‘Karma Chameleon’ is a song by English band ‘Culture Club', released in 1983. The single spent three weeks at number one on the US Billboard Hot 100 in early 1984, becoming the group's biggest hit and only US number-one single among their many top 10 hits. In an interview, ‘Culture Club’ frontman Boy George explained: “The song is about the terrible fear of alienation that people have, the fear of standing up for one thing. It's about trying to suck up to everybody. Basically, if you aren't true, if you don't act like you feel, then you get Karma-justice, that's nature's way of paying you back.”
In response to claims from singer-songwriter Jimmy Jones that the song plagiarises his hit ‘Handy Man’, Boy George stated, “I might have heard it once, but it certainly wasn't something I sat down and said, 'Yeah, I want to copy this.’”
I have always been a believer in Kama. Kama, in Hinduism, is one of the four goals of human life. Kama means ‘desire, wish, longing’ in Hindu and Buddhist literature. Kama often connotes sexual desire and longing in contemporary literature, but the concept more broadly refers to any desire, wish, passion, longing, the pleasure of the senses, the aesthetic enjoyment of life, affection, or love, with or without sexual connotations.
Kama is one of the four goals of human life in Hindu traditions. It is considered an essential and healthy goal of human life when pursued without sacrificing the other three goals: Dharma (virtuous, proper, moral life), Artha (material prosperity, income security, means of life), and Moksha (liberation, release, self-actualization). Together, these four aims of life are called ‘Purusartha’.
We of English custom generally refer to the Kama as being a kind of moral boomerang whereby our own behaviour comes back to hit us sweetly or harshly. Though we might throw dirt and ingratitude at another, it will come back in some other form to bite us on the bum. Similarly, our good deeds will also return ten-fold to us,
Love and peace. Bill xxx