The Answer

Well I am back once again after one more long hiatus and some boring excuse. So I will get right to the post instead of justifying my absence which in all probability went unnoticed.

So what is the answer that I am talking about? Well the answer to most questions when it is all boiled down to the core. Risking being labeled a fanatical, fundamentalistic, lunatic blowhard, I would like to categorically state that the answer is JESUS! Whether you are brown, white, red, black or yellow; whether you are pro-life or pro-choice; whether you are right-wing or left-wing; capitalist or communist; saint or sinner; theist or atheist; monotheist or polytheist; rich or poor; foward, backward, OBC, MBC, scheduled caste or scheduled tribe; jew or gentile; Hindu, Chrisitan, Muslim or Buddist.

The reasons for me to come to this conclusion are varied both from sources claiming to know HIM and abhor HIM. It is a fairly simple inference from the fact that nothing or noone else promises you the answer without expecting something else in return. Only Jesus claimed that He first loved us even when we didn't care and dared to proclaim Himself as the only way to God, making Himself exclusive. He claimed to be the Truth and truth is exclusive by definition. And the best part is that I didn't have to pay for my sins, beat that!

This post is the boiled down core of all the posts I wanted to write and wrote in my mind these past few months!

God bless!

Jesus did not come to make bad people good but He came to make dead people live!

What I have learned from Palm Sunday

This is not another religiously pompous and theologically thought provoking post on the significance of Palm Sunday, atleast not in the conventional sense. There are probably tons of them floating around. This is all about one lesson that I stumbled upon at a very epiphanic moment: Do not put your trust in people or other things temporal! Why you ask? Because one week they would be riding you triumphantly on an ass into the city waving palm branches and proclaiming you the king while the very next week they are baying for your blood and leading you out the city on foot with a freaking wooden cross on your back. To add insult to injury they kill you in the most excruciating way possible.

People's mind are as fickle as they come and I still wonder why HE took this crap from people who don't really care!

The shaky moorings of an ideological centerist

I had a more cooler title for the post but I can't remember it for the life of me! The title could be misleading in many ways, because the definition of a centrist varies depending on who you ask; from a spineless rat to a highly practical deal breaker. I am personally not very comfortable with the tag of a centrist seeing that there are too many pseudo centrist out there, which brings us to the question of the definition of a centrist.

The reason I find the moorings shaky is because they do not have the adamantine morality of the right or the freewheeling social boundaries of the left. This is further compounded by the fact that they hate both extremes but are equally poised to embrace either on most issues.

On the topic of definitions, I have seen - all the more frequently now-a-days - that conservatism and right-wing are used interchangeably. I beg to differ on that synonym as all right-wingers are social conservatives but not the other way around. A simple point of reference is that the right-wing in the US generally tends to be the Christian right while in India they would be the Hindu right. Conservatives on the other hand tend to be hard to define along religious views. Same applies for the left too, while the serious left have no religious underpinnings, the liberals are from all religious and non-religious persuasions.

That being said, I am ready to prod on with my rambling. So how does a left of the right of the center conservative liberal find myself at the crossroads? that question hides the answer!

There are times when I wish that things were simple and right and wrong was black and white like the conservatives want us to believe. The very idea seems Utopian and gives you the familiar longings of a simple life. Then there are times when I wish people would understand that traditions were made for men and not the other way around. Growing up in an ultra-conservative society with very rule based and sometimes hypocritical values I have come to recognize and value the solid comfort that conservative ideas provide. There is not much of a grey area when it comes to conservative ideals while across the spectrum its a lot more grey with no idea of the were the black and white start.

I have often wondered how this ultra-conservative boy could move to the non-conformistic and shifting sands of the center? It was probably the cultural shock of the contradictory characteristics of conservatism in different cultures. More importantly though, it was the realisation that the conservations "WWJD" Jesus I was raised to believe was more a non-conformist liberal who challenged the prevalent traditions and cultures. I never thought to question the fact that Jesus ate with "sinners" while I would not be allowed to talk to "morally bad" people.

Does this make me want to be a hippie? (A lot of people in South America really think that all Indians are Ganja smoking hippies). Far from it, I could never truly be a snob (Inspite of various attempts). And why would I not be able to call myself a liberal? The fact that I would have to care more about animals than humans, the perpetrators than victims and assign all responsibility of evil to the society rather than the individual.

Starting on this blog I really didn't know where I was going with it, neither has then position changed in the last couple of days that I have been trying to finish it. It started out more as a attempt at putting down my frustration in finding people with exactly similar views. I do realise now that by my definition I am not going to find somebody else with the same exact views on all topics. I have also come to realise the fact that inspite of the shaky moorings, I would not want to be self righteous, condemning right-winger nor a snobbish, superficial left-winger.

I also did realise that I needed to finish this post!

1200 Israelis dead ...

This month my church has been having a series of sermons on racial equity and reconciliation. Dwelling on the fact that Jesus' message cut across all nations, class and race, even 2000 years back. I know a lot has been achieved in the last half a century towards a goal of equity for everyone, but there is definitely a lot more distance to be covered. If there is one thing we have learnt above all else in these years of trying to attain equality for all men - be it their race, gender or caste- it is that the society plays a bigger role than laws.

So why am I rambling on about equality when the heading talks about 1200 Israelis being dead? Firstly, the heading is false, if there were that many dead Israelis you would have seen it on network TV 24 hours a day. Secondly this statement is true for the stateless Palestinians (the death toll was higher), but they do not warrant the same amount of network coverage or people time. No, I am neither an Israeli basher nor a Palestinian supporter. Also I am not fond of watching people die or hearing sad tales of loss. What made me think about it was that it seemed a double standard that one group of people dying would sound more terrible than another group of people.

This lethargy is not just confined to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. You can see it manifest most frequently in the African nations. The fact that the western world thought that Saddam Hussain was more "bad" or "cruel" than some of the ethnic-cleansing, genocidal and baseborn dictators in the third world speaks volumes.

Closer to home I have been following the conflict in Sri Lanka, between the majority Sinhalese and the minority Tamils, with whom I share my ancestry. This conflict has been going on for decades with no solution in sight. Infact the LTTE (Liberation tigers of Tamil Elam), which is the largest armed tamil group, have the distinction of being the originators of suicide bombings. The struggle started peaceful enough with the minority Tamils wanting equal rights in all aspects of life. Soon it spread to armed struggle that got out of hand. Most people including yours truly have labeled the LTTE as terrorists - they got me on board by killing one of India's most beloved leaders in a suicide attack. I am not likely to withdraw that label, since they killed him in my home state of Tamil Nadu(country). Lately though I have come to realise that if this were a Tamil majority and Sinhalese minority conflict the roles would have been reversed and the Sinhalese resistance group would have been called terrorists.

At the end what it all boils down to is the fact that we are all prejudiced against people who don't look like us, don't talk like us or even eat like us. Until we change from the inside to believe that all men are born equal and not similar, we are going to have to keep paying in blood.

I personally believe that once you have Jesus in your heart, it becomes easier to overcome such prejudices.

Eurotrip

I wonder if people realise that you get lazier as you get older. I have been meaning to write on my European adventure for a quite a while now even planned on making it a journal with interesting tit bits. The only accomplishment has been to write it over and over inside my head and never put it down on either physical or electronic paper. All those ideas for the journal with daily information have now been boiled down to this on post, if I can finish it. So here it is after 5300 Kilometers, 12 countries (Germany, Switzerland, Lichtenstein, Austria, Italy, Monaco, France, Spain, Andorra, Belgium, The Netherlands and Luxembourg) and countless cities in 11 days.

At the outset let me state that driving through 12 countries in less than 12 days is sheer madness and is not fun unless of course you are crazy yourself (an attribute that I can claim to an extent). It also boils down to what you want to see and what motivates you. I am not a big fan of old medieval architecture, though I do get awed by it every now and then. I wanted to just tick certain countries off my bucket list and this was a good chance for me to do it. I did want to see the Eiffel tower and the streets of venice, other than that I just wanted to add some countries to the "been there" list. Unless you are driving you wouldn't be in Liechtenstein, Monaco, Andorra or Luxembourg. For the uninformed, those are principalities in western Europe, smaller than most large cities. Of the four Monaco is worth visiting, mostly to see the most interesting F1 track. They also tend to be cheaper compared to the rest of Europe, but not the US of A.

Driving in Europe is definitely easier than driving in the East but not as easy as in the US of A. Everything from the roads to signposts, are inferior to the US and I don't even want to talk about the GPS. The one that came with my car only showed me the correct location of the hotel on two occasions. A couple of times even the cities that I was supposed to stay was available in the GPS. The fact that there are no street signs in most of europe is compounded by the fact that there are few people on the streets late at night, unlike India where the pedestrians are the only source of street information. It was almost a daily ritual for us to spend more than an hour trying to find the hostel each night. The worst was either Italy where we finally had to settle for a expensive hotel because the hostel was supposed to be on a mountain that did not exist or Luxembourg where we spent over two hours to find the castle hostel. Though it was these "searches" that made the trip interesting and adventurous; that and the people who refused to acknowledge English.

Driving through Europe was an experience in itself, because of all the different landscapes that we drove through. Be it the tunnel filled mountains of Austria or the coastal French Riviera along Nice and Monaco. Throw in some snow, rain and sunshine and you have all the different weather rolled into a single trip.

Switzerland