Short Stories on Facebook

Some of my short stories are on FB here

https://www.facebook.com/vasudev.murthy?sk=notes

Please do take a look

Miscelleneous Turkey Photos Including Nature Scenes Slideshow: Vasudev’s trip from Bangalore, Karnataka, India to Turkey was created by TripAdvisor. See another Turkey slideshow. Take your travel photos and make a slideshow for free.

The past month

So much has happened over the past month


An important trip to Saudi Arabia and Bahrain
An amazing trip to Turkey - Istanbul (Topkapi, the bazaars, Hagia Sofia, The Blue Mosque, the Cisterns), Konya (Rumi's tomb), Antalya, Demre, Phaselis, Chimera, Myra. Erzurum, Ishak Pasha, Kars, Ani, Ardhavan, Childer Golu, Shaitan Kalesi, Ardhanuc, Savsat, Hopa, Rize - so many photos on my FB page - have attached two here
Another Trip to Saudi where many issues were resolved
A speech at the Social Media Summit at Chennai

I was hardly home. But it was fantastic.

Auroville Recording

Do listen to my interview and a recording of me plying the Araban Oudh at Auroville Pondicherry.

http://www.aurovilleradio.org/arts-a-culture/performing-arts/2315-vasudev-murthy-on-the-oudh

Barbarians at Thiruvaiyaru

I visited Thiruvaiyaru, where the great saint-composer Thyagaraja lived and composed wonders.


His house has been restored by barbarians. Bizarre ideas like ugly metal gates, shocking gold paint, absolutely ugly sculptures, bathroom tiles - oh God, where did these idiots show up from??? What have they done to our heritage??

Inside you see horribly painted walls, with pictures of other musicians - and hold your breath - photos of politicians leering down, taking credit for this 'restoration'! What could be more outrageous???


The house opposite - very humble - is probably what Thyagaraja's house actually looked like. Now we have a concrete monstrosity, and no one can imagine that great musical wonders took form there. India is destroyed by modern vandals, clueless about aesthetics, philistines with no sense of colour, proportion and heritage.

Nemo passes away

My dearest Nemo passed away after months of suffering.

A urinary infection, a body weakened - what else? He died in my lap and I watched his last breaths form bubbles. And then they stopped. His eyes were fixed in the distance and he did not respond to my voice. And then I too had no voice.

I wrapped him my T-shirt and we put flowers on him. We buried him next to another beloved dog. Perhaps we shall plant tulips and roses on his grave. They will thrive, fanned by the vapors of love and innocence. We are left behind, to regret we did not do enough.

Here are some photographs

His first picture at the shelter from where I brought him home.

European Pictures - October and November

Trips & More Trips

Bangalore - Delhi - Bangalore - A Management Game

Bangalore - Mumbai - Lucknow - Delhi - Bangalore - Consulting Workshops

Bangalore - Mumbai - Indore - Mumbai - Calicut - Bangalore - Consulting Workshops

Bangalore - Delhi - Workshop Planning

Next Month - Europe


I'm tired

The Saatchi Gallery

I spent a couple of hours walking around the Saatchi Gallery in Chelsea, London. In a city full of great museums, the Gallery seems to hold its own because of its vivid, extremely unusual exhibits.

A corpse on chairs?

A two headed lamp!

Not sure what this is, but its cool!

This is not a creased cloth. Its the actual design!

A room full of speakers!

Workshops and Exercise

I've been helping some folks with running workshops in Delhi. I'm enjoying that though not the travel but thats not too bad.

On a fitness mania at the moment and of course, it has its advantages. Not the least being an ability to be more alert and effective on my feet at the workshop, where the display of kinetic energy is needed.

I feel light and energetic at the ripe old age of 47. In fact I feel more fit than when I was half that number! I hope it lasts!

Nemo's illness

Nemo is ill and we are very down. He has stones in his bladder and is unable to urinate. An operation is the only option but he is too small and weak. It could be dangerous. Wish him well.

My Dogs

Scotty

Cookie
Mocha

Jumble
Jimmy

Jimmy

Jimmy

The Collapse of Education

An entirely new wave of oddly-literates stalk the corridors of the corporate world.

The origins of this strange set seem to be in the zillions of B-Schools to be found at every corner. What are they teaching? Where is the faculty? Why can't these students write at a BASIC level? Why are they completely confused about what they want to do?

Over the past six months I have met students who have no idea what they want to do - finance is the same as marketing which is the same as consulting. All that matters is some strange notion of a 'pay-package' and the brand. Bravado alone is apparently enough. Inflated resumes claiming all kinds of baffling excellence ("Top 0.013% in India in Grade 6") , restless body language, eyes that have already wandered off to the next scheduled interview - are these the leaders of tomorrow? I guess the answer is yes.

I can't wait to be led!

Music in London

I had the pleasure of visiting the Raj Academy of Sikh Music in Southall, London. Met their Principal, Dr. Surinder Singh, a wise and knowledgeable Musicologist. I listened to some soul stirring music in Raag Badhans (not far from Desh) in an orchestra by his students - Esraj, Sarangi, Dilruba and Sarinda. They really believe in bringing feelings out. I was very touched.

I shall be back in Feb to visit them again.

The Runaway Puppy

Sarang's book is featured in a list by Reading Rainbow as something small children should read!

http://www.readingrainbow.in/rrr.shtml

You can get it here http://www.flipkart.com/run-away-puppy-sarang-dev/8187649615-dw23for8te or

Dog Rescue

I managed to get a dog rescued two days ago.

Hour after hour, day after day, month after month, year after year - there it was - tied up in an area called BTM Layout. Half-starved. No dreams of unrestrained freedom. Complete hopelessness. Perhaps waiting for the the bliss of death.

Finally, a complaint to CUPA and my friends there actually rescued it. The 'owners' gave up without any resistance!

Hats off to CUPA!

I am adopting the chap after he recovers at the ICU at CUPA. That might take ten days. Photos soon.

Utterly Ghastly cruelty to animals

There is no limit to the base cruelty of man.

If you have a Facebook account, see the photos on this group of animals skinned alive, beaten to death for 'better taste' and so on.

http://www.facebook.com/#/group.php?gid=6976864122&ref=nf

There is no God.

South Africa's SPCA

The NSPCA believes that an animal’s welfare should be considered in terms of the five freedoms

• freedom from hunger and thirst
• freedom from discomfort
• freedom from pain, injury and disease
• freedom to express normal behaviour
• freedom from fear and distress

The NSPCA does not support the chaining of elephants and is opposed to any handling methods which may cause pain and suffering. In terms of the Animals Protection Act, Section 2(1)(b) – any person who

“confines, chains, tethers or secures any animal unnecessarily or under such condition or in such a manner or position as to cause that animal unnecessary suffering or in any place which affords inadequate space, ventilation, light, protection or shelter from heat, cold or weather;”

is guilty of an offence.

Nathaniel's Nutmeg

A fascinating book by Giles Milton about the Nutmeg trade and the associated bloody history.

The Island of Run was exchanged for Manhattan as a political settlement between the Dutch and English.

And read all about Dutch atrocities at Amboyna! Shudder!

Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary - about Animals

The Philosophical Dictionary
Voltaire
Selected and Translated by H.I. Woolf
New York: Knopf, 1924
Scanned by the Hanover College Department of History in 1995.
Proofread and pages added by Jonathan Perry, March 2001.


Animals



What a pitiful, what a sorry thing to have said that animals are machines bereft of understanding and feeling, which perform their operations always in the same way, which learn nothing, perfect nothing, etc. !

What! that bird which makes its nest in a semi-circle when it is attaching it to a wall, which builds it in a quarter circle when it is in an angle, and in a circle upon a tree; that bird acts always in the same way? That hunting-dog which you have disciplined for three months, does it not know more at the end of this time than it knew before your lessons? Does the canary to which you teach a tune repeat it at once? do you not spend a considerable time in teaching it? have you not seen that it has made a mistake and that it corrects itself?

Is it because I speak to you, that you judge that I have feeling, memory, ideas? Well, I do not speak to you; you see me going home looking disconsolate, seeking a paper anxiously, opening the desk where I remember having shut it, finding it, reading it joyfully. You judge that I have experienced the feeling of distress and that of pleasure, that I have memory and understanding.

Bring the same judgment to bear on this dog which has lost its master, which has sought him on every road with sorrowful cries, which enters the house agitated, uneasy, which goes down the stairs, up the stairs, from room to room, which at last finds in his study the master it loves, and which shows him its joy by its cries of delight, by its leaps, by its caresses.

Barbarians seize this dog, which in friendship surpasses man so prodigiously; they nail it on a table, and they dissect it alive in order to show the mesenteric veins. You discover in it all the same organs of feeling that are in yourself. Answer me, machinist, has nature arranged all the means of feeling in this animal, so that it may not feel? has it nerves in order to be impassible? Do not suppose this impertinent contradiction in nature.

But the schoolmasters ask what the soul of animals is? I do not understand this question. A tree has the faculty of receiving in its fibres its sap which circulates, of unfolding the buds of its leaves and its fruit; will you ask what the soul of this tree is? it has received these gifts; the animal has received those of feeling, of memory, of a certain number of ideas. Who has bestowed these gifts? who has given these faculties? He who has made the grass of the fields to grow, and who makes the earth gravitate toward the sun.

"Animals' souls are substantial forms," said Aristotle, and after Aristotle, the Arab school, and after the Arab school, the angelical school, and after the angelical school, the Sorbonne, and after the Sorbonne, nobody at all.

"Animals' souls are material," cry other philosophers. These have not been in any better fortune than the others. In vain have they been asked what a material soul is; they have to admit that it is matter which has sensation: but what has given it this sensation? It is a material soul, that is to say that it is matter which gives sensation to matter; they cannot issue from this circle.

Listen to other brutes reasoning about the brutes; their soul is a spiritual soul which dies with the body; but what proof have you of it? what idea have you of this spiritual soul, which, in truth, has feeling, memory, and its measure of ideas and ingenuity; but which will never be able to know what a child of six knows? On what ground do you imagine that this being, which is not body, dies with the body? The greatest fools are those who have advanced that this soul is neither body nor spirit. There is a fine system. By spirit we can understand only some unknown thing which is not body. Thus these gentlemen's system comes back to this, that the animals' soul is a substance which is neither body nor something which is not body.

Whence can come so many contradictory errors? From the habit men have always had of examining what a thing is, before knowing if it exists. The clapper, the valve of a bellows, is called in French the "soul" of a bellows. What is this soul? It is a name that I have given to this valve which falls, lets air enter, rises again, and thrusts it through a pipe, when I make the bellows move.

There is not there a distinct soul in the machine: but what makes animals' bellows move? I have already told you, what makes the stars move. The philosopher who said, "Deus est anima brutorum," was right; but he should go further.