Pick up my Guitar and play

These are heady days….days of especially headstrong winds of change…..not least because they affect me….or better, affect the few avenues in the labyrinth of the world that concern me.
The world of humans is a bizarre place…by far the most intricate and multi-faceted , yet outrageously wasteful biological , socio-cultural and technological ecosystem of all species , meant ultimately , only to sustain that Darwinian rat race called survival.
Morality….theology….art…culture….all radically different from that crazy little helix that works ceaselessly, mindlessly ; ensconced in its little cell….yet ultimately lies at the heart of all creation…be it biological or otherwise.
At certain times…one , each with a set of impoverished 46 XX or XY , is wont to feel distant and aloof….a tiny fragment amidst matters of far greater importance.
Yet at other times one feels at the centre of it all, and why not…if the universe (by which I mean the memetic universe of man , not the cosmic one) is infinite , then each of us is at the centre…the veritable arachnid from which a vast web stretches out…each move of the spider, shaking even the most distant strings…..and conversely…any influence , even on the furthest edges , transmitted to the inhabitant in the centre.

I sit beside the fire and think
Of all that I have seen,
Of meadow flowers and butterflies
In summers that have been.

I sit beside the fire and think
Of how the world shall be,
When winter comes without a spring
That I shall never see.

For there are so many things
That I have never seen,
In every wood, in every spring,
There is a different green.

I sit beside the fire and think
Of people long ago,
And people who will see a world
That I shall never know.

As people would have me believe…..these are the days of history making presidents …. upheavals …… markets …computers ….some say days of terror…some say days that are better.
I wonder…if the sum total of all this…..makes my life happier…and then I smirk. Happiness indeed !!! What on earth was I thinking.
At most times I was wont to be Benjamin the donkey….remember…. “Windmill , or no windmill ; life will go on exactly like it has , and that is…badly.”

I can already discern someone making eyes at me…. “Sour Puss” was it ?...or perhaps “little piece of sunshine”….but little hobbits who sway between “Tookishness” and “Bagginsism” can hardly be blamed.

Barack Obama is already my favourite political personality , at least among the ones that I have heard of till date….and this because of one statement of his -
“Given the increasing diversity of America’s population, the dangers of sectarianism have never been greater. Whatever we once were, we are no longer just a Christian nation; we are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, a Buddhist nation, a Hindu nation, and a nation of nonbelievers.”
Religion and God , I fear (indeed I know) will not die away till the last human on earth ceases his miserable breathing. However there is some hope that in the future there may yet be a day where such outrightly ridiculous, unscientific and delusional affiliations would be limited to a purely personal level….or at the very least , that they may be completely segregated from the administrative , logistic , professional and social commitments required of an individual as part of a community or a state.
In other words….the day when any proforma for personal particulars / bio data ceases to have a column titled “Religion”.
Maybe my hopes are too premature and ultimately misplaced…yet such words from a political statesmen are music to the ears…that have grown accustomed to holier than thou eulogizing by all and sundry.

Well , people tell me that we’re in the midst of a recession….the greatest economic meltdown in three quarters of a century. Companies declare bankruptcy , and masses of people all of a sudden find themselves out of a job …. I am mighty unschooled in markets and such things but one thing which always struck me , whether it be recession or a global economic boom is that, after all isn’t there only so much to go around. How long can a community subsist on writing programs , creating softwares , building computers , evading taxes ( and helping others do the same) and investing resources (what these may be I cannot fathom) to generate so called wealth out of sheer nothingness it would seem (or is it). Everything about the ‘markets’ seems a basic violation of the principles of thermodynamics to an unschooled person like me. Earth…wood…water…and stock….are after all limited…and at most times Malthus makes total sense….they cannot live forever, can they ???
(Shyam , if you read this…please explain).

These days , every few months , it would seem ; the snooty upmarket urban Indian is shocked…….when his own security and survival flashes before his eyes. The last such was when smoke and flame bellowed from the famous turrets of the Taj Hotel. An unquestionably barbaric act……but then you do not expect anything else from individuals who have ceased to acknowledge the principles that form the foundation stones for human civilization. However if the act per say was villainous , the knee jerk reaction that followed was downright absurd.
And at the head of it all was that all-powerful social virus of the technological age – the media. The Indian Media – and its cumulative single mindedly dastardly whorehouse , has made a mockery of all possible norms of ethics, honesty and value systems , never better borne out than in their actions during and succeeding the Mumbai horror.
The media….print or electronic…hardly ever gives you what you should hear…it doesn’t even give you what you want to hear. What it dishes out is a dangerously potent cocktail, meant simply to arouse passions at the expense of any kind of logic or scientific reason. It eats into society like a canker ….dividing it regionally , communally , economically , professionally , linguistically and in every other divisive nature possible ; with one and only one objective : to strengthen its own self and make itself indispensable to the masses. The basic behavioral pattern of selfishness and self above all else is epitomized by the media , ironically a system that is supposed to be working for the masses irrespective of bias or prejudice.
Nothing or no one creates more unrest in the society than the media….neither violent acts of terror , nor controversial movies , nor vitriolic comments made by random individuals….but the manner in which the same are processed, packaged and fed to the unsuspecting crowd in a maliciously ingenius honey coated psycho-toxin.
Facts of any kind are conspicuous by their absence, and what emerges is a garbled up fictitious account more suited to the desks of B grade movie scriptwriters. The other thing the media breeds is decadence and phobia…and worst of all by proffering its own ‘shining’ example encourages an ignorance of basic scientific norms , in exchange for outrightly ridiculous and atavistic mumbo-jumbo.
So much for the media , it is of course an accepted bed-fellow of the highest bidder……what of the rest…. People held hands…..held up posters….lit candles ( a novelty in the Indian context….can anything we do for once cease to be inspired from films.)….and retired into the comfort of their homes.

But from where I stand….ol’ Pete was dead right -

The change, it had to come
We knew it all along
We were liberated from the fold, that's all
And the world looks just the same
And history ain't changed
'Cause the banners, they are flown
In the next war

I'll tip my hat to the new constitution
Take a bow for the new revolution
Smile and grin at the change all around
Pick up my guitar and play
Just like yesterday
Then I'll get on my knees and pray
We don't get fooled again.

There's nothing in the streets
Looks any different to me
And the slogans are replaced, by-the-bye
And the parting on the left
Are now parting on the right
And the beards have all grown longer overnight

I'll tip my hat to the new constitution
Take a bow for the new revolution
Smile and grin at the change all around
Pick up my guitar and play
Just like yesterday
Then I'll get on my knees and pray
We don't get fooled again