Back to Basics

For the first time in three years, I've missed three consecutive posts over a week and a half, and that I guess should say quite a bit of how I relished my homeward trip, considering that I enjoy blogging equally well, or so!

Ooty is a pleasure of many lifetimes layered upon one and cannot quite be described in words to the heart's content and any little time spent there does well to rejuvenate the soul in a very vivid proportion.

Much seems to have happened during the past week, particularly on the political front, across 5 Indian states as a result of the exercise of 14 crore voters who finally decided that the left wasn't right in Kerala and West Bengal and most pertinently voiced their sentiments against corrupt forces in Tamil Nadu, a much needed move that one hopes would change the innards of this now dilapidated state!

I guess this is the beginning of some much needed change that we have all longed for, and that it hopefully proves to be so.

Blue Mountains Calling

Endless expanses of plummeting rich green, shouldered by soulful mighty blue mountains where clouds come calling for the hand to feel, the air is rich with the calling of birds, bees and beetles and the smells of pine, tea and eucalyptus linger ever-fresh for the senses to indulgently savour.

Blue skies dotted with puffy moist lingering clouds, which make way for warm and soothing sunshine, reflect in awe as if in appreciation of nature's dexterously delightful artistry of the land below.

The inner self is rewarded with a state of perpetual bliss and there is little interference of time, allowing one to embrace unending measures of many bountiful offerings of this gifted land. The child in the self is awakened and an enchanting progression of natural invigoration envelopes the body, mind and soul.

One enters a sublime state of marvel, and realizes that there is no quest for material associations, which otherwise engulf the mind, perpetually dogging it to embark on a maddeningly never-ending journey of crazed pursuit.

There is only the quest to unite with nature, to be one with it - to be one of it!

The call of the blue mountains is all alluring, particularly when one's soul resides amidst those very enthralling wonders, and I'm ecstatic about my short vacation to Ooty.

Truly, going home, to Ooty, is a celebration of sorts! 

More than I can say

"More Than I Can Say" originally released in 1960, is a song written by Sonny Curtis and Jerry Allison, former members of Buddy Holly's band The Crickets and was recorded by their band in 1959 soon after Holly's death. Their original version hit #42 on British Record Retailer Chart in December 1960. It has since been made iconic following the performances by Bobby Vee and Leo Sayer.



British song-writer and singer Leo Sayer made this a cover version in the year 1980 and it almost earned him a spot on the charts, following his two singles reaching #1 in the U.S., "You Make Me Feel Like Dancing" and "When I Need You", both in 1977.

This evergreen hit is part of my list of all time favourites, and will remain so for all time to come. 

Free Speech - On a tight leash

Some excerpts from the text of an article in the New York Times about growing restrictions on free speech in India.

Free speech advocates and Internet users are protesting new Indian regulations restricting Web content that, among other things, can be considered 'disparaging,' 'harassing,' 'blasphemous' or 'hateful.'

The new rules, quietly issued by the country’s Department of Information Technology earlier this month and only now attracting attention, allow officials and private citizens to demand that Internet sites and service providers remove content they consider objectionable on the basis of a long list of criteria.

Critics of the new rules say the restrictions could severely curtail debate and discussion on the Internet, whose use has been growing fast in India.

The list of objectionable content is sweeping and includes anything that “threatens the unity, integrity, defense, security or sovereignty of India, friendly relations with foreign states or public order.”

The rules highlight the ambivalence with which Indian officials have long treated freedom of expression. The country’s constitution allows “reasonable restrictions” on free speech but lawmakers have periodically stretched that definition to ban books, movies and other material about sensitive subjects like sex, politics and religion.

The new Internet rules go further than existing Indian laws and restrictions, said Sunil Abraham, the executive director for the Center for Internet and Society. The rules require Internet “intermediaries” — an all-encompassing group that includes sites like YouTube and Facebook and companies that host Web sites or provide Internet connections — to respond to any demand to take down offensive content within 36 hours. The rules do not provide a way for content producers to defend their work or appeal a decision to take content down.

An official for the People’s Union for Civil Liberties, an advocacy group based in New Delhi, said on Wednesday that it was considering a legal challenge to the constitutionality of the new rules.

Footnotes: 

A complete write-up of the article can be accessed via this link on the NY Times website. The aforementioned post contains certain parts of the original publication, without amendment.

Full credits to Vikas Bajaj, correspondent for The New York Times in Mumbai, and author of this article. 

After Chernobyl

25 years have come to pass since the Chernobyl incident. Wounds and memories still remain anew. It still ranks to be the worst civil nuclear disasters the world has witnessed, shadowing the more recent Fukushima I nuclear accident in Japan.

As countries dabble on the question of whether or not nuclear power can be a safe and reliable source of energy, it is shocking that many nations, presently part of the elite nuclear club, do not yet have a concrete nuclear safeguard policy!

This post pays homage to those who were affected, and to those who continue to endure the suffering, long after the world has forgotten the incident! 

In Atlantis

Its taken me 9 months to go out for a movie here in Chennai! And that I've been a movie buff all my life will tell you a thing or two about how non-existent my personal life has become these days! Given this serious lack of time and effort to create a personal space, I'm worried about how things will take shape once I'm ready to enter holy matrimony! But thats seemingly a while away and so I could afford some thinking to do.

Anyhow, Friday night, on an impulse, I turned off my phone, and after a sumptuous fare, walked into a multiplex and settled myself for a movie! Apart from of course the welcome change, I cannot tell you enough of how enjoyable it was to be incommunicado, though for a short while. No interfering intrusions, no deadlines, no tasks on a never-ending list and no feeling of being swamped over - Only bliss and relaxed comfort!

Having thoroughly relished this momentary state of ecstasy, I repeated the act once again on Saturday!

And, it has set me thinking; why has life become so chaotic? Is it about priorities or overpoweringly endless things to do?

Suddenly, I'm looking over, straining to find the end of the horizon and with it a great deal of calm.

I hope life isn't a big joke, because I don't get it!

Footnotes:

It must be an easy guess as to why I titled this post the way it is. But just in case anyone wonders, then I'd like you to look up the lost island of Atlantis, and you'll be sure to understand, perhaps! 

The Enemy is Us

The first Earth Day was observed on April 22, 1970, and the man behind what is today a coordinated effort across 175 countries, and better known as the Earth Day Network is Denis Hayes.

But, my post is not about glorifying the need for any network or cause, for I truly believe that such acts involving conservation and activism need much more concerted efforts and they are not subscribed to or endorsed merely because of a group of people coming together on any given day!

Any mention of the first Earth Day, is incomplete without reference to Walt Kelly's iconic poster that was made for the occasion and that is precisely the reason why this post has been made today - to honour a vivid sense of reality that a person chose to portray in the most convincingly elementary manner! Kelly was the American animator and cartoonist, best known for the comic strip Pogo.

Kelly passed away only 3 years after the first Earth Day, but his iconic creation remains timeless, and in all probability, will continue to be more relevant in the coming times, considering the manner in which we continue to progress, or regress perhaps!

Footnotes:

Image Courtesy: Wikipedia

Image Description: Familiar, and hence needs no explanation, hopefully! 

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Footnotes:

First published in 1916 in the collection Mountain Interval, Robert Frost's iconic lines need no introduction and continue to be a timeless metaphor to aptly describe life.

Vishu Ashamsakal

Today is Vishu, the beginning of the Malayalam new year.

Redefining Oblivion wishes you good health, happiness, togetherness and prosperity, on this auspicious beginning.

Undoubtedly, my heart is in Kerala, where Vishu is observed with great fanfare and reverence celebrating the spirit of happy togetherness, and a new beginning.  

Sunnyville

There is a place I know, where peace and happiness reign supreme. A million miles of solace lie in evergreen expanses as vast as the imagination itself. There is a feeling of having finally arrived in the sense of having achieved a purpose that one is, rather, was, in a never-ending quest for.

Heartening moments of perpetual bliss compelled by the effect of soothing nature balm frayed nerves and there is a great feeling of content. There is no room for hatred, quest, want or anticipation as life is now and being played out in all glory.

Blue mountains beckon amidst flowing creeks and crackling winds that caress the inside, a state of being where time does not matter. What matters is one's presence and a deep realization of the self and the surroundings. Palls of gloom do not exist even so much as in the most inaccessible recesses of the mind. An overwhelming feeling of love prevails and unites all forms of creation in one large tapestry never distinctive of one another.

There is no sense of individual identity or definition and hence uniqueness is at best described in being similar, in character, thought and the remarkable sense of being able to co-exist elatedly in marvel. Differences, of whatever nature, are immaterial and there is a deep sense of connection one feels with another despite not being of the same kind.

There is a place I know, where peace and happiness reign supreme, and it is called Sunnyville.

There is a place I know, and I'm gone there soon! 

Yesterday Once More

Anna Hazare is no new name in the crusade against corruption and his recent campaign has like minded folks united across the length of India. It is heartening to see that techies and management professionals, among others, including a list of social activists, teachers and students have joined the fold in highlighting the ills of corruption that this great nation continues to be pillaged by!

However, it is quite another something if one were to ask if this beleaguered country would be delivered from this evil. I answer in unequivocal negative not because of any deep rooted prejudice or cynicism that I bear towards the ethos of Indian-ness, but because of a known fact that the Indian mindset swings wildly, and often in stark contradiction, between a very selfish personal jurisdiction that often compellingly keeps the individual well above the social or national aspect, and a pseudo-sense of adherence to values which seems to be projected only to portray a very nationalistic endorsement for the need to change others than the self which unquestionably requires the biggest transformation!

In effect, corruption, or for that matter connivance in that sense, lies within us, deep rooted, unaffected and unchallenged because of the lack of a personal value system, which will right any wrong so long as there is personal benefit associated.

So, while Anna Hazare and his well-meaning protégé brave the odds on empty stomachs, yet with concerted and committed minds, just so that their vision of a free nation comes one step closer to realization, to expect India en masse to follow suit is naive!

Is it Churchill to whom the phrase 'enemy within the gates' could be attributed?

Bleed Blue

If they ever tell my story, let them say i walked with giants.

Men rise and fall like the winter weed, but some names will never die.

Let them say that i lived in the land of Mahatma Gandhi - the tamer of forces..., let them say, that i lived in the times of Team India and Mahendar Singh Dhoni!

2011 is historic!

Many congratulations to Team India!

Footnotes:

Kudos to Team India for the historic win in the World Cup 2011.

These aforesaid lines, in the post, are originally from the movie Troy, in memory the timeless icons of Hector, Achilles, Odysseus and Priam.

All I want All I need

From Whitesnake, of the album 'Good to be bad' released in April 2008, this track written by David Coverdale and Doug Aldrich is among my all time favorites.

The first from Whitesnake since it's 1997 release Restless heart, this album eventually went on to sell 710,000 copies worldwide. The album charted at number 8 on the Top Independent albums, number 23 on the Top Canadian albums, number 62 on The Billboard 200 and number 7 on the UK Albums Chart.

The Unsettling Quest

I'm in perpetual awe of all that we know collectively. There is so much of information that we as a body are aware of and that certainly makes all of us a very formidable force, in unison!

But on the other side, there is so much more that we do not know and that undoubtedly is much larger in proportion in comparison to what we know! What baffles me, no end, is whether we'd ever reach that state of knowing everything that can be known!

How therefore, with such trivial knowledge, do we emphatically claim superiority in any respect?

I begin this week, asking the very question that perhaps intrigues us no end on how it is that we categorize our knowledge as one that deems fit to be termed as knowledge in the very first place, given the fact that our ignorance is certainly much larger in proportion to what we claim to know! 

Balls to Unity

That a country so divided like India could be strangely united in one voice over a game of cricket is both unique and ironic. And the irony is in the sense of oneness that departs almost immediately after the game is completed.

For starters, yesterday began with a feverish excitement of the upcoming knockout game between the Australians and the Indians. There was a sense of enthusiasm one does not otherwise see or attribute to one's passion for work, let alone excellence! The almost minute by minute rumination of any and sundry made one ardently believe that the soul of the Indian-kind was kindled and warmed by bats, balls, wickets and bookies!

Therefore, it was not very unexpected when the afternoon was blocked off as private time with dozens streaming the ongoing mêlée on their desktops, thanks to that freely available hi-speed connectivity, which assuredly, in many cases, is not put to good use or for the very purpose that it has been provided for!

For the uninitiated, (read: the outdated my kinds), the remainder of the day was as if cloistered in a curfew! Telephones unanswered and people no longer accessible, one would not need a lot of thinking to assume whatever happened to official emails that were marked 'for urgent response.'

Now, as if that wasn't surprising enough, one stepped off work to find the roads almost deserted, public transport systems, for once, un-chaotically easy to ride! Shortly thereafter, electrically charged, blood curdling screams in unison told of India's victory, much anticipated, though on a nail-biting finish, I gather!

Surely, if one may want to represent to the world the ubiquitous sense of Indian unity, there perhaps couldn't be a better way than writing a book titled "Balls to Unity."

No pun intended, I assure! 

Where theres a way

There are ways and there are ways! Some exist, yet others are created by an undying urge to move forward, assisted greatly by a sense of determination known to us as the power of the will, more so of the mind, in tow with an immense sense of hope, greatly in anticipation of the future to be a better destination than the present whereupon one has arrived!

While some trails offer scenic views of life, some others are fraught with anxiety and privation, perhaps as a manner of being a potent master to ensure lessons well learnt. So the question arises, does one look for cause and effect within? Quite as if by pattern, every one of us seem to tread either walkways in some measure that leaves a lasting dint.

Pace, time and consequences of happenstances are not quite the attributes one often happens to have any control upon and hands go up in awe or tedium as the case may be. Wagons creak by as the road turns bumpy and high on the hill there is light, teasing one to believe in what is almost certainly a ruse. Sounds from distant drumming bring some fleeting recollections of the past, gone in a flash, and there is a yearning from deep within to relive a certain moment of time that is now bygone, almost forgotten, roused momentarily by a déjà vu.

In the ensuing passage of time that is surely galactic and myriad, I walk along wondering, what it is and where the what is that the why has always been in search of. How, is so far away and unknown to comprehend, let alone be able to come to terms with!

Do all questions have the same answer? 

Japan Today

With over 10,000 lives lost, several hundreds more unaccounted for and monumental concerns surrounding one or more instances of nuclear meltdown, it is very difficult not to remember Japan and pray for its people.

Last on the wires; "Almost 2 million households were without power in the freezing north, and about 1.4 million without running water."

Redefining Oblivion extends heartfelt condolences to the families of the affected and hopes that the situation in Japan is addressed by the collective strength and efforts of the international community, which has serious responsibilities in this case. 

Blocking out the Blogger

Never mind if the Government of India drags its feet on the Foreign Universities Bill, Surrogacy Laws, Legislation related to Public Interest Disclosure, et al. At the peak of this summer, the Indian Parliament will be ensconced in palatial comfort putting its time to urgent use, and without dissent, in order to hurriedly enact the Indian Bloggers Control Act 2011 (pun intended)

The information and communications (monitoring) arms of the Government have, without reason, and rather inexplicably assumed that the blogging community has become a serious threat to its machinery, supposedly because of a perceived potential to expose many an unknown fact that may cause serious embarrassment and worse - change of guard at the helm of affairs, thanks to a wave of public awareness blitz that this medium is fast generating.

"There is an over-emphasis on the activities of blogs and bloggers; vast and vague reasons for blogs to be blocked or shut down; and above all, there is a specific rule on ‘due diligence on intermediaries’, which, in the context of the internet, can include readers who post comments."

Sounds hideously undemocratic? Or does that make one 'rightly' wonder if the babudom and netaland (bureaucracy for the uninitiated) is mighty worried about the pro-democratic outpour of the ongoing Jasmine Revolution that has transformed many a nation?

Anyone here whose read George Orwell's 1984?

The Pale Blue Dot

Image Description: This narrow-angle color image of the Earth, dubbed ‘Pale Blue Dot’, is a part of the first ever ‘portrait’ of the solar system taken by Voyager 1. The spacecraft acquired a total of 60 frames for a mosaic of the solar system from a distance of more than 4 billion miles from Earth and about 32 degrees above the ecliptic. From Voyager's great distance Earth is a mere point of light, less than the size of a picture element even in the narrow-angle camera. Earth was a crescent only 0.12 pixel in size. Coincidentally, Earth lies right in the center of one of the scattered light rays resulting from taking the image so close to the Sun. This blown-up image of the Earth was taken through three color filters – violet, blue and green – and recombined to produce the color image. The background features in the image are artifacts resulting from the magnification.

Some excerpts from Carl Sagan's book, Pale Blue Dot, which have to be read after one leafs through the image and its description mentioned above.

From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of particular interest. But for us, it's different. Look again at that dot. That's here, that's home, that's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

Footnotes:

Image Courtesy: Wikipedia

Content Reference: Google Books

About the book;

Title - Pale blue dot: a vision of the human future in space
Author - Carl Sagan
Publisher - Ballantine Books
ISBN - 0345376595, 9780345376596
Length - 360 pages

Out goes the Outlaw

In matters of truth and justice, there is no difference between large and small problems, for issues concerning the treatment of people are all the same.

-- Albert Einstein

Reading about the eviction of the Central Vigilance Commissioner by the Honourable Supreme Court of India reassures one that the power of the judiciary may not altogether be lifeless in this great nation.

Yet once again, a sense of merit and justice fostered by the Apex Court has prevailed well over the mired echelons of political and executive offices and enshrined the principles of justice as etched by the Constitution of India.

Let there be no doubt, therefore, that the Rule of Law shall be upheld, enforced and proven at all times irrespective of what could be a very well orchestrated exertion of force by bodies with a vested interest, unified in purpose to constantly attempt subversion of this very righteous effort.