are resented. Men have sex on their mind and will lure, cajole, flirt and flatter to that end. All roads lead to Rome. Men who are masked certainly reveal their unmasked persona. Again the hypocrisy of: I don't care what you look like, how old you are, what you do etc is a standard script written  without any cross-referential training. It is like it's programmed in their genes. It is laughable. The assumption that women on chat have unhappy marriages or are there to mingle is what most men hold as truth as this makes the women easy targets. The conservatism in the Indian male is paradoxically very visible once they are masked.

Some women are vain and soppy, play hard-to-get and when got become clingy, sentimental and needy and once hooked are often ill-treated. Women who stand up to men are either called men in disguise or ugly and old. Therefore, there is a pettiness that is sad.

Often men who come across as sensible and non-abusive will remain silent in the face of others who abuse. They will even befriend these to avoid confrontations. The chivalrous or courageous male is almost non-existent. Life does not throw up many of these either. The dominant alpha male kind who is aggro and spewing invectives is feared by men and women who kowtow to them with a lot of ingratiating lolling (laughing out loud) and yes men ship. The very same people will decry them behind their backs. In real life, it is the same or would we be in this state of moral and ethical penury as a nation?

If you are a people watcher, you will enjoy watching chat. If you observe, you will see many trends in human behaviour that will reflect what you already know from life. What is different is you get to view a stage of men and women interacting on a daily basis and see how they shape up like dramatis personae in a tragi-comedy called Life.  They are masked and this reveals a great deal more than they would ever let you see in real life. So the value of chat to study human psychology, especially the male/female kind, has been under-utilized.

'Second Life'  is a parallel  virtual world  created on the web where, as expressed in its title, people can have a second life ' one in which they play God and choose for themselves identities and personas that have been hitherto only  dreamt of or achieved by  dint of hard labour or genetic happenstance. The lame can walk and the mute can sing. One can get married have kids, do business, own a house and do whatever in the virtual space. To what end? Psychological of course ' the feel good factor, the delete button that will erase all flaws of now and allow the person to morph into the stud, the superman/woman, the sex bomb, the whiz kid, the millionaire and have another go. Virtual identities and interactions create real feelings and that is the core substance on which these worlds are sustainable not only in terms of interest but also longevity of engagement.

The computer revolution in India as far as the common man was concerned, began in 1993 ' fifteen years ago, when only a smattering of corporate men and women could afford it ' thanks to the multinationals they worked in. Then the only function was the email and a few sites which offered what I shall euphemistically call the 'forbidden'. Today we have so much technology and communication that not only have all things clandestine become possible, but they have also become blasé.

 The chats began in 1996 and again it was for those savvy to the extent possible in a nascent field, where others were still struggling with one finger typing, who could be on the forum and enjoy the luxury or banality of spending hours with a community that must have seemed like second life seems today.

Chatrooms morphed into many things for many people the most common being the presence of women shrouded by tanatalising nicks, never mind some were men in disguise, who could raise  the interest of men who filled the gap with their fantasies. This must have been huge titillation to a lot of repressed men who had little interaction with women socially, especially if they were married, middle aged and adipose. Why even the young, the shy, the reticent would have sought to find that elusive man/ woman in the midst of the crowd stalking the rooms in veils that beckoned.

To be fair there were amongst these people, those who were there to simply meet other people. Though not averse to other pleasures that might serendipitously come their way, they were basically looking for contacts in business or like minded people, be they men or women, to talk to at an intellectual level.

When there is anonymity, the human is a different animal. Like rioting and pilfering when the law is dysfunctional or crisis hit, the masked entity is capable of the kind of culpable behaviour, the kind he would have denied even to himself before the virtual era. The mask unravelled a whole host of desires, behaviours, instincts that were hitherto concealed by the need to be socially accepted in a real world, the id was ready to raise its head.

So, cyber sex, chat rage, power games, serial abusing, cross-dressing, manipulation and in some cases confidence tricks, blackmail and exploitation came to rule chat more than its innocuous label intended. With this, the assumption that only the proverbial loser would be part of chat - be it the pervert, the wastrel, the idle woman, the unemployed man, the sexually starved or the fiend cum manipulator preying on the less fortunate - actually kept most people away from chat rooms.

Yet there was no denying the attractions of escape and sublimation that these rooms made possible. For many who discovered the joys of chatting it was a routine to a full time activity. Many people log on to chat rooms even as they open their mails and remain with chat till the end of day. The new generation of IT young at call centers, BPOs and the like, when put on the bench, bored housewives with time on their hands, young students and retired old men found chat a haven for fulfilling connections.  

The community that emerges from such intermingling that happens on a frequent basis, sometimes everyday, becomes a 'real' part of the individual's life. Sometimes this is a mild interlude that is shrugged off as soon as one logs out and at other times it is a devastating intrusion into thoughts and interactions in the real world. Such individuals experience addiction which forces them to go back to the room and engage in the game of blind man's buff, sitting for long hours and neglecting their responsibilities to real life. Like all addictions, there is a drain on time, money, energy and emotional well-being.

With this blog I begin my second year on rediffiland. I have enjoyed this experience and built in a year a body of reflections that I am proud of, but more importantly I am delighted by the astonishing number of minds I have met here and interacted with. There is something to be said of the virtual world where one has both the banal and the profound. Like the pond that has the muck and boasts the lotus in its midst, it is in the end what we choose from whatever media that is to our profit. I thank all of you who have engaged with me in this past year for giving me moments of enlightenment, joy and laughter.

Rajesh Talwar will be released today for lack of evidence.

After the lull in the spate of murder stories, the press now has fresh fodder for a few more days with a new angle. And the Talwars will witness the brunt of the collective hypocrisy of our media. Suddenly, overflowing tributes will be paid to their stoicism; their tragedy will be highlighted with an eloquence that will put Sophocles to shame. The Press are likely to jostle, nudge, elbow, shin, kick, shove, beat and do what ever it takes to be 'breaking news' an ex-pression akin to and apt in context with 'breaking wind.'

Yesterday one already saw a preview of that with one channel herding together all the close members of the family for airtime and questioning them on how they coped! A couple of months back they had wondered what the parents "felt" on seeing the dead daughter!! The curiosity of the press is indeed breathtaking when it comes to such cunning investigative questioning and observations. Now they are talking of how they could not imagine what Talwar must have gone through in 50 nights in that cell without the space to mourn for his child!

There were occasional bleats of 'accountability' but they were not enough to pepper an egg. The façade of the free press in India exercising its power of being the people's voice in full-throated glory is alive and well. Thank you.

The main issues ofcourse remain unanswered. The 'show' quickly moved on to display  Arushi's scrapbook beginning with  baby pictures in what they thought was a rare tribute to the dead child. Belated yes, but now is the time to do it for who knows two months back how the whole thing would have turned out. Now it is time to underline the tragedy of the parents and exploit their privacy further.  All of this allows us to walk the sensational path without grappling with the larger question of what should be done with the UP police or the CBI or whoever else investigated this crime and botched it to the point where an innocent man was given a double tragedy in one go.

No research was done on what happens to these agencies in other countries. No comparisons  were drawn.  Is there a law on what should happen next? Don’t we need a law to rap the 'protectors' of law for their 'carelessness'? Ofcourse when there are strict guidelines for scientific investigation in developed countries, as opposed to kitchen gossip theories, the fact that it may not be necessary for them to have any measures against failures, is another matter. Here the CBI feel that they can exonerate themselves by saying Krishna the compounder 'misled' them and sent them on the wrong track. Hello? That kind of investigation surely my dhobi can do? I wonder what the national exchequer pays to keep these goons in business!

We were subjected to the Director of the CBI ' a man who I am sure would have been as bad in Hindi as was in English. His 'waj' (was) and hij'(his) and 'the Arushi' ' was the only thing I could use at the moment to uncharitably jeer in the absence of any kind of punishment that he is likely to come across. His lack of intelligence, his floundering, his indifference to the responsibility that should have been shame-faced were all symptomatic of an apathetic government officer who knows he is never likely to be held accountable.  The clips of the police slurring Arushi's and Rajesh Talwar's character as motive for the crime were aired once again with no mention of the fact that the man was only transferred or suspended which is like a  mild rap on the knuckles.

The media and police need to be made accountable. Power is certainly not meant to be used like a butcher's knife. I wonder if anyone will ever tell the media a few home truths about itself or about the police when a mike is thrust in front of them for opinion. And that includes the Talwar family. It is because we never speak up, we are not brash about such truths, that the culprits merely exchange one tragedy for another and carry on in exactly the same fashion.  As I have said before when shame is lost everything is lost.

In a lot of countries the politicians flinch under the media glare, people who are in power quial under the interrogation, sweat and squirm in their seats under the relentless badgering they get from interviewers. The press speaks for the people and expresses their anger and frustration coherently. That is the job of the press: to cogently put across the thoughts that all of us have and which a lot of us don’t know how to word with economy and punch. If the media does what it is meant to do,  people in power will fear it, and worry about coming into positions where they can be asked to account in front of the whole country and made to look like fools. It will stop every criminal and goonda from entering the fray and literally and figuratively having a blast. When is the media likely to understand its own power and stop behaving like hags around a fire?

The special tragedy of this event is that this can happen to any of us. This veneer of democracy in which we live is but a thin veil. The Talwar case has just told us that and we have watched the 'show' and clucked our way through it  and 50 nights seems small when we compare it to the undertrials who spend lifetimes waiting for trail so hota hai yaar . investigation toh karna padta hai na? . koshish toh ki na? ab aage upar wale ki marzi

Are we for real?

This begs definition of the word ‘God’. What is God? Unless we are clear that both the atheist and challenger mean the same thing by the term 'God', the argument will be at cross purposes. God varies from believer to believer. To some it is a spirit, an energy, to others it is a friend who they actually 'see' or 'talk to' or at least believe that they do. To some it is a father figure, a guide, a solace, a crutch, a comfort, a habit, a healer. To others God is wrathful and vengeful, punishing those who have not followed his dictates. For many God is an explanation for the world and its yet unsolved mysteries, an answer to the perennial question: from whence did we come and quo vadis. To a lot of others to believe in God, is to play safe. To ensure that there is reward and avoidance of punishment if there is a God and to lose nothing if there isn't one.

God, at the end of the day defies imagination in his omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent self, because the human mind is incapable of holding such magnitudes. Hence, we have the anthropomorphic God, one made in our own image and romanticized in the best of our music and art traditions. Any attempt to bring down this anthropomorphic God brings out the savage ire in man who bares his fangs and is ready to draw blood to 'protect' his God.

God is a wonderful excuse for the intellectually lazy. Enquiry, exploration, reflection are all difficult and time-consuming tasks. They require patience, hypotheses, study, thinking, deliberation and dedication. To seek no answers but to explain the apparently unexplainable in a single word attributing to this invisible, unknown, unseen entity a name and a personality, is to solve problems instantly. Then there is the basking in this created light, where many simply by virtue of uttering the name, believe that they become part of the reflected glory. This further inures them from more endeavours inflicted by the need to know the truth. God becomes a convenience.

Humans have therefore given God a stature that enables them to rest in his gargantuan shadow, a shadow so humongous that it defies the imagination and protects anyone who comes into its 'sharan'.  The walls of this haven have been fortified by priesthood and temples, songs, drama, and the entire machinery of culture that make it not only desirable but also good.Thus the definition of good becomes synonymous with this nebulous God  and furthers the convenience of the men who take shelter.

God is so ubiquitous that He/she becomes a habit. (It has always been a He, till now, in keeping with the patriarchal custom of male supremacy.) When one is conditioned to take a name from childhood the 'oh my God' slips past ones lips quite effortlessly when in a situation requiring succour.

The other use for God is prayer. Man in his fraility and often self-created misery, be it from greed or lust or anger, often needs someone to call to piteously when in pain and despair. God, who need not answer, except by a serendipitous happenstance, when things take their course, is lauded for his mercy and his generosity. God becomes a private counselor and mentor with no real accountability. When things go well, He is the saviour, when things don't work out, He is testing us and we have to bow to his Will. Thus, the old lie goes unchallenged.

Humans being social animals are extremely unhappy when they are alone. Therefore, the public God, who is kowtowed to jointly in temples and churches and mosques, becomes a collective reality. There is great solace in numbers when one is bound to a lie. The same people would have great discomfort if one were to suggest they should henceforth worship quietly in their homes. They also carry symbols of their gods in the manner of their clothes, hair, rituals, and feel the need to proclaim loudly their beliefs. This causes conflict when birds of different feathers meet and that is the excuse from mutual bad mouthing to terrorist attacks. In the name of God, evil is perpetuated without shame or regret.

God is created by fear. Fear of being visited by disease, death, loss, pain if one were to forsake it. If these fail, there is the fear of hellfire and brimstone and many religions expound the horrors of the flesh that hell would subject them to. The devil is again an anthropomorphic creation to give to hell a 'human' representative in case the whole destination becomes abstract and therefore unbelievable. Mythology does its part in spreading the word of belief with stories and parables.

Another convenient rider thrown into the belief equation is that God must not be challenged. Like the tree of knowledge from which one may never eat, God must not be questioned. This is seen as a kind of virtue. Another very clever way of hiding the unknown from inquisitive eyes. God's word is also the ultimate word so you may not ask any more questions of it. God said so, must suffice as an answer to end all questions.

If religions were born to unite tribes who were on the brink of destruction, then God becomes a social refree with his 'thou shalt nots' and a moral policeman who defines the limits of decency and acceptable standards. Socially, God keeps the peace by making sure the fear of the consequences of sin will make people responsible like nothing else will. Fear of the unknown is the best kind of fear, for we know not what it is that  we fear.

Finally, the symbolic God. God as omnipresent becomes all things in Nature in pantheistic religions. He is the stone, the river, the monkey, the elephant, the snake, the sea. Nature itself being a rhythm, a scientific rhythm has immense grace and purpose and charm. Nature lends itself well to define the niraakara God. Physical symbols are easy to understand. Abstract symbols require a lot of transference to be understood and experienced.

Now that I have kind of defined God, we can understand the atheist better.

Atheism is a rational exercise. It does not carry the emotionality of the theist, or the physicality of the ritualist. It is therefore almost lackluster in its practicality. It is the difference and the rebelliousness of atheism that gives it its glamour. It is therefore easy to judge people who differ and take a separate stand, as arrogant and negative. There is much anger against any breakaways when the God concept has been constructed with such care, for so long and with so many safeguards in place.

Many atheists are rabid. Richard Dawkins is one. Intelligent, rational and rabid. I don't see any reason for the atheist to overstate his case. Like theism it is a journey that everyman must make for himself.

The other kind of atheist is the 'betrayed theist'. This one has come to his/her conclusions of atheism based on betrayal by their God. Someone dear has died and so belief has been abandoned. This kind of narrow perceptive atheism will be short lived. All it takes is a small miracle of coincidence for them to go running back to the temple with coconuts. Several films that are made, move the God propaganda machinery towards these kind of stories to convince the believers and to warn those who are likely to stray.

Then there is the half-hearted, non-conformist atheist. This one ends his atheism with a 'but' I am an atheist but .. There is doubt and there is fear. This one will switch sides in certain company. Confused and befuddled there is a need to be both. Like bi-sexuals they have their own cross to carry. Like the man on the fence they battle snide remarks from both sides.

Atheism is not a badge. It is the right to believe that something does not exist because there is no proof. If proof is found anytime in the future, acceptable proof that is, objective proof, then there will be belief too. And if there is a God I am sure he is wise and just enough to understand that some of us need proof and that is reasonable.  :)

True Atheism is about freedom and enquiry. It is about listening to anyone who is ready to reason as opposed to blindly believe. It is opposed to anyone who speculates that it is better to believe, which is just an opinon. It does not limit because it is based on the search for truth and true humility in its resolve to surrender to reason.Atheism is not pretentious for exactly the same reason.

The tag 'atheist' must not be likened to a theist who is bound by patterns of behaviour, rituals, customs, philosophies etc. An atheist on the other hand is an observer, one who appreciates all efforts at seeking the truth, one who can see beyond what is apparent, one who is willing to deliberate with any belief within reason, one who is willing to change his/her belief if there is enough objective evidence to the contrary.

My apologies to Amit for writing a blog on Atheism instead of writing a preamble for a new religion. Amit, that is an idea whose time has not yet come!

Crime and law are partners bound by vigorous handcuffs. They are two sides of the same coin ' opposites, linked so inextricably, that the boundaries seem to blur and like Orwell's pig and man one cannot tell which is which.

Nowhere is this seamless blending more true than in India where the seats of administration and thereby law are densely occupied by  unproven and yet- to- be- proven criminals. The Constitution itself grants them the right to rule.

In such a state of law, the increasing spate of murders and suicides galloping in outrageous succession on a daily basis must not strike despair. However, these are not hardened criminals but our everyday naval officers, aspiring entertainers, wannabe small town migrant girls with stars in their eyes, ubiquitous IT couples, housewives, corporate managers it could well be you and me.

The surprise is also in the nature of the crime, such, that has been hitherto found only in the annals of serial and psychopathic killers who need to find ingenious ways to stimulate or pacify their chaotic minds. It is not the crime of passion in finding the killer's girlfriend with her lover that startles you, but the manner in which the body of the victim is then cold bloodedly hacked into appropriate tidbits to fit into carry bags and transported to be burnt in a remote forest. After that, the methodical clean up, the shopping, the charade of lodging missing complaints using the aid of unsuspecting friends adds to the drama.  It is the stuff Hadley Chase novels are made of.

Coming on the heels of this crime is the Arushi murder case where the girl's parents are suspect and the police are arrest-happy. Our police remand and then ask questions. When nothing is found there is no apology on the part of the police or the judge for the arrest of or trauma to the victim. There is no compensation either by the state as in the West. Under these circumstances there is no special care taken to ascertain facts and the police enjoy wide unfettered draconian powers without accountability. Our CSI non-existant. Our police work is all about ‘beating’ confessions out of suspects rather than painstakingly collecting forensic, circumstantial and documental evidence that would be admissable in a court,  before confronting and arresting a suspect.

 Loss of memory regarding the exact chain of events and the details of what clothes the Talwars wore on the night of the murder are seen as major covering up of facts. One cannot begin to comprehend the agony and horror of parents in a situation of finding their only child dead with a slit throat. Their daze must be a part of their survival mechanism. I remember the shock of a parked car pulling out and hitting me in motion. After chasing the car for a good mile, I had no memory of its colour so I am not sure how reliable memory would be when one goes into devastating shock like the murder of a child.

The police are at sea. They have nothing to go on except suspicions. They have no explanations and they expect 'cooperation' and one wonders if that is some euphemism for sub radar pressure to get the suspect to confirm some of their pet theories. When the police botch up they are given gentle raps on the knuckles in the form of transfers, whatever that means. Meanwhile, reputations have been besmirched beyond repair and no on pays. The media abets this homicide by the law, changing colours with a temerity, that would put a flamboyant chameleon to shame.

Even if one were to forgive some extremes in murder investigations, cast your regard on the growing menace of arrests for "abetting suicides". Abetting is defined by the dictionary as approve, encourage, or urge an action or plan. Woe betide the man who has had an affair, been a friend, a sympathetic colleague, mingling single man or divorced ex- husband if the woman in a fit of anger or depression decides to take her own life. His arrest is almost immediate under section 107 of the IPC. He is then paraded by the media for all he is worth. His family, friends, ex girl friends, estranged wives, online buddies are called, questioned, interviewed, slurred, suspected without compunction. His crime?  He refused to marry the girl who died. Arjun Menon is the latest of the victims of this kind of knee jerk arrests. However, the MLA husband of Padmapriya the latest latest among the suicide belles, has been spared arrest ' a point to note your Honour. Interestingly, no woman is picked up when a man she rejected commits suicide.

So if you have the misfortune of having an affair with a weak woman you are looking at your house being searched, your computer hardware probed, your cell phone records scrutinized, being spurned by your friends, shamed in your community and shunned by everyone. 

All your women friends stand the risk of being interrogated by our diligent police force because you are not supposed to have any friends of the opposite sex. This could inadvertently damage their reputations by insinuating unhealthy speculations. It is all part of police work because you refused to marry someone or elope with her or whatever and the woman took her life.

Be ready also for financial ruin. You could lose your job, have a jail record which you will need to disclose in a lot of places, you need money to bribe your way out of jail and bad press, not to speak of hefty criminal lawyer fees.  Then there will be righteous women's groups and relentless relatives of the dead girl baying for your blood long after the dust has settled.

What kind of archaic law is this? Don't these victims have any rights? Who is going to question the intrusion on privacy? The malicious slander? How does a person outlive that? Who will compensate the injustice and who will pay?

The heat generated by these crime investigations never let up. For weeks, the channels go after the whodunit with salacious delight. Every moment is a screeching ground breaking speculation. The reporters are like vultures asking the most ridiculous questions. I particularly remember that goon Arnab of 'Time Now' asking Nupur Talwar "What did you feel when you saw your dead daughter?" I wonder at his sanity.

Older sensational cases like the Afzal guru case have lost their sheen and simmer on the back burners. Kasliwal's rape victim is suddenly missing and so there is a possibility of a 'no show no case' when it comes up for hearing. Soon the present sansanikez cases will become low in visibility, when fresh gossip comes up and  eager audiences lap up new salacious episodes in true soap opera tradition, waiting eagerly for the next installment. Violence and sex in real life is unbeatable. We are all voyeurs even as we make those sympathetic noises.

And so, the brides burn, husbands rape wives and the voiceless screams of abused children get smothered under the family umbrella.  Ministers not disclosing their wealth are forgotten, and even as the PM mildly bleats out his austerity measures, they  get political immunity. R.R. Patil dithers over the arrest of  Raj Thakeray and his goons, who so blatantly beat up innocent Bihari labourers on camera.

Crime stalks our lives in various forms ' committed by everyone either through commission or omission.  The law? What law? When the law is guilty, who, as Lady Macbeth averred, can call it to account?

Man is born nude and is everywhere in a state of shame over it just as the Rosseauvian man who is born free,  is everywhere in chains.  This post was inspired by the Lady Godiva blog posted by my friend hardhitter (hardhitter.rediffiland.com), which set me thinking on the subject of nudity.

Lady Godiva rode through the crowded marketplace in the nude because of a dare from her husband.  A wager that he would bring down the taxes in Coventary if she dared to do it. The speculation after the event, which shocked the husband, was whether the lady, who was religious, should be canonized for her social largesse or be deemed a repressed exhibitionist who wanted to seek the attention of her bored husband. The whole dynamics of the male female relationship on the subject of nudity is speculated on. The romantics, many among them monks who vowed  to claim sainthood for  Godiva, circulated  stories of how her 'purity' blinded the lecherous and kept her 'clothed' because no eyes actually 'saw' her in the nude state - a reversal of the Emperor of the new clothes fame.

Children growing up in nudist colonies or even offspring of parents who are mindless of being seen nude by them from birth, will have a lower tickle factor at the sight of nude bottoms or breasts or private parts. Repressed societies that cover up all parts except eyes are likely to be titillated at the sight of an imagined wrist or ankle. All things taboo have  excited and  aroused much more than mere curiosity. Shame has been conditioned early at the cradle stage in human children with the puppy shame business of reprimanding their innocent uncovered bits or with a chee chee that often stays in the psyche and later emerges as sexual dysfunction of many varieties, not all of them physical.

Anthropologically the Neanderthal was nude but was also too hirsuite to have resembled Adam and Eve in their garden, roaming in idyllic contentment  with strategic fig leaves to shield them from present sinful post-lapsarian eyes. The word 'pubic' is associated with hair as clothing and shield. Before pornography, full frontal nudity always meant a glimpse of the bush. In many early cultures, nudity was not frowned upon and the loincloth was the only adornment for the man. The women were often all nude as their sexual organs being internal, were not as fragile as the male ones.

The fall of Man and his ultimate introduction to 'shame' for his nudity is seen as his recognition of sin and ugliness. It marked, according to Christian theology, the end of innocence that nudity symbolically represented ' an openness and candour as opposed to dishonest concealing. Among Hindus ofcourse all deities are in a dehabille condition and  worshipped in that state. The deification of the linga and yoni are further evidence of the worship of nude genitalia as life forces in keeping with ancient religions the world over, that gave importance to fertility. Newer religions like Islam called for cover up. The arwah for men and the hijaab for women were compulsory and nudity therefore was viewed not just with guilt and shame but as immodest, arrogant and sinful.

Nudity has therefore come about as befitting punishment for those who have erred. From ragging teenagers in colleges, to stripping witches in medieval Europe, and  Jews in Nazi camps to the more recent scandal of US troops at the Abu Gharib prison camp, nudity has been used to humiliate and degrade. Village justice has often been beating men and women in the nude.

Even mythology is witness to the disrobing of Panchali with evil intent. Invincibility has also been associated with nudity of great warriors like Karna, Achilles and Dhuryodhan who had their thighs and heels left vulnerable by their sudden sense of shame ' a weakness not a strength.  Orisis killed and dismembered in the nude and strewn to be picked up and put together had one vital piece missing making it an immortal Egyptian myth.

The gods might have been up to all kinds of mischief but it is not for men to deride their nudity with pictures that are deemed lewd and punishable as MF Hussain realized to his chagrin and no amount of pleading that all the hindu gods were nude in the temples has brought down the collective anger. The Danish people are still paying for the defamy brought on Muhammad by getting their consulates bombed randomly years later.

Artists however have a long tradition of nudes. Early Greeks were enamoured with male nudes. A long line of male nudes in Atlas , David, the discus thrower and Vinci's Vitruvian man have bared it all ' a manifestation of physical and moral perfection. The Italians brought in the female with the Renaissance as the symbol of idealism and beauty. Small breasts and swollen abdomens were sensuous in Botticelli's Birth of Venus and Giorgione's  Sleeping Venus. Eve was ofcourse the first female nude covering herself with her hand when her hair was not in use. How the tides have turned in the twenty first century ' first it was anatomy forbidding the study of human bodies and now its nudes who are banned for painters in some countries. A loss indeed of primal innocence in the reverse. A corruption and a loss of culture ' a malaise of our times and its narrow perceptions.

On the other hand there are nude beaches and colonies, nude dancing and strip news reading, an orgasm of porno films, a leer of flashers, streaking as a form of protest and pleasure, skinny dipping, more and more men and women who want to drop it all, a gymming culture that aims to make the 'showing' pleasant. There is advertising, which blatantly uses nudity in all forms to 'sell' any and all products, relevance being a non- issue. Then there are strip clubs and near nude fashion shows where wardrobe malfunctions are common, which gets the police force all active and the girls running for cover. There is a subterranean band of activities where all that can be imagined, is rendered possible. The stark truth. The naked truth.

 So is nudity an aspect of the mind? What is the psychology of nudity? Is it a sign of vulnerability or courage? Is it to be viewed as primal innocence or as perverse corruption? Is it to be seen as au naturel and revered or is it to be shunned and punished as vile? Does it excite as only what is taboo can do? Have we created the taboo deliberately to create a dimension of titillation? When a lot of time, money and unabashed energy is spent on vain pursuits to ensnare and attract the opposite sex, why is nudity such a no no?

Anyone care to strip this cloaked mystery and denude nudity?

Opposites have always fascinated me.

 William Blake's (1757 ' 1827)   influential work "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell" written more than 250 years ago manifests a vision that is astonishing in clarity, wisdom and insights. A dynamic relationship between a stable “Heaven” and an energized “Hell” has fascinated theologians, aestheticians and psychologists. A book of paradoxical aphorisms and Blake’s principal prose work. “If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.”  he wrote. The work expressed Blake’s revolt against the established values of his time. Radically he sided with the Satan in Milton’s Paradise Lost and attacked the conventional religious views in a series of aphorisms.

“Without Contraries is no progression. Attraction and Repulsion,

Reason and Energy, Love and Hate, are necessary to Human existence.

From these contraries spring what the religious call Good & Evil.

Good is the passive that obeys Reason. Evil is the active springing

from Energy. Good is Heaven. Evil is Hell.”

And yet, before you dismiss him as one of those run of the mill thinkers, cast an eye on the 'Proverbs of Hell' excerpted from the book,  and marvel at their outspoken, candid and utterly forward looking contrary thinking that would put Richard Dawkins to shade. And all that, packaged in the simplest and yet most profound verse. A rebel. A revolutionary.  A mystic. A prophet.

A treat for every no nonsense mind. Who can conceive of a better marriage?

It is the age of this work that astonishes me. And its progressive thinking. There is Osho, Krishna, Buddha, Jesus, Sun Tzu, Zen, Muhammad, Socrates, Gibran, Gandhi, Freud, Jung and Neitsche in these allegorical aphorisms. Blake did live in the age of persecution and therefore his beliefs are cleverly concealed in innocuous images that have  the ring of aesop’s fables. He was considered a harmless lunatic. A couple of aphorisms on God in this list stands out as red herrings to fool the clergy.  

If you read carefully these are the various thoughts you will encounter:

- irreverence to authority and age.

-espousal to indulgence in experience as the road to wisdom.

-a demasking of posturing  as  virtue and its hypocrisy.

- the bane of inaction.

- there is nothing after sentient life - all is silence.

- Go with the natural flow in children.

- All men are not alike. Their perspectives on the same thing are different.

- Change begins with me.

- change is life /growth /health.

- time has a scope that is eternal and infinite that Man cannot fathom.

- vegetarianism and non violence.

- moderation in all things.

- frugality in misfortune and celebration in good times.

-the traditional ’sins’ table is meant to restrain / repress and sicken.

- paradoxes of joy and sorrow.

- all events however small, invalid, harmful have their place in time.

-  to everything there is a season / right action at the right time .

- your adversity is not you.

-true friends are your solace and shelter.

- anything that can be imagined can be achieved.

-dont spare the rod; it has its uses.

-the mind can hold unreal spaces.

- know that your enemy knows you.

- passion is better than knowledge; aggression is better than passivity.

-unity of body and  elements/matter.

- brain over brawn.

- empty the cup to receive joy.

-appreciate all things great and small.

- beware of priests who are kill joys.

-understand basic nature of all matter.

-understand differences of all matter.

- acknowledge desires and do not run from them.

- understand that perversity is a common human trait.

- imperfection is the short cut to  creativity.

- there is a natural satiation level for all things.

Finally the evolution of ‘God’  from pantheism to idol worship to philosophy - to religion and indoctrination - all of which have resulted in God not residing where He should reside - in the human breast.

Blake could not predict fundamentalism and terrorism - his world had not been corrupted as much as ours - his worries must have only been limited to being decapitated.

As I was walking among the fires of hell, delighted with the enjoyments of Genius; which to Angels look like torment and insanity. I collected some of their Proverbs: thinking that as the sayings used in a nation, mark its character, so the Proverbs of Hell, shew the nature of Infernal wisdom better than any description of buildings or garments.
When I came home; on the abyss of the five senses, where a flat sided steep frowns over the present world. I saw a mighty Devil folded in black clouds, hovering on the sides of the rock, with corroding fires he wrote the following sentence now percieved by the minds of men, & read by them on earth.

How do you know but ev’ry Bird that cuts the airy way,
Is an immense world of delight, clos’d by your senses five?

In seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy.
Drive your cart and your plow over the bones of the dead.
The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.
Prudence is a rich ugly old maid courted by Incapacity.
He who desires but acts not, breeds pestilence.
The cut worm forgives the plow.
Dip him in the river who loves water.
A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees.
He whose face gives no light, shall never become a star.
Eternity is in love with the productions of time.
The busy bee has no time for sorrow.
The hours of folly are measur’d by the clock, but of wisdom: no clock can measure.
All wholsome food is caught without a net or a trap.
Bring out number weight & measure in a year of dearth.
No bird soars too high, if he soars with his own wings.
A dead body revenges not injuries.
The most sublime act is to set another before you.
If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise.
Folly is the cloke of knavery.
Shame is Prides cloke.

Prisons are built with stones of Law, Brothels with bricks of Religion.
The pride of the peacock is the glory of God.
The lust of the goat is the bounty of God.
The wrath of the lion is the wisdom of God.
The nakedness of woman is the work of God.
Excess of sorrow laughs. Excess of joy weeps.
The roaring of lions, the howling of wolves, the raging of the stormy sea, and the destructive sword, are portions of eternity too great for the eye of man.
The fox condemns the trap, not himself.
Joys impregnate. Sorrows bring forth.
Let man wear the fell of the lion. woman the fleece of the sheep.
The bird a nest, the spider a web, man friendship.
The selfish smiling fool, & the sullen frowning fool shall be both thought wise, that they may be a rod.
What is now proved was once only imagin’d.
The rat, the mouse, the fox, the rabbet; watch the roots; the lion, the tyger, the horse, the elephant, watch the fruits.
The cistern contains: the fountain overflows.
One thought fills immensity.
Always be ready to speak your mind, and a base man will avoid you.
Every thing possible to be believ’d is an image of truth.
The eagle never lost so much time, as when he submitted to learn of the crow.
The fox provides for himself. but God provides for the lion.
Think in the morning. Act in the noon. Eat in the evening. Sleep in the night.
He who has suffer’d you to impose on him knows you.
As the plow follows words, so God rewards prayers.
The tygers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction.
Expect poison from the standing water.
You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough.
Listen to the fools reproach! it is a kingly title!
The eyes of fire, the nostrils of air, the mouth of water, the beard of earth.
The weak in courage is strong in cunning.
The apple tree never asks the beech how he shall grow; nor the lion, the horse, how he shall take his prey.
The thankful reciever bears a plentiful harvest.
If others bad not been foolish, we should be so.
The soul of sweet delight can never be defil’d.
When thou seest an Eagle, thou seest a portion of Genius. lift up thy head!
As the catterpiller chooses the fairest leaves to lay her eggs, so the priest lays his curse on the fairest joys.
To create a little flower is the labour of ages.
Damn braces: Bless relaxes.
The best wine is the oldest, the best water the newest.
Prayers plow not! Praises reap not!
Joys laugh not! Sorrows weep not!
The head Sublime, the heart Pathos, the genitals Beauty, the hands & feet Proportion.
As the air to a bird or the sea to a fish, so is contempt to the contemptible.
The crow wish’d every thing was black, the owl, that every thing was white.
Exuberance is Beauty.
If the lion was advised by the fox. he would be cunning.
Improvement makes strait roads, but the crooked roads without Improvement, are roads of Genius.
Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires.
Where man is not, nature is barren.
Truth can never be told so as to be understood, and not be believ’d.
Enough! or Too much.

The ancient Poets animated all sensible objects with Gods or Geniuses, calling them by the names and adorning them with the properties of woods, rivers, mountains, lakes, cities, nations, and whatever their enlarged & numerous senses could percieve.
And particularly they studied the genius of each city & country, placing it under its mental deity;
Till a system was formed, which some took advantage of & enslav’d the vulgar by attempting to realize or abstract the mental deities from their objects: thus began Priesthood;
Choosing forms of worship from poetic tales.
And at length they pronounc’d that the Gods had order’d such things.
Thus men forgot that All deities reside in the human breast.