The Order of the Crutch

As a foreword let me declare that Im not trying to be argumentative, racist or accusing anyone or any race or any sect of people about anything. Im merely trying to bring out perspectives that may help us all to move ahead in a better fashion for better times.

I recently commented on a Flickr members stream. They had beautiful pictures and one of them was that of Mata Amritanandamayi Devi. I told them that she was not the saint that she seems to be and there are loads of problems with her and that she is a criminal. I ended up with an email response calling me sick and black at heart and being blocked. Nothing unexpected as such, an atheists life is hard trying to prove religious bigots and being called an animal all the time. I’m so used to this by now, i have a thick skin.

This episode made me think of one thing which significantly affects how false saints and religious bigots work out of India and how powerful they become. Its very simple. It all comes out of foreign exchange money. Hence I would like to make a small request to every foreigner who comes to India or wants to come to India.

India is a land of varied spiritualism and a meadow of religions and culture. It is understood from my personal experience and from other available documentation this really fascinates the foreigner or to not sound so politically correct but technically correct, the white man. Just like in the western world you have criminals like Benny Hinn you need to understand that India being a mountain load of spirituality has more of this than you can ever possibly imagine.

The reason why I stress is because your one dollar makes 45 Indian rupees approximately. Your one pound makes 80 Indian rupees approximately. If you give this dollar or this pound to an orphanage and feed the poor, well and good. You qualified yourself to be an extra ordinary human being. However if you give this dollar to a prick who runs schools, colleges, hospitals and other business in the name of spirituality your wonderful heartfelt intentions of helping the poor brown man is just not going to work, in fact it works exactly the other way around.

There are thousands of spiritual things you could do as a theist in India when you come here. My sincere request to you is don’t give money to any charitable institution that runs on the basis of a saintly man or a woman. None of this money reaches the poor man. It goes in to building colleges, schools, engineering colleges, universities, hospitals all for business to make money in the name of spiritualism.

Classic examples are Shirdi Sai Baba, Amma, Kalki and so on. If you drop a dollar into the hundi of a roadside Ganesha temple such as this one, it would at least feed a poor priest who looks after the temple. Think about what I’ve said here, it makes a difference even though I may sound sick a person to many of you for speaking the truth about Amma, Sai Baba and other such underground dons running drug rolls and porn flicks.

Truth is very bitter to swallow, as we all know. Claude Renault has wonderful pictures of Naga Baba, they hardly wear clothes, smoke ganja and meditate and need no money. They are real saints, Amma or Sai Baba who travel in a Mercedes Benz S Class clearly aren’t.

Canon EOS 400D with the Canon EF 50MM F/1.8 II. Aperture Priority, F/8 at 1/100th of a Second.

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Happy Birthday Kadalai
Originally uploaded by Dilip Muralidaran

Picture Shot at a Surprise birthday party we organized for this friend (read useless talkative fellow) at the Café Coffee Day in the Ascendas IT Park.

Kadalai, the Tamil word stands for “Ground Nut”. Gentlemen listen very carefully as Im about to equip you with some survival skills. Chennai dudes pardon the repetition, others you have to realize that your entire LIFE depends on what you are about to read below. I need your 101% on the text below. Turn off that mobile phone now! (Unless you are texting a girl)

Back here in Chennai, when you pointlessly talk to a chick with the intention of making something out of nothing in your hopeless desperation we call it “putting ground nut” or “Kadalai Podaradhu”. Its the accepted local slang for terribly insulting terminologies like flirting which is taboo in our pseudo culture.

The terminology comes from the late 80′s and early 90′s times when pizza was an unknown entity and coffee pubs were in mars. Women never wore sports bras on the road and men did not sport ear rings and the sky was blue and the whole world was a lot more innocent according to our old folks here, apparently. At that time the only available thing considering the amount of pocket money parents used to give their kids (which is not even enough to buy toilet paper) all you could buy was ground nuts. 2 rupees will get you so much groundnuts you could sit in the loo for days and not go to college.

So what do you do? Take any girl you can find, buy truck loads of ground nuts, find an isolated place, say for example under a tree ridden with poisonous bee’s or say at 2 in the afternoon at the beach sand (115 degree Fahrenheit only in Chennai) where even buffaloes dont tread into or say a useless box office flop that even the director dont watch twice and talk, talk, talk all that you want till your groundnuts bag is depleted.

This process is ISO 9001-2000 certified even before this certification existed and there is a theory that the Six Sigma training was conceived from such time tested processes. If you are not living in tamilnadu where women are already aware of this shit and nowadays expect you to take them to beach resorts and disco’s you can successfully deploy this methodology and move yourself from the lonely world of being single to a world of blossoms. As a Chennai’te I stand by this theory and take full responsibility for any consequences arising out of this. I mean, we folks KNOW that this WORKS!

Canon EOS 400D with the Sigma 24-70 MM F/2.8. Aperture Priority, F/4 at 1/60th of a Second.

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She is a constant reminder that you are stupid. Frankly you appear so stupid in front of what she has managed to achieve in life. For starters i don’t know of anybody who scored 19 gold medals in pharmacology or had honored by our wonderful ex president APJ Abdul Kalam or the govt. of India funding someone to go to France to study genecology.

However thats just the tip of the iceberg, there is antartica out there if you need to explore the complete personality in her. I for sure wouldn’t be prepared to do that for the primal fear of looking so small.

We’ve all had people in our lives that our parents/siblings point to as an example when we act the fool. As i know it literally everybody in every family who know of her point to her as an example. She is one example you cannot refuse and give stupid excuses to get away with.

Everytime i’m stuck and i find myself incapable of doing something thats seemingly so impossible a task, i tell myself 3 things.

1. Padmaja is my Cousin
2. Padmaja did it, the very same blood runs through my veins and i should be capable of it.
3. If point#2 is true then i should find this a piece of cake compared to what she knows and does.

Period, problem resolved.

My dear cousin padmaja, shot on the day of her flower ceremony. We are all eagerly waiting for the little one. For all that we know instead of crying, the first thing junior padmaja may do is question the doctor about some random calcuus problem from a quantum physics theory.

Canon EOS 400D with the Canon EF 50MM F/1.8 II. Aperture Priority, F/4 at 1/200th of a Second. Black background added on Adobe Photoshop CS3.

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As in many other traditions and various other cultures there are traditions of celebrations during pregnancy it’s of my humble belief that Hinduism shares the mother loads, well that would be an understatement and its no exaggeration. I don’t know much about Hindu tradition in other communities but being born in a Brahmin family (although never lived as one or want to either) the function of Valakaappu is celebrated on the 7^th or 8^th month of pregnancy.

Valayal is the Tamil word for Bangles, Kaappu is a tamil word signifying protection, well being, blessing etc., Hence the term Valakaappu (Valayal + Kaappu) or in simple terms the bangle wearing ceremony. My cousin is expecting a child soon, we celebrated her Valakaappu last weekend.

In the current day scenario, events like these are more so a opportunity for a family get together. An excuse to stop you lame ass from working during the weekends too and go see family/friends and have something called “personal life” that exists right outside of a hell called “work”. Last weekend I was happy not working. J

What you see here just a simple shot of the set of bangles that were kept for the ladies in the house to make my cousin wear them. I will post more shots of this later and try and explain the process in detail, although I’m not an expert on it. Corrections/criticism welcome by all means.

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I found this awesome joke today, i thought i would share it with you all and give you the pleasure of a good laugh.

A grade school teacher was asking students what their parents did for a living. “Tim, you’re first,” she said. “What does your mother do all day?”

Tim stood up and proudly said, “She’s a doctor.”

“That’s wonderful. How about you, Amie?” Amie shyly stood up, scuffed her feet and said, “My father is a mailman.”

“Thank you, Amie,” said the teacher. “What about your father, Billy?”

Billy proudly stood up and announced, “My daddy plays piano in a whorehouse.”

The teacher was aghast and promptly changed the subject to geography. Later that day she went to Billy’s house and rang the bell. Billy”s father answered the door. The teacher explained what his son had said and demanded an explanation.

Billy”s father said, “I’m actually an attorney, but how can I explain a thing like that to a seven-year-old?”

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Many people ask me, why am i so blatantly against religion? Why is that im so rude towards people and things that religion is associated with. Calling myself an atheist and making claims that im a better person by thought and actions than the average theist, why am i so filled with hatred against religion and what makes me any different from the religious vandals out there??

The problem is quite simple to explain. Let me draw a comparison. In life all of us like somethings and hate others. For example when i walk into a Consumer Appliance Store and ask for a Samsung LCD TV, it is because of the fact that i know Samsung is the world leader in display systems around the world and they have the best of technology and know how and products when it comes to displays. I have done my research and seen the demos and im convinced samsung fits my idea of a “perfect” LCD display system and hence im hell bent on buying it.

The problem here is if the salesman tries to convince me that Phillips is better then he needs to provide some tangible information for it, even in that case i may not favor it much since my personal research has already made me aware that samsung is good and i cannot really take for granted what the sales man says. I would politely refuse his offer and ask for a samsung again and be firm if he tries to convince more, at best walk out of the store to the next where i can get my samsung.

If only life was this simple with religion. Religion does not offer this option of being with someone else in the absence of faith in it. It claims to be the sole opportunity and the only way to get to someplace imaginary that no one has ever confirmed or reciprocated back with communication. Plus, end number of restrictions on what to do and what not to do when you get there and if you want to get there.

Religion simply is a disgrace to humanity for words like Blasphemy to exist.

Absolute power corrupts, anything or anyone with absolute power for that matter is a problem. Religion always wants you to surrender yourself absolutely to that god that it preaches and promotes without any questioning at all. It is in this perspective that religion fails miserably. No one has absolute authority that he cannot be question at all, including god. The result is for us to see here today. The Bible and Quran (and Gita to a minor extent too) preach open hatred against any disbeliever. The Quran calls for Jihad against them and the Bible punishes them with eternal damnation so that they will burn in hell for eternity. How cruel a thing to do to someone just because they did not believe in you!

Religion takes offense at anything and everything. Whilst as normal human beings when we take offense we avoid that thing or do not wish to associate with that person or thing, say for example prostitution. Religion thinks that it is so exclusive that no one that offends it needs to exist and calls upon the destroyal of that entity which is against nature. In nature, no animal kills another for any need other than food, survival.

This is precisely why i hate religion. I have friends whom i do not agree with on many a things yet we are good friends. This is not possible with religion. Exceptions are there but it can never be a norm for all religion claims its supreme exclusiveness. To me that is simply unnatural and potent a thought process.

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