All Hail The Rafale Baba

There is a religious/ preachious organization in most of the cities in India that organize Satsung (preachy lectures) on every Sunday. I think this is inspired from the idea behind the Sunday Churches; if you want to keep your follower blinded by your ideology/ faith/ narrative; you need to make them hear it over and over again every week so that they build a wall around them that automatically reflects away all the arguments/logic that are not in alignment with their ideology.

Well, my parents are followers and whenever I am home; my mother would insist that I go with her. Since I meet her once in a month or so, I don’t resist much but this Satsung thing always tires me. They quote Meera and Kabir which is great; I am actually found of their poetry but what they try to preach through that, doesn’t make sense to me or any sense in general, I reckon.

So last Sunday after the Satsung:

My mother:  May be because of my insistence but you have attended these many Satsungs. It is going to help you later.

Me: Mummy come on, even your Guru says that just listening to Satsung isn’t going to help you a tad bit. Everyone has to earn the blessings of the word that originated the world. (As they say: Sabad ki kamai karni padegi)

Mummy: Then do that. I will be very happy if you join it.

Me: But why should I, how is it going to help me?

Mummy: If you will do that then you will get free from this circle of life. Your Afterlife will be peaceful. Your soul will rest in peace.

Me: Mummy, tell me something. Do you believe in Bhagwat Gita?

Mummy: off course, now will you doubt that also?

Me: Great then, here is something that Lord Krishna said in Bhagwat Gita, Chapter 2 (Part-3)- Saankhya Yoga:

nainam chhindanti shastraani nainam dahati paavakah
na chainam kledayantyaapo na shoshayati maarutah // 2.23 //

acchedyo'yam adaahyo'yam akledyo'shoshya eva cha
nityah sarvagatah sthaanur achalo'yam sanaatanah // 2.24 //

“Weapons cannot cut It, nor can fire burn It; water cannot wet It, nor can wind dry It.

This Self cannot be cut, burnt, wet or dried up. It is eternal, all-pervading, stable, ancient and immovable.”

Here He clearly said that Soul can’t be harmed or pleased. These are human emotions. It is ancient, stable and immovable.Yet they will keep on telling you to do things for the sake of your soul. Guess what, your soul is part of God himself and doesn’t need a rescue. 

Even the idea of hell and heaven is completely flawed because soul won’t feel tortures of Hell or pleasures of Heaven and also what is this deal about getting out of circle of life, when soul doesn’t feel anything like pain or pleasure and you are actually your soul not the body. It is only your body that feels pain or pleasure, and in next birth it will be different body feeling those emotions not your soul.

So in this birth you can only help your body. So do something for that. Enjoy, Meditate or Yoga may be. You can also do something for other bodies; can help your fellow people, but that’s it.

Mummy: Leave all that, at least he is teaching us how to live in this world.

Me:  So I should leave the social life and go meditate alone in some forest, Ashram or Cave?

Mummy: No, you can connect to God, being involved in this social life also, that’s what he says.

Me: In that case mummy, your Guru is telling me something that he has no experience of, because he has abandoned his social life and I am not as stupid as Indian Govt. / Dassault who will give such a big contract to a company without having any experience in the field at all.

Mockingbird is Dead

I am in Kota and you would be surprised to know (as I was) that the city is much more than just IIT coaching institutes. The plant I came to work for, is almost 40-50 km from my hotel. There is a French guy staying in my hotel. Same car comes to pick us both. But he is always confused and lost about the car arrival as driver only has my contact number.

Lately I have got special affinity for France, mostly because of their Football team and their president (I wish if we could swap him with our leader). Rafale deal was little off putting though.

So yesterday while coming back to hotel, the French guy said: Can you tell the driver to inform the hotel reception every day when he arrives so that they can inform me?”

Fair request I thought. I told the driver and thought I will inform the Hotel Reception also. So I asked his name.

To that he replied: Don’t worry, I don’t think many white guys even come here. I am probably the only white guy here so just tell him to inform the white guy.

I could smell the racial superiority complex in his tone, I don’t know he intended it or not but that didn’t go down pretty well with me. So I replied: Sir, we don’t discriminate people racially here. You were born white. It’s not your achievement or fault. So we aren’t going to label you on that basis.

He didn’t see that coming. He was moved. Surreal kind of moved. Shocked kind of surprised. So he responded: Wow. ok. Austin My name is Austin.

I called hotel reception: Hello, This is Rajesh from Room No. 207. There is a French guy, Austin staying here, Kal jab driver mujhe pick karne aaye to inform him also.

The guy at reception Replied: Ok sir, vo GORA na 210 room vala.

I didn’t know what to say anymore.

Austin asked looking at my reaction: What happened?

I replied: Wasn’t that Mbappe run against Argentina just amazing.

Choosing the Right Stream After 10th Board Exam

“I personally feel that science is way too overhyped. Every kid passing the board is not supposed to be a doctor or an engineer. There are hundreds of other disciplines out there.”

“I totally agree bro, moreover, now is the worst time to study science or to pursue it as career option for that matter.”

“What exactly do you mean by “now” in particular?”

“Isn’t that obvious? Now we aren’t sure how long science will be talked about in the country or which version of science, you are supposed to study.

Darwin says that humans evolved from apes but one of our MP totally rejects it because he or his ancestors haven’t seen monkeys turning into humans. The logic makes me wonder whether humans evolved from apes or they are going to end up as apes.

All the theories about procreation that you may study in years will be damned because a high court judge will tell you that peacock celibates and still reproduces.

Some elected member of ruling party is suggesting research on Pushpak Viman technology in IITs. I think that will be tough one for even IIT students.

Prime minister of the country wants medical students to learn cosmetic surgery from Lord Ganesha’s head transplant case.

And then there is Cow of course. You may be given a project to prove that cow exhales oxygen or cow dunk blocks radio waves or how cow urine can cure all the diseases known or unknown to men.

So instead of thinking whether India will have science career scopes, we should rather ask whether India will have science at all.”

“Don’t worry bro Science isn’t going anywhere. But seriously arts actually has broader career scopes.”

“Sorry bro, but I have to disagree here. Future of Arts isn’t any better than that of science.

If you want to go in movie making, you are supposed to make such movies that even people’s imagination about script shouldn’t hurt their sentiments.

If you want to be a writer, you are supposed to choose your content wisely or you can be murdered.

You can be jailed for cartoon making or even for using snap-chat filters if you are considering comedy.

If you want to be an archeologist or a historian, you may have to find references or evidence of a queen that existed only in a poem.

If you want to be a journalist, you should be able to make news like the scamster photobombed the CEO’s photo op with prime minister, when there is any photo proof comes out of any scamster with PM.

And if you are inspired from 3 idiots and you think you will become a wild life photographer, you always run into the risk of clicking any film star shooting any endangered species.”

“What exactly are you suggesting? You have problem with every single thing.”

“Not with everything bro, Commerce has the brightest career scopes and I don’t doubt that a bit.”

“Why and how, exactly?”

“Glad that you asked.  Since we have the best government of all time, it is taking so much pain to create jobs in the country. They demonetize most of the currency, with every day changing rules of withdrawal and deposit. They changed the whole taxation system and changing the tax slab for every other item now and then. They keep on reducing interests on provident funds or keep adding a new cess so that you just can’t keep up with them. So people and companies have to hire more and more finance and economics professionals. With these unstable economic policies of government, if you study commerce and you are brilliant at finance and economics you can find a place anywhere except, of course, at that one place where it is required the most,  ‘on  the economic policy making bench’. For that you may need a degree in Law.”

“Just one suggestion bro, never be a career counselor to anybody. By the way, why are you getting down here, you live in Saket, right?”

“Actually that was rented flat and I borrowed a lot of money from neighbors there telling them that I am going to buy a flat in the same apartment. Now that guard told them that I don’t have such plan, I have to secretly move out from there giving some money to the landlord. But this is nice place. When Landlord will come here for picnic, I will have reunion with him.”

Just then metro announced “Next station is Chhatarpur; Door will open on the right. Please mind the gap” and I waved him good bye.

HOLD STRONG, GABON IS WITH US

“Dude, I am scared. I write random stuff that won’t be very pleasing to many fringe groups that have suddenly started feeling empowered more than ever. Though the good part is nobody actually reads what I write.”

“There is no such thing. Just stay away from social media for a while. Everything will be alright.”

“I tried that. But a journalist in Karnataka was killed at her door step for writing and the sad part is all main stream media, newspapers are reporting about it. Even it is part of discussion in this year’s literature festival. So I think it will take more than shutting down my social media. May be I should try, stop watching TV and stop reading newspapers and books and attending social gathering and meeting other fellow human beings and probably start watching Salman Khan’s movies.”

“You are stretching it brother. Nobody knows who killed her. You are just jumping the gun and getting panicked. At max you can call it a failure of state’s police force”

“That’s what I thought until I find people celebrating her murder because she used to write against their kind of ideology.”

“They can be anybody or nobody at all; people on internet don’t really have an identity.”

“True But the thing that worries me is that our Prime Minister follows these identities less murder celebrating people on social media and don’t think these people are nobody. They exist and their existence is empowered more than it could ever be.”

“You are saying anything on just speculations. Reality can be easily miles away from it. You are just scared because people in the power are less westernized and more nationalist now which probably doesn’t align with your ideology that you have developed reading the western literature and philosophy.”

“I wish that to be true.  But how do you explain somebody beaten to death and burnt alive, that too on camera?”

“How is it related? He was just a random psycho killer who was arrested”

“No, He wasn’t just a psycho killer. He was representation of how protected these anti-social elements has started to feel. He recorded the murder because he was assured that there are people who will celebrate his act and he will be a hero and he wasn’t actually disappointed. People actually sent money to his accounts for his family”

“So what? Government is with us. Wasn’t he arrested and his accounts were seized?”

“Yeah, Government off course.  A film was protested by some fringe groups before its release without knowing any script or story.  Sets were damaged during the shoot and director and crew were manhandled. Bounty of crores on director and actress head was announced.

But off course our government is here for the rescue. It arrested all the fringe elements (one of them off course was a member of ruling party) who gave open life threats to people and set the theatre on fire and also assured the smooth running of the film to maintain people’s faith in law and order but sadly, only in my dreams.

Five state governments banned the movie in the state even before censor Board screened it. Even when censor board passed it after some insane editing suggestions, some of the states still maintained the ban on the movie.”

“Ok, Then director should go to the court. We have an independent and impartial judiciary to help us out.”

“May be not so much, a judge who was to hear a case on the president of the ruling party was approached for bribery and later died in mysterious circumstances and judgement on that case was done in first hearing by the new judge.  How can you expect them to be independent? They are human and they love their lives too.”

“That can be just another conspiracy theory. If they had some solid proof they might have re-opened the investigation.”

“Anything is possible until you keep the blind fold on. It’s like Schrodinger’s cat. To be sure, you should always open the box. Four Supreme Court judges just did that for us yesterday and the cat is not doing very well. “

“So you are trying to tell me, now these people can give threats to anybody, kill openly, vandalize properties and these people have specifically started to feel protected in current regime and we can’t even go to court against them.”

“Don’t worry; we can obviously go to court. The government is totally taking care of courts. Leader of one of the state scraped off cases against himself and another state government tried to pass a bill to protect all member of its assembly from any possible investigation”

“So how do you raise your voice against it?”

“Don’t you get it, you don’t.  If you raise your voice against any of government policy (like even against the multiple increase in the fare of the very metro we are travelling in) you will be termed as Anti-National and character assassinated for everything you have ever done. If you write anything against it, you will be murdered at your door step. If you report loophole in the government procedures, there will be an FIR against you and if you want to pass a judgement against it, you will die a natural death mysteriously.”

“Where is the democracy then? It’s like we are living under dictatorship. Now I am scared too bro.”

“Don’t worry brother.  Hold strong, Gabon is with us.”