November 29, 2009

Fed up

I am fed up of the money mindedness of the world around me. Everything begins and ends with monetary considerations. Decisions relating to education, career, marriage, relationships, future - all are linked primarily to financial pay-offs. There seem to be absolutely no acceptance for the unconventional/non-conformists. Life, it appears, is only about adding more moolahs to your wealth by focusing only on monetary aspects of the world. I have been asked quite a lot of times by friends and relatives as to why I have not bought a house yet. It's as if that should be the key aim in life. Get a house, a car, then a bigger house, then a more lavish car. Gosh, where does this all end! Marriages are based on financial status. Sure, money is important. But so much that you become obsessed with it? You forget your human fabric in the quest for financial dreamworld?

My fellow professor beautifully described the virus: It is always about financial and mental strengths. Moral strengths are hardly looked for. So very true. Character and the strength of your values ranks a distant third or fourth may be to your ability to amass more wealth. And then utilise that wealth for things that you never really need or use. And then, propagate the same way of living to every one around you. Crazy.

Why can't someone dance to a music that the world neither hears or understands? Why can't an individual strive to do things that he believes is right? Why must he be always judged on social norms of wealth and assets? Why should the efforts of being a genuine human being not rated as highly as efforts to create wealth? Why must things be loaded on to him without realizing his preference or core beliefs? Why must a person with lesser bank balance be seen as less successful?

The longer these crazy ways of measuring happiness exists, more difficult it would be for the younger lot to create their own set of values. We are pushing them to be stereotypes, to be followers rather than leaders. We help them to learn the tricks of making money but not the ways of growing as human beings. We includes me and I cannot hate myself more for it.

Let me share an incident here. Something that happened few weeks back and will probably chase me for the rest of my life. While returning from my trip to Kerala, a family friend with me had a very heavy bag containing stuff bought from there. They seeked the aid of a railway porter for carrying the bag. The porter who came forward was a visibly weak, 60+ years old person. I could not imagine how he would carry that bag all the way through the long series of stairs. So I offered to carry that bag and give him my light bag to him instead. To that, the family friends and parents asked me not to since it is his job to carry it. I tried to insist but gave it up to avoid creating a scene. And for the next 10-15 minutes, I cursed myself seeing the old man carry that severely heavy bag and struggling for breath. I could have forced others and took the bag myself. I could have not listened to anyone. Instead, I chose to let him carry that bag.

The face of the man and his desperation for the 50Rs. he was doing the work for makes me feel ashamed of my lack of ability to change things around. Rational, educated people look away from such 'trivial' things perhaps. And that is precisely the reason why I am starting to hate the way a lot of us are, more so myself. Selfish, self-centered pigs are all what a lot of us are.

November 22, 2009

Quote of the day

Major Sandeep Unnikrishnan's father quoted in Times of India:

People want a Bhagat Singh, but in a neighbour's house.

How apt and true! Pretty much the reason why the world at large have issues that needs to be sorted but have not been. We all believe somebody else should do the needful.

November 20, 2009

A point well made

A friend's Facebook status message reads:

A Maharashtra born and brought up Shivajirao Gaikwad, calls himself a ‘Tamilian’ because that place made him ‘Rajnikant’. Hence he feels indebted to it and calls himself as ‘Tamilian’. Therefore when I don’t mind earning/living in Maharashtra, why should I mind the local culture and being called as Maharastrian.............. because it’s not about being Marathi, its about being 'Maharashtrians'.


Well put Romi.

November 19, 2009

November 11, 2009

Very useful

I have not verified it. Believe it's genuine. Please pass on this piece of information to all.

Socialism

Received this as a forward. Interesting read.

An economics professor at a local college made a statement that he had never failed a single student before, but had once failed an entire class. That class had insisted that Obama's socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer.

The professor then said, "OK, we will have an experiment in this class on Obama's plan".

All grades would be averaged and everyone would receive the same grade so no one would fail and no one would receive an A. After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a B. The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy.

As the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too so they studied little. The second test average was a D! No one was happy.

When the 3rd test rolled around, the average was an F. The scores never increased as bickering, blame and name-calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else. All failed, to their great surprise, and the professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great but when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed.

November 7, 2009

Shantaram

Reading Shantaram. And loving it. Amazing story-telling. Beautiful narration.