Scene Two

A long time ago around 3500 BCE in Mesopotamia that now we know as Iraq, was the wheel invented. During the Bronze Age then, potter’s wheel was developed first as per records. Although, I have heard that the cigarette lighter was invented before the match, but still to me, the wheel on a cart makes more logic before the wheel for a pot. A potter’s wheel seems applied innovation in mechanical sciences, doesn’t it? Arguably, does this raise a question that the wheel might thus not have been invented but may be discovered then? On the contrary, there already existed a civilization many years ago in the Treta yuga (Silver Age), which Indians describe as the Ramayana. So if the wheel was invented by 3500 BCE, what were the chariots we’ve heard made of? This understanding creates a doubt about the carbon dating. How did chariots come into existence during the Ramayana, if wheel was not invented till then? The dating of the Ramayana goes back to about 7000 years BCE.

The history of the world began with the first civilizations traces from Egypt, Mesopotamia, India and China. The Sumerians from Mesopotamia were apparently the first find of mankind traceable. They had brilliant knowledge about astronomy, astrology, geometry and mathematics. The vedas in India have been much older than anything existing today. A very close friend of mine gave me this information, which might amaze you about the knowledge of the ancient. Everything that is to be known was within the vedas. Well, also this information below is as good as from the horse’s mouth.

There are 4 primary Vedas Rig, Yajur, Sama, Atharva. Each Veda contains 3 parts. Samhita has mantras, Brahamanas make the context, Aranyakas are the unstructured text. The original length of Vedas is something not known. The Brahamanas and Aranyakas contain the Upanishads, which also implicitly indicate they were added later. There were about more than a 1000 Upanishads of which 200 are known now. 14 of which are considered primary. The Upanishad, Bhagavad-Gita and Brahmasutra together form the Prasthantray, the mandatory literature for Hindu Acharyas.

If there was everything of today’s technology back then, why do we say we have invented them today? Isn’t everything regeneration? Why do we still deny the fact that there could have been a science that is impossible to understand today? Why does man always want to prove something only in a way that he can understand? Why the rage of understanding everything rationally? What is rational understanding? Why is logic and reasoning everything in accordance of human understanding? Why deny everything that is not comprehended by mind today? We think we know how the pyramids were built and again after some research we assumed to understand the reason why they were made too. Then why couldn’t man crack the code for where the Pyramids point at the sky, and why?

Robert Bauval, Ancient Egypt researcher says the pyramids at Giza align with the stars on the belt of Orion, just as they would have appeared in 10,500 BCE. And with his Orion Correlation Theory he says that the Orions are an extraterrestrial race operating on this planet. And incidentally, 10,500 BCE is the time when mankind on Earth and outside, were recovering from the catastrophe and building their civilization again. There is some evidence kept covert about the pyramids on Mars discovered by the NASA scientist Vincent DiPietro. He discovered about 6 huge pyramids on Mars that resemble the ones in Egypt. Who made those on Mars? Why do they resemble the ones on Earth? What is the connection? Communication? Communication with whom?

Well rationally, man will only try to prove something by way he understands it.  As the mind just cannot compute anything of a higher frequency when the perceptive reality is of the lower. But have you noticed some people talking about dimensions these days? How the 4^th dimension is coming into existence and how many people are experiencing that? It is the human consciousness. Simply put, you are a device that functions as per its operating system installed. It will only determine, evaluate and validate data that it can decipher. The world appears different to different amongst us. Some see a physical or material reality around. Anything that seems spiritual or emotional is just not actuality. To some like me, the world is nothing but a hologram and a hologram is never a reality, it is simply a projection of something else which is unknown.

You speak to a child in a way that it understands. The intelligent insight is limited for the receiver, as he cannot interpret data beyond his respective dimensional consciousness. Thus, the child speaks to you in a way it understands. For you it is basically switching to a different level to make understanding possible with the child. But for the child, it is lack of potential to communicate with you by your level of understanding. This is very similar to how a human mind cannot comprehend intelligence of the higher frequencies than his. 

End of Scene Two

No content of this article may be copied or duplicated without the writer’s consent. Copyright © 2012 Gaurav Chavan. All Rights Reserved.

In the beginning there was nothing. From the energy of nothing comes everything that exists today. Some say it is God who created everything, while some say it’s Physics. God is a logical escape for irrational beliefs. In simple words, everything that parents cannot answer to children comes from god. Physics is forced understanding to defy god. Meaning, all the efforts made to understand everything and then justified in literary terms for human comprehension. When the structure and behaviour of the natural world is assumed understood, it becomes a science. And when something unfathomable still evolves, it becomes metaphysics. Now for my understanding the first paradox that ‘energy cannot be created’ arises. If so, then who am I? But ‘I’ is completely inconsiderate in the enormity of the universe. Yet.

This article is my attempt to understand my own disagreements of who we are, where we are leading to and why. The reasons for ‘where’ and ‘why’ are entirely subjective reactions of my understanding. The facts mentioned are scientifically proven but never adhered to, the belief used, is just an emotional notion of how I perceive this universe. I have an equivalent belief in myths as my disbelief in science. Because what I have found out gradually, that they both make sense somewhere. 

Let me tell you a story today. A story of the earth, the planets, the sky, the oceans, the gods, the people, the wars, the science, the love, the hatred, beliefs and mankind. My story would not be anything new to some of you. You might have read or heard small parts of it somewhere in time. But some parts of it have never been spoken about or questioned, anywhere. What I simply did, I connected everything together to make one big story. Because I believe there is always a pattern out there. My grandmother used to tell me stories from the Ramayana and as a kid I used to believe them for real. Today I realized that our perception of reality is so absurd. As kids we believed in fantasies; now we don’t even trust experiences.

This attempt here is not to make you believe what I believe in. This is merely some information, which perhaps some of you never looked at. It’s surprising that some people have already started to call most of it controversial! But that is where I am trying to base my renderings. What is a belief? And what is a controversy? Something that you do not believe in becomes a controversy. And anything that you believe in becomes your answer to everything. But you never care to understand what is that makes you believe in something and why. Remember, whatever religion you follow, whatever you have grown believing in, it has reconstructed you to what you are today. In other words, your parents, your society, your religion and everything you associate yourself with have hypnotized you.

Article is fragmented into parts. Readers’ discretion is advised.

Scene One

The universe is about thirteen billions years old. We live on a planet that is four and half billion years old. The dinosaurs became extinct about sixty five million years ago in just less than 10 minutes of the asteroid crash. Life was virtually deleted from the planet that was burnt in the humongous explosion, then earthquake, sand storm and tsunami that followed after the crash. The asteroid came at a tremendous pace towards the only planet that holds life. It crashed in the Gulf of Mexico and in a few minutes, nothing existed on earth then. But the same asteroid had carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and hydrogen at its center. These are the very elements that support life.

It is an evident law of nature that whatever begun has to end. But the question unanswered is how do you interpret an end? Is physical destruction the end of a physical beginning? Is emotional wrecking the end of an emotional beginning? Perhaps. But an end to something also denotes a beginning of something else. That is how energy transfers and this clarifies the first law of thermodynamics. Therefore it was important for the elimination of the dinosaur of the Mesozoic era to form base for the evolution of mankind. Between Mars and Jupiter lies an interplanetary space that harbours asteroids called the asteroid belt. Out of many, one of them was destined to meet Earth. Perhaps the only reason for our existence.

Time is as significant as nature. Time is what mankind believes in. Everything we do today revolves around time. The past, the present, the future, everything is perceptible reality. If you have a memory, it forms a past. Consciousness of the moment is the present. And anything that is established with strings from the past and the present becomes the future. The vedas subscribed time in yugas. Beginning with the Tret yuga, then the Sat yuga, then Dwapad yuga and the Kali yuga. We inhabit the last of all yugas, the Kali yuga. The first thing I wanted to understand is why these yugas and what are the implications? Then perhaps the most important question, if time is all there is within the four yugas, if we now live in the last of the four, then what comes after the Kali yuga?

Prophecies, predictions, legends and myths have been publicized a lot these days. ‘End of the world’ is perhaps a subject that is discussed so widely supposing it to be a global threat. So much information goes around the Internet, so many people have been reading it, misunderstanding it and further misleading with misinformation. Or if you understand, the wound is talked about without understanding the pain. The superficial layer creates the curiosity that man wants to vanquish without understanding the core of the subject. But that’s man, we see a mountain and we want to climb it. Sometimes it is an instinct. Sometimes it is predetermined.

End of Scene One

No content of this article may be copied or duplicated without the writer’s consent. Copyright © 2012 Gaurav Chavan. All Rights Reserved.

Just!

The world is full of mysteries. So many enigmas are still left unsolved. Although reasoning with science has fulfilled a lot of man’s curiosities, there are yet many peculiarly strange happenings that intimidate the modern mind. The other day, I was looking at my portable hard drive after a long time. I found a portion of my life in pictures in there and I realized last night that I have never written much about that significant part of my life in the deserts of Arabia. Not a lot but I spent about 500 days in the Middle East and met some peculiar people whom I would have never met otherwise. Here, I am going to record some happenings, my experiences, some first hand accounts and some from reliable others. Nostalgia hit me making me remember moments that I might forget with age, anecdotes that need to be told, legends that need to be recounted and stories that should never be forgotten, about what happens in the deserts.

The Arabian Desert spreads about 23,00,000 square kilometers. The temperature plays around 45 D to 60 D Celsius thus making it impossible for man to survive in such harsh conditions. It is very amusing to witness a cultured modern civilization on one side and on the other, vastness of abandoned land of the unknown. And what separates these two worlds, just half a centimeter of barbed wire.

I recollect traveling daily from Sharjah to Jebel Ali, a stretch of about 99 odd kilometers and 95% of my travelogue witnessed desert on the left and desert on the right. Sitting in the car looking outside I used to be amazed by the enormity of the deserts and wonder what could ever exist there.

20^th July 2007 was my first encounter with the sand. I was being introduced to the Emirates on a clear sky day that afternoon. Suddenly by noon the weather changed and everything around looked hazy. There was so much sand with the wind around that people literally shut windows and door and grabbed children indoors. People mentioned a sandstorm when I was buying a phone card at a grocery store. For a moment I was very enthusiastic to experience this phenomenon for the first time in my life but just then an old man standing by the glass door of the shop exclaimed ‘god bless’. The statement left unsettled in my mind and I hesitantly asked him why he said it. In his typical Arabic accent he said it was not for the people around, but for the ones crossing over.

The gentleman had grey eyes and spoke accentuated English. People used to cross borders and walk the deserts to escape poverty. When it becomes difficult to get visas for some nationals, they make groups and escape to developed countries bribing the police. In the earlier times it was said that prisoners were left to die in the hot sand tied to the desert rocks. I still couldn’t comprehend the magnitude of this journey walking across deserts. So I started asking reliable sources about it.

People crossed over in groups of 8-10. They bribe the border police, sometimes a fortune to let them escape the bullets. There are guides arranged who escort these people to various spots in groups of 2 to escape barb wired fences. The journey begins usually on a waxing moon phase. Once crossed, these people are asked to get together using flashlights that are only used at a predefined time. People then regroup somewhere in the desert and from there on the journey begin, using only a compass.

Camels were used before for the travel but because it is easy to spot a group of camels walking in a precise line that raises doubts of human guidance, it was stopped. It is said that the journey through the deserts is so horrifying that people have turned scavengers in hunger and thirst. The immensity plays a big role on the mind that sometimes denies sanity. Nobody is allowed to run or even walk in a continuous motion and constant speed. The heartbeat has to be controlled and it is advised to sit down every 15 minutes for rest and to settle the adrenaline. It was prescribed to walk the slowest during the day and to consume water to the minimal. The temperature has said to be crossing 80 D in the summers making heatstroke the most common reason for death. These are the physical requisites to be taken care of but there is much more mystifying things that occur with time. Out of every 8, barely 2 people make it across the destination.

The compass gets stuck somewhere in the middle of the desert. It ceases to point the north and some narrate to have witnessed it spinning like a slow-motioned fan. It is very difficult to locate where in the middle this happens because these travelers don’t use a GPS. People have heard voices, noises and whisperings in the darkness of the night. There is a legend amongst the refugees that have traveled the desert least thrice in their lifetime that somewhere sometime you find hundreds of camels on a waxing moon day walking around you. But when you try to get hold of them, they vanish in the darkness.

There are mysterious forces in the emptiness of deserts. Some travelers have talked about frequent changes in the weather. The temperature drops to freezing cold and in the next minute is hot as hell. The wind plays many games too, you hear trumpets, you hear roars, you hear voices and sometimes you hear sounds that man has never heard. During my short visit to Qatar, I met an Iranian national who told me about his father who tried to escape Iran during the Persian Gulf War through the deserts with a few fellow friends. Six of them left and in a few days three of them died. One couldn’t survive a frequent sandstorm. The sand had blocked his windpipe. The second one was caught in a quicksand that is the most dangerous phenomena in the deserts and is said to be impossible to come out alive. The third one was bitten by a desert snake and died of poisoning. One of the 3 survivors exclaimed about bizarre visuals of objects and people that he saw around in the night. Sometimes the sand dunes play magic on your mind they say. Wherever you go, no matter how far you have traveled, sometimes the desert brings you back to where you were. The dangers of walking across a desert capture the mind so terrifyingly that you tend to have hallucinations that often mislead.

Here is one incident that happened with me a night driving across the Al Khail road that goes parallel with the Arabian Desert. We were a bunch of colleagues in two different vehicles returning back from Abu Dhabi from a conference. It had past ten when we struck the highway and about six minutes at the speed of 110 KMPH after we past the last radar one of the vehicles broke down. We parked both the cars alongside to examine. We were six of us together excluding the two drivers. Stopping somewhere I cannot tell, road signs were not visible from where we were. When the drivers checked with the vehicle, the tires seemed fine but the engine wouldn’t buzz. While the drivers tried to get the car started, we waited near a wired fence, at the threshold of the desert.

For about 20 minutes we waited for no solution and then decided to call the police for help. But it was very strange to believe that none of us could see a network bar on either of our phones. And the most terrifying thing I noticed later was not a single car drove past us since our halt. One of us decided to drive a little ahead for any possible help. As a few and I waited, my colleague drove away about 400 meters staying in the vicinity. When we found his car to be still and seeable, we guessed if there was some communication made with the police for help. In the next few seconds the hazard lights showed up on his Toyota. We waited for a minute but then decided to walk towards it.

I reach near the car to find my colleague standing outside. He was surprised to see me walk all the way till him. When I asked him if he could make any contact with the police I got an affirmative answer. We then turned back to the broken vehicle and waited for about 45 minutes there for the police to show up. The hazard and headlights were kept on as advised by the police. When we contacted them later again, the patrolling police said that the drove past the highway twice with two patrolling SUVs and found nobody in the said area. It was not until half past twelve that we saw blinking lights and gladly discovered the police and honked for attention.

Living in a city keeps us a lot aloof from a realm that mystifies the mind. We have read fiction as kids, of Jinhs and spirits, but all seemed unreal the moment we jolted back to our authentic reality. There are numerous worlds that exist in the same world of ours. An academic mind finds belief in rationality. But beyond the literary domain, there is also a world that contradicts the laws of physics and disables understanding.

Happiness Always,

GC

No content of this article may be copied or duplicated without the writer’s consent. Copyright © 2012 Gaurav Chavan. All Rights Reserved.

I was fifteen when I wrote my first essay on developing India. I was so happy about talking of the riches and advancement of the nation then. But today, I don’t know for some reason there is a sense of mortifcation in the youth today to do or say anything about the country. A very close friend of mine wanted to start an anti-spitting campaign in my locale. And considering how it didn’t have a pragmatic approach, I gave him a bunch of reasons why he cannot change anything. I still say that he cannot change anything. Not because it is not possible but because the whole system is incapacitated, paralysed and bedridden. Pardon my thought but even a prostitute vacates her bed least a few times in a day but that’s not the case with our administration.

“India to become world’s 5th largest economy by 2020: CEBR report” read The Hindu on December 27, 2011. Such a proud statement to read and feel, isn’t it? Nevertheless there is much more unread between those ten words and perhaps covertly perceptible to the common man. For years in conjunction we have asked questions about the cultural corruption, national infidelity, disputable child labour, frightening poverty and so on. But yet we cannot have justified answers to any.

Pease try and answer my few questions. I ask you if you have ever raised questions? Did you ever ask a why to all that was conferred upon you? We only hear what shouts out loud. We only see that is flagrantly shown. We only speak when we are personally offended. And again I ask you why? I am 28 today and perhaps capable of reading, writing and understanding. But I am totally incapable of comprehending why I do what I do when I can choose to not do. I am sure you must have had that strongest desire least once in your life to bring a change. But over a period of time something changes that desire too. And we laugh about it like a joke, despite that being on our own selves on our own impotency.

Take your time to read this one. Perhaps I won’t be writing anything again like this. I don’t know the number of times I must have sniveled writing this article.

Most of us will wake up in the year 2020 to see a dynamic new emerging India. This new India will be serving us the best of the world. Meaning, right from the morning tea, perhaps the French Mariage Frères to the Britain’s Warburton bread for breakfast. Sounds like a status symbol in a developed India. But ever wondered what it means to have all these foreign companies in the country? Globalization some might call it. Do you remember that small tiny shop near your home from where you used to buy candies, stationary or quick grocery? I am sorry to remind you that its 2020 and certainly you don’t see that shop anywhere. Where is it? What happened to the baniya?

The baniya is gone away; he could not sustain his miniscule business against some western giants. This story is very similar to Gold Spot & Campa Cola, which were known Indian brands that vanished after the liberalization policy in 1991. The government of India wanted some “competition” in the market and in time both these drinks were lost somewhere in the economic transition. In 1977 I think the then honourable Prime Minister Morarji Desai asked Coca Cola and IBM to leave India to protect the domestic market. But his honest government lasted for a couple of years more only.

Eventually Coca Cola was again invited to make business in the country under the Liberalization and Globalization policies. With these foreign companies, came in several others to spread “technology & advancement” in the country. India has an enormous market and that is the sole reason why Wal-Mart and apparently Carrefour wants to sneak in too. Owing to the Foreign Direct Investment that has been reformed in the favour of multinational companies, we have them everywhere we see today. But in this limelight what we do not seem to see is the local companies that we have lost, usually taken over or the expensive age old taxation system and competition shutting it down.

A good foreign exchange comes in with multinationals finding base in India. The common man is very happy to see some more varieties in food, beverages, medicine, clothes, automobiles and employment etcetera. But in this excitement what we missed is to know what these companies bring in. Do they bring in exclusive quality stuff or otherwise. Do you have a huge garbage bin in your locality? I believe every street has one. What is this garbage bin here in this context? Well, people from the nearby locality can come and dump their left over in this bin. This is exactly what India has turned out to be if you pay close attention.

There are more than 500 products in the country that are foreign made but shockingly these very products are not even sold in their home country. And when I say not even sold, I am saying their home government has rejected most of them to be futile, useless, unproductive, unprofitable or dangerous to human health. And surprisingly these very products are conveniently sold in India and also other Asian countries. You would be thrilled to know that there are a few foreign medicines that are sold in India which are even rejected by Bangladesh and Nepal. Do you remember the Bhopal Gas Tragedy of 1984? I hope you do. About 20,000 people died and about 6,00,000 injured in the methane gas leak. Warren Anderson the CEO of US based Union Carbide Corporation was charged with manslaughter. The man absconded to the US after his US$ 2,100 bail and was never seen again.

The inside story was that Anderson was flown out on a ‘government’ plane. The then ‘chief secretary’ of the state allegedly planned his evacuation. On July 31, 2009, an arrest warrant for Anderson was issued. But the United States declined to extradite him quoting a lack of evidence. In 1989, Union Carbide paid the Indian government US$470 million as compensation but feel the inhumanity, the victims are still to receive that money. Today Anderson lives in a US$9,00,000 villa in Long Islands, USA. This is just an example of what has been done under the “globalization and foreign investment” tag, the government has allowed foreign companies to dump their waste and make tremendous profits at this cost.

We live in a country where there’s a segment of people who barely have any clothes to wear and in this same country we have a pair of denims being sold for a fortune. Don’t be surprised but these foreign companies are given special tax waivers to make business in India. And this becomes a direct striking calamity to the local businessman. I suggest you to get into the intricacies of the GATT and WTO and you would know whom it has benefitted. You might also think, that foreign investment is equally important to any nation to develop. Indeed true. But I would want to know how does a country develop when the local production is hampered. How does a country develop with more of imports and less exports?

Understand how functioning of this politically corrupt trade here. After the Second World War Europe had lost a lot. America too had, but survived. In the 1944 the International Monitory Fund was formed that started functioning by 1945. The World Bank too came into existence then. The principle of IMF was to lend loans to developing nations for macro economic issues in the country. The World Bank was set up to help with development projects providing long-term loans. But these two institutions that appeared or appear to be installed for a good cause have other discrete intentions. India started its Liberalization policy somewhere around 1991 and the Rupee has been devalued constantly since then when it stood at Rs. 18 against the dollar. If we are so developed today, if we are so globalized today, if there is so much advancement today then why has the Dollar beating the Rupee since? June 2012 recorded the lowest at Rs. 57. South Korea is another great example how IMF exploited the nation to the dogs by its “reform” policies of making it open the domestic market for foreign sellers, devaluation of its currency, peeling of restriction on foreign companies to make business within the local market and so on. I recommend you to read about South Korea, Indonesia and the worst being Thailand. The strip shows, massage parlours, the prostitution made legal there is nothing but the only refuge to call in foreign currency after the IMF exploitation. If you think that’s a Thai culture then go check when this all begun and if you can read between the lines, you will also know the reason why. It is a sorry state of Thailand today that the world had to find its monstrous lust satisfied in its helplessness of the mothers and daughters. I am sorry that I cannot find words in this English language today to express what I feel right now.

Pause.

If you are reading this right now, you have a good decent life. You own a computer, an Internet connection, you can certainly read and understand and perhaps most of you are making some money for a living too. Therefore it’s a given that there is no such a need for you to pay attention to the perceptible tiny affairs happening around you. You get your food to eat, house to stay and some entertainment and to make you feel living in a cosmopolitan state. Most of us including me are not bothered if the price of milk rises by a few rupees because we earn enough to compensate few rupees for the milk. And this very most of us never cared to know why the price of the milk arose. And this very most of us who are educated don’t even know why we pay those few rupees more. And these are the people, like you and me who are solely responsible for the state of economy today. Whoever said that ‘a bad government is elected by the good citizens, who do not vote’, said it correct.

Please understand that when a price of a commodity rises its not always because of its scarcity. It is because something else is to enter the market as a substitute. These are chain of events that are meticulously strategized. And all this is planned by the government with the big companies who want to make that sale possible and how. Look around you at this very moment and count the number of products that are not made in India. I debated about this with my friend and he said that India does not make quality products. He said although we have the labour, we do not have the brain to make commodities like the iPhone. He said, if we don’t have International technology in our country, we would never grow.

My serious question to you all is how do you define technology? Is technology a scientific knowledge of developed western minds or is technology an inherent answer to your basic need? To me technology is nothing but an answer to your desperation, your need. I will only make an umbrella if it rains. I will only weave a sweater if it’s cold. India would definitely need to communicate and therefore needs a phone but not an iPhone. An iPhone is not the advent of technology; it is progressive innovation. India does not ‘need’ an iPhone although I have nothing against if India ‘wants’ it.   

So if the system states that its investing in foreign companies then its not it. It is definitely true that the foreign companies in the country bring in employment opportunities. I will never deny this fact. But what I am ignoring is the layer under this superficial veracity. There are about 50 cities scattered around 29 states in India.  Each city has a population of about a million. As per the statistics by FAO (Food & Agriculture Association of the United Nations), if Walmart were to open an average Wal-Mart store in each of these cities, the employment would merely be of about 16,000 persons only and displacing about 700,000 persons. If you think you are paying a Rupee less when buying a product from Wal-Mart, there are atleast 3 people who have lost their job in the same country while you did that. So show me, where is the effing employment?

The economic terms of Balance of payment, Free trade, Foreign Investments, Multinationals are nothing but glorified names of contemporary concurrent corruption. Rupees 35,000 Crores were spent on the Commonwealth Games in 2010. As per figures by the Right to Information Act, India suffered a deficit of nearly Rs. 1500 crore. The Games were meant to earn 1780 crores and ended up with just Rs. 400 crore. What I do not understand is why be a part of this Commonwealth club? What is this Commonwealth? When the British Empire fell apart, eight states namely Australia, New Zealand, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, South Africa, United Kingdom and Canada adopted the 1949 London Declaration. This declaration said that they recognized King George VI as the symbolic head of their association (Commonwealth of Nations). I ask why? And what is this great effort all about? Keeping the British colonial legacy alive? Come on, how can anyone be so shameless to forget the history of what the British did. Why the excitement over Pratibha Patil receiving a baton? I ask her if she has any sense of pride to accept it from the Queen who certainly has never expressed any remorse over what her ancestors did to our nation. It is utter disgrace if this administration including the President is still catering to the fancies of the stinking British Empire that is proving to be completely futile in the European union itself.

Our minds have been infected beyond a remedy. Corruption is in our blood and has become the only way of living. If you are not an Indian reading this, learn. If this is the same story in your country, revolt. If you choose to read and Like, joing the league of the mute.  

“Use Taiwan erasable paper to save trees.” The Indian Express, August 08, 2011. What a statement to decipher. Save Trees it says, and the World Heritage Site the Western Ghats is been constantly bombarded for mining, dam constructions and of course did I miss the coal scam amounting to Rs. 1,85,591 Crores by the UPA government? And to sum it up read the first two words. ‘Use Taiwan’ erasable paper.

Tied up in this cubicle I am doing things that I am asked to do even if I do not believe in it. That’s advertising, intrinsically. Which is why I feel like an intellectual prostitute, squandering my existence at times. Today, about US$ 1,450 billion is stashed amongst the Swiss Banks. This money belongs to the people of my country and millions like me know about this but are handicapped.

Nevertheless, I feel good when I abuse this system out loud in the nicest demonstrative words I can.

Jai Hind (sarcasm).

Apologies.

No content of this article may be copied or duplicated without the writer’s consent. Copyright © 2012 Gaurav Chavan. All Rights Reserved.

They ask me what is it and I am unable to tell them what it is. They tell me that they don’t understand it and I feel sorry that I cannot make them understand.

Look around you.

You see people around speaking different languages, moving around places, engaged in doing something. There are objects lying around, some are motionless, some are moved around. There are colours, so many of them around, on people, on objects, on trees, on flowers. Each colour speaks to you, something about it. There are books around, each telling you a story. There are gods around and I wonder why all are kept above the eye level, you have to reach to them, look up at them and then complain gods are never accessible. Some are hung in frames while some rest in clay. There is a map somewhere, showing you the world, how big it is, to me it shows how small I am. Somewhere there is a calendar, telling you that there was a yesterday, there is a tomorrow to come, to live.

Put all these things together and there is chaos. This chaos is our routine life with all these things together, at once. You have to fight through all of them, together every single day, every single hour, every single minute of your time. Look at your wristwatch and see if it is scaring you. It tells you there are things to be done, people to be met, conversations to be made, a doing is awaited and every passing second it is mastering you. Remember the time you bought it; you bought it so it could assist you.

Pull yourself on the street and there is noise. There are people talking, screaming, fighting, romancing. There are cars moving from places, sound of their horn distracting you. There are traffic lights, communicating with you. Commanding you to move as it says. There is the smoke of someone’s cigarette that you inhale passively. There is someone’s perfume in the air trying to attract with you, your senses. There are expensive clothes worn by some rich around, broadcasting their riches and announcing your deficit. In someone’s food you see your hunger and in someone’s hunger you see your food.

Relationships are even more subjugating. You never are the same with each relationship that you make. What you are to your father, you aren’t the same to your mother. What you are to you sister, you aren’t the same to your wife. What you are to your friends, you are not the same to your colleagues. You are not the same, though you are the same you. Each relationship rules you, breaks you, demands, expects, and identifies you each differently. But you are the same you, broken into a several yous. Which one is you, the real you?

We love, we cry. We are hurt, its painful but we still love. Why don’t we learn? We want to be touched, we want to be known, we want to be heard, we want to be seen. Each of it is a suffering and yet, we don’t learn. To want all this for what? So more people know you, about you, talk about you, mock you, abuse you and compliment you. To be touched, with love or hatred, it pains both ways. Don’t tell me it’s different. In the end, it is all the same. But we don’t learn.

Now look within you.

There is nothing to be seen. Because you don’t know what to see. You don’t know what to look for. But when you know, you will see something. Something that is, but Nothing. This nothing is the emptiness. This emptiness is what you need to see. This unseen is to be seen.

When you Disconnect yourself from Everything that you look around is that moment, one moment of Nothingness.  

When you looked around, you saw 1+1 become 2 and that is when the problem begun. When you look within, you shall see a zero. That is where the problem ends.

Shunyata is Being. Being whatever you want to be, but not to become. Shunyata is to be. To be what you are to be, what you are made to be, but not to become. Don’t speak, just acknowledge. Don’t listen, but perceive. Don’t see, simply witness.

They said I was illiterate when I could not read and write. Now that I can, I am susceptible to all that literacy got me. This knowing, this pain, this suffering, this misery, this torment and the unhappiness it got me. Now when I know, I understand, I analyze, I judge, I moderate. Then I write. You are literate and so you read. You read and then you think. You think of that which you never thought before and you complicate. Life was simple when you knew less. But now you know more, life has become too complex. 1+1 brought me to a pandemonium. I was better illiterate.

Love is just being. Just being in harmony with the other beings. They say love is found. I believe love is never lost. Love is only discovered. It is discovered from its very existence. It is not a need. It is nature. You come with it. You die with it. It is basic instinct. But I became literate and I analyzed love. And then I learnt of lust.  And I complicated everything. I didn’t realize when love became intimacy. And in no time, intimacy became intricacy. 1+1 brought me to a pandemonium. I was better illiterate.

We live our lives in chaos. Struggling each day to answer that one question people ask us, “what do you want to become?” Expectations arise, dreams are woven and a suffering begins. Each day towards your “becoming”, you kill each you who wanted to just be.

Now that you are something you wanted to become, you are satisfied. But are you at peace? Is there harmony within you? Has the becoming got you what you thought would get you? Did you become what you were to? Did you answer that question?

:)

just Be.

Na paap ka bhar na punya ka adhar, sirf nirjara.

No content of this article may be copied or duplicated without the writer’s consent. Copyright © 2012 Gaurav Chavan. All Rights Reserved.

Recently I went to a medical supplies store near my office to buy some stuff. Next to me stood a young pretty looking girl who was somewhere in her twenties. She asked for a Fair & Lovely face cream. I wasn’t really perturbed at that as it was nothing out of the ordinary.

I looked at the girl and she was already quite fair to use the product. When I went back to office and sat before the computer browsing some information across the web, an advertising banner leaned aside with five to six facial colour transitions of an Indian model. The product was some skin whitening cream.

I know that this fairness cream issue has been discussed over time but I still couldn’t comprehend why a fairness cream is actually used.

There is a small analysis that I did about where this fairness cream actually fits in. Indians as we know are of the brown skin. Now there has been no calamity that made us brown. We are what we are by nature. Just like how the dark skinned people of Africa are or just as how the white skinned people of Europe or America are. There is nothing religious about it so I would definitely not use the word god-made anywhere.

Right from the pre-independence period, India was self-sustained in every aspect of trade and commerce. There is nothing where we lacked or there was nothing that we were exclusively dependent upon. We produced the best steel in the world; evidence states that it was better than the produce of Denmark. We produced the best cotton in the world that was exported all around the planet as no one else could cultivate cotton due to climatic restrictions. Well, if I had to put it this way then, we put clothes onto the rest of the world including the Greeks and the Queen.

We cultivated food when most of the Europe lived majorly on forest produce. We built our own houses with the epic drainage system and carved out civilizations. These are some facts that state, India occupied about 32% of the global economy. Re-read. India occupied about 32% of the global economy around 1600s - 1800s.

So basically, we were in no way inferior to any existing nation then. But all this changed after some white men from Europe approached India for trade and tampered the very being to what we see today. Everything changed after the East India Company was set in India. In the year 1600 Queen Elizabeth I granted a Charter to the East India Company that established trading posts in Bombay, Calcutta and Madras.

Indian exports were at its peak and there was a huge demand for Indian produce from all over the world. This development was a major setback for the British. You must have read the famous quote by Macaulay in 1835 talking about him traveling the length and breath of India and not find a single beggar or a thief.  In there he also apparently mentions about breaking the backbone of India, which is its spiritual and cultural heritage. He then proposed to replace the ‘old and ancient education system’ in India, as he believed that Indians think that all that is foreign and English is good and greater than their own.

I don’t vouch for the authenticity of the above quote or wouldn’t know if there is any fabrication injected therein. But when I read that quote in time and jolt back to the present, I do find it to be true to the core when a Fair & Lovely is the largest selling fairness cream in Asia and especially India. It was somewhere then when we were convinced that the light skin is better than the dark skin. English education was introduced in the Indian culture that slowly began to poison the nobility of the intellectual literature of the nation.

Africa prides over its scenic beauty and its abundance of natural resources and yet people who came from countries that could not even grow basic rice enslaved the continent for centuries together. And then you ask why and the answer overtly recorded in history is because of their dark skin. This was a contagious disease that spread across several continents but it stayed back in our nation etched on our belief system.

I bought the cream to find what was it made of. I am not a science expert but the one thing I found in there was that since Fair & Lovely is not categorized as a pharmaceutical product, it evidently does not need to prove its efficacy. Which simply put, we can laugh on a bunch of us who believe it’s a bad omen when a cat crosses the street before you but not in the superstition like a fairness cream.

This is just for your information that I learnt reading some case studies that dark skin is better and less vulnerable to skin diseases than lighter skin. Dark skin contains more melanin that protects it from the sun and hence, reduces the incidences of skin disease. I wonder if you have ever read this as a statutory warning on these products. And one more interesting fact that people have always missed is about who makes this fairness cream. Hindustan Lever is the name of the creator. Sounds very Indian doesn’t it? Adding to the information, Hindustan Lever, which is now Hindustan Unilever, is India’s largest consumer goods company but owned by the British-Dutch company Unilever, which controls 52% majority stake in HUL. Its products include foods, beverages, cleaning agents and personal care products. Sourced by Wikipedia. So looking into the crux, till 1947 the whole of India fought against 1 British East India Company for its atrocities and post independence invited about a thousand more like it to deteriorate.

India truly is a nation of contrasts. On one side we worship dark skin gods like Krishna and on the other side imprecate their own skin colour and make several attempts to look like who we are not. I do not blame the British for this and the fairness cream is a mere metaphor in this whole idea of superficial prestige in the light skin. This belief is so deeply instilled in our being that we ourselves inculcate it as a value in our culture. We do not realize the humiliation we cause to our own existence of what we are every single time we stand before the mirror. It is a rude truth that we are discretely ashamed of our colour. And you might deny this because you do not realize this.  It subconsciously happens every single day and has become a way of life, an attribute, and a characteristic and terrorizes to become a culture.

Once black Michael Jackson was kept at the pedestal and was adored by the black community. But there was a segment amongst them who will never forgive him for his surgical white plastic face. It is very shameful to see an idol like Shah Rukh Khan influencing the young men towards the wrong notion of handsomeness. Your language, your skin tone, your values together define your identity. And this respective identity defines your native philosophy, heritage and culture. Do not destruct this identity by disguising someone else’s.

I wonder what is it that the cream does to your face but I can definitely tell you what it does to your dignity.

I am,

Gaurav Chavan

No content of this article may be copied or duplicated without the writer’s consent. Copyright © 2012 Gaurav Chavan. All Rights Reserved.

Today I was discussing about patenting with a colleague at work. He was telling me that whatever (shit) I write, I must get it patented. I was a little flummoxed at that very moment. Either I have done sometime for noble cause or invented something that nobody has ever. Neither I had.

I asked him what is there that I must get registered. He tells me everything that you write; you must have it registered so that no one else claims to have written the same. I laughed at that moment and went back to my seat. Honestly, it was not at all a contemplating moment over what he said and I was really not thinking of doing anything of that sort.

But I wanted to know more about patenting and its rights. And I tumbled over some information that I missed about 7 years back. It is about the controversy over the Neem tree. Some of you might know this or must have missed it like me. I couldn’t resist myself to know more and here I am writing about the whole disputation.

The other day when I went to my relative’s house I saw a few Neem leaves kept in a plate. I asked what these were for and was told that it were to keep with the stored rice. I didn’t have to ask why because I knew about how Neem acts like a pesticide and we all know about it. But what was surprising is that an American businessman named Tony Larson didn’t know that everyone in India knows about the medicinal properties of Neem (Azadirachta).

I am confused what adjective I must add before his name, stupid, ignorant or a moron. Tony Larson claimed to have “invented” the properties of the Neem and had put forth his intentions to get it patented. Surprising for you? Well, it’s not just that. The patent was granted by the European Patent Office and given the rights to a multinational company called W. R. Grace.

Silence. Express your emotion for a moment. Would you feel like laughing? Or you are angry like me.

I was very furious when I read that Tony Larson stole the knowledge from India, escaped to wherever and put forth his intentions for a claim of “inventing” something. How can someone assert to own someone else’s intellectual property? And what kind of defective institution is this that lets a thief have someone else’s property as his own? An appeal was raised against W.R. Grace in this subject somewhere around 1995.

The Neem is native to India and few other countries around Asia. It has been widely used for centuries together in rural areas for its insecticidal properties. What amazed me even more is that how can a product of nature be patented? When I looked into the intricacies of these patents, I found that even the intellectual knowledge of using a nature given product couldn’t be patented, as no one knows when it was used before for the same purpose.

Neem is nature’s produce. It can only be discovered and not be invented. Because Indian’s were equipped with the knowledge of botanical science, we could make use of its properties. Indians have always been pioneers with fundamental science which is why we could identify Neem from the rest. We have been better with the applied sciences as well which is why we could pick Neem’s properties for various purposes. And therefore, no Larson can ever claim to know the chemic attributes of the medicinal plant and put it to use somewhere and say that he “invented” it.

I was looking for the food timeline in ancient England around the 17-18th century and found that they relished on meat and it was considered to be an upper class meal as only the queen had the right devour on all the kinds there. The other diet included bread, Artichokes, French beans and some citrus fruits as a staple diet. On the contrary, by 600 BC the rice cultivation began in India and by the 18th century we had about fifty thousand varieties of rice. And the science to store with the Neem leaves to save from pests was already known then. The Ayurved in India is about 50,000 years old and the Greeks, Romans, Chinese learnt much from it. I am sure this is enough of a validation for Neem’s indigenousness in India.

Here is an excerpt found online about this issue.

“There is an increasing awareness in India of the commodification of neem will lead to the expropriation by multinational corporations, like W.R. Grace. On Indian Independence Day in 1995, farmers in from Karnataka rallied outside the district office to challenge the demands for made by multinational corporations for intellectual property rights. As part of their protest, the farmers carried twigs and branches from the neem tree as a symbol of their collective indigenous knowledge of the properties of the neem.”

Tony Larson licensed his formulation of Neem that he sold as “Margosan-O”, to the chemical giant W R Grace. Did you know that there are about sixteen patents on turmeric (haldi) by America? And how do you think they know about haldi? The Basmati rice has been patented too. Indian history has always witnessed such thefts throughout. If you remember the battle of Plassey, it might remind you of Robert Clive who ripped off the nation by stealing away the gold, silver, diamonds, precious jewels from its people. Nine hundred ships were rented, each weighing valuables of about 60 metric tons that were sent to Britain. After Clive came Warren Hastings and looted the country. Followed by Curzon, Willam Bentinck and so on. I do not want to get into the intricacies and details of history here. But I am just infuriated how foreigners have come, lived and taken away our material and intellectual property and asserted as their own.

On March 8, 2005, newspaper The Hindu headlined ‘India Wins Neem Patent Case’. The story continued with The European Patent Office in Munich dismissed an appeal against revoking a patent granted by it for the preparation of a fungicide derived from the seeds of the Neem tree. Tony Larson was denied of its rights later on.

Sigh.

The first question that came to my mind is if this is the attitude of every Westerner towards Asian countries? Nothing I have to say but I seriously wished that zero should have been patented then.

GC

No content of this article may be copied or duplicated without the writer’s consent. Copyright © 2012 Gaurav Chavan. All Rights Reserved.

Ever noticed that whenever you are standing on a high-rise object looking down, you often go silent. Standing on a tall building, a mountain cliff or anywhere that is a little inaccessible, your mind puts you to a quiet. It is the same when you are standing around a vast ocean or on a mountain watching the sky feeling the wind.

What is it that makes you silent? What is it that your mind tells you then? What is that you do in that moment of elevation? What is that you experience?

The London Olympics play a fine role to bring the nations closer under the platform of sports. Some nations win gold at the same time when some other nations are losing lives. Where the United States is leading with the maximum medallions, people in Syria are dying in maximum population. If you look closer, at a point, wining a gold or taking a life simply means the same. What is that feeling when you know that you knocked off an opponent from another nation to win a gold? What is that feeling when you have killed an opponent from another religion to win a battle? Same feeling?

The World War I was a battle to scrutinize power and conquer authority. The World War II was to display potential and dominion and conquer the weak. The World War III never happened yet because each has recognized the prospective potentiality of the other. The UN is just a metaphor illuminating in the fake skies of apparent harmony. We are cannibals, who only don’t use the mouth, but we otherwise consume everything that the wounded, defeated, slaughtered, the dead has left. Including the echoes of the crying voices but even those fade in time without remorse.

Survival of the fittest has been the most convenient refuge for us. This is what we abide by when debated. We believe so much in god that our conviction in humanity has deterred. And all this for what? For the same feeling that you feel when you are standing on top of a tall building, a mountain cliff or anywhere that is a little inaccessible. Feeling of peace. Do not try to deny this truth. Have you never snapped at a mosquito buzzing around you that haven’t even bitten you? And why do you terminate the existence of the mosquito, which is simply living by its nature? Do you feel at peace once you don’t see it around you?

No matter how educated you think you are or regardless of you being a member of any peace keeping association. You always find peace in the subtraction of something. Your colleague at work talks too much; you find peace in his absence. The music on the television is too loud; peace is at the mute button. Your father pesters you too much with his ideals; peace is when he comes home late. A nagging wife at home; peace is at the club. We do not realize this violence we live within every passing day that subjugates the freedom of existence of the other. We criticize the team who failed to win the match but do not realize it is nature to lose. Why do you not point fingers at the one who is dead? Why the sympathy there? The dead is of no use anymore. There is no good he can do and no bad he can create. Why there is peace here?

Mankind has claimed to find answers for everything but has failed to question the moral conscience of its own being. We win battles to be free and yet decide to be enslaved in this same ideal of freedom that we fought for. We as human beings think we know what it means to be free but defy the same definition of the same freedom if it comes from another human being. It’s irony that human beings we are but have failed miserably in being humans. Never heard of an unborn child crying in the womb but the moment it’s out of its tranquility base, the strike begins.

A few days back there was a protest by some men in Mumbai that gradually turned violent killing a few of them and injuring many. The protest seemed a remonstration for the riots that happened in Assam last week. The riots in Assam were more or less the consequences that happened in Myanmar. What happened in Myanmar was a repercussion that happened because of a moment of exasperation or purposive expression of hatred towards the other. This sense of expression was developed because of the dissonance within religious beliefs demonstrated each day in every human being. And this demonstration is an endeavour to substantiate the ego that religion has inflicted as a curse on mankind.

The victories, the medals, the battles, the war, the bloodshed, the inhumaneness is just to find a delusional tranquility base. Perhaps we get there. Some find it in ashes while some ten feet underground.

Peace. Please.

GC

No content of this article may be copied or duplicated without the writer’s consent. Copyright © 2012 Gaurav Chavan. All Rights Reserved.