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The bloody diamond

The bloody diamond
This is life

Welcome to the imperfect world

Welcome to the super-real world where survival comes first, much before the high alter preachings of excellence (for others only). So if you are the one who does not have to survive, or does not care - you have a choice not to remain here.

For others, please have a seat and take cover - here anything can happen anytime and you may just become a faceless co-lateral damage. Everything here is related to life and death, pains and agonies, treacheries and conspiracies, cons and deceit, treason and betrayals, despair and darkness - we just do not live in any perfect world.

BUT that is why the blog is here at all - let there be light. It aspires to show the way, to train myself and my friends in the defense against the dark arts. It is also related to hope and courage, renunciation and redemption, indomitable will and lust for life - the immortal battle with the dark side. Red flag fluttering in the gentle wind, all hands on deck, war cries in the air, daggers drawn, no quarters given nor asked, no hostages taken - we must fight till the last man standing

Rest assured, you are in good hands. These hands, with all the talents or the lack of them, with all the liveliness and the inner brooding, with the over-sized ego and the extra-ordinary humility, with all the goodness and the devilish designs - have been war veterans - they have fought for decades in the battle of survival.

Happy surviving




Love in blood

Love in blood

The inescapable war within

It is the curse of the human that we are constantly at wars. War with the Government, society, family, spouse, children, Boss, peer, friends, neighbours. Some of these are overt, some crude, some plain enmity but some are subtle, some barely palpable, some low key and guerilla types, some are cold as razors, some are dry like the funeral pyres.

Most of these cannot be own with force or when you try for winning - sometimes you have to lose to win them. Some are more like trials than wars, they never show the faces, never let you see their pimples, just shadows, the kafkaesque faceless executioners take over.

For all these, we need inner strength, we need strategies. Sometimes the objective is survival, sometimes it's plain escape from the random blades, sometimes the heady delight of beheading the enemy. Sometimes it is sheer joy to be alive, sometimes happiness comes over from a walkover or just a walkaway, without even a careless looking back. Often it is a mixed feeling - the agony, the ecstasy, the brutal orgasm or a complete disenchanted detachment - a shelter in the NOW. They sometimes need courage, need cunning finesse, sometimes ruthless lack of values of a son-of-the-bitch, sometimes daring flamboyant recklessness, maybe even stoic nonchalance. But the best of the best generals in the wars of life, always win without unnecessary bloodshed or even none of it at all.

But the most painful and fearful of all these wars are the ones with oneself. It could be a conflict between mind and heart or even the soul that holds our values dear. And this is one war that always hurts, always wounds, always bleeds one dry, always keeps one awake through the fearful night with the shadows of the beautiful lacey curtains blowing in the gentle wind and making shadows of our most intimate fears within. It is like a nation under seize, and alas, there is no escape. When you will kill yourself softly, no survival strategy ever works.



Saturday, November 20, 2010

Survive from our awful History teachers

When Shakuni, his father and 7 brothers were kept in jail by Duryodhan, they used to be given food and water barely enough for one person. They decided that one of them must survive to take the revenge. Because Shakuni was physically malformed, his mind was the most developed and he was the chosen one. Everyday, he was fed the food and water and all others died in hunger and thirst, one by one. Shakuni arranged to get a bone from all and used them to make a “Pasha set”. ....Mahabharat

How many people you have seen who love history? Or read history once they go out of their school ? Some of them take it up as a subject later, but alas, 99% of them take it up because they have found no other options. And that explains why, as a race, we have failed to teach the real history to the generations, why we are failing to inculcate the sense of history – the sense of perspective – the sense of strategic importance of real-politic to our promising young-stars and inspire them.

We do not teach them Mahabharat, that is used mostly as a storybook that has no real mapping to the practical lives. We do not teach them Chanakya slokas, that can really set the foundations of the sense of realpolitic – the essence of strategic thinking. Do you know anybody who has read “the Prince” of Machiavelli ?

Then we wish our children to be bigger than all others, outshine all others by miles. We teach them logical thinking – the thinking that is also used by machines and if you train a goat and use them to run the machine, he CAN!! We only want them to get in the JOINT!! Only one question from my side, “Then ???” We are blissfully unaware of the need for lateral thinking – the creative and innovative thinking that can set one apart from all others, in all aspects of life – be it excellence in studies - survival in workplace or peace and harmony in relationships. It is the nectar, the Philosophers stone that can touch someone’s life and start a process of creativity that is irreversible, it can’s be stopped ever.

Let’s come back to the question of the sense of perspectives. We consider history to be a rubbish dump for the dates and place and people, maybe a bit of features, a pinch of characteristics, a dash of causes and effects – but where are the lessons ? History is like the only zero sum game where we can be the passive viewers to the strategies employed and look at the right and wrong decisions taken with a detachment. This is our only chance of learning the deepest lessons of life without actually paying dearly for it. And we just falter at the alter of the ridiculous and throw away that chance, and try to memorize a few dates .. and places .. and people.. There should be a limit to being dumb.

I teach history to my daughter slowly, as a lifetime job, as I myself go on learning. I am qualified enough to work on three technical areas – IT, management and Insurance practice and super-specialized on strategic management which I teach at the MBA level (to some brilliant and some dumb students) but the subject I mostly study even at this age is , well you guessed it – HISTORY. This was my first love and has remained with me ever-after. But every time I start teaching from her history syllabus before her exams, I get painfully aware of how dumb the teachers are (well, they had no other options for subjects – I told you nah!!) and so the students think “oh no, once I get out of the clutch of this subject.. never again”. We have failed to light their interest of the perspective – failed awfully to inspire the generations.

When my 85-year old Pop needs to blast the education system, he has a ready example of me. “If we had enough money to provide the support or we had a bit more faith in the running of the Calcutta University, he should have studied history. But NOOOOO. We probably sacrificed a top-class historian to make a very mediocre engineer”. Not a very flattering observation, but nevertheless true. I am a failure as an engineer. I never had my heart into it. I just loved History and I still do it. Only I hate these stupid teachers who cannot teach us the lessons, who make us hate the subject itself.