I linked to this blog about Ramadan a couple of days ago. I had then just read the first post. The post was hilarious so I assumed — and perhaps gave you the impression –that it was a humour blog. The blog turned out to be not just humour; it is now one of the best blogs I am reading. Pure gold — read this short story, this poem, and this post by the mother of an autistic child. So visceral.

Even an atheist can read these posts about the most religious month for Muslims and chuckle or read along in agreement without having to stop and raise an eyebrow. That is because the writers talk about emotions and higher states of mind, which to me are the best bit about religions, but often obfuscated.

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Sam Harris writes in a post:

People generally come away from such experiences with a sense that our conventional states of consciousness obscure and truncate insights and emotions that are sacred. If the patriarchs and matriarchs of the world’s religions experienced such states of mind, many of their claims about the nature of reality can make subjective sense. The beautific vision does not tell you anything about the birth of the cosmos—but it does reveal how utterly transfigured a mind can be by a full collision with the present moment.

And this is where sanity diverges from religion. I once asked a monk a question which had bothered me for long: How does looking inward and experiencing higher states of mind reveal truths of an absolute nature? It seemed paradoxical. But the monk was convinced they weren’t merely higher states of mind. Calling it that would demean it. These were states, he said, where the mind does not exist. And I couldn’t visualize that.

Either he was wrong or I was a n00b.

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I feel Ramadan and similar forms of fasts and self-deprivation that inflict some pain on ourselves are a wonderful exercise. We don’t experience very different states of mind in our routine life. Think of a normal day: Your mind probably goes between that little-happy state, that little-unhappy state and one where you are neither happy nor unhappy.

Self-deprivation is a simple, effective way to stretch these states (As long as we agree that this or any of the aforementioned exercises do not and shall not be construed as conversations or any form of communication, direct or indirect, with god as he is popularly defined or the creator of this or all other universes that may be in existence now, in the past or in the infinite future.)

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I could make a strong argument that the form of hiking I do is similar to roza in many ways. As I’ve said before: Hiking is the closest I’ll come to religion.

Watch Arun Jaitley’s fine critique of the government in the parliament.

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Today’s money quote:

[Prime Minister Manmohan Singh] said “respected” Hazare has the “undoubted right” to protest “as long as he wants” but subject to certain conditions.

It’s the free speech debate all over again.

Chidambaram:

“What wrong did we do? No force was used. No one was injured,” he said while terming Hazare’s arrest as “inevitably unfortunate”.

 This rhetorical question is in the intellectual ballpark of How Can She Slap Me?

[Source]

Anna Hazare has been sent to seven days in judicial custody and will be lodged New Delhi’s in Tihar Jail. Hazare’s supporters Manish Sisodia, Arvind Kejriwal, Darshak, Radheshyam, Suresh Pathare, Naveen Jaisingh and Dada Phatare have also been sent to judicial custody.

Hazare was sent to judicial custody on Tuesday after he refused to sign a bond which stated that he and his supporters would not violate Section 144. He told the magistrate that he was not ready to sign the bond and was ready to go to jail.

On a normal day, it doesn’t matter if the country you reside in is free or not. The daily schedule of a person in China is no different from that of someone in say America. But protest against the government and the days start to differ. Today, in atleast this one instance, we are much closer to China.

(Not that there is anything wrong with China. I love Chinese food.)

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If you fancy a chuckle, here’s BJP reacting:

“Our senior party leaders are discussing this issue. We will do something in a couple of hours from now.This situation is worse than emergency and its all due to arrogant attitude to government,” Naqvi said.

Worse than an incompetent government is an incompetent opposition. The one thing they are expected to do well is oppose the government when it’s wrong — it is right there in the title!

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Buried under this news is yet another RTI activist shot dead.

Wajahat Ali will be blogging at Patheos through the month of Ramadan.

Optimus Prime Muslims 

But, sadly, this unity means bumping into more “Optimus Prime Muslims.” These are Muslims who transform during Ramadan – and only during Ramadan – into obnoxious, religious blowhards and completely change their personality and behavior traits for 30 days only to de-evolve into the same exact human being immediately on Eid, the day celebrating the end of fasting.

These guys stop listening to music, watching tv, logging on facebook, reading magazines and the whole shabang. Now, I have no problem with this. Go forth and free thyself from these technological crutches that have paralyzed human interactions, I say! However, I do have a problem with Optimus Prime Muslims lecturing me for being a heathen for occasionally watching a Netflix flick or catching a re-run of Dexter.

“You watch movies during RAMADAN!?!? Wow…ok, maybe we were…raised…differently. Well, Allah is Merciful…I guess.”

Listen, I don’t drink, do drugs, beat people up, snort cocaine off of strippers’ bellies, gamble or even know what bacon tastes like. Life is hard for a practicing Muslim. Relent. Give a brother some instant Netflix. That’s all I’m asking.

… aaand subscribed.

Link via The Atlantic.

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To the readers here practising roza, do NOT click on this link with pictures of mouth watering foods.

Subramanian Swamy appeared on Devil’s Advocate to defend his DNA piece. More annoying than Swamy’s reiteration of suspect statements is Karan Thapar latching on to inferences Swamy did not make, giving Swamy the upper hand.

Back to Swamy’s point that Muslims of India (and I suppose Pakistan) were converted from Hindus and that they should wear this fact proudly. Let’s say this is true. To give some perspective, the Indian land mass came into being some 55 million years ago. The earliest accounts of Hinduism are 3500 years ago — even though if many Hindus I know were asked to take a guess how old Hinduism was, the answer you’ll get is millions of years if not billions of years.

Does that give you an idea of how ridiculous an argument this sounds to me?

Besides being a form of ‘my penis is larger than yours’, asking Muslims to acknowledge their ancestry is as worthwhile as asking Hindus to proudly state they descended from apes.

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Uh .. and speaking of penis sizes, the average length in Pakistan is anyway 2 cms more than in India. If Muslims in Pakistan did descend from Indian Hindus, where and how did they get those extra 2cms? And just to complete the circle, given a choice between solving terrorism and a larger penis I wonder what most Hindus would prefer in anonymity.

If you have been following Indian politics closely over the past few weeks/months and if you are disillusioned at this point, I don’t blame you.

Let’s list the issues that were in focus. Off the top of my head: 2G scam, CWG scam, Adarsh society scam, mining scam, LokPal, bomb blasts, black money, Aarakshan movie controversy. If I had to see a silver lining, I’d say these are all 21st century problems. Perhaps the only exception is Aarakshan which was about a who-knows-when-it-started caste system.

Now check out the debate of Republican presidential hopefuls from yesterday. If I knew the entire timeline of the earth and I was asked to guess when some of these candidates lived, I’d easily be off by a few hundred years.

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I’m glad I made you feel patriotic in time for Independence Day.

OMG! OMG! Zen and Haniya are in India! (Another video. Their new music video is out too.) From the interview, Zeb’s ideal man must have wit, strength of character and spontaneity. You’re welcome.

I’m off googling strength of character.

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Moving away from cute-as-a-button Pakistani singers, I liked Javed Bashir’s recent album Subrang. He is even better than I thought he was.

Stunning footage of the northern lights.

I’ve lost count of the number of times I have said this: If you have the means, visiting the far north is something you must do.

I like a good outrage as much as the next guy, but I’ll reserve my judgement on this one:

“I was on a 24-hour trip on a train from Delhi to Orissa. But, after 72 hours, the train still didn’t reach the destination due to some strike and, earlier, due to a rail block by some cows or camels. At the end… my skin became dirty and dark, like the Tamilians,” she reportedly told the gathering.

However, Chao went on to applaud India and its culture. “I was a student like you and had an opportunity to do a semester abroad. I could have gone to any country, but I chose to come to India as I was fascinated by the culture and the religion. I travelled across the villages…

I was amazed at the graciousness and friendliness of the people,” she said.

Without hearing the audio, it is tough to tell whether she equated dirty and dark skin with Tamilians (that would be ignorant and in bad taste) or just dark skin (which could even work as a humourous anecdote if told right).

Let’s assume it is the latter. Would you feel the same way had someone said the following: I waited at the flour mill for an hour and at the end, my skin became white like a foreigner.

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While on skin color, why the animosity towards Freida Pinto? Most comments I’ve heard or read about her over the years are summed up by the good commenters here.

I’ve been following Karthik’s Milliblog for a while now for music reviews. Today, he posted an audio comment recorded by a reader who disagrees with Karthik about Himesh Reshammiya. It’s roughly 6 mins. long and it made my day.

If nothing else, I and everyone who debates ought to emulate the guy’s tone of argument.