RIFLE RANGE BOY

Sex, Death and the Meaning of Life (Documentary; 2012) Different from many of his presentations, here Richard Dawkins portrays an image of sobriety as he tackles one of the many unanswered questions of life. Rather than being ballistic against the many dogmatic beliefs and seemingly meaningless rituals of organised religions, he is willing to engage in his attempt to understand their many practices and how it maintains sanity in Man. Studies have shown that everyone sins including people from a religious background. Unlike their non-believing counterparts, believers carry a considerable amount of guilt. The incidence of cheating, lying, fornicating and watching porn is the same across the board. In fact, some figures show suppression brings the worse in us. On one aspect, we act and behave like animals. On the other hand, due to development in our neocortex, we are capable of rational thinking. We have the capacity for reasoning and able to differentiate right from wr...

My Gita (2015) Devdutt Pattanaik The author drew a lot of flak from the so-called Sanskrit scholars and Hindutva protectorates for his inaccuracies in its translation, factual 'errors' and understanding of the scriptures. The purist, the defenders of the Hindu inscriptions assert that he is not a qualified person to give his interpretation of the revered holy book. Bhagavad Gita, the poem of the God, is sacred scripture. They assert that one has to be a Brahmin or ordained to do the mammoth task of interpreting the Gita. In short, not every Tom, Dick and Harry can tell his views. I thought it reeked a lot like many of the fundamentalists and religious zealots amongst us who insist that there is one way to the Truth and it is their way. There is no compromise in religion. Pandits (not pundits) like Rajiv Malhotra and Nityanand Misra also take offence to classifying Bhagadvita as a myth. Most intellectuals today accept happenings in Gita as historical occurrences, not a st...

Hanuman and Suvarchala Credit: Pinterest I used to frequent temples quite a bit in my younger days. My mother probably thought that by loitering God's home, maybe He would take pity and throw a bone to us to chew. She must have put her trust in God believing that He would not disappoint. Be it, Thaipusam, fire-walking ceremony or billy-goat slaughtering ceremony, she would be there, and I would be passively taken along. It was her sincere belief that through divine intervention, her children would live a better life than her and that God would peel open the inner eye of Consciousness. We still await but hope, but we cannot say we did not get in abundance. But what is too much and when is it enough, anyway? As a child, my mind used to wonder a lot. Rather than doing the things I was supposed to do, I found pleasure as an observer of things and people around me. Sometimes, I ask myself what they thought and why they did the things that they did. Occasionally, Amma gives exp...

https://scroll.in/article/879633/hidden-under-meghan-markles-givenchy-veil-was-britains-bid-to-hide-its-bloody-colonial-history COLONIAL HISTORY Embroidered into Meghan Markle’s veil was Britain’s bid to celebrate its bloody colonial history The bride’s dress is being praised for its floral motifs of the 53 Commonwealth countries. But colonialism destroyed the lives of India’s weavers. Danny Lawson / AFP May 20, 2018 · 12:01 pm Aparna Kapadia Meghan Markle wore a beautifully simple, ivory silk dress at her wedding to Britain’s Prince Harry on Saturday morning. The royal wedding has been a global media event though of not much relevance even to the British crown. After all, Harry is the sixth in the line of succession to the throne. And given the pressing world news from just the past week – the killing of dozens of Palestinians in Gaza, North Korea’s threat of withdrawing from nuclear talks – a celebration of the monarchy, of a country barely able to keep itself t...

© daily telegraph In 1981, the televised event was easily the most watched event of recent times. The institution called marriage was still looked upon as a beacon of hope to keep the family unit intact. When they said that it was a public declaration of private intent, they meant it. It still had respect. The one act that solemnised the union of male and female was treated with due respect. Young girls went agape looking at their idol whose hairstyle they would soon be aping. They too wished that their wedding dress would be as glamorous. Forget the fact that groom stuck out like a sore thumb; his royal status would nullify all other deformities. How they adored the horse carriages, the guest list, the guests' wardrobe and the flowers. But see how it all turned out - the two-timing, the depression, the possible contamination of bloodlines, the accident, the conspiracy theory. Much has happened since then. It is all water under the bridge now. The confluence of hearts is no l...

https://scroll.in/magazine/877275/photos-the-american-photographer-who-came-to-calcutta-during-wwii-and-fell-in-love-with-the-city The American photographer who came to Calcutta during WWII and fell in love with the city Clyde Waddell spent around two years in South Asia, but it was Calcutta that fascinated him. "Early morning in many Calcutta street finds natives huddled around a breakfast teapot, having risen from their sidewalk abode. The milkman makes a regular stop at this community gathering on busy Park Street." |  Photo credit: Clyde Waddell/University of Pennsylvania/Wikimedia Commons [Public Domain] May 15, 2018 · 11:30 am Anu Kumar In December 1940, Clyde Waddell, then a 24-year-old photographer with the  Houston Chronicle , a Texan newspaper, travelled with several newspapermen to Brownsville, further south in the state. It was an almost 12-hour bus ride from Houston, Waddell’s hometown, along the Gulf of Mexico that borders Texas. A...