Whoa!!! Am in India, but...

My blogs are going global.
My rantings that have been occupying this space here is being viewed across countries. Blogspot offers an option to track stats and I find that someone from Nicaragua was kind enough to view it :)

Talking about Nicaragua, it gets back sweet memories of my once-upon-a-time hobby - Philately. That was as far back as when I can remember this country. Stamps from Americas were considered rare in my country then... We used to buy books called "Misha" (Russian books that never made sense to me, but my friends had it) The books had some stamps shown on some of its pages. We kids were taking the stamps off the pages and used to cut it off the edges and then add it to our albums :) And there were enough suckers at school to get envious of us coz we passed these as originals :p

And there was Cuba, Chile, Paraguay and others... It had some of my prized collection of diamond shaped, triangular and other weird shapes for stamps

Good going Google. I need to hunt on my attic and figure out where the stamp album has disappeared since last 15 years.  Here I come!

Sky, God and the feel

After a lot of days I went up the terrace and was gazing at the sky. I always was awed at the sheer magnitude of the starry canopy of God’s canvas above me. Millions of stars twinkling at me. Awesome sight. There was an urge to find out what is behind all this. Behind the stars I mean, The stars always used to look like small holes in the great canvas. The feeling was that there is an unending source of light behind the “sky” and the “stars” are showing us a glimpse of the light behind.

And that got me to the question – If the sky is so big, beyond my wildest imagination, how big should God be? Beats imagination. The closest I got to this answer was when I read Isaac Asimov’s book (not sure of the name, though). Not to disclose the climax, the hero finally pops out of the universe after a long, longer, longest saga. The story offered a glimpse into the size of the universe. The next brush with the topic was when I tried interpreting the “Purusha Suktam”. The hymns from the Vedas talk about the creation of the universe how the God is positioned in eternity. The explanation offered is that the God is so huge that the whole universe as we know it, is just a third of Him. And that that the whole universe is just a an eye to the God (Vishwaksham). The description that the many faceted God has one feet in the past and one feet in the present and one in future is enough to fuel the imagination. What we understand of the God we know is nothing compared to what He really is.

It is an awesome feeling trying NOT to ask Him of anything – Health, Wealth, Seats in colleges, Forgiveness, Thanks etc. We humans see Him as someone who is like us. We bend before Him and postulate before Him. But the feeling of imagining Him being assembled as a package called “Me” is something more exhilarating. Me and I am God and God is me. And I am one with the entire Universe in one Omkara. This feeling is akin to explaining the taste of Honey to a person who has never tasted Honey. Try and try, the feeling can never be explained.

And finally, the twin feeling of what I feel when I see the sky - The feeling of being small and insignificant. (Not a feeling of being belittled, no confusion please!) Compared to the whole wide sky, I am so small and insignificant, my worries are far smaller and more insignificant. And then, why the heck am I making it look so big,  that the whole wide universe begins to look small?

Independent confusion of sorts!

The independence was day was a mixed bag for me, with emotions running amok.

 

Surveys indicate that my country is the largest democracy in the world. The multi culture, multi ethnicity and multi lingual populace is something I can boast of even while sleeping. The number of billionaires that we can boast of is increasing by the day. Indian firms are buying out “FIRANGI” companies with ease. Wow!! The effects of being a red hot economy. I almost go into a certain feeling of elation.

 

But the negatives of my motherland drag me down. We still are a country where hunger deaths are a common occurrence. We have rotting grains on one hand and dying masses on the other. So much for the economic muscle of the country. We have a democracy that is vibrant. Yeah! Vibrant on all fronts... We have thugs, corrupts, thieves, murderers as our representatives in the government. Strange as it may sound, I am not sure if I should lift my head high due the amount of corruption that is engulfing the ironic Common Wealth Games (Ironic because the participating countries are all capitalistic). I have to hold my head high because it is us who elected the corrupts and it is no wonder that the corruption has crept into everything. In short, target achieved. We are a land that allows its citizens to be plundered without a proper compensation (read Bhopal tragedy!). We are a land which favours inheritance based rule.

 

But why am I complaining? Am I really doing something about it? Nope. Nothing. I remain a stupid citizen. With no means to vent out and no means to work towards it. With no idea as how to proceed in my mission to get the country back to a decent quality of life. Corruption and incompetence of everybody around biting my conviction that something good will happen, I remain silent... There is no end to this dichotomy I feel. It too, shall pass in the annals of my time.

 

Dear India, most of us are your selfish children. We don’t care a hoot about fellow people. Me, mine and myself – This is my motto. My patriotism raises when I listen to my countrymen being targeted outside the country. When Kashmir is debated and when India plays Pakistan for cricket. I complain a lot about how everything could be better and minutes later, frenzy dies and I become my selfish old self.

 

Am sorry!