• The other day I was in the local bus, there was this elderly man shouting at young boys and girls. Reason was that the *boys* and *girls* were having a jolly chat. Probably, the first girl that man ever talked to might have been his bride. I have been witness to a few such incidents in buses.

• My uncle once in his college days visited one of his friend along with other friends. Customarily, they were offered tea. My uncle who was visiting this friend for the first time was shocked to see his other friends go out and wash the tumbler they had used to drink tea. This looked strange to my uncle but he later learnt that in this friends home, a guest not belonging to their *group* was supposed to clean the utensils if they use it. My uncle never visited that friend again.

• In the movie Gran Torino, that I watched today (I started this post last week), Waltz slightly brushes up a kids hair in his neighbouring Hmong home. People there take offence as they believe that one’s soul resides in the head and one should not touch other’s head. There’s this movie, the name of which I don’t remember( Google search says it’s Mars Attack), where the aliens attack humans mistaking the gesture of releasing the doves.

• There was some ceremony at a neighbours home and they had invited me for lunch. People were all seated on the mat laid on ground. Food was served on plantain leaves. Just when I was almost finished with the food, I saw a boy carrying a bucket to everybody’s seat. They were washing their hands in the bucket, sitting right at the same place.  I was seeing it for the first time and I felt it was weird and ill mannered.  Well, I was clueless when I saw the finger bowl for the first time.

• I also remember another incident where the man at a bakery refused to take money from me when I was holding the note between my index and middle fingers. He said it was ’scissor’ symbol and was bad for the one receiving the money that way.

• And then there is this rant of a north Indian visiting south India about the food available down here. They can’t stand coconut and rice. Well, some people here can’t think of a day without coconut and rice!

What is that I want to convey from these?
We live in our own universes. We have our own language, culture and all that. We travel to other universes, We meet people and come to know about their culture. We sometimes are shocked witnessing the alien cultures. We criticise and abhor them. Some of these cultures, we like and adopt. As we move between these universes easily and as bridges are built between them,  each universe evolves. One universe shuns one of it’s culture because there is another universe that finds it wrong(or maybe they realise that it is wrong). This has been happening for long time but it has gained momentum in last few centuries.

Just like water in an equilibrium tube  the ideas and cultures will travel universes and one day, there will be balance, uniformity. What I see in future is one such common culture being followed by all these universes. That day (,which may never come), we will have one universe.

But what I am confused about is the process how this equilibrium of ideas and culture will be achieved.  I know this is abrupt but the post has been long by my standards, so I will probably reflect on it in another post.

Two weeks ago, dad & I went to a book store to get some books to gift few boys on their upanayana. There, my eyes fell on “An Autobiography or The Story of my Experiments with Truth”. I was surprised looking at the cost of the book, just 30 rupees. There, I thought of getting it. If it was some hundred or more rupees, I wouldn’t have bought it because there was no guarantee that I would read it. I wouldn’t mind wasting 30 rupees & see it lie on my table.

Last weekend, I finished Part 1 and Part 2 day before yesterday. I have reread a few chapters of Part 1 and this is something that I hadn’t thought that I would ever do. The book is interesting, the interest being brought by the experiences told truthfully. There are so many aspects of Gandhi’s life that  I hadn’t known, there are so many ideas, experiences that we can learn from. There are few chapters that I felt should have been in the school syllabus.

Here are some of my observations from Part 1.

• Though Gandhi was quite religious, he says “I literally believed in the story of Harishchandra. The thought of it all often made me weep. My commonsense tells me today that Harishchandra could not have been a historical character. ” (*)
• Gandhi talks openly about the mistakes he committed, as a teenager, as a husband.
• Major portion of the part has been dedicated to dietary habits & how he stayed a Vegetarian in England. He also recommends long walks.
• There are chapters where I could relate myself with Gandhi, those talking about the reluctance to do anything wrong or lying  and shyness.
• This one paragraph, I found interesting, probably because of my ‘ascetic’-interests.

I must say a word about the Eiffel Tower. I do not know what purpose it serves today. But I then heard it greatly disparaged as well as praised. I remember that Tolstoy was the chief among those who disparaged it. He said that the Eiffel Tower was a monument of man’s folly, not of his wisdom. Tobacco, he argued, was the worst of all intoxicants, inasmuch as a man addicted to it was tempted to commit crimes which a drunkard never dared to do; liquor made a man mad, but tobacco clouded his intellect and made him build castles in the air. The Eiffel Tower was one of the creations of a man under such influence. There is no art about the Eiffel Tower. In no way can it be said to have contributed to the real beauty of the Exhibition. Men flocked to see it and ascended it as it was a novelty and of unique dimensions. It was the toy of the Exhibition. So long as we are children we are attracted by toys, and the Tower was a good demonstration of the fact that we are all children attracted by trinkets. That may be claimed to be the purpose served by the Eiffel Tower. (*)

Have to say this, I’m quite impressed by the book. The subsidy on the book by Navajivan Trust has very well served it’s purpose!

And then, I met a few people. These people were different, their thoughts, beliefs, customs, traditions & language. Never before had I met people with such beliefs. Their beliefs were strong.  I was in no way uncomfortable, because there wasn’t a time when I was strongly attached to any belief system. It was a new learning experience.

And then there was a time, I wanted to classify myself, chose a philosophy, a theist or an atheist or something else. With no proof, I couldn’t choose. So, I had to be agnostic. But, I was not satisfied. I wanted to have an opinion,a strong one. I wanted to stick to something. And then, I watched ‘The Big Lebowski‘  and ‘The Fight Club‘ .  A new word got into my vocabulary: ‘Nihilism‘.

That was the time, I needed a pillar, to cling. And looking at people and events around me, Nihilism was the way to go. “Screw the world!”, I said without giving it a deep thought.

But then, I thought a little. Nihilism sounded cool but that wasn’t the practical way to live. I chucked it out. I wanted to go back to my old ways of carefree living.

There is so much to learn about life  that one life isn’t enough. There have been thousands of philosophers, scientists who have dedicated their lives to find answers to mystery of life. And I don’t think anybody has found an answer yet.

So, now… Do I stick to one belief system and criticize every other?  May be I won’t. I will try to accept things as they come. I will try to be open to other people’s belief.   There will be times when real life experiences will force me to think one belief system is much closer to truth than the other. Life’s going to be a nice learning experience. I will choose good things, things that suit me and make my own philosophy, my own belief system, one that will grow with me.

Anyway,I like this dialogue very much…

Mere man ko bhaya, mein kuththa kaat ke khaya.

So, what do you believe in?

Coming to the topic about which I wanted to express my personal views, We meet different kind of people all along our life, we try to understand them,judge them, make a mental image. All this is causal, we observe their appearances,actions & words, we analyze & judge…But almost every time we interact with people, we get to see only a part of an individual & the mental image we build is incomplete.

We learn not only from our experiences but also from experiences of people around us. These experiences will have a huge say in the way we will act or react. Most of the times we tend to generalize these experiences and use this knowledge to evaluate people. The chances of mis-evaluation are less but once in a while we will be wrong.

I don’t believe in love at first sight. How could you love someone just because one is looking more fairer. That is just attraction at first sight. Then again even if we spend a little time together how can you be sure that it is in fact love, it may be nothing more than infatuation.

When I say ‘I don’t believe in love at first sight’ may be I can also extend it a bit further to ‘I don’t believe in hate at first sight’. How many times I interact with people for just a few seconds and develop hate at first sight. Shouldn’t I give them a second chance ?

Knowing that I am a causal being living in a much larger causal system, may be I can give a little thought on not only the effects but also the causes.

One of the many purposes of education is to educate on how to be a responsible citizen and more importantly a responsible human being. So what does a responsible citizen mean? It’s not just voting in elections and paying your taxes, it’s about being actively involved in whatever kind of work you do so that you make the place around you a better place to live in. I would say be a human first, then a citizen.

The stampede mentioned above resulted because of Crowd Panic triggered by a rumor. If people there knew how to react to rumors and behave in a crowd and not to panic, may be the incident could have been averted.

What irks me is the fact that most of us lack knowledge (can call it common sense or anything you want to) about some of the basic things that we need to know. We live in a society, and in a society we need to act and behave in a particular manner. In our day to day life, haven’t we found people spitting on roads & other public places, people behaving indecently, people not caring for fellow human beings, people not caring for precious resources being wasted around, etc., Its not that these people are doing these stuff knowingly & intentionally but because no body told them that it wasn’t right. A little bit of education will go a long way…

School is not the only place where we learn but it is one place where a uniform knowledge can be imparted to a wider audience. We usually learn a lot of things by being a part of society and interacting with people around us, but not everybody gets to learn every essential thing. There needs to be some form of a structured/formal way. We take for granted that children will learn about these things from their parents, friends, society as they grow but most of the times that isn’t the case.

What I think will be appropriate is a subject taught at school that will teach students some of these basic things. Well, there was a subject in my school called as Moral Science which told us to be Good Samaritans, but the same subject also said fear God. We need something that talks about practical things, based on reasoning and logic.

A few things that can be taught at school (that I can collect at this moment):

• How to behave in a crowd, at public places.
• To understand and respect differently-abled people.
• How to act in case of emergencies.
• To care about fellow human beings.
• To care for our natural resources.
• To respect Life.

[There are lot more that I cannot think of as of now…]

What I wish is that we all grow a little more mature and responsible as human beings and citizens of earth.

What I liked about the Dream the most was the whole pictureization. It was grand and unique which completely took me by surprise. There were 3 scenes in all.

Scene 1: I met two of my friends from college. Location, a huge ground in front just as you get down the wide stairs.  One of the friend(F1) was standing next to me looking at me. Another friend(F2) was down the stairs, with his head turned towards me, telling “I have to ask you something important, come” and walking briskly away from me. I said “stop, wait… what is it ?”.  I cannot take suspense, I again asked him to stop, he kept walking. I followed.

Scene 2: I’m following my F2 along with F1. Location is again the same ground but what I see is amazing. There are two huge mountains far away. It is completely brownish, without any patch of green, there are some dark spots in the mountain which look like some kind of  caves. There is a fort situated on one of the mountain, the architecture is Rajasthani. Its dusty behind the mountains and view is kind of blurred. There is some kind of storm behind the mountains. There are huge white bright clouds in front of the mountain. These clouds are moving fast over our head. One such cloud, is particularly very  bright and moving towards me. It is pure white, its rays falling on the ground taking weird paths. I told my friend F1 about the approaching cloud but he doesn’t hear. The cloud passes over my head and I am perplexed. Friend F2 is nowhere visible, F1 is walking forward and I follow him.

Scene 3: Now I’m in front of a large building. The building being wide, my whole sight was occupied. It had some 4 or 5 or 6 storeys ( that I don’t remember) above which I could see some dark clouds. My friend F2 entered the building and asked me to come in. I was behind by a long distance and started moving towards the building. F1 was walking with me. I raised my head and I could see a storm above the building. It was carrying some kind of a huge liquid fuel engine with a large tank. It was about to fall down right in front of the building and I realized that I had to save my life. I was scared and ran in the opposite direction but my friend F1 stayed there.

That’s it and I woke up.

I haven’t done justice to the dream, I’m at lack of vocabulary to describe it. This is one of those things that one has to experience and cannot be described by words.

I’m still scratching my head to understand what the dream meant.  Any idea what it means ?

There are multiple reasons for the Traffic problem Indian cities are facing, our Leaders & planners suffering from myopia, corrupt implementers, over-intelligent drivers and many more that I’m ignorant/unaware of.

One thing that I observed while commuting was the huge number of cars on the roads. Most of the cars accommodate only one driver who probably will be the owner of the car. These are obviously citizens of the city commuting alone to work in their cars. Hanging in BMTC busses I have witnessed so many of these cars driving harsh, change lanes at will. One of the many reasons for the traffic jams are these cars.

Commuting in a car to work is for sure safe and comfortable but shouldn’t one also think about the traffic problems that they are causing. Just cannot imagine the situation when Tata’s 1 lakh car comes out !!

Carpooling is a wonderful concept, that should be implemented and not just discussed about. [Stumbled upon a few sites www.commuteeasy.com , www.carpool.in, www.carpooling.in that may be useful for organizing carpools ]

A good exercise for companies, educational institutions, etc., would be to conduct a survey on different modes of transport its employees use. A suitable solution can be found out based on the results of the survey.

There’s lot to be done on the main page vinayraikar.com.  Have been experimenting with jQuery a lot… so will probably will have a cool interface. Meanwhile I moved my design blog (which seems to have got many people interested in it)  from blogspot to http://art.vinayraikar.com . There is lot to update there, but I lately have been procrastinating a lot. Have a couple of posts in draft but havent found time to complete them !!

Well… thats it for now… before signing off couple of lines from one of my favorite songs to express what’s running in My Mind…

Here I am – this is me
There’s no where else on earth I’d rather be
Here I am – it’s just me and you
And tonight we make our dreams come true