Quote from krishnamurthi

Aloneness in Which There Is No Fear

It is only when the mind is capable of shedding all influences, all interferences, of being completely alone...there is creativeness.

In the world, more and more technique is being developed - the technique of how to influence people through propaganda, through compulsion, through imitation...There are innumerable books written on how to do a thing, how to think efficiently, how to build a house, how to put machinery together; so gradually we are losing initiative, the initiative to think out something original for ourselves. In our education, in our relationship with government, through various means, we are being influenced to conform, to imitate. And when we allow one influence to persuade us to a particular attitude or action, naturally we create resistance to other influences. In that very process of creating a resistance to another influence, are we not succumbing to it negatively?

Should not the mind always be in revolt so as to understand the influences that are always impinging, interfering, controlling, shaping? Is it not one of the factors of the mediocre mind that it is always fearful and, being in a state of confusion, it wants order, it wants consistency, it wants a form, a shape by which it can be guided and controlled. And yet these forms, these various influences create contradictions in the individual, create confusion in the individual. ...Any choice between influences is surely still a state of mediocrity.

...Must not the mind have the capacity to fathom - not to imitate, not to be shaped - and to be without fear? Should not such a mind be alone and therefore creative? That creativeness is not yours or mine, it is anonymous.

The Book of Life - December 7

Quote from Krishnamurti

Krishnamurti.org - Daily Quote ===

Create a New World

If you have to create a new world, a new civilization, a new art, everything new, not contaminated by tradition, by fear, by ambitions, if you have to create something anonymous which is yours and mine, a new society, together, in which there is not you and me but an "ourness," must there not be a mind that is completely anonymous, therefore alone? This implies, does it not, that there must be a revolt against conformity, a revolt against respectability, because the respectable man is the mediocre man because he wants something, he is dependent on influence for his happiness, on what his neighbor thinks, on what his guru thinks, on what the Bhagavad-Gita or the Upanishads or the Bible or the Christ says. His mind is never alone. He never walks alone, but he always walks with a companion, the companion of his ideas.

Is it not important to find out, to see, the whole significance of interference, of influence, the establishment of the "me," which is the contradiction of the anonymous? Seeing the whole of that, does not the question inevitably arise: Is it possible immediately to bring about that state of mind that is not influenced, which cannot be influenced by its own experience or by the experience of others, a mind that is incorruptible, that is alone? Then only is there a possibility of bringing about a different world, a different culture, a different society in which happiness is possible.

The Book of Life - December 6

Pritam Uncle R.I.P.

A wonderful tribute to Pritam Uncle. He died like he lived, peacefully. He
was sitting out in the Delhi winter sun and then said goodbye to his
son and walked to his room, lay on his bed and breathed his last. His
spirit, his guffawing laugh, his stories and his warmth will always be
remembered. This image is what he gave me as well. Gandhiji and him.

‘Brig’ and I were both Gorkhas, though he was born in Peshawar in a Sikh Punjabi family. He was also the husband of my dear friend, aunty ‘Bim’ and father of my friends Sonia and Arjun. But it was our Gorkha kinship which led Brig and me to spend great times together. He sought my company to talk about Gorkhas and I sought his to hear of the same. Though retired in 1971, Brig kept constant track of what was happening in the Gorkha world.

Many years ago, he was very upset and called me over. A Gorkha had stood first at the prestigious Sandhurst Military School, UK, but was granted commission only in the British-Gurkhas.
He was not given a place in the other British armed forces, because the
Anglo-Saxon British officers did not want to serve under aGorkha . Brig
was livid at the discrimination and wanted me to raise a hue and cry
about it. But I was not unable to find out more details nor was I in
anyGorkha network like Beacon to raise the subject.
Brigadier Pritam Pal Singh on his 90 birthday

Brigadier Pritam Pal Singh on his 90 birthday. Click on the image to enlarge

An excellent story teller, Brig’s repertoire of Gorkha
stories was fresh and never-ending. At a later stage of his career, he
was assigned to the Research and Development wing of the army. There he
worked hard at the emancipation of theGorkha soldiers. At one time, he lobbied hard to induct Gorkha soldiers for further training. Brig was livid when told by his British senior “Why lose a first class infantry for 2nd class artillery?”

Brig
shot off indignant letters to the army honchos, earning the wrath of
his seniors which is detrimental to an officer’s career. But he cared
two hoots. Today theGorkhas are ace-shooters, thanks to the faith of officers like Brig who firmly believed that the Gorkhas were capable of handling the highest technical and intelligence skills.

Once in operation at Rawalpindi, a group of Gorkha
soldiers were awestruck at seeing a plane for the first time. They
huddled for sometime trying to figure out how that thing flew. Finally
they asked Brig. He told them “Very simple. Clap your hands and say up,
and it goes up”. They then asked “How does it come down?” He answered
“Clap your hands and say down, and it comes down”. TheGorkha soldiers had a merry laugh at this and said even our ‘Sahib’ does not know. Such was the camaraderie they shared.

Some six years ago, Brig was recuperating from a heart operation but was very keen to attend a 5th Gorkha reunion out of town. Despite the family’s trepidation, not only did he insist on going “alone without your nagging aunty” as he told me, but apparently also spent the whole night dancing there. ‘Those fellows did not know how to dance the Gorkhali way, so I taught them” was his defiant retort.
Brave Gorkhali Brigadier Pritam Pal Singh expires on the 3rd of December 2008er

Brave Gorkhali Brigadier Pritam Pal Singh expires on the 3rd of December 2008. Click on the image to enlarge

In 1947, the British asked the Indian Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru for the 5th Gorkha Rifles and the embassy at Oman. According to Brig, Nehru said, “You can take the embassy of Oman, but I will not give you the 5th Gorkha Rifles”. Brig was so ever proud of his 5th Gorkhas.



Brig was a treasure house of Gorkha
stories. He was forever writing and writing. Once I said “Brig, you are
writing with a one inch pencil stub!” He said “It does not matter, my
dear, I can still fill many more pages with ” Though even older than my
father, I could not keep pace with Brig, my friend’s energy and
constant push to keep theGorkha flag flying high. He was always urging me to write on the Gorkhas. My only regret is that I did not have the time to sit with him and work out that fantastic book on the Gorkhas
. He kept time and waited for me. But with my professional and personal
engagements, Brig I am sorry I could not complete that one project with
you. I hope you have written it all down and Sonia andArjun will be magnanimous enough to share it with me.
From Here.

Amitav Ghosh

An intelligent op-ed in the NYTs by Amitav Ghosh.
He compares the reaction of Spain after the Madrid bombing to the U.S.
reaction after 9-11 and feels that India should respond the way Spain
did.

SINCE the terrorist assaults began in Mumbai
last week, the metaphor of the World Trade Center attacks has been
repeatedly invoked. From New Delhi to New York, pundits and TV
commentators have insisted that “this is India’s 9/11” and should be
treated as such. Nearly every newspaper in India has put “9/11” into
its post-massacre headlines. The secretary general of theBharatiya Janata Party, the leading Hindu nationalist political faction, has not only likened the Mumbai
attack to those on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, but has
insisted that “our response must be close to what the American response
was.”


There can be no doubt that there are certain clear
analogies between the two attacks: in both cases the terrorists were
clearly at great pains to single out urban landmarks, especially those
that serve as symbolic points of reference in this increasingly
interconnected world. There are similarities, too, in the
unexpectedness of the attacks, the meticulousness of their planning,
their shock value and the utter unpreparedness of the security
services. But this is where the similarities end. Not only were the
casualties far greater on Sept. 11, 2001, but the shock of the attack
was also greatly magnified by having no real precedent in America’s
history.

India’s experience of terrorist attacks, on the other
hand, far predates 2001. Although this year has been one of the worst
in recent history, 1984 was arguably worse still. That year an
insurgency in the Punjab culminated in the assassination of Prime
Minister Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards. This in turn led to
riots that took the lives of some 2,000 Sikhs.

I was living in
Delhi then and I recall vividly the sense of besetting crisis, of
extreme fragility, of being pushed to the edge of an abyss: it was the
only time I can recall when the very project of the Indian republic
seemed to be seriously endangered. Yet for all its horror, the portents
of 1984 were by no means fulfilled: in the following years, there was a
slow turnaround; the Punjab insurgency gradually quieted down; and
although the victims of the massacres may never receive justice in full
measure, there has been some judicial retribution.

This has been another terrible year: even before the invasion of Mumbai, several hundred people had been killed and injured in terrorist assaults. Yet the attacks on Jaipur, Ahmedabad, New Delhi, Guwahati
and elsewhere did not set off chains of retaliatory violence of the
sort that would almost certainly have resulted 10 or 15 years ago. Nor
did the violence create a sense of existential crisis for the nation,
as in 1984. Thus, despite all loss of life, this year could well be
counted as a victory not for terrorism but for India’s citizenry.

The question now is this: Will the November invasion of Mumbai
change this? Although there is no way of knowing the answer, it is
certain that if the precedent of 9/11 is taken seriously the outcome
will be profoundly counterproductive. As a metaphor “9/11” is invested
not just with the memory of what happened in Manhattan and at the
Pentagon in 2001, but also with the penumbra of emotions that surround
the events: the feeling that “the world will never be the same,” the
notion that this was “the day the world woke up” and so on. In this
sense 9/11 refers not just to the attacks but also to its aftermath, in
particular to an utterly misconceived military and judicial response,
one that has had disastrous consequences around the world.

When
commentators repeat the metaphor of 9/11 they are in effect pushing the
Indian government to mount a comparable response. If India takes a hard
line modeled on the actions of the Bush administration, the
consequences are sure to be equally disastrous. The very power of the
9/11 metaphor blinds us to the possibility that there might be other,
more productive analogies for the invasion ofMumbai : one is the Madrid
train bombings of March 11, 2004, which led to a comparable number of
casualties and created a similar sense of shock and grief.


Amitav Ghosh is the author, most recently, of the novel “Sea of Poppies.”
More
Articles in Opinion » A version of this article appeared in print on
December 3, 2008, on page A31 of the New York edition.

Baby Moshe and Sandra Samuel

My heart is breaking for Baby Moshe who was orphaned by the Mumbai terrorist attacks.

Unmindful of the tragedy that he had undergone, two-year-old Moshe, dressed in a bright green T-shirt and blue shorts, was carried into a synagogue in Mumbai to attend a prayer meeting in memory of the Jews killed in the terror attack, including that of his parents Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg and Rivika.

Holding a ball in hand, Moshe who was orphaned on the day of his birthday (November 28) kept looking around, probably wanting to see his parents even as his caretaker picked him up in his arms.

Standing right next to him was his grand-parents who had come all the way from America as soon as they heard about the blast.

As the prayers started, Moshe could be seen getting fidgety and ended up crying which he stopped only after he was allowed to play.

Meanwhile, even as the synagogue echoed with the prayers, sobbing could be heard from among the 100 odd Jews who had come for the prayer meeting.

While the ladies present wiped their tears off, men could be seen trying best to hold back their tears.

"We found the child on the second floor. We had initially thought he was sleeping on the fifth," said the caretaker of Moshe, who was rescued in a dramatic fashion by the cook of the house, Sandra Samuel (44).

Samuel had literally pulled off a coup when she, hiding inside one of the rooms after having slammed the door on a terrorist's face, rushed to the second floor after hearing Moshe yelling out her name continuously. As per Israeli media reports, she saw the parents lying on the ground, apparently "unconscious". Soon enough she caught hold of the boy and ran out into the safety of the NSG commandos, some of whom had entered the building by then.

Tragically, his parents who arrived in Mumbai in 2003 to serve the small local Jewish community, visiting business people and the throngs of tourists, many of them Israeli, were found dead once the fierce encounter with the terrorists was over, nearly 48 hours after it all began first on November 26 evening.

And this from the BBC.

The mood at Monday morning prayers at the 124-year-old, green-painted Keneseth Eliyahoo synagogue in Mumbai was grim as members of the city's Jewish community paid homage to the six people who lost their lives in the attacks that hit the city last week.


The dead rabbi's son moved the congregation to tears
The outreach centre of Chabad Lubavitch - a New York-based orthodox Jewish organisation - in a nondescript building in a crowded and grubby sliver of a lane in Mumbai, was taken over by gunmen who held hostages before Indian commandos rappelled down to the building in helicopters and cleared it out.

Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg and his wife, Rivkah, were among the six people who died in the attack at Nariman House. The couple, who moved to India in 2003 from Brooklyn, New York, offered lodging and ran a kosher kitchen for Jewish travellers out of the four-storey building.

Their son, Moshe - who turned two on Saturday, three days after the attack - survived, along with his maid Sandra Samuel and family cook Zakir Husain.

At the prayers Moshe, cradled in his grandfather's lap, cried out "Ema!" (mother).

"Everybody at the prayer was crying. These are very tense times for our community, which has never faced anything like this before," says Reena, a Mumbai Jew.

'Sense of discomfort'

About 90% of India's approximately 6,000 Jews live in Mumbai and the neighbouring suburb of Thane. It is a low-profile community which since the attacks has been avoiding the media.



Indian Jews have never faced anti-Semitism, we have never been persecuted



Reena, Mumbai Jew

I tried to get in touch with a prominent Jewish community centre and vocational training institute in the city, but they would not even reveal their locations, let alone allow me to speak to the people who run them.

"There is certainly a sense of discomfort. There is a feeling that community members could be under threat," says Ruth Krishna, a Mumbai Jew and former hospital administrator.

The community has seen its numbers dwindle fast in India from around 30,000 in the early 1960s.


Heavily-armed militants stormed the centre as part of last week's attacks

Most have migrated - by one estimate, more than 50,000 Jews from India live in Israel today. Many of them have married outside the community in India, leading to further depletion in numbers.

The first Jews - Bene Israel - arrived in India about 2,000 years ago. Later, they arrived from what is now Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and other, Arab countries.

In Mumbai, the community has nine synagogues, and runs a number of schools, a prominent community centre and an organisation running vocational courses. Most of the Jews here are employed and a few run small businesses.

Closer to Muslims

The attack on the centre has thrown an unwanted spotlight on the community.




We have been targeted once and the terrorists have succeeded - that makes us vulnerable



Jonathan Solomon,
community elder

"It does not feel good at all. This was like a bolt out of the blue. I am an Indian first, and I am married to a Indian Hindu. I wear the Star of David, and I have never even thought of hiding it. But suddenly I am feeling conscious that I am wearing it. I am feeling vulnerable," says Reena, who was born in India.

"Indian Jews have never faced anti-Semitism, we have never been persecuted. India and Israel enjoy the best of relations. But I felt hurt by the way the rabbi and his wife were killed. As an Indian I have to be careful of terror attacks anyway. And now it seems as a Jew I have to be doubly careful."

Despite differences elsewhere, the Jewish community here is close to Muslims, closer than to Hindus, and has traditionally lived in Muslim-dominated neighbourhoods like Byculla and Dongri, and shared business ties. The majority of students in Jewish-run schools in Mumbai are Muslims because they are located in Muslim-dominated neighbourhoods.

"That is why we never believed we could become a target, though for many years some people have told us to be careful," says Jonathan Solomon, a community elder, who runs a nearly 100-year-old family-owned law firm in central Mumbai.

"We are not a part of the Middle Eastern animosity between the two communities. We are far away from all that.

"This is a very traumatic moment for the community. We have been targeted once and the terrorists have succeeded. That makes us vulnerable as soft targets."

Sacred Arts Festival

Here is the website of the sacred music festival starting in Delhi in Febuary.

Pakistani TV conspiracy theories abound

Pak Media discusses a conspiracy theory, claiming that the Indian Government is responsible for the Mumbai blasts. The women are quite something talking about Pakistan as the "peaceful neighbor".

I personally find conspiracy theories spurious and one can go on claiming nothing is what it seems. But that method is more gossipy than intellectually rigorous or worthy of an analytical discussion. Most conspiracy theorists seek others like themselves or try to convert non-conspiracy theorists to their viewpoint. The most common conspiracy theory around the world is the claim that 9-11 was caused by the U.S. government!