It’s 7pm on a beautiful autumn evening on the banks of the Ganges river in the holy town of Hardwar in North India. The melodious bells, the priests, the fire, the chants, and the devotion of the people give the ceremony a feel of divinity, as if it were something dictated by God for human bliss. The atmosphere is full of devotion and the huge masses look upto the river to bless them and wash away their sins. It’s 7pm, and the same river has become an extremely huge mass of water flowing slowly through the Sundarban deltas. It’s raining heavily in the monsoons and the millions of drops of water create uncountable ripples throughout the huge river at twilight. It is impossible to see one shore from the other, and the thunder and lightning create a rather shocking scene of the power of nature. Far away from the mesmerized crowd, a lonely soul in the middle of the massive river slowly steers his small round wooden boat towards the shore. He can hardly see anything and he keeps trying to move a little bit at a time, lingering on to hope. He cries and his few drops are lost amongst the zillions. He just hopes there was no rain. It’s 4:30pm in the middle of the desert, not a drop of water in sight, the scorching heat enough to make anyone dizzy. Dubai is being made into a miracle city in the middle of the desert…..
Daddy, we are all God’s dream
So as usual my 7 (almost 8, but try telling her that) year old daughter came up with this simple answer to complex questions.
Sonya’s Picks: The Booker Prize 2008 – Six books you shouldn’t miss
It is unfashionable, I know, to be so swayed by the hype of western literary prizes. (Haven’t we been colonial captives long enough ? And we still let a crusty committee in the UK , dictate to us, their system of aesthetics?).
Still, how can one resist the lure of a good Lit shortlist ? So here I am , guilty as charged, caught up , in the excitement of not just the Man Booker Prize, coming in July this year, but also of , the special contest that goes with it.
The Booker is after all, the world’s biggest literary prize, after the Nobel , and the most commercially rewarding. Bizarrely, it doesn’t allow any American writers, but that doesn’t prevent the lit world, each year , from getting into a tizzy about winners and losers. This year, we’re all invited to join the jury too. We get to vote, on the Best book of all – from 40 years of Bookers prizewiners.
All we need to do ( besides reading these 6 great books ) is to go online (http://www.themanbookerprize.com/news/vote) by midnight of 8th July, to register our vote. And the 6 books are ….
Continue reading “Sonya’s Picks: The Booker Prize 2008 – Six books you shouldn’t miss”
Message from the Administrator
Shekhar Kapur is travelling in Kerala and he might not be able to access the internet as often as he would like to. He says that Kerala is wonderful in monsoons and he is thoroughly enjoying with his daughter. He would be back in 4-5 days.
meaning to life ?
you are the problem
and the solution too
and everything that lies between
is also you
and so goes on
the endless struggle
to give meaning to life
Cops commiting suicide
As the Times of India reported that a cop blew his brains out in front of the Mantralay in Mumbai today, there came with it a full blown report on depression amongst the lower rungs of the police force leading often to suicide. Please look at my blog of a few days ago ‘The Depressed Mumbai Constable’, where I describe some of my conversations with young constables and their immediate officers.
From RK Pachauri : Nobel Prize recipient on Global Warming : Myanmar is a grim reminder of climate change..
Do current patterns of growth and development define an improving human condition ?
The global economy has reached unprecedented levels of economic output and activity. Earlier predictions of grim disaster associated with Malthusian thought have proved completely irrelevant, because human ingenuity and technological development have provided solutions to the problem of stagnation in production of goods and services that were foreseen during the nineteenth century. Yet a consumerist society, which has focused relentlessly on accelerated economic growth measured according to conventional yardsticks has created problems at a staggering level, solutions to which are at the same time difficult, yet crucially urgent.
The most important challenge facing humanity – as has been voiced by several world leaders including former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, United Nations Secretary General, Ban-Ki-moon and former US President Clinton – is the growing threat of climate change. Human society, ever since the advent of industrialization, has been responsible for emitting increasing quantities of greenhouse gases, the most dominant of which is carbon dioxide, which is largely the result of combustion of fossil fuels. This has led to a warming of the climate with several other forms of interference with the earth’s climate system. Precipitation levels have changed in different parts of the world and extreme precipitation events have become more frequent and more intense. Similarly, heat waves, floods and droughts have increased in frequency and intensity, with increasing misery and hardship for some of the poorest communities in the world. Thermal expansion of the oceans and melting of bodies of ice on a widespread basis have led to sea level rise which increases the extent of devastation from cyclones, storm surges and coastal flooding. The recent tragedy in Myanmar is a grim reminder of the severity of impacts of climate change with an increasing sea level……
Is this how all of us will get water soon ?
My assistant went out and shot a little video in Colaba, in Mumbai. There’s no water in the taps in this area. It is served by Water Tankers, that come once a day if you are very lucky, and you queue up for hours to get water. A few burly guys are pushing and pulling people, bossing them around – (and they have a kind of a barricade for the tanker that is carrying water) – I’m not sure who those guys are. They certainly don’t look like government employees to me. They look like local goons.
What’s interesting is this is not a slum of Mumbai. This video was shot right in the heart of Cloaba which is where the Taj Mahal Hotel is, one of the ten best hotels in the world.
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The purpose of life
Loved the simplicity with which harb wrote this under the blog ‘Can we change our Destiny ?” There is a fascinating discussion going on there that you should visit.
“As for the purpose of life, imagine yourself to be a part of a flowing river, rather an indistinguishable part. Pushed by and flowing with the flow you just carry on with your life and the question of purpose does not arise in you. You do so in fact in your childhood and youth phases in the River of Life.
A child does not ask for purpose rather enjoys living his natural life which comprises mainly of playing games and indulging in senses. So with a youth, he does not ask the purpose, rather enjoyes his life chasing opposite sex, loving and so on….
The depressed Mumbai constables
The other day I went ‘somewhere’ in Mumbai and got there early. So sat down with the really nice young constables outside and shared a cup of tea with them. How different they were to the constables either made fun of in our films, or derided as corrupt individuals. It was startling for me to discover that all of them spoke primarily about job related stress, suicides amongst young cops, and the inability to make two ends meet.
“you have no idea how much pressure we have from above, and can never be sure when and how we may be implicated in some political game to protect someone senior or a political big wig’. And this could happen in any of the jobs we are called to do, so constantly have to watch our backs’.
This was a startling statement – and it came passionately from every one of them ….