Religion and Atheism

By Raghunath | May 31, 2009

It annoys me that the burden of proof is on us. It should be: you came up with the idea. Why do you believe it? - Ricky Gervais on being an atheist.

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The Rise and Fall of Permanent Fixtures.

By Raghunath | May 4, 2009

Maybe its age creeping up on me as I move on to the wrong side of the 20s (Thanks Neeti!) but there are things from my childhood that I used to take for granted and/ or ignore that I see less and less of nowadays. What were permament fixtures in the landscape of the India of the late 80s and early to mid 90s seem to have finally entered the final leg of their existence - at least in urban India.

Permanent Fixture: Something or someone who has been a part of a situation/ surrounding for so long that we presume them to be always there. Ex: “Everytime I arrived in the village, I would see the old man sitting under the banyan tree greeting everyone who would come and go. He was a permanent fixture in the village scene. The village greeter …”

Most of my memories of urban to semi-urban India growing up are around some people/ things that were an integral part of every town in India …

  • The News Stand
    One of the many fading memories of the India of old.
    One of the many fading memories of the India of old.

    My first memories of the news stand are at railway stations (a place that still have a lot of magazine carts around). I would always want to buy the latest Sportstar or comic for the journey to come so that I could pretend to read while I looked at the photographs in the magazines. The other real memory are of dad sending me out with Rs. 10 in my hand to buy the latest India Today or Life! magazine from the corner news stand.

    Now a fading relic in today’s digital age, the only two news stands that I can think of in modern Hyderabad are the one next to Paradise circle (which used to have 5 vendors at one time) and one on the busy streets of Abids.

    Thankfully, everytime I go to my village in Kerala, I get to see this comforting sight again :)

  • The Ice-cream wallah

Whenever you think of ice-cream vendors in India nowadays, you think of this:

But the image that remains in my mind is that of the good old Kulfi waala. The man who would come up to every building in the neighbourhood in his bajaj chetak and shout “kulfeeeee” - the call to which every young brain in every household would simultaneously flip a switch and ask their mothers for the Rs. 3 needed to buy this precious commodity that will bring eternal peace to our souls. I guess what I miss the most is the personal experience of the Kulfi and the saint who would give us the kulfi and refresh us with his smile even before the kulfi was had … Good times, good times :)

  • Amar Chitra Katha
Culture and comics for the young Indian.

Culture and comics for the young Indian.

Every Indian child’s first exposure to comics and culture used to be the Amar Chitra Katha series of culture ridden comics. A perennial favourite, the stories brought us stories that only a grandmother could have otherwise told. Stories of kings and jesters, ghosts and kingdoms, of Punyakoti - the honest cow that went back to the lion as promised after saying goodbye to its children, of Chanakya the one man who shaped the thinking of kings and so many more.

One good thing is that I know that these are still being published, although I don’t know how they are doing as a business …

  • Kapil Dev lifting the world cup
Enough Said!

Enough Said!

There are so many things that come to mind when I think about it but I can write only for so long. If there is anything that comes to your mind, add on :)

I leave you with the quintessential Indian video: the national integration video that we used to see every day on Doordarshan:

YouTube Preview Image
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Reservations, politics and another return to blogging.

By Raghunath | May 3, 2009

The months and weeks of the political circus that is the Indian election season is finally coming to a close. What should be a dignified process of selecting able bodied leaders to run and uplift the country has, as always, turned into a display of exactly why close to 50% of the nation does not want to vote.

Everyone in India (urban youth- youth as defined by political parties can be up to 40 years of a person’s life) knows that a country with around 70% of its population below the age of 30 years is governed by leaders whose numbers count among the other 30%. The people contesting do not inspire anything other than vomit and the underlings and regional politburos are nothing but a crazy mirror image of their idols - the ones with all the money and power.

In a blatant display of stupidity, more and more campaigns are being created to get the urban population to vote. Most of these claim to help wake people up (jaago re), get them to vote via the crowd mentality (lets vote, vote india) and other such “ground-breaking” ideas. Maybe what the campaigns and their drivers should think about is what the voting public wants from them and the politicians who finally profit from their traffic stopping campaigns - the right to not vote.

jagterahoI do not want to vote. My vote means an exercise in freedom and I have used it this time to vote for someone who will not get voted in. What I want is not a jaago re, its a jaagte raho. A campaign or a setting in which every single politician gets a report card that shows what they did, how corrupt their officials were and how the funds that my taxes have created have been used. I want to know why a country that has the opportunity to grow globally has actually got no prescence in the world forums. I want to know why India’s foreign policy is the weakest in all the BRIC nations.

I want to know why India is still counted as the one of the worst places to do business due to its corrupt politics and red tape laden bureaucratic process.

I want to know what my money gets me. Right now, all I see is broken roads, sad infrastructure and religious extremists who put in a 1:1 dog fight with any regular Indian would stand the same chance as a regular Indian does when they stand up against them and their power play today.

—————————–

Yes, I might be blogging again after all.

The departure was one brought on by a feeling of futility which, along with laziness causes one to believe that one cannot and does not want to write; something which was closer to the truth than I would otherwise admit freely.

My returns to blogging are as hopeless as a pro wrestlers attempt to retire and live a peaceful life so lets see where this goes.

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Hey, it made ME laugh!

By Raghunath | February 25, 2009

jeebus

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DMC: Pearl Jam - You Are

By Raghunath | February 16, 2009
YouTube Preview Image

Lyrics:

This broken wheel is coming undone
And the road’s exploding
But you’re keeping me strong
Rolling along with you,…

Love is a tower
And you’re the key
Leading me higher
When you let me in

Keeping us close,… so close
On down the line

Sometimes I burn like a dot on the sun
With no one knowing
But you’re keeping me strong
Moving along with you

You are a tower of
Strength to me
The darkening hour
Sees light again… again

Ooh wah… ooh wah… ooh wah… ooh wah… ooh wah…
You are… you are… you are… you are… you are…

Love is a tower
Of strength to me
I am the shoreline
But you’re the sea.. the sea

You are, you are, you are, you are, you…
You are, you are

Lyrics and Music - Matt Cameron (Pearl Jam)

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Reboot?

By Raghunath | January 11, 2009

I thought that I should remember something that I wanted to write about and later realized that I did not remember what I thought I wanted to remember to write about. I remember now that there was something that I needed to remember to ensure that I remembered that I write about something but now I am writing about that exact thing that I needed to remember to write about but I don’t remember what I was supposed to write about …

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Kilmer on Poetry

By Raghunath | December 25, 2008

“Poetry is a very subjective and intimate expression. It’s literally your heartbeat. Your rhythm. The song of your soul. It’s superconcentrated. It’s a dense piece of yourself.”

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Erm…

By Raghunath | December 16, 2008

What do you do when you don’t know what to write but you want to? What do you do when the number of drafts in your dashboard make you think of the graveyard of ships? What do you do when all around you is inspiration but for you there is no respite? What do you do when everyday you lose a new good idea?

I am going to stop thinking! …. about myself

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Travel Peeves and General Grumpiness …

By Raghunath | November 19, 2008

Wise people say you should not talk when you are angry. I say screw them. Who the hell do they think they are??

So anyways, as I did a little bit of travelling again (Seoul), I realized that for some reason, nature and the energies around me always gang up against me to make sure I have a horrendous ride (The Bastards!!). Why do I cast such negative aspersions against such a beautiful thing such as nature you ask me? (What are you, a tree lover?? Freak!)

It all started with the immigration officer adding himself to the list of fools, ignoramuses and mutant orangutans who think that just because their family decided to tag a name behind theirs to give them a heave-ho, everyone else needs it too. The guy just didn’t believe I don’t have a second name/ initial/ final or any other form of appendage attached to my name. One word name, is that so hard to believe?? Dumbass!!

Then, I am given a seat right next to the “nice old couple” who are travelling to Shingapur to see their son who is in software (Yes he is possibly a function/ statement or even a dynamic variable) and this is the first time they have ever flown. Isn’t that nice? (not!) This placement of this poor soul (me) also created the opportunity for another role for me to play - that of general comforter for everytime we would go through a airpocket, both the old people would jump, exclaim in telugu while holding each others hand and look around at which time my job was to look at them with kindness in my eyes and tell them everything is going to be ok and get a strange look from the old man! Ingratitude, I tell you. The old people these days!!

I also get the aisle seat so that I have a close encounter with the baby kind! Why does every trip of mine have to have a baby vocipherate its displeasure at being brought into this world at the top of its ratty little voice right in my ear??

Children should be banned from public places that have no place for someone to run away to.

Then, I see that there is a seat free up in front and get ready to move only to have the old punjabi aunty decide to use all three of the damn seats to make a bed and sleep with a warning to the airhostess to only wake her up in case they are serving food, alcohol or snacks. Ha!! The same punjabi aunty later went on to show me that Russel Peters was right. You can never take Punjab out of an NRI. The lady had never been to <indian_accent>Panjabuh</indian_accent> and of course she doesn’t have a canadian accent (wow!). She thinks <indian_accent>Chandigadh</indian_accent> is nice and <indian_accent>Jalandhar</indian_accent> is so old fashioned and she tells me all this while we wait for the next flight and I am trying to get the sleep I never got on the flight.

To top it all off, the absolute b@$t@&* who is seated next to me on the second leg of the flight decides that his snoring should drown out everything including the sound of the airplane engine and the tv when I have my head phones on!

As you can see, whoever said that “the journey is better than the destination” is an a$$ and should be “shot where the sun don’t shine”.

…

Repeatedly! …

…

Till you don’t have any bullets left! …

…

What the hell are u still scrolling for?? Loser!

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The Matrix on Windows …

By Raghunath | November 11, 2008

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