SHAME SHAME

A family trip to Delhi and whereabouts is just what I need to boost my sense of national pride, I remember thinking. After all, what could be better than looking at those marvelous pieces of architecture built by the ancient kings to make you proud of being an Indian? What better place than the streets of a city where history has been made? Which other place can give you goosebumps than the Taj Mahal? Which other city can take you back to Mughal times than Fatehpur Sikri? Just listening to my father describe all these places sent shivers up my spine. His enthusiasm was infectious. I could hardly wait for the day to come when I would see the marvels of my countrymen in all their glory, for the day I would see our own wonder of the world. Boy, I was raring to go…

I sit here infront of the computer, punctured. The balloon that initially filled me at first sight of these places had deflated long ago. The strongest thing I feel now as I look back is a sense of shame and embarrassment. I’m not talking of the monuments, those are marvelous as always. I’m talking of the people.

The Taj Mahal requires people to remove their footwear before ascending onto the monument proper. Today however, there are alternatives for those who do not wish to leave their expensive footwear for the tour guides to steal. A disposable wrapper of some sort is provided which they can tie around their shoes and sandals, after which they can freely explore the monument. This seemed a pretty good idea until I got onto the monument. The sight was horrendous, those wrappers were everywhere. People were walking around with unprotected footwear all over the beautiful white marble, taking selfies, completely unconcerned about what they were doing to the monument. It could hardly get worse, I thought shaking my head, when I saw a group taking off those wrappers as soon as they came up. It was not even accidental, it was deliberate! Every step that these shoes took on the white marble broke my heart. A marvel of architecture which had no parallel anywhere in the world, and never would was being desecrated in plain daylight by people who had no interest in anything other than to take pictures of themselves infront of it so that they could show it to their friends.

But I haven’t even gotten to the worst part yet. The most shameful moment of the day was yet to come. I was walking around trying to ignore the insensitive buffoons around me with their smartphones taking photos of themselves and checking in on Facebook, when I saw a child being reprimanded by his mother, for trying to take off those wrappers like everyone else. They were clearly foreign, talking in an English accent. She was telling him how sacred this place was and how one should respect the great monument of the past, not to mention those inside it. A foreign tourist knows how to respect a piece of someone else’s history, while the people who should were soiling the whole place. I had never felt so ashamed at my own people before. How could I enjoy the beauty of the place anymore? My first visit to the Taj Mahal was completely spoilt.

This was not the only incident of the sort that happened. It was simply the one that shook me the most. Although the other places were not that bad,(with the exception of Fatehpur Sikr, but let’s not go into that) it was more or less the same, if not in so brute a fashion. Very few people did I see who were actually admiring the monuments, genuinely glad to be there. The rest were busy looking at the buildings through the screens of their phones or through their camera lenses.

How can we hope to move forward if we can’t even respect the past? How can we hope to build a new and better country when we are the ones dancing in its ashes? How can we hope to lead the race of the nations while we are too busy posing for photos with our best duck faces on?

It doesn’t look too bright to me.

HAVE YOU EVER LOVED SOMETHING SO MUCH YOU'D DIE FOR IT?

He woke up to find himself and the bed completely drenched in sweat. It was swelteringly hot. His bedsheet was lying on the floor beside his bed. The ceiling fan had stopped working, and so had his night light. His digital watch said it was 1.25 in the morning. What a time for a power cut! He tried closing his eyes and going back to sleep, but soon found that it was futile. His modest hostel room offered no way for any hint of breeze to get in, barring the tiny varendah which opened out onto the street below. Resigning himself to another sleepless night, he went out onto the varendah and felt gratified to feel the coolness of the night on his body. He drew in a deep breath of the fresh air and closed his eyes to listen to the stillness of the night. That was when something struck him as amiss. There was way too much noise in the street below. He opened his eyes to find that there were a lot of people out there, most of them still in their pajamas, and many of them were gesticulating towards the building and talking in an animated manner. He could also see fear on many people’s faces. Bewildered, he looked on, trying to make sense of what was happening, when a voice shrieked out “Oh my God! Someone is still in there!” A sudden outburst of noise assaulted his ears, with people looking up at him and screaming, frantically gesticulating something he could not make out.

Suddenly, he smelt something strange, something very much similar to what the kitchen usually smelt like when he was in there. “Who the hell could be cooking at this godforsaken hour?” he thought as he turned round, intending to check out the hostel kitchen which was only two doors down from his. A sudden heat wave pushed him back into the varendah. His door was on fire! And so was his wardrobe! Flames were licking their way into the room, making it unbearably hot. He stood rooted to the spot, not comprehending that all his belongings were being burnt to ashes right in front of his eyes. Most of his clothes were gone, and so were his books. His eyes were the only things that could move, and that in an increasingly frantic manner, resting for not more than a few seconds on every inch of his room. But when they came to rest on his bedside drawer, they widened in horror. He felt a horrible sinking feeling in his stomach. The searing heat which relentlessly attacked him was nothing compared to the cold, clammy hand which took a hold over his body. All his dearest possessions were in there. His iPad, his Samsung smart phone, his HP Ultrabook and his most prized possession, his brand new Alienware M15x, something which he always kept under lock and key for fear of its getting stolen. This was the thought which propelled him into action. He leapt towards the drawer and opened the topmost draw. He grabbed his iPad, phone and the notebook. But the most important thing was in the bottom draw, which was locked. He knelt on the floor and lifted the mattress of his bed, which was already partially burning, trying to avoid putting his fingers into the flames and snatched the keys. He fumbled with them, trying to put the right key properly into the keyhole, something which the inferno above and his sweaty, shaking hands did not make any easier. Finally, after a few failed attempts, he managed to insert the key into the slot and turned it. He caught the handle and pulled, but it refused to come out. It was stuck! Screaming out every profanity he knew, he pulled once more, but it just didn’t budge. He tried taking a deep breath, but the smoke caused him to collapse in a fit of coughing. After a few seconds of gasping for air, he managed to pull himself up and tried to open the draw one more time. It opened just enough for him to see the shiny red piece of technology glinting in the flames, and the Alienware logo looking back at him with the orange flames reflected in its eyes. He could feel his hair getting singed as he tried to squeeze his hand into the opening to get it out…

The next day’s paper had a piece somewhere in the middle on how a short circuit led to a hostel building somewhere in the middle of the city going up in flames. Thankfully, there was only one casualty. Though there were no pictures accompanying the article, some obscure online news site managed to get hold of a grainy, black-and-white picture of a room on the second floor. If you looked hard enough, you could just make out the body on the floor, next to what might once have been a bed, looking almost as if it was reaching out to the barely-distinguishable bedside drawer. 

SURVIVAL OF THE RICHEST?

“Money is power. The sole purpose of human existence is to make money. With money comes happiness. There is no life without money. Money is everything.”

This is the message that is most commonly put across today. It is a fact that a person earning five thousand a month gets less respect than someone earning five lakhs a month, irrespective of whether the former works harder. “How much is the starting salary?” is a common refrain heard when young people choose their career paths. Anything and everything is possible with the right pieces of paper in hand, right from a good education to, as movies would have us believe, getting out of sticky situations with the law. That song from a recent hit farce movie sums it up. All we live for now is Money. Money enables us to possess smartphones and iPods. Money enables kids to show off on sports bikes. Money helps get kids into elite colleges, even if they don’t deserve a place.

It is undeniable that those pieces of paper possess enormous potency. But is that what man wants in order to be happy? Somewhere down the line, humankind had confused having money with happiness and passed down that legacy, managing to corrupt the successive generations. Whoever said “Money is Happiness, Happiness Money”?

I was very troubled upon hearing a 7-year old tell me “I wanna be billionaire” in reply to my question. Of course, he’s just a kid, but for some, these priorities don’t change as they grow up. We really need to stop believing in the omnipotence of money if we are to put ourselves back on track. We must stop comments like “Study hard now, you’ll get into a good engineering college. Study hard for another four years, you’ll have a ready made job at the end, 50,000 minimum. Bas, life settled!” Is this really all that is to life? Does happiness mean possessing incalculable amounts of Money? Is Money so important that people are willing to sacrifice everything from their health, to their friends, and in the end, their lives itself? Some introspection is much needed in today’s world of survival of the richest.

IT’S ALL A MATTER OF PERSPECTIVE

The train sped away from the platform just as I reached it. Breathless and covered in sweat, I proceeded to curse everyone from the bus driver who felt the need to stop at every bus stop to the train driver who couldn’t wait a few more seconds. This was the third time I would be late this week, something which definitely wouldn’t sit well with the professor taking the first hour. Thoroughly fuming, I sat down and waited for the next train, wondering if anything would go right that week. I’d lost my wallet, cracked my sunglasses and ripped my backpack in the last three days. “It can’t get any worse” I was thinking when I heard the “zzzipppp” of my sandals ripping and falling apart.

I climbed onto the positively overflowing train with a black cloud over my head. Jostling for position and having stare-downs with my co-passengers for that much-coveted seat by the window, I cursed these hundreds of people for choosing to get into my train while there were hundreds of others available. It was then that I noticed the old lady near the doorway crying silently. The look of pure sadness on her face made me forget everything else for the moment. Then the guy standing next to me broke the spell. He was shouting obscenities into the phone. Apparently, some poor bloke lost a few thousand rupees and had to face the wrath of this fellow right here. I could empathize with both of them, being in the shoes of each of them at different points of time. Then I took notice of the many others in the compartment, each of them wrapped up in his/her own miseries and anxieties. The sheer magnitude of humanity in that one train suddenly made me stagger. Thousands of people with problems much bigger than my own. There were people who could barely manage a square meal per day, there were people rushing to the place of some unfortunate relative who had some problems, what were my cracked glasses in front of these? Here I was, a kid wearing branded jeans, with an iPod in his pocket and a smart phone in the other, having the audacity to be angry at the world because he couldn’t wake up in time while there were people around me whose problems encompassed the whole of their world. In the midst of it all, a baby, smiling with pure joy, his mother with a look of absolute adoration on her face, a sight which made me smile as well.

I got down at Tambaram no longer angry or depressed. In that one journey of a little more than half an hour, my problems were put into perspective.

Note: This piece was published in The Hindu Nxg on Thursday, 11 July. 

A STORY OF HOPE

The most intriguing part of my life, certainly the part that changed me the most was the period of time I spent in the hospital. Sometime around the end of fourth grade, I was diagnosed with a type of jaundice, which led to the discovery of some sort of aberration in the behavior of my white blood cells, which in turn led to a chronic kidney failure. The next two years took place nearly entirely in hospitals. I remember shifting from hospital to hospital, from ward to ward and from bed to bed. One would not be far from the truth in saying that it was the darkest phase of my life.

For a kid of around nine years of age to be taken terribly ill so as to spend his days in a hospital with an assortment of tubes and wires going in and coming out of his body, being denied any sort of junk food and with no friends to play with is a sad thing indeed. The only company I had was my parents and a few relatives, and the occasional grown-up I never managed to recognize nor remember. They did their best to make me feel comfortable and loved, but that did very little to shake that feeling of loneliness and unjustness that constantly assaulted me, not for want of trying on their part though. And the doctors who came for my blood (literally) every day didn’t help either. I had never been inclined towards the religious side, apart from the occasional visit to a temple, but I vividly remember wondering why God was so angry at me so as to put me into such a state. This was a period which was filled with all sorts of rants and curses directed towards God, for the injustice that He had done me. It was a part of my life filled with pain and suffering, not just for me, but for all of my relatives, and especially my family. The sadness and worries that they experienced can never be put to words. I especially remember the one time I saw my father crying outside the room; he didn’t realize that I couldn’t see him. I didn’t understand back then, but it still felt like a stake driven through my heart.

But, like an angel appearing from the heavens with a solution to my misery, my father one day entered the room with a book in his hand. It was the second book of Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling. I was not much of a reader before, some Enid Blyton and perhaps a bit of Satyajit Ray were all I could boast of having read, but from the first page of this wonderful world created by The Queen, I was hooked. It didn’t matter that I read the second part first. All I knew was that this piece of art by that great lady provided me with an escape. My days were still for the most part, filled with pain, but I now had something to battle it with. This world of magic and beauty gave me my “happy place”.

Having exhausted those books, I proceeded towards others, though the books escape my memory. It was only that beginning which lingers in my mind. I can safely say that it was this decision by my father that truly changed my life. When I look back now, I find a world filled with pain, misery and anger, but also a world of joy and beauty. I remember the numerous times that I wished for it all to go away, the times I wished that I were someone else, someone normal and healthy so that I could lead a happy life, but I realize now that every happy story must have a low point. It is this dip that moulds that person into what he is to become. Had such a thing not happened to me, I would probably be studying my butt of for an exam tomorrow in a subject like engineering graphics. That certainly makes for a scary thought. But I look at myself now, and I realize I am happy. Needless to say, I still have problems to face, obstacles to overcome, but the important thing is that I am surrounded by people I love and who love me back, doing something I love and just enjoying life. Every cloud has a silver lining. Every dark tunnel has light at the end of it. Every rainy day gives way to sunshine. There is always hope. If there is one thing I learnt from those Dark Days, it’s that life is like one of those kung-fu masters we see in movies. It makes your life a living hell, robs you of everything that makes you happy and makes you wish you were never born, but all that is only to make you a better person in the future. In the end, it is to your sensei that you owe your identity to.

SCIENCE – BOON OR BANE?

As I switch between the computer and the TV, thoroughly bored and pondering over the direction of my life and the meaning of life in general, when it strikes me that I wouldn’t even be in this predicament if some fool hadn’t got the idea of changing nature to suit himself instead of adapting himself to nature. This brings forth arguments and counter-arguments, and before I know it, I am drawn into a long debate with myself on whether science is a boon or a bane. Yes, I know. It’s a very old topic that has been completely chewed out by innumerous people over the years, but hey, atleast it helped me pass the time.

My first thought was that I wouldn’t have a phone or a computer if it were not for science, and needless to say, survival without these gadgets if nearly impossible. That definitely counts as a huge plus for science. But then it strikes me that maybe this is exactly what the problem is. We get so addicted to the little things that science brings to us that soon, we’d have a very hard time living without them, something that reminds me of the symbiote that turns Brock into Venom in the Spiderman series. Perhaps this is all a conspiracy, maybe some aliens gave us all these so that we’d slowly become dependant on them and finally, when they wish to invade us, they can just take away all of these gadgets, making as very vulnerable and fragile and thus, easy pickings. At this point, various conspiracy theories invade my mind and I spend nearly an hour to sort through them.

“But look at the number of lives science has saved. The life span of man has increased dramatically, and the number of diseases that can actually kill us slowly reducing in number. We no longer have to live in fear of being hunted by predators which are far superior to us physically. We’re at the top of the food chain, thanks to science” I argue, striving to close the argument once and for all. And it is true. Compared to the early days of human existence, we live in much better conditions, with much more safety and comfort. We don’t have to worry about nature’s changing moods. It doesn’t matter if it rains cats and dogs or if it’s scorchingly hot. We can always adjust the thermostat to suit our comforts and let nature storm and rage outside. So science has changed the world for the better, atleast from the perspective of man.

But what about that “ultimate aim” in life that everyone talks about? What does a regular human being really want? If being happy is the right answer, then how does one go about achieving it? By becoming rich? Or achieving fame? Or is it all about power? And how do we know if we’re truly happy? In our pursuit of happiness, it is common that we often lose our way. Most people cannot answer definitively when they are asked whether they are happy. Children are made to imbibe inhuman quantities of knowledge in order to help their journey towards this “happiness”. After education, it’s work. The general idea is that the more pieces of paper we earn, the happier we can be. But no, there’s more to it. Having these bits of paper is not enough. We need to spend them wisely, knowing what to exchange them for and how much it is worth. And then we have to calculate how much to pay the people who run the society in exchange for a safe life. And yet, there are those poor souls who are not by any means, happy. Does life have to be so complicated? In the beginning, happiness meant a full tummy. For that, the people had to go out and kill something or collect fruits from trees. A much more straightforward process than that we follow today, where we need to study for a minimum of fourteen years, more if we want to be less hungry and then work for atleast eight hours a day in order to earn money and then use this money to buy food. Was life so bad in the wild? When I see pictures of tribals, I see genuine happiness in their eyes. Sure, they have all kinds of problems like diseases and lack of food and water, but what they have that we don’t is the exact idea of what they want and how to get it. And to top it all off, they live in harmony with nature, whereas we share a relationship with our Mother which is not different from a parasitic one.

It was that last argument tipped the scales towards the “bane” side. If someone asks me now whether I would prefer to live in the wild among nature, my reply would be something like “Of course, not. Are you crazy?”, but that doesn’t stop me from thinking maybe life was better back then after all, inspite of all the obstacles and difficulties.

PLANET - X

One of my professors asked us to submit a paper on a world without men, and this is what I came up with. It is based on generalization and stereotypes, so bear with me please

The first thing that is necessary for such a world is that the women must figure out how to reproduce. Although research says that synthesizing semen in laboratories is a reality, such a thing on large scale is still quite far away. But, for the sake of this paper, let us assume that it was perfected and that all the males were wiped out in some freak accident. What would happen? Apart from an ecological disaster, of course.

The first thing that most women would say is that there would be lesser number of disasters in the kitchen and more number of accidents on the road. But jokes apart, the first thing that strikes me is that there would a definite reduction in the number of crimes of sexual violence. Of course, such crimes are to be made gender-neutral, but one cannot ignore the fact that most of the crimes of such nature are perpetrated by men.

The next thing which comes to my mind is that the number of commercial activities which show a particular sex in bad, like the advertisements of a certain brand of deodorant, would be greatly reduced.

There also those who argue that a society in which women are the dominant force tends to be a more egalitarian society, so one would hope for lesser discrimination.

Most people would agree when I say that men are generally more violent than women, something which is apparent in childhood itself, where one can see young boys preferring to smash things up whereas girls like to play with dolls. Nature provides testimony to this fact too, in the closest relative of the humans in the animal world – the chimpanzees. The Bonobo is a species of chimpanzee in which the female are the dominant sex, unlike the regular chimpanzees. It is observed that the Bonobos are much less violent than the regular kind. Therefore, one can safely say that a world filled with women would have lesser wars, a definite plus point, one would say.

But some, like yours truly, would beg to differ. Although it is unquestionable that wars must be condemned because of the death and destruction they bring about, they are not without their merits as well. War is something which brings a change in ideology to a country, albeit in a violent manner. A war is sometimes the only solution to a dictatorial regime which is putting the welfare of the people at stake. Sometimes, a war has to be waged to protect the interests of the people, however twisted those interests may be. Let’s try to put things into perspective. The small group of islands off the north-west shore of Europe wouldn’t have become Great Britain, where the sun never sets, if it had not been for their military campaigns. Christianity wouldn’t be the most popular religion in the world if it had not been for all those wars waged for it. All the roads wouldn’t have led to Rome if they hadn’t had the best warriors of the time. For all we know, I wouldn’t be writing this in English if the East India Company hadn’t taken this nation by force. So, maybe a world without violence isn’t the ideal world everyone fantasizes about.

Another generally accepted conception is that men are more adventurous than women. Had it not been for this death wish, half of Africa would still be unexplored and America wouldn’t be the most powerful powerful country right now. Infact, I would wager that humans would still be shivering in caves if it were not for the men who ventured out to find out what that hot thing burning up all the trees was. And, I remember reading somewhere that some scientist actually managed to prove that men are brainier than women (Google it, I’m not going to cite any sources here), the reason for there being more male scientists than among the females, although I can already hear the feminists shouting for my head right now. So, effectively, this means that the industrial revolution wouldn’t have taken place yet, and the small-pox vaccine would still be a fantasy if it had not been for the “rougher” sex.

What I’m trying to say is that killing off all the men in the world is not going to solve any problems. The relationship between the two sexes should be symbiotic, where one cannot survive without the other. After all, everything in the world comes in twos, like light and dark, war and peace, yin and yang etc (I know, they’re not the world’s best examples). So, we really must try to appreciate each other more instead of just pointing fingers and claiming that our own sex is superior.