A Soaked Cloth

I was listening to a song by Indian Ocean called Jhini. The original song was written by Kabir. The analogy used in the song is wonderful. So I wanted to write about it. First of all the lyrics of the song (from here).

jhini re jhini re jhini chadariya, jhini re jhini re jhini
ram naam ras bhini chadariya, jhini re jhini re jhini

ashta kamal dal charkha doley, panch tatva, gun tini
saiin ko siyat mas dus lagey, thokey-thokey ke bini

so chadar sur nar muni odi, odi ke maili kini chadariya
das kabir jatan so odi, jyon ki tyon dhar deen chadariya

The translation from the same site verbatim

This is fine, this is fine cloth.
It is been dipped in the name of the lord
The spinning wheel, like an eight-petal lotus, spins,
With five tatvas and three gunas as the pattern.
The Lord stiched it in 10 months
The threads have been pressed to get a tight weave.
It has been worn by gods, people, and sages
They soiled it with use.
Kabir says, I have covered my self with this cloth with great care,
And eventually will leave it like it was.

Kabir was a weaver himself and this song compares the human body to cloth. He used an analogy taken from his profession to express his philosophy, that is the beauty of this song. I believe the five tattvas refer to the panchabhutas or the five elements. There is an interesting article I found on the pancha tattvas. However, Chaitanya Mahaprabhu himself was a younger contemporary of Kabir as apparent from the dates given in Wikipedia. So I think I can safely assume that Kabir talking about the elements here.

I do not know what he means by the eight petalled lotus. There is a concept called the nava randhras which talks about nine orifices in the body. Thus the body has been described as a city with nine gates. Also, there is the concept of the seven chakras. But this eight is between the seven and nine and I am not sure what he is talking about. Trigunas refers to the three kinds of qualities that exist in man - saatvika, rajasika and taamasika. I don't want to say I understand these, so I won't comment. The 10 months period must refer to the pregnancy period and the making dirty refers to the soul being tainted by karma probably. More on this in the next post.

RIP, House of Lords?

Britain is planning to do away with the House of Lords in its Parliament as per a news report. I believe that our Parliament (among a lot of things) is based on the British system. Is it time we looked at doing away with our Rajya Sabha? There used to be two houses in the Andhra Pradesh legislature. When N T Rama Rao was the Chief Minister he did away with the upper house (the legislative council) and now there is only the legislative assembly. There are still legislative councils in a few other states in India today. The vallue that is added by the Parliament is suspect anyway :P It costs lakhs to run the Parliament for a day and everyone knows how well our Parliament (dis)functions.

An interesting point is that abuse of expenses has been given as a reason for the aforementioned decision. Will such accountability be present in India as far as our legislators are concerned? There have been news reports that the government's austerity drive might end soon. Should our "leaders" be circumspect about their expenses only when the going is tough? There were riots yesterday in Bengaluru about allocation of tickets for municipality elections. Imagine the amount of money that must be up for grabs through the posts of these "people's representatives". I am not foolish enough to say that we must do away with our legislature. I am just curious if it is feasible to do away with the Rajya Sabha.

UPDATE: My friend Sasanka tells me that AP still has a legislative council. He says that the current CM is a member of this and not of the assembly. I stand corrected. By the way I believe Rama Rao initially thought it was not useful and he also wanted money for his kilo-rice-for two-rupees scheme.

Suspension and the Aftermath

The unruly MPs have been suspended from the Rajya Sabha. I saw some news item today which said the government was considering revoking this suspension. Lalu has desisted from withdrawing support with the government apparently showing some leniency with his disproportionate asses case. Convenient, isn't it? A shamefully excellent example of a quid pro quo situation!

There was some ruckus in the AP assembly where the speaker instructed some remarks to be struck off from the record. Why? There should be a record of shame where such activities should be mentioned with the names of the perpetrators in bold. Shame on such legislators!

BSNL launching a PE Division?

BSNL has cash reserves of about Rs 35,000 crores and is hence planning to enter the PE business to focus on tech startups. The company seems to gets first preference when auctioning of spectrum and 3G services are concerned, which in my opinion is unfair in India's already cut-throat telecom market.

An interesting point in the news article was that in 2007-08 the profit was driven by interest income, yes, you read that right, interest income on its bank deposits. The profit was about Rs 300 crores and the interest income was about Rs 4000 crores! Thus there is also apprehension that if the reserves are used to set up a PE business the company will have to forego the interest it has been earning. Now should a telecom firm actually be earning its profits through interest? There used to be something called the Access Deficit Charge (ADC) that used to be levied on private telecom players in India. This I believe was replaced by the Universal Service Obligation (USO). From what I remember this was paid to the government in order to compensate BSNL for its non-profitable rural operations. It being a public sector company, BSNL had to provide telecom services in rural areas but was incurring losses on them.

I do not know what the current situation is or if this is indeed the major reason for the profits or losses BSNL shows. But I think the telco can try other avenues to make profits other than the interest route. Let us see what happens.

An Eventful Women's Day Indeed!

I am back, courtesy of our politicians. The Congress is headed by a woman and she is adamant that the women's reservation bill should be passed today. Well, some men had differing views and what resulted was pandemonium.

Before we move on, let us look at the word pandemonium. It was coined by John Milton in Paradise Lost and was the capital of hell. It literally means a place full of demons. Look up this and this for more details.

Now let us come back to this issue. The Samajwadi Party (SP) and the Rashtriya Janata Dall (RJD) headed by Mulayam Singh Yadav and Lalu Prasad Yadav respectively have chosen to withdraw support to the government. A few MPs from these two parties and one from the Janata Dal (United) actually tore up copies of the bill in the Rajya Sabha and threw these at the Chairman. The video being shown on television makes for some interesting viewing. The Rajya Sabha has been postponed a couple of times and I do not know when the bill will be ultimately passed. My question is, why do we let such people get away with it? Plaster photos and posters and show videos of these 'people's representatives' in their constituencies and let the voters see for themselves who they have elected. Remove these people from Parliament. They disgrace not only themselves and their constituents but also the nation in front of the world. Some action has to be taken against such people. But when? And is this a quid pro quo situation? I disrupt, don't harm me, the next time you disrupt, I won't harm you. Is that it?

Now why might the two Yadavs be doing this? The most recognizable Thakur face, Amar Singh is no longer with the SP. The party has always 'positioned' itself as a representative of Muslims. So now there has to be an increased focus on this votebank. A similar story can be made of the RJD also. They want a quota inside a quota. They say the bill in its current form is anti-OBC. They want separate reservation for Muslim women I believe. Is it not wondrous, the number of ways we Indians can divide ourselves?

In other developments a woman has won the Best Director Oscar (The Hurt Locker) for the first time. I saw this movie recently and well, though it seems well made I still did not like it a lot. When I saw Avtaar (the other major contender), the 3D glasses were blocking a part of the view in front of me and the glass was tinted. I found this movie ok. But well, I am entitled to my personal opinions :)

So all in all, an eventful women's day. Now will the bill be passed today?