July | 2013 | Confessions of a Disquisitive Writer

The Fake Wellwisher

July 31, 2013 1 Comment

Often, when you are not too happy, you might find a lot of people empathising with you. And, that is a good thing because you feel you are not alone.
However, when things turn around and you are happy again, most of those people would continue to be happy for you but there would be a few who would suddenly vanish. All your deep ties appear broken.
I wonder why that happens. Maybe it is human nature that brings out the good in people when they see others unhappy and that somehow makes them feel their lives are so much better.
But it is much more difficult for them to see the same people become happy, maybe because it rubs away the special feeling that they have enjoyed till then.
Truth be told, once you identify this behaviour, you should be even happier than before because now you know that someone is jealous.

Filed under Reflections Tagged with fake, friends, friendship, jealousy, Life, Relations, relationships, relatives

Love and Loss

July 27, 2013 1 Comment

Sometimes, when you love someone, then the most difficult thing that you can endure isn’t losing them but having to watch them lose you.

You cry not because of your own loss, but because you know someone else is crying too.

Filed under Philosophy, Reflections Tagged with breakup, grief, heartbreak, Life, Loss, Love, relationships, sadness

Thank God or else…

July 27, 2013 2 Comments

When some people thank (their) God for giving them what they wanted – happiness, money, health, etc. – and claim the greatness and lovingness of God because of their own personal experiences, isn’t it unfair to those who are supposedly given the opposite of that – disease, disability, grief and a life of immense and eternal suffering?

Consider a state that does everything for the rich but neglects the poor and takes away even their basic rights as humans – right to health, education, food, water, justice, etc. Wouldn’t it be unfair to the unfortunate for these few lucky people to praise that state endlessly because of what it does for them?

And, what if the state declares that it will only take care of the people who vote for it again and again and that those who don’t, must be punished forever or at least until they also fall in line? Wouldn’t you call that state an evil state? Of course you will. Then how dare anyone ever say that in order to get the love of God, you must pray and worship endlessly and have complete faith otherwise you would be subjected to eternal damnation even after you are dead? Sounds equally evil to me.

How would you explain the lovingness and generosity of God when a child is born with a permanent disability, is going to live in suffering for its entire lifetime (long or short) and is marked to die with it? When I see someone suffering immensely, wouldn’t it be a corruption of my mind and morals if I should still praise God?

As Epicurus famously quoted:

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?

Filed under Atheism, Philosophy, Religion Tagged with atheism, Disbelief, evil, faith, god, Life, Religion, suffering, worship

The Lord of the Rings – The Best fantasy ever?

July 22, 2013 Leave a comment

Isn’t The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien the best piece of fantasy writing ever? If the movies were not fascinating enough, the books are even better.

I read the Hobbit and loved it but ever since I have started reading the LOTR (which is actually a single novel and not a trilogy as people erroneously often call it), I have been mesmerised by the quality of the writing and the depth with which the characters, the locations and the histories have been modelled.

What has amazed me the most is the panache with which the author has composed the numerous and often very lengthy songs throughout the length of the story. For an author to be able to write such a long and fantastic story without losing the reader’s interest is a huge achievement in itself. But when you add to it the fact that he has deviced a seemingly different style of poetry to go along with story, you really start to understand what it is that makes LOTR the best piece of fiction writing ever.

Not to mention the numerous times the novel has run into problems due to printer’s errors, compositor’s mistakes including well-intentioned ‘corrections’ of the invented languages and delicately constructed nomenclatures by Tolkien. Despite suffering from such tragic setbacks, Tolkien kept working on rectifying the problems and the publishing of these books spanned over a decade. At the end, Tolkien has delivered the world’s most fascinating piece of fantasy writing ever to be published. And all this way back in the 1950s.

So, for me, there is absolutely no question about it. There is not and will not be any other book that even comes a close second.

Do you agree with me or do you think there are others better than LOTR?

Filed under Books, Literature & Fiction Tagged with Books, fantasy, Fiction, hobbit, Lord of the Rings, lotr, tolkien

Moon further from Earth than Sun: Godman

July 9, 2013 3 Comments

I recently came across this website (http://www.prabhupadanugas.eu/?p=9315), dedicated to Late Srila Prabhupada, anchor of the Hare Krishna Movement of the ISKCON fame, and I couldn’t make up my mind regarding whether they are serious or is this all some sort of a joke.

You wonder why I say this?

Because, though this website is supposed to increase the Godman’s followers even post-humously and add strength to the movement, it makes the mistake of actually and shamelessly publishing a lot of junk that he has preached which no sane person can dare to utter and another dare to hear without breaking out into a fit of laughter and ridicule.

Sample this. The Swami says that man has not landed on the moon (http://www.prabhupadanugas.eu/?p=9315) and explains it in a conversation that becomes absolutely non-sensical after the first 5-6 sentences itself:

They have not gone to the moon (excerpt from conversation with disciples, Perth, May 12, 1975)

Prabhupada: They have not gone to the moon planet .
Paramahamsa: Really?
Prabhupada: Yes. It is far, far away. Their calculation is wrong. They are going to a wrong planet.

Paramahamsa: It must be the Rahu planet.
Prabhupada: Yes, or something else. Not moon planet.

Well, as everyone clearly knows, there is NO Rahu planet. Yet, the godman seems to be unaware of modern (or even medieval) astronomy. Anyway, after this bit, the conversation drifts into looney calculation territory which is mind boggling even for a class 6 student because the swami and the other person keep tying themselves up in knots. Suffice to say that they end up concluding that the moon is further than the sun and then he says it is above the sun (another crackpot conclusion). And then he says:

Prabhupada: Above the sun. How they’ll go? [laughter] They are going to the wrong… bluffing only. I am repeatedly saying, they have never gone, simply bluff. How it is that they brought some dust? So brilliant, it is blazing, full. There is fire blazing.

Another conversation on the same page:

Guru krpa: How is the moon behind the sun?
Prabhupada: Not behind, above.
(ACBSP. 27th May 1975. Morning Walk in Honolulu, Hawaii.)

The moon is really above the Sun? Am sure this is going to piss Newton off because if defies his theory of gravitation completely. And I wonder how an eclipse is caused then. Oh, well, but wait… he has answered that important question also in an equally looney way:

Amogha: Is that Rahu planet closer than the moon to the earth?
Prabhupada : Rahu planet orbit is in between moon and sun. So when it comes in between moon and sun there is eclipse . At night it is eclipse in the moon, and daytime it is eclipse in the sun.

Eclipse in the moon and eclipse in the Sun? I have never heard such preposterous claims in my life and I was shocked to the core. I could not understand if I should simply laugh at everything and let it be. But then I realized that it is extremely sad to know that ISKCON has a huge following world over and this is what they must be preaching to their innocent unquestioning followers, so this is tragic news for humanity.

I really think that all the followers should now attend ISKCON sessions but only for fun and entertainment and not for science anyway.

Oh, and by the way, this is how that webpage concluded considering all the arguments against (none in favour, mind you) man landing on moon:

So as ISKCON devotees we are left with various possibilities :

1) Astronauts did indeed land on the moon, but they did not perceive the world of the demigods (Candraloka) because it is invisible to gross sense perception.

2) The astronauts were deluded by the demigods at some stage in their journey and diverted to the planet Rahu. (SB 4. 29. 69p)

3) The entire moon-landing story is a complete conspiracy, which has fooled millions of people all over the world for over 30 years. (Some say that they filmed the “moon’s surface” in a place in America known as Area 51, according to the TV program.)

So even those concluding from it were nuts? They gave so much thought to the Swami’s arguments that they perhaps didn’t consider a fourth more obvious conclusion:

4) The man was crazy.

P.S. I know all ISKCON followers would be fuming by now reading this blog. But please stop here one minute and think and answer one second. Don’t you think it is grossly unfair of you to get angry when everything I’ve state here is the truth substantiated by Prabhupada’s own webpages? And do you really believe that the moon is further from the Sun?

Come on.. You know he was wrong.