A slow draft

You come not as the autumn leaves on the birch
Gently swirling down into forgotten piles
But as the spring break
Welcoming in its soft harshness.

You appear not like the orange sun on those
Early summer mornings beset with tepid air
But as the dewdrops on the green
Breaking the light into a multitude of hues, except Indigo.

You smell not like the quenched earth on
A drenched monsoon afternoon
But like a bouquet of carnations handwoven
By seers atop the lofty plains.

You radiate not like the strobe lights
Furtively illuminating our deeds
But like the face of the clay idol
Feverishly worshipped by pagans and atheists alike.

You stand alone
Not like me.
But like the sky
Blue, pristine and unharried.

You I call my own
Not like the pages of the novella I flip
But like the beat that
Resounds inside me.


This is for my agnostic friend, and the influence he's left on me.

Visceral Ideologies

Firstly, I have not posted in a while, and was getting itchy to type in something. So here goes.
Got up this morning to the humble rantings of a slobbered Homer Simpson, screeching me out of my morning happiness. I sat down with my cup of tea and enjoyed the episode in which Lisa goes all out to protect her school from becoming another parish church Sunday school where they abolish all scientific theories in favor of the greatest theory of 'em all: Creationism... In short, it means: Balls to you Darwin!!!!! In the end, as always, better sense prevails and the Creationism theory is dumped in favor of its more scientific counterpart, but not without the help of an intelligent Marge and an animated, albeit simian Homer who wrestles his bottle of beer like a Hollock Gibbon would wrestle an Olive Baboon, establishing the fact that we have, infact, descended from apes. Thank you Lord!!


Got me thinking. The Bible, the Gita, the Zend Avesta and every other conceivable 'Holy Book', including the one by the psychosomatic Heaven's Gate, all say the same thing: That we are the creations of a Higher Power that we can never ever gauge, but can only revere, sometimes blindly, as most people do. What is religion? "A religion is a set of common beliefs and practices generally held by a group of people, often codified as prayer, ritual, and religious law. Religion also encompasses ancestral or cultural traditions, writings, history, and mythology, as well as personal faith and mystic experience. The term "religion" refers to both the personal practices related to communal faith and to group rituals and communication stemming from shared conviction.".. Focus on the words 'mythology' and 'tradition'... Essentially means that religion is for the masses, of the masses, by the masses. So much for that Lincoln.

Thereby we come to the concept of superstition. Edmund Burke once said "Superstition is the religion for feeble minds". Although the vice versa of this statement is not advocated by me, I agree with him completely. Religion has been sown, harvested, reaped and exfoliated meticulously by our seers and politicians alike. Religion IS to opiate the masses, gather them under a spell wherein their cognitive and rational thoughts can be diverted for a lesser cause. When I say this, I do NOT intend to demean Hinduism. For all I know, Valmiki and Ved Vyasa are two of the greatest literary icons India's ever had. They wrote two epics which had their foundations in history, with a generous dose of imginative fantasy thrown in so as to make the perfect recipe for an epic omnibus. The issues and the thoughts potrayed through both the semi-biographical epicas still find relevance in our modern, somehow dystopian world. The sad part is, the theories and ideas the two great poets wanted to convey has been, over the ages, barbarically misconstrued, boiled, ringed and served with garnish to appeal to the masses, who, without a single second thought, will grab the shovel nearest to them when anyone says that Ram was a mythological figure.. for God's sake (yeah :-P), he was!!!!

Over the ages, we've had numerous instances, as history has been a witness, where eminent individuals have had their heads cut off, or their faces maimed, or their families wiped out, because they chose to reason scientifically over following religion hypnotically. We've also had instances where civilizations have been wiped out for want of 'Holy Land', temples, churches and 'Holy Water'. Blood has flown without remorse, hatred, bigotry and racial disrimination has thrived without check, and mankind has spiralled way beyond his control. Pretty scary.

I still believe religion should be practised, by anyone who wants to. It's his/her fundamental right, no matter where you reside. It is the one thing humanity still takes refuge in, like a placebo that helps ward off all evil. I only wish that humanity extracts the fanaticism that somehow embodies the religion of today. Suprisingly enough, religion , which helped theorise Creationism, has effectively been successful in establishing it's own credo. Because if we were ACTUALLY evolving, would we be the way we are?

There you go, the solution is the problem.

So long.