What do we do with freedom?

We spit, we litter, we abuse, we kill, we rape, we discriminate, we disobey laws, we break traffic signals, we cut lanes, we bribe, we take bribes, we misuse authority, we cut into forests, we mine all natural resources illegally, we loot the poor in all ways possible. We splurge money on movies and malls, overlooking the poverty just outside and around. We disrespect "outsiders" from "other states" and want only "our people" to prosper.

Of course, we also forward messages about how great India is, and how our national anthem is the best in the world, and how corrupt the ministers are. We do a lot obviously.

We are indeed free to do all the above things. We are truly cherishing this freedom.

Thank you freedom fighters to give us this freedom to do all this and more.

Memories of New Zealand

I read the below lines in a sports article written in Wisden by R Kaushik. This was the opening para of his article on Indian cricket team's tour to NZ. However, the para reminded me of my 2 weeks spent in NZ last year with my wife. Each and every word is so true and it is wonderful to be reminded of what NZ made us experience.

Five weeks in New Zealand spoils you. It works wonders for your facial muscles because you learn to smile at strangers – on the roads, in the malls, at the grounds, in the airports. You get accustomed to drivers stopping to let you, the pedestrian, cross the road, and after the first two or three days, you sort of leave your door unlocked even when you go to sleep. You take it for granted that if you have forgotten something at the ground, it will remain untouched when you return the next day. That if the meter fare is $38.90, you will get the $1.10 change back when you hand over $40. And that if you have asked for a cab and the operator tells you, ‘Someone will be there with you in 2 minutes’, it is not just a 2-minute warning, that the cab will unfailingly be at your doorstep in 2 minutes – maximum.

Turn a life around

Mark was walking home from school one day when he noticed that the boy ahead of him had tripped and dropped all the books he was carrying, along with two sweaters, a baseball bat, a glove and a small tape recorder. Mark knelt down and helped the boy pick up the scattered articles.

Since they were going the same way, he helped to carry part of the burden. As they walked, Mark discovered the boy's name was Bill, that he loved video games, baseball and history, that he was having a lot of trouble with his other subjects and that he had just broken up with his girlfriend.

Mark went home after dropping Bill at his house. They continued to see each other around school, had lunch together once or twice, then both graduated from junior high school. They ended up in the same high school, where they had brief contacts over the years. Finally the long-awaited senior year came. Three weeks before graduation, Bill asked Mark if they could talk.

Bill reminded him of the day years ago when they had first met. "Do you ever wonder why I was carrying so many things home that day?" asked Bill. "You see, I cleaned out my locker because I didn't want to leave a mess for anyone else. I had stored away some of my mother's sleeping pills and I was going home to commit suicide. But after we spent some time together talking and laughing, I realized that if I had killed myself, I would have missed that time and so many others that might follow. So you see, Mark, when you picked up my books that day, you did a lot more. You saved my life."

By John W. Schlatter

Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around - Leo Buscaglia

TED video on Math calculations!

This guy is super sharp! Do watch.

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/arthur_benjamin_does_mathemagic.html

Inspiring

The need for change

The Anna Hazare led anti-corruption movement is a desperate call for a need to change the way things work around in our country. While we can keep supporting this and other movements, the underlying fact is that we live in a democracy and a long-term sustainable change can only be effected if we vote more consciously when the elections come by.

I had read the following article some time back. Want to re-post it here. Do read.

The good vote banks

Simplify

If we were to see how a typical life around us goes, there are just a few instances in one's lifetime where one has to take potentially life-changing decisions. Rest of the time, the things that we do are mundane, uncomplicated stuff. Yet these mundane tasks are the ones that test our mettle. Its these little moments that define what we are and what we could be in our lifetime. Unfortunately, we end up assigning a lot of undue importance to the big moments and take the smaller ones for granted.

Life's short - made up of tiny little beautiful moments. Capture them. Live them well.

As Anton Chekhov puts it: Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.

Don't fantasize!

No, I'm not veering towards what the title would suggest. I am talking of some froth we create in our minds - consciously or sub-consciously. Over the last few weeks, I have been audience to few incidents that had the same underlying theme - the disappointment of expectations not being met. Let me take few general instances here:

First: A die-hard fan of a mega superstar, who likes the star madly, desiring to meet him, goes and stands outside his house everyday from 5am till the sun decides to call it a day. Even after 10 such days of wait, the mega superstar does not turn up to meet the die-hard fan, who is presumably his greatest fan. The dejected fan goes back home and vows never to worship his hero who broke his hopes and dreams so brutally and heartlessly.

Second: A boy deeply loves a girl. He expresses his love to her. He is very sweet to her and takes good care of the girl. He wishes all the happiness in the world for the girl. He desires to marry her and keep her happy, always and forever. The girl, however, does not wish to marry him. Reasons? Irrelevant here. The boy is dejected. He feels cheated. He goes down hard on the girl and thinks of her as a heartless, brutal person who has no respect for other's feelings.

Third: A young married couple wishes the joy of parenting and wishes to bring a little bundle of joy to their lives. A baby is born to them. They are extremely delighted to have value and purpose added to their lives. The baby is well taken care of. The husband quits his job to be able to be with the growing baby who needs to be nurtured. The baby grows to become a very able adult and the parents are proud of her. She falls in love with a guy and wishes to marry him. She conveys the same to her parents. The parents are dejected and feel betrayed. Their hopes have been shattered by their daughter for whom they made so many sacrifices over many years. They decide not to be with the girl in this decision and makes it very clear that the day she marries the guy, she is out of their lives. Why? Because she is heartless and brutal who does not take care of her parents' wishes and expectations.

What is common among the three instances? Expectations have been broken. Desires have been left unfulfilled. Well, hard luck. Yeah, it is a simple case of hard luck. It is utter nonsense to put the blame on the superstar/girl/child for the state of mind of the fan/boy/parents. Sounds harsh? Well, so be it. If I expect something from someone, it is MY problem and not the other person's. Why should the other person accomodate your expectations if he/she is not happy doing it? If they are not able to see your viewpoint, fair enough. Different people dances to different music in this world. If they do not like your music, hard luck. Accept it and move on. Stop feeding sympathy to yourselves. Do it if you feel so, but do not hold the other person responsible. It is your problem and you must be the one who should take care of it.

The more unfortunate factor in all these instances is that the fan/boy/parents apparently love the superstar/girl/daughter. Unconditional love, they boast! Such unconditional love that their expectations comes much before the other person's happiness. Amazing love indeed.

To all the parents in this world, your children have a life and mind of their own. Accept it. Be with them if you indeed love them.

To all the lovers in this world, the person you love may not be be happy loving you. Accept it. Be with him/her if you indeed love him/her.

Accept things. Stop fantasizing. Everything we do for others are only because they make us happy. Everytime. Let us accept that we are selfish. Let us stop blaming others for breaking your expectations from them. Sure, feel bad that your expectations have been shattered. But do not hold anybody else responsible for it.

Children and values

A lot has been talked about the demographic structure of India and the amazing dividends that we could reap owing to the fact that a large proportion of our population is in the productive age group. One dimension of the key to exploit such natural advantage is to ensure that the upcoming lot of younger generation is educated and skilled. Towards that, a lot is being done and a lot more promised to be done.

Personally, I am more concerned about another dimension. How and where is the value system of kids going to be cultivated and nurtured! Reason why I feel there is a lacuna here is two-fold.

Firstly, schools increasingly are money making machines these days. The entire process of education and teaching has now become more a business idea with the objective of creating knowledge-driven-weath creators rather than values-driven-productive-human beings. Money making at the cost of deteriorating values is an unwarranted scenario.

Secondly, families these days are increasingly becoming leaner and nuclear. A married couple where both partners are working professionals, staying nuclear away from their respective parents and trying to manage a full-time career is extremely productive for them. But when a child is born to them, the equation must change. What we are increasingly seeing is that the mother taking a maternity leave followed by a post-child birth sabbatical for few months (a year tops) to take care of the infant. Post the initial couple of years (where generally either set of grandparents are also present), the child is taken care by a nanny/baby sitter, sent to kindergarten, school, etc (with years passing). Now, when the child's mind is most fertile in the growing years, parents are not really available. They are, but not completely. In many cases, even the grand parents are not. So whom does the child learn the values of life from? He will surely be educated but will he grow up to become a man of strong values? In my generation, mothers generally were home makers and inculcated a lot of essential values to us. I can be sure in my case atleast.

And what do the children get exposed to when they come to home from school and wait for parents to come? Shocking television programmes, abundance of polluting information on the internet, social networking sites with hosts of online 'buddies'. 10-year olds are becoming memebers of networking sites these days and some of their status messages really shock me. Surely all this would make the kids cool, funky and street-smart but we should not complain if some of them later think that commiting a crime for money is fine or getting the latest electronic gadget for themselves must be the agenda in life.

I wonder about this for the coming generations. Should one of the parent completely devote himself/herself for the development of child in the formative years (between the age of 4 and 12 perhaps)?

Bringing a child to this world is a responsible decision. Does it end with sending the school to the best available school and coaching class? Isn't parenting a lot more than that?

All this around...

... and I continue to lead a self-centered, selfish life.

Source of pictures: Amit Naik from Pankhudi (a very active NGO)

Current Affairs.... the Lighter Way

Received them as a forward.

Important & Useful

Came across this at a site. Must share this in any way you can.

Colorful India

Do see some awesome photographs on India and her different shades. Enjoy.

Isn't money simply a mean?

Let me begin with a question. How much money is 'good enough' to leave peacefully? I realize it is an open-ended question with no possible consensus reply. But what I am trying to ask is, do we all really believe that money is merely a way of securing a peaceful life? If yes, then should we not also know how much is enough? On the other hand, if money is not the mean but the target itself, what's the target amount you are trying to reach? Is there a quantifiable answer to it?

I am fortunate enough to be at a stage of life where survival is not my main target. This is the case with a lot of people I know - my friends, my cousins, my seniors, etc. Lot of us earn substantially higher than our basic needs. Most of us also earn much above even our luzury needs that we enjoy. Most of us earn enough to take our families out for a movie or dinner few times a month. We earn enough to enjoy a couple of vacations in a year to a far-away place, away from the routine. Sure, we need money to do all this and more. Point is, many of us are earning much more than what you need to do all this. Day in and day out we are slogging out in our lives to get that higher increment or a super bonus that marginally/incrementally goes into our savings and not towards luxury spending. Saving for an uncertain future perhaps. Despite all this, I strongly feel a lot of us are giving way too much importance to money and financial safety, thinking about not just the next year or two but even 10 years and 20 years down the line. If this is how it goes, money will hypnotize us and leave us drained and dead even before we are actually dead.

I have two points to add further. First is the happiness quotient. If the money-making efforts are making you truly blissful, then half the problem is taken care of. You are not killing yourself internally for a secure future. However, is this not a rarity? Lot of us crib about not having enough time and mind-space to live for ourselves. The attempt to get 'work-life balance' has caught up in a big way among corporate executives. Clearly so, there seems to be an unhappy inner self even as the outer self is busy chasing the money targets. That, to my mind, is a problem one must address. If more money does not make you more happy on a daily basis (and not at a future unknown point in time), then we ought to change few things around.

Now, let's assume one is indeed blissful in doing things that consequently results in money being created. Case in point would be a sportsman, an actor, a painter, a musician or a CA for that matter who loves what she does. Even then, I have an inkling that there is something not-so-right. That's my second pointer. I cannot see a lot of sense in a situation where someone tries to achieve a separate room for each member of his family (by purchasing a 3BHK flat, for instance) at a time when some of them around in this world cannot afford a single small room for 10 of them put together. I am not intending to sound 'socialistic' here. Question that disturbs me is, do the money making people not think about the relatively under-privileged soceity? I am not taking anything away from people who make money. Surely they are extremly skilled and work hard to earn whatever they do. But, do they not believe that once they reach that point of security, they can then try to help somebody else around to get to security as well? Like as if we are one big family in this world and we seek & help each other out? Can we not do that more often than not? Can there be no collective efforts towards that? Or do we remain self-centered as always? Do we simply add more luxuries to our own wealth & lives, and may be end up not even enjoying them. By upgrading from a 21-inch TV to a super big Plasma, when life is so reckless & fast that we spend only a few hours in front of the TV. If that's the case, wasn't the decision to upgrade the TV just a symbolic gesture to tell the society around that you are a wealthy person and ought to be respected? TV is just an example, we could be spending our money in a lot of other ways.

I read this somewhere recently (I think it was Sri Sri Ravishankar who said this) that our education system needs to be modified to include two more things in it right from grass-root levels: a little bit about Philospohy and a little bit about Philanthropy. I totally agree. This will add a sense of perspective in our lives and see things in a different manner. We will be more compassionate and less wasteful in our attitudes.

I have asked myself how much money is 'secure' enough for my family. Working to reach that number and then trying to spread out for others is what my motto is. If you think this way of living makes sense, then ask yourself how much money is 'secure' enough for your family and their needs. Then work hard to reach a level where even 'ancilliary' works (read part-time) that does not consume all of your time will help you earn that bit. Rest of the time can be used to make this whole world a much better place. This is where education helps. A professional degree like MBBS or CA must be used to make our lives less complicated and easier. Unfortunately, we use these degrees to challenge ourselves to earn some obscenely high amount of money and screw up our own happiness in the process.

I began with a question. Let me end with a beautifully worded line that I read as the status message of one of my friends and is apt here. A perfection of means & confusion of aims seems to be our main problem.

Plagiarism

Imitation, they say, is the best form of flattery. But plagiarism is very different from simply appreciating by imitating.

I stumbled upon a link to a newly created blog through Orkut and just a preliminary reading made me realize that the words and style are so very mine. It took me another 3 minutes to locate my blog post from where the other post had been apparently 'inspired'.

I am proud of my blog and whatever little I can write on my own. To see one's words being lifted verbatim, without any credit being offered to the original writer, is certainly not a pleasant sight. I am all for giving writers their due credit and insist on buying original copy of a book rather than a cheap, pirated, photocopied version of the same. Plagiarism is also a form of corruption.

Friends, please do not ever indulge in anything like this. I know of an instance where an analyst I personally knew was sacked from an organization for 'borrowing' from another report. This instance may not be as serious as professional plagiarism, but is still in the same league. If you intend to use a text that you like, ask the original writer before you publish it somewhere. As an unsaid rule, he MUST be the first to know about the reproduction of his work elsewhere.

It is heartening to know that my blog is followed and read. I am pleased to see many readers stopping by and reading whatever I have to offer through my writing. Yet, to see something like this leaves me perturbed. I sincerely hope that such instances do not hit me or any one else who has the patience to write something original.

P.S. 1: I have not resisted telling him what I thought of this incident.

P.S. 2 (updated later): I am told by the blogger that it was a mistake and that he had copied the text long back & did not remember where he had taken the text from! I am still keeping this post with an intention to hope that such things are not repeated, not just with my writing but any original writing.

What the heck!

Reading this made me furious today. Are we joking? Are we in some dreamland?? Ridiculous!!!

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.

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.

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.

I did not vote

Yeah, I did not vote. Thought a lot about whom to vote. Could not choose between the lesser evils too. Thought from both a state perspective and local area perspective. Still could not convince myself to favor any person/party. Eventually decided not voting is a better option than voting a wrong guy in.

On a related note, 25% voter (read later that the final number could be close to 49%) turnout in Mumbai! Is it not largely a reflection of consensus view that no one is worth voting from the options given? Sure, textbook answer is find the right person to stand for elections then. My point is how is this different from some funda of voting for no one by filling a form? How does the latter score over the former?