The weekend beginning Friday the 13th of Nov was very ominous for both Chennai and Paris as floods ravaged the former and much blood spilled in the latter. But many other things were common between the two distressed, distant lands.
Author: T R Jawahar
Lord Brahma has this bad habit. Often, he tends to lose his head, all four heads rather, when tapped for boons by a devious demon dazzling him with die-hard devotion. Armed thus, the demon then goes about tormenting the devas, sages, commonfolk and finally L. Brahma Himself. And when tipping point arrives, there appears Lord Vishnu or Lord Shiva, depending on who is appealed to, for deliverance.
It all boils down to beef now. Like a cow tethered to a tree all debate revolve around just this one issue. Every other happening, from Bihar polls to SC verdicts to the economy either gets run over by cattle or is consumed by cattletalk. Beef has become the staple diet for the hungering ‘intelligentsia’.
In the passing away of Swami Dayananda Saraswati the nation has lost a revered Guru, who saw himself as a philosopher-teacher (as opposed to a mada adhipathi). This distinction is important to understand the great Guru and put his immeasurable contributions in proper perspective. For Talk Media, News Today and Maalai Sudar, the death of this kind soul is a sad event as he had been an important guiding spirit to it.
To hell with Senas and Sahityas. Sehwag is the one on my mind today. To place him in current context, he tarred many opponents with his willow than the Sainiks did with their ink and wrote lasting cricketing lores than what those literary luminaries achieved with their pens.
The liberal onslaught does not seem to abate. Despite Senas obliging them with sumptuous stuff, the appetite of this starved crowd of intellectuals with their manufactured outrage is getting insatiable by the day.
Now to the matter on hand. Why all these precautions? Millions and millions of Indians, majority of them belonging to the, well, ‘majority’, subscribe to the above, not just as a Constitutional obligation but a core conviction too. The average citizen is as much aghast at mob violence or for that matter, any legal or value transgressions as his/her neighbour, cousin and uncle and aunt.
As a true citizen of TN alias Tinsel Nadu, I am always deeply agitated whenever a calamity befalls a beloved cinestar. The ‘calamity’ could range from something as simple as a pimple on an otherwise spotless cheek to WhatsApp memes to serious financial troubles to censor woes to IT raids. The last is now my prime concern. Why Vijay? But more disturbingly, why Nayantara or Samantha?
‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy’
That’s Shakespeare-speak from Hamlet. Forget heaven, which at present sights, looks well beyond our reach; there are enough things to not dream, but dread, just on this earth. ‘Good’ may have won many battles, but ‘evil’ has so far won the war. And it owes this unassailable historic lead to just one single, strong and supremely reliable source: The human mind.