My India...My Lokpal!

Blogging at such a short interval of time. Does not happen regularly.Especially, not when I have a post grad examination date staring right at my face! But what I want to say today needs to be said. Not because I have lots of people reading what I write,but, because this currently is my way to show support to a cause which I believe in.
A million articles, countless blogs, inumerous tweets, extensive media coverage both in print and television have covered, telecast, supported and hailed Anna Hazare and his movement. I have nothing new to say. I do not want to say anything new. I want tot reinforce and strengthen this movement. We are a country full of educated people (at least lots of us are), a country overflowing with entrepreneurs, top-notch engineers, talented people from all walks of life. But about 200 years ago we were a country which did not have enough people who were qualified to have fancy salaries and  THE perks. But, back then we had a handful of leaders who told the nation what was going wrong. What exactly about the British oppression was harming the Indian identity, what was happening to 3000 years of historic greatness and what was happening to Indians and their quality of life. And, we had people who had enough moral fibre and courage in them to stand up to what they believed in. We had people who knew what was right and what was wrong. We had people who did not believe in the grey regions as politics did not concern them. All they were worried about was getting salt and the rest of their daily requirements at prices which were affordable. All they were worried about was to make a living without having to pay more than half of what they made to the government. They were concerned about able to live a life where nobody told them what to do. They were not people who thought a lot before doing the right thing. They were not like us, who, are worried about what might be the consequence of doing the right thing. They were not silently supporting the British.
But, we are doing just that. We keep quiet and support our 'extremely wonderful to people..:p' government. Why wont we? After all we voted for them. Now, please do not pretend that we did not know we were electing a corrupt government. We did.
Then again, what will a nation do when the choice is between the lesser of the corrupts?
Almost 100 years of constant struggle to get Freedom from foreigners and then the process of building the world's 'largest' democracy began! And then all hell broke lose. 10 years of free India and the very foundations on which a great republic was to be built began withering and shaking. And the saga contnues. On the occasion of 64th anniversary of independence I want to report the 'state' of my country to our first prime minister:

Dear Pandit. Jawaharlal Nehru,
Thanks a ton,for successfully beginning the 'let's take India down with all our might' Andolan. You started it and we followed you without too much of opposition. Your rich legacy was carried on by every man/woman who came to power after you. And your movement has spread into every ration shop, RTO, municipality, school, colleges etc. So do not worry. Your vision for India has come true. We are finally the world' 'largest-corrupt' state! All the roads in India exactly look like the way you thought they should be, the quality of every Indian's life is amazing (very 1960's)..after all we are still following what you and the rest of your team mates have given us in the name of constitution, All schools function like you dreamed they would..in the most primitive fashion, we still have the largest railways with the same technology you had in your times. See, its perfect. Congratulations!!
Okie..I exaggerated a little. There has been development, there has been a lot of improvement. But I would love to point this out to you: None of it with your help. People..every single Indian  (here I am excluding all your people-corrupt-ians) has worked so hard to change India from being a theme park of sorts to a functioning state.
News update: Have you heard? There is a new man on whom the entire nation's attention is currently focused. His name is Anna Hazare. And this man who is doing a little good to the nation is being painted as the 'villain and a anti-peace element' by your successors( literally!). I want to tell you this, so that everybody from your generation to mine can get the point loud and clear: 1.2 billion of us are backing him. We do not care what kind of a person he is. His mission to bring down corruption is all we are concerned with. It is our chance to undo all that you twisted, greedy, ruthless and highly SHAMELESS politicians have done to bring our country down.
So, for once let us handle our country. Let us make our conditions of living a little better. Let us have a government and a system which we would want to trust. For once keep your big fat ego aside and work for the betterment of the nation. For once, let us try and get rid of the corruption-jinx. DO NOT thwart our efforts and further lower your dignity. Please.
Give my best to the rest of your corrupt chums

Cheers
A hopeful to the point of being stupid Indian.


Ps: Stupid because: Pragmatism is something I have given up on currently!! It is a cause...1 reason to support it ..100 reasons not to do so.

@The rest of you who are reading this:  You know what to do :-) Do it!! For once..do it!! The Lokpal bill can not and should not be another vegetable bill of our democracy!! Let us not let this happen.

Food: The best way to bond!

Staying away from home comes with it's share of distressing times and days. But then, there are days when you know that, you would never trade this extra amount of freedom for anything in this world. And, when you are living with people you have never known before it becomes a whole different thing. The experience of living with people for days at a stretch sort of makes them your extended family and you realize that cooking becomes an event which starts bonding the inmates of the house.
When I first started cooking food with my roomies, it was a big fat deal! Big because, the food cooked was often 'big' on experimental value and fat because, we all belong to the classical India 'Khathe-peethe' khandans and our sizes kind of stand testimony to that fact! It all began with buying apples from random grocery stores and grew into actually cooking elaborate 3 to 4 course meal. 'Maggie-noodles..3 minute mein tayar' was the first and the most favourite option for us. And when our Maggie stocks started dwindling, we started looking at food which 'mom-usually-cooked-back- home'. A few days into the community cooking habit and all our conversations started revolving around the next meal..or the next Indian dinner night. So much so that, even our Facebook updates looked like: "cooked palak paneer today for the first time..tastes awesome". And the joy of cooking your first edible meal is incomparable to any other achievement, no matter how huge. The ear to ear smile which reflects the satisfaction of  being able to put the ingredients in the right proportions to make it humanly agreeable is one of the best smiles I have ever witnessed.
After getting used to the culinary duties and throwing lavish parties which involved 'food' as the 'main' attraction, cooking became more like a daily chore. Finally, budgeting our food expenses( becos we were cooking,mind you, not eating a lot) also became an integral part of living together. Soon, the conversations which used to start at the vegetable chopping table began to last till the last round of drinks were available in our old refrigerator. Each one of us regale the rest with childhood stories to anecdotes from the 'just- over' college life. Our ability to talk to each other for hours now has gone beyond the kitchen and well into our rooms, where, all of us come together almost at every dinner time (Note: It can be very painful for five people when they get crammed into one small kitchen ).
I cant think of anything else which could have brought 5 mad, strikingly different and compulsorily disagreeing strangers together in such a short span of time.  Now, we plan to set up a restaurant if we do not finish our Master course on time :P. However, I hope it does not come down to that. :-)
So happy cooking, feeding and bonding..good times eh? :-)

Life influencing art or vice-versa?

Having not written five sentences together and not having made strange analogies to make those words look colourfull in three months makes a writer pretty un-sophisticated and sometimes even plain. So, this is my effort to shrug off all that dust which is beginning to settle on my grand ideas. But, I am still not promising big words. Somehow I do not know how to pick the right ones.

Well since I have made an honest confession about how I can not manage to put more than two big words in one sentence or write up something fancy, the title for the post should come as no surprise. But what I do know is that- this is one question which is nagging almost all of us. Infact, this has been that one thought never ceases to cross my mind whenever I have an encounter with the art-world( so much for being an engineer :p).

When I say art, I am definitely not trying to behave like an off-shoot from the Roman social scene, quiet the contrary. But then, I really think that this connect between the society and its art output is amazing. Its symbiotic of sorts. 4 New york women living their dreams, wearing designer gowns, dating men and having highly successful careers- Sex and the City! Is it not something all new age urban women want? Ofcourse it is. No wonder the series had its viewers by their jaw. I have friends who most certainly relate themselves with each of those women at various phases of their lives. I have even heard a friend of mine say' " I should have just taken a leaf out of Carey's life and told my boyfriend what he needed to hear.". That is some serious influence here. If we are going to carry Carey, Samantha, Charolette and Miranda around in our minds and let them have their way in our lives then I do not know what other word but 'influence' will be justifying this scenario.

If lines like “ us haath ko tum tham lo..woh meherbaan kal ho na ho” and “tujhe yaad na meri aye..kisi se ab kya kehena” seem so relevant to what a teenage heart is aching from, then there is something which is just more than entertainment that can be attributed as a quality to these works of art!

But what I have also came to think of is how William wordsworth could conjure up the “Solitary reaper”. From what has been said of his poetry, they have merely been a reflection of his life. If history has made Dan Brown tell stories which have filled four books, three of which are best-sellers, then the reverse of the above stated phenomenon must also be true. If true life incidents like Jessica Lal’s case went on to become the biggest commercial grosser so far with the movie No one killed Jessica, then what more can be said of Life influencing art in such a big way?

Talking about Life influencing art, Michelangalo’s  Last Judgement is the finest example of this creepy-ness ( What with some people being so observant of one's life..!! Even the intelligence agencies seem to miss so many things these artists notice..:D). The master painter has used the face of this one man named Biagio whom he absolutely hated as Minos( who is depicted with donkey ears!!). The man in question was so disturbed by Biagio that he used his face to symbolify life in hell ( probably one should be really careful when picking fights with a painter of any sort :p:p).

Personally I think all these observations have got me to see this as a vicious (sometimes pleasant ) circle which is stuck in a never ending loop ( @comp.sci wizards : I hope I am using that term in the right context ;-)). It is like Life and Art are two entities which are happy feeding off each other. I would not call it a love-hate relationship. I would describe it as “need” for each other’s continued existence. It is wonderful to know that human-life is a motivation enough for an artist to glorify it and that humans are willing to learn and lead model lives like the ones which are depicted on a canvas. The psychology of the creators and the followers are so intense and inter-twined that the existence of either party without the other seems un-fathomable.

In one line: I am willing to keep my life in a lovely shape, I do not want to be caught off-guard if someone decides to paint it after all J

Meghana Dayananda: Turtles and Elephants

Meghana Dayananda: Turtles and Elephants: "This one is not to spread social awareness of any sort..it is not even a take on the larger section of the society..it is 'just a thought' ..."

Turtles and Elephants

This one is not to spread social awareness of any sort..it is not even a take on the larger section of the society..it is 'just a thought' i want to share:-) This is about people who have a world of happiness but still have the audacity to complain! 

I have finished laying off the disclaimers..we can go on now I guesss.

Look around a little..maybe u r just missing out on seeing lives of the people around you... maybe…

Sometimes, things kick off greatly and everything seems word-perfect. Well, there are times when this does not happen and then, the people who have such experiences become the 'unfortunate' ones. 

However, most of the times I think it is all about Einstein's theory of relativity. Don't be super-socked. This is just the beginning of my rather strange analysis of human behaviour. Experts (who, however, are not reading my blog right now! :p) may disagree with me. And, I might be wrong, but I would still want to go ahead and say this. 

Now, this man is famously quoted saying -"Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. THAT'S relativity" . Honestly, sitting next to a pretty girl has not made any difference to my existence.. But I can vouch for the truth of that genius's quote if when I sit with a super-hot guy;-);-). So, when we say things did not commence or happen the way we wanted it to, we conveniently forget that: Things happened..only the magnitude of it varied. Relativity! Look around..

For instance, one of my very close friends complained about not getting a job in a particular town. I listened to him for about two months without complaining. I sympathized and behaved like a perfect friend. His cribbing season never ended. Every conversation started revolving around the same topic. I wanted to hold his throat and say, "you atleast have a job! There are a million people out there who can kill to be in your place right now..so just shut up and stop cribbing!". I agree that it might have been his life time dream, but not everything is lost. There are ways out of such situations.

All of us like to keep the money pouring in. But 7.5 million Indians, 25% of the german population, 27% of the Canada’s population is without a job of any kind. These people have NO job. In comparison was my friend's situation worse? Relativity! Look around…

If some situations are annoying, some are exceedingly enlightening.  I was at this grand ado where everybody was a somebody. I have no clue why I was there. A very charming acquaintance of mine walked up to me and said..” My parents will never understand me..They think I have changed after I found her (girlfriend). I feel so lonely. If they do not understand me who else will?”

I listened to this guy for more than an hour( I am a sucker for stories!). It then flashed me that he might not stop talking at all. Thank god for this one elderly person who walked by and said something sane. She said- “Listen son, I am sorry but I overheard all that you said. I would like to tell you that you do not get a choice between having your parents or Al- Pacino’s parents, the only choice you r getting is-  you can have your parents or no parents. That is how life is to everybody..you make the choice now. “  I was bowled over. Well its Relativity! Look around..

I mean, life is not exactly hunky-dory all the time and that fact is very well registered. Thank you. But then, why can't people be sportive enough to accept what happened in their lives. Its not the end of their world. The options that are given to us may not be overwhelming. But, we still have options. There are so many of them who do not have any. If we continue to live high up in the air and build our own little castle there, even going to a grocery store for milk will seem difficult. There are so many people around us who have nobody to care for, so many of them who are dying from hunger and poverty, so many hwo can not read or write, so many who are physically/ mentally challeneged. They do not complain half as much as we ‘privileged’ ones do. Things can be so much simpler only if we are willing to budge a little and change our prespective. The train moves if you are standing on the platform..but for the passenger inside it you are moving away.  

It is very important to understand/realise that we human beings are not elephants or turtles. Our life does not span for 130-150 years. On an average we get to celebrate our 60th birthdays. When such is the case, why do we waste moments of life doing nothing better than sulking?  Why not just apply the theory of relativity now and then to just lighten some pseudo-traumatic moments of our lives. And maybe we will even discover why our parents are upset with us? Why  we did not get the job we wanted? Why my girlfriend/boyfriend dumped me liked trash?  Maybe…

Turtles and Elephants

This one is not to spread social awareness of any sort..it is not even a take on the larger section of the society..it is 'just a thought' i want to share:-) This is about people who have a world of happiness but still have the audacity to complain! 

I have finished laying off the disclaimers..we can go on now I guesss.

Look around a little..maybe u r just missing out on seeing lives of the people around you... maybe…

Sometimes, things kick off greatly and everything seems word-perfect. Well, there are times when this does not happen and then, the people who have such experiences become the 'unfortunate' ones. 

However, most of the times I think it is all about Einstein's theory of relativity. Don't be super-socked. This is just the beginning of my rather strange analysis of human behaviour. Experts (who, however, are not reading my blog right now! :p) may disagree with me. And, I might be wrong, but I would still want to go ahead and say this. 

Now, this man is famously quoted saying -"Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. THAT'S relativity" . Honestly, sitting next to a pretty girl has not made any difference to my existence.. But I can vouch for the truth of that genius's quote if when I sit with a super-hot guy;-);-). So, when we say things did not commence or happen the way we wanted it to, we conveniently forget that: Things happened..only the magnitude of it varied. Relativity! Look around..

For instance, one of my very close friends complained about not getting a job in a particular town. I listened to him for about two months without complaining. I sympathized and behaved like a perfect friend. His cribbing season never ended. Every conversation started revolving around the same topic. I wanted to hold his throat and say, "you atleast have a job! There are a million people out there who can kill to be in your place right now..so just shut up and stop cribbing!". I agree that it might have been his life time dream, but not everything is lost. There are ways out of such situations.

All of us like to keep the money pouring in. But 7.5 million Indians, 25% of the german population, 27% of the Canada’s population is without a job of any kind. These people have NO job. In comparison was my friend's situation worse? Relativity! Look around…

If some situations are annoying, some are exceedingly enlightening.  I was at this grand ado where everybody was a somebody. I have no clue why I was there. A very charming acquaintance of mine walked up to me and said..” My parents will never understand me..They think I have changed after I found her (girlfriend). I feel so lonely. If they do not understand me who else will?”

I listened to this guy for more than an hour( I am a sucker for stories!). It then flashed me that he might not stop talking at all. Thank god for this one elderly person who walked by and said something sane. She said- “Listen son, I am sorry but I overheard all that you said. I would like to tell you that you do not get a choice between having your parents or Al- Pacino’s parents, the only choice you r getting is-  you can have your parents or no parents. That is how life is to everybody..you make the choice now. “  I was bowled over. Well its Relativity! Look around..

I mean, life is not exactly hunky-dory all the time and that fact is very well registered. Thank you. But then, why can't people be sportive enough to accept what happened in their lives. Its not the end of their world. The options that are given to us may not be overwhelming. But, we still have options. There are so many of them who do not have any. If we continue to live high up in the air and build our own little castle there, even going to a grocery store for milk will seem difficult. There are so many people around us who have nobody to care for, so many of them who are dying from hunger and poverty, so many hwo can not read or write, so many who are physically/ mentally challeneged. They do not complain half as much as we ‘privileged’ ones do. Things can be so much simpler only if we are willing to budge a little and change our prespective. The train moves if you are standing on the platform..but for the passenger inside it you are moving away.  

It is very important to understand/realise that we human beings are not elephants or turtles. Our life does not span for 130-150 years. On an average we get to celebrate our 60th birthdays. When such is the case, why do we waste moments of life doing nothing better than sulking?  Why not just apply the theory of relativity now and then to just lighten some pseudo-traumatic moments of our lives. And maybe we will even discover why our parents are upset with us? Why  we did not get the job we wanted? Why my girlfriend/boyfriend dumped me liked trash?  Maybe…

Happy beggining :-)

If the world acceded, joy wud b spread

If ideas converged, joy wud b spread

If smiles lay curved, joy  wud b spread

Maker reveals- joy alone spreads faster

Pain does not last a long time

Wounds so deep do not lay unhealed

Stream of tears no longer flood..

Life does not remain unfair after all

The wheels turn, newer flowers bloom, newer hopes rain

What persists at the end of it all is JOY n its spreads..

A fresh start...!! I am already loving it :-)