Meditations on Transcendence

Last week the movie Ravanan got released in multiple languages – Hindi, tamil, telugu. Its a ManiRatnam magnum opus scripted around the character of Ravana – the ten headed villain in Hindu epic Ramayana. Its about exploring the ten different characters in the same person and how they interact, conflict each other. Is it like a multiple personality disorder? I don’t know – haven’t seen the movie. There is a recent spate of movies based on our holy epics. If Rajneeti by Prakash Jha was a take on Mahabharatha, Mani’s version is inspired by Ramayana. In fact this is a first take on Ramayan being used as base for modern day story telling. Mani has to be credited for his creativity and for going in the direction of unexplored waters. What are these epics? Are they just stories, fables or reality? What makes them holy?

Recently 2 kinds of news are hogging the media space. The BP oil spill issue and the union carbide issue. Both have lot of things in common. BP oil spill is about the oil well deep inside the gulf of Mexico going berserk. The earth has oil inside it and we drill it for running automobiles and whole lot of things to enable mechanical motion. But this spill has caused irreparable damage to the environment. Whole ocean flora and fauna is dripped and bathed in viscous oil. Has led to irreversible damage to life. If we can empathize then one can understand the sad plight of life in the gulf of Mexico. The ripple effect on human civilisation will have a time lag but is sure to come. Whole world is a system with interdependent subsystems which need each other for survival and growth. So its only foolishness not to anticipate an impact in the near future. Marine specialists should extrapolate this event to possible child events that will be triggered in future. Why is humanity creating such a ...