Life-en-treats

I am reading the Vigyan Bhairav Tantra and an introduction to it by Osho. The text has occupied me for several weeks now and feel much better than ever before. I have been practicing the techniques taught. Osho talks about a lot of things very sensibly. His commentary on the habits that we take to often have a reference to the time he was living in. These comments have been largely misunderstood in most of the stuff found on Osho on the internet. I remember distinctly what Osho says about experience. He asks us to experience things in themselves without the help of beliefs and words. He criticizes us that the moment something is about to enter our experience, we hurriedly name and interpret it. In talking of the word sex, he explains how all we have lost it. Sitting in France, a stark contrast came to mind, that of Helene Cixous. She is treasured for responding in her writing to words and is considered very good for this and more, by many of my Indian friends too. I too liked her at...

Why do Brahmins practice vegetarianism really? And not all of them do too! They are not exactly non-violent in other spheres of life...what really do these feudal residues mean anyway... one may wonder. What exactly is the traditional Indian argument about preferring vegetarian food? Lets see, here is how I can explain it... A google search would reveal a variety of definitions for Vasana, here is one: vasana: (Sanskrit) "Subconscious inclination." From vas, "living, remaining." The subliminal inclinations and habit patterns which, as driving forces, color and motivate one's attitudes and future actions. Vasanas are the conglomerate results of subconscious impressions (samskaras) created through experience. Samskaras, experiential impressions, combine in the subconscious to form vasanas, which thereafter contribute to mental fluctuations, called vritti. The most complex and emotionally charged vasanas are found in the dimension of mind called the s...

The astrologers I consulted before leaving for France, said that I could stay there for three years. I had apparently done some good deeds in this part of world in past lives. Had I fought for the French Revolution? He he! :) When I first returned from France, I was glanced at curiously that said “how are they?” from family and friends. It’s only then does one realize that meeting with a culture different from one’s own is no trivial task. My memory was pressed, faculties of thinking set into motion and exhausted and yet it remained an arduous task to explain another culture. In one of my urgent pronouncements, I had simply said, “They have big, powerful washing machines that one can use to wash a week’s full of clothes.” And friends in France were no less surprised about the Indian girl. They would ask with utter horror, “you don’t drink, how do you celebrate?!”, and were promptly met with answers that revealed that “drinking was a major taboo in middle-class India”. If you were ...

I was going to light lamps But it did not feel like that. The cotton wicks clung like lovers. It pained to tear them apart. They came in threes or fives; they were not couples. And I had to choose two, reshape them a little, soak and drown them in oil and light them.

Just through with Black Water (1992) by Joyce Carol Oates. A novel of about 150 pages, that is also a serious critical comment on US politics and life. The novel was very refreshing after some of the recent fiction I had read, and I found myself wondering exactly what was refreshing about it, apart from of course the style of writing that held suspense, by going into the past, through repetition and so on. Perhaps what was refreshing was that the Senator (in this novel with whom a 26 year old girl drives a car as passenger and is drowned to death because of his drunk-driving) simply replaces the grey of recent novels to actual black! The Senator does not dive back into the water to his submerged car where Kelly (the 26 year old) is stuck, because he cannot bring himself to swim about in the dirty sewage water. Later of course, he would tell everyone that it was the girl who was drunk-driving and it takes him 40 minutes or more to call for help on the deserted road of an island, thro...

This time during my stay in Bangalore for four months, I noticed a lots of things about Bangalore that were changing. Growing intolerance, judgemental attitudes, ultra-moderness, stricter assertion of the institution of the family, stronger sex segregation, moral policing by the khaki and much more. Part of me wants to label some of these things, even if in mild proportion, as Bangalore's first serious response not only to westernization, but to modernity and colonialism as well. The Bangalore I know was one that was very tolerant towards differences, along with being strict on discipline and personal values. It is a city that never needed rules about alcohol consumption, a very strict social abomination was present for anyone who exceeded the limits. But finally, people would just say its his/her own problem, what can we do? A kind of non-interference policy. In the public spaces, nobody looked or stared at anybody too much. The attitude of indifference and safe distance had ad...

Just finished reading Toni Morrison's Love. Didn't like it as much as I liked The Bluest Eye and The Beloved . It could have been better written. Especially the last parts. I wonder if the person who wrote the blurb read the novel accurately! Towards the end, I just couldn't figure who or what was with Celestial Cosey! I liked the way the novel stored up its twists till the end, when finally the reader is told of the 53 year old man marrying the 11 year old girl! The pent-up denial of the common suffering that all the women go through, while consistently ignoring the man's faults completely, is beautifully truthfully portrayed. It opens up an unexplored ethical universe. There lingers some dissatisfaction in the reader that the authorial voice, both in the form of L's voice and otherwise too, would not punish Bill Cosey enough. But when you think about, the character's (L's) action, the action has indeed been strong --she has killed Bill Cosey. L's voi...