Thats-so-Raja !

BC 37 : Romans invade the Hasmonean kingdom of Isreal (with Jerusalem as capital), which was under the Jews then. They install King Herod, a Jew himself who conspired the whole invasion. King Herod rebuilds the Solomon temple with 9 years of hardship. After Herod, Jerusalem is directly under the Romans with their Governors ruling it. But they were always submissive to the Jewish religious leaders as they did not prefer any riots. AD 70 : By now, Jesus was born and executed for the reasons that he contradicted the previous holy men. Caligula, the comedian of the roman kings, orders the Jews to only worship him. Here is something about Jews. They staunchly believe that they are god’s preferred race. They were educated, orderly and throughout history have never submitted to any oppressor. So here begins the Jewish revolt that led to a bloody roman assault. Romans believed that they have to erase the Jew identity so that they can avoid any uprising and hence they totally destroy the temple...

Do you know who Jesus was fighting against? When the world went down with the great depression in the 1930s, do you know who was celebrating? When you are itchy of acquiring anything which is an economical stretch far beyond your potential, do you know whom you are worshiping? Do you know who Buddha was preaching against? When the Wall Street guys robbed innocents off their retirement funds and yet splurged on the public money in exotic resorts, do you know who felt flattered? Do you know who Gandhi strived to keep away from? Do you know who is the reason for all the inequalities on the earth today?

Once, a wealthy and a powerful family man decided to embrace the Zen way of life. So he renounced everything – except for his loin cloth. But the rats in his hut were prying on the loin cloth (good that those were not squirrels) and hence he brought a cat to take care of the rats. Now, the cat needed milk, so he had to bring a cow. The cow needed to be attended, so he brought in a maiden. Shortly, he fell in love with the maiden and went back to square one. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I remembered the ‘simple life’ days when we used to hop rental homes. All that mattered would be 2 sky bags and a taxi. This time home moving was a few bruises, a sore back and shoulders, a loss of 2 kgs of body weight and a week’s time off from work. Mentally, it was like moving Mount Kinabalu. All the time, I had been wondering about how junk got accumulated. And that’s when the story above came to mind. I consulted Sujatha’s thick yellow ...

I was first introduced to Kahlil Gibran’s ‘The Prophet’ when I was 18. The book had a great influence in shaping my personality along the way. Now, double that age, I still find amusing treasures in it. For the uninitiated, Gibran (1883 – 1931) was born in Brazil but moved back to Lebanon when his father died. Studied in US and in Lebanon, he traveled far and wide. His mother dies and his love fails, shattering him. He moves to France and learns painting. He has multiple women in his life inspiring and inflicting pain as well. He writes ‘The Prophet’ when he was 40. One reason why you always find me humble is that I come across men like him and wonder, if I can beat what they did at my age! I can’t help feeling like a tip of their toe hair. ‘The prophet’ captures the essence of life in a poetic conversational style – love, marriage, children, giving, freedom, reason, passion, self knowledge etc. Powerful lines profound with subtexts. I am giving you a snippet from the love and marriage...