The weather is changing.. and it is signaling very openly to those who are smart enough to understand, that there is more drastic change to come...
it is changing at a pace that for most of the world seemingly unnoticed but for those who have been watching nature so far, it is VERY Evident.

Few examples I can share... point 1 - the flowers which are referred to in Hindi as 'Tesu' which - I am not so sure but - as the link shows, is related to the Flame of the Forest or the Gulmohar flower.
These flowers at least till 2005 didn't bloom by January. They usually bloomed just a few days before Holi which is usually in March.
This year, these flowers are in full bloom, in the last week of Jan. I happened to see these blooms along the NH3 in M.P. on 25th Jan.
Since they are in full bloom then it means they began blooming a few weeks before, that is much into the first week of Jan.

Point 2 - The Indian cuckoo, or the Koel, usually comes out of its hibernation in the beginning of April, if not a week or so earlier.
This year, I heard the cuckoo off and on through the fall season, around Oct-Dec and then again last week.
Way back in the 80s, the arrival of summer and mangoes was signaled by this bird.

So in 2009, is the cuckoo getting the blues of the weather? or is it telling us all something that we might want to hear and take notice immediately?

Is it telling us that the weather is getting warmer as the cuckoo would expect it to be early April... though it is still end of Jan when we are known to have temperatures as low as 6-7 deg through the Day, and not just in the night???

point 3 - Snow in London. No reason for an alarm as London does experience this kind of weather once in a long time, but in th last 3 years, it is the second time.
So does it need to be noticed and thought about?

point 4 - snowstorm in the northeast US and Ice storm in the lower southern US. Normal phenomenon? ask the weather men!!!

bottom line... the signs are here in India, the world and in the arctics where the glaciers are breaking off...
People in India - the man on the street - understands some of it, but does not bother as we are not a 'scientific' society, we do not think logically and we do not think cause and effect though our culture did bring up the whole concept of Vedanta which is basically cause and effect theory...
But we hardly put it to practice and never relate it to things around us...

So we will be panicking when the effect comes up in a drastic form, and all we shall see will be politicians blaming someone and the rest of us blaming the politicians...

We shall hopefully try and rest in peace at least - in large masses...

It's a term which has caught my fancy - Open to Interpretation. This term, I heard in the Vodafone Plc. chief's speech a couple of days back, when he came out with the statement that Indian laws in FDI are not clear and 'open to interpretation.'

Coming down to the root cause of the chaos that India is, in general and also in all the environments it supports, spiritual, social, economic or for that matter political - the whole Indian system is 'Open to Interpretation'

In everything that happens in India, people choose to interpret things the way they want to, and behind this very generic cover, several shady activities thrive which have been an eyesore not just for the world in general but also to the citizens in particular.

Look at the way the Indian legal system runs. All it's laws are archaic, and totally irrelevant to today's times. Yet no one wants to change them. Simply because behind these laws, the dirty underbelly of the Indian system hides effectively.

Just like a chameleon, that interprets the surroundings and turns itself into the surroundings, so also, the Indian governance has acquired this art of interpreting the laws and regulations to it's own benefit, thus hiding and carrying out it's underhand tasks there.

Being open to interpretation is even subject to the scriptures of religions esp. the Bhagavat Gita. This epic can be interpreted by several people in their own ways and it will hold true.

This applies even to the way the Indian mythology has unfolded. The Karma of this land is itself open to interpretation. Hence India per se, is Open to Interpretation.

No wonder you find so many people reading about so many aspects of this land and feeling fascinated by it because for each one of them, this land holds its own interpretation.

Boiling down from all this is one simple fact. The spirit and existence of India is open to interpretation and so also are its people and laws and governance. The only aspect that hinders this 'open to interpretation' thought process - which is the basis of the chaos that it creates - is the overlap of a logical thought process of order which runs against this free interpretation aspect.

As a result, there is so much of perceived disorder in the nation and everything that happens to its citizens.
As I mentioned in my earlier blog entry, the Karma of this land is to be in chaos, to be always turbulent and to emerge victorious out of it.
The people who inhabit it are true embodiments of this spirit of free will and bringing any forced order to it will never be possible or will not bring in positive results in the long run, for there will be some other force that will run that will be perceived to be 'against' the orderly thought process.

Hence all of us in this nation should learn to 'interpret' things for our own convenience to have a more 'fulfilling life

- with just one caveat -

keep your morality and conscience aspect in mind, so that your interpretation and its implementation does not hinder someone else's interpretation and implementation to cause a clash of an extreme kind - something similar to the old English phrase which is no longer being used anywhere in our regular lexicon -
"your freedom ends where my nose begins"

The chilling levels of terror that is going to unfold if not checked RIGHT NOW at a very fast pace can be gauged by this comparison of the modus operandi of training for such modules.

We have all heard that in the neighboring nation, ex army people are training the so called militants who unleash terror in various ways.

Look at the similarity of this event unfolding through the investigations in the Malegaon case. You find an Indian army guy, in service, doing just the similar thing here in India - if the investigation allegations are to be believed.

If the similarity of these two events click in your head, you see that at the ground level, the radical youth see how the militants across the border are functioning, and they are trying to replicate that model here.

Now look at the location where this seems to have originated. SIMI and Abhinav Bharat are 2 of the organizations that have been blamed so far. Both have roots in the central state of MP.
Does this mean, that the cops and intelligence in the state there are NOT aware of the simmering heat and smoke signals such activities generate?

Is M.P. becoming a hot bed of such 'criminal' activities today, esp. also because there has been a huge influx of youth from the rural parts of other states into MP given it's 'education center' tag?

Is this kind of a situation even being considered by the cops there or they are under severe political pressure to perform to the tune of the politicians and thus ignore such happenings?

In my opinion it is not possible that the intelligence and cops are not aware of this. They are aware but they are probably under some pressure from somewhere to keep quiet about it.

But if the converse is true, that if the cops are really unaware of this ground level activities of these groups when they were formed, then it is a matter of highest level of shame (if we Indians have retained the meaning of being ashamed)

- that all of us are living our lives disconnected from everything but our own selfish pleasures.

- that we common people have taken our life and our system and our degrading existance for granted and are willing to die like insects esp. in a nation which seems to have a more evolved existence in the past. (it does not mean we have to only rest on our past laurels but it shows that we don't care about our individual worth in the present)

- that all of us are no longer considering ourselves as part of this nation, but each of us is an island unto ourselves with our super Egos and our mis-conceptions and out pre-conceived notions.

- that we are just living the lives of those chaotic soap bubbles that get formed when water is agitated, only to burst up and die out - without trying to really live to our full capacities of our human form and function.

Unfortunately, this is what the terrorists are making of their own lives and spreading the cancer in all societies, esp. the ones like India where there is high vulnerability, helplessness and utmost corruption in the governance and everyone is living in their own world uncared about what happens around them - till it happens to them.

Only then they pay a little attention.. and then they get into their daily grind...

The following piece in the HT 07-10-08 reflects what people like me are going through today ..hence I present it here for you verbatim...

- about the current state of affairs of the nation and how it has impacted people like me..

The last line underscores the mindset of people like me, who feel helpless about the law and order situation around me, are seeking... and believe me, we are not insane, when we demand a gun for ours and our family protection....

are we not looking at signs of what one can call.. a civil war????

on a side note, I see a parallel between India today and the US of the past, which might have led the gun laws to be set up there 'cos I think the US has probably gone through similar times before it reached today's state.
But that does not help me today 'cos my safety is at stake and I need protection from what the state has failed to control... increasing violence and reducing value of the human life....
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Searching high and low for the law - Gautam Chikermane, (HT)

There are two forces of physics acting upon a changing India today. On the economic front, as India expands into global terrains, a centripetal force is gathering momentum, best represented by the country’s 8 per cent growth rate. This force, however, is being pulled back, through an equally strong centrifugal force that looks inward, is fragmented and savage in its execution. Caught in between are the rest of us. If economic development and mass prosperity have to be delivered, the politics of violence that the centrifugal force represents needs to die. And there lies a political opportunity for
Elections 2009.

The most high-profile wart of this centrifugal force is the Nano’s undignified exit from Singur. Last week Ratan Tata had said that Mamata Banerjee had pulled “the trigger on his head”, forcing him to move out of West Bengal to Gujarat, the trigger being his employees’ safety.
Earlier, L.K. Chaudhury, CEO of the Italian company Graziano Trasmissioni, was beaten to death by workers in Greater Noida, some 20 minutes from the national capital, with the Labour Minister subtly trying to build political capital from the crime by saying, “This should serve as a warning for managements.” (He later backtracked, but the damage was done.)
North Indians are being targeted in Mumbai by Raj Thackeray and his Maharashtra Navnirman Sena as an investment into future elections to garner jingoistic support. Churches are being burnt in Orissa and nuns raped under the blind eyes of the police while the state’s highly articulate Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik says he’s doing his job.
A young journalist dies a mysterious death in Delhi and its Chief Minister Shiela Dikshit says women should not be “adventurous” and that companies, not the police, should take responsibility for their safety.
The message from our politicians who have built walls of protection with taxpayers’ money around themselves and their families: India is,and will continue to be, run by thugs, so please watch out for yourselves.

As the rest of us take events like these in stride and get desensitised by the never-ending images on TV, permanent headlines in newspapers and infinite opinions on blogs, never has the need for law and order as the first and foremost electoral expectation of voters been so high, so acute. Law and order is something we are supposed to take for granted. It is only riding this safety infrastructure that we can do anything else — pursue jobs, buy groceries, watch films.
On the other hand, we are gradually beginning to accept lawlessness,particularly by the rich, the powerful and the organised mobs they manage to cobble, as one more dinner-table discussion — ‘Pass the death toll, please.’ As this anarchy gets political support, we are gradually being pushed into a corner, where an unvoiced frustration with governance is systematically eating into our democratic and civilised innards. With weapons in the hands of a small clutch of ineligible political aspirants, the man on the street has never been in as much physical danger as today.

Lawmakers are breaking the law as if it’s their birth right. And when stopped — as Virendra Kumar Khatik was, as he tried to barricade the arms of the law from an anti-encroachment drive, only to face collateral damage — action is taken, not against the honourable Member of Parliament for attempting to come in the way of the law, but against the junior policemen who tried to implement it. They’ve been charged with an attempt to murder and have been suspended from duty. Shed a tear for them.

Those whom voters have entrusted with democratic power and white car privileges — and with them the responsibility to provide law and order — are all but numbed into submission under this new force gathering strength, issue by issue, in state after state. Leadership at the highest levels is reeling under the weight of a moral compulsion to let people, who any right-minded person would call murderers, rapists, repeat offenders, and bad characters, have a free run on the rest of us, feed on our livelihoods, our fears. And our freedoms. (“Today, terrorists are being worshipped,” said Justice J.N. Patel referring to Raj Thackeray, who, in turn, instead of feeling the fear of the law as any law-abiding citizen should, is brazenly asking the court to “define a terrorist”.)

The CPI(M)’s West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee virtually offered a free hand to Mamata Banerjee and her mob to stop workers seeking nothing more than an honest day’s job from working. The Congress’s Maharashtra Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh is standing still, watching non-Maharashtrian citizens of India being beaten and threatened, their businesses, taxis and trade being destroyed. The Biju Janata Dal’s Orissa Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik has nothing more than lofty words to offer Christians being mauled in his state.

We, the silent majority, have allowed this small band of hoodlums to decide whether we have the right to work, to religion, to celebration, to life, to love. Too busy to look beyond the prosperity that the economic centripetal force has brought, in the form of our 2-BHKs and iPhones, we are allowing a new political culture to invade our country.
It’s almost as if we are being conquered all over again, this time by some of the smartest minds this country has produced, minds — like the smart lawyers, accountants and financial engineers who recently ran the global financial system aground — that are finding and punching holes in the law to usurp power.
A leveraged buyout is underway, where a small bunch of private interest groups cobble together to create visible damage for maximum impact. We are being forced into believing that violence is the currency of political or social intercourse in a modern, trillion-dollar economy. That if we want something bad enough, we can just go out and collect thugs. This faith needs to be destroyed. These mobs and their political masters need to be dragged under the purview of the law, before this belief system becomes a mass religion. For any responsible party, this presents a so-far ignored political opportunity. In the last elections, with a focus on economic growth, our attention moved from ‘roti-kapda-makaan’ to ‘bijli-sadak-pani’. It’s time now to go back to basics and devise a new slogan around ‘suraksha-kanoon-dand’ (safety-law-punishment) — and implement it ruthlessly. Political profits are guaranteed.

Until that happens, can anyone tell me where I can buy a gun?
(C) HT 07-10-2008

61 years - 61 summers 61 winters 61 monsoons, 61 billion and counting…- this is the story of what came to be called the Golden bird, the land of Spiritual renaissance, the elephant that was learning to dance, the tiger that never got it’s due and the abode of Gods.

The sum of the age digits add up to 7 - a lucky number for some, probably has several hopes pinned on now to hold lucky for not just an individual but for an entity, a nation.
India’s astrological star sign is the Leo – the Lion, if it ever means that India was really ‘born’ on 15th Aug 1947.

Though it existed long before it was born, discovered or for that matter ‘created’, India – a capricious notion - existed in various states, geographies, beliefs and spirit much before it was ‘still-born’ in it’s 19th century polity that the planet Earth is actively keeping history of now.
So after 61 years of that fateful midnight, a conflicting and fighting mass of people was shorn off - a forced caesarian of sorts of a predominantly British mother – to be recognized as an individual polity/entity, albeit with a polit-o-genetically misaligned twin attached at it’s head - a head that today is very messed up.

The train of fate for these, almost million odd men and women, fighting, conflicting at various levels of existence, hurriedly switched tracks to rush off into an unknown direction - much like a toy train that, totally ignored by a bored child - that accidentally slips off it’s toy tracks and veers off trying to balance on it’s tiny toy wheels, till either the child turns it’s attention to put it back on it’s tracks, or is left to crash somewhere, unattended.
Today, 61 years later, the toy train, is really ‘lucky’ for not having been pulled down by gravity - gravity of the situation it has found itself in, since then.
Lucky – to be still on it’s wheels, trembling, shaking, teetering on a path not designed for it’s wheels, but yet, somehow keeping itself up, balancing, yet chugging along laboriously with increasing mass - the bored child nowhere in sight - looking for those lost rails that it was probably smoothly running on up until 300 years back.
Even after 61 years, with its hurriedly chopped off psychogenesis umbilical cords still dangling from it’s disintegrating and misappropriating spirit and it’s unattended psychopathology, this entity is alive, and is considered an anomaly of sorts by – pardon the pun – even God.

Today, this growing, once-upon-a-time-stillborn entity, is still a kid at heart, though 61 years old.
The kid that wants all that the world can give it’s consumerist population; the kid that still wants to be on the stage struts its glamour stuff with the grandeur of cinema, music, with it’s ill-kept but still considerably beautiful contrasts of human life with nature; the kid that cries loud for a seat in the security council yet not being able to get past the bullies that guard the seat; the kid that wants to grow into a mature adult, but ‘luck’ in one form or another hushing down it’s need for growth…

So what does it mean - to be an Indian - 61 years later - today??? I say -