He must have been around 6 years old, a shy and diffident boy trying to cope with being thrust into an alien environment. It was a christmas party for children where he was desperately trying to fit in, and not having any friends to play with, was consigned to the sidelines watching the merriment unfold. His retiring nature constrained him from breaking free from the shackles that held him back from new friends and experiences.

The new game was to run around the hall to try and find a special spot previously chosen by the organisers. He watched as the other children ran all over, forwards and backwards, up and down the hall with uninhibited glee. He found it childish and refused to partake in the general melee that was ensuing. Then the gears in his head started turning - where could this elusive spot be? Something clicked and he realised that at a christmas party, the most special place in the hall had to be near the christmas tree, all decked up. Slowly he started walking towards the spot he felt was the chosen one - still not running out of sheer contempt for the other kids. He might not have known what the word meant, but apparently knew how it felt. As he was nearing his destination, the bell went off signaling the end of the game. A little boy, seperated from his mother was wailing under the christmas tree, oblivious to the game going on around him, and surprise surprise - he was deemed to be in the chosen spot. Still crying, he was dragged onto the stage and given a bunch of presents - Merry Christmas!!

Smug at the validation of his logic, our young six year old took his first step towards developing a sub-concious attitude of intellectual superiority - after all, he had deduced correctly where the mystery spot would be, and that was enough. Unfortunately, any lessons that should have been learnt from this were conviniently overlooked. Life goes on all around us every second of every minute of every day. Either you participate in it, or it passes you by. To know something is of little value unless you can use that information, act upon it and derive value from it, otherwise, all knowledge is an unending excercise in futility, to be filed away, taking up space in your mental hard drive. Granted, there is plenty of free space available, but that is missing the point, as our young six year old failed to appreciate. Life is action - inertia just sucks out the potential life force in us, rendering us passive spectators while the game of life goes on before our eyes. Inaction denies us the chance to tap into our unmeasurable potential, denies us the chance to live as opposed to merely exist.

This attitude of inherent inertia would continue to haunt him for many more years, but how could he have realised it back then. After all, he was just a kid. Over the years he would meet many people who would try to shake him out of this lethargy, but when it is inscribed on your psyche, it takes some doing to cast it out of your system and banish it forever. It would be an uphill struggle, but atleast it would be a step forward, another small step in his search for Avalone.

This weekend marked the 40th anniversary of the release of one of my favourite albums, 'Sgt.Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band'. This album has long been considered a classic and one of the first 'concept' albums, leading to a whole new direction for music. However, recently while reading the Beatles Anathology, I came across a comment made by John Lennon about this album. According to him, Paul came up with the title, and they wrote the first two songs of the album - that's it. In his own words,"every other song could have been on any other album". The album went on to set standards and came to be regarded as a Concept Album "because we said it worked". The Beatles never set out to make this pysechedelic standard with a 'concept' running through and linking every song, it became that because the world put it on a pedestal and the fab four went along and said yes, it works! This brings me to the point of today's rambling - our penchant to create and worship false gods. This is not a comment on the Beatles, one of my favourite bands - they deserve every bit of praise ever showered on them, but rather a comment on how an album they released 40 years ago came to be elevated to such heights, based on an erroneous appropriation of praise.

Deification has always been the shortest, easiest and most transitory result of Warhol's 15 minutes of fame. While some actually deserved their time and got plenty more of it (The Beatles), most were raised up for worship only to be torn down later under the harsh gaze of a public given to the easy complacency of pop-culture and passing fads. In India, this phenomenon is even more pronounced, as can be seen in the illogical world of politics and films. Stars from the screen are elevated to such lofty heights that they actually begin to believe the hype they hear and read about. Politicians are promised and granted the reigns of a nation based solely on a last name. This is manifested in all its glory through the disastrous coupling of these two streams, when film stars turn into faux politicians, surviving for a short term at best (with few notable exceptions - and we all know how that turned out). The adoring public that carry out this deification are almost always forgotten thereafter, until sooner or later when they return with a fury previously reserved only for a woman scorned and topple their deities from previously unreachable heights. And yet, this circle continues like a merry-go-round without brakes. The yin needs the yang to be complete lest we disturb the delicate balance of the cosmos. So we continue to elevate, tear down and elevate again either the incumbent or the new claimant to his 15 minutes.

Einstien once said "God does not play dice". Since he was considered a genius, we tend to consider his views with more gravity than, say, my views. From Einstein's comment, we can draw the conclusion that everything happens for a reason, there are no accidents, and that serendipity and mischance are both predestined. The universe is functioning exactly as it should, a view shared by philosophers, scientists, artists and religion alike. This would mean that we, the public, are getting exactly what we deserve - the idolatory worship, the neglect and misuse and general apathy. Now what does all this have to do with 'Sgt.Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band' - not much I'd imagine. It's a great album that was elevated to legendary status for the wrong reasons. That does not deduct in any way from its musical merit, but serves as an analogy on how we tend to grant divine right all the time to phenomenon around us in a mistaken sense of glorification. Let us venerate the venerable, but for the right reasons.