DISCLAIMER: Please be warned that Hemant Sreekumar’s performance at 7:25 pm in blueFROG uses strobe lights and high pitched sounds. It is not recommended for those prone to seizures, palpitations or experiencing heart problems.

flower running

Siem Riep

A quaint old french town at the base of the most spectacular temple complex in the world . . and its totally underwater . . actually most of cambodia seems to be. The Tonde Sap lake which acts as a monsoon storage seems to have exercised its right over most of the country from what i can tell . . would love to see a satellite picture! Siem riep itself is a really touristy place, but its retained an old world pace that eludes even the smallest indian tourist spots. The cambodian people are so happy. The food is amamzing and the beer is cheap too . . not like vietnam, but cheap none the less. Thought I would go to Battambang to see the bamboo trrain, but Siem Riep seems to have superglued me . . :)

Vietnam

Communist, socialist or capitalist . . it really makes one think . . definitely not democratic, but after Bush I have to think of that as a tainted word . . . I have grown up respecting the power of the people, and it has been reinforced time and again . . . even as recently as the mad marathis nation bandh. it defintely seems great. the power of the people, freedom of speech, freedom of laziness and freedom of anything. at least that's what they'd have you believe . . . more and more it is seeming to me like an argument for limitations . . . here in this third world country, everyone is equal . . yes its a small country, one tenth of our size and population, but none the less . . there is something to be learnt here . . we can't go on using democray as a veil for capitalist exploitation and hiding behing and archaich education system and a social heirarchy which has been abused beyond belief forever . . how long can we keeep our women behing the scenes . . how long can we act like biharis are not human beings . . i sense some serious myopia.
Its really been a gift . . the experience of a society . . not an affluent society at all, but one which breathes a common spirit . . and if it was a hegemoneous society i would not grant it so much favour, but though it does appear such on the surface, the complexity of the social strata is very much there, much as it is there in say Delhi . . .
I guess its an economists game at the end of the day and that;s what i really hate about it . . .
:)

:)

The latitude and longitude of Phuket, Thailand is:

7° 53' 0" N / 98° 24' 0" E

D D Kosambi on Marxism in India

"Certain opponents of Marxism dismiss it as an outworn economic dogma
based upon 19th century prejudices. Marxism never was a dogma. There is
no reason why its formulation in the 19th century should make it obsolete
and wrong, any more than the discoveries of Gauss, Faraday, and Darwin,
which have passed into the body of science. Those who sneer at its 19th
century obsolescence cannot logically quote Mill, Burke, and Herbert
Spencer with approval, nor pin their faith to the considerably older and
decidedly more obscure Bhagwad Gita. The defense generally given is that
the Gita and the Upanishads are Indian; that foreign ideas like Marxism are
objectionable. This is generally argued in English, the foreign language
common to educated Indians; and by persons who live under a mode of
production (the bourgeois system) forcibly introduced by the foreigner into
India. The objection, therefore, seems less to the foreign origin than to the
ideas themselves, which might endanger class privilege. Marxism is said to
be based open violence, upon the class-war, in which the very best people do
not believe nowadays. They might as well proclaim that meteorology
encourages storms by predicting them. No Marxist work contains incitement
to war and specious arguments for senseless killing remotely comparable to
those in the divine Gita."

Living in what is commonly known as the worlds largest Democracy, I can hardly feign surprise to the spontaneous anti corruption protests rocking the masses. Anna Hazare, I'd never heard of the man before he decided to stop eating to protest corruption! Now he's the next mahatma all of a sudden. Nothing about the man appeals to me . . the obvious saffron connection, the recklessly anti democratic totalitarian solution to a problem which is so wide spread that it would be difficult to isolate it from the system at all, and not least, the obvious political agenda of opposition. Not to say that I am a big fan of corruption, but I for one believe in respecting the enemy and assessing the scale of the war before i jump into the battle field.

There is no doubt that the Hazare led movement has tapped the support of large numbers of disgruntled citizens, for that and that alone I have to applaud the movement. They have made blubbering fools of our elected representatives, not that there was much going for them anyway. Unparalleled disparity, military occupation within the country, an economy flexing its muscles and reckless destruction of natural resources apart, there came a point in the second term of the UPA when it became blatantly autocratic. Their attempt to arrest Hazare and thwart the movement just shows how far down this road they have come. Behind their 8% growth they hover like vultures.

Corruption. Misuse of power for personal gain. Much as I admire the blaket of vague that a democracy protects its citizens with, there are some things I just can not fathom. The dichotomy of personal freedom and disparity is at the root. The problem is actually quite simple, its just been around for so long that we look right past it as if it doesn't exist. Freedom. The ability to speak or act on ones own behalf without restriction. Responsilbilty. Not to harm others, to abide by the law . . . Now the problem comes when we bring in money. freedom to become rich. but to become rich at the cost of trampling upon others? Any right comes with riders. They are there everywhere. Even a cursory glance at the economy make it obvious that there is no attempt to bridge the gap.

We live in a world inured to the stratification of society. For thousands of years humans have coexisted side by side in ever increasing numbers, shaped by the rules of society. These very rules that we know so well in India, like sati or caste, are at the basis of the acceptance of the status quo. It is these rules that we need to question. The NREGA does exactly that. Ensuring a minimum wage even a fraction (tending perilously we might add) has been a fight fought over many years. The answers are there I presume if we head a little towards the left and ask ourselves how the Dalai Lama could show compassion even to the Chinese, we shall be well on our way, but that is not going to happen. The thermodynamic whopee that we are so addicted to belies any expectation of the revolution.

Anna I suspect will fade rapidly into oblivion, but it wouldn't surprise me if this was all about us winning the last world cup as much as anything else ;)

http://www.torn.com/1558790

ELP site up

Just finished the skeleton site for the Organisation for Early Literacy Promotion (ELP) . . an organisation founded by my mother to address the special educational needs of children coming from backgrounds where reading and writing is not prevalent at home. The division of the hindi alphabet into five stages makes it far easier to grasp. There is also an emphasis on sound symbol relationships, meanings and context. The child is taught 5 characters, then he makes words with them and poems with the words. Thus without having to rote learn the entire alphabet, the mystery that script conceals slowly starts to reveal itself and the joy of learning is established. A far cry from the standard curriculum, which is catered to a very different social setting. The program has been developing over the last five years, and studies already show decreases in the drop out rate at rural schools in Rajasthan. With the help of a teaching kit designed to facilitate the teacher to implement the methodology in the classroom ELP really breathes some fresh air into a system so rusted one almost feels scared to push!

Check out the page . . and do donate to mom if you have some spare cash . . :)

some go
some stay
live on the fringes
just make way
heed the flow
take the day
sweat it out
disarray
constant twinges
rock my world
niggles bends
torn unfurled

trouble

Trouble by emni

follow my website

just got down to learning enough dream weaver to get a site online . . watch it emerge :)

watch it froth and glow

Analyse the bitterness

See if from within

Shapeless till withdrawn 

Formed when forsaken

Seldom is there clarity

To live within ones means

Wasted hope seeds freedom

Ticking through the seams

Take time for compassion

Redirect the punch

Pay heed to the emptiness

It never meant that much

Seeking nothing seemingly

Beating through the bone

There’s simply no denying that

The heart is always home

Twitching restlessly the tongue

Wants no more to know

Bitter bitterer bitterest

Yearning for the glow

Sweet nothing then is far beyond

What ails and weathers men

Tangy sour and tasteless blend

What’s now is never then

Thinking through the bitterness

Re tasting thick and thin

Reminiscing the bold embrace

The glow takes me within

School for Democracy

The School for Democracy/लोकतंत्र शाला 

down the drain

where does our water come from? where does it go? can the Yamuna ever be a river again? These are some of the questions which led me to explore traditional water systems in the country as well as looking at a direction for our metropolises of the day. Focussing on Delhi, the pretext is that we actually get enough rain water to meet our needs, yet ever increasing large scale projects are endlessly under construction, I smelt a rat . . . decentralised solutions, which are small scale, community managed and cater to the immediate locality obviate the need for transportation and drastically reduce the footprint of a community, but there is little scope for large scale corruption . . thus the saying we need a 1000 1000$ projects, not a million $ one!

the new delhi graffiti

teeming with uncertainty
the point sharp yet unsteady
no more than eternity
palms will weld the soul to me

shock so gentle bullet proof
mean to mingle be va koof!

The space I inhabit is wide and free

flipping from sunny to desultory

encased in caring possibility

makes me wonder dream then be

if space needs bounds just to exist

and infinity lies in my closed fist

what shackles then do i resist

for this is one train that just can't be missed

nose to the grind

punctual swift

help me unwind

get on my drift

time out of mind

sands gently shift

oscillate slow

three one two three

up the tempo

and its melody

minds eye window

have a look see

of them paths breaking through my wall

muddle my world engage it all

singed finger tips sculpted rationale

some call it mayhem others gall

time it will tell as i enthrall

rock or rocket fly or fall

we won

no biggie . . it actually felt thataway . . but it was some grit there . . crazy . . :)

we DID

kudos to dhoni for coming up the order. just what the doctor ordered!