Every moment of Life is beautiful, live to the fullest.

I get amused whenever I see people who try to save every paisa they earn and end up missing the moments they live in. I am amazed by their belief and confidence that sacrificing this moment would make things better for the future. And in most cases those things generally turn out to be pretty materialistic and even worse when they arrive at that futuristic point, they would have turned their attention to something even more futuristic and missing the moment again.

Though I have come across many of that sort, I got totally pissed off last week when one of my friends avoided eating out just because it is costly. The costly dinner came out to $12 per head which amounts not even to 0.33 % of his monthly income. Of course he knew that it would be coming around that range only. This act of alone didn't force me to write this post, but a series of quite silly acts. For instance, he didn't want to travel 3 extra miles in the car for getting fresh vegetables, worse he consoled himself that a week old (believe even more) dry Spinach was fresh indeed. There are many more and I don't want to waste my time prodding into everyone of them deeply.

I am not against the habit of saving, it is a quality which all of us must develop. I believe we, Indians, are masters in the act of savings. These days, maybe I am seeing it now only, I see lot of people trying to hoard every single rupee the earn. They don't mind missing out beautiful places, events, parties, even good food, in short to be miserable in all aspects of life just for the sake of saving.

That made me wonder what the hell are they saving for? Because most people of these sort, I have come across, don't come from poor families but from families which have a decent standard of living and some wealth. When you dig a bit deeper, you could see Indians save for 3 important things,

1. Buying a house. Perfectly right, Home sweet home. Having one's own home will give a sense of satisfaction, especially when you live in it. But is everybody buying a home which is affordable?

Not quite so, they invest in a house in a busy or posh area of the city which will make both husband and wife pursue on their jobs under all circumstances for repaying the loan. As a result they fail to spend quality time among themselves and their kids, worse in many cases they don't even understand their kids. When at last they settle, life would have passed along and in some instances there are some irreparable damage in the families.

And one thing which I constantly hear when discussing this topic is that this is the best form of investment and security.

I haven't seen many who sell their homes when in times of need, I have seen only homes bequeathed from parents to Children.

2. Buying and hoarding gold saying it's the best form of security. Passing it from generation to generation and also continue the process of removing credit from the system and keeping it safe in bank lockers. This is worser than the first one because in the first one you at least get something tangible but this one is something absurd.

3. Marriages - The amount of money people invest in marriages is something which is so big these days. In most of the cases the entire family of the bride will be nervous, tensed and anxious that the marriage should go smoothly, in the process missing out to enjoy the occasion. The occasion for which the bride's parents should have started saving from the day the girl was born. Isn't it absurd that you spend all your life saving for an occasion and not able to enjoy it when it comes. Do we really need such big marriages? Can't we make them simpler and more happier? For these days, the photographer has made marriages a kind of civic ceremony, a place which is meant for shaking hands and giving pose to the photo with an smile which turns out to be artificial on many occasions.

On a lighter note, I would like to have my marriage where people come, sit down and chat among themselves about whatever they want. Whereas me and my better part will move across the entire hall meet up with people, have a lively chat and move on. Would it be better?

These 3 things I won't say aren't worth spending the way we are doing right now.

In Tamil, we have a saying, "நாய் பெற்ற தெங்கம்பழம் போல" literally translated becomes, "Just like a coconut in the hands of a dog.". What it actually means is that a Dog cannot eat a Coconut but it simply won't accept it, instead it will keep on rolling the coconut and carry with it to everywhere it goes. Neither the coconut nor the dog's time end up being useful.

Makkale there are many beautiful things out there which are not worth sacrificing for these three. Do go and chill out at times.

Why blog?

On 6th of December, I was driving back from Jersey City to Delaware, I realized that on this very day 17 years ago Babri Masjid which was just a centre of controversy, to become a scar on the face of India. My first thought was to check Google news, as soon as I get home, to make sure there was no bomb blast or a heinous act like that. The barbaric act of Dec 6 has caused irreparable damage to the Secularism of India, widened the Hindu - Musilm divide and has made more people become religious fanatics. It might take decades, might be even centuries for India to shed off the scars and move on.

The scar would have not been this deepr had the Government acted sensibly, instead it choose to be a mute specator and every Indian Citizen is paying for it. To this day nobody have been indicted for the carnage which happened in Ayodhya, doubt whether it would ever happen. After all it took 17 years for Justice Liberhan to submit his detailed report to the Government. Worse still only an unofficial leak prompted the Government, which was skeptical, to release the report.

I was actually thinking of writing a detailed post on the Liberhan Commission, howeversome Vidial work, my friends birthday bumps and plans for India return kept me occupied a bit. However there were some questions lingering in the corner of my mind like, why do I need to write it. What is the effect of writing it? Is it going to change anything? and a lot more.
These days, I often get questions like this, though it dissuades me from writing at times, it does gives me some different perspective and also help me in brooding over the topic a little deeper.

Hence I don't try to restrain it, doing so would be .

Ok, lets come to the questions? Why blog?

The primary urge for blogging is not just for others to read, it's actually a vent in this busy world when we are not able to share our thoughts with anybody. I don't care whether it creates a profound impact on people, it's just that writing a blog takes some weight of your mind and you can move on thinking about various other issues.

One more reason is that only when I decided to write over an issue I start thinking about it deeply, try to find out the facts, perspectives, reasons, etc. It is indeed a bad practice, for this should happen irrespective of what I am going to do, ofcourse I am not Mr.Perfect however I would like to mend my ways.

Blogs also serve us a way to communicate with people who can understand what you think and the people like that cannot you generally live with. I do have lot of friends but not everybody see things from their own planes and is rare to find a person in your plane. You can always talk, discuss and argue with people having different perspectives, but talking with a person in a different plane is rarely productive.

Also I am just a spectator in this world and rarely do things which can do good to people. Though I don't have the guts to go out and play, I atleast don't want to be a mute spectator. The most important duty of the spectator is to cheer around, shout and support his team which would effectively improve the performance of the team. That's why in all major sports, teams carve to play at home, for the effect which spectators can bring in you might be the difference in winning and losing. This is one place which doesn't make me a mute spectator.

To conclude blogging is something which brings better things out of me and I am sorry for you if you are reading this post, my rants will continue. :)

Love for Words

I am one among the thousands from Tamil Nadu who is neither fluent in my mother tongue Tamil or the tongue which gives me work, English. We can say that it is insanity as well as a boon that we were introduced to the language of English right from our Kindergarden, a language which is still as alien to me as it was when I read "Tiger Tiger burning bright", the first poem whose meaning I could comprehend a bit when I read it for the first time. Coming back to the topic, it was good that we were taught English in Tamil during our Kinder Garden which is the best way initially, teaching a new tongue through a known tongue, but bad that it was the same way we were taught over our entire schooling.

The main problem in dealing with English among of us is the dogma imbibed deep within us which proclaims, "English is one of the toughest things to learn and is complex". When this mindset is set in each and every child right from their infancy, it is no wonder that we struggle to learn the basics lest alone think about mastering the language. I cannot see when we can remember the lyrics of hundreds of songs still vividly though it has been years since we heard them, why cannot we remember words and grammar provided we have the passion for it.

I can say with confidence and shame that I cannot express / write what I feel using either English or Tamil alone. Vocabulary is something extremely important for expressing yourself in any language and if I look back and recollect the new words I have learnt after 5th standard has been extremely low. Though I have thought about this on number of occasions since College I have never taken sincere, sustained efforts. I need to thank my Appa for the decent grammar he has taught which had made me survive with a very mediocre vocabulary.
I appreciated the beauty of Tami for the first time when I was in College asked me whether I have ever paid attention to the lyrics of இளைய நிலா பொழிகிறதே.

These two verses in that song made me go on a high, which I believe I would have reached with a snort. (I have never taken a snort :-( ).

"வரும் வழியில் பனி மழையில்
பருவ நிலா தினம் நனையும்
முகிலெடுத்து முகம் துடைத்து
விடியும் வரை நடை பழகும்"

"முகிலினங்கள் அலைகிறதே
முகவரிகள் தொலைந்தனவோ
முகவரிகள் தவறியதால்
அழுதிடுமோ அது மழையோ"

I don't want to translate this to English and make these beautiful lyrics awful. These words made me realize that I have been living in a different world altogether, a world which was too machine like. These lines are something which I would say symbolize creativity, the feeling which has the power to move the world and is moving the world. From there on I started reading more and more especially Tamil which I have neglected for years. I started not just loving, but discovering more thoughts, perspectives in books. This was how my love for Tamil began, a tard too late, which took about 17 years after my birth. And it is no exaggeration that this discovery has turned my life upside down, I am indebted to Kani for his question.

English was something which I loved in School, think I can attribute a variety of reasons for why I loved the language. One of the primary reasons is that I was fascinated by the language right from the day my Amma made me showed a piece of Calvin and Hobbs in the Sunday edition of The Hindu during my secondary school. My fascination to English is akin to that of my fascination towards Wine.

As am sipping some Red wine and writing this blog, I laugh at myself about the delusions I had regarding wine. I believed wine as concentrate of the grape juice, like the Grape juice which Amma used to make, until I first tasted Golconda, the most common wine you get in India, at Thiruvanmayur. My first glass (actually not glass, but the usual plastic disposable cup) was a bitter experience, I didn't like the sour taste of it and moreover it crashed all the dreams I had about wine. However after coming to Delaware I slowly started appreciating the beauty of wine and do take it regularly. I realized slowly that wine is not just made from grapes alone but from variety of berries and fruits just like English which is not for elite alone.

It was in the Palani hostel I winked for the first time on the beauty of English. It was one of those golden days when we were putting vetti mokkai at Room 212 (Think the room number is right), Peter (aka Vivek) explained the beauty of the word Laconic, a word which got it's name from the place called Laconia of ancient Greece. The legend mentioned in Norman Lewis's Word Power made easy (Never completed beyond 3 chapters in that) says an army camped on the outskirts of Laconia and sent out a messenger to the King of Laconia asking him to surrender. The messenger came to the court room and said, "If we capture you, we will destroy the city, kill all the men, will take your children, women, etc". The King of Laconia replied with a typical wit of a Spartan, "What if". And from then on Laconic was used to symbolize short and crisp language with wits. This word hit a spark in me and wherever I come across a new word I try to identify the origin of the word which has become a favorite past time of mine.

So why do we need to care about these words be it any language? Language has been one of the most beautiful inventions of mankind, just imagine a world without language. Certainly it wont be a world of void but without it we would not have progressed so much. It is the tool with which we convey and obtain our feelings, need, knowledge across centuries and millenia, things upon which the entire world moves on. Had it not been for lanugage human civilisation would take countless more millenia to reach the stage we are in.

I know that I cannot neither do I have the desire to be fluent in English like what .Higgins in My Fair Lady or like Kamal Hassan in Tamil, but I believe before I breath my last I can say proudly that I made every effort to learn and appreciate the beauty of Tamil and English.

And finally the thing which triggered this post was the explanation regarding the Orgin of the Word Sincere by Professor Langdon in Dan Brown's lost symbol.

Sin-cere - Since the days of Michelangelo, sculptors had been hiding the flaws in their work by smearing hot wax into the cracks and then dabbing the wax with stone dust. The method was considered cheating, and therefore, any sculpture “without wax”—literally sine cera—was considered a “sincere” piece of art. The phrase stuck. To this day we still sign our letters “sincerely” as a promise that we have written “without wax” and that our words are true.

I am an avid fan of Dan Brown not just because of his plots but the details which is giving in his books regarding language and arts, I am thinking of writing a separate post regarding Dan Brown in near future.

And the rant ends here for now

PS: You may ask, "Why the hell you are typing this blog in English". Two reasons, I do blog in Tamil once in a blue moon, I am still poor in typing and spelling. Hoping to blog in a frequency in Tamil also.