Encounters with Reality

I found this book browsing books available under ‘Kindle Unlimited’. There is one huge disappointment, which I faced first time about kindle books. This book has numerous font and spelling mistakes. It seems that a draft and not the final version have been released under kindle limited.             Mark Tully has maintained a flowing narrative throughout the book. The narrative touches briefly the history of Sikhs. The emergence of Bhidranwale and the role played by India Gandhi and Akali Dal and Congress leadership in assisting this emergence is quite well explored, though the rigour of exploration is of a journalist and not of an academic. The book came in 1986, 2 years after operation blue star, which suggests that Tully and Satish Jacob (both are authors of this book) were working briskly to complete their project. Times of India is most cited reference. For me, it is hard to believe that Times of India can serve such serio...

            I watch Game of Thrones. I have read the published 5 volumes of Songs of Ice and Fire.             I observe many people of my age; the ones which I encountered in my education do not indulge in TV serials or such books. They are performing things of higher orders and living lives of higher orders. They will deny if it is asked, politely. They are nice people.             I am hooked to narratives, especially in visual forms. Yes, it frequently forces me to neglect some important activities than can have serious bearings on my purchasing power and nuisance value. There is not much I can do which I do not enjoy and there is not much which will give me enough purchasing power while allowing me to enjoy. The problem is I am not bestowed with any skill that can generate alternative enjoyment, barring this writing.  But writing c...

If life is meaningless, how do we justify the efforts to help the other people? The only justification is that – my stated objective of helping others is just the pretension and what I am doing is just having the fun. The meaning of the work is the essential delusion we have to create to let ourselves save from annihilating ourselves. But there is no meaning without our assumptions and sometime the naked truth is out in front of us. What do we do then? We bid for the time and shelter back in our delusion. Lucky are the people who do not have to this exercise and damned are those who do not have the shelter. Life is all about having our own walls and then longing for the freedom from those walls while showing as if we are so warm, so good within those walls. May be eventually we start believing in those walls and then we are happy. Belief is happiness, and it is an ancient truth which we keep glimpsing again and again.           ...

I just finished ‘How Much is Enough?’ by RobertSkidelsky . I certainly do not agree with many of the explanations provided in the book and many of the suggestions made. Yet, it is a thought-provoking book, no doubt about that! Skidelsky has shown courage to develop suggestions, based on explanations, with acknowledged religious overtone. He does now thump the chest while arguing that government policy should cease to be the value-neutral or liberal or efficiency based and it should explicitly move away from mad pursuit of growth. Clearly, his explanation lacks sophistication and is more of a persuasive nature, the style which we miss in the days of semi-formal books published by Economists about everything under the sky.  But he takes on an interesting journey to establish that there is more to life, more to policy-making than some digits. I have always though that Religion was a way, at least theoretically, to tap the consumption. Why any ancient civilization would have though...

If I search for activities happening around me, I can trace roots of these activities. There are many institutions and professions whose function and emergence in social structure can be thought. I can think how engineering had evolved. I can trace how animal husbandry had evolved. I see evolution of medical sciences. I see emergence of chemists. And, then I wonder why philosophers got any place in social structure. I have very destructive hypothesis in mind. But before that let me put what I have in mind about emergence of streams of knowledge and professions. If we see society or human groupings as self-evolving sphere, then it becomes easier to understand the emergence of institutions. I am using few words little carelessly here like institutions, professions and streams of knowledge. What I want to stress is emergence of these things and hence I am accepting little casual approach towards semantic specifications for the sake of simplicity. In this self-evolving sphere, there a...

Past is difficult thing to leave. It becomes even more difficult if past that you are trying to forget was what your identity for all years passed. The memories you are trying to erase are what your habits and words for all time passed. It is difficult burden to throw away and more difficult if you know what you are throwing away is still dearer to you. I never made peace with the fact that I worked for RSS. What kept me there are persons who designed the organizations, curtailed and fitted themselves to any task and impulsive responses whenever any social catastrophe happened. What made me to withdraw myself is restricted view towards human being. Sketching human being as religious entity, putting unnecessary benevolence or cruelty on him or holding concepts about humanity much more worth than humanity which created them are not my cup of teas. But even though I fragmented in my attachments, what never changed is my respect and attraction for creative organization of human beings ...

I have written before about being selfish. There is visual interpretation of words which we use. What comes to my mind when I say ‘selfish’ is someone chasing wealth? It is not image, I agree. But, what comes to my mind is person with measured, tailor made talks, behavior in which there is no contradiction and chase of opulence or some sort of gain evident in every action. There is nothing done without visible intention of gaining something out of it and rarely that gain is non-materialistic. There may be different, polar opposite visuals coming to mind of different persons. There is connotation every word carries. This connotation is made up some average meaning which is present in everybody’s mind, with few exceptions. The connotation for ‘selfish’ is tilted to negative, towards region of characteristics which we do not want to see or we are taught not to see in ‘ideal’ human being. If this ideal human picture is removed, selfishness is what will remain, in different orders. It i...