matter, energy, things

Suppose you are left with a 3 year old or even a 5 year old in this world and no one else. Say a nuclear holocaust left the world with you and this 3 year old. Suppose you were a great mad scientist who was on the verge of a path breaking medical research for cancer cure till the day before the holocaust happened.

What will happen to all that knowledge you had gathered and how will you use it? Will it matter anymore? Suddenly will you not find that the only companion you have is the 3 year old and for it, all those stuff you gathered do not matter.

This is definitely a stupid thought, but the point underlying this is that we hang on with our gatherings over time, burdened. We spend enormous time on things in life going into every bit of detail on something until a event which nullifies all of that or some other thing which is important than the one you were up to springs up. Let me call this as 'thing hopping'.

The more you have hopped from one thing to another, the faster it dawns on you that what you are up to is not permanent at any point in time. It changes like the flow of a river or passing of clouds. If you look back in your life, how many things can you point to, that looked like life changing at that point in time and yet you have come all the way here hopping more things?

Life is the flow through time and space. We are swirled around in space by clinging on to this earth and   changes in things around bring the notion of time. The most visible perception of time is when I type on the keyboard while writing this. The energy makes things move. Energy could be a subtle form of matter and vice-versa. So several layers of matter from fine to coarse make up this existence and some layers appear as energy to make things flow.

In all of this I tend to make interpretations, observations, deductions of things around and create a another subtle layer of matter / energy which further puts me into the spin of space and time.

What is all this? 

Flow

I was listening to "Vennilave Velli Velli Nilave" Tamil song from "Vettaiyadu Vilayadu" movie. The song is composed by Harris Jayaraj. The movie itself I like especially the NewYork scenes where Kamal goes to investigate the serial killers and the interesting dialogues with Jothika. The scenes of NewYork triggers another thread in my mind. Sujatha's (Tamil writer) 'Pirivom Sandhipom' novel. Part II of that novel has great narrations of the protagonist's time there , the love, education, twists etc. The description of NewYork is from the angle of a student from tirunelveli background attending a university.

Coming back, Harris in this song and in other songs I liked from "Vaaranam Aayiram" is very structured. I mean the music follows a pattern which I don't see it with the latest Rahman's songs. By this I don't mean I dislike ARR. In fact I mean to say that I like ARR's lack of structure or unpredictability more. Especially the 'Mannipaya' song from 'Vinnai Thaandi Varuvaya' Tamil movie is a good example of the unpredictability of the turn of the tunes and the background score that comes and goes. I don't think it is a tune that can be played easily on your keyboard and it will in the end appear catchy. The song gets its value from the unpredictability and the orchestration itself.  I feel ARR has experimented more in his songs not only with instruments, singers, tunes but also with the way the song flows. It takes unpredictable turns and he seem to some how go anywhere he wants and finally be able to conclude aptly.

This I feel is like the way some one paints a modern art. They may start with a basic idea. But as they progress with the colors and sketches, new thoughts emerge. This is very much after seeing the interim output and based on that the next steps occur. This is like a continuous feedback loop. As a work of art or music progresses, you get new meanings and you change the course which is a more logical step and which would not have occurred to you when you began the work. I am sure most of the creativity hinges on continuous feedback and leaving it to guide the next step. This is not something a person with commercial interests would agree with. I feel humanity always evolves towards elegance, aesthetics in all the fields along with the utilitarian value of something.

I treat software also in this category. Developing software products of your own begins with some initial idea. However, as coding happens new things emerge. You read, hear, try new things. They can be new business models, new requirements, altogether new deviating ideas and so on. This is especially the case if you create software for yourself without time pressures, without some one having a concreteness about the outcome and the goals are absolutely driven by flow guided by usefulness and ease of use. That is where I feel even software turns into a work of art. The more you spend time thinking on what you are doing and refining it, it becomes more beautiful.

Note 1: I realize this article itself highlights the aspect of the 'flow'. It seem to meander from music to art to software one feeding as a input to the next guiding the overall flow.

Why the AAP phenomenon is relevant and needed for us

Post the elections, AAP has churned out lot of negativity in the press. Senior party members resignation, Kejriwal in jail, refusing bail and pursuing the case against Gadkari and all that. There is a lot of flak they have drawn in the media. Comments and feedback on AAP is totally in the negative. On the contrary Modi has started on the right foot with instructions to fellow MPs, clean governance, strengthen the hands of executives, friendly links with foreign states and so on.

Not that BJP or Modi and AAP are enemies. If BJP is doing the right things, it is good for our nation. It is not that AAP is the only force to fight corrupt elements. If BJP is making the right moves it should be welcome. After all, the face does not matter all the time. When it comes to giving good governance, the issues matter more than the face. Modi seem to be making the right noises towards this in my opinion.

However, it may raise the relevance of AAP here. Do we need it if the government is doing its job giving clean governance to the people? I have felt AAP is always needed as the informal Lokpal which was their core demand. AAP may not have done the right things recently. Their strategy to leave governance after the referendum in Delhi has surely back fired. A golden opportunity was lost by taking extreme stand in haste. In politics, abject honesty is not the one which may do maximum good, but a balance of things with an eye on public good without being dishonest. However, AAP being the new kid needs to do a lot of learning in this direction.

So whether we have BJP or Congress or some others ruling this country, once bitten badly with the experience of governance which was indifferent to the very people who elected them (I mean the previous Congress government) and pushing the economy to disaster with series of scam, the need to have a body or political force which can take more aggressive, non compromising stand on the issue of governance, corruption is badly needed for India at this stage. I see AAP filling this position irrespective of the face of it being Kejriwal or some other.

We need guardians who are not leaning towards communal or pseudo secular and just be issue based. So, in a country which has long been divided along communal, linguistic, caste lines and people have largely been aligned along these, it will take time to wake up from the sleep and start looking at the issues that plague our country that are immediate and burning like price rise or the expensive way education is turning to be or the bad roads and polluted cities and so on. We have many concerns right in front of us with the economy expanding in all directions and waiting to explode. In this scenario, we better build bridges than temples or mosques. We focus on things which first make our lives on this planet better not only for us, but for our children. That said, I liked Modi saying build roads not temples or something of that nature. That is the right thinking.

AAP as a movement should be exactly worried about these even if there is in-fighting among the leaders of AAP which I believe should be laid to rest sooner and people should shake hands to build a better India. After all they should never be behaving like the regular political parties we are used to. AAP should move forward to publish their 'Areas of focus' and use the funds and volunteers to help the existing Government to do better in all spheres. That would be a very positive thing and will go down deep in resurrecting their fading image.

Ah another thing I left out of the previous blog

In the same walking incident I described in the previous blog, I saw a person wearing a T shirt with this expression 'I will even kill for Noble peace prize'. It was obviously to display to others that 'I found this funny' and you may too sort of thing. I too felt it funny for a moment. Then I thought what sort of sick fellows are around to wear a T shirt like that. If I wear to choose to wear a T shirt with a statement I wont be selecting this. The oxymoron may be appealing, but I do not like provocative words like 'killing' nor the idea that you would kill to achieve peace. So it is in a way not so funny.

Going further I was thinking over this. People end up killing each other in acts of terrorism or war mainly to find peace. But how sad it is that your peace is decided by the elimination of another person. How sad you came to that conclusion. If some one is attacking another then the person being attacked loses his peace and end up retaliating to get back to his peace. But what if some one attacks another with a larger interest to gain control over land? They invariably destroy the peace of others. In such a case would you mind killing? Peace can be there when there is no killing. But killing has to be there to reach a state of peace.

In the movie Hey Ram by kamal haasan, the protagonist finds his wife raped and murdered in communal violence and ends up killing a few in that rage. A case of retaliation to regain peace which was disturbed because the killer's peace was disturbed and so on. Initially it may start with a wrong and it gets multiplied with every one repeating it. It is a system without balance. The system automatically balances itself by killings. Even if there exist one person who sees something as wrong and even if it is seen as right by all others hatred continues, killing continues.

Its a chain reaction and never stops. Hatred is a chain reaction. Hatred comes out of lack of peace within. We have prejudices built within ourselves over time seeing things, reading thing, hearing things and layers and layers of untold emotions are within us which lets out at a conducive moment. Being able to see through these layers within and be able to un-identify yourself or dissociate the you from these mythical layers is the way to go.

Love helps people remain in peace. But to love one has to be peaceful within himself. 

I saw that same person approaching me as I walked again. This time I noticed the spelling mistake in the 'Nobel' word. I had a urge to point it out to him. By that time he crossed and went behind me. I was thinking 'leave him in peace'. Why create a conflict in him. You never know if he will take it positively or negatively. His jogging is important. Not words. Nor spelling mistakes :-)

The mysterious connections between people when they come close

As usual I was in the park adjacent to a lake which is very much dry and you can see kids playing cricket. There is a walkway around the dry lake. There are trees occasionally along the path.

I went one full round which is little more than a kilometer as I am told. Then I saw some one crossing me. He was a middle aged man wearing white shorts and a T shirt with dull orange color stripes.  After a while of walking, I realized I was just behind him. Our pace were somewhat the same. So I was just behind him. At some point I saw that I was hearing the sound of our walking. The shoe noise. I normally take up a topic and think it over while walking and this noise was interfering. So I tried to speed up a bit and cross him. While I equaled him, I saw he was also increasing his pace to stay ahead of me. Then I increased mine and he did and we were kind of in competition. I was mildly frustrated that both are reacting to each other when I wanted to just walk freely in my pace. So I suddenly ran past him for a distance and then started my normal walk. I felt free. I was back to my pace and my world of thoughts. Then I saw this man crossing me jogging now and continue to jog. I was thinking what sort of people we have around. I was convinced now that he wanted to show he can walk faster or he was reacting to my pace. In any case he disappeared from my eyes soon and I was left with myself.

There is a certain magical force when one person comes in the orbit of another. This is something like the way planets are positioned and follow a orbit and are influenced by other. If you are alone you are fine and left to whatever you are. The moment I add another variable in the system such as a person in the room or space you are in you no longer are the same as what you were when the person was not there. Your thoughts are invariably about the other person as what he thinks about you and your actions are very mindful now. This is mysterious to me. In some way this shows we get connected through some stream of consciousness and are influenced by one another. People tend to avoid this eerie silence by either staring at something else or reading a newspaper or some times strike a conversation. The latter actually eases the friction to some extent. You feel comfortable that there is nothing unusual in the head of the other person about you.

Being withdrawn inwardly and not getting associated with your mind and its tentacles extending into others minds nearby helps to first observe this in you and further choose to focus on what you want devoid of external situations. Do this. Do this. Do this.

Hi Fellow Indians

You cannot ignore this guy. You can love or hate him but not ignore him.

Haters call his actions as theatrical. Lovers hail him as the crusader. But his actions definitely asks for your action. To love or hate him. To take positions. 

The issues are such. Long has India been in slumber and Indians are yet to wake up and question. Subservience runs in the blood. Indians have got freedom from the physically spottable enemies. But they cannot see the latent enemy. British had long left. But the mindset of the politicians are no different. Indian political system has shown us some of the biggest and baddest scams. The scams are what appears on the surface. Deep within is a craving to gather more and more and more and more and more. This could have roots in the way princes ruled this land. If citizens have to go with a begging bowl to their own people whom they voted into power, it cannot get worser. 

The model where Government created jobs miserably failed and it became a obstacle in the path of growth.  Globalisation has opened the door for more goods, more jobs but it has had its dark side with the strong and powerful politicians of India who were the maximum beneficiaries of the produce. 

As a entrepreneur I would have expected how I set up business and the completion of the same in a jiffy if I comply with the rules. Here you see a powerful layer called the politicians and the system they have created called the Government colluding to flout every norm, every rule to reap the benefits in the process driving away genuine businesses. Letting in those who are sort of flexible in dealing with this 'layer'.

And this man supported by a new crop of general public exposing this 'Layer' that has been created over decades, its sinister designs, its collusions and crony capitalism is obviously hated and questioned and derided by the beneficiaries of this 'layer'.  People who are passive observers are obviously confused by the mid night raids in Delhi or the Dharna etc. 

These are not the things they are used to. They are used to being subservient. They are used to being 'give me something to eat and I will mind my own business' and the 'layer' is used to throw some bread crumbs whenever things hotted up a bit and they used to have a seven course maharaja lunch. 

How can the maharaja suddenly disappear? What will happen to our image and the lives we have led all these years? How can there be no palace? How can there be no dictums? When some one is sleeping on the road in bitter cold to protect the women in the city, the image built over decades, the subservience built over time, the crony mindset exhibited by us when extending a bribe to get some personal work done ….oh all of this if it has to disappear, then where the hell is this I? The I, I have carefully nurtured and built in this so called society. 

Some one out there is breaking your mindset. He is calling you a lunatic who has been adjusting to this system for years without raising a voice. Without questioning for fear of getting ridiculed. So, the natural reaction is you turn around and call him a lunatic, a joker and so on. Why disturb when all of us are sucking this nectar? Happily able to write whatever we feel like in the media and sit back to look at the next email from your boss who is directly or indirectly linked to the way we are today.

You often do not get a chance to wake up from your sleep. This is one such opportunity. It is not about Kejriwal. It is not about AAP. It is about a inner awakening to question things which you had conveniently ignored all along. 

Wake up! Question!! Observe!!! Act!!!!

AAP's unique position

I feel AAP is in a very unique position in terms of numbers. They can be supported by both Congress even though they have 8 seats and BJP who have 30+.

The bootstrap seem to be done by the Congress. AAP cannot be brought down for next six month. AAP appoints Lokpal and they are referred to corruption done by previous Delhi congress govt. This will bring out lot of scams. If congress decides to withdraw support at the end of six months, then BJP has to support AAP because of the scams against Congress.

Also, it would be prudent for BJP to support AAP as Kejriwal and others would be kept busy ruling Delhi and doing all the work to bring down Congress which is important for the BJP's Loksabha ambitions. If they do not support and AAP government comes down it is to BJP's own peril.

AAP thus seem to be in a unique position where they can be supported by both Congress and BJP at any point in time, provided they make the right moves.