Fart session - Part I

This one's a long one, but then I can't help it(well I did help it by dichotomising the really long one into two long ones!).....

I had one hell of a fart session today, easily one of the best in my 5 years of IIT life. As was my wont, I went to dhaba at 12 am, to have tea and then made a customary visit to saras. There, I met two guys and we started discussing a rumour about our current chief ministers' idea of inscribing her acheivements during her regime on a piece of rock to be retreived later on, a few centuries down the line, so that the then society would get to know abt the great ruler of Tamilnadu, so to speak. A great idea I must say, the so called 'imprinting of name in the sands of time'. Anyway, we wasted an hour discussing the merits of burial of that rock in guindy national park(gnp) or some other 'protected' forest reserve.

The one hour was a totaaal waste of time, as we went on debating about the characteristics of the right place for burial. We agreed that it had to be an inhospitable region, but it shouldn't be too inhospitable that the inscription isn't discovered in the timescale of less than 10 centuries. But then you could never tell. Climatic changes could make the inhospitable, hospitable like say the Death Valley converting into a Living valley or say the Thar Desert converting into a flourishing river-side city. Or you could even have a freak asteroid or meteor hitting the spot surrounding that rock...But then will that push the inscribed rock further in was what I wasn't convinced about. Suppose, the rock were to be buried in a national reserve, wouldn't it be the right place to ensure that the inscription is discovered in a time-scale of
centuries, neither too far-off into the future nor not too nearby, that is just the right time when it was intended to be discovered or found..Well, that could be 500 years or 1000 years.
If, 2000 years ago, I were to bury an inscription into our beloved mother earth, the society would really be in awe, especially the archaeologists of the current time to discover such an ancient inscription.

But the same '2000' years it takes to make an
inscription significant and of great value, might reduce if I were to look at burying an inscription now. This is due to the fact that, the change in the pace of life has been really drastic especially over the last 200 years, with the advent of industrial evolution and the rapid mechanisation of work and vast improvements in technology, so that the same inscription might seem very important 500 years hence, if discovered buried under the earth.

At this stage, we felt bored about this discussion going no where...
The next few topics to have the misfortune of being addressed by us were: auto drivers in chennai, the general consevationist attitude of the people in chennai, the food prices in hot chips, the futility of bargaining in chennai, the MTC bus tickets being really low-priced, the stupidity of MTC in trying to compete with the suburban train, the monorail gimmick being dished out by the CM, the lack of a business sense among business people in chennai, etc....We next turned our eyes to caste system, the origin of the prejudices or the superiority of one caste over the other. We assented that the caste system was originally based on the notion that certain people were best suited to certain professions. Hence an intellectually motivated guy would want to chose a profession in academics and hence would be a Brahmin, a businessman would likely be the vaishya(??), etc. That is to say, the caste system originated so that people could be tested out to see what is best for them and according to their capabilities would be assigned the appropriate profession and they would then come under a certain caste.

But when in history did this caste-system become a source of creation of rivalries and false prejudices between different castes, was the question. After the invasion of the moguls?, after the start of colonial rule in India? When? In gita, Krishna says in the 4th chapter that, he had created 4 castes for people to be categorised under based on their karma and qualities(gunas) or character. But, I wonder if there is a deeper basis for this classification? Is this classification valid even now, or was it context-specific to the time that the gita addressed?

We then talked about how people call themselves spiritual but not religious as if religion were something to be shunned. Infact, it is those ignorant of even the contents of the religious texts that assume that religions are mere rituals with no meaning attached to them. One guy told me a few days back what he thought of religion and spirituality:

Religion is for those who are illiterate and so they take in blindly what ever the religion preaches, while spirituality is for people who want to seek the truth in a practial manner, neatly explained! What he doesn't realise is that religion over-shadows spirituality, it's over and above spirituality. Religion gives both the basis and the means to the truth. You could atleast read up the basis and see if it isn't spirituality, then may be if interest suffices, try out the means described therein.
Hmm, there is one thing that people forget in life:
If one is ignorant of something in life, whether it be religion or anything else, it is better, not to pass comments or prejudices that one has about the same.


There are so many issues that we get exposed to in a fart session, as an interplay of ideas ensues between different people, arguments are forwarded and countered back, insights get revealed all of a sudden, hypothesises are made, theories are blurted out and proofs are arrived at..Indeed, fart sessions are a major source of intellectual nourishment that proves vital for broadening one's perspective in life.

To be continued...