Slide.com Closed in 2012

Hi, I was just doing some housekeeping on the blog and saw that Slide.Com has closed its doors in Mar 2012.

Some of my pics were hosted there, and as a result they aren't displaying anymore on some of the older posts.

So it looks like I'll have to get into my archives and fish them out....




.  

KG Birthday 2012

Insex

CAUTION : The Following Image may be unsuitable for some audiences due to its graphic content. 

.

"You know the hardest thing about being smart -- I always pretty much know what's gonna happen next. There's no suspense."

Billy Bob Thornton - From the movie : Bandits

This is actually a perfect description of me. Seriously.





.

Charikonda Day Trip

Charikonda is a small hamlet about 75 km from Hyderabad.
Nestled among the Nalgonda hillocks, we got to see these farmers work on Cotton Fields during harvest season ! They gather about a large sackfull of cotton bolls in a days work, with all the family members pulling together.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thought Bubbles

Thought bubbles are like club-soda bubbles along the glass. They gather momentum and air then move upward, as they burst to the surface. Sometimes if you shake the glass they rise faster, while some bubbles just take their own sweet time.


Stages of wisdom and passing it on. 

The giver's intention being to give a heads-up and save trouble, the recipient thinks that the giver is cramping their style .

At first it is stubborn and self-seeking, then comes a stage of semi-understanding. And finally a fuller knowing, which grows into actively seeking wisdom.

I'm not sure if this process can truly be accelerated... 

.

Climbing and Spiritual Peaks

This morning's conversation with Deepa. 

Spiritual awakening is a journey and cannot be a destination because it is vast. A seeker is like a climber. He climbs a peak and has his first "A-ha" experience, but he cannot assume that this is all there is. 

There are multiple peaks, there are peaks of differing heights, there are different views from the top too, depending on which face of the peak has been scaled.  There are also different climbing trails and pathways to the top. 

Some people get to a peak and assume they've "reached". They think that they have to stay there and shout out to all those below that they must climb up to the peak that they themselves are on. 

Sometimes they shout to others on other peaks and tell them that their view / peak is wrong, and that the one they're on is more beautiful / correct / rewarding.

-

Quote from Movie "Stay"

"Bad art is tragically more beautiful than good art because it documents human failure." 




.

Piano Grade Exams

The Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music’ was founded in 1889 in response to a proposition by Sir Alexander MacKenzie, principal of the Royal Academy of Music, to Sir George Grove, director of the Royal College of Music, that their two pre-eminent musical training institutions unite to create an examining body ‘inspired by disinterested motives for the benefit of musical education... which would genuinely provide a stimulus and an objective for a high standard of achievement’.

On 31st Oct 2012, Armaan & Alisha both took their Piano Grade Exams.
Alisha took Grade 1 and Armaan took the Prep Test.

Armaan was awarded his Certificate the same day, while we are waiting for Alisha's results to be declared in about a month.

** UPDATE 15 DEC 2012 **
Alisha passed her grade exam with Merit !

We are so very proud of them both !!

Lyrics from Tunnel Of Love

It ought to be easy ought to be simple enough

Man meets woman and they fall in love

But the house is haunted and the ride gets rough

And you've got to learn to live with what you can't rise above

if you want to ride on down in through this tunnel of love

 

- Bruce Springsteen : Tunnel Of Love

Excerpt from : The Grapes of Wrath - 11

Then,  with  time,  the  squatters  were  no  longer  squatters,  but  owners; and  their children grew up and had children on the land. And the hunger was gone from them, the feral hunger, the gnawing, tearing hunger for land, for water and earth and the good sky over it, for the green thrusting grass, for the swelling roots. They had these things so  completely  that  they  did  not  know  about  them  any  more.  They  had  no  more  the stomach-tearing  lust  for  a  rich  acre  and  a  shining  blade  to  plow  it,  for  seed  and  a windmill beating its wings in the air. They arose in the dark no more to hear the sleepy birds' first chittering, and the morning wind around the house while they waited for the first light to go out to the dear acres. These things were lost, and crops were reckoned in dollars, and land was valued by principal plus interest, and crops were bought and sold before they were planted. Then crop failure, drought, and flood were no longer little  deaths  within  life,  but  simple  losses  of  money.  And  all  their  love  was  thinned with money, and all their fierceness dribbled away in interest until they were no longer farmers at all, but little shopkeepers of crops, little manufacturers who must sell before they can make. Then those farmers who were not good shopkeepers lost their land to good shopkeepers. No matter how clever, how loving a man might be with earth and growing things, he could not survive if he were not also a good shopkeeper. And as time went on, the business men had the farms, and the farms grew larger, but there were fewer of them.
Now farming became industry, and the owners followed Rome, although they did not know it. They imported slaves, although they did not call them slaves: Chinese, Japanese,  Mexicans,  Filipinos.  They  live  on  rice  and  beans,  the  business  men  said. They don't need much. They wouldn't know what to do with good wages. Why, look how they live. Why, look what they eat. And if they get funny—deport them.


05-10-2012, 08:32

And  in  the towns, the storekeepers hated them because they had no money to spend. There is no shorter path to a storekeeper's contempt, and all his admirations are exactly opposite.


05-10-2012, 08:34

How can you frighten a man whose hunger is not only in his own cramped stomach but in the wretched bellies of his children? You can't scare him—he has known a fear beyond every other.


05-10-2012, 08:34

And the great owners, who must lose their land in an upheaval, the great owners with  access  to  history,  with  eyes  to  read  history  and  to  know the  great  fact:  when property  accumulates  in  too  few  hands  it  is  taken  away.  And  that  companion  fact: when a majority of the people are hungry and cold they will take by force what they need. And the little screaming fact that sounds through all history: repression works only to strengthen and knit the repressed. The great owners ignored the three cries of history. The land fell into fewer hands, the number of the dispossessed increased, and every effort of the great owners was directed at repression. The money was spent for arms, for gas to protect the great holdings, and spies were sent to catch the murmuring of revolt so that it might be stamped out. The changing economy was ignored, plans for the change ignored; and only means to destroy revolt were considered, while the causes of revolt went on.

Excerpt from : The Grapes of Wrath - 10

An' I tried to be good, an' I can't. I get drunk, an' I go wild."
"Ever'body goes wild," said Casy. "I do too."
"Yeah, but you ain't got a sin on your soul like me."
Casy said gently, "Sure I got sins. Ever'body got sins. A sin is somepin you ain't sure about. Them people that's sure about ever'thing an' ain't got no sin—well, with that kind of a son-of-a-bitch, if I was God I'd kick their ass right outa heaven! I couldn' stand 'em!"
Uncle John said, "I got a feelin' I'm bringin' bad luck to my own folks. I got a feelin' I oughta go away an' let 'em be. I ain't comf'table bein' like this."
Casy said quickly, "I know this—a man got to do what he got to do. I can't tell you. I can't tell you. I don't think they's luck or bad luck. On'y one thing in this worl' I'm sure of, an' that's I'm sure nobody got a right to mess with a fella's life. He got to do it all hisself. Help him, maybe, but not tell him what to do." Uncle John said disappointedly, "Then you don' know'?"
"I don' know."
"You think it was a sin to let my wife die like that?"
"Well," said Casy, "for anybody else it was a mistake, but if you think it was a sin—then it's a sin. A fella builds his own sins right up from the groun'."
"I got to give that goin'-over," said Uncle John, and he rolled on his back and lay with his knees pulled up. 
 

Excerpt from : The Grapes of Wrath - 09

Tom grinned. "It don't take no nerve to do somepin when there ain't nothin' else you can do. "…

Excerpt from : The Grapes of Wrath - 05

The big cars on the highway. Languid, heat-raddled ladies, small nucleuses about whom  revolve  a  thousand  accouterments:  creams,  ointments  to grease  themselves, coloring matter in phials—black, pink, red, white, green, silver—to change the color of hair,  eyes,  lips,  nails,  brows,  lashes,  lids.  Oils,  seeds,  and  pills  to  make  the  bowels move.  A  bag  of  bottles,  syringes,  pills,  powders,  fluids,  jellies  to  make  their  sexual intercourse safe, odorless, and unproductive. And this apart from clothes. What a hell of a nuisance!
Lines  of  weariness  around  the  eyes,  lines  of  discontent  down  from  the  mouth, breasts lying heavily in little hammocks, stomach and thighs straining against cases of rubber.  And  the  mouths  panting,  the  eyes  sullen, disliking  sun  and  wind  and  earth, resenting food and weariness, hating time that rarely makes them beautiful and always makes them old.
Beside them, little pot-bellied men in light suits and panama hats; clean, pink men with puzzled, worried eyes, with restless eyes. Worried because formulas do not work out; hungry for security and yet sensing its disappearance from the earth. In their lapels the insignia of lodges and service clubs, places where they can go and, by a weight of numbers of little worried men, reassure themselves that business is noble and not the curious ritualized thievery they know it is; that business men are intelligent in spite of the records of their stupidity; that they are kind and charitable in spite of the principles of sound business; that their lives are rich instead of the thin tiresome routines they know; and that a time is coming when they will not be afraid any more.

Excerpt from : The Grapes of Wrath - 04

For man,  unlike  any  other  thing  organic  or  inorganic  in  the  universe,  grows  beyond  his work, walks up the stairs of his concepts, emerges ahead of his accomplishments. This you may say of man—when theories change and crash, when schools, philosophies, when  narrow  dark  alleys  of  thought,  national,  religious,  economic,  grow  and disintegrate, man reaches, stumbles forward, painfully, mistakenly sometimes. Having stepped forward, he may slip back, but only half a step, never the full step back. This you may say and know it and know it. This you may know when the bombs plummet out of the black planes on the market place, when prisoners are stuck like pigs, when
the crushed bodies drain filthily in the dust. You may know it in this way. If the step were not being taken, if the stumbling-forward ache were not alive, the bombs would not fall, the throats would not be cut. Fear the time when the bombs stop falling while the bombers live—for every bomb is proof that the spirit has not died. And fear the time when the strikes stop while the great owners live—for every little beaten strike is proof that the step is being taken. And this you can know—fear the time when Manself will not suffer and die for a concept, for this one quality is the foundation of Manself, and this one quality is man, distinctive in the universe.

Excerpt from : The Grapes of Wrath - 03

Al steered with one hand and put the other on the vibrating gear-shift lever. He had difficulty in speaking. His mouth formed the words silently before he said them aloud. "Ma—"  She  looked  slowly  around  at  him,  her  head  swaying a  little  with  the  car's motion. "Ma, you scared a goin'? You scared a goin' to a new place?" Her eyes grew thoughtful and soft. "A little," she said. "Only it ain't like scared so much. I'm jus' a settin' here waitin'. When somepin happens that I got to do somepin—I'll do it."
"Ain't you thinkin' what's it gonna be like when we get there? Ain't you scared it won't be nice like we thought?"  "No,"  she  said  quickly.  "No,  I  ain't.  You  can't  do  that.  I  can't  do  that.  It's  too much—livin' too many lives. Up ahead they's a thousan' lives we might live, but when it comes, it'll on'y be one. If I go ahead on all of 'em, it's too much. You got to live ahead 'cause you're so young, but—it's jus' the road goin' by for me. An' it's jus' how soon they gonna wanta eat some more pork bones." Her face tightened. "That's all I can do. I can't do no more. All the rest'd get upset if I done any more'n that. They all depen' on me jus' thinkin' about that."

Excerpt from : The Grapes of Wrath - 08

In the water, the man and his boy watched the Joads disappear. And the boy said, "Like to see 'em in six months. Jesus!"
The man wiped his eye corners with his forefinger. "I shouldn' of did that," he said.
"Fella always wants to be a wise guy, wants to tell folks stuff."
"Well, Jesus, Pa! They asked for it."
"Yeah, I know. But like that fella says, they're a-goin' anyways. Nothin' won't be
changed from what I tol' 'em, 'cept they'll be mis'able 'fore they hafta."

Excerpt from : The Grapes of Wrath - 07

Rose of Sharon looked helplessly at the old woman. She said softly, "She's awful
sick."
Ma raised her eyes to the girl's face. Ma's eyes were patient, but the lines of strain were  on  her  forehead.  Ma  fanned  and  fanned  the  air,  and  her piece  of  cardboard warned off the flies. "When you're young, Rosasharn, ever'thing that happens is a thing all by itself. It's a lonely thing. I know, I 'member, Rosasharn." Her mouth loved the name of her daughter. "You're gonna have a baby, Rosasharn, and that's somepin to you lonely and away. That's gonna hurt you, an' the hurt'll be lonely hurt, an' this here tent is alone in the worl', Rosasharn." She whipped the air for a moment to drive a buzzing blow fly on, and the big shining fly circled the tent twice and zoomed out into
the blinding sunlight. And Ma went on, "They's a time of change, an' when that comes, dyin' is a piece of all dyin', and bearin' is a piece of all bearin', an bearin' an' dyin' is two pieces of the same thing. An' then things ain't lonely any more. An' then a hurt don't hurt so bad, cause it ain't a lonely hurt no more, Rosasharn. I wisht I could tell you so you'd know, but I can't." And her voice was so soft, so full of love, that tears crowded into Rose of Sharon's eyes, and flowed over her eyes and blinded her.
"Take  an'  fan  Granma,"  Ma  said,  and  she  handed  the  cardboard  to  her  daughter. "That's a good thing to do. I wisht I could tell you so you'd know."

Excerpt from : The Grapes of Wrath - 06

"Sure,  nice  to  look  at,  but  you  can't  have  none  of  it.  They's  a  grove of  yella oranges—an' a guy with a gun that got the right to kill you if you touch one. They's a fella, newspaper fella near the coast, got a million acres—" Casy looked up quickly, "Million acres? What in the worl' can he do with a million acres?"
"I dunno. He jus' got it. Runs a few cattle. Got guards ever'place to keep folks  out. Rides aroun' in a bullet-proof car. I seen pitchers of him. Fat, sof' fella with little mean eyes an' a mouth like a ass-hole. Scairt he's gonna die. Got a million acres an' scairt of dyin'."
Casy demanded, "What in hell can he do with a million acres? What's he want a million acres for?"
The man took his whitening, puckering hands out of the water and spread them, and he tightened his lower lip and bent his head down to one shoulder. "I dunno," he said. "Guess he's crazy. Mus' be crazy. Seen a pitcher  of him. He looks crazy. Crazy an' mean."
"Say he's scairt to die?" Casy asked.
"That's what I heard."
"Scairt God'll get him?"
"I dunno. Jus' scairt."
"What's he care?" Pa said. "Don't seem like he's havin' no fun."
"Grampa  wasn't  scairt,"  Tom  said.  "When  Grampa  was  havin'  the  most fun,  he comes clostest to gettin' kil't. Time Grampa an' another fella whanged into a bunch a Navajo in the night. They was havin' the time a their life, an' same time you wouldn' give a gopher for their chance."
Casy said, "Seems like that's the way. Fella havin' fun, he don't give a damn; but a fella mean an' lonely an' old an' disappointed—he's scared of dyin'!"
Pa asked, "What's he disappointed about if he got a million acres?"
The preacher smiled, and he looked puzzled. He splashed a floating water bug away with his hand. "If he needs a million acres to make him feel rich, seems to me he needs it 'cause he feels awful poor inside hisself, and if he's poor in hisself, there ain't no million acres gonna make him feel rich, an' maybe he's disappointed that nothin' he can do'll make him feel rich—not rich like Mis' Wilson was when she give her tent when Grampa died. I ain't tryin' to preach no sermon, but I never seen nobody that's busy as a prairie dog collectin' stuff that wasn't disappointed." He grinned. "Does kinda soun' like a sermon, don't it?"

Quotes from the Grapes of Wrath

…. dogs whose breeds had been blurred by a freedom of social life, …...

-----------------

How can we live without our lives? How will we know it's us without our past? No. Leave it. Burn it.

-----------------

Wanta be a hell of a guy all the time.  But, goddamn it, Al, don' keep ya guard up when nobody ain't sparrin' with ya. You  gonna be all right."

-----------------

 Jesus Christ, one person with their mind made up can shove a lot of folks aroun'! - [ Tom Joad on his Ma ]

 

 

------------

 

 

The walls decorated with posters, bathing girls, blondes with big breasts and slender hips and waxen faces, in white bathing suits, and holding a bottle of Coca-Cola and smiling—see what you get with a Coca-Cola.

 

-----------------

 

 

Excerpt from : The Grapes of Wrath - 02

One  man,  one  family  driven  from  the  land;  this  rusty  car  creaking along  the highway to the west. I lost my land, a single tractor took my land. I am alone and I am bewildered. And in the night one family camps in a ditch and another family pulls in and the tents come out. The two men squat on their hams and the women and children listen.  Here  is  the  node,  you  who  hate  change  and  fear  revolution.  Keep  these  two squatting men apart; make them hate, fear, suspect each other. Here is the anlage of the thing you fear. This is the zygote. For here "I lost my land" is changed; a cell is split and  from  its  splitting  grows  the  thing  you  hate—"We  lost  our  land."  The  danger  is here, for two men are not as lonely and perplexed as one. And from this first "we" there grows a still more dangerous thing: "I have a little food" plus "I have none." If from  this  problem  the  sum  is  "We  have  a  little  food,"  the  thing  is  on  its  way, the movement has direction. Only a little multiplication now, and this land, this tractor are ours. The two men squatting in a ditch, the little fire, the side-meat stewing in a single pot,  the  silent,  stone-eyed  women;  behind,  the  children  listening  with  their  souls  to words  their  minds  do  not  understand.  The  night  draws  down.  The  baby  has  a  cold.
Here, take  this blanket. It's  wool.  It was  my  mother's  blanket—take  it  for  the  baby.
This is the thing to bomb. This is the beginning—from "I" to "we."
If  you  who  own  the  things  people  must  have  could  understand  this,  you  might preserve yourself. If you could separate causes from results, if you could know that Paine,  Marx,  Jefferson,  Lenin,  were  results, not  causes,  you  might  survive.  But  that you cannot know. For the quality of owning freezes you forever into "I," and cuts you off forever from the "we."

Excerpt from : The Grapes of Wrath - 12

.....Them goddamn Okies got no sense and no feeling.
They ain't human. A human being wouldn't live like they do. A human being couldn't stand it to be so dirty and miserable. They ain't a hell of a lot better than gorillas.

Excerpt from : The Grapes of Wrath - 01

THE HOUSES WERE LEFT vacant on the land, and the land was vacant because of this. Only the tractor sheds of corrugated iron, silver and gleaming, were alive; and they were alive with metal and gasoline and oil, the disks of the plows shining. The tractors had lights shining, for there is no day and night for a tractor and the disks turn the earth in the darkness and they glitter in the daylight. And when a horse stops work and  goes  into  the  barn  there  is  a  life  and  a  vitality  left,  there  is  a  breathing  and  a warmth, and the feet shift on the straw, and the jaws clamp on the hay, and the ears and the eyes are alive. There is a warmth of life in the barn, and the heat and smell of life.
But when the motor of a tractor stops, it is as dead as the ore it came from. The heat goes out of it like the living heat that leaves a corpse. Then the corrugated iron doors are closed and the tractor man drives home to town, perhaps twenty miles away, and he need not come back for weeks or months, for the tractor is dead. And this is easy and efficient. So easy that the wonder goes out of work, so efficient that the wonder goes out of land and the working of it, and with the wonder the deep understanding and the relation. And in the tractor man there grows the contempt that comes only to a stranger who  has  little  understanding  and  no  relation.  For  nitrates  are  not  the  land,  nor
phosphates; and the length of fiber in the cotton is not the land. Carbon is not a man, nor salt nor water nor calcium. He is all these, but he is much more, much more; and the land is so much more than its analysis. The man who is more than his chemistry, walking on the earth, turning his plow point for a stone, dropping his handles to slide over an outcropping, kneeling in the earth to eat his lunch; that man who is more than his  elements  knows  the  land  that  is  more  than  its  analysis.  But  the  machine  man, driving a dead tractor on land he does not know and love, understands only chemistry;
and he is contemptuous of the land and of himself. When the corrugated iron doors are shut, he goes home, and his home is not the land.


[ Excerpt from Chapter 11 - The Grapes of Wrath - By John Steinbeck ]
 

Rango Comes to Visit

Can you spot him ?

 

[ Click on each image for full size view ]

 

 

 

 

 

 

KungFu Tournament 2012

This year both Alisha & Armaan took part in the Annual KungFu Tournament held in Hyderabad.

Armaan won a Silver in the under 12 yrs Boys Category for Katas

Alisha won a Gold in the under 12 yrs Girls Category for Katas
AND she won a Bronze in Sparring [ fights ] in the under 12 yrs Girls Category.

We are all so proud of them both !!

 

Wisdom & Quotes

It used to be that you read a great book or piece of poetry and quoted from it to underscore a point.  Now you just google "famous quotes by xyz or for an abc occasion"

Going by the amount of wisdom being spouted and re-circulated by people on Facebook, I'd assume we'd be a happier lot, and possibly that the collective wisdom today far exceeded what the Buddha had at his time. Yet we see him as enlightened.... I wonder why ?.... Perhaps we don't take ourselves seriously enough ? We need to be "told" ? 

Is the concept of original thought a misnomer ? 

  

Violent Entertainment

"We’re the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War’s a spiritual war… our Great Depression is our lives." - Tyler Durden

My thoughts this morning were about :

How possibly in the days of old, violence and gore on the battlefield was common place, and mere activities like obtaining food (the hunt) were in themselves fraught with danger. Even if you had a farm, you still had to slaughter and prepare the chicken / pig / sheep for consumption.

So when the average peasant got home, his need of rest & relaxation possibly aspired to ideals more lofty, such as poetry, music, art & sculpture.

Today however, we lead an emasculated existence and operate within our commercial & societal frameworks with greater decorum and civility, which possibly leads to a pronounced need to vent. And so we have TV programmes and films that give us the blood and aggression that we  -- perhaps secretly crave ? 

Day Trip to Chekittimammedi

Chekettimamedi is a small village about 30 Km NE of Hyderabad. We went there on a day-trip to explore what seemed like interesting terrain. We got there in an hour, and after about half an hour of trying to figure out a path to the lake with the car, we ditched it midfield amongst some brick kilns and slushy soil. Gathered up our gear and began the kilometer long walk through the countryside with poor visibility of the trail and a meandering dirt path. After about a 20 minute walk we entered a wide open space and could hear some kids voices much before we actually could see them. There were about half a dozen of them taking a dip in the lake as their mothers did their washing. We were something of a curiosity to them, as they quickly got out of the water and followed us to the other side of the lake to see what we were up to.

A quick lunch, and we began our climb up the hillock which was quite scenic and fairly easy for the kids. It took us about 30 minutes to find the peak as we circumnavigated the path. Alisha led the way, and found us a nice track using her good instincts.

Coloured Pencil Illustration

KG Wisdom 07

The keyboard is mightier than the pen.

Foreknowledge & Immortality

 "I'll tell you a secret, something they don't teach you in your temple. The gods envy us. They envy us because we're mortal, because any moment might be our last. Everything is more beautiful because we're doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now, and we will never be here again." - Achilles




Life as a subjective view.

Question : What happens with a blind guy? If he doesn't see the beggar can he know poverty ?

Extend that to other things - If someone is in ignorance, can they be held responsible ? 
And if knowledge isn't absolute but only partial and evolving, we are always semi-ignorant and hence cannot be fully responsible except to the extent of our knowledge.

Life as wave cycles. 

One main wave and then others interlayed over that as possibly 1) birth circumstance 2) health mental & physical 3) inborn personality traits 4) random events

How God cannot enjoy a football match or a penalty shoot-out as he already knows the outcome.
And so, can there be any real benefit of fore-knowledge ? 
Are we destined to fully realise our lives only through living ?

Achilles' view that the gods envy us because we die; there is no enjoyment in anything that lasts for eternity. Yet somehow he seeks immortality himself. The eternal paradox.





.

KG Wisdom 06

What a poor fool, the man who mistakes his mental chatter to be his intellectualism.

Conversations 02

Last evening on the way to piano class Alisha pointed out the lyrics from the song "Don’t think twice its alright" By Dylan …. "I gave her my heart but she wanted my soul"….

 

What she had to say was -- that based on the sentence structure and order, the sense of responsibility / blame shifted onto either person. Eg what he says lead us to think that the girl is dissatisfied and wanted more. But if we change the order of the sentences to "she wanted my soul but I gave her my heart" makes it look like he was responsible for not fulfilling her want. I was very impressed with her observation, and the underlying logic which was pretty sound.

Green Belt Exam [ Kung-Fu ]

On 17 July 2012, Alisha & Armaan took their Examination for a Green Belt in Kung-Fu. They are steadily making terrific progress in their martial Arts training, and feel so proud of themselves.