WHY I AM NOT RELIGIOUS

While channel surfing on TV I have often paused, like most of you I am sure, at one of those
channels where a very driven (for lack of a better expression) kind of a man, a Hindu guru or a
Christian evangelist, is delivering a fiery discourse.
Sometimes screaming at high pitch, sometimes whispering in falsetto, sometimes weeping, sometimes laughing, pausing for effect......like an actor trained by Lee Strasberg, these people really know how to work the audience. They are masters of their craft. They really know how to manipulate the emotions of their followers. And I mean this as a compliment.
The popular evangelists( and Hindu gurus, and Muslim mullahs, least I forget!) can take thousands of decent men and women on a collective emotional roller-coaster ride, crying and laughing, as if caught in a spell.
History tells us that Hitler, with his impassioned oratory, could make women swoon and faint! But ofcourse he had his own agenda and he was a nasty little rogue. Whereas the television messiahs are only trying to spread their faith, and in the process cleansing society of the evils of the other religions.

Ah ha, that is where they are being just a wee bit naughty! Caught you! I know your dad is nice, sweet-smelling and sauve. But whoever told you that my dad stinks like a swine? Even if he did he is still my dad and you have no business asking me to junk him.

Don't try to pin your god on me. The only god is the sum of all gods.
If you don't know that, you are not only ignorant and uneducated but you are also mean, biased, illogical, boorish, childish, arrogant, egotistical, unreasonable and blind. You are a SOB and a fool and you are the reason why the world is in tatters today. You may be a Hindu, a Christian, a Muslim or a Zoroastrian it makes no difference. You have not out-grown your childhood when you fought with your best friend claiming your father was better than his father! That mindset still rules. You make me sick. I wish the worst nightmare on you!

Many years back I was at a massive gathering of Muslims on the Red Road, in Kolkata, and was stunned to hear a mullah deriding Hindus and Hindustan over the public address system for one full hour. I was there to take photographs. I turned to the people around me, all Mulims, and asked what this was all about. This was many years back but I recall clearly that to their immense credit all of them said, "usko chillaney do, usko baat kown sunta hai!"( let him shout, who listens to him anyway). I guess times have changed. Now I guess, we do listen to the mullahs, the gurus and the priests. And look where we have landed ourselves. Look what the career-religious leaders have done to us. We are all rearing to go for another man's throat.

Look,we are all poets!

Apparently a poet laureate was lurking inside the legal eagle Kapil Sibal! If you read the history of the Delhi sultanate or the Mughals you will see that most of the sultans and emperors had tried their hand at composing couplets and short poems in Persian or Urdu. Poetry came quite easily to these despots who were otherwise engaged in chopping off heads of brothers, fathers, step mothers and other enemies!(Which makes me wonder if they were not actually ghost written by the court poets who were then thrown off the ramparts!)
Mr.Sibal’s poetry is certainly not ghost written because even a ghost writer would not mix up doggerel with verse! Mr.Sibal, Stepehenian that he is, should know what a doggerel is, and should have the courtesy of refraining from passing off his doggerels as poetry. Sample this –
Inflation is
Bound to abate
With corrective steps
Sooner than late.
!!!!! By the same yardstick the guys who write the rhyming couplets that we see on trucks and buses are all poets! The guys at davp who compose the slogans for public awareness campaigns are also poets! Holy smoke, the Govt. of India is a constellation of unsung poets!
Ms Mamata Banerjee had also tried her hand at ‘English poetry’. Her stuff went like –
I fly fly fly
High, high, high.
Pretty basic imagery and selection of words! Can’t blame her, she’s like that only! Buddhadev Bhattacharya is a poet in his own right (sorry, no left here!). He could try quoting this poem, Oops, doggerel, by Poet Sibal to Ms.Banerjee( we in Bengal are not used to calling her that, but Mr.Ratan Tata, sauve gentleman that he is, has shown the way.) to ease the Singur impasse a bit.
Nano tubes
In nano pores
Nano tech
In nano stores
Nano thoughts
Of nano brains( hear, hear Mr.Sibal!)
A plethora of nano claims.
Nano metres,
nano miles
Nano cars
In nano style.

Abhinav Tussi Great Ho!

This is the entire text of a letter I had sent to The Telegraph, Kolkata, on 13 Aug. Predictably, it wasn't published. No one loves a spoil-sport, especially when a nation of a billion people is busy basking in the glory of a 25 year old young man.

India is a-buzz with the wonderous achievment of Abhinav Bindra, without realising perhaps, that the country had little to do with it!
By the look of it, it was a brilliant individual effort backed by papa's considerable wealth. Rifle shooting is an elitist sports and even if India manages to produce gold-medal winners by the dozen in that particular sports, it will not make us a great sporting nation. An impoverished country like ours ( inspite of globalisation and Cognizant or Macdonald's opening shop all over) cannot afford to pump in the tax-payers money into grooming an individual, practising a rich-man's sports, to fulfill a nation's dreams. Such pursuits should be left to the affluent, with the govt. backing up only in sectors beyond the purview of individuals. The tax-payers money should be spent on grooming atheletes and team sportspersons. To put things in proper perspective, without taking anything away from Abhinav's truly great achievment, we as a nation, must realise that his is an 'individual' gold if there was one.

I now quote from Abhinav's interview published in The Telegraph on 21st. Aug.

" In terms of equipment, a very basic range(for one point) may not cost more than Rs.25 - 30 lakhs....Yes I've been very lucky to have been born into this family".

Thank you Abhinav for being so candid! You are a nice guy and no wonder you finished first!

uday

Look Who's Calling!

This is no time to take or make a call on your mobile Mr. Rathore! The silver winner at the Athens Games was given the unique honour of carrying the national flag at the opening ceremony of the Beijing Games and this is how he messed it up. And to think that he belongs to the army! According the the Constitution the first duty of a citizen of this country is to show respect for the national flag and the national anthem. I am surprised that no one pulled him up for his faux pas. Perhaps a medal starved country like ours is destined to give in to the whims and boorishness of its medal winners? In India the individual has always been bigger than the nation. The player has been bigger than the team. Would Mr.Rathore pause for a moment and wonder where he would have landed by now if the country concerned was China or USA or Britain or Japan or Israel?
uday

Rift Valley

All those clamouring for a permanent shrine at Amarnath should be stopped in their tracks post haste. Are they dumb, stupid, ignoramuses or what? Not only will it create an irreparable socio-religious rift in the valley - as if there aren't enough all ready- but also result in an unforseen and complete ecological disaster.

The Amarnath shrine has a certain mystiq about it precisely because of the unpredictability regarding the formation of the ice shiva lingam. It is nature's gift to the believers and should be left as such. The inacessability also adds to the aura. If soon we have Toyotas and Mahindras roaring up to the cave itself the idea of making a pilgrinmage through hardship and uncertainty will be lost. I have a feeling that someone is trying to do a Vaishnodevi to Amarnath. Vaishnodevi is a designer goddess, stage-managed and marketed to perfection with a twist in the tale that one doesn't have to shell out mullah as 'puja' a la Tirupathi or Jaggannath of Puri. Big deal that!

It is time,..... we are very late in fact, to raise the sane vioices. Appeasement of the vote-banks at the cost of individuals and society at large , should be done away with. The greater good should be held supreme. If there is one issue today that calls for a strict no- compromises- stance, it is this. How long are we going to pay for the machiavalian practices of the indian politicians who are always playing one community against another to achieve their very petty goals?