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Job’s friends‼️

Zophar the Naamathite‼️

Zophar was a friend of Job and in chapter 11 he launches defending God and expatiates on all aspects of His glory.

In the first flush it seems true. It is not the contents which Zophar utters which irks and draws a fitting response from Job, at chapter 13 of the book as much as the mettle of the person who said it & the person to whom it was addressed.

Hypocrisy is not revealed better in any other piece of literature I’ve ever read.

Job’s predicament of having been subjected to the misfortunes that he was going through was not because of the “fault theory” or even “randomness of events”, there was a testimony by the Creator on Job, which was assailed by the Creator’s antipode, the Devil, on the grounds that Job stood protected by God, the Creator, and consequently Job was merely ‘grateful’ and once the protection of God was removed, Job would not be ‘perfect’.

God, allows Satan to assault Job serially after God removes the protection gradually till Job is denuded of all protection except Job’s life.

It is in these circumstances that Job’s three friends find him and Zophar requires Job to ‘repent’.

Job’s justification is known to the readers as his misfortunes were not the cause of his faults.

Zophar eulogises God and tells Job to repent.

Chapter 13 shows that Job couldn’t find anything to repent. Zophar should have left it at that, but he exalts God and His virtues.

Job demolishes Zophar’s arguments by saying the Zophar was not worthy of talking of God.

It is not uncommon to find priests walking into houses and telling people to repent, neither leading worthy lives of making such a demand on innocent people and rounding off their demands by exalting God.

Maybe Zophar’s averments would have worked with lesser mortals, but Job was of a sterner stuff. Job’s answer thus is amazing:

7 Will ye speak wickedly for God? and talk deceitfully for him?
8 Will ye accept his person? will ye contend for God?
9 Is it good that he should search you out? or as one man mocketh another, do ye so mock him?
10 He will surely reprove you, if ye do secretly accept persons.
11 Shall not his excellency make you afraid? and his dread fall upon you?

Job’s assertion is: be worthy of talking and taking up for God and just don’t do it because an institution has vested you with temporal authority. Spiritual humility is fundamental.

Jesus’ challenge at Luke 13: that do you think that the tower fell on them in Siloam and you have been spared is because you are more righteous? Is similar to what Job told Zophar, Bildad and the other friend.

The New Living Version of the Bible runs as follows and is easier to comprehend:

Are you defending God with lies?

Do you make your dishonest arguments for his sake?

8Will you slant your testimony in his favor?

Will you argue God’s case for him?

9What will happen when he finds out what you are doing?

Can you fool him as easily as you fool people?

10No, you will be in trouble with him

if you secretly slant your testimony in his favor.

11Doesn’t his majesty terrify you?

Doesn’t your fear of him overwhelm you?

12Your platitudes are as valuable as ashes.

Your defense is as fragile as a clay pot.

13“Be silent now and leave me alone.

Let me speak, and I will face the consequences.

Interpreting, without factoring the text or the context or the person to whom it applies, is terrible!

Xanthipee & Facts!

When still callow and burdened with little understanding to distinguish between a Fact and a Popular Opinion, I was asked by my Professor the meaning of Xanthipee, I blurted with youthful effervescence that the word meant a “shrewish woman” and that the word derived its meaning from Socrates’ wife’s name, who was supposed to have been a shrew.

After reading Xenophon, well into my forties, I realised that the name had assumed a meaning without any contemporary authority to back that ascription. Neither Plato nor Xenophon, ever say that Xanthipee was a shrew in any of their writings. However the line ‘after thunder comes the rain’ and the various paintings of Xanthipee emptying a chamber pot on to the head of Socrates, had to be explained to be consistent with the popular beliefs and consequently the idea that Xanthipee was a shrew, has come to stay.

A maligning based on popularised beliefs!

Facts do not stand alone, they network in a way that envelops the reader into a possibility. Socrates’ sayings and the writings of Xenophon lucidly show that Socrates was a reasonable and honourable man prone a little too much in explaining the lives of those who were living it.

It sounded to many as a nice explanation of what their lives were, and how worthy they were.

He built a consciousness of a human view of itself.

Secondly Socrates showed the Virtuous side of it and named it Good.

Thirdly, how Good was Desirable.

Finally, how and why a man has to Strive for the desired goal.

Socrates showed how a Man through observing and studying oneself, one would know, as much about the outer world, and function perfectly in the external world too!

Three fifty years before salvation was brought by Jesus, Socrates brought the thought of making man look both inside and outside himself- Man got over a hunger based Life.

The greatest thought Socrates left behind was social responsibility with honourable goodness through effort.

Croatia beat England to reach World Cup final for 1st time
https://goo.gl/jDzkEU
-via inshorts

England Vs. Croatia WC Football

This semifinal match is the most pedestrian match at this level. England having scored their first goal within the first ten minutes of the start are behaving like those kids which failed marshmallow test- no plan- just grab the ball and run to the Croatian end. Kane had been offsided at least twice within twenty minutes.

Scoring the first goal within the opening minutes of any football game against a mediocre team is a sure recipe for the standards of the game to hit new lows. Sure enough, I have quit watching after the first half an hour – watch! NOT the first half.

England wants to be in the finals. That’s it. They have colonised Croatia and no need for keeping up the international standards of the game. Pity, when the result is the only thing.

Yesterday, even after France had taken the lead, they didn’t let their game slacken to merely aim at possession, even though Mbappa was puerile enough to delay throws and free kicks of Belgium in the second half.

Kane appears to be desperate to add some international WC goals to his kitty. Kane is not interested in being in position to feed the ball to some of his teammates who probably have a better view and chance, he is all tied up behind the Croatian defenders.

France, despite having scored at the 51st minute, did string some poetic passes at the goalmouth of Belgium, though nothing fructified.

Those flipped back passes, and pushes to vacant slots where teammates are likely to reach ahead of the defenders and other individual brilliance is what soccer is all about- jingoism notwithstanding. At least that makes great spectacle.

With the exit of Brazil, standards have fallen to European club levels.

Hope at least in the finals the traditional rivals would raise the standards of this spectator sport and not a statistical affair.

Cavalryman or a Horse rider?

A Footman with a horse doesn’t become a Cavalryman!

Skills, my friend, skills, is what matters. Aspiration with good fortune can fetch a horse but riding skills is not only a question of opportunity, but acquiring skills through practice.

After acquisition of riding skills, where it is applied determines the person’s contribution to himself and/or the society.

One could become a show jumper, a lion tamer on a horse in a circus, or a warrior. Opportunities could be created like King David of Israel, where he marketed to Saul, his skills as a slinger when his father assigned him the job of being a Swiggy boy to his brothers and Abner.

Or because of adverse Times be in the jail, like the Joseph of Genesis, and learn bookkeeping, store management, reporting, prioritising the institutional requirements; and thereafter, when Joseph met the cupbearer identified that he would be released and restored to his position with the Pharaoh, requested him to remember him of his innocence and obtain for Joseph release by putting in a good word.

Circumstances are different, but application without skills might get relief, but not RECOGNITION. Joseph could have been released, but to be out in charge of Egypt required skills.

Astride a horse never made one a cavalryman.

Get the skills & market it. Time will redeem the persistent.

twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1014611307427966976

Divinity of Jesus

Whether one is Right or not, is known only when one is powerless to the point of Death. Any powerful person is Right because of the implications of the Power he wields. But whether he is Right or not is known only when he is powerless. When Jesus made Himself powerless by Not Summoning the Legion of Angels from His Father in Heaven, he made Himself Powerless by Choice. A choice which is seldom exercised by humans in such a situation. He postponed the exercise of this power because He said He had been given the Power to Resurrect Himself from Death. After His crucifixion Jesus resurrects Himself. That makes Jesus, God.

How can I get more logically certain about Jesus’ divinity?

Belgium’s BAT FORMATION!

I watched and wondered how Belgium was able to thwart left flank forward Neymar from even having a view of the goal – post to post- of the Belgium side.

From the attacker’s view from the front, the Belgian backs and the other midfielders on defence line up in a position not in a single line horizontally or even diagonally. Except the extreme end defenders, each defender was placed randomly blocking the view of the Belgian goal. Thereby in split second the Brazil forward is unable to see the chinks between the defenders.

If you had observed the shots were either the corner ends of the post or the crossbar of the goal post. They were palmed off for a corner.

When one sees bats fly, they never fly in a symmetrical formation, reason being that they go not by sight or by echolocation, therefore they do not form a phalanx. Each bat is on its own and has to fly finding a path for itself it doesn’t ‘follow’ another bat – unless the reason is a fight or mate!

The Brazil forwards are used to the lined up defence, which is for offside trap, when they saw this random formation they had to either try below the crossbar or incurving ball, where they couldn’t make it.

It must be interesting to watch the semifinals of Belgium match against France, I suppose.

But Brazil’s playmaking was poetry. It is a pity that they were pitted against the next best in the quarterfinals itself, denying them of a podium finish.

To understand I have pictorially done a bat formation for my own hypothesis, maybe I am wrong, but worth reducing it to a written thought.

MAHOUT MENTALITY!

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It is not very common to find this expression MAHOUT MENTALITY. But, if we understand the methods which a MAHOUT employs to control, exploit, manage and show helplessness when the ELEPHANT turns “musth“, we’d be able to identify the people who have a similar mentality.

The most important thing before a man becomes a mahout is for him to IDENTIFY an elephant. Once identified, then take over the control of that elephant. Mind you, the MAN never goes to the wild to capture an elephant, he merely identifies a temple elephant, a draught elephant or a circus elephant. They are already DOMESTICATED and are familiar with the spear used by the mahout to harass the elephant. They are nothing but soft targets for the mahout and once he gets into control, he merely has to know how to exploit the strength of the ANIMAL.

THAT IS MAHOUT…

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The Clever Husband!

So there is this couple known to me who go on city drives, long ones, on holidays and weekends, just to get the feel of the city of Chennai. These drives are mostly with the husband at the wheel.

The wife, uses these drives for clarifications of facts long held in abeyance with anxiety; seeking new eat outs; watching families on scooters and bikes and feeling good for the institution of marriage; delivering lectures on strategy as to how the husband could have been one up on the servants by adopting her post-mortem brainwaves; and picking holes in his facts.

The husband had not only to concentrate on the slow but surely moving (unlike Bangalore) traffic besides listening to her talk, but had to also carefully follow her chatter. A promptly unrebutted nod to her statements are likely to be called into question as a wilful act of defiance of her ‘suggestion’.

After a few weeks of such drives, the husband said: see, we get to see a lot of Swiggy delivery boys and when I sight one, I will call out 1. When you sight the second one you call out 2 and at the end of the journey if the total sightings are odd, then you pay me Rs. 100; if at the journey’s end the total sightings are even, I pay you.

Thus started the game.

Now the husband confides that his wife is busy not only looking out for those orange T shirts with Swiggy, but even enthusiastically calls out. The wife has become more participative and has given up on thinking up, out of her false memory, to pull out petulant infractions.

He said: I was surprised when she noticed a Swiggy boy in the odd sequence and she kept quiet. When quizzed she is supposed to have said: “The law doesn’t come to the aid of those who sleep over their Rights. It is your responsibility to call out the odd numbers in the sequence, if you sight one, why should I assist you?”

A great principle which Eve used to great effect. Adam had the Right of Liberty to refuse eating the forbidden fruit, but he like a lamb to the slaughter took it and ate it, thereby not enforcing his Liberty not to eat even though offered.

Now the wife is not only busy in sighting those Swiggy boys, but delays that pittance she owes, when she loses; but maha prompt when it comes to collecting her dues.

The husband said: small participative skirmishes are good alternatives to those long rancorous silences.

Long live these impromptu games. God knows how long these games would last. Maybe, he has to up the stakes when he loses and keep it low when she does😂

Boccaccio & the Bible story of Judah

Boccaccio’s Gillette of Narbonne is just like the story of Judah and Tamar from the Old Testament. Boccaccio’s story redeems itself by leaving out the death of the earlier husbands Er and Onan of Tamar; Judah not honouring the tradition of giving the younger brother of her deceased husband Shelah to Tamar; and Tamar playing the harlot with Judah.

The ring stays without the bracelet & staff as a symbol to redeem Gillette from the accusation of having had carnal relationship with someone other than Bertram, the Count. The setting is also regal.

No wonder Shakespeare chose him as one of his sources! Story is short, but multiple perspectives – well integrated with parenthetical clauses- describing each perspective simultaneously and sensitively‼️

I wonder what Gillette and Bertram would have named their twin boys, surely Boccaccio would not have recommended Pharez & Zarah as the names – that would have been a dead giveaway 😊

Share a bathroom.

They shared the same bathroom, but his cup holder in the washroom was red with a colgate tooth paste tube sticking its head out of a neatly rolled up crimp.
In her’s was a blue Binaca toothbrush, basically bought by her for those little plastic dolls kept to lure the children. Beside that brush was a Pepsodent toothpaste all squeezed randomly that one can’t make out if she was squeezing in the middle to make the crimp end of the tube bulge up instead of the mouth-end.
Their marriage boiled down to their preferences shown in squeezing the bottom or the middle!
They parted ways and now they share the same bathroom but have separate toothpastes, a choice not based on aesthetic or health reasons, but their inability to conciliate. But it has its benefits, when she kissed him she could sniff a hint of his Colgate and he could the Pepsodent. They are beneficiaries of a benevolent Nature. They stay together but they live single.
STAY DOUBLE, BUT LIVE SINGLE.
Oh, how beautiful‼️

Imperiousness of Shakespeare!

While others had striven to make a reader/ listener to understand an imagery or a metaphor, Shakespeare is unconcerned. He’d said it and they like arrows shoot on all directions from his bow, grasp if you can. But while you are still grasping many, arrows streamingly dart out. Shakespeare isn’t trying to hold a mirror to a reader’s ignorance, if you miss the images and metaphors, you still have the plot to feel gratified. But grasping the aptness of his images and metaphors elevate your associative awareness – an introduction to the past; sewing it up with the present and predicting the probabilities of the future. Alabaster is itself premium, but monumental alabaster is the unmatched homage to the memory of that Imperial past. Lilies do fester, but who could have related it to the smell of the weeds and redeemed those weeds? None besides Shakespeare!

Prometheus & Man kinda:

Prometheus
The interpretations of Prometheus herein is based on the THEOGONY of Hesiod.
Prometheus was on the winning side of the war among the Greek gods.
But Prometheus did two deeds, which infuriated Zeus, the Chief of the Gods, on whose side Prometheus had once played the games of the gods.

The problem about interpreting the later falling out or rebellion or testing Zeus, by Prometheus has bred many literary, art & cinema based interpretations.
For me Prometheus, like any follower of a victorious man assumes that once the victory is won, EVERYTHING should be made possible for the followers, forgetting that the followers has added volume to the cause and not necessarily the right inputs which led to the victory.
The crowd which had followed either would have had no opinion at all or even if they had one, not a very balanced one. The leader provides the greatest inputs: balance & prioritising the action plan, which in the Altar of Time gets sanctified as Victory!
Prometheus turns a rebel creates man and restores fire against the WILL of Zeus!
Zeus, whom I tremendously admire, keeps his once vanquished foes in Tartarus, alive and kicking but severely constrained through rationing and sequestered from external interaction. Zeus knew fully well that if an external enemy is eliminated, sure enough even for gods, inimical forces would sprout from within!
Hiranya Kasiphu had to counter Prahlad his own son. Likewise, Kamsa had to decimate his own nephew. The principle of UNIPOLARITY OF UNCHALLENGED EXISTENCE is denied even to the Greek gods! A great piece of wisdom.
Prometheus, is thus the voice of modesty of the victorious wilful SELF.
But, it has its own pangs. The pangs of INGRATITUDE which visitS every night to peck at the liver of Prometheus! The liver is restored each morning but the eagle visits every night and inflicts the excruciating pain of being pecked at by the eagle. In Sisyphus, it was a repeated FUTILE TASK, which was only an exercise in futility in its unadulterated form, but Prometheus’ punishment was crying for mere relief every night and probably the days spent in anxiety over the impending nights!
Yet, the spirit of Prometheus to debunk Zeus wouldn’t subside!
Prometheus restored fire to mankind, but that led to Pandora and her box of gifts! The bigger evil came visiting MANkind!

The Graft!

There once was a garden in which stood a huge banyan tree. The tree had by its longevity spread its seeds through the centuries by birds which had eaten its fruits. The garden became a forest and subsequently, filled the nation with banyan trees all over.
Suddenly, a few insects had invaded the banyan and started gnawing at them, or so the farmer thought. This spread and most of the banyan trees got afflicted with those insects.
A farmer saw the plight of the huge banyan in his vicinity, losing its majestic qualities and merely living off the structural support of the aerial roots which had become trunks to the main banyan tree. The main banyan has become hollow, sheltering the birds and rodents. The farmer tried to resuscitate the main trunk, but to no avail.
The farmer took the issue to an agricultural scientist for a solution.
The scientist after prolonged study discovered that the main trunk was no more the conduit for the nutrients of the water and minerals from the ground, as the passages had been clogged over the years and that the aerial roots which had become trunks, after supplementing to the efforts of the main branch, had taken over the functions because of Necessity.
The scientist discovered that the main trunk by forwarding all the nutrients and water to the branches, had not utilised the same nutrients and water for nourishing itself, even though God had designed it to be not merely a conduit for conveying but also a beneficiary of such conveying. The scientist invented another specie of a Banyan, which had followed the God designed principle of deducting the user charges, for conveying the nutrients and water.
The scientist advised the farmer, see: we cannot restore the health of all the existing banyan trees of this strain, but we can GRAFT the specie of the banyan which collects user fee into this banyan and over a period of time attempt to grow a breed of Banyan, which would not be prone to this self-inflicting debility.
Thus the Grafting of another specie into the original banyan was done.
Generations later, the hybrid (grafted breed) replaced the old banyan trees after half a millennium.
The new generation of scientists after 500 years discovered certain health issues of the hybrid and had to decide whether to bring back the old banyan tree’s strain by eliminating the grafted strains which have become a part of the hybrid banyan trees.
A conclave was convened and all the farmers, scientists and vegetation enthusiasts met.
The squabbling went on for years.

The Traditionalists said that the GRAFTING was wrong, as the original banyan tree’s integrity had been compromised.

The Modernists said, we are people here by accident and our duty is to primarily rectify the issues, as is understood by us now, and continue with the historical grafting untouched. They further added as a compromise, we can accentuate the original strains without stymieing the grafted strains.
The Traditionalists said: No, elimination of the grafted strain was a must through stymieing the supply of nutrients and water through targeted policies.
The Functionalists, said: See, both are banyan trees and we have grafted only strains of another banyan into this Banyan, so why eliminate the benefits derived out of the newer strain grafted by our forefathers? We do not know the challenges faced by our forefathers 500 years ago, nor can we predict the inherent gains through the grafting done centuries back. The fact that the hybrid strain has coped with these 500 years, should vouchsafe for the benefits of the rectification. So let us not INTERPRET HISTORY in a cussed way, but allow the grafted strain to continue and provide more nutrients to the older strain of the original banyan.

The Purists would have none of it.
The matter is now escalated and it has been resolved that the whole country should participate in determining whether to eliminate the Grafted strain or to allow more nutrition to the older strain without stymieing the grafted strain.
The next conclave has been fixed for May, 2019.
God bless India.

Truthfulness is above Fearlessness!

Truth is beyond Fearlessness, it is Truthfulness. Voltaire was not one to merely set up an idol and leave it to your choice to follow, Voltaire destroyed the existing idols by setting his idol above the preexisting idols. He not only set up Sir. Isaac Newton but destroyed the conquerors by setting up Newton above the Caesar, Alexander, Tamerlane, or Cromwell. How Cromwell made it to that list should not be read ejudsem generis, but as referring to a contemporary, hence to each and everyone.

Not long ago,” said Voltaire, “a distinguished company were discussing the trite and frivolous question” (alas, this is an untimely quotation!), “who was the greatest man Caesar, Alexander, Tamerlane, or Cromwell? Someone an-swered that without doubt it was Isaac Newton. And right-ly: for it is to him who masters our minds by the force of truth, and not to those who enslave them by violence, that we owe our reverence.”

Law & Convention!

In India everyone believes he/she knows the law.
That there are broadly statutory laws and judicially pronounced laws, are known to the better informed.
That unless the Supreme Court had authoritatively pronounced on an issue, the High Court decision on the issue ought to prevail in that state is known to the legally minded.
That if a decision could be distinguished on certain grounds, the precedents set by the SCI and the HCs could be challenged is known to the lawyers.
If a matter has not yet been decided authoritatively by any court in India then such issues are classified as RES INTEGRA and beg for judicial determination!
Beyond all these is something called CONVENTION, which by common consent over a period of time has come to be accepted as the Law.
In Administrative Law there is a judgement delivered by Lord Greene, in the late forties of the last century, which enunciated certain principles which goes by the name WEDNESBURY PRINCIPLES.

There are three limbs to those principles relating to DISCRETION in administrative law. They are
0. Whether in the decision making process any irrelevant material has been taken into consideration?
0. Whether in the decision making process any relevant material which ought to have been taken into consideration has been left out?
0. Whether the decision is so unreasonable that the decision is UNREASONABLE.
I have been amused at the arguments put forward both in the TV news and sometimes even in the Supreme Court, that I wonder if we as a nation should spend so much time on ‘distinguishing facts’ to overturn the principles enunciated in precedents of force.
Some of the arguments which are laughable are
0. Whether the Anti Defection Law as mentioned in the Tenth Schedule would come into force only after an elected representative had taken oath 😂🤣
0. Which law provides for a person to start executing the office of the Chief Minister, immediately after swearing in, when he doesn’t have the support of 50% of the house. It is a constitutional necessity to be sworn in as a CM before proving his majority, but to start exercising its functions even before the floor test, especially when apparently the numbers are not there, and take administrative decisions is a ludicrous act.
0. Under which law of the land does it say that the largest single party or pre-poll alliance should be called to form a govt. overlooking the reasonable numbers of the post poll formation from the other side?
0. As a convention we have accepted the Goan, Manipuri and Meghalaya models, so it appeared as a convention to me that post poll alliance is also acceptable for consideration by the Governor.
0. Who told that when elections are called for, upon end of the previous term, if the party which was in ruling received fewer seats it has been VOTED OUT? It simply means the same party has not been VOTED TO POWER. Period. This cannot form the grounds for a less than majority party to stake claim that the previous ruling party had been ‘voted out’. Every party is voted to power for a period of five years and thereafter they have to seek a fresh mandate. After four years of Presidentship when a George Bush senior recontested, he was not voted out, he was not voted in for the second term. That’s it. To build grounds for claiming a better right on those grounds appear to attack ‘reasonableness’.

This hogwash of ‘dance of democracy’ of unreasonableness and irrelevant consideration and non consideration of relevant factors have to be stopped in the altar of Conventions.
It would be laudable if the Hon’ble Supreme Court of India came up with its own WEDNESBURY Principles and shorten and sanctify the procedures for determination of whom to call, by the Governors of the various states of India.

Lying Vanities!

A phrase which had set my mind to explore the meaning is ‘LYING VANITIES’.
The clearest mention of this phrase occurs in Jonah’s prayer after he had been thrown out from the ship to Tarshish; swallowed by a fish; stayed inside the belly of the fish; and finally spewed out by the fish.
Does this phrase have a specific meaning? I believe it has.
I believe that one of the commandments of God in the old testament is found at Leviticus 19:
26 Ye shall not eat any thing with the blood: neither shall ye use enchantment, nor observe times.

‘Observing Times’ is with reference to people studying patterns of human existence falling under the influence of the movement of heavenly bodies.
Firstly, one has to have sufficient knowledge of the heavenly bodies; secondly, the movements and the inter se positions of these heavenly bodies will have to be measured accurately. Upon measurement of Time & Space regarding these heavenly bodies, one has to speculate on the effects of these heavenly bodies on human beings and human affairs. Those predictions would be knowledge based.
Then there are those who are possessed by spirits, they also predict human affairs, sometimes with accuracy. The Bible says that those predictions are not prophecies, they are predictions – a mere sporadic foretelling of an event to come in the future, which mostly is within the realm of probabilities.
If one resorts to these forces, (I am not saying that these forces and these predictions are false), they may come to pass, but as human beings when we repose our Faith on such predictions and on the purveyors of such predictions, what we mentally succumb to is
1. We believe that certain things are bound to happen and they would happen anyway.
2. We believe that neither our will nor our actions would change the occurrence of these predictions
3. Through subscription to these beliefs, we repose faith on those people who indulge in those predictions, thereby undermine the power of the Almighty to alter the impossible.
At Jonah chapter 2:8 it is written:
They that observe lying vanities forsake their own mercy.

This leads us to the question as to whether we need MERCY at all and if so to what purpose?
MERCY is a jurisdiction which chronologically falls after judgement of conviction. Mercy could be setting aside of the sentence, proroguing the sentence, commutation of sentence, or remission of the sentence.
So why do humans need Mercy?
Remorse is the feeling that envelops a mind for having done something wrong. This feeling doesn’t go away when it involves an issue that is proscribed by spiritual laws and stays as a millstone round his neck. It could be an event which had happened in his days of ignorance, nevertheless, it hangs. To remove that one needs contrition and REPENTANCE.

Mercy shown without Repentance is Grace. If the execution of the sentence after the conviction had been instantaneous, there would have been no Mercy. But Christianity presupposes that the sinner is intimated of his sins and is allowed time for repentance. But till the repentance takes place, every sinner is in a period of Grace, having no idea of his sins, persisting in those sins, which he falsely believes as right. Therefore, everyone is in a period of Grace.
Evangelist Paul, when he was still Saul and ‘breathing out threatenings and slaughter’ against Christians, may call his actions as zealous acts, but was the recipient of Grace. But when he was intimated of his behaviour of ‘kicking against pricks’, he was directed to go to stay in Damascus and for three days what he did and how God told him to wait for Ananias, was the Repentance phase. Thereafter Saul turned a new leaf and preached Christianity. He obtained Grace as an unpunished sinner and once convicted of his sins, he was pardoned/sentence commuted, we cannot know which, it was between Saul and God.
Grace is the period spent as an unpunished sinner, worthy of death yet spared in time.
This Mercy would not be available for a person who observes ‘lying vanities’. The reason being that if there is no repentance there cannot be any Mercy. Cain, when cursed by God, doesn’t repent, yet he asks for commutation of the curse. Cain didn’t forsake Mercy, as he was not observing lying vanities‼️

One should read the Old Testament Saul, the King at I Samuel Ch: 28

When Saul, the King of Israel, didn’t get any answer from God, he consulted a woman who could bring up the dead. After that incident, he couldn’t ask God for His mercy. The reason was Saul couldn’t repent or seek God’s mercy.

Judas, after his betrayal of Jesus, couldn’t obtain the Mercy, as he had used Jesus as a mere miracle performing diviner‼️ What Judas did was observing lying vanities and forsook Mercy.

The typical example would be DR.FAUSTUS. Please commiserate with me for these words of Faustus:

“FAUSTUS: But Faustus’ offence can ne’er be pardoned: the serpent that tempted Eve may be saved, but not Faustus.
O gentlemen,
hear me with patience, and tremble not at my speeches! Though my heart pant and quiver to remember that I have been a student here these thirty years, O, would I had never seen Wittenberg,never read book! and what wonders I have done, all Germany can
witness, yea, all the world; for which Faustus hath lost both
Germany and the world, yea, heaven itself, heaven, the seat of God, the throne of the blessed, the kingdom of joy; and must remain in hell for ever, hell. O, hell, for ever! Sweet friends,
what shall become of Faustus, being in hell for ever?”

(Excerpt From
The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus
Christopher Marlowe
https://itunes.apple.com/in/book/the-tragical-history-of-doctor-faustus)

Dr. Faustus through observance of lying vanities couldn’t seek Mercy nor the preceding Repentance‼️

Please read Psalms 31 verse
6: I have hated them that regard lying vanities: but I trust in the LORD.

In the following passage from
Ezekiel 13:23, it is not a coincidence that vanity and divination are juxtaposed!

Therefore ye shall see no more vanity, nor divine divinations: for I will deliver my people out of your hand: and ye shall know that I am the LORD.

In a gist, observing Times depletes a man of his will to stand up for something and becomes a stumbling block in seeking mercy or repenting💐💐💐

Moses’ commandments Vs. God’s commandments.

This portion in chapter 7 of the Gospel of John has been a great challenge to my understanding.

22 Moses therefore gave unto you circumcision; (not because it is of Moses, but of the fathers;) and ye on the sabbath day circumcise a man.
23 If a man on the sabbath day receive circumcision, that the law of Moses should not be broken; are ye angry at me, because I have made a man every whit whole on the sabbath day?

There is a commingling of the Ten Commandments and the other Rules given by Moses. Jesus tells those Jews who tried to kill Him contextually thus in the same chapter:

19 Did not Moses give you the law, and yet none of you keepeth the law? Why go ye about to kill me?

It appears that Jesus was trying to dissuade the Jewish people who were trying to kill Him, that they ought not to kill, as killing would be breaking of a commandment of God.
But a few verses later he brings in the conflict arising between CIRCUMCISION and SABBATH.

My understanding is that Circumcision started with Abraham and definitely doesn’t find a part in the Ten Commandments; whereas keeping the Sabbath holy is a commandment of God.
Jesus brings in the conflict, between circumcision and the Sabbath, by saying that if the eighth day after the birth of a male child were to fall on a Sabbath day, you Jews circumcise the male child even on Sabbath, as you believe that the TRADITION of yore should not be broken. But by circumcising the child on the Sabbath, you are violating one of the Ten Commandments. Thereafter, Jesus Justifies circumcision on Sabbath by stating that if for the benefit of the child circumcision is carried out on the eighth day, only through an infringement of breaking the Sabbath, then DOING GOOD, like HEALING (making a person whole) on the Sabbath would not tantamount to breaking the Sabbath!
The underlying principle which Jesus said was: God is good and if any deed is done infringing a general law, such Good deed should not be seen as a deed having violated the general law.
Brilliant.
How he got them!
It was not the Circumcision that Jesus was questioning but the tradition of circumcising only on the eighth day, come what may, though the eighth day fell on a Sabbath, which Jesus drew as a parallel to justify good deeds, like healing and making people whole.
Another way of looking at theses passages is that a General Law need not be strictly applied to every PARTICULAR situation. A child would have only one eighth day after his birth and if it were to fall on a Sabbath, why break the tradition? After all that work of circumcising was not the choice of the parents, assuming that the day of birth of a child would be beyond the choice of a parent. Therefore, in the PARTICULAR case of male children whose eighth day fell on Sabbath, the act of circumcising would not offend the General law of the Sabbath, but would act as an EXCEPTION to the observances of the Sabbath. Likewise, if Jesus were to heal on the Sabbath, such healing would also fall within the exception and would not attract the penalties for non observance of the Sabbath.

Eve & the Serpent.

The Serpent entered Eve’s mind much before the forbidden fruit entered her throat.
One’s mind is the last bastion to repel an enticingly evil idea. Once entertained, rationalisation takes over and sanctifies the evil. That’s the penultimate stage.
Finally, once entertained, rationalised and sanctified, very rarely a person escapes DOING the evil deed.
Once Done, all the perfumes of Arabia wouldn’t sweeten the little hand🦆

Dilemma‼️

When Hope is severely challenged by the existing perception of Reality, awaiting the Biblical Grace may involve an undefinable period of Time!
Secondly, the Pauline predestination leaves one in further doubt as to whether one is surely predestined to receive the Grace‼️
Teetering between these uncertainties, the only way is to redouble one’s efforts and plunge into Life with all gusto and drown one’s Despair and Doubts in the frenzy of toil. God willing, if the tide were to turn, instead of becoming an exemplar of an amorphous Grace, one may become a cherry picked example for Effort based escape from Despair & Doubt‼️‼️

Giotto & His Circle!

In the early eighties, my Professor Eugene D’Vaz in one of his lectures made a passing reference on Giotto and contextually said that a Pope was able to identify the drawer of the circle among many other competing paintings presented to the then Pope vying for his attention and the concomitant patronage.

In the first year of graduation it wasn’t easy to ask for the sources to one’s Professor, neither did I have the nerve to ask.

I legged it to the library and asked the librarian if there was any book on Giotto, he told me to check the decimal dewey system and find out for myself.

Well I couldn’t make out what decimal- dewey was. Any way I walked up to the section on Art & Architecture and browsed a few volumes and got carried away by a tome titled 100 GREAT PAINTINGS. After perusing a few plates, I was ashamed that someone might watch me ogling intently at those nudes, with that juvenile guilt writ all over my face, I quickly closed the book and left it at the table nearby, as I had forgotten the exact place from where I had taken the tome!

Decades passed by with no thought of the Circle and Giotto, even though I had seen some of the photographs of his paintings.

Fortunately, as I was going through Vasari’s LIVES OF THE ARTISTS, Giotto’s life was the first and what I found there resuscitated the doubt I had 3 decades back and gave me a graphic detail of how the Pope identified Giotto’ circle!

The screen shots are extracted and placed below, for anyone who cares to read!

A great Professor like Eugene D’Vaz never leaves you, he stays and triggers thoughts even after years of preoccupation of “preparing to Live”‼️

Thankfulness‼️

When one’s time for Thankfulness has arrived, he would either receive a benefit for which he would become thankful; or he would discover a preexisting reason to be thankful for‼️

Resurrection

The difference between a person who affirms the Resurrection of Christ, affirms it based on his Belief; whereas, the man who denies the resurrection of Christ, at best could only rely on common sense and assert that Jesus could not have self-resurrected!
Through denial, he closes down his options for belief in such a possibility, on common sense grounds.
But there arises a time in everyone’s life to go against COMMON SENSE, as common sense itself is built on the five senses and the tools which reveal more to the five senses, and common sense fails when those senses are assaulted by ‘possibilities’!
It is when he realises the limitation of his senses that he is driven to belief on EPIPHANIES. Once a person’s mind is prepared for belief on ‘possibilities’ , it is merely a question of ‘which belief system’? Thereafter his proclivities, his earlier knowledge, and his attendant circumstances come into play.
The mind and soul get their relief through BELIEF and not through questioning every Belief, the mind and soul cling on to some belief and the process of ASSERTION starts and ends up in an AFFIRMATION! It is that affirmation which becomes a part of the self.
I am amazed at those who do not know the names of their great-grandfathers, accusing others of conversion.
It is steeped in a belief that they must have been of a particular ‘belief system’ that a geographical territory is supposed to have had!
Such beliefs are sanctified, whereas, when a person has consciously subscribed to a new religious belief, he is assailed as having given in to those ‘perks’. It is risible that those accusers’ Beliefs are in no way superior, in fact they are inferior as there is more traditional pressure in their acceptance of the beliefs of their forebears, than an informed rational choice, in their following a faith of their fathers!
Liberty in such matters is highly recommended, as no one knows for sure as to what system exists after death – whether like a Judeo-Christian-Islamic one time judgement for all deeds done while in the earth; or enter the cycle of rebirth till one attains the Ultimate; or extinguishing of all memory in time.
No one knows, why do we strive for proving superiority of one assertion over the other?
Just like a person is judged by the law to which he subscribes, each person is to be judged by the accepted standard Religious Beliefs to which he subscribes.
Social laws should be separated from the Religious laws, unless through secular means we arrive at a conclusion that certain religious beliefs are inseparable even in secular matters.

Time – the great Liberator!

When the rusted shackles fall off your wrists, Fool don’t believe that you overcame the shackles, you just outlasted those shackles. And…. everyone resurfaces!‼️

Clarity

Just as clarity improves during the endgame of chess because of fewer pieces on the board, in Life as one ages, with fewer resources, clarity dawns and gives everyone the vanity of perspicacity!

Conjugal Rape‼️

If the Hon’ble High Courts were to criminalise acts, which are exempted under the existing criminal laws of the land, based on Fundamental Rights against Discrimination, would that be fair?
When a husband misapplies his conjugal rights without the consent of his own wife, would that tantamount to Rape? The Inshorts message says, YES.
The argument which appears to have been applied to arrive at the above judgement doesn’t seem to be sound to me as the ‘right against discrimination’ is a guarantee granted by the Constitution against exploitation and deprivation without an intelligible differential.
In the case of a Rape, even if there is no consent, or any of those ingredients necessary to constitute Rape, the preexisting CONJUGAL RIGHT, excludes a man from being treated as a Rapist.
I guess, for want of any other section to penalise the husband, to invoke the charges of Rape against the husband seems inappropriate.

Paradigm Shift!

Eureka!
The Hon’ble Supreme Court has found a way to untie the Gordian knot, knotted by all the Hon’ble High courts of the country by granting STAYS in civil and criminal trials, mostly on the only ground that somebody had approached the respective High court.
The path breaking judgement has cut through the cackles and come to the horses of the issue. Which part of Justice would be served if a high court were to grant a stay merely because someone has pled his cause and escalated his issue by approaching a High court, and the Justice in his magnanimity has granted stay for complying with the Audi alteram partem Rule? Unfortunately the other side lacks prosecution and never takes the initiative to submit its reply and the person who obtained the Stay is ‘Happy’ !
The whole story became an endless saga waiting for someone to comply with the Principles of Natural Justice.
Finally the brilliance of the Supreme Court in
Criminal Appeal Nos. 1375-1376 of 2013. D/d. 28.3.2018 in
Asian Resurfacing of Road Agency Pvt. Ltd. & Anr. – Appellants
Versus
Central Bureau of Investigation decided by the bench consisting of
Adarsh Kumar Goel, Navin Sinha and R.F. Nariman, JJ.
has settled the issue FOR GOOD.
0. No stay valid for more than six months
0. All extensions beyond 6 months should be backed by a Speaking Order.
0. All stays would lapse beyond 6 months if not reviewed under those parameters!
The impact of this decision, I feel, should go a long way in de-clogging our judiciary. Secondly, the Justices would be more inclined to “write” speaking orders and therefore there would be clear grounds of appeal, not merely based on the Principles of Natural Justice and the broad doctrines of justice!
Brilliant💐💐💐💐💐💐💐💐💐💐💐💐💐💐💐💐

Peruvudaiyarkoil (The Big Temple at Thanjavur)

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I along with my two friends visited the PERIYA KOIL (BIG TEMPLE) at Thanjavur, last Saturday. I was amazed at the magnificence of the temple and even more amazed that Raja Raja Sozhan the Great (henceforth I declare him ‘GREAT’) did complete the temple in a span of 6-7 years; did pay for the labour employed towards building the temple; had engraved in old Thamizh, his land administration, revenue collection and the like.

The entrance of the temple is smaller compared to the temple spire and edifice. On top of the temple spire sits the granite dome of 80 tonnes of carved granite. The temple is stated to have been completed in 1010- a full thousand years back. The millennium celebrations have been completed and it was told that a thousand bharatanatyam dancers participated in the inner court meant for such dance performances.

The nandi- overlooking the temple entrance with…

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The Righteous!

Because the entitlement of rising after a fall is assigned to the righteous, doesn’t mean that a person who hadn’t fallen can’t be Righteous!

Agri Income Tax?

Taxing Agricultural Income!

Can Agricultural Income be taxed in India?
Sure, by common consent, we gave ourselves a Constitution which provides for taxation of agricultural income, but who is authorised to make legislation on taxation of agri incomes? Under entry 46 of List II of the Constitution the States are EXCLUSIVELY EMPOWERED TO LEVY TAX ON AGRI INCOME.
Does the law prohibit levy of tax on agri income anyone else?
Yes, under entry no. 82 of the List I of the 7th Schedule, the Union is PROHIBITED FROM LEVYING INCOME TAX ON AGRICULTURAL INCOME.
So where is the confusion?
As the Constitution stands, there is NO LEGISLATIVE COMPETENCE FOR THE UNION TO LEVY INCONE TAX ON AGRI INCOME. When there cannot be a law enacted for taxation by the Union, why the itch to tax agri income as a Union Taxable Income ?
It has been reported that agri incomes totalling @ inr 3000 crore escapes taxation under income tax based on personal/ corporate holdings generating income from agriculture!
Who gave the Union authorities to make an estimate regarding income arising out of agriculture and account it as ‘escaping’ taxation? Especially when the income is mandated under the constitution to be taxable by the States!
I know of at least one state which has enacted a law on this subject and that is the Kerala State in 1991.
Agri incomes in Kerala are taxed and from a cursory reading of the Act, it only taxes incomes from holdings over 5 hectares of land and the income arising there from are taxable.
I also remember that there was a case decided by the Chief Justice of the Kerala High court in 2004, along with a puisne judge Sh. Sankaran, wherein the issue was whether income arising out of a building, which was in the vicinity of the agri area and used for storage arising out of non clearing of the produce by the buyer of the produce, and the rent/ charges earned by the company was to be taxed, as Agri income or not.
The CJ of Kerala concluded that based on the 1991 State Act, the income was Agricultural and hence taxable under that statute.
Period!
There is at least one state which has enacted a statute to tax Agricultural income, so it is not an unoccupied field either. So why COVET A STATE SUBJECT?

Robbing Peter to pay Paul has been the mantra for all financial policies . National law making is getting covetous of the potential gains arising from taxing some states, especially those states which earn out of cash rich cash crops and “use” it for “national development”!
The Constitution has given enormous powers under List I of the Constitution for the Union to develop/ protect the Nation, whereas agriculture which is terrain, climate, and worker based is best left in the hands of the state politicians who could within a short period react to situations emerging or even make distinctions based on the quality of land and climatic conditions, for example certain produce from certain taluks are taxed at a higher rate than similar produce from certain other taluks, and give concessions based on their disabilities. Sitting far away from the terrain, how would it be proper or pertinent to make laws and change rules compatible with the exigencies of the climatic conditions prevalent in those areas. The time lag to take corrective measures from a far off place would be time consuming.

Another important factor is that the ruled should believe that they are being ruled by a Ruler sensitive to their needs. That makes it mandatory to have a local person’s face to the ideology! Whatever that may be😊

Default Democracy!

Default Democracy!

In our Democracy an Assertion is worth more than a thousand Abstentions, unfortunately it doesn’t factor the Negativity attracted against that one Assertion. Which means the negativity of those thousand votes go unheeded in the computation of the victor’s tally. Consequently leaders who are unacceptable to a sizeable chunk capture power and make policies compatible and convenient to their votaries! This type of default option has led Indian Democracy up the garden path.
In an election there are votes which are obtained because the voter ASSERTS his preference, but some voters prefer a candidate merely to avoid another contestant- this is no choice though expressed by a vote, it is the negative vote which could not be cast, as there is no provision for that. The only option available is to invalidate his own vote by choosing NOTA.
NOTA is merely an exercise of franchise with no quantitative difference to the counting.

Instead, if an option is given to the electorate to cast a VETO against a candidate and if one VETO cancels out one ASSERTIVE VOTE for that candidate, though that candidate may be popular yet if he is unacceptable to a sizeable chunk, it is possible that a more ACCEPTABLE candidate with fewer Veto votes may EMERGE, who ultimately may have more nett assertive votes with less negativity .
This would pave the way for getting new leaders and the parties wouldn’t be able to control the electorate through money and paid media!
Let me exemplify this, supposing out of 100 votes, 30 supported X and cast Assertive Votes in favour of X, but 20 VETOS are against X, then the nett votes he received would be 10. This would leave the balance 50 votes meaningful, as even a person with 11 ASSERTIVE VOTES and no Vetos, would trump X, though X had received more number of votes.
I suppose we should empower people to express their single transferable vote either as an assertion for a candidate or to negative a candidate.
This method would ensure that Disguised Frankensteins do not escape the notice of the discerning, as their numbers are few but virtuous.
The positive part of this NEGATING CHOICE would ensure that that Negating Choice would cancel out a vote of Assertion.
Only one vote ought to be given and the option should be with the voter to either make it an ASSERTIVE VOTE or a NEGATING VOTE. The final tally should be that the person with the maximum votes of Assertion is chosen.
This method would make the voters more than conquerors, as collectively if people decide to keep someone out, it would be easier yet that would be at the cost of an Assertive vote for the voter as he has to use his vote as a VETO and not as a vote.
Maybe with this system, we may be able to keep some of those “popular” leaders out because of the attrition of a sizeable electorate sacrificing their votes for a VETO.
The NOTA is a meaningless exercise, as it neither Asserts nor Vetos any of the candidates in fray. It is a palliative for the voter to believe that he voted and that nobody else had exercised his franchise with no quantitative difference. It is a clever ploy by those well entrenched to assuage the weak conscience of the indifferent voter!
What say you, TRUMP?

https://movid.wordpress.com/2012/02/08/why-negative-prayers-are-downright-fatal/

JOSEPH’S story!!

‼️

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Did Joseph tell Jacob about his brothers’ deed of having sold him for a price to the Ishmaelites after him having become the minister in Egypt? I think so. He reported all matters to his father and to destroy his brothers’ credibility he’d have done that further he couldn’t have concocted a better story than telling the truth as to how he ended up in Egypt. Truth stated to his advantage! Or had he learnt the lesson, not to carry old and damaging tales to others, with all those terrible experiences? Maybe. But he in all probability to wangle the birthright he might have stated the fact. But what was the fact? He wrote the history in Egypt! God gives the good man the opportunity to give final touches to history.

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Landon’s bakery!

One of the new baking company chains, which has caught the fancy of the Madrasis is OLD MADRAS BAKING COMPANY. There is an outlet in the Kilpauk area of Madras(presently Chennai) on Landon’s Road and my wife loves the Tuna Salad served in the outlet. It is reasonably priced at ₹ 250 @ 4.1 $. Though I share the salad, which is exceptionally good, it is more for the Jazz, mostly traditional, which sets the background to the tuna and the green tea, which captures my attention.
With enormous storage in our iPhones with iTunes retailing songs on a reasonable price of ₹ 12-20 apiece, one grows used to those old downloads, which have lost their novelty, though high in sentimental value. The enormous space helps retain those old sentimental tunes for those days when out of the blue, those tunes waft in our memory unsought. So where does one add to the repertoire?
The calmest place is THE OLD MADRAS BAKING COMPANY with its Jazz playing, while one lets one’s spouse enjoy the tuna salad.
If the tune doesn’t catch my fancy, I just let go; if it does I turn on the app called SHAZAM, with which my boys fooled me for quite a while identifying western classical tunes in a jiffy. Discover the jazz tune and just download the tune for future hearing.
So when I told my friends that I’m in Landon Bakery, they presume I am in a bakery in London – some benefit out of some jazzy aspirations.

Why not Boaz?

That was my reply to a question to me, by my friend, thus: what do you think of the Book of Ruth?

What do you mean?

I said: Why didn’t the author name it Boaz, if he didn’t, how did the compiler miss renaming it as Boaz?

He said: Why so?

It is not the struggles of misfortune which should be glorified, but the character shown when a person has the power and resources. Boaz had it in a platter, that night when Ruth uncovered the sheet of a drunken half sleepy Boaz, to have had a fling and paid off the next morning. But Boaz was of sterner stuff- despite his tipsiness Boaz is not only RESTRAINED but also SENSIBLE to the extent of following the rules of succession! That was Character, the next day he followed it through, which Naomi had predicted to Ruth : That man wouldn’t rest!

That makes him a MANLY CHARACTER.

My friend was unconvinced, look at it this way bro: a woman loses three men in her life and is stuck with two young daughters in law, with no security of not only shelter but the next meal. Only Jews had gone through such situations in their history and had yet survived, not through the masculine force, but through the feminine charms and guile! So naturally the Books of Esther and Ruth are examples of triumph of the spirit of the feminine when the masculinity of their men had been subjugated by their enemies. Men are not allowed the luxury of IDLENESS. First they are told to earn their bread, then their family’s and finally the society’s! Men are kept for breeding more worker bees and the rest are castrated into oxen to the plough. It is at this moment that the Feminine forces emerge to defend its offsprings and these books are examples of that Spirit.

I told him: It is always a perspective of identification, you glorify the struggles and I exalt Manly Character.

My friend wanted to end that topic on “diverse perception”, he said: whenever I refer to that book I shall call it Boaz, for you.

I felt a small battle of the sexes had gone in favour of Man.

What an illusion!

Integrity

I love chess, for the integrity of each piece.
No doubt there is an indelible hierarchy and the King is to be protected at all costs even by voluntarily inter posing oneself; vacating a square jeopardising one’s own survival on board, for the king before he is ineluctably jammed; or even sacrificing oneself in the interest of structural advantage. Despite all these burdens of a hierarchy, never ever can one pawn or piece cut its own colour however hindering that pawn or piece be, or even to facilitate a win.
That is integrity!

Confidence in Action!

The bird that perches on a branch without a doubt of falling has the subconscious succour of its wings; but the monkey that clutches a branch and swings to catch another leaving the first branch, has the knowledge of the strength of the prospective branch and confidence in its reach and grasp. The underlying difficulties have to be overcome with other capabilities, no point in analysing the difficulty and getting stuck. Resource is what we use of what we have/get and the way we use it to move ahead. Imperfect steps sustained, leads to strides, but seeking for perfection before taking the first step, preserves our fear of imperfections, breeds judgementalism and delays our progress.
The wings for a bird, but strength of the knowledge of the prospective branch is the monkey’s wing to confidence.
Move and keep moving ahead. Make use of everything on the way. That Liberty is God given and only we can get stuck thru diagnosis of the problem.
Think, dream of what you want to become or what you want to achieve and keep Doing.

Zeus & his thunderbolt!

With people becoming secure in their own homes, Zeus still held sway on the memory of the fear of the thunderbolt.
But with Benjamin Franklin’s invention of the lightning conductor, even the residual power of Zeus vanished.
Zeus is ossified for poetic metaphors and secured in literary museum.
What a fall for a God who depended on Destructive Power.
The day mankind discovers a way to harness the power of lightning, Zeus would be restored in the Pantheon!
Destructive capability is NOT POWER, it is merely a capability that breeds Compliance out of Fear and vanishes once its firepower is earthed safely!

Gamaliel & Paul!

I’d like to juxtapose two sets of verses from the New Testament of the Bible to delineate the character of a teacher and his pupil:
Acts Chapter 5 poignantly portrays Gamaliel based on a situation where Peter and other Christians preached Jesus, thus:
34 Then stood there up one in the council, a Pharisee, named Gamaliel, a doctor of the law, had in reputation among all the people, and commanded to put the apostles forth a little space;35 And said unto them, Ye men of Israel, take heed to yourselves what ye intend to do as touching these men.36 For before these days rose up Theudas, boasting himself to be somebody; to whom a number of men, about four hundred, joined themselves: who was slain; and all, as many as obeyed him, were scattered, and brought to nought.37 After this man rose up Judas of Galilee in the days of the taxing, and drew away much people after him: he also perished; and all, even as many as obeyed him, were dispersed.38 And now I say unto you, Refrain from these men, and let them alone: for if this counsel or this work be of men, it will come to nought:39 But if it be of God, ye cannot overthrow it; lest haply ye be found even to fight against God.
At Acts 26 Paul testifies about himself thus:
9 I verily thought with myself, that I ought to do many things contrary to the name of Jesus of Nazareth.10 Which thing I also did in Jerusalem: and many of the saints did I shut up in prison, having received authority from the chief priests; and when they were put to death, I gave my voice against them.11 And I punished them oft in every synagogue, and compelled them to blaspheme; and being exceedingly mad against them, I persecuted them even unto strange cities.
So this is what Paul did, by his own admission. He persecuted the Christian believers and even went to the extent of getting them death sentence. Paul says ” he compelled them to blaspheme”!
So why did Paul do these things?
He says at Philippians 3:6 thus:
Concerning zeal, persecuting the church; touching the righteousness which is in the law, blameless.
At Acts 22:3, Dr. Luke says that Paul spoke thus:
3 I am verily a man which am a Jew, born in Tarsus, a city in Cilicia, yet brought up in this city at the feet of Gamaliel, and taught according to the perfect manner of the law of the fathers, and was zealous toward God, as ye all are this day.
So Paul was brought up as a student of the same Gamaliel referred to above. Gamaliel cites two examples and arrives at the conclusion that both Theudas and Judas of Galilee had declared themselves to have been more than mere mortals, yet their end showed that they were mere mortals who had their time in the sun for a while and faded into oblivion. But at the same time Gamaliel cautions the Jews that, if what the Apostles said about Jesus were to be true, why take the unwarranted risk of opposing God?
Despite Paul having been schooled by Gamaliel, while Paul was still Saul, he did not imbibe the moderate attitude of Gamaliel.
The difference between Gamaliel was this: while Gamaliel did NOT want to be wrong; Saul believed that his belief was True and hence not only asserted his beliefs but defied anyone who went against his Pharisaical upbringing.
Saul of Tarsus wanted to find the Truth and took those beliefs to the extremes!
I believe Gamaliel was able to impart knowledge but NOT THE WISDOM, which made Saul of Tarsus do the things which he did against the Believers in Christ.
Saul had a gory past, which along with his oft repeated accomplishments as a human being, stickler to the Mosaic law, being a Roman citizen and thus entitled to certain privileges, is interspersed. Naturally he has to glorify the Grace more than Jacobean ‘Works’, along with Peter, whose imperfections are well documented.
In Christianity there is an inherent conflict between WORKS and GRACE and if one examines the putative lives of the votaries of each, the past life of each of the votaries has a significant bearing.
Had Gamaliel been converted to Christianity, as I presume there is nothing contrary to that assumption of mine from the Bible, I believe that Gamaliel would have rooted for the WORKS a trifle more than GRACE. But why Gamaliel was not the recipient of such an epiphany as Paul on his way to Damascus, depends on how virulently one takes an ideological position. In Gamaliel’s life there was Liberty, but Saul of Tarsus not only bound himself with the Mosaic law but also virulently imposed it on others and worse still inflicted punishment on those who digressed. This virulence called for course correction and the epiphany happened. Moderation is the foundation of Liberty, methinks⚖️

Gamaliel & Paul!

“Whoever studies himself arrests his own development. A caterpillar who seeks to know himself would never…”

PHILOSOPHY

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The following is the analysis of Philosophy and the evolution thereof according to Nietzsche:-

In every philosophical school, three thinkers succeed one another in the following way: the first produces out of himself the sap and seed, the second draws it out into threads and spins a synthetic web, the third waits in this web for the sacrificial victims that are caught in it- and tries to live off philosophy.

Nothing can be truer than this epigrammatic statement. Let us take the example of the trio Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. Socrates had to consume hemlock before his Philosophy sprouted in the youth of Athens. Plato drew the thread and spun the synthetic web of UTOPIA and Aristotle with his ETHICS waited with hope for the sacrificial victims.

Let us come to Christianity, where Jesus produced out of himself the sap and seed, then Peter spun the web…

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Samson & Agamemnon!

Both valorous and courageous but, to the guile of women, fell victim. Samson was felled for Power for the Philistines; & Agamemnon for the stolen pleasures of his unchaste wife Clytemnestra.
Tragedy is that both Delilah and Clytemnestra had come into some other male influence in the absence of Samson and Agamemnon. The Philistine Lords were able to undermine Samson in the eyes of Delilah. She being a Philistine thought too well of the cunning Philistine Lords and helped them denude Samson of his power- a power unmatched by any man, mentioned in the Bible. Delilah had become like a steel which has lost its magnetic power once the wires of induction around it had been removed. Her overestimation of the power of the Lords and her kinship with them Led to that loss of respect towards Samson. Samson lacked the guile to measure the unfathomable depths of a woman’s guile. Like a moth drawn to the flame to its own decimation, Samson, barters the fact of where his strength lay without realising that it wasn’t a question of Delilah’s curiosity but intelligence gathering.
In the case of Agamemnon, it is worse. His wife had developed intimacy with Aegisthus and had been emboldened by that untrammelled intimacy in the absence of Agamemnon, to kill the victoriously returning Agamemnon, in collusion with Aegisthus. Clytemnestra had lost all her moorings of her matrimonial devotion during the long absence of her Lord
Homer in Book xi of the ODYSSEY, makes a parade of the dead souls in the HADES and the Protagonist Ulysses (Odysseus, in the Epic) is advised thus by Agamemnon :
“Then from a wretched friend this wisdom learn,
E’en to thy queen disguised, unknown, return;
For since of womankind so few are just,
Think all are false, nor e’en the faithful trust.”
Probably these words of advice made Ulysses take all the precautions in the matter of Penelope. The trouble in life is that, in most cases, till one dies, one doesn’t know whether one had a Penelope or a Clytemnestra for his wife. Homer’s Epic had survived the onslaught of Time, not for nothing.
Let us get in Shakespeare, who brilliantly brings out the dilemma of Othello. Desdemona seems innocent but the proof of the handkerchief in his hands challenges Othello’a belief in Desdemona’s innocence. In real time, sexual jealousy and an implacable sense of betrayal crowds his mind and elbows out the benefit of doubt due to Desdemona.
Alternatively look at Hamlet’s plight, he is dithering between the factuality of the intimations of his father’s ghost and his inability to ascribe and believe that Claudius was his father’s murderer. Gertrude’s faćade intervenes! His indecision peters to inactivity and finally does Hamlet in.
Look at the formula of Homer:
“Think all are false, nor e’en the faithful trust, even though a few are just”
A formula he provides to Ulysses, as he would also have to return to his matrimonial home after a long absence!
What is the prescription?
Mentally think that the ALL women are false – make no exception merely because she is yours! Therefore trust NOT even though they might be faithful. The woman being faithful is not in your hands, that being so, why TRUST any woman at all?
Henry VIII, was an example who excelled in it. He went a step further, he decimated each of those whom he perceived to have digressed from his perception of faithfulness! If Samson had intelligence on the Philistine Lords having communed with Delilah in his absence, would he have spared Delilah? Nay!
That’s what exactly happened in the case of Catherine of Aragon with Henry VIII.
Look at what the wise Ulysses does? He enters as a suitor in his own house and gauges Penelope’s inclination much before he wins her. Ulysses gives the benefit of doubt to that general presumption of faithlessness of women, as recommended by Agamemnon, who had become the victim of Clytemnestra’s liaison with Aegisthus. That patience coupled with fact finding nature made him a Hero. Let us assume what would have happened if Ulysses had found his wife Clytemnestraish? Would he have decimated her like Henry VIII? Nay! I believe Ulysses would have engaged the man to an honourable duel defeated the man, may be killed him, and would have reclaimed Penelope. Whether he would have had the marital bliss thereafter? That could be another story to tell. Would a Clytemnestraish Penelope be happy in such an end of her lover, at the hands of her peripatetic husband? Another story again.
There is an underlying GOODNESS TO PEOPLE AND THEIR PERCEPTION and that is TRUST. Without that Life cannot exist notwithstanding our cherry picked examples, both from scriptures and art!

MOSES & ESOTERIC KNOWLEDGE OF EGYPT.

Moses’ first forty years are recorded and thereafter Moses’ history starts at 80 and lasts for the third 40 years, the most eventful and the most religiously believed history.
Moses and his encounter with God in the burning bush happens at 80.
The first 40 years of the life of Moses was spent in the palace of Pharoah. Moses, being then thought of as born to the Pharoah’s sister was educated in all types of knowledge, especially the esoteric knowledge of the Magicians in the Egyptian courts.
To understand the esoteric knowledge of the Egyptians one has look at the plagues.
The first plague was BLOOD, second was FROGS.
Let us stop here.
The Egyptian magicians were able to perform, rather aggravate these plagues as they also converted all water founts and pools to blood. Likewise, the Egyptian Magicians were able add more frogs to the ones declared by Aaron and Moses.
From the third plague LICE (Gnats, as per certain versions) the Egyptian magicians were UNABLE TO REPEAT WHAT MOSES DID.
There was this acceptance of failure to replicate the third plague, by the admission of the Egyptian magicians.
Exodus Chapter 8 reads thus:
18 And the magicians did so with their enchantments to bring forth lice, but they could not: so there were lice upon man, and upon beast.
19 Then the magicians said unto Pharaoh, This is the finger of God: and Pharaoh’s heart was hardened, and he hearkened not unto them; as the LORD had said.

It doesn’t end with this. Till now all the three plagues were commonly affecting both the Egyptian cities and Goshen, the ghetto of the Hebrews. But after the third plague, that is in the plague of the FLIES, there is a differentiation of the habitation of the Egyptians and the Hebrews. Confer the following verses:

22 And I will sever in that day the land of Goshen, in which my people dwell, that no swarms of flies shall be there; to the end thou mayest know that I am the LORD in the midst of the earth.
23 And I will put a division between my people and thy people: to morrow shall this sign be.

To simplistically state that Moses’ life after forty was eventless till eighty may be a Truth simpliciter, but it is in those forty years that Moses had the exposure of the religion of his father in law Jethro and Moses’ consciousness went beyond the knowledge of the Egyptians. Moses must have realised that there was a HIGHER TRUTH than the ones he had been taught at the palace of the Pharaoh. That crumbling of the existing knowledge and the resurgence of a higher knowledge what made him reach Jehovah.
To prove this point I need to refer to the book of Job, which is putatively written by Moses. The book of Job describes the life of a righteous man, who maintained probity yet was not spared the travails and vicissitudes of human existence. Upon completion of a period, falsely interpreted by those ‘religionists’ as when Job realised that it is not the works but Grace of God that health returned to him along with a double portion of all that he had before bad times befell him. Be that as it may. Moses learnt that there was more than “GOODNESS” required to endure the misfortunes and become resurgent. It was that understanding which paved the way for Moses to meet his Lord. Thereafter it was a ‘communion’, which empowered him beyond his earlier knowledge and his later understanding of Jethro’s religion.
Moses, according to Jehovah, would become GOD TO PHARAOH!
Cf. Exodus 7:1
And the LORD said unto Moses, See, I have made thee a god to Pharaoh: and Aaron thy brother shall be thy prophet.

I presume that Moses having been taught the knowledge of the magicians of the Egyptian courts had to go beyond the divination arising out of the heavenly bodies and their effects upon human affairs. Moses’ survival for 40 years taught him draw nigh to an understanding that the power of the Creator was and must be greater than the effect of The Creator’s creation of the heavenly bodies and made a connection with that God, Jehovah, when He appeared to him in the burning bush. All the past knowledge became SUBSERVIENT TO THE TRUST MOSES WAS ABLE TO REPOSE ON JEHOVAH.
When Jesus says that at Mark 11:23
King James Bible
For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith.

Moses was able to arrive at that core of Jehovah’s Faith, which went beyond the knowledge of the Egyptian Pharaohs: the RELIGION OF FAITH.
I believe that Moses was able to approximate to it to be drawn to the religion of Faith, as he was successful in unlearning the Egyptian knowledge and also understand the limitations of that knowledge through the religion of his father in law Jethro.
In effect he was able to perform ‘miracles’ which the magicians were unable to duplicate and when the fourth plague onwards Moses was able to provide IMMUNITY TO THE HEBREWS.

Resumé

Abner, despite having been the Chief of the Army of Israel under King Saul, which I believe was more because of his kinship with Saul than his fighting skills alone, DID NOT HAVE A RESUMÉ, like that of David, soon after the latter defeated Goliath.
Resumé is assiduously built based on the opportunities presented, embraced and utilised, for display of one’s skills honed in idle hours!
What stopped Abner from offering to Saul that he be nominated to combat Goliath?
Fear – Fear of losing. Lack of a Plan backed by appropriate skills. Abner had become the head of the armed forces and to indulge in a dogfight was neither befitting his stature (or so he must have thought) nor a wise move. Abner avoided, where David embraced and succeeded. That success was entered in his Resumé. David did not win wars for Saul, but built a name for himself as a protector of the Hebrew tribes. He became the alternative to Saul as a brand in the minds of the Israelites! That’s why after David ruled in Hebron, that the same Abner, for whom he had carried parched grams, figs and honey, was made to sever the matrimonial links between Michal and her enfeebled husband – whose name my subconscious doesn’t want to remember with certainty – could it be Phlatiel- was made to pimp for David “THE SHEPHERD” !
David had a Resumé, that the Jews have carried his ideals till date, under his name ‘David’.

Regret & Remorse

A successful son’s regret is that he could have done more but didn’t while his dad was alive, whereas an unsuccessful son’s remorse is that his father could have done more for him!

Greatest achievement of man!

The greatest achievement of an individual is his capacity in having drawn Future to the Present through an idea, a principle or an act.
There are infinitesimal things to be known and to be done in the Future. Human endeavour is not merely to be functional for providing the necessities of the Present efficiently but to strive and make the efforts of humankind easier through discovery of a Principle or a Fact so that our move forward is fast forwarded with Certainty and ease. It is such discoveries and deeds which leapfrog man to the Future.

Belief! – The Problem of This Generation.

When I did not know the difference between Belief & Truth, I was believing as truthful all those things which I believed in. My belief validated Truth. What is my Belief made of? Impressions, certainty of cause and effect and occasional run ins with Scientific Facts. All an amalgam of hope/ despair inspiring Impressions; results of action/inaction; and trust in chemistry/maths induced Beliefs. The only substantive of the three above are Chemistry and Maths.
Chemistry defines the material therefore properties and the results of the interaction between different materials. But to prove that you need a system and that tool is maths – which is built on the predictability of a constant result irrespective of the mode of counting numbers. This being the provable, those who insist on scientific beliefs rely on the provability and deny the Truthfulness of anything that doesn’t provide proof little realising that the tools of Chemistry and Maths are limited to chemically composed material. Now that there are new compounds being concocted out of the elements and compounds, since there are possibilities which have not YET been invented, they cannot deny Beliefs as untruthful those which do not stand the scrutiny of their own yardstick which is expanding triggered by inventions of new materials – which have not been tested thru interactions with other material and proving the same through Maths. They cannot deny an Assertion which has not been proved wrong by their own yardstick- at best they can assert that they have either not tested it or that the results of their tests have NOT denied such a possibility.
That being the case, when all religions are based on ASSERTIONS, the margin for Liberty of Religion is huge and only a negative proof would suffice.
Does it mean that all and sundry ASSERTIONS are to be suffered till proven wrong through some scientific method? The answer is that When the society has granted the Liberty of Belief, the society by implication has granted a reciprocal Liberty to Hope, which turns into purveying of seductive future skimming off your present labour/ time.
Awareness is the only test of that Hope.
Anyone who believes that Beliefs may be true or not, but I want that belief to be true. When you run to catch it, it is a reality for you notwithstanding the fact that the reality may be a mirage, but to insist on that to be a Universal Truth as an assertion is being Cussed!
Awareness lets one live this Life, DOING things which would aid his Happiness, Health and Growth, without asserting on the wrongness of a thing without a proof of falseness to that Assertion!
Liberty to remain a fool is allowed but NOT TO BECOME a fool at will.

LIBERTY🔥

Liberty is not the oft walked path, yet if you are of the few, who tread that path, no one can accuse you of any criminality, yet you may be responsible for the damages – simple, whoever dares ought to go out there & try out something new😊💐💐💐

Dangerous Rum sold in TN

Read this news item appearing in the ToI on 23/10/2017. Tamil Nadu earns 30% of its revenues from liquor sales, based on a monopoly status exercised through the provisions of certain Articles of the Constitution of India. The State Govt is the licensing authority for the manufacture and the same Govt has monopoly in marketing liquor within the state of TN.

The responsibility is dual, rather their control could be exercised at the point of production as well as at the time of sale.

Let’s cut the cackles and come to the horses, it has been reported that ANCIENT CASK PREMIUM XXX Rum contained alarming levels of tartaric acid, acetic acid and ethyl acetate which could cause gastrointestinal diseases!

That the Govt has failed in its duty by not banning that brand or at least warning its customers of the health hazards.

The wives and women of regularly drinking men have been expending their ire on the shops; and the Supreme Court had issued orders to remove liquor shops on highways much to the perverse delight of some women and wives, but what about the quality of content sold by these shops? The health hazards of these chemicals are passed off for the ill effects of drinking! The deaths and ill health caused by these hazardous drinks are billed to drinking, whereas the reality is that it is the profiteering of the distillers and the connivance and lack of quality checks by the licensing authority, who are the culprits!

Why not make an open market for liquor sales when the government, which has taken upon itself to sell and collect taxes on it has grossly abdicated its responsibilities?

Should we take the taxes collected from liquor sales and build our infrastructure at the cost of serious exposure to gastrointestinal issues to those regular drinkers?

Don’t we as enjoyers of those taxes disassociate ourselves, like the priests of yore, citing moral reasons, and allow the distillers to sell substandard products?

Let us leave morality aside and provide the minimum safe guards to those products the consumption of which we may not agree.

Dangerous Rum sold in TN

Ahab & Jezebel

The following is a portion of I Kings 21:

7 And Jezebel his wife said unto him, Dost thou now govern the kingdom of Israel? arise, and eat bread, and let thine heart be merry: I will give thee the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite.
8 So she wrote letters in Ahab’s name, and sealed them with his seal, and sent the letters unto the elders and to the nobles that were in his city, dwelling with Naboth.
9 And she wrote in the letters, saying, Proclaim a fast, and set Naboth on high among the people:
10 And set two men, sons of Belial, before him, to bear witness against him, saying, Thou didst blaspheme God and the king. And then carry him out, and stone him, that he may die.

Jezebel’s techniques at handling the male ego is amazing.
Ahab refuses to eat food and his Queen, Jezebel is concerned. Asks him as to what is distressing him, the King of Israel is neither wicked enough to dispossess Naboth of his vineyard nor is he good enough to relent his pursuit of wanting to possess the vineyard. Caught between his covetousness and incapacity, like a disgruntled kid, refuses to eat food and makes a mighty show of it.
Jezebel steps in.
She smothers that wee little manhood still left in him by asking him in a reprimanding tone:

Dost thou now govern the kingdom of Israel? arise, and eat bread, and let thine heart be merry:

The King of Israel with ten tribes under his rule, must have been bewildered and Jezebel instinctively follows it up with the solution thus:

I will give thee the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite.

That the King of Israel, who ought to be upholding the Rule of Law, sheepishly hands over the symbols of his power and authority to a woman who promises to take through cunning and violence the heritage of his subject and hand it over to the King!
What a plight of a King, who did not know the nature of his office. The same King on the advice of his courtiers or even the same Jezebel had, in the previous chapter of the same book of the Bible had sent word to Benhadad, the Syrian King thus: Let not him who puts on his armour talk like one who is putting off his armour!

The weakness of Ahab is to be contrasted with David’s reply to Michal when she reprimanded David for dancing in the presence of the Ark of God. I Samuel 6 runs as follows:

20 Then David returned to bless his household. And Michal the daughter of Saul came out to meet David, and said, How glorious was the king of Israel to day, who uncovered himself to day in the eyes of the handmaids of his servants, as one of the vain fellows shamelessly uncovereth himself!
21 And David said unto Michal, It was before the LORD, which chose me before thy father, and before all his house, to appoint me ruler over the people of the LORD, over Israel: therefore will I play before the LORD.
22 And I will yet be more vile than thus, and will be base in mine own sight: and of the maidservants which thou hast spoken of, of them shall I be had in honour.

I know not whether David danced naked or in the exuberance of his dance he was seen undressed as is reported:

Michal Saul’s daughter looked through a window, and saw king David leaping and dancing before the LORD;

In any case, that was not palatable to the Princess Michal. So the Princess admonishingly chides David and see the response from the MAN. David refuses to be ‘cowed’ down and rebuts the princess and defends his action.

Ahab, though a King, behaved like a spoilt kid and went running to the mothering Queen, little realising that it was his own power which was deployed by Jezebel to procure for him Naboth’s vineyard. Worse part was that the sin which accrued out of that act of getting Naboth killed was billed to his account also!

But the beauty of all these virulent Queens who use their men’s resources and power meet their Jehus also.
Jezebel threatens Jehu thus: HAD ZIMRI PEACE? (Refer my earlier blogs on this topic)
Jehu was made of sterner stuff, he just orders the eunuchs from her own harem to throw her down and his orders were complied!
Jezebel’s end though pathetic, is fittingly cathartic.
The Bible says:
25 But there was none like unto Ahab, which did sell himself to work wickedness in the sight of the LORD, whom Jezebel his wife stirred up.

Ahab allowed himself to be stirred up and Jezebel was the best in this business. There was none like her in the Bible, even her relative Athaliah is not a patch on her. Elijah blurted out and ran away, but Jehu, kept all these things in his heart and after his anointment wreaks retribution on the whole bunch of the Omriites.

Ahab’s Blunders!

Ahab exposed the underlingness of his subordinates before his Queen Jezebel.
Permitting the use of his seal, without him sealing the orders himself; thereby empowering and sharing his power and also shortening his own time for recall! It might seem like delegation, but it was sharing. Jezebel took hold of Ahab’s seal and whatever she wrangled out of Ahab during her pillow talks, she converted them into Regal proclamations and orders!
Ahab’s childish desire for land got him into trouble, Naboth’s vineyard and Ramoth Gilead. The man who defeated the Syrian Benhadad, became a shadow of his former self. Irony is that he uses the principle that even ancestral property from the hands of the legatee was subject to procurement by money or exchange and thereby denied the sanctity of a heritage; whereas, in the matter of ramoth gilead he relies on the same principle which he denied at home and says that Ramoth Gilead belonged historically to the Israelites. This double talking principles did him in.
Fourthly, Ahab did not show humility when Micaiah predicts disaster as Ahab did in the case of Naboth. In Naboth’s story he had contributed to the crime by having shared his Regal Authority with Jezebel. But in Ramoth Gilead he had not been specifically arraigned with any sin. Yet his arrogance and preconceived notion of Micaiah did Ahab in.

Budding to blossoming

In the exuberance of blossoming little do the petals sense the irreversibility of the blossoming! The petals would wilt one day and then the petals would yearn for the Reversible!

Notice!

When I was probably 10 years old and while playing chess with my dad’s friend’s son, who was in college, one of my moves forked the opponent’s king and one of his pieces, he didn’t notice the threat to his king and made a move leaving the threat to the King open, and in a flash I cut his King.
I started jumping for joy, whereas the opponent was amused at my exultation and was telling my dad that I can’t cut his king without notifying him of the threat to his king. For the life of me I couldn’t understand what he was talking about!
I sprang an analogy and asked him, if I could cut his Queen, the most powerful piece on a side, without notifying why should I notify?
Logic, but the game cannot end in a whimper. The game of chess is so structured that there is another result called STALEMATE!
When the King is not under a threat on the square he stands but cannot move into any square without a threat, and no other move is possible, then the result is a DRAW because of a STALEMATE!
Had my older friend clarified that NOTICE was essential because there was a possibility of a stalemate where the King is immobilised from moving into a square and sacrificing himself, and there is no other move possible with any of the pawns or pieces, I probably would have understood. Probably‼
The point I’m labouring is that a King can be mated but cannot be ambushed. Therefore, the Doctrine of Notice is essential. And the King is the only piece in the chess board which has this privilege. Every other pawn or a piece could be sacrificed, the King – NEVER.
An exalted position but restricted in moves. His greatest liberty is his capability to jump one square to his left or right while castling with the rooks. Even while castling he can’t jump a square under threat or run into a square under threat!
Great model for our honchos‼
There are the marching pawns which squint while cutting! They are the BLOCKERS- they impede the progress of the other side.
There are those diagonally moving Bishops, who squintingly HAVE AN EYE ON THE OPPONENTS.
There are those rooks which help the King to jump to security and move straight, like the FORCES.
The knights have a convoluted movement capable of jumping the occupied or unoccupied squares but have to cut on landing, if their landing square isn’t free! The knights are the PARATROOPERS.
Finally the Queen, who is the most powerful piece and is a clone of a bishop and a rook. It could move diagonally or straight up or down. The only drawback is that theoretically, the King could end up with eight more queens, if each of his pawns were to be Queened! A sort of harem of chaos! Good for the King. Structurally, the Queen is the most belligerent piece and has the greatest latitude to move within those 64 squares – a kind of SHUTZSTAFFEL!
When a King surrounds himself with such people with delegated responsibility, why worry about footmen on footbridge?

Mark of Cain!

The reference is to the Bible and for authenticity’s sake I reproduce the relevant passages from the KJV: Ch 4:
9 And the LORD said unto Cain, Where is Abel thy brother? And he said, I know not: Am I my brother’s keeper?10 And he said, What hast thou done? the voice of thy brother’s blood crieth unto me from the ground.11 And now art thou cursed from the earth, which hath opened her mouth to receive thy brother’s blood from thy hand;12 When thou tillest the ground, it shall not henceforth yield unto thee her strength; a fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be in the earth.13 And Cain said unto the LORD, My punishment is greater than I can bear.14 Behold, thou hast driven me out this day from the face of the earth; and from thy face shall I be hid; and I shall be a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth; and it shall come to pass, that every one that findeth me shall slay me.15 And the LORD said unto him, Therefore whosoever slayeth Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold. And the LORD set a mark upon Cain, lest any finding him should kill him.
So that’s the whole story relating to the “mark of Cain”.
That Cain is a murderer was known to God; Cain did not answer back God with any self righteousness when God answered Cain’s question AM I MY BROTHER’S KEEPER?
That Cain was the murderer is a known fact to any reader, but nowhere did Cain confess.
God did not set about proving Cain’s guilt, as just Abel and Cain were there in the field and one was missing. The cry of the blood was the proof!
Straight a way, God delivers a judgement. Only in the case of the Serpent that God did not use the Audi alteram partem rule! God never gave the Serpent a hearing, God convicted and sentenced without a hearing. Interesting thing was that the Serpent had “beguiled” Eve – that was its guilt! The sentence may look disproportionate but, as Othello says: ” lest she betray more men” the Serpent was punished disproportionately lest she beguile more women!
There are creatures and humans who deserve no hearing. Coincidentally, in both the cases, the ‘beguiling’ and the ‘murder’, there were only two persons when the alleged instances of beguiling and murder took place. There was no third person and God rightly dispenses with the Audi Alteram Partem rule and pronounces the judgement based on the nakedness of Eve and the crying of the blood of Abel. Wonderful!
But in our theme why did God put the mark on Cain?
Notwithstanding the sentence, Lord’s mercy being immense, God puts a mark on Cain and warns others that those who slay Cain would have a seven fold sin of Cain. Therefore I believe that God wanted none to allay the murderer of the pangs of being murdered. What Cain saw of the suffering of Abel while dying was probably haunting him and became paranoid of someone inflicting the same on him! Cain couldn’t handle it. God, though didn’t find a repentant Cain, was moved by the fear exhibited by Cain, of punishment by third parties, so God put a mark on Cain as a skull and bones sign.
It is not as if in this generation there are no Cains with Marks of Cain, they sure are there, UNREPENTANT, but afraid of the punishment, yet crying to God daily. So let us recognise that we may not be able to read the marks of the contemporary Cains, but lest a sevenfold sin be cast on our backs, refrain from wasting our time hunting those fratricidal fellows.

Navodaya Schools!

A Trojan Horse to smuggle in the syllabus and agenda of a Central Subject of List 1 of Schedule VII of the Constitution of India.
Education at the secondary and Higher Secondary Schools were exclusively in the hands of List 2 of the said Schedule VII, which was moved to the Concurrent List III entry no 25 vide the 42nd Constitutional Amendment, which till date remains the most controversial Amendment of the Constitution.
Armed with this Amendment the Government in charge of List 1 subject, had made in roads into the syllabus of the school education which was exclusively the domain of the Government running List 2.
The framers of the Constitution had applied their minds to give a broad liberal education at the primary and secondary levels so that the cultural identities of the states do not get swamped by the political agenda set by government running the List 1.
So how would the agenda be reset?
Navodaya Schools follow the CBSE syllabus, which is controlled by the government running the List I subjects, they consequently would follow the democratic dictum of the maximum Good to maximum people, which not only COULD but WOULD marginalise the exceptions to the majority opinions.
No effort had been made by the Government running the List 1, to adapt the history of the culture of Tamil Nadu, especially the Independence movement! Even Jawahar Lal Nehru with all his erudition and exposure couldn’t write much about the Madras Presidency’s contribution to the freedom fight in his 1946 The Discovery of India. There is no VOC, no Vellore Fort Rebellion of 1806, no resistance by the various satraps who were running the Tamil areas since the reign of the Nayaks and Zamindars!
Ironically these Navodaya Schools are named after the person who wrote the Discovery!
It is no doubt that Hindi is compulsory in the Navodaya Schools, as the B II level for non Hindi speaking states. That’s about the concession granted, but that is not the issue.
Firstly by allowing Navodaya Schools in Tamil Nadu, which has the stated objective of providing standard education with free boarding facilities to talented rural children, in some states the same are being availed by not so talented middle class urban kids.
Tamil Nadu is the most urbanised state, so these Navodaya Schools would have not much impact, they would just become showpieces for kids to flaunt.
NCERT books which form the backbone of CBSE syllabus is to be weighted not on the basis of numbers but based on facts and truth. If one language is declared by a Professor as a Classical language, examine that language and either accept or reject it on intelligible differentia! Not on powerful and majority opinions.
TN gets 4.02% of the shareable revenue from the centre with a population of 7 %. If there’s true concern the Navodaya propagandists should ask for funds for education based on the progress made since independence!
Let the primary and secondary education be reverted back to the List 2 of the seventh Schedule.
Even not knowing Hindi is a qualification in India, otherwise why would have the Tamil Nadu Special Police be the guards in Tihar Jails in Delhi?
Variety is the soul of Liberty.

Drawing Power Vs. Doing Power!

DRAWING POWER is a power that is a Right, whereas DOING POWER is a power of Liberty. To exercise Drawing power one has to have the resources under his control or command. The resource could be a stored one like money, captive workforce etc. But a Doing power is not something which could be exercised as a matter of Right, it has to be earned through “DOING” something which would attract resources to be put in one’s hands or people may join in and contribute.
Drawing Power is therefore a personal resource at one’s command acquired through effort, by virtue of an office or even as a patrimony or bequest.
The greatness of Buddha was that he forewent Drawing Power as the heir of the Lumbini throne and CHOSE the path of Liberty to pursue the Doing power. The Gautama abdicated his throne and donned the role of a man who started with nothing other than the education his position gave him. Jesus was born with no Drawing Power, yet He, while alive in the flesh acquired a set of followers who propagated His teachings, which in time gained momentum and formed a Religion, which attracted even people like Paul, who was a avowed anti- Christian ! That is the Doing Power. Doing power is available with everyone, not that everyone would reach the level of renown or popularity of the Gautama or Jesus. To cite an example from recent history , Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was a great example of the Doing Power. He did not take an insult from the Apartheid pro people in the then South Africa, he quit a flourishing practice of an attorney to take up the cause of Liberating India from the clutches of foreign rule. To that intent he DID many things which galvanised a movement. The Tilaks, VOCs and Pal’s were resisting and did something, but the galvanising didn’t happen, it was Gandhi who was able to do it. May be the time had come for it during Gandhi! I do not subscribe to such fatalistic cosmic timeless perception on any Doing! Gandhi nailed it. Probably, even though Gandhi could have aspired to have become what he became, I’m sure that when he started, he COULDN’T HAVE HAD THE ASSURANCE OF SUCH GALVANISATION! That’s the point.
In the Doing Power, it is the Faith and Effort, which matter. The fruits of such labour is not guaranteed and most people don’t start as there are no guarantees.
When I see a cobbler sitting on the street and waiting for his next customer yet sewing up a new footwear for a future customer who hasn’t yet ordered or met him, he’s not idling his hours but gainfully deploying his Time with Hope. That’s the Doing Power. At every level Doing Power works, it is not capital intensive but could be Labour intensive.
Most of the people having DRAWING POWER prescribe ‘doing’ to others thereby breeding more administrators like Pharisees who in the guise of perfection goad their doers to excel and produce better products and once the products are made, the meagre wages are paid to the doers and the product is removed by those Drawing powered persons and sold at abominably high profits at a jurisdiction to which the Doing powered people may not have knowledge or access. But the Doing Powered people have to realise that it is their skill and craft which is spreading joy and happiness not the Trader’s racketeering! The Trader acquires goods not for its value but for the profits he could make out of someone else’ skill, which may give him the Drawing Power but never ever the skill of Doing power.
The greatest have always struck a good balance between the two and eschewing undermining the Doing power of anyone.

Ulysses – To the mast tied!

Liberty to listen to the Sirens is not merely a Liberty, but a Right acquired through Leadership.
Ulysses couldn’t have obtained the Compliance of his comrades to have wax fixed in their ears had he not been considered a useful and benevolent Leader. Ulysses’ comrades not only agreed to have their ears plugged with wax to disable them from listening to the Sirens, but obtained their approval for exempting himself from such ear plugs.
What Ulysses won was his Liberty to listen, cherish and even ethereally be transported with delight listening to the Sirens.
Having been made aware of the music and death, from Circe, Ulysses got his Liberty of motility restricted by getting himself tied to the mast and ordering his comrades not to untie him till they had crossed the island of the Sirens.
In true democratic fashion, Ulysses imposed a disability which would have allayed the scepticism of his comrades denying them what he himself wanted to relish.
May be in Voltaire terms it was a masterstroke of leadership when he imposed a disability on himself, as Voltaire says in his ‘Philosophical Dictionary’ thus:
“To succeed in chaining the multitude you must seem to wear the same fetters.”

But to what effect was this Liberty of Ulysses put to use?
He heard something which none had survived to tell.
That may look simple in the first flush, but it is those songs which move one’s standards higher. I’m sure, Ulysses would never have been impressed with the music of any troupe or person thereafter. He reached the next level of perception, denied to the underlings.
But to survive not only one has to have the Liberty, but the Leadership to afford an opportunity to go near the Isles of the Sirens ( without the galley or the sails and sailors there is remote chance of Ulysses reaching the isles); have the courage to tell one’s followers to deny what he didn’t deny himself; and finally leave instructions to tie him to the mast and not to untie him, come what may, till the Isles are past.
When all that is achieved, one succeeds in surviving after hearing the untold!

Rehoboam & the rich kids!

Movid's Weblog

When I watch rich kids flaunting their flashy cars and unbounded swiping of credit cards acquired through their father’s good fortune or effort or skill, or of the last two above like King David, I wonder often, how they are any different from Solomon, the Wise, in impressing the Queen of Sheba? Wise Brats, who probably would leave their kids with a disgruntled and rebelling workforce, little realising that Future, a merciless one at that, is always lurking round the corner, striving like Jeroboams to make comebacks!

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Democracy!!

It is the process of disenfranchising the common man of his Right of Choice, in favour of a Politician and vesting him with an irrevocable Right of Choice on your behalf for a fixed period -excepting for reasons occasioned by institutional crisis- and which when exercised is mostly for personal gains, which metamorphoses into Greed.
Personal Gains is the mother of Greed. Personal Gains starts with the thought: WHAT IS THERE FOR ME IN A PROJECT FOR WHICH TAX MONEY (public money) IS SPENT OSTENSIBLY FOR PUBLIC GOOD. Thereafter, as the appetite grows on what it feeds on, Projects are promoted which fetch inordinate profits for those Representatives of common man’s Delegate.
The above is the worst end of the spectrum of Democracy. Thus Greed is engendered by Personal Gains and the Public becomes the pretext for such gains.
When the old methods of taking gratification for public projects slims out, new methods are brought in revamping the old system. But this delegated responsibility of framing public policy and public spending always leads to corruption.
The best method to sustain a corruptionless Democracy is to have a method of expressing online opinion of informed denizens on policy matters and a sound technical force to execute projects in an efficient and uncompromised way.
Would it ever happen on India. I believe it would, maybe in another 20 years.

Grace is not a substitute to human understanding!

The best way to obtain Grace is to educate oneself. Moses was fully trained by the Pharaoh’s homeschool for the Royal kids. They, Moses included, would have received the best education.
In the power struggle with Ramses II, Moses was externed,
Before him was Joseph, he chose to get himself educated in every circumstances- in Potiphar’s hose he became an accountant, a Manager, and a logistics man but Potiphar’s wife wanted to give Joseph an additional burden of being a night watchman in the place of Potiphar! The first jump is always false, and he escaped that snare. In the prison Joseph becomes the storekeeper and doubles up predicting the futures of the co-prisoners, in leisure. So the skills Joseph had acquired through experience takes him to be a candidate for the Governorship of Egypt. The primary exposure to education and knowledge and transcription of their language into a script took place in those 480 years of sojourn at Egypt. Miracles without process are episodic, but there are miracles which happen coupled with human effort could become Institutionalised. The Ten Commandments was written by God, but the second block of the Commandments was written by Moses, a man well versed in all Egyptian learning. When Jesus made clay of his spittle and told the blind man to wash in the pool of Siloam, if the blind man hadn’t made that effort, would the miracle have happened?
If the woman with the issue of blood had not dared to touch the hem of the garment of Jesus, would she have been healed?
If Joseph had not honed his skills in book keeping and strategising on apportioning the provisions when he was at Potiphar’s house or in the jailhouse, would he have had the skill set to run a country like Egypt?
If Moses had not been educated enough to understand the wiles of the Pharaoh in keeping a large group of Hebrews as slaves, would he have liberated them from the Pharaoh?
Had David not built his skills as a slinger, while discharging his assigned duties as a shepherd, would he have struck Goliath in his temple, on a situation fraught with slavery for the community, if one man failed?
If Paul had not been trained under Gamaliel, against Christianity, would he have had the mental wherewithal to counter the sophistry and rhetoric of the Greeks and the logic of Romans?
The examples I had cited are where human effort with hope fructified, but in Jeremiah’s case, God touched his mouth and thereby put His words in Jeremiah’s mouth. In this case, God’s role seems absolute.
God’s angel calls Gideon ‘mighty man of valour’ when Gideon was threshing wheat, away from the eyes of the Midianites. That’s again sanctification if human effort.
David composed lyrics which shows his ability to blend understanding with spirituality in an artistic way.
The above examples proves that God loves the educated, the skilled and those who put on an effort with whatever they have. Christianity, besides Jesus, is built on the Pentateuch, putatively written by Moses; the Psalms, mostly by David and the doctrine/ rules written by Paul. Education formed the basis of all these pillars.
God opens Himself to those who strive for Understanding, of the spiritual kind and their writings have stood the test of Time and inspired generations and continue to inspire and lead many in the centuries to come.
Consequently, Movid believes that Grace is not a word to sweep the conflicts and contradictions of human understanding and make it an unintelligible Idea, but made up of God’s love for human effort with sincerity.
Least of all Grace should NOT BE USED to substitute human understanding. God is good and wants man to strive sincerely in a path which brings good to all. What He would do, give, withhold or inflict shouldn’t be of human concern, it is man’s duty to strive with sincerity.

Why Bismarck couldn’t have been French?

Besides zeitgeist, there is a certain pervading spirit of the terrain, which sprouts and supports certain traits in human beings. A flamboyant Napoleon who could sway the crowds and the ragtag militia, the spillover vain men of the French Revolution, into a military command was possible in France, but the same French terrain couldn’t have supported Otto Von Bismarck, as French terrain would support brilliance and flashiness at the cost of fundamental structuralism. Yet the opposite terrains need to be next to each other to bring equilibrium to the terrain.
Likewise Jallikattu is terrain specific to Tamil Nadu. It needs a reason and the reasons are not merely functional, it is the recognition of the Bull’s/ ox’ contribution to the society. It is not merely a means of transport of Lord Shiva, it is the symbol of effort and masculinity coupled with unleashing of stored prowess. Bull is amenable to breeding and it is not merely a showpiece like the over muscular Belgian bulls, but loyal to the family which raises it through self control of its aggressive power, but when attempted to be controlled by outsiders capable of shrugging off its attempted Tamers and in the worst case scenario capable of goring and ploughing through a mountain of men. That trait is what endears the owners to raise and hone their capabilities. In olden times when the physical prowess determined the skills of man, taming such a bull aided the tamer to get the hand of the daughter of the bull owner! A surrogacy to blatant submission! Why give your daughter to the man who squelched your pride? A plated surrender deed signed by the loser in a platinum nibbed pen. Contrast this with its neighbouring state Kerala, which has decimated their bulls through a Legislation during the CMship of Shri. Pattom Thanu Pillay! The cows which have enjoyed the mount of a tumescent bull during their lives may not be more than 5 %. Reason being that they strawed their heifers and cows into accepting artificial insemination instead of consort with a bull. The bleating mooing of a cow in heat makes you run to get the nearest bull. Once done, the receptivity being so high, the cow conceives in a single jump. Cow is the only animal which copulates only for posterity’s sake, never ever as a recreation or demonstration of an idea! Such a cow should give a higher milk yield, so the Fresiens, Jerseys spermed their way into Kerala. TN prides in its bulls, whereas Kerala celebrates the yield of the cow, truly matrilineal.

God loves human Effort!

It is one of the myths propagated by false Prophets and bogus Apostles of Christianity that God gives unmerited favours according to His Will, irrespective of man’s efforts.
Wrong and PATENTLY WRONG!
Christianity was not built on meekly submitting and succumbing to the martyrdom inflicting Evil, it was built on the Life and teachings of Jesus, who lived a life of purity; said what He heard from His Father in heaven & DID THE WILL OF HIS FATHER.
To know and to DO are the twin points of Christianity. To know is easy, to Do that which is Right is Tough, but to Know and Do that which is Right is nigh impossible. Herein comes the Principle of Uncertainty. The more accurately one Knows the Truth, the less a man Does that which is True. The reason is that Knowledge numbs activity beyond a point.
Christians have become inert and believe that idle goodness is what God loves. My father, who had slipped into Pentecostal doctrine through inadvertence but kept tethered by the false guilt inspiring interpretations of the Bible once told me: It is better to sleep in the church than to be in a cinema or a tavern! Therein begins the IDLE GOODNESS.
Opportunities do not come announcing, they steal upon us. The aware and the aspiring ones take initiative and explore, sometimes it works but mostly those don’t work. To give up is abominable, as every effort raises a man’s hope to more activity. Do something – God loves it.
In the Acts of the Apostles, where Dr. Luke stealthily, out of weakness for Paul & Saul of Tarsus smuggled Paul into a disguised Apostleship in the book, at chapter 12 talks of how Peter was saved from the chains and the prison.
But look at the shrewdness of Peter, he did not present himself as a sitting duck for the bloodthirstiness of Herod, the Tetrarch of Judea, but ran off to Caesarea!
Well, human mind might be apt to question: When God saved a man from the prison and chains, why should Peter evade or fear a temporal authority and not stay in Judea? Good question – Herod ain’t gonna answer that one. Herod had executed James the brother of John a little earlier, so why would he spare Peter if, not sparing Peter would please the Formalism of the Synagogue going Jews?
We make principles and start believing in those principles, little knowing that there are exceptions to those principles. I am reminded of two boys who caught sight of a barking dog at a distance. The smart Alec said: BARKING DOGS SELDOM BITE. But as they approached the object of their trepidation, the smart Alec took to his heels, so did the other boy. Later when they met, the other boy asked the Smart Alec: But why did you run, as that dog was merely a barking dog? The smart Alec replied: But that dog doesn’t know that barking dogs shouldn’t bite!
We make principles and start believing in those principles and later become victims when the same principle starts showing deviance or exceptions. But Peter knew that Herod, who was believed to have murdered his own brother, wouldn’t spare him if Peter’s martyrdom would result in political gains for Herod. At the end of it, a Satrap wants to keep the local populace happy to make them more productive so that taxes could be appropriated and sent to Caesar, at whose pleasure Herod was the Tetrarch! Amen.
So Peter’s effort of running away despite having been relieved from the chains by angels by not presenting himself to be victimised by a bloodthirsty fellow like Herod, is what God wanted. A personal initiative. A caged bird, when let loose OUGHT TO FLY.
God loves Effort!
False prophets do not impel people to put more effort and care, in their worldly affairs, yet smugly live off the labour and tithes of the same adherents, who eke out an honest living through Effort!
Jesus says again and again DO DO DO! Yet false Apostles with their brand of Communism tinged Pentecostalism have perfected the art of downgrading the effort of the laymen so that the fruits of the labour of laymen could be appropriated with consummate ease, in the name of God.
Remember that God wants even the person with one talent to go and strive and succeed! God doesn’t want him to bury that talent and return it safely.
Peter was sharp!
But that sharpness showed itself as an effort and God sanctified his effort.

I am excerpting two passages from the Bible, which are fundamentally divergent. The first passage is from the Book of Romans, the next is from the Gospel of John.

When we are embarking on the assessment of merit for choice of an Idea, it is immaterial as to who authored it.
Whether it be Paul, the Evangelist or John the Apostle, shouldn’t be of any consideration unless we need to deduce the ascribable meaning based on the Life of the Author. Since the passages below do not concern either of the putative authors, it must needs be that we ignore their received and assumed backgrounds, and set forth to assess the content of the statements.
The passages are:
Romans 8:11
11 But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you.
John 5:26 & 27
26 For as the Father hath life in himself; so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself;27 And hath given him authority to execute judgment also, because he is the Son of man.
The first passage says as if ‘the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus‘ & ‘he that raised up Christ from the dead’, was required to raise Jesus from the dead. Herein is the idea not in consonance with the Idea of God the Son, as mentioned in the passage from the Gospel.
The greatness of John’s Gospel is that God the Father’s primacy within the Triune, is not compromised, and the obedience of the Son – vis á vis God the Father, is well brought out. The Son CAN KNOW, IF HE WERE WILLFUL ENOUGH TO ASK THE FATHER OR EXERCISE HIS OPTION TO KNOW when the Second Coming would be, but in obedience to the Father’s will modestly, says EXCEPT THE FATHER NONE KNOWS IT.
The Spirit is a Comforter and none is to speak ill of the Holy Spirit, which is a command of Jesus in the flesh, but to exalt Holy Spirit as the one reviving Jesus from the dead is to berate the Godhood of Jesus Christ.
Please read the passage from the Gospel, the writer says:
‘..so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself‘
In effect, according to the Gospel, just as God the Father had LIFE IN HIMSELF, which I understand as self-perpetuating; self-organising and self-resurrecting, Jesus was granted a Form, unlike the Holy Spirit, and he was vested with the same capability ‘to have life in himself’!
There erred the writer of Romans.

Jesus did not need the spirit to resurrect Him, but he had divinity in himself to bring himself back from the Hades or annihilation.
John’s Gospel is head and shoulders above the rest because of the possible interpretations emanating out of out of it than the other books.
In the same 5th chapter of the Gospel of John, it is mentioned as follows:
21 For as the Father raiseth up the dead, and quickeneth them; even so the Son quickeneth whom he will.
This is the power of Jesus to raise others from the dead. This power had been exhibited by prophets like Elijah and Elisha of yore, but none had the power to RESURRECT ONESELF OUT OF ANNIHILATION OR DEATH, that made Jesus divine and this strain runs through the The Gospel according to John, through the exposition in the 5th Chapter, which brings out an idea fitting enough. Unlike the Romans, it doesn’t make Jesus dependent on another part of the Godhood.

It is these interpretations which have emboldened the Pentecostals to have exalted the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, above the Son of God, who in submission to the will of the Father took the form of man, subjecting himself to all the temptations and liabilities of Man and finally emerged to Life through SELF-RESURRECTION.

If Phoenix could, God should!

Co-escapee from the Pentecostals!

When I saw him, whose name I know not, in a grocery after Church service on a Sunday at about 11 AM, I felt a surge of brotherhood in my soul. I didn’t have to run upto him and confess our fraternity of our escapehood but deep down I felt how he must have struggled to have got out of the snare which his father would have led him into in those years of infancy.
Fathers have their challenges and if food were to be a challenge no doubt, when the father bird sights a good spread of corn and seeds, it would be his priority to swoop and start pecking at it unmindful of Liberty & Freedom. It is a pity that only when the stomachs are full that the sense of Liberty & Freedom start emerging in our consciousness. But, Alas! When the birds try to fly, the wings flap but the feet are tied to the snares into which those feet had slipped in unwittingly! No escape.
If at that moment of trepidation and anxiety the young bird were to help itself by slowly pulling the noosing-end of the noose with its beak and enlarges the noose for it to escape; and with that new found knowledge if it were to loosen the other noose from the other feet and free itself, how happy and liberated would that young bird feel? INEFFABLE feeling of Thankfulness to God and the grace given to believe in an attempt at loosening the noose and finally succeeding therein!
That sense of ineffable thankfulness to the divine can be felt only by those who value Liberty and who had extricated themselves from a situation of despair as above. It was that sense that I felt when I sighted him at the grocers.
An Escapee, has not submitted to the sentence imposed based on judicial determination of the Law in force. But there are escapees who have been freed by systems which declare a Law contrary to the one which convicted the person. One of the best examples I recall is the case of SOMERSET in the U.K.. My facts may be rusty but the principles may be sound. Somerset was a slave bought in Africa and was being transported to the USA and the ship had to be moored for supplies in one of the UK ports. While it was docked in the U.K., Somerset escaped and was later captured. The slave owner wanted restitution of the slave, but the decision was that THE AIR OF ENGLAND WAS SO PURE THAT THERE BREATHES NO SLAVE IN THE UK! Since slavery has been abolished, the claim of the slave owner could not be sustained as there was no such Right vested with any human that he could bring action for restitution of ‘slavehood’ of any other human being.
I consider this relief as setting aside the basis of the conviction.
The Church of South India(CSI) is an accommodative church, a church built on the leftover foundation of the Church of England, which in turn had seceded from the Papal Christianity built on the state legitimised Christianity of Emperor Constantine; who in turn had turned to Christianity on an epiphany during a war; which was founded on the evangelical and apostolic spread of Christianity during the currency of the Roman Empire since Tiberius!
The snares laid over the appetising corn and seeds were the personalised prayers and specialised incentives offered in the after- life by their interpretation of the Bible. To put it succinctly the Holy Ghost had been promoted over the other two of the Triune Godhood of Jesus and Father Jehovah, by the Pentecostals merely on two counts: Jesus said that He has to go and send the followers a COMFORTER, who was the Holy Ghost. Secondly, Jesus in the flesh had said that anything uttered against the Holy Ghost would not be forgiven. So based on these two verses the Pentecostals have made a neat prescription of the Permanent Comforter and One against whom nothing OUGHT TO BE UTTERED!
So what is the proof of The Holy Ghost residing in human hearts? The Pentecostals believe and propagate as an exclusive Truth that unless and until a person speaks in tongues, he ain’t filled with the Holy Ghost. There are enough passages of Jesus which show that when He blessed His disciples to receive the Holy Ghost, they did NOT speak in tongues! Further in the Acts of the Apostles, (Acts 4:31) it is mentioned that they were filled with the Holy Ghost that they became bold in their profession of the faith of Christianity. Therefore, this blogger is of the firmest belief that speaking in tongues may be a sign of the Holy Ghost, but to state that speaking in tongues is the only manifestation of the receipt of the gift of the Holy Spirit/Ghost, is not sustainable from the concordant reading of the New Testament.
By advancing these two Fundamental creed the Pentecostals have hijacked, rather attempted to hijack the agenda of Christ – which according to me is – DO WHAT CHRIST PREACHED AS A HUMAN BEING. The only part of the Godhead which participated in human affairs subjecting Himself to all the limitations of human being is and was Jesus, therefore to follow and attempt what Jesus preached is my duty, but I am bound to fail and in those moments I need the support and comfort of the Holy Spirit and I am sure a Comforter can never replace Christ. Therein they err. All the above is doctrinaire, but their not so subtle spread of superiority on the basis of Celibacy including their preposterous claim that the celibate priests would be allocated Zion and the “believers” who had not dedicated their lives for spread of such Christianity would be allotted a place called NEW JERUSALEM , a place trifle lower than ZION, in the life after!
Even Jesus in the flesh refrained from making such claims when James and John with the help of the earthly aunt Salome tried to obtain a special place next to Jesus in the life after! How preposterous, based on their interpretation of the Book of Revelations!
CSI may be bankrupt of such florid and self-elevating interpretations of the Bible, but sure gives its members a lot of Liberty. One can have ENTERTAINMENT, do personal service to mankind; build social structures for the upliftment of the needy including education and orphanages; wear gold; get baptised as an infant etc.
To put it in perspective, CSI Christianity grants Liberty to practice Christianity without a constant sense of guilt instilled through weekly sermons and other assorted Pentecostal influence peddled through overenthusiastic neophyte Pentecostals!
So when I saw him at the Grocers, I was truly Glad. God gives Liberty, but it is our duty to choose a jurisdiction which would preserve it.

Hannah & fecundity!

What I don’t know about Hannah is Whether Hannah was the first or the second wife of Elkanah?
If Penninah had been troubling her and drove her to the extent of soreness of her soul, was it engendered by a Leah-ish claim of having been the first wife to Elkanah and Hannah as an intruder?, or was Hannah the first wife and Penninah brought in like Hagar?
Facts are not furnish-able from the text of the Bible.
But one thing emerges: Hannah prayed and she conceived and brought forth a boy child. Named him Samuel.
Despite the effusive praise of Hannah in the lines of Deborah and Elisabeth, what is praiseworthy about Hannah is that she DID SOMETHING WHICH NO WOMAN DID, within the Bible.
Even before she conceived the second time, she parted ways with her only child and gave him to serve in the temple.
Can anyone imagine the extent to which Hannah must have felt about her barrenness? That it was provoked by Penninah, rather aggravated by Penninah, and is explicitly stated on the first chapter, but as a gratitude towards God for having removed that taint of having continued a Barren Woman, she was willing to part with Samuel, soon after he was weaned!
That act of Hannah shouts: CALL ME CHILDLESS, BUT NOT BARREN!
That she got at least 4 more children after Samuel was a bonus, but her parting with Samuel – the precious child – notwithstanding her vow before God is AMAZING!

CAVALRY MEN WILL COME! | Movid’s Weblog

The Scorpion Kick

In the 90’s of the last century, there was a Columbian footballer by name René Higuita. A name not heard much in this century.
Still in the twenties, and watching a Football World Cup match would not only obliterate other duties, but would excite us to such an extent that the most preposterous players were followed avidly. The towering one over the rest was Rene Higuita, the Columbian Goal keeper.
He was not merely unorthodox in his defence, he was aggressive in his forward moves, sometimes snatching the ball with his foot from the opponent racing with the ball towards the goal which Higuita was to mind. All acts of RECKLESSNESS when successful is not judged by the means, but by the Results achieved. The trouble is that when it fails, the employer of such recklessness is not judged by the overall success achieved despite probability statistics, but is DISCREDITED by the conformists and the dormant bureaucrat! That is what happened to Higuita.
Whether Cocaine made the Medellin footballer so imaginative, skilled and unafraid of a miss, would be a wild guess as the drug tests for footballers had not yet dawned. Whatever that might be, in those days when Adrenaline was what kept me going, Higuita was a person to be followed with wonderment.
To put it in modern management terms, he brought in Disruptive Standards for a footballer. Higuita did not merely want to guard the mouth of the goalposts, but wanted to score goals. His free kicks were confident and many a time sneaking through the chinks of the defence wall.
What had particularly bewildered the sensitivities of me and my pals was his sense of Timing, except for that Roger Milla snatch and score for Cameroon.
It has been reported that he would practice scorpion kicks often with his mates, which in an exhibition match with England, was executed so perfectly that an incoming ball floating over his head was kicked back into play by diving forward flexing his knees and meeting the ball with his heels at that precise moment so as to clear it back for play.
Here’s the video:
http://youtu.be/yCxe4r6SjH0
Watch and wonder at the timing, but remember that the opponent player was offsided for that float.
The other great attitude Higuita brought to football was his sense of judgement of distance/ speed of the approaching pass to an opponent. When a ball had been passed to his opponent and still in air, Higuita had the uncanny skill of judging if he could intercept the ball before it reached the intended opponent, mostly he succeeded and this led to many of his solo forays into the opponent’s goalmouth with adept dribbling skills.
In this world where the Institutionalised priority of Failure through following accepted procedures are glorified and winning thru unorthodox methods are frowned upon, Higuita stood out standing against the Institutionalised Tide.
Like a Scorpion, when its hands couldn’t reach the tail stung to kill!

Of Nobles & Queening of pawns!

There are certain disabilities which are imbedded in a Pawn’s functions, naturally its structure is the least pivotal in a chess board.
The disabilities are that it is unidirectional and that’s forward. Come what may it can never ever turn around.
Secondly, it can never cut a pawn or piece facing it and consequently its prospects of it getting stuck is very high.
Thirdly, it is the piece which is made a scapegoat or an intervener to protect another piece or square.
Despite all these disabilities, the only glimmer of hope for a pawn is that if it were to reach the other end on its march where there is no scope of any further movement, it becomes, rather transmutes itself into a Queen – the most powerful piece in a chess board!
In the Greco – Roman mythologies there are humans who had been elevated to the level of gods, for their endurance based accomplishments. The outstanding example is Hercules. The tasks he had to perform were enormous and the troubles he had to face in pursuit of those tasks were not the ones which could be borne by human beings. When he completed those tasks, he became a Queened pawn. Moses spent forty years in the wilderness with his father in law Jethro and had forgotten his kingly skills of building pyramids, but once he stood before the burning bush and had his calling – Moses became a Queened pawn.
David, the shepherd boy when he was chosen to fight Goliath of Gath on behalf of the Israelites and won the fight became a Queened pawn.
But Ulysses despite being an astute warrior, able leader of men and tactful handler of situations, never got Queened. Because, Ulysses was already a Noble and most of all, he was totally human and made no resolution to spare himself from the temptations which offered themselves in great regularity to him. In fact I see more nobility in Ulysses than the queened pawns.
To become a queened pawn one has to have grit and copious amounts of good fortune to suffer and survive, but to be NOBLE a man has to just have the leadership qualities to make his comrades comply with his demand of them pouring wax into their ears whereas keep his own ears clean to hear the seductive Sirens; but tell the same comrades to tie him to the mast and never ever untie him despite his struggles to be loosened from the mast. He heard the seductive sirens immobilised by his own prescience! That is Nobility! He heard the voice of destruction yet survived, through anticipation and preparation. Not for nothing Homer walks away with the title of the greatest Epic writer.

Joseph’s initial years of prosperity as the Governor of Egypt:

After Thomas Mann, one man who is interested in dissecting the life of Joseph of Genesis is yours truly. That Joseph is projected as an ever forgiving ‘nice guy’, built since one’s days in the Sunday Schools and uninterruptedly continued till one is hauled to the grave, is thoughtless and one more instance of hallowing the profane!
Joseph, sold by his brothers at 18 and redeemed from the jail around 30, probably became a governor of Egypt immediately thereafter. Joseph’s interpretation of the fat cows kicked in immediately and therefore till 37 years he was flush with prosperity raking in the produce of Egypt and saving all for the rainy days which were to follow.
Most of the Christian preachers in their cherry picked anecdotal sermons fail to factor that Joseph was the son of Jacob, whose mother Rebekah, had instructed the then youthful Jacob to wive from her people and not like his brother Esau. That Jacob followed his mother’s advice and came back with two wives and two more concubines, is well known. But after Joseph became the ruler of Egypt, why didn’t he wive, like his father Jacob from his own people, is interesting. Not only that, joseph married Asenath, daughter of the Priest of Potiphera! Well in those days the Deca Commandments had not yet been given, nor was there a binding rule, except for two precedents by Joseph’s father Jacob, and his father Isaac, who also wived from Padan Aram area.
It was these two events which bring in the concept of wiving within the ‘believer’s community’, which gets formalised through the Rules made by Moses. Joseph breaks those precedents and marries Asenath, forgetting the precedents, especially when he could have, if he had wanted, as Joseph could have easily convinced the Pharoah, who not only valued Joseph’s prescience but was indulgent in getting Joseph’s father and his folks in wagons and allotting the best of the Goshen land to the inferior pastoral band!
The second question that is skimmed over with nuanced interpretation is: Why did not joseph meet his father for more than 8 years after his position and prosperity set in? Leave his father Jacob, who didn’t rein in his elder brothers, why didn’t Joseph have the urge, a fraternal, uterine fraternal longing to meet his brother Benjamin?
Answers pour in only of questions are framed. I may not have the answers, but now that the questions are out, think up an answer in congruence with the Biblical verses.
The historical facts as emerging from the texts of the Bible, may not contain all facts to satisfy our intellect, but that doesn’t mean, we have to rush in and hallow things which have not been ruled out as profane!
Hold your horses!
Maybe, it is not in God’s scheme of things for this generation to know, but it still may be in the scheme of God for this generation to frame the question‼

Declared Christians & Practising Christians!

There is an underlying belief in Christians who are born Christians or who have declared themselves to have become Christians that those who are Christians by belief but are shy – not ashamed- of confessing, that the latter are crypto- Christians not eligible to be called as Christians!
There are verses from the Bible which are adduced by the former, such as:
For whosoever shall be ashamed of me and of my words, of him shall the Son of man be ashamed, when he shall come in his own glory, and in his Father’s, and of the holy angels. (Luke 9:26)
Whosoever therefore shall be ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation; of him also shall the Son of man be ashamed, when he cometh in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.(Mark 8:38)
Such verses are repeated to assure themselves of a certain superiority and decrying that those Christians wouldn’t inherit the kingdom of God!
Woe unto them who preach such things!
Christianity is an evolutionary process. Learning through hearing, reading or even an epiphanic event are the resources through which Christianity gradually sets into the consciousness of man.
Zacchaeus in Luke 19, did not plan to meet Jesus, but when Jesus tells him to come down from the Sycamore and stays with him, Zacchaeus repents of his rapacity and restores many times the amounts he had wrongfully collected as taxes at Jericho! He became a practising Christian much before he was baptised! To become a practising Christian nothing is a bar. If the Chief Vizier of the Ethiopian queen was convinced by Apostle Philip, that the Eunuch had to be baptised before he started practising Christianity, even that was right.
There is no single formula to Christianity. The hierarchification which goes on in Christianity neither has the sanctions of the teachings of Christ, nor are they sustainable on a sane interpretation of the Bible!
In fact when Jesus’ mother’s sister kneels before Jesus and asks Jesus to make his sons James and John sit on His right and left in His kingdom, He nails it thus:
…but to sit on my right hand, and on my left, is not mine to give, but it shall be given to them for whom it is prepared of my Father. (Matt.22:23)
This is the condition of Jesus’ apostles chosen by Him. What guarantee can a man or a church give to an individual about his place in the kingdom of heaven?
Christians should stop making such distinctions which teem with stupidity. Christianity is an evolutionary process and at what stage a person is and what opportunities he or she had, what is the weightage to his or her contribution are variables beyond the ken of human understanding and therefore, we as humans shouldn’t rush in to judge.
If anyone has any doubts if the Father in heaven (Jehovah) also thought so, please refer to the big talk of Elijah when he distinguishes himself as the only one who had not bent his knees to Baal!
14And he said, I have been very jealous for the LORD God of hosts: because the children of Israel have forsaken thy covenant, thrown down thine altars, and slain thy prophets with the sword; and I, even I only, am left; and they seek my life, to take it away.
15And the LORD said unto him, Go, return on thy way to the wilderness of Damascus: and when thou comest, anoint Hazael to be king over Syria: 16And Jehu the son of Nimshi shalt thou anoint to be king over Israel: and Elisha the son of Shaphat of Abelmeholah shalt thou anoint to be prophet in thy room. 17And it shall come to pass, that him that escapeth the sword of Hazael shall Jehu slay: and him that escapeth from the sword of Jehu shall Elisha slay. 18Yet I have left me seven thousand in Israel, all the knees which have not bowed unto Baal, and every mouth which hath not kissed him. (I Kings 19 chapter)
See that reply of Jehovah, a passing reference of those 7000 who had not followed Baal! God recognises and en passant counters the superiority claims of Elijah!
If that is the plight of Elijah, a man who feared no man or woman, except that he grew tired of Jezebel’s relentlessness, how much less would be the judgement of mortals who, to borrow a phrase from John the Baptist, would be unworthy to unloose the latchet of the shoes of Elijah say that Declared Christians are superior to those Christians, who confess within the confines of their homes and churches only? I am a declared and born Christian, but that in itself isn’t redeeming as the deeds and belief of man. It is time Indian Christians understood that!

The Truth of the oxen is not the Truth of the Bullls!

To realise Whatever I’ve got is all that I’ve got, is the beginning of the end to all regret. When the could’ve beens and the should’ve beens and ought to have beens are laid to rest, the paths to the future possibilities unfold. Thereafter it is the Effort and Randomness of events that determine our growth!

One of the episodes in all the epics, I have read, which holds an abiding interest in my mind is Ulysses’ instruction to his mates to tie him to the mast and get their acquiescence to have malleable wax fixed in all their ears!

Was this a bargain of mutual disability? I go non-motile and you go deaf!
Did Ulysses foresee that the Voice of the sirens, heard by the plebeian sailors, might lead to disobedience and en massè abandon of their sense of duty and therefore incapacitated them from hearing the divine voice of the Sirens; and as a measure to balance their disability, he incapacitated himself by getting himself tied to the mast?
Or is it owing to Ulysses’ superior understanding of his purpose and self- restraint, allowed himself the luxury of hearing the Sirens, yet trusted Circe’s warnings by getting himself tied to the mast?
All perceptions fork at a point and the view taken is more subjective depending expediency or on one’s proclivity, than objectivity!

‘Introductory offer’ is the earthworm strung to conceal the hook. If you try to gulp the earthworm you are sure to be the angler’s meal, but if you learn to nibble the earthworm off, you sure could live another day!

Comply with Contempt!

That it is profitable, may be true, but is it not too simplistic? Or is Truth simplistic yet hidden from common perception because of divergent aspiration; of lack of courage to see the Truth; or merely the fear of being wrong when the shaped majority opinion is contrary?I don’t know, but one of the instances in Jesus’ life on Earth is amazingly earthy.

Matthew 17:

24 And when they were come to Capernaum, they that received tribute money came to Peter, and said, Doth not your master pay tribute?

25 He saith, Yes. And when he was come into the house, Jesus prevented him, saying, What thinkest thou, Simon? of whom do the kings of the earth take custom or tribute? of their own children, or of strangers?

26 Peter saith unto him, Of strangers. Jesus saith unto him, Then are the children free.

27 Notwithstanding, lest we should offend them, go thou to the sea, and cast an hook, and take up the fish that first cometh up; and when thou hast opened his mouth, thou shalt find a piece of money: that take, and give unto them for me and thee.
The above passage reflects Jesus’ opinion about the temporal powers and the devices they had institutionalised.

In modern times, most countries have done away with Entry Tax on persons, since with evolution of society when people move from one city to another their payments towards lodging, boarding and purchases are all taxed, which provides a better return to the government than imposing an Entry Tax. At the time of Jesus in the flesh, even entry of human beings were liable for customs duty, but in modern times, the movement of persons is monitored by Immigration. Caesar had imposed customs duty on the goods and persons who entered from other cities and this was collected by those authorised persons.

Peter says that his Master doesn’t pay entry tax and as he walks towards Jesus, Jesus asks him whether kings collect taxes from the children of the land? Peter says No.

Jesus at this point says a few things which are astonishingly amazing.

Jesus agrees with Peter’s opinion but tells him thus:

Notwithstanding, lest we should offend them, go thou to the sea, and cast an hook, and take up the fish that first cometh up; and when thou hast opened his mouth, thou shalt find a piece of money: that take, and give unto them for me and thee.
Jesus COMPLIES with something He doesn’t subscribe to, yet in this case the compliance is to be backed by payment, look at what Jesus did: He tells Peter to cast a net and catch the first fish caught, open its mouth, take the piece of money and settle the customs claim “lest we offend them”!

Jesus doesn’t comply with the offerings received by Him, but tells Peter to catch the fish with the money and pay that piece of money.

This is a classic case of Compliance without Belief in what the law of the Times prescribes!

Jesus believed that one should render unto Caesar those which are Caesar’s, yet the income which was used to settle was a lost piece of coin, definitely lost in the books of Caesar’s accounts. Jesus remonetizes a lost coin into circulation.

Secondly, was Jesus concerned about offending those tax collectors?

It may appear so in the first flush, but Jesus definitely did not want to bring a blot to the duties being performed by those officials for a salary. It was Caesar’s policy of taxing the son’s of the soil that He was against, not the persons who did their job!

That was Jesus!

Yet, Preachers don’t expatiate this point or this instance with clarity. When an unreasonable Compliance is a must, the means with which it is complied, is immaterial! He complied without wasting His offerings and paid the entry tax out of a lost, hence a demonetised coin!

Comply with Contempt, at its best!!!

Today Tiberius Caesar, is no more, but Jesus’ act of Compliance with Contempt stands out💐💐💐‼‼

Article 48 & “…. and prohibiting the slaughter, of cows and calves and other milch and draught cattle!”

“…. and prohibiting the slaughter, of cows and calves and other milch and draught cattle!”
The above clause in Article 48 has rendered all the English knowing people of India, excluding the legislators, English illiterates!

As it is the Directive Principles are not justiciable – which means that when one of those directives are not legislated upon, the Higher Courts wouldn’t have the Constitutional handle to drive the Legislature to legislate on that subject. Therefore it follows that if any legislature has cited any of the legislations to have been enacted with an object to give effect to the noble directions & sentiments enshrined in the Directive Principles of a state Policy, it may be a gratuitous act of that legislature. But remember, for ever remember dear Indians, that any Legislation has only three ends

1. Repeal

2. Struck down by the superior courts as unconstitutional

3. Desuetude

The first usually takes place when the legislature which enacted realises its mistake or the changed circumstances or in deference to a court order or even to preserve the majority of the government of the day.

The second happens when a challenge succeeds in a High Court or the Supreme Court regarding the unconstitutionality of the provisions which offend the Fundamental Rights guaranteed in the Constitution.

The third is merely a provision falling into DISUSE or at times when the courts have struck down, yet left behind in the statute as a relic of no enforceability.

What is in the hands of a common man is the Second option, which is fraught with not merely resistance from the Government which mooted the legislation, but the structural resistance built into the system.

The primary resistance comes from the doctrine that THERE IS A PRESUMPTION OF LEGALITY TO ANY LEGISLATION MADE INTO AN ACT!
This has to be overcome and this has to be necessarily done in the higher judiciary, where thankfully, English is the language of the higher courts.

Then comes the meanings attributable to the language of the statute.

Let me expose my ignorance of the language of the clause excerpted above:

The statute uses the word “prohibit“, which is the only verb in the clause, thereby stating in the narrowest of terms the SCOPE OF THE LEGISLATION relating to “slaughter, of cows and calves and other milch and draught cattle”. Consequently I believe that any legislation which tries to REGULATE SLAUGHTER is not mandated by the Constitution of India.

Am I possibly right?

In the enormity of my ignorance I believe that since Article 48 deals with cattle and livestock it intends to proscribe, prevent through PROHIBITION ‘slaughter’, which again means the act of killing as a class, as regards animals, for consumption purposes.

The next point is prohibit slaughter of what?

This is where the ingenuity has been utilised to smuggle in the will of the mooters of the bills, piloted in various States and assented to by the Governors and probably the President of India, if it had been reserved for his/her consideration.

The prohibition is clear:
“of cows and calves”. Why cows and calves? Why not bulls, oxen, buffaloes, heifers etc.? The answer lies in the succeeding part, which is “….and other milch and draught cattle.”

My understanding with the enormity of my ignorance impels me to believe that COWS & CALVES, which are common and known to all should help the reader understand the underlying principle: a cow not only calves ( verbal sense) and thereafter allows humans to appropriate their milk, it does the calving many times over within its lifetime and therefore entitled NOT TO BE TREATED like beef cattle. We humans should not be greedy enough to butcher even an animal which had been used for appropriating milk for nearly a decade.

Further, I am sure our Constituent Assembly, with its vast experience in understanding human sentiments and tendencies, did not want a ‘mother of many calves’ to be butchered for consumption, as that would be a heartless deed on a cow which had enabled many households extra income through sale of its calves and milk.

As regards the CALVES, man should not be allowed to eat an animal which is too young to be used for consumption, as that would indiscriminately eliminate the cow-calves also, merely on the grounds that there are medicinal benefits or tasty or nutritional benefits etc. Further, such slaughter of the young ones could lead to decline in cattle population. More than all these, I believe that no being, once born should be killed, before it reaches a certain age of maturity. Therefore the Constituent Assembly had named the Specie COW and applied the principle to ‘other’ MILCH & DRAUGHT CATTLE!

So the principle deducible is that similarly, any animal which provides MILK or is used for its work, like oxen and buffaloes, which had been used as draught animals should also NOT TO BE SLAUGHTERED!

So the Article states that the specie COW and CALF and the genus which provide milk or helps man in his labour SHOULD NOT BE SLAUGHTERED. Period.
Instead of excluding these classes of cattle for consumption, when the legislature, in its pretended collective false understanding, enacts laws REGULATING SLAUGHTER, is primarily outside the ambit of the Directive Principles of State Policy.

Not including she goats and ewes, which have parturated multiple times, would be against the pith and substance of this principle.

When I am NOT a beef- eater, what locus-standi do I have?

One more resistance of the structure to overcome.
Let us get some education in English, at least the High Courts and the Supreme Courts would become temples of ideas and not the fortresses of ideologues!

COW SLAUGHTER & BEEF.

Movid's Weblog

The bill placed on the floor of the House of the Karnataka Legislature bans sale & possession of “beef”within the state of Karnataka. The ostensible reason is giving effect to Article 48 of the Constitution of India, which falls within the head of Directive Principles of State Policy.

Article 48. Organisation of agriculture and animal husbandry.—The State shall endeavour to organise agriculture and animal husbandry on modern and scientific lines and shall, in particular, take steps for preserving and improving the breeds, and prohibiting the slaughter, of cows and calves and other milch and draught cattle.

Now this is the provision of the Constitution of India. Note the wordings “……..prohibiting the slaughter, of cows and calves and other milch and draught cattle.” To the best of my understanding of this provision, slaughtering of COWS, CALVES and DRAUGHT CATTLE are to be prohibited as the Cows give…

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MCP – Irony of ironies!

The Feminine force realises its potential only through physically merging and parting with its Masculine counterpart. Prolonging such a merging and parting with a continuous commitment to a continual cohabitation with one exclusive masculine force, makes her a Queen. That is the reason why there is a competition to become a Queen and when they don’t get what they yearn, they turn against the Masculine force maligning it as the devastator!This Transferance of rancour is the pastime of the lost and the loser!

Silvio Berlusconi & Alimony!

Besides the rhyme between his name and his liability, there is nothing nice about paying a monthly alimony of over 1 million Euros, to a woman whose association he had contracted under a marriage.
The award was based on granting an award commensurate with the “life style” of the spouse out of the ‘marital assets’.

Wtf is ‘ marital assets’? It is the net assets in the hands of both the spouses on the day they decide to terminate their marriage minus the assets held by each spouse prior to their marriage – or so I’d like to imagine.

This disregards the individual contribution to the wealth created after marriage and lumps it all together as marital assets. A formula which discounts individual initiative and enterprise. Berlusconi was a media Mogul much before he contracted the marriage which went awry; he was an entrepreneur of success much before his wedding. But his spouse had chosen to depart based on reasons which the courts in Italy have found to be sufficient. But when alimony is demanded the courts were guided by the doctrine of not paying ‘subsistence’ for the spouse of lesser means, but had been guided by ‘accustomed standard of living’ of the spouse who claims alimony.

I find this doctrine strange as the alimony awarded is not dependant on the payer spouse’ future earnings, which may rise or fall. It puts a pressure on the payer spouse to keep up his ’emi’ outflow by hook or by crook.

A greater injustice is that if the payer spouse has chosen to contract another marriage, he starts off with half of the marital assets to take care of his future family, whereas, if the payee spouse is a female, she not only finds another nest built by another entrepreneur with no decrease in her monthly alimony accruals!

Seems good to have a xx chromosome, as it is one leg of the x is truncated and the other is made is hobble around carrying the weight of an ex! Seems grossly unfair.

Now the courts have made a slight departure- a return to sanity. It says: ALIMONIES SHOULD NOT GUARANTEE PREVIOUS STANDARD OF LIVING!

When there is no guarantee the the paying divorcee wouldn’t be able to guarantee his own lifestyle, how on earth could the courts have given credence to such a proposition?

Whether it was Elizabeth Taylor who paid alimony to her plumber spouse or it be Berlusconi, the issue should be decided on equanimity if not on equality.

A one time settlement would have been fairer as there would be an additional responsibility cast on the payee divorcee to handle her/ his assets with care so that they also would get to feel the pinch of the difficulties of keeping one’s assets secure from those preying wolves, in the garb of asset mangers.

I think the courts are returning to evenhanded doctrine instead of a gender driven policy of making Peter pay Paul, for the flamboyant luxuries of Paul .

When ambition resides in the minds of the incompetent …..

In Life, however undesirable it might be, all types of permutation and combinations show up in Time. But the strangest is when the Incompetent imbibes vaulting Ambition and starts troubling other human beings .

I for one believe that lack of direction and effort, lead to Incompetence. But the incompetent see the rewards of the competent, and mentally berate the successful, with an attribute those competent persons may lack, and thereby mentally feel falsely superior and consequently desire the Recognition, normally due to the Competent.

The primary emotion of the Incompetent is Fear. The Incompetent, fear not only their failure, but the success of those they ‘berate’ as incompetent!

I’ve had the unenviable privilege of having been associated with at least one such person, who when it is his duty to ‘DO’ a particular task, would never embark on it, instead would let a competent person, in the back office, to initiate the process. The Incompetent fellow is not worried about that back office walking away with the credit, as he would restructure the base programme, which needs not only effort but also a high level of imagination, skill and innovation, and present it as if it were his own, after demoralising the back office executive. Too bad that the back office executive not only doesn’t get recognised but is demoralised by this old limp cockerel on some venial grounds!

The Fear of failure of this old limp cockerel shows occasionally as an Anxiety over the success of the diligently competent.

Have you worked with non-starters like this – Stealing labour, berating competence for self approval, riddled with anxiety that others might succeed? Be sure to notice such types, they breed faster than mosquitoes and occupy places beyond their competence.

But if you ask them, they would say with all put on humility: God exalteth the humble!

Oh, really?

MCC in the Eighties

Madras Christian College in the early eighties catapulted my consciousness from the outer to the inner. The realisation that the outer was limited by my perceptional tools and that the ‘inner’ wasn’t thus circumscribed, dawned with a suddenness completely eclipsing my then prevalent notions of ICON SEEKING and WALKING ON THE FOOTPRINTS OF THOSE ICONS!
There was a Professor of English, Rajani, who was perennially dressed in tees and denims walking to take his classes in Selaiyur Hall from Thomas Hall, where he resided. His walk was measured, not stiff, but with a casualness, and his long grey beard blending well with his pensive look. Prof. Rajani was ready to entertain not only a new idea but had the honesty to admit that he hadn’t thought about it or that he’d blocked that view with a long- held set notion. A sort of intellectual honesty, unperturbed by opinions of the outer!
He was for me a symbol of the man who had turned to the inner, not through austerity, piety or self mortification, but allowing the experiences to seep into his consciousness untrammelled by pre-held notions and yet recording it for reference but uninfluenced by unmerited experience. My friends used to read their meanings into his attitude as him being ‘tolerant’ to others’ opinions and actions, yet for me that unblinking depth in his eyes showed that he wasn’t supercilious about those opinions and actions as being mundane or irrelevant but a silent realisation that each human was in his own stage of opinions in Life aspiring for something and evolving at his own speed!
That silent uncensorious move with his own Inner ploughing of a lonely furrow of his self set him apart from the rest of the Professors in the campus.
One day I walked into his apartment over Thomas Hall to the mellow flowing of Rachmaninov. Anyone could walk into his apartment and listen to his collection of jazz, classical or any other genre either brought or available there. When many in the campus wouldn’t have even heard of Bang & Olufsen he possessed a music system complete with LPs neatly stacked. Rachmaninov was new, utterly new to me, especially with that low drone of the double bass accentuating the bathos in that piece.
He waved us in.
That was the beginning of the realisation that each had only one Life, with no guarantee of either continuity of this Life or another, notwithstanding my Christian beliefs!
Unless spoken to, Prof was economical with his words and even when he answered, he triggered a curiosity in the other to explore and not merely to offload his knowledge or opinions on the other. In that atmosphere of chants and bells of Rachmaninov, the Prof said something, which rings in my mind even today:
The gamut and depth of one’s experience defines the silent accommodation of ideas and opinions set upon us. Let those overflow but never overwhelm as it is their’s and till felt, experienced and adopted, it ain’t yours!

Language policy of TN & KL!

The recently announced policy of KL in education is that schools affiliated to all boards SHALL teach and the students be tested in Malayalam! A policy which according to me lacks character both in its content and its timing.

Reasons are:

Developing Regional languages and culture is mandated under the Indian Constitution, but imposing is NOT. If the CBSE, ICSE and IB students have chosen that board for the primary reason that they either do not belong to that state or don’t have Malayalam as their mother tongue, why should they be forced to learn a language which would have no functional use for their future? Secondly, there are students who migrate from state to state based on their parents’ professional demands, so why deny them a choice to their exigencies?

As regards timing, when TN demanded that they would brook no COMPULSIVE methods of learning another language based on a majoritarian view of a special status accorded to a particular language the time limit of 15 years was expiring for English to be treated as Co-official language. But no such threats are imminent to Malayalam now. Things have settled down. TN has proved beyond all reasonable doubt that making kids learn another language is in no way going to facilitate its economy. TN resisted IMPOSITION, which was brought in blatantly through legislative policy changes. What KL is doing is IMPOSING its language on those who don’t want to make their wards learn Malayalam. It is nothing but a State majoritarianism, denying an opportunity of choice!

The only way to preserve one’s culture and language is by GRANTING LIBERTIES to other cultures and languages to prosper side by side and not impose liabilities and grant undeserved incentives for acquiescing with majoritarian views. That Liberty is not only decent but in the long run inculcates in our culture the ability to defend when others impose or incentivise other culture or languages.

KL has taken a regressive step.

Unheard Melodies‼

Unheard Melodies!
“But those unheard are sweeter” about melodies, and the General theme of unachieved pursuits having a greater appeal by John Keats in his ODE ON A GRECIAN URN had warped my head in pursuit of the unheard.

It is not as much the itch to hear the unheard, but to survive the hearing and recount that experience to my brethren is the tougher part.

In ODYSSEY, at Book xii, Homer narrates the consequences of hearing the unheard melodies of the Sirens thus:
Next, where the Sirens dwells, you plough the seas;

Their song is death, and

Unblest the man, whom music wins to stay

Nigh the cursed shore and listen to the lay.

No more that wretch shall view the joys of life

His blooming offspring, or his beauteous wife!

In verdant meads they sport; and wide around

Lie human bones that whiten all the ground:

The ground polluted

Homer’s “ground polluted” is the consequence of the death of the unprepared persons, listening to the melody of the Sirens and being led closer to enjoy the melody in proximity! Homer continues thus:
floats with human gore,

And human carnage taints the dreadful shore

Fly swift the dangerous coast: let every ear

Be stopp’d against the song! ’tis death to hear!

Firm to the mast with chains thyself be bound,

Nor trust thy virtue to the enchanting sound.

If, mad with transport, freedom thou demand,

Be every fetter strain’d, and added band to band.

The melody of the Sirens cannot be heard and dismissed with man’s sense of morality. The only option is FLEE!
But what sets apart Ulysses from the rest is that he wanted to hear the melody.

A life of toil, travails and turmoil would’ve been a compromised Life, if the melodies of the Sirens have not been heard. The survival method is to be learnt and implemented: TIE YOURSELF TO THE MAST AND GET NO RELIEF OF RELEASE FROM THE FETTERS FROM YOUR MATES!
Ulysses pours wax into the ears of all his mates on board. Mates cannot hear the “unheard melody”. They are seamen drawn to danger like moth to the flames. Their enterprise is a must for your journey, but DON’T, repeat DON’T EVER USE THEIR IDEAS. Seal them off from the melody of the sirens so that they neither get attracted to the melody, nor do they understand the reasons for your imploring them to loosen you and unfetter you from the mast!

The shore of the Sirens is past and a great Truth survives.

A man who had heard the UNHEARD MELODIES OF THE SIREN AND YET SURVIVED TO LIVE WITH THOSE MEMORIES.
What Ulysses lost was his ability to be appreciative of any melody which did not measure up to those of the Sirens he’d heard! A lifelong liability, to be worn as a Stoic with a knowing smile.

That’s the fate of hearing unheard melodies! We all hear those melodies day in and day out, either with wax in our ears or fetters to our feet.

Blessed are those with fetters than with wax‼

Of Queening Pawns

Queening a pawn!
There are certain disabilities which are imbedded in a Pawn’s functions, naturally its structure is the least pivotal in a chess board.

The disabilities are that it has only one direction to move and that’s forward. Come what may it can never ever turn around. Secondly, it can never cut a pawn or piece facing it and the prospects of it getting stuck is very high. Thirdly, it is the piece which is made a scapegoat or an intervener to protect another piece or square.

Despite all these disabilities, the only glimmer of hope for a pawn is that if it were to reach the other end on its march, it become, rather transmutes itself into a Queen – the most powerful piece in a chess board!

In the Greco – Roman mythologies there are humans who had been elevated to the level of gods, for their endurance based accomplishments. The outstanding example is Hercules. The tasks he had to perform were enormous and the troubles he had to face in pursuit of those tasks were not the ones which could be borne by human beings. When he completed those tasks, he became a Queened pawn. Moses spent forty years in the wilderness with his father in law Jethro and had forgotten his kingly skills of building pyramids, but once he stood before the burning bush and had his calling – Moses became a Queened pawn.

David, the shepherd boy when he was chosen to fight Goliath of Gath on behalf of the Israelites and won the fight became a Queened pawn.

But Ulysses despite being an astute warrior, able leader of men and tactful handler of situations, never got Queened. Because, Ulysses was already a Noble and most of all, he was totally human and made no resolution to spare himself from the temptations which offered themselves in great regularity to him. In fact I see more nobility in Ulysses than the queened pawns.

To become a queened pawn one has to have grit and copious amounts of good fortune to suffer and survive, but to be NOBLE a man has to just have the leadership qualities to make his comrades comply with his demand of them pouring wax into their ears whereas keep his own ears clean to hear the seductive Sirens; but tell the same comrades to tie him to the mast and never ever untie him despite his struggles to be loosened from the mast. He heard the seductive sirens immobilised by his own prescience! That is Nobility! He heard the voice of destruction yet survived, through anticipation and preparation. Not for nothing Homer walks away with the title of the greatest Epic writer.

How to slip into slavery?

Very simple! Empower another man to make laws regarding what you will eat, where you will stay, whom you will meet, what and how you will dress!

The man to whom you gave the authority, is enjoying every moment, he enjoys your consent for him to make the laws. He starts experimenting based on his half baked hypotheses. His lawmaking becomes an experiment! His lawmaking is to establish an order to his liking. Procrustes had an idea!

What an Idea sirji!

Fit everyone in his bed. He wanted to fit all into his bed. Not longer than the bed nor yet shorter. Perfection was Procrustes’ mantra. Either way, the traveler gets stretched or truncated.

Procrustean methods also establish an order. An order which creates UNIFORMITY! The spin off is not known to others. When people die of truncating or stretching, the dead man’s chest is his. After all he took away a traveler’s belongings and money ONLY after putting him to rest in his OWN bed, in which he passed away! WHAT COUKD PROCRUSTES DO?

Marvellous!

In a Democracy, Liberty could be over-ruled because shortening of someone’s Liberty is going to provide employment to many. Because shortening of Liberty could serve the interest of the many instead of the few! Because curtailment of Liberty ensures that girls’ parents don’t have to worry about their daughters being followed!

There is a thin difference between ENJOYING ATTENTION and UNWANTED ATTENTION. There are girls who are over 18 years of age and enjoy male attention. But their parents don’t want any of that stuff to take shape. They want their daughters to be with their books and assignments instead of giving room for the dawning physical pleasures. So how to control the girls who are self-willed and enjoy attention of the opposite sex? Do a Jeppiar on them. Segregate them and prevent any male- female interaction outside the classrooms!

Next, there are irresponsible drinkers who take to the wheel even when drunk! What to do? We are unable to control the rogues who get drunk and mow down human beings, so let us make it a reason for banning liquor on the national and state highways.

Purity for want of contaminating substance is no Purity. It is a showcased purity, something which cannot remain pure once the opportunity is available. Why deprive now and later regret the waywardness of People?

If liquor is not served in hotels and motels, we criminalise a product by location of no sanctity. If liquor is banned near religious places, near schools and other places of solemnity, there would be substance in it. But banning it on state and national highways would breed a new type of bootleggers who would sell liquor on highways, enjoy the patronage of a corrupt police force, etc. But that doesn’t inculcate in our brothers and sisters a sense of responsibility, which ought to be born out of a REALISATION. Courts do not view drunken driving strictly and bribes have replaced cancellation of licences. So take the easy route! Don’t wait for people to realise and alter their behaviour, just DEPRIVE THEM OF LIQUOR ON HIGHWAYS.

Easiest solution is that we look into the statistics and realise we need to alter ‘something’ and curiously that something always happens to be something which gives ‘pleasure’ ! Liberty and Pleasures are badly mated now.

Another way of looking at it is that when self control is lacking, you will not get your marshmallow! Go and be a good boy, silently in a corner. That’s the emasculating power of Democracy, where Liberties are sacrificed for statistical aesthetics!

MIT households in India!

MIT households in India!
Of late the Duties of citizens enshrined in the constitution of India has been taken so seriously that ‘building a scientific temperament’ is not merely a gratuitous advice of the Constituent Assembly, long ignored, but has become a spiritual prescription of all and sundry pontificating on WHAT NOT TO DO, with a dire consequence to boot, if not followed.

Each Indian household has become a workshop of the various hypotheses being tested in Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The only difference is that these household MIT workshops have become ‘UNSCIENTIFIC’ teepees of squaws and Indians pontificating to their young ones beliefs which have long been exorcised through reason.

One of the alarms raised in the social media is: WHAT ARE THE 10 FOODS WHICH SHOULD NOT BE CONSUMED AFTER REHEATING?

The pseudoscientific exposè is a WARNING with a specialised knowledge on what ought not to be consumed.

Human mind being prone to veiled threats more than blatant ones, immediately responds through compliance. Collective compliance based on a hypothesis is the recipe for all SOCIAL, POLITICAL & RELIGIOUS PRESCRIPTIONS!

These prescriptions may breed uniformity and for a while a chest thumping story would be narrated, as to why they are not afflicted with the disease, thereby glorifying the consequence of NOT eating certain reheated foods! QED‼

Neat BS!

Avoid and certain diseases would avoid you! This was the same formula purveyed by the cunning philosophers, religious leaders, political honchos and occupants of the upper hierarchies!

There is nothing scientific about this!
Proverbs 26 says:

The slothful man saith, There is a lion in the way; a lion is in the streets.

14. As the door turneth upon his hinges, so doth the slothful upon his bed.

15. The slothful hideth his hand in his bosom; it grieveth him to bring it again to his mouth.

16. The sluggard is wiser in his own conceit than seven men that can render a reason.

The reason for all such PRESCRIPTION is that they who prescribe are SLOTHFUL, GREEDY & UNSCIENTIFIC!

Slothful because they are long used to making others work for their benefit, comfort and wealth. Greedy because they can’t wait to garner the resources which the society has to offer and make others to work without fair wages for their benefit. Thirdly, UNSCIENTIFIC because their hypotheses are structured to serve their sloth and greed. These unscientific propositions are tinged with the right amount of ‘fearful consequences’ to obtain compliance and thereafter based on statistical data on the percentage of compliance, obtain concessions for such compliant behaviour, which concessions, in Time are stabilised into Inviolable Rights!

Society built in the above model would remain TURBULENT , as the foundation is not TRUTH VERIFIED IN THE ALTAR OF SCIENCE, but a compliant behaviour elevated to a TRUTH through pseudoscience!

Let us beware of PSEUDOSCIENCE and the evangelists of such propositions!

It is just like the OLA and UBER war of statistics on MARKETSHARE. Market share can never declare the truth if it is not EVOLVED through a natural process.

Allow EVOLUTION, not micromanagement to suit your predicted results!

JESUS & the Canaanite woman.

Paul and Peter might have encashed it, but this blogger believes that what Jesus did that day to the Canaanite woman set the standards of Christianity to all!

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One of the passages of the Bible which had troubled me a lot during early adult years, was the passage found in Matthew chapter 15 verse 26. We as Christians are fed with a lot of nice epithets like ‘loving’, ‘compassionate’, ‘non-judgmental’, ‘forgiving’ JESUS and suddenly the verse, “It is not meet to take the children’s bread, and to cast it to dogs” hits an Indian Christian. Was Jesus truly sent for the lost sheep of Israel and not for the salvation of “MANKIND” as suggested by the disciples after the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus?I reproduce the passage for better appreciation of the episode:-

21 Then Jesus went thence, and departed into the coasts of Tyre and Sidon. 22 And, behold, a woman of Canaan came out of the same coasts, and cried unto him, saying, Have mercy on me, O Lord, thou son of David…

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Vineyard workers & 1 denarius!

One of the finer distinctions one fails to make in the parable of the vineyard owner and the wage of one denarius is that the first set of workers offered their services on a fixed wage I.e on Labour contract. The second set were persons who were not HIRED, so the vineyard owner engaged their services on the basis of SERVICE. In Thamizh, that would mean OOZHIYAM! Oozhiyam is essentially rendered as service owed to a Church, Temple, deity or public work of the community. These are NOT QUANTIFIABLE in wage terms. There is a certain prestige in Service, without the assurance of a specified wage.
When the owner gave a denarius each to those contracted on Labour as well as to those who were called to render service at the vineyard, it was the owner’s will to assess the service rendered and the ex gratia to be paid for service. When the master gave a denarius each to all in both the categories, the wage contracted probably thought that they had sold themselves short! They could have bargained for more for their labour!
It is also possible that the vineyard owner had a specified sum assigned for the harvest and there was no cost overrun despite completion of the harvest, therefore he decided to be generous with those who did ‘service’ at the vineyard!
What emerges on the whole out of this parable is that, of the one who has entered into a Contract for a job, it would be none of his business to see how much his boss pays people who do lesser duration of work. If you don’t win the contract, do service, you may still get paid handsomely! Go and Work.
The skilled win labour contract but the unskilled may have to go thru anxious moments, but the vineyard owner would come even at 5 pm and engage our services and pay us equal to those who had won the contract for labour. Cheer up! There is Hope and keep it alive while still alive!
16 “So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”(Matt:20)
Does anyone sympathise with the idle anxiety of those who were not hired in the morning at six, again at 9, again at 12 noon and finally at 3 pm but were sent in to the vineyard at 5 pm but received their “service fee” of one denarius at 6 pm?
Does anyone sympathise with the 5pm service providers who had missed their breakfast, lunch and tea- break but waited with hope or merely stood there with nowhere else to go?
We don’t. We look at the salaries and perks. We seldom realise what Milton said in his epic poem : THEY ALSO SERVE WHO STAND AND WAIT!
But like Godot, one could turn up wasting one’s life – with Nothing to be done!

Declared Christians & Practising Christians!

Heine Heinrich

A mistress stood by the sea
sighing long and anxiously.
She was so deeply stirred
By the setting sun
My Fräulein!, be gay,
This is an old play;
ahead of you it sets
And from behind it returns

RESIGNATION OF MPs & MLAs IN INDIA

Written in 2008, seems relevant in today’s scenario in Thamizh Nadu

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OF late in INDIA there have been a spate of en masse resignation of the Members of Parliament and Members of the Legislative Assemblies of the states. The reasons cited are dependent on the political hue of the party they belong to. The issues that i am interested in is two fold:-

1. Whether the MPs and MLAs have a right to resign and if so, what is the alternate arrangement for ensuring the representation of the constituency that sent them, subsequent to the resignation of that MP or MLA?

2. Shud the grounds based on which the resignation is tendered, be enumerated in the Constitution and unless it falls within the prescribed reasons, the Speaker/Chair-person SHOULD NOT accept the resignation.

Getting publicity for one’s policies and principles, in a democratic set up is essential. No doubt, if the electorate is ignorant of the policies, for which a candidate stands…

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Thelonius Monk & Wagner

I’ve listened to many jazz pianists and other pianists, but none stings the keys of the piano like Monk does. To listen to him sting those keys and wiggle on those keys, is just like a bee which after stinging, continues to exercise its sting into its victim further by wiggling its abdomen, till it expels the last vanishing venom into the victim. It unravels the deeper anxieties of the soul mercilessly, making me stand and wonder at the vast expanse of the universe, ALONE.
When complacency gets the better of me Thelonius Monk is my cure, if that fails, I listen to Wagner, who belligerently marches into my soul with his trumpets and tubas and trombones and drags me to his Valhalla.

God bless their disruptive music!

Does the Criminal Appeal filed by the State of Karnataka abate on the death of Dr. J. Jayalalithaa?

On the 5th of December, 2016 Dr. J.Jayalalithaa, then the Chief Minister of Thamizh Nadu passed away, while a Criminal Appeal was pending before the Hon’ble Supreme Court, against the acquittal granted by the Hon’ble High Court of Karnataka. The Appellant in this case was the State of Karnataka, as the Prosecutor.
In the above scenario, on the day of the passing away of Dr. J. Jayalalithaa, what was her status as a citizen, endued with all the rights enshrined in the Constitution of India? I’d not have given serious thought to this, had I not been flooded with whatsapp messages stating that a “CONVICT” cannot be glorified in the Government offices or in the State Assembly by displaying her photographs and much less be exalted by the State government sponsoring the building of a memorial at the Marina.

According to me Dr. J. Jayalalitha was an AUTREFOIS ACQUIT, at the time of her demise and merely because a Criminal Appeal had been taken by the State, the Appeal does NOT reverse her status as a CONVICT under Section 120B of the IPC, 1860 and Section 13 of the PC Act, 1988. She had been absolved of all the taint which stuck to her by virtue of the Trial Court’s order convicting her of the above mentioned offences and sentencing her to serve 4 years’ imprisonment and a fine of Rs. 100 crores.

Did the Appeal reverse the status of the Accused who was ACQUITTED?

A categorical reply would be NO.

There was no CONCURRENT FINDINGS by the Trial court and the Hon’ble High Court, in fact the penultimate court order exonerated her and thereby her innocence of the offence was established under the abiding principles of “presumption of innocence till proven guilty”.

If that were so, when did the Hon’ble Supreme Court convict her?

By the fact that the Hon’ble Supreme Court set aside the Orders of the Hon’ble High Court and affirmed the Trial Court Order, the Hon’ble Supreme Court REINSTITUTED (not ‘AFFIRMED’) that Dr. J. Jayalalithaa was a CONVICT on the date of pronouncing the Judgement on 14/02/2017 in CRIMINAL APPEAL NOS. 300-303 OF 2017(Arising out of SLP(Crl.) Nos.6117-6120 of 2015).

Irony is that Dr. J. Jayalalithaa had passed away on 05/12/2016, so the question arises as to whether a person could be pronounced guilty and convicted after her death?

Secondly, the sentence was also upheld in toto, which means that Dr. J.Jayalalithaa shall serve a prison sentence of 4 years and also pay a fine of Rs. 100 crores. That she had died on 05/12/2016 would preclude the deceased from being within the grasp of the living to enforce such an incarceration. Therefore the sentence of the jail term of 4 years would have to necessarily abate, however, the fine of Rs. 100 crores imposed on her would be recoverable from her assets left behind, either in her own name or from the beneficiaries of her bequest.

The law governing abatement of proceedings upon death is available at Section 394 of the Criminal Procedure Code, 1973. Section 394 reads as under:

394. Abatement of appeals.

(1) Every appeal under section 377 or section 378 shall finally abate on the death of the accused.

(2) Every other appeal under this Chapter (except an appeal from a sentence of fine) shall finally abate on the death of the appellant: Provided that where the appeal is against a conviction and sentence of death or of imprisonment, and the appellant dies during the pendency of the appeal, any of his near relatives may, within thirty days of the death of the appellant, apply to the Appellate Court for leave to continue the appeal; and if leave is granted, the appeal shall not abate. Explanation.- In this section,” near relative” means a parent, spouse, lineal descendant, brother or sister.

“It was conceded by learned counsel for the parties that neither in the Cr.P.C. nor in the Supreme Court Rules there is any provision dealing with such a situation.” (State Of A.P vs S. Narasimha Kumar & Ors on 13 July, 2006)

Justices A. Pasayat and S.H. Kapadia, in their 2006 judgement, had excerpted passages from Harnam Singh v. The State of Himachal Pradesh (1975 (3) SCC 343), which appears relevant in the present context:

2. …….It is to be noted that Section 394 Cr.P.C. corresponds to Section 431 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1898 (in short the ‘Old Code’).

8……….Dead persons are beyond the processes of human tribunal and recognizing this, the first limb of Section 431 (Chapter XXXI of the Code of 1898) provides that appeals against acquittals finally abate on the death of the accused. Where a respondent who has been acquitted by the lower court dies, there is no one to answer the charge of criminality, no one to defend the appeal and no one to receive the sentence. It is of the essence of criminal trials that excepting cases like the release of offenders on probation, the sentence must follow upon a conviction. Section 258(2), Section 306(2) and Section 309(2) of the Code provide, to the extent material, that where the Magistrate or the Sessions Judge finds the accused guilty and convicts him he shall, unless he proceeds in accordance with the provisions of Section 562, pass sentence on the accused according to law.

9. Every other appeal under Chapter XXXI, except an appeal from a sentence of fine, finally abates on the death of the appellant. By “every other appeal” is meant an appeal other than one against an order of acquittal, that is to say, an appeal against an order of conviction. Every appeal against conviction therefore abates on the death of the accused except an appeal from a sentence of fine. An appeal from a sentence of fine is excepted from the all pervasive rule of abatement of criminal appeals for the reason that the fine constitutes a liability on the estate of the deceased and the legal representatives on whom the estate devolves are entitled to ward off that liability. By Section 70 of the Penal Code the fine can be levied at any time within six years after the passing of the sentence and if the offender has been sentenced for a longer period than six years, then at any time previous to the expiration of that period; “and the death of the offender does not discharge from the liability any property which would, after his death, be legally liable for his debts”. The fact that the offender has served the sentence in default of payment of fine is not a complete answer to the right of the

Government to realize the fine because under the proviso to Section 386(1)(b) of the Code the court can, for special reasons to be recorded in writing issue a warrant for realizing the fine even if the offender has undergone the whole of the imprisonment in default of payment of fine. The sentence of fine remains outstanding though the right to recover the fine is circumscribed by a sort of a period of limitation prescribed by Section 70, Penal Code.

10. The narrow question which then requires to be considered is whether an appeal from a composite order of sentence combining the substantive imprisonment with fine is for the purposes of Section 431 not an appeal from a sentence of fine. It is true that an appeal from a composite order of sentence is ordinarily directed against both the substantive imprisonment and the fine. But, such an appeal does not for that reason cease to be an appeal from a sentence of fine. It is something more not less than an appeal from a sentence of fine only and it is significant that the parenthetical clause of Section 431 does not contain the word “only”. To limit the operation of the exception contained in that clause so as to take away from its purview appeals directed both against imprisonment and fine is to read into the clause the word “only” which is not there and which, by no technique of interpretation may be read there. The plain meaning of Section 431 is that every criminal appeal abates on the death of the accused “except an appeal from a sentence of fine”. The section for its application requires that the appeal must be directed to the sentence of fine and not that it must be directed to that sentence only. If by the judgment under appeal a sentence of fine is imposed either singularly or in conjunction with a sentence of imprisonment, the appeal against conviction would be an appeal from a sentence of fine within the meaning of Section 431. All that is necessary is that a sentence of fine should have been imposed on the accused and the appeal filed by him should involve the consideration of the validity of that sentence.

11. It is difficult to discern any principle behind the contrary view. The reason of the rule contained in the exception is that a sentence of fine operates directly against the estate of the deceased and therefore the legal representatives are entitled to clear the estate from that liability. Whether or not the sentence of fine is combined with any other sentence can make no difference to the application of that principle.”

State Of A.P vs S. Narasimha Kumar & Ors on 13 July, 2006

Bench: Arijit Pasayat & S.H. Kapadia, JJ

CASE NO.: Appeal (crl.) 1446-1450 of 2004.

The distinguishing part of the above mentioned judgement with that of Dr. J. Jayalalithaa’s case is that, the Appellant in the cited case was a “CONVICT”at the time of the Appeal, as the Appellant went on appeal against the orders of the High Court which had held him guilty, whereas, Dr. J. Jayalalithaa had been exonerated and the State went on appeal. Therefore, Dr. J. Jayalalithaa was innocent in the eyes of the law during the pendency of the Appeal.

The above judgement by Justices Pasayat and Kapadia is based on Section 431 of the 1898 CrPC, as no pari-materia provisions were found to be available to the succeeding CrPC and after adoption of the Constitution of India, the law had to be rewritten.

It is clear that only the Fine part could be continued and that too from the assets of the deceased Convict. But the question rises again whether a person could be held guilty of a crime after her death and be declared a Convict? If all the criminal proceedings except the liability of fine continued, at the time of her death, what is the sanctity of “presumption of innocence” which followed her acquittal? and who convicted her guilty after her death?, to create a claim over a fine, which was imposed by the Trial court and later set aside and thereafter revived by the SC Order dated 14/02/2017?

I have no answers for the above questions, but am sure that someone who is interested in ensuring that Dr. J. Jayalalithaa’s reputation is not sullied, by the exigencies of the political commotion, would be emboldened to raise it as a Curative Petition before the Hon’ble Supreme Court and remove the unwanted taint cast on her because of her association with EVIL.

If nothing else, constant self assurance keeps your morale high and your body up. An incapacity to Believe is like illiteracy, it can be cured through practice!

Like as the arrows of the archer are to kill, there are archers of golden arrows, who give Life and luxury to those survivors or his descendants or finder of the Arrow. The intent of the Archer is of importance, I don’t know whether the intent made the arrow gold or the gold made the Archer’s intent.

Quarantined MLAs & Governor’s response!

The happenings in Thamizh Nadu are in the cusp of Formalism and Evolution.Formalism is that the Governor has to call the person who enjoys the support of the majority MLAs of the state legislature and swear him/her in as the Chief Minister of a state. Mrs. Sasikala has a list of MLAs which consists of 135 MLAs who had pledged support to her as the Legislature party leader of the single largest party of the Assembly. The effective strength of the legislature is 233 and the midway being 116.5, Mrs. Sasikala has the support of 135 MLAs, as per letters of support dated 05/02/2017, thereby there appears to be no doubt about her having enjoyed the majority of the MLAs as on 05/02/2017. But the Governor has to consider if the letters of support has become STALE and NON REFLECTIVE OF THE EVOLVING SITUATION POST DHYAN OF OPS IN THE MARINA.

The Governor is to consider if the person he’d swear in has the majority and thereafter tell him/ her to get the CONFIDENCE VOTE in the Assembly, so that the person chosen by him doesn’t take over the Administrative machinery of the state and legitimise it through strong arm tactics and prove his/her majority.

Further, it is common knowledge that the May 2016 poll victory was for Dr. Jayalalitha and none besides.

So the MLAs, being the representatives of that will of the people and the only remnant beneficiaries of that will, post demise of Dr. Jayalalitha , should be guided by the good sense of their conscience and support a new leader. Are their CONSCIENCE UNENCUMBERED? I guess not. Having been quarantined in Koovathur Golden Bay Resorts, their free will appears to be cumbered and fettered, casting legitimate doubts if the MLAs are truly Free! The Governor ought to feel that the letters of support have become stale and majority MLAs are not FREE, as on date. Therefore their letters of support are suspect.

Under the above mentioned Formalism lies the magma of the new emerging force of OPS, which is accreting MLAs and MPs by the day. The MLAs in Koovathur neither know the happenings, having been cut off from the electronic media and social media. Democracy is all about catering to the legitimate will of the people, however capricious it may be. Stability is important for administration, however during turbulent Times, to expect quick stability would be a wrong expectation.

Over and above all this is the fact that the KA Govt had appealed against the acquittal of Late Dr. Jays and Mrs. Sasikala and others by the High Court. The Supreme Court has already stated that the matter has been heard and reserved for orders and just a week back a sitting Justice of the Supreme Court has stated that the verdict would be delivered in a week’s time. If the Supreme Court were to overturn the KA High Court verdict, the surviving Accused run the risk of being taken to Jail, unless there is a suspended sentence. Mrs. Sasikala being one of the defendants in that case, would it be appropriate for the Governor to swear in an ex- factotum as the CM of the state, when even the mandate was only for Dr. Jaya and none besides?

I guess not. This calibrated response of the Governor is laudable and praiseworthy as he has not rushed into sanctify a stale Formalism at the cost of an Evolving reality.

Vaazhga Thamizh. Valarga Thamizh Nadu.

Inclusiveness of Thamizh Nadu!

There is a tendency to refine culture to the extent that the underbelly of the culture which produces the base products and provides labour, are marginalised to such an existence of mere subsistence. The effect is that the refined tastes and products become the ASPIRATIONAL VALUES of the whole society. The consequence of such universal aspiration drives the whole community towards the single spire of perfection of the educated and the well heeled. Diversity exists out of necessity and the NATURAL ASPIRATIONS of the deprived and the uneducated are marginalised through discouragement of funds, knowledge and opportunities.

The above is the condition of most of the cultures in India, but the outstanding exception in India is Thamizh Nadu.

This has not been achieved thru the efforts of Thamizhans alone but with the complementary contributions of the Telugu people, especially the Andhra & Rayalseema people. One may wonder how the Thamizh got integrated with the Andhra! But without the Andhra rice, tobacco, chillies and their entrepreneurial involvement Thamizh culture wouldn’t have evolved to where it is today.

The seeds of the so called Dravidian culture was sown by the Justice Party, which was against the refinement expressed by me above. Refinement leads to removal of all fibre in the society and it becomes maida, with no essentials for smooth movement of the bowels! Stagnation leads to grumpiness and ossification with little capacity to meet the exigencies of the evolving challenges.

EVR, TM Nair, Natesa Mudaliar. Subbarayulu Reddiar, Panagal Zamindar and Theagaraya Chetty led the Justice Party , which had democratically won the hustings and ran the diarchic government of the Madras Presidency between 1920 and 1936. The only exception to the leaders of the Justice Party was T.M. Nair, having his community base in Travancore and Cochin kingdoms. Thus as an outfit to obtain representation of the other communities other than Brahmins worked together in close ranks, which in today’s context could be explained as having worked for the upliftment of the DEPRESSED CLASSES.

I think one of the realisations which dawned on the promoters of the party was the fact that having capital, land and labour cannot EMPOWER those who brought those inputs but in the new order, it was important to have the LEGISLATIVE POWER to make laws which would provide opportunities for education and bring managerial skills to the uneducated and the uneducated but wealthy classes!

So the process of rectification of the power balance within the Madras Presidency as a society started from 1920 and lasted till 1937 when Congress, which the Justice Party perceived as being controlled by Brahmins came to power. The essential reason for Justice Party losing power were twofold, primarily there was no charismatic leaders with the ability to enlist new acolytes to its line of thinking; secondly, Gandhi’s popularity along with a rejuvenated Nationalism brought the people under the new perception and the social engineering came to an end. However Rajagopalachari’s imposition of Hindi kept the embers alive, but Justice Party became Social outfit without showing the necessary belligerence to politically fight the Congress. It was only in 1949 that this was corrected by Annadurai forming the DMK with a political agenda of capturing power. The 1950’s linguistic division of Madras Presidency further clove the Thamizh Telugu unity, with Prakasam and Potti Sriramulu rooting for a separate Andhra. The Madras Presidency split leaving a residue of Thamizhs and Telugus sharing the state of Thamizh Nadu. As is their wont, the Keralites went back to their state except for those who had small businesses and jobs, but all the Malayalees kept their native place lands and never cut their umbilical cord with their Travancore-Cochin state. This is true of all malayalees, whether in Delhi or New York, they build their native homes before buying a flat in the domiciled country. This is where the Telugus differed, the Naidus and Reddiars who had flourishing businesses were not inclined to quit the state for multiple reasons. Predominantly they are that the Telugu culture is complementary to Thamizh, in that Telugu ability to take financial risks in entrepreneurship was complementary to the Thamizh disciplined skilled workforce desirous of reasonable wages only and uninterested in the ultimate profits or losses made by the landowning and capital bringing Telugu; their shared eating habits; their empathy with the religious rituals of the Thamizhs and also that the Telugus were not able to exit their businesses and build alternative businesses in Andhra. The infrastructure of Thamizh Nadu provided a better movement of goods and services. Thus the Thamizh and Telugu cultures have become complementary in the right proportion and shall remain so.

Let us see the areas on which Telugus have excelled within Thamizhnadu: in the textile industry; in the film industry; in the finance sector; in educational institutions; in restaurant businesses; in component manufacturing industry they have inextricably linked to the Thamizhs. More than all this the Telugus who had contributed have all been from those communities which were supported by the Justice Party. Hence, there is a composite culture of those deprived classes in huge numbers, whose aspirations are not ‘REFINEMENT’ but earning a good education and livelihood. These have made the present day Thamizh Nadu the most INCLUSIVE STATE, with lesser priority in merely acquiring ‘refinement’ at the cost of the fundamentals. Thamizh culture rarely adopts other cultural icons, it borrows and quickly adapts those cultural traits and integrates them efficiently.

For the above reasons, Thamizh culture periodically is susceptible to purging of the vestiges of the alien cultural trappings which smuggle themselves in thru disguised Trojans, like the aspirated consonants like jha, sha, bha etc, which were promptly replaced through purging of ‘contaminated’ Thamizh. The Serfogis of Tanjore and Naicks of Madurai had brought many of those sounds and empowered them to become aspirational sounds. For example, ‘agam’ became ‘aham’ ; mugam became muham, etc. These purges are essential and the assertiveness of the Thamizh from time to time is not for berating other cultures but a purging of the vestiges of elements foreign to its culture. Jallikattu and the aspirations of the Thamizhs is to be seen in this light. The farmers and livestock owners are opportunities for the Thamizhs in their periodic exercise at INCLUSIVENESS.

Thamizh vaazhga!

Dipankar Gupta’s article titled TORTURE THROUGH THE AGES in TOI dt. 28/01/2017

Dipankar means ‘bringer of the lamp’ figuratively meaning one who throws light on something. Unfortunately the article is a compendium of false assertions, bigoted opinions and divorced from the cultural sensibilities of the Thamizh Culture.
Being a Sociologist, he should have been aware of the fact that each state of the Union has a distinct culture blurring on the edges with a smattering of a combination of the cultures with which there is social, economic and physical intercourse! Thamizh has its own culinary, sartorial, musical, linguistic & literary besides the ‘attitude’ and ‘aspiration’ which it unappolegitically glorifies. He has failed to understand that distinctness inherent to Thamizh culture. Just because he would never be considered a part of the Thamizh culture, even if he were to be a part of a Thamizh based institution, to entertain resentment and deny the validity of the cultural expressions of the Thamizh culture on the grounds of ‘ torture & cruelty’ to animals, which is an omnibus amorphous definition under Chapter III of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, appears cussed. It is just like a Thamizhan who hates Bhangra of a Punjabi or the Rabindra Sangeet of a Bengali or the Dandia of a Gujarati or the Onam of a Keralite!

I have to first recognise that my culture is DIFFERENT from those cultural expressions and see if it were to cause any damage to my sensibilities. I don’t play Holi, because I feel it violates the integrity of a person. The last bastion of my self is my body, when some unknown person in his exuberance of celebrating a festival which I cannot be a part of and don’t want to be a part of, inflicts himself and discolours me with his colours, I am unable to see it as an essential part of his celebratory process! That is because as Dr. Johnson is supposed to have said: Your Liberty ends, where my nose begins! The unknown person should either take my consent or refrain from making me a part of his process of celebration, as the Constitutional Right not only grants me to live unmolested without any colours but also casts a Duty on my neighbour to refrain from inflicting his cultural trappings on my body and thus violate my integrity. Period. There is no cultural avalanche for Holi, having a greater right as most Indians celebrate this festival THEREFORE all human beings in India SHALL SUBJECT WITHOUT DEMUR to such violation! It is to be respected and I as a Thamizhan SHOULD avoid a place where such practices are full blown on a Holi day, but to make a neat paradigm of prescriptive cultural behaviour and preach the rest of the country the dangers of throwing unwholesome powders and smearing oneself or others with paints and consequently enacting laws would be nothing but an expression of using the legislative might than what is sensible and right.

In fact when I see a Bihari like Dipankar Gupta having an opinion on Jallikattu and equating it with fox-hunting and Bullfights of Spain, is similar to an uninvited person giving an opinion on the taste of Biryani which he never tasted!
Lay off, dear friends, Lay off!
The law is in an Occupied Field (enacted by the Parliament) from the Concurrent List. The State’s opinion stands diluted in a Union Legislation, however of the legislation relates to List II of the 7th Schedule, exceptions could be carved out.

In fact at Section 28 of the PCA ACT, there is an exception to the cruelty to animals on Religious grounds.
Therefore, exception to be carved out on Cultural grounds would be available to the State legislature, as the Union Legislation is from the Concurrent List, which is what Tamil Nadu Legislature has done. I also see no reason, why this Tamil Nadu Legislation should not be placed in the IX Schedule, like the 69% reservation Act placed by the Parliament. In fact the issue on cultural grounds should NOT BE OF ANY CONCERN BY ANYONE EXCEPT A THAMIZHAN.
Coming to the grounds of CRUELTY and comparing the same with fox-hunting or bullfighting in Spain, is naive. First and foremost, the animal is NOT KILLED. Secondly, in the case of the bull, the bull is meant to be killed finally to be consumed and it is the way that the sport is structured by tradition, of a man or woman wielding a knife or a spear or whatever sharp implement which offends and OUGHT TO OFFEND ANY CIVILISED MAN’S SENSIBILITIES. The bull is ranged not only against the matador or a toreador but with immense support of menials who distract the bull in the event of the bull having an upper hand. The bull is DOOMED. Thirdly, it is prolonged to such an extent that different persons serially and collectively plunge their knives and spears into the bull. Finally it is gory and bloodthirsty.

As regards FOX HUNTING, there are hounds involved, which track down the foxes and the heads and tails are taken as trophies but the lifeless torsos are left for the hounds. It might have been effective as a pest control mechanism, but it provided an upper class of ritualistic fox hunting and became an aspirational sport are the inherent bloodthirsty elements to that sport. Herman Goering brought in a law banning fox hunting , even though he was ably aiding the Fuehrer in extermination of a breed of human vermin(he thought) without any compunction!

Jallikattu is a sport, which is neither bloodthirsty nor is it a sport of an orphan animal. In the bullfights of Spain, cruelty is writ large on the manner and methods of the sport. In fox hunting, it became a ritual in bloodthirstiness, but in Jallikattu the Bulls have owners and it is not the catchers or hump- huggers of those bulls who cause annoyance and cruelty as much as the owners themselves, on the mistaken notion that if the bull went ‘uncaught’ he would be called the owner of an untameable bull. This can be and SHOULD BE REGULATED BY LAW.

The bull is taken care of by the bull owners and they do earn through the stud services offered by those bulls after they are retired from Jallikattu. The excesses carried out and showcased by PETA, AWBI, HSI and PFA are nothing but sporadic instances which have been indulged in by some overenthusiastic persons. I have seen college boys taking a handful of coloured powder and smearing it on women’s cleavages and hips on slow moving buses, in public on Holi day, should one ban this because of such sporadic excesses? NAY. They need to be streamlined.

Finally, Mr. Dipankar Gupta asks rhetorically: NOBODY WOULD LIKE TO TAKE ON TIGERS OR GRIZLY BEARS AND THEN CALL IT CULTURE! What piece of wisdom my friends! Compassion and perspicacity shall die with Dipankar Gupta! In Jallikattu is anyone killing? or using a knife or spear? Is the bull owner complaining? Are the bulls killed for eating, at the end of the sport?

Nay, nay, nay!

Jallikattu is celebrated only during PONGAL, the harvest season and not a sport to gladden the hearts of the bloodthirsty spectator.

As a rounding off, may be with India in the threshold of Superpowerdom, Dipankar feels that the cultural epicentre of India should not shift to the land of Bharatanatyam, Carnatic music, Thamizh movies, Jerusalem of Tennis, Chettinad cuisine and a people who could agitate without violence along with their wives and children in the Marina.

Sorry Sociologist, you can’t set the agenda for a Thamizhan, he is way too hoary to fall within your grasp😎

Jallikattu – A cultural conflict!

A democratic setting involves Liberal expression and propagation of ideas and information, however offensive, it may be to the other group. Recently I had been led to reading some of the twitter comments made by Ram Gopal Verma regarding the Jallikattu issue in Tamil Nadu. RGV is a flotsam from Vijayawada of Andhra and his claim to fame is ascribable to making terrorist & gangster based movies, and his dalliances with the actresses who hang on to his coattails for the crumbs of the roles he offers for those seductive moll roles in those movies!
One of the most coincidental things which he shares with Sasikala, GS of the AIADMK is that both had been ex-vcd shop owners, one on Ameerpet and the other in Chennai! Their careers were launched from renting video cassettes.

Some of the tweets RGV had made in the social media are:

One could see from these tweets his rancour towards the Tamil culture more than his concern or his reparative suggestions to improve the lot of the Jallikattu bulls.

The poor fellow is not concerned with the roosters which are made to die in pits getting mutilated after a prolonged and exhausting fights with the other rooster. Besides the gory fights, there is heavy betting on the cocks, almost during the Makar Sankranti in Andhra.

Andhra Pradesh, post partition from Telangana, had lost its political clout of 42 MPs in the parliament, which it enjoyed prior to the bifurcation.

Andhra has been motivated by garnering the resources of the state for its own people at the cost of the Telangana people – such was the general discourse during those days of bifurcation. Andhra is yet to recover from the shock of the bifurcation and the strident position taken by TRS.

The CM of Andhra inaugurates cockfights, in derogation of the laws made under the laws of cruelty to animals and birds. Such is their culture, less compliant and ensure less detection thereby hangs a tale of their respect of laws of the land.

A cretin who is bred in that culture has the gall to talk about letting loose a 1000 bulls on the protestors, built on an analogy that a hundred men chase and scramble to cling to the hump of the Jallikattu bulls and thereby are cruel!

His concern appears so deep rooted that he could put the kafkaesque embeetled fears in Metamorphosis to shame! It is not the concern for the bulls which is the basis of his blather, but the inadequacy of the cultural lot from which he hails! A culture that follows anything that attaches itself to money is an inadequate culture: run after IIT, run after infrastructure building; run after a God who holds money; run after three harvests; run after building cities of other cultures and do nothing to your own home. In the process you do nothing lasting, it is merely a competition for keeping up with the joneses and never an achievement of any lasting worth.

This fellow had milked all the soup out of the gangster/ terrorist themes, which has run dry and is showing sympathy to the bulls of Tamil Nadu disguising his hatred for the Thamizh people and their unity .

“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars / But in ourselves, that we are underlings.” (Julius Caesar, Act I, Scene III, L. 140-141). Your Ongole breeds are kept only for a limited purpose and you have not strengthened that breed for ‘honour’. Sometimes in life one should do things for honour and not merely for money. It is interesting to note that the CM of Andhra had announced that Rs. 100 crore would be given to anyone from the state winning a Nobel Prize! It is that culture which puts it at loggerheads with the Thamizh culture.

The culture of a state resides in the villages which still thrive on the hoary history and the hearsay exploits of the ancient heroes. The cities and towns sift the rock edicts, excavated material, literature and other palpable and provable material to show the culture, but such culture don’t reside in towns and cities. To talk ill of those histories of villages is not the habit of Thamizhans!
To expect a scavenger of gangster themes for replenishing his cine repertoire, to understand the Thamizh culture is too much and way beyond his mental means.

I’ve always been appreciative of the Andhra entrepreneurship, but some black sheep like RGV by propagating such skewed and bigoted opinions bring a bad name to the whole lot.

Thamizh people have outdone the rest of the country on three counts: firstly, by organising themselves through an evolutionary process of aggregation of the young, befuddling the state police perceptions of a transient vocalisation of an evanescent cause. Secondly, they have not fallen for palliatives and have stood and are standing for a permanent solution knowing fully well that the state Govt wouldn’t be sleeping the next time and would nip their attempts to coagulate into a fierce force like this time.

Thirdly, the youth have not provided the courts or the police and the administration to use force to disperse them and have also ensured that it is happening in most of the places in TN.

A word of appreciation for those expatriates who have lent their voice to the cause is due.

There has been a general perception that TN was merely one of the 29 states, that is over. If the youth could threaten MNC cola companies and NGOs on health grounds and cultural grounds, a new day has dawned in the history of India. If Bengal thought yesterday what you said today, Thamizh Nadu is doing Today what the rest of India would follow in future.

Cultural conflicts between states are inevitable, so let us stick to our own cultural aspirations and stop talking about other cultural facts or aspirations like the Moron RGV has tweeted!

An Ordinance to avoid a Legislation on Jallikattu:

Now that the Governor had signed the Ordinance for the conduct of Jallikattu, it appears like a Pyrrhic victory for the students who had invested their time, energy and meagre resources in aggregating near the Marina Beach. The reasons are three fold: 1. It is not only a temporary solution as this Ordinance is valid only for six months, but also a dependant Ordinance in the sense that the next extension also would have to be reserved for the consideration of the President, as this is an amendment to a legislation enacted by the Union Government from the Concurrent List(List 3 of the VII Schedule of the Constitution) and hence an amendment would be from an OCCUPIED FIELD and it could be considered trenching, on an area already occupied, by the future Government and dependent on their mood and sense of accommodation at that point of time.

2. The second reason is that the Ordinance is open to challenge by the PETA, PFA, HSI and AWBI. Therefore the people of TN would have to live with the memories of Jallikattu to be held tomorrow, without the assurance that it would be conducted in future!

3. This Ordinance could be a tactic of the politicians who have been upended by the students and there is no guarantee that the students would be able to take over the Marina in future to create a similar impact, if they let go of this opportunity this time.
In sum, it appears that the TN Government, if it is serious, should use Entry no. 58 of the State List of the VII Schedule and tax Jallikattu bulls and make a legislation to recognise the breeds, bulls of those breeds to be licensed, provide a reason for Occupied Field so that the perverse PETA doesn’t induce the future governments both of the State and the Union to trench into this field.

If anyone doubts this, there was a state legislation passed by the Kerala state called THE KERALA LIVESTOCK IMPROVEMENT ACT, 1961 through which, in Section 4 it was stated:

4. BULLS WHICH HAVE ATTAINED A CERTAIN AGE TO BE LICENSED:

No person shall keep a bull which has attained the prescribed age except under and in accordance with the terms, conditions and restrictions of a licence granted under this section unless it is certified by the prescribed officer that the bull has been EFFECTIVELY CASTRATED by a menthod and in a manner approved by the Director.
The effect of this legislation is that there are NO COUNTRY BULLS IN KERALA. This was achieved by the Congress party in Kerala while Pattom Thanu Pillay was the CM from the Praja Socialist Party and within a year of the legislation Sankar of Congress took over as the CM of Kerala in 1962!

So much for National parties! The ostensible object was for making nondescript cows of Kerala to become high yielding varieties.
After 56 years we have realised that we made all our A2 cows into A1 milk yielding cows in Kerala, besides ensuring that there are NO COUNTRY BULLS in Kerala and only oxen and bullocks! So much for the ignorant National parties which have no connection with the terrain of the states and make guinea pigs out of our states. Let us never EVER forget that our great country is a UNION OF STATES and eternal vigilance is the only way we could ensure that the moneybags and carpetbaggers do not set the agenda in Culture of the States, so long as the State cultural aspirations do not disturb other States of their aspirations and Liberty!

Tax Jallikattu bulls!

Entry no 17 of the Concurrent List of the Seventh Schedule of the Constitution is Prevention of Cruelty to animals. But there is another entry at entry no 58 in List Two of the States, which is Taxes on Animals. The state government of Tamil Nadu should immediately levy a tax on all the Jallikattu bulls and tell all those who claim that they are going to breed a bull for Jallikattu purposes only, should register those bulls and the tax should be nominal.

This would be on two grounds:

1. Preserving the culture of Tamil as mandated under Article 51A (f) of the constitution. (Based on historical proof in Tamil literature, and pre-independence scientific studies)

2. Even if the sport is prohibited, to preserve the hoary tradition, Pulikulam breed called as Jellicut breed by Capt. littlewood in his 1936 book called THE LIVESTOCK OF SOUTHERN INDIA, should be declared a Thamizh cultural breed connected with Thamizh. This would prove that there is a pre-independence scientific study by the Imperial Agricultural Research Institute, which validates the declarations to be made by the state government.
Once a legislation is made on this, one can take out and nullify the Notification issued by Jairam Ramesh and his cohorts!

Then Revival of Jallikattu would get validated.

I see no reason why, there are not enough chanakyas in TN to counter perverse PETA, PFA, HSI and AWBI through the legislative process!

Time to rescue Tamil Nadu from those sleepy and lazy states, spawning easy donation monies drawn through eliciting untruthful sympathies, based on one off cruelty inflicted by persons who had illtreated the bulls in Jallikattu!

Long live Thamizh!

On Jallikattu & Cockfights!

The Tip of a Criminal Iceberg Cockfighting usually involves other crimes in addition to cruelty to animals. Gambling—frequently illegal and involving large sums of money—is found at many cockfights, as are firearms and other weapons that are sometimes used in violent, interpersonal crimes, including murder—for example, in a triple homicide that occurred at one Texas cockfight.9 Following a raid on a California cockfight, one Fresno County deputy said, “In years past we have a lot of other crimes associated with cockfights. We’ve had several murders, shootings, assaults, drug issues, weapons charges. A variety of things come as a result of these cockfights. That’s why our department takes it so seriously.”10
What You Can DoMany states have made cockfighting a felony. Even attending a cockfight is illegal in most states, as is possessing roosters for the purpose of fighting. In 2002, President George W. Bush signed legislation that made the transport of roosters across state lines to engage in fights a federal crime.11 Five years later, the Animal Welfare Act was amended to make “knowingly buying, selling, or transporting animals across state or international borders for the purpose of fighting” a felony.12
If you suspect that this illegal activity is occurring in your neighborhood, contact local law-enforcement authorities.

The above is excerpted from PETA website. PETA is run on funds received as donations from the public, grants and other resources made available to the begging socialites made in parties and closed door occasions!
A grand garnering of ‘resources’ based on the cause, that animals should not be treated cruelly or trained rigorously in inhuman ways for the purposes of entertainment appears to be the prime objective of PETA! Well, all causes are drafted having an eye on what the law not only prohibits, but also with the other eye on how well the “cause” could be marketed with the wealthy persons and the government, both of which owe their income to the legacy of their forebears or taxes respectively!

Cockfighting is a sport much reported in the media as having been performed in the state of Andhra. Neither the state authorities nor PETA india ( I have purposely used a small for I in India, as the organisation is neither Indian in its content nor is the agenda set by culturally knowledgeable Indians!). It is an Indian chapter of a foreign agenda, formed to comply with the laws of India to obtain tax benefits based on altruistic causes!
So why are PETA and its votaries so stuck on turning a Nelson’s eye on cruel activities to animals and birds in the state of Andhra, whereas they are strident on Jallikattu of Tamil Nadu?
Elementary, Mr. Watson! In Tamil Nadu, Jallikattu is a cultural issue, whereas in Andhra it is merely a sport for gambling. Look at the people running the Animal Welfare Board of India, the second in command is one Chinny Krishna of Tamil Nadu and his wife Nandita Krishna is the one who formed the Blue Cross! Besides these two, there are other players from Karnataka who are Poorva Joshipura the head of PETA india, who incidentally is an American citizen and had the guts to write to the Chief Secretary of Tamil Nadu threatening her(the CS) of contempt of Court, if she allowed Jallikattu in Tamil Nadu. Except for the head of the AWBI, who is a veterinarian from the armed services, none of the lot appears to be with a balanced view on any of the matters relating to Jallikattu. In fact all of them are activists and fully into organisations which have an avowed purpose of protecting the rights of animals! In fact one could call them the policemen of animal rights.

Jallikattu is apparently not a cruel sport and it would be difficult to justify proscribing this sport, therefore these cattle policemen queered the pitch before the Hon’ble Supreme Court and got included Jallikattu, as ‘cruel’ through inclusion of ‘Bulls’ in the category of animals which are proscribed for training for entertainment purposes. The law was passed by the Union Government, when a Kannadiga (Jairam Ramesh) was the head of that ministry, who knew more of Carnegie Mellon and MIT, than the history of Thamizhnadu!
(One should read the Pulikulam Breed or the Jellicut Breed of bulls used for Jallikattu at page 95-97 in THE LIVESTOCK OF SOUTHERN INDIA by Capt. Littlewood, 1936)
Time for the PETA and their cohorts to read “The Livestock of Southern India” by Littlewood especially pages 95 onwards for those morons to realise that there have been bulls which gored and killed humans then and one which killed 14 men prior to the 1936, which was considered ‘prized’, yet with tremendous improvement over the conditions since 1936, in Tamil Nadu, Jallikattu is neither unruly nor unregulated!
Read up my history, if you don’t have one.
Lay off from my legacy, if you don’t have one.
Grow up and do something so that at least you would have succeeded where your forebears have failed!
Did the government consult the stakeholder in Jallikattu, which was the state of Tamil Nadu and Tamil Nadu only? It neither consulted nor offered an opportunity.
Let us look at it this way, when 504 MPs, hailing from the other states, have no interest in Jallikattu and only 39 could have been interested being from TN, whose cause was affected by including bulls for Jallikattu on the proscribed list? Naturally the needle of suspicion points to PETA and other Animal Welfare Boards which neither spin nor toil for the funds funneled into their accounts, either as donations or taxes! Such monies have been strategically used to deploy the ablest lawyers in the Hon’ble Supreme Court of India.

These organisations which live off the taxes and non taxable donations cry foul when a cultural event of centuries, is played with gaiety in Tamilnadu.
It is a sport of the valorous and not of the armchair philosophers and priestly classes which earn their butter through hymning! There is NONE, i repeat NONE from the communities which bred bulls, but the great grand daughter of a Dewans and American citizens, who are more accustomed to consuming the ghee from cows, who are the honchos of such animal welfare bodies!

It is time to set up a commission to ascertain if Jallikattu is an ancient sport and if so the courts should DECLARE it so and remove from the minds of those who hate it, for oblique reasons as a sport, as they fear that it could become an ” aspirational sport” and wean their boys away, and especially draw their girls to the valorous men who tame those bulls. .

Secondly, if cruelty is not practiced by the breeders of the bulls, that should also be stated. Licence should be issued to those who breed and the Bulls ought to be tested for performance enhancing substance before and after the race.

Thirdly, the participants should be allowed to register themselves before participating in Jallikattu and;

finally the spectators should be provided secure enclosures for their security in those arenas.

Instead of maligning the sport as cruel on the basis of unfounded sympathy for bulls, based on cherry-picked sporadic instances of abuse, a thorough impartial study should be conducted by the Thamizh community before banning the sport, by our highest judicial bodies!

I am sanguine that states which are NOT CONCERNED WITH THE BULL OR THE PEOPLE OF TAMIL NADU and also the Thamizh communities which are merely consumers of the milk products and who are not traditionally into raising or breeding cattle, would attend to some of their own infrastructure building and put their time and resources on educating their sons and daughters instead of making it their idle pastime in interfering with the variegated Thamizh culture!

Vaazhga Thamizh!

Flow or Force?

Movid's Weblog

Flow & Force!Watching Thelonius Monk play piano is quite disconcerting. In seeking a parallel with classical western music, it is Wagnerian, disturbing and there appears to be structured violence, but violence when structured is no more violence, it is FORCE. It is violence with a clear ear for subjugating itself to a command. The command is not external, but an internal machinery which subjugates the skill to the will of the command.

A Force is under control when so structured, yet also terribly forceful when unloosened. That’s what I see in Thelonius’ style.

His style is not very dissimilar to Vincent Van Gogh’s twirling forceful expressions on the canvas brilliantly hued in blues and yellows, yet not esoterically themed to satisfy the cerebral itch of the cognoscenti, but there to shock them with a day to day theme, exuding a vibrant emotion. The cut onion pieces of Vincent bring more…

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Rehoboam & the rich kids!

Jayalalitha – from Selvi to Amma!

Seldom are actresses, especially the very successful ones, remembered for anything other than what they portrayed themselves to be in certain iconic movies. Seldom being merely ‘rare’, there are exceptions & both the exceptions which my memory serves me anon, come from Thamizh Nadu, an unenviable state much envied, who are M.S.Subbulakshmi and Selvi Jayalalitha!

The former for her music and the latter for her politics.

Even in her seductive songs in Thamizh movies, she was willing to go with the man, who was not only righteous but unafraid of his righteousness. A trait she probably imbibed through admiring that trait in her men. Her co-star MGR went beyond the screen and when he needed a woman who could advise him in international politics, & national alignment in politics, within the confines of his private chambers, she slipped in effortlessly into that role and was subsequently made the Propaganda Secretary (Thamizh literal translation would be ‘secretary who spreads the policy’). She blossomed into a public speaker carrying the message of AIADMK, as propounded by MGR, but aesthetically presented by Jayalalitha; further enhancing MGR’s macho image. There is no moral certificate better than the one issued by an intelligent and good looking woman, who works for a man. That certificate, was seen as a guillotine to those prurient thoughts which pervade the onlooker’s mind. She neither had the Dravidian complexion, nor was she from the ‘Dravidian’ stock. But how does it matter, when you are at the threshold of a bequest? Line and lineage cannot give Power in a democracy, it is the opinion of the many, which when electorally harnessed, would bring power! She learnt that early, not only that she learnt that lesson, but wanted to capture it herself. Her joy was double when she took it out of her mentor’s spouse and thereby was decorated with the mantle of the two leaves electoral symbol of MGR. A posthumous bequest, given to the winner of the succession battle. Mrs. Janaki Ramachandran surrendered the party and admitted Selvi Jayalalitha as the leader of AIADMK.

If Mr. Karunanidhi sat on the vacated imperial steed of C.N. Annadurai and made it as the CM much before he won at the hustings in his own name, Jayalalitha had no such luxury, she had to wait for two years to face elections, which was more for determining who was to get the electoral symbol of MGR. She became an opposition leader before she was catapulted to the CM ship either through vagaries of fortune or cunning! She had to fight it through with not only the CM, but also the Governor of TN. Chandrasekhar when he got the Karunanidhi government dismissed, the people of TN, who saw her tenacity in pursuing politics, gave her a chance in 1991.

She was declared the true legatee of the MGR phenomenon, but for her it was merely a stepping stone for bringing in a philosophy of moderate culture to TN politics through the WORD.

The WORD, whether it be the government order or the religious texts or even movie script, meant not a professional necessity but she saw it as an expression in cold stone the Supreme Will legitimately expressed by the people, or God or the Director of the movie. She did not exploit the word for her gains, but submitted to the power of the word. The word outlives mortal aspirations, social limitations and even one’s own life! This was her mantra. She wanted the appropriate authority to pronounce the Word. She insisted on getting an order of the Supreme Court in Cauvery matter, when other politicians were vying to go for an amicable settlement with their counterparts, she wanted an authoritative pronouncement for the posterity. She gave closure to issues from the highest authority based on reasons. When she got included the positive discrimination for the Backward castes in the IX schedule of the Constitution, none imagined the import of such inclusion till the other states started clamouring for similar inclusion.

Jayalalitha went beyond the state and was the first national leader from a regional party from TN. Her exposure early to the Rajya Sabha, made her see the state not as a part of India but as a geographic division with subjects assigned by the constitution for protecting the geographic and cultural integrity of states. The fake Tamil nationalism just petered out! She did not fight such forces instead showed the polestar of growth through togetherness of the nation and made her followers choose a path of integration. It was this silent leading which won her the fourth term against the incumbency and the lies propagated by her detractors.

The only problem with her was that she could never understand why human beings could not stand by their commitment, and became betrayers of causes and people. She was fortitudinous! Courage can push ahead but it cannot stay its ground like Horatio on the bridge over the Tiber. The cause could be lost, but that she stood till the end for the cause could never be in doubt. That was Jayalalitha, she staked it out for records. She marked the place from where she stood her ground and lost, for future reference, with a hope that someday in future like Panipat, would be associated with her. When the LTTE was the holy cow in TN, the way she steered her party by being firm and the vindication which followed decades later is a monument to not her foresight as much as her ability to take a stand on principle, against public sentiments.

If one cannot choose one’s neighbours, one can never choose one’s opponents. Her opponents were declared atheists, striving for upliftment of the ‘Dravidian’ downtrodden masses – to be contrasted with the ‘Aryan’ aka Brahmins of TAMILNADU. The breakaway admk under MGR was headed by a Menon, who had sympathised with the Dravidian politics of Anna. It was symbiotic, MGR lent glamour and the DMK honchos like Anna and Karunanidhi lent their message filled script writing skills for his movies. But Jayalalitha had no such ideological moorings, she saw in MGR, a single window for her progress both cinematically and politically. Thus by aligning with MGR, she inherited a powerful adversary with no baggage that MGR came with, consequently AIADMK was a shell into which Jayalalitha, a Brahmin lady, infused her own agenda and sidetracked, intentional or otherwise would be a polemic, the original agenda of the Dravidian parties, which saw Brahmins as their avowed detractors.

She quickly hung the brasen serpent of growth and populist schemes which outdid the DMK promises. She was able to attract the law-abiding and hardworking labour classes of TN with ease. Violence and disruptive behaviour receded. Jayalalitha united people more on orderliness and a powerful police, which was spared from local political interference. People started seeing the institutions getting the better of personal connections, at the local level. In a democracy, this infusion of credibility in its institutions, is the highest achievement, although people were ignorant of who were manning those bureaucratic points – which was what DMK was obsessed with.

The spirit of the times also helped the lady immensely, middle class aspirations of getting their children educated as professional engineers became a reality through the reasonable capitation fee payable to those private engineering colleges. Middle classes were interested in incremental growth with assurance of peace through the institution of the police. The second, she provided and the former, during the evolutionary process happened and she should consider herself lucky that she had been dealt a hand, to play the politics which suited her.

Violence can be best deflected only through structured growth prospects. This happened and she encashed it politically. It is the way she encashed it that set her apart, not sneakingly, but by promoting the harnessing of the Tamil labour with the Telugu capital. The Telugu is not distinct from the Tamil, if the former represent entrepreneurial skills, the latter represented the skilled labour. Only land had to be provided and she did that, as the head of the state government. This harnessing kept TN among the top few states, not living off the minimum support prices, fixed by the centre, but through creation of a climate conducive for labour and capital to lie together in harmony for manufacturing activities. The labour problems of the period prior to the nineties disappeared along with the dwindling of the communist ideology and its parties. Zeitgeist had set in and properly harnessed. The events evolved, but it was her ability to read books and grasp the evolving situations which made her decide the way she did which went down well with the people of TN.

Finally and most importantly, she was SINCERE, in the political world of nimble turn arounds, she stated clearly what she wanted and forcefully pushed it. This contributed to her becoming an accomplisher of the projects undertaken by her.

It has been a complaint that she had filed too many cases against the media and had strait-jacketed the media. But in a political milieu of script writers, it wasn’t uncommon to fill up facts with imaginative details quite detrimental to the administration. Hence to get the media to taste the medicine of judicial procedural delays with injunctions, wasn’t a bad idea, methinks!

To say that Jayalalitha stole the hearts through doles and watering holes of TASMAC, is too naive, especially an electorate which not only distinguished the Parliamentary election from the Legislative of 1980, but was wise enough to listen and read all the whatsapp blitzkreig of goebbelsian propaganda let loose in the 2016 Assembly elections and yet choose to persist with the incumbent!

In her death too, she has accomplished dying in office thereby ensuring longevity to her legacy. Probably after Anna, in TN she might end up having the largest cortège!

A Democrat’s illiberalism!

Yet we think that the whites are still treating the blacks and the Latinos badly. Blacks would have a history of enslaved immigrant but the Latinos are escapee migrants from a neighbouring country! Rightly, the citizens had voted a black for the reason that people felt they were correcting a historically unjustified harm inflicted by their forebears, but the Democrats I presume have allowed themselves to believe that they had done it for some principles of Liberal-ism!

The Democrats voted for a black, but that wouldn’t have carried Obama to the White House, it was the whites who voted him to power, but being a dwindling majority- down to 62% from 72%, during the last bit one elections!

Now, the resentment whether it is Trump’s likely conflict of interest with his business or his strident position against the Latinos, is not clear, but never has a Democracy been undermined ever, as the protests against Trump, the winner of a democratically conducted elections, fairly with no allegations of rigging by anyone.

Yet they are not Liberal enough to accept a verdict returned by the majority- as defined under its Constitution!

Democrats’ Liberalism!

Never had I seen a country where the losing side would agitate with the avid support of the media against a newly elected party, which had been out of power for EIGHT LONG YEARS!
The last eight years saw a person belonging to a 12% minority as the President of the USA, who in his first victory speech didn’t mention Martin Luther King – as grave an error as Joshua not making a mention of Moses when he set foot into the land of Canaan. In my country the largest minority has 18% of its population, yet had never come anywhere within the sight, forget striking distance, of making it to the top political job – either thru an organisation or in his/her own name.
Yet we think that the whites are still treating the blacks and the Latinos badly. Blacks would have a history of enslaved immigrant but the Latinos are escapee migrants from a neighbouring country! Rightly, the citizens had voted a black for the reason that people felt they were correcting a historically unjustified harm inflicted by their forebears, but the Democrats I presume have allowed themselves to believe that they had done it for some principles of Liberal-ism!
The Democrats voted for a black, but that wouldn’t have carried Obama to the White House, it was the whites who voted him to power, but being a dwindling majority- down to 62% from 72%, during the last bit one elections!
Now, the resentment whether it is Trump’s likely conflict of interest with his business or his strident position against the Latinos, is not clear, but never has a Democracy been undermined ever, as the protests against Trump, the winner of a democratically conducted elections, fairly with no allegations of rigging by anyone.
Yet they are not Liberal enough to accept a verdict returned by the majority- as defined under its Constitution!

Trump & Obama!

The book of ESTHER offers a super parallel to the recently concluded US elections.

The following are excerpted to portray a sketch of how Haman pumped up by the media (229 newspapers had endorsed Hillary to less than 20 for Trump) had been emboldened not to see this coming!

But Mordecai bowed not, nor did him reverence.

And when Haman saw that Mordecai bowed not, nor did him reverence, then was Haman full of wrath

Then said Zeresh his wife and all his friends unto him, Let a gallows be made of fifty cubits high, and to morrow speak thou unto the king that Mordecai may be hanged thereon: then go thou in merrily with the king unto the banquet. And the thing pleased Haman; and he caused the gallows to be made.
So Haman came in. And the king said unto him, What shall be done unto the man whom the king delighteth to honour? Now Haman thought in his heart, To whom would the king delight to do honour more than to myself?

7. And Haman answered the king, For the man whom the king delighteth to honour,

8. Let the royal apparel be brought which the king useth to wear, and the horse that the king rideth upon, and the crown royal which is set upon his head:

9. And let this apparel and horse be delivered to the hand of one of the king’s most noble princes, that they may array the man withal whom the king delighteth to honour, and bring him on horseback through the street of the city, and proclaim before him, Thus shall it be done to the man whom the king delighteth to honour.

10. Then the king said to Haman, Make haste, and take the apparel and the horse, as thou hast said, and do even so to Mordecai the Jew, that sitteth at the king’s gate: let nothing fail of all that thou hast spoken.

11. Then took Haman the apparel and the horse, and arrayed Mordecai, and brought him on horseback through the street of the city, and proclaimed before him, Thus shall it be done unto the man whom the king delighteth to honour.

12. And Mordecai came again to the king’s gate. But Haman hasted to his house mourning, and having his head covered.
Such is the case of Obama that he has to not only take around Trump, but has to share the nuclear code with his successor Trump!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJ45VLgbe_E&feature=share

This was a catechism class taken by Michelle Obama in New Hampshire, predicated on the dredged up stale video more than a decade old, colouring the President elect Mr. Donald Trump, as a male beast with no decency! Thanks Michelle🙏🏽. It is this stupid gender based male bashing engendered by being cocooned in the White House for the last eight years which did the hapless Hillary in!
A little reminder of an old saying from the Old part of the Bible: THE RACE IS NOT FOR TGE SWIFT NOR THE BATTLE FOR THE STRONG.
At least when you get out of the White House and return to reality, like Nebuchadnezzar your sanity would return. Stop this catechism and grow gracefully instead of taming men. Let them be! You have tamed yours and stick to it as a blessing from God, stop pontificating on decency based on the morale boosting belief on the mercenary pollsters! Like that hen pecked Ahab said: LET NOT HIM WHO PUTS ON THE ARMIUR TALK LIKE THE ONE WHO PUTS IT OFF.
Stick to the coastal rich and don’t start lectures on stale videos let loose by interested crooks!

Illma Gore’s cartoon!

Movid's Weblog

Underbelly of Feminism!
Men have evolved!
The indicator is that most men would revolt against depiction of women in a disparaging light, especially relating to their bodily parts.

I am amused that women who had been defending men, having a small penis, have become a puny voice when it comes to the choice of a President, there appears to be a deep aspiration for them to have a well endowed President.
Illma Gore, whom I suppose to be an Australian, has depicted Donald Trump with a stub, taking the nomination of the Republican debate further!

If size didn’t matter, why should Illma Gore be making that the point in issue, especially when she doesn’t appear to have been at the receiving end of it or has been at any point been licensed to use it?

Opportunities to become somebody from relative oblivion through such dubious means are proliferating, especially as…

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Demonetisation of Rs. 500 & 1000 currency notes!

Demonetisation of INR 500 & 1000 notes:
We as a nation tend to be myopic, to that extent that we are concerned about our concerns and not the concerns of others. It isn’t necessary to be sympathetic always when we are concerned, at times we have to see the inordinate gains which are possible for others because of a situation. The situation today i.e on the intervening night of the 7th and 8th of November, 2016 is one of speculative trepidation! Everyone is having his or her own perspective. Most Indians believe that Hillary and her Democratic Party would be good for India. In Bangalore, where even for purchase of paan techies swipe cards, especially in the IT corridors of Bannerghatta Road or Sarjapur Road or the nucleus of Whitefield, this demonetisation has no alarming reaction. Most of those who are writing programs, crunching data and distilling algorithms aren’t concerned at all. It is another piece of news. But there are millions who are bothered, bothered how they would get their cash into banks with justifiable reasons and get it integrated into their accounts. The ones who would predominantly get into this are the drug dealers, land grabbers, diamond dealers, hundi transporters of cash, and land sellers who had taken a part of their sale proceeds in cash! The last is a pitiable lot, they not only lost their property but have as well lost the cash, which they have to sell on a discount.

Besides the above sufferers, there is a minuscule set of people who COULD FISH IN TROUBLED WATERS! Who are they?

They are the bankers & politicians in power. They have the reins without any Rules. Mayhem brings its own set of Rules – MIGHT IS RIGHT. Day after Tomorrow morning when the banks open and ration payouts in lesser denominations or in the newly christened 2000 and 5000 denominations, the Rules are going to be made by the banker. It is not the payouts which would be lucrative but the pay-ins. How to avoid the threshold of detection and get enormous cash integrated in lieu of the defunct notes. The Politician is the big daddy of them all, he gets to know how to get all the cash into the account as donations from unknown faces. The more powerful in the Government have more options, they could make certain rules which would be published much after the excited ones have made a clean breast of things within the initial few days. They are the ones one should envy, at this momentous juncture. Imagine a truckload of currencies stuck with a business cum political person! He has to make a deal with a politician to make a bank accept the cash and redeem its npa to a certain extent and the politician gets a cut, a chunk of it for the timely but substantial help!

How interesting? I am turning green with envy at the impending prospects of those bankers and politicians!

What would happen to all those notes in Nepal, Bhutan, Singapore and Srilanka? God knows! May be there are opportunities evolving for them there as well. But in any case, the opposition parties which have relied on cash for purchasing votes have to galvanise their cadres to get their act together to get the old notes exchanged! But in any case, they would be the biggest losers.

Caesar’ death was a fact, but Antony & Brutus had different perspective on that fact. It is but refreshing to read JC at these moments and amaze!
“O, pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth,

That I am meek and gentle with these butchers!

Thou art the ruins of the noblest man

That ever lived in the tide of times.

Woe to the hand that shed this costly blood!

Over thy wounds now do I prophesy,–

Which, like dumb mouths, do ope their ruby lips,

To beg the voice and utterance of my tongue–

A curse shall light upon the limbs of men;

Domestic fury and fierce civil strife

Shall cumber all the parts of Italy;

Blood and destruction shall be so in use

And dreadful objects so familiar

That mothers shall but smile when they behold

Their infants quarter’d with the hands of war;

All pity choked with custom of fell deeds:

And Caesar’s spirit, ranging for revenge,

With Ate by his side come hot from hell,

Shall in these confines with a monarch’s voice

Cry ‘Havoc,’ and let slip the dogs of war;

That this foul deed shall smell above the earth

With carrion men, groaning for burial.”

–Mark Antony from “Julius Caesar” (3.1.254-275)

Pre-conception Issue!

Pre-conception issue!

I never get tired of reading the fifth chapter of John’s Gospel, for predominantly two reasons.

One is that there was an invalid outside the Bethesda, who neither desired to be healed, nor knew the name of the one who came calling, worse still, he didn’t even know His name, after he got cured of his inability to stir out of the slot he had occupied for 38 long years.

There is nothing to show that that invalid willed for a cure, probably he is the best character to exemplify that if you join the queue your turn would come. It came, but not as he expected.

This invalid knew the complete procedure of the Bethesda, the first to get in at the stirring of the pool would get healed. He had a good excuse, that there was none to get him into the pool at the time of stirring. Someone always got ahead of him.

Can you imagine that he was there for 38 years, maybe he came in as a young man or a boy. THIS INVALID WAS POSITIONED NEAR THE BETHESDA MUCH BEFORE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION. A problem which pre-dates the Word coming in flesh.

6. When Jesus saw him lie, and knew that he had been now a long time in that case, he saith unto him, Wilt thou be made whole?

7. The impotent man answered him, Sir, I have no man, when the water is troubled, to put me into the pool: but while I am coming, another steppeth down before me.

8. Jesus saith unto him, Rise, take up thy bed, and walk.
Effort was not lacking despite his knowledge that he couldn’t be the first for he says : ” while I am coming ….”
He knew the procedure, he never gave up Hope in the system, waited for 38 long years, he may not have been the first, but surely he put in the effort needed for him to be counted as a man in the queue who moved a step ahead.

Jesus, what He felt I know not and hate to be presumptive enough to speculate but ORDERS him RISE, PICK UP & WALK. The rest is there for anyone who cares to read. I see the invalid as a man ossified with the knowledge of the procedure, not inclined to overcome the knowledge which has not only kept him tethered to the Bethesda, but content following the procedure knowing well that he wasn’t going to be the first!
The next is verse 26 which says that Jesus could lay down his Life and take it back. A self proclaimed attribute of Divinity to not only grant Life to others, but to lay down one’s Life and take it back at will!

I often wonder, if Jesus had laid down His Life, where would He have the consciousness still left in Him, to get Himself back to Life?

That’s where my logic, reasoning and knowledge break down.

An analogy like a car dismantling itself and reassembling to form the car again as a wholesome car!

Well, each part of the car has to know not merely its place in the scheme of the car, but has to individually gyrate in TIME & SPACE , to move without a Consciousness and form the whole car!

That’s what Jesus said!

Probably that’s where God the Father comes in and the Spirit inspires.

Whatever it be, to my insignificant understanding, this Chapter shall never dim my spiritual curiosity on this point, notwithstanding the valley of dry bones; Pauline palliative of the Father resurrecting the Son!

All those interpretations may have a semblance of Truth to it, but do not explain holistically, as human understanding needs to improve much more to appreciate that phenomenon!

I recently had listened to a short talk on Heart failure, where the Speaker said: When the cells of the heart die, the neighbouring cells rush in to resuscitate the dead cell and the wholesome cells all rush in and create new cells to make up for the loss. If that were to be the case, there is God consciousness in every cell and may be in Jesus, He got a new body, as John says that the mortal remains of Jesus wasn’t there!

Read John 5 and wonder ! !!!

David – Saul’s choice

One of the interesting and recurring themes in Christian sermons is the victory of David over Goliath. That in the English language it has become an idiom to epitomise an unrecognised person defeating a person of reputation is of little importance to the preachers!

What impels me to write this piece is the preachery which goes on from the pulpits stating that a shepherd became a king through the Grace of God, as if man and his efforts count for nothing! This suits the preachers who steal the resources and labour of individuals and accumulate the collection into their Trusts, where the individual contributions have lost their identities and the Trusteeship smugly rests in the hands of the Author’s heirs. This is a nice arrangement as none can claim his contribution as significant and the individual contribution itself gets diluted into the huge pot of the Trust.

Jesus never ever told anyone to be seeking idle righteousness. If one were to read the closing verses of chapter 6 of the Gospel of Luke, it is clear that Jesus wanted human beings to WORK and DO according to His teachings.

In fact in the parable of the Talents, the Capital provider not merely encouraged the persons who doubled the capital given, but chided and punished the man who received one talent and kept it idle and returned that talent safely.

Every Christian preacher has concentrated on leading a flock which is taught Patience, which is nothing but veiled Idleness.

David was a go getter. When he went to give the goodies to Abner, he enquired beyond the task assigned and looked around for finding an opportunity to engage his skills, honed in his idle and lean hours.

That’s the hallmark of leadership. Hone one’s skills during lean and idle hours; nursing a Hope that an opportunity would arise for exhibiting one’s skills and looking around for such opportunities; declaring that one is equal to those challenges; executing the job with meticulous precision and finally giving ALL THE GLORY TO GOD!

That the preachers tell the flock to give all glory to God, is the final stage of human effort fructified through God’s Grace. Preachers want a share in the fruits of the success of the congregation, consequently they skip all the intervening stages which compose and culminate in the bearing of the fruits.

They have ignored the training needed for the flock to build up their skills; the courage shown against the adversities and hopelessness which loomed before the members of the flock won! They need your success in the form of Tithes; if the members of the flock can’t generate income, obtain free labour from those indigent flock members! This overemphasis on Grace, is a camouflage for the rapacity of the preachers. They themselves float Trusts and obtain nameless contributions so that they don’t have to be indebted to anyone and create a secure future for their children.

The teachings of Saul the Paul, which were nothing but primer on Christianity, for the benefit of the then gentiles, have been converted into reference books on Christianity at the expense of Gospel of John, which is the most authentic reproduction of Jesus’ teachings. Jesus told the rich and self-righteous young man: GO SELL ALL THAT YOU HAVE AND GIVE IT TO TGE POOR AND FOLLOW ME. But the Pauline instructions in the epistle primers have been efficiently used to spread a new gospel: GO SELL ALL THAT YOU HAVE, GIVE THE SALE PROCEEDS TO US AND FOLLOW JESUS (ref: Annanias & Sapphira)

David’s skills were not and wouldn’t have been welcomed by Saul, the King, with desperation, as is being made out. Saul was also the anointed of God when he clothed David with his coatmail. If one is to occupy even the position of a harpist in the palace of Saul, he needed to prove his skills. How much more would it have been for Saul to choose a person to fight the Philistine, where the implication of a loss would enslave the whole Israel. I am sure that Saul would not have allowed David to fight Goliath without testing the skills of David. In those circumstances Saul would have ensured that David hit a target within a millimetre, ten times out of ten. Further, it was Israeli history that Benjamites were the best slingers of all the tribes of Israel, read Judges to confirm my statement. Saul being a Benjamite, would have known inside out the skills of slinging.

Those skills which enabled David, was not inborn, even assuming it to have been an inborn skill without practice and honing, no skill could measure up in times of adversity, especially with the thought that if he failed, not only that would have been his last day, but would have put the Israeli liberty in jeopardy!

It is the skill, courage, execution and the Grace which culminated in the decimation of Goliath which was what fetched Glory. It is that Glory which David surrendered to God. Our preachers are telling Christian flock to surrender the Glory, where none exists! Our preachers are canvassing for surrender of free labour in the name of God, instead of instilling in the minds of the young flock to build up skills, hone it regularly, scout for opportunities, hope in God and thereafter execute when the opportunity is found. Finally after victory, SURRENDER ALL GLORY TO GOD.

Preachers should stop standing with begging bowls to collect the tithes from the successful and free labour from the indigent to feather their own nests through the structure of Trusts controlled by their own family members!

God loves man, but He loves more the Effort, Courage, Execution skills and Hope of man!

Stop preaching the primers of Christianity cleverly alloyed with Pharisaical erudition!

Dramatic Monologue of Robert Browning!

I wonder if even Robert envisaged that his dramatic monologues would go viral in the future and make aficionados go threadbare on the emotions which he impregnated within his monologues.

My Last Duchess: every word is shown through the prism of the Widower Duke! We know nothing of what sort of person the last duchess was. It is the duke who is saying that she was simple yet ignorant enough to treat centuries of heritage of the Duchy to be of the commons.

The Duke is unsure if he gave orders, and all smiles stopped without knowing that she was not only loyal but also committed to him! A murder of Innocence. The reader is equally confused with the equivocation of the Duke. Duke spreads his murder of Innocence.

In Porphyria’s Lover, the lover murders Porphyria, to freeze that moment of Porphyria’s display of what? Was she propitiating for her untold guilt? Or is it that the Lover was consumed with Porphyria that he believes in some guilty deed – presumably infidelity? No details are given.

Facts are assumed. In the first poem a Duchess had been murdered and the next one is being negotiated for. In the second poem the Lover has frozen a moment precluding Porphyria from any further guilty behaviour.

Both men, from the poems do not furnish proof of guilt to the readers, but the dubious circumstances in which both had died, leaves the reader with a dilemma as to whether those women deserved that treatment either from the Duke or the Lover.

I have teetered in my assessment between murder of Innocence and crime of passion. Othello is wrong and Desdemona was innocent, but Othello is also a victim of planned slander, the murder is condemned, in these poems of Robert, there is no such resolution. A tinge of morality intervenes to deny giving a clean slate to the Duchess or Porphyria!

Finally a sense of proportion is creeping in!

In a nutshell, a junior officer of the Air Force has an affair with his senior officer’s wife, who also happens to be another Air Force officer of the same rank as her husband. The lady officer committed suicide upon the junior officer marrying someone else. The junior officer is court martialled and dismissed from service by the Govt. Upon appeal to the Air Force Tribunal, the junior officer’s sentence has been reduced to ‘ released from service’!
The grounds of the guilt hinges primarily on ‘stealing the affections of a brother officer’s wife’ – the question to be determined for answer are manifold. She was higher in rank too. She was in the same service too. It was consensual; the woman was older; she could not handle the junior officer getting married and committed suicide; was the adultery with the connivance or consent of her husband? All these questions need to be answered before dragging the man through the mud. Poor fellow, his relief is limited to a palliative of removing the taint of dismissal but nothing substantive, as if the man was solely responsible for an adulterous relationship with a woman being older and higher in rank in the same services! Let us strive to apportion guilt proportionate to the deed, not through the Imperialistic prism of the laws made by East India Company for enriching the shareholders back in London then! After all the IPC had new in the making since the 30’s of the 18th century much before the Crown assumed direct control !

Myth making!

Myth making!
There is only one thing which causes a Myth and it is the accretion of unproven and at times unprovable but palatable and sweetened facts. A Myth is probably a historical figure, who though accretion of eulogy and mindless belief on the merits of the facts narrated by the previous generation, becomes an irreplicable (just coined a word) symbol of some quality or power!

A Myth is something which lacks a counterpoint ! There should be nothing required to complement it in any way.

In the process the society hates any negative input to those characters except the wicked and evil ones. There is no blend, there is no internal jostling, just peaceful harmony.

The casualty in all this Myth making is the Seeker of Truth! He has no incentive for ascertaining the Truth and declaring it. Thereby becomes a rare breed taking private tuitions like Aristotle to Alexander because of the munificence of his father Philip of Macedonia! When the Truth seeker becomes a private tutor he becomes a mercenary of knowledge, when he is idle, he becomes a cynic- like Diogenes!

An evolved culture is one when negative comments are allowed to co-exist without any pressure from the majority and judged by the law and the Justices under a common law.

Now do we know why we Indians are excellent mythmakers? Anyone can add to the image so long as it is a positive comment eulogising the object! There would be no touchstone in that culture which will come to value copper as much as gold all for want of TOUCHSTONE! It is in that touchstone lies the value of the metal!

Pharisaical Trust!

If you don’t trust, then you will be reassured through unverifiable assertions! Therefore pretend to Trust, but put the facts available on probation!
So what happens if your pretension of Trust leads you to commit?

The only way is to not commit when in doubt. Maybe by not committing you run the risk of losing an opportunity. Hence your pretence keeps you pinned to the lie not believed, removing the gusto which naturally follows Trust.
So is the pretended Trust a liability in the long run? Yes.
The only way to overcome this dilemma is to state that you are skeptical about an assertion, but would like to be a mercenary to that Trust scavenging on the benefits to accrue!

Truth has its super travails with a prolonged gestation!

Hence to Trust is easier than to have the conviction of Truth.

How beneficial this has turned out to be for the Christian Pharisees to insist on a Trusting flock. Lay the burden of the Pharisaical standards of Righteousness on the flock, but peddle Christian Grace for a good life – of the Evangelist.

That’s called Wages without Labour!

POLITICAL PASSION

Once when Benjamin Disraeli was asked the difference between Misfortune and Calamity, he said: If Gladstone were to fall into the Thames that would be misfortune, but if somebody were to pull him out, that would be a calamity!

Look for the possibilities of the intent of that statement, not that Disraeli intended any of those at all! Yet, the possibilities of the intention possible behind that statement ought to be attempted to be brought to consciousness.

Very few would believe that Disraeli meant that he wanted Gladstone to struggle and swim the Thames and reach the bank! Human thought takes such an idea as desiring death of another human being! So the conception would be that Disraeli intended the death of Gladstone! That’s the Political Passion, not merely defeat of one’s opponents, but desire annihilation! The politician wants a free ground, something akin to Shah Jehan, Akbar, Jehangir’s had been in those bazaars within the fort palace at Agra, where all stalls were manned by nubile girls and the sole customer was the Emperor! Babur would have been ashamed of it, that his heirs were demeaning themselves by excluding their opponents from the game of Life! Babur, Shershah Suri and Raja Raja Chola needed to be included along with Asoka and Akbar as greats!

Getting back to the thread, with political Passion being such, it is impossible to ascribe innocence when a politician gets curious about the health of his bete-noir, except see his opportunities to fish in troubled waters!

What I detest about politicians is this lack of humanism- a realisation that LIFE is in the hands of the Divine. Yet their passion is to have an uninterrupted field for them to have a field day – every day!

Pharisaical Christians!

New International Version:

The horse is made ready for the day of battle, but victory rests with the LORD.
New Living Translation

The horse is prepared for the day of battle, but the victory belongs to the LORD.
English Standard Version

The horse is made ready for the day of battle, but the victory belongs to the LORD.
New American Standard Bible

The horse is prepared for the day of battle, But victory belongs to the LORD.
King James Bible

The horse is prepared against the day of battle: but safety is of the LORD.
Foolish Christians, who want to demean the EFFORTS OF MAN, talk and preach interpreting the above verse to mean as below:
EVEN IF YOU PREPARE THE HORSE FOR THE BATTLE, VICTORY SHOULD COME FROM THE LORD, with an implied message that there is no point in preparing the horse for the battle when you have not secured the approval of the Lord, therefore spend 7 days in church activities and please the Lord.

They steal the labour of man for 6 days a week to please the Lord. Thereafter, when success has gone to the Church and its trust funds, and the man has aged, he is told to keep praying for his sons and grandchildren! The Churches make you old with assurances purveyed through Hope.

Whereas, the wiser interpretation would have been that there are two parts to Victory, one is the horse being readied by man and the second part being that the Lord should be given all glory for the Victory which ensued because of the effort of man. Man should not take, rather not appropriate the Glory of the Victory to himself, he should ascribe the victory to the Lord.

But Organisational Christianity has from the time of Pauline epistles to pagans, has used this verse, not for egging man to redouble his efforts, but to undermine the part of man and thus stymie him and enrich the Organisation!
Luke 19:

39. And some of the Pharisees from among the multitude said unto him, Master, rebuke thy disciples.

40. And he answered and said unto them, I tell you that, if these should hold their peace, the stones would immediately cry out.

God has unimaginable alternatives, that is not for Man to look into. Man has to DO! Pharisees did not die for the Christians, they are still interested in building the organisation by exhorting man to undermine his own efforts, so that such labour could be perennially tagged to the Organisation; and secondly, it could be obtained for free, if it is episcopally stamped as ‘Worthless’!

Innocent & fearful Christians heed these exhortations by these misinterpreting rascals, to render unto these Organisations free labour in the name of God. These Trustees of Christian organisations have thus accumulated wealth for these Christian Organisations which have specialised in writing expense accounts and selling Organisational properties after effortless acquisitions!

Tell the foolish Christians:

GO AND PREPARE THE HORSE FOR THE BATTLE SIX DAYS A WEEK, THE SEVENTH DAY IS THE LORD’S!

Go make your 5 talents to 10; or your 2 to 4! Don’t be like the son who pleased his father with Words, but went not to the vineyard to WORK.

Truth of Commerce!

Don’t call the bluff of your friends, competitors and enemies. Build on it.

After all you cannot be held responsible for having believed in their bluff. Which bluff to believe and which one not to believe, is entirely in your hands.

Wisdom lies in making that choice and Liberty lies in exploiting that choice to your advantage without any compunction.

The best part of the spin off of Honesty is this! This is the core of all Commercial Honesty.

GRE Scores & admissions!

GRE SCORES
The conundrum of the GRE scores expressed in percentile, has to be put in perspective.

For example out of the max 170 if an examinee had scored let us say 168 in maths, he may be in the 95th percentile.

The next urge is to find out as to how many examinees would be placed above as competitors to those courses on offer. Consequently the total number of examinees who had taken the GRE from the 5th year preceding the first of July from the current year, have to be totalled. Therefore, assuming that 5 lakhs examinees had taken the test per year, the total examinees would be 25 lakhs. Therefore if one is in the 95th percentile, that examinee would come to the simple arithmetic conclusion that 5% of 25 lakhs are above him, which in this example would be 1,25,000.
QUITE DEPRESSING.
Not at all.
The total numbers are, first of all that the 1,25,000 above are NOT EXAMINEES but scores, which could be that a person who scored 170/170 in quant might have taken the GRE multiple times to improve his English scores. Assuming that he had consistently scored 169 or 170 in all those 5 attempts but his English scores were either stagnant or incrementally improving, that person would, in the final analysis, be able to occupy only one seat, as it is the same examinee who had occupied the 96-99.9 percentile.

Therefore it may not be that 125000 students are above him to compete for seats in prime institutions.

Therefore, take 20% out as multiple test takers but the same person, those above would plunge to 1,00,000.
Next, since the scores are valid for 5 years, many in the last 4 preceding years would have found admission in colleges already in the last 4 years. Since we are talking of those who had scored 170 and 169 in maths, about 80% of that 100000 is to be knocked out, thus bringing the real competition to 20,000.
The pie is huge, with each university offering not less than 500 seats requiring maths, if purely calculated based on the GRE scores for the 50 top universities, the requirement would be 25,000.

This brings those who had scored 168/170 and just below into the pie of opportunity.

Hence, a score of 168/170 or thereabouts below, need not be as depressing, as the initial arithmetic showed.

One could make up for it with certificates of experience and recommendations.
Go with full vigour even if you guys have just below perfect scores. Of course, there may not be an opportunity for a particular course in the top 10 universities, but you would be still on top of the third world, than languish in an education system which predominantly does not support merit!

Screw when you can’t extract!

The interesting and exciting predicament of Life is captured in three frames of this cartoon. The first one is a predicament sharing affecting the reputation or revenue of the Organization. The second frame captures a dilemma, and the first part of the third frame expresses an opinion of Sure Failure and the request to decide on a course the result of which is already known to the subordinate but the decision making is thrown to the superior. The boss has to decide either way and explain to the shareholders a reason for his failure! Bonafide or not they would decide. The boss is trying to get the best out of the bad bargain! Boss wants to put Dilbert through as much grind as possible, as making Dilbert suffer is the only UPSIDE!

JESUS & SECOND COMING!

The Second Coming and the Fear thereof has overcome and overtaken the Love of Jesus. The seeds of Fear was sown through the Book of Romans, when the writer said “fear to whom fear is due!”

Why Fear?

When Jesus propagated Fearlessness through his actions and reminded Pilate of his powerlessness if it wasn’t given from above; asked the High Priest’s sycophants the reason of His fault for smiting His cheek; or even when He told the soldiers at Gethsemane that it was Him that they were looking for? should I believe another mortal writing ‘ Fear to whom Fear is due’.

No, never.

Fear is only due to God, when the Love for God had subsided!

It is a deficiency of the soul.
So the fear of being left out at the Coming of the Groom is the agent which is the starting point of all spiritual Fear! The Event has overtaken The Love of the God out of whom the ‘event’ takes place!

Jesus was fearless and everyday when a man goes to bed at night, he is likely to meet his Second Coming.

When asked by His disciples: When would the event be? He says: It is not for me or you to know such Times, and only the Father knows it. When Jesus Himself submitted to that level of ignorance vis a vis the Father, who are we to get Curious and start predicting an event ‘shortly’ implying thereby that the event would come to pass even during their lifetime! Second Coming is an event which would be the last cut-off day of Grace for those who are alive, with no recourse to repentance! Purgatory notwithstanding!

So that Fear is unfounded and baseless to Christianity!

Grace!

What is Grace?A question which has haunted me since I heard a dubious definition thus: AN UNMERITED FAVOUR. A ‘favour’ is too small a gift to be associated with the Christian idea of GRACE. The definition according to me is, as dubious like ‘EVIDENCE OF THINGS NOT SEEN’ for FAITH!
My endeavour is not to obfuscate the obvious, at the same time, when a definition does NOT appeal to one’s intellect, that definition has to be looked upon with suspicion and each person ought to struggle to capture the meaning within the ambit of the intellect. That’s human effort.
To understand Grace, I had to turn my attention to MERCY. Mercy, as we know from criminal jurisdiction, is the power granted above the judiciary. The judiciary convicts a person of a crime and sentences him. The sentence could be from payment of penalty to death.
Once the sentence is handed over and the conviction and sentence have reached finality, there is no scope but to serve out the sentence, or during the subsistence of the sentence, to get a remission for good behaviour etc..

Under the Mercy jurisdiction, the highest power granted by the society, the ultimate political body, may GRANT MERCY. Here Mercy, does not mean that the conviction had been set aside. The person surely IS GUILTY of the crime, but the sentence is waived- that is Mercy.
When it comes to the Christian concept, GRACE is, when any relief is granted, without getting into a question of fact as to whether the person did or didn’t; or, deserves or doesn’t; instead if the request is granted it is GRACE.

There is NO PRIOR JUDGEMENT TO GRACE. That’s why the Psalmist says : BLESSED IS THE MAN TO WHOM GOD DOES NOT IMPUTE INIQUITY.
Who could have been better qualified to say that? None better than David – assuming that he wrote Psalm 32:

2. Blessed is the man unto whom the LORD imputeth not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no guile.
So when a person is NOT IMPUTED with iniquity, that’s GRACE. But to obtain that, is it a must that he shouldn’t have guile in his spirit? Or is it a consequence of God not imputing Sin? Well, Brother Paul, to whom Jesus was merciful has a take on it, at Romans 4, where he cites the belief of Abraham, as no ‘work’ and how that belief of Abraham obtained Grace. Bro. Paul repeats that portion of the said Psalm and argues that without going through physical circumcision, through belief alone, one could obtain the benefits of the belief in Christ.
For me, Grace is when God despite having the capability to know,and yet desists from knowing but GRANTS RELIEF FROM THE BURDEN/ GUILT OF SIN, WITHOUT LOOKING INTO OUR SINS, THAT’S GRACE!
Not only sins, God doesn’t look into the MERIT of a person to grant him his desire, therefore a person who doesn’t ‘deserve’ obtains his object of desire, that is GRACE too. Thirdly, HUMAN KNOWLEDGE may be absent, yet God may provide something which a person neither desired or imagined. For example, the person who was incapacitated and lying near the Siloam for 38 years thought that he has to be the first to get in at the stirring of the waters by the Angel. But Jesus, IGNORED HIS KNOWLEDGE and cured him, that was GRACE.

He is merciful to the sinner; honours the diligent lagger; and surprises the IGNORANT HUMAN, with his Benevolence. The last two are also incidences of God’s GRACE!

As most priests and preachers sweep mercy, forgiveness under the carpet of Grace, the word has lost its clarity.

Time to put in an effort to understand and not let the spiritual quacks exploit the word!

Of suspensions & walk-outs in Assemblies!

I am amused that a political party which had been making walk-outs of the Assembly, on grounds flimsier than muslin, had, when suspended from the Assembly should file a writ before a High Court and state therein that by that en masse suspension by the Speaker, 33% of the people of the State have gone unrepresented!
How specious could the argument get before the Hon’ble High Court.

When the voluntary walk-outs are orchestrated by the same party for strategic reasons, they care a fig as to their percentage of people they represent going unrepresented !
Time to introspect. Be in the house and allow business to be transacted, with erudite and humane speeches.

Record your objections with sane reasoning. Stop TACTICS & STRATEGIES. Start participating and record your objections, if any, on reasonable grounds!

Long live India and Thamizh.

CHENNAI SMASHERS CAPTAIN IN THE OLYMPICS FINALS!

Nobody knows that there is a team called Chennai Smashers in the Badminton Premier League in India . The captain of the team is P.V.SINDHU, who has today reached the finals in Olympics in women’s badminton.

I liked that attitude she showed in the second half of the second set, when she squelched her Japanese opponent 21-10! Eleven points straight. The best part was that she didn’t seem to be overawed by the occasion, when she was in the threshold of becoming the best hope for a silver or above, in this 2016 Rio Olympics, where medals for India have dried up faster, even without hope.

It is at that juncture that the captain of CHENNAI SMASHERS, P V SINDHU like a fresh breath stormed not with false modesty, but with innocent brashness seizing even the slightest opportunity to smash with accuracy!

She made it!

Sindhu go go! Get the gold. The whole of India is behind you. Don’t be overawed by the occasion, you have it and you will. We need you to win. Go lady go! With Gopichand as the coach, I am sure that she’d maintain her head on her shoulders!

Expunging in general!

Amazing! Whenever I see that an EXPUNCTION is sought in a legislature, it is always by the side other than the one which uttered the remarks!

In Life, when we have COMPUNCTION we seek EXPUNCTION from ourselves to forget what we had said to others, but in a Legislature, others demand for removal of the records to control the media from propagating what our representatives said.

Videos had already been blocked on the premise that legislators started targeting their constituency instead of the issues legislated upon.

Now, there is no way a curious common man would be able to read about the goings and sayings on in the legislature!

God bless us all!

The bee & the bud!

வண்டின் வையாது பூவிற்கு தேவையற்ற கணிப்பு! பூவிற்கே அப்படியென்றால், பார்வையாளருக்கு அவசியமற்ற ஓன்று!

பூவிற்கு மகரந்த சேர்க்கை, பார்ப்பவனுக்கு பொறாமை😜

The tongue of Esau!

Esau had two appetites which did him in.

The Taste of his Tongue and the Lust of his eyes; and both had no restraint. The hunter in him required replenishment of energy lost in pursuit. Worse still was his lack of foresight to carry with him foodstuff to appease his hunger, which accentuated his taste of his tongue and the lust of his eyes.

Jacob, on the other hand had not refined his tastes or allowed his lust to become unbridled, being under the care of his mother.

Jacob was more a vegetarian, good at brewing pottage with lentils. He had added colour to make it more appetising. That Red, made Esau’s tastebuds go haywire and resulted in the barter of his birthright.

Or is it all a post facto justification to attach some demeaning attributes to a loser? Or was Esau the weaker one who got kicked out of the womb by the robust Jacob, even at birth?

Who knows? Maybe what we call the elder is the twin who lost to the stronger inside the womb!
Whatever we believe is the Truth and that thought works in us and impels us forward. In sum, MAN IS A VICTIM OF HIS CHOICE – WHETHER FORCED OR FREE!

Parable of Talents.

The parable of talents!
What surprises me about the exposition of the Parable of Talents by the preachers is their emphasis on the attitude of the man who received one talent. The Pentecostals even threaten their congregations with the plight of that man post judgement. Instead of expounding on the Patience, Effort and Hope exercised by the five talent man to double the talents he received, they talk of the judgemental, slothful and diffidence of the one talent man!

Incentivisation needs to replace threats in Christian preaching. Fear CANNOT form the basis of any choice, at best it could only make a human freeze into inactivity.

Smoking & Drinking demographics in India!

Smoking & Drinking data! Sample Registration System (SRS), Baseline Survey released by the Registrar General of India shows that Tamil Nadu has a 7.7% smoking population and 8.6% drinking population compared to 12.4% & 16.1% (AP); & 11.8% & 16.1% (KL). The national average for the corresponding habits are 12.1% and 10.7%.
The following is a thumbnail of geographical representation by these two groups, as per the survey.

There has been a talk that the incumbent government of Tamil Nadu had converted around 10% of the Tamils into drunkards. The fellows who bandied these half baked theories based on concocted or imagined data had attempted to prejudice the voters by insinuating that 10% of the Tamil populace had been made drunkards. What a big lie! Thank God, for his great mercies for having given the TN voters a discerning mind.

The next question is: if a 8.6% population of TN could generate INR 30,000 crores annually, what ought to be the revenue generation of the state of UP , which has three times the population with a 7% drinking population ? So where does that ‘revenue’ go? Is it because of poor harnessing of the governmental functions or a planned skimming of governmental revenues? Time to think.

The revenues from smoking is appropriated by the Union Government and the revenues from intoxicants belong to the States by virtue of entry no 8 of List 2 of the Seventh Schedule.

The point is, a state’s revenue is bolstered mainly through taxes on alcohol, sales tax and land revenues. When a major state like UP bungles in generation and collection of taxes from sale, production and distribution of alcohol, it not only impoverishes itself, but becomes a pretext for the Union government for collecting and apportioning higher grants and share of the central revenues for its ‘upliftment’, which has been happening for more than 6 decades. This has an impact on the more efficient states, as it is their legitimate share from the centre’s revenues which get diverted on these repeated and unrepaired socialistic grounds.

It is time for the ‘efficient’ states to form a think tank to help these ‘inefficient’ states to help generate and maximise their state revenues, otherwise the revenues from the Union are likely to be spent on some of the black hole states which have no transparency or fiscal discipline and become a bigger burden to the economy.

The Big Question!

The Big Question!
There lurks one SINGLE QUESTION in every mind, which lies hidden unanswered waiting to surface and show itself up. But the ignorance of the answer to that question causes the mind NEVER EVER to FRAME that question. But the underlying question keeps effervescing.

That ANXIETY causes ACTIVITY, which can be answered, through meditation/prayer ONLY. Any amount of activity is not going to find the answer to that question. If Solomon failed, I am sure that I wouldn’t be able to find the answer.

One day You through meditation or prayer would find that ANSWER first, and the QUESTION POPS OUT!
QED. All good questions don’t beg for answers, but seek PROOF TO YOUR ANSWERS.

Rivets.

Religious rivets!As rusted rivets of religious taboos fall apart, laminates of decorum flake up, revealing the enticing opportunities of Life!

Beware! If the priest doesn’t come with new rivets, your enfeebled conscience, in time, will concoct ritual rivets.

French Open!

French style!
The French Open is underway and watching Baghditis vs. Alfred Tsonga was an eye opener!

From my teenage I’ve been an avid watcher of the tennis ball bouncing off an eight millimetre grass in Wimbledon, which gave time for the server to reach the net and volley, on the other side of the Dover, the clay tested a man’s ENDURANCE.

As always men are tested to LAST!

This match would go down in the history of the French Open as a match a sheep almost won in a wolf’s clothing.

Baghditis had apparently honed his skills in a way most women play their tennis. Attempting drop shots, not occasionally but incessantly, from the baseline just to test the other guy’s ability to retrieve expending energy on SISSY TENNIS.

We used to have a tennis court in the quarters allotted to my dad and senior police officers used to regularly play there and I as a teenager used to play along with those uncles, who were there more for keeping themselves fit than for the love of the game. Me, in my naive enthusiasm as a kid to win used to be quite successful in such sissy drop shots playing from the baseline.

One day my dad walked upto me and said: PLAY TENNIS LIKE A MAN- KEEP THE RALLY ON!

It was during that time that McEnroe and Connors had burst into the tennis scene challenging the style of Bjorn Borg’s ENDURANCE TEST.

But McEnroe and Connors did not play those drop shots unless they were drawn to the net, but Baghditis has sharpened his skills to do dropshots by standing near the baseline may come in handy for a while, but in the long run, such chicanery may reduce his endurance and his own ability to retrieve with hard hitting players – as he found out today!

I was wondering if he was transporting a skill set from women’s tennis to the highest level of men’s tennis?

After much thought I was inclined to believe that, HAD THE MATCH BEEN BEST OF THREE, BAGHDITIS WOULD HAVE WON HANDS DOWN!

That’s the upside of women’s tennis which winds up faster, otherwise the organisers would not have shortened the format and spared the spectators the sight of two worn out women scrambling for balls in a tennis court in the fifth set!

This is no gender debasing, it is just that tennis might have been invented and evolved today for testing men’s endurance and skills, but in women’s case test their reasonable skills in tennis with on court gracefulness in movement and pricey off court. That serves for other brands of advertisers.

But being specific to men’s clay court tennis, Baghditis was pathetic with a sling in his armoury against a sniper of a high order .

Hope, such perverts like Baghditis, whose names sounds like an inflammation of the capital of Iraq, do not take away the precious ENDURANCE SKILLS required to win a French Open.

Thanks Tsonga for averting such scum from rising to become the cream.

Why did DMK lose TN 2016?

The question is NOT How Jayalalitha won the elections in TN, but How did DMK lose in TN?
Let’s go back to some of the fundamental assumptions which preceded the elections in TN.

1. There is anti incumbency, as historically since 1984, TN voters have never re-elected the party which ran the Govt.

2. Both the veterans Dr. M. K and Dr. J.J have not been keeping well, so if not now, the persons who had proclaimed themselves as CM candidates in this election, would have a head start in the next

3. Dr. Anbu was the first who declared himself as a CM Contestant, forcing the hands of Vijayakanth, thereby putting paid for the hopes for an alliance of DMK with DMDK.

4. Once VAIKO cobbled up his Naidu/Dalit/Communist platform, Vijayakanth’s past vote percentage gave him the primacy to lead the alliance.

It is in this background that the elections in TN was fought.

In effect, since Dr. MK didn’t want to alienate his cadres and also rouse Azhagiri’s overt resistance, he declared himself the CM candidate of the DMK.
In effect, it was suspected that Stalin was trying to upstage Dr. MK in a future date, after an imagined win by DMK.

BJP and the Congress did not make any open announcements, as the former was constrained by self doubts, and the latter had split into TMC of Vaasan and the other by Elangovan.
So Vaasan fell in line with VAIKO and in effect there was Dr.JJ as the only serious candidate and the rest were either a pretext for someone else – like Dr. MK was for Stalin. The rest were all pretenders wanting precedence in the next elections.

For political parties it is strategy and vote banks – nothing else matters.

Voters may not be serious but they are sincere. They found that except for Dr. JJ, there was NO OTHER SERIOUS CM CANDIDATE IN THE FRAY IN TN 2016!
Without sincerity there is no such thing as a promise . If one is NOT sincere about wanting to become the CM of TN, how can one trust the promises made by him/her?
No doubt, Dr.JJ moves slowly, but her clarity in expression and request to the people of TN for their votes, based on citing her past performance had a RING OF SINCERITY, if not a ring of truth to it. However, Dr. MK’s request was a benami transaction of seeking vote for Stalin, and at his will could hand over, if not forced to hand over, the reins of the government if DMK won. Dr. MK’s voice had the telling gruffness, but not the clarity. In effect, the people of TN had to choose someone who sounded sincere and that left her as the only choice, with a dash of sympathy – as they saw her combativeness and imperiousness had subsided and Sincerity stood out, albeit with a tinge of arrogance.

Therefore, essentially in TN if anyone asks for power with Sincerity, people do favourably consider that.
One of the main reasons for a strong showing was DMK’s guiltless promise of economic revival coupled with relentless effort. Why “guiltless”? because DMK felt that the scam allegations have already been paid for, in the form of the 2014 parliament elections. That was not entirely correct, people remembered the allegations as much as the 20 year old allegations against Dr. JJ for her amassing of wealth. But DMK cadres are not prone to introspection unlike the not so belligerent AIADMK, consequently, DMK’s campaign was vibrant, full-throated & remorseless. This gave an impression that DMK had won over the media, it seemed more as cornering the media space than fairly playing the game.

TRANSFERENCE of Congress votes was total in favour of DMK, but DMK votes in favour of Congress was dismal. Probably, post win DMK did not want a congress with 25-30 MLAs, if DMK itself hit only 100 MLAs- that would make DMK vulnerable, which was the case in 2011, which invited a refrained jibe of “minority Govt” from Dr. JJ! This obviously cost DMK a strike at the power, unfortunately, DMK WHICH IS PRONE TO EXTROVERSION IS UNABLE TO SEE IT, MUCH LESS ADMIT IT!
PROHIBITION, was not DMK agenda brought before the Tamil electorate, it was Dr. Ramadoss’ initiative, borrowed and drum-beaten as a tool against Dr. JJ ! Dr JJ couldn’t have agreed to total prohibition, as the parties would have asked her to implement it immediately, as she was in power. Therefore she came up with the “phased manner” concept, which probably went down well with the regular TASMACers! Who knows if the differential percentage was those who apprehended prohibition ? Maybe, DMK lost on that count too.

To say that this election was without anti incumbency is a fraud, the reality seems that SINCERITY, TRANSFERENCE and PROHIBITION went against the DMK and nullified the anti incumbency gains.

Thamizh Nadu state elections!

Predicting the winner in the state elections of Thamizh Nadu is easier than formulating the pattern of media behaviour and psephologists. But, believe you me, there is an undeniable pattern to their behaviour.
Psephologists:

They are a breed which surfaces every lustrum. Till then they keep providing ‘consultancy’, an amorphous rather a protean nomenclature which is fastened to any freelancing activity which takes advantage of knowledge and contacts for unimaginable gains. The gain is not for nothing, they monitor the trend of the voting masses. They ignore the non voting electorate and pitch on those who vote. Secondly they mingle to find out the aspirations of the voting types.

Aspirations being of two types, they do not inform that they segregate the economic aspirations from their social aspirations. Once this is segregated, they inform through various media that the whole electorate is after this or that SOCIAL ASPIRATION. This creates a bandwagon effect and coagulates further to the core the consultant created. Next he provides ‘consultation’ to a party to which he has been affiliated through ideology or remuneration. There he explains to the party think tank that there is a coagulating group which has aspirations for certain ECONOMIC ASPIRATIONS and unleashes it. That forms the manifesto of the party – a lure to hook the gullible voter.

Then there are those POSTULATES, which the clever ones formulate and propagate to the point of a cliche. E.g. ANTI-INCUMBENCY. – this is a standard piece of jargon which substitutes well when their predictions go wrong.

BANDWAGON EFFECT – this is one more jargon to the point of cliche, that it is a less sophisticated one and had been in use a lot longer than the previous one and probably heading towards retirement by the next lustrum!

MATHEMATICAL & STATISTICAL BS– when words fail, numbers are invoked to obfuscate facts. Facts are better countered by numbers than letters. If that fails, STATISTICS, which is alphanumeric is invoked, where they are sure that none would understand it and left wondering, as they believe that as they have not understood it, none can!

Psephologists are saprophytes, which live ON but not OFF!
These need the MEDIA.

Just as an army marches on its stomach, this one which used to live off the governmental newsprint and advertisement, lives ON ADVERTISEMENTS- the paid ones, not the governmental ones which are either statutory or bill based. The bill is a threat which a legislator could use against an interest group. The threat is that, the power of the day would make an Act, which might take the cream off, at one stroke.
The advertisers are companies mostly, who have a product or service, which are busy building a brand or staving off other companies from superseding their brand image. Therefore they fund movies which have greater viewership and cost more per telecast. They pay triple or quintuple the normal Advt charges and keep themselves afloat during the churning of the people who end up running the Govt. So Psephologists start by making pre-election polls and purvey the desired results by going to those areas which would return their expectations. Since Psephologists are creating a voting group they start PROMOTING their affiliate party. They don’t care about their credibility, as even if one gets it dead right on the numbers, people believe that they got it by fluke; and if they got it wrong, they could slime out with their jargon or statistics. The flak that might follow would not be comparable with the benefits they could gain through being “friendly” with parties and the media. Each one is a playing referee, rather a referee who has punted in favour of one of the teams in which he is the main, rather spot referee!

TREND OF PSEPHOLOGISTS AND THE MEDIA:
The clever know that elections are Marathons in terms of Time. To be in the right side of the proverb WELL BEGUN IS HALF DONE, would be a Trojan blunder of mistaking an army for a wooden horse. The game begins in the last ten days, before the polling day.

But the media and the riding Psephologists start the game early as they are the payees and don’t lose anything, whereas the political parties, who are the payers, by starting early might become burn outs, like Dr. Ramadoss and co. But the media and Psephologists have already taken out the fat of PMK.

Politicians decide only when a decision cannot be postponed any longer. So they wait to catch evolving trends, which they themselves could have triggered through deft deployment of the media and Psephologists.
After the burn outs come the NAIVE ENTHUSIASTS SANS IDEOLOGY. A person like VAIKO is capable, a good man and meaning well, but his belligerence is misplaced. He lacks the organisational skills to build a platform, consequently he needs a Vijayakanth and the Communists to provide him the base, which gets crowded and he gets lost.

The long players are the ADMK oops! AIADMK, which is in the form of Dravidian vehicle manned sorry womanned by a Brahmin and a Brahminical sympathiser, and the DMK. AIADMK has a form with a different substance, she did not make it that way, when Thamihzans voted for the putative goodness of MGR, the electorate approved of such a content-form contradiction . The next is the DMK, which is a platform which is being usurped by Stalin shooting over the shoulders of Dr. MK. Stalin has the pedigree but not the mettle of his father. People of Thamizhnadu don’t even remember that he was a state minister – the better part is that even the ruling party doesn’t talk of the decisions or opportunities squandered by Stalin as a minister!

But people know one thing that Dr. MK is being egged on by his family than out of any ambition to become CM once more. Maybe Dr. MK would want to see the back of Amma more than he wanting to become the CM.

Therefore the subliminal question nibbling at the thamizh brain is whether to Give one final chance to the saviour of the backward castes of TN or to extend the rule of a woman, who through her own making, has made herself a one woman army lumbering up and down the state. She believes that she is THE WINNER and wants to take all the credit for it, so it is not that there aren’t any second ring speakers but that she is loath to sharing credit with someone else. So no second rung leaders are empowered to campaign with gusto.

In this election melee, the advertisers and Psephologists who had been purveying their aspirations disguised as news and science, would be groping in the darkness that they have created and in the last week before elections, would give a seesaw majority to AIADMK and leave it for fate to decide and start working on theories and hypotheses to defend how they missed the AIADMK landslide.

That is called as the BALANCING THAMIZHAN OR IN THE WORDS OF MY NORTH INDIAN FRIENDS JELEBI!

Thamizh movie ’24’!

This Thamizh movie named(?) rather titled ’24’ deals with a unique concept as yet not seen by me in any Thamizh movie. The storyline has a reticulated weave of love between Samantha and Surya on the one side; and a deep rooted conflict between boy twins born 180 seconds apart. The younger sibling’s son grows up to be the romantic hero Surya with Samantha being the object of his desire.

Both the siblings and the romantic hero are played by Surya, thus making Surya’s presence in the movie all pervasive.

The younger sibling is a scientist who had dedicated his life for inventing a watch like machine, which could set not only the Time back and restart events from the past but would also enable the wearer to remember the events which happened before resetting and allow the wearer to make choices different from those he made earlier, especially with the help of the ‘foresight’ he acquires because of the past event!

Now that can get very confusing, when getting it into words, that is all the more reason that one SHOULD WATCH this movie ’24’, as with interesting episodes this shuttling possibility in Time is exemplified with elan and in an understandable manner.
H.G. Wells’ TIME MACHINE, is too remote and the transportation time is so vast that there is no emotional glue to hold the attention of the emotional types’ interest, whereas, this movie has an Immediacy and the story line is flawlessly clear. The deployment of willing suspension of disbelief is required only on two or three points, which are dealt with early in the movie thereby not allowing sceptical logic entering the stream of the watcher’s consciousness.

A R Rahman’s music is appropriate and the screenplay is INCREDIBLY GOOD.

Thamizh Cinema has moved into the NEXT LEVEL.

I haven’t seen an Indian movie made with such care, having a demanding storyline.

Must watch 24!

Illma Gore’s cartoon!

Underbelly of Feminism!
Men have evolved!
The indicator is that most men would revolt against depiction of women in a disparaging light, especially relating to their bodily parts.

Opportunities to become somebody from relative oblivion through such dubious means are proliferating, especially as the electronic and social media have provided various platforms! Illma Gore has exposed the deep need of women for well endowed men, may be when one gets used to it, it may not be a badge which could be worn in public, but within the confines of friendship these probably are the priorities women aspire. But the proof of it is in the eating of it. A coiled snake’s reach cannot be judged by the naked eye, further there is an interactive extension which can be significant.
Illma Gore has broken the barriers of decency by not only substituting her putrid imagination for want of first hand proof, but by making it an issue whereas feminism had long derecognized it. There are a lot of sorority sniggering going on in the media at her cartoon, fraught with a feeling that they have had a peek at Trump’s privates.

Women are getting bothered about things they are very unlikely to encounter. It goes by the name of empathy. If Ivana and Melania are not bothered, why should Illana Gore be curious about such things ?

Some women like less belligerent and avuncular men to become the President of the US, but there might be a significant number of women who probably like to have a pugnacious and belligerent type. So in this war against these two types, it appears the ones preferring avuncular types may lose out. This seems to me to be causing fervid anxiety to this lesser known Gore. Illma Gore’s cartoon, some call it painting, seems to me to be the outburst of a frustrated woman with anachronistic values bringing a bad reputation to the torch bearers of Feminism.
What if Donald Trump calls her for a verification session after his ascendency to Presidency? Would she be able to handle it? And if she were to be proven wrong, would she pull down (her cartoon!) or badmouth it still – I mean her cartoon ?

Let mankind get this one straight: NAILHEADS ARE MEANT FOR HAMMERS!

NEAT job!

A person is to be judged by the rules which are applicable to him or her.

The medical college entrance called NEET acronym for National Eligibility cum Entrance Test, conducted recently in Tamizhnadu, is a travesty of Fairness for the reason that most students who took NEET had studied either matriculation or samacheer kalvi. Consequently their syllabus varies vastly from the CBSE, which is the basis of the said NEET.

A student studies what he or she is prescribed to study. If the parents enroll the child in a State Board, it is not the fault of the child. The student ought to be judged by the syllabus that he or she was taught.

Unfortunately the SC order, which has been uniformly applied to the students in Tamizhnadu appears to be more jingoistic than fair. CBSE has a standard, which caters to a different section of the society, with a strong North Indian flavour in its syllabus. May be one might say in science and maths, such biases don’t matter. Right, absolutely right. But Thamizhnadu’s priorities in inclusiveness, has brought about a churning which the other feudal states have neither attempted nor achieved.

In the social churning which had been at play since the late 60’s, a certain sense of fairness had to be brought into the admission system and into the curriculum too. Therefore a certain lowering of standards to accommodate those who are deprived, had been built into the curriculum. This is reflected in subjects like science and maths too. Whereas, in search of building a new caste of the educated, CBSE has included advanced syllabus and therefore the students from State Boards have been handicapped, for no fault of theirs. Even the brilliant ones had prepared only from their syllabus and hence, in all likelihood would lose out in this NEET game, which had been imposed on them suddenly.

NOTICE, is one of the abiding concepts in any civilized society . The students who had prepared as per the State syllabus, had NOT BEEN NOTIFIED in advance of the yardstick by which they would be judged. Supreme Court ordered and within a week, the test had been conducted.

Thirdly, how higher and other technical education came under the control of the Union Government itself is a big study in how to perpetrate a gradual fraud! Education like food, is terrain specific. Anyone can aspire for anything and with effort and a little backing from luck and family fortunes, might be able to make it. The aspirations of the many from the more populous States with no infrastructure, have instead of going to Russia and China, aspire to be within the country and study Medicine. But Medical colleges are not super special educational infrastructure paid for by the centre’s resources, therefore creating a foothold for students from the other States of the Nation is not a VESTED RIGHT. If Thamizhnadu had built more medical colleges, and if the central revenues have not been expended on such infrastructural creation, to let other state students to enter would be a backdoor promotion of Regionalism of a reprobate kind.

Medical colleges in Thamizhnadu are not meant for people who do not know Thamizh, as the goal is to serve the people of the state of Thamizhnadu. He who has sown should have the predominant right to reap, especially if the LAND belongs to him.

If standards is what the real worry is, then medical exams could be conducted by other state medical boards by rotation or by a national examination committee, after duly prescribing the syllabus and examining the medical students therefrom. After all it is in nobody’s interest to produce KILLER DOCTORS.

Finally, those feudal states which have eked out a living through the munificence of the beleaguered governments of the day in the parliament for want of majority, cannot seek equal opportunity in the infrastructure built so assiduously for the denizens of states which are more democratic and inclusive in its politics.

In my opinion, the views of the states are to be taken otherwise it would be disrespecting the sacrifice of the states done over decades.

God bless India.

Let us notify the syllabus before examining students.

Let us give at least two years’ notice period, to be Fair.

Let us not grab even the infrastructure after grabbing the revenues.

Let Medicine be taught in the Mother Tongue of the student, to serve the State better.

In all fairness let the grasshopper states be encouraged to build and nourish its own institutions, instead of eyeing to grab the medical seats from the hardworking Ant states.

India vaazhga!

Searching the Deep!

Searching!
Had I lost something

I’d ‘ve known what

I was searching for!

Alas! I know not

What I’m searching for

I don’t even know whether

Whatever I’m looking for exists at all!

But the Hope that if I

Stumble upon it

I shall recognise whatever it is.

Not Hope AND Effort, but Hope WITH Effort keeps the Search on.

It would be my prayer that

If they have to be parted,

Then let not Hope cease before Effort.

Spiced up Spice Jet Airways!

On a Spicejet flight from Bangkok to Kolkata the male commander of the flight got a female air hostess into the COCKPIT of the flight and locked out the co-pilot for a considerable long time. Spicejet has taken action of suspending the pilot and have informed DGCA of the incident.

The facts missing but crucial for a reader of the newspaper are

1. What was the duration of the locking out of the co-pilot? It is not a question of how long the closed door meeting took place between the commander and a hostess as much as how a Copilot could be denied access to his seat?

2. Was the hostess made to sit on the pilot’s seat or in the copilot’s seat? So where is the problem?

3. Was the closed door meeting consensual or was the hostess an unwilling partner to the proceedings. Even if she was willing, the Superior cannot leverage his higher rank.

4. Who said that the meeting was sexual in nature? Is it a probable event considering the circumstances or is it based on a complaint?

5. Wtf is the black box there for? Can’t it be used to glean facts of the last heard ‘noises’, if any?

6. Why did the flight purser object to that air hostess going in?

7. Do the passengers have a right to sue the airlines as there was a man and woman made situation which was risky?

I’d be wrong to imagine that Wright brothers would have been happy to have seen the flights secure for such mile high indiscretions.

Btw, why have not the names of the pilot and the air hostess not been published and thereby named and shamed the ones alleged to have put the lives of many passengers in jeopardy?

Let us be kind at a personal level, but not on disciplinary issues involving lives of others.

Why do ppl still rely on statements when there would be so many electronic evidence?

Maybe the pilot reprimanded the air hostess for some activity . Why impute motives?

Collecting incontrovertible facts is the only way to ascertain FACTS. Otherwise anyone could give acveptAble reasons and slime out.

Remember there is a special joy in getting into the mile high club. Probably the hostess could have been a victim of enticement !

Why I couldn’t care less if someone insulted my God?

Because He was insulted before and He did not react either destructively or disruptively with the Power that He claimed He Possessed. When Dan Brown filled up the gaps of facts in the Gospel with his imaginative possibilities and even imputed that He was married to Mary Magdalene, I couldn’t care less – it was just because He once stood near a well and told a woman with multiple husbands to Ask Him of the Living Water and He couldn’t be bothered about even what his twelve disciples thought.
When He told the officials who slapped Him before the then High Priest, His retort was amazing: Why do you punish me without charging Me?

That is fundamental to all Jurisprudence today. He couldn’t care less.
When I worship a God born Human, I have no reason to defend either the Man that He was in this world or the Son of God, He claimed He was and I believe He is!
Neither can I go back to his flesh and blood times, nor would I be insulted at others tilting at windmills of my invisible God.
William Blake’s poetry could at times be very unsettling. As long as one reads TYGER TYGER BURNING BRIGHT, there is nothing but appreciation and once you touch the POISON TREE, a mystical feeling envelops us, but the moment we read those poems which logicise that if Jesus chose a humble place to be born, does it mean that he was born to the woman with the worst Character too?

Read the following from Blake’s EVERLASTING GOSPEL:

When even a poet couldn’t stir me to revolt against utterances anathema to my belief, why would I care when hordes and savages insult the name of my God. He is the only one I know who said each would be on his own and didn’t beg for even Justice, leave alone Mercy. Does my God need me to defend Him? Not at all. He needs man to follow the path of Righteousness, He cares a fig for the rest .
I pity those who feel that their God needs man’s protection and care!
Get going, God is good and would make a comeback like the Hound of Heaven.

The Kernel!

This morning I saw a line of ants
after having discovered a piece of a kernel of walnut, were busily salting it away to its pit or hill or colony, somewhere. On the way many more ants joined the task. After an hour, when I followed the route of the ants, there was only half of the kernel left.

Presumably, the ants which helped on the way had filled their belly with the nutritious kernel. An army surely marches on its stomach and probably toll is collected by terrain jurisdictional ants too! No wonder our Public Distribution System works on the same lines! Solomon the Wise said: THOU SLUGGARD LEARN FROM THE ANTS, we sure have learnt all the convenient ones.

What Easter means to me!

The Shepherd!
KJV ….. lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen. (Matt.28:20)
That’s the shepherd’s promise being remembered every Easter. Jesus, was born a man, lived in the flesh & blood untainted by human failings or weaknesses; was brought before the temporal rulers both the spiritual and territorial. Condemned by the territorial rulers at the instigation of the then spiritual leaders. Was crucified, died and buried; on the third day He brought Himself back to life, as He was granted the power to lay down His life and take back through his submission to the human situation , yet overcame without succumbing to it. The above is my NON-NEGOTIABLE BELIEF!

Easter is the commemorative day for Jesus’ resurrection.

Each has his take on Christ. But what matters is one’s own belief and the strength thereof, when the Blind Bartimeus was attempted to be silenced by the disciples of Christ, he shouted out all the more to get the attention of Christ. It was that Belief coupled with relentless and redoubled Action, which saves man, when such a belief is followed up with relentless action, mankind is collectively saved.
There would be shepherd dogs which is also eating out of the munificence of the Shepherd, which would attempt to silence the voice of cry towards the Shepherd, but like the unmindful Bartimaeus, keep calling out. The day would come when the Shepherd would hear your cry.

That’s why Jesus lives even today within ourselves. Don’t let the Shepherd dogs to frighten you with their moral yardstick or their understanding of your ‘need’ etc. Etc.

Jesus doesn’t need the sale proceeds of Ananias and Sapphira, but the Shepherd dogs NEED that. Jesus wants a sincere open heart and a cry like no other.

Go ahead and grab your Salvation, not only in terms of the Spiritual but also the Temporal. He had submitted to both and OVERCOME both.

Go for it & get it!

iPhone space fraud!

That’s the screenshot of the iPhone I use. What one can see is that the used storage is 11.6 of the 16GB IPhone, whereas when I total the used up space, it hardly adds up to 6 GB. Consequently to my simple mind the question is: when I have used up only 6 GB of storage space where did the other 5.odd GB go? That is after ignoring another question: When I was sold a 16 GB iPhone, where did the 10 GB go? Understandable, as I need to pay for the storage of the iPhone ‘s operating system, but iPhone takes credit for the storage space afforded at my cost!

So I turn to my son , whom I presumed would answer my logical question sincerely, and if stuck for an answer would do a little research on it and find a cost effective solution. Alas! That was not to be, instead he said: That’s why I said you should’ve bought a 32GB iPhone, you saved then and now is the payback time! Enjoy!- so saying he left.

Kids have no time for these issues, they are a new breed which thinks a plastic card or a password contains money, but I belong to a generation when a currency note with a Gandhi on it, was of a higher value than the ones with a tractor or a deer!

I was anxious with thoughts that anytime next when I take a selfie an unhelpful notification THERE IS NO STORAGE SPACE, would crop up on the screen.

So when a friend needed something to be resolved relating to his iPhone, I joined him and visited an iPhone service center (Americanized for better recognition of the brand headquarters).

What I went through in the service center of iPhone was an epiphany. The service guy , who had been given an exalted designation of ‘engineer’ says, Sir you are right, it shouldn’t be like this, the used up space should add up to at least 10 GB, so you can leave it for repair.

I said: REPAIR?

I just need your help for clearing up the muck so that the space is freed up for storage. You make a million changes to my iPhone ‘s software without my knowledge, when it suits Apple, why can’t you get my space freed up?

He says: Sir, you may have to leave it at the service center for 2 days and we’ll get it DONE!

I thought to myself GET IT DONE! MY ARSE! And 2 days to boot.

The biggest challenge we face today is that the marketeers of any product know the herd mentality of people and apply it to individuals, without exceptions. This belief which has mushroomed is primarily because of the data collected, collated and algorithmised by some data analytics guy and presented as a fait accompli.

When the newspaper reported (probably widely marketed by those marketeers) that iPhone refused to part with the encryption codes except on an authority of law, the whole world was numbed into a belief that since the security is tight, we should pay for that technology which is used by the iPhone guys. But when iPhone wants to make that a recurring expenditure by false alarm of NO MORE STORAGE SPACE, it is superlative fraud.
I forgot to tell that almost at the same time when the first notification popped up of insufficient space, another ostensibly helpful notification followed , which said that I could go to settings and manage storage.

After this discovery of stolen space, another helpful notification pops up and says I could subscribe to SPACE IN ICLOUD! Of course at a monthly fee- that’s why I called it recurring expense. So to appease the iPhone racketeers I subscribed to the monthly fee, but I wanted my 5 GB on my phone- that’s it!

Nothing changed, my 5GB appears to have been stolen and if I want to get it back, I need to leave my iPhone with a moron for two days who after going through all my contents with avid curiosity, may end up returning with an explanation which could mean something to a person who has a doctorate in science.

Naive that I am, I’ve decided to stake it out and find a guy who would attempt to ‘repair’ my iPhone in my presence, like those old time watch repairers, who to enhance their credibility of not stealing parts of expensive watches would do the work right in front of the owner of the watch!

Time will tell, if I succeeded or succumbed to the iPhone marketeers. Now it is a question of my persistence versus the fraud of iPhone storage bs!