jabdakhata

Europe and its struggle 2

2012-01-28T10:09:00.001+05:30

The early adopters of Christ also included certain sects who were influenced by Buddhism, paganism and other ideals. Some of these sects, e.g. the Gnostics believed in reincarnation and many of their notions and practices were influenced by Eastern ideals of Vedanta (monism and dualism) and Buddhism. However some of these sects, being persecuted by the Church and the Holy Roman Empire, later fled to Persia and under Islamic influence many of them converted to Islam. Their original ideals helped them in forming a separate sect called Sufism with divine communion and love for God as the central theme. Others who remained in Europe, preserved the main teachings of Christianity and gave rise to what came to be known as Christian mystics who also believed in direct communion with God. Needless to say, in the middle ages, with the growing influence of Church, some of these Christian mystics were persecuted as heretics because their teachings and messages were not in sync with the preaching of the Church. Meister Eckhart was one such mystic. Others like Ignatius Loyola, St Francis of Assisi however were more fortunate as they had a larger following and the Church accepted them in the mainstream, albeit grudgingly, although the label “mystics” distinguished them from the Catholic mainstream Christians.

Apart from frequent warfare, class conflicts and rise of religious conflicts and persecution, Europe at this time was also afflicted by several calamities, like the Black Death and the great fire.

However with the decay of Arabic Islamic rule in the near East which had been a great patron of art and culture, and with the rise of the less liberal Islamic Turkey, Europe had a great opportunity to rise. The European nations at this time became great sea farers, a legacy of the Romans, Phoenicians and the Vikings. They discovered new worlds, some of them travelled to various countries in the Far East including India, their dreamland. Treasures were discovered and old civilizations were destroyed but European monarchies started becoming rich. The discovery of the colonies and their riches resulted in mutual warfare over the booty but ordinary people remained as poor as ever. Only the ruling class and the adventurous class prospered. Wherever colonies were established Christianity also spread its wings, sometimes through the help of sincere teachers but most often by force and repression and subjugation of the local culture.

The golden age at this time was ushered in through the opening up of new realms – in art, literature and science.

Andhenaiva niyamana……

2012-01-28T09:59:00.000+05:30

Sri Ramakrishna had a simple way of teaching. Through many parables he has handed down very profound messages of Vedanta and other scriptures to his devotees and disciples. Himself uneducated in the traditional sense, he nevertheless derived this source of knowledge from direct realization. The supreme mother of the universe, according to him, passed on the required knowledge whenever a need arose for teaching others, just as a peasant woman moves forward the paddy for the removal of the husk. One of his famous parables was that of a physician to whom one day a father and a son duo appeared from a different, far away village for the treatment of the latter. The physician did a general check up but did not suggest any remedy. Instead he told them to come back next week. The next week the duo turned up and the remedy suggested was simple – “don’t eat any of those molasses”. The father was astonished – “why didn’t you tell us this last week?” he asked the physician in private. The latter replied, “Because, I myself had molasses in large containers in my house last week. Only after I removed them that I asked you guys to come down. Otherwise your boy would not have taken me seriously. He would have said that the fellow himself is addicted to molasses, what can he prescribe me?”

Of course Sri Ramakrishna told this in the context of renunciation and God realization. Only a man of renunciation who has developed the love of God and who has realized God can preach about God to others, not anybody who is still enjoying the sensual pleasures, who has not been able to overcome the twin worldly passions of lust and greed.

When one hears the political leaders of today condemning corruption, one can’t help but remember this parable. Those who themselves are sunk neck deep in the mud of corruption, nepotism and other malpractices cannot prescribe a way out of this mess. Nobody will take them seriously, despite all the stringent laws that they advocate. Therefore Janalokpal or any other pal is not going to save India as long as we are under the clutches of a gang of mercenaries and thugs who consider themselves as leaders and who are idealized by the self serving media and supporters. Remember that famous shloka from Kathopanishad? –

Avidyayam antare vartamana svayam dhirah panditam manyamana

dandranyamanah pariyanti mudhah andhenaiva niyamana yathaandhah

Deluded by ignorance, yet considering themselves as wise and intelligent, fools roam around (baptizing people), like a blind leading a blind.

If we continue to be led by these blind the whole country runs the risk of falling in a very deep ditch, but is anybody realizing the grave danger that lies ahead of us?

Europe and its struggle 1

2011-12-10T10:32:00.001+05:30

If we analyze European history we have seen sagas of rise and fall quite often. Spectacular rises have given way to humiliating and crushing falls. If we consider ancient Greeks as part of Europe, then we have a golden period followed by the rise of Romans, a general darkness after the fall of Rome which was assuaged by the spread of Christianity, even though this spread itself was marked by bloody wars between the so called “believers” and “heathens”. Europe’s ascent through the dark ages was threatened by a rapidly advancing Islam and therefore the two Semitic brothers got engaged in a series of devastating civil wars over the occupation of the common holy ground. In this respect Jews, the original inhabitants of middle Asia were nowhere to be seen and as Christianity spread its wings, they became an object of much hatred in the Christian world, because of their role in the killing of Jesus the Christ.

Of course it was not apparent to the general populace that the Savior himself was a Jew and he would definitely not have condoned the killing of brothers and neighbors in his name. But the Church which was “built upon the rock St. Peter” instead of spreading the message of Christ, of love and renunciation, of forbearance and benevolence, of chastity and peace, devoted itself to spreading Christianity and grabbing power, in alliance with the kings and emperors. The Church got involved in almost every affair, be it social or political, conspiracy or scandals, warfare or violence, except for the purpose for which it was built – that of upholding the light of harmony and respect for ideas, religions and cultures. There were many honest and upright Christians who followed these ideals. In fact the burning ideals of renunciation, charity, love and benevolence carried out by many an ardent followers of Christ did a lot of good and some of these also contributed to the rise of Europe in the middle ages.

However Christian world broke into two halves in the middle of fourteenth century as within the Christianity some resented the dominance of Catholic Church and Protestantism resulted in further violence and warfare, e.g the thirty years war which ripped apart Germany in the 17th century.

India’s Soul

2011-12-10T10:12:00.001+05:30

Swami Vivekananda was very categorical when he tried analyzing India and its problems. The kernel of India lies, not in religion, or dogma, or politics, nor in dharma or virtue, but in countless sagas of devotion, service, contemplation, sacrifice and wisdom, not found in any other culture. From time immemorial India’s culture has soaked it in the stories of Ramayana and Mahabharata, in the Vedas and Upanishadas, in Puranas and other smritis, poems like Gita Govinda or Ramacharitamanasa, Baul, Vaishnava and Sufi ballads. Many holy men have walked on the dusts of this land which has made this country holy, their well wishes and their spiritual practices have played a major role in shaping the destiny of this country despite the many obstacles and many enemies, both internal and external. Very few countries in the world have bled like India had over a span of more than thousands of years through myriads of foreign invasions. There are very few countries like India in which only a handful have been able to dominate and repress many for a long period of time. Internal enemies in the form of treachery, deviousness, callousness, inertia, oppression, bigotry, fanaticism, indifference, corruption, discrimination, poverty, ignorance, in sort most of the what Bhagavat Gita refers to as Rakhashi and Asuri Bhavas, i.e. traits of monsters and demons, have caused more damage than external enemies. Many of those external enemies had been absorbed and assimilated in the larger milieu and had become a part of India. And still the country holds on and tries to assert itself. This is not a mean achievement.

India’s soul therefore is not secular education, nor its people, nor achievements by few individuals or political leaders, who appeared both before and after independence. It is something that helps the country survive and sustain against all odds, it provides strength, courage and a general will to overcome all odds, even in the worst of time. It lies in the heart of the masses, not amongst a few elite. Despite all the apparent differences, a thread of unity binds the country from Kashmir to Kanyakumari, that which the scholars refer to as “Unity in Diversity”. This unity is perceived in the form of what secular academicians refer to as “mythology” or “stories”, stories that link one end of India to the other, one group of people to another, that are told and retold by countless saints, monks, holy men and sages of all ages, by mothers and grandmothers to their children and grandchildren, by village story tellers to the innocent illiterate villagers, by the kings, poets and wise men, by artists and sculptors in their works, by warriors and peasants, by priests and pariahs.

In sort, the backbone of Indian unity is spirituality, the essence of Indian culture and the source of its strength is its inner purity, the preserver of Indianness are the characters Rama and Sita, Krishna and the Pandava, Budhha and Mahavira, and countless others, who have molded and shaped the character of the country through ages, by their influence on various strata and substrata of thoughts, beliefs, values. Rama, Krishna and Sita and their associates like Hanuman, Arjuna, lord Shiva and Parvati, goddesses Durga and Kali and others have threaded the very fabric which had woven the garments of culture – folklore, literature, art and sculpture, paintings, temples, thoughts and philosophies, songs, poems, ballads, lifestyle and habits, of all sections of humanity and therefore despite all differences, everything and everybody is interlinked, like different pearls on a common string.

Therefore India’s soul is its spiritual and cultural legacy, which if threatened will be disastrous for the country’s future. Swami Vivekananda discovered it through his travels for ten years throughout the length and breadth of India before he became famous and it is the discovery of this soul that had influenced him in his mission of rousing India and serving its poor and downtrodden.

Diversity

2011-12-10T10:09:00.001+05:30

The differences and variations are nature's rule, not exceptions. Nature likes variations because it helps in maintaining a harmony among disharmony, order among chaos. Differences exist because they help in preserving the supremacy of nature. We are all different, in our tenacities, in our culture, beliefs, values, customs, manners, superstitions, attitudes, behaviour and a whole lot of other things. There are so many varieties of plants, animals, insects, and other living and non living organisms, there are so many varieties of natural formations, of colours, sounds, tastes, smells and other objects of senses. These varieties on the one hand exist because they fit with others. Take for instance culture - there is no inferior or superior culture, it merely fits the person who embraces it. Similarly the varieties of sense objects are there to satiate the sensory pleasures of different tastes and preferences, which themselves stem from the varieties of nature and character of a person. No two persons are same in embracing the same set of beliefs, values, creeds, dogmas, behaviour, habits, understanding, intuition, reflex and other traits inherent in human beings. Such inequalities exist among siblings who inherit the same biological traits, among parents and children, among people who supposedly share common interests or goals. Therefore diversity is the law of nature, it is a way by which nature asserts herself over us, the puny humans who dare challenge her in terms of progress of civilization and technological advances.

According to Vedanta every name and form are but representations of our mind and therefore all divisions are products of the mind. Actually there is a grand unity pervading all diversities which we fail to see or comprehend. Therefore diversity exists in our mind as we are incapable of merging ourselves with the universal consciousness to detect the underlying unity.

Is it little wonder then that we need to respect diversity? Nature teaches us not to be intolerant to something which does not comply with our tastes and preferences, but be aware of the fact that both the things or ideas or people we love and hate have right to exist equally. Through a continuous cycle of love and hatred we make ourselves more miserable and more pitiable than the thing or idea in question. More so if we believe in the Vedantic concept, because if a grand unity pervades everything what other choice do we have than to embrace or accept everything?

Poverty of Mind

2011-11-05T17:34:00.000+05:30

While poverty of material wealth is a widely acknowledged source of tribulations, another type of poverty frequently goes unnoticed, and that is the poverty of mind. Poverty of mind is manifested in various forms – like corruption and nepotism, where gathering of material wealth at any cost is considered to be the very purpose of existence and where little consideration is displayed towards others, crime, vulgar display of wealth and power, fanaticism, bigotry and intolerance, biases and prejudices, deliberate maligning of whatever or whoever one dislikes ( You may be good, but I don’t like you and therefore I’ll say only bad things about you), lack of compassion, indifference towards injustice and evil ways, and so on. The drivers are ego, lust, greed, pride, jealousy, and so on. They obfuscate truth and cover mind just like fog covers a landscape. Poverty of mind is ubiquitous. One can see a rich spending millions in his daughter’s marriage while some poor and hungry suffers not far from the venue. In this case who is poorer? One may say that the rich person is entitled to spend his hard earned money in his own way, but is that really the case? If we think objectively, spending for enjoyment is not the bone of contention, the amount spent is also not an issue. The point is that we are often oblivious of the fact that we are indebted to the society in many ways, however hard we’ve worked to establish ourselves, in whichever way – straight or crooked. We may have got our education funded by state, an amount which could have been utilized to subsidize the education of a more deserving and financially weak candidate. That education often forms the basis of earning a livelihood. We have probably established a business and amassed wealth not completely by ourselves, but through the diligence of employees who may have sacrificed their personal lives for establishing my business in return for a meagre source of income, help from lending insititutions who may have used the money deposited by a poor or a middle income person to fund my ventures, patronage of customers, generosity of suppliers, support of retail shareholders who trusted my business with their life savings, and so on and so forth. Therefore we are accountable to the very society which has provided us all these wealth. However without returning anything if we spend heavily on our personal enjoyments, isn’st that kind of unjust?

Similarly when we are corrupt, biased, fanatic, indifferent, we are negelecting a vital side of the story of life, that nobody can really sustain and survive on his own in this world. We need to deal with various kinds of persons and pursuing selfish agenda can bring in short term gains but can be dangerous in the long run. If everybody becomes self serving there cannot be any society at all but only individual egos. That means relationships cannot develop or sustain and rule of jungle follows – In jungle every animal has to fend for itself, there’s no social security, might is right there. Just as a rich and and powerful has right to enjoy material wealth a tiger in a jungle has right to kill, but unlike human beings, tigers do not have a higher, discriminating mind, so they are better than human beings with poverty of mind. Animals are driven by basic instincts. Human beings with poverty of mind fare worse as they are driven by a purely selfish agenda despite being endowed with a higher form of intelligence above instinct.

Democracy vs. Rajtantra 3

2011-11-05T17:33:00.003+05:30

A democracy, one would argue, would pave the way for a more liberal and tolerant regime and people would be aware of any transgressions in an era of fast communication. Dissent can be voiced and people can throw away elected representatives if they do not function properly. Secularism and pluralism are encouraged. Just puase, look around, and think. You are living in a democracy, are these the traits around you? The media, which is supposed to be the watchdog of a democracy often connive with the ruling elite as they propagate certain ideologies and hate campaigns against others. Media exhibit certain biases against specific classes, creeds and communities as they are controlled by organizations and insititutions which have their own vested interests. Thus news and opinions promoted are often false or worse, selectively false. Ruling classes often suppress information, esp. the ones which would be detrimental and inimical to their interest. Power and money play the supreme role and people have almost taken bad governance for granted because the substitutes are often no better. The two largest democracies in the world, India and US, also feature in the top ten list of countries in blocking or censoring, along with certain dictatorships around the world. One may argue that the flaw lies in execution, not in the concept, but that is the moot point here, that whether the concept is at all perfected and can there be a better model of Governance, irrespective of the mode of governing.

However the old age Rajtantra, contrary to the popular belief, fared much better because there was hardly any repression of news and information. News always percolated to the bottommost layer, in absence of any controlling agency which had the monopoly of distributing news. That would be a result of societal gossips, information leaked from sources in the palace, official communication from the king (which may be biased), the barber ( in ancient days a person belonging to this profession was the Reuters) and so on. The point is, in most cases the news would be informal, coming from diverse sources and varied in nature, just like the role the social media like blogs and twits play today. Thus there could not be any censorship or suppression.

Unlike in a democracy, in a Rajtantra there would be very less opposition to the ruling elite. While this could be disadvantageous when the ruling class was ruthless and ineffective, it mattered not when the same ruling class was paternalistic, as the checks and balances that existed have already been discussed. In many cases the distant villages which had a decentralized set up (Panchayats) were insulated from the misrule and led a relatively peaceful life. In a way this was a blessing, because there could not be any opposition for the sake of opposition and which were driven by vested interests, a characteristics which manifests very strongly in a democracy. If, for instance, the media has very strong biases against a community or an ideology, it can, in a democracy, render every person belonging to that ideology and community, esp. the leaders, as villain and “manufacture” news to suit their agenda. In present age of democracy, media, which has monopoly over information distribution, is controlled by various business groups, religious bodies, even political parties, and hence can propagate news that would suit their own vested interests, and in the name of liberalism, there often exists bigotry and intolerance. Even good works of persons or communities which have been dubbed as “villain” are ignored or questioned and the bad works are highlighted more prominently than those who fare better in the eyes of the media.

Thus democracy in its present form is limited in multiple ways. One can argue that in the present age dictatorships are no better and around the world monarchies and dictatorships are giving way to the rule by the “people”. However we are certainly not concerned about that, failed system of Governance was around when democracy was still in its infancy and the failure lies with the model that the countries around the world are following for delivering sustainable and effective governance. The objective here is not to point out flaws of any one system over another but to point out that perhaps its the time for trying out the model of Governance which existed in India in ancient period, by making it acceptable in form and content to the present age.

So to conclude with Swami Vivekananda – the whole world is looking expectedly at India to provide a model of good governance. It should not borrow a failed model of Western democracy and disappoint everybody by being a failed state itself.

Looks like our political leaders have done exactly that. Perhaps SV saw this coming and thats why he sounded the warnings.

Democracy vs. Rajtantra 2

2011-11-05T17:32:00.000+05:30

In West such checks and balances were not elaborate. The king in the middle ages in Europe was often in cohort with the church which interefered extensively with the state affairs,and the nobility, who had their own vested interests. Thus Rajtantra in West was often of an inferior form and therefore people suffered a lot, whereas in India we hardly find any notable instance of people suffering for long under a corrupt regime, except during the period right after Shashanka in Bengal (known as Matsyanyaya) when there was no strong king at the helm and when the lawlessness reigned supreme. That state of affairs was discontinued when a strong monarch came to power (in case of Bengal the Pals ascended to the throne of Gauda).

However when we come back to the flawed democracy that we’ve inherited we find that much of Swami Vivekananda’s apprehensions have come to be true. There is a heartless bureaucracy at the centre of affairs which is also largely corrupt and which has largely retained the colonial legacies, viz. the notorious legacies of looking down upon general populace as inferior to them, and of being subservient to the interests of their political masters. The politicians have exploited these defects to perpetuate their own vested interests and they have created a vast bureaucracy to help them mismanage every affair except their own. Politics have also fuelled divide and rule, much like the colonial masters who perfected the art. This last thing would have been unheard of in a Rajtantra. A king would not like to divide his subjects as that would undermine the interest and safety of the state (imagine a divided army protecting the borders), but instead would try to divide his enemies.

A democracy in its present form also hinders sound decision making, because multiple entities are involved. Wherever there are multiple entities there are chances of conflict of interests and opinions and stalemates are likely. Thus the people continue to suffer under an indecisive Government. A Rajtantra on the other hand would have only the best interest of the state in mind and all decisions would come from a final decisive authority who would be advised by a wise council, who would take a holistic view of the state of affairs and would not be driven by narrow, selfish motives.

Democracy vs. Rajtantra 1

2011-11-05T17:31:00.000+05:30

Swami Vivekananda was not very comfortable with the concepts of Western democracy, although he was aware of the merits. He saw various democracies from close quarters and felt that in their present form they would not be ideal for India. Because in a democracy, people should be intelligent and educated enough to understand the nuances of various decisions. Otherwise there is an inherent risk of an unintelligent or honest majority being taken for a ride by a cunning, devious but shrewd minority.

Swami Vivakananda also felt that a democracy run by bureaucrats, is unsuitable as bureaucracy is normally heartless. Bureaucrats go strictly by policies and procedures and peoples’ woes do not matter to them. In an informal discussion with his disciples he cited the examples of many innocent persons from India who lost everything, including their lives, while nurturing a vein hope of going to England to lodge their complaints with the Queen and getting their problems resolved. He said that this had always been the culture of India – that people having a last refuge, in the form of the king, whom they could always approach and they came from the remotest places of the kingdom to the capital to lodge their grievances with the highest authority. Not that their wishes were always fulfilled, but the key thing was that they had a supreme authority whom they could trust. However, in democracy in its present form there is no supreme authority. There is no single decision making body and almost nobody at the helm is accountable to people although the very basis of democracy is accountability.

Swami Vivekananda also said that India devised its own unique form of Rajtantra in the ancient period where the king, by virtue of being the highest decision maker, was also accountable to the subjects through a council of elderly and wise who monitored the day to day affairs. The wise men who were acquainted with the principles of “Nyaya Dharma” or virtuous deeds, ensured that such procedures were followed and that the subjects were not under duress because of king’s proclamations and policies. There were other checks and balances as well, in the form of peoples’ representatives at the grass root level like village panchayat leaders who were elected by their good deeds and popularity and not by money or muscle power, the important citizens and respectable members of the societies who wielded influence, the wealthy who lent money in the event of warfare or natural calamities, the Brahmins or the priestly class who controlled the religious and spiritual affairs. They all ensured that the king functioned well and did not become a tyrant. In the extreme case when a king became a repressor the subjects revolted and there are several instances in Indian history of dethroning the king when a suitable substitute leader was found, or one (stronger and popular) dynasty replacing another (weaker and unpopular) one – e.g. Mauryas replacing the Nandas, after the tyrant Dhanananda was hunted and killed by popular ire orchestrated by Chanakya. In some cases the subjects may also have switched loyalty to appeal to a neighbouring state to come to their rescue. Unjust and unpopular monarchs might also have been toppled by their own ministers and armies.

The point is that, in all cases, subjects exerted tremendous infuence, contrary to the popular belief that the king was all powerful in a Rajtantra.

Point of indecision

2011-11-05T17:30:00.000+05:30

In Mahabharata, Shanti Parva, there is an interesting story as part of the conversasion between Bhisma, the aged Kuru warrior who is on his deathbed, and Yudhisthira, his grandson, the Pandava king,who belongs to the opposite camp and whose army just won the war against the Kauravas or the Kuru clan. In response to the questions asked by Yudhisthira, Bhisma is explaining to him the duties of a king, of a householder, of an ascetic, the path of righteousness and virtue and the ways of dealing with people, as well as the paths of attaining the highest knowledge. In the process we come across several stories and parables – one of them illustrates how diverse interest groups instigates persons to behave in a certain way and how people should be wary of the motives behind what seems like innocent advices.

A Brahmin who lost his only son went to creamte him along with his village men. Since it was already evening they decided to stay for the night and cremate the child in the morning. A vulture, who was sitting atop a tree, saw their proceedings and told them, “Why do you plan to spend the night here? The boy is indeed dead and he will not return, so whats the point in waiting in this dreadful place? Go home and take rest and come back in the morning.” The villagers almost bought its advice and began returning when suddenly there appeared a jackal. It said, “ Wait, you guys are leaving that poor child behind, what kind of dreadful parents are you? As long as the child was alive you could’nt live without him and now that he is dead you are abandoning him? Be with him. Who knows, he may come back to life as well.”

At this the villagers were ashamed of themselves and came back. The vulture then said, “You would like to spend night in such a dreadful place. Do you know that this place is infested with ghosts, ghouls and other such spirits at night? Why do you want to risk your life for a vein hope? Can’t you see that the child is quite dead?”

The villagers were now in a real dilemma. The jackal further said, “Remember, if you abandon him now you also forsake him, for who knows what fate awaits him in this dreadful place. If you stay back together no harm should befall you. Whereas if you leave, you will be deemed as cowards. Stay back, hope is always there and you may get back your son because there are so many holy men around this place, one of them may have pity on you and give back his life.”

The poor villagers could not decide what to do and whom to trust. This discussion in Mahabharata dragged on for sometime before the villagers decided to stay back and pray to the Lord Shiva (and it was a wise decision that they took, for Shiva, who wanders in cremation ground, came and gave back the boy his life).

This is quite often the situation in which we also find ourselves. There are conflicting advices by people who appear to us as well wishers, but neverthless those advices have an important bearing on important decisions in our lives, say marriage, education, job, travels and so on. We find ourselves in similar dilemma, what to do?

Under all circumstances we should keep it in mind that however “wellwisher” one may appear, one always has some hidden motive or agenda in giving an advice to us, even if they may not be aware of the same. This holds true for everybody – friends, spouses, family members, relatives, neighbours, colleagues etc. There is nobody who is giving an advice from a perfectly neutral standpoint. For instance, a parent advicing you on education may have your best interest in mind, but also has her agenda – of getting the chance of being proud of your achievment at the best, or taking the financial conditions in consideration at worst. So your decision cannot solely depend on their advices. You should be aware of the motive, of the interests and then take a decision based on the best possible outcome that you can envisage. That does not mean that you should be selfish, but act according to “dharmic” principles, do not fall prey to selfish interests of others.

Coming back to the story, what do you think were the motives of those two advisors? The vulture had one object in mind, to eat the flesh of the boy when his relatives had been sent away. The jackal was also not altruistic. His simple objective was to eat the remants of the boy himself, after the vulture would be dissuaded and perhaps would fly away in disappointment and when the villagers would take some rest at night. So none of them were really wellwishers, even if by their talks they sounded like one.

You are responsible for the outcome of your decision, listen to the advices but also try to understand the hidden agenda. Do what you think is right, let not the others do the thinking for you.

Psychology of stress

2011-10-22T09:52:00.002+05:30

In Gita the lord says in the second chapter, verses 62 and 63–

Dhyatah vishayan punshah sangasteshupajayate
Sangat sanjayate kama kamat krodhabhijayate
Krodhatbhavati sanmohah sanmohat smriti bibhramah
Smriti bhramsad buddhinashah buddhinashad pranashyati

This means that while meditating constantly on a worldly matter which affects one deeply, one may develop an attachment and cannot get rid of the troublesome thought. Attachment results in desire and desire, if resisted or unfulfilled, results in anger. It is very surprising how the two common enemies of mankind as proclaimed in Gita – Anger and Desire, are intrinsically related, from the latter often the former evolves and the former often fuels the latter. The desire may be gross or even subtle, like earning some name and fame, a wish that somebody will praise an act, getting some material objects including begetting children, wealth and prosperity, power, good fortune, having to get go of something which is desirable or close to heart, i.e. possessiveness and so on. Sri Ramakrishna said that it is very difficult to control desires; subtle desires will always be there however hard you may try. You may not be even aware of them.

When the unfulfilled desire gives rise to anger, the person is deluded. Delusion means trapped into a world of one’s own making. A person is deluded by her ego to think that this non fulfillment of her desire is a conspiracy against her and she must resist it, at all cost, otherwise she will lose something. This delusion thus leads to an apparent lapse of memory. She forgets the incidents which might have helped her in countering her thought process, her very assumptions. She loses her ability to think rationally and is seized with “buddhinashah” or loss of intelligence, i.e. reasoning and a level headed realistic and objective assessment of the situation. When this happens, she is finished, because it results in an outburst or some disastrous situation not at all conducive to a sound mind and healthy living. This incident may torment her forever or for a very long time. Others of suicidal type may get depressed and may even kill themselves.

To quote an imaginary example, suppose I have a hidden desire that I should be given due respect in all official matters. However suppose in one case I was not consulted when an important decision was made. I became perturbed. Cogitating over it in my mind, I got deeply attached to the thought that I have been left out, perhaps intentionally. That’s a blow to my desire of getting respect, i.e. name and fame. My ego got hurt. I got angry. I made the person who did not consult me responsible for this. I was deluded by my ego in believing that this person had intentionally left me behind, perhaps she wants to usurp my position or had some ulterior motive. I did not bother to check her motives but simply got mad at her. I forgot that on a previous occasion she had come to me and consulted on another important decision, that this time there might be some compulsions at her end which were unknown to me. I did not try to get the other side of the story which I could have done had I judged with my normal level of intelligence. Instead, I chose to confront her and shout at her and this brought my professional and personal downfall. Later when I came to know of the true reason I was extremely repentant, but the damage was done – to a career, to a relationship and also to the very reputation for which I was so hankering.

Even if the above situation was the result of an ulterior motive against me what did I achieve by getting angry and upset? I just reinforced the other person’s position that I was unfit for consulting. Therefore either way I was a loser.

If only I had known those four verses of Gita and if only I had some spiritual discipline I could have done better! Because I would have been aware of my hidden impulses and desires, I would have been aware of the moment I was getting attached to the thought and I would have been aware of the moment I was losing my head and therefore I could not have lost my intelligent reasoning. Thus we could have avoided a situation like the one above. Perhaps I could have discussed and sorted out the matter or perhaps I would just have let it go, or could have had a discussion with somebody higher up.

That’s the essence of anger and stress management – spiritual discipline and giving reins to the intelligence instead of allowing the emotion to take control. Kathopanishad, a discourse between Yama, the god of death and Nachiketa, a young boy who is on the journey to realize his true self, provides a beautiful picture. If the self or individual is the rider, the body is a chariot, the driver is the intelligent will, reins are minds, and the horses are the sense organs. The roads are the sense objects. If one lets go of the control (reins, i.e. mind) from intelligent will, one is at the mercy of either the sensual cravings or the fickle mind with often disastrous consequence. The sense organs will run amok on the path of sense objects. So the best bet is to have the control in the hand of intelligent will, the charioteer, all along. Will, under the guidance of an enlightened self, would be able to control the sensory cravings like anger, desire, lust, greed, delusion, pride, with the help of a pure and effective mind as reins. Body will be led by senses on sense objects, under the control of the mind, which will be further controlled by the intelligent will, which will be guided by the senses.

This is aptly summarized by the Lord in Gita Chapter 3 –

Indriyani parani ahuh indriyebhyah param manah
Manasastu para budhhih yah buddhayah paratah tu sah

The above verses could be interpreted as - senses are greater than the body (they say), the mind is over and above the senses, the intelligent will is greater than the mind and one which is even above the intelligent will, one which guides it and the rest is the Self, the atman. Everything else is subordinate to a realized Self (therefore try realizing the Self first and everything else will fall in place).

In this way there are many interesting teachings in Gita which are not found in any modern psychology or psychoanalysis book and which would take Western science perhaps many years to comprehend.

Meditation 8

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How do we develop dispassion? One way is to consider this world as a hell, with all its sufferings and miseries and thereby long for a reprieve, a kind of escape from the mundane and gross reality. However, that is pessimistic approach. A far better way is to cultivate love, love for a better life, love for peace, love for the divinity inside and a strong belief that the divinity can be realized. Everybody in this world strives for a better life, for improvement in the living conditions. The purpose of natural evolution is improvement in living conditions, progressing from a lower to a higher and better form of life, from amoeba to human being with consciousness, from man to divinity, the seat of consciousness. The evolution happens over physical, mental and spiritual plain, when we change forms, when we mature and when we grow inwards. Meditation is a way of connecting to the divinity, of achieving this higher state, of being and becoming divine. Love is one of the ways of manifesting the divinity. Love expands the heart and brings about the purification which is needed in this journey. Love and peace are intrinsically related, but this love is unlike materialistic love where there is always a give and take involved. This love is unrequited; love for the sake of love, without expecting anything in return, even the urge to get love in exchange. The worldly love can be a cause of sorrow and unhappiness, but not the love residing in the inner consciousness. The worldly love is selfish, possessive, whereas this love is pure, equal towards everybody and every being. Even a small percentage of this love cultivated while doing meditation helps in getting the much needed inner peace. All selfish thoughts and miseries go away and are replaced by an unfathomable joy. The yearning for this love and peace is one of the purposes of meditation and if that is achieved, one can be sure of the progress made.

Concluding this with an example – Swami Turiyananda, a direct disciple of Sri Ramakrishna, while travelling as a wandering monk got depressed by seeing people working everywhere. He felt that he was worthless, merely idling away his time while people all around were productive. When he again sat for meditation he had a unique feeling, as if he was expanding and becoming larger and larger, till he filled up the entire universe. The realization dawned on him that by realizing the self through meditation one becomes merged in the universal consciousness, therefore all the work around was his work and he was present in all work, even though he himself was not working. That’s what is aptly summarized in Gita –

Karmani akarma yah pashyed akarmani cha karma yah
Sah vudhhimaan manushyeshu sah yukta kritsnakarmakrit

The meaning of it is if somebody realizes inactivity in the midst of intense activity (i.e. realize peace and calmness associated with meditation) and work in the midst of inactivity (i.e. working for the whole universe in spite of being apparently engaged in inactivity), that person is truly intelligent among all, that person has realized work in its entirety.

One may question that how can one work in the middle of inactivity! This is something which cannot be understood unless one starts meditating oneself and progresses to some extent. Swami Vivekananda meditated upon a rock in Kanyakumari or Cape Comorin in the middle of a turbulent sea, not on God or Self or Enlightenment, but on the problems plaguing the vast country called India. The result was his subsequent works on the educational and social reforms, formation of the Ramakrishna Mission for carrying out philanthropic and charitable work and upliftment of poor and underprivileged, the establishment of Ramakrishna Math and Vedanta Societies for spreading the message of Vendanta across the globe, and inspiring thousands to leave their cozy nests and spread the wings with a vow to renounce everything for the country and its people. It will not be too dramatic to claim that this meditation was the origin from which came the dissemination of eastern philosophy and ideas to the West, the seed of Indian Nationalism, the awakening of a nation from a thousand year’s stupor and inertia and many other accomplishments. That’s the supreme culmination of work in inactivity.

Meditation 7

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Swami Vivekananda had prescribed several steps towards a good meditation –

1st step is to assume a posture and pray that the posture can be retained till the end.

2nd step is to pray for the well being of all, eliminate all selfish thoughts

3rd step is to do a few pranayams or breath control exercises (a maximum of three, because pranayams, although it is said that they can help in controlling the mind better by controlling the vital forces in the body, can be dangerous if not performed under the supervision of a qualified person)

4th step is to go for the actual meditation, for atleast half an hour.

Swami Vivekananda also advocated letting the mind run around for sometime before even trying to focus it. The mind like an errant child, after playing for sometime will get tired and come back to its resting place, just as a child goes back to its mother after being tired with a day’s play.

Another way which is advocated by spiritual seekers is to let the mind work its way instead of trying to focus it, and let the will and self merely witness its works in a disinterested and detached way. This is like you are watching some cinema without actually getting attached to the story, knowing all the while that it is a movie and you have no stake in it. But again, it is very difficult to detach the will from the thoughts.

It often helps a theist and dualist to meditate upon a form of a chosen deity which is luminous and full of bliss, ever smiling. That feeling provides lot of peace to a troubled mind.

Swami Vivekananda insisted on meditation as not only a means of attaining perfection through knowledge of the Self, but also for the secular education. He said that education is the manifestation of perfection already existing in human beings, which means that everything which is taught from outside is already there within. One will just have to make a conscious effort in retrieving that knowledge from inside. Thereby through deep thinking on particular subjects and through concentrated and sustained effort, which are also forms of meditation, a lot of scientific “discoveries” have been made which had been lying all along within us. That’s why often after reading about a theory we have that “aha” feeling, that ‘I also knew this’! Because the impression of that knowledge is carried within, the external reading merely corroborates the intuition and we cannot understand it unless we ponder over it truly and deeply. James Watt’s invention of steam engine by looking into the steam emanating from the kettle was no accident. It came as a revelation from within. So were the “eureka” moment of Archimedes, the apple of Newton, and special relativity theory. Most great paintings and music have their origin from within, a sudden soul stirring inspiration from a deeply concentrated thought process aimed at creating something “joyous”. That’s nothing but meditation.

Meditation 6

2011-10-22T09:42:00.000+05:30

Only a yogi is able to completely control the mind; however for ordinary folks even attempt to do so has lot of benefits. Purification of mind increases the divine or superior nature or Sattvic bhava and eliminates the baser nature or the crude Rajasic and Tamasic bhavas or the demonic characters. That means one has lesser anger, material cravings and desires, impulsiveness, excitement, stress, depression. One experiences more joy with life, gets a real purpose of life, becomes more compassionate, understanding, and develops empathy and fellow feeling which helps in personal and professional lives. One is able to contend with the internal enemies like lust, anger, greed, pride and ego, delusion and envy better as one becomes aware of their presence. Awareness is the first step towards fighting the menace. Once somebody is aware of his or her weaknesses, he or she is able to fight it out.

Connecting to the inner world is necessary to know one self completely, which is often hidden amidst the clutters of external world which is perceived by senses. The mind also runs after the external objects only, driven by desires and passions. Meditation and contemplation helps one to direct the thoughts towards the inner world, the self. It is equally beneficial for an atheist or a theist, after all Lord Buddha was an atheist and he was also a complete master of mind. The true liberation is freedom from being slave to mind and senses - desires, passions, attractions to sense objects and external world, and instead begin to hold sway over them. Meditation helps one in achieving that.

In Gita lord Krishna has also mentioned who can meditate better. He is opines that a person, who eats a lot, sleeps a lot, cannot meditate, nor can a person who eats very little and is not able to get much sleep.

Yukto aahar viharasya yukto chestasya karmasu
Yukto sapnababodhasya Yogo bhavati duhkhaha

One should be moderate in eating, moderate in sleeping, moderate in work or endeavors. For such a person, Yoga mitigates sorrows.

Work can itself become meditation if done in the true spirit of service and worship, when done in a detached way without caring for the fruits. In fact that is something very clearly mentioned in Gita as well – Yogah karmasu kausalam

Apart from the ways and means prescribed in Gita, Sri Ramakrishna also had prescribed several ways of meditation, as recorded in the Gospels of Sri Ramakrishna. He had even described how one can meditate the formless entity. But he had also told that it is good for a beginner to start meditating on a form and attain certain degree of perfection, because focusing the mind on formless from the very beginning is difficult. He said that one should meditate in mind, in the wilderness, or in a secluded corner, (in Bengali dhyan korbe mone, bone o kone) i.e. in secret, seclusion, isolation, free from clutters, without announcing to the world that one is meditating. He had also advocated retirement to solitary places for a certain period of time without communication with friends and relatives and without having to do any secular work, in order to get better concentration and purification. He had advised to meditate early morning, at noon time or in the evening, when the surroundings are quiet enough and the mind is also quiet enough. During daytime because of the involvement in activities mind cannot rest peacefully. He had also advocated that the mind should be focused by concentrating on the form at the heart, near the forehead between the two eyebrows, on the tip of nose etc. These are also mentioned in Gita as possible places of fixing the mind. Sri Ramakrishna also emphasized on the posture, the lotus posture or Padmasana for better concentration. Sister Nivedita mentions in one of her writings that the lotus posture helped her in focusing better.

Meditation 5

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So all these practices are intrinsically linked to each other and can form a comprehensive or holistic way of having superiority over the vagaries of mind. It is very easy to train and control a pure mind, just as it is easy to control a docile and good natured horse.

However it requires a lot of patience and determination. Mind is a very powerful enemy, unless one has formidable strength of will, battling with mind is not easy. A lot of patience is needed because focusing or concentration does not happen easily; it needs a lot of time before one can even concentrate for a few minutes, unless one starts at a very early age. One has to get rid of desires arising and anxieties looming large and all other kinds of thoughts which tend to surface up just as one starts looking inwards. Sri Ramakrishna narrated a small parable on determination about a young boy who, in order to get water, began digging in a place, but getting disheartened with only rocks and sand and no water, he left it and began digging at another place and in this way made several attempts by digging at several different places. Instead if he had persisted, he could have probably struck water in the very first place itself. Meditation is also like this. One may be disheartened initially by the inability to control the deluge of thoughts and to focus on one thing, but if one persists, which for a long period for some and short for others for unknown reasons, one may be able to get some success.

Another key thing is that even after getting some success one should not stop and become egoistic thinking that one had achieved everything. The journey is long and there are many stops en route. Sri Ramakrishna depicted this with another parable – a woodcutter while walking through a dense forest and yet not being able to get good wood, was advised by an ascetic to proceed further. He did so and found a sandalwood forest whose woods were very valuable, but he thought that the ascetic had told me to move on, not to stop in the sandalwood forest, so let me carry on. In this respect while travelling further he came across a silver mine, a gem mine, a gold mine and a diamond mine resp. and became immensely rich. Meditation is also similar. On the search for truth one may get many initial glimpses, but just as one should not be disappointed with initial hurdles put forward by a very powerful enemy, the mind, one should also not be elated by some successes in focusing or concentrating, as the mind is vast and deep like an ocean and there are many gems hidden below which can be brought up by delving deeper and deeper.

Meditation 4

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What happens when one begins to meditate? Anybody who has tried meditation will agree with Arjuna that it is very difficult to control the mind because it always tends to run away in different directions, it scatters, it runs after sense objects, all the problems and thoughts which have been lying hitherto hidden, surfaces up and gives much pain. It is impossible to attain a complete focus on a subject even it is only for a few minutes.

So what is the way out? The key lies in practice, sadhana. The first thing which is necessary to focus the mind is to think of a form, may be of God, or that of any thing very dear to anybody. Sri Ramakrishna had prescribed to a devotee that she could meditate on the form of her nephew whom she loved very much. Such affection helps in restraining the mind. A form is very essential contrary to the popular belief that “meditation is freeing the mind from all thoughts and making it blank”, because we need something to focus upon, so one single, determined one pointed thought is essential and the thought on any material objects or desires cannot be single or one pointed as one desire very often leads to another and one material thought leads to another.

The second thing is to get rid of gross desires. The desires can be in the gross or latent form. We often do not perceive the latter form. The gross desires like, “I need some money”, “ I need to build a house”, “ I need to have name and fame, do this and that, buy that gold jewelry”, need to be eliminated, and that’s the easier part. The harder one is to remove the subtle or latent desires which would appear at the opportune moment even when gross desires are retrained, and haunt you. Latent desires can be related to name and fame, desire for begetting a son, desire for power and wealth or any shakti or vibhuti (special powers). But again with practice, with sufficient purification of mind, the latent desires can also be restrained.

One should try to get rid of worldly thoughts at this stage. In Gita 3rd chapter the Lord is very categorical – if somebody controls his organs of working (as it happens during meditation) but still thinks in mind of worldly and sensory pleasures, that person is deluded, a Vimudhatman.

The third thing is to expand your heart, to reach out. This is something which you can do in actual practice and this is very good aid in purifying the mind. This means, have care and concern for others, work for others in a spirit of service and not merely out of compassion, feel for others. Before beginning every meditation it helps if we pray, for peace and welfare of others, or if we are atheists we can just wish happiness and joy for others. If we regularly practice welfare work in the spirit of service, sacrifice a part of our lives for others, we are actually practicing karmayoga, through which purification of mind is also possible. The key is to bring in happiness and joy in the lives of others without any self interest, for people you would not even know, not your friends or relatives for whom you care but for absolute strangers. Sri Ramakrishna said to his disciples, “who are you to have compassion? You should serve others as you would serve Shiva or god in a spirit of worship”.

Meditation 3

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Therefore first step in good meditation is to control the senses. That’s what the Lord prescribes in 3rd Chapter of Gita when he says –

Tasmad indriyani adyaou niyamya bhatarsabha
Papmanam prajahi hi enam gyanavigyananashanam

-First control your senses and try overcoming these sinful impulses (lust, anger) which destroys the knowledge (of the Self).

Continence is the key in restraining lust, a key enemy against leading a pure life. Continence helps in controlling senses by taking away senses from their resp. objects, the source of distractions and deprives the mind much of its power to scatter in different directions. The other step is restraining desires. Desires will invariably drive mind and senses in different directions. Restraining desires also restrains anger as the two are intrinsically related (anger stems from desire – Gita Chapter 2, verse 62, 63)

The second step is getting rid of the dirt and grimes which have accumulated in the mind over a long period of time, in order to achieve purification of mind. A pure mind can concentrate better, it can achieve dispassion better. There are several ways of purifying mind and meditation is one of them. That’s a catch 22 – with a pure mind one can meditate better, while meditation purifies mind! The truth lies in Lord’s prescriptions – Abhyasa and Vairagya. It’s the abhyasa or practice or sadhana that is needed to purify the mind. Practices of controlling these senses, like continence, restraining the desires etc., also purify mind. A pure mind can develop dispassion. Purification of mind can also be achieved through selfless work or Karma yoga, through sacrifice, through penance, through charity devoid of any desire or ego, by cultivating humility and restraining the ego etc.

The third step is concentration, focus. Here several things will help. This is what the lord refers to in 2nd chapter of Gita as the Vyavasayatmika buddhi, or the one pointed intelligence – “Vyavasayatmika buddhi ekeha kurunandana”. When the intelligence is one pointed, it has one purpose, one direction; mind will get focused because it will not be able to scatter in different directions. This is again arrived after perfecting the first two steps, after developing perfect detachment and dispassion for worldly affairs. This is something restricted to a serious seeker. This is also achieved through bhakti or one pointed devotion and is also a high point in Bhakti Yoga. This is also achieved through contemplation or the “not this”, “not this” approach, also called Gyana Yoga, where all “unreal” i.e. worldly matters are discarded and only the “real” is reflected upon.

The one pointed intelligence is also explained in Bible through the story of Mary and Martha, the two sisters whose house Jesus visited. Mary was sitting near Jesus and was looking at him while Martha was busy preparing food and taking good care of the lord and his devotees. When Martha complained to Jesus that Mary was not helping her, Jesus said that Mary had chosen one thing that was necessary, while Martha was busy with too many things. Mary here stands for that one pointed intelligence.

Meditation thus synthesizes various Yoga paths together and enables one to achieve complete control of mind once the above three steps are perfected well.

Meditation 2

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Attachment to sensual things means that mind gets a powerful source of distraction. If you are too concerned about money, name, fame, innumerable desires, power, lust, greed, anger, passion, jealousy, hatred, sorrow, or for that matter worldly joy and happiness, cravings and sensory pleasures, you are nowhere near to controlling the mind, instead it will control you.

In Bhagvat Gita 3rd chapter the lord asks Arjuna to first control the senses (five sensory organs or eyes, ears, nose, skin and tongue and the five work organs of legs, arms, mouth, anus and reproductive organs), because the source of all troubles in the world – Kama and Krodha, or Desire and Anger, reside in the senses, in the mind and in the intelligence. These overshadow the Self, who is shining bright, just as smoke covers the fire, and dust covers a mirror, and the womb covers or encapsulates the fetus. He also goes on saying that senses are greater than the body, because they control all bodily functions, mind is greater than senses because it has control over the senses, intelligence is greater than mind because it is capable of controlling the mind, but the Self is the greatest of them all and the real intelligence lies in uncovering this Self.

An equally powerful statement is made by Lord Krishna in 2nd chapter of Gita –

Yatato hi api Kaunteya Purushascha bipaschita
Indriyani pramathini haranti prasabham manah

Even a person who is intelligent and wise can get deluded by powerful sensory cravings. Senses can run amok leading to a total failure of the individual. For instance getting attached to hemp or cocaine or other drugs, alcohols and cigarettes is like giving way to sensory cravings and thereby losing oneself. So these addictions are attachments to objects of senses. Similarly there can be addiction to power, greed, lust and other cravings and desires which would drive a person towards an endless pit. Meditation is never possible if senses are allowed to run free.

Meditation 1

2011-10-22T09:38:00.000+05:30

The basic purposes of meditation are contemplation, connecting with the inner world and diminishing the influence of the noises and disturbances of the outside world. However more often than not it is considered as a fad, a new trend for “spirituality seekers” whatever that may be. Nevertheless, getting addicted to meditation is certainly better than getting addicted to drugs, nicotine or alcohol and if a generation spends some time and money in search of that elusive peace, what is the harm? Peace is a fundamental need for every living being on this earth and there are very few who would not opt for this at any cost. Most of the fellows who are addicted to hemp or cocaine or alcohol do so because they can blissfully forget the “existence” which is so full of problems and miseries. However the effect of such recourse is very temporary and the impact is most damaging. Meditation, on the other hand can bring you closer to the ineffable bliss of the divine reality, at best, called Sat Chit Ananda (Reality, Consciousness and Bliss), or at worst, can provide you peace for about an hour or so without any negative impact.

As per Bhagavat Gita, meditation is just one way to realize the truth, but it is an extremely powerful tool to control the mind. In the 6th Chapter of Gita called Dhyana Yoga, the lord Krishna explains to Arjuna the way to meditate in the most detail and scientific manner, starting from how one should sit and concentrate the mind to what kind of person will be able to meditate best. He ends the narrative with a small but extremely important advice–

Jatah jatah nishcharati manah chanchalam asthiram
Tatah tatah niyamya etad atmani eva bashanm nayet

which can be interpreted as - whenever the fickle and restless mind goes here and there, try to control it and bring it back to its place of dwelling, the Atman or the Self or the God, just as a parent would bring its errant child back by restraining her from running around.

When Arjuna, just like many of us, doubts whether mind can be controlled at all –

Chanchalam hi manah Krishna pramathi balavaddridham
Tassya nigraham aham manye bayoh iva sudushkaram

--- O Krishna, the mind is so restless, it’s so powerful, to control it, according to me, is as difficult as controlling the mighty wind.

The Lord provides an assurance – yes, certainly mind is powerful; however it is possible to control it.

Asamshayam mahabaho manah durnigraham chalam
Abhyasena tu Kaunteya vairagyena cha grihyate

Mind, though powerful, can definitely be controlled (I have done it, so have others, you can do it too! That’s the implicit message). That can be done through practice and dispassion.

Mark the words – practice and dispassion. We know that nothing can be achieved without practice which is comprised of sadhana, intense and dedicated work, perhaps sacrifices as well. So practice is an essential part, but the other equally important part is dispassion or Vairagya. Unless one is able to get a sense of detachment from all material things, unless one is able to renounce mentally, it is not possible to achieve much success through meditation. The mind will remain as restless as ever, however hard one tries.

Value of Life

2011-10-22T09:35:00.002+05:30

There was a piece of news that Supreme court has reduced the compensation to be paid to the victims of Uphaar cinema hall tragedy in which several people were burnt alive in 1997, from Rs 15 lakhs to Rs 7 lakhs. While the Supreme Court is the highest authority and any attempt to write against it would be treated as “contempt of the court”, I humbly ask one question to the honorable judges – what is the value of life? How can one even compute the value of a life lost, the cost of pains and sufferings and miseries for over fourteen years for the family members who are fighting for justice? In any civilized country the court would have asked for maximum punitive damages from the guilty party, in this case the builders, the MCD, the police etc. who gave the necessary safety clearances (a clear case of corruption). Sadly in India human life is treated with utmost contempt and often vested interests and other considerations hold greater sway. The builder (Ansals) however will appeal even though they must be inwardly gladdened. I do not know if at all there is a system in India to compute the value of lives lost due to negligence, corruption or malpractices.

Will mere bickering over the amount help in bringing back the lives lost or help dispel the miseries caused? No, the punitive damage is meant to only act as caution to the others who are guilty of the same malpractices and yet are running unscathed. This was supposed to set a precedence, sound warning bells to miscreants that if you do something wrong you need to pay a very heavy price, be it in terms of money, reputation or business. Therefore it would have been ideal to charge maximum punitive damage, whatever is possible for the business house to provide even at the cost of going delinquent. The families are fighting based on principles; they are not after the monetary amount, a bigger amount of compensation would have dealt a better blow to the guilty business house and government organizations responsible for the mishap. It would probably have also served as a reminder of the “cost of corruption” to Government and general public and may have pressurized public servants to be more careful in future with respect to public safety. But alas, none of that has happened and an opportunity has been missed.

Who is the Doer?

2011-09-11T12:00:00.003+05:30

When we proclaim that we are going to usher in changes, clear the mess and do whatever its possible to bring improvements in the lives of the people, we probably hid within ourselves a smug and self congratulatory tone, that we are the real “doers”, that we have the ability to change lives, to positively (or negatively) influence society, community and the nation. But hold on! Who or what are you? Whether you are a theist or an atheist does not matter. Whether you truly believe in God or whether you are a believer in destiny, karma or whatever, it does not matter in the least. Do you really think you are the doer? Do you really think you create and shape your own circumstances and also that of others who are waiting to be helped by you, your visions, your dreams and your works?

Think of at least one event in your life that has been solely and purely influenced by you, think of anything that “you” have changed. Isn’t there interplay of too many factors and actors in all those events to be claiming credit by just one person? So what are you going to change? If you think deeply you’ll find that you are merely one of the actors, or worse still, a mere cog or an instrument.

Think in this way – have mankind, despite the best efforts, been able to dominate nature completely? Despite the best technological innovations and advancements there is always a tussle which is going on between man and nature, and in many cases man is still helpless child clinging to his fate against the vicissitudes of a cruel nature. By nature I mean external nature, the environment, and not the internal nature, Take example of Japan, despite being technologically most advanced nation, it could not save its own people against Tsunami or earthquakes. If we consider the internal nature, we find men to be even more helpless. As stated in Bhagvat Gita, men helplessly follow their nature in performing a task – Karyate hi abashah karma sarbaih prakritijaih gunaih. Men are mere tools, instruments, in the hands of nature – their Gunas which drive them to do one kind of work over another are also by-products of the same nature. Another statement in Gita corroborates this – Prakritim yanti bhutani, nigrahah kim karisyati.
You may say that these fight between man and nature have brought in many goods, like in the field of medical technology, transportation, comfort and convenience and so on. I am not denying that, but despite that, are we really and truly happy? Aren't more innovations bringing in more miseries? Are'nt advancement in medical sciences being accompnanied by the advent of new and more deadly deseases. Even the deseases like plague or malaria against which we have won, were really products of human avarice and ignorance. The famines were man made and the need for faster transportation arose from the roothless desire of human beings to conquer far off realms, often inflicting severe misery on the people of the land to which they travelled. Even now that same means of transport is being used by nature in spreading deseases rapidly far and wide, bird flue and swine flue being more recent cases, and terrorism is being able to exploit the same faster means of communication. Yes, we do need these despite the drawbacks, but hold on, lets move on. The main point is, are we really the changers as we perceive ourselves to be? Or are these changes, positive and negative, are happening through crucial interplay of other factors, not within an individual, a collective or a nation's control?

Take a long term look into the world history. How many events have been shaped by mankind? Was there any control over the birth and rise of a Hitler? Could the world leaders have stopped the two world wars and the associated death and destructions? In either case there were too many factors and actors, so we come back to "unforeseen and uncontrollable" circumstances. The once mighty Roman Empire crumbled into pieces, Mughals and other mighty Muslim kingdoms faded into oblivion, British imperialism crawled and finally evaporated and now American supremacy and hegemony are at stake, first by the unforeseen and unexpected success of the brutal frontal attack on WTC by a bunch of rag tag jehadis and then by the guerilla warefare in different countries, and finally by the great burden of debt and the cumulative effect of societal violence, arrogance, mindless consumerism and materialism.

So who is controlling all these? Mankind? When people sleep if somebody urinates on their face they will not realize that and yet their puffed up ego considers themselves as the “doer”, “achiever”, “shaper of destiny”, “changer of lives” and what not. They don’t realize that they only humiliate themselves further by acting as the “doer”.

So one may ask, should man stop doing things just because they are not “doers”? Should men stop fighting against nature, bringing out new innovations and dreaming of changing lives of others?

The response is no, one should continue doing that, but with all humility, sans any ego, just like a true Karmayogin, without getting attached or being too concerned with the results of the efforts. It does not matter if one is a theist or an atheist, if one works in this spirit one would find that in humility lies peace, in acceptance of defeat lies victory, in not trying to influence lives but simply trying to serve mankind lies the true positive influence. Work can go on in all sphere – politics, science, humanism, social uplifting, education, technology, but without wearing the cloaks of puffed up ego, selfish desires and motives. When Arjuna asked the lord, what drives a man to commit sins, despite his best attempt to do something, the Lord replied – “Desires and Attachments/anger which are intrinsically related and which arise from Raja Guna, the nature of activity, of restlessness. They are the main enemies of mankind”. The feeling of “I am the doer, the influencer and shaper” stems from several desires, of seeking name and fame, reputation, wealth, power or several of these together. These desires in turn stem from self importance or the ego and vanity. Only humility can leash these forces from spreading across and destroying and that humility can come through higher motives, of Sattva Guna, the nature of peacefulness and serenity, of contemplation and understanding, of compassion and self introspection, of forbearance and truth.

Journey of Life

2011-09-10T10:40:00.002+05:30

When sometimes we undertake a journey have we ever realized how similar it is to the life’s journey that we are making day in and day out since our birth? Imagine that you need to go and visit some place with many interesting things to see, having many accessible and inaccessible nooks and corners, each one of which is worth visiting. Himalayas for instance offer one such interesting destination. There are so many things to see but you end up seeing something and missing others. When you start the journey you are full of enthusiasm, just like when you are a child beginning on the life’s journey, eager to learn, full of optimism. But as you progress in your journey, you see many interesting things, some of the sites fascinate you, some do not, you are able to visit some interesting places and miss out on some others. In real life, you have so many experiences, some of them interesting while some are painful, others are just boring. You have so many desires; some of them get fulfilled, while others are not.

When you finally reach your destination there is a sense of fulfillment and accomplishment, you look back retrospectively at the journey undertaken and view it from an altogether different perspectives, collect lessons learned, analyze the mistakes and failures, the losses on the way and the gains. Similarly when you enter old age you have almost completed your life’s journey, mission is accomplished and you are left with memories of pleasures and pains, of friends and relatives. During the course of the journey you may have met fellow passengers who have chatted with you for a while, may have helped you, may have also eradicated some of the difficulties and boredom, but they are all transient phenomenon. They fade away once your journey is complete. Similarly in life’s journey you have met so many people, near and dear ones who made that journey tolerable and pleasing, but yet, slipped into oblivion one by one and at the end you are left with nothing but memories.

Now that you have completed your journey, seen what you came to see, experience what you came to experience, you yearn for your home, the comfortable and cozy nook to which you really belong. At the end of life’s journey also there is a great yearning to return to the place where we do really belong, and we do return there, all of us.

Face the Brutes

2011-07-17T10:03:00.001+05:30

When Swami Vivekananda was wandering as a mendicant in Varanasi, he was once troubled by a group of monkeys. He started running out of fear but the monkeys chased him. Seeing this, another ascetic shouted at him, ‘Swami, turn around, face the brutes!’ Swamiji did just that and the monkeys vanished. Later, while recalling this experience Swamiji said that problems in our life are like that of these monkeys. If we run away from the problems, they will chase us and hunt us down, but if we face them bravely, we may be able to beat all odds and emerge unscathed. It is a vital lesson of life that unless we stand up and face the challenges, the challenges will multiply and will eventually destroy us. What is a vital lesson for an individual is also a lesson for a nation and for the entire world. India has repeatedly been attacked but it has not faced the brutes. Time and again for the past 60 years or so it has proved that it is a nation of cowards, non violence and tolerance are just its façade. It is time that we rise above such cowardice but for that we need another Vivekananda, this time as a national leader. We need Swami Vivekananda as the ideal and role model, we need courage and dynamism, we do not need a Gandhi-ism suitably exploited and moulded by the present political class. We need a synthesis of all yogas, not "akarmas", "vikarmas" and 'Naiskarmas" (inaction, bad action and passivity resp.)

Resilience or plain cowardice

2011-07-17T09:58:00.000+05:30

Another terror attacks strikes Mumbai. The pattern is now oft repeated – bold headlines, TV channels running for TRP and excitement, innocents losing lives, families getting shattered, politicians including the heads of the state “condemn” and request people to maintain “calm” (why don’t they just hand over a previously recorded version instead of repeating the same glib statements is something beyond my limited wisdom, and why do media attach so much importance to their repetition is also strange). Another thing that comes up repeatedly, esp. in the media is the “resilience of Mumbaikars”. Now that leads me to wonder, what is meant by resilience? Is it to suffer attacks time and again and do nothing, just go back to old business, forgetting everything – is that what is resilience? Silently suffering all corruption, bad civic infrastructure, monsoon flood – are these all part of the same resilience? To my mind, this is not resilience but far from it, it is cowardice. It is the tendency of ignoring all ills, it is the indifference and the lackadaisical attitude, and it is the attitude that as long as it does not affect me or my family and friends I am ok. It is tama guna as per the definition of Bhagvat Gita, not the sattva guna of resilience. Resilience is fighting the menace, disarming it through sustained non violent effort. India is now in the grip of the same psychology which Arjuna had before the start of Kurukshetra battle – it needs a lord Krishna to remind it – “Be a lion, shake off this weakness, stand up and fight”. It'll have to get rid of its political class, the Shakunis and Duryadhana's of modern age. If there is courageous leadership rest will fall in line.

Mumbai is therefore not resilient, Mumbai is coward, indifferent. It can put up statues of Shivaji or name airports after him, but an actual Shivaji is now more needed instead of his statues and signboards in his name.

When They Came - 4

2011-02-27T13:49:00.002+05:30

Ramakrishna was born in a poor Brahmin family, he was devoid of formal knowledge and education but he was not "illeterate" as some of the contemporary studies would like to believe. He got to know of scriptures from various sources like enlightened discussions, but what would be the need of a formal education for a person who is born illuminated. Just as it says in Gita that for a "Brahmavid or the knower of the Brahman, the knowledge of the vedas is as limited as compared to a small water tank in an area which is flooded with water". He did not need to know the scriptures, he was born to teach them from his own direct experience, of arriving at the same truth by following various disparate paths. He was a personification of the Upanishad's profound statement - "There is but one truth, the wise call it by various names". He, using simple colloquial Bengali language, similies and metaphores, clarified effortlessly the most profound and most difficult to understand statements, in such lucid styles that even great scholars accepted them and common men understood them. It is said that in a gatherining of eminent scholars, his first Guru, the Brahmani or the wise lady proved that he was a divine incarnation as per the Shastras, and everybody accepted that. However this space is not intended for propagating his greatness, it is too small a space for doing so. This is just to analyze the purpose of his coming.
To understand a tree we need to look at its fruits. Similarly to understand Ramakrishna we need to look at his disciples, each of them were spiritual giants, most of them were men of merits and great talents, like M, the author of his gospels, who was a brilliant student and a professor. However we just need to take a peep at two, very different persons - one of them of course is Vivekananda, a man of unparallel greatness, the other being a householder disciple Durga Charan Nag or Nag Mahasaya, a man of absolute humility. Girish Chandra Ghosh, the famous Bengali poet and an ardent disciple wrote that Mahamaya, the great force of nature which binds human beings to worldly life, could not bind two despite her best attempts - one was Vivekananda, who became so great that he was far beyond her reach, and the other was Nag Mahasaya, who became so small that he easily evaded her, by completely getting rid of his ego and by dedicating himself to the service of god.
What did Ramakrishna's advent achieve? I would go to the extent of saying that it achieved a complete rejuvenation and transformation of India. Look at the array of luminaries who came along with him or after him, esp. in Bengal - Rabindranath Tagore, Iswar Chandra Vidyasagar, Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, Dinabandhu Mitra, Surendranath Bannerjee, Keshab Chandra Sen, Dr. Mahendralal Sarakar, Girish Chandra Ghosh, Jagadish Chandra Bose and many others who were all directly and indirectly influenced by him. Keshab Chandra Sen, it is said, worshipped him. Spirit of Nationalism revived, art, literature and culture flourished, scientific knowledge gained prominence, education thrived and more and more women came out of their cocoons to get educated and transformed. Vivekananda played a pivotal role in the rise of nationalistic spirit, even though it is not widely acknowledged - most of the young revolutionaries from Bengal were directly influenced by his words and writings, some of them being handpicked by Vivekananda's foremost disciple, Sister Nivedita. The most prominent of the revolutionaries was Aurobindo Ghosh (later Sri Aurobindo). Subhash Chandra Bose was an ardent follower of Vivekananda. Swami Vivekananda and his brother disciples started the spirit of selfless work for the betterment of others in the field of health and education, poverty alliviation etc. which impacted a very large section of the society. And this time the divine incarnation had come with a divine consort, the holy mother, specifically bearing in mind the plight of Indian women, for their salvation, through modern education. Through some efforts of Nivedita, through active encouragement of the holy mother (even though she herself was not literate) and other women disciples of Ramakrishna, several prominent institutions came up for the general Indian women. Even though Brahma samaj and missioneries had already started some work in this front and Vidyasagar's social reforms were reaping great dividends, a major push was needed for the welfare of the common women, and that came during this period. The other was Ramakrishna's work to protect Dharma from falling prey to viscious attacks from foreign traditions and customs on the one hand and to unite the various strife ridden sects - a massive counter attack against Macaulay and British divide and rule, which swept away all endeavors to "Anglicize" India.
There is very little attempt of knowing and understanding swami Vivekananda and his contribution to India, in an era of false gods and godesses, even far less attempt has been made to know his Guru and his influence and teachings. But one thing is acknowledged by even his detractors - the message of universal love and harmony that was taught by Ramakrishna is unparallel in the history of mankind. He had taught us that the concept of "tolerance" preached by Western civil societies is a joke, because human civilization should be based upon love of god and "respect", not "tolerance", because goal of human life is to realize god and everybody is trying to do the same thing in their own way, according to their own culture and upbringing. Just as a mother cooks different preparations of fish to suit the tastes and preferences of her different children - fry for one, curry for another and soup for another, so also the universal mother has provided different ways and means of satisfying everybody's tastes and preferences. So the claims of "my religion is greater than yours" is laughable, but one should follow one's own tastes. However difference between Indian and Semitic religions is while Indian religions have known this since time immemorial and it took Sri Ramakrishna to assert the truth through his own practical experience, semitic religions have always believed that their faiths are inherently superior to others and therefore considered their sacred duty to convert others, often forcefully through fear and pain of death.
Just as Jesus regarded God as "father", Ramakrishna regarded him as "mother". Or perhaps he and his mother were the same, as Jesus also said "I and my father are the same".
Ramakrishna's advent definitely paved the way for the growth of a new world and emergence of a new India, an India supremely self confident and ready to reclaim its role in the world.

When they came - 3

2011-02-20T10:57:00.001+05:30

Before getting back to the discussion on Sri Krishna, lets talk about another person who figures very prominently on the divine appearance list. The difference between the rest and him is that 1) He is the most recent 2) His leela or divine play has been well documented and corroborated by various sources.

Sri Ramakrishna Paramhansa has been varioulsy refered as "Avatar", "Yugavatar", "great saint", "mystic", "sage" and "phenomenon" (the last one by Christopher Isherwood). However, my belief is that nobody, except for a very select few, knew who he truly was, he revealed himself only to his nearest and dearest whom he called as 'Antaranga' or the innermost circle. In his own language, he was "achin gachh" or that unknown plant, ever mysterious and beyond comprehension of ordinary mortal. Vivekananda certainly knew who he was, being his foremost disciple. The very depth of his feeling about Ramakrishna can be understood by anyone who has read his work "My Master". He went to the extent of saying that Ramakrishna is equivalent to a million Vivekanandas. Coming from a person who is known to be measured in his evaluation of anybody, be it friend or enemy, it is something worth pondering.

Ramakrishna came at a time when the social and political scenarios of India in general and Bengal in particular were going through a major upheaval. Only recently had Macaulay and Bentinck carried out their educational reforms, hoping to put a death nail on the indigenous culture and believing that a superior spirit of Christianity would be able to engulf and civilize the entire India by replacing the ancient religious orders. No doubt they were partially successfull, given the craze with which young Bengal, a product of British dominated Calcutta University, began hating traditions, ritualism and casteism and embraced Brahmaism and Christianity. Bengal was then the educational and cultural capital of India, apart from being the capital of British Indian empire and the danger of "India doing tomorrow what Bengal does today" was a very big possibility. There were people who stuck to Hindu traditions with all their mights, but they were hopelessly divided into thousands of sects - Vaishanvites, Shaivites, Shaktas and even into young and obscure sects. One couldn't tolerate another, let alone fight unitedly the dual menace of English education and missionery invasion into the Hindu religious life. So it seemed for a while that Macaulay was winning convincingly. The British education system at this point started a lot of false propaganda and fuelled the divide among castes and creeds. They with the help of a few over zealous European scholars (among whom was Max Mueller) came up with the fantastic but seemingly plausible Aryan Invasion Theory (AIT), which hypothesized that an alien group of white skinned people, possibly from Europe or Central Asia, invaded India in about 1500 BC and overran the homegrown Dravidian culture, the conquests of the Aryans being depicted in Ramayana and Mahabharata, Rama being an Aryan and Ravana the archetypal dark skinned Dravidian (of course they did not consider the fact that Rama himself is depicted as "dark skinned"). Surprisingly even after Indian independence nobody tried to seriously question the Aryan Invasion Theory and no thanks to our socialist establishment and Marxist historians AIT found a way into our text books and generations after generations are being fed on this garbage of a theory which has no credible evidence. However more on this in a separate blog. Suffice to say that this propaganda caused a lot of damage and was definitely responsible for fuelling Racism in "Aryan" Europe, the culmination of which came with the Nazism and slaughter of 6 million Jews.
AIT is just one example for showing the deep hatred and prejudice which Europeans and colonial rulers had for India and Indian civilization. Sadly the English educated Indians began to follow their mentors, openly ridicule "Indianness and Hinduism" without understanding or comprehending any of them. People of great stature like Ram Mohan Roy made the same mistakes. After the failed mutiny of 1857 British rule was accepted as a destiny and foregone conclusion by Indians. Nationalism and patriotism was still at a conceptual stage. There was social disharmony and poverty became rampant. Bengal, the ertswhile rice bowl of India suffered from frequent famines owing to the negligence of the ruling elites. Superstition prevailed in the name of religious practices and opporession of poor by rich and mighty was the accepted norm.
Thus was set the stage for the arrival of another luminary, to reestablish "dharma" and to destroy "adharma".

When they came - 2

2011-02-19T17:32:00.003+05:30

Elsewhere when we look around the world we find similar parallels. Every 500 or 600 years, when a part of the world is submerged under great darkness, there came great men with message of deliverance. In the West when the Roman civilization was at its nadir, when barbarsim, beastliness and debauchery reigned supreme, when ritualism and oppression haunted the Western faiths, both Jewsih and pagan, there appeared a great man with the message of selfless love, compassion who laid the foundation of future European civilization based on what later came to be known as Christian principles. Similarly about 600 years later there appeared another great man who was a karmayogin, who united much of the barabaric cruel and viscious Arabic tribes into a cohesive force on the principles of universal bortherhood and replaced the terrible prevailing practices of the different tribes with a comprehensive rule of law, of worshipping one true god in place of stones and woods so that they could be bound together under one discipline. The prophet's message spread far and wide and Islam was established as a great religion esp. in the central asia whose tribes could not be harnessed by Buddhism's message of love and harmony, nor could be influenced by the distinctly European Christianity.

Therefore we find these great historical events to be an echo of the declaration in the Bhagavat Gita - Whenever "dharma", which stands for virtue, order, harmony and everything positive and constructive, is on the wane, whenever decline sets in, whenever it gives way to adharma or evil, I project myself, to protect my devotees and to reestablish order and harmony. Lord Krishna appeared at a great juncture, that of end Dwapar and beginning of Kali yuga, when India was confronted with its destiny. The events that followed shaped the history of India. Sri Krishna was a person whom very few can comprehend and fewer can write about. Not even great scholars and men of wisdom can fathom his greatness. His greatest manifestation is during the Kurukshetra war when he gave his discourses on Gita to a battle wary Arjuna, urging him to fight, explaining at length the principles of doing one's duty without attachment, without desire for fruits of actions, elaborating on the different "yogas" or paths of union with the supreme being. Much of the teachings in Gita are found in Upanishads, however whereas in Upanishads they are explained often in cryptic languages as direct experience of great seers and sages and hence beyond the comprehension of common men, in Gita all of them are explained lucidly.

Question is, what was the purpose of the incarnation of Lord Krishna? It is very difficult for a common man to try to understand the reason for his advent because unlike the times of Buddha, Christ, the prophet, or Sri Chaitanya, there is no recorded history of Krishna's time and therefore we'll have to rely a great deal on Mahabharata to understand the purpose of his coming.

When they came - 1

2011-02-19T17:01:00.003+05:30

During the 6th century BC whole of India was immersed in a worst form of ritualism. Cast system reached its most loathsome form when the priestly class dominated and the wisdom of the brahmins degenerated into obnoxious practices through misinterpretation of the Vedas. Brahmins used their dominant position in the society to establish their sway and power over everybody, including the kings. The so called inferrior castes and common men were debarred from parctising religion as per Vedas and most of the great truths were anyway outside the reach of common men as there were no documents, every teaching was based on Sruti. In this despondent situation there appeared a prince who had renounced his kingdom and his married life in search of Truth. He was lord Buddha, the enlightened one. He openly embraced everybody and debarred none. People flocked to him, for getting the taste of the eternal peace. And in the next three of four centuries, many great kings, most prominent being Ashoka, took to Budhhism and non violence. India was saved from a crisis, masses found their voice. Buddhism spread far and wide, even ferocious tribes like Kushanas and Huns who came to India to attack and plunder, became ardent Budhhists and were assimilated by Indian culture.

Towards the end of 6th century A.D Buddhism reached its nadir. The same worst form of ritualism which gave its birth, also resulted in its decline, only this time Buddhists themselves were responsible for degenerating the principles and teachings of Buddha into pointless rituals. Buddhism was deeply influenced at this stage by Tantra. When again India was going through a general despondency as neither there was a powerful ruler to hold the country together, nor a powerful religion, and when Islam, the newly created Arabic force was at its doorstep, came a person in the South, who was intensely intellectual and scholar. Sankara established the high and lofty principles of Vedanta - that all beings are gods themselves, only they are deluded by Maya and not realizing the same, that there is no personal God as the Brahman, the supreme being and the Atman, the individual souls are one and the same, that all of us are the same and by hating and killing others we are hating and killing ourselves - Mayi sarvam idam proktam sutre maniganah iva ( into Me all are tied up, like pearls in a string, as proclaimed by lord Krishna in Gita). But Sankara's dry intellect and ascetism was not understood by householders. Therefore the principle of Advaita was challenged by Madhvacharya and Ramanuj, the two great persons with large hearts. The monism and dualism helped reestablish the sanctity of Santana Dharma. The three together helped build up a mighty legacy in the Southern India which continued for the next 500 years and which indirectly influenced powerful Southern empires like Chalukyas, Cholas and later Kakotiyas and Vijayanagar.

Now the spotlight came to Bengal, a mighty kingdom which was threatened by inroads of Islamic influence and culture. Bengal was at this stage in a quandary, Brahmanas had shut themselves up to protect the religion from the foreign influence, leaving ordinary people to their fate. Learned and wise were more interested in dry intellectual discourses and scholarly fights than providing means of salvation to ordinary people. At this juncture when things were looking quite bleak there appeared a hurricane of love, "prema bhakti" which sewpt away much of Bengal, Assam and Orissa. The person at the helm was called Sri Chaitanya. Born as Nimai Thakur of Nadia, he was a fantastic scholar with unmatched erudition. Sri Chaitanya and his companion Nitayananda spread the message of love and devotion and accepted anybody and everybody in their fold, much like Buddha, without discrimination. This bhakti moevment saved Bengal and much of India from getting trapped into a viscious cycle of hate, conversion, ritualism and dogma. Nobody, who has uttered the name of Hari, is untouchable, thundered Sri Chaitanya, and therefore caste system was washed away by this flood of love and devotion. Sri Chaitanya through his Bhakti movement reffirmed the faith of ordinary Indians on the necessity of loving god selflessly. A lot of literary works were published by renouned Vaishnava saints. Ramayana and Mahabharata were tranlsated into Bengali and powerful and devoted Bengali satraps raised their heads to further promote religion, art and culture. Flood of devotion touched North India where Tulsidas wrote his Ramcharitmansas to bring lord Rama closer to every North Indian household, and Kabir spread the message of harmony and tolerance.

Similarities between German and Sanskrit

2011-02-13T13:39:00.002+05:30

After studying German grammer and while studying Sanskrit grammer, I came across some very interesting similarities between the two. Perhaps this is one of the reason why the "Aryan" theory came into existence after Europeans discovered the linguistic similarities of the ancient Indians with Europeans. The similarity is the underlying base for the Indo-Germanic languages. However to my mind the root cause of this similarity is not because European sprache spread across the globe towards the East along with Aryans (the theory has now been established as a bunkum except being tenaciously held by some racists and Marxists), but rather Sanskrit spread towards Europe which was at that point of time a mainly barabarian regime devoid of any capability of constructing a civilized form of language. Sanskrit was probably then as popular as English is today and thus early Europeans eagerly and zealously adopted the syntax as their base.

Coming to the similarities that I observed -

1. Declension of adjectives - In German adjectives are declined based on gender, number and cases. In sanskrit the adjectives are declined based on number, gender and cases. Declension of adjectives in Sanskrit follow their resp. nouns which they modify.

2. In German nouns differ on the basis of gender, i.e. each noun can be classified into masculine, feminine and neuter gender much like that in Sanskrit. In Sanskrit, in addition nouns follow declension on the basis of cases and numbers, apart from genders (Shabdaroop).

3. Declension of pronouns in number, gender and cases - ihm, ihn, er, sie, ich, du, mich, mir, dich, dir etc. Similarly Sanskrit has declension of pronouns in number, gender and cases (ayam, aham, tvam, mama, tava, te, me, vayam etc.)

4. The prefixes which add to the verbs to form new verbs in German like emp, be, ent etc,. are similar to Upasargas in Sanskrit which add to the verbs in the beginning to form new verbs. There are 20 such Upasargas or prefixes - like pra para, apa, sam, ni etc.

5. Short form of language constructs - German language has short forms like da, im, am. Sanskrit has short forms like te, me, nau, nah, vah

6. Avyayas in Sanskrit which does not change in cases, genders or numbers but drive cases in a sentence formation are similar to adverbs like mit, gegen, on, an, in, bei which drive the case formation (e.g.dative with mit)

7. The 7 cases in Sanskrit can be mapped against the 4 cases in German (Nominative - prathama, Accusative - dwitia, tritiya, saptami, Possessive - sasthi and Dative - chaturthi, panchami

8. There are in several word formations - e.g Nacht - Nakta (both means night), tochter - duhita (Persian -dukhtar as intermediate, means daughter), hansa-hamsa, stern-tara (star) etc.
9. Compound words - German language has these monstrous compound words (combination of two or three words) and Sanskrit has the "sandhi" words which are equally monstrous

On Religion

2011-02-05T12:36:00.003+05:30

Rabindranath Thakur (Tagore in English) was a person whom very few can comprehend and even less can speak about. However there are many so called "experts" on him. I do not profess to be one and I am simply delighted to read him and interprete him in my own way. Here is a piece which I got on his viewpoints on religion. Towards the fag end of his life in 1937 he was delivering a lecture in the parliament of religions organized by Ramakrishna Mission.

Religions at their most profound level, he indicated, help to reveal a spirit of harmony that bridges the dark abysms of time and space…that reconciles contradictions…and imparts perfect balance to the unstable. Yet, “when these same religions travel far from their sacred sources,” he noted, “they lose their original dynamic vigour, and degenerate into the arrogance of piety, into an utter emptiness crammed with irrational habits and mechanical practices, then is their spiritual inspiration befogged in the turbidity of sectarianism, then do they become the most obstinate obstruction that darkens our vision of human unity.”

He continued:

All through the course of human history it has become tragically evident that religions, whose mission is liberation of soul, have in some form or other ever been instrumental in shackling freedom of mind and even moral rights.

…The pious man of sect is proud because he is confident of his right of possession of God. The man of devotion is meek because he is conscious of God’s right of love over his life and soul….the bigoted sectarian nurses the implicit belief that God can be kept secured for himself and his fellows in a cage which is of their own making…

Thus every religion that begins as a liberating agency ends as a vast prison-house. Built on the renunciation of its founder, it becomes a possessive institution in the hands of its priests, and claiming to be universal, becomes an active centre of schism and strife…This mechanical spirit of tradition is essentially materialistic, it is blindly pious but not spiritual, obsessed by phantoms of unreason that haunt feeble minds with their ghastly mimicry of religion.

How very true and how very prophetic. When we see every religious institution we find that they have formed shackles of ruthless rules and rituals which bind their aspirants and which restrict freedom of the soul to mingle with the free spirit and respond to the inner yearnings.

Then again religion cannot be a liberating force, it is merely a tool which can be exploited easily by a select few to hold sway over many. Also most people are simpletons, they believe that by merely uttering some meaningless chants or merely adhering to doctrines, dogmas etc. they attain heaven or salvation. Only a very few can comprehend what true religion is all about and even fewer succeed in attaining the realization. As it is said in Gita - Of millions only thousands truly seek, of thousands only a few get.

Scriptures are difficult to understand and subjected to multiple interpretation. Only a true man of god can interprete scriptures, not the scholars or ordinary priests. When these latter people try interprete scriptures it becomes disastrous as they often take the literal meaning or force feed their own interpretations, and thereby make lives of others miserable, by asking them to follow the prescribed rules.
Every soul in this universe seeks freedom. Any activity or dictat that restricts freedom cannot be the means of attaining it. Those who are involved in petty politics and regulating day to day social norms of people cannot realize god and hence have no moral authority. And yet, a large majority of people obey them,thinking that they are pious and following the doctrines, merely because very few have got the capacity of seeking and understanding the truth. They are content to follow their leaders. It is like the Upanishad's example of a blind leading another blind, both falling ultimately into the same pit. It is only a fool who would assert that his path is the only path or a better path than others and the rest would have to follow that. The supreme being is not so restrictive as to pass favours to only the "chosen ones", it is available to all who seeks it with true devotion. The attitude of my religion is holier than yours is much like a child's claim of his toy is bigger than the other fellow's.However most established religions broke into several sects or paths, while professing all along to be the "only true path".

Religion also restricts openness and confines the thoughts to narrow boundaries. Thats why there were so many tussles between scientific thoughts and semitic religions as they were less prone to accept anything outside their doctrines. Take for instance the battle over theory of evolution or the heliocentric universe. Several mystics from had been prosecuted by the established religions because of their direct experience which did not conform to the preached doctrines. These mystics only have a few followers but they understand and respect other religions and are much more tolerant than others who decried these mystics. There is a striking similarity in the experiences of mystics from various backgrounds, the essential theme is unity with the divinity which is stranegly very similar to the experiences narrated in Upanishads by the sages and is the core of the Vedantic philosophy. However that theme is anathema to the established religions.

Ego and its perils

2011-01-30T11:52:00.001+05:30

What is the definition of "Ego"? Anything to deal with "me" and "myself"? What is egoism and what is egotism? Are they good or bad? "I am a great leader, I am highly placed, I have influences, I have money, muscle power, I have education, I have a good job, I earn a lot, I can teach you a lesson, how dare you crossed my path!" - these are all statements of egoism, which Sri Ramakrishna used to call "bajjat Ami", meaning the "Evil Self", or "Kancha Ami" meaning "the unripe self". On the other hand he classified "Bhakta Ami", 'Das Ami" (Devotee Me, Servant (of lord) me) etc. as the "Paka Ami" or the 'Ripe Self'. He gave an example of 'Evil Self' (vide Gospels of Sri Ramakrishna or the Ramakrishna Kathamrita) - suppose someone had stolen 10 bucks from you, you thought how dare he steals from "Me", and getting hold of that guy, gave him a good thrashing, took away his belongings and then gave him up to police. That "Me" is "Bajjat Ami".
How very true! this bajjat ami dominates us most of the time. We think highly of ourselves, our achievements and refuse to think of our shortcomings. We get demoralized if somebody criticizes us, but we never bother to introspect. We always like to think of ourselves as superior to others, that we are better than most others, but in practice do exactly opposite. All these stem from the delusion of "ego", what is refered to as 'Ahamkara'. The perils of ego lies in our refusal to admit our shortcomings and not understanding the power of humility,unselfishness and the courage to introspect and rectify our course of life.

Travel Dreams

2011-01-30T11:30:00.001+05:30

While life itself is an endless voyage towards eternity, travel dreams are there probably to remind us that we are all fellow travellers in this great journey. The Shantiparva in Mahabharata speaks of the vast ocean of life 'Sansararanava' where people float around haplessly like pieces of wood, clinging to each other for a brief period and then once again separated. All unions and separations are but fleeting moments, transient and transitory. Therefore all longings are futile, as we are born to be separated and float alone, towards the great refuge. Travel dreams are therefore repeated attempts of our mind to remind us of the stark reality. The inner cconsciousness of which we are unconscious during our wakeful hours tells us that this sensory world which we perceive as real is as elusive as the dream itself. We are out on a long journey, in which we sometimes get lost, sometimes long to return to our near and dear ones but find it difficult, sometimes we simply want to escape and get lost, sometimes we miss a train by accident or sometimes we run in narrow alleys, trying to escape from unknown enemies. Is our inner mind continuously trying the escape the miseries that life has brought upon us? Is it trying to escape the enemies of senses and pleasure seeking worldly affairs? Or is there a hidden fear of separation from our near and dear ones and longing to get back to the world which is secure and comfortable?

Mirror Mirror within ourselves - a reflection

2011-01-30T11:18:00.001+05:30

The mirror within us so so covered with dirt and grime that only repeated and hard polishing can bring about a true reflection of ourselves within us. This mirror enables us to rediscover ourselves, our hidden potential and talent, instill confidence and ensure that the potential is translated into a great energy and enthusiasm towards life and work. The mirror helps us in developing dispassion, detachment and devotion. It also helps us to cultivate renunciation of material pleasures and senseless sensual fulfilment and appreciate the wealth of simplicity and harmony that the nature has bestowed upon us. Our goal in this life is to find the mirror and polish it till it shines and shows us our true nature.

Ayodhya, Hindu Muslim etcetera

2011-01-30T11:12:00.004+05:30

I know that any blog on sensitive issues is dangerous. It might result in losing friends and alienating people. However it is time to be a little bold.

There have been many views on the Ayodhya judgment. Most heaved a sigh of relief calling it a balanced judgment. Hindus are predictably happy as they stand vindicated. Muslims are not happy, they feel further alienated in a Hindu dominated society. Many Muslim intellectuals decried the judgment calling it biased and unfair. Many Hindu intellectuals have done the same (i.e. calling the judgment biased and unfair and decrying it, esp. the acceptance of Ram's legitimacy).

I have no opinion on the judgment or on the core issue. It is pointless to assume as all the intellectuals seem to assume that Hindus and Muslims can be bhai bhais, that there is no problem between them. On the other hand it is prudent to accept that the relationship is mired with problems for the past thousand years, and then try to see what can be done to address the problem.

First, the nature of the problem -

Muslims (or at least a section of Muslims) have never accepted the fact that they are now dominated culturally by the same people whom they dominated for nearly 500 years. This lack of acceptance was partly responsible for the two nation theory and partition. Post 1992, the feeling has increased because Muslims have become increasingly insecure and protective about even minor incursions into what are known as Islamic values, culture and ideals - in short the religious and social practices. It is not a local phenomena, but is a worldwide phenomena. Backlashes are also prevalent across the globe, esp. in Europe. This is evident through the rejection of "multiculturalism" by Germany (read Turkish culture, as German culture is anyway predominant in Germany), call for ban of Burkas in France and Italy, rise of the Neo Nazis and extreme rights, coining of the derogatory term "Paki" which is applied to all South East Asians in general regardless of their origin.

Hindus on the other hand always perceived that despite being a numerical majority they got a raw deal as the so called minorities always dictated terms, be in political space or intellectual discourses and writings. So what began as a "backlash" soon became a right to be assertive.

The feelings on both sides are nurtured and nourished by the community leaders, political class, intellectuals and the media. By attacking one and overlooking the deficiencies of others, by resorting to vote bank politics, by simply "hating" a particular ideology, by refusing to be tolerant and yet preaching tolerance these sections do their best to further increase the chasm. And the menace of global terrorism, riots, sustained campaigns by media in hunt of sensational stories further fuel the apprehensions of both Hindus and Muslims and make them even more defensive, so much so that the people who would have probably in ideal situations taken a more balanced and pragmatic view of the situations became intolerant and outright hostile. This is further evident in Kashmir, which was one of the most tolerant regions of India even 50 years back.Now it is virulently intolerant. Some blame it on the Pakistan's influence, others on the growing dominance of the Wahabism over Sufism. Whatever be the reason the fact remains that there is widespread discontent and disharmony.

Problem no 2 is Disbalance in terms of approach and belief. Whatever one set does the other set expects an equal commitment, when that is lacking it leads to discontentment. Hindus do not get a subsidy from Government to visit religious places while minorities do, nobody in their sane mind would propose a religious subsidy to Hindus as that would mean political harakiri. Minority run institutions enjoy special privileges while Hindu run institutions don't. In the 1980s Ramakrishna Mission embraced a controversy because the Marxists conveniently created problems for mission run institutions, through labour movements and non coperation of the Jyoti Basu run state government. Mission wanted to get minority status in order to protect the institution sovereignty which is enjoyed only by the minorities. That was a desparate attempt no doubt but it shows the partisan approach in a so called secular country. Liberal Hindus often consider and rever Islamic prophets and men of god ( need to look into the crowd which visits the Sufi shrines or Dargas). A reciprocity of similar nature is considered as a blasphemy in Islam and no Islamic scholar or Maulana of sane mind would even consider praising a Hindu holy man or god or scripture. So the chasm is wide enough and there are many hawks and doves on either side to further widen it.

There is a need today of the level headed pragmatists from both sides (not the so called secularists though, because they tend to add fuel to the fire) to come forward , putting aside all prejudices, communal feelings, and hostilities and try to understand each other. Mutual understanding is the first step towards acceptance. One of the greatest persons in Hinduism who understood Islam was Swami Vivekananda. He always preached on the positive sides of Islam - the universal brotherhood, the piousness and adhering to rules, and called it 'Vedanta in practice'. He also dreamt of an India with a Hindu brain and Islamic body, implying an India based on the great principles of Vedanta and its practical form. There are many Hindus who subscribe to those values and they have no problem in accepting a liberal and tolerant Islam as their near and dear one.

Similarly there were great Islamic scholars like Dr. Syed Muztafa Ali who understood the core principles of Hinduism very well and there are still several scholars in Islam who does so but nevertheless whose voice is not heard in the frenzy of the intolerants, fundamentalists, secularists and leftists.

Let these persons come forward and extend their hands of friendship. Thats the first step towards mutual understanding.

They struck with impunity

2011-01-08T10:14:00.002+05:30

After Nandigram comes Lalgarh. Every day the bhadralok CM of West Bengal is getting unmasked and what is coming out is sending a shudder down the spine.When the villagers of Netaigram in lalgarh area had assembled outside a house to protest against armed camps of CPM cadres residing inside, there were several rounds of firing on them and many of them got killed on the spot. The below photos are taken courtesy a local Bengali daily.

When recently the home minster sent a letter to the CM, asking about presence of armed camps in Lalgarh, instead of acknowleding the problem the CM haughtily responded to it, as if leaders of the left parties are not accountable to any one, not definitely to the consitution. More lies and propaganda were spread often through the friends in the media, of alleged nexus between opposition and Maoists. When that story was not bought a new line of attack was conceived - terrorize them to teach them a lesson, the same tactics which they have adopted successfully for the past 35 years in rural Bengal. But the party leadership is increasingly concerned that the tactics is no longer working as people are becoming more and more desperate. If you corner a cat for long, in desperation it will bite you. Similarly in West Bengal's most deprived areas, Maoist menace have gone up. Ironically it is the same Maoists that helped CPM reclaim Chotta Angria village in 2000, killing many innocent villagers in the process. And now the state leadership wants to pin the balme of these killings on the same Maoists and is alleging their nexus with state opposition.
The ruling party has no obligation in maintaining law and order, things are now totally out of their control and its better that they acknowledge the same sooner and move away quitely because people are willing to pay any price to make them go. In these 35 years the state has bullied the police forces into absolute ineffectiveness and incomptence by inducting and promoting people with party affiliation everywhere. Result is that the police force in West Bengal is non existent, except for firing on innocent unarmed villagers or while extracting money from them. In 35 years the state has also built armed cadres who used to win elections for the party year after year by simply intimidating voters. This gang of armed cadres, refered to as "Harmads" in local parlance have now gone berserk, probably in the fear of retribution. The monster can no longer be leashed and the state leadership has decided to unleash them instead.
People of West Bengal are paying with blood and tears for their sin of being indifferent for so many years. West Bengal is now "Waste" Bengal after all these 35 years.

Political parties - Indian ruling and opposing elite

2011-01-08T09:45:00.001+05:30

The muscle power of political parties in India is known. Their obnoxious representatives hijack any thin effort towards Governance. Vile and corrupt, most of these politicians thrive on money, muscles and corruption. Their proximity to big and corrupt business houses is known. In the matters of corruption most of the political parties including the two major ones are birds of same feather that flock together. In matters of expressing their power and in moral matters they are not very apart. Not very far behind are the parties who claim themselves to be representatives of the poor. It is in interest of every political party that muscle power, money power and the cycle of massive corruption continues because then they will be able to look into their own selfish interests. It is only the amount of the loot with which they have disputes. The one who gets into power gets a major share and therefore everybody fights an election - to have power and more power. The recent killing of a politician by a woman once again highlighted the desperation of people. The woman was raped and silenced by a politician and she had to take a drastic measure. Whether her action is justified or not is a different question, but the incident shows the desperation. Only under extreme provocation would one take that much risk that the woman took. We have seen the scams unfolding which are tips of icebergs. We have seen the massive corruption with land everywhere in the country, where big businesses and realtors (again many of them are politicians or have close links to the politicians)have a major stake. The pro poor parties are no different - West Bengal now become a "waste" Bengal, a veritable killing field and everyday tales of corruption of a party in power for 35 years by making a mockery of democracy, are coming out. "God's own country" is now a happy playground of the devils. We have seen the danger of divisive policies - terror attacks and killing at impunity for differences in opinion, be it religious, caste or political. Associations and organizations which have long been beneficiaries of divisive policies have come out openly in support of corrupt people whom they hold as their icon and have pleaded victimhood for the corrupt who makes judicial process a mockery. No severe law has come up against corrution - nobody is bothered. CBI investigation is an eyewash because everybody knows CBI to be servant of ruling elite. Therefore a general despondency has grasped the nation in the beginning of a new year and new decade as we are unable to nurture any hope for the nation with this system and set up. No respite for common men it seems.

Income Tax Refund

2010-10-23T16:32:00.002+05:30

We got our income tax refund, but a substantial amount was deducted from the original claim of Rs 40000/-. Only Rs 35000/- was refunded and that too including interests. That means about Rs 7000/- was withheld by income tax office – why, nobody knows. It took a long time and two visits to the Income tax office to get the refund. The refund for assessment year 2009-2010 was provided in October 1 2010, almost 14 months after filing return. The same income tax office which levies a high penalty on the non-payment of income tax within stipulated time, payed a paltry and miserly interest. We tried all options – calling up the IT ombudsmen in Hyderabad, filing RTI and filing first appeal after RTI was not responded.
The IT ombudsmen was at first sympathetic and became very formal on the second occasion. The IT assessment officer Range 12 was at first apologetic and on our second visit became very non-chalant, as if she was not born for handling such petty issues. The Right to Information was never responded (strange are the ways of Government offices). The first appeal has not been responded yet(it’s been almost 30 days).
There was one helpful IT chap who helped us in checking the refund status in the system. Bless him. Such guys are rare in Government offices but by sheer luck if you come across one of such rarer species your jobs get half done.
Anyway, good part is we got our refund. It takes a lot of determination to get things done with Indian bureaucracy and most of them would like to remain in the self imposed cocoon and would think it rather demeaning to respond to ordinary mortals. But it is possible and there are few good men (and women) out there.
There is another side to this story. While we got the refund, we got a whooping RS 7000 less, without any explanation. When enquired, the response from ITO was "send us query, we'll get back." But she has not got back in two months. Onus is on us, the poor taxpayers, to get their refund, follow up with ITO and get IT related issues cleared. Ki bichitro ei desh!

The Mess

2010-09-27T15:59:00.003+05:30

Why is there so much anger in the media over CWG mess? Media is behaving as if they have suddenly woken up to the deficiencies of Governance and corruption in India. We who encounter it day in and day out know better.
We know that the Government services will not be able to deliver any goods
- because our roads are poor despite paying road taxes and they are increasingly becoming poorer
- because we have filthy cities as garbage remains dumped on roadside
- because we have virtually no sanitation and sewage disposal which during monsoon season either often comes up on the roads or contaminates the drinking water causing all sorts of diseases
- because we have no public urinal and people relieve themselves on the roads along with dogs
- because we do not provide toilets to poor and underprivileged and they defecate in public
- because our roads remain inundated with flood water during monsoon
- because our flyovers take an eternity to get completed causing colossal loss of public money
- because we often stay without power, without drinking water
- because our transport systems are in mess.

The list of Government failures is endless. And despite all these failures, our media expects our Government to deliver a mega event (that too a hangover of colonial slavery) successfully! It amuses me to no ends.

The same media is silent when it encounters numerous stories on corruption in public offices – RTO, property registration, municipal services, income tax, utilities, customs, excise, passport, irrigation, sanitation, school, and public works, again the list is endless. How many times has the so called alert media been able to write against a scam, let alone unearth it using investigative journalism?

Sadly there is corruption is every sphere of public life in India and media is also no saint. There are many instances of stories being implanted by politicians by paying bribe to media, many instances of media giving all its credibility away to the benefits and gifts received from the ruling classes foregoing all ethics and integrity.

And media is not alone. What about Indian educated class? They seem to have found a way of convenience in corruption. Many of them justify corruption as a “convenience tax” for a quick and hassle free delivery of service. They forget that they are supposed to get that same quick and hassle free service without that “convenience tax”, that the convenience tax is actually the price of a great inefficiency which goes on increasing under the aid and abatement received. To circumvent the filthy, dirty unhygienic roads, water and other public utilities middle class is now sheltered in gated communities, insulated from the filth outside. And now suddenly we are enraged?

People who do not care for the plight of the fellow citizens will care about national prestige? Joke of the century. Where is our nationalism when we see fellow citizens crushed under wheels of poverty and illiteracy? When we see the huge wheel of corruption not allowing public goods to reach the poor and needy?

Our political and ruling elite are actually honest enough. They have made it very clear that the problems in CWG is nothing to worry about, they are routine. Even if a bridge collapses, it is only meant for common men, not VIPs. Who cares if a few common men die, they will die anyway, and nobody is immortal. They have made it very clear that corruption is not a matter of concern because it happens, it is usual. No need to worry about unhygienic living conditions in the games villages because that’s the normal condition in India, and probably even worse. The bathrooms in games villages are at least better in shape than public urinals.

So, what’s all this fuss about? It is a taste of Indian governance to the whole world and the world knows better. We stand in the 88th position in transparency index, tad better than Russian oligarchy or a failed Pakistan and Somalia. And our media is engrossed with the spoon fed 9% growth story. Now they and the Indian educated class have suddenly discovered our many failures and are horrified by it. India is a corrupt nation because its citizens chose to be one and it will remain corrupt unless there is a massive resistance against corruption. Till then, political class will be wise enough not to host any mega event which attracts public scrutiny.

Multi brand retailing

2010-08-15T12:46:00.001+05:30

Many articles are being written in favor of and in opposing multi brand retailing, but nobody is sure of a common ground. While multi brand retail would create jobs, it would also endanger the livelihood of unorganized retail industry. Thus arguments of both proponents and opponents are true, but the problem is none of them are appreciating the complete picture. Many small retail businesses may go bankrupt because they cannot simply afford the economy of scale and scope that big retailers enjoy. This is already a possibility with so many big Indian names entering the retail fray. This will be an even more menace with names like Walmart, Carrefour, Seven Eleven or Mark and Spencer with their deep pockets entering the arena. Small retailers have their margins eroded through wastages at various levels. They do not have an efficient IT infrastructure for managing sales or inventory, a sophisticated distribution and supply chain, access to easy credit or a reliable vendor base from where they can purchase in bulk. They only have the goodwill and trust of their long standing customers. However only a loyal customer base cannot ensure a level playing field because in the event of price or quality wars, small retailers will be vanquished.
How can a level playing field be ensured? The onus is on both retailers and Government. Small retailers would have to collaborate rather than fight among themselves to counter aggressive bigger stores. They need to form a common investment platform,set up or tie up with a more effient logistics service, purchase in bulk together by developing a bigger vendor base across states, invest in technology for ensuring efficiency across the supply chain. Government should ensure that big retailers do not ignore smaller ones in this endeavor, and that banks and financial institutions provide credit at low cost to them. Only such a visionery and dynamic approach would ensure that right environment for retailing emerges in the country and will fuelfurther growth in this industry. But is it feasible? Who will take the lead in bringing small and disparate warring sections on the same ground thus triggering a retail and socio economic revolution?

Strength vs. Weakness

2010-08-15T10:49:00.001+05:30

Nobody likes weaklings even if they are good at heart, everybody likes strong, determined approach. Nobody likes to be led by a weak and incompetent leadership even if it is good at heart, everybody likes to be led by a strong and confident leadership. In a end, a weak and vacillating leadership brings more evil than a strong and resolute leadership which may do some wrong. There is no respect for the weak and coward. Therefore if a nation is led by a bunch of cowards, that nation as a whole loses respect, its moral character changes and evil thrives. When a country finds itself in stupor it is detested even for the reasons for which it is not in fault. Its enemies can cry shriller to draw attention to perceived misgivings and wrong doings and the world at large listens to them, even if they know that it is hogwash. This is because, the world fears strength, courage and confidence. This is the reason why Hitler went unchallenged for full four years even while attacking one country after another. Strength is dynamism, weakness is stagnancy. No more evil can befall a country which is cursed with a weak leadership. There can be no more ills than cowardice and inaction in the face of adversity. This is the lesson of history. Countries which find itself in such stupor often pay a heavy price, by losing independence, by getting disintegrated or by fading into oblivion. World does not care.

A weak leadership does not care for the citizens, it does not care about the country, it only cares about staying in power long enough to justify its own existence, which in the end it cannot.

Unless a leadership cares for the country and the sufferings of its citizens, of those who are deprived of basic rights or those whose rights are trampled, it cannot draw strength. Strength is not merely the strength of sword which does not last for long, it is the inner strength, which is drawn from self, drawn through prayers and yearnings, strength which enlarges the heart and drives one crazy till he or she acts decisively for the benefit of the nation, for the welfare of the nation, against all vested interest, and against, if need be, the everlasting desire to be in power. Power corrupts, strength does not. Power is weakness, strength is not. Power is attachment, strength is absolute and resolute detachment. Power leads to temptation, strength leads to renunciation.

Leadership, courage and strength

2010-08-15T10:32:00.001+05:30

On the day of India's independence, let's pray to the nation's God to give us courage, strength and confidence.
we see around us cowardice and weakness galore. We see a weak and vacillating leadership who is unable to take any major decision, we see a vast corrupt machinery called bureaucracy which has neither ability nor willingness to rise out of lethargy and drive changes, we see a weak and corrupt entity called politicians who have no feeling for the nation and its people and are only after power. We see a weak and apologetic media and intellectuals who do not speak from their heart. In short, we see all wrong pictures. Then again, we see what we are, the outer world is merely a reflection of what and who we are inwards. There are many stories of success, strength, courage in the face of adversity and inspirational leadership that could make another Mahabharata, which are shaping the destiny of this nation. Future of India will not be decided by a weak and impotent political leadership and a bunch of corrupt Government officials, but by such men and women of resolute and steadfast determination to bring about changes, to fight against all odds. That is why India survives as a nation for the past 5000 years.

God men and Men of God

2010-08-01T11:04:00.001+05:30

Nowadays media is crazy about God-men, but not about men of gods. For instance not a single newspaper mentions anything on Swami Vivekananda’s birthday but a lot of newsprint is wasted on some god-men’s sexual exploits and consequences. Hilarious but pitiable is the condition of spiritual stupor into which this country has denigrated itself. Media is anyway a reflection of the socio cultural condition prevailing in a particular time. They sell what sells with the public. And what sells with public is dirt. Media also shows how the followers of the same god-men feel cheated and self proclaimed columnists in editorials raise doubts on the concepts of chastity and Brahmacharya as written in scriptures. That’s why it is said in Sanskrit – ‘Gandusha Jalamatrena Shafari Pharpharayate”, which is similar to the proverb “Empty vessels sound much”. The article writers are those empty vessels, without adequate knowledge or research they would like to draw attention to their opinions.

Ramakrishna Paramhansa had given two extremely valuable advices – First one is choose your Guru carefully and deliberately. Not everybody can be a true Guru. Similarly the Guru must choose the disciple carefully. If either of the choices is wrong, there can be much heartburn, as is happening today with the so called god-men’s so called disciples. If Guru is not good it becomes a classic case of blind leading a blind, both falls in the same pit. As Jesus said – "Ask and Ye shall be given, Seek and Ye shall find, Knock and Ye shall be answered", a true yearning for god can often connect the right Guru to the right disciple. Second one is that for being men of god you need to have unwritten writ from God itself. Without real God’s grace it is not possible to become a person of God. Without extreme devotion one cannot get God’s grace. This is what is described in a simple parable. In one village there used to be a person called Padmalochan, who was known as “Podo” by the villagers. There was a very old and ancient temple in that village, which was in a ruined state. Bats used to dwell inside that temple. One evening people of village heard that somebody is blowing a conch in that temple. People came flocking to that temple and found that ‘Podo’ was the one who was blowing a conch. The temple was in the same ruined state and there was no idol of any God. So they said “Mandire tor neiko Madhab, Podo shankh phuke tui korli gol, tai chamchike egorojona dibanishi dichhe thana”. Podo is here an unworthy man.The literal meaning is, “there is no god in the temple Podo, but you’ve brought in trouble by blowing the conch, moreover eleven bats are running this place”. The actual meaning of this is that unless you have God in your temple, i.e. extreme devotion and yearning for God in your heart, you should not blow the conch, i.e. call people to you. The eleven bats are the eleven senses or “Indriyas” – five gyanendriyas or the sensory organs (eyes, ears, nose, skin, and tongue), five karmendriyas or working organs and the Mind as a standalone entity. With these uncontrolled senses one cannot realize God. Only when senses are subdued completely it is possible to realize God. Men of God like Ramakrishna-Vivekananda, Jesus, Buddha, Krishna, Mohammed and Sri Chaitanya have that ability, not the so called god men.

Commonwealth games - what the heck?

2010-07-24T10:48:00.001+05:30

A question that often comes to my mind is that why are we still the part of an entity called Common Wealth? It is a colonial legacy, it constantly reminds us that once we were servants of a mighty imperialist nation which is now fast going downhill. Perhaps our political leaders like to remind us of our colonial past, perhaps it helps in getting some aids. It certainly does not help the international cause, being on the same bench with some rogue nations who have gone more downhill than their erstwhile ruler.

Point is, why waste so much tax payer's money with this extravaganza? What will the entire nation gain through this? even if that means infrastructure development of a single city, can't this happen in isolation? Why do we need an event for developing infrastructure? what is the return that we are expecting? More tourist inflow from commonwealth countries? Hogwash. Most tourists in India are from non commonwealth countries like USA, Japan and Germany. Who will spend their money and come to see commonwealth games where not even the second rates athletes will participate,certainly not from the best countries? So this entire event is hyped up for providing cut money to the politicians and their contractor cronies in the name of infrastructure development. A frenzied media will support the event (obviously, they are paid by the same politicians, money changes hands). everybody in the administration gains, politicians from all class, bureaucrats, businessmen. Only losers are common men and tax payers. DU students lose their hostels because they are driven out apparently to accommodate guests. Hotels runs by politicians and their friends in business raise their rates so common tourists are fleeced. Media gets headlines for few days to up their TRP. Security establishments can get a lot of money to keep their lot busy. And the project is managed as badly as ever with poor quality infrastructure which will crumble once the games are over and its memory fades into oblivion. An Olympics or a FIFA world cup would have been much better because atleast they will enhance the prestige. Who cares about commonwealth games?

Are we civilized enough?

2010-07-24T10:40:00.001+05:30

Just read this news to decide for yourself. Judiciary is beyond any comment? But do we have any conscience collectively as a nation? Does not seem so, else a rapist could not have been qualified for civil services or acquitted as a result of that. This does not happen in any civilized nation.

SC rejects women panel's plea against rapist

IANS | New Delhi

The Supreme Court on Friday dismissed a petition by the National Commission for Women (NCW) challenging the Delhi High Court order setting free a rapist on the ground that he had "redeemed himself" by clearing the civil service exam while in prison.

The apex court bench of Justice Harjit Singh Bedi and Justice C.K. Prasad rejected the appeal by the NCW on the ground that it has no locus standi to challenge the high court verdict setting free Ashok Kumar Rai.

The NCW appeal was dismissed after Additional Solicitor General Mohan Parasaran, appearing for the state of Delhi, said that they did not intend to challenge the Delhi High Court verdict.

Rai was convicted and sentenced to life term for raping a 21-year-old who committed suicide in 2003. He used to teach her chemistry as a tutor. Rai was also convicted for abetment to suicide.

The victim in her suicide note said Rai used to give her drugs that made her have sex with him. It was this piece of evidence that the trial court relied upon in convicting and sentencing Rai to life term.

The relationship between the two continued as Rai had promised to marry the victim. However, later, he forced her to have sex with another person. This led to the young woman committing suicide.

The high court had upheld the conviction of Rai for rape, but absolved him of the charge of abetment to suicide.

The high court verdict had said: "We concur with the view taken by the trial judge that victim's consent was obtained under a promise of marriage and that the intention of the appellant from the very beginning was not to marry. The proposed matrimonial bond was nothing but a bait to obtain her consent to have a physical relationship."

While granting remission on account of "good conduct", the high court had said that Rai had already suffered incarceration for five-and-a-half years.

The court said Rai had redeemed himself by appearing in the civil services examination and qualifying for it.

The high court set him free by reducing his life term to prison term he has already undergone.

A letter to a reputed media

2010-07-24T10:22:00.001+05:30

I wrote this sometimes back to the editor of the business standard for propagating semi truth packaged with a lot of statistics and opinions. As expected did not get any response.

Dear Sir,

In your editorial on 22nd July, you have rightly pointed out with statistics the overall failure of Ms. Mamata Bannerjee and have justified why railways deserve a better leadership. However, sadly, your editorial falls below the level of objectivity that befits such a reputed newspaper. Admitted that Ms. Bannerjee is not a favourite with Indian media, it is expected that she will receive a lot of brickbats for some right reasons. However in absence of objective evaluation of the realities the article becomes a "straw man". There are some points which I would like to draw to readers' and your attention, because some questions remain unasked by media.

Why are major accidents happening only in West Bengal, and that too within such a short interval? Media has now grudgingly admitted that Gyaneswari express was a pure sabotage. Why is the railway ministry then being blamed for an act of sabotage? Isn't it a responsibility of the state administration to ensure that no untoward incidents happen within its jurisdiction?
In case of the Sainthia accident there are several lose ends which media is either not analyzing or deliberately ignoring. Why did the Uttarbanga express come at such a high speed before it was supposed to halt? The drivers were trained and experienced, they were not novices. Why didn't the drivers attempt to escape an impending disaster? its natural reaction to jump out of train or at least pull the brakes.None of that happened. Just before the accident somebody pulled the chain of Vananchal express to unload some cargo. Who did that and why? Was the timing deliberate? Why didn't the train stop after not getting signals, were the drivers out of their minds?

I am not trying to speculate here but would only like to point out that there are some lose ends which need to be tied up before pinning the blame. If at all we look into the entire incident in an objective manner, we should try to identify the root cause through an investigative journalism rather than taking the easier path of attacking the ministry which sadly most of the Indian media does.

An accident of this magnitude is extremely sad and people have the right to understand the main cause. We are not interested in blame games. Can your esteemed newspaper unravel the mystery through a good bit of investigative journalism than pinning the blames on Mamata's absence from cabinet or Delhi? This is a challenge probably you should take up if you are transparent and objective.

Safety is an extremely neglected area in India. It is not only railway ministry but all ministries are culprits of ignoring safety. The Road Safety Bill which was based on Sundar Rajan committee's recommendations have failed to materialize even after 5 years. Do you ask the prime minister to resign and opine for a better leadership every time there is a major road mishap? Even though statistics show that during Lalu's regime there was no major accident, does that mean media's poster boy Mr. Lalu Yadav had adopted a lot of safety measures? If so why aren't we reaping dividend of those measures? Everybody remembers the blatant corruption with railway contracts and abysmal lack of customer service during his regime.

Hope you'll take this in the right spirit.

regards

Shantanu Dey

Stoicism and Advaita Vendanta

2010-07-24T10:21:00.001+05:30

Stoicism as a philosophy originated in ancient Greece by a sage called Zeno in the third century before Christ. The ideals and preachings of Stoicism finds echo in eastern monist thoughts, particularly Vedanta in India. One of the most famous patrons of Stoicism was Marcus Aurelius, the Roman emperor who was an adoptive son of the Roman emperor Antonius Pius, in the second century after Christ. In his book called "Meditations" he had provided a comprehensive overview of how Stoic principles work in practice. Stoicism deals with self control and control of emotions to understand universal reason, not to get perturbed either in happiness or in sorrow. The same concept is echoed in Upanishads "Dukheshnanudignamana Sukhecha Vigataspriha" theme (remain steady and equally composed under both joy and sorrow) which is recurrent in Vendanta as well as Bhagavat Gita, where the lord Krishna advises people to remain calm and steady under all circumstance and devote all fruits of work to God. Gita also teaches one that that work is best which is done without a desire. Stoics want to live in harmony with nature, here nature means god. In Vedanta, shakti or prakriti is synonymous with nature and utimately purush and prakriti or brahman and shakti are one and the same. Stoics want to live a simple life, sans any materialism, effectively leading a spiritual life. Vedanta advocates complete immersion in God, develop a knowledge of the absolute truth through simple living and negative everything else as Maya.
These are but a few of the parallels. This shows how intrinsically related the ancient wisdom were.

A decline in courage

2010-07-19T10:43:00.002+05:30

Excerpts from "A World Split Apart" by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Replace "West" by "Indian political class and media" and you get the truer picture.

A decline in courage may be the most striking feature that an outside observer notices in the West today. The Western world has lost its civic courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country, in each government, in each political party, and, of course, in the United Nations. Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling and intellectual elites, causing an impression of a loss of courage by the entire society. There are many courageous individuals, but they have no determining influence on public life.

Political and intellectual functionaries exhibit this depression, passivity, and perplexity in their actions and in their statements, and even more so in their self-serving rationales as to how realistic, reasonable, and intellectually and even morally justified it is to base state policies on weakness and cowardice. And the decline in courage, at times attaining what could be termed a lack of manhood, is ironically emphasized by occasional outbursts and inflexibility on the part of those same functionaries when dealing with weak governments and with countries that lack support, or with doomed currents which clearly cannot offer resistance. But they get tongue-tied and paralyzed when they deal with powerful governments and threatening forces, with aggressors and international terrorists.
Must one point out that from ancient times a decline in courage has been considered the first symptom of the end?

Leadership

2010-07-09T09:46:00.002+05:30

Sometimes back there was some initiative by a leading newspaper group in India to identify future leaders. Novel initiative no doubt, but it was mostly a marketing gimmick. Reason is simple, you cannot identify leaders through a marketing campaign. Leaders are identified through their work and attributes. True leaders do no need to go to a market place and beat their drums. True leaders do not need followers, followers need true leaders. As Ramakrishna Paramhansa used to say - "you do not need to write on your forehead that come people, I am a leader, I'll teach you, lead you. If you have right kind of attributes God will make you a leader, even if you do not want to be one." People will find the true leader and will follow him/her themselves. A Gandhi ( an I am talking about the only one true Gandhi who could abdicate all power and adulation, not the other power hungry ones) emerged when there was a right situation for him to do, he was not picked up by some newspaper. Nobody campaigned for him, nor did he for himself. He never intended leadership. The same goes with Subhas Chandra Bose who was called "Netaji" or the "beloved leader". Even Herr Fuehrer was a simple tramp from Austria whose speeches struck a chord with the Jew hating Germans. There are lots of German tramps who hate Jews, but only one of them could go to the extent of reigning over Europe.
The point is, leaders are not made through sustained marketing campaigns. They are picked up by destiny and often they have to pay a very heavy price in their personal lives, for being leader, for changing lives of others.

The politics of Bandh

2010-07-06T09:28:00.001+05:30

Some snippets from the "Bharat Bandh" called yesterday -

A pregnant woman delivered her baby on train because communist supporters in West Bengal did not let her go to hospital. The baby is in critical condition
Trains were forcefully stopped and vehicles were not allowed to ply in West Bengal. Even ambulances did not escape the ire of the bandh supporters in West Bengal
This is yet another time communists and BJP came together on the same platform almost hand in hand thus providing a major dent to the "secular" credential of the communists

A major economy heading towards a major disaster owing to its major political parties who are majorly evil.

right to education

2010-07-03T16:04:00.001+05:30

The right to education bill is passed and the government is elated. So is Indian media. Nobody cares as to how hollow the bill is when actual implementation is concerned. Another flopshow of Government is Sarba Sikhsha Abhijan initiative, which is supposed to provide education for all but in the end provides good money for corrupt bureaucrats and panchayat leaders. One CAG report showed sometimes back how money for this scheme from British Government was diverted by officials at district level to buy luxury cars, beds etc, while schools are ill equipped and children do not have quality education. Children from poorer section often do not have any money to buy books and only few schools provide free books and other accessories to them. Thus they end up in search for work.I happened to meet one of these kids who was a school dropout because of poverty, and came to Hyderabad from Bidar, which is about 130 km away, in search of work. When asked why is he not studying, he replied that he had no money to buy books, his father and mother are both daily laborers and often struggle for their livelihood. Education for him means buying books for class seven which he can ill afford.Therefore he needs help. He is not alone in his plights and there are perhaps millions like him. The school dropout rate is alarming, they simply do not have access to quality education. Indian middle class is caught in its own whirlpool of selfishness and consumerism ignoring the fact that a large section of the countrymen is crying for help. Why blame Government and media alone?

Tourist Places in India - mostly inaccessible

2010-06-06T11:18:00.001+05:30

It is a matter of shame that the good tourist places in India are so inaccessible from other parts of the country. Take for instance Ladakh. There is no train station. Only a few flights can go to Leh. Kudremukh in Karnataka is not connected by any train. Most of the hill stations do not have any associated train stations and it takes a lot of patience to plan for travel. Many coastal areas are inaccessible by train or flight.Again even if there are train stations, the trains are not available unless you book couple of months in advance. Roads are mostly pathetic and the operators overcharge. Therefore off the beaten tracks remain off the beaten and the few accessible ones are overcrowded, filthy and overrated. A few others suffer from non development and nonchalant attitude from administration. Most of the hill stations in India were discovered and developed by British and precious little have been done by successive Governments to develop them after independence. Is there any other country in the world which neglects its resources in this manner?

The VIP in airport

2010-06-06T11:11:00.001+05:30

A certain gentleman named Robert Bhadra (bhadra implies "civil" in Sanskrit) is exempted from any security check in Kolkata airport and that is declared very proudly by airport authority of India in a written instruction in front of the security counter. This certain gentleman (replace Bhadra by "Vadra" and you'll get the sense) is the son in law of UPA chair person, the most powerful woman in India. Both the honorable madam chairperson and the gentleman Mr. Bhadra would do really well and gain some appreciation from general public if they make sure that Mr. Bhadra undergoes security check just like any other layman and do not fall pray to the VIP culture which has so engulfed the nation's political class. With due respect Mr. Vadra/Ms. Gandhi, would you dare to be a little different?

Materialism and consumerism - one way to look at

2010-06-05T18:14:00.001+05:30

It is often said that desire is like a burning fire. When you want to satiate the desire you are merely pouring butter into it. The effect of butter is to enhance the intensity of fire which consumes everything. Similarly when you go on quenching your desire, the desire multiplies just like that all engulfing fire and you do not know where to stop. Debts get piled up, savings diminish and ultimately you are caught in a death trap. Sounds very familiar? This is situation worldwide today. We do not know where to stop, how to limit our wants, needs and greed. We think that we would be happy by getting this and that, by getting richer. Sadly however that happiness remains as elusive as ever. Ramakrishna Paramhansa in his gospels had given the example of a falcon who has a fish in its talon. It suddenly finds that all the crows are after it. It flies but crows do not leave pursuing it. The falcon then lets the fish go and perches on a treetop, and to its delight it finds that all the crows have now left it and gone for the fish. In this world the fish is like attachment to the material possession and the crows are like all unhappiness and problems in life. You invite problems when you succumb to desire, develop more and more possession which ultimately hunts you down and consumes you.

Reichstag fire and Gyaneswari Accident - parallels

2010-06-01T21:13:00.002+05:30

I hope everybody remembers the Reichstag fire incident which happened in 1933 and which catapaulted Hitler to the helm of affairs in Germany. The Reichstag fire was started by Nazis in order to pin blame on communists and other dissidents and assume power in Germany. Their plan was very successful, the German people and media were gullible enough to blame the communists, they were already afraid of the reds (read Russia) and they believed what they wanted to believe, which was far from the truth. Hitler could hit two birds with one stone, he silenced his detractors and he assumed supreme power.

A similarity can be seen in the case of Kural Howrah Gyaneswari Express accident. The accident took place just a day before civic elections in Bengal where ruling left front was struggling and was expected to undergo a major loss unless there was some miracle. That miracle was delivered at a colossal loss of 150 lives. The ruling left could blame the Maoists, who have made some recent attacks (not on civilians though), they could get more central force and a pat from the tame central H M who is ever ready to believe them, a sensation loving media who has simply lapped up their story as they have no appetite to find the truth. Ruling left with a master stroke became tragic hero, the victim of Maoist insurgency. The second achievement was that before civic elections in West Bengal they could hugely embarass their arch rival, the railway minister, who any way is not much loved by National Media. So a few sane voices of an impartial enquiry would get lost by the dual onslaught of a frenzied media and a deft PR from leftist.
Its strange how history repeats itself and how same follies are commited.

Information, misinformation and disinformation

2010-06-01T19:51:00.003+05:30

Earlier I had posted an article on Indian media and their general cavalier attitude. The same was evident yet again after the recent train accident which killed 100s. From the very beginning, without any proper investigation, the Maoist hand began to do rounds, even though it is widely accepted that Maoists generally do not attack civilians deliberately (let me clarify at the onset that I am no Maoist sympathizer and personally would prefer them to rot in hell). Unlike other incidents here the Maoist leadership has not accepted its responsibility. The People’s committee against police atrocities, the local body formed in retaliation to ruthlessness of CPM cadres and police under Budhha rule, who aligned themselves with the Maoists just to save their village from becoming another Nandigram, has accused CPM cadres to mastermind the attack. Media however lapped up the story fabricated by the CID and West Bengal Government that Maoists were behind the attack. No effort to investigate the truth (isn’t there something called investigative journalism?), not even half hearted attempts to verify what PCPA is saying. English media went hammer and tongs when railway minister said that there should be proper investigation, as if she herself planted the bombs or removed the fishplates. The general feedback from media was opposition and PCPA is trying to rake up false allegations when it is clearly a Maoist attack. Now who says that? CID of West Bengal, an entity with minus one fifty credibility, the same entity which gave a clean chit to perpetrators in Nandigram attack and in Singur rape case. There is a demand from CBI investigation but state government is against it. Nobody in media is raising the question that why state government is against an impartial CBI investigation if they are so damn sure of Maoist involvement?

The truth will probably come out one day, whatever that truth be and Indian media will probably not give much attention to the truth when it emerges, because they will be busy with other misinformation and disinformation. But the Gyaneswari express train accident and the colossal loss of lives raise some pertinent questions? How come the accident happened just before the local civic body elections in which the ruling communists are clearly in back foot? It is too much of a coincidence. If the Maoists are involved why did they choose such a time, knowing very well that it would only embarrass the railway minister and would help their arch rival, the CPM? Maoist influence has waned and CPM influence recently increased in the area and adjoining where the incident occurred, as a result of the joint operation. How could PCPA gather resources to mobilize such an operation? And how minutes after accident the state government machinery, who normally takes ages to react to any catastrophe, addressed a press conference blaming the Maoists?

This is once again the age of Goebbels, showing us clearly how propaganda can flow and how information can be planted at will and how gullible people are fed on that information. A few Bengali and local English media can make a hero out of a criminal who dies while looting votes on behalf of the ruling party just because there is a sustained campaign by the ruling party bosses to deify him. That fellow died while looting votes, when he was challenged by a central paramilitary personnel who was much more unbiased than his SS (read Bengal Police), counterparts. Who says Nazis have perished?

China - some perspectives

2010-05-19T20:12:00.002+05:30

Is 21st century truly a Chinese century? To answer this, you have to look into the rich and enduring history of China, which is so full of golden periods. China, no doubt is a great civilization and deserves a high pedestal in worldly affairs.Whether Tibet affair is a thorn on its global ambition it is a point which only the enlightened ones can discuss. China has a great history, except for a brief dormant period when Opium trade flourished and a large part of the population was engulfed in widespread poverty. The Great Wall is a testimony of what the Chinese can achieve if they will. China is now everywhere, Chinese immigrants are one of the most successful lot in almost every country that they are in, because they are hard working and always willing to travel that extra mile.China controls the manufacturing world, even though occasional quality problems may create embarrassment. The successful completion of Olympic games tells the world how modern China can transform and transcend.
On the other hand there are few caveats. China wants to get a share of the world's resources which can fuel its burgeoning economy. It is hard to believe that in Africa, the Chinese interests are purely altruistic in helping setting up infrastructure. But that is understandable as China needs to take care of its own interest. After all the growth of European nations during industrial revolution was largely fueled by large scale colonial exploitation and China's activities can hardly be termed as "exploitation". Similarly its relationship with Pakistan and a few other nations of doubtful integrity might raise some pertinent questions. Especially it is now evident that Pakistan's nuclear programme is in essence based on borrowed Chinese technology.China's military might is also enviable and in the event of a war with any of it's neighbors it is very evident who would have the upper hand.
All said and done, China has arrived, so love it or hate it, you cannot ignore it.

Indian Media - some thoughts

2010-05-01T19:42:00.002+05:30

Is Indian media really biased as perceived by some section? Is it truly doing an outstanding work of exposing faults in the Governance? Is it truly secular, liberal and democratic as it portrays itself to be?

I know that we cannot generalize and stereotype all media and put them under same bracket. But here we are talking about a majority. You may argue that there are different types of media, like print and electronics, and even internet is a separate media, but I am talking of media in general, the category does not matter. If there is a fault which is inherent everybody needs to share the blame simply because others did not have the guts to rise above a majority and point out its faults.

First, the English speaking, “secular liberal” media, to my mind, is highly partial. It is partisan not only because it highlights only the plight of specific people belonging to specific communities and ignores the need of people in general irrespective of caste, creed, and communal affiliation, it is partisan because it chooses to ignore the wrongs of people or parties of what it considers to be right or less evil and highlights or magnifies the wrongs of people or parties of what it considers to be wrong or greater evil. It is partial because it never admits that it is mistaken, and even when it is grossly mistaken, it will assume an air of smug contempt and try to analyze the situation from “other angles”, ostensibly how it is right in a “different way”. Specific cases – a) During Mumbai carnage how its reporting provided real time information to the terrorists and how it jumped into TRP bandwagon b) How not a single English newspaper condemned the atrocious behavior of two DMK ministers in Tamilnadu who chose to let a bleeding cop die rather than taking him to hospital in their car c) The cases of corruption and nepotism were highlighted only in isolated and half hearted, without asking why the prime minister, a man of impeccable integrity himself, is not concerned about all pervasive corruption and the low human development index, esp. during delivery of flagship NREGA scheme d) How their favorite politicians and Government have failed in delivering basic services in the states they ruled, e.g. West Bengal in comparison with some other better performing Governments whom they do not like (e.g. Modi Government in Gujarat) f) No English speaking newspaper asked the question that if Narendra Modi, who did nothing when innocent Muslims were targeted and killed in Gujarat riots, can be dubbed as a pariah, communal and partisan, and even as a mass murderer or genocidal and denied a US visa, why cannot the same treatment be meted out to dhoti Punjabi clad Bengali bhadrolok Buddhadeb Bhattacharya, the eminent intellectual under whose reign many poor peasants of Nandigram (no exact figures of how many were killed, but numbers do not matter, what matters is the similar attitude, a genocide does not depend on number of people killed, it’s the attitude of systematic elimination of any opposition, the similarity in both the cases, counts) were butchered, many of them again innocent Muslims, and who, much like Modi, dismissed the incident with brusque arrogance (at least Modi initiated some actions against some errant police officials, Bhattacharya promoted his SS commanders) , g) why should we look the other way round when an alternative of “disruptive” and “communal” Shiv Sena in Maharastra is massive corruption and nepotism of congress and NCP big wigs h) why should Mamata Bannerjee be vilified in successive English speaking newspaper editorials (e.g Times of India/ET/Business Standard) just for bringing out the fudges that took place during his predecessor’s reign in the form of white paper, for establishing the truth? Is bringing out the true accounting figures a crime? Some edits do think so, they don’t like her, and therefore they don’t like anything that she does. Moreover they think that any attempt to embarrass UPA Government is a crime as it is the epitome of secularism i) Why should there be so much eulogy in the death of a corrupt and massively arrogant communist feudal lord who single handedly brought in economic ruin of a once prosperous state, and whose only contribution was to make his son a multi millionaire j) The one year of non performance of UPA Government – no adverse comments so far in any edit except for benign complaints, mostly ascribed to allies, not Congress. Even prime minister’s grand declaration in Egypt did not raise any eyebrows, even though he considerably weakened our position vis a vis the blatantly communal and hypocrite neighboring country.

These are just a few instances. There are many, many more. English speaking liberals have utter disregard for the value system and faith to which they belong. They also routinely disregard leaders other than Nehru Gandhi clan, for instance Netaji Subhash Bose does not even appear in any of the newspaper columns even on his birthday. All spaces are occupied by Mahatma Gandhi – because he sells. To them Tagore was just a fad, To English speaking elite Vivekananda and Ramakrishna were some crackpots who have lost their relevance and rightly so and anything remotely connected to religion (even though the message is of universal tolerance and harmony) is bigotry and blasphemy. Fact does not matter, their opinion is the fact and anything can be fed to people, including hope of establishing peace with a rogue nation which single point agenda, of destroying us. That the hope is futile does not even cross the mind of our eggheads.

Romain Rolland's views on East vs. West

2010-04-29T10:20:00.002+05:30

I started this blog for East Vs. West and then I cam across the writings of Romain Rolland, the great European philosopher of early 20th century who was also an Indologist. Here are few excerpts from his book Prophets of the New India.

"The age-long history of the spirit of India is the history of a countless throng marching ever to the conquest of
supreme Reality. All the great peoples of the world, wittingly or unwittingly, have the same fundamental aim ;
they belong to the conquerors who age by age go up to assault the Reality of which they form a part, and which lures them on to strive and climb ; sometimes they fall out exhausted, then with recovered breath they mount undaunted until they have conquered or been overcome.But each one does not see the same face of Reality. It is like a great fortified city beleaguered on different sides by different armies who are not in alliance. Each army has its own tactics and weapons to solve its own problems of attack and assault. Our Western races storm the bastions, the outer works. They desire to overcome the physical forces of Nature, to make her laws their own so that they may construct weapons therefrom for gaining the inner citadel, and forcing the whole fortress to capitulate. India proceeds along different lines. She goes straight to the centre, to the Commander-in-Chief of the unseen General Headquarters ; for the Reality she seeks is transcendental.
But let us be careful not to put Western realism in opposition to Indian "idealism." Both are "realisms."
Indians are essentially realists in that they are not easily contented with abstractions, and that they attain their ideal by the self-chosen means of enjoyment and sensual possession.They must see, hear, taste and touch ideas. Both in sensual richness and in their extraordinary imaginative power they are far in advance of the West. How then can we reject their evidence in the name of Western reason ?"

Some worldly wisdoms

2010-04-29T10:07:00.003+05:30

It is an age old wisdom of Hinduism and Buddhism that desire gives rise to anger, anger gives rise to hatred and violence and therefore downfall of the person. Therefore desire is the root cause of all evil, including suffering in life and the best recourse is to do your duty respectfully without desire for results.

Hitler had a desire, he wanted to the ruler of this world. He thought Jews were responsible for all the problems that Germany faced. His anger and hatred for Jews resulted in a catastrophic world war, which ultimately brought down Europe and imperialism.

Upanishads give a beautiful parable. You are on a journey, embarked on a chariot, which is your body. The fives senses are five horses which are pulling you in different directions. The harness is your mind to control your senses, the charioteer is the wisdom who can take you to your destination. Question is, whom do you trust and give control? If you give control to your senses, you'll run amok, directionless, and surely will end up in a ditch. Sadly this happens with many people, when they are angry or when they fall prey to temptations and lust they are basically giving in to their senses. Sensory fulfillment takes precedence over everything in a materialistic culture. On the other hand, giving control to mind is not enough, a harness is used for controlling horses, not for controlling your journey or destiny. Mind can also be wrong. Mind is fickle. Therefore, give control to wisdom, who is your charioteer, he can take you to the right path.
How to distinguish between mind and wisdom or how to install your wisdom on the charioteer's seat? That will be another blog.

Reason for this long "Abataranika" or animated conversation is, just saw a news that the IFS officer who was caught spying for Pakistan said that she did it on account of her hatred and anger against "arrogant" IFS officers. Needless to say she brought her own ruin upon her.And she is not alone, history is full of such instances where people gave reign to their senses and brought not only their own downfall but misery to countless others.
Sadly we do not learn, neither from ancient texts, nor from history.

Lessons from Hercule Poirot

2010-04-25T21:08:00.002+05:30

An Agatha Christie whodunit is a sheer pleasure for anybody who loves mystery stories. It reduces stress appreciably as it leaves you less time to ponder on your present woes and miseries and problems. Be it a cold winter morning or a windy day, a warm summer evening or a rain washed afternoon, you can always recline in your easy-chair or sofa or even sit outside in the porch drinking tea or coffee, or smoking your favorite brand of cigar, and read the exploits of the Belgian detective with his little grey cells, egg shaped head and characteristic mustache. Agatha Christie in one of her books rued the fact (through her another famous character Ariadne Oliver) that once you have put up a character you cannot change the same, as readers who have taken to that character will never accept any change. Therefore Poirot cannot come out of his idiosyncrasies.
What can Poirot, the eccentric Belgian teach us? Of course, apart from his unique ways of detection of solution to a problem, sitting in an armchair and using his little grey cells, rather than sniffing around like an old greyhound!
Poirot emphasizes a vital skill which is absolutely necessary for managers - that of having an order and a method in everything we do. In most of the Poirot stories we see the harping on order and method many times. The order and method is necessary in any scientific pursuit, including management and more so in project management where we apply "methodologies" day in and day out.
Order and Method is a discipline which needs to be instilled like any other discipline and like any discipline it needs practice for perfection. However, once it is fully imbibed, in your profession you can also become a Hercule Poirot, obsessed, but accomplished. Let's try that.

East Vs.West

2010-04-18T10:45:00.001+05:30

Sun rises in the East and sets in the West. This natural law is also true of civilizations. In distant past different civilizations flourished in the east and then gradually those civilizations faded away. The dawn of awakening happened in West and East went into deep slumber under the covers of dark night. But sun is now leaning towards horizon and once again east is seeing faint lights of dawn. It will have to wake up, get out of its slumber and be active, once again. Once again the beautiful chants should fill in the crisp air of dawn.

East and West share a unique relationship. When Jesus was born, three wise men from the East visited the Lord. They saw in the stars the sign of a great man with a mission. By then East was at the peak of its glory, with so many civilizations in so many countries flourishing and fading away - Indus Valley, Babylon, Egypt, Assyria, Persia, Greece, India, China, all extending their great influence all over the world. Then faint dawn showed in the West, Rome arose and fell, followed by Holy Roman Empire and rise of Christian Church. by the middle ages it was clear that East was on the way to decline and West was on the rise and by 17th century when colonialism took its root, it was clear who was going to rule the next few centuries. Although East did great in early science, mathematics, art, culture, literature and philosophy, post Renaissance West soon took over.

West almost always believed in power and reason, and tried establishing its superiority over others, while East was humble enough to accept everybody and give dignity to all. Universal tolerance was the language of East and that was its bane. Those who were greeted with open arms came with swords and cannons and unleashed reigns of terror.While East did not enforce its rules and culture over others, West did try to do so, in many cases successfully. Whil Eastern religion and philosophy was inward looking, realizing the divinity within selves, Western philosophy was driven primarily outwards, towards a God in heaven. While East tried to find the kingdom of heaven within, West tried finding it elsewhere. This inward seeking of East also resulted in their getting trapped inside their cocoons, thereby destroying any possibility of discovering and doing great things. This outward approach of West helped them in unleashing a new materialistic culture which also helped immensely in crossing new frontiers in science and technology, trade and commerce. But in many cases their philosophy and thinking was greatly indebted to the thoughts of East as openly admitted by Maxmueller, Schopenhauer, Goethe, Emerson, Henry David Thoreau

But sun will once again lean towards the horizon in Western Hemisphere and once again first lights of awakening will greet East. There in lies the great hope of mankind, therein lies salvation. We need great wisdom.

Differences

2010-04-18T10:18:00.002+05:30

How do we account for the differences in culture, religion and ethnicity? It seems that like a great river which orginates from a snow clad mountain and then distributes itself into many tributaries and distributaries, this great ocean of humanity has divided itself again and again and has permeated many different civilizations, just like rivers and rivulets do. Just as all the tributaries and distributaries of the great river meets at sea, so will this vast ocean of humanity converge somewhere, despite all the differences, despite all intolerance and hatred and violence. It will converge in a vast ocean of supreme consciousness, of grand unification, therein lies its destiny.
What is Difference? What is the meaning of religion and cultural difference? On a larger scale, it is nothing. Ramakrishna Paramhansa described this difference using a beautiful parable - Imagine a big sweet water pond, having several steps in various directions. On one side somebody is drinking water and is calling it "water", somebody else is drinking the same water from another side and calling it "Pani", somebody else is drinking from another side and calling it "wasser", but they are drinking the same substance, only they are quarelling amongst themselves the name. That is as childish as the prevailing practices that we have of extolling the virtues of one religion and culture over others and deriding others. We all need to learn from each other, learn from the differences. As long as the differences exist, we live. In the absence of the same, we decay and perish. Just as Ramakrishna said - " Jato Mat Tato Path" - i.e. More the differences of opinion, more the number of paths to salvation.

international air travel - how bad can it be

2010-04-17T19:52:00.003+05:30

I saw the plight of thousands of passengers stranded owing to the volcanic eruption in Iceland and was saddened. However this is an instance which is denoted as "Act of God" or "force majeure", airlines cannot be blamed for this. But what if passengers are stranded owing the problems of the airlines? They are supposed to compensate, but do they? I recount one of my own experiences here in this context. While returning from Toronto, I had a connecting KLM flight from Amsterdam. Because my original KLM flight got delayed I missed this connection in Amsterdam. The lady at the counter could not help. No hotel accomodation was provided, only a meal voucher of Euro 10 was handed (poor beggar, he won't need more than this!), no upgrade was provided despite plenty of miles on my flying blue card to justify one, and I was given two straight choices, either spend the night in the airport and board the next day's flight, or get yourself rebooked in another flight which will take you through 3 different ports, and instead of 8 hours you will spend 20 hours in flight. The prospect was daunting and the choice was between devil and deep sea. Worse, the lady at the counter had her shift ending and she was not ready to listen to me by spending time beyond her working hours. She at times was downright rude instead of being sympathetic. The third choice was simpler - it was "Go to Hell!, we do not need you!".

Customer Service! It is non existent in Europe.

I chose the second one, I will reach damn tired, but atleast I will reach few hours earlier. But still I shudder if somebody asks me to travel with KLM.
Other European airlines fare no better if stories are to be believed in different consumer forums.

Its sad that passengers are suffering. But then European airlines should learn it the hard way. If they make some losses today, tomorrow hopefully they will try hard to recover lost ground with better customer service.
Or am I too optimistic?

NREGA – the pitfalls

2010-04-17T19:31:00.001+05:30

NREGA (National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme for the uninitiated) is another mammoth instrument of corruption in the hands of the political class. This scheme, which ensures a minimum wage to the rural labor, is flawed because it has no output, direct tangible benefit in the form of asset creation. It just disburses tax payers’ money to rural daily wage earners. But given the pathetic condition of our delivery mechanism, only a pittance of the billions of dollars actually reaches the rural masses. Rest of the money is conveniently pocketed by political parties who have floated the scheme, and their middlemen. This scheme is supposed to have contributed in insulating Indian economy from global financial crisis by creating demand and purchasing power at the bottom of the pyramid. Even if this is considered true, isn’t the Government encouraging reckless spending through this scheme? Given the fact that rarely the benefits of savings and investments reach the rural people who actually benefits from this colossal disbursal (according to an estimate in 1980s, the disbursal rate was only 18%, i.e. for every dollar given by Government only 18 cents reaches the intended beneficiary. Given the fact that the Government delivery mechanism has changed little since then, there is no reason to believe that the situation has changed for the better), it can be safely said that this amount of money actually does not provide a better life and a sustained livelihood for poor but only provides them with a temporary relief. After the money is spent they are once again dependent on availability of work. Moreover, there is tremendous pressure on the local bodies to spend the allocated amount. Thus the money often ends up literally in digging holes and filling them again.

Instead, if the Government were genuinely concerned about poverty alleviation, it would have used this money to employ rural people and engage them in productive, meaningful community work – of urban and rural asset creation, infrastructure building like schools, hospitals, roads and bridges, rail network, forestation, sewage treatment, clean water, libraries, computer centre etc. This model was followed by Franklin D. Roosevelt right after the grim years of depression in US when the unemployment rate there was as high as 25%. These activities ensured gainful employment as well as asset creation which created more jobs and sustainability of employment, thereby starting a virtuous cycle and ending the gloom and despair associated with Great Depression.

Oh, when will our political leaders ever learn! When will they ever learn!

goal of mankind - progressive evolution

2010-04-02T11:39:00.002+05:30

Is the evolution over or has it just begun? According to sage Aurobindo we are on an eternal voyage of spiritual evolution, transforming ourselves from a human with limited consciousness to a super human with super consciousness. The physical evolution from pisces to birds to reptiles to mammals and higher form like human beings was the basic layer of evolution.
If the goal of human journey is to identify oneself with the vast oneness (what is refered to as divinity, Brahman, God or cosmic energy in various contexts), how close are we to achieve that goal in this strife ridden world?
However one point is that even though strives and tensions are ways of human lives, they have considerably reduced from the past and we are talking about historical ages, viz. the middle ages when we used to have warfare at the drop of a hat. So does that mean world is now a better place?, I am not sure, because one thing is that weapons are now deadlier than ever and war mongerers are very much there, only they fear that they may not escape the same fate as that of their victims. The other is that intolerance has taken an all pervasive form. We are sitting atop a volcano which may erupt at any time.

However just as science is trying to establish the "Einheit" of various forces in a GUT theory and going back to the beginning of creation in the process, humankind is also searching for that elusive unity. They key is to continue searching and the answer lies within all of us. Therefore, look inward, not outward. The same is echoed in the poetry of great Sufi saint Jalaluddin Rumi of Persia -"I searched in various places, ancient temples of idols, Christian church, Persian temple, and Kaba, and I could not find Him. When I searched within myself, I found Him". The same concept is beautifully illustrated in Upanishads. So lets introspect, individually and collectively, thats the real road to progress.

Continued from my previous post - some perspectives

2010-03-28T20:21:00.001+05:30

The point which I am trying to drive here is that if Indian media in general behaves in a non discriminatory fashion, it would be easier to establish just and fair society. However by indulging in witch hunt in some cases while deliberately ignoring others, the media is making a mockery of itself. Any form of intolerance and hatred is a curse to the civil society and media should not filter out or highlight incidents based on their own bias. Any such attempt creates more polarization and hostility because everybody can perceive unfairness and lack of objectivity in evaluating current situation. Several cases in points had been in the past that of banning of "The Vinci Code" movie in response to protests from some religious groups, banning of "Satanic Verses" and the death threat to Salman Rushdie, banning of some websites because apparently they treaded on sentiments of specific communities etc. In all such cases media at best played a passive role, at worst tried justifying the same. However in case of similar incidents committed by so called Hindutva groups, media was more scathing.
Ms. Taslima Nasrin's case is particularly disturbing because the brazen manner in which she was attacked, ostracized and packed in a flight by Indian Government shows the nefarious designs of fundamentalists and a weak Government which kowtows to the hoodlums and hatred mongers because of compulsions of vote bank politics. Media was watching like Dhritarastra in Mahabharata. Question is - How long?

An email exchange, Indian media and some perspectives

2010-03-28T19:57:00.001+05:30

I recently had an email exchange with Mr. Barun Roy, columnist in Business Standard, in response to my letter to one of his articles. Mr. Roy is one of the few columnists whose writings I greatly admire.

Dear Sir,

The article, A Prison for Mr. Husein by Barun Roy is a well written article and I can understand the author's anguish and also empathize with him on the prevalent situation. It is unfortunate that we have to lose a person of the stature of M.F. Husein owing to intolerance with the subject of his artwork.

However with due respect, I would like to point out one dimension which is missing here. The Indian media have in the past raised issues pertaining to intolerance and gagging of artistic freedom, but some instances have either been deliberately ignored or been downplayed. One notable case here is that of Ms. Taslima Nasrin, who was driven out of India, was attacked in Hyderabad by MIM vandals, and is still under death threat from fundamentalists. In all these cases, since the minority community's sentiments were involved, except for very few courageous people, nobody in Indian secular liberal establishment bothered to take side with Ms. Nasrin. The difference in treatment is stark from the reporting in some of the Indian media where 'Shivsena hooligans" are treated harshly and rightly so, while "MIM activists" go away lightly for the same crime.

My question is, isn't Ms. Nasrin in the same boat (and perhaps in worse condition) with Mr. Husein with respect to artistic freedom and doesn't she deserve the same sympathy from Indian media? Or is the secular liberal establishment find it blasphemous to take side with anybody who has dared to defy the minority religious sentiment?

Whatever it is, this is not exatly what we call a non partisan approach. This attitude of Indian media to behave in a discriminatory fashion against certain group and communities while downplaying others for similar offense is leading to more polarization and dissonance than the so called saffron groups (or for that matter MIM and other green groups) could have done. A just and right approach would have been to treat both issues with the same degree of importance and decry the obnoxious behavior of gagging artistic freedom in general, than making it appear that while some religion's and community's sentiments are sacrosanct and cannot be broken, that of others are dispensable.

regards

Shantanu Dey

In response:

Dear Mr. Dey,

Many thanks for your comments. However, it's not true that the media have been silent on the question of Tasleema Nasrin. You may read the attached article that I had written not too long ago and was published in the Business Standard.

With regards,

Barun Roy

My response:

Dear Sir,

Many thanks for the attached article. I remember reading it and appreciating it when it was published in Business Standard. I have utmost respect for your opinion and the attached article very aptly summarizes the prevailing situation.

I only wanted to point out in this mail that a section of the Indian media may have downplayed the issue of Ms. Nasrin for the fear of minority backlash, while they have fought (and rightly so) for Mr. Husein. Such a tactics is counterproductive in the long run as it prevents spreading the idea of establishing a just and honest society where all opinions are respected and regarded. Hooligans are only emboldened where unjustness and unfairness reign supreme, which sadly is the present state in India.

We must be objective and transparent in evaluating and assessing the strengths and weaknesses of various communities and societies and not target any one in particular, because any discrimination helps the rogue elements in the community to justify their actions. This is where Indian media has a wider role to play. They should highlight the strengths but also condemn the weaknesses.

Thanks again for the same. Hope to read many more interesting articles coming from you.

regards

Shantanu Dey

I do appreciate your remarks. Many thanks indeed.

Barun Roy

Casteism Demystified

2010-03-21T17:21:00.001+05:30

Casteism is much vilified world over and rightly so and this obnoxious system is associated with only Hinduism and again rightly so, because the priestly class among Hindus usurped all privileges for themselves, ably aided by kings who in return got the favour of “god men”, misinterpreted scriptures and developed a system which only favoured their own interest and let the corrupt system continue ensuring miseries for thousands. The Hindu priestly classes were no different from priestly classes in other religions who pursued practices like burning heretics on funeral pyre or accepting Indulgence in medieval period. The power hungry priestly classes and kings (of all religions) came together depriving common people of their belief and power and keeping them poor and wretched through a system based on discrimination and fear. The caste system is a by product of thousands of years of domination by a privileged few over ignorant many, of destroying the later's self confidence and self worth by repeatedly telling them that they are inferior by birth and nothing can save them.

Hinduism however does not promote caste system, only those who misuse this religion for the power and privileges do, and the rest of the lot follow them out of sheer ignorance. Hinduism emphasizes on the fact that every individual is divine and the goal of every individual is to realize that divinity. Then what is this Chatur Varna concept? Why does Vedas promote Varnas or the caste? To understand this, you need to get rid of the education promoted by colonial rulers and their slaves who are propagating those teachings even now.

Sri Krishna in Bhagvat Geeta says clearly - "I have created Chatur Varna out of Gunas and Karmas". Please note that the lord does not speak any where of Varna by birth, He is only talking about Gunas, i.e. character and Karma, i.e. work. In short, what the Lord says is that the so called caste system was originally devised based on the ability and characteristic of every individual. The three Gunas are - Sattva or the character of supreme wisdom, Raja or the character of action, and Tama or the character of inaction. These three Gunas, together with the ability and willingness of inidividuals to work in certain fields determine their caste, not their birth. Thus a Brahmin is a person who is engaged in the lofty pursuit of developing and spreading wisdom, detaching himself or herself from the worldly affairs, one whose character is dominated by a high degree of Sattva Guna. The sages in ancient times were all Brahmins because of their knowledge and wisdom, not because of their birth. Kshatriyas are those who have a higher amount of Raja Guna, they are supposed to protect and defend the country and the weak. They are the kings. Again, anybody can be Kshatriya, even though he can born in a Brahmin family. However that did not preclude one to follow another's Karma. Parashuram for instance was a Brahmin who waged war against Kshatriyas because of the ruthlessness and the debauchery of Kshatriyas during his period. Dronacharya was a Brahmin but was a master of weaponry and fought in Kurukshetra war. So there was not much strong distinction among these classes. Vaishyas and Sudras have measured amount of the three gunas. As far as the Karma goes, anybody engaged in any enterprise can be a Vaishya - one who conducts business. Again this has nothing to do with birth but simply inclination. A Brahmin by birth can also be a Vaishya by his work. Same goes for Sudras. Sudras are the working classes, by their inclination or capabilities. That does not make them inferior. In fact nowhere in Vedas it says Sudras are inferior, it only mentions their difference in terms of ability. However we have many examples of Sudra kings and even Sudra warriors. Ekalavya for instance finds a place of sympathy in Mahabharata because of Drona's egoism and Arjuna's jealousy.

Caste system is a form of racism. Racism was present almost everywhere, and is still present almost everywhere. Caste system in its present form is a system of discrimination and so is racism, it fails to give the due respect to fellow human beings. The system of aristocrats and common men, patricians and plebians, feudal system, the discrimination against skin color are all equivalent to caste system. In England there is still a House of Lords and a House of Commons, and its a fact that common colonial European was the biggest form of racist or casteist in the last century and their dominance over other "inferior" races was nothing better than a caste system. Infact they founded this dangerous theory of "Aryan civilization" which has since being debunked, which was nothing but a support for the caste system (one race being superior to the rest). Thus don't just blame the Hindu priestly classes alone for the sin of the most of the world. Its a common legacy of all human beings to discriminate and therefore enjoy the best of the limited natural resources by depriving others.

Nothing can justify the caste system in its present form which is now being exploited by the politicians, and it must go. Only through education, awareness and instilling pride and self confidence among masses it will go.

Very Important Person

2010-03-14T16:32:00.001+05:30

The so called very important persons in India, notably high placed Government officials and politicians are the neo feudal lords (as was discussed in one of my earlier blogs). Today the honourable Chief Justice of Andhra Pradesh's convoy passed by my car. Police had vacated the roads for his highness, but somehow I was left, so the convoy overtook me and I had to give way to his highness. Otheriwse he would probably have put me behind bars (hopefully this blog does not consititute a contempt of court as I have nothing personal against CJAP).

Further downstream I had the misfortune of meeting CM's convoy. A huge police force was deployed to allow the convoy to pass (note the colossal wastage of tax payer's money) and one constable did his duty so well ( My wife quipped that he was almost lying down on the road to prevent any car from getting in the convoy's way). He probably got a pat in the back from his seniors for being so loyal.

So much for the democratic India where so few enjoy so much power and privilege. What a shame!

Success and Satisfaction

2010-01-23T16:43:00.001+05:30

How are success and satisfaction related? Is there any linkage? Are the people who are successful, really happy? These are some of the questions that come to the minds of people. The answer for this is of course, within us.
First, success and satisfaction are not linked. Satisfaction here stands for “happiness”. In the epic Mahabharata, Dharma (the God of righteousness and virtue) asked king Yudhisthira, “Who is happy?” Yudhisthira’s answer was that a person who does not have any debt, who is not abroad and at the end of the day is able to get his share of meals, is happy. Now this is definitely not a modern definition of happiness as our desires and wants have grown manifold since Yudhisthira’s era. Therefore we are happy when our needs and desires are fulfilled.
But are we really happy when we reach the pinnacle of success, when all our endeavors bear fruit? Are we happy when we get what we want? Of course not! Happiness, defined and measured in terms of wants and desires is as elusive as water in a desert. Success always has a limit, you may climb the pinnacle, but after that there is a void. Tycoons of today are nobodies of tomorrow. Once a want or desire is fulfilled another replaces it and you are left as unhappy as ever.
Then the question that comes is whether satisfaction is really and truly happiness! The answer is “No”!
Satisfaction is a standalone phenomenon, much broader concept than happiness. Satisfaction has a spiritual connotation while happiness has a material one. Satisfaction encompasses an understanding of the circumstances in which we are and acceptance of the circumstances, without being anxious to get rid of the circumstance. Satisfaction implies tolerance, with self and environment, without a conscious desire to change. It is an inward, almost divine state of peace, serenity and blissfulness. Satisfaction is the topmost level in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs – Self Actualization.
Happiness is transitory, transient, while satisfaction is permanent or quasi permanent. Happiness is a state of mind which passes away even before you realize that it was there. Satisfaction is a state which you can live and relive, you almost reach out and touch the God residing in your innermost depths. Happiness is linked to mind, satisfaction is linked to wisdom.
Now can success result in such a state? It does not need a big bang success to achieve a state of calm acceptance and peace with surroundings, even small activities like gardening and seeing a flower blooming on a tree planted by one can result in such a state. In the novel “Siddhartha” by Hermann Hesse, the author talked about “listening to the river” to attain a state of bliss. That’s a state of intense satisfaction.
To my mind, success can create happiness, but not satisfaction unless you are a Yogi. A Yogi can accept success and satisfaction with equal stoicism – a state which is called in Sanskrit – “Dukhsheshanudwignamana Sukhecha vigatataspriha” – one who is indifferent in joy and sorrow, a true sage who has realized the futility of every material thing and has received the ineffable bliss of the divine reality. Success normally creates a hunger and penchant for more. People cannot stop assuming that they have reached the summit, they want to extract more and more from life and very soon, when they taste failure, they cannot take it, or they become disillusioned. In many cases people who hog limelight, like politicians, actors or sportsperson, find it very difficult after they have exhausted all avenues and they start getting faded away. Politicians therefore try to cling to power as long as possible, businessmen try to make even more money or grow their business, and others try to be in headlines in some way or the other. If they were really satisfied, i.e. at peace with their surroundings, they need not do any of these.
However, we can strike a delicate balance; we can harmonize between success and satisfaction, only the subtle point where we should give up needs to be identified. Thousands of years ago lord Krishna had told us in Song Celestial or “Bhagvad Gita” to do our duty with a sense of detachment, so that we should not become too engrossed with the outcome. Therefore if we do something with utmost detachment to the best of our ability, we’ll achieve success, and if we do not have that penchant or thrust for outcome, we’ll not become a slave to it and thus would not clamor for more success. In that way we’ll arrive at a state of peace, serenity and inner calm, which we call satisfaction. We would truly be able to “listen to the river, "like the Tagore poem which states (in a nutshell)- "The day and its work is now over and all is quiet, now listen intently to the call that comes from within, spread your mind and consciousness on the threshold of the temple of the vast, eternity within you, even if you do not see it, you will feel it and will receive supreme bliss and happiness."

Relationship with Pakistan – some perspectives

2010-01-23T16:38:00.001+05:30

There was an edit in one leading English newspaper that we need to “engage Pakistan in an innovative way.” Engaging Pakistan is a phrase which is now being used Ad Nauseum. This phrase was started by US political class, notably the friends of Pakistan among democrats (who are also responsible for bringing in Kerry Luger bill for wasting billions of dollar and putting further strain on an already strained US economy and fuelling its joblessness). Now “engaging Pakistan” had become instant hit with “secular liberals” in India. Since even they are a little tired of this oft repeated phrase, there is a new twist to this – “Engaging Pakistan in an innovative way.” Nobody knows for sure what engaging Pakistan means, nobody has even faintest idea as to how innovative could one be in dealing with a terrorist and a rogue nation which has got itself caught in a perpetual and vicious downward slope of failure and violence.
Pakistan is an epitome of what intolerance stands for where religious minorities, even of Islamic faiths like Shias, Sufis, Ahmadias and Bahai, are regularly killed, tortured and maimed, not to say about other religions like Hindus, Buddhusts, Christians and Sikhs, who barely live there. It is ruled by specific elite classes, of Punjabis and Wahabis, who thrive on Mulla raj and to whom any other sect is like a worm to be gotten rid of. If a nation treats its own citizens in this way, is there any doubt as to how it will treat other nations, esp. those that are secular, multicultural. Pakistan is afraid of China’s power and might and China helps Pakistan in various ways by using it as a buffer state, so at present it keeps a good relationship with China. Given a chance, Pakistan would also like to become a thaw in the path of Kafir China. US provides it with money, so as long as money flows, even though Pakistanis hate the infidels in US passionately, they will not show it outwardly. Pakistan reveres Wahabi nations like Saudi Arabia where intolerance is as common as camels in desert but to what extent SA can go protecting it is not known. After all SA is practical, and nobody wants to be a friend of failed states.
Now how can you engage with a nation which is blind by hatred and at the same time is continuously failing? Do you expect all its people and leaders to develop good senses and get back to you with a hug? Even if they hug you they will stab you at the back. My prognosis about Pakistan is that a nation which is born in hatred and violence, torn apart in hatred and oppression and indulges in violent suppression of its own people will go down in hatred and violence and nobody would be able to prevent that, much like Duryodhona in epic Mahabharata who was blinded by his hatred towards Pandavas. If anybody “engages” with such a nation, it’s only at its own peril of going down too. Pakistan wants to destroy India, even at the cost of its own nationhood, again like Duryodhana. Its stance on KAshmir is very much like Duryodhana's comment - "without war I won't give an inch of what I consider as my kingdom." So if India tries engaging with Pakistan in innovative way, it will go down too in an "innovative" way, bringing in suffering and miseries for its own people. And “secular liberals”, many of them having means to flee the country, will be the first to desert the sinking ship, notwithstanding their grand stands of “secularism” and “liberalism”. This happens when a nation's leadership is weak and myopic and when its people are too spineless and corrupt.
A leading English secular liberal daily is now busy spreading grand words like “Aman Ki Aasha”. Great effort no doubt, but what a colossal waste of space! Or is it a deliberate effort to make Indians forget about atrocities so that they continue enduring all the vicious attacks from across the border.
Bottomline, “Aman ki Aasha” is “Hopelessness of Hope and not Hope for Peace” as this particular “secular liberal” English speaking “newspaper” would like us to believe.

Perspectives on Life

2009-12-12T08:01:00.001+05:30

Life has many interesting dimensions. The reason why they are interesting is that you can draw so many parallels and analogies. One of the analogies is, for instance, stock market. Like stock market life has ups and downs, and the volatilities may vary from person to person and from period to period. For some periods life is drab, boring, monotonous, which means very low volatility or extreme form of stability, while at other times it is stormy, with extreme volatility, so that it gets difficult to cope with. The other aspect is that like stock market life is influenced by so many factors in the external environment – relationships, economy, weather, many of which are beyond our control. The ups and downs are temporary phases, every upswing will pave the way for a downswing and vice versa, only the period of fluctuation may vary. Like individual stocks in a portfolio, the events in a life can move in different directions at different phases. While some may move up, others may come down thus dragging the entire life down. Some events, like marriage and children have a greater weight than others in the portfolio of events. There may also be catastrophic phases like great depressions in life, but if fundamentals are in place, in the form of determination, will to succeed, honesty and sense of duty and responsibility, the upswings are bound to happen and are bound to stay for longer periods depending on the degree of presence of the above factors, come what may. The key thing is that even during the darkest moments not to lose sight of the goals and move ahead with determination and conviction, knowing that an upswing is imminent in the long run.

Travesty of Justice

2009-12-12T07:59:00.001+05:30

Remember Manjunath Shanmugam, the IIML graduate and IOC officer who was murdered in cold blood by a petrol pump owner because he brought on them charges of corruption?

Yesterday he received another blow, this time from Indian Judicial system, a system so arcane and dismal that it cannot deliver justice in 5 years (and we all know cases normally drag on for a lifetime in Indian courts). Earlier in March 2007 district sessions judge (DSJ) Lakhimpur Kheri, S M A Abidi had given death sentence to the chief architect of the crime, Manu alias Pawan Mittal, and the rest of the gang were given life sentence. Honest people were relieved that there is still some sanity in judicial system.

But now in December 2009, the Lucknow bench of Allahabad High Court felt that the crime did not belong to the “rarest of the rare cases” and therefore does not justify death sentence, they commuted it to life imprisonment. Not only that, the high court has freed two of the accused. These guys will obviously flee justice.

Anybody familiar with Indian court and prison system knows that life sentence is nothing but a mockery, very often the perpetrator walks free after spending certain amount of time in jail, that period can be 10 to 14 years depending on his conduct. And a life sentence does not deter criminals and murderers because they know they can bribe and get away from jail, get a parole and start afresh. The very definition “rarest of rare” is at best vague and has been carefully designed by bureaucrats to give minimum number of death sentences. Then politicians make a further mockery of justice by giving parole to those accused of cold blooded murder (if these are influential and wealthy), and the person in parole goes to night club for partying (Manu Sharma, prime accused in the sensational Jessica Lal murder case was granted parole by none other than chief minister of Delhi, Sheila Dixit and he promptly went on partying).

Next in line is Supreme court, the case will drag on for few more years and perhaps the sentence will be further commuted because the judges will feel that the murderers have already spent considerable amount of time in jail. Couple of more accused will get freed.

So 5 years down the line, the honest people of India is still seeking justice which has been denied to them by Indian legislative, executive and now the judiciary.

New States - T Issue

2009-12-12T07:54:00.001+05:30

History is full of ironies. The fight for separate statehood so as to gain identity, which is happening in Andhra Pradesh whereby as usual unscrupulous politicians are taking advantage of ignorance and thoughtlessness of ordinary people, is a mirror image of what happened 105 years ago in Bengal.

The partition of Bengal by British had a hidden agenda, of diving and ruling a state which was leading the voice of dissent and was getting more and more vociferous in its demand for a national identity, even though the justification was administrative convenience of smaller regions. The proposed partition idea bounced back as people of Bengal found their voices, rose united against the proposed division and was largely led by great intellectuals of the stature of Rabindranath Tagore and Sri Aurobindo Ghosh (later sage Aurobindo of Auroville in Puducherry). It was a mass movement against partition which also gave a fillip to the hitherto dormant nationalist movement called “swadeshi” movement, giving a call for boycotting all foreign goods and buying everything indigenously made.

However what do we see in the case of proposed Telengana? This is just opposite to anti partition movement, as it is pro-partition. Unlike people of Bengal who knew what they wanted, the Telegu population is divided and confused. Some of them sense immediate gains and are happy while others are apprehensive. The movement is not supported by masses as the political parties who advocated the idea got badly beaten in the last election. The movement is led by a so called leader who is unscrupulous to the core and who commands little or no respect. The movement was stage managed by various political parties who smelled big opportunities in the form of money and power but who nevertheless were not sure of the outcome. The haste with which the split decision was taken gives rise to suspicion that perhaps the entire incident was a grand theatrical performance and the face saving exit was provided to the unscrupulous leader. There is a tug of war for the city of Hyderabad and its rich resources.

The proposed division is not based on any ideology or even administrative reasons, but is perpetrated to leverage the perceived bias in resource allocation and consequent anger among largely ignorant populace, and to grab power and money and more power and more money.

The strange case of abuse of power and missing justice

2009-12-10T16:37:00.001+05:30

Ruchika Girhotra was a young promising tennis player who was molested by a high profile director general of police, S.P.S Rathore. The incident took place in 1991, 19 years earlier. The story does not end here. It was witnessed by one of the friends of the victim who promptly informed her family. The said police official (?) got panicked and left no stones unturned to intimidate and humiliate the victim’s family. As per media report her brother was tortured in police prison, the family was threatened with dire consequences, her father’s house was eventually bought off by the offender’s lawyer, rowdies were dispatched to instill fear. Eventually three years down the line the victim, unable to bear the pressure, committed suicide and her family was in ruins. But the friend’s family carried on with the fight despite all threats, abuses and attempts to retrain it from its strive for justice.
19 years later that same DGP was convicted of the crime even though he stands defiant and unrepentant in court. However he was sentenced for a paltry 6 months behind the bar. Immediately aftermath he was released on bail.
In these 19 years he has fully enjoyed his power and clout, developed huge properties and definitely made his life good. Now once again he gains the freedom for abusing and tormenting his poor victims.
This is the state of police and administration in India, the subset of corrupt officials strangely match those who abuse power and position and they form the bulk of the force and they also enjoy the blessings of political and judicial system. There is no attempt ever made from political class to restrain police wrong doings or make them accountable, because, as a Bengali saying goes “Chore chore mastuto bhai”, or “thieves all belong to the same clan”. Honest officials (like Hemant Karkare) normally get themselves killed by terrorists or by political classes.
The nation watches indifferently. Wonder how long!

bhopal gas tragedy and coroporate arrogance

2009-12-06T08:48:00.001+05:30

Bhopal gas tragedy enters into its 25th anniversary. A lot has been written on it. Suffice to say that nothing will alleviate the pain, misery and horrendous suffering of people caused by Union Carbide (now Dow Chemicals). The disaster left around 4000 dead and another 500,000 badly affected. They are dying a slow death everyday. The ground water has been polluted by the incident to such an extent that people are drinking toxic water for the past 25 years. Governments and political parties have done nothing, except taking advantage. People of India have not shrunk in horror at the extent of the calamity, they have just accepted it as another ill fate.
But the most unholy response came from Dow. The paltry amount given to every injured was around INR 25000 and to every dead person's kin it was INR 62000. As if Indian lives are so cheap. It seems that there was also a statement from Dow that the "amount would be sufficient for Indians".
Now isn't that called arrogance?

Anger anger everywhere

2009-12-06T08:26:00.001+05:30

People are angry. Students are angry. They are calling strikes on flimsy grounds, burning buses, breaking glasses. They don't know the real cause of anger, all political causes are just hogwash. They just want to give a vent to their frustration, with everything, the civic apathy, administrative failure, corruption, poverty, joblessness. These are commonplace in India and so are the expressions of anger. People will say, give it sometime and the tide of bitterness will subside. This may go, but they will begin again with renewed vigour elsewhere, for apparently some other cause.

Remember the mushal parva in Mahabharata! People were generally angry and fighting without any reason among themselves and a stoic lord Krishna was watching. The lord did nothing to save his own clan. He said that this was inevitable.

Hope this is not the same case with us.

Communists - Going, Going, Gone

2009-11-11T09:31:00.002+05:30

This week marked the 20th anniversary of Berlin wall fall which tore asunder the iron curtain. Ironically the same week saw the communists in India seeing their last bastions crumbling and falling. The communists lost in all elections in West Bengal and Kerala, considered as their fortresses. The top brass of Indian communists were busy holidaying in Europe and Brazil, travelling in business class and sipping cognac ('course all in the name of poor and underprivileged, they were drinking the health of poor peasants who just booted them out).

In West Bengal they have managed to wrest one seat from poor Congress, other wise the TMC juggernaut seems invinsible and Mamata is going from triumph to triumph and she is wisely consolidating her gains. Atta girl!

Therefore communists are finally restricted to a small territory called Tripura, and there is still North Korea. China has ceased to be a communist state 30 years back and they are retaining the name only to keep democracy at bay. Cuba is in non man's land, and South America is suffering from a major identity crisis.

Communism, Rest in Peace! and leave us in peace.

management lessons - Vivekananda

2009-11-07T19:52:00.000+05:30

I was going through letters of Swami Vivekananda and was pleasantly surprised to see the depth of his thought process in management principles. We need to understand that we are talking about 19th century end, when scientific management principles were still at the stage of infancy. And nobody in India was aware of principles of modern management, let alone practice them.

Here are some exerpts from Vivekananda's letter to Swami Brahmanand written on 1st August 1898 from Srinagar-

No job can be learnt without practical experience, theory itself is not sufficient ->we all know how important practical experience is nowadays
There should always be backups, if somebody goes away, others should be ready to take his work up -> its a perfect example of risk management
Nobody works unless there is interest and motivation. Everybody should be given work which would interest him/her. With interest comes dedication.->This is the cornerstone of Herzberg's theory of motivation which came much later
Everybody should have a share in work and property and everybody should get a voice in management -> Again directly related to motivation. It took modern management a long time to realize this.
Give everybody a responsible position alternately with an eye to watch and control (monitor). Then only we can get a system driven by process ->Without monitoring accountability does not come
Develop a process/machine which works himself, then people can be found for business and work -> we only had Toyota Production System and TQM in the later half of next century, while this thought existed in the mind of this great man a century ago
We cannot make a permanent organization because we never like to share power with others and never think of what will come after we have gone -> Isn't it still true of Governments, both democratic and autocratic?

Definition of Intolerance

2009-11-01T21:26:00.001+05:30

No, I am not talking about the dictionery definition. I am simply talking about the inability to accpet a different point of view - be it in religion, politics or in any sphere of life. Intolerance is a great divider, it creates an insurmountable barrier. A greater degree of intolerance is called fanaticism, whereby human beings forget all rational logical thoughts and call it ego or brainwash, that takes over senses completely. Under such a circumstance man can kill, steal or do anything to establish his idea's superiority over others.
We are all intolerant, to a greater or lesser extent, racism is a form of intolerance. Come to think of it, even marital discords are nothing but intolerance. We create enemies because we are intolerant. Office politics is nothing but intolerance - of perhaps the success of a colleague.
Now what is tolerance? Tolerance is the ability to see other points of view, to accept facts as facts and discard dogmas, to acquire the wisdom to understand that divergence and convergence of ideas are necessary for civilization and mankind to flourish.

A tribute to a braveheart

2009-10-31T22:13:00.001+05:30

One girl stood steadfastly against her assailants, dreaded Lashkar e Taiba militants who are either revered or feared by most in India, more so in Jammu and Kashmir. Her name is Rukshana and she is only 18 years old. She attacked the AK47 totting terrorists (atleast three of them including their commander, a notorious terrorist), with an axe. She and her brother together managed to snatch away the guns and kill one of the terrorists, and injuring others.

No human rights organization (who so painstakingly defend any terrorist killed), came to her aid. No so called Kashmiri organization came forward in her support. She is now living in constant fear, away from her home and village, of brutal revenge, and her home was attacked only yesterday.

LeT, grow up, we are not afraid of bastards like you. We know that deep down you guys are nothing but a bunch of cowards who just rely on bombs and AK47 to get their "heaven". And Indian Government, learn from this teeage girl how to combat terrorism.

Obama - Nobel peace prize

2009-10-10T18:08:00.001+05:30

Alfred Nobel must be turning in his grave. The Nobel peace prize is gotten by who? The president of a country which is engaged in warfare in many corners of the world, who talks about disarmament for other countries but holds a huge stockpile of nuclear himself, who has so far only tall talks and nice speeches to offer to the world.

Ok, the justification is, unlike his predecessor, he has offered possibilities of peace in some corners of the world whose names his average countrymen cannot even pronounce properly. Big Deal!

May be I am judging this person too harshly, may be he has willingness and ability and also sincerity, but shouldn't a person first deliver and then get recognition?

Well, lets not forget his humanitarian gesture of 3 billion USD aid to a country which is the epicentre of terrorism and which has a history of proliferation as well as well known for its treachery and duplicity, not to say about using the external funds to forment terror attacks against its neighbour. So, president Obama, are you going to donate the Nobel prize money to Pakistan's dreaded ISI and the so called "good Talibans"? May be they will leave their arms and weapons at your instigation. What about Iran? It will probably stop barking against Israel. Does'nt matter if some innocent civilians in some remote corners of the world get killed, everyday thousands are dying in that part of the world anyway. President has extended his olive branch, he will go down in history. Peace prize is what matters.

The intelligentsia of Europe is too obsessed with sweet talks and pacifist dreams. I hope their dreams are not shattered too soon.

Corporate Lessons from ancient tales - part 2

2009-09-15T09:31:00.002+05:30

The second story goes like this - In a town there lived a small time businessman who was doing poorly in business and therefore was in dire financial strait. That businessman prayed to the God and that night he had a dream that a monk had come to visit his house, but instead of entertaining his guest, he took a stick and hit the monk on the head. Immediately the monk fell down and got converted to a heap of gold.

In the morning when he woke up he was still deliberating on the significance of his dream when his barber came for his daily shave. Just then there was a knock on the door and when the person opened the door, a monk came inside. Just then he remembered about his dream, took a rod and hit the monk on head. The monk fell flat and immediately there was a heap of gold coins in his place. The businessman gave his barber some gold and sworn him to secrecy.

But this incident dishevelled the barber. He too went hom and began thinking, if by hitting a monk he gets so many gold coins, I too can hit a very large number of monks and get even more gold. So the very next day he invited all the local monks to his house for a ceremony. As soon as the monks began pouring in, he took a rod and began hitting them. One after the other innocent victims lay wounded or dead in a pool of blood but there was no gold. The local people saw this and they took the barber by force to the king. The king being just asked him the reason for such a "barbarism". The barber by then was helf dead with fear, he squarely blamed the businessman for his predicament. The king called for the businessman and heard the entire incident from him.

After hearing the businessman's story the king turned to the barber and said, "You did not try to realize the full context and yet you emulated his action, resulting in so much bloodshed, you should get capital punishment for your extreme impulsiveness".

Whats the moral of this story? We all realize that to make any sound decision and implement the same (i.e. take some action), we must understand the whole context, think holistically and then only take steps. We must never be impulsive, must not emulate something done elsewhere just because it has yielded result there. For instance in manufacturing industries its a fad to implement lean philosophy and just in time, just because some competitor has done the same and got success. But without careful context analysis, deliberation and going for a holistic understanding of the situational differences, it is often suicidal to adopt a "me too" approach. The fact is that many manufacturing industries, in their haste to adopt lean principles, ignore several aspects and only implement some of them, like just in time principle, thereby shifting the entire inventory from its premise to vendor's premise, or to the regional warehouse. Thus inventory still exists in supply chain resulting in waste, and management tears its hair in understanding what went wrong despite implementing lean principles.

There are plenty of such examples and therefore wisdom, which seems simple and common sense at first glance may not even be remembered in practice. And that is why Lehman brothers and AIGs go bankrupt.

Corporate lessons from ancient tales - part 1

2009-09-14T08:06:00.001+05:30

In this series I am going to tell a story from ancient literature and draw the learnings in our professional and personal lives from the same. These stories are mostly taken from Panchatantra or "5 lessons" and Hitopadesha or "Good Advices".

The first story (from Panchatantra) goes like this- In a large pond there used to live four fishes among others. These four fishes had some peculiarities. The first one was capable of sniffing, scanning and monitoring the environment and forecast and analyze trends based on changes in the environment. We will call this fish the "Astute Observer". The second one lacked the talent of scanning and forecasting, but he had a wonderful ability to scurry into action whenever a need arose. He used to devise a strategic plan and immediately acted on the plan. We will call him the "Intelligent Actor". The third one was neither an analyst like the first nor as intelligent and active as the second. However, he was extremely level headed, even though he was lazy. He could think through a situation and act decisively at the last moment. We will call him the "Slow Thinker". The fourth one was the laziest and the least talented of them all. He often used to be in tight situation on account of this, but every time his luck saved him. He neither reacted nor planned, but just went with the tide. We will call him the "Passive Floater".

So these four fishes were living happily in that large pond and they did not have any real danger, until one day.

That day the astute observer was as usually observing and monitoring his environment while doing his usual work of being fed on insects and water plants, when he heard some noises. A careful attention enabled him to hear some conversation, of human beings, on the banks of the pond. He realized that there must be some human activities going on here, and that might be too dangerous for fishes. He therefore called a meeting of his friends and told them - "listen brothers, I heard some human beings on the bank today, my gut feel is that they are going to do some fishing in the next few days, lets leave this pond and go elsewhere". Now that pond was interconnected (at the deepest level) with a bigger lake, so escaping was no big deal. However others did not agree. The intelligent actor said, "Well, you may be right, but why bother now, we'll tackle the problem when it comes. Besides, where will you get so much foodstuff like here?"

The other two fishes agreed with him and therefore astute forecaster was quite alone with his fears. But he decided to leave at once, even though that would mean he was leaving his friends behind. And he left for the larger lake.

The very next day his fears came to be true. The fishermen folk had targeted that pond and laid their traps in the form of big fishing nets. However the intelligent actor was sharp. When he saw some huge black net falling on the water, he scurried into action and before the net could engulf him, he was free and went away to the larger lake. While going however he wanted to take his other friends too. But they were lazy and did not want to respond immediately until the danger became very apparent in the form of a net around them.

Both the other fishes were caught along with so many others of their clan. Both the fishes were thinking that they should have believed and followed their friends. However both were having a Micawberian optimism that "something will turn up". The slow thinker began to rake his brain furiously while the fishermen pulled their net up. Then slowly but decisively he chalked out a plan. When the net was on the top of water, some fishes were already dead and fishermen were throwing them off, since already dead fishes don't fetch any value, its the freshly caught one that matters. So our fellow just lay side by side with a dead fish and did not move a single muscle, as if he was dead too. So when the fishermen got hold of him, they threw him away to water again. And once into water, our friend swam away immediately to a safe distance.

And what happened to passive floater. All the while he was thinking something will turn up, he will be saved by luck, but no such miracle happened. He was caught. In the end he rued the fact that he depended too much on chance.

This story is similar to more contemporary classics like "Who moved my cheese" where Sniff and Scurry, Hem and Haw, the two mice and two little men resemble our four fishes in their nature.

So whats the lesson here?

One thing is clear, you and I cannot apply the same principles every time, so there is a situational aspect. We need to be one of the four characters in the story depending on the situation. However its always better to belong to the first three, and best to be the first two, because your luck may run out before you realize and not everybody can think and act at the last moment under pressure.

Lets look into the macro environment of today. With the threat of a global recession looming large what can an investor do? He needs to scan the environment in which he operates and see if there is a disturbance, a threat. He should respond to the disturbance by simply moving away his investments to a less risky environment, e.g. emerging markets. Similarly a person who scurries into action can act immediately and move his assets elsewhere when a recession is no longer a possibility, but a reality in the environment in which he operates. A slow thinker will take time to react, but when he does react, he does it decisively, may be he dumps his bad assets to protect the rest. In fact there is an old sanskrit proverb - "Sarvanasha Samutpanne, ardham Tyajotih Panditah", i.e. when the danger looms large, a wise man may dump half of his wealth to save the rest. There is no need to cling to all when its very clear that all may go, you get rid of some to protect others. However, because he did not react immediately or did not scan his environment, he lost half of his wealth.

Others, like Lehman, go down the bankruptcy route, simply because their luck has run out.

Other applications of the same principles are in general risk management, like in a project. There are four tactics to deal with project risks - mitigate and develop a contingency plan, avoid, accept, transfer. Of these, mitigation is the safest route and generally practised by "astute observers" or "intelligent actors". However all risks cannot be mitigated, so depending on situation you may need to accept some or avoid some. In some cases cost benefit analysis will favour acceptance and thus "passive floating". However its better not to depend on chance when there is a possibility of Murphy striking, because if Murphy strikes, it will strike really hard and therefore some decisive and firm action is needed before the impending doom.

We find echoes of this in our personal lives. Many of us living a comfortable existence is uncomfortable with changes, but changes do happen. And when they happen, its always better to belong to the first three categories and either prepare for changes, take some intelligent but quick decisions, or take a slow but deliberate stand rather than float with the tide which may be disastrous.

India Post

2009-07-30T08:52:00.001+05:30

The rebranding exercise at the cost of tax payers for department of post is going on for quite some times. They have revamped some of their post offices from dilapidated shacks to decent looking outposts in association with Deutsche Post. But more things change, more they remain same. Has anything changed at the service level? simply nothing. Indian bureaucracy is one of the most inefficient and most corrupt, esp. at the lower levels and India Post is a very symbol of the same. I had speed posted one RTI application to income tax department twice, based on pin codes given for their Hyderabad office in their associated websites. Every Tom Dick and Harry knows the location of Income tax office, but not India post. The speed posts came back twice, after roaming around the city for a few days, the reason cited was "insufficient address". The post offices whose stamp was marked on the envelope were stones throw away from the Income Tax office and yet they did not know the address. And this happened twice. The address was written in detail on the envelope based on website data.
India Post has a grievance portal, but after you have filled up the mamoth form with all data duely filled, it never posts. Therefore the conclusion is, India Post is not only inefficient, they even refuse to acknowledge any complaint, let alone paying attention to it.
Well, now you know why we avoid Government departments in India as far as possible!

Nevil Chamberlain reincarnated

2009-07-19T09:07:00.001+05:30

Does anybody remember who Nevil Chamberlain was?

Oh yes! He is synonymous with a foreign policy of appeasement and weakness.

To the uninitiated Chamberlain was a former British priminister, who signed the Munich agreement in Germany in 1938 conceding Sudetenland to Hitler, overlooking and overruling the concerns of Czechoslovakia republic. He praised Hitler and Musolini and was too anxious to buy peace with Germany, even at the expense of Czechs and Austrians. Probably he was handicapped by his domestic problems, probably he had a wishful thinking that by placating Germany and Hitler a war could be avoided, or probably he truly believed that Hitler and Musolini were gentlemen who did break agreements and Sudetenland would be the end to Germany's ambitions in Europe.

Well, history shows that whatever his intentions were, however good a man he was, he was wrong.

Similarly we have a good man at our helm, who is anxious to buy peace with Pakistan and China, to placate the "wounded" Pakistan who, according to him, is a "victim of terrorism", who probably in all his sincerity thinks that peace can come through dialogs, even at the cost of his own country's security stand and a few good fellow country men who would die defending the nation again and again or a few bomb blasts here and there which would claim innocent victims again and again.

But this time he has got it all wrong. Pakistan is not a migraine as a former US secretary puts it to be, its a cancer, a very malignant one. Pakistan is so engulfed in its own game of vicious treachery and duplicity, that it has no way to come out of the mess. It cannot keep any promise, or commitment, or agreement. Time and again its leaders have fed on the goodwill of the weak and credulous neighbour, and time and again it has duped the world at large and stabbed its eager to trust neighbour in the back. It has put up a false facade of being a "victim", when all along it is the perpetuator and epicentre of all terrorist activities. But just as all duplicities and cunningness have their end, this nation is now caught with the very weaopon that it used to bleed others. Unless it stops this duplicity and be sincere it cannot come out of the mess. And it cannot stop this because then politically it will have to pay a big price. So Pakistan is doomed. A nation which is born in despicable violence will also go down in violence.

What about India? The policy of appeasement will certainly not last. Pakistan will go down but it will take a slice of India along with it. We'll have to pay a very heavy price for our leadership's weakness and myopia.

Neo Feudalism

2009-06-24T10:05:00.001+05:30

You think Feudalism was in vogue only in Europe during the dark ages and in the early medieval period? well, you are mistaken. Feudalism is back with a vengeance in today's India, the modern India, an India which competes with China and other tiger economies and aspire to become a world leader. This feudlism does not have explicit feudal lords and serfs, but have a class of patricians and plebians like that of ancient Rome. The patricians are the privileged classes, while plebians are not so privileged. Now who are these patricians? In modern Indian context they are the politicians in power, the ministers, the bureaucrats or the adminstrative services guys, the big businessmen and corporate honchos, the big media men and of course, the celebrities - film actors, cricket gods etc. These feudal lords, though they belong to diverse sections of the society and may have different backgrounds and circumstances, share a common thread, their disdain for the prosaic, mundane common men and their boasting of their social and economic status.

Let me share a few examples. Almost all major politicians receive Z category security (at the expense of tax payers, who get none). Which means they are entitled to a large fleet of black cars, hooters, pilot cars, convoys and then they can show off to each other, whose convoy is bigger and better. Not only this, their convoys make lives of common men miserable. When they are on road, all other traffic has to stop for an indefinite period. Two instances I would like to share here - The AndhraPradesh chief minister is one such show off. In the midst of torrential rain when his convoy was passing, his loyal police force stopped all other traffic. That means ambulences were stopped on the way, people on 2 wheelers were stopped amidst torrential rain and had no where to go, and all the rest stranded, till the "God" passes. The same chief minister had once gone to a marriage house. All the traffic on the road near the marraige house was stalled, till "His Highness" paid his social visit. Just imagine the situation of people out there on the roads.

These are not isolated events and they routine happen. These feudal lords have scant respect for the public because they know that public is nothing but a herd of sheep bealting to their tune and that Indians can withstand all pains and sufferings indifferently as their "karma". If you protest you spend god knows how many days and nights behind police lockups. The brutality of Indian police towards common men is legendary and nobody in their right sense would even think of stepping on their toes.

I wonder how long we would remain indifferent to these thugs looting and exploiting us in the name of their own security cover. Isn't it high time to bring them down from their pedestal?

Tagore and his perspectives on Western world

2009-06-21T07:59:00.001+05:30

Tagore had traveled all around Europe, middle East, America, Russia, Japan, South America, in short, almost the whole world in the 20s, and 30s of last century. He has written lucid accounts of his travels and perspectives.

We need to remember that during this time Europe was going through a major crisis. Communism was taking its root and Stalin's iron hand was almost established in East Europe. First world war was just over and Europe was still struggling to get out of the mess. In Italy and Germany fascists were fast gaining grounds. Persecution of Jews had taken legitimacy in many parts of Europe. British Empire was getting increasingly shaken, esp. in India by a thin, lean shrewd ascetic called Gandhi. Middle East was probably flourishing, Palestine crisis not yet created fully, Shahs were ruling Persia with a mighty fist and secularism was at its height there. Turkey had newly tasted democracy with Ottoman empire lying in pieces and Mustafa Kemal having established his authority.

Tagore was extremely pleased with the way Russia had carried out Educational reforms, thus making education available to millions of poor peasants and was ruing that if only we could do the same for India. He was amazed by the vast amount of energy being spent by Russians in carrying out cooperative agricultural works, thus increasing productivity. However all these were shown to him by the authorities. Even though the stories of mass purging and and Gulag stints were deeply buried under secrecy laws, he could sense that some of the things were not right. Therefore he said that if there is a great tidal wave in the ocean and we take refuge under a volcanic mountain thinking that this will protect us, then we are mistaken, because some day the volcano would definitely erupt -> How prophetic.

On Arab-Jews relationship he said "Jews must be patient in dealing with Arabs. Despite political obstacles Jews must keep their religious heritage intact. Come to your co Palestinians and tell them "you and we are old and stubborn races, we cannot subdue you and nor you can us". Establish a Palestinian commonwealth with separate identities and cultures for Arabs and Jews. The success will depend upon mutual understanding and cooperation, Jews need to free themselves of Western concept of nationalism and instead work toward a unified model where both Arabs and Jews can coexist."

He was delighted with the tolerance and friendship received in Iran under Shahs.

A tale of two LPG connections

2009-06-14T11:10:00.001+05:30

It is the worst of time, an epoch of incredulity, age of foolishness, season of darkness, winter of despair...as far as new LPG connection is concerned.

I always thought that getting a gas connection would be a cakewalk. That was my expereince in 2003, when I walked into the nearby Hindustan Petroleum dealership which had opened recently in Madhapur, and got a connection. The mistake I did was returning this connection before I went abroad. After coming back to India in 2007, well, it proved to be a herculean effort to get a new connection. Almot all dealers I approached - HP, Indane, BPCL, told me that the minimum wait period to get a new connection is 1 year after enlisting. Some even refused to enlist my name saying plainly that its of no use. I had to take up a private connetion from Shakti gas at a much higher price, but the service proved to be unreliable. So I finally gave it up. Private gas players are mostly out of business owing to absence of any level playing field. Therefore there is virtually no competition and state run oil and gas dealership is the king. They can do whatever they want to and they don't care about customer service.

Then I got my father in law's Indane gas connetion transferred to my place as an intermediate solution. I could not get a double cylinder as I was told bluntly that I should be considered fortunate that I have one cylinder, because its an age of scarcity. Then in May 2009 after eletion results were declared the unthinkable happened. There was a letter from HP dealership saying that my application has been considered and I need to apply within 20 days of receipt of letter for the new connection. I was elated and duly went with documents like address proof. The dealer was not very enthused, he simply handed me the forms and said curtly that there would be an inspection.

The inspection happened the very next day and then the bombshell was dropped. The guy while inspecting saw the already existing connection and aksed me what should be done? Ideally in a typical Indian set up, he would get some money and write down that I don't have a connection. This is because of rule of Government department of oil and natural gas that if a household has an existing connection, no matter what is the nature of the connection, no further connection should be given by state run oil companies. Which means that because my father in law has a connection and because I borrowed it for running my household cooking ativities for an uncertain period, I was not eligible for a connection of my own. I ignored the cue of the "inspector" and told him to do his duty.

I contacted the dealer, he atfirst refused to entertain me, like all dealers of state run oil companies. Then I approached the regional manager Mr. KS Rao on email and to his credit he immediately called me up and explained Government poliy and his inability to bypass the same,but he promised immediate delivery if I give up my existing connection. Moreover the customer service of HP replied promptly on my complaint against the dealer and the lady assiduoulsy followed up with the dealer who had to finally call me up. He was peeved at my approaching the customer care over such a trivial issue, but finally took my documents and promised to send them to sales officer, which to his credit, he did. The sales officer Mr. Garg called me up and explained that if I give up the existing connection he would ensure a new one for me within two days.

Now thats indeed good service and responsiveness, at various levels - the customer care lady who followed up dutifully and was patient over the phones, the regional manager who was sympathetic and the sales offier who explained and promised quick steps. Kudos to HP Gas that they listened and took some steps. I am satisfied.

Now coming to Indane gas. I received this letter on 1st June from Indane dealership Madhavi distributor at Shaikpet Hyderabad that the seond connection of my father in law has come through and I need to contact them within 60 days. The letter had no envelope and so the postal stamp overshadowed the documents required. Nevertheless I approached them with all the documents we possessed on behalf of my father in law. In the morning when I went there the dealer told me to come in the afternoon. When we went in the afternoon, the dealer simply locked his gate and refused us (along with a few other hapless ladies from various sections of society, the so called amjanta, a term so favourite with politicos who care a zilch about them) entry. The dealership closes at 5 PM and it was only 4 PM, but it was of no avail.

I tried calling up the Indane sales officer Mr. Nagaraj. Initially nobody picked up the phone. Later when he picked up he was curt and refused to listen and told me to contact the customer care on Monday. Now that left me wondering is the customer really the king? or some junk in the eyes of IOC officials? I sent a mail to IOC representative of the state, but so far no reply. I tried lodging an online complaint in IOC portal, unlike HP gas, the complaint/feedbak section simply did not work. This gives the impression that Indane gas does not need or value any feedback/complaint.

I don't know whether this would ever be taken care of by IOC officials but here are some facts. If you open any complaints portal, be it http://www.complaintsboard.com/ or http://www.consumercomplaints.in/, the maximum number of complaints are against Indane gas dealership in gas distribution. That there is a widespread irregularity esp. with IOC dealers is well proven through the sensational murdercase of Manjunatha Shanmugam, the IIML 2003 alumni and a sales officer in IOC in 2005 (read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanmughan_Manjunath) He was incidentally a batchmate of my wife Devmitra in IIML.

But the question is, whether IOC officials are doing anything about it or are they too non chalant about customer grievances?

To be fair when I had a similar problem with an IOC petrol pump outlet (gave less petrol than supposed to for an amount), I raised this in a forum with IOC and IOC official Mr. Srihari Rangrajan (Hyderabad) called me up and promised to take steps against ssuch erring practices in Madhapur area. He is a very helpful chap.
But the same cannot be said of Indane gas, as so far, I only received a curt response and absolutely no empathy.

I am sure the sorry state of oil and gas distribution in this country will change one day, there will be more accountability and perhaps the subsidy regime which has created so many evils esp. that of arbitrage opportunity, corruption and arrogance among dealers and poor quality of service, will be a thing of past.

There is a postscript to this tale. Yesterday morning (15th June) I received a call from the dealer and she apologized repeatedly for the behavior. She said that to prevent agitating people without documents from visiting her shop she had closed the doors.

I received atleast two calls from Indane customer care, both sympathetic and pledging a speedy resolution on the same day. In the afternoon we went to the dealership and she herself made us sit in her room, took all the documents and released us the cylinder, in a matter of half an hour. Seems some phone calls from Kolkata did the trick.

Thank you IOC. However, if the process is controlled and improved so that such escalations and heartburns are avoided, it would be great.

education for all

2009-05-31T10:00:00.001+05:30

Universal education is a concept fairly close to my heart. Of late, there has been a lot of deliberation from various quarters on universal education access. The major problem is the access to quality education. Not every institute or school has great faculty or infrastructure. Second thing to ponder upon is whether we are doing it right. Education in today's world is career oriented which creates competition and when the demand for few lucrative careers outstrips supply there is bound to be a fierce competition at various levels, resulting in rat race. These factors, competition, fear of failure, lack of proper education and of course the affordability part of it results in large scale school dropout, suicidal tendencies and building up of stress in the society. Also a large number of people do not have proper access to education.

I think the access problem is easier to solve than anything else, leveraging technology. Esp. since mobile phones are now ubiquitous, once 3G comes through, remote education policie can be used to bridge the gap of lack of quality teachers or even lack of proper physical infrastructure. Digital education medium can revolutionize the field. However there are two practical difficulties - 1) development of technology infrastructure, esp. broadband and its reach. When we do not have electricity in many villages, we cannot even imagine to develop fast broadband networks in these areas. 2) Content is the key to quality. If we do not have good content, even a powerful medium cannot meet the goal. Like open source software movement, there should also be an open source education movement, whereby access to quality content is not restricted but is opened up even to people who cannot otherwise afford the price. Another important access factor is delivering of the content. Having a good quality of content is not enough, the success depends to a large extent on who is delivering it. Here we come back to the starting point -quality of education depends to a large extent on the deliverer, i.e. teacher. You cannot have cart before horse. Just as the country needs great leaders, it needs great teachers, who are actually leaders at a more fundamental level - building the building blocks. To develop quality teachers there can be and should be programs at various levels. But the lowest cost solution is again a cue taken up from open source movement - that of opening up the discipline to all sections of the society. In a way, if we look at it, we have some thing to learn from every individual and every segment of society, so why restrict education to a special and privileged class who is not necessarily the best in this field. Why not opening up this discipline for participation from all sections and all stratas of currently educated society? e.g. a kid at standard 5 would much more benefit in learning history from a practising historian or archeologist than from a primary school teacher. He would derive the fun from actually seeing the ruins and drawing correlations rather than memorizing dates and names and vomiting them to the paper. Similarly a biology student of standard 8 would immensely benefit from experiences shared by a doctor or a molecular biologist or a botanist.

This is too vast a subject to cover in a single blog, but then, its just a random thought. This is also a wonderful business opportunity for some visionery social enterpreneurs who has the ability and zeal to develop the ideas and dig out the business potential.

Bengal poll results- some random thoughts

2009-05-17T19:46:00.002+05:30

I would dare say that Bengal poll results has surprised me, although I hasten to add, thats its a pleasant surprise. There was an undercurrent of change, but that the undercurrent would soon convert itself into tidal wave was beyond my wildest dream. Honestly I had almost given up on ever being able to witness a West Bengal without leftist regime in my life, since the better part of my 32 years had been under their rule.

Why is it a pleasant surprise? Reasons are multiple. First, vindication of my own stance. While most educated middle class was busy villifying Mamata and her so called politics of driving out Nano and anti industrialization stance, I had a subtle feeling that what she was doing was absolutely correct in the long run. She was playing straight from her heart.

You may ask, what did the communists do wrong? They wanted industrialization and a prosperous Bengal. My answer, what were they doing for 30 years?

Let me put down in bullet points what wrong they did, and why this massive tidal wave of change has swept over Bengal.

Statistics and hard data shows that number of industries closed in Bengal is substantially more in the past 30 years than anywhere else in the country. My note: Any unbiased observer go and have a look at the industrial belts in Naihati, Bujbuj, Howrah, Garfah, Durgapur, Asansol. Many of them have turned into wastelands or at best, the industries are languishing. Here is one study of noted economist Bibek Deb Roy on West Bengal' economic condition under leftist rule - http://www.slideshare.net/indicusanalytics/transforming-west-bengal-changing-the-agenda-for-an-agenda-for-change?type=document

My personal experience - there was an Usha company on Prince Anwarshah Road near the placed I spent much of my childhood. That factory got closed down owing to trouble by CITU, CPM's militant trade union. The land was sold and in its place a huge and sprawling shopping mall has come up, while the erstwhile labourers are dying out of starvation. There have been many cases of worker stravation, suicide of workers from closed down industries and workers vending small wares to earn a livelihood. So, you are talking of industrialization, very good, but what about existing industries which are getting closed down? Here is a quote from our industry champion chief minister who is a darling of media for being industry friendly - "We cannot revive those which are closed, we'll have to get new ones". Great, but what if the new ones get closed as well? Where is the effort to set fundamentals right?

Health care and Education - These are two sectors which have been utterly destroyed by CPM. In every educational institution they removed men of honour and merit and put party loyalists, even if they were incompetent, noted examples being Santosh Bhattacharya, the vice chancellor of Jadavpur University, or Amlan Dutta. All noted educationists who did not speak for the party were sidelined and their place was occupied by party enthusiasts whose main job was to uphold the interest of party above everything else. Can any good emerge out of this? The result is, West Bengal's educational system is in shambles. In rural areas people don't have proper access to education and it is no surprising that school dropout rates are highest in West Bengal. The highest accolade is received by any teacher not for teaching but for being a loyal party supporter. No wonder then that literacy rate in West Bengal also absymally low. Same story goes with higher education - Universities like Calcutta, Jadavpur etc. are languishing for the lack of quality teachers and research workers as meritocracy has taken a backseat. The most dangerous trend in every school, college and university is the CPM and CITU supported workers union who controls the work culture.
Same story goes with healthcare. Almost all Government hospitals are in the last stage of health themselves and their revival is next to impossible. Here also the main culprit in CITU supported failed work culture and deliberate mishandling and mismanagement of affairs by party loyal superintendants. Doctors and nurses in Government hospitals are an indifferent lot, indifferent to patients' woes. Patients normally lie on grounds instead of beds, because free beds come with a price tag, a neat sum to the local party leader. As regards private hospitals and nursing home, they are ubiqitous but nobody to do a quality check or regulate their affairs. So they happily fleece patients and even then provide the shoddiest treatment. No wonder then that people from Bengal flock to Tamilnadu, Andhra, Maharastra and Delhi for treatments
There is party affiliation everywhere, even among administrative officials, so naturally if party loyalty can ensure them plum posts and promotions why would they work? more so if the work demands a fair and unbiased attitude. Result is Westbengal lacks in almost all projects, be it rural eletrification, rural roads, sanitation, primary healthcare, eucation or urban infrastructure
Only one industry has prospered in the past 20 years in Bengal - that of real estate. If you have a piece of land, there is no guarantee that it will remain yours if the local leaders have their eyes on it. An entirely new class of exploitative entrepreneurs have come up called promoters - on who buys land and sets up apartments to sell them and make a killing. They have very close affiliation with party and police (in most cases partymen are promoters) and have enough muscle power to grab any land or settle any dispute in their own favour.

The election results were so because people are fed up with lies and deceit. They want tangible results, development. They are tired with a notoriously arrogant party with a bunch of hooligans and ruffians who have ruled Bengal with an iron hand for the past thirty years but still did nothing for its people and took them for granted.

Specifically mentioned these areas of failures as these are the backbones of any development but for the past thirty years these are most neglected areas. Most of the rural areas in Bengal are pathetically underdeveloped, infact that being a primary source of discontent, industrial belts have dried up leading to rapid urban poverty, while crores of central funds remain unutilized or gets into the pockets of corrupt officials and party functionaries. So where are the right fundamentals for development?

What can should be done?Answer is simple. Aggressive infrastructure building, both urban and rural. Only asset building can salvage the state from total disaster. While our chief minister stresses on industry creation, he should understand the simple fact that a horse comes first, not the cart. Unless infrastructure is available, there cannot be industrialization. Roads, railways, bridges, electricity, health and sanitation and education, these are the pillars on which any development drive should rest, not aggressive industrialization at the expense of the poor farmers and farmland. Industrialization is the end and not means, means to achieve it is capital expenditure, which will drive growth, build assets, provide jobs to millions and provide impetus to industrialization as well as entrepreneurship. If you provide rural folks with good roads, uninterupted power and water supply and proper education, they will find growth avenues for themselves. They themselves will create lot more opportunities. Again by roads I don't mean expressways in place of farmlands on which Mercedes can move at 120 kmph, but good rural roads with connectivity to national highways so that tractors and pick up vans with perishables can go to the markets fast.

I hope the neo lord Buddha and his followers are listening!

On Mother's Day

2009-05-10T09:30:00.001+05:30

Remembering Tagore's poem -

Keno cheye accho go Ma Mukhopane

Era chahena tomare chahena je

Era apono Ma yere nahi jane

Era tomay kichhu debena debena

mitthya kobe sudhu hino porane

Tumi to ditechho Ma ja achhe tomari

Shorno shoshyo tabo Janhobi bari

gyano dharmo kato punno kahini

Era tomay kichhu debena debena

mitthya kobe sudhu kato ki bhane

monero bedona rakho ma mone

nayano bari nibaro nayane

mukho lukao ma dhuli shayane

bhule thako jato hino santane

shunno pane cheye prahoro gono goni

dekho katekina dirgho rajani

dukhho janaye ki hobe janani

nirmomo chetanahino pashane

Translating this beautiful poem in English retaining its sense is next to impossible. However here is a feeble attempt.

Why are you staring at our face mother, they don't want you, they don't know you, their own mother. They won't give you anything except for lies and more lies and pretension.

You have given us all you have - golden harvests, pure water, knowledge, religion, virtue. But they don't value all these and will give you nothing, nothing in exchange. You need to keep your agony within you, get rid of those tears, hide your face in dust, forget these lowly sons. Count your time by staring at bleakness and wish that this long night was over. There is no point in recounting your sorrows to cruel and merciless with stony hearts.

Sounds very apt, isnt it, in the context of the state of affairs in our country? The way corruption, criminalization, nepotism, mindless violence and hatred has engulfed this nation, being spearheaded by leaders whose lust for power is only comparable with their lust for wealth, has rendered any great nation building work virtually impossible. Even though the above poem was composed to serve as an eye opener to the evils and atrocities of the colonial rule, it somehow exposed hypocrisy of politics which is more relevant today. Do we find any leader talking about removing sorrows, despairs, miseries around and a strong vision to elevate India from all these? Everywhere we find glib talk, casteism, communalism, vote bank politics, corruption on a massive scale and the greed for power through opportunistic alliances.

Are we heading towards disaster? Already there are enough inidcations. However the sucour is that historically whenever India was facing a grave crisis and going through periods despair an agony, great souls emerged in different spheres of life. Its almost as if evils are necessary for good to thrive. So may be there will be a tougher time, but we'll emerge better and stronger.

My Stint at Deutschland - chapter 6

2009-03-14T18:55:00.001+05:30

I was really enjoying my stay at Heinzelinweg, even though I hardly stayed there. Almost every week I was away travelling to Utrecht, waking up at 4 Am, booking a taxi the night before, rushing to catch a flight at 5.30 AM. The picture is of my one room in Heinzelinweg. The major attraction was a water bed, which comfortably suited me as it was fun sleeping on it.

Even then I could manage weekend gateaways to Zugspitze, to Strasbourg in Alsace region etc. I also managed another trip to Paderborn to meet my friend Seshadri who worked with SAP labs and had come to Walldorf near Heidelberg, and we had a rendezvous in Sujoyda's place. It was a memorable trip, culminating in our visit to Koeln and seeing some exotic villages in Northern Germany. The photo below shows our pose in front of Cologne Dom across the Rhine river.

Prior to that Sujoyda along with family and friends had visited me in Stuttgart. They had come to tour Southern Germany and enroute they took rest in my cottage. So we had two good evenings together and the next day I had to leave for Utrecht at 5.30 AM when they were still sleeping.

It was a wonderful summer this time around in Europe, and I had some leisure trips in the weekends to Zugspitze, Strasourg and blackforest (lake Titisee and adjoining areas). I already had the Bahncard 50 and utilized it to my heart's content. Its very convinient to book tickets through http://www.bahn.de/ using the Bahn card or credit card as identification. Discounted tickets are obtained if we plan our trips well in advance.

Day comes and day goes. I spent the Puja in Utrecht reminiscing about our cultural festivities with a fellow Bengali, Mr. Gopal De, proprieter of restaurant "Namaskar" in Utrecht, near our hotel NH. He was originally from Syllet, a pharmacist and left Bangladesh in the 70s and relocated to Amsterdam and then to Utrecht. I was a regular customer at Namaskar.

A puja happens in Stuttgart as well, but at that time I was unaware of that. This Puja belongs to Ganguly family in Stuttgart. Their elder son, Timir Kanti had become an aquaintance later when I went to buy my tickets from his family travel agency, for my trip to India (for marriage) later in June next year. Timir is a wonderful fellow. Born and brought up in Germany and with little or no contact with Kolkata and India, he still loves Bengli language and culture. This is reflected in his webpage which he calls as "Web Pata". He even maintains a Bengali chat room and has an enviable collection of Hemonto and Manna song on his web page which was a constant source of solace to us all abroad. More about him on his "web pata" ://www.ganguly.de/ The web page also contains a link to Durga Puja Stuttgart.

Come November, we witnessed the ferocity of winter in Germany. Temperatures began dropping and there was no respite from bitter cold. In this situation you pray that you leave this god forsaken country soon and go to some warmer places, but that is not to happen soon. But the snow fall from comfort zone at home is worth watching and here is "das Blick" or view of snow clad road in front of my house.

We also had a rapturous Deewali celebration in one of our colleague Manoj Goel's house. Almost everybody from our project team was there (and it was quite a large team). We had an excellent meal of homemade Pooris. But when twenty of us sat on the wooden bed at the same time, it caved in.

On December 26 (Boxing day) the terrible Tsunami hit Indian Ocean islands resulting in hundreds and thousands perishing. The wrath of nature proved once again that despite all advances in civilization, we are still mere children to combat nature's fury.

I spent a lonely Christmas and New Year in Stuttgart as Devmitra was away visiting her sister in US. I could submerge myself in festivities around me and enjoy the mirthful faces of people around me, much like we have during Pujas in Kolkata or during Deewali elsewhere in India.

Thus ended my first year in Europe, mixed bag comprised of some happiness and some troubles but more on the happier side. I had this valuable learning that any experience should always make you better and stronger, else it is not an experience worth living. Moreover, in any circumstance that you live, you will always find happiness, peace and joy, you will just have to look around and seek for it.

Pics: Stills of a wonderful European summer. The sunflower was right in the perch of my house.

My stint at Deutschland - chapter 5

2009-02-18T09:06:00.001+05:30

Heinzelinweg is memorable for a variety of reasons. I settled down here peceafully for a much longer time and there was no need to worry about cleanliness and relocation. The area itself was very peaceful, far removed from cacophonies of busy city streets. Not far from it were several great lush green meadows,and forested regions.I often used to take long evening strolls in the afternoon which used to take me past the meadows with horses grazing, past a small locality with neat shopping areas and bus stops, towards the railway tracks, or towards the forest. You could walk miles along the railway track.

However for the first few months I had so little time to myself owing to incessant travelling. From my place, it hardly took 10 min and 10 euros to go to Echterdingen airport. And return could have been using a S Bahn, only if the time was suitable, number of S Bahns being very few on that route.

In October Stuttgart holds what is fondly called as Oktoberfest or Volksfest - a kind of festival, probably a long tradition in German countries to celebrate Herbst or Autumn which provides a rich harvest. A heavily mechanized Germany has still clung to its agricultural tradition. In Munich the Oktoberfest is famous, for buccaneers have made it famous. The quantity of beer that flows during this period is mindboggling and Germans look down upon anybody who cannot drink beer, their favourite drink.

Stuttgarter Volksfest is a much subdued affair, although it takes place in a huge area called Cannstatter Messe in Bad Cannstatt area, which is very near to the city centre or downtown.

I remember it to be a Sunday, I had come back from Utrecht to enjoy a lazy weekend after a hectic week of work. To be precise, it was 2nd of October, Mahatma Gandhi's birthday back in India. I boarded an S Bahn from office (our weekend work) along with Devmitra and few other colleagues and set off for Bad Cannstatt. I had once come to this area along with Devmitra on a previous occasion, but that was more of misadventure in search of Mercedes Benz museum which we could not locate at that time.

The Bad (pronounciation "Baat") Cannstatt derives its names from Bad or Baths in German, it has a natural source of hot bath (hot springs) which apparently has healing power and which are so ubiquitous all around Baden area (probably thats why the name Baden or "many baths" has come into being). The volksfest has a websit of its own - http://www.cannstatter-volksfest.de/, with an english version.

We got down from the S Bahn and walked towards the entrance. An amazing crowd, hitherto unthinkable in a quiet plac like Stuttgart, had gathered. It almost like the traditional fairs that we have back in India, only there the number of such fairs are coming down, because of various reasons, lack of space being one.

We enjoyed ourselves thoroughly, indulged in corns and cotton candies, took snaps with ghosts and witches and some of us got onto rides which were unnerving in nature (it lifts you to a great height and then drops you!)

On the way back we had dinner in Burger King. Next day early morning I had to travel.

My stint at Deutschland - Chapter 4

2009-02-15T20:16:00.001+05:30

Its now last week of April and I should have to search for a new house. Next month two more of my colleagues were coming, so I decided to share an accomodation for a change and got a pointer from an agency called Schwaben Stern, promoted by Frau Carmen Maier. The house was in Echterdingen Leinfelden, in the suburbs, near Stuttgart Flughafen or airport, the address being Goldaecker strasse no. 1. It was with some difficulty that I finally located the Goldaecker strasse. The bus no. 72 from Echterdingen station dropped me at the bus stop from where it was another quarter of a mile walk. The landlord was Signor Franko Pala, an Italian working in Lufthansa. He was fluent in English, with a goati and specs and we hit on instantly. The rooms were nice, clean and tidy and there was no problem in signing off a 6 months contract.

However once myself and my colleagues Shailendu and later Ashish Malik settled down, we had the first signs of troubles. The landlord often use to come to apartment in our absence and also presence, without prior appointment. Being bachelors, working 80 hours a week and then coming back home after travelling for 1 hour and cooking a meal, did'nt leave any of us much time to clean the house daily and whenever our landlord came, he was heartbroken by seeing his dear apartment rooms, esp. kitchen, in a state of perpetual mess. We assured him that we would clean it every fortnight, or even every week, but to no avail. I was away in Utrecht for most of the time and my colleagues were bearing the brunt. He demanded another 320 Euro per month from us for a professional cleaning service every week, which we were under no obligation to consent to as per contract. Upon his insistence and since the matters were going too far, we had to request Schwaben Stern to break the contract. Frau Maier very kindly understood our position and agreed for a break up and we are ever debtful to her on the same.

So house hunting time again, in the month of June when flowers are blooming all around, clear skies and beautiful weather makes Europe look like the paradise on earth. We got a house at Mittelstrasse 15 in Degerloch, at a cost of 1500 Euro which was to be borne by 4 of us together. We could stay in this rather expensive fashion (like four rabbits in a hole paying a large rent for that hole) for about a month. In the meanwhile I was supposed to relocate to Milton Keyenes near London, and my colleagues switched home to a more convenient location. The only significant event in this house was our breaking a small part of a window and having to pay 300 Euro as a penalty for the same.

My Milton Keyenes did not work out, I almost betrayed my managers and decided to stay back in Stuttgart. The decision was a well thought out one, however not a properly executed one and hence caused some heartburn. The fact that I would be staying back in Stuttgart so gladdened me that I ignored those minor hiccups. Moreover Helmut fuiously backed me and even went to his boss Lutz to retain me in Stuttgart (lucky to have such a boss/client).

In the meanwhile I also had to travel back to India for a week. My dad had passed away the previous year and it was his death annversary related religious ceremony that I had to attend, come what may. I got my tickets booked from Mr. Sen of Asia Kultur Tours in Stuttgart and as a consequence got Air India tickets. Flights were not bad. In Mumbai airport I had to pay 5 Euro to customs as a bribe(my fault actually, did not know that a digital camera was exempt from duty).

On coming back I had to shift temporarily into an accomodation near Vaihingen, courtesy Night and Day, but from where I was again driven out, (and u've guessed it right) again on grounds on cleanliness. This time Night and Day was not so friendly and sent me a nasty stinker, refusing to provide any more accomodation. Frau Maier arranged for an alternate which I gladly accepted. I was supposed to shift to my new accomodation on Saturday after flying back from UK on Friday. Myself and my colleague Prem Sagar Challa were travelling together. The trip is memorable for a variety of reasons - 1) When I was about to open my notebook to deliver a presentation in front of a room full of British clients, Kishore Kumar's song began to emanate from it loud and clear, startling even the bravest British minds. Looks like my junior colleagues on the previous day were listening to music on my laptop and they neither closed the winamp, nor shut the laptop down. I somehow mumbled an "execuse me" and literally ran straight towards the garden for shutting down the laptop as in the hurry I was not able to to do even that 2) While returning we missed our Birtish Airways flight by a whisker, courtesy a traffic jam on the highway. So had to put up in a Sheraton near Heathrow (overpriced at 188 GBP) and shared a room with my colleague as we were running out of our allowances 3) On returning to Stuttgart on Saturday morning, near Prem's house, we almost lost our laptops. The lady taxi driver was about to start oblivious of the fact that our laptops were still inside. We could barely stop her after running behind the taxi for some distance and she was very apologetic 4) On the same day I was supposed to withdraw money for paying rent in advance to my future landlady and was supposed to meet her at 1 PM in her house, but found that all Deutsche Bank ATMs were down owing to some server problems. The Italian taxi driver who roamed around with me for sometime in search of ATMs ultimately threw his hands up and I payed my last penny for the taxi fare and headed towards Koenigstrasse for spending the day with my suitcases and bags and couple of books. My other belongings were with my colleagues and they were not at home and they had put up a polite notice on their door requesting me not to enter (even though I had a spare key) because they were paying their landlord for three persons (themselves) and I was the fourth guy. The landlord somehow had a doubt that a fourth person was staying with them (myself, I had piled on for a couple of days, being driven out from my own house), and was trying to get hold of that fact to demand more money. An entry with a spare key would be like giving oneself away altogether, so did not dare risk it. However I enjoyed spending 4 hours in Koenigstrasse, sitting on the green grass and reading books and leisurely watching people.

In the evening things turned out to be better. I could withdraw money, come to the new place in Echterdingen, could locate it with the help of a helpful German couple who were on a evening walk, meet my landlady Frau Inge Kremmer, after waiting for some time in front of her house (the best landlady one could ever have, vide my musings on "landlady" to get the details) and checked in to my new accomodation at Heinzelinweg 1.

What happened next? Thats a new chapter.

My stint at Deutschland- Chapter 3

2009-02-10T10:12:00.001+05:30

By this time I had to start travelling, to Netherlands, Utrecht to be more precise, where our project was going on. It was not a very engaging thought to wake up in the morning at 4 AM in biting cold, take a bath (esp. when hot water does'nt run continuously), pack your bags and hop on to a taxi at 5.30 AM to catch a plane at 6 AM. But precisely those were the things that I had to do. And then for the whole day you sit with a bunch of clients who are still not very warm with you for various reasons. In the afternoon you sometimes have a rather tasteless lunch and yearn for that rice and curry which you miss. And then evening after everybody else in the office goes home, you call yourelf a taxi and go and check in at the hotel, take a shower and even though you are too tired to go out, drag yourself along to a nearby restaurant to have dinner, or else opt for the room service, and then blissfully go to sleep thinking what is awaiting you the next day.

The days when I was in Stuttgart were used to be good though. In the weekends I could have a stroll in Koenigstrasse watching merry crowd, take a bite or two in a MacDonald or a Doenor Kebap joint or simply seat at home and read a book. After I bought my first digital camera I went around taking snaps of almost anything and everything I liked.

I was taken for my first movie in Stuttgart by my colleagues in a small theatre called Europa, (which closed down soon after) where English movies were shown. There were'nt any multiplex in Stuttgart, just plain old fashioned "Kinos". The movie we watched was Gothica, starred by Halle Berry, and it was quit a forgettable one. On that night I travelled for the first time without tickets as I thought that the pass which was given to me after local registration and which was supposed to be valid only after it was endorsed by them, which I did not do, was a valid one. Fortunately there was no checking that night, else I would have been a "Schwarzfahrer" caught in the act and would have to cough up 40 euro. Fortunately that did not happen.

The other incident worth remembering during this time was my visit to Paderborn on an Easter weekend to meet Sujoyda and family who were staying there. Paderborn is almost 5 hours ICE journey from Stuttgart and I set off at 5.30 AM. On the previous night I got back from Utrecht, with a lot of difficulty. I was travelling with Ritu, my project manager, and Lutz Beck, my client side project manager. The KLM city hopper from Utrecht to Stuttgart was stuck by a lightning and got cancelled. Since we had a Europe class ticket, we were rebooked in a Lufthansa flight to Munich at 9 PM. While boarding the flight Ritu checked in his small bag containing all credit cards, and that bag did not arrive at Munich. So he panicked and got all his credit cards cancelled. Lutz drove us till Stuttgart from Muenchen in a rented car and we arrived at 3 AM. Ritu helped me in getting a taxi at 4 AM to go to the station. Goes without saying I slept all along in the train, only to wake up to change my train at Kassel.

Paderborn is a nice quiet sleepy town, and from there we took a trip to Cologne where I bought my digital camera. There we met Jagmeet Singh, the jovial colleague, who had come all the way from Toulouse (he was working there on an Airbus project) to meet Sujoyda. We had great fun together and the lunch and dinner prepared by Shibani (Sujoyda's wife) were simply marvellous. We also went to visit Neanderthal, the place were Neanderthal man's remnants were first to be found. And later we went to Atta-Hoehle, the stalactite cave. I have some photos of the trip here.

All good things come to an end and I had to return from Paderborn to Stuttgart and then go away again for a trip to Utrecht. When I returned, there was a surprise in store for me in the form of a letter from my agency stating that they cannot renew my house contract for the month(it was a monthly contract) and that they were providing me with alternate options. Much later I came to know from the same agency that I was literally driven out owing to the fact that I failed to keep the rooms clean. I always had this stupid notion that cleaning of rooms, like cleaning of bedsheets and pillow covers, was a duty of the landlady and she would engage somebody for doing the same, little knowing that in Germany no maid is employed for cleaning the rooms and that cleaning charge is very high. So it was my ignorance rather than deliberate neglect that led to my expulsion.

What happened next? Let me cover that in detail in the next chapter.

My stint at Deutschland - chapter 2

2009-02-08T15:05:00.001+05:30

The next few days went away like hurricane. The next day I had to get up and join office. I gave a miss to the breakfast thinking that it would cost me when all the time it was just free (an information which I got later from other colleagues), took a taxi and landed at Am Wallgraben 129, the DaimlerChrysler (erstwhile, now it is only Daimler) ITM office address. Our team was sitting in the ground floor on the right hand side and since it was befor 9 AM, very few had bothered to turn up, one of them being Paparao Venkata. An intelligent and extremely helpful chap, he soon provided me with basic ingredients of information for my survival, including a 5 Euro calling card for which he atfirst refused to take the price but upon my insistence relented. Then slowly came the others and I met them one by one, all the voices that I had heard over telephone or all the names that I saw on the emails now became a full blown person. "Oh my god, she looks like this!" or "Well, this guy has a mild voice but looks rather vast" kind of thoughts flooded my mind. Then I got my laptop, met my manager Ritu and other colleagues and got to know my work along with another fat lot of helpful information. Amit Bobade for instance showed me how to use vvs.de and locate all transport schedules in Stuttgart. But I still had not mustered enough courage to venture out in local transports. I met my German team lead and client Helmut Gann, who later proved to be an antithesis of a stereotype German. He was affable, emotional but great and able team lead, always maintaining a personal touch, and very eager to reach out and help.

I had to go for local registration to Moeringen Rathaus and then to the foreign office for my visa extension. I had maintained constant touch with our immigration consultant from KPMG, Naveen, and he was working on my work permit extension. In the meanwhile the Mueringen Rathaus gave me a breather for three more months by extending a temporary residence permit, with which I was even allowed to travel to Schengen countries, an imperative for me, as the project location was Netherlands. On the way to foreign office from my hotel I got into one driven by a female Turkish taxi driver named Gul, who had a hearty discussion with me in broken English - about her son, about Stuttgart, Germans, how India is like, etc. On the way back from foreign office, in search of taxi, I happened to get into one driven by a Pakistani fellow from Multan with whom I had a wide ranging discussion, from politics to movies and we agreed that all problems between the two countries are owing to the "gore logs", meaning white men.

By now I had become acquainted with the free breakfast served by Mercure. However a pressing problem was on my mind, after the first 5 days I need to find an accomodation of my own.

Infy had a policy (or still has) that it would pay for hotel accomodation only for the first 5 days, within which the employee would have to find an accomodation of his own. Therefore I got into the search mode with the help of my colleagues, none of whom had a vacant space to share. I was also not too keen on sharing. Therefore the first option was to look for houses coming up in Daimler employee bulletin by ex and prsent Daimler employees. This would be the cheapest option. However my luck did not work out. So I got the number of Night and Day, an agency who provides pointers for accomodation and takes a fee from the house owner. The catch here is, you cannot see the apartment before you finalize the contract, and once you finalize the contract you cannot back out. Therefore its a little risky, but beggars are not choosers. After some search and plenty of advises (often contradictory) from colleagues, I selected this small studio apartment in Bopser area (near downtown I was told) and confirmed it. At 530 Euro per month, it fitted my budget nicely (even though it was fairly expensive by German standards).

On Friday evening I got my luggage from the hotel, took a taxi and headed for my new abode. The taxi driver like a typical Germn was not very communicative, but on entering Bopser area he said, "You stay here?", I said yes. He said "Its too expensive!"

I met my landlady who opened the street door on my ringing the bell. She was a French married to a German and was very cordial (obvious, somebody paying such an astronomical sum for a measly one room must be either a Maharajah or a fool, in either case he needs a good treatment). She could only speak a few English sentences, along with some French and some German. I could only speak English and a few French words like "Bon Jour Madame", which impressed her a lot. So we got along falrly well and I settled down in my tiny but comfortable room. Here are three pictures of that room along with the small kitchenette.

I went hungry that night, there was no restaurant nearby or I could not locate any. Next day was a saturday. My young colleagues had planned to take me out for a city tour and also get me familiarized with Stuttgart, the transport, grocery shopping, Indian stores and Koenigstrasse, the hangout place for weekends. I bought some rice and pulses from Maharaja cash and curry, the Sardarji shop at Stadtmitte and that evening tried cooking a "Khichudi", sans any salt, because I had none. After about a week without Indian homemade food, this tasted like heaven. I also bought several calling cards to make calls at home and got my mobile phone SIM card (Vodafone) which cost 40 Euro. Then I wrote a long letter to my Mom describing all the experiences and posted it from Deutsche Post @ 3.50 Euro, but sadly it never reached her (Indian postal system must have been the culprit).

My stay at this place was uneventful except for the fact that on weekdays I worked till 9.30 or 10 PM in the evening and came home late at night (integration test and training document preparation was going on and everything was on fire). There are few incidents which are worth remembering - 1) I had wrongly disposed of my garbage much to the chagrin of my landlady who bought along her sister (who knew English reasonably well) to tell me how to dispose off garbage (bio in bio muell or brown bins, others in restmuell or blackbins and papers in papier basket, green bins) 2) I was not getting hot water and hence bought it to the attenion of Night and Day and my landlady came rushing and showed me how to operate the taps. Still I did not get a running hot water and often used my rice cooker as a container to hold warm water and bathe with it everyday 3) On the weekends I was working from home and listening to music and at the same time singing myself.MY landlady came one afternoon, knocked my door and made a very polite request - "you sing very well, I like your songs, but please, if you do not sing after 9 PM in the evening it would be good".

I was almost driven out from this house owing to my abject misunderstanding with regards to cleaning the rooms and kitchen, but thatanother story and would tell it in the next chapter.

My stint at Deutschland - chapter 1

2009-02-07T13:18:00.001+05:30

Let me see if I can remember a major chapter of my life, the eventful stay in Germany, those memorable three years which I would cherish for ever because of a multitude of events that were associated with that stay. I was working as an SAP consultant in Infosys at that time. I still remember that when my greencard came for the CESAR project in Stuttgart, my passport was not ready. It had expired just then. So I had to first renew it with Dada's help, from Kolkata RPO. It took a month and more than 1000 bucks and atleast one agent for my passport to get renewed (even under the so called Tatkal or instanteneous scheme). Finally when it came my German green card (three months duration) was about to expire in 15 days. So I hastily raised a Payana and booked my flight tickets, got approval from Sushil Tiwari (project manager at offshore), got the forex (around 4600 Euro with travel advance) and booked a taxi from my home to airport on 13th March, 2004. The Jet Airways flight to Chennai from Hyderabad Begumpet was at 7 PM in the evening and I reached Chennai by 9 PM. People had cautioned me repeatedly on the amount of luggage that I should carry, "Never, ever exceed the stipulated weight limit of airlines", was their two pennies, "Else, you end up paying hefty fines, which may be more than airfare in some cases". How prophetic, I got a full blast of it while leaving Germany, but thats another story. For now, I had a big bag, one suitcase, and a cabin baggage. At the Lufthansa counter the weights of each individual piece did not exceed by much amount, so the girl at the counter let me go, but she did a thorough scrutiny of my visa. Not without reason though, I had heard horror stories. One of my colleagues, Manjunath, had apparently boarded an airplane to Germany thinking that his visa was valid, but the day on which he was scheduled to land was 24hrs ahead of the day he was supposed to land as per his visa, and he was deported from Frankfurt airport. Apparently nobody noticed the discrepancy, except the German immigration counters, who are pretty thorough and ruthlessly efficient.

For me the story was quite different. Visa was valid for only 7 more days, within which I would have to renew it. But an optimist like me never gets apprehensive about such small matters. With almost a Micawbarian attitude of "something will turn up" I had not given much thought to the whole business.

The boarding pass allocation was smooth, security check and immigration was smoother to say the least ( I had shown my mobile and walkman to customs asking them if these would require any declaration, I had heard horror stories about corrupt customs officials at Indian airports, but they probably took pity and said those things won't require a check) but then came the blow. The onward flight was delayed and hence so would be the fate of the flight from Hyderabad to Frankfurt. Nobody knew the extent of delay. Anyway, in the excitement of my first trip to abroad, I did not mind as long as the plane turned up. So we waited at the departure lounge and met a few friends, esp. with a consultant from HCL who was travelling to UK on a short stint and who shared his "bhujia" with me. I met one of my IIM A juniors, Rakesh Kumar, who was travelling with his boss to USA on the same flight. Then there was this bored looking American Indian couple with two kids whose husband was an Indian with a Geekish look and wife was a white American. At around 2 AM (when the flight was actually supposed to take off at 1.30 AM), the information came that the flight is delayed by 5 hrs and 30 min and would not take off until 7 AM. Instead, Lufthansa decided to provide us with a free meal, even though its an odd hour for a meal and I was not hungry, still queued up in front of the provisions supply and got my share.

Every agony has its end and ours too ended at 7 AM. The flight took off and the 8 hours on the board was uneventful.

When finally the flight landed in Frankfurt on 14th March I had missed my connecting flight to Stuttgart that was booked, but so had other passengers and I had no reason to panic, knowing that airlines would provide some arrangement. The weather was much colder in Frankfurt airport than I anticipated and was simply not prepared for the windchill. However that was just for a short while till I would get inside the airport.

The first thing that I noticed on embarkation was the security with regard to arrival from foreign countries. This was because (I later came to know) the Madrid train bombings had taken place on the same day or day before, which was done by fundamentalists and which killed around 200. So entire Europe was jittery. Security guards escorted us to further checkings but then they let this poor innocent Indian guy go. At the immigration counter the guy checked my passport and visa thoroughly and asked me the purpose of my visit. "Business", I said. 'With whom?" "Daimler Chrysler", my proud reply. "Good business!", a somewhat comtemptuous tone, but maybe I was wrong, maybe that was the normal manner with which German officials scrutinize foreigners or "Auslander".

No reason to get my baggage as it was a through check in till Stuttgart, so I hastily went to the Lufthansa official who was helping passengers to get into new connections, and got to know mine, which was to depart at 1.30 PM local time. I had another 30 min time so I rushed to the gate. Not an easy task, considering the vastness of Frankfurt airport and the fact that I had never been to any international airport before and was not conversant with the procedure of locating departure gates. The small gate was packed with people and almost none of them spoke English.

The flight, a small city hopper from LH was on time and arrived in Stuttgart after 40 min. Now came the biggest blow of the journey. One of my bags containing a lot of my belongings did not arrive. So I went to the lost baggage section and explained them my plight and they assured me that it would arrive no doubt and would be delivered to my hotel address which I left with them. I did not have much idea about baggage los at that time and thought that what was gone was gone for good. Anyway, again my excitement took the better of me and left me no time to brood over my apparent loss.

The hotel in which I was booked by my team lead in Germany, Rajesh Singhvi, was Mercure, which was near airport. At the rate of 90 Euro per day and 55 Euro over weekends it just fitted my allowance provided by Infy.

I was in constant touch with my colleagues in Stuttgart before the journey and got a primer in cultural sensitivity. It was told that its considered impolite in Europe if you take a taxi alone and sit at the back, because the driver would expect the passenger to sit beside him/her, and if you really want to sit at the back, take the permission of the driver. Therefore I duely took my sit beside the driver and gave him the hotel address. In German Mercure is pronounced literally as "Mer-Ku-Re", so it was quite natural that he was not able to understand my pronunciation of the hotel name as "Mar-Cure". However on shwing the address, he gave a curt node and started off. We reached in 10 -15 min.

A bright sunny midday, with a little cold breeze, that was my first encounter with German weather. Smaller buildings, no skycrappers, plenty of green and so few people on the street, and everything so neat and clean and well planned, a total contrast to my chaotic, overpopulated India.

I gave the taxi driver 1 Euro tips above his fare (result of a crash course on cultural differences) and took the printed receipt. Then I tugged my luggage along to the reception counter, no porter came to help me, there was none. The reception was manned by a pleasant faced guy called Alex, who took the deposit for the stay, told me the timings for breakfast and handed me the room key and showed me the direction of the elevator. The room was nice and after a tiresome journey I should have slept soundly after taking a bath. But eventually I decided to make a few phone calls, one to my home in Calcutta to assure my Mom of my arrival in one piece. Even though the phone call from hotel was prohibitively expensive, I had simply no option as it was a Sunday and everything in Germany was closed and there was no phone booth nearby.

After a brief rest I decided to take a walk around the place. Got to know from Alex that there might be some phone booths at a nearby place called "Europaplatz, which were red tall buildings" and which was across the main street, I got out of the hotel, clad only in a T shirt, and instantly realized what a big mistake it had been. I almost got chewed by the cold wind (temperature was around 8 deg celius even though the afternoon sun was present). In Europa platz I found few shops which were mostly closed and a few people loitering around. I called Rajesh Singhvi to inform (and assure) him of my arrival and got some initial funda. Then I went to a Thai retaurant and smartly ordered a cup of coffee and asked them if they had rice. When they said in affirmative, I smugly told them, "Then I should come back and have rice here tomorrow!". After the wamth of the coffee gave me some respite, I came back to the hotel and with some peace of mind after those phone calls, went asleep and was awakened briefly by Alex bringing up my "lost" baggage to my room, apparently LH had delivered it in the evening. Another incident worth remembering on that day was my utter surprise in not finding any drinking water in the room (in India room service always leaves a jug or bottle of water in rooms). So I asked Alex and got to know that in Germany people don't leave drinking water in the rooms (as they don't drink much water anyway), however I can drink water from the bathroom taps if I want as all water in Germany is eminently drinkable. I was atfirst a little annoyed as having told to drink "bathroom water", but later when I tasted some of it and liked it, I had no taboo. Later I came to know the truth behind Alex's statement, however its often kitchen tap water that people drank, not the bathroom one, for obvious reasons.