Mute Witnesses

Festivals fill our minds with happiness, hopes and aspirations.  Diwali, the festival of Lights is no different, but we put in hardly any effort to understand the rationale behind it.

In Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, there is a verse that enunciates the significance of Light: ‘Asato ma sadgamaya, Tamso ma jyotirgamaya, Mrityor ma amritam gamaya...’.  Contrary to this sagacious adage, the current year is turning out to be a ‘Diwali of scams’!  Look at the instances of alleged plundering of public trust in broad daylight in the Indian Premier League, 2G Spectrum, Commonwealth Games, Adarsh Housing Society, Lavasa Hill city...

The Upanishad exhorts us to move away from Delusion to Reality; from Darkness to Light; and from Death to Eternity. But to many, Delusion is merely a Reality of opportunities, with the Light helping them loot and the Darkness to hide it, and the greed instilling an elevated sense of Eternity over other lesser mortals! What is sought is deliverance, not from ignorance but the clutches of law. The chase is for money, power and possessions, not knowledge, values or virtues.

Bess Myerson once said: The accomplice to the crime of corruption is our own indifference.

May the festivals help us wake up to this truth.

Roasted meat! Wasted heat !

My thoughts are not about marinated meat or microwave ovens. This may sound soothing to the vegans who abhor even milk, butter, and cheese.

Parents often tell their children about bees and birds, but they seldom talk about cows and elephants. Maybe, the thread that strings them together is invisible. Birds eat grains; Bees buzz for honey; Cows graze on grass; Elephants chew leaves. Most of us human beings however follow their carnivorous cousins. We prefer to devour flesh, mercifully not raw, but dressed, marinated and cooked.

I am not blogging about food or cooking; but about a few pounds of flesh called life, and a crazy oven called living. Both are controlled by a celestial power called destiny.

Destiny has a split personality! If it is kind, it can also be cruel; generous it may seem now, stingy a while later. However it is never ignorant or indifferent. Destiny is said to be a great leveler, a strict disciplinarian, always fair and just to everyone. Therefore, when you go up the ladders of your life, remember the time to come down is imminent! If you lose something, do not lose your heart with it; future has something else in store for you. Always take the stick willingly for, carrots may well be on the way!

Destiny gave me an opportunity to experience it all. How I got such a precious gift is as mysterious as the success formula behind a Hollywood box-office hit! Everyone likes success and yearns to recreate it. Experience however, stops me from joining that bandwagon. Once bitten, twice shy?

Oh! I forgot. The oven is still hot. The piece of meat called life is continuing to burn. Wait until I turn it over...

Over to Anil Ambani

27 floors, 400,000 square feet, a salon, ballroom, health club, swimming pools, mini-theatre, guest rooms, an elevated four-storey garden, six levels of parking space, nine elevators, three helipads...! 

After seven long years of construction, the building to which Mukesh Ambani, the richest man in India and the fourth-richest in the world would move in with his wife and three children is finally ready.  Built reportedly at a cost of `4500 crores, it is said to be the most luxurious residence of an individual anywhere in the world. 

From ‘up above the world so high’, I wonder what a view the sprawling slums of Mumbai be offering?

Forgive Them...

There are still many Whites who imagine that the colour of their skin lends them the licence to be snobs.  Falling in this category are two TV anchors from New Zealand who recently demonstrated to the world how uncouth and perverted they are!    

One of them ridiculed Sir Anand Satyanand, Governor General of New Zealand for being obese and for his Indian descent: "... we don't expect Indians to be begging on the streets of New Delhi, but it's like Anand discovered the buffet table at 20 and never really left it".

Another anchor, midway through a token suspension for his racist comments on the Auckland born and bred Sir Anand, chose to mispronounce Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit's name.  When corrected, he quipped: “’Dick Shit’ is more ‘appropriate’ because she is an Indian”.

But be nice to them, folks!  As Desmond Tutu, Noble Laureate and famed anti-apartheid campaigner said: ‘They need you to rediscover their humanity’.