You can learn a lot about a man by the way he shrugs his shoulder.

Ben Okri

I lost interest in Jaipur Literature festival when they dropped Salman Rushdie because of political reasons. It is shame to secular India. He is the finest anglo Indian writer to date. One day he is sure to win Nobel. But Ben Okri Yesterday day came for the festival, I like his novels, especially The Famished Road. This is how The Famished Road begins: “In the beginning there was a river. The river became a road and the road branched out to the whole world. And because the road was once a river it was always hungry.” It is his tryst with magical realism. He says that turned to magic realism as he found that there is no reality in realism. I like what Ben Okri said about Jesus, “The greatest miracle Jesus did were his stories.”

Faith is a joy of ‘yes’ in the sadness of ‘no’.
– Paul Ricoeur

Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of our language.

—Wittgenstein 

Who?

Who writes what you write? Believe, it is not a stupid question. I write because I want to become somebody else, someone great, someone who understands beauty, someone who is in love with eternity. But in normal life I am just pathetic, silly, who gasps for air at the presence of two people. It makes me to believe that I am best when I am alone, and who doesn’t care to be best? What it is boring to best always by being alone. Is their any other way to escape your finitude, cobwebs of commonplace life?
Then I have no other option than to write, to hand over myself to something different and strange, to believe I am not altogether lost and wasted. I write because I want to love, even then I know can only fall in love and can’t love. Because fall in love does not mean to love. Thats my case, but there are other people who not only fall in love but just love without questions and complaints. They love when they love. For a while I let him, the lover live in me, instead of me. So that I can write a love poem.
So who writes what I write, Believe its not me!

The miracle is a new thinking

The Dream I Had.

One late autumn night,
The disciple woke up crying.
So the master asked disciple,
Did you have a nightmare?
No.
Did you have sad dream?
No. Said the disciple.
I had sweet dream.
Then why are you crying so sadly?
The disciple answered quietly,
while wiping his tears,
Because the dream I had can’t come true.

Metaphor

Philosophical dialogues sound awkward in most of the movies. But in animated movies they are great, as if animals know how to be metaphysical! It reminds me what Milan Kundera said about paradise: “our wish to go back to paradise is our wish to become animals, because animals alone were not expelled from paradise.”
Rango Is an animated movie with excellent philosophical insights. I like its introduction where four singing howls introduce the hero: “it is the story of a hero who has not yet entered into his own story.” Rango is a sheltered chameleon living as an ordinary family pet, while facing a major identity crisis. He acts out many imaginary roles in an aquarium, because he cannot be himself. He gets an epiphany that “Hero cannot exist in vacuum.”
He accidentally falls in the Mojave desert after the fall from his owner’s car. There he meets an armadillo who is in search of enlightenment which lies at other side of the road. He is ran over by a vehicle. Rango asks him, “why can’t you travel when there is no vehicles”. Then he says “can’t help friend, these are all metaphors”
vehicle are metaphors? only a philosopher can call them metaphors. It underlines my understanding of Philosopher: philosopher is a silly man!!
But in silliness lies the heart of the matter.

My favorite Brecht lines

On a certain day in the blue-moon month of September

Beneath a young plum tree, quietly

I held her there, my quiet, pale beloved

In my arms just like a graceful dream.

And over us in the beautiful summer sky

There was a cloud on which my gaze rested

It was very white and so immensely high

And when I looked up, it had disappeared.

Shape of thought

People speak about girl’s shape. What about shape of thought? Plato has it, Whitehead, Paul Ricoeur, Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Alain Badiou, all have it. St. Augustin has a clean marvelous shape of thought. He says:
“Don’t panic, one of the theives was redeemed.
Don’t presume, one of the thieves was condemned”
It is an indefatigable vision, as if you are opened to a closed door.