The dichotomy of Fountainhead

The fashionable ideas these days: to follow your own heart, do what you like, find your passion and the iconic Stay Hungry Stay Foolish have one thing in common. All of them collectively owe some part of their origin to one book: Fountainhead. It is one of those books which have had influence across generations. One of the most influential books of 20th century, Fountainhead talks primarily about the triumph of the individual over society. The book  splits the world into two kinds: the first hander who relies on his own thinking and the second hander who borrows from ideas and values from the independent thinkers

Howard Roark is the epitome of the first hander man. He stands up for himself and his ideas. He does not follow the laid down norms of society. For Roark, his individualism is the way he contributes to the advancement of society. He truly believes in his values and more importantly, he is willing to stand for them against the society. He considers originality as the highest ideal for humans to achieve.He is a man who has the potential of greatness and is willing to risk everything to achieve it. Roark considers the individual contributions of the people as the reason that humanity has been able to make any advancement. He fiercely guards his own values and judgments. The trouble with Howard Roark is that he does not give society what it wants. The society expects submission to its rules and norms and he does not give in to the compulsion.

Peter Keating on the other hand is painted as the unoriginal man who gets success merely because he knows his way around the world. His focus is on giving the society what it wants to get the fame and success in return. He wants to win the admiration of people even if it is not his own work that is giving the success. To put it dramatically, he wants Keating wants the admiration of men, while Roark wants the admiration of Gods. Peter does not have the strength to stand for his ideas. He seeks validation so desperately that he is willing to trade anything for it, his friends, his wife even his own self. Ayn Rand terms him as the self 'less' man in a very literal sense that he has given up on his own self. The only thing he wants is the prestige and admiration in the eyes of others even if it comes at the cost of his own ideas.

It is pretty evident that Ayn Rand wants people to be a first hander and to go with their individual thought. According to her, collectivism is the root of all the evils in society from Fascism to Communism to World War.

But being a  first hander also comes with its own set of challenges. A glaring example would be the duo of Tesla-Edison. Nobody could be more original than Tesla but in his final days he died alone in a hotel room. Nobody could be more derivative than Edison and he is celebrated like anything in this world to the extent that all of us have read about his 1000 failed attempts to invent a bulb which apparently taught him 1000 ways to not make a bulb instead of de-motivating him.

We really cannot say what is right or wrong and like everything else in life it is really difficult to paint the picture black and white.The world cannot be so easily divided into binaries. But yes, this is a line of thought that is worth pondering over.  Ultimately, it is you who makes the decision about what you want .The two characters of Howard Roark and Peter Keating portray the extreme ends of the spectrum and I feel most of us are in the middle. The key here is not to find the perfect point on the spectrum but to find  your own self on the spectrum and be true to it.

Existentialism

When you think about the world, it becomes really difficult to find meaning in anything at all. Religion, family, society used to be the pillars on which the world used to stand upon, they served the purpose of providing meaning and guiding the people, not anymore. The most obvious thing that looks logical is to acknowledge the meaninglessness of the world. The absurdity of it all, that there is no meaning and ultimately it is you that has to create your own meaning. This realisation is really daunting  as well as empowering at the same time.

It removes the crutches that you were using in life to make decisions like family, religion because if no one knows anything then every choice is right which means there is no right choice.There is no  one hand holding you.You are on your own. You do not have the comfort cushion of a long standing line of thoughts agreed upon  by a large number of people to fall back upon. You have to make your own rules, values, morals.This can lead too the dilemma that Ivan had to deal with in Dostoevsky's last novel Brother's Karamazov. If anything is right then a criminal can  use this argument to justify his crimes saying that if everything is right then so am i, whatever I may do. It is really a difficult thing to deal with with no right answers.Everyone has his own morals and you can just hope and expect that they might be having similar morals consistent with your own but yes you can not force anything on anyone.

On the other hand it can be liberating as hell that you do not have to confirm to some one else's standards and that you can make your own decisions.It frees you up to make any decisions that you might want to make but it also puts the onus squarely on you that what you are doing is only by you and you are the only one responsible for it.


In the end it is about the perspective that you have.

Agnosticism

The question about God's existence has always been puzzling and divisive.People on both ends of the spectrum tend to be so extreme that it becomes difficult to distinguish them from one another.Each of them convinced that they are the ones with the true knowledge about the world and so convinced in their beliefs to not even listen to the other side.

The irony with liberals is that they become conservative in their liberalism.So many times it appears that atheism could be just another kind of fundamentalism,that you are wrong i am right,no god exists ,end of discussion. They are ready to fight over it just like religious fundamentalists do.  On the other hand, are the theists who would have you believe that service to God is the one-stop solution to everything and any objection to it invokes vigorous response from them to the point of violence.

Among all this extremism agnosticism comes as a stream of sanity.The belief that there is no certainty about the existence of God and it could or could not be there. It gives breathing space to everyone. If you get your strength from the concept of God you can have it, if on the other hand you believe that God is just a story that we like to tell ourselves to feel good about ourselves then welcome aboard you can be a agnostic. Obviously this can be said to be taking an easy or rather, an escapist position but it is better to be aware of one's ignorance than being ignorant.

General Elections

I think I don't love anything as much as I love elections.I have always been excited about them.I guess the reason for this is that I have always wanted to understand how the nation functions.I have wanted to be a part of this process by which the nation is run.Now that the elections are around the corner once more, I feel like writing again on it.

The champion:
No doubt that the undisputed king of the jungle right now is Modi. He is the man to beat not just for Congress but every major political party, not part of the government. The impact of Modi has been so huge that it has come down to the survival of some of the regional parties .The questions about Modi's past (read 2002) have largely been buried in the storm of 2014.Almost all of Modi's tactics have worked successfully and there seems to be no one near his stature in Indian politics.He has become the pivot around which the Indian politics revolves.

The performance:
Modi himself has done pretty well in the last 4 years. Electrification, High way building, Infrastructure projects all have been taken up with a sense of urgency. I also feel that he has done much for India's foreign policy. I don't buy this criticism that he has wasted taxpayers money in foreign junkets. In fact, he is the first PM in a long time who has taken steps to establish Indian relations with long lost countries. He has gone about the world as a salesman, pitching India as a destination to do business with and that zeal is something no PM has ever shown in India. Even if a fraction of  all the MoUs with all of the countries are materialised it would be enough , because it goes a long way in establishing the  impression to the world that India means business.

The caveat:
What might work against Modi is the issue of unemployment. If the opposition is able to successfully build a narrative around him and that he has not been able to provide jobs, then it can harm him. And it is true to  a certain extent that this is a serious concern facing the Indian nation irrespective of the party lines. The demographic dividend that we keep on harping about, in comparison to ageing population of Japan and China would amount to NIL if this demographic does not have quality education and if they are not given jobs.So this is going to be a concern for any party.I don't think Congress could have done anything drastically different for this problem but since Modi is in power it will be counted as his failure.

The challenger/s:
It seems that there is no challenger as of now. Its just a rag tag bunch of parties who are aligning together for their survival more than anything else. It would still be a folly to undermine them, we should not forget that there was a time when BJP was called a party of 5 PM candidates and there was a lot of heart burn before Modi was announced as PM candidate. So, yes even though the opposition might be leaderless but they might galvanise around someone post the results and Indian elections have never been Presidential style traditionally.So the opposition can theoretically pose challenges to the government.

Showdown:
If Modi  does win then it would be interesting to see if it was indeed that easy for him to go and win the elections as it has  been predicted by some.He might fundamentally change the Indian nation because no one other than Congress would have got that much time at the helm of nation. And if he loses then it would be even more interesting to see how the opposition was able to win the match in which they clearly were the underdogs at the beginning.Any which way the results come out, it is going to be a blockbuster!Waiting for it with a popcorn bucket!

The Joker Question

                                                           

Joker is a fascinating character.I feel very awed by him and his ideas every time I see Nolan's Dark Knight.He is not your  run of the mill, trigger-happy villain who wants to conquer the world or has a backstory justifying his evil. He is evil just because he is, like  a force of nature, he just exists. Anarchy and Chaos are the corner stones of the philosophy which he abides by.

He describes himself as an agent of chaos and he really is. The dilemma that he puts  Gotham in, with two ships having the trigger for each other's bomb asks real soul searching questions.The civil behaviour and morality it seems is a pretence that people put on because they are not allowed to behave otherwise. Push the people sufficiently, and they will throw away the facade or at least think seriously  about it. Now it is a subjective question, whether we will be pulled down into chaos like force of gravity as Joker puts it or we ultimately let our nobler instincts prevail as it happens with the people of Gotham.

But it is an interesting thought, if we really are civil and moral due to our choices or due to compulsion. The overwhelming conviction of Joker is that we behave ourselves just because that is what is allowed in our society, the artificial rules are what hold this world together.And if we let it all loose we might see the people in the truest sense, stripped of the pretence and back to animalistic behaviour. He was successful to a large extent in revealing the moral vulnerability  of humans by changing the outlook of Harvey Dent. But the extent of human nature is such that it never ceases to surprise us.The world is replete with examples where people have shown  examples of kindness in the face of extreme strife and also we see comfortable people behaving in most inhumane ways.So we can't be sure if we will eat each other up  in case food on Earth runs out but it is indeed a distinct possibility.

Facing such a potent villain or rather an idea, Batman did not just have to defeat Joker in the material sense but in a deeper philosophical battle. The only weapon to counter it would have been hope and that is what Batman uses, even if based on a lie. Joker's questions over human nature are answered by Gotham itself when the ships  do not blow each other up. But the light is not lit everywhere, Dent does fall prey to Joker's machinations and embraces his dark side. To defeat Joker, to keep the hope alive, Batman has to lie to make the people believe in themselves, in their own humanity.He has to sacrifice his own self to achieve that.

It really boils to each one of us and where do each one of us wants to go.Its like a self-fulfilling prophecy, if we do think that we will blow the other boat then we might be the one who might get blown up.As for me, I am still hopeful of the world amidst all the strife, I still believe that hope is a good thing and no good thing ever dies.

Times They Are A Changin'

There was a time when it appeared that everything was collating, connecting and joining.The world was getting smaller.I used to think that eventually the world would become one entity.The powers of globalization and liberalism appeared inevitable like a law of nature.

The recent happenings in the world with Brexit, Trump and the Rise of xenophobia across Europe have made me question whether these assumptions are right or not.Add to this the recent regime change in Brazil and you now have a world where every major country is closing its borders , the people are okay even if their leaders don't always say the most politically correct things and in general it is okay to distrust and attack people who are not like them.

To a large extent the reason things are changing this way is that for a long time the world was on the path of globalisation, of inclusiveness, of trusting the people who said the politically correct things and look where it led the world to. The 2008 crisis made the people question the powers that be and this current scenario is really a result of the people wanting the power back to them or at least the appearance of it. A common pattern in all of these political changes is that the new leader is always projected as the outsider, the one not part of the “system”, the one not scared to say what everyone is secretly thinking.

This makes the future so much more unpredictable.I don't know what is going to happen with the world when in the past I thought I knew where it was going.And you never know when something is just an ideology or a rebellious cry and when it becomes an accepted norm.

For example, today you can't say anything against women in general or consider them inferior or degrade them in any way.But back when it started, if you were a feminist then you were the one who had a different opinion than the majority, you were a rebel and you would have to fight it out with the society but now it is so entrenched within all of us as if it is a rule of nature and considered a basic law just like universal franchise where everyone has an equal vote.

Things change so quickly and before you know it there is an entire new world around you and you need to change yourself according to it. We need to keep ourselves one with the times because times, they are a changin'.

On original thought

What is originality?This is one of the fundamental questions that very few people bother to ask.What is an original thought and what is its importance?What people think and believe is affected by so many things that after a point it becomes really difficult to separate the adopted thought  from the genuine.

The fact is that there is a general level of acceptance about certain things like if a politician says that women should not have voting rights he would be shred to bits on prime time news because the general acceptance in the society is that men and women are equal at least that is what everybody in principle has  to pretend no matter what they think in their private lives.But  if the same politician had said the exact same words a 100 years back they would not have evoked sharp criticism only raised brows may be and if he had said the same thing 200 years back it would have uninteresting even dull responses because he would be stating only the accepted norm of the  society. So the point  is that there is a certain unwritten common  code of acceptable behavior which the society follows and it cant be codified

But fast forward 200 years and the accepted norms are changed.The question arises how do these changes arise and why do we as a citizen blindly follow the accepted norms the prevailing society.If for example a person holds the opinion of equality of men and women because it is what everyone says .Should that person get credited for holding such broad views about women or is he merely a function of the society that he is born in ?.It raises the serious question whether  our thought is only reliant on the prevailing society or are capable of independent thought process of our own?And if so where does our influences end and original thought begin?

On Freedom

I don't know what kept me from writing for so long...i guess it was the lack of readership or rather lack of interaction which disinterested me in writing posts.And i think it hits everyone who blogs at some point of time when  you don't seem to have the motivation to blog but here i am giving it another go.
For some time now i have been thinking about freedom and what is it actually.Now it being an abstract concept it is very difficult to come up with an exact definition for it and yet wars have been fought, massacres have been committed, people have have been killed  for this very abstraction.

But are we really free??Us the people who are supposedly free now that the British have left(Obviously i am referencing India only because it is unlikely that the six people who would be reading this post would have a US passport).Do we make the choices that we want to make?Or are we just following the existing structure of the society because that is what we are supposed to do and that is what is easy to do??In that respect are our choices the function of our surroundings and if so than where does the freedom lie?Isn't it all an illusion of freedom under the chains of societal norms.?

What i believe is that freedom is a huge responsibility.Freedom makes us feel lost.Freedom makes it difficult to decide because there is no guideline to follow.Freedom can make life hell.And so we have devised several contraptions to give us a path to follow which includes religion.Now religion in itself can be a very broad term but the one here is the ugly organised religion of evangelism and conversions.This is the religion of the priest in the grand inquisitor(Brothers Karamazov) where the priest rebukes Christ for having given the curse of freedom to the people and says that he is no longer needed.The chains of church would provide the salvation to the common man.

But i don't want to go into how freedom is suppressed.I want to talk about are really free???anywhere at all??anyone at all??what is true freedom?I think true freedom would lead to us gratifying our needs.And in all possibility in the order of Maslow's pyramid.But to be able to know ones desires,that in itself has become a big task because of the years of influence of the existing society wherever we live.To be absolutely free of the shackles of society that is something that i think about.The people who meditate possibly Buddha or Mahavira might have come across this only.They might have been able to delve deeper into themselves and see beyond what was being projected on them by their times.

If we make free decisions,where would that lead us to?Not just big decisions the daily life decisions that we make.How do we spend the 24 hours that we are provided daily?Eating ,sleeping, performing daily routines beyond this how do we decide what to do with our time?Most would be doing a job.But ultimately it is something that we do for money?So is that what should be our driving force??Is that what our freedom has led us to??And there is no denying the value of money.But if we are free to do anything what would we to do?

Desiderata- A poem

DESIDERATA(by Max Ehrmann)

Go placidly amid the noise and haste,

and remember what peace there may be in silence.

As far as possible without surrender

be on good terms with all persons.

Speak your truth quietly and clearly;

and listen to others,

even the dull and the ignorant;

they too have their story.

Avoid loud and aggressive persons,

they are vexations to the spirit.

If you compare yourself with others,

you may become vain or bitter;

for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.

Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.

Keep interested in your own career, however humble;

it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.

Exercise caution in your business affairs;

for the world is full of trickery.

But let this not blind you to what virtue there is;

many persons strive for high ideals;

and everywhere life is full of heroism.

Be yourself.

Especially, do not feign affection.

Neither be cynical about love;

for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment

it is as perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years,

gracefully surrendering the things of youth.

Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.

But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.

Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.

Beyond a wholesome discipline,

be gentle with yourself.

You are a child of the universe,

no less than the trees and the stars;

you have a right to be here.

And whether or not it is clear to you,

no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore be at peace with God,

whatever you conceive Him to be,

and whatever your labors and aspirations,

in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul.

With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,

it is still a beautiful world.

Be cheerful.

Strive to be happy.

                                                                                                            

Moral of the Armstrong story.

The scandals of Tiger woods (who had squeaky clean image) Bill Clinton and even more recently and closely the spectacular fall of Rajat Gupta make one wonder whether the proverb "you can fool some of the people all  the time,you can fool all the people some of the time but you cannot fool all the people all the time", is really true at all.These were people who had everything most people think or dream of, they were the epitomes of  a public image and what we come to know in the end is that they were just fooling all the people all the time.

We need heroes.There is no denying it.there is almost a natural tendency in humans to look up to someone,to pull you up in tough times and Lance Armstrong was born for it.The great American hero, the cancer survivor ,seven time Tour de France winner, philanthropist, a larger than life image, a fairytale  too good to be true, a living legend.

That is why his fall from grace hits even harder.

I remember we used to have a moral science chapter about real life heroes and Armstrong was one.......now it looks odd (for lack of a better word) that we used to study his heroics as apart of our syllabus.I don't know if the book is still on but consider a boy who has just read about him and learns of his doping....

The fact that he could fool so many people for such a long period of time is really awe inspiring.Armstrong never accepted that he doped even when people wrote books about it or when his team mates alleged it,he even sued people for alleging doping on him.One can not help but feel  hatred for someone who harassed other people for speaking the truth,who used to visit children and deliver inspiring speeches when he himself was the God of sleaze.The amount of goodwill,trust and hope that people invested in him, in his image was tremendous and his fall has affected many not in the least the patients funded by his Livestrong foundation.Now that he has been caught he emerges a mere mortal, the deconstruction of his image shows a fallible human who did whatever he could to save himself.Even now; going to Oprah and making a show out of his confession does not improve his credentials,because thats what trust is about ,when you break it and at this level ;even the Queen of confessions can't save you.

The moral of the story in our moral science book was that hard work and strong will conquers all but the way things are this appears to be very far from truth.The moral seems to be that deceit and treachery wins all,that in this world you can get away with any thing you do,and that even a 7 time cycle champ cant be trusted to be honest and real,that this world has come to such a point that when we look for inspiration what we see as role models  are just carefully cultivated charades of people with money and a good PR agent.

Or that moral can be that while looking for inspiration we should not look up to someone but to our own self,to the innate belief in one,that we should not judge other people simply because its an impossible act to perform,that when we decide our morals we should not need the help of someone else.Whatever Armstrong might have done in the races the fact remains that he did beat cancer fair and square,that what he achieved still remains something most people fail to do, that his will and determination did indeed succeed at something,that he did raise $500 million for cancer patients.

May be the true moral is somewhere in between, somewhere between the extremes, somewhere between black and white, somewhere between the pessimism and the optimism....... like everything else in life.

The outrage and the country.

The latest thing to have caught the mood of the nation after the corruption protests is the heinous crime on the 16th of December. The lawlessness of this country was once again displayed for the world to see.The fact that it took one week for the prime minister of this country to speak up on the issue while the president of the united states made a public statement on the very day of connecticut shootings requires another post.For now it is about this incident.The crime was dastardly ,make no mistake about that but what intrigued me was the outrage that followed it.

What beats me in the outrage is that people react only when a such a crime is committed in the tier 1 city and that too in a "decent" area.Does any one know Thangjam Nanao Singh?.Not many.No one cares for the brutal cases that occur in the hinterlands of this country or in city slums.No vigils are held for them ,no one raises a voice for them.In short, no one gives a damn.

Moreover the knee-jerk reaction is what surprises me the most..Does any one remember the  Keenan Santos and Reuben Fernandes case?Not many.The outrage,the facebook groups squared up to zilch.This has become a sort of a cycle.,an incident in a metro, outrage, rally,provocative emotional images and graphics(at times with background score) on news channels, candlelight vigils,facebook likes groups,change the dp......new t20 match of India....sehwag scores a ton....whatever happened to the incident.

This is seriously sad. 

I don't have a problem with death penalty or castration or whatever you wanna do with the culprits but the problem in this country are not laws but their implementation ,the required amount of police personnel,their training to deal with such incidents,the patriarchal mindset of the society .

The offender does not feel free because of lack of laws but because he knows that the girl will herself not speak up,even if she does the social and parental pressure will push her down,if she does manage to reach the police station the insensitive police would not cooperate and if the culprit is influential,might simply refuse to make an fir. Supposing she beats all odds ,the pathetic judicial system makes sure the remaining glimmer of justice is quashed.

Call me a cynic but this " 'like'-this-to-bring-a-change","click-here-for-revolution","change-dp-to-to-change-the-nation" kind  of armchair slacktivism makes me squirm.A similar kind of "activism" was shown during the corruption protests when many went to the jantar mantar to get a pic with Indian flag to make a dp because it was the new "in-thing".Teaching your maid's kid a new word every day can bring more change than this.A false sense of altruism is all one gets most of the times.This comic by Garbage Bin shows the hypocrisy.

Not that there is no hope for this country ,the repeated protests and anger in this country do indicate there is a silver lining for this country after all.But this system needs massive changes.This rape incident and the lokpal issue point to  the larger need of police,judicial,electoral and  administrative reforms.There have been countless committees for them but it is only when people get on the streets for them when the politicians would bother with them. Till then the politicians are happy making more committiees and the people are happy creating a new page to like.

The Wasseypur saga (Spoilers Galore)

When i first heard about GOW i was very excited about it as AK had come as a revelation to me  recently when i had watched Gulaal and i was blown off by it.I thought that AK's  take on small town gangs would be interesting.So in a way i was already biased in its favor before watching it.I travelled 40 km to see the movie so that i could enjoy the movie in its full flow and magnificence.And it didn't disappoint.

It has AK written all over it and it is fitting that he be compared with QT .

Strangely Humour is the first word that comes to mind when thinking about GOW.It is really odd that a crime film with so much amount of gore and violence and abuses should invoke humor as a first word but i could not stop laughing during the film.AK's humor is not your regular slipping on a banana peel slapstick it is wacky, it is black, observational, situational almost to the point of being cruel but stops short of it.I don't know if there are words to describe his humor.

GOW is full of such examples two of my favorites are the operation in the dark scene in the first part where the fearsome sardar becomes unreasonably caring for his son who barely has an  injury.Another is the one where ramadhir asks his son which "cinema" he went to see the day before and JP sheepishly tells DDLJ.The look of disappointment on Ramadhir's face,the guilt and embarrassment on JP's face are all priceless.AK manages to takes such funny situations out of daily lives and portray them on screen, which is brilliant..The one where Durga puts a loaded gun her sons bag and asks him not to get into a fight with a straight face is another gem.One other  priceless scene that comes to mind is the one with Abhay Deol and the Aunty with a bus Ticket in Dev D, that scene had me in splitts for a long time.

The music plays a great role in setting the mood of the film and it has been dealt with carefully.AK has done a great job here with the an innovative soundtrack by Sneha Khanwalkar, Piyush Mishra, and the background score by GV Prakash.Barring the song Moora which i believe is pretty uplifting and leaves a impression, but doesn't work well in the film as a sort of strength giving track for Faizal Khan, all the songs help in taking the story forward. 

The way the woman characters were given a backseat along with Asghar and Farhan could have been done away with.The way Nagma Khatoon's character was shaped up in the first part, much more was expected then a one time riling up of her son, also the character of Mohsina doesn't have a major say in the scheme of things other than singing a song and a few hilarious scenes.

Death becomes commonplace in the city and is almost trivialized by the sad songs sung by Yashpal Sharma of which he keeps track by counting the beats on his fingers. In spite of this, the climatic death along with the epilogue does leave you a bit poignant.Also it leaves the space open for a Wasseypur series if not soon then may be 10 to 20 years later but the saga can be continued and may be till then the real life inspiartions would give more fodder  for the story.

Although the two films individually have their own place but the best way to see GOW is as one movie which surpasses the individual films.

Not just another show

One of the things that i dislike is the use of  someones emotions for one's benefit especially the emotion of sorrow.The awkward silences, polite talks, solitary tears  all just make me cringe and i just  loathe these kind of methods.

So when on the sunday morning i switched on the tv  like millions others ,one can imagine the disappointment when i saw aamir calling assorted ladies and hearing their sad stories.I thought  aamir too had fallen prey for the tears-for-trp business even though he did it in a more subtle manner and  gracefully showed the tears and horror of the audiences but still it looked stage managed and it probably was.But as the show went by, it appeared to become bigger than just use-and-throw of the emotions of people for trps.The research,the  travel, the experts , the intent ,  the decision to participate himself to lead the way forward to the solution and most importantly the effort to encourage people against the female foeticide cause  made the show more than  a exploitation-of-the-emotions show.

But herein lies the catch; in making his show different from others aamir has taken a really major decision by himself participating in causes , he must understand that just doing celeb lip service to a cause will bring major flak and criticism to him.He has made it more than just trps and as he intended it to be; it  is not just another show not only for the audiences but also for himself he can not get himself away from it just by shooting for it.It will or at least should take a significant portion of his time.

The major criticism for the show is that aamir has no magic wand and that there are activists who have been leading the cause for decades and that aamir is being listened because he is a star and that his efforts are only giving pr to the cms and they will do nothing more. But i think  aamir himself made it clear on the show that  it is the people who have to change and no amount of regulations can help unless people change, secondly this should not be one up manship that he is a one day wonder and that others have worked for decades, the "activists" should look at it as another helping hand.It must be understood that what he brings to the table is attention to the cause and that the battle would still be long but more people will join in.Lastly it is too early too comment on the show ;how the show fares will largely depend on how aamir takes the issues forward in the future; it is too early to be cynical about it or question his intentions;he has a long way to go but at least he is the only who has made the step in the right direction .It is not just another show ;not for the viewers and if aamir is not acting it certainly should not be for him..........

UP elections

So the dance of Indian democracy has once again put the pollsters to shame.No one knew that the sp goondas will be so much coloured this holi and that that mayawati will have to face a washout, the position of the national parties were pretty much known.So for my first post i would like to do one of my favourite things i.e. dissecting the political parties.
CONGRESS-----The "party of the prince" fell flat on their face.While the party never really claimed that this was the prince's fight but it was pretty much clear that they were treating it as the "coming of age" ceremony before the battle of 2014.The mentor of the prince tried every trick in the book to woo the muslims ,the sal'man' of the party too tried to sacrifice himself on the alter of CEC to help the prince but could not even save the election for her own wife.The prince himself continued his policy of "eat -with -the -poor- to- woo- them" but even they could see through his superficiality, the poor may be illiterate but they are certainly not dumb.And even though the prince tried to be courageous and had good photo op with his sister waiting while he took the blame gallantly,the sycophants had a field day defending him.
But in my opinion this was a good wake up call for congress and they can still rectify their decline and still make some gain for the 2014.While i don't like the dynasty of congress or of any other party but given the present options i will still put my bet on rahul g for 2014 provided he brings some change in the party.
BJP------The party with 55 pm candidates also failed to make any mark in the elections.The party never really looked in the fray and made only cosmetic changes at the last time to bring uma bharti and khushwaha(even though that hurt them more than helping them).The party never had any leadership in the state and they couldn't have credited anyone nor can they blame anyone for the failure.It reflects on the party which has so much infighting going on that they are not able to take the advantage of such a pathetically abysmal central government.Also the fading of their  hindutva politics was again proved by their loss in their bastion of ayodhya.
So if bjp has any intention to swap the benches in the parliament they better get out of the 90s politics of raths and mandirs and  start working around a leader on the development front and go full on against this terribly shaky government.
BSP--------The party which considers that the basic human need is pride and not roti ,kapda,makan and so spent crores on the murtis and parks and that too of herself instead of welfare schemes,the party which made a very serious attempt to create a cult around their leader, was thrown out of power with a very convincing mandate.The bsp has a lot to think over ,the top down working style, the corruption ,the arrogance all have contributed to their decline.But the greatest silver lining for bsp in all this gloom  ironically is their very adversary;it looks the state has no choice but a goonda and a goondi and as is proved by the post poll violence ,the sp hasn't really changed much so the bsp don't  have to do much but wait for sp  to self destruct.
SP------The greatest miracle is really for the sp ,the party which didn't do much but was generously helped by the pathetic bsp government.Everyones talking about akhilesh but i don't think he should get as much credit as he is getting and by the looks of it he doesn't look to be a very smart chap; i may be wrong but he doesn't impress at first sight.
The real challenge for sp would be to deliver on the development front and control their goondas.

So their you  go ........ this is MY view on the elections .
Do remember to comment on it if you happen to read it.
:)
MJ