How Old is God?

Yesterday while having a late evening snack at a fast food restaurant, I happen to overhear the coverstation betweek a 6 or 7 year old boy and his parents. The boy was so full of energy and he was in the midst of conducting a mini quiz competition for his parents perhaps imagining the patrons to be the audience and me imagining having a front row seat to this event. The quiz master was in a hurry to shoot out all the questions he had prepared and I found it hard to think about the questions while busy witnessing this bundle of energy permeate the room.
As the questions kept flowing, one particular question caught my attention. The boy asked his two contenstants "How old is the earth?". As soon as I heard this, my focus completely changed from the food I was eating to this intriguing question and I was going through the list of possible answers I can come up with. The quiz master was getting irate with his contestants as they were busy talking about something they thought deserved more attention than the question posed to them perhaps not realizing that thinking about the answer to this question might change the way they live their lives. Finally after a stern warning from the kid, the mother answered "1 million years" and the father answered "100 million years". I was getting anxious about what the answer would be from the kid and he went on the say the following: "The earth was much older than the answers given and that it was older than any person". When I heard this answer, I had a sigh of relief since I was secretly hoping that he doesnt say it was 6000 years old, a number that a popular mainstream religion believes it to be. But as I was basking in this feeling of relief, came the shocker. The boy went on to add to his initial answer the following: "The earth was older than anyone, but younger than God and that God was the oldest". Before I could comprehend how a yound kid could come up with such an answer, I wanted to ask him a question myself... "How old is God then?" But since the rules of a quiz show doesnt premit a member of the audience to question the master, I decided not to indulge this idea any further.

But one thing I do hope for to happen sometime in the future is for the kid to pose the question to himself ..."How old is God?"

Who is a Best Friend?

Someone whom we constantly talk to so that we can listen to ourselves...

"Show me a Hero and I will write you a tragedy" - F. Scott Fitzgerald

The above words from F.Scott Fitzgerald kept playing in my mind as I was reading the statement from the Chairman of Satyam Computers Mr. Ramalinga Raju where he explains the accounting irregularities of the firm that he founded and built. A true Hero whose business acumen helped build Satyam , a son who made his father proud with his achievements, a beloved leader of fifty thousand employees, a social reformer who created programs for the upliftment of people from various strata in the society, a wonderful father to his two sons and now … ? I wonder which act gives more joy to the society – Celebrating a Hero or witnessing a tragedy?

Prejudice

I was reading an interview of Clint Eastwood on the web and during the course of the interview, one of the questions that the interviewer asks is about Filmmakers's responsibilities and the depicition of violence in movies. Clint Eastwood replies that he grew up watching violent movies but that didnt make him go shoot people. He goes on to say that the healthy mind doesnt get affected by this and then remarks " Those Columbine guys? They were sickos to begin with." In that instant, my mind had interpreted COLUMBINE as COLOMBIAN and thoughts about the drug cartels and the kidnappings and the violence assoicated with such things were flashingly rapidly. And for a second I thought how Clint Eastwood could make such a prejudistic statement? I couldnt believe what I thought I had read and went back and read the line again and thats when it struck me that he was referring to the guys involved in the COLUMBINE Massacre. Well that put to rest the question of who the Prejudist was... But I just wondered why I ended up with such a connection in the first place and the only thing I could think of were the movies that portrayed drug wars and all the violence associated with it. Borrowing from what Clint Eastwood said, I could say that my prejudices will not make me go as far as shooting people, but can filmmakers assume that all minds that watch movies are healthy minds and where do they draw the line?...

Cruelty to animals, REALLY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I came across this incident where a Golfer killed a bird with a golf shot while filming a documentary. The golfer claims, he only tried to scare the bird away.The animal rights activist are trying to sue him because they feel he did it on purpose and that the bird is a rare species and is protected by wild life laws. I couldnt help but think about all the millions of chickens and cows being slaughtered all year and the ones that I eat :) . Unfortunately cows and chickens are not rare enough to deserve special protection. Is it their fault that they can be easily bred? Or is it our fault that we didnt take a liking to the meat of these other creatures and didnt try to breed them in bulk? So why are some species more precious than others? The answer to this question might lead us to the reason behind the amount of aid received by Hurricane Katrina's victims from the US government.

Microsoft+Yahoo = Sony+Toshiba

Hold on! I am not suggesting that Microsoft and Yahoo together is quivalent to a Sony Toshiba merger. Since most people have an opinion about Microsoft's bid for Yahoo, I thought I would add my 2 cents to it, here it is - A man named Fumiaki Sato wrote a book called "A Scenario for the Realignment of Japan's Electronics Industry" where he talks about how the Merger of Japenese electronics manufactures into two huge corporations would help maintain profitability in the long run. I came across this book in Business Week(http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_19/b4033083.htm)
Since a lot of the execs managing businesses are supposed to reading business magaznines, I am wondering if they got the idea for Microsoft Yahoo merger after reading this book?

Why I am starting to believe in rebirth...

Recenlty I joined the social networking bandwagon and became a member in Facebook. Initially I was skeptical about it, but later as I tried it out it had a few things that kept me interested. I found an interesting application called Virtual bookshelf, where you can list the books you read and want to read and the cool thing is you can view the bookshelf of your friends as well. So I came across this book called "Buddha" in one of my friends book shelf . Later when I visited my friend I found that it is actually a graphic novel(comic) that was originally written in Japanese. The last I remeber reading comics were during the days when my Dad used to get me Tarzan comics. I reluctantly started reading the first few pages and was immediately sucked into the book and so I took the book home and completed it in a day or two. But the sad part is, it is a 8 volume series and my friend doesnt have any other volume. How all this relates to rebirth...? Well after reading the book I did some research about the author Osamu Tezuka and found that he was a "Manga"(comic in Japanese) artist in Japan and was a legend. Just a few days ago I was making a list of all the things that I liked to do and it was a very big list consisting of things like sports(cricket, tennis, golf, chess), reading, visiting different countries, various professions I am interested in other than my current one and the list was getting endless. And just in the types of books I liked to read there were so many genres and here I am introduced to another one "Manga". At that moment, I pretty much realized that there is no way I will be able to do all the things I want to do in this lifetime and therefore rebirth is probably the only solution... If only we are given a database of things that we did in our preivous lives, the task in this life would be much easier... :)