Top of the Mind

Shadows are good for concealing the form of the object it hides. You can make out the silhouettes in the shadows, but can only guess as to what lies in there. We as a nation have always been afraid of what lies in the shadows, afraid of facing ourselves in the harsh glare of the light, content to live in the dark, content with past, content in singing hosannas to our culture as in the past, content in basking in the glories of the kings long gone and kingdoms long lost. India as a entity has been content living in the shadows for a couple of centuries, never really finding the courage to step out in the light, let the rays illuminate it for all its glories and the warts. India has chosen to live a life in the darkness, happy with what could be the future rather than what is the future. But what is it that make a nation, what is it that defines the Indian-ness in an Indian. What is it that is identified with being Indian. Is it not the people who make up the identity of a nation, the pe...

Anyone solving a mathematic equation with unknown variables will know what I am talking about. The solution to the most simple of solutions is evasive and someone can easily land up somewhere from where the person will have no clue as to how to get back on track to finding the solution. What needs to be done is wipe the slate and start all over again. Isn’t that a feeling one gets when we try to make sense of what god is, we sometimes get so hopelessly lost thinking about the infinite spirit that we have to have a rain check and chuck out all our beliefs and start all over again. Mathematics is also something which is the reason that people are religious, have you ever wondered about the potency of the prayers one offers when one finds that the math problem one is faced with in the exams is no where near to the zillions of problems solved during revisions. Yes, god is the last recourse during that time and we dive into the unknown with belief that somehow we will get to rhs=lhs. The si...

A choice is “A decision to choose one thing, person, or course of action in preference to other s”. A choice is made between options which are acceptable to the person making them. The right to say no is a required option when faced with choosing between options not favorable or acceptable to us. Why is it that we are denied the basic right when we chose our representatives in parliament, legislature or municipalities. Time and again we have to vote and chose between options which rather than being the best are more likely to be the least of the worst variety. What stops the election commission from introducing the “ None of the above ” option in the election rolls. It does throw up pertinent questions as to what is to be done, if this options wins, what happens next, so on and so forth, but is the answer really that difficult to answer. If the option garners more votes then it means, none of the people who were on the roll were found eligible by the people to lead the constituency an...

What is it that drives a human being, is it the things that a person experiences, is it the things that are heard, told, seen, felt which give structure to the persons actions or is it something else. We are so busy trying to live our lives that we sometimes forget that we have to “live life”. Is survival all about just staying alive or is it something else, is it just about the place we want to be, rather than how we want to be at the place we want to be, is everything fair in love, war and life. When does ethics, principles, ideals come into the picture, is it just some words we learn in our infancy and which eventually gets obscured when we move on and start the struggle for existence. Can we think of these as just buzzwords which get thrown around when we need to impress someone or when we try to come up with reasons for our own shortcomings, “I can’t do it because my ethics don’t allow me to do it”. What is this ethics anyways, is it a rule, is it a way, is it a compulsion, what i...