Karthik's musings

Mumbai blasts and significance

Did anyone realize that the Mumbai blasts occured on the Guru Poornima Day? Itz surprising to see that when the blasts occured the media was trying to find all kinds of significance of the date the terrorists decided to strike....7/11, elections in POK, serial blasts in Srinagar, et al, but no one remembered what should have been a festival celebrated across India with great improtance - Guru Poornima.

Sad that Nehru's secular legacy has dumped India with a Teacher's Day on Sep 5, but no importance given to Guru Poornima. I myself would have forgotten about this day if not for a reminder from Yogoda Satsangha Society :-(

Sad that the media that goes gaga over Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, Women's Day has no space for Guru Poornima. Just shows why Shiv Sena, Bajrang Dal are still needed!

We shall build good ships here. At a profit - if we can. At a loss - if we must. But always good ships.
- Collis Potter Huntington

Mumbai blasts and the Law of Karma

I'm currently reading the book Aghora: At the left hand of God. This is of course the first in the series of three books that Robert Svoboda wrote on his Aghori Guru.

There was this striking paragraph in the section on Aghoris in which Swami Vimalananda says:

Do you have any idea how many murders occur every minute on the face of the globe. How many raes, how many robberies, lootings, tortures and other heinous crimes? And how many times each second people are cheated, misled, duped, and made fools of? When you try to put it all into perspective, it's all too much; it will frighten you, when you think of the tremendous load of karmas. Once you have Jnana, and you know the consequences of each action, you will be so scared of karma you will think a thousand times before doing anything at all; do deep will be your fear.

But you must go beyond this fear and realize that it is all part of the whole, all moving according to Nature's sublime plan. Every murder, every cruelty has its significance. You must love everything taking place in the Samsara. That doesn't mean you should go out and murder, but you will realize that even murder is just part of the play of the Three Gunas, all due to the Law of Karma, and therefore a part of Nature.

After reading this, I'm wodering how to interpret it in the context of the Mumbai blasts. Probably it means that more than hot pursuit, zero tolerance, etc, we are better-off increasing our quotient of our good Karma. Trust the Universe to deliver us from this terror.

You can’t manage change. You can only be ahead of it. You can only make it.
-Peter Drucker

Perfect weekend?

If you are a Indian sports lover, you would have cherished this weekend, what with action across sports as diverse as soccer to cricket to chess!

• Cricket: Eng-SL - What a match! If England thought they finally have managed to pull one through after making 321, Jayasuriya had other plans. SL made 324 in - hold your breath - 37.3 overs!


• Tennis: Wimbledon - Agassi plays his swansong match, courtesy some excellent tennis by Nadal. The teary farewell Agassi bid was so unlike his earlier dislike for the tournament! So indicatuve of the transformation the man himself has undergone.


• Soccer: World Cup - If the Portugal-Eng match thrilling, the France-Brazil match did not deliver what it had promised. At the end, both the teams I was rooting for ended up loosing :(


• Chess gets its' youngest GM - Parimarjan Negi - all of 13 yrs and 142 days.


• Cricket: Ind-WI - What a come back by India. Just as I'm typing this, they have taken 4 WI second innings wicket at tea on Day 3, WI still 184 runs short. Just look at Harbhajan's figures in 1st innings - 4.3-0-13-5! Must be one of the quickest 5 wicket hauls.


• F1: US GP - Schumacher makes it 4-in-a-row at Indianapolis. However, this time also US GP seemed jinxed, what with 13 drivers retiring!

The sad news this weekend was the death of the eccentric Fred Trueman.

It is those foolish people who identify themselves with their bodies that piteously cry, 'Weak, weak, we are weak'.
-Swami Vivekananda

Code in Kannada!

Students of SJCE, Mysore - with the help of Banavasi Balaga - have come up with a unique idea that has won a prize from Red Hat. Linux in Kannada! This can be a path-breaking initiative.

One of the reasons a lot of bright minds of rural India do not do well professionally well is because of lack of good grasp of English language. People with otherwise good analytical skills get short-changed because of this disadvantage. Rural and underpriviliged India has realized this, and hence the war-cry for making English compulsory from 1st class in Karnataka by oraganizations like Dalita Sangharsha Samiti.

This demand is not without reason. There is no doubt that in the present context to get any kind of entry into the IT field, one needs to be good in English. And every Tom, Dick and Harry in India wants to be in IT field today.

At the same time, I hold the belief that one of the key ingredients for a countries progress is to allow all transactions in their local language. By forcing a foreign language upon people, we are breaking their self-belief. Not surprisingly, most of the richest countries in the world transact in their own language, and most of the poor countries transact in foreign language.

One must read this eye-opening essay by Sankrant Sanu. If anybody still thought that it is because of our "English-speaking skills" that India is able to get the max of globalization, then this should remove any such illusion.

I hope initiatives like this Linux kernel in Kannada will bridge the gap between India's English-speaking elites and the non-English speaking millions. Imagine somebody coding in Kannada using "paTTi -u" rather than "ls -l"!

Avoid all weakness, for weakness is sin, weakness is death.
-Swami Vivekanda