To kill a mocking bird.

Written by Harper lee.

A small girl, her brother, their friend, their father, their maid, their neighbours, their relatives, their county, their lives.

The fantasies of childhood; the ideal way of raising one's kids, the general view of it; the mockery of the good by those who have mocked their own lives exhaustively and hence have to depend on somebody else's apparent misgivings for entertainment; the determined and deliberate ignorance towards common sense, cognitive dissonances, blind faiths, hypocrisy; the social injustice, the rumours, the stories, the useless formalities and isolations, the education system, the division of everything and anything among the socially divided, and its simple and marvellous perception, through the eyes of a seven year old.

Ohh, how I would love to grow up again!

To kill a mocking bird is a fine book.

Yes Prime Minister - Review

Just finished reading Yes Prime Minister.

It is a classic comedy that maintains its class so classically that while classifying  my list of favourite pieces of classic comic literature, I literally may classify this classic piece of classic comedy into an altogether unique class of its own, with no other piece of literature to match its class with the exception of its prequel i.e. Yes Minister.

While my favourite actor while watching the series of Yes Minister and Yes Prime Minister will remain the man playing the character of Sir Humphrey Appleby(Sir Nigel Hawthorne, who I remember played a role in Ben Kingsley's Gandhi), I am still at a loss so as to decide which character among the three best entertained me while reading ...

1. PM Jim Hacker, for his amusing style of dictating memoirs; for his mixed metaphors, for his outright denial in self-criticizm and desperate attempts to seize any credits for the 'novel' ideas that his political advisor or Principal Private Secretary give him, his
hypocrite moralism, his occasional and frequent outbursts of honesty(while dictating memoirs), his hunger for a place in history, his priorities and his anxieties, his political advisor(I love her), his admissions of hypocrisy and farse to his wife, his gradual progress in handling beaurocratic replies and counter blackmailing the permanent secretaries, his confidence in Bernard, his state of being drunk, and much more.

2. Sir Humphrey, for his witty and downright insulting remarks to the PM's ideas ànd suggestions, his prolix clarifications so as to make things more unclear to the PM, the utmost care he takes while lying to not be seen as technically a liar, his self-righteousness, his unnecessarily prolonged explainations, his style of leaking things among the press and friends, his vested interest in almost anything that the PM takes up, his threats to both PM and Bernard, his struggle and helplessness when beaten, his spontaneous reactions to the PM's 'novel' ideas, his constant suggestions of setting up an inter departmental committee, his
opinions about the 'ordinary people' of England, his lust for power and its centralization in his hands, his insecurities, and much more.

3. Bernard - (this guy, rocks!) For his platitudes, often interrupting serious and important (important to the PM personally) discussions, and continuing with his rants, as the PM describes it, upon being goggled at by Hacker, mistaking the glare as an expression of confusion. His own confusion, so as to his loyalty, which is often divided, partly to the PM who promotes him to his current position and partly to Sir Humphrey who has great influence over both him and his career. His style of clarification, though innocently adopted, leaves Hacker as confused as he is, when deliberately put into the state of confusion by Sir Humphrey's explainations. Bernard's demonstrations of technical errors in Hacker's mixed metaphors are thouroughly entertaining. Excerpts of his conversation with the editors are bound to leave you rolling on the floor. His sheer innocence, his excellence in all the
technicalities, his unbelievably powerful memory, leaves me dumbfounded. His occasionally unintended insults of the PM and his evident delight of seeing his master (Sir Humphrey) in personal trouble show the menace and thus make it possible for the reader to believe the possibility of the prosperity and progress of a seemingly innocent private secretary to the Head of the Home Civil Service. It also explains his changed attitude towards Jim Hacker, lacking any trace of respect.

When these three team up trully to fight some deadly situation, the episode becomes a sheer delight for the reader.

What more can I say? I loved it. The book didn't make me laugh out loud a lot, but it definitely added infinite smirks to my face.

- Kaustubh Anil Pendharkar

"All that proceeds from power is good. All that springs from weakness, is bad."

- Friedrich Nietzsche

"All that which proceeds from man's independent ego is good; all that which proceeds from dependence upon men is evil."

- Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead.

Ayn Rand was known to have heavily studied the works of Nietzsche and also to be in strong disagreement of his philosophy. She has mentioned a logical reason for it in the preface of The Fountainhead. Yet she seems to have been unable to resist the influence of his works on her writings and philosophy. The question is, should her disagreement with Nietzche's philosophy be called non-absolute, or should it be called an absolute disagreement to the inconsistent and contradictory parts of Nietzsche's philosophy? I haven't "HEAVILY" studied Nietzsche but I found Thus Spake Zarathustra confusing from the beginning. I left it unfinished. Now, after reading this quote of Ayn Rand, I have grown a renewed interest in TSZ.

Guzaarish (2010) Euthanasia

I saw Guzaarish today, a film released in the year 2010 starring Hrithik and Aishwarya. Based on the subject of Euthanasia (mercy killing).

It is a sad thing that Hrithik reminds us of Koi Mil Gaya everytime he sounds excited. But apart from that, his acting in the film, expressions AND Dialog deliveries are superb. To see the great duggu dancer as a paralyzed person in the film would have certainly left me with a feeling of 'there's something missing'. Flashback took care of that. I remember being quite excited about watching the film when its trailers played on TV back in 2010, especially the one in which he dances with his assistant, the song Yeh Tera Jiqra Hai playing in the background.

I also remember a lot of jeering and denouncing of the film by several political parties had been received because of a trailer in which Aishwarya was shown smoking. I hated that row for its biased stand. They protested because a woman was shown smoking a cigarette, which apparently sent out a bad message. If they or anyone really, sincerely wanted to protest they should have protested the smoking scene altogether. I myself had laughed at the news that time. I smirked today while watching that scene. It could have been skipped, as all smoking scenes in all the films can be skipped, but being there it added a little flavour, and humor too.

Dialogs and scenes - I loved all of them. Except one. I feel the need to mention it. Aditya Roy Kapoor tells Hrithik that he would sacrifice Magic, his passion, for his love if his girlfriend asks for it. I wished, hoped and expected Hrithik to shout at him and order him out of the house at that moment. But he smiled. And I winced.

Love, as a rule, does not ask for compromise. If it does, it is not love. It is merely a stubborn and forced PLEA. Stubborn, because it won't listen to reason. Forced, because it would blackmail emotionally, and PLEA, because it will inadvertently acknowledge its own impotent compatibility and yet ask us to accept it like that. It is not very difficult to recognise this flaw, what IS difficult for most is the admittance to themselves that the idea of love that exists in their partner's view is horribly flawed. The simple solution is to leave the partner. But if we choose to stay with their idea of love, we not only betray the concept of love, but we also betray the concept of passion. If we compromise our passion for our 'love', then we lose both - love and passion. We realize yet refuse to accept the fact that we are incapable of loving and we are just not passionate enough.

I winced for the same reason when I saw Makarand Deshpande who plays a passionate artist being potrayed as a scoundrel who beats his seperated wife and forces her to stay with him. And while being beaten up she complains of his choosing his paintings over her. Being passionate to the core about one's work is potrayed as BAD in this film. Just by these two incidents. And they would certainly have their effect on the audience engulfed in watching the film and being the part of the flowing story. Compromise is shown as a virtue.

I liked Hrithik's conversation with the Church Father the most. Also the hearing at his home where he displays the 'magic trick' of 60 seconds. Predictable. Yet amusing, effective and Fantastic.

Euthanasia - Only the man who fully recognises the value of life, not just HIS life, but life as a concept, for the whole significant part of it, should be given the permission to die. In this film, Hrithik through his acting, aptly conveyed the message and gave justice to the character and the film.

The film had received four stars back then, and justly so. I don't like writing reviews, I avoid them when I can. This is the first film which made me write about it.

- Kaustubh Anil Pendharkar

THE CURSE OF BEING AN ATHEIST

They say knowledge is power. And with power comes responsibility (Ben Parker, Spider man).

Responsibility is like a liability forcefully laid on weak shoulders. Why weak? The moment we treat some task that we have to perform as a duty or a responsibility, it implies that we don’t really want to do it but since it is a must it has to be done. It implies lack of will to do it. And without will, we are left feeling weakened.

 Let me elaborate on it a little more with illustration. I hate to do the dishes at my home. I hate to wash clothes and hang them on ropes and rods for drying. But when the maid is absent, I have to help my mother with these chores. This is a task which I am not willing to perform, yet I have to do it. I ask myself – why? The instant answer that props up in my mind is, “Because it is your responsibility”. So, the word ‘responsibility’ comes in the picture only when there are both ‘lack of will’ and ‘compulsion’ of performing the same task, a collision of whose leaves the person with a feeling of weakness.

With this logic, I will be a much weaker person than many others who have no idea of the task that is to be performed, since the task is to be performed on them. If they are not aware of the task, how will they be aware of the responsibility? And how will they feel as weak as I do? They do not have the knowledge, so they do not have the power, so they do not have any responsibility, so they do not feel weak.

I was twelve years old when it struck me that there is no such being as God. The concept is a fantasy carried forward by generations and generations of human kind and human mind. It first appeared when the nature scared the hell out of human beings, the thunders, the mighty clouds, the heavy rains, the droughts, the forest fires, the high tides, and cyclones – the might of nature against a tiny human being. Humans could not locate the source of these calamities. They could not see who sent these things upon them. They were awed. And this led to the concept of total submission to that mighty thing – which they couldn’t name correctly yet knew that it existed – Nature. They started worshiping nature; they started worshiping its powers. Till then, it all seemed okay. But human mind needs a fixed shape, symbolically representing something towards which the mind has a feeling, whether of respect, or of disrespect. It needs to know (imagine, rather) what is it that it’s commanding, or what is it that it’s submitting itself to. This led to the creation of the concept of GOD. Its scope was compressed into a figure. The significance of the representative figure gradually grew more than what it represented.

Today, we have acknowledged the sources and reasons of these ‘miracles’ by scientific means. It can be easily proved that GOD doesn’t exist. Education can enlighten those who are curious to consider the doubts on existence of god. The sad news is, even after being labelled as educated, people refuse to consider the impossibility of God. The very thought scares them off. Why? Why do the masses close their eyes to the obvious realities of life?

The answer to this is, fear of doubt and lack of confidence. People like the idea of being secretly supervised all the time. They like to believe that conscience is a gift through which the almighty guides them, directs them in the right way. They like to believe that no matter however incorrect steps they take, there is always someone who is going to bring them back on track. They like to believe that their journey of life has a fixed destination, and something that externally controls them and their lives will lead them to it in the end. They know, deep down, that every important decision that they take in their lives can change the whole course, can turn their world upside down – for which they themselves are solely responsible. But they are scared of regretting, they are not confident about their own abilities. So they tell themselves that god has good plans for them, that god wants them to do that which they actually do not wish to do, and yet are doing it.

Where does this tendency come from? The tendency of depending on god? The tendency of depending on somebody other than oneself? It comes from laziness and reluctance of thinking. To think is the responsibility of every human being, for thinking leads to evolution, and constant evolution is the ultimate goal of human species. 

However, since it is a responsibility, there is a lack of will to perform this simple task, and it leaves the human mind weakened. A weakened mind, which is refusing to think, becomes vulnerable to products of alien thoughts, and brings out baseless conclusions – which may or may not be correct. The essential element required to bring such conclusions is, absence of thinking. So what has been mind left to do, if it is not to think on its own? It directs itself to simply filter any oncoming data so as to provide evidence to support their previously concluded (mis)conceptions – which they like to call information. The mind performs no other significant task.

With so little amount of thought production and processing on its own, the mind has to import ready made thoughts for functioning. This increases the tendency of dependency. This leads people to start believing in god, to follow the masses, to look at themselves through eyes of others, blindly. And the mind rapidly starts turning more and more passive, becoming completely alien to itself after certain course of time.

I know this is their problem. I know it will be very easy for them to understand this problem themselves once they decide to open up their minds for self debating. My real problem is, I don’t know how to persuade them to THINK, yet I know I will have to do it, even if it consumes my whole life. Since I care for them, since they are dear to me, since I have to live with them, since it is my responsibility – I am left feeling weakened. This weakness, this inability to easily share my strength of knowledge with the weak that refuse to grow strong, is the curse of being an atheist.

-         © Kaustubh Anil Pendharkar

Pluviophile

It has started. I can feel it. With my eyes, I greet every drop I see

from the window almost every night. When I am not feeling sleepy and I

can't bear the overload of unnecessary thoughts appearing in and

disappearing out of my mind anymore, then the sight of the timely

downpour becomes soothing and relaxing. It is not the sight, but the

sound of it, generated by the smashing of all the cold molecules

coming together; maybe to feel a little less cold of themselves,

forming shapes of many drops of water, made heavy with the force of

gravity, drenching everything in their way - That sound gets my

attention first, and brings a smile on my face when I turn my neck

absent minded towards the window, even with my eyes closed at times.

I like to keep the curtains open at night, I am too lazy to get up to

open the curtains and watch the show! It has to be a

contribution to the relaxation of mind and body. And getting up just

to brush those stupid meant-for-privacy curtains aside in order to get

privately intimate with rain, my rain... No, it is asking too much of

me. Besides, the rain must see me. It must feel my presence. How would

you feel if you went to visit your friend, and you find that the door

supposedly kept ready for you to approach him is closed, locked. The

rain comes at its own convenience. I may not be awake every time. The

rain at least should get a glance of me. The fury and the force with

which it thunders upon the grounds to make a sound audible enough to

reach my ears and wake me up, is often described to me by someone in

the house next morning, or some friend over chat who stayed late awake

last night. I always feel sorry for missing to see it, to greet it.

The poor thing does its best to please me, but never gets enough

admiration, proper acknowledgement for its efforts, most of them gone

in vain. Rain at night is a friend in need who comes to the rescue for

those like me who suffer from occasional insomnia. It may be the

beast destroying crops of poor farmers, it may be the monstrous force

drowning people with their houses and at times whole villages, it may

be the never grown-up problem child, ruining the transport systems of the

city, but it will always remain my best friend. The intimacy is so

powerful that while writing this little piece, I corrected my grammar

a numerous times while referring to 'him' - the rain (I won't correct

this one. It is deliberate). Oh rain, I simply love you. And I am too

possessive of you. I don't like to think that you shower your love

over everyone in the street wishing to join the most graceful orgy of

nature, with a geometrical relation of correspondence of one to many. I hate the idea, I

despise it. No, I prefer to imagine and to believe that it is often

you calling me for a shameless romance in the street in front of

everyone, a romance visibly transparent and naked. The showers you

drop and the waves you travel on to locate me, make everyone in the

way aware of the fact that here is the rain stepping out of its cloudy

and gloomy palace, in search of its friend, its lover. And then the evils think - Let us take

advantage of the situation, lead or mislead this beautiful queen of

pearls to get, to snatch, to grope some love reserved for its intended

recipient. Let us rob and share the most of it within ourselves, and

make her lover furious with possessiveness.

Yes, I am possessive about you. There are times when I think of you as my best friend, especially

at night. Then, you are my buddy, with whom I can share the naughty

thoughts I am aroused to think about at nights. In the daytime, rain

is my queen. It changes gender. It attains elegance; it unleashes

beauty out of each particle of it, right from the cloudy starting

line. That beauty is mine, it is meant wholly and solely for me. I

don't share it, I hate sharing it. When I see people using umbrellas

and raincoats, I feel safe. When I see people without any protection

running amuck with an irritated expression over their face, I feel

relaxed. When I see people crowding the entrance shades of shops on

both sides of the roads, I feel lucky. It is only when I see other

people, enjoying the rains, like me, with a smile on their face, that

I feel terribly insecure. This is not for you, I think, it is a

private property. It is not for sharing. Run along and get to your

houses, you have no right to feel the beauty of my queen. Go home, get

lost. However, it is not the same with minors. I don't mind at all

when I see school kids returning from school, slum kids dancing nude,

and enjoying to their fullest in the rains. Because they are innocent,

by age, by thought processes. Their minds are not yet narrowed enough

to be felt insecure of. Yes, to a certain degree they do make me feel

jealous. Jealous because they have no worries, jealous because they

are care free. But yet I feel secure, because their intimacy with

rain is purely of a sporting nature. When I play football, rain to me

is a sexy cheerleader, while it was just another player in the field a

few years ago, when I was as innocent as that. The innocence vanishes,

and so does the trust, the confidence, in others around us about

things precious to us. For me, it is rains and its precious drops of

water. For many, it is money. For many more, it is their daughters,

sisters, even wives and girlfriends. The things precious to us, are

respected by us. Things precious to us, are demanded and wished by many

of the undeserving merely for the purpose of sipping out all the juice

of them, without giving any respect in return. The idea of losing my precious

rain to such undeserving, gives me shivers. And the fools think

that I am shaking with cold. The fools will never know the warmth of

my relation with rain. The problem is with their sight. I don't know

why they blame the rains for appearing at a wrong time, in the wrong

place. Who the hell are they to tell my rain where to be and where to

not. My rain is a daring darling. It ignores all, and keeps on

searching for me, all over the places, at any time it pleases. I like

that, I respect that, and I encourage that.

- © KAUSTUBH PENDHARKAR

THE BEAUROCRATIC MIND

I was crying. I looked in the mirror, saw my face. It had turned uglier, and without any further thought, without warning, I smiled through those tears to see if it makes any improvement. It did.

 I decided to be happy as I was tired of being sad. It was then that I realized, how easy it was to swim in the river of happiness, and how much effort it took to persuade myself back into the pond of grief. The river of happiness does not drown you, whereas once you manage to put even the tip of your foot into the pond of grief, which requires a lot of struggle, you start getting sucked into it and you never understand when you get totally submerged, from head to toe, into that horrible swamp. The good news is, happiness can save you. You just need to recognize it, which doesn’t require as much struggle as it is usually propounded by many.

Any sad feeling is an emotion deliberately forced on one’s mind. Any given situation asks the witness for a reaction by way of expression of the spontaneous emotion emerging in one’s mind. The expression is always exaggerated. Its intensity increases manifold through the journey from its emergence in mind to the outer muscles of one’s body which display the expressions. This exaggeration, this increased intensity can be reduced simply by acknowledging the fact that no matter what happens around us, we always remain happy. There is no negative feeling existent in the world. The world accepts each and everything as a positive event. When we feel down, we actually find ourselves standing on one of the lowest levels of happiness. Happiness can only be diminished, it is never finished. It is hidden, never destroyed. Happiness comes naturally. It constantly yearns to fully envelope our minds. And once it does, it simplifies everything. It is the stupid human mind which doesn’t want anything simplified. Whatever is easy, whatever destroys the feeling of being challenged is not accepted by the egotist human mind. The human mind likes complicated things; but complications do not exist naturally. So the mind takes on itself to complicate things. Complications give the mind an illusion of a purpose for its existence; the purpose - one can’t ignore the irony - of simplifying things.

People waste their entire lives in simplifying things the wrong way – things which they themselves have complicated – to simplify later on. People weave this circular web around themselves. And this, is, STUPID! Then what is the real purpose of life? What is the need of the existence of mind? If things in their absolute forms are simple, and if simplifying their deliberately complicated forms by means of happiness is also simple, then what are we supposed to do after achieving this simplicity? It will mean that we are satisfied, that our purpose of life is complete, right? WRONG! 

Happiness and satisfaction are two different entities. They are not synonyms, but they are connected. People, with their complicated minds, often think that happiness is the purpose of life, that once we achieve happiness, our purpose of life is complete. This is a misconception. Humans are restless creatures. Being restless is their true and absolute nature. The purpose of life is to conquer this nature. It can be conquered with satisfaction. There is nothing beyond satisfaction, as satisfaction puts an end to the chapter. One can’t be restless once one is satisfied. Satisfaction is a stage of life, which is to be achieved towards the ultimate climax. Whereas, happiness is a state of mind. Satisfaction is the ultimate destination, while happiness is the travel guide. It has instructions to accompany us throughout our journey of life. No matter how hard we try, we have no option but to carry happiness with us all the time. 

When we say we are sad, happiness acts like an organ gone numb, which we can’t feel at the moment, but it is there. What do we normally do to feel any organ that’s gone numb? We put our body in a relaxing position; and blood starts flowing towards that organ. What is blood? Blood is the medium through which energy flows. That’s what we have to realize and that’s what we have to do - we have to relax our mind and let our thoughts flow towards happiness. Our thoughts carry energy. Once that energy reaches happiness, the torture ends, and we start living again, until we are satisfied. 

 - © Kaustubh Anil Pendharkar