Last will come the labourer (Shudra) rule. Its advantages will be the distribution of physical comforts — its disadvantages, (perhaps) the lowering of culture. There will be a great distribution of ordinary education, but extraordinary geniuses will be less and less.

– Vivekananda, 1896

Shudra-dominated societal systems like democracy strive by highlighting the individualistic and collective inabilities of human beings. The utopian idea of a peoples’ state as the moral-ethical-spiritual redeemer is very anti-evolutionary. The constant, wrenching focus on human weaknesses and debauchery makes sure that we cling to our fears, and base our decisions on a selfish and utilitarian mindset where mere survival is dubbed as the highest-possible state of existence. Democracy is touted not as a solution to overcome our imperfections, but as a promise to liberate us enough so that we can live with them.

Just be satisfied with the illusory ideas like voting. Equality here is a notion of non-discrimination but something which never erases or makes us forget what makes us unequal at the first place. And justice, don’t even talk about it - the laws of the establishment should be eternal, time-independent, and not generically applicable to a subset of people. How can the current situation of an individual be described by the algorithmic machinations of fairness, morality and justice which don’t even take any inputs from that individual’s past and his complex social interleaving, basically impacting his future in such a way that he is tempted to do more ‘bad’ (I question the nature of bad too)? I see a convoluted form of control here. A sheath of abstracted morality is added to hide the filth, evil and brainwash. There are layers of truth in a democratic societal structure. The life of an individual is spent and wasted in retaining the integrity of the state and its compliance with constitutional laws. It should be the other way round - weed out the imperfections and ignorance of an individual and automatically there be an ideal state.

Men like Vivekananda, Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar, Nietzsche and Aurobindo have correlated the zeitgeist with the cyclical rise of Shudras (Shudras in character and not by caste) as rulers. It’s an impending cycle of doom, where every system fails while trying to refine its concoctions of perfection (varna-vyavastha). Democracy is not here to stay and I see a shift happening in this century.

The solution? Eat meat.

“Do you think that a handful of Englishmen could rule India if we had a militant spirit? I teach meat-eating throughout the length and breadth of India in the hope that we can build a militant spirit!”

– Vivekananda

The most favorable inhibitions and remedies of modernity:

1. universal military service with real wars in which the time for joking is past;

2. national bigotry (simplifies, concentrates);

3. improved nutrition (meat);

4. increasing cleanliness and healthfulness of domiciles;

5. hegemony of physiology over theology, moralism, economics,and politics;

6. military severity in the demand for and handling of one’s”obligations” (one does not praise any more-).

– Nietzsche (Spring-Fall 1887)

These fragments I have shored against my ruins
Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo’s mad againe.
Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.
Shantih shantih shantih.

- The Waste Land (TS Eliot)

The mere act of defining Hiranyagarbha - which is so intimately twined to our Self - in the soulless semantics of a language gives rise to the ultimate dichotomy. This duality between language and consciousness - arising due the expressionistic deficiencies of the former and the unfathomable abstractness of the latter - strays us, frustrates us, makes us write.

Hiranyagarbha is as ‘you’ as your breath; Hiranyagarbha can only be felt. It’s like an acid-trip - obvious but shocking, blissful but gnawing, primordial but evolving.

The Apollonian and Dionysian concepts mentioned by you are existential compromises, a joke of Western rationalism, a trade-off for sanity.

Hear the silence and realize…

On my sprint towards to the sandy seashore, I saw a damsel smile.
Took pause and asked her, “Is this the way to the Green Isle”?
She said, “Lo and behold traveler, for my wish came true.”
“Take my hand, tread along, but don’t miss the sceneries as we pass through.”

And she says…

I am a protective angel, a disappearing moment of truth.
A slap on your face.
An absolutist, a Kahloist.
A symbiosis of all that is humane, a milestone for everything that is achievable.
An empathetic melancholy of your tears, an alchemist of desires.
The definition of very existence.
My legacy spans your experiences, my aura flows through your veins, but my blood is black in color.
Your normalcy is my insanity, your pain is my gain, your sweat is my elixir, your prayer is my nightmare.
My every blink is an eternal snapshot of nature, my every breath is a late evening thunderstorm.
For I seek to be one with the Creator.

The sound of rain has those familiar, melodious undertones today. The smell of dampness is stimulating. He knows for sure, this is the day; this is the day. This weather always spawns that virginal avatar of hers. His heart starts racing on the very thought of that. He wakes up from the bed, takes a last look at the clouds from that small, hazy window and smiles. It’s time to go and make love to her. He leaves those creaky, ghostly Parsi corridors and takes the fast local from Churchgate. Doesn’t mind the crowd and smell of sweat for a change. He’s into a pool of thoughts. What would she smell like today? What would be the color of her clothes? Would she let her hair fall free, again?

He is aroused.

He reaches Mahim Fort, right on time. The last remnants of the evening are taking a deep, infectious yawn. The day is tired. There she is, white salwaar-kameez without the dupatta, highlighting her dusky bodily contours. He knows the reason why she doesn’t cover herself up with a dupatta on these days. It’s her way of blending-in with the eroticism of nature. Her feminine silhouette is striking a godly pose, reminding him of the pictures of those goddesses in the Paston Bhai Bakery’s calendar.

She is aroused.

She does the signature move. She lets her hair fall down, looks down on ground for a while, and starts walking. Small, slow steps, as if she’s trying to span every inch of wet ground beneath her. Gentle and suave. He follows her, with congruent steps and thoughts. She leaves a trail of cheap perfume, so that he can follow her blind-eyed. She never notices him. He is too common to be noticed. People like him appear everywhere in Mumbai. Lower middle-class looks, checkered bush-shirt, tailor-sewn patloon, pointy shoes bought from a thela outside Andheri East station for a bargain. He fears his roughened touch may malign her purity, or his greasy odor may poison her essence. He doesn’t mind the lack of attention. His love is all about giving and not taking. The smaller he feels, the bigger his ego. She takes a pause at that same point near the ocean. The roar becomes loud, a crescendo of waves hits the embankment. Water slaps her cheeks.

The ocean is aroused.

She closes her eyes, elevates her head slightly. From the mystic to-and-fro motion of her breasts, he knows she is taking deep, somber breaths. The spirit of Earth, Gaia, has entered her. She is now one with the ocean in front of her, the ground beneath her and sky above her. And she is making love; the passion is oozing out of her. His heart is skipping beats, he feels the rising body temperature. For him, this is the moment. Timeless, erotic, romantic, soulful. He quickly tracks back his steps, doesn’t mind affording the taxi, reaches the red-light area near Juhu and makes love to a prostitute, makes love to Gaia.

ऐ दोस्त, मेरी ज़िन्दगी के पैमाने पर, इक रूहानीं रोशनी की तरह तू जगमगाता है,
शुक्रिया अदां करता हूँ तुम्हारा, जब-जब मेरा यह कदम डगमगाता है…

ऐ दोस्त, कैसे भूल सकता हूँ उस महफिल, उस गुफ्त-गू, और उस जाम को?
वह अंदाज़-ऐ-बंयाँ, परवाना-ऐ-शब्बीर, और मौसिकी में डूबी हुई शाम को…

ए दोस्त, वह हसीनों के मख़मली हाथों से पिटाई, वोह झूठी जुदाई, अब भी याद है,
उनका शुरू-शुरू का इन्कार, वह हर रात का सच्चा प्यार, अब भी याद है…

ए दोस्त, उन दर्द-भरी दास्तानों का अकेला वारिस बन फिरता हूँ,
इक-इक लफ्ज़ को याद कर-करके, उठ जाता हूँ, जब भी गिरता हूँ….

दुआ करता हूँ, बरकरार रहे तेरी ज़िन्दगी की लौ, सालों-साल,
खुदा ढूँढ़ते थक जाए, पर ना दे सके इस दोस्ती की मिसाल,
ना दे सके, इस दोस्ती की मिसाल…

– आदाब अर्ज़ है (पुखराज सिंह उर्फ़ कार्मिक निर्वाणा)

Epilogue: Wrote this poem while remembering my nostalgic college days. A never-heard before engineering college, extremely backward town, two beer bars, three dhabas, 32kbps Internet shared by what seemed to be a billion people, sandstorms which choked your nostrils, infinite debt, almost life-threatening scandals. Everything about my degree was an exception. We were too smart to be studying in such a college. Seriously, too smart to fit anywhere actually. Always falling in the hands of establishment. Rusticated and expelled. Organized the largest technical gatherings in Punjab, wrote for national newspapers, started hacking, got busted, police cases, fights, anarchy. Pure, unadulterated fun.

I hereby solemnly declare that this moment of utmost pain and consciousness is the end, the end of my childhood and innocence. I loved meandering on those breezy meadows, hear my mother’s call for lunch and ignoring it. I loved getting my teeth knocked when I landed on the ground due to overly-athletic excursions. I love and detest at the same moment, the wailing to get more dessert then my sister. I feel honeyed silkiness when I remember it, which at this moment appears in frame-by-frame blips in front of my eyes, gives me excruciating headache.

Life is all a pretension now. It is a pretension of what I was, and what I want to be, and what you want it to be. A total chaotic corollary of every blank space in my life which never got filled, or got overflown. I am just an individual with a ballooned psyche and pin-pointed perception.

I don’t think I can turn back and try to find the route and turns I had taken. I had no chalk, no marker, and I was random. The woods might be still be wet with my sweat, but that might mislead me to someone else’s conundrum, as it did many times. But I keenly remember that once, the conundrums were all too similar to be believable. It is, as if, both of us took the same route, were born from the same hollow. It was too hard to swallow. The pain troughed, and consciousness started boring some correlation to the reality. That was my moment of peace. But the diseases are aware. They adapted and they blanketed it. I am back, a silent witness, who’s trying to gather similar individuals to make a common archetype, a group-therapy. Please allow me to give you some false hopes:

What happened to you, my starry-eyed friend?
Don’t take this as the end, but just another steep bend.

Shunt that pre-chewed utopia, for the past is not to forget.
Some people walk in the rain, others just get wet.

The above lines are a placebo, a temporal illusion. But that is the only medicine I got. I just hope, that this consciousness fades away with the age, I just hope that the wrinkles start setting in soon. There is, however, another way to cure it all. An act of taking matter into your own hands. Putting the gun to the temple and setting myself free. Or pointing it to your temple, and having a feel of being free.

It’s really sad that the over-abundance of resources and the scarcity of that raw human contact can marginalize the perceptions of the young people belonging to the enriched class. The issue here is that the society is parameterized and benchmarked on a flawed scale. Smart and intelligent is the one who has accessibility to resources. The irony, the heart-rending irony here is that these so-called resources are monetized accessories, thus accessible and not cherished.

On the other hand, the impoverished are totally foolish or are being fooled. But the biggest problem with them, are they themselves. A majority of them accept their smell, dirt and hunger as a god-given (god is not capitalized, intentionally) imposition. They just accept it, trying to fill their hearts and mind with rage, straying away to the so-called anti-social subculture. A small iota among them, which has enough mental restraint, crave for resources for their upliftment. They will just keep on craving, marginally satisfying their intellectual hunger with small pre-chewed chunks which flow through the gutters of society such that when it reaches them, it’s already decomposed and outdated. These shackles of limitations is their own creation.

I will tell you how.

The problem here is not the division of society or classism. I somehow accept it as a part of the setup now. The problem here is the resources. The intellectual resources which the impoverished seek are actually a by-product of excesses, whose importance has been over-assessed due to continuous dominance of emerging and developed societies. The actual resources which they should seek, lie closer, hence more accessible to them. I am talking to a conscious, considerably smart impoverished and enriched person here. All my conversations are focused on smart people and their smartness.

The real resource of upliftment is experience. And we all know, who gets all the harsh experiences of life like a pre-packaged bundle of fate. The impoverished, the proles. On the other hand, I chuckle when the enriched buy these experiences, choosing one over the other like looking out for the best deal in a supermarket. The proles just need a shift in their focus, get the cataract cleared, and get those squinted eyeballs to gleam on experiences and memories which they sideline, escape from. Their power lies in their experiences. It’s individualized, so they won’t need any union, any conglomeration, any guild or any mentor!

EPILOGUE: When I talk about upliftment, I don’t really advocate a violent effort (although it might be needed, I am just figuring out stuff). Currently, I am focusing on “resources”. These are the resources of knowledge and information. There should be centers of excellence, education should be de-westernized and made rapidly available. This was a raw, impulsive, fifteen minute draft catalyzed by rage. I will see if I can write in detail on this. Also, I just want to let you know that when I started writing this, I had no intention to add the Orwellian tinge. It WAS AND IS solely based on conclusions derived from experiences; experiences and not outlook. But I wanted to give it a literary twist. Once I re-read it, I just added the word ‘proles’ in order to make it simpler for people to understand where I come from, maybe. Since this is very brief, I thought some referential analogy might help.

A hasya-kavita (हास्य कविता) for kids, depicting the cobwebbed life of Kachwa-Chaap (कछुआ-छाप), the quintessential Indian mosquito repellent. The coil is challenging a mosquito to quit hiding behind those windows and get even. Enjoy my really, really bad Hindi poetry!

इस भिन-भिनाते बदबख्त को बतादो, मेरी शहादत ख़ाक में **ही** जायेगी.
गुम-अंधेरे में जलता हूँ, मगर उसकी नींद पर आंच भी ना आएगी.

क्यों सटा हुआ है उन खुली खिड़कियों से, पहन कर झूठी मर्दानगी का जामा?
नही काम आएँगी यह गीधर-भभकियां, जब लूँगा उस दो-बूँद खून का जुर्माना.

यह तिलिस्मी धुंआ ही नही, तेरी घुटती मौत का जारी फ़रमान है.
बिलखते-मासूमों और लाल-आंखों का, अब यही ईक आखिरी अरमान है.

इधर लड़ा, उधर लड़ा. इधर छुपा, उधर छुपा.
तुझ कायर की हरकतों से, न मै बुझा, ना ही झुका.

घुस गया सीधा, उस हसीना के मुह में, ऐ ज़ालिम!
तोड़ा महबूब का रुमानी ख़्वाब, क्या ली थी शैतान से तालीम?

मत भूल, हम कछुआ-छाप बन जलते हैं.
तभी यह नामाकूल मच्छर मरते हैं.
हम कछुआ-छाप बन जलते हैं…

– आदाब अर्ज़ है (पुखराज सिंह उर्फ़ कार्मिक निर्वाणा)

Entrepreneurship induces destructive changes in the underlying system. This is how the famed, uncontemporary economist Joseph Schumpeter defined it. He termed it as Creative Destruction. This rebel economist was the first one to rightly predict economic ecosystems like Silicon Valley, giving a deep existential insight into the mind of the entrepreneur. A far-cry and almost anarchic view when compared to the Keynesian notions of mass-production and supply-and-demand, which were dominant and popular during those days of industrial revolution. With seminal works like Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, he laid the foundations of entrepreneurship.

He (Schumpeter) rejected the notion of equilibrium altogether, instead arguing that the economy is in a perpetual state of dynamic disequilibrium. Entrepreneurs introduce innovations that upend the established order, he said, unleashing a “gale of creative destruction” that forces incumbents to adapt or die. This “process of industrial mutation,” he explained, “incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one.” Moreover, it is precisely this process that causes economies to grow. “Stabilized capitalism,” he declared, “is a contradiction in terms [1].

For me, Schumpeter was one of the earliest avatars of the entrepreneur we see nowadays. He was non-aligned to the prevailing economic theories and wanted to create an economic model whose basic catalyzers were idea and creativity. Under the heavy influence of existentialist writers like Nietzsche, he amalgamated basic reasoning with economics. Even while reading the “acclaimed” book Blue Ocean Strategy, I could somehow see the Schumpeterian foundations of big-is-better and monopoly innovations [2].

With the passage of time, his ideas were taken seriously and people could relate to it. He’s not a perfect rendition of the entrepreneurial mindset and neither his hypothesis has an underlying mathematical logic, still he had some fascinating ideas. Moreover, you don’t need a proof when the truth is already out there.

Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche once expounded, “In truth there was only one true Christian, and he died on the cross”. In a similar sense, did the true ethos of Sikhism started declining after the death of Nanak? A few months ago, SGPC issued a mandate that only the individuals who are registered on their rolls can be identified as Sikhs. How heinous can it get? Is this the beginning of ‘papalization’ of Sikhism? A vulnerability left unchecked for and wide open to exploitation?

The Sikh scriptures had laid an intricate and clever groundwork for incorporating faith and devotion into the daily lives of people, without any compromise of their societal obligations. There had been many such futile attempts in the past for the riddance of blind superstition, superfluous devotion and bland ritualism. Take for example, movements like Buddhism, Siddha traditions, Vedanta, Nath orders and Sufism, which leafed from the mainstream out of sheer frustration. But the easy ways of divinity and shortcuts to moksha were far more luring than these obscure and cultish sects. Moreover, these separatist movements focused on the inner aspects of devotion and societal non-conformism - hardly graspable by common masses, prone to secretive mysticism and not fit for collective self-realization.

Nanak could feel the zeitgeist very well. His theology borrowed the best of all teachings. For example, he had profound respect for Siddha traditions but was very well aware of their shortcomings (Sidh Gost). The Siddhas were high-strung on individualism and worldly escapism, the perfect catalysts for egoism which was a strict no-no with Nanak. He dreamt of a religion which was at the bleeding-edge of divine metaphysics, but completely scalable and worldly. He even took into consideration the prevailing socio-political scenarios resulting due to Mughal domination (political egoism) while indoctrinating Sikhism, such that any distractions to devotion were rounded-off. Elaborate code of conduct was laid for the daily life of the devotee, but any issues concerning the governing authority or state were completely sidelined. In my opinion, he knew that no doctrine could take into account the dynamics of socio-political changes which might occur in the future. Any such attempts have only lead to chaos and exploitation (Islamic Sharia). So this problem was ingeniously solved by incorporating a lineage of Gurus who would nurse the distracted devotee and incorporate necessary changes in the doctrine as per the prevailing scenario. But the lineage was discontinued and the doctrine was left hanging in the middle, wide open to exploitation. From then on, militarization of Khalsa has become a decadent ideology and an identity crisis is widely prevalent. I think this is the now-or-never time for a religion which has a strong focus on practicality and inspires the devotee to take life as it comes in an ecstatic Dionysian way. There’s a need for collective upheaval, to accept religion as a science which is prone to shortcomings, and above all, shed the inhibiting fears and approach the problem optimistically, as Nanak would have done it. Otherwise, I see a religion completely outdated and misunderstood, eventually venturing into obscurity or becoming a theological novelty. The following lines from Bulleh Shah sums it up:

Dharamsal vich dharvi rahinde, thakur dware thug/vich maseet kusatti rahinde, aashik rahin alag.

(In temples reside the ruffians, in gurudwaras, the thugs/In mosques reside the liars, the true lovers (of the Divine), stay aloof from all these.)

But individualistic renunciation, as advised by Bulleh Shah is definitely not the answer. Who will take care of the people?

इक खुली-किताब हूँ मैं, इक नई कुरान हूँ मै.

कच्चे राह की तरफ़ चलते हुए, दूर जलती रोशनी को देखा है?
उस रोशनी के गिरेबां में दफ्न, इक भूले हुए पीरज़ादे की मज़ार हूँ मै.

थके हुए मुसाफिर को, ठंडी हवा का लुत्फ़ उठाते देखा है?
उस आखिरी मोड़ पर, बरगद की छांव में सोते हुए राहगीर का मीठा ख्वाब हूँ मैं.

तालीमीं शोर के बीच, मुस्कुराते हुए इमाम को देखा है?
मुफसिर के तफसीर से रंगी हुई, उस मदरसे की पाक़ सफ़ेद दीवार हूँ मै.

याद करेगा तू, जब देनी पड़े मिसाल उस कुर्बानी की,
इब्राहीम के कांपते हाथों में जकड़ी हुई, दो-मूही शमशीर हूँ मै.

क्यों शक् करता है मेरे खून के रंग पर, ए नाचीज़!
कभी चख कर देख, हजर के नमकीन आंसुओं से भी पाक हूँ मै.

इक खुली किताब हूँ मै, इक नई कुरान हूँ मै.

Epilogue: Disappointing produce.

Note: I generally don’t publish my book reviews on the blog. You can find most of them on the mailing list.

I am not taking the moral high ground or subscribing to the holier-than-thou attitude while writing this review.

- All religious movements are, in essence, completely socio-political in nature and the rise of Sikhism was no different. I just can’t help myself in remembering what Nietzsche had to say about Christianity, “In truth there was only one true Christian, and he died on the cross”. I have said this before and I will say it again that the true ethos of Sikhism started declining after the death of Nanak. In fact, Christianity and Sikhism have a lot in common in terms of socio-political history. Both the religions re-highlighted and refined the already existing religious ideologies, the ’savior’ made them more accessible, and just like the gospels, Sikh holy scriptures have constantly been improvised in order to suite the socio-political scenarios of the prevalent times. But striking is the universal fact that when any religion starts expanding from the realm of mystics and intellectuals to common masses, corruption in inevitable.

- Separatism and Sikhism will always go hand in hand. The author has provided some interesting glimpses on the early years of Sikhism as a socio-political movement (1850-1925). Converting to Sikhism was really a casual act and many converts got back to Hindu ways, depending on what suited them the most. The population graph is quite topsy-turvy - constant during the times of Sikh maharajahs like Ranjit Singh, slight decline during the reign of the last king Dalip Singh (who himself converted to Christianity), further decline during the onset of Britishers, then a gradual rise due to the heavy recruitment of Sikhs in the British Army, steep rise during the Singh Sabha and Akali Dal times. Prior to Singh Sabha, even the definition of a Sikh was not clear at all. There were the Sahajdharis (slow converts, non-Khalsa), Kesdharis, Nirankaris (more mystical and esoteric offshoot), Udasi Akharas (offshoots by the descendants of Nanak), Akalis (a small militant offshoot made popular by Ranjit Singh’s Army General - the fierce Akali Phoola Singh), Namdharis, Nirmalas and a handful of others. Separatism was important to preserve Sikhism. Thus started the influential propaganda of Singh Sabhas (basically a congregation of rich and educated Sikhs) aided by the Britishers.

- Casteism was always there in Sikhism and still is, haunting it like an uncomfortable truth. Initially, the priests were hesitant in baptizing the lower castes and they were not even allowed in the holiest spots like the Golden Temple, sheer disdain for the teachings of Sikhism. Then Army recruitment created a monopoly of agrarian castes like the Jats. The control of the propaganda however, always remained in the hand of rich and educated Khatris.

- According to me, the golden age of Sikhism is over for time being. In this modern and liberal age, people are hesitant in adopting a protectionist and separatist religion. True, it was the same separatist zeal that preserved its identity, but they have to adapt with the times now. The Khalistani terrorism was nothing but this same separatist zeal regurgitated out en masse. The papalization of Sikhism by the likes of SGPC and Akali Dal is like a cancer. Almost everything, even the economical and social decline of Punjab is related to it. Look how terrible the state of affairs are, but the masses are being fooled by covering-up all this with religious propaganda.

Reading this book makes you understand all this and a lot more. The first few chapters of the book cover the rise of Singh Sabha and the rest of it are focused on the courageous struggle of Akali Dal in checking corrupt practices in still-autonomous Gurdwaras controlled by licentious Mahants. It is interesting to note that although some of the earliest movements against the British rule were initiated in Punjab (like the Ghadr movement by returning immigrants, Khalsa College’s voicing of protests), this state remained the most loyal towards the Britishers. Even during the times of protests, the Singh Sabhas and Akali Dal deliberately remained away from the Indian National Congress’ non-cooperation and boycott movement - to prevent their relation going sour with the Britishers who believed in the welfare of the Sikh state.

College is like a sacred orgiastic contentment for the completely-controllable and most-important link of a dystopian societal structure. A place where propaganda turns into reality, and the paedophilic intellectuals get their place in history. It’s where the swarms come in and the ant-hills originate. The mere definition of an intellectual there is like the culmination of 2000 years of guilt, rape and debauchery. It’s almost like voting, where the illusory idea of being a part of the system and thus having control over it is supreme. I hope this continues as long as I am alive, because I need it for my own purpose. :-)

Yes sir! I do have that metallic taste in my mouth.

Believe me or not, empathy is notion I could never understand. Individuality is a milestone I could never reach.

I built shoulders, strong shoulders on which my conglomerates could create castles of collectivist utopia. It really worked for a while. Yes it did! I saw beautiful formations. Formations of shoulders, legs, muscles, sweat and eyes. I heard chants, I heard music, I heard the sounds of unified, resonating reason. Everything was clear. But I knew the moment, the precise moment where this glass would be shattered. I expected it to happen. The formation collapsed. I know, I understand and I accept that this is a pre-requisite to built bigger formations. As far the collapse is concerned, I try to absorb the tremors.

Anyways. So what about the skinny brick worker from India?

Yes, what about him?

The West, with its extreme indulgence in Renaissance-ish individuality, obtuse morality, sheathed conscience and placebo-ed science really hits the wall when investigating something as esoteric as consciousness and existence. Look at people like Sartre, Kerouac, Weininger, Nietzsche, Orwell, Dostoevsky, Machiavelli, Foucault, Freud, Kant. Look how they really hit the wall after a certain effort. The individuality, the ego to retain the purity of their thought, to be unadulterated makes them go berserk in the end (where insanity is a relative term). The whole setup around them failed to give them the right feedback and the “spiritual” perception.

On the other hand, the East just sucks with its orgiastic desire to fulfill the colonial ambition to become the new enlightened race. And the thousands of years of existence have really twisted the notions such as God into some kind of anthropomorphic deities which we should respect out of fear. People worship Buddha and Nanak and not admire them as researchers.

So how do we conclude this? I would say that the existentialists win. They are mentally stronger then the mystics. Look at them! They really want to know the Truth, the definition of Truth, but they aspire to define it in terms of the worldly semantics. They shun esoteric mysticism. They aspire to be pure, underived, unadulterated and fundamental. This is awesome, really awesome! We all know that Truth lies inside us. There is no need to follow any prescribed methodologies. They believe in controlling the dynamic factors of consciousness like knowledge and experience. This works fine!

But there is a problem. The problem here is the stress on individuality, and the monstrous ego which gets produced as a result.

This is where the collectivism would balance out the negatives. There should be an emphasis to share, to co-exist as an archetype and not as an individual. There should be a way to negate the ‘self’ from self-realization.

Collective consciousness. An admiration of individual’s uniqueness coupled with the acceptance of the fact that we all are basically same. That is my utopia.

There are many ways to do it. Politics, evangelism, fundamentalism, fascism, meditation, terrorism? You name it!

From my personal observances, narcissism is the most negative trait among ambitious, confident, successful, contrarian or mentally strong people. Although, I duly agree with the fact that a controlled and healthy dose of narcissism is an essential ingredient for attaining a leveraged and commanding social stature, but it can easily take the form of a dangerous psychological disease. Narcissism is like an addictive drug, it gives you an extreme high.

I generally archetype a specific kind of people as ‘self-declared warriors’. And amazingly, there is a noticeable coherence in the thoughts, actions, behavior, attitude, experiences and even upbringing of such people. With all the extreme highs and lows in life and the resulting imbalance which it produces, narcissism acts as a stabilizer which helps us to justify or marginally rationalize many of our actions, though we don’t try to exploit this trait all the time. But after a certain point, things can easily go haywire and out of control. This small dash of positive narcissism can easily turn into the most dominating personality trait, resulting in lenience towards social isolation, unchecked aggression, feeling of supremeness, impulsiveness and ego. And this is where it becomes dangerous. We just revel in it, eventually getting lost in this fog of construed righteousness. All our actions seem ethical, every act becomes morally correct. The whole world seems to revolve around us.

Apparently, for a person like me, things are still simple. My successes have been marginal, with a lot of failed experiments which easily outweigh them. Most of the time, a single event of success comes after quite a few failures, which also act as the motivating force, a reality-check on weaknesses and a good ego-basher. This helps in slightly negating my narcissistic tendencies, but there’s enough left to induce occasional emotional instability, extreme rage and an increase bent towards social aloofness, which seems like a very justifiable, dignified and higher act. If it goes uncontrolled, this whole feeling can actually wreck your professional and personal life leading to a vicious cycle, where more resulting narcissism gets fed into the process. It peaks out, taking the shape of a person which starts living in a world of his own, with his own rules. Howard Hughes, as portrayed in the movie, The Aviator, could be the best and easily observable example of such narcissistic disorders and the resulting problems it accompanies. As you can clearly infer from Howard Hughes’s long and successful career, this is not a disease which peaks-out in one occurrence. It has cyclic rhythms of peaks, troughs and lows (where you develop notions of inferiority, thus tending towards social isolation). FLYING HIGH: THE MYTH OF SPECIFICITY (from page 3) is a rare psychoanalysis of the fictional character of Howard Hughes as depicted in the movie. Do note that even at such high-levels of intensity, people can pretend to lead a seemingly normal social life, thus making it a very difficult symptom to detect. It gets noticed only when it escalates to extreme proportions. And the biggest irony is that narcissism sounds very appealing and attractive to people who never experience it or are third-party observers, like the general audience which admired this character. But trust me, you really don’t want to go through it.

“An innocent spirit in a perfumed garden,
maligned by the claws of the husky warden.
He leapt, he wept. He contrived, he fried.”

The crush of establishment can have an irreversible impact on an individual’s life and psyche. I was strangulated many times by the establishment, gave me lot of bruises, and left a bittersweet taste in my mouth.

Establishment is a hard notion to grasp, especially for spirits who are free, live for the present moment and believe in general goodness. The rules of establishment are time-independent, and can be generically applied to a subset of people. This is a big problem. How can the current situation of a person be described by the generic algorithms of fairness, morality and justice which don’t even take any inputs from that individual’s past, and basically impact his future in such a way that he is tempted to do more “bad” (I question bad)? I see a serious form of control here. A sheath of abstracted morality is added to hide the filth, evil and brainwash. There are layers of truth in a societal structure. In fact, truth is a relative fact.

My personal experiences of being crushed by the establishment are worth remembering. Even if I may try to forget them, I can’t. My whole personality is contrived on top of it now. I am hardcore, angry, a rebel, a self-declared warrior, a misfit, a power-freak, an entrepreneur, restless individual. In fact, my primal ambitions were pure and wanted to leverage the poor and unprivileged, but the fist of the might shattered it again and again. With my Herculean mental strength, I was able to retain the long-term goals of empowerment and goodness. But things have changed. I have become very, very vile. A perfect bait for the establishment, who will return again and again to its claws. I don’t mind that. I can bear the pain. But my long term goals should be retained. In fact, it strengthened them. That will do justice to all the wrong which has been done, it will act as a final antidote to the poison.

Justice is a flawed concept. If you are a bit conscious and see the bigger picture, you will realize that finality is everything. The end of a human being is what should be assessed. The end is automatic justice. Currentness and justice is like an oxymoron.

“I am loosing interest in power, not empowerment.”

Power and empowerment are two notions which predicate the dilemma of human morality and consciousness. While they might sound leeward to each other, but they are related, linked by the same umbilical cord.

It’s actually funny, whenever my mind wanders and justifies two opposing phenomena, I always find a link which connects them, makes them inter-dependent. Somehow, all existential parameters like hate, love, anger, happiness and ego can actually be defined by the same, unified underlying logic. This shouldn’t be new to people who have experimented with consciousness, because as we elevate ourselves to higher pedestals, the answers shrink and collate, until finally there is only one answer which defines all existence.

Coming back to more rational, real-worldly terms, my experience in seeking power has hollowed me. While it may be true, that I also had strong doses of empowerment in the whole experiment, which acted as my life-support when I was about to choke in my vacuum of success in the perceptive world. Empowerment helped me to survive.

Success is a twisted concept; you just revel in your loneliness. It’s actually a precursor to moral demise and crash. The problem I see here is the very definition of success. I categorize success into two types: perceptive success and holistic success. Perceptive success defines the feeling of completeness and leveraged existence which you get, when you fulfill the parameters of success defined by the perceptive world, where human emotions and desires rule the roost. Talking about holistic success, it may or may not appear distinct in the perceptive world. It is that holistic feeling of completeness which transcends the common ground-rules of existence. Holistic success is actually a feeling of completeness and unison at a higher level.

Coming back further to truly, truly rational terms, a person who is holistically successful may or may not be a “big” person. Holistic success tests human endurance more then the perceptive success. So, only those holistically successful people are “big”, which have immense endurance and strength.

Being young (I was 19 when I started), I was drenched in the notions of perceptive success as I had no idea of the other. As I progressed at an insanely fast pace, rose immensely and eventually crashed, I am fortunate enough to realize the essence of holistic success at the age of 23.

I am concerned about young, bright people who want to choose the right path. I will tell them to read two gospels of success. The Entrepreneurial Connection (Gurmeet Naroola) and The Smartest Guys In The Room (Peter Elkind and Bethany McLean). These books tell the same story of righteousness, morality, power and success, but they take totally opposite approaches. However, what you must understand is the end, and which end you want to choose.

It’s their duty to do the talking;
To pave the path, on which I’ll be walking.
It’s their duty to open the knowledge vault;
It’s my job to take all, with a pinch of salt.
All they got is the prized experience and fame;
So that I can beat them in their own game.
Believe me, its better than cocaine…

I am on a high, a penultimate high. The blood is rushing, the adrenaline is pumping, the brain is hot like a furnace and the bouts of insomnia are soothing. However, I am not intoxicated for a change. It is just that my current schizophrenic avatar is on a cognitive high. I am under the influence of a top-secret drug which I found while strolling in the intellectual jungle. It can give you near-nirvanic kicks, better than cocaine. But the composition must be carefully ratioed. It must have the right doses of Unabomber’s diatribical solace, the blunt Orwellian razor blades , the Schumpeterian detest, the Machiavellian corruption and the Dostoyevskian toothache. I think more clearly either when I am intoxicated or asleep; in both cases I have that cringe to wake up from this out-of-body experience and document the brilliant idea I have in mind. But just right at the same moment, the very moment, I feel that incessant pain in my limbs, making me feel paralytic. As I make my mind to leave the attempt, the pain magically mutates into lullabied warmth.

I got the gift…
Hell yea! I got the gift…
I inspire, to make ‘em transpire…
But I need the green, to fulfill the dream…
Damn! The pain and satire, like my heart is on barbed wire…

I got the gift. Yes I’ve got the gift…
I am a mentor, giving you hope like a half-filled decanter…
I am the new Fyodor and I’ll lead you through the door…
I am the fire, that’ll burn the hate’s pyre…

I can feel the gift. Yes, I can feel the gift…
I am on a hacking spree, to make this place “silver-spoon free”…
I am a gentle villager. Oh no Sir! I am an intellectual pillager…
Arrrgh again! The pain and satire, like my heart is on barbed wire…

I need the gift, so I can heal the guilt…
I am already in prison and I feel like treason…
I gotta break the shackle, bend every obstacle…
Love, warmth and feeling, can’t take me as a human being…

Give me the gift!
JUST GIVE ME MY GIFT! (Shout)

-Pukhraj AKA Nirvana
Will rap it soon…

And he is standing tall, beating his chest,
Braving the storms, on the electronic crest.
His tri-colored Armada, his allegiant Andrea Gail,
Wrestled the mighty Westerlies, with her iron sail.
See his golden-toothed smirk, just see his one-eyed stare,
Crocked in his own success, drooling at the plundered ware.
Alas! He can’t sense, the rising water on the floor,
Vulnerable to his own desires, sunken by a hacker whore.

Check out the archives of my first h4×0r homepage www.cybervigilant.com. This lead to my suspension from the college and hostel once. However, a professor who supported us rented out his bungalow. It was great fun!

Aaah! Good ol’ days of pure anarchy, unadulterated passion and unstoppable fun.