28.5.08

The motorcyle diaries go on.........

Saw the film 'The Motorcycle Diaries," last week, a memoir of a young man's journey through South America back in 1952. A break from studies, a desire to see the neighborhood land and to eat new fruits, but the journey transcends all this only to transform Earnst Guevara's life.

Passing through the world of poor Indigenous people who lost their land, a couple searching for a mining job and having only the warmth of their partner in the chilled desert, people forced to work in mines, people affected by leprosy, separated and cities built on gunpowder which destroyed the Inca civilization. All this changed his world view. But our minds our pretty conditioned by all this being obvious.

Though a controversial figure in history, he didn’t go unnoticed, like many of us go. He turned out to be a revolutionary, the communist type. Ironically, He too believed in gun powder.

Wonder why he turned to extreme communism. Wonder why people seeking reform, for a more egalitarian society are termed communist. Wonder why, mainstream debates usually are of the Capitalist v/s communist kind and where we knowingly or unknowingly take one of the two sides when both our equally bad. They both are monopolies.

We need to get rid of both, capitalism and communism just as we need to get rid of poverty and hunger. It’s not at all fine when people are displaced from where they belong just to become mine workers, where people are systematically robbed of their resources.

However, corporations are growing out of proportion and governments are too not reliable. They are usually with the corporations. The corporations are trying to grab hold of natural resources which should ideally be managed by the local people. The government has failed us.

However with a long history of monopoly and with most likeliness of it being repeated the journey to the desired horizon shall go on.

25.11.07

Jokes apart!

We, friends were in Planet M, looking for movie CD's and cracking jokes and so ......looking ....looking ...., Sushil found one of the Mozart symphonies which he wanted and which was a part of a pricey CD which made him feel kleptomanic, but gasping along we thought we'd asked Robin, who was fond of the maestro's work, so could have had the particular CD.

Sushil said he had a couple of others but not this one! Robin didn't even have those so, in excitement asked Sushil, "where did you get it from?".

"Oh, Just copied from somewhere" Sushil said. I was besides them, interested myself!

"Oh terrible!" Robin exclaimed. "Because of you guys, students don’t get scholarships to learn music. You Economist don't understand this!" Robin responded.

"So what, did Mozart also get a scholarship?" came out of me!

Well I don’t have a clue about it (Mozart getting a scholarship or not) but he had a point but we still had a good laugh at the expense of his thought.

2.9.07

A great cup of coffee and not a great coffee cup


A group of alumni, highly established in their careers, got together to visit their old university Professor. Conversation soon turned into complaints about stress in work and life.

Offering his guests coffee, the Prof. went to the kitchen and returned with a large pot of coffee and an assortment of cups: porcelain, plastic, glass, some plain-looking and some expensive and exquisite, telling them to help themselves to hot coffee.

When all the students had a cup of coffee in hand, the Prof. said -

"If you noticed, all the nice-looking, expensive cups were taken up, leaving behind the plain and cheap ones. While it is but normal for you to want only the best for yourselves, that is the source of your problems and stress. That all of you really wanted was coffee, not the cup, but you consciously went for the better cups and are eyeing each other's cups."

"Now, if Life is coffee, then the jobs, money and position in society are the cups. They are just tools to hold and contain Life, but the quality of Life doesn't change. Sometimes, by concentrating only on the cup, we fail to enjoy the coffee in it."


(An email forward)