Flux of Time

Who am I? No thinking individual can ever escape this existential question. I was just watching this TED talk and found it thought-provoking.

I have no belief in an organised religion, and the concept of a god who needs appeasement in many ways, a thousand candles lit or yet another million rituals and prayers so he/she will shower blessings on us. I don't believe in a textbook version of god, as religion wants me to believe. Suffice it to say my god is my values, not any god mythology/the sacred books speak of. I believe more in making everyday living meaningful rather than reciting prayers after prayers without ever trying to capture the essence of any of them. Yes, you can light a hundred lamps to a god you believe in, and perform all the prescribed rituals. That makes you religious, and not spiritual. Spirituality has nothing to do with celebrating festivals or performing rituals associated with them. You don't even need to believe in a 'god' to be spiritual. I have always felt organised religion is more about a sense of community, rather than spirituality. Being religious has nothing to do with libe...

My favourite part of our Gujarat trip was how Hindi cinema references kept popping up at every stage. Hindi cinema served as a nice reference point to draw people to history, it seemed to me. Here's my piece in The Hindu Businessline's weekend supplement, BLink http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/features/blink/watch/starstruck-in-gujarat/article6986679.ece

What a nice ode to the Nineties 'Dum Laga Ke Haisha' is. Recording favourite songs on cassettes, sometimes re-recording on them, retrieving stuck tapes from the recorder/player, the whole works...Growing up, I remember how the person with the most tapes was always looked upon reverentially. I also remember using some of my parents' old cassettes to record, re-record and re-re-record. The Nineties were when we took our Hindi movies quite seriously and even watched terrible ones like 'Waqt Hamara Hain' in a theatre. My only quarrel with the movie is the manner in which it ends (over-simplistic, I felt). Suddenly, thanks to a local contest, the wrinkles are ironed out, and everything is sweet, and all is well that ends well. For a film that has managed to look at small-town Indian society and arranged marriages from a realistic perspective, the manner in which it ends is much like any other Hindi movie Also, take away the last device of the contest, and there...