Men wil be Men, Boys will be Boys and suchlike

This blog is mainly read by family and freinds. So my desperate attempt to be remotely funny may drive few visitors away. So let me warn you what follows in this post might offend you. But what the heck. Regular readers and people whose mailboxes i spam at an alarming rate, would know from where the inspiration of this post comes from. Yes, Yes only inspiration, i am a huge fan of Anu Malik and Mahesh Bhatt. So here is my rant on Men and what we do

Sex must be discussed: Dont get me wrong, we do discuss other things like world poverty, corruption and suchlike, but no discussion involving men is ever complete without discussing sex. And age is no bar at all. Be it a bunch of Mechanical engineers in whose close vicinity nothing remotely feminine ever crosses (The group i once belonged) or a bunch of mature happily married middle aged men (the bunch i aspire one day to be a part of), sex has to be touched upon.

We have to check out: Put a bunch of men in a room to solve the crisis of the world from an impending alien attack. They will all be fine and gung ho about it, until a moderately hot women passes by. I bet on my life that all of them will check out the woman, leaving world saving businesss hanging in the air for a moment. No, No, we dont mean any mailce, its just that we have to check out. we are wired that way

Sport is our religion: If sex is god, sport is religion. From a geeky bookworm to a hotshot hunk every man is hooked on to atleast one sport, it doesnt matter even its as mundane and boring as chinese checker

Cars are the next best thing: All men hate shopping, ateast majority do. But ask them to go from showroom to showroom to check out cars, they will do it all day. There is something about the BMW convertible that tickle the same part of the brain in a man, as it does when he sees a skimply dressed dame.

We are all the same: If you have a girlfriend or you watch as much bad Bollywood movies as i do, you must have heard that all men are same. The sad truth is we all are. Only the above four thing interest us and we ourselves are quite banal, boring and unintresting.

But women are different, like the wonderful country of ours they are quite a diverse group, on which i will write in my next post. I am a huge fan of women.

Karjath to Matheran, Monsoon trek: Wet, slippery, tiring but immense fun, som pics

End of faith - Sam Harris

I just finished reading "End of faith" by Sam Harris. I have yet to come across a more startling attack on beleif and religion than that is laid out by Harris in this book. I found most of it unjustified generalization and alarmist. The tone is set at the very beginning and as he goes on he makes sweeping statements out of thin air. Harris argues that religion is the bane of all that is worse in this world.

I am no fan of organized religion. But even as thousands are ready to become suicide bombers because of the promise of heaven as it is written in our holy books, millions more are doing the exact opposite just because of religion and the fear of god. Religion's biggest trumph according to me is not that it is pathway for a higher moral and ehtical consciousness, but the fear of god and hell makes millions of us not to kill, steal and do other horrible things. The path that religion lays out to our understanding of being may be irrational but sceince does not provide an perfectly rational alternative. I know know big bang and all that but how many of us are able to grasp it?

But it is an important book, especially because in a debate that is increasingly muddled where moderates struggling to find a space, a harsh look at our cherished beleifs is long overdue. In one of the hard hitting passages in the book Harris writes "Religious moderates are themselves the bearers of a terrible dogma: they imagine that the path to peace will be paved once each of us has learned to respect the unjustified beleifs of others "

Quite. In this troubled times its high time we re-look at religion and its traditions and question it. Religion however sacred it is shouldnt be beyond ridicule or critisicsm.

Relationships as multiple choice questions

Second post of the day, you guessed it right. I am on vacation at home and even after sleeping like a log and meeting all relatives time doesn't pass. So here i am again browsing through the net and blogs. I found a brilliant post by flagstaff on relationships. He writes

"Is it just that in an age obsessed with menus, with choices, with the drop-down box, we have turned even love into a multiple choice question? "How do you feel about this person? Are you a) a friend b) a lover c) a brother or d) a father". What about none of the above? What about Other (please specify)? What about feelings that are open-ended?

Or is it that we have been so poisoned by reason, by our quest for explicability, that the apprehension of another human being in his or her specificity has become impossible for us, and that we can only love people (as we may only hate them) by converting them into abstractions, into the idea of the other rather than the other itself? That having to face up to the reality of who the other person is, to their infinite humanity, is more than we are capable of, so that just as we must ignore what is human about someone to hate him or her, we must also ignore the details of the person we care for, in order to love them? Is this why we give names to our feelings - because we cannot experience them unless they are made intelligible to us, like a child who cannot eat his dinner unless it is cut into bite sized pieces?"

Hmm, i myself always been grappling with many questions on relationships,what to expect? What to give?. Its not in this age that relationships are defined by names, its been there for ever. Because relationship is never absolute, it always relative. And the name that we give define the way we behave. She is a sister , i should behave this way, she is a girlfreind i should behave this way, he is father like i should behave this way. Its the name that defines our relationship notthe other way around.

But what a thought, open ended relationship. How would society be then?

Yet an another year for sovergnity not freedom

Its been a long time since i have wrote something. I blame it on writer's block, yes yes, even bad writing can get into a block. So my blogging and the issues i write about will be a little dated, like me.

Our independence day just got over. And i sat on my sofa sipping an excuse for a coffee watching the idiot box, as familiar cliches of symbolic celebrations of our freedom whizzed past my eyes. The boring, uninspiring speech of the prime minister from the Lal Kila, re run of some latest super hit jignostic national integration movie, debate for the nth time whether Ghandi and Nehru are still relevant (They arent why dont we accept that), parade of numerous school kids in the hot sun for a chocolate afterward and numerous flag hoisting sessions. No i am not against all this after all i get a day off from office. But this is not celebration of freedom.

Pandit Nehru was wrong, On 15th August 1947, India didnt wake up to freedom, India woke up to sovergnity. India is still far from acheiving freedom. I am taking about freedom at all levls political, economic and personal.

Freedom for millions of Indians to break out of poverty by abolishing policies that are designed to keep them perpetually poor, freedom for that enterprising youngster to start a business of his own without going through the morass of red tape, freedom for that bar dancer to earn a living without moral police judging her, freedom for women to walk in whatever they are comfortable in without being subjected to molestation, freedom for that young couple in marine drive to steal a kiss of passion without onlookers harassing them..

No we arent there yet. Its an yet another day of sovergnity not freedom