THE INDIAN COMMENTATOR

“It did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us.” __Dr. Viktor E. Frankl ( Man’s Search for Meaning )   Image Courtesy: Google In Man’s Search For Meaning Dr. Viktor E. Frankl introduces his psychotherapeutic idea ‘Logotherapy’ and the events and revelations that led him into the practical realization of his hypotheses. The book has three parts: Part One: Experiences in a concentration camp; Part Two: Logotheraphy in a nutshell; and Postscript: The case for a tragic optimism. The book is graced by a wonderful preface by Harold S. Kushner , in which he contextualizes the book for general readers. As Dr. Frankl himself asserts repeatedly, this book is limited in its space and possibility to include the complete scholarship of Logotherapy. Instead, one should look at Man’s Search for Meaning as an attempt to elucidate what is concisely expressed in the subheading: “The classic tribute to hope from the holocaust”. Part One...

Is it Shakespeare who asked:- “What's in a name? that which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet.”? Let me think. Yes indeed, in his everlasting love story, Romeo and Juliet . Image Courtesy:sports.ndtv.com Before 1994, Sachin was a rare name in Kerala. It’s a north Indian name, and Keralites did not prefer trying it, ever before. Then something happened. The year between 1994 and 2000 coincided with the rise of a new religion in India, the land of all religions. Much like any other religion, there was a central god figure to this one too. They called this new religion, Cricket, and named their god Sachin. Image Courtesy: Google Indian culture has never been reluctant to worship human idols. Some critics have dubbed it a profitable industry, and some others a fraud. Every epithet appeared pale in the affinity a vast majority of people exhibited towards these human-gods. God-men and God-women even turned to become political kingmakers. Sa...

Some of you might have gone through my recent post titled ‘What’s Meaningful For You?’ . This was a short fiction in my attempt to extrapolate the significance of the few lines that struck me from the book Man’s Search for Meaning . Now I realize, there was more to it. It was not just about the meaning of a symbolic dream, but also about a strong enemy that often does some good to us all--fear.   Fear seems to be the most primitive of human emotions, which often works as an alarm bell and releases various signals through hormones in human body thus influencing mind to take the best suited decision at the time of need. Fear, however has a very deep cultural meaning as well. This emotion signifies the inability to be in control of a certain occasion or the failure in keeping one’s nerves calm when met with adversity. As a result the coward flees from the war zone. Many a passages from holy texts of religions as well as ideologies proclaim it best to be full of courage. “S...