Niggadheesi Adugu e sigguleni samaajaanni

Lyrics: Sirivennela Seetharaama sastry

Singer: Sirivennela Seetharaama sastry

Niggadeesi adugu, ee siggu leni jananni
Aggi thoti kadugu, ee samaja jeevakshavanni
Maradu lokam, maradu kalam
Devudu digi rani, evvaru emiponi
Maradu lokam, maradau kalam

Gali vatu gamananiki kali bata dheniki
Gorre thatu mandhaki nee gnana bodha dheniki
Ee charitra nerchukundhi pachani patam
Ee kshanana marchukundhi chichula margam
Rama banam arpindha ravana khashtam
Krishna geetha apindha nithya kurukshetram

Niggadeesi adugu, ee siggu leni jananni
Aggi thoti kadugu, ee samaja jeevakshavanni
Maradu lokam, maradu kalam

Paatha raathi guhalu pala rathi gruhalina
Adavi neethi marindha enni yugaalina
Veta adhe vetu adhe nati kathe antha
Nattaduvulu nadi veedhiki nadichosthe vintha
Balavanthule brathakalani sukthi maravakunda
Shathabhdalu chadavaledha ee aranya kanda

Niggadeesi adugu, ee siggu leni jananni
Aggi thoti kadugu, ee samaja jeevakshavanni
Maradu lokam, maradu kalam
Devudu digi rani, evvaru emiponi
Maradu lokam, maradau kalam

 

Your vote, your voice

A day before Republic day, we are celebrating the National Voters day. 63 years ago when India got freedom and formed as a democratic republic, many scholars have predicted that India would crumble in 10 years. There is no dearth of pessimism across the world saying that Democracy is not a good idea for a poor country like India. Later when Indira Gandhi imposed Emergency, the foreign scholars and statesmen criticized saying that it is the end of India as a democratic country predicting a coup.

We are completing 65 years tomorrow as a proud biggest democratic country in the world. We are very fortunate to have great leadership when this country is formed. Our leaders believed in the ideas of freedom, equality,fraternity and built a secular country. Even though the country is poverty stricken, majority of the people are illiterate(12% Literacy rate in 1947), majority don’t understand what democracy means, every citizens is given voting rights irrespective of the gender,caste,race and religion (Universal Suffrage) when the constitution is adopted in 1950. It was a remarkable achievement considering countries like France(Universal suffrage introduced in 1944(remember the french revolution),Italy(introduced in 1945), USA(Universal suffrage in 1965 after civil rights act of 1964 and voting rights act of 1965).

But the questions remains, are we really a true democracy when votes are casted by enticing money, liquor and offering freebies? More electoral reforms like negative votes, moving from First past the post system to proportional voting, transparency in the money spent by the candidate for election campaign can help in the deepening of our democracy. It is for the citizens of this country to decide rationally what is good for them and what is good for the country.

Remembering Martin Luther King

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” 

– Martin Luther King

I have a dream speech made by Martin Luther King Jr is considered one of the greatest speeches ever made in history. Along with Mahatma Gandhi, Dr BR Ambedkar,Abraham Lincoln and Nelson Mandela, King fought for the equality of men. I wonder how and why it took thousands of years for man to realize that we are all born equal.  When a child is born, he did not choose to be born as a white/black, he did not want to born as a Indian/ American or a man or an woman.  Even in 21st century, in many countries including India there is a deep discrimination based on color of the skin, caste in which you are born and religion.

These issues needs to be addressed at the fundamental level by rational thinking instead of tradition and dogma. If religion teaches discrimination then religion itself should be changed as it is created by man. Man has learnt to fly like a bird, swim like a fish but forgot being human.  Let’s treat each and every human being equally with dignity. Let’s be a human being first rather than a brahmin or a untouchable, white or black, male or a female…

Lance Armstrong and his illusion

Lance Armstrong, one of the greatest athlete ever finally admitted that he used several methods of doping. It was followed by international outrage. IOC(International Olympic Committee) claimed it as the sad day for sport.

It was indeed a sad day for many of his fans(including me) who strongly supported him. Not only for sport, it was a sad day for humanity. Our definition of success is flawed. Every society needs to rethink how success is defined currently.  Since childhood, society (especially parents) put pressure on children to get good grades, get in to the best college, get high paid jobs etc. Who is teaching morality, honesty, ethics to the kids? By what yard stick are we measuring success of a human being? Is the yard stick to go the top position, to be able to buy the most expensive car or is it winning all the medals in all the events?

Truth always prevail. Lance had to admit his mistake loosing all his medals, fame, money and the illusion of success.

 

What is Love?

What is love? Every society and everyone have their own definition of what love is. The word “Love” is used so easily, overloaded and corrupted many times.

We say I love my country, I love my king, I love some book, I love that mountain, I love my wife, I love God etc. Is love an idea? When you say you love God what does it mean? It means that you love a projection of your own imagination, a projection of yourself clothed in certain forms of respectability according to what you think is noble and holy.

Adoring someone, sleeping with someone, the emotional exchange, the companionship – is that what we mean by love? That has been the norm, the pattern, and it has become so tremendously personal, sensuous, and limited.

In what we call human love there is pleasure, competition, jealousy, the desire to possess, to hold, to control and to interfere with another’s thinking, and knowing the complexity of all this they say there must be another kind of love, divine beautiful untouched, uncorrupted. Our conception and perception of love has been extremely narrowed over centuries of human existence.

To understand love in a true sense first we need to reject what the church, what society, what my parents and friends, what every person and every book has said about it.

The government says, `Go and kill for the love of your country’. Is that love? Is love desire? For most of us it is – desire with pleasure. You say you love your wife. In that love is involved pleasure, the pleasure of having someone in the house to look after your children, to cook. You depend on her; she has given you her body, her emotions, her encouragement, a certain feeling of security and well-being. Then she turns away from you; she gets bored or goes off with someone else, and your whole emotional balance is destroyed, and this disturbance, which you don’t like, is called jealousy. There is pain in it, anxiety, hate and violence. So what you are really saying is, `As long as you belong to me I love you but the moment you don’t I begin to hate you. As long as I can rely on you to satisfy my demands, sexual and otherwise, I love you, but the moment you cease to supply what I want I don’t like you.’ So there is antagonism between you, there is separation, and when you feel separate from another there is no love. But if you can live with your wife without thought creating all these contradictory states, these endless quarrels in yourself, then perhaps – perhaps – you will know what love is. Then you are completely free and so is she, whereas if you depend on her for all your pleasure you are a slave to her. So when one loves there must be freedom, not only from the other person but from oneself.

To really love somebody is to love without hate, without jealousy, without anger, without wanting to interfere with what he is doing or thinking, without condemning, without comparing.

Ramakrishna Paramahamsa once said “Even in mother love, there is selfishness.”(But personally I don’t agree with this 100%) The parents want their children to have a secure position in society. Parents enjoy when their kids do better in school/job. They enjoy the respect they get from society. Is that enjoyment from their own selfishness of being respected? Is that love?

When you lose someone you love you shed tears – are your tears for yourself or for the one who is dead? You have cried, but do those tears come out of self-pity or have you cried because a human being has been killed? Do you cry/feel sad for any human being killed? If you cry out of self-pity your tears have no meaning because you are concerned about yourself, your family, your son.  You can see in a moment the whole structure and nature of this shoddy little thing called `me’, my tears, my family, my nation, my belief, my religion – all that ugliness is the reason for your sorrow. Sorrow and love cannot go together. Do you shed tears if your enemy dies? Why not?

Then what this thing “love” is? Fear is not love, dependence is not love, jealousy is not love, possessiveness and domination are not love, responsibility and duty are not love, self-pity is not love, the agony of not being loved is not love, love is not the opposite of hate any more. So if you can eliminate all these, not by forcing them but by washing them away as the rain washes the dust of many days from a leaf, then perhaps you will come upon this strange flower which man always hungers after.

Source: Inspired (Nope. Mostly copied and pasted ) from Freedom from Unknown by K.