Ridhus Digest

Endhiran

2010-10-01T08:11:00.000-07:00

I had a weird experience yesterday. I found out that the Phoenix theatre(owned by Reliance Big), a block from my apartment, was showing Endhiran. So, I went for the movie at 7:30 pm, and since the theatre did not do a good job, the movie hall was only 1/3rd full. So here I was, a not so hard core Rajni fan - not the kind who does Pal abhishekams - watching the movie in a quite enjoyable way, even before it was released to the die-hard fans in India (7:30 pm was only 5:30 am on the day of the release in India). Man, was I lucky yesterday.

For the first ten minutes, I was wondering whether I had wasted 2 and half hours of my time , but as the movie progressed I was really impressed. Rajni's acting is even more enjoyable without his over-reaching heroism. Good job Shankar!!!

One for the polls

2009-03-22T20:19:00.000-07:00

Watched this movie recently. Cho Rocks!!!

I was pretty surprised that the state of politics was this bad in 1971 itself. If that was the case, it is pretty good that we have made progress over the past 40 years inspite of such politicians.

News media, a terrorist mouthpiece?

2008-11-27T18:34:00.000-08:00

Winter, and gross stupidity of people who should be responsible compels a blog entry.

The goal of terrorists is well known - terrorize people

How to achieve it?

Simple - ensure a hundred or so people are killed and leave it to the news media.

The news media ever in search of drama, will hype it and give it a whole new dimension , enough to ensure people don't go about their normal business for long long time.

The number of people killed in road accidents in India is around 90,000 while the number of people killed in terrorist attacks even in a year like 2007-2008 is around 6000. The media will help save more lives if it focused on road safety. Oh! but of course doing the right thing will not bring in viewership or ad money. I guess CNN-IBN learned this quickly, I was pretty impressed with some of the investigative reporting they initially did, but they soon learned that sleaze sells better, their website is no different from a tabloid's now.

News reporting is a responsibility, it has a significant role in nation building. In a country of a billion people, there is always the possibility for negative incidents, these should not be highlighted, positive incidents should be highlighted to instill hope in people.

Yes, the rest of the world is not very different, when consumer confidence is important to kick start the economy the American media bombards people with negative news.

The news channels in India have had some positive impacts, for one - their coverage led to the several high profile criminals being convicted, but the media definitely needs to do some introspection and come up with a code of conduct.

Crouching tiger , Prancing dragon

2008-04-13T19:06:00.000-07:00

I have always envied China, for its decisive one party government. Its rate of development has been meteoric when compared to that proffered by the direction-less coalition governments in India.

But two recent incidents have made me reconsider, a few months back when Tibetans protested for greater autonomy, China smothered the region with brutal repression. At the other end of the spectrum Bhutan(whose defense and external affairs are handled by India) became a democracy, in spite of the people there being satisfied with the Monarchy.

Bhutan has set a trend for the world by measuring its progress by gross national happiness whereas Tibet, once a Shangrila of sorts, has been turned into a simmering volcano.

I now wonder, is the development really worth the sacrifice of freedom of speech,expression and religion? not to mention cases like the man made famine of 1959 which caused millions of deaths.

I also wonder if the drastic difference in the development rates is simply a reenactment of the hare and tortoise story?Will the crouching tiger leap? and is the story of the dragon a mere myth?

A difference of 6 months

2008-02-19T18:59:00.000-08:00

Elections

2008-01-21T19:54:00.000-08:00

I was watching a presidential primary debate on CNN. Every candidate was talking about how he/she would usher in universal health care.

I am pretty surprised that no one spoke about how they are going to handle the volume as a result of this. No one seems to be questioning whether the present infrastructure is capable of handling increased volumes. I would think that increasing the number of doctors and taking steps to reduce the cost of medical education would help bring down health care costs. Maybe they could find ways to reduce opportunistic law suits that drive up the cost of health care. Anyways I am not very knowledgeable about this issue, but that brings me to another point.

While I believe in the virtues of a free market system, and think it played an important role in making US a world power, I have also noticed a few drawbacks to it here.

A developed country should ensure that every citizen has easy access to

1) Health care
2) Higher education
3) The law

but all three of these are extremely expensive to a middle class citizen here.

Apt

2008-01-17T18:38:00.000-08:00

This is one of my favourite Tamil aphorisms

Paramasivan kazhuthul iruntha pambu kaetadhu "Garuda Saukiyama"

Adhuku Garudan sonathu" Yavum irukum idathil irunthu vital yellam saukiyamae"

It puts across a fact of life so wonderfully, and also explains why we people act the way we do at times.

I am not going to attempt translating for the fear of distorting it.

Name Change

2008-01-13T11:04:00.000-08:00

Came across a blog with a name very similar to my blog's previous name - " Ruminations of a Roving mind", and that blog was started much before mine. So I decided to change the name of mine to a name containing my pseudonym.

Selfless non-vegetarians

2008-01-11T05:25:00.000-08:00

In my view non vegetarians are considerate,compassionate people.

here is why.

The chicken in going to die anyway, so why not help it on its way.

If the chicken were to die of old age , it would be a miserable slow death. The motive of non-vegetarians is to not see the chicken suffer.

Even in terms of karma, if the chicken is killed to be eaten it accumulates good karma because it has died for a useful purpose.

Non-vegetarians go through the abominable task of eating meat, so food grains are left for others .
This they do in spite of knowing they will be accumulating bad karma. See how selfless non-vegetarians are.

I think I will remain a selfish vegetarian all my life, even if it means no vimochanam for thousands of chickens and goats

Nature's Nature

2008-01-07T13:48:00.000-08:00

Oceans that span the world,
Land that covers the rest.

Mountains of unfathomable heights,
and valleys equally deep.

Yet the earth that contains all,
is a speck in the Universe.

God alone knows the expanse of that which
contains the Universe.

US,illegal immigration and Mexico

2007-12-26T19:01:00.000-08:00

I sometimes wonder why the US government did not encourage companies to outsource manufacturing jobs to Mexico instead of China. That way

1) There would be lesser people looking to immigrate illegally into US for jobs.

2) A developed Mexico is preferable to a luke warm Superpower contending China from the US point of view

Snapshots of a different era

2007-12-25T07:03:00.000-08:00

It is winter and I have to spend a lot of time indoors now, reading, watching movies etc.

There is a used books store close by, and I enjoy reading old National Geographic mags that I find there. It is amusing seeing how people lived in the 70's, 80's etc and some of the articles on the iron curtain countries are especially interesting .

I was reading a 1981 article comparing east and west Germany. It is amazing how different the day to day lives of the people in both countries were. A great movie dealing with this is Goodbye Lenin.

Religion - Where atheists are right

2007-12-17T20:13:00.000-08:00

One of the greatest spies in history used to disguise himself as a hawker selling books. He used
to carry only two kinds of books - books on religion and books on sex. He knew that nine out of ten people will be swayed by either religion or sex.

Well, this is no big secret. Todays media/corporations use the later to influence people. In less modern times when society was more conservative, and a lot of natural phenomenon was unexplained, certain anti social elements used religion to manipulate the masses.

The practices introduced by these elements provide the fodder to todays atheist.

It is my believe that todays religions were formed from several centuries of experiences and observation. All the ancient religions provide insights into how we as individuals and as a society
can live fulfilling lives.

Yes, material progress does improve our life, but if you compared the number of people visiting psychiatrists in developed countries to the numbers in developing/under developed countries, you would realize that material progress alone is not enough.

May be we need to go back to our religious texts to finds solutions to the issues that we face today. Maybe sometimes individuality/freedom needs to be sacrificed for family and society.

I guess mankinds greatest folly with regard to religion was that instead of treating it as literature/theories it was solidified and used for identity. This rigidity put a full stop to progress, people could no long improve on it or add to it. Now people identify themself with a religion,defend everything their religion preaches and fight over which is the best.

Hopefully this will change as our world is brought closer together by globalization , migration and interaction of people from different backgrounds.

Hinduism

2007-12-15T22:24:00.000-08:00

Many people born into Hindu families turn atheists because they find it difficult to believe in Hindu mythology or Idol worship.

If only they had dug deeper, they would have found idol worship was encouraged in Hinduism because it is difficult for a layman to digest the fact that God is without form when everything he experiences in life has a form. Mythology and idol worship are the first steps on the journey, as a person develops interests in religion and continues on this journey, he will later learn about concepts such as mukthi and maya and pick up meditation as a path. In out material world we get stuck in the first step.

Budha did not beleive in Hinduism, but his quest for truth led him to what the core of Hinduism preaches - The journey to God is through the present and meditation is one of the ways to the present

In my view Hinduism is the collection of everything that our early society came across/documented in the search for truth. Parts of it may have missed the mark but parts of it may have hit the bulls eye (we will never know whether the map passed on to us is authentic until we explore the routes marked on it, at least there are routes we can try, so we don't need to recreate a map ourselves).

If I wrote a blog

2007-12-15T22:11:00.000-08:00

If I wrote a blog



what would it be about?

would it be about my innermost thoughts?
would it be frivolous?


What would I name it?
Shall I name it contemplations? no, that sounds too simple
what other name can I think of? why is it that all the
names I can think of are already taken?

How long would the blog last? Would it just be a fling
or would it be a lifelong passion?

How many people would read it?

Can I turn into a producer, having been a consumer
all my life?

Well, guess it is time to find out