Cut-piece : Confessions of a Paranoid Soul

When I see the world around me, can’t help but feeling the world is being set up for the worst kind of Doomsday. The kind seen in movies like 2012 and Deep Impact. Needn’t be a nature related cataclysm but I get a really strong feeling that the world as we know it isn’t going to be around for much longer.

I’ll tell you my reasons for this paranoia. The Eurozone crisis and unrest in countries like Syria, The extreme financial crisis being faced by Greece, the political-cum-tactical games being played by China against India , America losing face along with it’s credit rating at the world stage, Iran building it’s own nuclear weapon despite the international pressure and the worries that Pakistan’s nuclear weapons might end up in the hands of terrorists; are just a few of the things that make me feel , that we are on the verge of World War III. And we all know how this one will end.

Reading too much newspaper has done me in, I should say.

But there is one thing that gives me the willpower and optimism to stand up and go about my chores every day , and that is the sound of my neighbor’s baby boy laughing as his mother plays with him every morning. The sound of giggles he makes when mommy tickles him cleans my heart of any traces of pessimism I had gathered throughout the previous day. If God decided to send another life to Earth at times like this, Surely he must be giving us another long lease at life and happiness.

That kid doesn’t care what kind of crap is going on in the World as long as the woman he loves more than anything in this world (yet) is with him to protect him till the very end. All people like me can get inspired by him.

We all have people who would die before letting anything happen to us, and for whom we would do the same. Its for them that we should make an effort,  after all , they are the main thing our world is made up of.

If everybody thought about the people they loved and lived just for them, the world would automatically become a much better place to live in.

It might count as short-sightedness, but just like that baby I have decided to live day by day, not caring much for what developments in the world might mean in the long run, I’ll enjoy each day as it comes, being optimistic that nothing wrong can happen till that kid has seen life, had good moments , fallen in love and lived to the fullest. That must be God’s plan. Why else would He send him to earth at times like this?? :)

We Are Way Behind The Times

God made one earth, nature divided it into continents , man divided it by countries and religion. Our country went a step further and divided people of the same religion on the basis of different castes.

It should have stopped there.

There was once a time when some of the brightest minds in the country decided that some races  have been victim to oppression for centuries and that the time was ripe to bring them to justice.

And it was true , some castes (let's call them 'The Oppressed') had been ill-treated in our country's past. There is no denying it. They were oppressed, insulted , demeaned and denied the right to respect of fellow countrymen- which, in my opinion, is the most basic of all human rights and should be a constitutionally valid fundamental right as well.

What was done to enforce justice to The Oppressed was not right . At least it doesn't seem right now.

Reserving a few seats in educational institutions, providing education to the oppressed at minimal fee, might have seemed to be breakthroughs to the people in power at that time. In today's scenario, these ideas just seem stupid. These concessions should be for the people who need them, not for those who want them just because their forefathers got them and it has become a right of sorts for them.

And yes, The Oppressed were the poorest sections of the society at that time, so it was only logical then to provide them education free of cost, but why now?

Are The Oppressed the only poor (or let's say 'not-that-well-to-do') people of the country?

Are they still the undermined minority?

And if they are, is reserving half the capacity of educational institutions for minority right? Leaving the majority to fight it out tooth-and-nail (and bribe and coaching and endless hours of study and backdoor entries and suicide if nothing else works because all your friends got somewhere except you , as  they were either geniuses or kids of rich people or of those who the government has vowed to cherish and protect as their own) for the other half ?

It is a rule of human nature, that people realize the worth of something only when they have earned it, and paid for it by their blood and sweat and toiled for it with all they had. The Oppressed have their future presented to them on a golden platter , the others have to slog endless hours , and even then , there is only a 51% chance that their efforts will do them good..

What our intelligent leaders don't realize is that it's differentiations like this that divide the society, and don't let people forget that they are separated by something, that there is a difference between the way the world sees them and treats them. How can you be friends-forever with someone if you could not get into the college that could have been the gateway to your bright future because you weren't considered intelligent enough for it, but your friend could, he/she didn't have to prove their intelligence (because the results showed you deserved it more than they did ), but he/she ended up in your place, because centuries ago, your ancestors had ill-treated their forefathers.

Would it let you treat them as your own? I don't think it would.

There is a reason why a system of cut-off percentage is applied in admissions to specialized courses, so that the quality of people being trained is maintained. There is a huge difference between the performance expected from the different sections of society being discussed. It’s not understandable that the people given this advantage are allowed sub-standard performances unlike others.

This discrimination is being extended further . The Oppressed now have reservation in public sector jobs too . And any company that opposes it faces the wrath of the Mighties.

Doomsday for us would be the day when its decided that this rule will be imposed on the private sector as well.

The meritorious will reach success , with these crutches or without them. Kids in remote parts of the country sit in boats  and cross ropeways to reach schools. Our greatest President used to study under a street lamp. They did not have this favoritism fueling their aspirations. Why do some people find the need for them. And more importantly, why is it decided again and again , that they deserve that?

The day when some government has the guts to stand against this would be a great day for our country. The starting line for the leap to progress. That day India would be called a developed nation.

Governments would never be able to muster up the guts to tell off those in favor of this discrimination. They have their motives to think of. But it should be done. This is not right. Education is everyone's right and it should depend only on merit how far a person can go in his career. Not on caste, or religion, or even sex for that matter.

I know many girls who can kick any guy's ass in a quiz contest or a math Olympiad.

Our country has known great men from the classes we consider oppressed, even from the time they actually were being subdued, who rose from the ashes and achieved greatness.  People don't need  mercy to get where we deserve to be. But they also need a fair game to be played.

What can be done here is to appease The Oppressed by giving them a rebate on fee and last dates of receiving forms of admission and extra help with preparation and studies, workshops to educate them about new technologies and career options, to bring them up to speed about where the world is at, so that they don't need to feel behind the times and the other people around them.

We can have  creation of groups of equal number of representatives from The Oppressed and others for all assignments as part of school curriculum so that the feeling of brethren increases during childhood itself. For those sections that really are backward-hail from remote villages, we can assign mentors from good schools : kids their own age, and keep activities that will encourage more social and academic involvement in each other’s lives so that the difference between development of kids from different realms of society can be decreased. After all, that is considered the basis of the demand for reservation. If we eradicate the cause, the problem will go by itself. All that will remain then, would be to appeal to the sensibility of the masses to warm them up to the idea of eliminating reservation all-together. The Achilles Heel of the entire task, yes, but has to be done someday. We can at least stop increasing the percentage of reserved seats in educational institutions. Reducing the number or reserved seats can follow.

 In the end, it should be merit for everyone that get them to places , so that they can hold their heads high while talking about their achievements. The Oppressed need to understand too, that what their forefathers went through at the hands of The Oppressors, is exactly what they are doing to those not included in The Oppressed.

One should get what one deserves and it would be best for all concerned if there is an environment of equality so that the competition is fair and there is no environment of enmity that poisons the air of our nation.

The Boy Who Lived

'The Boy Who Lived'.
A word no smaller than 'phenomenon' could describe Harry Potter for my generation. A bespectacled , lanky ,little boy; ill-treated by his only living relatives, all alone in the world, fighting not just the loneliness in his life but also the feeling of being abnormal in some way; this character was drafted since the very beginning in a way that provoked sympathy in the hardest of hearts.

The journey begins when Harry is just an 11 year old. He fumbles with his new found identity, makes friends , encounters some phantoms of his unknown past, and experiences a head-on with the 'Darkest Wizard of All Time', the infamous He Who Must Not Be Named. The reader weeps with Harry when Dumbledore tells him that it was the power of his mother's love for him that saved him from the killing curse when he was a baby. The emotions of a boy who wants to weep but does not want his tears to be seen register with the reader, his pain can be felt.

While the first three installments of the series were Children's books essentially, J K Rowling achieved the amazing feat of making Harry grow along with his avid readers. The following installments contain emotions like love, jealousy, darkness, fear, loss; and make us witness the coming of age of the protagonist so effectively- his thoughts echo in our heads, we can understand why Harry yells at Hermione in frustration when everyone thinks he is a nutcase to believe Voldemort has returned from the dead , and why he insists on digging the grave for Dobby the house elf, rather than burying it using magic.

Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire is the turning point in the basic attitude of the series- it is here that Harry becomes the hero , and starts getting equipped to fulfill his destiny. Till this point Harry was just a kid whose life was in danger and everybody was out to protect him from any harm. It is here that he sets out as a man on a mission, who wants revenge for his parents' death.

Another that appeals to me the most is the ease with which all the characters have been carved so  distinctly , it's difficult to absorb that all the characters are actually the product of one person's imagination. With Dumbledore's cryptic monologues ("..but in essence divided?.."), and Hagrid's "..Arr..", she has spun a web of creativity so intricate , the reader gets to know on his own, which character is supposed to be saying the words that he is reading.

I fell in love  with Harry when I chanced upon a book (Harry Potter and the Order of The Phoenix) that I was getting in exchange for a prized Agatha Christey that I owned. I had agreed to this exchange after much deliberation, needless to say, I have not enjoyed any book immensely after that, because subconsciously I start comparing the current writer's prowess to that of my idol.

Being fully aware that these words give the impression of having been borrowed from a hardcore Harry Potter Fan page, I would still recommend Harry Potter to anyone who can read !! You are missing out on a literary experience of a lifetime!

Till some other inspiration drives me to the laptop-Signing off.

Caput Draconis!

MAYBE YOU LOOK IN THE WRONG PLACES...

It’s not that rare to witness a scene when parents, or elders-for that matter, irrespective of how they are related to some kid, dishing out advice about how much time a kid should spend in front of the TV.

The reason they give for their aversion to the ‘idiot box’ is that there is too much promiscuous or/and sinister activity being aired on TV these days, which is bad for a toddler or  a young boy/girl who has just stepped into teenage.

That’s a perfectly legitimate anxiety on the parents’ part. When harmones are a-raging, watching ways of attracting the opposite sex in seconds could give you pretty nasty ideas, which is bad when at that age you need to have your wits about you and concentrated on academics and character building. so parents are not totally wrong in imposing the frequent embargos on their child’s liberty to watch whatever he likes. Mostly its like “only pogo, discovery, or a news channel”. Sadly there might have been an oversight in this clever plan.

What do you do , when in the middle of SHINCHAN, an AXE commercial is aired, or your kid stumbles across a news being aired about a sex racket on the news channel you recommend? You bubble of security is not as sound as you think it is.. !

And its a very biased assumption that all television does is to corrupt young minds and put ideas about violence and the ‘bad stuff’ in minds of the young ones. I watch a LOT of TV and yes, occasionally I have come across inappropriate content, but I have also learned a lot, and not only through Natgeo and discovery. I learnt that Nokia is from Finland by watching Transformers; I know what and where Harlem is and that people of Indonesia prefer a lot of spices in their food; I perform really well in any audio based  test because from having an experience of watching Star World I understand what people with different accents are saying; I fully understand the severity of 9/11 and its impact on the world because I have seen almost every documentary ever aired about it . And yes, I also know that Shahrukh has an unmarried sister; John didn’t want to commit and that was the reason Bipasha broke up with him; but entertainment is not that bad for the mind as people mostly assume it to be!

By being exposed to such a lot of information people also can develop awareness of what is good and what isn’t. None of my friends use AXE to have the ladies swarming around. They use it because they want to be presentable. And about the people who are ‘influenced’ by the advertisement (generally intersecting the set of people who scream about the ill-effects of television), let’s just say when the top bunk is that empty , just smelling good won’t get you anywhere 

Its still important to guide young people what to watch and what not because the quality of content has degraded. But its a public medium and you can’t expect your filters to be applied everywhere. The storm comes even if you close the windows, if you stop your kid from watching it on tv, he will access it on the net or his friends will tell him about it . What you can do is educate them about some things you want to protect them from and information about why this age is not suitable for knowing about those things.

Inculcate their interests in the right things, so that they don’t migrate to the ‘banned’ channels even when you are not around, there is a lot of good stuff too. And its not just the chemical formula of sodium carbonate that makes them an aware person. Don’t put so many hurdles around them that when they finally break through , you can bet they would try what you stopped them from trying earlier.

Now that’s enough for today, Its time for me  to watch some TV.

Call me an idiot as i love that box!

Cheers!

WHY BLOGS

This blogging industry is not that old..Probably celebrated its 7th or 10th birthday, to be vague. But the boom that it has seen puts our economic growth to shame, even though it does form a teensy bit of a part in it.

People may not be sociable always, but we cannot deny the fact that man is social. He needs to interact, to talk, to share, to listen, to appreciate and be valued. It is his position in others’ lives , that forms the basis of his everyday life – most of his actions, beliefs and his mental makeup.

Social networking sites give you a platform to share bits and pieces of your life on display- what you feel at the moment (not more than 140 characters, including spaces !) , what you wore at a friend’s birthday, what that friend wore and who liked whose outfit..

To people who have more to say than that, who don’t feel its enough just to express your mood in two lines, who like to express their opinions along with the explanation of their origin and bases behind those thoughts, and most importantly who would love it if you had something to say about their views, be it trashing their ideas on a public portal, so that they can prove their point again; or people who just want to showcase their world of talent to others, however small that be; blogs are God’s greatest gifts to them, running a close third after mothers and oxygen.

Its my turf, I am the master of this little space, I decide what can be published where and what is just too simple to be worthy of a space like this.. If this were RUNWAY I would be Miranda Priestly.. This little blog might not be even close to that million dollar magazine yet, but I would always cherish it just the same, its my baby, the product of my imagination,.

Some lunatic who just had to have a paper and pen .. or in today’s scenario, a monitor , a modem and a working keyboard; to be lost in his own little world, would have created blogs, our very own little pieces of paper, only they don’t involve killing of trees or the fact that papers and ink run out..if the space on these blog sites is endless, so are my ideas.

Its going to be tough fight 

cheers!