YOUR COUNSELLOR IN DISTRESS. (PUN INTENDED)
Was planning on going to watch Matrix Revolutions with two of my friends (one had gone to write the CAT - but will have to write it again on account of the CAT question paper leak racket) but had to cancel it due to a calf muscle pull in the left leg early today morning. Currently not much is going on in my life. I am reading Amitav Ghosh's The Circle of Reason, about a small boy with a distorted head named Alu, who is adopted by a school master and then the conflicts with the landlord, the frequent clashes, and how deft a weaver he becomes surpassing his mentor to become a talented weaver, and his coming of age before the ensuing violence leads to his fleeing India to a place in Africa called Al Ghazira or something in a ferry. Here he stays with a community of workers at a lady's house who provides support to such displaced people. The only problem is he is taken as a criminal/terrorist and is in the police books; even as a police inspector is sent in to hunt him down. I am midway through the book - looking forward to a adventurous ending to the flawless narrative of Ghosh. But his characters always seem to be poverty struck and hopelessly and distastefully promiscuous... Anyway he writes well and has been consistently doing so - Glass Palace, Shadow Lines, Calcutta Chromosome and now The Circle of Reason. The fourth among many more of his well researched books that I am reading currently. I was reading an article where in the columnist was lamenting on the current consumerist approach and advertising strategies that goes with everything including books and literature - you need a USP to sell your product (Salman R and Taslima N - fatwas, hype and timing for Arundhati Roy - strangely as is quite well known, she hasnt written a single piece of fiction since her first book - she has reached celebrity status overnight)! You need to be glamorous and ready to do some subtle forms of modeling to be there at the top. Is the fact that when you do not reach the top in one way you start doing all kinds of absurd things (M F Hussain's bare foot and Kamala Das turning into Kamala Suraiya - celebrity conversions) or are the artists like any one else to be left with their creative freedom to do as they choose and we need not not meddle and interfere too much. Art's true form exists in the artist's excellence in his work rather than extraneous things to prop up his/her popularity.
Well some questions :
What happens when you find yourself stranded in your life with no clear goals in sight whereas you had great hopes and options earlier, your work life is dull and boring and you have no creative freedom (you leave the job right? but not without an alternative) - depression may set in and mindless thoughts (life is useless and how is a person much less capable and worthy than me succeeding so easily and jealousy and you become irritable and reclusive and unfriendly to people and colleagues at work and feel everyone else is inferior and you are among a bunch of fools) and foolish musings and flights of fantasy and utter chaos reigns; how do you cope with it - 2 ways as usual +ve and -ve.
He may go for advice from elders and other modes such as meditations long walks sports, SUGGESTED READING A LOT OF POSITIVE BOOKS etc etc and put up an aim in life and work toward it. As one of my friends (http://sluggard.rediffblogs.com) put it 'there is no alternative to hard work and without hard work nothing big can be achieved'. But when you start earning does the drive to work hard toward further academic goals drop may be for the lazy guys it does. The negative side effects could be tension, escapism and addiction to harmful products... You can also go insane due to excessive stress caused by mental distress - psychotic
Head for your psychologist and family doctor now ....... !
Everything goes blank before the great event ? Aimless and hopeless you become ?
You have to strive for and get your own salvation ! No one can help you right ?
I was also reading a QA forum at the Vivekananda Ashrama website - where a person has queried that at times he feels he should leave everything and take Sanyas and Vyragya sets in, but then a day later he thinks the whole thing is a foolish thought. He thinks he is moving from Satva(truth) to rajas(worldly). The reply states that the person is basically moving from rajas state to tamas(darkness) state and constant meditation is the key. What you think and contemplate on is what you become.
I was watching an episode of a stunning serial (DD National Wednesdays 10 pm) televised on the works of Kiran Bedi, the Delhi police chief of yore where just because a person informs the police about a murder he finds himself in a hideous net of police extortion and torture where the police unable to capture the real culprits make him confess that he is the murderer (his lawyer is shown as a money hungry man and the judge a foolish person) and he is convicted and when released after three years finds himself in utter poverty. But he says that he gets an offer to do a criminal job, to get the barest minimum for his family but says that he is still contemplating whether to jump down and stoop so low - but the moot question is Law and the legal system and its enforcing agencies that were created to stop such barbaric and criminal activities and minds in turn can churn out such products in the society today; and there the episode ends . . .
Also a good documentary type thing on environmental issues comes up at around 10:30 or 11:00 am on DD National.
And The Open Frame - a series of documentaries by young and budding directors every Sunday at 10:30 pm on the National channel.
Who says Doordarshan has got rotten all over, I still am proud to say I have no cable connection and subsist on the newspapers, the net and the omnipresent (in India at least that is) Doordarshan with its sloppy new News channel. Its no doubt thought-provoking channel, but not without its quota of mindless soaps and sleazy film oriented programs.
Well got you bored and dreary. In the first place I was thinking why did you come here. I wrote a big post after a long time and you say you are getting bugged, you *@#&^$#&# ...
LINUX UPDATE:
Looking forward to the Linux Bangalore conference 02-04 Dec 2003.
And yes the comment boxes (2 of them) are remaining empty nowadays and this is getting me maaaaaaad with rage.... ;-)
Probably the posts are also not coming from my side as regularly as expected - my fault again?.
BLOG UPDATE:
I deleted two joint blogs - one of some of my friends and other of another set of friends 'cause they had become more or less defunct and were not in much use.
Was planning on going to watch Matrix Revolutions with two of my friends (one had gone to write the CAT - but will have to write it again on account of the CAT question paper leak racket) but had to cancel it due to a calf muscle pull in the left leg early today morning. Currently not much is going on in my life. I am reading Amitav Ghosh's The Circle of Reason, about a small boy with a distorted head named Alu, who is adopted by a school master and then the conflicts with the landlord, the frequent clashes, and how deft a weaver he becomes surpassing his mentor to become a talented weaver, and his coming of age before the ensuing violence leads to his fleeing India to a place in Africa called Al Ghazira or something in a ferry. Here he stays with a community of workers at a lady's house who provides support to such displaced people. The only problem is he is taken as a criminal/terrorist and is in the police books; even as a police inspector is sent in to hunt him down. I am midway through the book - looking forward to a adventurous ending to the flawless narrative of Ghosh. But his characters always seem to be poverty struck and hopelessly and distastefully promiscuous... Anyway he writes well and has been consistently doing so - Glass Palace, Shadow Lines, Calcutta Chromosome and now The Circle of Reason. The fourth among many more of his well researched books that I am reading currently. I was reading an article where in the columnist was lamenting on the current consumerist approach and advertising strategies that goes with everything including books and literature - you need a USP to sell your product (Salman R and Taslima N - fatwas, hype and timing for Arundhati Roy - strangely as is quite well known, she hasnt written a single piece of fiction since her first book - she has reached celebrity status overnight)! You need to be glamorous and ready to do some subtle forms of modeling to be there at the top. Is the fact that when you do not reach the top in one way you start doing all kinds of absurd things (M F Hussain's bare foot and Kamala Das turning into Kamala Suraiya - celebrity conversions) or are the artists like any one else to be left with their creative freedom to do as they choose and we need not not meddle and interfere too much. Art's true form exists in the artist's excellence in his work rather than extraneous things to prop up his/her popularity.
Well some questions :
What happens when you find yourself stranded in your life with no clear goals in sight whereas you had great hopes and options earlier, your work life is dull and boring and you have no creative freedom (you leave the job right? but not without an alternative) - depression may set in and mindless thoughts (life is useless and how is a person much less capable and worthy than me succeeding so easily and jealousy and you become irritable and reclusive and unfriendly to people and colleagues at work and feel everyone else is inferior and you are among a bunch of fools) and foolish musings and flights of fantasy and utter chaos reigns; how do you cope with it - 2 ways as usual +ve and -ve.
He may go for advice from elders and other modes such as meditations long walks sports, SUGGESTED READING A LOT OF POSITIVE BOOKS etc etc and put up an aim in life and work toward it. As one of my friends (http://sluggard.rediffblogs.com) put it 'there is no alternative to hard work and without hard work nothing big can be achieved'. But when you start earning does the drive to work hard toward further academic goals drop may be for the lazy guys it does. The negative side effects could be tension, escapism and addiction to harmful products... You can also go insane due to excessive stress caused by mental distress - psychotic
Head for your psychologist and family doctor now ....... !
Everything goes blank before the great event ? Aimless and hopeless you become ?
You have to strive for and get your own salvation ! No one can help you right ?
I was also reading a QA forum at the Vivekananda Ashrama website - where a person has queried that at times he feels he should leave everything and take Sanyas and Vyragya sets in, but then a day later he thinks the whole thing is a foolish thought. He thinks he is moving from Satva(truth) to rajas(worldly). The reply states that the person is basically moving from rajas state to tamas(darkness) state and constant meditation is the key. What you think and contemplate on is what you become.
I was watching an episode of a stunning serial (DD National Wednesdays 10 pm) televised on the works of Kiran Bedi, the Delhi police chief of yore where just because a person informs the police about a murder he finds himself in a hideous net of police extortion and torture where the police unable to capture the real culprits make him confess that he is the murderer (his lawyer is shown as a money hungry man and the judge a foolish person) and he is convicted and when released after three years finds himself in utter poverty. But he says that he gets an offer to do a criminal job, to get the barest minimum for his family but says that he is still contemplating whether to jump down and stoop so low - but the moot question is Law and the legal system and its enforcing agencies that were created to stop such barbaric and criminal activities and minds in turn can churn out such products in the society today; and there the episode ends . . .
Also a good documentary type thing on environmental issues comes up at around 10:30 or 11:00 am on DD National.
And The Open Frame - a series of documentaries by young and budding directors every Sunday at 10:30 pm on the National channel.
Who says Doordarshan has got rotten all over, I still am proud to say I have no cable connection and subsist on the newspapers, the net and the omnipresent (in India at least that is) Doordarshan with its sloppy new News channel. Its no doubt thought-provoking channel, but not without its quota of mindless soaps and sleazy film oriented programs.
Well got you bored and dreary. In the first place I was thinking why did you come here. I wrote a big post after a long time and you say you are getting bugged, you *@#&^$#&# ...
LINUX UPDATE:
Looking forward to the Linux Bangalore conference 02-04 Dec 2003.
And yes the comment boxes (2 of them) are remaining empty nowadays and this is getting me maaaaaaad with rage.... ;-)
Probably the posts are also not coming from my side as regularly as expected - my fault again?.
BLOG UPDATE:
I deleted two joint blogs - one of some of my friends and other of another set of friends 'cause they had become more or less defunct and were not in much use.
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