a mARTIAN dIARY

 Everyday God gives us the sun, and also the moment in which have the ability to change everything that makes us unhappy. Our magic moment helps us to change and send us off in search of our dreams

Today was Ganesh Chathurthi. Even though I am reaching newer lows with respect o my ‘conventional’ faith, at some level I would like to believe that its not really southwards I am traveling, but rather exploring newer places in the vast map between atheism, faith and fanaticism. For me like most people, standing at the middle solid ground of faith through out my small life, the move away has neither been intentional nor easy. Its more like being pushed by circumstances and more so by my understanding (or pseudo understanding).

Being a keralaite this day should mean more to me being attom but maybe it’s the Bangalore atmosphere or my new found friends from DA-IICT I felt it more to be Ganesh Chathurthi. So I had this burning urge to visit a Ganapathi temple. But due to the previous lows I had talked about, even though it had been two months since my arrival in Bangalore, I had not bothered to find a nearby temple. My only temple visits had been limited to when my friend Raj (from Bangalore) would take me along to Raghevendra Swami temple or Sai Baba asthram, which is pretty far of from where I stay.

So there I was toying with the idea of going to a temple from morning. But in strange ways, all my doors kept closing and I finally had to force open the last door. My first idea was to call Raj (my Bangalore encyclopediaJ), but being a Brahmin, he was tied up with his house’s puja. By that time my room mates had left and they had forgotten to take the key with them. This coupled with the fact that our house owner was out, pretty much ensured that I remain chained to the house at least till evening.

I spent most of my afternoon sleeping and reading "The Zahir" by Paulo Coelho (actually doing more of the former). By evening I was in a trance due to the mixed bursts of sleeping and reading. I was practically flirting with the thin line between imagination and reality. A good book is like liquor since it will get you high. I had heard that most athletes, when they achieve a record are in a state of trance; from where I am today I think I can appreciate that, at least a bit more that I could yesterday.

I wanted to rejuvenate my lost skill (lost in another life perhaps?) of understanding the world’s signs. So as soon as my first room mate arrived, I was ready after taking a bath and putting on the cleanest cloths I could find lying around which is not much I might add. I pressed the keys into his hands, and walked off. I guess me being me, he was not that surprised. So finally I started my quest.

I know, to some at least, it’s a bit too much to call my wandering the streets of this urban jungle, bangaluru, a quest. But that was what it was for me. My quest had nothing to do with the surroundings, since I am pretty sure it would have been the same in any other place in the world, had I reached the same state of mind and sprit. It was about the courage to believe in god. No, not the over abused word, but the concept of the divine power, to believe in miracles. It was time for the part of me that had slept off to awaken.

Now, as I got out, I was instantly faced with a dilemma. Where to go? Many paths lay before me. Which one to take? It’s easy for a person to take a known path, how ever far his destination maybe. It’s when the path is unknown that a person has to call upon his inner strength even though the destination may be at an arms length. Maybe it was good thing because one of the biggest problems with humans is to know what to do and more importantly what not to do and not doing it.

I should follow the signs, I thought. Do what I am doing with my life now by joining MindTree and see the results. A sort of a toy universe to try out my ideas of following my instincts.

I looked around.

Nothing.

Harder.

Again nothing.

Maybe I am looking too hard? Its like the art of flying (Douglas Adams), you need to fall and then before you can touch the ground, you need to get distracted. So I closed my eyes to open again and try afresh. But as soon as I closed, my mind, which was till then wandering, suddenly fixed on a series of vocal stimulus, the bursting of crackers. That was it!!!. That’s the sign. I didn’t think twice and started following the sound. Its second thoughts that destroy most signs.

I started walking, not too fast, remembering about ithica, and also because I enjoyed it. As I walked I look at various shops and structures I had until now never noticed. I noticed people walking past me really fast. It was obvious they were in a hurry, but to where? I remembered to reach the correct destination sometimes it necessary to let other pass you. I moved aside, let them pass.

As I kept on following the sounds, I forgot about the twists and turns I had made, but my belief was strong, I moved ahead. I saw a person lying on the road. The strong smell of liquor told me his immediate story… He was safe from the middle of the road, and also for a while from his world? Maybe his quest was too much for him that it shattered his sprit?

I slowly resumed my quest, sure that he was safer than anything my actions could result in. I was nearing my destination, but as I was coming more and more close, the frequency of the sounds was getting lesser and lesser. A fear crept in. Maybe god sensed that. The sounds died. I hastened my pace. And I reached my destination but it had ceased to be that. There were a lot of cracker covers lying on the road. It reminded of a battle field at sundown, just after the battle. A battle between my faith and my fears perhaps? Those cracker covers started at me with tears in their eyes. And it seemed obvious to me who had won. My mind was at the verge of breaking but my eyes were still, since the trance I was in was keeping me from feeling my immediate pain. I looked around. No signs. I could hear distant cracker bursts but they were too far off to be mine, some other soul’s destination perhaps?

I looked up and asked god. Is it my fate to be so near my destiny and see it slip across my hands? But I felt a calmer voice in my head telling me "it was and is your doubts that keeping you from your destiny" I looked around, the way back was not something I could find in my mind. Nobody around to ask the way back.I saw a bigger road ahead. I started walking towards the intersection hoping to find someone to help my find my way back home….back to my life.

As I was nearing the cross, the road ahead was initially shrinking, but suddenly it grew as I had invertly had taken a turn. There were crowds and bright lights before me.

I could not believe what I saw. It was a temple (Actually 5 temples as I later came to know). A Ganapathi temple was the one that immediately caught my eyes. I didn’t have to ask my legs to walk. I could feel an invisible force which was dragging me towards the temple. I reached the entrance.

There was a huge queue. I went and stood at the back. As I waited I saw different types of people the rich and the poor, the disabled and the all so able, all waiting in the same queue for the same destiny.

In around 2 minutes, a pujari comes with a ticket book in hand and says something in Kannada which totally passes over my head. I swing my head to indicate that I don’t want the ticket. He looks enraged as he points to a spot at the entrance. It seems he wants me to make a new queue. With out thinking twice I get inside the temple. I stand before the huge Ganapathi idol and pay my respects. I had reached a stage where idol is not necessary for praying, but at the end of this journey, it’s a different feeling.

Then I noticed the sweet voice that’s making my destination sweeter. I love music but veena is something I associate more with Ravi Verma painting rather than to music. But I found myself sitting in the sabha enjoying the music like I have never enjoyed before. Granted the lady was playing veena beautifully but there was something else to the music. Enjoyment from unexpected sources at the end of a journey..life? But my final lesson, reminder rather, for the day was still to come. As I was walking out, walking in rather into life with a new found sense of belief, I was stopped by a small girl. She gave me a piece of paper. I realized I had walked into another queue. At the end of the queue prasad was being distributed. Suddenly I was reminded of my younger years, when whenever I entered a temple hungry, I was always given food. Not because I knew the people at the temple, it would be newer and bizarre reasons each day but the end result would be the same. I used to think of Ganapathi as my friend rather than a god in those days. The fact that I had forgotten it made me realize how far from me I was.

The trip back was similar in a sense that I followed my instincts not knowing the way back but this time I was much more confident…had more faith….and reached my home in due time.

When I gave this much to Vinayakam for reading what he asked me was "Ok it’s a good story but what is the point?"

I had this experience that helped me rescue me back. It was something that happened to me and I got my own lessons from it. But that’s not necessarily what you need to hear at this point of life. Like Memphias said "The oracle tells you what you need to hear". It is upto you to read this and make your own conclusions or even pass this off as another junk of words

(Update May 2007 : This post was selected as of the the top 3 posts for the month in out company intranet)

The waves of religion and religious belief, hope etc have never been calm for me from the  time I realized that Hinduism(my native religion) was not the only religion in the world. Using the word native religion seems a little funny since I could not be born native to any religion. But Of course since my family religion is Hinduism (funny!!!) it makes me a native Hindu.

Though the storms have never been what I would call timid, they have never actually influenced me as much as they have been influencing me for the past few weeks. I could humor myself into believing that the sudden surge of interest in this matter may be due to the smoggy cold weather that my place has been experiencing in the past few says but the truth may (I am almost sure it is) stranger (or maybe even trivial) than this fiction.

Anyway whatever be the reason for this interest I thought I should out into record the questions and the reasons for the questions that have been shadowing my mind.

Like I said I am a native Hindu. I used to consider my religion to be the best. The past tense of the previous sentence must be noted. I have tried in my small way to try and prove or even disprove that thought I had in my mind. What I feel right now is that its not like any religion is right or wrong, actually its more like a question of left and right, with north, south, NW etc thrown in for fun ;). A person searching for a religion that’s purely white may end up disappointed. Certain paths may be wrong or right in their own way but we can’t really grow on that since it’s unlikely that a clear answer may emerge out of all this darkness at least in my lifetime. I could attribute this to the fact that I am materialistic.

YES!!! I love my parker pen and my Honda unicorn and countless other items that a alien to our plant may discard as crap. Yes..that does make me materialistic. But like a thing I once read in an Isaac Asimov novel, Humans have this "guilty pleasure" concept. Through out history what ever makes you happy is considered evil. Maybe it’s because someone wise must have found that making something enjoyable illegal, you have squeeze more pleasure out of it . So if being materialistic is going to make me not understand the meaning of life all I have to say is F word OFF

Here I could use my favorite ‘what if light is dark’ question.Please see my other post on that

Coming back to religion…living in a "secular" country like ours….and unfortunately being a member of the majority community who is really a minority is really stressful. Like I said earlier I am not one to decide whether one religion is good or bad and thus my stand towards each community was done on a ‘person 2 person’ basis. Still I have tried to read up on some religions and frankly some have scared me. We have some verses in my religions proclaiming a particular deity (off about 33crore) to be the true one and to worship him. The content of Christian philosophy as I understand stands on the fact that JC must be followed or we will not gain entry to God’s kingdom. I know there are other branches in Christians that don’t believe in that and that JC is only a messenger…gotta look up on that. I think it’s similar in Islam.

Now I used to believe that tolerance was the key to any ‘popular’ religion. Of course we have small sects like KKK which is different but then again they are not popular. Now how can we have tolerance with basic aims like above? This is quite a paradox.

Personally I feel that majority people don’t give a damn. They want to believe that there is some better palace waiting for them after the wretched life. I wouldn’t blame them because I too believe the same. Then you could say that Religious zealot in the name of principles is a load of crap. But I would not condemn the people doing that since it’s just an avenue for the venting of anger and frustration caused due to ‘other’ reason. The outlook of each religion towards the other is important and order (as in "new world order") for that is absolutely necessary. What this means is that the struggle for Ram Temple is not a silly struggle for constructing a temple over a piece of land rather its just a culmination of the frustration that the Hindus feel over the treatment melted out to them in other spheres of life.

I guess I have asked enough questions for now and answered a few of them I hope. For this is the answer that calmed down the waves I spoke of and hope they don’t catalyze other storms in unknown waters. I think I will deal with my concept of religion in another post

In the Matrix there  is a pivotal scene where the rebels are eating and its Neo’s first ‘real’ meal. There on of the member wonders…Inside the matrix the chicken soup that they eat gives a particular taste…a sensation of the mind…simulated my the matrix. Since the machines don’t have the sense of taste he wonders whether the machines got it wrong and chicken has the taste of shit (ok ok I exaggerated a bit ;))

Similarly…consider the word hate..we use this word with some disgust in our day today life for hate is seen as one of the ‘dark ‘(inverted commas… see later) emotions of humans, Still in most of the ‘Dark’ alleys of mind it resides on, feeding on our most (Well maybe not most) forbidden thoughts lurking around for a chance to show its face. You may think that I might have had a better sentence if I were to use some common adjectives like ‘Ugly’ face etc but the following lines of junk is to address(and maybe disprove) the very usage of this and similar words associated with ‘Dark’ and hatred.

Most of the people i know are two faced (multi is more like it) and i am no different But when i probe into why they have some of the faces(Good faces) mostly what i find is
1) For the religious kind it seems to be a kind of bribe to ensure that they have a smooth "after life" (Lets call this the BRIBE INCENTIVE)…I see some eyebrows shortening ,OK so some of you think that u get a GOOD FEELING When you do this and that’s why u do it and of course i will talk about my atheist friends right now
2) Coming to the FEEL GOOD PEOPLE both religious and atheists I will have to draw a small example if i am to make my Point…Terrorists are some of the main celebrities in our era. Have you ever wondered how they are mad enough actually BLOW themselves up for something totally stupid(from my view point). If a person from his birth is told that the CAUSE 0s bigger than him and all related crap then he is kind of brainwashed into believing in the CAUSE and even becomes stupid enough to die for it. The way i see it (pretty arrogant i seem ,don’t I?) if any body is to be brought up in a "free" state( free does not imply freedom in the territorial sense or simply in the thought sense i mean it in the sense of Will and free from ‘navigation’, incidentally i am convinced that freedom in any form CANNOT exist in the true sense about which i may write another junk) he would be selfish and dark(dark again!!!) for the FEEL GOOD people from their birth have been brainwashed into believing that GOOD is "Good" (please note the difference) this brainwash is not done my some futuristic machine nor is it done overnight. In the actual sense it cannot be called brainwash because WASHING does not take place as its a new cloth. This kind of passive brainwashing takes place over the years from their birth till the present time. I would like to consider myself one of them now i present you with some arguments please think about it

WHATIF hate is not HATE but is LOVE this is what if dark is bright and vice versa. SORRY to disappoint you but i am not a crack(but i guess every crack says that :)) Please see all this in the metaphorical sense what i mean is what if doing bad can actually be good???

This is just a big WHATIF….nothing else…..