Ghost and God

I was watching Discovery channel series 'A Haunting'. It's a TV series comprised of narrations and dramatic reenactments of paranormal encounters and experiences based on real experiences. This is the first time I saw the series. I usually don't watch anything related to paranormal but today I did. Anyway the series got me thinking.

Do I need to believe in God in order to believe in Ghost?

Let me explain. Ghost is supposed to be spirit of deceased who either have some unfinished business or some attachment on Earth that keeps them from moving on. But moving on to where? In order to explain that, don't I have to believe in God?

The only explanation that I can think is based on Bhagwad Gita that talks about recycling of souls without mentioning God. According to the Gita:

The body is temporary but the soul is eternal. When this body is finished the soul must continue to exist as it's eternal. And just as the soul is currently residing in this body, when this body is finished the soul will continue to exist by residing in another body. (From: Gitamtra.org)

So in this case I don't have to believe in God and still can believe in ghost, do I? Or is there something I am missing?

On second thought...

Isn't God the reason for all the terrorism in world? Let's get rid of Him. :D

God's existence: New argument...

If God really existed, wouldn't He done something about the terrorism perpetuated in His name? If He is as good and as kind as all these religions propagate, would He have allowed all these atrocities made in His name?

Desi or non-desi

As I posted yesterday about the possibility of Tajel being an Indian. I simply can't stop thinking about it ever since. If she is Indian, then she is marrying someone non-Indian. Well, Dr. Khumalo doesn't sound like an Indian name to me. I can be wrong though. And she is marrying a professor. Hmmm....let me think. The words that are coming to my mind are 'disgrace', 'scandal' etc. etc. You get an idea.

I am not saying that I am against it but honestly I am amazed to see her parents being so supportive about it. Watch 'Bend it like Beckham' to understand the issue. A desi marrying a non-desi is a big deal. And it's just not movies. It's for real. I happen to know someone who is third generation Indian (her grandparents moved to US) and her family has trouble accepting an American boy-friend.

When I got accepted to Stanford and was leaving, everyone in my office told me to get engaged before I go to US (Really. I am not joking.). And when I simply ignored the advice, they had different approach. Few said that marry anyone, but don't marry a muslim. Some told me never to marry a Pakistani. Others had objection with marrying a black. Some were very specific and told me to only marry a desi. Otherwise.... well some said they won't come to my wedding while others promised to sever all contacts with me. You see, what I mean.

They are liberal enough to allow me to date and go for a love-marriage, unlike our parent's or grand-parent's generation but he should be a Desi.

I thought love is blind. What if I fall in love with a non-desi? What then? Why do I need to disqualify everyone who doesn't happen to born in India? Does that mean they are not good enough for me (or any Indian, for that matter)? And does being associated with India make someone more desirable? I don't believe that it's about cultural differences. India is a multicultural country. North Indian culture is different from South Indian. Bengali's are different from Gujarati and so on. Don't they overcome their differences and get married (rarely but they do). So if it's possible, then why is marrying a non-desi such a big deal? Or are we just too arrogant to accept a non-desi amongst ourselves, not as a friend (that's not a problem) but as a family?

I believe in human beings. I think there are all types of people in every culture and we can't generalize them. You can find the best of humans in the worst of the places as long as you are not blinded by racial prejudices...

Greetings...

Seen in Disney land:

Seen on Ph.D. Comics:

What life's all about..

I was packing this weekend and found an old diary (probably from my late teen years). In the diary I found some old newspaper clippings. Its been a long time since I saw them. Among those clippings I found this beautiful poem (it's a long one though). It's by Shanaz Hussain:

Have you ever seen the autumn leaves turn from green to gold,
A carefree flower burning with flaming colours and exotic perfume
Burn and die in golden sunlight
That's what life is all about
With a smile on your lips and a prayer in your heart
If you truly love me, you'll set me free.

Have you ever seen the romantic scarred, dreamy moon,
As you walk alone on a moonlit night,
and its soft silvery glow invisibly bathes your body
You looked into his eyes and your secret world explodes,
He looked back into your soul and saw the naked truth,
Your eyes were the mirrors of your heart,
It made no sense, your life's first love
Then the dawn of truth smashing all fragments of reality, truth and dreams,
The lovelorn moon disappears behind dark menacing angry clouds
That's what life is all about
With a smile on your lips and a prayer in your heart
If you truly love me, you'll set me free.

Have you ever seen a silent volcano
Boiling with life as if the bowels of the Earth are in anguished turmoil,
Then the flaming sea of burning writhing emotions
Pouring down hill like the fires of hell,
Destroying everything that comes in its fiery path
That's what life is all about
With a smile on your lips and a prayer in your heart
If you truly love me, you'll set me free.

Have you ever seen the shell-pink dawn of life,
Followed by the flaming rising golden sun,
Then the magic turn from gold to silver,
The high noon of life where all material things must be acquired,
Then by the law of nature left behind,
Meteoric success achieved at lightning speed,
One golden minute studded with 60 diamond seconds,
No second chance given-for they are gone for ever,
It is sunset. The heavens are aflame,
As the ball of fires settles in the inviting velvet arms of the night
One beautiful life has just burnt out, another just born.
As the world watches dumbfounded,
For others a good life meant a 100 years,
She lived a complete life time with the rising and setting of the sun
That's what life is all about
With a smile on your lips and a prayer in your heart
If you truly love me, you'll set me free.

Have you ever thought of people who burn their candle at both ends
They know it's time to go, they will not last the night,
But as they burn themselves, they give a lovely light,
Leaving their footprints in the sands of time,
That's what life is all about
With a smile on your lips and a prayer in your heart
If you truly love me, you'll set me free.

Have you ever heard a Nightingale sing
In a cage struggling to escape every moment
Looking for a chance, of the tiny door left open,
It steals out, then realises its wings are clipped,
The world rejoices, it gt its freedom at last, but cannot fly,
It stumbles, falls, rises. its wings grow again,
Only to fly far far away, for ever and ever, never to return,
Lost in the expanseless horizon,
Just think, if you love something, set it free,
If it is yours, it will come back to you,
If it does not, it was never meant to be,
That's what life is all about
With a smile on your lips and a prayer in your heart
If you truly love me, you'll set me free.

Have you ever built sand castles by the sea side,
Each particle of golden sand another childhood dream
The sunlight sparkling on your desires etched in mud,
Then the engulfing massive emerald waves,
Gushes over you and your dreams, in moments are washed away,
The roaring waves recede-the sand is still there
Just you and your dream castles are washed away,
Swallowed and drowned, part of expanseless sea,
That's what life is all about
With a smile on your lips and a prayer in your heart
If you truly love me, you'll set me free.

Have you ever looked into a mirror,
You will see a face you know-
It's the one you love the most, in happiness and pain,
The reflection will always be there-
But then you look into it again, it is still you,
Or you think it is you-
It is not clear, you freeze with fright, you sweat, you tremble,
You wonder, "Why can't I see myself, the way the world sees me, the way I always did,
Is my reflection not me, I wish I could clearly see!
Is this the Will of God, if so, then let it be."
That's what life is all about
With a smile on your lips and a prayer in your heart
If you truly love me, you'll set me free.

Have you ever seen a pink lotus plant grow from the silt and mud,
Into a tiny sapling, then a tiny bud,
Then a stunning flower exuding beauty and fragrance,
The bees humming a sensuous tune around it,
You see it bloom, the glaring sunlight basking in its exotic glory,
Then it is night the lotus wilts and dies,
That's what life is all about
With a smile on your lips and a prayer in your heart
If you truly love me, you'll set me free.

Melancholic still beautiful, isn't it?

Allowing God?

I have been meaning to write this post for a week now. Last week my room-mate, my sublet-room-mate and I were talking, you know, late night chit-chats. Somehow the conversation steered towards religion. And my room-mate, being as witty as she is, used the phrase "allowing more power to God" while describing the difference between detheist and agnostic person (basically detheist "allow" more power to God than agnostics do). Her brother is a Theosophy major. So she has an active interest in the subject.

Anyway the term allowing God more power got my thinking gear active. Isn't thats what all the religious beliefs or non-beliefs are about? How much power you will allow an imaginary figure, namely God, to have on you and your life? In case of an atheist it comes to allowing God to exist or not. Its ironic, isn't it? The believers say that its God who allow us to exist while in reality its us who allow God to exist. Its us who allow the amount of power He/She has even though the believers believe that He/She is the mightiest.

Oh, the beautiful ironies of life!

Project Snapshot #17

My office, I was walking out of office as alarm went off. Here is the view of that moment...

Date: May 19th, 2008
Location: Stanford, CA
Titled: Lines

Scraps

I don't understand why I always feel a dread whenever I delete all the scraps from my orkut scrapbook. Its actually equivalent to what you feel when you format your laptop. A sense of losing your best friend for some reason. Now with laptop I can understand but why do scraps hold the same position, I don't get. They are just tinie-tiny notes from people who at times are not even your friends (even though they are marked as "Friends" in the Orkut).

May be our hindi teacher was right when she use to reiterate... and reiterate some more:

"मनुष्य एक सामाजिक प्राणी हैं।"
(Man is a social animal.)

May be I am not as anti-social/socially inept after all. Somewhere, I do seek out that social aspect of life...even though its only online.

Personalized Religion...

Believe it or not, you can have your very own personalized religion. Try out this site. You can have your own religion, your very own "Commandments" in your hand! According to NYT, thats the latest trend in the religion sphere. Though they didn't mean this site but yeah something similar.

I didn't know that religion is a form of fashion too! How very interesting! So what is the God wearing these days? Black?

Seminars

Seminars totally unrelated to your field of work are so great. It gives you time to sit and think about so many other things which is sort of impossible in the crazy schedule I have. Anyway, so in today's seminar, I actually went for introspection as well as retrospection which I have been holding off for a while now. And some how came up the idea of sensitivity and something I was talking with a friend. And one thing lead to another (you know how it is when you are lost in your thoughts. No? You don't have an overly-active imagination like me? Ok then take my word for it..) and finally somehow I arrived to these questions:

Is being sensitive a vice or a virtue? People at times perceives it as a weakness but that also makes you a better person. How do you find that correct balance between the two: Being sensitive enough that you don't loose touch with the humanity but still don't come out as a weak person or rather someone easy to manipulate or even someone who wouldn't be able to deal with stress? Or may be more importantly, can we change our sensitivity at our command or is it something very inherent, very basic part of the nature which can't be changed?

Oh well, just few questions going through my mind for past hour before the presentation ended and then I was back in the real world, doing real job...Just using the lunch break to write them down before they disappear in oblivion again.

Now you know who I am ...

...and I am not ashamed of it.

Second Glance

I just finished Second Glance by Jodi Picoult. This is my third novel by Jodi Picoult. The first novel by her that I read, My Sister's Keeper, is probably her best work. The book was about a family with a daughter with leukemia. In order to save her, the parents decide to have a designer baby, designed to match her sister so that she can be a bone marrow donor. Its an amazing book. A must read.

This book, Second Glance, deals with paranormal stuff. Its tough to keep the book down (though this is my problem with almost all books) as the ghost can and did appear anywhere, anytime but compared to the other books by Jodi, this one wasn't that good. Though this book made me think..Does, not believing in God, automatically means not believing in Paranormal? Or are those two different aspects? The same old argument pops up...if you can't prove something, it doesn't mean that it doesn't exists. An argument given by religious people in attempt to convert atheist/agnostic people like me. I tend to incline towards this argument. Didn't subatomic particle exist before they were scientifically discovered, even though no one could see them or prove their existence? Its a good argument and so far I haven't been able to counter it. I think it finally filters to the individual's perception then. What we choose to believe. May be all these things exists or may be not but none of these phenomena or even God affect our daily life. So even if at some level they do exist, I don't care and obviously don't wait them to take actions on my behalf. May be thats why I prefer calling myself agnostic rather than an atheist (apart for it being convenient for me).

Thats what I like about Jodi Picoult's books. They actually make you analyze your own believes. She provides really good insight to her character's psychology. She usually takes up a social issue and describe events around that issue while analyzing each and every character's thoughts and beliefs. There are no blacks and whites in her books. May be thats why her characters are so real and their way of thinking affects you. The people chasing ghosts aren't freaks and scientists not believing them aren't perfect. Its just the circumstances, they have been through, affected them and their beliefs. How can anyone, who hasn't been through those particular circumstances personally, say that he/she wouldn't have done the same under those circumstances?

The best quote from this book is below. The circumstance of this dialog was argument against existence of soul-mates or an argument against destiny having any part with our choice of life partner.

...Fate is what people invent to explain what they can't understand. If you think Eli's the one, you tell yourself it was meant to happen. And if he breaks your heart, you'll tell yourself it wasn't meant to be. I've spent ten years trying to find a man who knows where I am in a room the moment he steps inside, without even having to look. But it hasn't happened. I can admit the truth to myself - that I've got lousy luck finding love - or I can tell myself that I haven't crossed paths with my soul mate yet. And it's always easier to be a victim than a failure.

Whatever happened to love...

Ok, before I start, I must confess that I have always been skeptical when it comes to the concept of Love. And let me be clear, by Love I mean the romantic inclinations and not the affections of parents, family and friends. As you must have guessed it, I have had quiet a few heated discussions with my friends about this topic. Anyways, thats not the topic of this post though the idea was conceived during one of those discussions with one of my friend.

The discussion made me recapitulate few confessions/reasons that my friends have given me over the years to be in a particular relationship. It was surprising to realize that that reason wasn't what it should be: Love. The various reasons I have come across are (in no particular order, first come first serve from my memory)...

1. Habit: I have been forever with him/her. He/she has become part of my daily habit. I am sure I love him/her. (I have one word for these people: Variety).

2. Obligation: He/she waited to be with me for so long, I don't have heart to say no now. He/she isn't bad either. I think I like him/her. (So keep asking a person out..he/she will finally cave in).

3. Need: I don't know how to cook/to take care of myself and she/he can. Its a perfect match. (Yeah for you, what about the other person?).

4. Greed: She is successful and earn well. We will have ample money to spend (Believe me, I have heard this one more than once).

5. Trophy Spouse: He/she is so good looking/popular. It makes me look cool. (Well they exactly didn't say the last sentence but thats what they meant..)

6. Reflection: Because he/she loves me so much. He/she is so obsessed with me. (Actually this is a modification of trophy spouse..these people actually like to show off how much their spouse loves them. I guess this is the closest I came to Love, at least one of them was in love).

7. Whatever: (This is my favorite). Because he/she asked me out and I wasn't going out with anyone at that time so we started going out. (Give me a break).

8. Convenience: We work together and this way I don't have to quit my job and settle down somewhere else. (I think they are in love with their job instead of that person).

9. Revolt: Because my parents have been pressurizing for the marriage and I didn't want to go for arranged marriage. (well isn't this a new type of arranged marriage when we arrange it instead of our parents? Isn't this just a revolt against parents/tradition?).

10. Help: This one is very popular among Indian students. He/she has good network and can get previous course notes/assignments. That way I can get good grades.(Very professional, I say).

11. Lonely: Last but not least, is being alone. I have to have someone in my life, no matter who. I can't cope with loneliness. (Well, so far this is one reason I can somewhat live with).

May be being in love is fashionable and thats why these people are in those relationships (so that they have a boyfriend/girlfriend to make their fashion statement). Or may be I don't know the definition of love. Will someone care to explain it to me?

Bhagat Singh and Atheism

Ok, I am not a big fan of writing about something that some other blogger has already posted about but this one is opinion-changing post so here it is. India Uncut has a link to a wonderful article by Bhagat Singh titled, "Why am I an atheist?".

My close friends know that I am a big fan of Gandhi and always had an aversion towards the violent freedom struggle. In fact, Gandhi is my second favorite character from the history, the first being Chanakya/Kautaliya. And let me be clear, I admire both these figures for the same thing: their cunningness and their political/financial understandings that actually made India strong at two different time periods in history. But I digress. Coming back to the article in discussion, I never expected Bhagat Singh to be an atheist, let alone have such a deep understanding about religious beliefs. As Amit Verma puts it, the article makes you want to learn more about Bhagat Singh as a person.

I like to think myself as an agnostic and not an atheist. I don't have courage to discard the existence of a supernatural power and not because I am scared of an Almighty and his wrath but because its a psychological need that I have come to accept. As I wrote earlier, I am a hypocrite when it comes to concept of God. I believe in him when the pressure/stress around becomes too much for me to bear. If I am in a stressful situation, the only way I can relax is by believing that He exists and will be responsible for the consequences of my actions/decisions (As we say it, aage uski marzi (All is in God's hands now)). I don't have enough strength to take responsibility of all my actions and I have a ready made concept/person to blame, then why not use it (I say, When going gets tough, believe in God)? But I do so in full knowledge that I am using the concept of God for my advantage and ultimately its me who has to change in order to succeed (it just gives me a brief respite). Having said that, I completely agree with the views of Bhagat Singh. I wish I had enough courage and emotional strength to become a full-fledged atheist.

The article makes me wonder that how many of the atheists in the world were brought up as an atheist? Most of atheist I know(including me), have come from families of firm believers and thought their way to Atheism. As Bhagat Singh puts it:

According to me, any man who has got some reasoning power at his command always tries to reason out his environments. Where direct proofs are lacking philosophy occupies the important place. As I have already stated, a certain revolutionary friend used to say that philosophy is the outcome of human weakness. When our ancestors had leisure enough to try to solve out the mystery of this world, its past, present and the future, its whys and wherefores, they having been terribly short of direct proofs, everybody tried to solve the problem in his own way. Hence we find the wide differences in the fundamentals of various religious creeds, which sometimes assume very antagonistic and conflicting shapes. Not only the Oriental and Occidental philosophies differ, there are differences even amongst various schools of thought in each hemisphere...
...All these creeds differ from each other on the fundamental question; and everybody considers himself to be on the right. There lies the misfortune. Instead of using the experiments and expressions of the ancient Savants and thinkers as a basis for our future struggle against ignorance and to try to find out a solution to this mysterious problem, we, lethargical as we have proved to be, raise the hue and cry of faith, unflinching and unwavering faith to their versions and thus are guilty of stagnation in human progress....

But above all, I like the underlying question of the article:

Is it due to vanity that I do not believe in the existence of an omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient God?

I think, all the atheist, agnostic people reached to their conclusions by only one reason: Common Sense.

Publicizing the Privacy

As our hindi teacher in high school often reiterated, Man is a social animal (In her terms: मनुष्य एक सामाजिक प्राणी है। (Ooh.. I love this multilingual feature of Google's)). I think that's the best way to describe the issue in hand. We, humans, by nature live in society. We need certain amount of socializing in order to survive and still we need some amount of privacy from people around us. A contrasting requirement. We have invented so many ways to increase our communications. From the earliest method of communication developed by humans, i.e., development of a language, followed by writing skills to some kind of postal system, we did quiet a lot to communicate and socialize. And now we have telephones, cell-phones, pagers and above all, internet. We email, blog, become members of social internet networks and still we want to live in our own private world. The question is where does socializing ends and where does the privacy begins? For example, are friends part of socializing and end of privacy or are they part of our private world?

Sharing thoughts is communication, sharing with whom makes it private or public. But now-a-days the means of communications decides the audience and hence deciding about it being private or public. Still that doesn't deter us from putting our most private thoughts on a public platform. At times, under an assumed name. The question being: Are the personal thoughts communicated on a public platform under an assumed name private or public?

Take me, for instance (no I am not using any assumed names), I like to blog (as should be evident by the frequency of posts on this blog) but only very few of my friends know about this blog. None of my campus friends have this url (which is ironic as the blog is titled Grad Life). I don't want any one and everyone, who knows me personally, to know about my personal thoughts but somehow strangers reading these posts doesn't bother me. Does that make me a hypocrite? I want to connect with a world beyond the one I am living in but I don't want to open up in the world I am already living in. And somehow this is an issue of privacy for me. Strange, isn't it? I guess this brings us back to the initial question: where does the privacy begin? What is privacy? May be, being a social animal we can't live in a private world, we will communicate and reach out to someone, not necessarily our friends, somehow, not necessarily by a private communication. Thats our instinct.

Your thoughts?