Moments are born and die,
Years pass by,
But this smile's still a lie.
Unfulfilled desires
Suppressed in deep reservoirs.
Their muffled screams
As they push out to explode,
Within a life left unexplored.
Heaven knows where I'm headed,
My head aches with feelings long dead
Every thought, rotting and stinking
Frothing in its own misery.
Yet the question remains,
Why choose me?
An undeserving host,
Manipulated, troubled, misled,
An ever wandering ghost
With no end to the pain I hold
In my heart, closed and cold,
Forever lost, never to be found
A terrorist once successfully bombed himself killing hundreds in the onslaught. After death, he was led to the gates of heaven where he met the gatekeeper.
The gatekeeper asked him, "Were you the suicide bomber who was just blown up?"
The terrorist answered, 'Yes, I am... I mean, I was."
The gatekeeper glanced him from top to bottom and made a note in his book of records.
"So, are you gonna let me into heaven?" the terrorist asked.
"Well, we will see about that after I finish calculating your tally of sins and good deeds in your lifetime", the gatekeeper said still peering into his record book.
"Oh, I don't care if I go to heaven or not! I'm here to claim what was promised to me", said the terrorist.
The gatekeeper looked up and asked, "Please be kind enough to elaborate what you were promised back in there as I do not seem to have any mention of it here."
The terrorist turned on his either sides to see if there was anyone listening, and making sure there was no one overhearing him, thus spoke, "Um... Well, during my recruitment and during my training, our leaders repeatedly stressed on one thing which kept us going and motivated no matter how difficult our tasks were. I did not care to see if there were children, women, old people, or innocent among the dead. I just wanted to kill. It was so much fun killing all those infidels!"
The gatekeeper was quietly listening. And the terrorist finally asked, "So, what about the 72 virgins that I was promised?!" with a grin of achievement on his face.
The gatekeeper immediately changed his demeanor and bowing to him with all the respect, said, "Oh! Please forgive my rudeness to have kept you waiting for so long, my dear Sir. Pardon my ignorance that I failed to identify you were a martyr in the Holy War. Your promise is right this way. Please follow me..."
He led the terrorist inside the gate and took him along a corridor. There were several rooms from which aromatic scents emanated and colorful ornaments were decorated on the doors and windows, which although remained closed. Trees bearing colorful fruits and flowers lined the corridor. It was truly a heavenly sight. The terrorist struggled hard to contain his excitement and paced up his steps to match up with the gatekeeper. After a couple of turns and passing a few rooms, they finally arrived at a beautifully decorated villa.
Upon entering inside, the gatekeeper said, "Here is the Heaven you longed for. Here is your destiny. The rewards for your deeds, my Sir. Step inside and glorify your afterlife as you deem fit. Your 72 virgins are waiting for you inside in the first room to your right."
The terrorist almost jumped with joy. "Thank you so much, Praise the Lord! My mission is finally successful!"
The gatekeeper said, "All right, Sir. I'll leave you here. Have a good time and a good stay!" and walked out of the house. The terrorist immediately closed the door and rushed to the room and pushed open the door. What he saw made him scream in shock! He rushed out to the main door and tried to open it but it was locked from the outside. Without another thought, he called out loud to the gatekeeper, "Hey, Mr Gatekeeper. You traitor! Come back here. I'll rip you to pieces..."
The gatekeeper, who was not very far, came back to the villa and saw the terrorist shouting from inside through the window. The terrorist, upon seeing the gatekeeper, frantically said, "Hey, open this door! Why is it locked from outside? I want to get out."
Approaching the terrorist, the gatekeeper calmly asked, "Why, Sir? What is the problem? Are you not satisfied with your present?"
"You moron, when I asked for 72 virgins, I meant girls and not 72 men of all ages", the terrorist protested. To this, the gatekeeper, maintaining the same calm gesture, replied, "Apologies, my Sir. Once allotted, the presents cannot be taken back and have to be enjoyed by either parties, which is the Law here. Uh, by the way, we have not lied to our word either. Those men in there are all virgins! And they're no more complaining if it's a man or a woman. It's only a matter of days that you'll get along with them. Anyway, enjoy your stay, Sir". Saying this, the gatekeeper walked away to check on the next person waiting at the gates.
If you were someone born in the last 2-3 decades, you would have definitely grown up singing along or dancing to the music on the cassette player. Sure, newer technologies and digitization of music has revolutionized the way we listen to music today. mp3 and digital audio files are extremely easily accessible and given to the popularity of earphones in today's world, enjoying music has become more of a personalized experience than a group session like it used to be in the early days. Earlier, in the times of the radio, huge radio sets would take up important places colloquial to the ones our TVs would occupy today. Since it was the only home entertainment and information source, whole families would gather round it and listen to music or cricket commentary or news or anything that would be aired. It was the same with gramophones, except that they gave a more personalized option of playing the music of our choice. Cassette came in as the next generation audio devices that further altered our music listening experience.
My memories begin with my mom gifting me a Videocon tape recorder when I turned 4. The first cassette I listened on it had Aashique on A Side and Dil on B Side. Though I had no clue at all about the lyrics, the constant listening to it had made me learn them by heart (I've forgotten them now however). With more time, more cassettes added up to the tape rack. I would religiously play a cassette everyday and listen to the songs. Most of the songs would be from the movies I had watched. At the same time, listening to music of movies that I'd not watched was more of an imaginary experience where I would imagine the visuals according to the music.
As I grew up, I began to sing along with the songs and tried to match up the scales. This gave me an insight into assessing where I went off and where I fit in and work on my singing skills. I am not a formally trained singer except for music classes in school which I seldom practiced. But I would surely listen to the music on tape and sing along.
As I got a little older, I learnt about Stereo technology and would sit in front of the tape recorder with my head placed at the center, between both speakers for perfect stereo experience and listen to cassettes, sometimes for even hours. I would intently watch the tape roll to the other side through the plastic pane and be amazed as to how such a thin tape could contain such beautiful music.
With access to a few genres and restricted to a limited number of cassettes by both choice and availability, I would play the same cassette again and again so much that I can still unconsciously recite the lyrics of the hits of yesteryears, even while not paying attention to as what the lyrics meant as long as they sounded right. Over time, the cassette player gradually wore out and died one day. During it's lifetime, it had immersed me in a world of blissful experience for 20 years. In the middle of its life, it had fallen a couple of times owing to careless handling and non-availability of genuine parts.
Every time I sing something out of memory, I would definitely have heard it on tape. For the lyrics of the new age songs, I have mostly depended on the internet and haven't bothered of seriously remembering it. This is generally true because the songs that we had heard in those cassettes back in those years are all now in our hearts, no matter what music we all listened to. Even though we seldom listen to those songs or admit we listen to them, we can unconsciously recite them anytime a cue is triggered.
I was cleaning a cupboard in my room where I found a box full 50-60 of cassette spanning across three decades. These are the things that inspired me to sing and write and find joy. Playing a cassette on the tape recorder for me is a way to spark up nostalgia and travel to the times of my childhood. Every time I hear those songs on youtube or TV, I am transported to that timeline where I had spent days together relishing that music from the cassette.
India is a land of tradition and culture that dates back to over 5000 years before the aspect of civilization actually began in the Western world. A culture so entwined in its dwellers, it is seen as a lifestyle among many across the world. Picking out the facts that matter, we have every reason to be proud to belong to the ancestry of legends who invented the numerical system, yoga, surgery, the Vedas, to name a few.
The Puranas, or the ancient religious texts, give us a wider picture of our ritualistic customs even before our history text books were written. A notable episode among those is the ocean churning incident, in which the Devas (Gods) and the Asuras (Demons) embark on a mission to extract Amrita, a drink believed to bestow immortality on its drinkers, using the aid of Kalinga the serpent. During the process, Halahala (poison) is extracted and Lord Shiva takes it upon himself to store it inside his throat, as a result of which he is also known by the name Vishakantha, meaning 'He who holds poison within His throat'. Then was the turn of Amrita to come out of the ocean.
The ocean milk churning inscription. Image courtesy: Wikipedia
Chris Bennett, the author of Cannabis and the Soma Solution, reinstates this in his book. He says that the Gods who were wary of the strength of the Demons, hatched a plan to safely hide Amrita and assigned this responsibility to Garuda, who flew with the pot. On the way, a few drops were supposed to spill out in certain locations on the Earth, and thus was born the divine plant of Vijaya, as it is called in Sanskrit. Today, it is referred by various names, some derogatory, such as Cannabis, Marijuana, Mary Jane, Ganja, Bhang, and more. You can find Chris's excerpt here.
The two most common varieties of the Cannabis plant include Cannabis sativa and Cannabis indica. What used to be a commonly used substance in religious sacraments and pleasurable sessions throughout history suddenly had changed its identity to a taboo filled criminal under the label of a narcotic drug, after the 1985 National Drugs & Psychotropic Substances Act was formulated. People were no longer allowed the recreational, sacramental, or medicinal use of Ganja in whatever form according to the law. The violators were booked and prosecuted. With the marginalization of Ganja, its cousin, another variety of Cannabis sativa, called the Indian Hemp, was too slammed shut tagging it as a dangerous drug.
After this landmark legislation, India took on the path of modernization and economic globalization under the mentorship of then Finance Minister, Shri Manmohan Singh, and in a span of a few years, the heritage related to cannabis usage in India was almost hidden away or lost from the new generation. Alcohol and tobacco industries boomed with their new found opportunities and a wretched consumer base willing to pay up anything to drink to their escapades. The situation is no different today, or probably even worse, with shocking stories of deaths and destroyed lives and families, a result of the Devil's Nectar that is freely available in wine stores and legitimately taxed for the benefit of one and all!
Image credits: The Independent, UK
I shall tackle the narcotic aspect of this plant in a later blog, but for now, it is important for us to know and understand that there is something called Industrial Hemp that silently waits to be uncovered. I personally came across this wonder plant an year ago and was too fascinated to learn about it. Industrial hemp, or Indian hemp, as it is called, is the non-narcotic variety of cannabis, which DOES NOT give you a "high" when consumed. Yet, it bears the brunt of the law and is quarantined from the existing agricultural practices.
Industrial hemp was cultivated in India until the 1950s-60s on an industrial scale to supplement the nation's fibre needs, along with the seeds for oil extraction. Today, the hemp crop is believed to support over 25,000 known uses. This is an incredible figure compared to any product that exists on the planet, natural or man made. India was once the largest exporter of hemp until the curtains shut down our progress, which slipped into the hands of China making full use of it.
Image credits: Huffington Post
The uses of hemp range from the classical fibre making to various advanced products such as biofuel, paper, vegetable oil, dietary supplementation, bioplastics, Hempcrete, to even automobiles. The first car by Ford was made of hemp and ran on hemp oil. Here is a video of this car and its durability. The various uses of this wonder crop are also broadly classified in this image for further reference.
Thus, it falls upon us to know its wonderful benefits for an Indian scenario, while the world is already updating itself in the search of more sustainable, viable and eco friendly options for their industries.
An agricultural country by nature, it is disheartening to see the decline of agricultural production by 13.7% in India. More and more people are migrating to the urban sectors in search of better opportunities and living conditions. Farmer suicides have become a common phenomena in our country. Unemployment is on the rise and the population has not stopped its Big Bang mode of expansion. To address such needs for a wide host of environmental and geographical conditions under common policies is inefficient, as we have been seeing. To quote an example, an acre of hemp can give us paper worth four acres of trees in a span of only 3-4 months, while it requires over 20 years to grow trees. I shall leave you to do the math by giving this a closer thought.
Recently, I happened to attend the International Agricultural Fair (Krishi Mela) organized in the Gandhi Krishi Vignan Kendra of Bangalore. We were surprised to know that a majority of qualified staff were mostly unaware of hemp and its benefits except that it was a fibre based crop. After thorough discussions, we happened to show them various fliers and presentations, which really made them reconsider the research on hemp on a positive note. The reason behind this is that we do not learn about such 'revolutionary' stuff in our daily newspapers or TV channels or school books or even casual discussions. I remember studying about cannabis in my highschool as a 'dangerous, addictive' narcotic. As if tobacco and alcohol are doing a great job by filling people with enlightened consciousness! That apart, thanks to the information insemination and the internet revolution that boomed with access to any part of the globe for essential data about anything that exists. I shall include a few reference links for your further interest below.
Speaking about hemp is not fulfilled in one blog post like this, but requires combined efforts of aware individuals and farmers. It is the right of mankind to have access to a crop whose sole purpose is to the betterment of a nation and humanity. Closing it as classified information, denying proper citations of its ill effects (which officially do not exist after extensive worldwide researches), is, in fact, illegal. Farmers in India need to be educated about this wonder crop and they must demand for a proper justification as to why it cannot be granted a permission for cultivation. Clubbing it with marijuana is a futile excuse, as botanists have certified that marijuana cannot be grown alongside hemp, owing to its high cross pollinating nature due to which it will soon be converted into hemp.
Hemp seeds are rich sources of essential proteins and fatty acids that we seldom consume in our daily diet. This is the answer to the problems boggling modern India - be it unemployment, farmer suicides, wasteland management, water inadequacy, weeding issues, malnutrition, fuel efficiency, and many many more.
Hemp oil is essentially used to extract biofuel. At the Fair, Dr Balakrishna Gowda, a professor at GKVK and Project Co-ordinator at the Biofuel Park in Hassan, Karnataka, beautifully quoted saying, "If we add even 1% of biofuel to our existing petroleum products, it could save up to Rs 5000 crores a year of the total import costs." How cool is that!
Image credits: True Democracy Party
Notable in India in recent times are the commendable efforts of a group of young entrepreneurs from Mumbai who have taken up the cause for a noble reason, under the name Bombay Hemp Company. They have been focused on their research and efforts in this regard and working continuously towards its realization for the past one-and-a-half years. You can also follow them on facebook and learn more. Also mentionable are Hemp India on the same path. Our country needs more such participation on corporate levels for a well informed society.
Route map for Cannabliss!
I know it is rather a long post about a simple crop, but mind you, the situation we are facing today is much more complex. It is not easy for a layman to freely grow hemp without undergoing painstaking tussles with obtaining the licenses and permissions that lies in vested hands of the Govt. The Government must step up its initiative to research about this by taking the example of various developed nations who are already headed towards a prosperous future like Canada, Australia, Netherlands, United Kingdom, and China. India is no less in terms of agriculture to these countries, save our limiting agricultural policies.
To conclude, here is a small documentary produced by the United States Government during the World War II period that encouraged farmers to take up the growing of hemp for commercial purposes. Do watch!
The past two months have been great for the kannada film industry, with the release of two intellectual movies - Lucia, about which I had written previously, and now, Jatta, by Giriraj BM. Speaking about Jatta is a debate that touches upon feminism, culturalism, socialism, all wrapped around the central male chauvinistic character of Jatta, played by Kishor Kumar.
Set in the beautiful locales of Sagara in Karnataka, the movie opens with a speech that introduces us to a backdrop that explains the current situation of western influence on our native culture and its ill effects. Torn between a lonely life and an eloped wife, it is up to Jatta to take upon himself the moral responsibility of the betterment of the society. For this, he believes women play a pivotal role, for which their suppression is justified, as he is advised by his mentor, played by BM Suresh. Jatta also believes the forest as his Mother, and strives to protect Her from illegal poachers and sandalwood thieves.
I shall not reveal the plot, but I shall give you a glimpse of what to expect. The film changes course once Jatta happens to rescue Sagarika (Sukrutha Wagle) from a car crash. This is where it starts to get interesting as the director excels in bringing out the contrasts between the two extreme ideologies of a hardcore feminist who religiously follows Dr Ambedkar and a hellbent male counterpart who believes women as increasingly taking the path of infidelity. Backed by other characters like the forest officer (Prem Kumar) and Jatta's wife, Belli (Pavana), the story takes on turns that, for a moment, might make you think twice.
This movie is not for the conventional thinker or cinegoer who goes to the theatre to merely feast on entertainment. Like Lucia, this movie not just makes you think, but will shatter your own ideologies and expectations, for reality is stranger than fiction. Giriraj has bravely depicted this with necessary rationalizations when required, and leaves us to make our own judgements as he leaves us in his premise of unusualness. It could come as a culture shock to some, blasphemous to others, and wondrous to many, as the mythology of an idol of a Goddess in the forest is narrated.
The film, though done on a lower budget, is intelligently done by keeping it up to the subject and not deviating out of it. Soundtrack by Ashley and Abhilash are appropriately scored situationally. Camera work by Kiran is good. Coming to the performances, Kishor is brilliant in his portrayal of the protagonist, be it his emotional state or body language throughout the film. Pavana, as Jatta's wife, has done a fine job. What requires special mention is newcomer Sukratha Wagle's performance as Sagarika. Her resilient, rebellious attitude portrays a mockery of a male dominated society, and she excels at it top notch. Prem Kumar as the forest officer is decent. Also, one would feel a few actors like the ones portraying the investigating police officer, Belli's lover, and the industrialist could have been much better. Even though their roles are shortlived, their presence adds weightage to the story and could have been performed by better actors.
Revolving around divine consideration of nature as Mother and an equally divine representation of a woman as Mother, the film deals with extramarital affairs and gender independence, trying to achieve a balance between all of it. Whether it succeeds or not shall be judged by you, after watching the film. Jatta is brave, fearless, and bold. It succeeds to create a dogmatic dilemma within you when you come out. Give this a watch if you want something out of the ordinary. And yes, do not watch it with any of your preconceived ideologies or notions in mind. Throw them all out before you take your seat and enjoy the film with an open mind. The movie deserves at least 3.5 stars for the content and its depiction. Happy watching!
