Seductive, Suggestive, Sleazy!!!

Published in Markathon,

Monthly Marketing Magazine of IIM Shillong

http://issuu.com/markathon/docs/markathon_september2013_issuu

Objectifying women and using their body as marketing instruments.

When was the last time you sae an advertisement catering to the men which did not have a sexy, desirable and available women as the prize, that is after you have bought the product. Right from the sleazy advertisements of AXE Deodorants, (and by extension all deodorants in general, but I will give them first mover advantage here) to the suggestive ads of BMW cars all rely upon the women, the ultimate prize, through the product. Are the advertisers simply utilizing the latent and unspoken of instinct that drives us to sell the product or do they take a step beyond the line?

    

Any advertisement tries to create a lasting impact on the mind of the viewers, and they find that attraction to opposite sex is one medium which allows for easy impact. Consider for instance the concept behind the AXE series of ads, which are one the highest viewed in India (on the internet apart from the runtime on television). While with their product, their ad might change they are fixed upon the concept: the end effect will be the “AXE effect” where the axe man becomes a prize for every woman. This single line concept has worked for them multiple times and in such a scenario why would not a company mint the gold mine?

In fact the advertising world has created stereotype of women in two categories. For a men’s product, a woman is a prize, who is impressed or drawn upon by the possession of the product by the man. In the women section again, especially in the Indian scenario the women is seen as a house maker, and the use of the product would entail her the appreciation of the family (or husband in the growing nuclear family) and fill her with a sense of fulfilment of her duty, or the product would enhance her beauty or other bodily, cosmetic part drawing the awe of friends and gaze of men. On paper this sounds harmless and it is. Men attracted to women is a reality of life, and true, we always try to impress the other sex, through actions or otherwise. But it is the excess that creeps into the system that creates fissures in the society.

Below are some of the ads run by famous companies:

This American Apparel ad was banned as being too suggestive.

The same fate was faced by this ad of Calvin Klein Jeans in Australia that boasted of being daring.

This advertisement in Dolce & Gabbana was retracted after the people complained that it glorified gang rape.

Almost 76% of women in India and one out of six women in America are victims of sexual assault. The stats are appallingly higher in many other countries. Yet advertisers often make light of sexual violence towards women. They disguise it as innuendo, humour or artistic expression and hope the shock factor will work promotional magic for their product. The marketers describe it as edgy fantasy scenarios and often point to some psychological results to their benefit. Many times the shock or the outrage factor works in their favour. As they say no publicity is bad publicity. In fact the controversy surrounding the products, spread like wildfire on the cyber space and the impact is created. All of a sudden the product is imprinted in everyone’s mind.

Look at this ad by McDonald’s. They fell so low that people were shocked. They used the rape intimation hotline tag of “You’re not alone” to promote the Big Mac.

In light of such advertisements the any logic falls apart and is shredded to pieces.

You begin to wonder if there is a line there at all? Or everything that catches our eyeballs is a strategy to associate some product with us?

The suggestion boiling down is that it is the perception of the brand that is the invisible and mutable line for them. So when Maruti SX4 is released with women lamenting that all men are gone is it the brand image of Maruti being the preferred choice of middle class that stops the advertisements short of what BMW did? Ford may never have approved the leaked JWT released ads of Ford Figo which shows scantily clad, tied women in the boot of the car, with the bunga-bunga Berlusconi flashing a V sign, but that the idea was floated and actually put on paper gives a glimpse of the world where the fame-lights have made them myopic to morals, and sometimes basic human sentiments.

And these glaring stories are the top of the line, there are so many more. A seductive woman in an ad that has no requirement of her whatsoever is where this all begins. And my accusations and questions are neither new nor undiscovered.

Many studies have revealed that women abuse in marketing practices negatively affects social values and her role in the society. Though the position of women have improved but their negative portrayal in way that degraded them continues. Content with sexual images exploiting the human body bring out the animal instinct in humans degrading the feminine role and insulting the social etiquette. Many also attribute adolescent or teen exposure to such sexually explicit and suggestive causes many defaults at the subconscious level resulting in increase in sexuality, objectification of women and violent behaviour.

Is there an end to the road? Yes, but certainly not objectively. No amount of regulation can define and proscribe suggestive, seductive and such ads. With the advent of internet it is of no use either, for what is forbidden can always be leaked in the cyberspace. The answer lies with us: the future managers. Defining ethics may take a lifetime but actions that improve human capacities are good or ethical and with this we can certainly determine our decisions.

Sexual arousal may have the instant impact, but there are other emotions and values that have deeper and longer impressions. They are not guilty pleasures, and you can look at your sister, mother, girlfriend without shame.

Live Free and FIREWALL Hard!

Published in Incubator,

The Entrepreneurship Magazine of IIM Shillong.

http://issuu.com/icube.iims/docs/incubator_-_issue_1_-_september__13

On the growing concerns of cyber security and potential business for start-ups.

The path of human evolution is closely linked to our defence systems. I am no anthropologist but I can see that the needs of today were actually the military necessities of times gone by. The computer, cryptographs, Internet, rockets, cars are by products of the Second World War. The famous saying goes that the fourth world war if ever fought will be in bricks and stones. Maybe. But the third for sure will be fought in the cyberspace.

And it has already begun!

Cyber security today has become paramount to national security. Security experts point out that there are two types of companies today: those which know that they have been hacked and others who have been hacked without realizing it. I propose its extrapolation to nations: states which know they have been hacked and those who know it but act ignorant. And of course there is a third category: states with army of hackers to invade other nations.

If I were to name the militarily active warzones of the world cyberspace would be my first choice. It is an active warzone, with multiple fronts, multiple combatants and no rules. The war zone has state players snooping around, private companies, ethical hackers and hackers who are there for the fun of it. The reported hackings around the world has increased by a phenomenal 42% on a year on year basis. While companies are more forthcoming in reporting hacking, states find a certain amount of reluctance to admit it. First no one country can be exonerated or proved guilty and since little can be proved any gung-ho about the matter it is quickly brushed under the carpet.

There has been a rise in two generation of hackers.  One is closely associated with the state armies like China or Russia snooping in other nations defence systems, or (being politically incorrect) USA and Israel whose Stuxnet virus was responsible for hacking into Tehran’s nuclear facilities. The other are relatively new entrants: companies or hackers who snoop in the cyberspace just to create havoc. Some self-appointed cyber vigilantes waged a cyber-war between Indian hackers and their Pakistani counterparts, each trying to unmask the other nation’s state websites.

With cyber space becoming the focus of the country’s defence it is immensely important for the country to channelize their cyber hackers in a right direction. A misguided hacker may just post the operations of a complex weapon on the internet for the benefit of the terrorists, or potential hacking into sensitive government databases can hold the country to ransom, with target spectrum of economy to defence systems. Maybe underlying the charisma and debonair of John McClane was a very real potential threat in Die Hard 4.0, where cyber terrorists hack into the government database.

The real problem is defining the cyber space and then protecting it. With the number of border issues still on ground demarcating the abstract space seems next to impossible. “If you don’t really know where your castle starts and ends, you can’t really build an effective wall and moat around it”, says Nils Phulmann, former security chief of Zynga and founder of cloud security alliance. India, unfortunately with its democratic baggage is not exactly a model of pro-activeness, but it is not far reaching to assume that China’s hackers used Indian cyber security hacking as net practice before taking on America.

Indian government and many start-ups need to look into the cyber security sector. Pessimistically, most of the world (ones that matter or is our potential threat or competitor) knows all about our missile programmes, company data and stock exchange, in the most optimistic view, they are struggling hard to shred through last few firewalls and blast in. In any case we are grossly underprepared and defenseless.

The American’s, touchy about their security after Pearl Harbour and 9/11 and petulant of their numero-uno status with regard to a inflaming China and cantankerous Russia, have already begun a debate about how best to tackle the problem. America has been a cheerleader for an international convention on cybercrime that prohibits private actors from striking out online. However there is a growing section which advocates a more aggressive approach, where companies or security firms they employ are allowed to strike back at the hackers or at least track stolen files and reclaim them or prevent their use without damaging other networks.

The Annual Black Hat event last year displayed the growing concern of companies with the issue. Some entrepreneurs have already dived into this area knowing full well that with the growing times they will be the forefront of defence capacities. Some have developed ingenious solutions like planting false info, gibberish data, creating a virtual labyrinth, an endless maze, crunching huge data to identify threat and shut down and much more. Some have even developed codes to strike back when required.

India with its neighbour concern has this one actual chance to stay in the game and not be overrun by China and the others. Though little thought seems to be given in this direction by anyone. The whole country is at a standstill for the next elections, and the army, traditional as always, is still struggling to catch up with China and effectively deter Pakistan on land to think of the cyberspace. What is appalling is the fact that no one is even recognizing this as a potential threat. But then we wait till the problem snowballs. It may take at least two years for the next government formed to begin work, assuming it is not a hung parliament and after diktats of the coalition dharma have been fulfilled. After that what remains to be seen is who is at the helm of affairs. It seems that a tech savvy aggressive PM may give this direction a thought rather than a puppet prime minister or worse still a ‘yuvraaj’ PM who might take one term to understand the problem.

Why I insist on governmental interference is because this is one defence system that we will have to develop indigenously and not buy from Russia or USA. And for a change we will be playing on a favourable turf: the IT industry is poster boy of our growth story. We do not have dearth of qualified engineers and we have space to experiment without drawing the irk of communities, locals, castes or other democratic ills. Finally we have an area where we can innovate and lead developing our resources and technology.

The Indian Inc. (as the growing Indian industries are often referred) is usually more enterprising and pro-active. With many of top Indian companies turning global they will face the same hacking risk as their American counterparts and this may just give them the impetus to invest into cyber security. While the country tackles other issues the companies can actually use this as an opportunity to wall their cyber space and continuously develop it. Many companies are of the view that anything within their firewall is safe, but with hackers scaling new heights with impunity the companies will be forced to change their binary view.

There are quite a few ethical hacking groups in India, like the Indian Cyber Army aka Indishell, Team NUTS, Team Gray Hat, Lords of Dharmaraja and the Indian Cyber Devils, that have reportedly been working to safeguards India's cyber space. Many of them in their free time act as patriots hacking in Pakistani and Chinese cyber space. The companies on the other hand have the opportunity to develop algorithms and software’s required for security concerns of tomorrow, all before government wakes up to regularise it. Many of these developed system may form the blueprint of the regulations. What the IT firms in India have at hand is potentially a billion dollar industry. With cloud computing and state backed hacking they are the hotspots of tomorrow. Investing in the security would make a wise decision for it can always be sold to an ailing company to country.

The government on the other hand has a potential industry that if effectively harnessed could be its strategic launch in the world giving up on it. Better control the fire lest we are fighting with it both without and within.

“If someone is shooting on you the last thing you focus on is the calibre of the bullet”- Gorge Kurtz.

Open Letter to Mr. M Katju, Chairman, Press Council of India

Dear Mr. Katju,

I write this open letter to you on your seeking of pardon of Mr. Sanjay Dutt through the Governor of Maharashtra in the case relating to possession of illegal weapons. Sir, as a distinguished member of the Judiciary and incumbent chairman of the Press Council of India it is disheartening to find you indulging in such activities which amount to undermining of the orders of the Supreme Court.

I must preface my letter with the fact that I have no personal animosity towards Mr. Dutt, whom I find to be an able actor, and henceforth would refer him as the Actor. I write this letter to bring to light the difference created in our society by starry eyed Justices such as Mr. Katju.

In an article published in the Hindu (22-March-2013) Mr. Katju seeks pardon for the actor on the following grounds:

1. That he has not been found guilty in the 1993 Mumbai blasts

2. The Actor has suffered a lot during the period of twenty years of the trial where he had to take permission for foreign shoots and couldn’t get Bank loans.

3. The actor’s parents worked for the good of the society (and were also MP’s), often going to border areas to give support to our jawans.

4. And now the most epitome of ridiculous: Through his films he has revived the memory of Mahatma Gandhi and message of Gandhiji.

To any able headed persons the above propositions are absurd, and that coming from a former Supreme Court Judge they are all the more depressing. That a person whose responsibility had been to uphold law, “equally for everyone”, should pick up one case and use his powers to influence the matter is highly derogatory. Mr. Katju better than anyone knows the number of cases pending in the Indian Judicial system and still of all the people you believe that it is the actor who has suffered a lot? India is famous for a lot of things, judicial process is NOT one of them, and everyone who has to pass through its hollowing walls has to suffer.

I respect the ruling of the court which exonerated the Actor in his association with the Mumbai blasts, but nonetheless found him guilty of possession of illegal weapons. Let us say the actor was a victim of the circumstances, caught in an illegal act at the wrong place (Mumbai) at the wrong time (December 1993), even then he broke the law. And this article is not about the actor actually, it’s about the flaws in our judicial process which had vertically divided the society into two: one for whom law is a tool and others for whom it is a fear.

What Mr. Katju has conveyed here is that is you are the have nots of laws then the judiciary is apathetic to you. Your sufferings die down and of course there are no governor given, PCI Chief facilitated pardons, for you. The stand of Mr. Katju is most depressing for a society that is still in a phase of transformation, his reasons downright silly.

Agreed the parents of the actors were great social workers, does that exonerate him from any offence and sentence awarded by the Supreme Court? By the poorest estimate a thousand people or more were involved in the making of Lage Raho MunnaBhai, does that exempt them from any form of offence, criminal or otherwise? And what about the viewers? Do they get a respite from small offence like parking challans if they were to produce tickets of the movie? The points put forward by Mr. Katju are lame, even to a rather under-studied person like me.

And if we were to agree to the validity of the above stated points of Mr. Katju and act upon them then should they also be applied to all individuals? If the Justice so believes then I admire his deep insight and he might just be a man of revolution who would step down from the Chair of PCI and study all such cases in the Indian courts and appeal for the Governor’s clement in cases he finds suitable?

Are you ready to do that? Or have you too become blind to the common man’s plight and focus years of experience into getting royal pardons for the people on the haves of the law? (It must be noted that it was he who pointed out the technicality in the sentence saying that if a minimum sentence is awarded in any case it can be considered by the Governor for clemency).

At a time when the world is keenly observing our law system such endorsements by Mr. Katju who represents the fraternity of Judiciary hangs my head in shame. The message we send across to the world is this: We will come down hard if your marines kill our citizens, even if the case is disputed of being within the ambit of our law (it is disputes if the Italian Marines were in international waters) we will overarch ourselves. If required we will revoke the immunity of your diplomat confronting the Vienna Convention but we have ways of keeping our favorite people (the rich and famous) out of bars.

While this letter may never reach you let me tell you that Mr. Katju here is one youth of the country who is disenchanted by you, is fast losing faith into the judiciary of India. It may never matter to you, for the judicial divide created by you I find myself on the wrong side, one that does not matter, and one that your star gazing eyes cannot see. In one of my interviews I was asked the question of what is wrong with India, today I would have begin with you.

If my letter or its conscience reaches you and you believe in what you said that study all the cases and show that the law is equal for all. But you won’t. Because you know it is not.

Before the letter is published the actor may be granted clemency, my best wishes to him, because even as I write hoards of actor-turned-old-turned-politicians are queuing outside the Governor’s office on the actor’s behalf. Only if they took such vigilance and sympathy in the life of every Indian.

Ps: My parent’s have not done social work, neither have I and for the record I have not watched the Munna Bhai movie in the threatres. God save me if I find myself on the wrong side of law.

Shubhang Srivastava,

Maruti Suzuki India Ltd.

National Institute of Technology, Raipur.

Lost Talisman of my Wallet

It came as no surprise to many but a dire shock to me when during my decent from a U.P. transport bus., my till then faithful wallet was besotted by a prestidigitator (a mere pickpocket cannot pick me) and took my leave. My numb ass, revengeful and treacherous having been burned, boiled, bruised and numbed under the combined action of north Indian heat and heat conducting seating raised no alarm during the act reporting the crime only upon being interrogated by my hand. Before this commission had completed its inquiry the result was out, as always. The Indian system literally seeps into you.

With nothing but action to my aid I followed that crummy old, variegated rusting bus whose number had been washed as a testament to the monsoons it had endured. Ironically for a bus of above description, tilted to the side of the passenger’s door, under the effect fatigue, cruelly metallurgical, it ran fast. For a vehicle that took half an hour to cross five sectors of noida, cleared the next five in ten minutes, as if my wallet was a baton for their relay. Conveniently no passenger had to alight in the next few stops. I am sure the driver and the conductor were a part of the racket but to think of all those people…

I never gave up pursuit though my oversized (given the contents) bag stymied my chase which ended in catching the bus in an auto rickshaw. It gained nothing for in the land of cycles and elephants, buses cannot be expected to be honest. In summation: I lost my wallet during a bus ride. It was gone. Poof!

Now coming to the curing mode the first question my uncle asked me was: What was in that wallet? The first thing I thought of was: screw! No, I am not using such language because of my frustration but then things must be told in the correct manner. Here in I introduce the most important things that I lost: my talismans.

But let me end before I begin. I lost money, that what wallets are for and though the significance of the amount will vary from one reader to another for me it was paramount because it mirrored a defeat. Hard earned by my father it made me in my eyes a pain in my parent’s neck. So that’s it. Answer to what was in that wallet but that is for sure not the way I answered it. But let me list them first before I tell about the lost talismans’. So spoils of this war were: driver’s license, money, two ATM cards! But some of them are also talismans so I will repeat them in the order I thought of them in my retreat march across the sectors of the city. First I thought of that screw, long forgotten, with magical prowess beyond reasoning, never fully demonstrated or understood. But this is one I will cover later if at all because it is most difficult to explain even for me.

So beginning the journey in my mind through the recesses of my wallet; my old, rusty brown coloured, tattering, torn at places, slightly bend to the shape of my ass, never having place for change, and now lost wallet. Now that I write I find it closely resembles the bus.

Just below my misused, without gear, Lucknow issued driver’s license, used in Raipur with five geared racing bikes, were two coins. Never used, safely kept, one smaller, plumper, golden wealthy in terms of value, other octagonal, large, and lacking luster. Perfect reflection of our society.

The wealthy coin of rupee 5 had a logo of the commonwealth games held in Delhi. The place and time of their receiving is also important. I got it in the host city, on the opening night of the games, in October. Why would I preserve a coin bearing the logo of one of the biggest dishonest and corruption ridden undertakings? How did become a talisman?

All because the logo was at back and things are opposite there. For me it represented the time when for the very first time in my life I got completely honest with myself. Alpha and Omega. Beginning and endings. End of trying to fool myself into perceptions and notions I found novel and seeing things as they were, and surprisingly finding them more beautiful. Alpha and beginnings, omega with endings.

The second coin, priced as two by the RBI, had the bust of Sardar Vallabh Bhai Patel and somehow the coin stuck with me. I just never spent it. It gave me a strange sense of responsibility.

A deeper search led me to the transparent compartment, unused and unopened. It had the receipts of all the speed posts I ever sent. No I would be lying here. It had receipts all right but not of all the posts, but those whose contents never received a favourable reply. Of application forms, scholarship and research requests for baccalaureates and many more. It would be hard to explain why I kept them. They were tokens of failures. Frivolous.  Maybe a caveat to my baccalaureate ambitions. Interestingly, or maybe strangely the ones that received a triumphant replies were shredded by my bare hands and found themselves in the heap of the weekly room cleaning campaign.

That old, loyally faithless wallet also had a diary. A small phone and address book which stored much more. A companion of the times I did not have a mobile and read the numbers off it as I dialed them in dangerously claustrophobic phone booths. Neither the diary nor the numbers it stored so carefully were exactly in use but it was the talisman of memory and nostalgia. It came to my aid one rainy day as I stood with punctured cycle and a soaking, tattering ten rupee note. The faded ink and the translucent paper spots mark the point where rain hit them as I dialed from a booth.

Then was the talisman of communication. Sim cards. Keeping me connected. Some would objectively disagree with the ‘talismanisation’ of a mere sim card, given their ease of acquirement and abundance, but for me it was freedom and bondage. Letting the kite fly a little higher. Talisman of moonlit nights and dark shady days. Of being able to letting someone know you are not well or helping them when they were not. Of unseen tears and vicariously true smiles. Talisman of aphroditic voices and shrill songs. Refusal of HR’s in conversation and waiting calls of final selections. Of anticipation and fun.

And then there was a screw, the most powerful of all, a real talisman that could work with time. No this terminology will not do in present context. It would mean the opposite. It could not work with time. It manipulated time. Yes, and in sooth its powers were never realized. Nor can they be. It lies with the wallet. Unknown, unvalued, uncared for. Maybe it will self destruct. It cannot be used just anyhow.

Who knew some scraps of paper and coins could hold such power. I did not. The funny thing about talisman is that you can know what a talisman is only when you have lost it. Tragic, but true. Omens and talisman have a deal. One confuses and prepares, working on or mind and another works silently, steadily, loyally for you. One is present in the open, discussed, debated, other in the dark, like a secret, a secret even the secret keeper is unaware of. Omens and talisman. Alpha and Omega. But from the opposite. Things are always different in the opposite.

My still loyal mobile (a device/talisman?) had a new message. My offer letter had arrived, and if rumors were to be believed a new bag and wallet from the company is a welcome gift along with it. Or maybe we will get it during joining. A new wallet. Omens change with times, and maybe so should talisman’s.

A new beginning, new talismans.

Alpha and omega. Omens and talismans.

NO Questions

There is something strange about me, or maybe with this world, or most probably with this life. And by that I mean everyone’s life, because they are all intertwined. We are all in the same boat, rowing the same ocean. Back to my weirdness: adding a new chapter. I hate this world; some could say I am an alien but whatever. The catch is that I hate it when I am happiest and with my loved ones. And why is that? Because this world is not meant for happiness. It cannot sustain that. And it eventually regains its equilibrium by spreading sorrow. Most likely on you, of some pain you buried long ago.

I hate life. Because it is unreasonable, unjustified and it never answers its whys. We all think there is a grand plan and maybe there is but why should I be a pawn in my own game? I hated this world, there was a reason, a why and I answered that. But in life, things happen, things that were never supposed to happen, things which benefit no one and they offer no why. Life is here to kill you. Maybe I am being unreasonable, but that is what life has taught me. This is not pessimism, neither a promise of hope and motivation. This blog is what it is supposed to be: unreasonable and irrational.

Between the sentences of banal talks lies the silence of our emotions. In those true expressions lies the pain of the heart. Ask me when it stops hurting and my answer, which may seem as a bullshit advice, says: if we are lucky then the pain never goes away. Losing the love of our life is the single biggest pain the heart may ever have to endure, and it does suffer. We think time heals and the pain goes away, or maybe we become immune to it, things feel brighter and better. But the pain persists, just below the smiles, a surface, and emotion. Just another day when we stare ourselves in the mirror we see that loss, the hole in our heart, visible in our eyes.

The fire which emanated in us out of love begins to burn the heart. Saturnine in conception who eats his sons and here the heart which gives birth to fire is burned by it. And all this, while the tears in a valiant but tragic attempt try to put it out. Wrong place, wrong time. Who thought even god’s would make this mistake in his most valued creation.

It’s quiet. We like quiet. It allows this unsaid to be put out in the open before the words flow. Lesson: there are no questions in life, no whys. There are answers, which make no sense. Quiet allows emotions to flow. Yes, we can never forget our first love, if ever we can actually love more than once. We can neither forget our true love. Both happen only once. They are special, inimitable, definitive and unreasonable. And with the same unreasonableness with which they happened, it so happens that you have to forget them. The only rational clause: if we have no control over how they happened, so we have no control if they are realized. And what if our first love is the true love? Or what if there is just one love, the first one?

NO questions.

Anything that doesn't kill us makes us stronger, and anything that makes us suffer makes us courageous. The fire is within us. And just like the pain it never extinguishes. It burns, sometimes silently and sometimes with force that can conflagrate the world and beyond. Love binds this world and also tears it apart. Irrationality and insanity rule the world. Why do things happen which benefit no one? Why is a person not allowed to have the love of his life? Why does not the person understand that no one in the world can love them more? If and when they do why is it that they refuse to accept it?

NO questions.

We walk this world alone. Stop looking for true love. It won’t happen again. You have loved with all your heart. You have hated the one to stop the pain. It’s is momentary pleasure, which will redouble and hurt you back. You can’t hate. You have loved and that is the truest feeling in this real-false world. You have carried that feeling allowed your heart and mind to be consumed by it. The fire has burned you and purged you. And now you stand as a man, who has loved-suffered-hated and loved. You stand as a testament to the courage that emanates from within.

True love never happens twice, not to you, not to anyone, but then you maybe someone else’s destiny, someone else’s love. In the boat you are supposed to row in the ocean with holding someone else’s hand. It is not what you heart wanted, but maybe it is the balm that you had been looking for since long. But again why couldn’t you be the love of the one you love. It happens, it has happened to others. But not to you. Why is it so? Is it unfair? Hold the hand a little more tenderly my friend, and now let that fire light you instead of burning you. Life is unfair, but maybe you can justify it for someone else. It is irrational, be a part of the randomness.  Maybe the hold of your heart was meant to be filled in a way you never thought it would be.

Keep rowing the boat in the direction of your dreams and let the fire light your way. It’s a large ocean, much larger than the hole in your heart. The yearning of the ocean is deeper than the irrationality of the world. Even the ocean is agitated over its lost love yet yearns since so long. And maybe at the bottom it all makes sense.

But why all this?

NO Questions.

KARNA: The beginning

Our epic hero, Karna, is born to Kunti, who in a moment of youthful curiosity invokes the Sun God, Surya, to test a spell bestowed upon her by a rishi. Under the effect of the spell the Sun god bestows a son, Karna,in the regalia befitting a true warrior, with a golden armour and golden earrings. They itself signify the infinite capability of the boy, an infant, who would change the course of time in ways so profound.

But from the moment of his conception he is shunned. He is unacceptable to his mother who fears defamation for bearing son while still unmarried. In a manner most disrespectful to a hero he is cast away in a casket to reach the house of a charioteer. His fatherhood is again intensely debated: should it be the Sun God, Surya, or the man his biological mother marries: Pandu, making him the foremost Pandava, or the husband of the woman, Radha, a charioteer in the Kuru dynasty, who bring him up as their own son. The irony continues to amaze us. Karna’s ancestry and fatherhood makes him either the ruler of the Kingdom, or its mere vassal, upon the generosity of Duryodhana.

Another stark comparison between Karna and Krsna’s childhood cannot escape this narrative. Both born of royal parentage are brought up in primitive households. Krsna brought up in the house of Nanda and Yashodha. Krsna accepts this position playfully and enjoys every moment of his childhood, playing with friends, tending to cows, with soft music of the flute. Karna on the other hand is forever seen distraught with this position. He knows he is born to be a warrior, why else would he have a golden armour and earrings. He never really comes to terms with his place as a charioteer ‘son. . We see that while Krsna, who is variously referred to as a cowherd is foremost respected by most kings, including Yudhistira, never takes ‘cowherd’ as being an offence.  Krsna accepts this fully and takes pride in being called a cowherd or nandlala. He accepts himself with delight and that may be the reason why he is accepted as a Kshatriya, a king more easily than Karna who refuses to accept himself, his past.

Much like a tragic hero of some odyssey, or like most men in the modern sense, Karna is presented with problems right from the moment of his birth, most of which he is helpless to do anything about. Yet he has to rise above them, for therein lies the glory. He cannot change his father’s position but he can very well rise up and does so to become the king of Anga, though again it is not his merit or his prowess as a warrior that lands him the kingship, at least not directly. It is rather the jealousy of one man Duryodhana upon the pandavas and the prospect he sees in Karna as the one man who can defeat Arjuna. He is made king of Anga by Duryodhana who wanted to see Arjuna loose more than Karna win.

All through his life he is pitted against problems he did not create, shunned for deeds he was not responsible for, his merits, skill, prowess and virtues all erased in the questions of blood and birth, and problems he can do nothing about. In modern terms that would be every man. But he rises no doubt, but not as great as Krsna, and that is because he refused to accept and respect himself for who he was and tries to become what the world respected.

Mahabharata: Characters

While reading the story of Mahabharata, we come across characters which teach us everything we can will ever need to know in our life. Just a surface deep, lie every emotion that crossed our heart, every thought that flew in our mind. The epic presents a variety of situations, each representing in its own way the subtleties of life. And then there are characters. Some are the incarnations of what one should not be and their deeds directives of what should not be done: exampled by Duryodhana, the foremost of the Kauravas, the villain in the epic in layman terms.

We have Krsna, the supreme personality, the perfect, revered, admired, a teacher, a warrior, with a shrewd mind and an innocent smile. He is mysterious, not all he does is understood, and that is what makes him more than a mortal. But we assume he is right. And he is always on the winning side, even when he uses no arms and fights against his own armies. He is God, his speech, Gita, is venerated, to be followed.

Devaratta, or Bhishma is another Goddess son, a figure so complete in himself. A warrior without equal, a son who embraces celibacy for delights of his father, a caretaker of the Bharata clan who watches the clan perish in the gory of the battle, bonded by his vows. He is not clever like Krsna who plays with words and smiles. He presents a curious and exciting dilemma much like the ones in our lives, times where we know what is correct and to be done but watch things unraveling in the wrong way helplessly.

Then we have the Pandavas, the God-sons, whose fatherhood is always intensely debated and always concluded in the perspective of them being correct, the rightful heirs to the throne. Our society will have a very difficult task if we for a moment conclude that they not being Pandu-putra, not at least biologically did not have any claim to the throne in the first place. The five Pandavs in their own right present the five important qualities in a man. They are all imperfect in their own self, but together they are the perfect male. The youngest of pandavs, Nakul and Sahadeva, who represent beauty and handsomeness loose prominence in the narration, signifying the slight and feeble position these qualities hold for a man. The Pandavs, Yudhistira, Bhimasena, Arjuna and the virtues integrity, power and courage are greatly esteemed. The Mahabharata has made a very clear distinction between being powerful and courageous, being brave and fearless.

Yudhistira, the upholder of righteousness, presents before us a perfect king, a perfect moral person, he is not exciting, just like the integrity of the rules he represents, he in modern terms would be a person we would call a bore and refrain from calling to adventure rides. He is also the person who losses his kingdom and his ‘wife’ in a game of dice, and lies, if not technically to win a war. Then we have Bhima, hopping across the line between good and evil. He is strong, powerful but he is also haughty and arrogant.

Arjuna is the most upheld of all Pandavas. Krsna was after all his charioteer, and revealed the Gita to him. He is courageous and compassionate; he wants to find morality ‘Dharma’ in his actions. He is powerful but not arrogant. He is the perfect disciple and an almost perfect warrior. He is the again a character one can find most close to oneself in the scheme of life, but he had Krsna in a way no one else had.

The various characters of Mahabharata, their virtues, their problems and dilemmas present before us situations we can relate to. But then stands Karna, the most interesting and exciting character of the epic. Karna: the right man on the wrong side. Our heart goes out to him, but he is not a character for pity. He is in the real sense a hero but is not allowed to be one, wronged by all, his mother, brother, teacher even God, yet stands up for himself. Unlike the other characters of the epic, we not only learn from his vitures, actions but he in one character we can relate to most easily.

Therefore in my next few blogs I am going to share of how Karna, a central character of the epic is actually the true representation of humans in the age of darkness or the Kali-Yuga. The right man on the wrong side: Karna.