Whats in store

What a fall from the six systems of thought to the six fatal diseases!

Well that’s the Indian reality now. True, we never were much bothered about philosophy. Aberrations like philosophy happen in history of a people, you know there always will be strange guys in any community who worries about meaning of life and life after death and useless things like that. The more intelligent never bothers about them. They have other things to worry about. Like making a living and putting others down etc.

When these interesting and vital activities are out there who cares to spend time searching inside to find truth. In fact only the idle and the useless would even think of philosophy as an activity, barring the chairs of philosophy in the west that has made it into a specialization and a bread winner in the last century.

The sad fact is that now no one can claim to be a philosopher in the west unless one belongs to either a continental or analytical stream of philosophical approach and has concocted a theses one some subjects like “ the sado-masochistic tendency in Nietzsche’s Philosophy” ( Am I being too simplistic and too Freudian here? Okay then let it be about “The problematic of will to reason in Nietzsche’s philosophy”). The point is unless one has a PhD in something such; one has little right to call oneself a philosopher in the west. Sad it is!

Luckily every Indian can still talk on high philosophy when there is nothing else to do. We have been through testing times in history; we were the ‘subjects’ of too many invaders to become anything less than philosophical.

You see, when aliens dominate the land and rule one’s body and soul nothing is left but sweet philosophy to console one ( No, no, I am not talking of the aliens belonging to the ‘gray’ or ‘reptilian’ sort that is supposed to have bases on our globe, god forbid! These aliens were of human origin and were from other lands and other cultures. How words lose their original meanings and acquire new ones in the passage of time!).

It is ever so easy to blame Karma and fate than our own petty inside squabbles and weakness of character that made the foreign domination possible!

Well, we have another sort of invaders in our midst now. We are said to harbor six nice illnesses in our land. They have very sweet names too -Malaria, Chikungunya, Filariasis, Japanese Encephalitis, Leishmaniasis and Dengue fever. I am not sure if they are the six deadly ones but certain reports make me believe so. One consolation is that India is not alone in this. Climatic changes and the resulting bug mutations are making them more drug resistant and fatal.

We can’t stop nature from having it out with us for our sins can we?

People are taking vaccinations (whether they are effective or not) right and left, especially if they are planning to visit this blessed country. These vaccinations seem expensive and there are moans of “watchagonnado” from them too.

Hygiene – mental, physical, and of the environs seems to be the only way to remedy the situation. We can’t go back to the stone ages to get the nature right. If we limit the air pollution alone we could save eight million deaths in the next two decades the WHO says.

Well our suffering might be over before that according to the Mayan calendar. There are but a few months to 2012!