The Hidden Eye

Recently i read in Renu's blog that when one goes to a shopping mall or any other public place and finds out that some hidden camera is watching us, one remains more cautious of one's actions. One avoids doing something wrong. The cameras act as deterrent. She further wrote that if we realise that there is an eye which is constantly watching us, the world will be much nicer a place. Yes that is true.

The picture given below was received in my mail and is supposed to have been taken by some space camera. It may be that of some phenomena in the space. But to me it looks like God's eye which is watching us all the time from above. What is your opinion ??.

New Year Wishes

About ten years back I could never think of diverting the same card that I received from some of my friends on New year, Diwali or any other such festival to another one by just rubbing off ink where the name of the sender was written and putting my own in that place. We do that now with e-cards and call it mail forward. In fact those days our cards were our precious possessions which were kept displayed for a few days or weeks and were preserved subsequently for a few months after the event. I used to display them according to their get up, ie., the official ones in my office, which mostly included the cards from my Army friends carrying formation signs or insignias of various military units and establishments. These went with office décor. The cards which came from civilian friends were more colourful and carried different types of pictures and prints. Those generally found place in our drawing room, on the corner tables, side boards, bookshelf tops etc and if the number was more then they were perched on top of the pelmets too. Some of them were so unique and rich in design and print that I have kept them as collection items. With the advent of Internet and mobile phones, the number of cards that we receive now has depleted considerably but the wishing has not stopped. Rather in some cases it has increased threefold i.e., to the same person we wish first by SMS, next by Internet and finally by telephone or in person, depending on his/her location. So here I am using the Internet mode to wish you all a very happy and prosperous new year.

Faith or Superstition ??

There is a thin line between faith and superstition. In this land of diverse religions and cultures, one man's faith is likely to be another one's superstition. Most of our religious practices and rituals are purely based on mythology. Most of the mythological stories, which we have learnt from our parents and teachers or from our books about our gods and goddesses, are devoid of all logic and reasoning.

It took a small girl of fifth standard to ask her mother that if King Kansa (the maternal uncle of Lord Krishna) had come to know that he will be killed by the progeny of his sister Devki then why did he put her and her husband Vasudev in the same prison. The mother told her to shut up. But when she repeated the same question to her teacher at the school, she got the reply that "during those days no copulation was required to produce children".

As children, we have lots of questions to ask, but over the years, as we grow, we tread along the beaten track and in turn our thinking gets so conditioned that we ask no more questions. Moreover since those stories, characters and rituals are connected to the faith of many people, we avoid asking questions, lest we may hurt some one's religious feelings.

The characters and incidents mentioned in our epics are so weird that one is forced to believe that their authors must have used a great sense of imagination to make them more interesting and readable. After a few centuries or so, our offspring may be told that an angel walked this earth between 1869 and 1948, in flesh and blood who, without firing or throwing a single projectile, drove away his enemy -- the white demons -- who had deceitfully and forcefully occupied his motherland and ruled over it for more than three hundred years. Well, while that is a reality, most likely in times to come, the story of Mahatma Gandhi may be presented by some author or a film maker by adding such special effects that the readers or the viewers will be forced to believe that he was the reincarnation of God. Already a feature film has been successfully made where the Mahatma appears as a hallucination, whenever the hero remembers him. That is exactly how the gods and goddesses are believed to have appeared before their devotees, whenever the latter were in trouble and prayed for help. Though the makers of 'Lage Raho Munna Bhai' have made a successful attempt to tickle the funny bone of the audience, but somewhere between the lines they have tried to drive home the point that our gods are in our minds. We can get their guidance whenever we desire so from the core of our hearts. The God is in fact our conscience.

While it is a fact that if two persons think, there is bound to be some difference of opinion, because if everybody thinks alike then no one thinks enough, but at the same time it also gives rise to controversies which some how, we Indians love. The moment some controversy -- religious, political or social one -- surfaces, the whole country erupts into war of words. One contentious song or a dialogue in a movie, a statement in a book, a painting by some artist, or an action by the Government, different groups pounce on the occasion to extract different derivatives as per their selfish interests i.e., the vote banks for the politicians, rioting and communal disharmony for the disruptive forces, loot and arson for the hooligans and above all the viewership for the Television Channels.

One such dispute doing the rounds these days is about the Ram Setu or the Adam's Bridge. The bridge is an extension of the two mainlands of India and Sri Lanka in form of small narrow strip of land stretching across Palk Straits in the Indian Ocean. Government of India wants to create a passage through the said strip to make way for the ships which, while travelling between east and west coasts, have to skirt around Sri Lanka due to want of such passage at present, spending much more fuel as well as time. However, a group of people are vehemently resisting such efforts because they feel that this extension is not a natural phenomena, but is a religious monument, which was built by Lord Ram with the help of 'Vanar Sena' (the monkey force) to cross over to Sri Lanka. They feel that the Government's action would destroy this monument and in turn, would hurt the sentiments of some people.

In my opinion, if Lord Ram was to resolve this dispute today, given the sense of sacrifice and justice that he exhibited in his every action, he would have ordered the same 'vanar sena' who built the bridge, to create the passage through the Setu for the Ships to pass, because that is the need of the hour. Lord Ram's purpose of building the bridge was served, the moment he crossed over to Sri Lanka and freed his wife from Ravan's captivity.

Let us give due respect to each other's faith, but let us also be careful that the maintenance of such faith does not harm others or it does not come in the way of doing something good for the mankind.




Notice the thin line under the water, joining the two mainlands of India on the right and Sri Lanka on the left. That is Adam's Bridge or the Ram Setu, stretching across 30 kilometers. The picture was taken by NASA satellite

Big or Small

Yesterday one of my assistants came to me with a complaint that all the staff working under him do not produce the same result in their day-to-day work. I told him that all the fingers in the hand are not equal so he should handle each one according to his/her capabilities. As I was speaking this sentence I had raised my hand to show him the five fingers and after he had gone I was still looking at my raised palm. As I unintentionally folded my hand with all the fingers joined together I noticed that though they were not equal in length yet the fingers promptly came together and made a bowl giving the impression that their length was absolutely as per the requirement. As I further bent the fingers I noticed that all the four fingers made a fist with the edges of the nails and the knuckles aligned in a straight line. I imagined that if our fingers were of equal length we would never have been able to grip any thing properly and also we would have never made a proper fist.

This is also true to the real life. All of us are not endowed with equal talent. There are certainly some qualities in some, which are missing in others. This reminds me of a very interesting story which was doing the rounds on the net a few days back. A merchant used to take some articles from his village to sell in the market. These were filled in two containers loaded on a camel’s back with each container hanging on either side. On his way back he would fill the containers with water which was scarce in his own village. One of the two containers was old and worn out and had a few small holes in its bottom and therefore some amount of water would invariably leak out on the way. After some time people going that way noticed that beautiful plants had come up all along the narrow barren path. They wondered as to how was that possible when there was no one to water and take care of them. They did not know that the merchant who used to bring back the water in his two containers had sown these plants all along the way on the side on which the broken container was loaded on the camel’s back. Since he knew that he could not change the worn out container, he made full use of it by watering the plants on his way back from the market.

We all are cracked containers having some weakness or the other. We are the small pieces who go on to fill the Big Puzzle. The pieces have to adjust to the dimensions of each other to make the puzzle complete. So let us work in harmony and work for the betterment of the mankind without feeling big or small.