Wednesday, May 29, 2013
The Grand Palace _ Bangkok
Grand Palace Outer View |
This complex consistes of three parts:
The Emerald Buddha Temple
The Middle Palace and
The Inner Palace.
No one is allowed inside the inner palace.
The Thais are highly ettiquette-driven. It is not correct to enter a temple scantilly dressed. Our guide a stout tThai woman kept poking chinese girls who were in mini skirts or shorts and forcing them to wrap their sarongs. It is not seemly in Thailand to expose the upper ans lower torso.
On the Banks of the Chao Phraya
Here I am...once more gazing out of my hotel window at the wide expanse of the Chao Phraya river flowing throgh the middle of Bangkok. I am here this time for a meeting with a client. The hotel is the Anantara Riverside Resort and Spa, a wonderful and huge property right on the banks of the river.
The entire place is alike a museum with carvings, sculptures and bas relief adorning the walls and corners. The elephant motif is pronounced.
Bangkok is the same old traffic loaded, ancient yet modern city. Every time I drive through Bangkok, I feel India could have achieved this long long ago. Till 1995 we were looking with awe towards Singapore, Kualalampur,and Bangkok as developed ultra modern cities. They were foren. We were Indian. Today any metrocity in India looks as modern as or better than cities like, for example, Bangkok. A drive through Bangkok today is no different fromn a drive through an urban sprawl like Gurgaon or OMR in Chennai. Bur in Indiua this modernization is still in pockets while here it is evenly spread. This is not to say that there are no poor underprivileged people. But here they seem to be contented with their lot and sincerely attempting to do something.
We had dinner at a nice Indian restaurent called the Indian Cor
ner opposite to Maa Hotel. There are lot of north Indians here who are traders and businessmen. But there is no service oriented community as in Dubhai or Muscat.
The entire place is alike a museum with carvings, sculptures and bas relief adorning the walls and corners. The elephant motif is pronounced.
Bangkok is the same old traffic loaded, ancient yet modern city. Every time I drive through Bangkok, I feel India could have achieved this long long ago. Till 1995 we were looking with awe towards Singapore, Kualalampur,and Bangkok as developed ultra modern cities. They were foren. We were Indian. Today any metrocity in India looks as modern as or better than cities like, for example, Bangkok. A drive through Bangkok today is no different fromn a drive through an urban sprawl like Gurgaon or OMR in Chennai. Bur in Indiua this modernization is still in pockets while here it is evenly spread. This is not to say that there are no poor underprivileged people. But here they seem to be contented with their lot and sincerely attempting to do something.
We had dinner at a nice Indian restaurent called the Indian Cor
ner opposite to Maa Hotel. There are lot of north Indians here who are traders and businessmen. But there is no service oriented community as in Dubhai or Muscat.
Sunday, May 26, 2013
Ooty Flowers
Managed a two-day break at Oootacamund en famille. These snaps were taken during a leisurely stroll through the Botanical Gardens.
I liked this quotation engraved on a slab in the Rose Garden:
Roses for the Garden
Roses are a gift of price
Sent to us from Paradise
More Divine our Nature grows
In the Eden of the Rose.
Roses, why for silver sell?
O, Rose merchant fairly tell
What you buy instead of those
That is costlier than the Rose
Kis I of Mreve
Dolie-Walas Relaxing
sabhari Malai Dolie Walas Relaxing |
Thursday, May 9, 2013
Nicholas Nickleby and Mahabharath
This is a 2002 movie adaptation of Charles Dicken’s third
novel. Dickens is able to bring out the stark black and white images of ‘good”
and “bad” in his novels. The Victorian idiom enables these “passion play”
imagery.
Ralph Nickleby is the
personification of evil or to use its Indian equivalent “adharma”. Nicholas Nickleby the honorable nephew is “good” or “dharma”. The story is essentially a tale
of the triumph of good over evil.
As I was watching the movie, I
could not help but speculate on the parallels between Nicholas Nickleby and the
Mahabharath! Both are tales that
describe the travils of dharma as it is put down continuously by evil. The
pandavas are personified in Nicholas and Kate. The insults thsat Kate undergoes
in Ralph’s house from his evil friends are similar to the famous scene where
Draupadhi is dishonored in public in Duryodhana’;s court. Just as we have
Vikarna and Vidhur who try to counsel evil, we have a friend of Ralph’s who not
only advises Ralph and hios cronies to desist but also feels guilty for not
having spoken up! We even have a “pair of Krishna
equivalents” in the Cheerybyl brothers.
The comparison rose up naturally
in my mind and there is no contrivance here. I think this only proves the
essential fact that the fight between good and evil, the initial victory of the
latter and the eventual triumph of the former are essential themes deeply
embedded in the human consciousness so as to transcend cultures and continents.
Of course, in the complicated world we have cocreated, there are no convenient
pegs for hanging good and evil. Our times are more Elizabethean than Victorian!
There is a lot of grey!
But, the real battle between the
forces of dharma and adharma is happening
outside but inside each one of us! Each one of us has a little bit of both
Ralph and Nicholas in us. The battle within is the Kurukshetra. It is both a
Dharmakshetra and Kurukshetra. It is Kurukshetra because we can’t transcend our
own inner evil by inaction. It is only by action that we help dharma to emerge
victorious.
Action is neither good nor bad.
It is the coin of life. We exchange time for action. We accumulate karma with
action! To stop acting is itself an action! “So, Act!” says Krishna. But, act
within the framework of love and good. Any action that is prompted by a general
desire for doing well by everyone including oneself and that is rooted in love
and a sincere commitment not to harm others by thought, words or action is
preferable over inaction.
We wonder why evilis victorious.
We wonder whether good will triumph at all! Yet, the Lord has promised to
return whenever there is a threat that good will be totally destroyed. How much
more should evil win before the balance is irretrievably tilted and the cosmic
force in irreversibly released in the final battle against evil?
Unconditional Love
My wife does not love me
unconditionally. She loves me within certain value parameters. But, it doesn’t
matter. Because, the parameters she has set are actually good for my long term
growth as a human being.
Therein lies the nub. Most
women/Men love or think that they love or that they ought to love their partner
unconditionally. This means, they deem it their duty to ignore the other’s
faults or shortcomings. They have a humongous blind spot. This creates superb
victims or martyrs depending on the other paty’s response to this
‘unconditional’ love. This is a Lose/Win contract that’s destructive for the
victim/martyr.(Try trelling this to them!)
Most unconditional love has
subtle value parameters. pretty girl marries a rich man and loves him
unconditionally as long as he provides her with the material wealth she seeks.
The conditions she places are not for the benefit of the other person but for
her own personal benefit. As long as love is filtered through ego, it is not
unconditional. But where conditions are not filtered through ego but a genuine
wish to improve the other person, such conditional love is better than the
unconditiona love that destroys and deludes either or both the partners.
Another combination is a
situation where one party is too critical or abusive. (In fact, this is ususlly
the other party in the ‘unconditional’ love example we saw above. This is not conditional
love. This is simply no love at all.It’s a Win/Lose relationship that’s going
nowhere.
Imagine a marriage where both parties love each other
unconditionally. That is to say both are willing to ignore their faults and
shortcomings. While they will be extremely happy in the short run, in the long
run they would have made so many mistakes in life that the whole point of a
healthy marriage would be lost. This is a lose/lose marriage. They laugh but do
not smile. They are living a lie and delude themselves. These people are
usually the educated middle class who need to put on a show of happiness. This
breaks down once the children settle down and the social need to live together
is gone.
It is better to be honest to your spouse. Shortcomings and
faults should be discussed and addressed as both the parties actualize their
fullest potential on the parallel and adjacent paths they have chosen to take
voluntarily and out of a deep (but not unconditional) affection and admiration
for the other.
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