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Where Have All the Boys Gone? A Father’s Reflection for World Men’s Day

2025-11-22T21:03:00.006+05:30

Every now and then, my four-year-old son reminds me that boyhood is not a phase, it’s a force of nature. He doesn’t walk; he launches and ricochets. His curiosity sometimes has a hint of interrogation. The world, to him, isn’t a place to inhabit but to conquer with a sword fashioned out of a rather long shoehorn. Somewhere between mopping up his “experiments” and rescuing innocent pieces of furniture, I catch myself wondering if today’s world still does have space for what was once just, boyishness?

Because if I look around, it seems we've begun quietly airbrushing this “boy energy” out of existence. Schools, once a place where curiosity and chaos coexisted, now demand stillness, compliance, and good handwriting. That’s lovely if you’re predisposed to those things; less lovely if you’re a small human whose emotional vocabulary consists mainly of “zoom” and “crash.”

And I doubt it’s just nostalgia talking. Across the OECD, boys are 40% more likely to drop out of secondary school, and university enrolment among men has been steadily sliding for over a decade. Boys are three times as likely to be diagnosed with ADHD and account for 70% of school suspensions. None of this is because boys suddenly became lazier. It’s because the system has gradually been redesigned to reward traits that align more with principles directly at loggerheads with this boyishness and how they learn and grasp the world's around them.

Don’t get me wrong, girls thriving is a triumph of our society, long overdue, and a victory one we should defend fiercely. But somewhere along the way, equality morphed into symmetry, as though every success for one side must be mirrored precisely on the other. The result? A generation of boys quietly slipping through the cracks while everyone argues about hashtags.

The irony is plain to see, historically more than anything else. In the 1970s, far fewer women graduated from college compared to men. Today, 50 years later, the gap is almost equally wide, but just gender flipped. Women now make up close to 60-70% of university graduates across the U.S. and much of Europe. What was once a crisis of opportunity for women has quietly become a crisis of motivation for men. We worked for decades to fix one imbalance and somehow engineered another.

Layered on top of this academic slide, there is, whether one chooses to see it or not, a broader crisis of masculinity. The word itself has ow become radioactive. Say “masculinity,” and people hear “toxic.” Men are told to “open up,” but when they actually do, the discomforting silence is onlyrivalled by bringing up politics at a wedding. We claim to want vulnerable men but only when their vulnerability is emotionally tidy. All this while the global suicide rate among men remains four times higher than that of women.

Culturally, men have also become something of a punchline. The bumbling dad who can’t change a diaper. The incompetent husband who can't do laundry or make toast without burning the house down. Online, on social media, these caricatures rack up millions of likes. Yes, it is all considered “harmless fun” but flip the genders, and the outrage would be instantaneous. And rightfully so.

Boys absorb these cues. If all they see are men portrayed as emotionally inept, domestically incompetent, and socially disposable, what kind of self-image are we gifting them? A generation that laughs at itself too much may one day forget how to take itself seriously.

The truth, whispered these days, lest someone misunderstands, is that the world still needs strong, dependable, emotionally intelligent men. Men who fix things (literally and metaphorically), who protect, who lead, who show up - even when it’s inconvenient. But we’ve somehow forgotten how to say that without sounding politically incorrect.

As a dad, I find myself walking this tight mental and ethical tightrope. I want my son to cry when he’s sad but not build a summer house in his feelings. I want him to be gentle, but also fierce when life demands it. I want him to respect women deeply, and also respect himself, without apologizing for existing in a world that sometimes treats masculinity like a malfunction that needs to be managed.

Raising boys today feels like an act of quiet rebellion. It means teaching them that energy isn’t aggression, leadership isn’t dominance, confidence isn’t arrogance. It means showing them that being a man isn’t about winning over others but mastering oneself.

This isn’t about turning back the clock; it’s about letting the pendulum find balance again. Because if we continue pathologizing everything that makes boys, well, boys, we risk raising a generation of men unsure of their place, and a society unsure of what to do with them.

So this World Men’s Day, I would rather skip, the anyway few performative hashtags and do something truly "radical", have an honest conversation w:hy boys are falling behind and young men checking out. Because well, empathy is not a gendered virtue. Caring about men’s struggles doesn’t diminish women’s progress, it completes it. A world that raises confident daughters but confused sons isn’t enlightened. It’s just imbalanced.

So here’s to the boys loud, curious, impulsive, imperfect. The ones still climbing trees while the rest of us argue about how they should sit. Maybe, just maybe, the world could use a little more of that chaos again.

One Idea, Many Hats: A validation for Kalam

2015-07-30T19:31:00.001+05:30

“I write for the same reason that a cow gives milk.”

That’s what George Bernard Shaw had to say about his creative process. I am neither GB Shaw nor do I have any bovine traits in particular- but then every once in a while, an intellectual comes along, with his out of the box revelations, and coerces me into a fit of lactation. The most recent of them was in order when Mr. N Jayaram came out with his article “Kalam was no great man: Don't let news of death confuse you.” (Link here)

Its seems to be a fixation with some, that Dr. Kalam was a Muslim who adhered to some traditionally “Hindu practices” – of all for God’s sake, Vegetarianism and Carnatic music!! While this seems to be a rather noble principle of life in a multi cultural, multi ethnic and pluralist country like India; opinions such as the ones Mr Jayaram holds, tend to place such personal convictions so forcibly into a political set up, that it feels utterly synthetic and phony. Case in point here is Dr. Kalam’s appointment as president in 2002. It might be very well true that the Political parties might have favoured a Muslim president. But then, what is it that was expected out of Kalam about the 2002 riots? He was a scientist, a workaholic handling his scientific chores of the day – not a politician and in particular, not a very shrewd one at that. What would you have had him do? Say NO to a position that he thought he could execute well and show, as opposed to most of his nominal predecessors that the post can actually be an instrument of influence, inspiration and change...? By the feeble argument that Kalam accepted a post that in the larger context was essentially a tactical political move, Mr. Jayaram would find it difficult to convince just about anyone to get into public service or politics in general at all.

There is also an attempt to term him and his projects “hawkish” using formidable words such as a proponent of nuclear weaponisation. Very few would disagree on the matter of Nuclear disarmament. It is perhaps the quintessential requisite to the survival of the human race or even terrestrial life on planet Earth. But such an issue can never be considered in isolation of its geopolitical implications. India sits in very slippery conditions in this regards. With military hostility from its neighbours being a very palpable reality, tending to a completely pacifist ideology is not just impractical but is also something that borders stupidity. But that is something the so called intellectuals conveniently ignore in their arguments. There is a reason why India is a non-signatory to the NPT and CTBT. The one truly global, trans-national organization of the present day is the UN. But sadly and by conscious design, it represents the world power structure of the post WW-II era. Until that time when the so called big players allow for a more level playing field, the new boys on the block will just chose to play somewhere else. Kalam’s views and his support on military strength is not a result of him being “hawkish”, but a by product of the a larger picture that the prominent nuclear powers in the world would want to make security decisions on behalf of the smaller ones; thereby compromising their own sovereignty on foreign and to a sizable extent, internal policy matters.

The ethical stand on nuclear power plants, river linking and death penalty is also a matter of considerable constipation. It is quite convenient and a little non-constructive to point out nothing but flaws in the current and prospective projects. When people in India die by the thousands, every season specifically due to climatic conditions, river linking would generally appeal to rationality. As it obviously turns out - not to all. The surprising fact is that while environmentalists worry a great deal about the social impact viz. displacement of people from their ancestral lands and the submergence of villages, they would not bat an eye when the same people die of floods or droughts. Even considering the flora and fauna, I believe sometimes environmentalists underestimate nature in its love for its own proliferation- Thekaddy (Periyaar reserve) in Kerala being a fitting example. Also, Kalam being a constant proponent of a Thorium based nuclear energy program is quite conveniently neglected.

As for death penalty- I can agree that there is no place for it the 21st century. But that is a completely subjective view and no one can claim to take the the moral high ground because human rights are universal and apply just as much to victims as they do to the convicted. The example of Dhananjoy Chaterjee is a handy one because Mr. Jayaram has the multipurpose tool of retrospective analysis – not a luxury readily available to people who need to make decisions based on current evidence.

It is but obvious that issues such as nuclear programs, energy generation and capital punishment are extremely disputed and naturally no one is going to agree completely on even the larger points, let alone the finer ones. To pass judgements on a man’s greatness based on such grey issues is a little rich. Especially given the fact that for the most part, he would be remembered and rightly so, to be a man who inspired a whole generation to dream big and work hard. He was a man who gave the phrase “Presidential Palace” a meaning more profound than the ones that could be found in a dictionary when he opened the imposing gates of the Rashtrapati Bhavan to school children, college students, farmers and a multitude of other social classes. This, especially because, unlike factional politicians and political pundits, he did not believe in social classes. And this is hardly surprising- how would social classes matter; especially to a Muslim boy who was son to a boat owner, friend to the son of a Rameshwaram temple high priest, who went on to become a technician at Thumba Equatorial Rocket Launching Station which was housed in a donated St. Mary Magdalene Church.

In his closing remark, Mr. Jayaram opines, “...eulogising of Kalam comes across as a tad obscene.” I would want to humbly state that like each one of us, Dr. Kalam was no God. As every human, he had his share of misjudgements, vices and beliefs. What is actually “a tad obscene” is the pathological obsession with nitpicking every single mistake or opinion that is incoherent with your own and painting with a broad brush a picture far less beautiful than the person Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam actually was.

The Days Of Men

2014-11-20T02:46:00.004+05:30

On March the 8th, 2014 Google proudly put up the following doodle. The occasion was that of the International Women's Day. It made me happy. Happy about the fact that the world does pay attention to the cause of womanhood and that women in general, feel the solemn sense of pride that must be solely theirs to have been a woman - on a special day, just dedicated to them.

Not many know and fewer give a damn but today is International Men's Day. I know .. You may now go ahead and laugh it out. Google shares my view and very creatively put this up to mark the day. I'm not taking offense because as they say- after all, every day of the year is a Man's day, free to strut about, feeling awesomely male and invincibly virile. The reactions to the existence of a "Men's Day" is a mile wide and an inch deep. - Ranging from "How dare they... " to "Why do they even need one ...". It ranges from astonishment, to ridicule, to plain indifference. And this makes me feel a little let down. Not that a particular designated day does anything significant for my self esteem as a man, but just that no one seems to give a damn.

Despite thousands of years of so called civilization of the human race, we remain majorly a patriarchal world and there is no denying that. And therein lies my inherent support for the cause of Women's rights. Having said that though, I sometimes feel, maybe incorrectly, that Men's issues hardly make it to the agenda and I wonder why..! I mean to most of us - What even are "men's issues" - do they even exist ?! Yes they do and its sad men, and more importantly, women are silent about it, despite being champions of the fight against gender bias.

On average, every year, more men around the world will be diagnosed of prostate cancer than women for breast cancer. While I read about a fund raiser for breast cancer just two days ago, I cannot recall one instance in my entire life of even a roadside pamphlet on the former. I don't claim the medical community to have been biased or some male obsessed argument of the like. It is just that while disease and death is gender neutral, the attention and keenness for awareness is not; and that ought not to be the case. Millions of dollars are spent for support in cases of single motherhood, domestic violence etc. All usually under the blanket term of "Women's Aid/empowerment". Agreed, when it comes to domestic violence or workplace harrassment- men are much less susceptible compared to women, but is that reason enough to pay less heed to a victim just because he is a man and should 'take care of his own shit'..?! I think not. And its not like male victims are all that a fringe either. As per statistics in India, 53% of victims of child abuse are boys !

And this brings me to my next point. To many, it is difficult to comprehend that men can even be abused. Aren't guys meant to always like it..? No. We don't. We are all so fed full on media junk about the male obsession for boobs, sex and everything vaginal that rape of a man is beyond comprehension. Somehow, I feel that it is demeaning above almost everything- that we are this peculiar creation of nature that is forever consumed by lust- and for whom predation and procreation is by far, the defining instinct. Rape victims are provided anonymity, not rape accused- especially if male. In fact, in the eyes of the general public, a male accused is guilty before trial. Not every one is a rapist, molester or wife beater. In fact, an overwhelming majority is not. Unfortunately on the flip side, male rape, molestation or physically abused is a story no newspaper reports, no news channel covers and very few organizations care about.

Speaking of organizations by the way, just a passing glance and two cents on gender ratio at workplace. Choosing female applicants at job interviews to maintain gender ratio is not gender equality but the stark opposite of it. Women more often than not, take offence to this "male claim" and its not difficult see their point; but only after acknowledging the existence of a minor misinterpretation. As a disclaimer, no one is saying a woman is going to make it to a job just because she is a woman. Women slog hard, very hard at college to get their degrees - nonetheless they are not exclusive in this pursuit. The male classmate slogged just as hard. Merit and business requirement should dictate hiring; not 'gender ratio at workplace'. Reductio ad absurdum: Why is there no discussion on gender ratio in coal mining, hazardous waste disposal ? Women empowerment does not start at the HR department of a company. It starts earlier, much much earlier. It starts at home, at kindergarten where going or not going to school and continuing there, and attending college later is not a decision made on the fact of a child being a boy or a girl. Hiring solely to maintain/improve gender ratio is not gender equality, its gender bias. A freebie which eventually robs her of self and peer side respect.

As confession, Yes ! This is a rant. Consequently, not all points may follow strictly logical reasoning. It is a vent to some bottled up frustration resulting from all the propaganda that dubs us collectively as sexual perverts, violent miscreants, emotionally insufficient jerks. Propaganda that makes us feel apologetic of every harm that was ever done to a lady; which by the way does no good to anyone or any cause. Propaganda that almost makes us feel ashamed for the very accident of birth as a male. Opinions and common 'wisdom' that I can never love my daughter or my son as much as their mother. And this is neither fair nor acceptable.

The average guy can be any of the following. He could be the son who wants to make the most of his talents to prove his worth to the world, to his parent and most importantly to himself. He could be a brother who would fight with and for his sister. He could also be the husband or the partner who would and does happily give up everything for a smile on her face. He could be the father under whose fortitude, every child has sought emotional refuge and security. He could be a friend with whom you share stories and gossip over a cup of coffee and some cookies.

He could also be the guy who likes to laze on his messy bed on a Sunday afternoon, the guy who loves to discuss cars, superheroes, the new girl in the dorm and global warming or he could be just a guy who wants to sit by a lake simply throwing rocks into the water and be a complete bloke.

Less bashing. More bonding.

Governance, God and Gujarat

2014-04-10T19:14:00.001+05:30

I am no expert with economics in general. But then, when I hear all the hoo-ha about all the great governance and the great economic strides that have apparently transformed Gujarat in a relatively short political span of 12 years- to me, it just somehow seems too good to be true. The sad part however is that to most us, all this seems to perfectly align, ipso facto, regardless of whether the 'facto' is actually existent or not and if at all existent, presents any corroborative evidence to this economic epiphany that Mr. Modi seems to have shown his people. Of course, if this stellar growth and development were true, the choice in the ongoing and upcoming General elections would be an easy one. But do they really all add up..?

BJP and Narendra Modi's electoral campaign has one main focus. Good governance and economic development; and of course the belief and make belief that he has been the one, and the only one, to have been true to all these promises in Gujarat. The argument, nonetheless losses quite a lot of its sheen in the light of some statistical data. The story of Gujarat's economic robustness is not unique to Modi. Gujarat has been outperforming the All India average GDP growth rate since the 1980's which of course is a testament to it industrious people. To put it into figures, before Modi, Gujarat performed on average 1.1% higher than the national GDP figures and post Modi this average has been 1.3%. While being above average is always good and so is the improvement, I do not see this as stellar growth by a long shot. In my opinion, The Gaurdian, made a very objective observation about this, "Though Modi's stock is rising high, evidence for the success of Modinomics is unconvincing." Then of course there is the rural electrification brilliance. Unlike the claims, Gujarat is neither 100% rural electrified and definitely not the first to be so. As of 31st January this year, according to a report by the Ministry of Power, 14 other states are ahead of Gujarat, mind you at 100%. There is also a power surplus theory afloat that people of Gujrat, even in the villages, have no idea of what a power cut is. I do not know what 11 lakh housholds, which roughly translates to about half a million people, think of this; as according to the 2011 census they do not have electricity as their primary course of illumination. Is it just me or can it be that there actually are power cuts or in some cases no power at all. 35 villages still to be electrified as per data by the way.

So much about the power surplus, lets talk about industrial investment - Modi's core competency - selling the idea of Gujarat to the world. Among Indian states, Gujarat ranks 5th. While fifth is not bad at all but why lie about facts. I assume, lies are not something that we desire from our prospective Prime Minister. And is economic development everything..? I would generally take Amatya Sen's and Raghuram Rajan's word over Narendra Modi's. Maybe because between the former two, they share a Nobel prize, great intellectual capacities, credits of having predicted the 2008 financial crisis or may be just because they do not need to use gimmicky "clever" AK47 genre of punch lines to convey a point. Nonetheless, according to them, the HDI (Human Development Index) and the CDI (Composite Development Index) figures in Gujarat are quite disappointing to say the least. Google it for yourselves and realize the trickery first hand. I am no congress supporter but my voice is only against all this falsehood. BJP's constant refrain is that Congress has never done anything. Ever...! And supposedly, AAP has no 'vision' for the country. The irony however is that neither has the BJP made any clarifications on its own developmental blueprints. Their favorite phrase of course is "The Gujarat model of development" Well...whatever that is. No one really seems articulate enough to let us know. He often asks, "I have no family. Who will I be corrupt for?” I don't know, maybe his Public Relations Officer. He seems to have done a pretty good job with the hogwash.

Having talked about the 'less important' governance and growth, let us shed some light on India's favorite pass-time, Religion and the favorite board game of the Indian politician, Religious sectarianism. If you go to the New York Times website and search for an article called Timeline of the Riots in Modi’s Gujarat, one can plausibly see why Modi has been so unapologetic. An action will have a reaction is his reasoning because obviously rioting is the better thing to do ..!! As opposed to say, not setting fire to entire neighborhoods, killing people, killing children- born and unborn and mass raping women. Mr. Modi has a standard and in some ways a pretty decent counter for this- that of having been re-elected as Chief minister. This too, unfortunately, like a lot of his other 'facts' is a little too simplistic and really lacks some judicial reasoning. If winning elections were to exonerate someone of blame, why have courts at all. Lets all decide convictions on opinion polls. The thousands of cases pending in court could obviously use some help. Then of course you have the court verdicts which have 'exonerated' Modi. But no one questions on what grounds and circumstances. The court suspects but has "Not enough evidence for conviction" I hope at least a few of you have heard/read the chilling confessions by Babu Bajrangi, "Narendrabhai got me out of jail…… He kept on changing judges…. He set it up so as to ensure my release, otherwise I wouldn’t have been out yet... ". You think a person who has say over "changing judges" has no control over the lowly constable or an SI who does the investigative 'errands' for the Gujrat police. Who are we trying to fool..? Religious divisiveness sometimes just stoops to really ridiculous levels in the Modi stable. In Kerala, for instance during a campaign he said, "Kerala the nursery of terrorism". No doubt, there are serious concerns but I have experienced social cultures from 5 states in India now and being a Malayali myself. While things are not rosy, its is far from a nursery of terrorism.

I can't, by the way, speak of Modi, without speaking about the RSS. That was after all his training ground. In the onset I'd like to say, I am not completely against the RSS, especially for the kind of relief work their young members have done in the past. However, currently living in Germany, I cannot but stop the Hitlerjungend (Hitler youth) picture baring down on my thought process because RSS's founding was inspired by The Fascist regime in Italy. RSS also holds Hitler in high regard for his staunch adherence to the principle of racial and cultural purity. This is not rambling by the way. Those interested can read the, Encyclopedia of modern worldwide extremists and extremist groups" - Stephen E Atkins. It is not my intension to paint a bad picture of the RSS but only to bring an objective view on its ideas and principles, because some charity here and some volunteering there is not what you are in your entirety. The principles you stand for, are to me, a major factor. RSS intellectual M S Golwalkar put it down plainly. Vaisudhaiva Kutumbakam and Indian values- which in itself is a good idea to start with. The problem is when they assume their idea of India to be the only idea and that this idea is so good and therapeutic that it is worth shoving down peoples throat. I hope they realize that the very diversity of India that they are so proud of is the reason why a monochromatic India is neither healthy nor justified. I am a Christian by religious faith but I think of myself a little more Indian than Christian because things to do with me and my maker are personal to me. However, my being Indian and the sense of pride associating its history, culture and ancient civilization is very public. Despite this, when history text books in Gujarat call Christians, Muslims and Parsees foreigners, it pinches pretty badly. I am not sure how many understand this but the promise of a better economy does not help. Really, it does not! It just feels a little servile and cheap to me. "We will call you foreigners in the textbooks. In exchange, the economy will be better and your monthly salary will eventually see better days." You know, it feels quite demeaning, not despite, but precisely because of the promise of better economic sense.

Probably this voice of mine comes too little, too late and maybe not too many will like or even read it but then, that is never a reason to shut up. Whether you vote for Modi or against Modi - no matter. But let it not be based on knowledge via the grapevine. Research well, vote wisely.

Remember Remember the 5th of November

2013-12-14T16:37:00.002+05:30

For me, its been an emotionally nerve wracking week. For five days now, I've held this rant inside me and that's something what I call, a self imposed form of mental constipation. I know, its kind of a grotesque start. But well, I'd have to say its much less of a bullshit story than that by the media and the so called "social scientists", whining about India's Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM).

At a personal level, I've held astronomy close to my heart from the time I was a child. In fact I still prize the "Earth, space and the universe" paperback quiz books my mother bought me a long time ago. I believe it was only natural to feel a very real sense of crackling excitement to have heard ISRO's ambitious plans and finally, to have seen PSLV-XL take India's maiden interplanetary satellite into space. But then of course happiness is an evanescent thing. That vicious question repeated yet again; and again and again. "Is India really justified on spending so much ?"

I am not really interested in specifying "spending on what" because as a matter of fact, to the assailants, if I may take the liberty of calling them so, it does not matter. Not one bit! As long as the BBC can show a photograph of a rag picking girl from a garbage dump, any expenditure that is not directly linked to feeding a destitute is unethical. I cannot agree enough that a large number of people in India live in ruthless poverty. I cannot stress enough that empathy and action from the state and from each citizen towards such grossly underprivileged people is of paramount importance. But it needs to be understood- India is not merely a monochromatic, painfully romantic BBC photograph.

And what numbers are we talking about..?! Taking into account the complexity of such a mission, I think the project is quite literally, a complete bargain. At a cost of INR 450Cr (c. USD 73 million) the mission is a meager 0.02% of India's 2013 budget. An interesting comparison would be an Indian family hatchback which takes roughly the same amount to develop. Speaking of cars, a friend of mine posted this a few days back for the mileage obsessed Indian: "The orbiter is slated to travel a distance of roughly 780 million km on its journey to Mars which works out to be less than 7 Rs/km." That is in fact cheaper than a god damn auto rickshaw in Bangalore although I think actually anything is cheaper than an auto ride in Bangalore. Even if you smoked a few less cigarettes during the course of the project, you would have contributed to a better probably a little more useful form of fire and smoke. Apart from the fact that it is genuinely low-cost, I wonder the critics know how much space missions generally cost. The Curiosity rover project was developed at a cost of $2 billion. That's twice the amount of India's entire annual budget on space research. Agreed, the size of the project is much smaller. But even on a comparable project, the US would spend close to ten times of what ISRO has managed to do it in. And given the extremely tight schedule of 15 months, its a no brainer that the effort is by any yardstick, a commendable one.

Here's another thing that really baffled me. This tweet aired on a BBC telecast said, "I think they do not want our aid money anymore" Unfortunately, that's the bane that follows the position and title of being a fast growing yet 'developing' nation. From personal experience, for many Europeans, India is typically a place with a lot of slums and a lot of call centers - both of which, take away tax-payer money in the form of aid and take away jobs in the form of back office services. The tweet reflects a very human tendency to prescribe to a rather sanctimonious ideology of relegating beneficiaries to servile yes men. In an interesting turn of events nonetheless, India has pledged to contribute $10b to Europe's aid as a part of the IMF 'firewall' against further economic crises. I'm not too sure India is really telling the IMF or beneficiary countries what to do or not to do with their own tax payers' money and I think the gesture needs to be mutual. And speaking of foreign aid by the way, India is the largest donor towards polio eradication, having contributed a total sum on $2 billion. This is from a WHO report - Not Indian propaganda. Aid is charity, a sign of solidarity and most of all the epitome of benevolent human relationship. Its never a license to dictate.

For the record, detractors are not just outside. There is a large breed of home grown critics as well. For obvious reasons, they are the ones that irk me the most. First of all allow me to say this - "Get a life !" Having said that, allow me also to give you reasons so as to why they should get a life. The primary objection is very closely linked to expenses. About expenses, noted journalist and social activist Praful Bidwai, for example, is of the opinion, "Completely disproportionate in quantity". He says that while a multitude is living in poverty, spending 450Cr on a space mission is totally disreputable. Now, lets take some stats into account. India, in 2013-14 will spend Rs. 27250Cr on the Sarva Siksha Abhiyaan alone, Rs 37330Cr on Family Welfare, Rs. 33000Cr on Rural employment and a whopping Rs 125,000Cr (estimated) on the Food Security Bill. By any standards, these are really, really large numbers. For a moment, I'd have to agree with Mr. Bidwai that the expense on the MOM is disproportionate, albeit only in the diminutiveness of its financial backing. So the argument that India doesn't have its priorities sorted out with regard to social welfare begs to be thrown out of the window. And for God's sake, Mumbai alone spent 600 crores on crackers on Diwali night - by the way some of which were rockets too. Instead of pinning the blame on a handful of scientists and engineers who've made the most out of the bare minimum offered, probably people such as Mr. Bidwai may better serve the nation using their journalistic skills and 'activist' clout to help figure out where these enormous funds go.

But then of course, you might ask, what's the point of it all? Why do it in the first place? Let me start with the less important financial part. From Aryabhata to Mangalyaan, there have been 72 Indian satellites sent into space. When Aryabhata was launched in 1975 we were completely dependent on the Russians and the Europeans with 60% of the first 25 satellites being put into orbit by a foreign launch vehicle. Today that figure is down to 16%. In fact, India launches satellites for developed nations such as Japan, Israel, Germany, France among others. To be exact with figures, ISRO has helped launch a total of 35 such satellites. With the cost of launching a satellite being anywhere between 50 and 400 million USD, I can't comprehend how someone is unable to see the savings and the potential income ISRO's missions entail. And by the way who are these people employed at ISRO? Indians. Who builds most of the infrastructure? Indian companies. That's home grown employment from home grown revenue generating work. Last time I checked, that's the most robust way to a society's economic evolution. Did I miss a meeting..? Antrix, ISRO's marketing wing reported a net income of 1.5 billion Indian rupees in 2008. Do I need to say more on how space exploration is profitable.. or that if it is of any use at all ?!!

So much for the present and the future. Take a peek into the past too. Cyclone Paradeep made landfall on the shores of Orissa on 28 October, 1999. By the time the storm had subsided, over 10,000 people had lost their lives. Our main handicap was the lack of advanced remote sensing satellites and Doppler radars. In stark contrast, Cyclone Phailin's death toll was 45. Are you listening ? 45..! Among other things, a direct result of investment in satellite technology. Can you put a price tag on the expenditure on technologies such as these that have helped save countless lives..? One should probably google the Cospas Sarsat system to know how space technology has direct impact on lives here- close to the ground. And where do you think GPS and your SatNav comes from? And what about national pride..? Where did that go..? Has it come to mean nothing! Does Rabindranath Tagore's Nobel prize for literature have no meaning because it has no substantial economic merit. Does the fact that one can't put to use the contents of Gitanjali onto an assembly line and churn out low quality so called 'blockbuster' bollywood movies make it irrelevant to national pride.

All this so vividly brings Oscar Wilde to mind who defined so accurately saying, "A cynic is a person who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing." No country has succeeded on its maiden attempt to Mars, more than half of all Mars missions have failed. Can one not foresee the challenge, the immense national pride if we are to nail it or even the courage to have attempted something as audacious as this? I hope we understand the role this will play on the young minds to whom the older generation will bequeath the role of carrying India's technology and status to greater heights. Somewhere in the last 10 years, an ever growing number of young Indian engineers have gone from I want to join NASA to I want to work for ISRO. I'm not convinced the critics actually appreciate the gravity of a shift or even the beginning of such a shift that's taking hold of India's enormous youth. I so wish they could stand from my viewpoint and watch the vista - a view that has infinite hope, boisterous energy, a calm assured confidence and deep down inside, a sense of innocent pride.

And hey, the ISRO guys seem to have a decent sense of humor too. Especially with regard to the subtlety in timing. So, the title of this piece in their honor.

In the 'Fairness' of things

2011-07-13T03:05:00.002+05:30

Somewhere in the vicinity of 10pm.

Barkha Dutt speaks about today’s cabinet reshuffle as she approaches a break. “Stay tuned! When we come back... blah blah black sheep”

Commercial: “…New Nivea whitening deodorant for fairer underarms!”

Come again… Fairer what..!? “New Nivea Whitening DEODORANT FOR FAIRER UNDERARMS”

Instant Thought (IT) 1: Think of Salma Hayek or Capt. Niobe, using the New Nivea Whitening Deodorant For Fairer Underarms ( from hereon referred as NWDFFU).

IT 2: How do you ask for this ‘product’ at the store... “Arrey, woh fair underarms wala deo dena(or deejiye)!” Like, you know, for places where you don’t really have something like a Big Bazaar and the gali wala cosmetic store called Ladies Paradise is the only place where you get this stuff. Interesting people might as well call it the Ladies Parasite.

IT3: This is awesome shit!!

I’m mean, seriously. Fairer underarms! That’s the new thing after the natural nikhaar!? Its hard to believe. So... ahh…well… I went on to go check it out. No. Online. By no means a minor feat… you know, to lurk around a website that is completely pink; filled with hearts and stars and small cute dogs and designer nail polish( ? what the hell is that) - www.makeupalley.com Those interested can visit. Surprisingly, there is a considerable amount of statistical data available on the website. NWDFFU is not doing too well with a lowly 2.7 lipsticks out of a max 5. And I am not bloody kiddin' you. This is too just too silly to make up; this one comments says, “…As for the whitening, I did see a little, but not enough…” Not enough..!!? What do you mean “not enough”. Bleach yourself lady and hope you shine like a fluorescent bulb. I mean.. i don't get it.. of all the things, you would want to brag about your fair underarm..?! Really?

Enough crap. Truth be told, I never really pictured Colonial hangover get this far. Never. I’m dark; but then I’m a bloke and for some(& that) reason I’m not really expected to compete in the marriage market. (Alas!) Okay some competition in the dating market. But what the hell... this is absurd! Shameful; not to mention. In this part of the world you could ridicule someone calling her dark. I mean, ‘Ja Kalmoohi’ is just not the same as ‘Ja Chudail (Also a Delly Belly song now)’. NWDFFU is a surprising new product but in many ways not surprising in the entirety of the way our society thinks. Sad...! And that is to say the least. Six and half decades have not been enough to clean up the Gori mem psyche. I’m but a nobody to impose my ideas. But ‘Fair is beautiful and dark is not’ That’s an idea I have a problem with. I do not want to start with Halle Berry, Beyonce, Nandita Das and some of my own dusky friends who are just as lovely as women get. This whitening thing, quite frankly, freaks me out.

These are some possibilities for the future... I don't rule out anything now.

New Complan with fairness additives.

Gillette shaving gel, advanced bleach formula.

L’Oreal fairness lipstick- because you’re worth it.

Shalimar Basmati – Now genetically modified for fairer Indian Skin.

Who knows! Some day Dell will come up with an India special version of its laptops with lower radiation, lower brightness, lower whatever LCDs for reduced skin tanning for the obtuse fairness obsessed Indian market.

Dark is good. Dark is awesome. Most importantly.. its YOU that are awesome.

Women, Get over it.

More importantly: Men, Get over it too.

Did I mention ba ba BLACK sheep anywhere? Oh..! The Cabinet reshuffle..damn.. chuck it now.. next time. I feel so totally stoned by stupidity.

Have a nice day. Outdoors.

Mrs. Dalloway - Let it sink in.

2011-03-11T17:16:00.002+05:30

Given my credentials of not having attempted a single review in my life, I think a ‘Mrs. Dalloway review’ is almost at the edge of travesty. To be frank, I believe there may be very few among us, who could

actually do justice to a book as compelling a Mrs. Dalloway.

I was drawn to the book following the film, ‘The Hours’ based on Michael Cunningham’s novel by the same name and Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf. While The Hours (film) left me shell shocked and jolted to the core by its sheer brilliance of screenplay and acting prowess; Mrs. Dalloway left me speechless, literally. I feel so utterly handicapped over words and ideas to describe it, let alone critique it. This is but a very humble attempt or perhaps even a tribute to a great book by a greater writer.

First and foremost, you need to forget any and every preconception you have about how to write or read a novel before you embark upon the Virginia reading experience. Woolf does not comply or confine herself to the structures of chapters or volumes. No chapter, no volume in the entire book. Woolf does not feel the necessity of a central plot to bring forth the very core of our emotions. She does not feel also, that it is so awfully necessary to terminate sentences with a period because she wants one to flow into the other. She therefore, is undoubtedly, a maestro at the usage of the semicolon. If you ever lecture to a class full of English literature students and wanted to cite an example of the ‘stream-of-consciousness’ style; Mrs. Dalloway is the piece.

Woolf accomplishes, with almost eerie and spectral freedom, movement in and out of the heads of her characters. She meanders (for that could be the only possible word) through Clarissa’s (Dalloway) thoughts about a black car with royalty inside, Sally, ‘her’ Elizabeth; husband Richard, her lover of yore Peter, her parties, her ideas of life and freedom and inexorably … Septimus. Septimus, is a character that went on to become my personal favourite due to the absolute lucidity with which Woolf portrays the horrors of war through a man ripped apart by voices, daydreams, hallucinations and finally death. But even death is put forward in such sobriety that it shouts out what were but hidden words of Septimus. Virginia’s characters in the book are never larger than life. All placed rigidly in the post World War I era, each having their own unique, queer, yet ‘real’ niceties, opinions and prejudices of the English elite society to which they belong.

In ways more than one, it is a work on social issues through inner sentiment. It is a work on mental trauma, its obscurity and stigmatization. It is also, to a large extent a work to the cause of feminism. It is also a work on death, its various forms, its precursors and consequences. Mrs. Dalloway is not your regular novel to be read once and put back to the shelf. It demands re-reading; because the more you read, the more you realize what you missed out. It glues you and you live with its words.

Woolf once quoted, “A good essay must have this permanent quality about it; it must draw its curtain round us, but it must be a curtain that shuts us in not out.”

This is an excerpt from the book.

“Death was defiance. Death was an attempt to communicate; people feeling the impossibility of reaching the centre which, mystically, evaded them; closeness drew apart; rapture faded, one was alone. There was an embrace in death.”

I think she proves her point.

Love and Hate

2011-03-03T17:45:00.004+05:30

I’m writing this for one: not to forget that I can/ I do write some spiteful stuff. And secondly, to vent out this sense of limitless frustration credited to a harrowing time I have had off late. Some related, some not. My head is such a storm its probably stupid to bind it in words. Stuffed. Stifled. Enraged. Bogged. My head is such a storm with so much of random annoyance that I can’t seem to figure out a structure to this piece that would even start to make some sense; So much that you don’t want me to get started. Or maybe you do, because you all, like half a billion other people in this country, me included, put up with so much of ridiculous shit everyday with no accountability or justification or even a basic wakefulness of shame on the part of the ones we rely on: Government, Brethren or Ourselves.

1. Recent Rambling

The Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corp makes roughly 1.5 rupees as profit for every kilometer it runs which I hardly need to tell (unless you are a complete imbecile), is an awful lot of money. I pay 20 rupees up from my flat to my office and 20 rupees back. It’s a distance just over 8 kilometers at the other end of which I reach my office at 9. Strikingly, I would now have been one and a half hours in traffic, jostling human beings, human-like beings and outright devils, all damned to a fate similar to mine. I deserve better. Enough said..? No! I stand; Almost all the while, almost all the days. I can’t hand over a ten rupee note to pay the bus conductor five bucks. Lest, Lo and behold: the over lord yells, snarls, grins, swears, (farts?) among other gestures repeating the phrase ‘change daena boss’ at least three times to reemphasize his authority and my stature as a monetary retard. All this in return to the crores and crores of rupees we contribute to the exchequer. All this in return to a requirement of paying 20% more tax if you don’t possess a PAN card! Very particular don’t you think. Inflation, Taxes, looting auto-rickshaws with meters as decorations, bribes: Nothing ever seems to get the constructions to finish, the dust to settle, the crowd to diminish, spay the littering stray dogs, calm reckless raging drivers, stop the air to literally stink from the open drains, stop every single day from being a maddening adventure to keep oneself in one piece. And I’m still talking about one of the most ‘cosmopolitan’ cities in the country. How do we manage to put up with all this? Wrong question. Why? Be extra cautious; you might just land up in shit here, in every sense of the word. Not trying to paint macabre images into your head, giving you an objective view on reality; if you didn’t notice you know.

2. Religion, Region and the Rest

I don’t hate India. I’ve been a passionate Indian all my life. I wear blue for an India match: hockey, badminton or cricket. I cheer for Force India, even though there is so little Indian about it except VMallya & NarainK, debated and sometimes even fought with foreign nationals, mostly white guys (no offence) for my national pride. I’ve been a big ass lover of India. I will remain so because I choose so. A bit too passionate sometimes. Although even in a secular country like ours, you sometimes need to wear your patriotism on your sleeve if you are not a Hindu. No No! Don’t give me that! No communal jargon here. I know better ‘coz I’ve been asked once to address my problems to Bill Clinton. I know better ‘coz my parents have been notified, more than once, that their Hindi sucks because well, they are Christian. Yes! To clarify however, both of them are Keralites, or popularly/derogatorily Mallus. So as per me, they can speak much better Hindi than most of Hindi speaking India can speak Pashto, Cantonese or Bulgarian. Dodge this: “Teri Englisss toh achi hogi… tu Christian hai na !” I mean, where do I start to explain things to someone who starts a dialogue with a statement like that? With a punch to the nose?!

I’m a rather dark skinned; malayali Christian who’s lived almost his entire first eighteen years in Varanasi; home to a so called ‘fairer skinned’; demographically Hindu and linguistically Hindi dominated ancient civilization. So word for word, I’m a fairly rare breed, having quite some hands on experience on the famed Indian diversity. The great melting pot of history, today I feel, is boiling to the brink. We have seventeen languages written on every Indian currency note which I once proudly explained to a German who said Germany was an extremely diverse nation. What is pride in an alien land is the source of political plundering back home. Demand for as many as 10 new states presently exist: so much so, one could make a famous, historic, founding father kinda political career out of a regionalist agenda: I don’t even want to get started with religion. I wonder how long it will take them to pillage this nation over region and religion; I hope it takes a wild blue yonder in eternity. But why point fingers at the ones who are always pointed at. We ourselves are no mean replicas of the devil himself. ‘Saala madrasi’, ‘jahil bihari’, ‘UP wale bhaiyya’, ‘a complete behenji’, ‘illad hi rahega’ are perhaps a few examples of a ‘tolerant, civil India’. Although proud of its better faces, it’s a dirty diversity in some ways, which in no measure rises above the level of racism over which the western world is so brutally patronized. In a society which still conforms to castes, religious stereotypes and even untouchabilty, we carry out the worst form of racism. Yeah, I heard you, “Common, no untouchability anymore. At least among educated”. Advice: Google ‘Doms of Banares’ and try speaking to one if you ever get a chance to. It will change your life. No one of the majority of India, dead or alive, can do without him, but no one will treat him human.

I have so much more to stab the rosy picture with. Cinema, respect for history-tradition, sports, language, the Indian typecast, friendship, love, intimacy. I will sometime, when I am overwhelmed again with a fit of rage for a nation I so love.

Bangalore

3March, 2011

Au Revoir TechTatva2010

2010-09-26T21:25:00.003+05:30

Its been five days of chaotic satisfaction. At least to me on a personal level it marks the zenith of the months of hard work and the sleepless nights of which most among us have now lost count (ref. TextTatva:D ). A bunch of days that would never be forgotten for each one heralded a new facet of the tremendous variety of ideas, discussions, fights and debates life could throw at you. You think you are brilliant and insurmountable with all the meticulous planning but then well all I can remember is what Roddick spoke about Federer: “I threw the kitchen sink at him but he went to the bathroom and got his tub.”

Its been a roller coaster ride for each one of us involved with this li’l fest of ours that has come to mean so much to so many. In the work list that filled the white board (and some great art work too), in the heap of entwined LAN cables, in all the missing pen drives, in the ‘abe printer nai chal raha $@@|#’ moments and some simple plain blond moments too; the ever increasing entropy never seemed more beautifully orchestrated.

Its nostalgia now, that reigns my mind, although its not even one complete day since I last said to myself, “Chal yaar sab ho gaya”. Its the hangover of contentment perhaps, both literal and figurative. To all who have broken their backs and endured the running; to all who sweltered in the sun and drenched in the rains; to all who did everything they could have to make TechTatva2010 and TEDxManipal what it was, this is one BIG BIG thank you, as heartfelt as it can get. Hope you all had fun.

That’s all for this edition. Let TechTatva2011 rock more than ever..!! All the best.

! ! NONE HOLIER THAN THOU ! !

2010-07-12T16:00:00.005+05:30

A tribute to perhaps the most beautiful urban sunset i have had the fortune to witness..!! Anything said would be an understatement.

With my gaze transfixed over the western sky... as the golden ball of fire, in its now diminished might slowly drowns into the horizon, nature reveals its painter within. It does not speak in words, but through elysian colours that have no rivals. Spread across the blue oceans above, the foam of clouds, with tassels of mauve and hues of peach; I cannot but feel, like a child - bedazzled by a carnival, lit up in his most fancied lights. A carnival though, so solemn, it makes him travel, and grow in thought; not of imaginary figments but in the art of an artist beyond compare.

The Chirping birds, the gentle echoing breeze through concrete settlements of lesser beings and the rustling leaves... all in a mellifluous harmony of sounds, resounding encomium to the greatest of them all. I feel everything around my being is celebrating its existence. Acknowledging its innate integrity with the universe; and thereby in some inexplicable way have intoxicated my self into a reality as blissful as paradise.

With each passing minute, I feel more and more dissolved its brilliance and enraptured by its benevolent presence. A gait so commanding of respect that it would be a sin not to notice such splendor. Sitting by the window, belittled and ecstatic, my words seem so unjust to the red rays of light that have traversed the vast expanses of space and time to illuminate a solitary eye into happiness and inspire a hand so unworthy. It has been a moment worth a million lives and a sight beyond expression. An evening that shall remain with me and a memory that will die only in the oblivion of my grave.

Nature ... Take a Bow..!!

FATE

2009-12-20T02:10:00.008+05:30

I almost thought i may not blog again. Fate compelled me. I hate fate. I like blog-ging.

iLike iLike.

Good Good..!

Let us say and sing, ‘Praise be to you, Oh Fate’

For all that you are: Mighty, Cruel and the ever so Great.

We, litters of the human creed: slaves of a greater plan

Stare and stand - oh you lesser sons of Misery’s clan.

What must I fight…? Whom shall I wrong…?

To the side of an unknown master I must belong…!

Shall I blame providence, fortune or an obscure destiny?

For what good is it, if doomed forever is my silent mutiny?

Tied and tamed in forged shackles of helpless Rage

Joys of the soul are but a generous Fate’s daily wage.

They say, our spirits are free: of bound and of boundary

But indeed, we shall laugh at a world stooped in vicious melancholy.

Of Pretence

2009-04-25T14:42:00.003+05:30

Squalling winds through a tunnel in my head.

Sometimes feels like a train racing past; flashing windows of light that leave an evanescent gleam in my contradicting eyes; and as it fades, daylight shines on my fake intellectualism, where facades over love and romantic hues become opaque in their mask of mystery. An inquiry into existing in a dark oblivious bliss pops up, looms over ones head and finally descends on you. Away from rational thinking, and the thinking of the ways of the world. In the dark where bats have their day- blind; and happy.

Other times it’s a ballroom, a regal banquet. Mindless clatter of mundane vocal chords in feigned ways royalty. Silvers plates beneath extravagant food for darkened hearts. Where formality is a way of life and true ardor a way of dramatic excellence. With a smile on the face most deceive and many an honest soul stands in reception- reception of disbelief and misunderstood faith.

Then there are times when it just feels a bit confused, anxious, and misjudged. Questions on ethics, truth, reality and who know what the human mind thinks. Vex perhaps is just another word for our very self. Who probably bothers...? Maybe just me or maybe the ones around. At dusk, as the sun set over the horizon; winds soothe with their now mellowed rage and new reflections take hold. We all act out our lives. Let’s just be actors then; at least live our acts.

...
???

Mortal lamentations

2009-03-28T19:42:00.003+05:30

The symphony of a soliloquy in slumber sheared the shallow stinging silence;
And Lost living left behind a lure of lust, known only to lonely limits.
As a bird flew through the underworld of dreams-
Trapped in the blizzard of gust-full thoughts;
A wild plunge into the final Poseidon of thoughtful vexation.
Strengths of mythical might and human disregard:
Souls of diminutive creations cry foul-
Under spells of ambiguity, a beast cried while its sinews scream!

People, Crowd and Me

2009-02-22T10:00:00.002+05:30

I know the date but I don’t know when I was born.

Its been a long time since I had water bottles round my neck, since we all fell down with “Ring-a-Ring o’ Roses” and since I wrote my exams through “four plus fives” and “three into twoes”. But who cares about it now anyway. It’s a mad rush and sometimes I wish I were Thomas Hardy. I’m not brilliant enough to write a book such as his, but “Far from the madding crowd” couldn’t be a better option.

I see people; people who’ve come here to be the solution to their family woes and people who’ve come over coz … well, they had nothing else to do; People who are dressed up in nothing less than Puma shoes, Nike socks, Levis Jeans, Reebok T-Shirts, Fastrack watches and Jockey under wear and people who write on their hostel wall, “Fuck this money culture”; People who would shoulder a tearful soul or would give it all for a smile on her face and people who walk hand in hand to advertise their pseudo-romanticized chivalry. People who would hang on to a charming departed past to fuel their hopes for tomorrow and yes, people, for whom departed is no better a word than non existent itself; some, for whom dad is the any time money, for some the hare-lipped kite runner and for some, “who gives a f**k”. I’ve seen by this time, ‘The genuine friend’, ‘The outright enemy’ and also the ‘The benign backstabber”.

So compelling is the intensity of this madding crowd that new men are forged every single day; some for the better, others, well … they just cease to be them. Its not too difficult to foresee the change, it’s the acceptance of it that is tricky; Many of us refuse it, others I guess get forged into new men themselves. Men designed to be efficient and just that, no emotional hangovers, no sentimental backlog.

Its a strange place; or maybe it’s just an instance of the terrible face of “The beautiful world” I’ve never seen or I guess I’ve never foreseen. I find it uneasy. Probably I’m just too young to grasp the complexity or probably I’m just too old to be comfortable with this transformation or maybe I just want to be reborn. Afterall, I know the date but I don’t know when I was born.

Malady of Discontent

2009-02-12T01:26:00.005+05:30

My skin's changing hues every other moment watching random males and females exchanging RED roses, teddies, chocolates and objects of eternal, perpetual, everlasting, undying, ceaseless and timeless fondness. (Yeah, i copied it from an online thesaurus)
I watched for the n-th time Tom Hanks standing on the cross-roads in Cast Away.
I fretted at my exam time table for the 253th time. Yeah, again..!
Bit Torrent’s f****d up … [shout]I want my downloads [shout]
I’ve got a tooth ache
I wanted to kill someone today but its both illegal and being Valentine’s week m not too sure…!
I got rated an average of 2.5/10 on looks… [scream]/[sob]/[beating my chest]

If you’ve read Gandhi’s talisman, you know now whom to picture..!!

A Trip in Time

2009-01-10T16:23:00.006+05:30

I now come to know, from a needle on my wall,
Seconds, days and years have passed.
Longing for the times I love,
A picture, a postcard and now myself at last.

In fond recollections of days gone by,
And thumpings of a reminiscent heart;
A breathless gasp and a saline stain,
For sure they reveal ; fate’s pungent tart.

I remember, innocent eyes that glowed,
And yes, the tiny nails I mowed;
I remember, inseparable sharpeners and broken pencils,
And also, feigned cries over fantasy tonsils.
I remember too, those colored school bags,
And skinned knees on spirited crags.

From days when my head was high
At a better toy or a flashing shoe,
Time has flown on fleeting sails
Now, toward forlorn lands I do not construe.

Forlorn lands they are,
Although here, a multitude is alive;
Each one in happy memories,
Holding on to shreds, of their childhood jive.
For we all, move on and march away,
But the eyes, the crags and the cries;
Immortal always and life itself, they always outplay.

Blood Sweat and Tears

2008-11-29T10:54:00.004+05:30

Its been long since I last posted, and now its necessary, not that my opinion would make a difference to the world at large but that if we don’t speak today, It might be well worth to stay zip-lip all our lives.

This very minute as I type my words out, I can hear Sagarika Ghosh, Arnab Goswami, Srinivasan Jain and the like, the top brass of the reporting world, letting the world know that scores have died, Mumbai’s heritage, its history has been burning and that officers have paid the ultimate price for valor. And then we also have the elite, the intellectuals sitting and debating. Debating in A/c rooms on how things could be better. One young lady blurting out clichés, one after another, as politically correct as they get, “We have got to be more cautious and its our collective responsibility.” Tell that to Hemant Karkare, tell that to Akshok Kamte, tell that to Vijay Salaskar, tell that to their children and tell that to a young 20 something men who bled for debates such as these and tell that to their mothers whose tears have no end.

So after over a hundred have died and a manifold more injured, what does the PM say, “We condemn this act of terror.” Mister Prime Minister, who does not..? “We shall consider larger funds for the police department”. After what has happened, all of these dastardly acts, the government shall only consider. This is the value for men of greatness, their lives and their death. Knowing this, the fact that India as a nation is under siege; does it make you even a touch surprised….?

For years on end now, the poor and the downtrodden have suffered the scourge of terrorism. Kashmir has been at proxy war for years now. I guess the PM could send some of his fund there. We wake up only when things go out of hand. Terrorism is no exception. Its like the terrorist are begging for attention now. For when the aam Indian died, in Assam, in Delhi, in Bangalore, in Varanasi, in Akshardham, in buses and in by lanes not many pay heed. I’m happy that there are rich in the world.

Islamic fundamentalist Jehads, such as these, need to be uprooted with the severest of action plans. Afterall, we always have one of these two to wreak havoc, the terrorist or the politician. The Purohit, the Sadhvi, the Mullah or the Jehadi, bottomline is, our nation is falling into tatters. It’s a shame and the government has been shameless. Shameless to ‘condemn’ the acts of terror, again and again and again. I wonder when it would be for the last time they ‘condemn’. For god’s sake, innocent people are dying on the streets of India’s most cosmopolitan city. Ah..! And what do they say, it for God’s sake. Jehad. Huff..! If killing the innocent is the confirmation to a ticket to jannat; I’d have to say, Allah needs to raise some standards.

It’s not just a sorry picture; it’s a grim one too. And to make dying people sound patriotic, we use phrases such as ‘spirit of the nation’, ‘India will be united’, and ‘we shall not go down’. Well, if India is limping, it has to use crutches. Its not about its mighty spirit, its about that fact that its spirit is bruised. To a point where, it has become susceptible ever more to fall under its own callous greatness. It’s easy to put on rosy glasses and say ‘East or west India is the best” or “Mera bharat mahaan”. Only hope that by the time, I’m 40 year old middle aged man, I’d belong to a faction of men who could proudly say, “Yes, India has risen. Mera Bharat mahaan”

Mechanical Love: Blind Deaf and Dumb

2008-08-12T09:25:00.002+05:30

For a mechanical engineering student, workshops are what a public loo is to a person in need of it. An unavoidable obligation to say the least. The usual Wednesday post lunch workshop returns you in post mortem status: Ghosts. Pale, exhausted, livid with life and its choices. The walk back to the room is not easy…especially when there are a whole bunch on non-mech ‘humans’ roaming around hissing at us, khakhi clad ghosts, and announcing, “Boss, T.C. chalega..?”The slow march back, under trembling thigh bones and unsteady calf muscles is just as pitiable as it sounds. The world does not seem to matter and it gets quiet when all seems futile: I could hear even the rubber sole under my canvas squeak. A feeble female count in the department and our behavior towards that small number, have rightfully earned us some queer titles. But Wednesday evenings, even our fundamental traits seem to lose vigour. As we pass by the 13th block; like Pavlov’s dog, our heads swivel around towards what normal guyz call eye candy. But mathematically, figuratively or genuinely Mech ≠ Normal.
And as we inch our way towards our shelters, the want for a soft comfy bed consumes our physical self. Climbing stairs is never more difficult. The knock on my door is then attended to. The door swings open and my roomie welcomes me with a smirk, gazing at my sweat drenched khakhi. A normal reaction in college life. I have done it too and hence shall not hold him guilty. After traversing 4 meters of my room in 20 seconds I look at the shelf, second one from the top. A piece of cast iron, once cut with a hack saw in my hand…
I turn a blind eye to my wet shirt, I turn a deaf ear to the mockery 15 minutes ago and I become speechless. I hold the piece in my palm and sit on the bed. With my back rested against the wall, my eyes plunge into sound slumber.
For all the blisters it presents me and all the joys it denies. I was blind deaf and dumb. I was in love, with gears, casting moulds, nuts and bolts. Love nonetheless.

2008-03-09T03:34:00.013+05:30

Music: Linguistically challenged..!!

It was perhaps when I was a four year old boy and Doordarshan, probably the only channel on TV. Coming back from the Sunday morning mass at church, I stood in front on the scooter as dad drove through the congested roads of the early ninety’s with mom sitting at the back. Feeling the cool morning breeze on my face, I believe the only thing that I thought about was ‘Jungle Book’, ‘Bible ki Kahaaniya’ and ‘Mahabharat'. With no offense to my Hindu friends, I never did like the latter of the three much. I found it confusing with so many characters, chariots and strange looking arrows that blew up in mid air. But, more than anything else, more than Mongli, Noah’s ark or Sri Ram, what I remember the most was a string of contemporary musicians and vocalists... Lata Mangeshkar, Shiv Kumar Sharma, Bhim Sen Joshi, Bala Murali Krishna, you name it, all singing or playing what one would call the essence of diversified unity, “mile sur mera tumhara, to sur bane hamara”. It was then, when I first happened to hear the phrase... “Music has no language”, from a person I blindly believed, my father.

For these many years, I have been an admirer of music. And when I say music, it ranges from the droning of a bumble bee to the rhythmic clattering of the railways; from the khyaals and the taanpura to the opera and the cellos. The mysticism of Indian classical music has no rivals, nor do the enigmatic overtures of the Western classics. Be it Tansen, Bhatkhande, Beethoven or Byrd, they all have been proofs enough for me to believe what my father had said. As the years rolled by, with maths, science, social studies and language...the one thing that grew along with my age was the frequency of a few words... why, what, where and the like. Looking back, it is no surprise to me now. After all, the whole world follows the same path to greater knowledge. Nevertheless, the latest in the list was a question that came to me a week or two before, that does music really have no language..!!

It suddenly popped into my mind after I was taunted by someone about my choice of music. For those who do not know my choice, here is a crash course and it’s a crash course because its one line long. “I like anything that is melodious”. I believe it was Pt. Jasraj singing Raag Bhairav. He was a lean fair dude, pale would be a more appropriate word, hair grown out and wore a black Nirvana T-Shirt with Kurt Cobain written on it. He said, “Dude, what the f*** is that madcap singin? And by the way, how the f*** can you listen to this nonsense?” An argument broke out, more out of insult and anguish than anger. The argument may have had no outcome but surly it gave me something to think about.

So, while we know exactly that Mike Shinoda was the one who put Linkin Park together, very few of us know the difference between a sarod and a saarangi. When I type Elvis with a small ‘e’... MS Word tells me its “Elvis” and not “elvis” with that irritating red line beneath it. But when I type Jasraj, I need to right click and “add to dictionary”; even Microsoft does not know who Pt. Jasraj is. Its not that I have something against western music, its that I cannot comprehend as to why it should be hailed so high that we treat our own tradition “unclool” and if I may take the liberty to say it ... even uncouth. We love and revere Jim Reeves, how many Texas guys would know about Kishore or Rafi. Too much for “Music has no language”.

I may be right, I may be wrong, but for the time being, that’s my stand. Music has a language; which one, I know not but surely as an Indian I can see clearly, it is none of the tongues we are born with. To some extend I presume even we need to do some introspection. After all, for me it goes beyond just music, its national respect at stake, not just a language.

2008-01-28T15:18:00.000+05:30

Oblivion Forever….?
India my Land,
A land of an everlasting spring,
Where soaring above the skies,
Here the Kokilas chirp and sing.

Where with its glorious glory,
The liths of time stand still;
Singing your praise the rivers roll,
Testifying your might,
Are high the hills.

Here is where the monsoons knock,
At the gates of a garden;
Where feeling the mounts, it could walk.
How nature’s Beauty herself, spies at her,
With the eyes of a Hawk.

Here is where knowledge found a glass,
For herself to look at,
Gazing at such splendour,
Here is where she found her throne,
Here where she sat.

But why do I speak in tenses of the past…?
Why do these lines crowning you,
Seem not sturdy enough to last.

Poets in the past,
Termed you many a time, a Harp.

Why, but today, thou art,
Unstruck forever, Unsung forever,
Speak if not sing,
What is it that I may do?
From you being forgotten in Oblivion forever.

If I were a Teacher, I would say...

2007-12-04T14:23:00.000+05:30

On the need for innovative action in Indian Eduacation

To say that even in the twentieth century, millions and millions of years since the first humans appeared on the face of this planet, ours is still a very imperfect world, would perhaps be, usageof rather mild language. Be it social, political, economic or educational, each and every aspect of human life has a far way to go into becoming an ideal reality. A ‘perfect world’, practically speaking is probably a ‘dream world’ but to put forward a hypothesis that our world, even today, is an unjust and hard world for the majority of mankind is not what one may call, ‘risky business’. What major countries, spend each day, on waging wars against one other, is in fact more than sufficient for a daily wage laborer to live his entire life, which he might have only dreamt about and thought to be fitting only to kings, to say the least. The unreasonable and unjustifiable system of discrimination of fellow humans on the basis of caste incorrigibly lingers in the society, haunting us of its presence, even to this very date.
Presenting forward and pondering over the problems of the modern world is an endless issue of consideration but the larger point is that the more we discuss this subject, the more we come to understand why nature made us humans, different from the rest of the animal kingdom. Why God made us the most curious of all living species. Why he provided us with a mind that has an insatiable thirst for knowledge and an unquenchable zest for solving problems. Why he gave us a mind that is able to “Innovate”. A famous English saying propounds that “Necessity is the mother of all inventions”. If this is true, may I also state, that it is socio-political predicaments that breed the innovative action of the human self. Ever since the human mind has become conscious of its own future, it has realized the necessity of a powerful and socially aware youth. As Tennyson rightly pointed out, “The old order changeth, yielding place for new”, it is the younger generation that lays the foundation of a progressive society, nation and the world at large. Having said the above, one cannot deny the fact that to a certain extent, what is wrong with the society today is the result of the fallacy of what is taught to our students. For change is the only constant in the world, it is the very profession of teaching that needs the greatest extent of innovative reconstruction.
Consider this, every year, the best talents in science and mathematics in India compete and crack a plethora of engineering entrance exams for getting into the top institutes of India. However even with this creamy layer of students that the institutions manage to search out, if one looks at a list of recent inventions, discoveries or scientific patents, the most common country names one would spot are the US, the UK, Germany, France etc. Why ?? Why is it that the best talents in India, do not show up on the world scene. It is because here in India, students are taught “what” to think and not “how” to think. The “teach WHAT to think” criteria is not specific just to the houses of higher education, unfortunately it is a common denominator that exist in almost all the educational institution in India. From village open air schools at the grass root level to the very zenith of higher education in India. In our schools, a good student is only one who is good at academics. The word “studious” has now become synonymous with, say a, “bookworm”. Though a student may have the artistic hand of M.F. Hussein or the poetic inclinations of Byron, Wordsworth or Longfellow, unless and until one can solve physics Chemistry or Maths problems, he is a mere fool who knows nothing at all. And for this both the educational system and the teachers are to blame. Our systems constant dependence on marks as the sole criterion of judgment is mundane and illogical. Not only is it outdated but also one of the greatest threats to a progressive society. Max Muller once said, “India, what it can teach us”. Nevertheless, to believe in this statement today in totality would be to set foot into dangerous territories of ignorance and complacency.
Education in India has to change. We live in a world which is highly competitive, and our children deserve the best. In the present age, the way we transfer knowledge to our students would leave them almost nowhere. The very outlook of Indian education has to undergo a transformation of colossal standards. The system needs massive reformation for it is to a great extent, the system itself that ties down the flare in not only the student but also the teaching community in transferring their vast ocean of knowledge to the future builders of the world. And this reformation is not to be imposed from the top but natured from the very foundation. Leaving the essence of education hollow, one would just be creating an unsustainable and fragile future nation. Considering the amount of scope for improvement in the teaching patters of Indian schools and institutes of higher education it is needless to say that innovation is not only the need of the hour but the need of every single minute hereafter.

Allen Jose George
[As a teacher on the need of Innovation in the field of education.]