Sparsh

Udaan is touching chords of nostalgia of growing up amongst adults and charming the young with hope in the eyes. The undecisive youth wants time and emotional support to pursue his/her dream career. Udaan is going to be more than teenage success in coming years, a benchmark for coming of the age film. Udaan is going to be our own The Catcher in the Rye , an expression for the teen angst. Udaan was selected in the competitive section in the prestigious Cannes film festival. And the mainstream media and Bollywood reaction: silence. Unforgivable! Such efforts need encouragement in an early stage so that Udaan could have good outreach to global audience. Mainstream media and Bollywood fail us in great way. Now, when Amitabh Bachan likes the movie, everybody is hailing it as masterpiece. Udaan is a cinema based on real life and that has touched us in our lives. And people must watch it as its the voice and angst of mature teenager. I find ~uh~™ 's review enchanting and rational...

1-  One grey issue needs our attention :  The real tragedy of the media’s surrender to the state is that journalists have stopped reading books, especially history books. Speaking at the Fifth Al Jazeera annual forum Robert Fisk laments the state driven semantics that take over and alter grave debates:  Journalism and 'the words of power' ; 2- Media does not act out of grief or out of some sense of compulsion at the death of any celebrity. Media is merely pandering to the lowest common denominator for commercial considerations as the stories that combine sex, glamour and death find a ready market. So its like justification of drug peddler for giving drugs to victims as given by media on defencing its coverage of sensational gossips and celebrity lifestyles. 3- Let me remind you, there is a public service broadcast also in this mob of news channels for serving citizens of this  nation. That is called Prasar Bharati. B G Verghesse covers necessity of publ...

This is mine 400th post on the 'Sparsh'. It’s an eve of expression and celebration for me. I have a long journey of “unlearning" prejudices to gain insight of human nature. Also, the explosion of the blog phenomenon has exposed youths like me to a multitude of opinions. I had read, written and discussed about social, economic, and political opinions of importance and enjoyed sharing views on cinema. I read several bloggers but follow ritually for new updates on these blogs : Nimmy , Nimmy2 , Indianhomemaker , Rashmi Bansal , Atanu Dey , Devinder Sharma , TheSouthAsianIdea , Prof Abi , Sameer Bhat, anindianmuslim , Winds From The East , Calamur Harini , Vikram V Garg , Diptakirti , aPocRyPHaL , Anu , The Rational Fool , Nita , The Religious Policeman , kufr , Roshmi , Jaya , Santosh Desai ,  joie de vivre and Rajjo ; I read and like works of these Public Figures : Osho , Nadeem F. Paracha , Bill Maher , Christopher Hitchens , Dr. B. R. Ambedkar , P. Sainath , N...

I have became a big appreciator of Bill Maher for his commentary on various social, political and religious issues. Here is his brilliant take on apocalyptic vision of religion in the must watch documentary Religulous : It seems peaceful, but this is where a lot of people believe the world will end. The irony of religion is that because of its power to divert man to destructive courses, the world could actually come to an end. The plain fact is, religion must die for mankind to live. The hour is getting very late to be able to indulge in having in key decisions made by religious people. By irrationalists, by those who would steer the ship of state not by a compass, but by the equivalent of reading the entrails of a chicken. George Bush prayed a lot about Iraq, but he didn't learn a lot about it. Faith means making a virtue out of not thinking. It's nothing to brag about. And those who preach faith, and enable and elevate it are intellectual slaveholders, keeping mankind i...

“Those who cannot attack the thought, instead attack the thinker.” (Paul Valery 1871-1945) A true questioning spirit is always introspective in nature, not accusatory. Verified doubt is scientific and it lays the foundation for merit-based trust. The advantage of a questioning spirit is that it is the opposite of an inquisition. Reason and free inquiry are the only effectual agents against errors and dogma. Voice of reason asks for the justification of each a religious doctrine that is proclaimed as true without proof. This creates a conflict in the society as people wants to be in their comfort zones of tradition. It is falsehood alone which needs the support of religion. Truth can stand by itself. The Judeo-Christian tradition began with the Hebrews but the goal was to extend the "faith" to the entire world over time. Judeo-Christian tradition has taken civilization back many years when scientific records and journals were destroyed in the name of being blasphemous...