Spider's web

The spider spins a web for its prey only to withdraw it later. The sun, too, rises and lights up the world and sets to withdraw the light. Thus lit world during the day, vanishes in the night's darkness. We fall prey to such an illusive world, lit up by the sun of our life: the mind.

The mind rises in the waking hours, painting the sun's world for us to believe in and live by. With that come the bound relations, friends and enemies, qualities of good and bad, and an utter ridiculous feeling of doership in everything that happens or is merely witnessed! The mind's web is also produced in the dream state, albeit such a world being different, governed by weirder set of rules in comparison to our waking world. No one can deny the tightly coupled senses in and during the dreams, although they're freed minutes from waking up. While waking up, the mind slowly fades out the dream world or does so shockingly fast (depending on the quality of the dream and one's attachment towards such a dream world) and brings forth another world of this waking state. There's not even a guarantee that it gives of whether or not you're still in a dream! It may sound foolish unless you've dreamt within a dream; yes, its recursive.

In deep sleep the spider's web vanishes; its pralaya, no dream or waking worlds exist. The mind is sleeping, though not dead. The little rest that the mind catches then, gives it sufficient strength to pull one out of the deepest sleep into freshly created dream and wakeful states to be related to; the memory that still exists aching to be associated with. This is true in its entirety even in death, except that the memory fades into being reset or sometimes corrupted in bits and pieces, brought alive in later lives by the mind. So the *individualized* soul gets dragged across worlds and universes of mind's web, spreading across lives and lives.

Humara Bajaj

Yesterday, I was stunned by the amazing interview that Rahul Bajaj gave on BBC's HardTalk. Personally, I'd issues with Bajaj due to the noise and air polluting autos (auto rickshaws) that Bajaj makes, until few months back when I happened to talk to a couple of auto drivers who said that originally the autos do not make such noise. Its only after the drivers make some modifications to increase pick up that they make that high pitch sound. Also its the kerosene or God knows what that they put in the autos that cause such air pollution. Anyways, back to HardTalk...

Bajaj played an impressive defense on his downsizing employees in favour of technology and even attacked some elements for not-so-fair-policing in Europe taking Mittal's bid for Arcelor as an example. The energy in this proud Indian who to quote said "India is going places" was felt even in the interview. He also went on to criticize Indian politicians of corruption and claimed that his files moved slow in the govt due to his refusal to bribe since ever. But most of all, while speaking of India in comparison to China, Bajaj said that China is far ahead in infrastructure, but his confidence in India's democracy guarantees that India can only improve from here on, since the Indian infrastructure can't worsen than what it is, and so can't the corruption. Towards the end, Bajaj said "so if we are so good-- based on facts about India and rest of the world-- even in such a scenario, we will be in top three countries in twenty years! Thats one more person who thought of generations other than his alone and my hats off to him. (I'll be getting as many Bajaj products as possible now on to show my support).

On a related note, I've always been a fan of Bajaj ads.

Harsh unreality

Deep down in sorrow
And no place to go
A little happiness to borrow
And a long life to tow

(... unfinished business, to be continued)

Thoughts 22

22. Belief is self-hypnosis.

Quo vadis

They say its lonely at the top. As one goes higher up the responsibility chain, lesser are the people left to make decisions. There's not many to share your load then. If we care to analyze this, its true even when one grows spiritually, leaving less and less people to understand you. If ishwara is considered as the highest position in responsibility, He's definitely all alone at the top!

Here's an extract from M*A*S*H season 4; the episode is called "Quo vadis, Captain Chandler". After dropping bombs from a B-29 plane over 50 times for almost 2 years, Captain Arnold Chandler gets some kind of an awakening telling him that he's Jesus Christ and he can no longer kill people. The psychiatrist, Major Sidney Freedman is called in to examine him.

Sidney: You died
Christ: I arose
Sidney: That was a long time back. Where were you all this while?
Christ: I live in all men

... moving on to questions on dropping bombs…

Christ: on people?
Sidney: on the enemy
Christ: I've no enemies.
Sidney: Even the North Koreans?
Christ: (Crying) They're my children

Sidney: Tell me, is it true that God answers all prayers?
Christ: Yes...
Christ: ... sometimes the answer is no!

Self hypnosis

If a person does something for a long time, it becomes a part of life, insomuch that the person may not even remember when that something started. It could be called as a habit, but not factually being so. Another reason for such overdoing is hope of leading to boredom and giving it up. A habit would be called so when it can be identified as a disparate activity, categorized and then dealt with (or not).

Other things that can't be identified apart from the daily chores or as something of an overdoing, can still be one. That something is what one would have gotten into as a part of self-hypnosis: a belief. One such belief is the existence of the world as a part of ourselves, or more appropriately, we as a part of the world. From childhood, all our sense feedings have led us to a self-hypnosis... an abracadabra... God knows when the wakeup alarm is set for, when the pendulum will come to rest!

Finest kind

Scene 1: Yesterday, I planned to order season 10 of MASH, but gave up the idea after seeing it to be 2 GBP over last time's price!

Scene 2: This morning, I finished screening the 3rd season for what maybe more than the 3rd time! The last episode "Abyssinia, Henry" has always been an emotional favorite. The last OR scene, when Radar breaks the sad news about Henry, has been shot without others being informed pre-shoot. The scene brings out the best of everyone's feelings, without a single dialog, and that too from under the OR masks... its just the eyes!

Scene 3: After I walked into office today, I placed the order for season 10!

Abyssinnia, tenth!

Thoughts 21

21. Making money is a time-consuming business.
Corollary: Time being money, its also a money-consuming business!

Sometimes, you hear the bullet

I postponed writing more on war then, but after watching "Sometimes, you hear the bullet" from season one of MASH once again this morning, thinking furthered.

Hawk's writer friend gets enlisted only to write a first hand account instead of a bystander's. The original title he has in mind for his book is "You never hear the bullet". His experience from the ongoing war is that there's no dramatic sound of gunshot or anything like that -- the way its pictured in movies -- when a soldier gets killed; but later, he himself hears the bullet!

Henry: I just know what they teach you at command school. There are rules to war:
Rule #1 is young men die
And rule #2 is doctors can't change rule #1.

A few scenes from Band of Brothers also suggest that there are times, even in war, when a soldier gets hit without even knowing from whence the bullet came and when. A dialog -- nay, a phoneme -- is left half way when the soldier who's talking, drops dead!