Posts by ramanathan:

Why Chase A Ghost ?

October 21st, 2010

Why Chase A Going-to-disappear Ghost ?

Now that the CWG are a ‘success’ and also because India has bagged some medals,
won’t it be in tune with ‘typical’ Indian ethos to celebrate the medals happily and to
‘forget and forgive’ (f-n-f) the mess and all talk of corruption AND the millions ‘swOllOwed’?

Valid reason 1: A poor country, still not out of the woods, can’t afford the
luxury of taxpayers’ money spent on expensive Commissions of inquiry. It is
wiser to save at least the money TO-BE-SPENT on some Hon’ble Commission.

Valid reason 2: Experience tells that nothing is likely to come out (culprits
may only go out) after all the ‘serious’ work by the commission for decades.

Valid reason 3: After all we’re used to this f-n-f in almost all (or is it all?)
earlier scams involving politicians and bigwigs, on some pretext or the other!

Valid reason 4 (must be added): It is common knowledge that
these are only the ‘Games’ of the politicians ‘for their Common Wealth’. Only fools like us do street-corner or lunch-hour discussions on finding and ‘punishing!!!’ the culprits. Some horses (several thousand crores)
have already left the stable and another set will be allowed to leave in course of time as the case proceeded, in
instalments ‘under watchful eyes’.

—————— Ramanathan, Kollam

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News or Nuisance?

October 18th, 2010

——- All this below from A PART OF the ZEE News page today …
Good. Is this the only way to reduce the population of the world?
1 Pakistan engaged in `existential struggle`: US
2 New terror groups on rise; coordinated attacks fall`
3 Baghdad suicide attack and bombs kill 39: Officials
4 Lahore: 42 killed in suicide blasts at shrine
5 Four detained over failed UK envoy attack in Yemen
6 Pak court acquits 6 charged for suicide attacks
7 Suicide attack on US convoy kills two Iraqis
8 Suicide attacker blows himself up in Kabul
9 Suicide attack threat: Security tightened at Chennai station
10 Three militants involved in Moscow bombing killed
11 Deadly suicide attack on Afghan city: Officials
12 Afghan suicide attack kills 1 outside CIA base
13 Twenty five militants killed in NW Pakistan: Officials
14 Suicide attack killed American soldier: US
15 US dismisses allegations of sponsoring Pak suicide attacks
16 Toll in Peshawar suicide attack touches 26
17 Seven killed in suicide attack in Pakistan
18 Eight killed in Iraq suicide attacks
19 Four killed in suicide attack in Pakistan
20 Toll in Afghan suicide attack hits 35: Official
21 Four suicide attacks hit Kandahar, 30 dead
22 India rejects allegations of involvement in Lahore attack
23 Death toll in Lahore twin suicide bombing touches 59
24 Suicide attack in northwest Pakistan kills 13
25 Taliban claim suicide attack on NATO-Afghan base

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India and Pakistan!

October 5th, 2010

I heard this long ago …. not sure if true or fiction, but here it is:

In the 1960s.

A heated debate arranged at the U.N.O.

To ‘thrash out’ the Kashmir issue and to make a settlement.

The ambassador of Pakistan spoke first. It was a spirited four-hour argument vehemently claiming that India had no business to claim Kashmir as theirs, that it belonged to Pakistan. He came out with points 1 … 2 … 3 … 4… … … … … X…. His voice thundered – very few nations thought that the Indian ambassador would have anything stronger to say against these ‘strong, convincing’ points. The Indian ambassador who was to speak next had no chance against such a ‘clean’ claim.

The Indian ambassador, Mr Singh rose to his feet and congratulated his counterpart on his eloquence. Then he said, “I have very few words to speak, not a long discourse like my friend’s. But before that, I want to tell you all a story which I heard from my grandfather when I was only 8 years !…………. This name ‘Kashmir’ originated from the name of a great saint in the region, Kashyap Rishi. One day, this Kashyapa returned after his bath in the Indus and found that his clothes left on the bank of the river were missing! He looked around, but found no one.  His clothes had been stolen by a Pakistani! The saint . . . . .”

Before the Indian ambassador could say another word, the entire Pak delegation  was on their feet, protesting and screaming, “A lie..”, “A lie!”, and the Pak ambassador shouted, “It is impossible. We were NOT there THEN !!”

After order was restored by the UNO Chair, Mr U Thant, Mr Singh said, “That exactly is the point I wanted to raise before the Assembly. Friends, now, I find no need for even my short speech, and I rest my argument here. The Honorable Assembly can come to a conclusion from these last words of my counterpart. Thank you!”

………………………………………………………………………….. Is the ‘Ayodhya’ any different?   



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Birthday, 2010 – Amritapuri Gearing Up for September 27

September 27th, 2010

It is less than twelve hours for the ‘go’!

Activity – that is one word that will describe anything one can see here.  Another word is ‘massive’ – be it the arrangements and preparation for reception and accommodation, seating the guests in the ‘pandal’, putting up the stage, catering, sanitary, stage, welcome to the first-timers … you name it!  As Amma herself points out often, ‘a large heart alone can accept and accommodate the entire world.’

So, what one can see here in Amritapuri is no rare sight for those who have been here on the occasion of Amma’s birthday in the past.  Even the smallest of persons – sorry, really, for, such a term does not exist in Amma’s dictionary, for, to Her all of us are “forms of the same magnificent Divinity and hence neither small or big, high or low” – is doing his/her best to gear up to the occasion to make everything in the festivities and celebrations of this day a grand success.  Several devotees of Amma have travelled a couple of thousand kilometers to be here for two or three days, doing any type of ‘seva’ for the satisfaction they find in it.  Some have come, cancelling or postponing many important things.  Most of them are here braving several inconveniences, willingly stepping out of their comfort zones, just to participate.  I happened to meet one (unemployed) youth here today who (preferring anonymity) said that he has an interview today in Thrissur with a bank for employment but that he prefers to be in Amritapuri ‘now’!  He is convinced that ‘seva’ here for two days and Amma’s darsan on 27^th can get him better placement than this bank job!!

No need to say anything about the inmates at Amrita Math and the local devotees – they are heart and soul into it, doing any possible ‘seva’ unconditionally for their ‘Mother’.  The same is the mood and spirit of the students and staff of Amritapuri and other campuses of Amrita Vishwa Vidhyapeetham, Amrita Vidyalayams and other institutions of Amma.  All are in the ‘massive’ ‘action’ like one man.

—————————– Ramanathan PV, Department of English

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FORGETFULLNESS —

September 24th, 2010

There is a saying, ‘Every author looks up his article in a magazine, for sure – to ascertain that it has ‘come’.  Hardly anyone else cares tor see what it is.’  That may not be the truth with ‘AMRITAAKSHARI’, but for the benefit of some who may have missed it, and others who couldn’t access it, permit me to reproduce it here.  (This is because, lots of friends did say that it is really ‘readable and fine’.)

“Forgetfulness”

Forgetfulness and I are “like Juno’s swans: coupled and inseparable” (to borrow the expression from Shakespeare).  If I remember right, its origin should date back to the days when the English teacher in class IV had asked me to spell the very same word.  I had started off confidently, as many as five times and faltered after managing to proceed upto ‘f-o-r-g-e-‘ , uncertain if it was a single ‘t’ or a double ‘t’ next!  That had the teacher go wild, and me end up with two flat slashes on my right palm from a merciless 12” wooden ‘scale’.  The event had become a matter for a long, suppressed laughter for the class – and I had thanked God that it was only flat-slashes for me and not the more dreaded edge-slashes from the scale.

But it is the mathematics class that generally sows the seeds to forgetfulness, with the inescapable task of memorizing multiplication tables which extend to eternity – like the numbers themselves?!  Mathematics as a subject itself would have been a hundred times easier and the most favourite one in school for me but for this inscrutable and inevitable exercise!  The consoling factor at school was the presence of leagues of schoolmates who were in the same boat.  But unfortunately, my class itself featured none who would be a solace to me by being worse off!!

In the world outside the classroom I am reasonably certain that I am not alone in the matter of forgetfulness.  I definitely have whole battalions and armies with me.  Some, I am sure, should be worse off than me (which makes me secretly happy!) and others, for whom, my plight is fun and enjoyment (– around the world with no dollars, as it were!).  What actually makes for this ‘lapse’ in life is the fact that there are too many unwanted things which we force ourselves to remember, and unnecessarily so.

That is not to say that we are total ‘memory flops’.  In fact, we do manage admirably to remember an awesome number of items, particularly, innumerable numbers!  (So, once again, life is full of numbers – the incorrigible set of mathematical symbols!)  For instance, look at the endless stretch of ten-digit telephone numbers or the fifteen-digit bank account numbers one has to remember for survival at the office and the domestic spheres!

Adding to the above are the myriad things one cannot afford to forget.  From locking your front door when you leave home to the bunch of office keys to be carried along (which one discovers as ‘gone’ only on reaching one’s office);  from the buy-today-urgently list (entrusted by one’s home office) to the umbrella (particularly, in the rainy season);  from the address you are to look for in a new town or the pair of spectacles (to find which you need the very same pair) to the special item you wanted to gift someone with, or the name of the person who would meet you today at dinner and the name of a counterpart you must call after dinner (to please your boss in order to get a raise in due time) – there are many, many things waiting to have the last laugh at you at the end of the day, every day!

It is always convenient, and fine, consoling a friend who forgets to take with him or her a gift baggage on a visit to the mother-in-law, saying, “Don’t worry yaar, it was no lapse!  After all, the parcel you forgot isn’t ‘that worth’ any way – nor, is the mother-in-law!”  This, of course, is because it is the other guy who is in a fix and I am safely off with my in-laws.  Additionally, these heartfelt matters are more ‘proper manners’ and etiquette than aught else, meant merely to cheer up ourselves in another’s miserable plight.  If he/she too takes it seriously and forgets the lapse, his/her luck!

One can afford to forget anything and it is okay, as long as one remembers one’s own name and parents’ too – and, in the context of our (less fortunate) married friends, the (name of the) spouse!

Memory lapses, I believe, must be considered sympathetically and accounted as the result of our earnest attempt to keep inside our pitiably small head too many unnecessary things, like hand phone and land phone numbers, not likely to be needed even once in the next one hundred and one years.  Some of us belonging to the old (out-dated!) generation make it a point to remember too many relatives – second cousins and third cousins – who too are happy to keep in touch unconditionally.  On top of that an equal number of friends, along with their first and second cousins too, from among our school and college contemporaries add to the list (making it a ‘Hanuman tail’)!  The appendage to this is the need to remember several dates of births and marriages!  And then there are their never-to-be used (old and current) door numbers, street names and postal pin codes, not meant to be of any use in these days of SMSs and e-mails.

At least in this one thing, the modern generation is right.  They seem to overcome this problem of the sexagenarians among us in a magnificently simple ‘one shot’ technique of I-for-me (or, is it ‘all-for-myself’?) alone!  This possibly is the only situation where the most horrid-looking utilitarian approach to life sounds sensible, and I should not blame them.

But coming to that, there is one more reason why the new generation needs empathetic consideration: with this magnificent advantage, they are not that freely off – they have the ‘modern headache’ of remembering what never bothered us!  What, with the numbers of several credit cards, identity numbers as voter, tax payer, employee, ration card holder, vehicle owner, club member etc – with their driving licenses, insurance policy numbers (and more importantly,) their dates of maturity or expiry, cut-off dates … the list is endless.

Now, I remember with admiration – and I can never forget – my good friend who exploits this universal aspect of forgetfulness to his best advantage to gather his ‘pound of flesh’!  He keeps it handy to conveniently forget anything that touches his comfort zone or costs him his peace of mind.  He seems to have trained every faculty in his being to erasing from memory anything that is against his interest, when the iron is hot!  But he most humbly apologizes to all and sundry after the horse has left the stable or as soon as his coast is clear and makes the atmosphere more congenial to further slips of memory!

He had once promised to teach me his art the very next month – that was well near seven years (NOT seven decades) back.  Every time we meet, he most earnestly (and unforgettingly!) remembers to renew the promise and I am sure the day is not far off when I will learn his trade secret – his ‘success formula’.  But the one thing I learn from him untaught is that good memory is a craft and forgetfulness an art.

Un-forget-tably, yours.

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A Thought: on Exercise and Fitness !

August 31st, 2010

A few hundred years ago if you spoke about the importance of ‘exercise’ for keeping ‘fit’, people would have laughed at you. Today? We call it ‘essential’ and schools and institutions teach how to go about it. in those days, they got all the exercise they needed from work, outside or at home – and remained ‘physically fir’. Making a living, raising a family, household chores, walking to and from places, was enough and gave them all the required movement of the God-given body parts, so they didn’t have to worry about any ‘exercise’ outside this.

Today? Today, we have fitness centers, gyms, and personal trainers. (I have nothing against them or the people frequenting them!) There are high-tech machines, and even electronic games to help us exercise. Each gadget comes with its own ‘selling points’. Some you can strap to your arms and legs and tummy and relax in front of the TV — they claim its vibrations give you your daily recommended quota of exercise. You can even sleep off – and the required exercise for the day is done!! There are virtual reality exercises, dancercise (exercise through dancing – ‘day clubs’ to compete with night clubs??), elliptical, and who knows what else – and more will follow. So why worry? Cheer up!

Well then, in the future when folk will not have even the time we have today (for the exercise), they can strap a few machines when going to bed … and be physically fit. Hurray! Good Luck!!

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