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Dissent is Democracy

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Dissent is Democracy pic courtesy Legend has it that the Lord Shiva decided to test the integrity of the famous poet of the Pandya court, Nakkeerar. The Pandya King had announced a grand reward for any poet who could give an answer to a personal confusion of his, through verses. The Lord composed a poem and sent it through a poor and greedy poet, who could claim the verse as his own, and thus, the reward too. The King was pleased with the poem and was about to hand over the reward, when Nakkeera stopped him. The verse was falsehood and hence could not be awarded, was his argument. On hearing this the Lord himself appeared disguised as a poet. He argued with the critic on the merit of the verses. And when the critic refused to budge, He is said to have threatened to open His legendary Third Eye to burn the poet to ashes. The poet is said to have stood his ground with the famous proclamation: Even if You open Your wrathful Third Eye, a fault is a fault.  This is the tradition I identify
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ON PATRIOTISM

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  image courtesy A t the outset, let me confess that I am a strong votary of the theory espoused by Charles Darwin, Evolution. And I think that everyone who has read and taken to heart that theory should also pursue the observations of the human socio-biologist, as he is called, Desmond Morris. In particular, I would recommend the reading of his two titles – Naked Ape and Intimate Behaviour. And for those who do not, this would be just a fantastic flight of imagination. Having defined the setting of my thoughts, I can now dwell on the burden of my song. Patriotism, to put it in the zoological sense, is simply the territorial instinct of the animal. This instinct is more pronounced in the case of mammals. The longer gestation and weaning period, that is the hall mark of the species, must have been the reason why this species turned out to be passionately protective of its native environs. A concern for safe rearing maybe one of its underlying reasons.  This behavior is a marked tr
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LAW, LAWLESSNESS AND THE JUST

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pic courtesy When I go to sleep at night, it is with the firm belief that I would wake up the next day, with everything inside and outside as it had been before. And in the morning, when I go to attend to my daily chores, I go with the conviction that I would find the house and all things inside in the same way as I left it. This, in essence, is what we understand by civilized living.  The belief that you can go along with your life undisturbed, living it the way you want it to be lived, without any one else intruding into your sphere of living.     An idyllic and very tame life, no doubt. But that is how the majority of what we call the common people would like to live their lives. I well remember the choral rants from T S Eliot’s play, Murder in the Cathedral. The Chorus in the play represents the Common Person, who is sure that the return of the Bishop, Thomas Beckett, would surely invite murder and subsequent anarchy. They do not want that to happen. They had been going about li
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