The Elements

I came across this really fun song by Tom Lehrer about all the chemical elements known to science at that time. TL is witty, funny and incredibly well informed. Here is something I have linked from http://www.tomlehrer.org:

"... I went from adolescence to senility, trying to bypass maturity ..." - Tom Lehrer

Anyways you can listen to the flash rendition of this song here

``There's antimony, arsenic, aluminum, selenium,
And hydrogen and oxygen and nitrogen and rhenium
And nickel, neodymium, neptunium, germanium,
And iron, americium, ruthenium, uranium,
Europium, zirconium, lutetium, vanadium
And lanthanum and osmium and astatine and radium
And gold, protactinium and indium and gallium (inhale)
And iodine and thorium and thulium and thallium.

``There's yttrium, ytterbium, actinium, rubidium
And boron, gadolinium, niobium, iridium
And strontium and silicon and silver and samarium,
And bismuth, bromine, lithium, beryllium and barium.

``Isn't that interesting?
I knew you would.
I hope you're all taking notes, because there's gonna be a short quiz next period.

``There's holmium and helium and hafnium and erbium
And phosphorous and francium and fluorine and terbium
And manganese and mercury, molybdinum, magnesium,
Dysprosium and scandium and cerium and cesium
And lead, praseodymium, and platinum, plutonium,
Paladium, promethium, potassium, polonium, and
Tantalum, technetium, titanium, tellurium, (inhale)
And cadmium and calcium and chromium and curium.

``There's sulfur, californium and fermium, berkelium
And also mendelevium, einsteinium and nobelium
And argon, krypton, neon, radon, xenon, zinc and rhodium
And chlorine, carbon, cobalt, copper,
Tungsten, tin and sodium.

``These are the only ones of which the news has come to Harvard,
And there may be many others but they haven't been discovered.''

Continuing from my previous post, I think I should recall this composition by the genius composer Thyagaraja:

endarO mahAnubhavulu |
antarIki vandanamu ||


(Very) Roughy translated:
There are so many great men,
I bow down to them all

I would not be able to put the greatness of this divine person in perspective, simply because I lack the depth of understanding necessary and so, here are some good paces to start
link 1
link 2

I am not trying to compare Tom Lehrer with Thyagaraja, phluease! But I just recalled 2 lines from one of the compositions of this genius just to state what I feel about great people.

Andrei Tarkovsky

I got an email from my good friend M with some quotes from Andrei Tarkovsky, a Russian born film maker. Some of them were such that I identified with them instantly. It is at moments like this that when you are able to identify with the thoughts of a Russian Film maker or a Columbian writer or a Japanese Businessman that you could believe there is a universal human language, and that is the language of ideas and inspiration.

I thought I should share these quotes without having to forward the mail :D

Or I would risk this or this.

Ok, fine, that was not so relevant to this kind of mail, but who am I to say, one man's food is another's poison.


Anyways, here are the quotes

We have forgotten to observe. Instead of observing, we do things according to patterns.



It is so much easier to slip down than it is to rise one iota above your own narrow, opportunist motives. A true spiritual birth is extraordinarily hard to achieve.



...nobody wants, or can bring himself, to look soberly into himself and accept that he is accountable for his own life and his own soul. The connection between man's behaviour and his destiny has been destroyed; and this tragic breach is the cause of his sense of instability in the modern world...[man] has arrived at the false and deadly assumption that he has no part to play in shaping his own fate.



There is nothing more beautiful and mysterious than simplicity.



Artistic creation is by definition a denial of death. Therefore it is optimistic, even if in an ultimate sense the artist is tragic. And so there can never be optimistic artists and pessimistic artists. There can only be talent and mediocrity.



Juxtaposing a person with an environment that is boundless, collating him with a countless number of people passing by close to him and far away, relating a person to the whole world, that is the meaning of cinema.

Bitter Brew

I love black tea. Just the tea leaves, boiled.
Nobody in my immediate family drinks (at least used to drink, now yours truly drinks tea now) coffee or tea. Which to some, can sound like "nobody in my immediate family has five fingers". Did somebody say, "Freaks!! They deserve to be sold off to the nearest travelling freak show."?
Good.

While I was pretending to study Computer Science so that my father would continue to feed me, I first started drinking tea. I had to, in order to continue pretending to study, I had to convince some total ogres and some other buffoons that they should let me continue to pretend to study.
And this required that I endure a few weeks of intense siberian torture sessions where I would be asked questions that sounded a little like, "Confess! You are a worm trying to pass of as human. Confess! And Repent!"
Sometimes, exams could also be like this:

Well, it was then that I first befriended black tea. I found the taste too bitter and would add tons of sugar to it. Ostensibly, this was to keep me awake so that I could go through the "character building" sessions that were strangely, for some reason, called examinations . Maybe, those critters did have a sense of humour of their own, albeit twisted :D

After I was tired of pretending to study, I convinced somebody to let be pretend to work. Now, this was infinitely more easier for me, so easy, in fact, that I lost touch with my pal, black tea. For a long time later (not too long, I am only 8 years old) I used Diet coke as an awesome substitute

I met my old pal a year or so back, when I got tired of drinking kiddish coloured water that passes off as some exotic drink at Cafe, Coffee Day and decided to try tea. It was the bitterness in my pal that so endeared him to me this time around. I felt no need to add anything. Awesome. I have been hooked ever since.


I am readin this book "Plant Intoxicants - A Classic text on the use of mind altering plants" by Baron Ernst von Bibra where he puts it oh so sweetly, wondering why we adultrate the wonderful tasting tea with substances like milk and sugar.

And coming to the book, it was decent. It is more of a scientific dairy that describes the cultivation, harvesting, processing and usage of various plant intoxicants such as tea, coffee , opium, tobacco, hashish etc... The most interesting chapter was about Betel leaves and arecanuts.

A really pointless and rambling post, but I am just recovering from the fungal infection of the AC ducts in my office :D

Balance and Joy

I completed reading the book form of a collection of blogs by my friend and (now) his wife. Splendid!
Words that were once familiar to me, feelings that once embraced me, jump out of the book, from the lips of my friend and his wife. It is hard not to be moved. Words like joyous, frolic, goosebumps, yearning, memories, colours, love, passion, warmth, asong, sunshine, tumble out of the book in a torrent. I wonder why I try to protect myself from them sometimes. The fragrance of the sheer positivity and earnestness that so infused my mind while reading the book take me back to a time when they were my constant companions. It is difficult not to be swept away by all these refreshing thoughts. It is at times like this that I catch myself saying, "Life is Beautiful"

Here is a beautiful poem by Rudyard Kipling that I came across in the same book.
Moderation and Balance.
Equanimity.

If
- by Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!

When the mind is still

When the mind is still, just before you sleep, the thoughts and memories that were sunk deep inside the still pool of you mind float up like so many bloated, half rotten corpses of things that drowned in your mind.

When the mind is still, just before you sleep, the thoughts and memories that would have made you smile, when you dint want to, bubble up like the fizz in your favourite drink.

When the mind is still, just before you sleep, remember to brush your teeth :D

Some random riff-raff, its the weekend heebie jeebies hitting me, I may have to work for sometime this weekend :-(

Diet Coke

I am feeling rather flippant today, :-) so here goes:
DC here is Diet Coke, and for those of you who are too dense to know :D, or have been living with Osama or the Taliban, I have modelled it after "Cocaine"by JJ Cale.
when you want to hang out, and also want to keep a count, DC
the sleepies hit you, and you still want to wade through, DC
she dont weigh, she dont weigh, she dont weigh, DC

if youre not just a kid, and you dont want to take a hit, DC
when you wont take the bean, but you still need some caffeine, DC
she dont weigh, she dont weigh, she dont weigh, DC

it has aspartame and acesulfame, DC
phenyleketonurics, pity you wont ever try this shit, DC
she dont weigh, she dont weigh, she dont weigh, DC

The ingredients section on a can sounds like a chemistry experiment gone wrong :D and phenyleketonurics is spelt as phenyleketoneurics on the can. I love her just the same, how can you love anything that does not harm you in some way? :-)

Look what phenylketonuria means: (from here)
"A genetic disorder in which the body lacks the enzyme necessary to metabolize phenylalanine to tyrosine. Left untreated, the disorder can cause brain damage and progressive mental retardation as a result of the accumulation of phenylalanine and its breakdown products"

The return of Napoleon and Kafka's Amerika

I learnt something about Napoleon today. Yeah, that midget of a man, wearing those funny fluffy white pants and the weird hat and those knee length shoes.






(Oh! Those pretentious French and their sense of fashion!!)

I learnt that he was actually exiled twice.

The fist time aound, he was exiled to the Island of Elba in the year 1814. He retained command of approximately 1000 men and was supposedly in control of the entire economy of the island. Which is not much, Elba, in those days was apparently a poverty stricken speck of an Island off the coast of Italy.
So our man is there in Elba, terrorising the local populace with his towering personality and chasing the mountain goats around and plotting his return to France and glory. (Ok, I just made that up, but we do know that he did plot his return)

And then, almost magically, his turn comes in the year 1815. He commandeers some ships and sets sail towards France. He lands in a troubled and chaotic France with a restive poplation. He then starts marching towards Paris with his small army and things go his way like a knife through butter. Apparently, he goes unarmed and alone in front of the army sent against him in the french Alps and is so persuasive that the army comes over to his side.
This is repeated again and again all along his triumphant return to Paris. (Let me guess what he said, "make me emperor and you can have all the moules à la crème you guys want" :D)

And then he is able to do what many thought was impossible, he is able to raise an army of at least 100,000 before the other allied European powers could raise theirs and send them against a still consolidating opposition.
We would better appreciate this if we understand that all this, his entire journey from Elba all the way to his Waterloo took less than 100 days!!

Finally, almost in a tragi-comic replay of this return to France in opposite, he loses at Waterloo. Some historians believe that rainfall on one day, gave the defeated Prussians enough time to regroup and rush to the aid of the English, and if this had not happened, had it not rained, history and our little man's life might have taken a very different turn.

Ok, now coming to what this has got to do with Kafka's Amerika? I dont know about you guys, but saw a parallel in how Karl Rossmann, the main protagonist, gains so much so quickly with so little effort and then loses everything equally quickly through no fault of his. This happens twice in his life.

So thats the story of Napoleons return.

OK , heres a movie that I absolutely loved:

30 billion viewers, 1 bull

On most days, I read the morning dope lazing around in the living room. Today, I almost fell off the couch when I read a screaming headline with jazzy graphics on the TOI main page.
(OK, I get the TOI on wednesdays and Fridays *only*. Everybody needs to get some dope on the celebs, even cavemen like me)
It had nothing to do with celebs. And it had everything to do with football.
The line screamed out something like:
30 billion viewers
1 world
1 cup
Or something lame like that.
30 billion. Wait a minute. T H I R T Y B I L L I O N!!!!
three oh BILLION? three zero BILLION????
I am sure that includes all the baboons who run the TOI besides every single man woman child and human like thingie on planet earth. Well, I dont think it requires so many baboons to churn out drivel like the TOI does, anyways.
Last I checked, the population of planet earth (homo sapiens and chinese only) was less than 7 billion. Where did the rest of the 23 odd billion viewers come from??

Did they start counting Laloo Prasad Yadav's extended family as humans to get so many viewers suddenly?
Or is it that all human pets, cattle, Michael Jackson and Elvis Ghosts were included this time around?


All these "responsible journalists" "editors" "sub editors" "assistant editors" etc.. etc.. whos job is to maintan sanity and hide all signs of retadration and actually try to *read* what is being printed (if they are all literate baboons that is) and try not to jump up and down while plucking lice off each other when they are supposed to be performing a very rare and miraculous act called as due dilligence.

Somebody writes that 30 billion cumulative users will be watching the world cup and it suddenly miraculously becomes 30 billions viewers. Bring on the martians I say!!
It is like a man who after his second marriage anniversary claiming that he has cumulatively slept with 730 women!!!

(mutter mutter grr grr)

The Genographic Project

I came across this link quite by chance today and it is fairly interesting. What makes me extra interested is that I have always wondered about my ancestors, where they came from, were they like some fierce warrior types who roamed the planet pillaging and looting (that would be cool) or were they a lot like me, where did they actually come from?

Here is a short description of the project:

The National Geographic Society, IBM, geneticist Spencer Wells, and the Waitt Family Foundation have launched the Genographic Project, a five-year effort to understand the human journey—where we came from and how we got to where we live today. This unprecedented effort will map humanity's genetic journey through the ages.

The fossil record fixes human origins in Africa, but little is known about the great journey that took Homo sapiens to the far reaches of the Earth. How did we, each of us, end up where we are? Why do we appear in such a wide array of different colors and features?

Such questions are even more amazing in light of genetic evidence that we are all related—descended from a common African ancestor who lived only 60,000 years ago.

All these questions may not be answered by this study, but I am sure it would be interesting nevertheless. I am really tempted to participate in this study. Maybe I will come to know that I am descendant of a disgraced slave woman in Chengiz Khan's harem :D, or may be I will come to know that my ancestors are most related to some remote forest dwelling tribe from south of the vindhyas, or maybe they were all somehow related to some secret egyptian order that brought dead people alive.

The only problem is the cost. It is going to cost me $130!! I am thinking hard, real hard about this one :-)

Here are some interesting trivia: (Totally unrelated to the genographic project)

The origin of the military salute.
The following explanation of the origin of the hand salute is perhaps closest to the truth: It was a long-established military custom for juniors to remove their headgear in the presence of superiors. In the British Army as late as the American Revolution a soldier saluted bv removing his hat. But with the advent of more cumbersome headgear in the 18^th and 19^th centuries, the act of removing one’s hat was gradually converted into the simpler gesture of grasping the visor, and issuing a courteous salutation. From there it finally became conventionalized into something resembling our modern hand salute.


Which side of the road do you drive on?

From this link about the change from Left side driving to right side driving in Sweden in the early Sunday morning at 5:00 on the 3rd of September 1967.














Pamphlet from 1967 about Sweden's change to right-hand driving. By Anders Hanquist.

Of course where I live, you can choose to drive on the left side, right side, topside or under the road or wherever, drive and just dont die :D

Obscenely Disgustingly Irresistibly Attractive

Anybody who reads the numblog should not get a wrong idea of who I am, after reading the last two posts.
:-)
With this in mind, I am going ahead and posting this one which gives a glimpse of the true me :D
Dont mistake me, I am but 8 years old.
This one here might sum it all up:

I was able to find just the right calvin comic by using this website. Its awesome, it lets you search the text in the comics and locate the precise comic image file, for example ch851119.

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The story of the incredible Mookkusali Samiyar (Snot Swami)

This one first appeared in the Outlook, that is a subscription link, so you can directly access it here .

I am going to save you the trouble of clicking on that link by quoting part of it here:

The long-locked man is just about five feet tall and an undernourished
40 kg. Clad in a yellow veshti, he lives in the Adi Dravidar (Dalit)
Colony, where the roofs of most of the 27 government-built one-room
houses have collapsed.

Seated on a gunnysack, Arumugam pedals his sewing machine, stitching a
green blouse. It’s early on a Friday, and before the clients turn up, he
asks us to fetch him two 180 ml bottles of Cosmopolitan whiskey, two
plastic glasses, two water sachets, a packet of savoury
‘mixture’, some pickle and five idlis. Of course, the ‘prasadam’ will be
of even greater value if you add ganja, pan parag and Ganesh beedi to
the list. The man at the state-owned liquor shop 2 km away knows at
once: Is all of this for the Snot Swami? he asks.

After a turmeric-scrub bath in a lotus-strewn pond, Arumugam drapes
himself in a sari, sits below a tree near the Karuppusamy temple, and
elevates himself to a higher plane of consciousness by gulping 360 ml of
rotgut whiskey in 40 minutes. "Other swamis hide what they drink, I
don’t," he says.

Arumugam makes pronouncements on visa cases, court cases and health
problems. However, his speciality is blessing childless couples. He
tells Outlook: "I have blessed 5,700 couples with children." It’s a
claim nobody can confirm. Or contest. He says he has been rendering this
service for more than 15 years, though it is only in the last two years
that his fame has spread. "A man on whose kidneys the Coimbatore doctors
had given up came to me. I cured him," he says.

On an eventful Friday, more than 100 people—of all castes and
communities—seek out the cross-dressing swami. After a few swigs of
whiskey, idlis, pickle and tobacco powder, Arumugam is able to generate
a great deal of phlegm—and he lets it fly. Snot and spit fly out of his
sharp nose and mouth and hit the faces of those seeking his counsel. To
wipe it off would be blasphemous. For Snot Swami’s disciples, this is
the best way to be blessed. The irony is: If Arumugam was just another
Dalit agricultural labourer, people would have refused water from him.
Now, they welcome his snot on their faces.


I thought of some nice things to say after reading this;
"By the slimy grace of the holy snot"
"May the holy snot rain down upon you"
"May His Holiness, Shri, Shri, KHRAAK, Mookkusali Samiyar shower his ample blessings on you"

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Kopi Luwak (Civet Cat Coffee aka Cat Shit Coffee)


Now for those of you doubting thomases who think I am making this up, here is a google search link for you. Read, see and understand the wonderful world of haute whatever.

Here are the gory details:

Only about 50 kilos of this blend is collected per year, making it the ultimate in exclusivity and rarity. And when we tell you where the beans have, er, been, you'll understand why. You see the primary reason for Civet Coffee's distinctive taste is that it's been partially fermented by passing through the digestive system of a Sumatran Civet Cat. No, really!

Basically this feral feline prowls Sumatran coffee plantations at night, choosing to eat only the finest, ripest cherries. The stones (which eventually form coffee beans) are then collected by sifting through the Civet's number twos.

Revered for its luscious chocolatey flavour Civet Coffee is totally safe, totally sterilised and totally delicious. Plus there's no discernable aftertaste.

The above is a quote from here. There is no "discernable aftertaste"!!!!!

Added on 8 June:
Here is a picture of the beans:

Thanks to AK for pointing me to this awesome blog that has the picture.

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I shall now retire with a warm fuzzy feeling of contentment :D

Shantaram

I read Shantaram, a novel by Gregory David Roberts quite some time back. My good friend M, and myself collected some quotes from the book to share them with some friends.

This is a good book, but is the bestest thing about it is the sheer passion with which it has been written. It better be, it is supposed to be a "fictionalised account of real incidents".

Some of these quotes can be trite and down right stupid, or very profound depending on the ambient temperature, comfort of your seat, well being of your digestive system, whether the Karnataka State Assembly is in session or not, whether you had any "white powder" in your champagne or not, or any other random thing.

Take your pick and eNj0i :-)

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Truth is a bully that we all pretend to like (Karla) - unknown page

I dont know what frightens me more, the power that crushes us, or our endless ability to endure it (Karla) - 336


Sometimes we love with nothing more than hope. Sometimes we cry with everything exept tears. In the end that's all there is: love and its duty, sorrow and its truth. In the end that's all we have - to hold on tight until the dawn - 346


Some of the worst wrongs, were caused by people who tried to change things (Karla) - 367
(Lin is considering how he had befriended a mouse and used to feed it and kept it as a very dear pet, and because he taught it to be friendly to humans, his cell mate is able to capture it and cruelly crucify it)


It's forgiveness that makes us what we are. Without forgiveness, our species would've annihilated itself in endless retributions. Without forgiveness, there would be no history. Without that hope, there would be no art, for every work of art is in some way an act of forgiveness. Without that dream, there would be no love, for every act of love is in some way a promise to forgive. We live on because we can love, and we love because we can forgive. - 370


One of the ironies of courage and why we prize it so highly, is that we find it easier to be brave for somone else than we do for ourselves alone - 381


The tendency towards complexity has carried the universe from almost perfect simplicity to the kind of complexity that we see around us, everywhere we look. The universe is always doing this. It is always moving from the simple to the complex.
(And the ultimate complexity is God according to Khader Khan aka Khader Bhai, the underworld boss. Anything that helps this move towards complexity is good, anything that destroys this move towards complexity is evil.) -480


Happiness is a myth. it was invented to make us buy things (Karla) - 491


The only time he ever stopped hating himself was when the risk he faced became so great that he acted without thinking or feeling anything at all (A dutch mercenary) - 583


Heroin is a sensory deprivation tank for the soul. - 630
Floating on the dead sea of the drug stone, there's no sense of pain, no regret or shame, no feelings of guilt or grief, no depression and no desire. The sleeping universe enters and envelops every atom of existence. Insensible stillness and peace disperse fear and suffering. Thoughts drift like ocean weeds and vanish into distant, grey somnolency, unpercieved and indeterminable. The body succumbs to cryogenic slumber: the listless heart beats faintly, and breathing slowly fades to random whispers. Thick nirvanic numbness clogs the limbs, and downward, deeper, the sleeper slides and glides towards oblivion, the perfect and eternal stone.


(Lin is charging at the Russians in Afghanistan here)
And I looked at the men, the brave and beautiful men beside me, running into the guns and God help me for thinking it, and God forgive me for saying it, but it was glorious, it was glorious, if glory is a magnificient and raptured exaltation. It was what love would be like, if love were a sin. It was what music would be, if music could kill you. And I climbed a prison wall with every running step. - 779


Nothing in any life, no matter how well or poorly lived, is wiser than failure or clearer than sorrow. And in the tiny precious wisdom they give to us, even those dreaded and hated enemies, suffering and failure, have their reason and their right to be. - 872


Luck is what happens to you when fate gets tired of waiting - 918


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There you go, I had a readymade post :D

Added Later: Here are some more quotes that I posted recently
http://tantrik-porter.blogspot.com/2006/08/some-more-shantaram.html

Bulleh and Sarvagna

I came across this number by Rabbi Shergill called Bulleh ki jaana main kaun, and I found it awesome. I mean, when was the last time you heard lyrics like that coming from the world of IndiPop, known more for mind numbing and banal lyrics. The best way to watch these is with the volume muted :D That way you wont miss all those skimpily clad bombs gyrating around. (I am not complaining about *that* :D )

I did some googling around, and found out about Bulleh Shah, a sufi mystic from Punjab, who had originally written these beautiful words.

Something interesting that I noticed in the song composed by Bulleh Shah, he uses the word "Bulleh Shah" as a kind of anchor to end stanzas. You could see parallels with the "vachana sahitya" originating from the veerashaiva movement in parts of Karnataka state in modern India. There is also a strong contempt for ritualism and all forms of authority in both.

I am reproducing the lyrics of the song here from here

Bulleh! ki jaana maen kaun	Bulleh! to me, I am not known
Na maen momin vich maseet aan Na maen vich kufar diyan reet aan Na maen paakaan vich paleet aan Na maen moosa na pharaun. Bulleh! ki jaana maen kaun Na maen andar ved kitaab aan, Na vich bhangaan na sharaab aan Na vich rindaan masat kharaab aan Na vich jaagan na vich saun. Bulleh! ki jaana maen kaun. Na vich shaadi na ghamnaaki Na maen vich paleeti paaki Na maen aabi na maen khaki Na maen aatish na maen paun Bulleh!, ki jaana maen kaun Na maen arabi na lahori Na maen hindi shehar nagauri Na hindu na turak peshawri Na maen rehnda vich nadaun Bulla, ki jaana maen kaun Na maen bheth mazhab da paaya Ne maen aadam havva jaaya Na maen apna naam dharaaya Na vich baitthan na vich bhaun Bulleh , ki jaana maen kaun Avval aakhir aap nu jaana Na koi dooja hor pehchaana Maethon hor na koi siyaana Bulla! ooh khadda hai kaun Bulla, ki jaana maen kaun	Not a believer inside the mosque, am I Nor a pagan disciple of false rites Not the pure amongst the impure Neither Moses, nor the Pharoh Bulleh! to me, I am not known Not in the holy Vedas, am I Nor in opium, neither in wine Not in the drunkard`s intoxicated craze Niether awake, nor in a sleeping daze Bulleh! to me, I am not known In happiness nor in sorrow, am I Neither clean, nor a filthy mire Not from water, nor from earth Neither fire, nor from air, is my birth Bulleh! to me, I am not known Not an Arab, nor Lahori Neither Hindi, nor Nagauri Hindu, Turk (Muslim), nor Peshawari Nor do I live in Nadaun Bulleh! to me, I am not known Secrets of religion, I have not known From Adam and Eve, I am not born I am not the name I assume Not in stillness, nor on the move Bulleh! to me, I am not known I am the first, I am the last None other, have I ever known I am the wisest of them all Bulleh! do I stand alone? Bulleh! to me, I am not known

And to end this, I quote some of the writings of sarvagna a great wandering monk from Karnataka, India

suTTa bUdiya tandu daTTawAgi baDidu
neTTaneye sreshTa swargawa padEwaDey
katte tA paTTa keDenenda sarvagna

If only heaven could be reached just by wearing ash thickly, even a donky that rolls in ash will be able to go to heaven.
(Wearing the sacred ash as religious markings, especially on the forehead, is common among hindus (shaivaites))