American Gods

American Gods is one of the most, if not the most, imaginative book that I have read. It is violent with plenty curses and sexual situations. But it deftly deals with Gods and religions. It talks about the world that we live in. About the influence of the past, present and future in our lives. Among all the trash in the book exists a thoughtful core. While I was reading the book, I could not believe the twists and turns it took. It is a book that I will always look at it awe. 

In 2017, I heard that it has been made into a series and that it is available on Amazon Prime. I did not dare to watch it on my TV in my living room. I was not really interested in watching it on my mobile or laptop. This weekend, I was alone at home and though had truck loads of work to do, I was not interested in doing it. I wanted to be irresponsible and irresponsible I was. I watched the first season of American Gods, all 8 episodes in less than 24 hours. It was amazing. Beautifully made! As expected, it was extremely inappropriate with violence, sexual violence and cursed laced dialogues. It was worse than the series "Rome". But I loved it.

Some of lines from the series are amazing. I am not sure, if these are in the book too. I have no choice but to go back and read the book within the next few months. 

"What should I call you, if I were so inclined?"

"Its all about getting people to believe in you. Its not about case, its about faith. Well, take this plane for example. This 80 ton chub of metal, cushion and Bloody Mary mixes has no right to be soaring through the sky but along comes Newton explaining something about the airflow over the wing creating an uplift or some such nonsense. None of it makes any sense but you got 82 passengers back there who believe in it so fiercely that the plane continues its journey safely. Now, whats keeping us aloft? Faith or Newton?"

"Religion inspire in those who fear nothing the fear of the gods and using that fear requires a certain element of messing up."

"Faith should not leave the faithful dangling."

"Do you trust him?"

"I know who he is. I know who he was and I can depend on that."

"Machine made goods! You used to do everything by hand. Craft and not manufacturing. Now! This is craft."

"Neutral in the face of injustice is being on the side of the oppressor."

"Do you love God or are you in love with God?"

"In the Americas, anyone can be anything they insist upon - new name, new life. That's the place a body could be happy."

"They don't have a king in America"

"Not yet. Everyone needs a king."

"Forgot its Easter."

"Well its Sunday, 16 April. Seven days after the vernal equinox"

"I love Easter"

"Oh! Many do. Some for the rabbits; some for the resurrection; most think of food. They don't think of the truth of the day and why would they. Yeah, you could call this Easter or we could call it what it really is - a pagan ritual, the celebration of the beginning of spring dating back around 12000 years. People celebrate it without realizing are doing it in the name of Ostara."

"Theres no end to the cruelty of men threatened by strong women."

"Worship is a volume business. Whosoever has the most the followers wins the game."

"Life is long when you have a regret. A moment can last forever when you can see how it should have gone."

"We should start with a story."

"Jesus!"

"I am gonna tell you a story."

"Haven't got the time for a story. Just do your work."

"Let me tell a damned story."

"I got a good one. Once upon a time... See it sounds good already. You are hooked."

"Do not confuse confusion for anger"

"Angry gets things done."

"Believing is seeing. Gods are real if you believe in them."

"Same every year, Ostara. You do all the work and he gets all the prayers."

One of the Jesus' say "I am a belief and so I don't how to not believe."

"Death is usually the last enemy."

"What do you think Gods do? They do what they have alway done: they mess with us. They mess with all of us. Just don't take it personally."

"Its religious Darwinism. Adapt and survive."

"People create Gods when they wonder why things happen. Do you why things happen? Because Gods make them happen. You want to know to make good things happen? Be good to your God. You give a little, you get a little."

"Tell the believers and non-believers that we have taken the spring. They can have it back when they pray for it."

Varanasi notes: GVK

On day two of the gathering, I had 30 minutes prior to the small group discussion. I walked across the road, through the gate and down the path towards the bench overlooking the Ganga. The points mentioned by the speaker that morning started my thinking engine. I felt that the outcomes from the thinking process should not be lost. So I sat down on the bench and started writing thus after looking at the Ganga for a few moments.

As I sit down to write, the words by Rage against the machine come to my mind.

It has to start somewhere It has to start sometime

What better place than here, what better time than now?

K's point on decisions startled me; it was a revelation. I don't remember his words exactly but the gist of his words were that decision is not a good word as it implies the existence of confusion. It means the person has not made up his/her mind. It implies that choices exist in the person's mind and choices, in turn, implies that the confusion resides in a person's mind. This thought goes against many of my beliefs. Decision making, I thought, is a quality that many of us desire to possess. But I had never really thought the choices itself as a sign of confusion. How can I! Are we all not encouraged to have choices to choose from? Why are we encouraged thus? An incident that took place the previous evening provided me with a response (I use "a response" and not "the response" - even here I see the existence of choice). 

A mobile phone at home stopped working suddenly, which, in today's world, is equivalent to having a near death experience. I had to order a phone through Amazon, immediately. My own mobile phone was ignorant of the fact that it was residing in the constituency of the Prime Minister of India. It would not connect to the Internet. With great difficulty, I found an Internet friendly location by the Varuna river. I had made the decision on the model to be purchased right at the beginning but I did not buy it immediately. I desired to find something better. So I went through the reviews of a number of phones. Thirty minutes later, I realized there were no better phones to purchase and went with my initial choice. 

I brought in the confusion of choice and spend thirty minutes of my life is searching for something better sitting in a dark, lonely and mosquito ridden place to ensure that my choice was the best one. The desire for being correct; not just being correct but being so correct that no one can discover even an iota of incorrectness seems to bring in the choice. The choice leads to confusion that results in a decision. The process of decision making itself results in a feeling of satisfaction. One gets the feeling of authority - "I had a choice and I decided to pick the best". The process of decision making itself is frustrating as one has to go through a set of conflicting and contradicting views. Ultimately, if one investigates the decision making process one would realize that it is more based on heuristic than logic. But one never investigates and ends up living satisfied with the decision and the process of reaching it.

This is the way most of us live. But K is trying to make us not live the way we live. All his talks try to move us away from our everyday confusions, which, at most times, results in confrontations. He is trying to bring clarity into our lives. Unfortunately, clarity is something I struggle to find in many of his talks. I have to think and think and think to get a glimmer of understanding. Frankly, many of the words I write here are not the ones I wrote in my book by the Ganga but required many hours of thinking.

We walk along the path of life and reach an intersection. Our life comes to a stop as we stand at the intersection wondering which path to take. We ask the people passing by on their opinions of the path. They give their opinion and based on these opinions we take the decision and choose a path. Our own experience of the path might be different from what we expected but we cannot go back. We continue on our path to get to the next intersection and the process repeats. As per K, by the time we get to the intersection, the path to be taken should be obvious. We shouldn't be waiting at the intersection looking at the choices. If we ruminate on this thought, we hear K telling us that  our paths should be free of intersections. There should be no choices, no confusions and no decisions. But this does not mean that one should mindlessly go about living one's life. It means the opposite - one should be mindful of the occurrences in one's life. One should truly know where he/she is.  Am I there yet? Obviously not. Will I ever get there? I don't believe I will but it is worth trying.

In the video, K also mentioned that one should be selfless in one's actions and should have a silent mind. During the small group discussion the next day, one of the participants appreciated the statement. All of us shook our heads in agreement. He continued that it would be impossible for him to have silent mind but from that moment he will work on making his actions selfless. I did not agree with the latter part of his statement though. I believe being selfless is next to impossible. The happiness one feels when one sees the happiness that has resulted from one's actions removes the selfless nature from one's actions. Actually, I don't think the happiness itself is the problem. When this happiness becomes an obsession, one starts doing good only to feel this happiness. I believe that becomes a problem - the act of selflessness becomes an addiction. The problem lies in this addiction as addictions of any form only leads to selfishness.

One should, I believe, act in accordance to the need. If the situation demands selfless action, do so. But do not go in search of it. More than anything else, it is the intent of the action that matters. I had written in my notebook that our actions should  not cause harm to other but that's not right either. One cannot say "my actions should not cause harm to others". Every action we take causes harm in some form or other. The buildings we build, the food we eat, the clothes we wear, the air we breath, the vehicle we use; almost every action of ours result in harm to others. Not just that, it is done for oneself in some manner or other and hence the element of selflessness is lost. I believe finding answers to the following question would help us.
1. Why am I doing it (the intent)?
2. What is the harm it causes and can we live with the harm caused?
3. Is this action really necessary?

The answer to the questions depend on one's personality. The search for selflessness should not lead one to inaction.

K talked about fear in another video. At the beginning of the talk he announced that by the end of the talk the people in the auditorium will not have fear within them. He then spent many minutes defining fear.  He also spend an annoying amount of time to inform the audience to come along in the journey as partners and not as listeners. Ultimately, he spent three fourth of the speech in this manner. Finally, he got to the cause of fear. According to K, time and thought are the causes of fear. I did not understand why and how time and thought are the causes though. At the end of the video, I had no idea how to deal with these causes and ultimately with fear. The video was played after dinner. Some people dozed through it and others walked out. I did neither though I was tempted to do the latter.

At the end of the talk, K warned that one had to understand the concept as it is being said and it cannot be left for later. I felt disappointed and felt that K had not evolved the thought fully. It seemed he was not prepared to talk on that day but was forced to do it. This video was a taped in 1980. Another video from 1984, touches on the same topic, fear. In this case, I was able to understand K's explanations. He seemed to have developed the thought and was patient enough to explain it. In the talk, he maintained that thought and time were the main causes of fear. As per K, thinking about an event that occurred in the past and expecting it to happen in the future brought about fear. It could be a pleasant occurrence that you are worried will not happen again or an unpleasant event that you believe might happen again. Either way thinking brings in fear.

The other cause of fear is time. When K talks about time, he is referring to the time we take to act.  We think we have time to change and don't start the process immediately. K continues that the future is now - what you are now is what you will be in future and what you were in the past. This means that if you want to change, change now - you are what you will be. In this video, K talked about our lives being a bundle of memories. Through our lives we add memories but memories are static. K went on to say that motives in our lives arise from our memories and hence they are static. Life is all about movement and static objects clash with objects that move. Hence we should find a way to live without motives and learn till there is nothing to learn.

Public speaking is a tricky business. I believe the speaker should combine knowledge with passion, language and wit to capture the audience's attention. Wit is not a necessity though. The tricky part in the above mentioned list is knowledge. It is a necessity else the speech would end up being hollow. Its existence does not guarantee a good speech though. It has to wrapped well prior to its presentation. It cannot be presented raw; one should not give a sugarcane to someone attempting to sweeten his/her tea. On the other hand one should not wrap it so much that the audience get tired unwrapping it; one should not provide a sachet of sugar to a person looking to sweeten his/her tea in a safe. As an example for a statement wrapped in complexity look at the statement "this control empowers the service provider to address the issues faced by one or more end users, by providing multiple packages that have fine-grained control on the end user’s network needs". It can be simplified as... Nevermind! I am sure it can be simplified.  In between all these knowledgeable speakers lie a set of speakers who wrap words masquerading as knowledge in layers on complexity. Thus public speaking is not only a challenge for the speaker but also for the listener too.

One of the speakers at the gathering, spoke gravely with a stoic countenance. He talked on the topic of crisis in society (which demanded a stoic countenance from not just the speaker but from the listeners too). The crux of his talk was about our society being mired in the crises of greed and triviality. According to the speaker our society our society is involved in triviality in all spheres of life -  Be it politics, sports, entertainment or social interactions.  He also talked of our insatiable hunger for a lot more than our requirement, which has resulted in widespread disparity in our society. The point on the crisis of greed disturbed a few, including me, in the audience. One person talked about this discomfort in the ensuing small group discussion.

She was disturbed by some of the excesses taking place as a result of the gathering. She was referring to the number of people who traveled to attend the gathering. In many cases, the attendees used the luxury of an airplane or AC compartment in a train to travel. She continued that the attendees stayed in comfort and consumed sumptuous food during their stay. She felt uncomfortable with this indulgence. She wondered if we were being insensitive about the issue while we talked about it at length. Are we all not adding to the crisis of greed while we talked about it? The learned facilitator cleared his throat and responded. Unfortunately, his response was did not address the questions.

Group discussions are dependent on the facilitators. Some facilitators play the role perfectly by asking a few questions to enable the discussion and by taking part in the discussion as an equal member of the group. A few start off quietly like the previously mentioned facilitators but soon take complete control of the proceeding. By the end of the discussion, the facilitator has a response for almost all the questions and everyone ends up listening to the facilitator quietly. The third kind can be classified as the expert facilitator. He/She takes complete control of the discussion from the start. They have responses for every question and the group discussion ends up looking like an interview or press conference.

One of the group discussions, had a facilitator of the third kind. A senior and respected person at the gathering facilitated the discussion. He was an expert in many fields. So he started answering all the questions from the beginning of the discussions. Soon, every member of the group addressed the questions to him and not to each other. Though the facilitator's responses were informative and illuminating, the nature of the group discussion changed. One of the younger participants was offended by the manner in which the discussion was proceeding. He protested by reminding facilitator that this was a discussion and not an expert opinion session (of course, he was not this blunt). Now, it was the turn of the facilitator to be offended. He did not hide his vexation as he answered that the participants in such discussions are all at different levels of thinking. So the discussion will not be among equals and tends to be pointless.

The incident brought out interesting aspects of today's world (and maybe the world at all times).  Members of the older generation are eager to bestow their learning and knowledge to newer generation. They authoritatively try to educate the younger ones. But the younger ones are not interested in listening. They want to explore and discover for themselves. They too want to share their discoveries. From their point of view, the world has changed and the rules are different. They believe that the older generation does not understand the world enough to advise them. The many generations that occupy our world brush against each other uncomfortably.

Such tussles between generations are common all over the world. But it disturbs us to see people, whom we consider learned, involved in such tussles. Their learnedness is seen in their talks but one can perceive gaps in their actions. The dichotomy between words and actions exists all around and the participants of the gathering are not above this dichotomy. K's messages bring in the additional complexity of being understood in many way or sometimes not at all. I think it is a blasphemy to think that K's messages has the absolute truth embedded in it. As a matter of fact, I don't think absolute truth or for that matter, truth exists. Everyone lives by their own truths but the trouble starts when one starts believing that their truth as the absolute truth.

We spend a lifetime building our truth and then go away.

PS: The GVK in the title stands for Gathering at Varanasi on K

Bohemian Rhapsody

The trailers of Bohemian Rhapsody promised an interesting fare. The 12 year old expressed his desire to watch the movie. His parents looked at each other worried. Biopics on rock groups were usually not appropriate material for children. But the boy was a big fan of Queen and was vehement he would watch the movie. He eagerly watched all the teasers and trailers. He ensured his parents were also a part of these viewing. Though they loved what they saw, the boy's excitement worried them. Finally, the release date of the movie arrived. The father eagerly checked the movie's rating on IMDB. He let out a sigh of relief; the movie was rated PG 13. The boy had turned 13 by the time of the release, which meant he could watch the movie.

One Friday afternoon, they walked into the theatre humming "We will, we will rock you". The movie started and it was a slow but interesting affair. The father wished it was a tighter movie. There were a few mildly intimate scenes at the beginning. Nothing disturbing! Even the Bollywood movie were risqué compared to this. After about an hour or so later, the scene had Freddie playing on the piano when Paul walks by and plants a kiss on Freddie's lips. The 13 year old was shocked and could not contain a "What the" within him.

He walked out of the theater with three thoughts. Queen is the greatest band on the planet and Freddie Mercury the greatest rock star. Freddie Mercury was gay, which meant he kissed and was kissed by many men. Freddie Mercury died of AIDS and not drug overdose.

Under blood red skies...

In my teens, I was enamoured by communism . The egalitarian outlook of the philosophy seemed perfect to make this planet a better place to live. Besides, the thrashing the ever-corrupt Congress government got from the communist in Kerala and West Bengal gave the party a larger than life image. Kerala was going through a revolutionary change during my father's growing years. The communist party was brought in equality and spread the concept of one's rights to every corner of state. The communist ideology made the party a cauldron of many young thinking minds. My father talked about those days and I was fascinated by the party's heroes and their heroic actions. I would have given anything to see the play "Ningel enne communist akki". All these years have not subsided that desire.

The first seeds of doubt were sown by Ayn Rand. Her essay "For the New Intellectual" attacked communism and Socialism mercilessly. Though I am not fond of her writing, this essay changed a part of my thought process. In that sense, she has had a powerful impact on my life. The tone of the essay can be understood from the following section of the essay.

The essential characteristic of socialism is the denial of individual property rights; under socialism, the right to property (which is the right of use and disposal) is vested in “society as a whole,” i.e., in the collective, with production and distribution controlled by the state, i.e., by the government.

Socialism may be established by force, as in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics—or by vote, as in Nazi (National Socialist) Germany. The degree of socialization may be total, as in Russia—or partial, as in England. Theoretically, the differences are superficial; practically, they are only a matter of time. The basic principle, in all cases, is the same.

The alleged goals of socialism were: the abolition of poverty, the achievement of general prosperity, progress, peace and human brotherhood. The results have been a terrifying failure—terrifying, that is, if one’s motive is men’s welfare.

Instead of prosperity, socialism has brought economic paralysis and/or collapse to every country that tried it. The degree of socialization has been the degree of disaster. The consequences have varied accordingly.

I really understood the issue with communism when I read the following part of the essay

the demand of one group for an unearned share of another group’s income is not socialism—that the destruction of property rights will not affect any other rights—that man’s mind, intelligence, creative ability are a “national resource” (like mines, forests, waterfalls, buffalo reserves and national parks) to be taken over, subsidized and disposed of by the government—that businessmen are selfish autocrats because they are struggling to preserve freedom, while the “liberals” are the true champions of liberty because they are fighting for more government controls

The idea of people working to support themselves and a set of lazy bums seemed shocking. Looking at my own brought up, I did not think I will end up being a lazy bum and so the ideology did not seem appealing. The sad aspect of communism and socialism is that it does not attempt to equalize the society by uplifting people. No! That would be too tough. It takes the easier route of burdening the ambitious and responsible few. It is not about "you cannot be lower than average" but "how dare you be better than average". I don't think Marx and Engels per se suggested this perverted view. The implementers of the ideology molded it to their convenience. The result is the extremely corrupt and violent forms of governance.

At most place communism has failed. People have thrown this form of governance away. But a few around the world hold on to it. This "holding on" is not a problem by itself. But arrogance of the communists and their fans annoy me to the edge of the world. They believe they are the epitome of human evolution. They act as though they are light years ahead of their times - socially, philosophically and intellectually. Their belief that this fading ideology would save the world is laughable yet one can't laugh.

Most communist governments are violent. They have absolute disdain for human life. I would not be surprised to hear that they have killed more people than even Hitler. Yet Hitler is a villain and many of the communist leaders are heroes. The ideology being strong does not mean it should be kept in a shrine. It should be placed at a safe distance away from the world at large. Let the lovers of communism discuss and debate their profound thoughts behind closed doors. We don't need another Stalin. We don't need another Mao. We definitely don't need another Pol Pot.

I came across an interesting article on three people (from the west) who went missing during the Khmer Rouge government in Cambodia. The article brought out the brutality and the paranoia of the communist government. The comrade and cadres went about killing indiscriminately. Their only excuse was that they were following orders. The article is disturbing and poignant.

From Newcastle and New Zealand to the Killing Fields of Cambodia

At one point, the author talks about human nature and that we should not blame it all on one ideology or other.

The man who ran S-21 under Khmer Rouge ordered the murder of thousands Comrade Duch subsequently lived in the jungle who. He was remembered as a journalist  as a man who “knew how to swim with the sharks, knew how to manipulate… He was a classic survivor. The survivors [of these sorts of regimes] are the thieves, crooks, the murderers… I’ve met many people like this and they’re quite ordinary. We don’t like to admit that we all have that potential within us. We are all violent.”

Humans seem to be violent by nature. We don't really require the impetus of communism. Whenever and wherever communism has bloomed it has left that period and place bloodied. All the intellectualism are limited to the talks of a few peripheral maniacs. So, I believe we should have buried this diseased ideology many year ago. Many innocents have shed their blood to redden the red of the communist flag. Its time the red feeds on itself and disappears from this planet.

Plastic living

Plastic spoons feeding

Plastic food into

Plastic bodies steered by

Plastic minds making a

Plastic planet through its

Plastic actions driven by

Plastic thoughts to satisfy

Elastic greed satisfying

Elastic needs stretching the world's

Elastic limits till no 

Elastic life remains in

Elastic planet accommodating

Elastic requirements of

Elastic living organisms

Mayhem

I love Facebook; more than ever. It throws information at me and some of them are amazing. By information, I don't mean the useful kind of information; these fall into the "I would never use this in my life" region.

Today, I learnt about a band called Mayhem and its brief and gruesome existence. Mayhem is a black metal band and have a hardcore sound. Their music can barely be called music and mostly feature unearthly and guttural shrieks. The guitars are loaded with so much distortion that the resulting sound can hardly be called music. I listened to one of their demo tapes on YouTube and though I found it interesting, I don't think I will ever listen to a Mayhem piece. As the name and genre suggest, their music is quite morbid. 

I came across an article on a recently released book on the group. Its called Mayhem: The Death Archives. The death in the title does not relates to death metal but the deaths that took place during the existence of the group. The first was the suicide of the lead singer who had appropriately nicknamed himself Dead. Dead was a maniac and took his performance to the extreme. On stage, he would often cut himself with hunting knives and broken glass. A member of the group said the following about Dead.

"He [Dead] didn't see himself as human; he saw himself as a creature from another world. He said he had many visions that his blood has frozen in his veins, that he was dead. That is the reason he took that name. He knew he would die."

In 1991, Dead committed suicide by slashing his wrist and shooting himself on his head. His suicide note was a simple. He wrote "Excuse all the blood, cheers." and it included an apology for firing the weapon indoors. The lead guitarist of the group, Euronymous, found him and behaved as he was expected to. Another member of the group recounted the actions of Euronymous on discovering Dead's body thus.

Euronymous called me up the next day ... and says, "Dead has done something really cool! He killed himself". I thought, have you lost it? What do you mean cool? He says, "Relax, I have photos of everything". I was in shock and grief. He was just thinking how to exploit it..."

Euronymous used one of these photographs as the cover of a bootleg live album. In 1993, Euronymous was murdered by the bass player of the group. The details of how and why this happened is quite gruesome. The band continued its existence in form or other since then. 

I am not sure if I will ever listen to the songs of the group but I am so tempted to read the book. 

Oppressing oppression

I did not think I would ever think the days of the past were happier than now. But I think so now. 

For the past month, since floods struck Kerala, I have been watching the various Malayalam news channels. The channels covered the sad flood related events in great detail. As depressing as the events are, my own unhappiness does not primarily arise from them. The news covered other topics too and these bring to the fore how unjust our society is. One of my friends had said that every human is a crook; some have exhibited their crookedness while the remaining are waiting for an opportunity. The events covered by the news channel proved his observation. 

A Bishop has been sexually molesting a Nun for many years. She appealed to the Church and its organizations but of no avail. She has appealed to the Police but they in collusion with the Bishop are attempting to malign her character. The Government is not helping either. A few Nuns have brought the protest to the streets. They are not sure where to go for justice and security. The police have questioned the victim more than six times but have not even managed to talk to the culprit. The Bishop sits safe in the northern part of the country surrounded by Gundas. All this done under the cover of God and celibacy.

A woman had to undergo series of sexual molestations from many priests. All this took place when one of the priest's started blackmailing her based on her confession. Not only did he molest her, he passed the information to some of his friend priests who too indulged in sexual debauchery. In one case, one of the priests flew in from Delhi, booked a room and molested her. To add insult to the injury he made her pay for the room rent with her jewelery. Come on! These are servants of God. Have we been mixing up between God and Devil? Have the roles been reversed as some point of time?

One of the ruling party's MLA in Kerala has been harassing a woman for the past few months. She being a chaste communist complained to the party but of no avail. Since the complaint was in Malayalam a lady leader in the party could not read it and it took her nearly a month to get it translated. Since then the media has been raising hue and cry about the incident but the party with all it's young and old leaders has been quiet. The party ethics is unquestionable and as in every case around the world "how important are the words of a woman in comparison to <insert you favourite idealogy here>".

In all these cases, the new channels have presented debate between people talking against and for the culprits. Actually, its worse than that. There are people talking against the culprit and other talking against the victim (to be read as "people assassinating the victim's character"). How cruel is this! Not only do the victims go through a lot of nonsense in their lives, they have to go through bullshit from some dick-head on television. In the first case, a ruling party MLA has called the Nun a prostitute. He uses the age old man's argument "if she could enjoy it 12 times, how can she object it the 13th time?" This is not said in private but during a media conference or some such event. The fellow continues to be an MLA and live among us. In the second case, a leader in the church is trying to desperately play down the confession angle. He is trying to convince the world that the only thing known is that the woman had sexual relations with a set of priests. Nothing else is obvious. In the third case, no one in the party knows anything. 

These events seem to be only known to the people of Kerala. For the remaining parts of the country, the people who speak Malayalee have ruined their lives as a consequence of eating beef. I am glad they are not aware of these events else we will be forced to go through a number of "my religion being better than yours" or "my region is better than your" or "my party is better than yours". 

Religion, at best, can only be an external influence in life. One cannot depend on God to live one's life or for that matter, ruin another's life. Most people propounding religion are trying to take advantage of you. I am sure there are exceptions but they are like a needle in a hay stack. Recently a ehhh... what do I call him? I am not sure; maybe a Sadhu. This Sadhu has become a rage in the social media for his combining humour with preachings. The man preaches about the futility of anger, jealousy and greed (among other topics) but his upcoming show in Chennai has tickets costing Rs.1250 and above. Where does all this money go? Who needs it? Not the Sadhu, I hope. 

If we are gullible enough to give, there are many greedy enough to take.

Of course, this does not mean I will let any of you mock me based on my identity. If you mock, I will mock you too for you are as screwed as I am. I am a human and so are you - nothing can be worse.