fans??

A great doyan of Kannada cinema passes away and the nameBangalore gets another tag to its image along with the IT capital and a true emerging metro, that of extreme destructive fanaticism. How much this tag will help in improving the image of Bangalore, along with the deeds of our politicians and bureaucrats? Only time can tell.

Coming to the word FAN.. It was derived from the word fanatic, which, according to merriam webster's dictionary is:

marked by excessive enthusiasm and often intense uncritical devotion

But is burning of vehicles, be it government, private or public termed as fanaticism? Were these people trying to show their respect to the departed soul? Is that the way? Would Dr. Rajkumar have loved if these people respected him like that when he was alive? For all the humility and humbleness he had, that doesn't seem to be the case, even his fans will agree. Then what happened?

Were these people trying to force the government to declare holiday the next day? Well, Govt. would have given the holiday anyways.

Were these people so much controlled by their own emotions such that the feeling that he is no more made them feel nothing should remain? Well, these people surely need some counselling.

Was it some sort of political gimmick? I can't rule it out.

Whatever the reason, I had to face some funny situations in the office. People who were having some good impression about Bangalore (apart from the traffic jams and cricket matches), were more than laughing at the fact that people can destroy their own buses, buses which their tax money feeds, if an actor dies of natural causes.

They were amazed at the fact that the entire state can stop working for a day if an actor of yester years dies of his old age. Calculate the number of man hours wasted without production to the nation.

One thing to learn from this incident and what Krishna has always told in Bhagavadgeetha:

sangAdajAyatE kAmo, kAmAt kroDoBijAyate...

kroDAt buDhinASo, buDhinASAt vinaSyate...

Trying my hand at a very vague/crude translation, it means:

Desire comes out of attachment.. and from desire (when it is not fulfilled) comes anger... anger kills the thoughts and thus ends everything.

Anything followed blindly without reason and with full of passion on an emotional bent of mind will lead to misery. Take for example the people who elect actors as politicians. Though they are good at acting, they need not be good in politics. I'm not talking about those few good actors who have been good politicians too.. but about the people who elect them. They need not be good social workers or politicians. But still they get to cash-in their popularity for something else.

We need to change. We haven't. If I go back in time to about 50 years, our mindset would still be the same I guess. We need to open up our minds. Let some fresh air in and then take responsibility for our actions and their consequences. This can be an endless blog. I can't change everything alone. I can only change myself and hope this one change will be infectious.