The last couple of weeks there were a couple of times I ran into an argument on the issue of faith. Both the times, my friends claimed that people in general were losing faith in God because the world as we know it is becoming more unsafe with every passing day. The examples they gave varied from the unknown suicide bomber who might be standing next to you in a crowded bus stop to the monster that is capable of raping 3 year olds. And each of the examples were more horrendous than the other. But, the question that keeps creeping up in my mind is whether the world as a whole is becoming unsafe to live in. Even if that is the case, why do people lose faith in God when most of the reasons for the world being unsafe is manmade? First lets examine if there is any truth in the conclusion about safety.

Everyone of us who live in big cities are worried about a terrorist attack striking us. But, do these terrorist attacks make this world more dangerous than it was at some point in the past? Or, do all these terrorist attacks happen because some people are not happy about the freedom we have or the economic progress we make? But leaving all the moral and political reasoning aside, do these terrorist attacks make this world a dangerous place. Though it may be counter intuitive I personally feel, that the world is now the safest than ever it was in recorded history. When I say dangerous I don't talk about the possibility of physical injury alone.

Today we have institutions in place which keeps in check the forces that are controlling (ruling elite) the world. Think about a world without a UN, or an IAEA. There are the human rights commissions that are fairly independent in the developed countries and to some extent in our country. And today, think about how many people have come out of the hold of caste system by moving to the cities and getting themselves a decent way of life. Some parts of our country is still under the spell of this vicious system which is based on utter nonsense. Today there are more avenues for the common man to express himself, to voice his concerns and demonstrate against the ruling class if need be than ever was.

Coming back to the problems that face us, we have to realise that each one of them is man made. Say if I am from Bihar and I see the sorry state of Bihar under Laloo Yadav. If i feel sad and decide I cannot do anything about it (which may be the case for very many) and expect God to do something about it, its not going to happen. Reason number one, Laloo is a product of a system designed by us. He is a product of a long history of exploitation of one caste by another. Reason number two, by putting the responsibility on God (whose very existence is questioned by a few), we are excusing ourselves of any culpability. In any case, until someone comes around to create an awareness among a critical mass of population, the problems afflicting Bihar will not disappear. And Bihar is just one example. The same reasoning can be applied to most of the man made troubles we might have.

The practice of Sati did not go away until RajaRam Mohan Roy came around to create awareness about this atrocity. Similarly, Mahatma Gandhi created the necessary awareness among the masses about our need for independence. So are the examples of Periyar, Bharatiyar, Jesus, Buddha etc., They all created a mass awareness about a cause and in some cases have tried to show a way to deal with it. Terrorism is again a problem and it has to be dealt with. The cause is human and the one doing it human and I don't see any reason for losing faith in God just because we are not ready to face the problem and deal with it. When i say deal with it I mean to go to the root of the problem and stop the menace from growing. Not nuke all the places that you might think terrorism originates from.

The way I see it, faith in God is on the rise (except maybe western Europe whose population is shrinking anyways). And since most of the problems facing us are human, there is no reason calling GOD to make amends for them. Lets try and do our part to make our system better and leave everything that is not in our hands to GOD.

C Karthikeyan

P.S. My special thanks to Rahul, Subbu and V Karthik for their ideas.

With Tamilnadu General Elections coming up everyone of us will have our own ideas about who should come to power and have our own reasons. My vote in this election goes to JJ. Even though most of us have grown to hate JJ for her high handed approach in almost every sphere of her political life, I would like to see her come back to power for the following reasons.

1. This term has not been as bad as the first one (thought this is not reason enough for her returning to power).
2. The strong action she took against the Government employees for going on a strike (though my opinion can be controvertible, i was impressed to see that she means business. Its a different issue that it backfired badly and she reverted most of her decisions.) ( I find it unfathomable when professors and bank employees go on a strike when their pay is pretty decent compared to the other Govt employees and if i am not wrong the fifth pay commission increased the professors base pay a lot (if some one knows better please post your comments)).
3. The DMK has started to act like a dynasty, as if ruling Tamil Nadu is their birth right just like the Nehru family of Congress. (This in any way does not mean I support the BJP, its a party that is just as detestable as the Congress if not more). Here is an anectode to show the thinking within the DMK family. When i was in india in summer, Dayanithi Maran came on NDTV profit for an interview. When asked about something related to doing more on some sector, he told that the Indian public is very greedy and how much ever they are given, they ask for more. Amazing it was to see an elected MP talk about the people who elected him like this. For a minute take the public out and put in begger, it would make a lot of sense. Moreover Karunanidhi might retire from active politics anytime soon and I don't think Stalin is good enough to be a CM (personal opinion). JJ is a first timer in Politics and after her someone else from a different family will take over AIADMK.
4. Inspite of all the corruption, she has brought in more investment into the state. Everyone will agree that Chennai is one of the most happening places in terms of investments (though one can argue that this is inspite of JJ being in power, not because she is in power.)

http://www.fdimagazine.com/news/fullstory.php/aid/1489/ASIAN_CITIES___REGIONS_OF_THE_FUTURE_2005_06.html

Here is an article that shows TN's place as an FDI destination.
5. She took some bold decisions by bringing in the anti-conversion law and law on animal sacrifice. (this is a highly controversial decision and she did back off.)
6. She is dead against the LTTE (we can sympathize with the Srilankan Tamils, but not with LTTE and its ways).
7. Any power that can keep the PMK in check is absolutely welcome. The worst thing that has happened to TN is the PMK. Instead of doing what is required for the state, these guys go around moral policing in the state. From tamil names to Tamil movies ( i don't get the logic, if i am producer and i invest in making a product, i should have the right to name it in whatever way that will help me market my product better. After all the investments, if i have to follow some idiots diktat to name my product.......i don't understand) to talking about safe sex to smoking on screen to creating problems in screening of a Rajini's film to clashing with vijayakanth they are more interested in gaining political mileage by targeting the film industry. Although most parties do caste based politics, this is one party which is primarily based on caste.
8. JJ is the only politician i have seen who is not taking the issue of TAMIL, TAMIL MAKKAL (tamil people) , TAMIL INAM(tamil race) , TAMIL PANPADU (tamil culture), blah..blah..blah... to gain political advantage. In that respect she is far better than most of the scum that make up the political spectrum in TN.

These are reasons enough for JJ returning to power. This does not mean that JJ is the best CM to happen for TN, rather she is just a lesser evil. If one of you guys have a differing opinion and reasons for them, please write in your comments.

C Karthikeyan

Amongst the four dravidian languages (tamil, telugu, kannada and malayalam) which one was the first to be patronized,
There is an old tamil aphorism,
"Kal thondri man thondra kalathae mun
thondri mutha kudi thamizh kudi"
(Before rocks and stones, before mud
was born a race, the thamizh race)..

speaks volumes of the age of the language. These kind of writings may be misleading. These may be only to eulogise the language or more so to spread the language amongst the people. Its been said that tamizh is the oldest and purest of the dravidian languages. It may be true that it had its own literature (esp the sangam literature) which stood firm even while the vedic literature was dominating other pre-aryan literatures in other languages. The sangam literature dates back to 500 AD when the eight-tu-thogai ( 8 collections) and the pathu-p-paatu (10 Idyls) along with the athi-chu-vadi which laid the grammar for the languages. It is important to note here that even though the last of the four vedas in sanskrit was itself complete by the 10th century BC, it was difficult to converse and a lot of modifications had to be done. The Buddists were the first to branch off from prakrit (the language resulting from the mix up between sanskrit and dravidian languages) and re-christen them into pali. By the time of 600-1000 AD prakrit was the base for churning out a number of indo-aryan languages (Amongst them is Hindi, the national language of India). During this phase between 500AD-1000AD when the indo-aryan languages were born, thamizh was more or less steady. It is also well known that thamizh is the only language which has not borrowed from sanskrit.

Kannada has literature which dates back to 700 AD. A lot of bits and pieces information is only available of the origin of the language and the dates that come along with it. The kannada speaking belt was concentrated more towards present day karnataka and a significant population drifted across to maharashtra as well. But the language was unable to spread beyond karnakata primarily because of its topography. They were being drifted off or pushed out from the north by the aryan-marathi and had innumerable conquests from the tamizh cholas who wanted to spread their own philosophy. Even today a number of other languages like thulu, konkini use kannada scripts and owe their existence to kannada.

The last of the four vedas mentions the name of "Andhra" in its writings meaning to present day Andhra Pradesh. This was around 700 BC. But the actual script came centuries later around 1000 AD mostly influenced by kannada. Telugu initially borrowed from sanskrit and later developed its own dictionary with a strong kannada influence. Usually termed " Italian of the East" for its very mellifluous words, it became quickly attractive for literature and classical music. Innumerable literature and huge classical compositions have always been its forte and helped to grow the language (or has it ??)
Present day, telugu is demographically widely spoken dravidian language and the second most spoken language in India (After Hindi).

Tamil Politicians today wrongly claim that tamil is the truest and purest of the Dravidians. In fact those people who claim this are infact are from other languages. Look at the people who arose to power and have become successful chief ministers in Tamil Nadu M Karunanidhi and Annadurai (Both telugu), Jayalalitha (Half Kannada/Half tamil), MG Ramachandran (Malayalam) and the list goes onn.

How has telugu spread into Thamizh Nadu to this extent ? It is said that 30% of the population in Chennai are telugu speaking people?? How did this happen ???
Coming Next ...

RAGHU

Here are some thoughts for the weekend to munch. Before we all get gung ho about the rapid strides Indian economy is making, let us try to be a little objective. I am happy about what is happening in the service sector though in its current form it is only for the UEM (urban, educated, middle class). But, as a lot of commentators have pointed out there is the other India that has been left untouched. Here is an article which throws in a different perspective about the reform process right now.

http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20060105&fname=prashant&sid=1

He talks about the misplaced priorities of our politicians, who in their zeal to open up the economy don't think about the really important and immediate concerns. Talking about misplaced priorities, Chandrababu Naidu comes to mind. The self-proclaimed CEO of Andhra Pradesh, who in his burning desire to project himself to be the most hip of CMs failed to do even the most basic of duties as a CM. This is the guy who was going around to bring the F1 Formula racing to Hyderabad when farmers in his state were committing suicide in the tens of thousands. Probably he didn't realize that the much publicized video conferencing he had with the district collectors was to prevent something like this from happening through faster access t0 and dissemination of information from across the state, instead of showing off infront of the cameras and discussing about the latest Balakrishna movie.

On a lighter note, this is a question that has been nagging me for quite sometime. The question goes something like this. Why is it that among homo sapiens (i.e., us) a fellow being from the opposite sex has to be hot while one from the same sex has to be cool? Is it because we see the physical attributes of the opposite sex, but with the same sex we see the attitude (unless of course you spend most of your time in the closet). But then, why associate hot with body and cool with attitude. can someone throw some light?

Another very interesting thing i came across this week is about Zoroastrianism. We all know about devas and asuras. According to our mythology, devas are the good ones and asuras are the demons. It will be interesting to know that all the stuff in our mythology are not myths after all. Apparently, the people of ancient Persia were called asuras and the people in our side were the suras. And in ancient times, asuras were actually equated with good things just like the devas. But over time, the devas got predominance in the religious scheme of things and asuras were made to be demons. Guess what, the persians had the same idea, but in the other way. In their scheme of things, Ahura ( this is how they call asuras) are the deities and Daevas (devas) are the demons. Talk about perspective.

C Karthikeyan

In an article on Building a Learning Organization, David Garvin speaks about how inspite of investing a lot of money on Continuous Improvement programs by businesses, most of them fail. This according to him is because of rigidity of the organizations, which are not able to unlearn some of the stuff they have learnt over the years when they were successful. And, when the going gets tough, these organizations try to apply the same rules in a different game. As they invest more on the improvement programs, without unlearning or begininning to open up to radically new ideas, they only become adept at applying the old rules more efficiently, which take them nowhere.

The psychologists term it as conditioning. I am sure everyone of us have read about Pavlov's experiment with his dogs. Just as the dogs were conditioned to react in a particular way to a particular situation, out reactions to most of our daily situations doesn't say much about ourselves. Do we condition ourselves to react in a particular way for any given situation? Our reaction might not be as simple as that of a dog's, its still a reaction nevertheless. Or, do we think about stuff rationally before coming up with conclusions? I believe not many of us fall into this category. Isn't David Garvin taking about the Pavlovian Behavior, but with respect to an organization?

Physicists term this as inertia. Inertial force can be a very powerful one. I for one know personally, what it can do? Its again the same when you think about it. We have our own set of ideas and notions about things. Whatever new situation might come up, we try to come up with an explanation that satisfies all the axioms that we might have. If we further think about this, any natural phenomena becomes supernatural when we don't have an explanation. Again, when a person does something that defies logic, he is either elevated to the level of God (this still happens in our country) or ostracized. It takes a whole lot of effort to break out of the ideas that we have. Or is it just the enery required to come out of our mental inertia? Isn't David Garvin talking about the same Inertia that might have built up in an organization.

Most Eastern philosophies talk about this in one form or the other. Take our own aphorism,

'Aynthil valaiyathathu Aymbathil valaiyuma'
'That which doesn't bend at 5 won't bend at 50'

'Thottil pazhakam sudu kadu mattum'
'Old habits die hard'

Isn't this the same principle that David Garvin is talking about? We can again call this inertia or conditioning or whatever one might come up with. Isn't it interesting to note that everything is the same though we call it by different names. Wait, am i talking about Inertia or GOD? If we can have so many names for a force like inertia and see it in so many different forms, how do we even try to package GOD within one religion or one form and fight over it? Think about it.

I don't have enough time to post all my thoughts. Will post the remaining in the next post.

C Karthikeyan

This is my first post. I would be posting regularly from now on. Though had the idea of doing this for sometime now, it required a New Year and one of the resolutions we take every year to push me into doing it. I intend to record my thoughts which vary from mundane stuff to outright controversial.

My New Year began with calling home and friends around the globe, wishing them a happy and successful newyear. But then, more than a happy and successful newyear, what everyone will be hoping for this New Year would be a peaceful and safe one. 2005 had been quite eventful, to put it mildly, with both Nature and man trying to out do each other to inflict as much pain and suffering as possible. Though its said we can do little (though i believe we can do much by cutting down our energy consumption and being conscious about our environment) with Nature's fury, think about the kind of atrocities that are being committed across the world in the name of Civilization and Freedom. I leave this topic for another day, but think about one of our very ancient mantras and its profound meaning. It can only make you proud that our fore-fathers have had such an open mind and attitude towards life. More than me saying, just ponder over this.


Sahanaa Vavatu
Om Saha Naavavatu Saha Nau Bhunaktu
Saha Veeryam Karavaavahai.
Tejasvi Naavadheetamastu
Om Shaantih Shaantih Shaantih.


May the Lord protect us together.
May he nourish us together.
May we work together uniting our strength for the good of humanity.
May our learning be luminous and purposeful.
May we never hate one another.
May there be peace, peace, and perfect peace.

Karthikeyan C