a brand new day

These days am getting very interested in Brands and how a brand is built. Its a fascinating subject, and seems to have replaced religion as a community identifier among todays urban youth. Are Apple stores the new temples, and the new product launches with queues outside the new piligrimages. Something is happening here, and you dont know what it is ....do you ....mr jones / samsung / blackberry / microsoft / google ? Just being a popular brand is no longer enough.....you need to be loved with a sufi like intensity it seems. As the Brand Consulting firm Industree says on its blog -

Just like new product slogans or campaigns are referred to Legal before being finalised, corporate communication and marketing/sales activities might benefit from a layer of brand advisory which functions independently of pressures, and is staffed by competent experts with exposure to multiple brands and the science of brand building..

read the rest here

Slaughterhouse Extract

The visitor from outer space made a gift to Earth of a new Gospel. In it, Jesus really was a nobody, and a pain in the neck to a lot of people with better connections than he had. He still got to say all the lovely and puzzling things he said in the other Gospels.
So the people amused themselves one day by nailing him to a cross and planting the cross in the ground. There couldn't possibly be any repercussions, the lynchers thought. The reader would have to think that, too, since the new Gospel hammered home again and again what a nobody Jesus was.
And then, just before the nobody died, the heavens opened up, and there was thunder and lightning. The voice of God came crashing down. He told the people that he was adopting the bum as his son giving him the full powers and privileges of The Son of the Creator of the Universe throughout all eternity. God said this From this moment on, He will punish horribly anybody who torments a bum who has no connections!

- Kurt Vonnegut - Slaughterhouse 5

Ganesha Chaturthi

The much loved elephant god, Ganesha, gets his very own festival. Millions of people all over India celebrate this with much enthusiasm and gusto. Its specially popular in the western state of Maharashtra and even more specifically, in Mumbai or Bombay, the capital city of Maharashtra. Crowds spill out on the streets, carrying clay statues of Ganesha, singing and dancing and banging drums and getting drunk and shouting prayers and what not, till the ferment becomes a fervor and the stream of humanity carrying Ganesha statues aloft, pours into the beaches where the land meets the sea. Wading into the sea, with chants and mantras and the odd curse when someone slips and falls or get pushed, the clay statues are immersed into the sea and they slowly melt away.

* note : all statues are made of baked clay and are totally bio-degradable.

There is a rather silly joke which I always remember when I think of Ganesha Chaturthi.

* note #2 : its not to do with the fact that he is an Elephant God, and yet is carried by a mouse. Thats right, a little mouse is the official carrier of our beloved happy funloving elephant god. That is funny, but also very profound if you look at it differently. Sometimes Ganesha loses his mouse...specially if theres cheese around..and then he doesnt like it a bit... as you can see -




Where were we, ahh yes, the joke. Well it seems once a christian, a hindu, a muslim and a Sikh were on a boat near Mumbai, and it sprung a leak. The christian, prayed to Jesus, who appeared and picked him up and carried him to land. The Muslim prayed to Allah, and was rewarded similarly. The Sikh, prayed to his Guru, who appeared and carried him to land. The Hindu being a follower of Ganesha, prayed to him and Lord Ganesha appeared before him. The hindu was happy and waited for Ganesha to lift him up and save him. To his amazement, Ganesha started to do a little elephant dance singing a lively song and made no move to save him. The boat went under and the Hindu was drowning, and there was lord ganesha, doing the cha cha cha and singing a peppy film song. "Lord why dont u save me" cried the hindu. Lord Ganesha gave a smug smile and said, " You guys make a song and dance and drown me in the water every year dont you..now see what that feels like" ...at which point the Christian, the Sikh and the Muslim standing on the shore, clapped their hands and acknowledged the wisdom of this. The Hindu was going to say something, but swallowed some water and went under, never to resurface.

a train journey - rajneesh

Read a nice thing written by OSho ( Bhagwan Rajneesh , Acharyaji or whatever...this is just a nice description...)..you can read the page here..

Because I had slept, and there was now no need -- and it was night, a full-moon night -- I said to myself, "Enjoy yourself, go third class."

I had an air-conditioned-class ticket. When the ticket collector looked at my air-conditioned-class ticket and then looked at me, he thought I was crazy. I said, "You are right" He handed the ticket back to me."

He said, "This is strange. What are you doing here? Your seat is reserved and it is empty."

I said, "Let it be empty. If I get fed up with this experience I will come along."

He said, "What experience?"

I said, "You don't know what is happening here. If you want, you can stay with me just for one station."

He stayed and he said, "Really, it is an experience."

What was happening was at the station, the lights of the compartment would come on, and as we left the station behind the lights would go out. And ninety people in that small space... and who is pulling whose leg? It was such a joy! I enjoyed it like nothing else in my life.

A Hindu monk was sitting by my side. I was hitting his head, and he would tell me, "Osho, somebody is hitting me."

I said, "In the dark it is very difficult. Remain patient, and if you want to hit, hit anybody! There is no question of who is hitting who."

A woman who was sitting in an upper berth... somebody pulled her leg and she fell down. And she said, "This is strange -- someone is doing this to a woman. Who is this nasty fellow?"

In the darkness nobody could be identified as nasty, and as the next station appeared, everybody was sitting perfectly correctly. And in the station the lights would come on. If it had been the other way round things would have been simpler. If the compartment lights had gone out at the station, there would have been no problem because the station lights were there.

The train was going really crazy, and people were shouting in the darkness, "Somebody is pulling on my leg." And, "Who is this fellow?" And, "I will try to find out, but it will be difficult." "Please don't pull my leg!" -- but no answer came. In the third class it is certainly the real India you meet. In the air-conditioned, it is not part of India.

amarnath

Every year devout hindus trudge up the mountains, braving the kashmiri militants, to offer prayers at the amarnath cave. This cave has a naturally occuring Shivalingam, a ice formation that resembles the traditional round headed obelisk that symbolises lord shiva. This year the ice shivlinga looks funny and there are stories that say that global warming has led to the non-appearance of the shivalingam and the one that is being worshipped as the very symbol of Lord Shiva- is fake! Newspapers have printed before and after pictures which do add credence to this theory. The current shivalinga looks very much like a stone and cement and white paint job. Its rather too geometrical to be a natural ice formation. This is one story that we are all following eagerly as it mixes global warming and conspiracy theories witha healthy dose of religion and geopolitics thrown in..