Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Friends: Stand By Me

What legacy I will leave after my death. That question bother me. I can give power, wealth and ego but not my friends. I am feeling that I will die in few years. Just an intuition. I want to express my feeling about my friends in cinematic way as a last note from the film 'Stand by Me'.

Stand By Me is a story of how one event can unexpectedly change lives. It seems to be a story about friends and how important they are, but this possible theme is clearly dispelled in a line from the narration spoken at the end of the film :–

`As time went on, we saw less and less of Teddy and Vern, until eventually they became just two more faces in the halls. It happens sometimes, friends come in and out of your life like busboys at a restaurant.'

Instead, this time less film is about learning from a life changing experience and actually making changes or modifying your life in some way because of it. I am blessed with really good friends who accepted me as I was and cared for me. This post is dedicated to all of mine friends especially intimate ones : Vishu, Sanju, VVS, Chaudhary, Golu, AGP, chammo, kunal, hathi, chandan, and bond. This song is for my friends whom I will never let down:-

Creativity -Search for meaning

People who achieve great success in any discipline - science, business, education, the arts, etc. are always creative. It makes sense to define the creative part of any intellectual endeavor as 'looking for patterns and relationships or trying to create them. I think it does suggest that the definition of "idea" as "a new combination of existing elements" is indeed true. The first is conscious, periodic and primarily externally motivated. The second is unconscious, ongoing and primarily internally motivated.

Truly creative people create not because they want to, but because they have to. They are in a constant state of wondering why, asking what if, and looking for meaning. When meaning isn't apparent, they have to find a way to create it. Creators are meaning makers. They’re in an ongoing (and perhaps neurotic) pursuit of existential stasis.

The search for meaning is inherently emotionally and psychologically volatile. That may be why creative masters as an archetype are moody, insecure and depressed. In fact, as Eric Maisel points out in his intriguing book "The Van Gogh Blues," it's a cliché that creativity and depression go hand-in-hand. But clichés are the children of truth. Maisel writes: "... creators are not necessarily afflicted with some biological disease or psychological disorder that causes them to experience depression at the alarming rates we see. They experience depression simply because they are caught up in a struggle to make life seem meaningful to them. People for whom meaning is no problem are less likely to experience depression. But for creators, losses of meaning and doubts about life's meaningfulness are persistent problems - even the root causes of their depression... Creators have trouble maintaining meaning. Creating is one of the ways they endeavor to maintain meaning. In the act of creation, they lay a veneer of meaning over meaninglessness and sometimes produce work that helps others maintain meaning. ... Not creating is depressing because [creators are] not making meaning when [they are] not creating."

Thanks to Nimmy for providing weblink. Click here for Source of the article.

Thought of the day: Be yourself, be natural. It is far easier than pretending to be someone else.

What does social democracy mean?

It means a way of life which recognizes liberty, equality and fraternity as the principles of life. These principles of liberty, equality and fraternity are not to be treated as separate items in a trinity. They form a union of trinity in the sense that to divorce one from the other is to defeat the very purpose of democracy. Liberty cannot be divorced from equality, equality cannot be divorced from liberty. Nor can liberty and equality be divorced from fraternity. Without equality, liberty would produce the supremacy of the few over the many. Equality without liberty would kill individual initiative. Without fraternity, liberty would produce the supremacy of the few over the many.

The constitution drafted under the chairmanship of Dr. Ambedkar allows equality, liberity, fraternity and justice to every Indian citizen but the law enforcing agencies are in the hands of the elite class. Some part of the Indian bureaucracy and English speaking media is possibly made up of RNIs (Resident Non-Indians), whose children and future, they have ’secured’ in the West – much like the indifferent westener. And this may be the one quality, that possibly is the one thing, that the RNIs and foreigners share – indifference to the fate of the country.

Monday, November 30, 2009

Final Solution: Documentary on Gujarat Riot

Final Solution :-



Final Solution is a study of the politics of hate. Set in Gujarat, India, the film graphically documents the changing face of right-wing politics in India through a study of the 2002 genocide of Muslims in Gujarat. The film examines the aftermath of the deadly violence that followed the burning of 58 Hindus on the Sabarmati Express train at Godhra on February 27 2002. In “reaction” to that incident, some 2,500 Muslims were brutally murdered, hundreds of women raped, and more than 200,000 families driven from their homes. Borrowing its reference from the history of Nazism, the title of the film exposes what the film director calls 'Indian Fascism' and seeks to remind that “those who forget history are condemned to relive it." [Source]

Torrent Download Link
To know more about the film, please check this website.

Friday, November 27, 2009

Vichaar Shoonya +3

A lot has been said, but not by me. I give weblinks of few articles in 'Vichaar Shoonya' because its just that their voices are not in all the noise that gets heard.

1- The disgraceful Armed Forces Special Powers Act allows the army the right to, among other things, shoot to kill based on mere suspicion that it is necessary to do so in order to "maintain the public order". For more details please read this article. This law is applicable in Assam, Manipur, Tripura, Meghalaya, Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram and Nagaland. Interestingly the residents of these states don't find it exciting to sacrifice their fundamental rights for the rest of us. I see their point.

2- The Ready-made Garment Industry: Global Chain Of Imperialist Exploitation : A revolt of ready-made garment workers have broken out in the last two years in different so-called ‘developing’ countries. A report by Debabrata Mondal.

3- Anjumans deprive Muslim women of microcredit by S A Aiyar, Economist.

4- How the Servant Became a Predator: Finance's Five Fatal Flaws by William K. Black, Univ. of Missouri: What exactly is the function of the financial sector in our society? Simply this: Its sole function is supplying capital efficiently to aid the real economy. The financial sector is a tool to help those that make real tools, not an end in itself. But five fatal flaws in the financial sector's current structure have created a monster that drains the real economy, promotes fraud and corruption, threatens democracy, and causes recurrent, intensifying crises.

5- ‘India is prospering, but Indians are not’ by Mani Shankar Aiyar : The same people who are brushing under the carpet that our relative position on the HDI has not increased are the very same people who are boasting again in comparative terms that ours is the second highest rate of growth. So, obviously, the high GDP growth is not translating itself into commensurate high HDI growth, with the consequence India is prospering, but Indians are not.

6- 'Indian democracy in a state of emergency' : Arundhati roy talking to Karan Thapar

7- Business Of Knowledge- Article on Higer Education.

8- Ten Simple Rules for Choosing between Industry and Academia. --- Journal from Computational Biology.

9- Lessons for life, in black and white. - On power of books.