The High-Strung Life

It is said that the most blessed evangelist John, when he
was gently stroking a partridge with his hands, suddenly saw one in the habit
of a hunter coming to him.  He wondered that a man of such repute and fame should demean himself to such small and humble amusements, and said, “Are you that John whose eminent and widespread fame enticed me also with great desire to know you?  Why then are you taken up with such mean
amusements?” The blessed John said to him, “What is that which you carry in your hands?” “A bow,” says he.  “And why,”said John, “do you not bear it about always stretched?” The hunter answered him, “I must not, lest by constant bending the strength of its vigor be wrung and grow soft and perish, and when there is need that the arrows be shot with much strength at some beast, the strength being lost by excess of continual tension, a forcible blow cannot be dealt.” “Just so,” said the blessed John, “let not this little and brief relaxation of my mind offend you, young man, for unless it sometimes ease and relax by some remission the force of its tension, it will grow slack through unbroken rigor and will not be able to obey the power of the
Spirit.”

John Cassian (c. 360-c. 435)

Please Pray

Yesterday my dad met with an accident in Calcutta, India. He is on blood thinning medications, hence he still bleeds from the nose and eye even after major nasal surgery. Please pray for his speedy recovery.

The Unnamed Mafia or the Indian Bureaucracy

They are the unnamed mafia holding back our nation.

What we all knew for so long has been ratified by international rating bodies. Yet the paradox is such that if any babu (include the IAS, please) reads this, she or he might fly into a Dickensian rage and go to  court against me. In fact our babus are known to love the courts and legal niceties. In fact they love to waste our tax money in persecuting us. I’ll not be surprised if our Babus try to undermine this report rather than work harder.

If you do not believe me then try any of the following:

a) Go to your local Corporation/Municipality office and try to meet the biggies for any official work. See how many times your are asked to return. Over and over again they’ll tell you to come back and the concerned biggies will never be there!

b) Try to register a death, birth or apartment. I mention them in the same breathe for our babus do not differentiate between them. See how you have to grease palms and do your rounds.

c) Try to get your BSNL / Gas / Water lines working. See the fun. Nobody will pay any attention to you unless you are a local goon or a know political psychophant.

d) If you are an educator, visit the UGC offices. There the security guard will surely greet you with rudeness and then of course, the babus sit with extreme self-satisfaction looking for ways to wallop your ego.

e) Try getting a PhD and see how much time it takes for the powers-that-be to process your thesis reports…

f) Lastly, just make an effort to speak to an IAS ( say a District Magistrate). See how you are humiliated till you agree to your non-existence in the scheme of things Indian.

And surely now you know why no political party with the people’s mandate will really be effective in changing the system. The Babus, big and small, will not allow change. Period and Amen.

Fine Print Admissions: I am a coward and cower in fear of our powers that be. This is all a joke and you just have to ask me to remove this post, I shall do it. Please misters and madams, our Lords and Ladies, I am a lierature afficiando, so this is just that: fiction and as Mr. Plato said: literature’s a lie. Mea Culpa.

Lady Luck and Christianity

The Renaissance believed in Fortuna, or what we today call Lady Luck. & the said Lady has never been favorable to me as far as lotteries go. But this post caught my eye and I am pitching for it here! In fact in light of this post by me some days ago, I am praying against despair that I win the prize!

My dear constant reader, pray that God wills that Lady Luck smiles upon me this time. Amen. (Frivolity intended, for the Kingdom is certainly joyful!)

PS. As a matter of fact I do have this erudite blog in my Google Reader. That’s where I got to know of this giveaway.
Cheers to winning for once.

From Kala Chakra, Foreign Scholarships & Racism

Our students mostly don’t want to be scholars. That’s too nerdy, they feel. And studying core subjects don’t pay much in India. And even if you study say Literature, Culture Studies or Pure Mathematics here and top your university at the Masters Level, then too a bilayat-returned B-grade student gets the plum academic job here. The proverbial colonial hangover prevents us from respecting homegrown scholars. So our moneyed class and generally discontented intellectuals seek out doles ( called scholarships) from various foreign universities and rush there to cram what they easily could have done here only if their greed were checked. The result: Australian racists bashing our poor exiled students.

I am not much surprised at these attacks. Even a cursory glance at colonial studies will show how people of colour have been regularly brutalized by the Whites. They are deplorable but nonetheless a fact of history. It’s bound to occur like the bull-bear cycles of the equity markets, somewhat like Eliade’s myth of eternal return, like Nietzsche’s transvaluation of values. I am sure you have got the hang of it…

Amitava Ghosh says somewhere in The Shadow Lines how we have no right to eat off the fat of developed nations when we never made their houses and streets. Rather we should make our own country developed. That ain’t gonna happen if we have cowards running away from our troubled nation.

Kala Chakra

On Wisdom (Reading 292, from the Book of Job), some of the most haunting lines ever written in English

But where shall wisdom be found? and where is the place of understanding?

Man knoweth not the price thereof; neither is it found in the land of the living.

The depth saith, It is not in me: and the sea saith, It is not with me.

It cannot be gotten for gold, neither shall silver be weighed for the price thereof.

It cannot be valued with the gold of Ophir, with the precious onyx, or the sapphire.

The gold and the crystal cannot equal it: and the exchange of it shall not be for jewels of fine gold.

No mention shall be made of coral, or of pearls: for the price of wisdom is above rubies.

The topaz of Ethiopia shall not equal it, neither shall it be valued with pure gold.

Whence then cometh wisdom? and where is the place of understanding?

Seeing it is hid from the eyes of all living, and kept close from the fowls of the air.

Destruction and death say, We have heard the fame thereof with our ears.

God understandeth the way thereof, and he knoweth the place thereof.

For he looketh to the ends of the earth, and seeth under the whole heaven…

The Book of Job

Reading 291, on Adultery & the Nazis

Once a man asked a woman , ” Will you sleep with me for$10 million?” The woman readily agreed. Now the man said, ” Since we agree in principle now let’s settle the proper price”…

The Nazis: A Warning From History (Not an exact quote)

My notes:

That’s about how Hitler and his cronies seduced a nation. Of course, the nation wanted to be seduced first.

Reading 290, from The Hidden Lives of Nuns

I have taken this pic from Mrs. Reed's web-site, hope she does not mind!

“It used to be walls were the most important. You were cloistered, and you mustn’t go beyond a certain point…Our cloister is the cloister of the heart. It’s not necessarily walls. I think it is a freer way of looking at life: allowing people to be themselves and allowing them to express themselves…”

Mother Gemma Angelo in Cheryl R. Reed’s  Unveiled: The Hidden Lives of Nuns

My notes:

Religion is all about being free. Don’t get me wrong; religion should not be an escape from the world and its pains. The truly religious are deeply affected by the world’s joys and sorrows. They are NEVER indifferent to life. Their love for people continuously incarnate God’s Kingdom even today.

There are a few things which I believe Evil  adores:

a) Too much discipline.

b) Perfection

c) Judging others.

d) Rituals and constants shows of holiness.

e) Respecting the letter of the Law

Reading 289, from Darvish

It is related that one day a few years ago, a new darvish was sitting in one of the Nimatullahi Sufi khaniqahs when the Master, Dr. Javad Nurbakhsh, walked through the room, saying in passing to one of the older dervishes, “Go clean your room. I’ll look at it later.”

The older darvish then moved to a quiet corner to meditate and repeat his zekr, while the new darvish went out to work in the garden. Much later, the new darvish came back into the room and found the older man still sitting in the corner. He went up to him with a worried expression and said, “What are you doing? Aren’t you going to clean your room?”

The older darvish looked up at him and smiled. “The Master meant my heart,” he said.

Darvish

My notes:

Darvish is everything that a true Muslim should be. A kinder, liberal man than him will be hard to find. And his posts are so very beautiful.

Reading 288, from Good Jesuit, Bad Jesuit

Taken without permission from Good Jesuit blog: a ownderful blog!

He was born in an obscure village, the child of a peasant woman.
He grew up in another obscure village, where He worked in a carpenter shop until He was thirty.

Then, for three years He was an itinerant preacher.
He never had a family or owned a home.
He never set foot inside a big city.

He never traveled two hundred miles from the place He was born.
He never held and office or did any of the things that usually accompany greatness.
While He was still a young man, the tide of popular opinion turned against Him.
His friends deserted Him.

He was turned over to his enemies, and went through the mockery of a trial.
He was nailed to a cross between two thieves.
While He was dying, His executioners gambled for the only piece of property He had-His coat.
When He was dead, He was taken down and laid in a borrowed grave.

Two thousand years have come and gone, and today He is the central figure for much of the human race. All the armies that ever marched and all the navies that ever sailed and all the parliaments that ever sat and all the kings that ever reigned, put together, have not affected the life of man upon this earth as powerfully as this “One Solitary Life”.

Good Jesuit, Bad Jesuit

My notes:

I am a sucker for Ignatian Spirituality. I am working at adapting  it to Hindu life.  Jesuit Spirituality is Gita Spirituality: Karma without desire for Karmic results.  I suggest you add Good Jesuit, Bad Jesuit to your Google Reader.

We often forget that we need not go anywhere from where we are placed by God to achieve salvation. Prophets, both Biblical and otherwise, have achieved satori struggling in one definite place, not constantly running here and there.