Tuesday, November 13, 2012

Time, Technology and... generation. Part 2


(continued from previous post.. )
 
"ye naye zamane ke ladke... " every generation bollywood movie has got this dialog. I used to think that 70's and older movies would not have this line. But a little bit of research helped me to derive the correct fact - the dialog has been the asset of the bolloywood for many a generation now. Like the ancestral property, the line has been inherited by all generations. So the theorem thus proves that every new generation gets deviated from the rules-of-good-book by certain degree. And every deviation of every new generation is aided by a new change that is remarkable in that generation - Movie, computer, internet, fashion, and the latest spoiler of current generation - the mobile phone and tablet pc. Every new generation deviating  got drifted away from the complex business of understanding the religion and its underlying fundamentals.

Lord Krishna says in Geeta “I provide the intelligence to human beings, how they use it is left to them”. Why go till Geeta, in the hit Hollywood movie “Bruce Almighty” Morgan Freeman says the same line. Technology has been developed by the humans with the intelligence they r gifted with. How do we use it is again dependent on us. Mobiles are used by teens for what not these days. But the same can be used to access social networking sites and share useful information. Recently I happened to watch the movie Oh My God and I instantly shared the good dialogs and scene pics of the movie. Many a people liked it.

The movie tried to expose the dirty affairs regarding the self-appointed religious heads (swamijis, christian fathers and maulvis) and showed how foolishly people are getting duped by them. Huge sum of money flows into their fold due to innocence (if it can be termed like that) of people.. There are a lot of rituals which many people follow in various religions. With the change in time, people started to ask questions behind these. Unavailability of people who could provide proper answers has made the younger gen loose faith in their respective religion. The movie OMG had an excellent message. If you don’t understand the rituals, fine. Instead of going behind the magic-making-self-appointed-swamijis and wasting crores of money, donate it to the people in need. Help the human kind (or at least that is what my conclusion was after watching it). Both the movie and the book have helped me a lot for answering so many questions that I myself had.

Thanks to the authors like Amish and Ashwin Sanghi who have made good attempts to decode the mythology and making it an interesting topic currently in the market. Amish's books gave out a message that "Gods are human beings, who became god due to their good virtue". Lord Krishna in udupi turned around in diametrically opposite direction, to give darshan to his famous devotee kanakadasa, thus creating the famous kanakana kindi (the window of kanaka) in the holy temple in udupi. Recently, i happened to listen to the pravachana that is read by purohit during satyanarayana vrata. In that, purohit explains as to why the vrata is so sacred. It seems Lord Narada asked some question to the Lord Vishnu(forgot the correct question) for which the lord replied that "for the sake of simplicity of the people of kaliyug, who are under delusion and always pressed for time and dedication for god, it is enough if they worship me by doing this higly simple vrata. No need for them to do any difficult yaga and homa as this vrata will be equivalent of all of them".  There is plenty of opportunities around us to feel the god and get answers for anything related to mythology. Only dedication is required i feel.


While Movies such as OMG might have helped us build the faith, there are some movies which might have acted in negative way although unintentionally.  The way the divine weapons (or rather magical weapons as one gets tempted to say) are shown in the war scenes of certain mythological movies have been matter of fun for many people. I too had this question as to how come there could be weapon of this kind in that era. But I was proved wrong. With every new Yuga, the knowledge of people goes down, opposite of what we thought. So these technology products such as Mobiles, computers and weapons of modern times are not greatest as we have believed. Just consider this – the fact that sushruta - the father of surgery, existed such long ago itself is the proof of great knowledge that the ancients had. There could have been so much of science knowledge present in those times that all the things which we read in mythology such as a person coming out alive from near-death situation, passing thru fires, building highly sophisticated palaces are not because they are connected to gods in some or other way. But due to the help of science! The fact that science was present during that time has been ignored and thus when we read such miracles without keeping the fact (of existence of science) at the back of our mind, either of two things happen i.e. we may either get forced to believe them without any logic since we believe in god or one may loose faith completely since we don’t find any logical base for that.

(To be continued... )

Time, technology and ...... generation - Part 1


And one more bday came and went. Lots of wishes, lots of calls. Good to talk to so many friends on the same day. I feel good that at least on this day, my mobile battery gets spent on the actual functionality for which the mobile was designed - call and text, rather than on listening to FM and music.

Looking back, i feel quite amused as to how we manage to survive without this electronic gadget. These days, it doesnt matter where a person is located? just dial his mobile number and talk to him. If there s not much to talk, just text him to convey the short message. Cities has grown, it is practically not possible to go and meet friends and relatives easily. Not that it was easy before, but the lifestyle too has changed now. I still remember my first year of engg. Mobile was just making its entry into indian market then and it was a expensive device. Even the incoming call was as expensive as 16/- per min. Only Airtel was offering the service then. I was staying in a room in mysore. Owner was in ground floor and our room was in 1st floor. My mother used to call to the land line number in owner's house and the maid used to shout from the window. I had to rush down, wait beside the phone sitting on a sofa till my mom called again.

Monsoon season is very tricky in mysore. One can hardly predict whether it will rain on that day looking at the sky. It would start raining all of a sudden and sometimes wont stop for hours together. One fine day, when me and my roomate went out for first time after joining the college in 1st sem, it started raining cats n dogs. We had to wade thru knee deep water thru the center of city to reach the city bus stand (majestic of mysore), catch the bus and reach our room. It was not too late and so i wasnt worried much after reaching our destination. Vignesh, my roomie, quickly rushed upstairs and i was following him when i heard the maid shout out my name from the window. I was dripping all over and certainly didnt quite feel like taking a call from home at this situation. I stood in front of door. As soon as she opened it, she started questionaire. Apparantely, my mom had called some 3-4 times in eve and was eager to know where i had been. Being still new guys, and that too jst out of teenage, there was certain amount of apprehension in owner's mind. So there was a huge burden on us to convince them that we are not smokers/drinkers or making-merry-on-dad's-money kind of guys. I told her that i will change and come back. After 20mins, when my mom called, i spoke to her and there wasnt even a small degree of worry in her voice since she knows me very well. Since it was the first time i went out, she wasnt quite used to know that "I can/need to go out". If only i had the mobile then there was no need for the maid to show off her attitude, nor i had to listen to her and answer her questionaire.

It was only in 3rd sem that i got my first mobile. It was a great relief for me as well as my roomie since we could talk to our family sitting in room itself. All we need to do was give a missed call to dad's mobile and within a couple of mins, the mobile would ring. It was definitely a great relief. As time progressed, more and more functionalites got added to the small hand held gadget. Now it is hard to see people sans their earphones plugged to their ears. Whether they listen to FM/Music all day long? I wonder. And for girls, there are only 3 things. Either they will be talking to companion (girl/boy) who are with them, talking on mobile or listen to FM if they r alone.
(To be continued.... )