A Story Called .....LIFE...
This is no Story...Just things happening in my life, my ideas, my sorrows, my fears and all such crap. Well, you must be thinking "Why am I here then?" Because we all have similar lives. Similar problems but different solutions. Similar joys and sorrows but different kind of handling. May be, You can see something in my life I don't and tell me. May be, you can learn from my mistakes, may be you can identify with my happiness
Friday, November 26, 2010
ఆలోచన - ఆవేదన / Aalochana - Aavedana
Saturday, September 25, 2010
Personal Electronics’ (R)evolution
Monday, August 23, 2010
"What's Your Problem With GOD?"
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Living in the age of Instant Marriages and Honor Killings
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
The (in)significance of Kasab’s sentence
Amir Ajmal Kasab, the lone surviving terrorist of the 26/11 massacre, recently flooded the news channels, the main papers, the editorials, live discussions on TV, offices, bedrooms, living rooms, cafe’s etc.. The reason?
He has finally been brought to justice after 17 months. He will be hanged to death. The Kasab who walked into the Chatrapathi Shivaji Terminus in his cool black T-shirt and cargoes, with a gun in his hand pumping bullets into innocent people, waiting for their trains to attend a marriage, appear for an exam, begin their vacation, go back home, sending them to their graves long before they were due with a cold, emotionless exterior has finally been brought to justice. Or, has he been?
A number of people saw their loved ones dissolve into death in their own blood pools and life for them has never been the same after witnessing the most violent and brutal scene of their life. For them, the verdict is the revenge. One man’s death for the bruised and lost lives of hundreds is not justice or revenge in any way. Does the killer regret what he did? Does he feel sick that he is responsible for mayhem in many lives? Does he have the courage to look into the face of his parents and talk to them (if at all they are brought to him)? Does he ask for forgiveness from the God whose war he was tricked into believing he was fighting? We need to find answers to these questions before we can conclude anything about justice or revenge.
We, the media and the world have endowed upon him a celebrity status second only to Osama Bin Laden (in terrorists). There is however a very fundamental difference between the two. The latter is considered to be the mastermind of the greatest terror attack (read 9/11) while the former is just a pawn of some masterminds who decided to test the resilience of a city and a country to terrorism. How does sentencing the pawn while the masterminds and conspirators are freely walking and scheming more such attacks in a country that pretends to be oblivious to its terror problem mean justice?
Does this sentence discourage the other “pawns” from playing the deadly game. No, it doesn’t sadly. The other pawns are removed from the world training in some training camps, listening to hate speeches and growing hostility inside them to kill more innocent people while feeling lucky that God himself picked them for the great service to their religion. Even if the other pawns learn about Kasab’s fate, they will grow more hatred towards the country and be more motivated to seek revenge for their “soldier” or get fooled into believing that Kasab like the other soldiers has accomplished his “duty” and is finally going to “Jannat” (heaven). Does this mean Kasab’s sentence is counterproductive? No! Sentencing Kasab at the earliest will mean more funds for the government to concentrate on the welfare programs. Enough of money (read more than 39 crores) and time has been wasted on him.
Justice does not just mean sentencing Kasab and celebrating the verdict. Justice means restoration of normalcy in the lives of victims. Justice means punishing the conspirators and stopping them from poisoning more young vulnerable minds. Justice means not having to see such an attack. Justice means more allocation of budget for development. Justice means forgetting that this ever happened. Justice means being able to sleep without any fear. Let us not celebrate and forget that the task is still not complete and we have a long way to go.
While Kasab is only the arrow and more such arrows will keep coming till the marksman exists, let us not forget that being an arrow doesn’t make Kasab any less of a culprit.
P.S: Watch this video to understand the role of the handlers and the terrorists 'on the job'
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
What do you want to be when you grow big?
This is a question we all have been posed in our early childhood. Early childhood was when we had no idea of what the world was like and all we knew was that Popeye who ate spinach to give him strength to beat up Bluto who was more than double his size was cool. That the hero who beats up a villain and millions of the villain’s sidekicks was macho. So, if the hero was a truck driver we wanted to be one. Popeye was a sailor so we wanted to be a sailor. We laugh out loud at the innocence of a child who proudly declares that he wants to be a bus conductor when he grows up without realizing that it was the innocence in us that allowed us to pose such a question. It is ironic that when no one really knows what one wants to be, they are asked a million times by everybody regarding what they will grow up to be but, when you grow big enough to make such a decision nobody is bothered because the entire world has already decided what you should be.
In this process we never realize what we truly want to be, what is our true calling. We are never encouraged to find out the answer. There is not so much time. IIT and Medical special coaching is started at class 5 itself. Your parents want you to be a doctor because they think they did not have a chance to be one and you are their chance to fulfill their unfulfilled dream. By the time you reach class 10 you realize that doctor is the last thing you want to be but, sorry son too late. 5 years of special coaching later you cannot say so. Especially with so much money spent on you.
So you slog and become a doctor when you wanted to be someone else. You don’t complain either as the money is good. All you care about now is money. Why? Because you have been told time and again, directly and indirectly that money is all we need.
Now, you have accumulated a lot of money, bought yourself a big car, an air conditioner, a costly sofa set and you are still not happy. Work pressure, stress you blame them. Somebody suggests, take a vacation. You go on one. You return and do well for 2 months and again the emptiness, hollowness returns and so you go on another break. The cycle never breaks. You are never really happy. Why? Because you don’t truly love what you do. Ok you became good at this by doing it for all the years. Ok you know nothing but this. So, keep doing it. It’s too late to complain.
Ok. Put that aside do you know what you love to do?
No. Why? You have never been allowed to find out. Your inner voice was always drowned by others opinions and suggestions. You hope badly to know what you truly love to do but, you don’t find out because you never knew in the first place what you were good at and now the inner voice is muted, dead.
Every parent wants their child to be an engineer from IIT or a doctor from the biggest college in the country, after all its a matter of pride. Has the parent ever looked into the eye of its child and asked, “Beta, tell me what you want to be... Whatever... I will stand by you and help you become that.”
Never.... Anything other than doctor or engineer is not safe, its risky. They want us to be doing something that is safe and not something we like. It is their responsibility to get you into a safe spot in life. Wrong.
It’s their responsibility to help you realize what you truly love and what you deem worthy of doing for the rest of your life.
Now, don’t get me started on love. Love is a strangled word. We are only told about 2 types of love all our life. One, motherly love or family love. Two, girl/boy love. Of course, all the movies are busy glorifying the “type two” love. All the movies that attempt to glorify “type one” love are panned as being too senti, emotional, melodramatic.
Now, no one talks about the true love. Don’t we need to love something we spend doing for more than half of our life? Work. No one cares about that or even talks. The one who talks has gone mad or is dreaming because he is clearly talking something that no one else had the courage to think. So, he is wrong.
This brings us to the point of social acceptability. Why is the son of a engineer mocked at for aspiring to be an actor or director? Why is the son of a barber considered a very ambitious person for aspiring to be a doctor? Because, it is the way society has decided it to be. An actor’s son should be an actor. A doctors son, a doctor. Why? It’s in the genes.
Now answer this. What if the doctor is a better actor and became a doctor by accident? Who cares? No time for such stuff. That accident was a blessing in disguise, they say.
We are too sucked into this society thing without realizing that we can also give direction to what is socially acceptable.
Was Amitabh Bachchan’s father an actor? What if he had not risked trying to be an actor and instead been a doctor?
I know. We would miss a legend but that’s a different story altogether. Why? Because amitabh is not your son.
Ok now leave it. What’s your problem? I am a doctor and am not very happy. So what, my wife has enough money to shop every week and my kids go to the best coaching centre. At least they are happy.
Hmm.. You wish... Now, did you ask your children what they wanted to be? Yes, of course I know. They want to be engineers.... Like your parents knew you wanted to be a doctor? I ask.
Look... Love marriages were not socially accepted till sometime back but, now many parents proudly boast it as a symbol of modernity in their thinking and wider perspective.
Do you realize why your kids now have to face so much competition, when you could do away with one-tenth of this competition? The answer is simple because back then people wanted to be many things... Now all the parents want their child to be the same thing and so this competition. All the parents want their children to be “Another brick in the wall”...”another face in the crowd”
Friday, October 30, 2009
Salty superstitions
The billion people of India still believe in a million odd superstitions. Though India has progressed enormously on various fronts, dropping off these superstitions is something it has still not been able to achieve. As a result, a part of India is still struck in the past.
One of the most common superstitions is that passing salt hand to hand causes the two persons involved to get into a fight. Is there a logic behind this? I can’t find any. Can you? People till this day and this includes people in my family believe in this and make sure that they never pass salt. They just move the salt jar a little closer, when asked to pass whereas they are willing to pass other huge vessels into the hand. If logic is allowed to speak, it would be advised not to pass other vessels containing rice or dal hand to hand because the weight of the vessel may be too much for the hand and sometimes they may slip out of the hand.
Every superstition or custom has a history behind it. There is a hidden logic behind everything. For example, it is well-known that Indians use far more spices in their food than do the people of the west. Why? There is a reason. India is a hot place and in the olden days there were no refrigerators. So, more salt, more oil and more spices helped retain the food longer. As an analogy, observe the same thing is done with pickles. Lot of salt and oil and also pickle is generally prepared in summer. The west was cooler and so there was no need to worry about preservation. Now, in India there are no preservation problems with a refrigerator in almost every house (at least in urban India) but, we are still continue the practice. The purpose is lost but the practice goes on.
We call it our tradition, our culture and retain many such blind illogical beliefs. We are just denying to drop off the past and move ahead. I would like to quote another example. During some festivals, women go to snake holes, burrows or pits and offer milk to the snake to please the snake goddess. Science has proved that snakes do not drink milk and if anything, the milk that is poured will suffocate and kill the snake thereby, displeasing the goddess, in case of her existence. Why do people still flood their pits with gallons of milk? In this process, lot of milk which can otherwise be used to feed the needy is thrown to the ground. My grandmother proudly claims that these beliefs are only increasing and the crowd at the snake pits is only increasing. Isn’t this sad?
Then, I had a discussion with her, my granny, and explained her all this. She says she is not bothered and it is an age old custom and she will follow till she is alive. When I say that she could kill the snake, she says there are no snakes in the pit. What is the point then? I ask. She shrugs off the question and goes away furious that I questioned her age old practice.
I tried to get her rid of her belief about salt and fight. I very devotedly planned and made sure that each day she give me salt straight into my hand else, I would not eat food. This worked for many days and each day I showed that we never fought and how the superstition is wrong. I thought she understood till the day she launched a full fledged attack on me saying that she will drop the salt jar to the floor in case I tried to get her to give me the salt straight to my hand. She was furious and my sister joined the chorus. I was heart broken and dejected. I put the salt jar on the table and returned to my room. She had succeeded. She proved the superstition right. Salt causes fight. With the fear of resurrecting her faith in that superstition I held back all my efforts.
I had lost the war at home. I began the war at home. I thought I will take it to the world after I had won it at home. But, I lost the war. But, it is only the war I lost and not my hope. I will keep fighting in newer and better ways to get most people at home if not all to drop these superstitions. I guess its time we all started such wars, get people to think rationally and question age old established customs. Start from the homes and friends. This way the campaign will spread and one day India will get rid of most of its superstitions.
Now the question, why the fuss? Hmm. Remember how few years earlier lord Ganesh drank milk. There was a scarcity of milk for a few weeks after that. The loss was clearly visible and quantifiable because it was a sensation and more importantly it happened at the same time all over India. Many other things like this keep happening day in and day out in separate incidents and so the loss is overlooked. If this loss in all its forms is quantified the results will be shocking. Is that all? As if this is a small thing in a country still wretched by poverty. But, there is a bigger issue. What these superstitions do is make people, especially the younger generation, weak minded, what India needs is a strong-willed younger generation not a generation that waits for five minutes after sneezing because sneezing brings bad luck or goes back to home on seeing a black cat in the way.