dei sridhara!!...ennamo poda

Have you ever had an original idea? Yes?...Good. Then you would surely have enjoyed the feeling of floating on air, looking down at fellow mortals who just do not have it in them to be as original and enlightened as you. You almost feel that you are a Buddha.(Oh well I am already a Buddha, for a different reason though). Let me tell you, the feeling that stumbling upon an original idea gives, is better than sex, trust me. Er...well you can't trust me on that currently, but you do get the picture...Good. But then what happens if you find that your "original" idea also happened to be an original idea of some guy who got at it even before you were born? Sunk...yes...Deflated.... yes....and no I am not giving an analogy for that.

I happen to have a large number of such "original" ideas, which by some underhand scheme these blokes (who go around in the guise of scientists and philosophers) manage to pinch when they feel like it. And employing some type of classified technology they travel back in time to a period of their choice, secure in the knowledge that, that technology is beyond me currently. Some of them like Mahavira even went back a more than a couple of thousand years to ensure that I don't end up following him there. History claims that he was one of the earliest to speak about ecological footprints. He advised each one of us to live a life like a bird leaving no trail behind. And how many know that I arrived at the same conclusion, a mere 2500 years later. None......I tell you it is just not fair.

I spend years ignoring my school and college curriculum, locking myself in a room, developing a theory of equality of all being, doing away with the idea of relative value of beings which is an extremely anthropocentric view and developed my theory of the existence of a form of socialism in nature. And what happens? Some fellows led by Arne Naess propound the basic tenets of Deep Ecology and carry away all the fame. And what is the advantage they had over me? A small matter of 40 years.

Having given up trying to claim rights to Deep Ecology, I next concentrated on developing my pet misanthropic theory of man being a biological error who multiplies and destroys like a virus and is nothing but a pest in the grander scheme of things. Now who asked Mr Ernst Mayr to propound the same thing (in fact Mayr used the same words "biological error") a few decades before me. Thanks to Chomsky and Hugo Chavez, people think that Mr Mayr was the only man who happened to have this train of thought, even as I continue to fret and fume over my fate of having born a few decades late. With the regularity with which this sort of thing is happening, I won't be surprised if there is a conspiracy involved. There seems to a pretty concerted effort by some superior powers to not give me my due share of credit to some of the most profound theories that mankind has known.

But then one can never keep a good man down. Offlate I have stopped fretting about such issues and have instead adopted a different tactic. If no one else praises you, praise yourself. If you can't fight them, join them. Such Shiva Kherasque maxims meant that I have stopped grudging these folk and instead started claiming membership to their elite circle. And I insist on feeling good about all my original discoveries, even if some one else thought about it before me. So these days you would find me doing only the Janakraj thing after making any profound discovery. "dei sridhara eppadida ippadi ellam....eppadi unnala ippadiellam mudiyudhu...ennamo poda...."