Hindi vs India?

A few days back - after a really long time - I saw an excellent debate on NDTV about Kapil Sibal's controversial 3 language formula that seems to have rekindled old anti-Hindi passions. Now, being a 1980s-born guy, I haven't had first-hand experience of the anti-Hindi agitations in the 1960s. I do know Hindi was to become the sole official language in 1965, and I also know there were large-scale protests against this, especially in Tamil Nadu. For those not in the know, Kapil Sibal has proposed that schools adopt a three language formula, with English and Hindi as two of them. Though the matter has been extensively debated and written about, I feel compelled to put my two cents in. I'll beat around the bush a little first and come to the formula later.

Hindi and National Integration

When Vallabhbhai Patel set about integrating 562 kingdoms and numerous provinces into what we know today as India, our leaders were keen to identify, and establish, opportunities for national integration. This was a time when secession from the Union was a very real threat, thus prompting the likes of Nehru and Gandhi to try and integrate the country in spirit, and not just politically. This, and the urge to uproot all things colonial, spurred the efforts to replace English with an Indian language. Gandhi pushed for Hindustani -the utilitarian blend of Hindi and Urdu- as the national language. Even Rajagopalachari was in favour of establishing Hindustani as the national language. Nehru, the eternal democrat, proposed that linguists evolve a simplified version of Hindustani that South Indians could learn with ease.

Post-partition, however, the Jana Sangh and other Hindi groups pushed for the 'purification' of the language by ridding it of its Urdu influences. Eventually, after the violent protests in Tamil Nadu in 1965, Lal Bahadur Shastri, himself an advocate of Hindi, permitted the use of English alongside Hindi for conducting business in India. In addition, states were left free to conduct their business in the language of their choice.

Circa 2009. Apart from secessionary tendencies in some North-Eastern states and J&K, India is largely a united nation. While the motive of designating a national language made sense in a volatile and brittle post-partition India, the current obsession with establishing a "common link" stems from a puerile notion of national integration. National integration is not about making Tamilian children learn Hindi, teaching Malayalis to do the bhangra, or forcing Gujaratis to eat maacher jhol. National integration is about tolerance; about peaceful coexistence of culturally diverse communities; about every Indian acknowledging every other Indian an equal citizen- an ideal I think India has achieved (with the caste system and occasional riots as notable exceptions).

Isn't it better to have Hindi rather than English as the universal language of communication? At least it's not a foreign language.

No. When you have 22 national languages and want to make one of them the sole official language, efforts by one language to assert itself will obviously be seen as one-upmanship. This is exactly what happened with Hindi. In such an environment, it's best to let the language of global commerce stay as the language of communication within the country and let the regional languages develop and spread to other parts of the country through cinema and literature, which Rajnikanth and Bollywood do with tremendous success.

English is the undisputed language of global commerce, and hence the ultimate functional language, as most panelists in the debate agreed. Those who cite examples of France and Japan perhaps don't realize that a lion's share of our GDP comes from services, and that's thanks, in no small measure, to the urban youth's knowledge of English. So all the "foreign language" sentiment against English fails in the face of practicality and convenience.

Sibal and the three-language formula

Kapil Sibal, the poster-boy of radical education reforms, mooted the idea of teaching children three languages, two of which should be English and Hindi. The first pleasant observation is he understands knowledge of English is necessary; the second pleasant observation is the room given to students to learn any language of their choice; the third observation is what's causing all the hungama- why Hindi?

Hindi, as an early critic of the Hindi movement said, is just another regional language. It is the most-spoken language in the country, but is by no means a language of the majority of the country. It does not even serve a functional purpose; so it is absolutely pointless for a child in a remote Tamil Nadu village to learn five paryayvaachi shabd for 'elephant'.

A common grouse among all Indians is their inability to communicate in the southern states. Shouldn't there be a language all Indians should speak? Doesn't it give us a national identity? Yes, there should. No, it doesn't. It will be nice if a Haryanvi can communicate freely in Kerala, but it's not the government's business to decide what that language should be. Anyway, are things really that bad? Some people in every state do know Hindi and English, and I've never heard of anybody unable to survive in an Indian state because of a language problem. And about national identity, isn’t our national identity the multitude of languages? Isn’t it something we boast about to the firangs?

The three-language formula, stripped of its specifics, is an excellent proposal. It is a great idea to teach children two Indian languages. It is good not only for their individual development, but also for giving regional languages a pan-India appeal. I know Sibal is not a Hindi hardliner; he just has a misplaced notion of establishing linguistic uniformity in a country that takes pride in its linguistic diversity.

For me, the best way to structure the three-language formula is to let the children learn any 2 Indian languages. I have absolutely no doubt many parents will choose Hindi. But if a Kannadiga family is living in West Bengal, it might want its children to learn Bengali and Kannada- something the current formula does not allow.

Finally, as Mukul Kesavan said in the debate, there is a difference between learning a language and being literate in it. People watch Hindi movies and understand rudimentary Hindi without knowing the Devnagri script. That should suffice. Must every child in the country be able to read Premchand and Maithili Sharan Gupt?

Microscopy 101

The Shallow Thinking Game

Try to crack this. It's not a whodunnit; some of the words in this article lead back to a common source. Identify the source. It's GK-based; so if you don't know about the source under consideration, you can't crack it. Don't look to interpret the story- I've just built it around the words. A small hint- the first two sentences have one of these words each. A little bigger hint- think sport.

Mohan fumbled in his pocket for the spare key. He swore at his brother for not answering the bell. Was he asleep? But if he was asleep now, what was he doing at night? Did he forget to plug in the Good Knight liquidator? Or was he stranded in the snow? Something was definitely amiss. Anyway, he had had a long day and was in no mood for such deliberation.

The room was eerily dark. Surely, Ram wouldn't have forgotten to switch the light in the puja room on? Did that mean Ram left the room in broad daylight? As his hand surveyed the wall for the switch, the sound of a popping cork shattered the silence. He froze, but only momentarily, as the lights came on, followed by a deafening "Happy Birthday" from a group of at least 50 people.

He could hardly recognize the place; it was beautifully decorated with small artifacts from his eventful 24 years. It was done with such dexterity and grace, that he was sure it was Sudha's handiwork. His friends trotted to him, one by one, and handed over their gifts and greeting cards, which he stowed away to read later. He was pleasantly surprised, because he had never had a surprise birthday party prior to this.

Since Ram knew Mohan had a teleconference later that night, he decided to wrap up the party well before the allotted time. He sent the Pringles and drinks around, and watched with amusement the sight he had got used to now- Mohan sipping his vodka with 2 straws. The starters over, he asked the cook to get the minced lamb cutlets and paneer tikka.

It started slowly; Shaque looked at the lamb cutlets suspiciously after her first bite. Then Kantha asked why the taste of onions was so overpowering; wasn't this suppsoed to be a lamb cutlet? Aveek threw up, and everybody groaned- did the sucker drink more than that famously sensitive stomach could take? Shaque and Kantha followed. Nobody suspected anything fishy till Suneol -the man with a steel stomach- threw up.

Ram summoned the cook. Did he buy the lamb from the street? He said he didn't know, because he didn't go to the butcher himself. Didn't he taste the lamb while he made it? The cook shifted uncomfortably. His head was all knotted up; he didn't know what story to make up. He didn't know his best friend -ace cook B.A.W. Archie- to whom he had delegated the job, would use stale meat.

"What crap!" The cook was jolted from his excuse-making deliberations as Ram shouted. The guests were collapsing one-by-one. The remaining guests immediately boycotted the party and left the house. Ram and Mohan were busy apologizing. Once the last live guest left, they turned to the cook, who, by then, had already fled.

Movie Review- Love Aaj Kal

If we ever calculated the differential between potential and result for movies and listed them in descending order, Delhi-6 would top the list with Love Aaj Kal coming a slap-worthy second. The movie is difficult to review because during it -when we had the pleasure of hacking the movie to death in true sadakchap style, and after it –when we were abusing everybody from Imtiaz Ali to Imtiaz Ali under the unsteadying influence of Diet Coke, we couldn’t figure out what the hell was happening; not because it was Mementoistically complicated or Night-Shyamalanistically abstruse, but because it was so comprehensively pointless. And it pains me to criticize the movie, because I think Imtiaz Ali is a smart director. But unfortunately, if he addresses a gathering that has just been subjected to Love Aaj Kal, he will most certainly earn plenty of frustrated footwear.

So Jai Vardhan Singh (Saif) is this stereotypical uber-cool uber-modern clean-shaven stud whose core competencies include scorning traditions, scorning old love stories, chick-hopping, and being practical. The first 15 minutes of the movie move at a frenetic pace culminating in an amicable break-up between Saif and Deepika, who split so that they can pursue their professional dreams. In the period between their last goodbye and Deepika’s flight to India next morning, Saif meets Veer (Rishi Kapoor), a stereotypical 60s man who waxes eloquent about the virtues of sachcha pyaar and laments the logicopractical modern man who doesn’t follow his heart enough. Deepika and Saif have a truly entertaining conversation before she leaves, and then she leaves.

Now that he has nothing better to do, he hangs out with Rishi Kapoor who tells him about his innocent 60s love story. The pattern is predictable- Rishi Kapoor (who looked like a turbaned Saif in his jawaani) tells Saif about his 60s love story with this Punjabi kudi (who looks thin enough, and has expressions monotonous enough, to be considered one-dimensional); and Saif keeps interjecting with “Come on man!” and other Censor Board-approved variations of “What the fuck!”

To cut a dreadful story short, Saif and Deepika want to “move on” after their break-up. Saif finds some Swiss chick who loves Indian culture and wants to see the Taj Mahal; Deepika dates with and gets proposed to by her boss (Rahul Khanna with a size 2 clipper run over his head); Saif takes his newfound girlfriend to India and starts meeting Deepika on the sly; Deepika marries Rahul; Saif is destroyed, Deepika is distraught; Saif wastes himself by growing a beard, losing his job, and pining for Deepika; Deepika ditches Rahul because she can’t get Saif out of her head; LHS = RHS, Saif meets Deepika and they make up.

I’m sure the script must’ve been okay; it just hasn’t worked on screen. For starters, there was -273^oC chemistry between Saif and Deepika; Imtiaz made the mistake of compressing their entire love story into 15 minutes; they could’ve been brother and sister for all I cared. Secondly, the songs were numerous and bad; I can’t understand why Imtiaz hires Pritam; he might as well buy the rights of some Vietnamese or Moroccan album. Thirdly, he strived too hard to show the contrast between love aaj and love kal, and used some of the most clichéd clichés you’re ever likely to hear to establish this contrast. The biggest weakness of the film, however, was the dialogues. Imtiaz Ali is a really witty writer, as he showed in Socha Na Tha and Jab We Met; but the dialogues in this movie, save the odd one here and there, were woefully vacuous.

The acting was just okay. The 60s love story track had a lovely rustic charm to it that no amount of cool-dudeness from Saif, mini-skirts from Deepika, and smooches from both could match. Saif looked a pretty authentic Sardar and I can’t believe he had to apologize to the Sikh community for the length of his beard in the movie. Rishi Kapoor was a delight to watch, and I can understand why he was such a rage in his time. In all, the movie wasn’t bad- it just didn’t work; it was too lethargic and too one-eyed in its interpretation of our generation. Go watch it with a gang of friends in a shady theatre where people don’t stare at you for making a racket, and make a racket- you’ll have fun.

Weighed Down- 2

Since the last time he was weighed down, he decided to buy trousers and jeans with one eye on the future. That meant buying size 34 jeans when his waist was still 32". This implied two things-

a) He could keep glutting without worrying about waking up with the jeans's button and button hole a foot apart

b) He felt good wearing a pair of loose jeans every morning. It made him feel thin- which is more important than actually being thin. Think about those models who are as flat as Tom when a door slams him against the wall, but still deprive themselves of good, greasy, creamy, cholesteroley, fatty, starchy food.

He went to the US feeling pretty good about himself. He also started playing tennis, which meant he could afford to eat without girthical fears. He threw caution to the hurricane and returned every week from Walmart and the Indian store with 2 gigantic bags of potato chips, a semicircular cake with cream on every side and inside, 3 large packets of Haldirams bhujiya, 2 bottles of mango juice, and umpteen frozen ready-to-eat meals. That's not to say he didn't cook. While the ready-to-eats were intended to be used on days he was too tired to cook, he eventually ended up cooking on days he ran out of ready-to-eats. He also developed the habit of ordering a medium-size Dominos pizza and garlic bread every week. He was under the honest (mistaken) impression that all those hours of tennis (1 hour of doubles and 1 hour of twiddling-thumbs-waiting-for-your-turn every day) would burn the extra calories he was consuming by the thousands. Little did he know it was like that standard question- A frog climbs 100 feet up and slips 1 foot down a well every day. How far is it from the starting point after 10 days?

Damn evolution! Like you can't notice incremental changes in your height every day (unless you drink Complan regularly, which will supposedly make you the tallest structure in the world after the Burj), you also can't notice incremental changes in weight. So while the adipose was gradually fortifying itself and expanding him ever so slightly, he continued gorging without a care in the world. Even when he saw his loose jeans weren't as loose anymore, he didn't lose sleep over it. After all, clothes shrink when you wash them, don't they?

Then, Los Angeles happened. Cameras came out and megabytes were consumed. He posed for photos merrily- smiling, laughing, standing, and sitting. On the last day of his visit, he transferred the pictures to a laptop to look at his well-toned, shapely, muscular, athletic self. What he saw came as a thunderous shock; Hanuman fumbled with the Dronagiri and it came crashing down on him. His face, once small, thin, and ugly, was now big, round, and ugly. All the photographs he thought would be worthy of sending to the auditions for the next Bond, turned out to be perfect for VLCC's Before photo. The growth in his stomach was 3-dimensional, so whether you took an elevation, plan, or side view, you would be able to notice the ungainly bulge. His loose t-shirts could scarcely hide his sins, and were stretched to the point of being short-tops. When he sat in the flight next morning, he was half-afraid the seat-belt wouldn't go around. It did. He ordered a meal and box of Pringles. Half-way through his box of Pringles, he realised he had to stop this junk. He just had to. He mulled over this over the remaining half-box of Pringles, a packet of cookies, and a nice, soft, buttery cake.

He was so scared of stepping on the weighing machine, that he didn't. But he assumed he would be in the 75-80 kg range. A strict diet followed- no more rice, chips, mango juice, ready-to-eats, and pizzas. He began cooking and playing tennis everyday. He was confident this would work. It did. By January, he looked less grotesque. But 4 months in India, marked by curd rice with pickle, chaat, oily sabjis with enough oil to make OPEC irrelevant if used to run cars, and all kinds of sweets, were enough to inflate him to Los Angelical proportions again. And this time there was no tennis. But he climbed 6 floors of stairs to his office everyday, again giving him the impression that it justified his pre-climb and post-climb gluttony. He also did 20 crunches every day (for 10 days), and followed this rigorous work-out with 2 packets of burnt Maggi, chips, and cookies.

Well, when he finally got back to the US on June 1, he decided he would relive his post-Los Angeles-pre-India days. He started cooking everyday; he almost completely abstained from snacking- the only snacks he had were Wheat crackers (0g fat). Whatever he bought had to pass the flip-it-around-and-see-the-fat-content test. He began eating fruits regularly. The tennis was back too- and it was singles this time, which meant more running, more sweat, more calories burned. In addition, at work, he went out into the field almost everyday, climbing insanely tall ladders, crawling through holes, and in general sweating enough to regenerate the Saraswati. Whenever he felt like indulging in a sweet or a cake or something tasty-but-fatty, he'd take off his shirt and face the mirror, and wince at the excrescence he'd see.

Anyway, after 3 weeks of strict dieting, climbing, crawling, and tennising, he was confident that he would be back in the early 70s; 72 probably, or at the most 73. After another intense work-out in the field, he stepped expectantly on the weighing scale. These weighing scales aren't digital or the circular automatic types which tell you your weight instantly so that you can step off before your friend sees it. These are balances. You have to slide a weight along a scale till the scale is stable. So it gets kind of Swadesical as you keep sliding the weight waiting for the scale to stabilize. To cut a long, painful story short, the scale read 152lbs! Less than 70 kilos! He was over the moon, till his colleague came around, corrected the scale, so that the new, correct reading was 170lbs. 77 kilos. He was aghast; he stepped off, took off his heavy coveralls and H2S monitor- that was about as naked as he could get in office- and stepped back on. It read 169 lb. He went back to his desk and sighed.

Possible Post-poll Scenarios

Consequences of Maya winning with the 3rd Front's backing

Consequences of the 3rd Front ditching Maya

The picture says it all

The Probabalistic God

Let me confess at the outset that my practical knowledge of religion is limited to what I see around me and what I have experienced in these 23 years. Most of my notions of God are a result of these experiences and of my contemplations on the subject. In addition, I have been influenced by Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion, Stephen Hawking’s The Theory of Everything, and Klaus Klostermaier’s A Brief Introduction to Hinduism.

I’m sure most people of my age would already have contemplated about religion, and most would’ve made peace with their faith or the lack of it. So, if you think most of what you read is clichéd, please consider this a personal diary that I feel like baring. This post is, not surprisingly, very long. I've added some pictures for relief, but with the hope that they don't trivialize the issue.

What we all know

We all agree that God as a subject has been debated for years now, and will be debated for many more without a logical conclusion. As we all know, the closing line in all such debates is, “It’s finally down to your faith.”

I don’t know about you, but for me, faith is based partly on reason, so I can’t just “feel” my faith; it’s something I need to decide- especially if it’s about faith in an entity that we cannot see; whose presence we assume; whose influence we consider all-pervading; who is considered the ultimate Chief Justice, Scientist, and Engineer; and whose identity depends on the average of each man’s religion.

Most of us have had a religious upbringing and understandably so, because until recently there was very little ammunition available to the doubter in us. In fact, by the time we’re old enough to be inquisitive, we begin taking God and his existence for granted. Even those of us who contemplate know that we can never conclusively disprove God’s existence just as believers can never conclusively prove the same. Read this masterpiece about Russell's teapot. This is where faith (a euphemism for gut) steps in.

Our gut is heavily influenced by our early experiences, which are almost always pro-God. The existence of an omnipotent God also seems intuitive when we are young, because we look at our bodies, at the marvels of nature, at stars and the Sun, and realize that there must really be a super-intelligent being designing all this. All those who don’t read or hear about Charles Darwin and the history of the universe have very little reason to believe that our bodies are not God’s handiwork and that the universe is not created by God. But even among those who believe in evolution and natural selection, there are those who believe that our daily lives, our future, and our every action are governed by God’s will, and are judged by Him. How can we ever defend or contest this?

The problem with prayers

Many believers in God believe prayers have the power to help them achieve an end that they might not have been able to achieve otherwise. Even if they agree that their prayers are more an expression of hope than a demand for action, they somehow feel praying helps them. Now this is the ultimate Russell’s teapot. How can you ever prove or disprove the power of prayers? Whether you are a believer, an agnost, or an atheist, you will agree that not all prayers are answered. For atheists, the reason is simple- since God does not exist, why God does not answer some prayers is a non-question. But how do believers explain unanswered prayers?

Believers believe that some prayers are not answered because of God’s will, where as non-believers believe that prayers that are answered are pure strokes of luck. Non-believers use this selective answering of prayers as one of their proofs against god; they ask: Why are some sincere, well-intentioned, and desperate prayers unanswered? I came up with some possible answers for this question, and one of these answers gives this post its name. The answers:

The sincere believer’s answer (my assumption)

Because this is how it was meant to be. God doesn’t always give you everything you want; there must be a good reason why your prayer has not been answered; maybe God has better plans for you. Just have faith.

My answer

Well, this is not really an answer but something I was contemplating and found appealing. If God exists, I don’t believe He has a supercomputer to process all supplications and allot receivables to each stakeholder according to merit. It’s easier to imagine God being a little inefficient, and thus He doesn’t answer your prayer because it is still enqueued in Wishamp.

An alternative explanation that I found appealing is that God doesn’t decide the final outcome of the prayer and what each stakeholder in the prayer should get in the end. He probably just tweaks the probabilities in favour of the person praying, and thus if your prayer is not answered, it just means the probability has not worked in your favour. For example, if you roll a die praying to God that you get a number between 1 and 3, God might just bias the die against 4,5, or 6 so that the probability of your winning increases from ½ to 3/5. You might still lose the game, but your prayer has not gone unanswered. Thinking about God this way naturally leads one to wonder how much influence God has over these probabilities. Will more fervent praying bring the probability closer to 1? On the other hand, is it possible that God works within the realms of probability and the laws of nature, and thus has no real power to tweak either?

The other problem with analyzing prayers is that they are often not object-oriented. In fact, true devotees will tell you that it’s selfish to pray for something specific, and that we should pray regularly without a selfish motive. The problem is, the benefits of this genre of selfless prayers are tough to ascertain, unless we can create a parallel identical universe where we can test the consequences of not praying. For most believers, benefits do not matter because the process of praying gives them a contentment and sense of fulfillment that make prayer-analysis and stupid calculations of probability irrelevant. I cannot, and will not make an attempt to, shake this belief in prayers- people are entitled to indulge in whatever makes them feel good irrespective of their truth-value.

Destiny vs. God

The trade-off between destiny and God has always puzzled me. Most believers in God also believe in destiny, which essentially means they believe what happens to us is part of a grand cosmic plan that has been written at the start of time (the “honi ko kaun taal sakta hai” school of thought). So if you believe in destiny, and you also believe in God’s power to make things happen, it means you believe God can alter destiny. If you don’t believe that, praying serves no practical purpose. The problem is, since none of us knows our destiny, we can never conclusively prove God’s ability to change it- this lack of knowledge is the ideal breeding ground for all manners of faiths and superstitions such as wearing rings and amulets, and performing pujas and havans. But most believers nowadays don’t consider destiny sacrosanct; they know astrologers’ predictions are fallible, and use destiny only as a crutch in times of distress, which I think is pretty fair.

The What-if believers

There are those who believe in God, but do so mainly because they are unsure of His existence. These people pray because if He does exist, why take a chance? After all, it just takes a few minutes of our time every day or every week. Till very recently, I counted myself in this category. But as I started contemplating and reading more on the subject, I felt less and less sure about God’s existence.

Why I have almost pulled the shutters down on belief

Multiple Gods

The things that make me most unsure of God’s power are the multiple identities of God, the friction between these multiple identities, and our belief that He is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent. When we say God is omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient, whose God are we talking about? Are there many o-o-o Gods fighting for this space, or is there only one God, as we all claim? We all know different religions originated at different points in time. Are the Gods of these religions avtars of the first God thus being consistent with him in some way, or were the new Gods free to expand their reign and challenge the authority of the existing Gods? When a war is fought in the name of religion, is it actually a proxy war between two Gods? That is, are Hindu-Muslim riots actually cosmic duels between Allah and Ram? And what of intra-religion warfare like the Sunni-Shia conflicts?

One God

And if there is only one God, how does He tolerate a Hindu leader masterminding a riot against Muslims because of a suspected Muslim hand in the burning of a train? How does He tolerate one group of Muslims branding people of other communities infidels, bombing them, and getting away with it? How does He tolerate one group of Christians printing lewd material about Hindu Gods, and in return how does He tolerate Hindus raping nuns and razing churches to the ground? How does he tolerate Bhindranwale’s men firing shots on the Harmandir Sahib, and subsequently tolerate some people calling Bhindranwale the eleventh Sikh guru? How does he tolerate men being executed for blasphemy, women being stoned to death for defying His strictures, and women being abused and assaulted for going against Hindu “culture”? If in these moments of crises, especially in crises caused by clashes over His identity, God can do nothing but watch people die and property burn, will we be wrong in assuming that God is just a figment of our imagination? And that if he does exist, he has little influence over what happens on earth, and is really just a slave of nature and of man’s perception?

The Last Word

I think imagining a world without God makes things simple. Things happen because circumstances make them happen, and each of those circumstances arise because of other sets of circumstances. That some of these circumstances coincide and lead to a particular event can be either due to human design or due to the vagaries of luck. Thus, if I walk out of my house today and get run over by a car, it’s a purely random event caused by the chance presence of the car and Akshay at the same point in space-time. It’s not because God intended to end my innings on earth and begin the driver’s behind bars, and facilitated this eventuality by finishing my stock of shaving cream and forcing a baaraat through Road A so that the driver had to use the road I was crossing.

God might exist, and I really am not as much concerned about the fact of His existence as I am about the power we think He wields. The notion most people have of God is of a friend, philosopher, and guide; of a hope and an inspiration in times of distress; and of a gentle, compassionate, and all-embracing entity. This notion is sustainable and harmless; and it doesn’t depend on the existence of God. The Calvins of the world need their Hobbes. It’s only when people start killing each other and doing other crazy things in the name of God is one forced to think whether the whole fuss about God is worth it. I don’t think it is. I don’t think a person with an atheistic upbringing in atheistic surroundings will ever feel the presence of or be able to visualize a power that is watching every step he takes- in other words, he will never need or miss God. If God exists and is reading this post, I want to assure Him that I am not disrespecting his role in making people’s lives better- it’s just that till I am completely convinced of his powers, I prefer to follow my gut and stay an agnost. I’m sure God will excuse this temporary suspension of belief.

I have a lot more opinions on this subject, but they have been articulated so beautifully by Richard Dawkins, that writing them in my own words here seems pointless. This post might sound very immature and even laughable to many believers. The fact is, these are my current thoughts on the subject, and I am far from convinced about them. I hope to read a lot more and either stand firmer on my ground or shift to the believers’ ground a happy man.

Caught in the Web

103 days and counting...

The Aks Effect

Misquote the Quote Contest

Thanks to dear Ramalinga Raju, we now have another immortal quote:

"It was like riding a tiger, not knowing how to get off without being eaten."

I now invite you to modify this quote in your own funny ways and post it in the comments section.

For example:

It was like driving a stolen car, not knowing how to get out without being beaten.

or

It was like watching a Barjatya film, not knowing how to come out without feeling outdated.

Twist it any way you like and make us laugh.