Bhanvar from phaloda

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."