Seeing Things

Is worship your way of connecting to God or your way of feeling superior amongst fellow people? Let me tell you why this question rose in my mind. Yesterday, my uncle who came to town offered to take me to the temple. I love visiting places of worship. Not because God resides there but because peace and serenity live there. It has a calming effect and makes you think clearly. It helps you dispense negative feeling and leaves you purified. I have never interacted with God. I have no reason to place my faith in Him. I would rather credit these wonderful effects to the overall goodness that often exists amongst people within places of worship. Anyway, I happily agreed to join him to the temple. However, soon I got a call regarding an early morning assignment because of which I needed to cancel the plan. So when he called immediately after to give me directions, I politely tried to refuse. But his self-righteousness got the better of him. Foe some reason, he felt he had the right to overlo

I’m not a typical lizard lover. I only find them the most tolerable of house insects/reptiles because they are considerate enough to stay on the ceiling or high up on walls. They don’t come in the way of regular human activity. My feeling for lizards is as distant as that. Yet, I managed to call one my pet. Notice how I say ‘call’ one my pet as opposed to make one my pet. I can’t imagine a lizard-man relationship grow any further than that. I can’t train it to fetch me stuff or shake hands with me. But there was something this lizard did for me. It killed cockroaches. I can’t stand cockroaches. I have not been able to or don’t want to understand the significance of the cockroach in maintaining ecological balance. I wish they just became extinct. I can’t look at a cockroach. I find it difficult to even kill them. Few will understand the mental torment I went through every time I saw one crawling in my house. I had read somewhere that one cockroach you see outside is indicative of a 100

Recently one of my posts managed to churn out a lot of strong comments. The post was on my views about the comedian who lampooned Mahatma Gandhi and put it up on Utube for the world to see and laugh (!). All my posts so far dwell mostly on Indian sentiments (my immediate surrounding) but people across the globe spoke up on this one. I had broached upon something that is a universal, timeless concern across countries, religions, age-groups etc. I had attacked the freedom of speech. Nobody can deny the importance of freedom. Millions have and continue to martyr themselves for the cause. The lack of freedom has been grounds for divorce. Lack of freedom causes children to rebel. And yet, those who have it tend to take it completely for granted. They forget to take what comes with freedom - responsibility. Adolescents who start drugging, spouses who cheat, cartoonists that disregard religious sentiments, comedians that disregard nationalist sentiments etc are examples of people who misuse t