The Ironies of Indian culture

India has probably one of the most diverse cultures in the world with hundreds and thousands of subcultures from state to state, province to province, village to village. With over 360,000 gods and individual mother tongues in India numbering a whopping 700, you can only get an idea as to how many different collective fields of thought to expect in this country.
And culturally speaking, what Gandhi said just before independence, “This is not one India that we are fighting for, but thousands of India’s living side by side” holds true.

Through travel and curiosity of mind I have come to realizations which I think will be agreeable to most who have been able to see these distinct differences.

The reason for this would be that the whole of India has never been ruled by the same monarchy. The North had the Mughals which most of us know about, the south had the rulers of mysore, golconda and the rest had hundreds of smaller princely states that were ruled independently.

In cold North India, Delhi, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, the people are hot blooded, proud, righteous, passionate, aggressive, warm, proactive and willing to take initiative for anything that they feel strongly about.

In the hot south, people are cool, lazy, sleepy, laid back and have a take it as it comes attitude. Many have a very poor Business sense because of this attitude and are simply too naïve. Yet, they are also very very intellectual.

In the higher mountains and villages where people have relatively little, they are most willing to share with those they may not even know, hospitable and friendly.

In Mumbai, where people have relatively much more, people everywhere are looking for something MORE, to enhance their lives, their possessions, and are competitive with regard to everything, are extremely professional and much less human than the smaller cities, and everything happens extremely fast. This is because of the commercial nature of the city and is common to most big metros the world over I think.

People living in hostile environments like the Nepal / Tibet border, Kashmir are some of the nicest people I have met and even in such a hostile external environment they are friendly, curious and kind and willing to offer any little help they can freely to strangers and friend alike.

Good, Bad and the Ugly

One cannot describe the good unless he knows what the bad is.
Because without there being any bad, noone would know what was any good.
It is like two sides of the same coin, where one cannot exist without the other. They are co dependant and relative only to each other.

Therefore if bad and good can be said to be relative, then neither is absolute and is of variable nature depending on the state of the other in the current reality. ( This analogy is highly relevant to right now, because good and bad is in a state of constant flux)
So therefore lets say hypothetically at some date in the future, man starts behaving in a never before seen way of seen of bad( Lets call this the ugly). And takes bad to a completely new dimension of bad, here, would you say that some of the old bad things are now okay or good. Lets take an example here –

Earlier war was fought in the name of god, for land, for riches, for the prosperity of the nation, for SOMETHING. So those waging war looting and plundering was bad. But now the bad has become so bad that they want nothing to gain out of waging war, only causing harm to the enemy( Terrorists) with no real benefit to them.
So hence , waging war against these terrorists(To accomplish something) has become good.

Ok a better example, in the 18th century, Alcohol was the destroyer of society and was looked at as a menace, but now that we have worse things like drugs and so on , alcohol is not a bad thing anymore and one can say drinking alcohol is okay or not bad therefore good? (Lets keep it simple as of now assuming what is not bad is good, rather than get into a third grey area of in between the two)


Also if the existence of good depends solely upon the existence of bad, like we earlier discussed, two sides of the same coin, how can the good conquor the bad ? without giving rise to a new bad , which can be better or worse than the old bad.

Lets take an example – America invades Afghanistan/ Vietnam/ Iraq/ Its America you never know whats next, and treats the locals there badly, rapes the women, kills the children, hence exposing the bad to more bad.( we have deducted that bad cannot be erased but only made better or worse.by looking at it from a single perspective of just RIGHT NOW that is always constant,and does not change constantly or evolve.) Will this make the bad worse than the old bad, or will this make the bad better.

If you add more salt to salty food, it only get more salty, and if you add more sugar to sugary milk it only get more sugary, therefore by being bad towards the bad, how is that going to make things good for anybody?
Whats up with the Americans man ? Is this so hard to figure out ?

Does the answer lying in being good to the bad ? I think so.

Gautam Buddha said the same thing in his teachings too. Love towards all life was the way to go ( Basics of spirituality)

What really belongs to me ?

Today im happy, tomorrow im sad

Today im rich, tomorrow im poor

Today im here, tomorrow im there

Today im big, tomorrow im small

Today im climbing the ladder, tomorrow im diving back down

Today was great, tomorrow might not be so

Today im everything, tomorrow im everything

Today im nothing, tomorrow im nothing.

Effects of 12 days of questioning

I am big, I am small

I am happiness, I am sadness

I am alive, I am asleep

I am power, i am submission

I am spirit, I am creator

I am absolute, I am relative

I am strength, I am weakness

I am the change, I am the non-change

Everything ive ever thought about,
I am.

Dormant, awake, resting, ressurecting,
I am everything.

I am nothing

i am mine.

How commercialization is breeding mediocrity.

Today if an artist wants to sell his art, even an amateur, the route is very simple, go to a few galleries, look up some art stores, visit google.com to see what the scope is for your art style/ talent etc and you know exactly what sells and what you can do just to make some moolah. Or even if you’re below average painter, with so much commercialization in todays times, theres demand for everything even really poorly done Rs.200 paintings till probably as far up as you can count.

Same goes with poetry and literature, getting your work published has never been so easy, and with the globalisation and marketing practices, not that hard to make a nice fat chunk of money either, with far less effort put in as compared to in the days gone by.

This practice I think is breeding mediocrity. The whole concept of money being involved from the very start of one’s career dilutes the ‘striving for excellence’ attitude. Also when everything today in the world revolves around what the market is looking for, what the people want, there is very little room to think out of the box and be revolutionary and making money becomes the only priority for everyone involved in the process.

To name a few examples, William Blake one of the greatest poets of all time, with magic flowing through his letters was relatively unknown in his time, probably he was ahead of the curve, people didn’t get him and he lived his life without any fame or riches.

There was an African American rock musician in the 1980’s who was first heard by U2’s manager and some other top bands like the Rolling Stones, when they came across his demo tape and they were blown away by how good he was, he was recommended to record labels by the top guns of the industry and launched his album which did very poorly. Apparently he was ahead of the curve too. People didn’t get him.

So moral of the story – Music / Books / Art, etc you come across today which make the highest money or sell for the highest amount are not the best. They are just the most marketable and hence command that much. So don’t go by money as a barrier as to how good things are. You can either do your own thing, follow in your own creative energies, dwell inside and come out with some ground breaking content, or you can sell out, make what people want you to make and get rich.
A very large number of people today choose the latter.

Today, when you know at every stage of your life where exactly you stand and what is needed to reach ‘somewhere’ and make a mark for yourself, you tend to not use your own creative talents and skills as much and focus not much on what you want to write, but instead focus on what there is a higher demand for.

Earlier to be a good artist/poet/ writer you had to be able to dazzle people with your brilliance, there was no scope for mediocrity or the mediocre. Thus people pushed themselves to their limits and beyond, there was no fixed road that was known, no fixed path that they needed to walk down, thus they looked within themselves, used their own brains for better ways and came out with dazzling results.

And the results are clearly evident. Creativity is keeps going down as we move forward.

Poetry is dead. ( A fact globally agreed upon, it peaked in the 18th 19th century and in on a downward spiral ever since)
Philosophy is dead ( Same story as Poetry. Science has taken up the void created by it)
Art is dying ( Some of you might not agree here, Art still commands high prices, you’re right! but the era of dazzling art/ artists has ended and everyone would agree art today is nowhere close to as GOOD(quality wise) as it used to be in the period till the end of the 20th century.)

(Root Cause) The Whole Squared.

This is an idea I have had in my mind for a long long time, even though I’d always been opposed to excess materialism, commercialization, and so on. This is not something id ever looked at directly. I ve always asked myself this from time to time, and I always found myself replying No.

Until offlate, I came across a few facts.

A survey was done in Canada, which in the 90’s had one of the highest standards of living in the world was found to show that the ratio of mental ailments, and patients suffering from psychological problems also to be the highest, in the WORLD!
How can that be right ? Something’s gotta be wrong, the better the standard of living the happier im supposed to get right! Its obvious, Everyone knows this! Well WRONG!

The United States of America, probably the most commercially, materialistically forward, most developed economy in the world, also has an extremely high case of mental ailments, but not only that, also have the most number of prisons as compared to any other country in the world!
The most recurring reason why crimes are commited anywhere = Money!

I have a theory as to why this may be the case, Most people are brought up thinking that by having a lot of money and all the materialistic pleasures they can imagine, they will be happy. But this is not really the case always, infact there’s much more to real happiness than just these material pleasures. Then some of these people become desperate, and start making wrong decisions hoping to find happiness and the downward spiral begins leading to trauma. While those in the smaller towns and villages with lesser means are not expecting that much from life, and are content with what they have.. and are hence generally happier.

This is just a point of view and I would really like to know what you have to say about this.

Little Flakes of Silver

I must be privileged,
I really am, for from dusk to dawn,
From eve to morn, the heavens shower upon us,
From aeons and eras away,
Milky shiny spots of silver
Shapes and colours and even numbers.

Which come closer and closer,
From the now dancing skies
And float lightly on the breeze
And land exactly where they looketh best,
Little flakes of silver.