Yea I want to put down these great lines from a great epic here in my diary today. Without these lines this diary would have remained incomplete because there exists no parallel to these lines. No one in this mortal world can say these lines for sure.

BTW am I turning religious or something? Consequent posts related to mythology put me in doubt as well. But on a careful analysis the following causes have made me revisit mythology again and again this year:

1. Realization of my own imperfections and mistakes as I turn entrepreneurial.
2. My incomplete struggle against my mind’s need for instant gratification and my temper.
3. A mind severely upset by the recent series of corruption scandals that broke out this year (make me wonder what kind of a world will I have to survive in and what kind of people will I deal with in future and what deeds will I have to undertake to grow)
4. A mind that has become intolerant and started magnifying incompetence and mistakes of others to an extreme
5. A mind that has always wanted to know about our origins and about where we are headed

Chapter IV

text vii
yada yada hi dharmasya
glanir bhavati bharata
abhyuthanam adharmasya
tadatmanam srijamy aham

text viii
paritranaya sadhunam
vinasaya ca duskrtam
dharma-samsthapanarthaya
sambhavami yuge yuge

Whenever and wherever there is a decline in rule of law, O descendant of Bharata, and a predominant rise of lawlessness, at that time I descend Myself. In order to deliver the pious and to annihilate the miscreants, as well as to re-establish the principles of law, I advent Myself millennium after millennium

I had a couple of notes in my phone that I noted while reading newspapers over the last few months. There isn’t any context to them and I have noted them out of random articles that I have been reading. Thought I shall put them here:

- “But all over the factory there developed a myth of the Japanese manager. The one who is groomed in the fires of the factory floor. And not on the syllabus of PowerPoint, Segmentation and Strategy”

- “ICBMs are the idiom of power in international relations. Even as economic might plays a greater role in shaping international power equations, hard power remains central both for national deterrence and for power-projection force capability”

- “No nation can be a major power without three key attributes: (1) a high level of autonomous and innovative technological capability (2) a capacity to meet basic defense needs indigenously. (3) a capability to project power far beyond its borders, especially through intercontinental-range weaponry”

I found these two quotes while surfing the net and thought I should post them here:

1. “If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all.” — Noam Chomsky, speaking in a BBC television interview with John Pilger on The Late Show

2. “We reap what we sow. We are the makers of our own fate. The wind is blowing; those vessels whose sails are unfurled catch it, and go forward on their way, but those which have their sails furled do not catch the wind. Is that the fault of the wind?…….We make our own destiny.” — Swami Vivekananda

I found these set of quotes on dogs. Some of them might be a little senti, but they make a lot of sense (especially to the ones who have had dogs). Thought I will post them here:

1. Money will buy a pretty good dog but it won’t buy the wag of his tail. – Josh Billings

2. Heaven goes by favour. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in. – Mark Twain

3. The greatest pleasure of a dog is that you may make a fool of yourself with him, and not only will he not scold you, but he will make a fool of himself, too. – Samuel Butler

4. Dogs have more love than integrity. They’ve been true to us, yes, but they haven’t been true to themselves. – Clarence Day

5. A dog is the only thing on earth that will love you more than you love yourself. – Josh Billings

6. Animals are such agreeable friends–they ask no questions, they pass no criticisms. – George Eliot

7. A dog’s best friend is his illiteracy. – Ogden Nash

8. If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you; that is the principal difference between a dog and a man. – Mark Twain

9. What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight, what counts is the size of the fight in the dog. – Mark Twain

10. The reason dogs have so many friends is because they wag their tails instead of their tongues. – Unknown

11. There is no faith which has never yet been broken, except that of a truly faithful dog. – Konrad Z. Lorenz

12. Our dogs will love and admire the meanest of us, and feed our colossal vanity with their uncritical homage. – Agnes Repplier

13. “The greater love is a mother’s; then comes a dog’s; then a sweetheart’s.” – Polish Proverb

“The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who, in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother’s keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon you.”

1. Crime cannot be tolerated. Criminals thrive on the indulgence of Society’s understanding. – From the movie Batman begins

2. I have plumbed the depth of Human cowardice and I realized that there is only one way to be right and that is to be in power. – Georges Bedault

3. Jis ke pas power hota hai, uska wrong bhi hamesha right hota hai – From the movie Sarkar (On a similar note as quote number 2)

4. A war represents a failure of diplomacy. – Tony Benn

5. Non violence leads to the highest ethics which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages. – Thomas A Edison

6. Passion for destruction is part of how a child discovers the world – Paulo Coelho (in 11 minutes)

7. Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition. – Timithy Leary

8. A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on. – John F. Kennedy

9. The promise given was a necessity of the past: the word broken is a necessity of the present. – Niccolo Machiavelli

10. Leaders don’t create followers, they create more leaders. – Tom Peters

11. In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities. In the expert’s mind there are few. – Shunryu Suzuki

12. The time has come to choose between what is right and what is easy – From the movie Harry Potter and the goblet of fire

I think these two are the best I have ever read:

13. Religion is the opium of the people. – Karl Marx

14. Hate oppression. Fear the oppressed. – V.S. Naipaul