RIFLE RANGE BOY

Stop, Look, Think! By Farouk Gulsara Here I am, waiting in my car, clutching my steering wheel. It has been a good five minutes, and I am at a standstill. There are no vehicles in front of me. It is a T-junction with traffic lights. There is no traffic on either road, but I have no choice. I have to wait. https://borderlessjournal.com/2024/07/15/stop-look-think/ This work is licensed under a  Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License . google.com, pub-8936739298367050, DIRECT, f08c47fec0942fa0

Maverick School, Malaysia. I am amused by how some establishments have probably wrong choices of names. In my mind, their names have negative connotations. Or it was intended to be so. As they say in business, any publicity is good publicity. Anything that would stir the readers' curiosity or turns any head is good for business. Recently I came across two such instances. A private school called' Maverick' was set up in the Klang Valley. I always thought a maverick always has something up his sleeves. He has a scheme, a sleight of hand, that would benefit him. I perceive a maverick as someone like Artemus Gordon of 'The Wild Wild West' (1965), a secret service spy with tricks up his sleeves to protect the US President. Apparently, over the years, the term maverick had evolved from giving a negative connotation to something positive. People are no longer expected to be conforming and obedient but to think outside the box to be innovative. Correspondingly, students sho...

Just the other day, a discussion brewed in our WhatsApp group. This group was started with the intention of educating ourselves and understanding the nuances of the world. We discussed politics, world events, philosophy, religion, ancient history, epistemology, Trump, Vedanta and almost anything under the sun with the hope of peeling open the sleeping inner eye within us to see the bigger picture of things around us. Brihadaranyaka Upanishad: असतो मा साद गमय, तमसो मा ज्योतिर् गमय, मृत्योर मा अमृतम् गमय (Asato Ma Sad Gamaya, Tamaso Ma Jyotir Gamaya, Mrityor Ma Amritam Gamaya) Lead us from ignorance to truth, Lead us from darkness to light, Lead us from death to deathlessness. ( recited at the end of the climatic end of arthi, Hindu prayers, when the Jyothi, fire, is shown to the deity. If only the congregation appreciates the true meaning of the verse and put it into practice. ) On one hand, we see some who perceive the world as one going through a 'dystopian age' of ...

Genius of the Ancient World (BBC Four) #2. Socrates. My mother, with her limited academic qualifications due to lack of opportunities, still try to enrich her mind. Her daily dose of wisdom used to come from the Tamil calendar. Besides having the daily almanac, it came with famous sayings and quotations. From them, she knew about JFK's 'ask what your country has done for you but what you have done for your country', Gandhian philosophy and Socrates' famous teachings to question everything in life. At a time when every occurrence happened by the auspices of the pantheon of Gods, Socrates stimulated the minds of the young to ask life's difficult questions. Is wealth a good thing? Does democracy create a just society? What makes Man truly happy? Probably after being a soldier and seeing the effects of war, he must have been disillusioned by humankind. Having the luxury of comfort in Athens at that time, with plenty of time in the Agora and an average of one to ...

There are three levels of verbalisation. One which is vocalised for all to hear. This would be the one that gives an impression of ourselves to the world. It is often used as a yardstick to gauge our levels of education, our politics, our upbringing, class and creed. The spoken words in this category are guarded and carefully worded so as not to jeopardise one's own image. It is our way to engage with the world which would compartmentalise us into our pigeon holes. The second level of spoken words is the one uttered amongst immediate relatives and close ones. Here, the words are less guarded, but still, a certain amount of restraining is always exercised so as not hurt the sentiments of the people around us. We also take into consideration that the younger ones are watching (and listening). We have to be careful with his choice of words to a certain extent. Sometimes emotion takes charge to prove a point. The threshold to lose our composure is lower as we are in...