Expressive Thoughts from an Underworked Mind

Numb

2011-09-08T02:05:00.000-07:00

Its just another one of those moments
I feel like I am losing myself again
Its just another one of those days
When my shadows become shy to walk with me
Just a strange feeling flew past me
And dreams I would never ever dream.
Someone said I am lonely
Someone said I am dumb,
But I dont understand what I feel,
But this feeling has to be concealed.
Did I ever said I am happy,
Did I ever said I am in love,
The sun tells me to raise my head,
The stars tell me not to be afraid,
The river whispers me to flow away
The wind howls me not to be ashtray.
But how can I be like you,
When I know I cant,
So I am running away far,
Dont try to find me,
Dont try to find me.

Ghost Town of India : Bhangarh, Rajasthan, India

2011-02-16T00:22:00.000-08:00

Why It’s Eerie:

In 1783, this dusty, rusty city in Rajasthan was abandoned overnight after a guru cursed all residents to death, without rebirth. Today it’s forbidden to visit after sunset; locals and tourists enter during daylight hours only. What remains are eerie ruins, which include two abandoned Hindu temples, several banyan trees, and a few troops of macaque and langur monkeys.
It is a ruined town in the Alwar district of the state of Rajasthan, India, famous for its historical ruins. It is said to be a haunted place. Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) has put up a signboard by the main gate stating (among others): "Entering the borders of Bhangarh before sunrise and after sunset is strictly prohibited."

Bhangarh Myth: The Curse

The local people say that the entire place was vacated overnight due to a curse. They also say that as per the curse the city will disappear and if at all it is discovered, there will be no reminiscences of the place except for the temples.
The second part of the story lends some support to the myth. The entire place has nothing but ruins, or rather attractive ruins. However, the place is full of temples. Most of the temples belong to Lord Hanuman. Lord Hanuman is said to save people from Ghosts and evil Spirits.
As per the legend, the princess of Bhangarh was a match to none in beauty to any other woman in the place. There were several marriage offers coming in for her, when one tantrik (evil magician) spotted her. He was so enchanted by her beauty that he wanted to possess her at any cost.
Following the princess, one day he went to the local market where the servant of the princess was buying perfumes. Taking advantage of the princess’ absence around the servant, he poured some magical lotion into the perfume bottles. The effect of the lotion was supposed to draw the princess to the tantrik as soon as she applies it.
However, someone saw this and informed the princess who broke the bottle. This acted as a reverse effect and hurt the tantrik who as a revenge, cursed the entire place saying the place will no more be existent and all the residents will die. This happened and the princess too died. Till date there are several related myths related to the story.

Ghosts at Bhangarh: The Extent of Fear

The Government of India was to set a military centre to patrol the place all over the night to solve the puzzle of ghosts but could not dare. None of the military personnel were willing to participate in the operation. Even the ASI office is a kilometer away from the place and has a board that says: “Staying in the Area after Sunset is Strictly Prohibited.” This indicates that something is very wrong, to the extent that even the paramilitary forces are not venturing into the area after dark.

Bhangarh: How to Reach Bhangarh

The place lies between Jaipur and Alwal. You can drop down at either places through train or flights and take a bus to the place. There are also private taxis that take you to the place. However, you will have to walk for a km as the buses stop at some distance from the place.

Places to Stay

There is nothing that will let you stay inside the place as it is uninhabited. It is suggested that you use the local Rest Houses spread outside the place. The Rest Houses are managed by the ASI and are located within the circle of a km from the place.

The Five Tensile Strands of Hinduism

2011-02-15T02:06:00.000-08:00

Across the vast sweep of Indian religious history, it is believed that five elements have given shape to the Hindu religious tradition: doctrine, practice, society, story, and devotion. To adopt a typical Hindu image, these five elements are understood as relating to one another as strands in an elaborate interlace. Moreover, each strand develops out of a history of conversation, elaboration, and challenge. Hence, in looking for what makes the tradition adhere, it is sometimes better to locate central points of tautness than to expect clear agreements on Hindu thought and practice.

1. Doctrine

The first of the five strands of Hinduism is doctrine or principle, as expressed in a vast textual tradition affixed to the Veda, the oldest core of Hindu religious note, and organized through the centuries, primarily by members of the learned Brahman class.

Here several characteristic tensions appear.

One concerns the status of the God. There are sects who of belief in Henotheism, i.e worshipping one single God, while accepting the existence of other Gods. Some belives in polytheism, that is in worshipping more than one God. Some believes that all Gods are "Avatar" meaning different manifestations of One Supreme One (Lord Krishna in most cases), others belief in monism, belief in only a Solo God.

Another tension concerns the disparity between the Dharma (one's religious duty and is affected by the person's age, caste, class, occupation, and gender) and that of Moksha (release from an inherently flawed world).

A third tension exists between individual destiny, as shaped by Karma (the influence of one’s actions on one’s present and future lives), and the individual’s deep bonds to family, society, and the divinities associated with these concepts.

2. Practice

The second strand in the fabric of Hinduism is practice. Many Hindus, in fact, would place this first. Despite India’s enormous diversity, a common grammar of ritual behavior connects various places, strata, and periods of Hindu life. While it is true that various elements of Vedic ritual survive in modern practices and thereby serve a unifying function, much more influential commonalities appear in the worship of icons or images ( pratima , murti , or arca ).

Broadly, this is called puja (honoring the deity), or archana (if performed in a temple by a priest). It echoes conventions of hospitality that might be performed for an honored guest, especially the giving and sharing of food. Such food is called prasada), reflecting the recognition that when human beings make offerings to deities, the initiative is not really theirs. They are actually responding to the generosity that bore them into a world fecund with life and possibility. The divine personality installed as a home or temple image receives prasada, tasting it and offering the remains to worshipers. Consuming these leftovers, worshipers accept their status as beings inferior to and dependent upon the divine.

An element of tension arises because the logic of puja and prasada seems to accord all humans an equal status with respect to God, yet exclusionary rules have often been sanctified rather than challenged by prasada-based ritual.

Specifically, lower-caste people and those perceived as outsiders or carriers of pollution have historically been forbidden to enter certain Hindu temples, a practice that continues even today.

3. Society

The third strand that has served to organize Hindu life is society. Early visitors to India from Greece and China and, later, others such as the Persian scholar and scientist, who traveled to India in the early 11th century, were struck by the highly stratified social structure that has come to be called familiarly the caste system. While it is true that there is a vast disparity between the ancient vision of society as divided into four ideal classes (varnas) and the contemporary reality of thousands of endogamous birth-groups (jatis), few would deny that Indian society is notably plural and hierarchical.

Seeking its own answer to this puzzle, a well-known hymn from Rigveda describes how, at the beginning of time, a primordial person underwent a process of sacrifice that produced a four-part cosmos and its human counterpart, a four-part social order comprising Brahmans (priests), Kshatriyas (nobles), Vaishyas (commoners), and Sudras (servants).

The social domain, is marked by a characteristic tension. There is the view that each person or group approaches truth in a way that is necessarily distinct, reflecting its own perspective. Only by allowing each to speak and act in such terms can a society constitute itself as a proper representation of truth or reality.

Yet this context-sensitive habit of thought can too easily be used to legitimate social systems based on privilege and partiality. If it is believed that no standards apply universally, one group can too easily justify its dominance over another. Historically, therefore, certain Hindus, while adopting tolerance at the level of doctrine, have maintained caste distinction in the social realm.

Responding to such oppression, especially when justified by allegedly Hindu norms, lower-caste groups have sometimes insisted, “We are not Hindus” Yet their own communities may enact similar inequities, and their religious practices and beliefs often continue to tie them to the greater Hindu fold.

4. Story

Another dimension drawing Hindus into a single community of discourse is narrative. For at least two millennia, people in almost all corners of India - and now well beyond, have responded to stories of divine play and of interactions between Gods and humans. These stories concern major figures in the Hindu pantheon: Krishna and his lover Radha, Rama and his wife Sita and brother Lakshmana, Shiva and his consort Parvati, and the Great Goddess Durga, or Devi as a slayer of the buffalo demon Mahisasura.

Often such narratives illustrate the interpenetration of the divine and human spheres, with deities

such as Krishna and Rama entering entirely into the human drama. Many tales focus in different degrees on genealogies of human experience, forms of love, and the struggle between order and chaos or between duty and play. In generating, performing, and listening to these stories, Hindus have often experienced themselves as members of a single imagined family.

Yet, simultaneously, these narratives serve to articulate tensions.

Thus, the Ramayana , traditionally a testament of Rama’s righteous victories, is sometimes told by women performers as the story of Sita’s struggles at Rama’s hands. South Indian performances may emphasize the virtues of Rama’s enemy Ravana as equal to or even surpassing those of Rama himself. And in North India lower-caste musicians present religious epics such as Alha or Dhola in terms that reflect their own experience of the world rather

than the upper-caste milieu of the great Sanskrit religious epic the Mahabharata, which these epics nonetheless echo. To the broadly known pan-Hindu, male-centered narrative traditions, these variants provide both resonance and challenge.

5. Devotion

There is a fifth strand that contributes to the unity of Hindu experience through time: bhakti (devotion), a broad tradition of a loving God that is especially associated with the lives and words of vernacular poet-saints throughout India. Devotional poems attributed to these inspired figures, who represent both genders and all social classes, have elaborated a store of images and moods to which access can be had in a score of languages; bhakti verse first appeared in Tamil in South India and moved northward into other regions with different languages.

Individual poems are sometimes strikingly similar from one language or century to another. Also, individual motifs in the lives of bhakti poet-saints also bear strong family resemblances.

With its central affirmation that religious enthusiasm is more fundamental than rigidities of practice or doctrine, bhakti provides a common challenge to other aspects of Hindu life. At the same time, it contributes to a common Hindu heritage even a common heritage of protest. Yet certain expressions of bhakti are far more confrontational than others in their criticism of caste, image worship, and the performance of vows, pilgrimages, and acts of self-mortification.

sources: Wikipedia, Britannica.

Dying Dreams of every Night

2009-08-08T07:28:00.000-07:00

So the shadows come over your face once more,
When you look into that damned cracked mirror,
Blood and sweat reflecting all your unsettling scores
Dripping drop by drop, awakening your fear.
You close your fist, harden your chaw,
Determination creeps into your mind,
Dirty tricks and all the betrayals you saw,
March into you from behind.
You swear to God to protest,
You vow to your morals,
You will fight for the oppressed
You will burn all the dirty dollars.

And then again the sun rises, and you open your eyes
Its time to wake up to reality and start running for an endless race,
You forget all the promises made in dreams like they were lies,
And head for the bus stop where she waits.

Global Warming

2009-03-16T23:41:00.000-07:00

Restless eyes wonder around,

searching for a shade to rest,

a desert lies ahead for miles,

and God knows its not the best of times.

When fear grips your mind,

the thoughts begin to bleed,

the mind goes dry

and the heart skips a beat

The overwhelming task that lies ahead

cannot be done in a day,

but the undoing of civilasation

has to be stopped today.

Created by the hands of men

a threat lurks everywhere trying to summon a wrath

the ice will break, the sea will rise

and life will be undone.

The wise minds of wise people

defies to grasp the thoughts

May their defiance catch the fading light

before a light remains no more.