One of my favourite Hindi songs of all time is Satyam Shivam Sundaram, sung by Lata Mangeshkar. God is truth, truth is goodness, goodness is beauty, so the song goes. The movie of the same name had a wonderful premise for a story: a man falls in love with a woman just by listening to her voice, but rejects her when he realises she has been disfigured. Unfortunately from what I understand, it is ultimately just another typical product of Bollywood, finding clever excuses for erotic scenes with a generous display of bosoms, so maybe one should be happier just listening to the song and not watch the movie.

Truth, Goodness and Beauty - three very simple words indeed that define the very ideals of human endeavours as civilised beings, yet so little of it is evident in our society which is mercenary and depraved, full of dishonesty, inequality, corruption and hypocrisy. Art is measured in our society by its economic value, while morals and facts exist only in academic books that no one cares to read. We prefer to watch movies that are more sexy and violent than we can experience in our mundane lives. The godly figures we look up to are heroes that only exist on the silver screen, the only beauty we understand is cinematic glamour, as if we have given up hope on real life. We tend to go for things that are superficial and choose the easiest ways in life according to the habits we are used to, we stop looking for deeper meanings in what we do. Scientists and engineers forget to invent things for the welfare of people who hardly have enough to eat, instead they keep coming up with latest models just for our luxury and vanity. Artists keep trying to perfect their techniques and worrying about how to sell themselves, but forget that the most important thing in any art work is the soul they put in it. The world fails to recognise that truth without goodness is aimless, just as beauty without truth and goodness is vain and meaningless.

The ultimate pursuit of truth is of course religion. But then 'truth' too often becomes an excuse for fighting and killing, all in the name of religion when in fact, it is just a human habit of settling old scores, or a skewed understanding of religious teachings. Ramakrishna has said: God is one but his aspects are many. Just as the same thing like water is called by different names by different people, "so the one Sat-kit-ananda, the Everlasting-Intelligent-Bliss, is invoked by some as God, by some as Allah, by some as Hari, and by others as Brahman". What we like to call religious difference is really a matter of cultural difference. Otherwise, if we say religions only serve to breed hatred, then they are not even half as positive as a sport like football - at least the World Cup has universal appeal and it inspires people to unite behind their countries too; there may be violence in a match but most of it is just taken out on a ball anyway. As the slogan goes at this year's World Cup in Germany, it's a time to make friends, say no to racism. Well maybe in the case of Indian communities, you need cricket instead like in the movie Lagaan, but you know what I mean.