A Different Truth

“Tiger, tiger burning bright, in the forests of the night,

What immortal hand or eye, could frame their fearful symmetry?”

Well, if I were to concoct an argument opposing the uprising in the Arab World, based on what William Blake expresses in the above poem (i.e. for every good in the world there is something bad), it would be preposterously lame; but so would be living in the world too vulnerable to economic changes and a world over influenced by U.S.A. or for that matter any other country.

There are times in our lives when we wish we would have looked back at a situation with a totally different perspective; my readers, this article is about the same new perspective on what is termed as one of the greatest uprising in the recent times—the uprising in the Middle East.

But before we go any further ahead on the topic, let us have some brief information on the countries of Middle East. Geographically speaking, Middle East mainly comprises the countries situated near the Persian Gulf. Bahrain, Cyprus, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, U.A.E., Saudi Arabia etc. with a few countries falling in the greater middle eastern region, countries like Tunisia, Libya, Algeria etc. Most of these countries have a few things in common. Firstly they all are oil rich countries. Secondly, almost all of them are Muslim countries and thirdly, most of them are ruled by monarchs or the so called dictators.

We live in in the world so crowded by the news and media that sometimes while listening others we fail to have our own perspectives. We judge the events at their face value, without bothering to read between the lines and discovering an entirely new truth—an uncomforting new revelation. The same set of logic applies to our perception of the uprising in the Middle East. Sitting in sofas in the comforts of our homes we rejoice the uprising. Of course what better to applaud that the heroic efforts of the people who rose against the oppressive regimes in their countries; but, what we fail to notice is what has been liberally omitted from the most of the news stories—the negative impact of the Arab uprising.

When we analyse the recent military, political and foreign policy of U.S.A. a few events stand out; events that changed future of two countries and future of certain thousand soldiers of one country. We come across the US invasion of Afghanistan and that of Iraq. The former being an “attempt to dismantle Al-Qaida” and the latter and attempt to overthrow a tyrant in possession of “weapons of mass destruction”. But the underlying obvious reason was US craving to influence a nation and control the oil reserves of the other. Now, US suffered criticism for its actions and its soldiers paid a heavy price for it. The events transpiring in the Middle East, if looked at with this information in mind, paint a clear picture. It may be an attempt to reap the same benefits (the oil and control), without collateral damage. Middle East as already mentioned, abounds in oil. And it is a well-known fact that US has been trying to save its oil reserves and at the same time trying to get its hands on the oil in the Middle East. The invasion of Iraq was one such attempt. While the US government cannot launch a full scale military invasion on any of these countries, it can definitely control the ruling power and hence achieve the same aim without the Damage. Wiki leak cables suggest that C.I.A. had been planning to topple Egypt for three years and finally it did happen and now all that is left is to share the spoils.

After Iraq invasion, Ray McGovern, one of the high ranking officers of C.I.A. claimed that a part of US administration is being controlled by what are known as “the crazies”, some people who believe in absolute monopoly of US on international front; following this chain of thought one can strongly suggest that all the recent events maybe an attempt to do just the same.

US had a lot to gain form the uprising. Despite, several contradictions from both the governments, there is no taking away the fact that there is no love lost between United States and Russia. Russia supplied arms to Libya. Now with the recent events Russia had to ban all the arms supplies thus losing a huge arms market and a lot of capital. Probably this is a coincidence or maybe all the events were planned to put US in the fore the world.

Even if we neglect any foul play on the part of United States, there are other reasons which place the Arab uprising in a very critical situation. Libya for instance, is huge supplier of oil in the international market, but with the entire drama with Gaddafi playing the epic villain, the oil market and the world economy face a serious threat. Recently the oil prices have gone up, with a barrel costing more than 100$ in US and 120$ in Britain. This price rise may be attributed to the fact that Libya due to civil war has been divided into two parts, with the east being under the influence of the rebels and the west being under the influence of Mohammed Gaddafi. The rebels control the very important export centres of Tobruk and Zuteina while the Gaddafi regime controls the refineries and other ports. So, the oil from refineries is not reaching the export centres. This coupled with the fact that there is no effective leader of the rebels to negotiate with the oil companies, has led to the soaring oil prices. Though Saudi Arabia has promised to make up for the lost oil supplies but its high sulphur oil is in no way a replacement for the low sulphur oil of Libya. This price rise though seems pretty harmless may be the cause of another economic crisis in the world.

Lastly one should also keep in mind that Al Qaeda, one of the largest terrorist organisations in the world has welcomed the uprising and there seems to be a lot of thought going on behind this; for most of us have been ignorant of the fact that Gaddafi though a tyrant, had abolished all the radical Islamic practices from Libya. Can this be an opportunity for the radicals and the terrorist organisations to strengthen their position in the Arab Countries?

While the author welcomes the new oppression free life of the citizens of the concerned countries, and is no way against the enunciation of civil liberties, when one looks at the other side of the story and see the pieces of the zig saw puzzle falling together, revealing a grotesque picture, for one moment one feels inclined to think was world a better place without the uprising?

Awakening

There is a saying in English which goes something like, if you strew roses in someone else’s path, you can’t do it without letting some of the scent left behind onto your hands. But it leaves a perturbing question: what if the sole purpose of strewing flowers is to get scent onto hands? It does make the deed morally insignificant, but does it take away the fact that the roses may gladden a heart unconcerned about the intentions. Is intention more important than the deed? Or can we just ignore the intentions behind an action and focus on the benefits of the action?

Human beings are inherently selfish species. A sacrifice maybe made with an intention of getting mental peace or fulfilling one’s responsibility or winning accolades—but each of the above actions reeks of selfishness or more acceptably self-preservation. So why is it that Homo sapiens need to hide their selfishness behind the curtains of charity and public service? Why is that the benefits of actions are assigned lesser importance than the intentions behind the actions?

If we take a trip into the history of human politics, a striking fact stands out—intentions have never been a stronghold of politicians or for that matter most of the public figures. So why is it that we still want to adhere to the belief of a “self-righteous politician with honest intentions”?

The adherence to the above belief is the sole reason behind the criticism levied against Baba Ramdev. The yoga guru is accused of fasting to serve his own political motives; he is under constant attack for misusing people to his own political advantage. But the question still remains, why are we so focussed on intentions? Why don’t we concentrate our thoughts on the positive impact that this strike is having on the society? Is it right to discredit the entire campaign against corruption just because the perpetrator of the campaign travels in chartered planes? Is it right to ignore the awareness that this campaign is spreading among its masses? There is no disputing the claim that Baba has his following among the poorest strata of society—the section unreachable by any form of media; the same section that plays a very important role in formation of the government; the section that lacks the ability to judge the pros and cons of a national problem and is easily influenced by the politicians. The government’s insecurity regarding Ramdev may be attributed to the fact that Ramdev through his campaign has reached people which otherwise only local politicos with no noble actions could reach before.

The time has come when we should focus on the positive impact of the campaign and not let the shadow of so called ill intentions over influence our perception of this national awakening.

The Dawn-HA!

Hello folks! Ha! Whom am i greeting? When i know that there are no potential readers of this blog. But i guess it nourishes my publicity hungry conscience to pretend greeting people, like i have an actual readership.

Hey what am i waiting for? Obviously you guys don’t have time to waste. You must have left your very important friends on facebook chat to read this blog( hell i am expecting too much from my readers. If there are any!!). Let me spare you the crap and get down to the base talk.

This morning i woke up at something around 5 a.m. and 10 minutes later i was bored from facebook. So the next thing i decide is to call up a friend( yeh! I know now you are gonna come after me with a shotgun). But HA! he is asleep. And texts me back saying

“itni sube missed call...go back to sleep again”

Well once i am awake i am not gonna go to sleep again. I guess this world needs my attention and creativity ;). So the next thing i do is to go in the search of the newspaper. Luckily the newspaper guy is spared of all the abuses and comments on his laziness cuz i find the newspaper at my door step. But unluckily the newspaper happens to be a Hindi daily. Now frankly speaking i have nothing against Hindi dailies except for the fact that the go out of their way to publicize a topic hoping desperately for improvement in their readership and good God! It works sometimes.

Having nothing else to kill my time i settle down with copy of “Dainik Jagran”. The first headline is about Rajesh Gulati. Now if you tell me that you don’t know him, you have my vote for the most uninformed person in the world; ok just in India.

In case you are ignorant enough that you don’t know who he is then let me tell you that he is the guy who married his girlfriend and then killed her when she asked for money and then borrowed idea form a cheap Hollywood flick(which by the way is favourite movie of certain facebook fanatics—yeh! I come across the movie a lot of times while browsing through various profiles) to get rid of the corpse. According to the reports he hacked her body into pieces, froze the pieces and then disposed them off one part at a time. Well rest i leave to channels like “Aaj Tak” or “India T.V.”. They are going to keep you updated even when there is no update. What? you missed the news? Don’t worry they are gonna repeat the telecast again and again till the government disconnects their power connection because they didn’t pay their electricity bill. Which obviously is improbable. So the chances are that they are gonna play on the same tape again and again till they get to cover another story where a boy fell into a pit or where a godman was indulged in a sex scandal or where a cricketer in sheer show of disrespect to the game, slapped a fellow teammate.

So here i was reading it all again in the news paper that calls itself the “voice of the nation” a newspaper whose name roughly translates into “daily awakening”. Bravo!

Hey! I am not against the press reporting a story which obviously needed national attention. But my point is- report it once. Fine make it a headline for a day or two, then shift on to the matters that are more important. The matters which if not pursued are never going to be resolved. Why are you after a guy who killed his wife in cold blood and has no remorse? Why dedicate you precious news space(for which you charge a hefty sum) to a psychologically disturbed criminal who cuts cake with the dead body of his wife to celebrate their second love anniversary. There are other matters to take care of. Matters concerning the state. There are roads left unconstructed, unfinished parks, flats which were promised in the manifesto of political parties, government vehicles being used for dropping kids to school and a lot more issues which any one will agree are of far more importance than a psyched software engineer who is making headlines of the newspapers. And this is true for every form of the media be it the Hindi Dailies or so called of esteemed English newspapers who go out of their way to addict young minds with soft porn (ever heard of “delhi times” or the international page on toi) and yes same goes for the 24x7 news channels whose form of work i have alluded earlier. My suggestion is, why not report the real news, instead of wasting time on these stories why not report the political frauds; why not come in support of Julian Asang who happens to be one person who brought out the raw truth, who for once used the media the way it is meant to be used. While i know that this blog entry is going to be rubbished the moment you finish reading it or wait a minute you have already quit reading it. But if you haven’t all i ask for is just some time to pay an honest thought to the aforementioned problem.

parishrut

Mirrors

...Yesterday while strolling down the road in the evening I happened to hear a conversation...rather an argument between a couple. Now frankly speaking i am not much into eavesdropping(however thrilling the prospect may look) and i know we hate to admit the fact that we all have eavesdropped sometimes and i also know that we humans as a self gratifying species hate to admit all the things not acceptable by social standards. Sorry that i digressed from the topic. So what i overheard were bits of an argument which went something like this (given below is english translated version of the conversation)

man: now why the hell are you upset. please try to understand.

woman: why don't YOU understand me and for a change see my perspective.

man: you know you are impossible.

woman:forget it!

I had slowed down my pace and the man now noticed that i was eavesdropping on them and one stare was enough to make me leave. But i was left with a question in mind. A question that perturbed me throughout the evening and that was what was the real cause of the argument. And though it may appear that the real cause was never mentioned in the conversation but the reality as i see it is different. The reality was that through the entire conversation the very reason was repeated a number of times and the reason was "lack of understanding". As a ruminated over it while walking i realized that we humans want to be surrounded by mirrors.

Confused? Let me elaborate. We humans want people around us to understand us and what they call as understanding i call desperate effort to find an image of oneself in others. All we want is world to silently approve of out ideas and if they don't then they don't "understand" us. i think "understanding" is a really misused word. What it has come to imply is that a person is not entitled to have his own opinion about the subject if he "understands" you on that subject. An if understanding means what it has come to mean then i guess understanding someone is a silent surrender of your free will. And trying to understand someone is a willing effort to surrender you free will which i guess is not what humanity should strive for.

---parishrut

(the outcast)

An Introduction

...Through An Outcast's Eye is an attempt to understand life....as the name itself suggests(hell i introduce a blog with a cliche) this blog will be what an outcast by social standards thinks about life. i call myself an outcast cuz throughout my life i have desired to be different, to think differently and in a society where every one wants a mirror around them to reflect their opinion being different sums up to being alone--being an outcast. so here I am giving you an insight into life--my view of it. You can call it my revenge against the society or my effort to change it into something that it never thought it could be but truth be told it can't be either cuz a voice too small coming from An Outcast doesn't carry weight enough to change the world--to change the perceptions and that too when people rejoice with their inflated ego being nurtured and their false sense of achievement being rewarded...so in reality Through An Outcast's Eye is a nothing but me hoping against hope(cliche again God!) that the views will be read and a thought will not die an inevitable death...

--parishrut