Arjun Singh and Bhim Sen ki maggie ..

First things first.

What is Maggie: Maggie is the staple food of all the bachelors of India. Its one of the first 'ready to eat' thing to strike the Indian market. Easy to cook, its tasty too and even healthy @ Atta Maggie.

Who is Bhim Sen: Bhim Sen is the name of one of the most loved Hindu Gods @ Hanuman. But to be context specific bhim sen was also the name of the guy who used to sit at the nestle counter in my college, Thapar - Patiala. And his speciality was Maggie for which he charged I guess rs. 14 ??? Don't remember really.

Who is Arjun Singh: He is Indian HRD Minister. He doesn't have hair on his head but has a characteristic moustache. Recently he has been in a great controversy on the Reservation debate in India.

Now about the relationship they have. You may think that its pretty contrived, but everything and everyone is connected somehow. Like the friendship networks on Orkut !

In my college there was something that happened every year. There were two magazines, and later on there was only one. And in the edition which was published near the end of the academic year, many final year folks will write their heart out in some sort of 'goodbye college' kind off articles. They will write about their friends whom they will miss all their life, lecture halls where they used to sleep, hostel rooms where they used to fight, TV room where there used to be stampedes during cricket seasons, but one thing that was mentioned always was that 'I will always miss bhim sen ki maggie'. Now I used to hate this so much, how does every one mentions bhimsen ki maggie, is it fashionable to mention it or something ? I am sure people who had not eaten that maggie more than 10 times in their entire lifetime in thapar used to mention it in their good bye emails.
But now I realize that it actually represent something. And that representation is what matters. After all as they say, its not the words that matter, but the meaning behind it.

And same is the case with Arjun singh. He has been the biggest villian of all the upper caste folks revolting against the reservation all over India. (Well all over india minus - tamil nadu, no one raised a finger here) But Arjun singh is just a representation. Its not Arjun singh behind it, its the congress govt., not only the congress govt., but the UPA govt., and really not only UPA, but the whole political structure of India. Arjun singh represents everything that is bad and wrong with Indian politics for the people revolting against reservation. So if Mr. Arjun singh, you are reading this blog entry ( yeah, there is a probability of everything), then you must realize that its not you whose effigies are burnt but of all the filthy politicians of India. Because YOU represent them.

Just as bhim sen ki maggie represents "all the memories of my college" !!!!

Some related thoughts ..
One of my team mates came from US to India. He is an american. He wanted to see some hindi movie, and we took him to 'Rang de Basanti'. Now I thought he should have some back ground to this movie, other wise he won't get a thing. We started telling him about Indian freedom struggle, bhagat singh etc. and he didn't get a word (Why do we Indians think that every one in the world knows about the history of India, that it received independence on 15th August ... ). Anyways the guy was not getting anything and he said, 'hold on hold on, just tell me that at what point in the movie does the hero and heroine START SINGING AND DANCING AROUND THE TREES'. I was flabbergasted.
'Singing and dancing around the trees' is what represents the bollywood, for that matter represents kollywood (tamil) and tollywood (telugu) too.

When ever you meet an israeli, you talk to him about palestine.
New Zealand just represents another cricketing nation for us.
Brazilians start kicking around in their mother's womb.
Chinese eat snakes, and japanese work 25 hours a day.
Every russian is the member of KGB, and every Afghani a terrorist.
And this is the best, I am sure in some porn infested part of the world, people think that 'all indians are taught kamasutra in their school'.

This is all about representations, everything.

DEATH

I was some 12 years old. Was sleeping on the terrace, and was talking to my Mom and I asked her “Mummy, hum sab ek din mar jate hain kya ? “. Well I don’t really remember what her exact words were. But I remember some buzz words: “ache kaam karo”, “bhagwaan ke paas”, “darne wali kya baat hai”. And this reminds me that I was once talking to my Dad also on the same topic, again on the terrace. Oh man, I was so inquisitive sort off a kid. Actually I still am, well though not inquisitive! So back to “discussion on death with my dad”. Again I only remember one liner that I said. I told my dad, “papa, agar marna hi hai to aise marna chahiye na ki aadmi so raha hai, aur phir agle din utha hi nahin”. And my Dad was affirmative. He remarked that that will be a nice way to die, peacefully.

But is it, do you actually want to die while sleeping? Without being aware in the most dramatic moment of your life… I don’t know what was the sensation of Bhagat Singh all that time in the jail . or the moment before he was hanged. Or the sensation of all those Jews, walking towards the death chambers where they knew they will be put in the blast furnace. Well, two unrelated examples. I am really bad with examples. But what a knowledge, knowing that when you are gonna die. We all know ONE day it’s bound to happen. But what a state of mind: “I am gonna die on this Friday the thirteenth when the comet K9 strikes the planet Earth”. Or a terminally ill patient: Rajesh Khanna – Anand. What makes them breath the next very moment ? what makes them eat ? drink ? talk ? What do they think ? Do the realize the futility of life or realize some other bigger truth ? And worst part is that if this some one is an atheist, then he knows he is not even going to heaven. Here I must say that the people who invented heaven and hell must be genius, what a concept! Well, so if this guy is an atheist, he knows that after death the only thing that happens is that your body is burnt to ashes. Or for that matter you can also be buried and then the insects will have a feast. This is the same body, you care so much about. Go to a Gym, so that you can melt your tummy into abs, go to a hair saloon to get that chic look, wear that adidas t-shirt, rolex watch, frameless glasses. Damn. This is so ironic.

Sorry for interruption: But Spain just scored an equalizer against Tunisia!!!! If you are reading this in 2100, I am talking about football world cup 2006 Germany.

Coming back to the point, I have started wondering if it actually makes a difference if we know WHEN we are going to die. Why does that make a difference? Isn’t the knowledge that WE ALL WILL die someday enough? May be you will say that if we are always conscious of death, we won’t be able to live naturally? But what does living naturally mean? Get up in the morning, go for a shit, put some caffeine in your body, again go for a shit (for people like me who have an uncontrolled abdomen!), bath, ready, auto, office, gossip, work, more gossip, auto, home, news, fag/sex (bachelor / married), sleep. DUH! So much for a normal life. Tell you what, we have been blessed by consciousness for a purpose, and I think that the purpose is to make us conscious of the inevitable. But the catch is that we don’t know why we have been told this. And in this answer lies the ultimate truth. To be continued.
Until then, if I find that answer, I will share it in this blog ;-)


LESSON: If you are writing a blog entry and you are writing for the first time, then please don’t watch a football match parallely. Switch OFF the TV.

So much hate is suffocating ..

I was listening to this discourse by Osho on 'Love and Fear', and some of the things that he mentioned just blew my mind. And I was so full of thoughts that if I don’t write about it or talk to some one my mind will explode. Here I will only talk about something I could actually relate to because I experience that all the time.

Have you ever wondered or asked "Who we are”? I bet you have, this is an age old question and every one at some point of time has asked this. But we have been giving all the wrong answers to it. From so long…

Now, sample this.

My name is Atul Dua.

I am an Indian.

I am a Punjabi.

I am a Hindu.

I am a upper class Hindu.

I am a upper class Hindu who belongs to some Khatri caste.

I belong to salaried middle class.

I am a North Indian (read, I am not a south Indian).

I am an engineer.

I am a non - IIT engineer (IITians are after all upper caste engineers)

I am a vegetarian.

I am brown.

I am a chapatti khane wala and speak Hindi (again a diff species if you are in south)

I am a scorpion.

(Does is sounds like Bulla ki jana mai kaun ? )

Its such an innocent profile, but can you see that where I am trying to lead to ?

I hate all Pakistanis by default.

I think Punjabis are the best race in India and sing that song "loki vasde duniya ch vathre, punjabiyan di shan vakhri" with jingoism.

I am dead against the reservation thing. I forward those ugly messages like "Why does arjun singh have sex only on 3 days, because other days are reserved for SC / ST / OBC".

I hate it when an auto wala in Chennai doesn't speak in hindi / english when he actually can.

I hate it when they charge for a spoon in murugan idli shop.

I hate all Gemini zodiac (because once I read in Linda Goodman, that scorpions don’t go well with Gemini)

Ok, this is now getting funny ..

But the truth is that there is so much hate around us that its now SOFFOCATING.

Be it in any context..

Islam and the west.

england and ireland.

usa and mexico. india and pakistan.

north india and south india. And can you believe this ?

even within south india, telugu vs tamil !

Upper caste and lower caste (Bihar is the living example of this caste hatred)

Sample this, one of my friend's parents are against her marriage because it is out of caste. Both the guy and the girl are Brahmins, but of diff. lineage. Can we get more stupid than this?

And this reservation issue (how can I not mention that), both sides are so full of hate. Mayawati unabashedly say "We have been stamped down for years, now its our turn". Wow, what a theory.. and all the protests by the upper caste folks, the smell of hatred is so strong there !!

On the funnier side, go to orkut, and search for communities, you will find "I hate Chennai", "I hate Ekta Kapoor", "I hate kareena kapoor", "I hate salman khan", "I hate this", "I hate that".

Then you switch on the TV, and listen that there was a bomb blast in sri lanka, protest in srinagar, a lower caste girl raped by upper caste butchers in some remote part of rajasthan, okk, let me not get into all these clichés.

But the point is that every act of hatred boils down to our false identity.

yes, we have been taught to identify ourselves with all the wrong things, all those things that divide.

Our schools, our education, our parents (yes, even our parents because the were also the victims), our society, media, friends, everything has destroyed our real I. And we are unaware of it.

Well, I want to try and find my true self who doesn't know how to hate. But the fact that I am writing this blog out of immense HATRED towards "all the hatred around us" means that I have a long way to go!

Dear Blog ..

Dear Blog,

I see that the first and the last scrap I wrote was months ago.
I promise from now on I will try to be regular.

With regards,
Dua