Spirituality is all about God-realisation through a process of self-realisation. But is self-learning the most appropriate mode for that? Is it an option at all given an individual’s intellectual limitations? Bharath’s spiritual systems and scriptures unambiguously prescribe taking a preceptor’s guidance in one’s other-worldly quest.
Author: T R Jawahar
So, the name of the game is: Deactivate the activists. Since sleaze is a politician’s birthright, spoilsport in the playfield answering to such names as Hazare, Bhushan et al need to be silenced, if that privilege were to be enjoyed in perpetuity. And what best ploy to achieve that end than using the politician’s most handy stock in trade, namely, muck, something he himself can handle with effortess ease owing to a naturally,
It was all over in a jiffy. And now the climactic wait for the result. This election was a watershed of sorts just on one count alone: Schedule. While polls were due only in mid-May, the EC advanced them by a month through its notification in early March, giving the parties and people just over a month to decide their own fates, besides being harsh on itself. To its credit, the process, a gamble as well as a challenge of sorts, went through in a flash with nary a hitch, though it wasn’t easy all the way.
To vote or not to vote has never been a question for me. I deem the short walk to, and often the long wait at, the booth on poll day as a compulsory ritual. That said, the futility of this regular early morning exercise is also not lost on me.
On the freebies front both the DMK and the AIADMK have achieved near perfect parity, give or take a mixie or a fan or a few kgs of rice. In any case the anomalies are minor and are already being addressed. Cash distribution is a different ball game and the ruling combine seems to have a clear edge, what with the EC itself alleging that some cops themselves have turned carriers and even couriers.
A week of free hits indeed. K opened the innings with quite a bundle of goodies but J’s slog overhaul puts his spirited knock in the shade. We voters are now spoilt for choice. Of course, ‘we’ should ideally mean only women voters, for most of the sops are aimed at them, but then if the homemakers are happy, what have we, I mean the other part of ‘we’, to grumble about?
The Indian political scene mimicked Japan this week. The nuclear ghost of 2008 came back to haunt MSingh, making his hot seat a bit too radioactive for comfort; Wikileaks came in a tsunami of waves, inundating virtually every facet of UPA governance and then scooping and setting afloat for full public view a sludge of skeletons.
The poll circus in TN got off to a rousing start. The opening show was dominated by the Cong and the DMK: while the former played the tough ringmaster, the latter slipped on the daredevil tightrope it had chosen to tread and landed hard on the ground of reality after a few clumsy somersaults. And many chinks too came tumbling out during the course of that near-fatal fall.
There is no time like poll time for newspapers. The media mills can work overtime, thanks to endless supply of political grist. Sales and viewership generally zoom, but with cricket already hijacking eyeballs, the polls might at least salvage some attention for the news side of the news media.