Ideas, Encounters and Observations

Realizing that my older posts assumed many things of the reader and demanded a lot of patience from him/her, I decided to make things easier for them. Simply put, whatever I have written here are issues anybody can understand and hopefully like reading. This is in many ways a preview of what I am going to write about in the future. Also I passionately request the readers to tell what they feel about my blog by posting comments with names. It would be a waste of time if the reader has nothing to say after spending time reading all that is written there.

Age is in the eyes of the Beholder: Of late I am seen sporting a beard which has become a staple topic for all those with whom I interact. One consequence of having such an appearance is that I look older than I am. So the other day, I went to enquire about the items placed on the shelf in a mall to the lady arranging them. Not to be admonished by her for deficiency of deference and etiquette, I started by addressing her as Aunty. She replied icily that she was not an “Aunty” and disappeared before I could get my confusion cleared. Probably I did not pay much attention to her face and the fact that with a beard I could have been looking older than her. Customer satisfaction was chucked out of the window.

This has happened a few times in the recent past. For reasons of convenience and politeness I address most people as Uncle or Aunty. Most of them have taken it quite lightly, particularly men, which should be obvious.

Our obsession with the Trivial: A different way of looking at things should tell us that many of the issues and headlines we are debating are very petty. And I am not referring to the trash going by the name of Page 3, Gossip, and Entertainment etc. The latest headlines have centred on the nuclear deal, the 123 agreement, but has anyone asked whether we really need a nuclear deal? Will it solve our energy problems? God forbid this, but what if a Chernobyl occurs in India? What about the radioactive waste?

183 people died in the serial bomb blasts that rocked Mumbai about an year ago. But spare a thought for the those people, almost equal in number, who are killed in rail accidents in Mumbai’s perilously crowded boxes of metal called trains, every month.

Forget a nuclear war, if experts and the pile of evidence they have compiled is to be believed, then global warming will submerge many of the world’s coastal cities in a few years from now. Laughable and lamentable it may sound, but a possible cure for erectile dysfunction garners more attention than the people who die out of such seemingly simple water borne diseases such as diarrhoea, cholera etc. If newsprint is something to go by, then obesity is more dangerous than malnutrition.

Steven Levitt so wonderfully highlighted it in Freakonomics- travelling in car is thought to be safer than a flight whereas it is the other way round. What we think about so passionately need not be so important after all?

Indian Idol is Indian Idle: How many of you have heard the latest song of Abhijit Sawant? Any idea of those warriors who battled and emerged victorious from the so called talent hunt shows? How many of you have seen A.R Rahman, India’s most respected music director and the man behind many memorable songs, on the panel of the judges of such shows which have attracted TRPs even in the regional channels?

By now it must be obvious that other than generating hype and money, such shows have done nothing else.

Extending this to cricket, I have forgotten the number of time self-proclaimed cricket pundits have hailed newcomers as the “face and future of Indian cricket”. Neither the number of sixes nor the brands endorsed is in any way indicator of a player’s worth. The last time any Indian film was a serious contender for the Academy Awards (i.e. the Oscars) was a Marathi film called ‘Shwaas’ and here we are obsessed with “Rang De Basanti”.

As Warren Buffet so succinctly put it “Opinion poll is no substitute for thought”.

Bollywood: The Fountainhead of the ideas of the youth. I have observed that most of the ideas in the minds of teenagers have their origin in films, which given the kind of films produced, is very deplorable. The electronic media, especially films are supposed to act as mirrors to the society. In our case they are the other way round. If my 7^th standard Civics textbook is to be believed, films are meant to be medium for spreading social messages.

Anyways I have often heard the statement “It is because of the politicians”. Great, but where does that take us. For starters, we have to bear in mind that the people called as politicians are elected by us and that prior to election they were one among us. Just as good, bad and ugly as our countrymen and a lot smarter. So in the film Nayak starring Anil Kapoor and Amrish Puri, a utopian world is painted where the root of all evil is the Chief Minister. In one day, Anil Kapoor transforms the State into a Ram Rajya, the ideal crime-free state.

Nothing could be farther from the truth. For many of our current problems the solution requires not just participation but sacrifice from certain sections of our population. It may be even perceived as a zero sum game where A’s loss is B’s gain.

Take for example, the problem of slums on encroached public land. Legally, the slum dwellers are on the weaker side and evictions can only create law and order problem. From where will a state with an astronomical debt of one followed by 14 zeroes get the money from? More importantly where will they be rehabilitated? In politics it is a battle between idealism and populism and an equation of votes. Surely they do eat our resources more than they should but it also must be understood that they must appease their voters to stay in power.

Is is it not strange and ironic that the heroes-heroines and role models who talk about pati-parmeshwar, the ideal bhartiya-nari and one life-one love theory should have marital problems for which the easiest answer is divorce Where else can such double standards and hypocrisy be seen?

To be continued….