Letter to a friend

Hi friend,


Happy to know that you are partially relieved of your workload.

Thanks for appreciating the photograph. I loved the 'the whining
schoolboy' bit, though the comment was deceptively flattering, since
the 'schoolboy' photo was done at the age of 40.

I am not going to argue with you on Arundhati Roy. I was, I must admit
now in retrospection, disillusioned when I had read her novel a few years ago. Her
subsequent writings have failed to create any interest and on re-reading
God of small things, I could understand a very weak craft.

Her politics, I believe, is not soulful and is mostly
attention-seeking. You may differ with this observation and that is
exactly what Jeyamohan is trying to present as the current state of affairs
in Indian media and social activism. This pseudo intellectualism, fanned by foreign media and
foreign-supported Indian media, places a solution which is not action
intensive, sacrifice oriented but just a pseudo uprising with mere empty
words.

I am reading 'Reality Check' by Guy Kawasaki (on entrepreneurism) and
The Kamasutra by Vatsyayana - A translation by Richard Burton,
Bhagavanlal Indrajit and Shivaram Parashuram Bhide.

Kamasutra! 


I am sure you are aware that this treatise is not entirely
about sex. Though I have scandalously read the book in parts during our college

days, printed only to highlight the sexual positions and
about how to acquire women, the current reading has opened a door through which I
could see how this 6 century AD book has impacted the cultural forms,
literature and the social psychology of Indian people and am amazed at the
fact, how still it remains the centre of the relationships of man-woman and have-have nots
(yes, that too). That is, if you are prepared to view through that
that sense.

At some point of time in near future, may be during my annual year
leave (December), I am planning to write a long article to analyse how
the book has been a result of rich (previously existing)
psycho-analysis of sex, sexual behaviour and the interpersonal relations
before its time and how it has got ingrained subconsciously and is affecting the psyche of the people even now.

All that I could see in Indian films, the day-to-day life (husband-wife
relationships in a typically Indian marriage - to what I
am accustomed, inferences drawn from the lives of my parents, my friends, my relatives, neighbours and that of my own), to all the art forms and to the subtle and
not so subtle vagaries and ideologies of manhood and womanhood, transcended to us by
the elders and mothers - are very closely connected to this extensive
research work by Vatsyayana.

Interesting?

Concerning your observation of what I would have done regarding
the energy situation in India: honestly, I have been slowly shedding
my invincibilities and vulnerabilities alike, as I am seeing the life
in a more practical light nowadays and am no more nurturing huge ambitions
of a professional changing the course of the destined lives.

I am setting smaller, achievable targets for myself and work upwards in a
typically bottom-up approach that has been working well for the last 3
years, rather than the more ambitious top-down approach. That way,
If I could proceed as I am doing as now, should be entering the Indibiofuel industry when I am 50 years old.

Pardon me for a pretty uninteresting mail.

Take care of yourself,

Love
IB Saravanan