Moving on

Let go and move on is one task that should recur in every to-do list universally. We all have had nagging thorns in our minds that kept hampering our daily lives. If this is the only life we get to live, and I don't see any evidence otherwise, then we all got to live it till we die. True though that it is easier said than done. Or is it? I adopted a policy of moving on a few years ago. Essentially this means that I intentionally and quite happily live my life forward. None of us other than the time-lords can live it backwards. Even if you are indeed a time-lord you are just jumping to another point of time and still live it forward (more or less like an Okazaki fragment). There is no point carrying the load which only makes the journey difficult. I avoid thorny roads, dark alleys and pestering co-travellers along my finite hitch-hike on this earth. It is never worth the trouble. 

I don't wake up every morning expecting the world around me to have changed. I don't expect miracles. I live under no delusion that the world revolves around me or there is some divine being planing my days ahead. It was the day that I stopped chanting my morning prayers that I started seeing how wonderful my life already was. May be thats why we are encouraged to pray with our eyes closed. Now I can live with my eyes open to see the Kanizsa triangle illusion of the solipsistic self.  

Of course some might pounce on me to enlighten my dimwit mind that prayers are for giving thanks rather than asking favours. Nevertheless, any honest person would agree that most prayers are aimed towards the divine Santa. But even if am to be thankful to a divinity who looks upon every single one of us without bias, what am I to be thankful about? That he/she had kept me better off than most of the created ones? That I survived infant fatality that still haunt most of the human species? That I lived in a middle-class urban set-up while many others suffered in agony wondering where the next meal will come from? That I was lucky to be university educated while many more smarter minds of my age had to toil to make a living solely because they were born in a poorer family? 

God works in mysterious ways they say. If such a mysterious being exist, I would rather let that one stay as such. I am better off living with the less mysterious terrains of life. As a scientist mysteries entice me. I love my curiosity kindled. But only if the question makes sense. If no religion had ever been right about the physical world, then why bother to square that circle? 

Neither do I want to be one of those facebookers who post pass-it-along pictures and phrases in order to appease their deities. I find it sadly pathetic that they got to try such gimmicks to squeeze as much juice as possible out of their gods. 

All I intend to be is a person who cares about the world around myself solely because doing that spreads a warm fuzzy feeling in my heart. I want to be altruistic solely because it makes me happy. I don't look for gifts in the future because of my deeds in the past. I am glad to leave behind things and people that hurt me. I have learnt to let go and move on. I don't carry grudge, not because its a sin, but because a grudge-free life is lighter. All these have made me a happier person. I don't wait in hope that the sky will open up for me because of all the deeds I have done, which am anyways hardwired to do through natural selection.

I don't intend to hurt anyone with this post. But if it did, let it go and move on. 

Justifying the case for selfishness

Please do not read further if you can't recognise or appreciate sarcasm.

A recent article on BBC said that the growth in number of English speakers in India is too slow! Some nationalists and great souls who can survive without a functional brain would rejoice on reading this. They are not without good reason to do so. English proficiency is inevitable for development of the nation as a whole, but surely not if you are hell-bent on keeping the socio-economic hierarchy dictated by the caste system undisturbed. It is only as long as the current elites keep the English knowledge and education to themselves (and make sure that the poor stay the way they are) that these elites can enjoy the fruits of capitalism. We can ask the child born for illiterate parents to study three languages. Obviously the child fails to pass the exams because his /her parents can not teach the child themselves nor can they afford to hire private tutors. We are free to pretend that we do not know that North Indian and South Indian languages are very different (by script, grammar, vocabulary and origin) and stay adamant in refusing that it is cruel to expect the three language formula has a norm in a nation with such low literacy rate. But, these are no big issues since we should care less about lesser beings nor it is a great loss for mankind, isn’t it? After all, every poor child that drops out of school would mean one more slave for our children, one more slum dweller whom we can look down with disgust and one more antisocial who we loath for being so insensitive about "our" sentiments and wellbeing.

As Professor Hardgrave of University of Texas explains the North [India] was and is keen to stuff Hindi on the South, but least bothered to learn anything about the South. Why should the North anyways be bothered about the sambar eating, ennada rascala talking, sweaty faced, dark skinned, annoyed and irritated (and irritating) southerners? Funny enough the three language policy itself is in place because we all know that English is vital to our survival. But why do we have more languages added to English? We do that, supposedly, because we need an Indian language to be the link language for all Indians to communicate with each other and not a foreign tongue. Hindi descends from Sanskrit which which has been unequivocally proven to be born in Afghan-Iran border regions which got a bit mutated in India (as Khariboli) and absorbing Persian and Arabic into it. It is indeed a very truly and natively Indian language, which some might foolishly claim to fall short of any qualifications of the Dravidian languages, which which are born and bred in the subcontinent. Well, but the Dravidian languages don't have good numbers of speakers isn't it? Next step is to dethrone the tiger as the national animal and give that seat to rats – the same with peacock too for crows. Numbers matter – it always does!

On NDTV's Big fight debate on the “language debacle in India” the sole surviving Gandhian, Mr N. D Tiwari, aptly pointed out that Hindi was the language used in the freedom struggle and that of Gandhi. Why would or should he or any of his battalion go through the annals of history that it was imposition of Hindi over Urdu that played a major role to the nation being partitioned or the fact that Gandhi wanted every child to learn at least 5 languages at school before she/he would learn science or maths, and every kid should learn to draw before they do to write. I'm sure all of these supporters of cause of Hindi as link language have bothered to read the Mahatma's biography – after all they are using his name as a reason.

We should care less if India's progress is dragged down at the cost of imposing Hindi on rest of the population. Let us be proud to be foolishly selfish!

Let us stop hitting below the [Hindi] belt

Why do we blame the Hindi belt for pulling down India’s progress? Let us pause here and try to reason. Till very recently government of India refused to accept most of the indigenous languages of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh as independent languages. They were merely considered to be dialects of Hindi. How preposterous is that? One of them, Bhojpuri, has an estimated number of 170 million speakers. Even if we take that as an exaggeration we are at least left with 100 million people with Bhojpuri as their first language within India! Linguists unequivocally agree that Bhojpuri is a language on its own and should not be considered as a dialect of Hindi. Is this the only language which has been sidelined? Nopes, the list is too long to put on here. Magahi is another such language with rich heritage. It is supposed to be the direct descendent of Magadhi Prakrit – the language of Gautama Buddha. Once again government of India refused to accept this language (which by all means needs to be preserved) as an independent one and once again listing it with Hindi. Why are we so unfair to the speakers of these languages? As Professor Paul R Brass (University of Washington) quotes in one of his books when talking about Maithili (yet another Bihari language) “the wolf of Hindi want[s] to swallow the whole of the language of north Bihar”.
Let us try to reason out now. Imagine someone born for illiterate parents and speaks a very colloquial dialect or slang of a language at home. If this kid goes to school where the medium of instruction is in the formal written form of the language would you think that this kid has got any chance of doing well? We all know about the curriculum in India. It is no way easy at all. If this is with different dialects now imagine a kid born in a Bhojpuri family and going to school where the medium of instruction is Hindi. By refusing to accept their language as anything authentic, their right to be educated in their mother-tongue has been refused. How do we expect someone from the lower socioeconomic family to do well when he/she is denied such right? They are left with choice of either giving up their mother tongue or stay behind. So much for the largest democracy!
We refuse to accept their language, we impose another language on them, refuse to give them quality education, call them as “Hindi belt” when they are not and above all mock and beat them up! I am deliberately using the personal pronoun “WE” since its time that we take collective responsibility for the state of affairs out there. How long is this Hindi imposition going to be continued? We all know that this is unfair. Probably the largest rumour ever to be spread in modern times would be that Hindi is the national language of India. How many times have I heard people telling me this! One even went to the extent of claiming that someone who doesn’t know “Hindi- the national language of India” cannot be considered Indian. I had to reply back that someone who doesn’t know that Hindi is not the national language of India should be ashamed of himself/herself for not knowing what the constitution states. Funnily enough the constitution states that all bills and acts passed should be in English (which will be considered as the acceptable version) and all other language versions will be mere translations.
I see no good coming out of Hindi being imposed on the citizens of India. However sweet the language might be, how can it be forced on people immorally? Tell me honestly, can India do well if we give up English? We definitely need English to communicate with other countries. English language is our window to the rest of the world. Do we need one language for us to communicate within India and another one to communicate with the world? Like Annadurai questioned, “Do we need a big door for a big dog and a small door for a small dog? Can’t the small dog use the big door as well?” Even nations like China who traditionally do not speak English are opening up themselves to the language but we have been walking backwards for half a century banking on Hindi. Is this the state of affairs we want to leave behind after our generation? Remember that we do not inherit the earth from our parents, but we borrow it from our children. It is our foremost duty to make sure that we are clear of our conscience the kind of world we let the children live. Is the condescending attitude towards the so called “Hindi belt” going to continue? To start with we should stop calling it the Hindi belt.

Have we crossed all borders to keep borders in place?

To be honest with you, I do not know how to start. You always need a good “punch-line” to grab the attention of the reader. I have none. I’m not trying to play the game of claiming I don’t have a hook to pull and use that claim as the hook. Honestly! So let me get to the point straight. Whats up with all these borders? Seriously, why do we need them? Are we still hunter gatherers who are too scared that the neighbouring tribe will consume-off all our food sources? Are we trying to keep the others off from our women and children? If they want to and work towards it, they will get them all with borders in place too. The American TV soaps will do that anyways.
By having borders in place we along with our brilliant ancestors have bred all animosities as possible between all people. Have borders prevented man killing man (and women alike)? Whats with the refugee thing and seeking asylum? Why can’t people feeling unsafe in a place just move to other and feel at home? Why are we still not civilised enough to unite all mankind? Are we not social animals? It looks very much like we are more animal-like than being social enough.
If India opens up its borders to Pakistan, one might say, will bring in all the terrorists in – to quote an example. But aren’t they getting in anyways? At least when you open up you will have more people gushing in seeking fresh pastures and people can see that the ones on the other side are not any different.
We might not be ready yet for this utopian dream, but I wholeheartedly feel that we should be working or at least thinking towards this end – the end that will bring all mankind together. It is heart aching to see us still going on with separatist ideologies. I can see no difference between the separatists within a country from a so called patriotic nationalists. It is high time we stop this madness and work towards the goal of being children of the universe.

~To be or not to be: that is the question~

After the match fixing fiasco, it is now about cheating for CRICKET. While one side of the debate being Mr.Hair’s bad track record of treating Asian teams, other facet is about Inzamam’s decision not to return on time to the pitch. Who ever wins the argument it’s the game that loses.

David Lloyd may say ‘For God’s sake, it’s only cricket’. Or is it?

Cricket is more like a religion in South Asia. This is the game that units the nations and it is this very game that helps the confrontation between the nuclear neighbours to vent their grudge in a more civilized manner. Throwing a ball with all the vigour is better than going in for nuke detonation. The muscle, teamwork, game plan, conditions and even love and hatred, all that you see in a battle field is manifested in the pitch too, and best part being, no team can out number the other. This elevates the game to a much higher importance that just being David Lloyd’s ‘it’s only cricket’. Fair refereeing is important for cricket itself, and much more for the people of the subcontinent to lay their trust on the game rather than confrontation in the battle field.

The overall outcome will eventually decide on whether the game would stay in the hearts of the millions of fans in the subcontinent or would be history forgotten in the last pages of the dailies.

Cheers

~Democracy rules~

Democracy is one of the most successful long running political systems in human history. Although, sometimes it may leave you in a demi-crazy kind ‘o situation; but it still works.


I was talking about world politics couple of days ago with my supervisor on coffee and what he said stuck to my mind. He pointed out that in democracy, even if people of Afghanistan vote for Taliban, eventually after the set term people would throw them away. Banning and bombing wouldn’t work as good as the vote of the plebeian. The mills of democracy may grind slowly, but surely.


Being a Christian born in predominantly Hindu India, keeps me wondering how good a melting pot India is. But when in 1996 BJP emerged as the single largest party in the parliament I was left with shock and disbelief. One thing I never agree with BJP is their anti-conversion policy, when it claims to reinstate India’s old heritage. Ironically, India had always been a land of many religions. The land where Buddhism was born and so did Jainism and Sikhism. All these religions have influenced the culture of this land. People have always been switching religions. Every icon of India denotes this basic truth to us. The Ashoka’s pillar (erected by a King converted from Jainism to Buddhism), Taj Mahal, Gomateshwara statue (tallest statue in India) etc,. Fascistic fundamentalist laws are antidemocratic, but still, they made it to the parliament, eventually seated in power in a couple of years. But what happened after the end of the term is a good example of democracy. BJP was voted out. The nation moved from far right to a left oriented mandate. I’m not pro-left either, but I’m sure by the next election India will lead to a more moderate government.

Democracy makes revolutions possible without a rebellion: democracy rules.

Cheers

~PUSH THE BUTTON~

Everyday my inbox gets pounded by junkmails, just like most of you out there. In spite of knowing that 90% of them are real junk, I go through each one of them to the word, looking for sense in them. The ones I find most disconcerting are those which hail themselves as ‘PRIDE OF INDIA’. But on a closer look have an hidden agenda to shake the very edifice of the integrity of this diverse but unified nation.

Here I would like to present one of the recent junkmails I received. It’s about the man who changed the education system in India. I do have my complaints about the current education system, which aims at spoon feeding and getting a clerical job rather than being innovative. But that is another topic altogether. But this man, Lord Macaulay, introduced an education system that is for every Indian, when compared to the then system of education for the upper class. Yes, if not for him, the subcontinent would be a bunch of educated upperclass ruling over the illiterate low caste pariahs (surprisingly enough the English word pariah itself was borrowed from Tamil, an Indian language).

This is the picture I received as an attachment with the junk mail I’m talking about.

The link here will explain the reality behind the above.

People seem to love the lies, for some reason. Pride of this artificial aura: unreal, but still spreading its dark lies.

The selfish fundamentalist is gaining and making strides already in the age of the internet. Will the tide change for the good? Or is he going to win? Will the light of truth be ever lit in the hearts and minds of those who forward these emails, without caring a damn to check the authenticity of the content?

The enlightened pushes ; if you are not then push the button.

Cheers