आओ हिंदी की बात करें

आओ हिन्दी की बात करें, आओ हिन्दी में बात करें।

कुछ गपशप, कुछ गुफ़्तगु, कुछ बकर-बकर,

आपस में, परस्पर, एक दूसरे के साथ करें।

आओ हिन्दी की बात करें, आओ हिन्दी में बात करें।

क्या है? कैसी है? कौन सी है हिन्दी?

इसके विभिन्न, मुख्तलिफ़, बहुरूपीये,

रूप रंगों से, चेहरों से ही शुरुआत करें?

आओ हिन्दी की बात करें, आओ हिन्दी में बात करें।

हिमाद्रि तुंग शृंग सी प्रबुद्ध शुद्ध तत्सम पुकार,

सखी वो मुझसे कहकर जाते की तद्भव गुहार,

मैय्या मोरी मैं नहीं माखन खायो का देशज दुलार,

इश्क़ पर ज़ोर नहीं का विदेशी प्यार,

कहीं हुआ हो उद्गम, सब हिन्दी है मेरे यार!

जिनकी भाषा हिन्दी-प्रमाण, जिन्हें राष्ट्रकवि हम कहते हैं,

उनकी कविता में भगवद् मुख से, ये सभी शब्द तो बहते हैं।

"बाँधने मुझे तो आया है, जंजीर बड़ी क्या लाया है?

यदि मुझे बाँधना चाहे मन, पहले तो बाँध अनन्त गगन।

सूने को साध न सकता है, वह मुझे बाँध कब सकता है?"

इन शब्दों में कितनो के बता, स्रोत साध तू सकता है?

हमने जो हिन्दी सीखी, सुनी, बोली, पढ़ी,

थी वो, है वो, मिश्रित, टेढ़ी मेढ़ी।

सुन्दर अनुपम, पर सममित नहीं,

थी वो, है वो, कई रूपों में गढ़ी। 

वो नहीं संकीर्ण, न सीमित स्थिर,

संगम सबसे कर चली, बढ़ी। 

किसे कहें अपभ्रंश, किसे विशुद्ध,

बोलियाँ भिन्न हैं, ज़रूर, न विरुद्ध!

फिर इन आलतू फालतू बातों से,

क्यों करें हम हिन्दी को अवरुद्ध?

लोहपथगामिनी को हिन्दी माने या रेलगाड़ी को,

या जो हर हिन्दी भाषी असल में बोले, उस ट्रेन को?

की फरक पैंदा है ब्रो!

पानीपूरी, पानी-पताशे, पुचका, गुपचुप, गोलगप्पे,

जो कहना है कहो!

मतलब तो स्वाद से है, नाम कुछ भी हो!

ज़िहाल-ए-मिस्कीं  मकुन ब-रंजिश उर्दू को 

वही धड़कन सुनाई देगी, तुम्हारा दिल हो या हमारा दिल हो!

बचपन में दिल्ली में "मेरेको" बिस्कुट खाने का चस्का था,

बिहार में गाँवकी गाछी में आम "मैं" नहीं, "हम" खाया करते थे।

मुंबई लोकल की भीड़ में वाट "अपुन" की लगती थी,

इस अनेकता में एकता देख, "ख़ुद" तो पा जाया करते थे। 

यादों को छोड़ चलिए बात करें कुछ आज की,

हिन्दी के बारे में सबके मौजूदा मिज़ाज की।

कोई जुड़ना चाहे संस्कारों से, शुध्द भाषा का करे उपयोग,

कोई सांसारिक, ग्लोबल, अंग्रेजी शब्दों का करे प्रयोग।

कुछ राष्ट्रभाषा / राजभाषा के विवादों में हैं पड़े हुए,

कुछ हिन्दी / हिंदुस्तानी/ उर्दू में करते रहें वियोग। 

पर कुछ के शोर में क्यों करें वक़्त बर्बाद?

छोटे मोठे अंतरों को क्यों दें इतना भाव,

जन साधारण में कहाँ है कुछ विवाद?

हिन्दी तो है प्रेम की, प्यार की भाषा,

मेल मिलाप की, दोस्त,यार की भाषा।

न मेरी-तेरी, ये हम सबकी, सबको मिलाने वाली, 

गली मोहल्ले, बाज़ार चौपाल की, घर बार की भाषा।

जो जोड़े लोगों को, आपस में बढ़ाये प्रेम विशेष,

हिन्दी में उन सब शब्दों का निश्चित होता समावेश।

जानना हो अगर हिन्दी क्या है, कैसी है,

तो पहले पूछिए हिन्दी कौन है, किसके जैसी है?

पाएंगे कि आप और हम ही हैं हिन्दी!

यत् ब्रम्होच्चारित तत् वेद, यथा तथा,

जो तू और मैं, आप और हम बोलें वही हिन्दी भाषा।।

My Son is here :-)

The biggest event of my life has happened. My lovely wife gave birth to my first child, my son on 16th July.

The feeling currently is a mixture of relief, ecstasy, joy, pride, along with anxiety of the welfare of my wife and my son. Both are doing well, though.

I'll expand on this blog soon, when I get a minute from looking adoringly at my son. And changing nappies ;-). Just wanted to get this in.

Festivals - Spirits or Spiritual?

Have been meaning to post on this topic for quite some time.

Basically, the point I want to examine here is - Are religious festivals about festivities or about the religious activities like praying? In other words, is Christmas about parties and gifts and Christmas trees, or is it about Christ and hence a time to remember the God and pray to him? Is Diwali about bursting crackers and eating sweets or is it about remembering Lord Rama and his triumph over evil and praying to him? Is Id about Seviyan or about Allah? The list goes on...

Most of the holidays, all over the world, are woven around religion. However, in today's world, they have lost their religious significance to most of us. For us, festivals mean time to celebrate and enjoy; or if nothing else, relax as it is a holiday. The religious part is just an excuse to have a break, have fun. Is that right?

Mousetrapped

I am mousetrapped.

Agatha Christie's Mousetrap is the world's longest running play, playing in London West End for last 55 years. Quite strange for a murder mystery, you would have thought that by now, the audience would have cracked the whodunit.

So here I am UK. Being a major Agatha Christie fan and a fan of live theater, I had to see this. So I dragged my lovely wife along to the matinée show as an anniversary treat [yes, that's my idea of romance :-) ]. I was expecting the theater to be empty and the performance to be just satisfactory, obviously expecting that the great actors would have moved on to the latest commercial successes and taken the audience along with them. To our pleasant surprise, here we were, watching the 22659th show of a play (see the photograph) and there still was a large enough audience. A further pleasant surprise was that we had bought the tickets for the upper circle, but the usher was chivalrous to my dear wife and found us a couple of seats in the front stalls. Too good.

But forget all that preamble. To have seen Mousetrap is an experience in itself. This is not a review of the play, for what can I say that has not been written already a thousand times. This is about my experience. First, for all those people who are not into live theater, get into it. The kind of involvement with the performance, the kind of connect of the cast with the audience that is achieved here is unparalleled.

So here we are, making small talk and waiting for the play to begin when suddenly, the whole theater goes dark. A lone voice on radio gives us a news that a murder has happened and the suspect has been seen wearing a gray overcoat, a dark scarf and a felt hat. One by one, the characters of the play keep on appearing, each wearing similar clothing. The plot unfolds gradually, and at every step, your mind is torn between following the clues/ red herrings dropped in the classical Agatha Christie style and observing the wonderful acting and expressions of the actors. Guessing the whodunit should not be too difficult for Christie die-hards, keeping yourself uninvolved and hence not falling for the red herrings will certainly be much more difficult.

I cannot tell you the story or the ending. According to tradition, during the final bows, the cast announces to the audience, "Having watched this, you are our partners in crime. So do not reveal the ending". Those of you lucky enough to be in London or near-abouts, do not miss this. Do not be bothered if you don't like murders or murder mysteries, Agatha Christie's were "crime-less murders", as a friend puts it, meaning that there is no violence or unpleasantness in the story.

Meanwhile, I am enjoying my status as being a "partner in crime".

Lyrics from Bharat Ek Khoj

सृष्टी से पहले सत नहीं था, असत भी नहीं
अंतरिक्ष भी नहीं आकाश भी नहीं था
छिपा था क्या कहाँ किसने ढँका था
उस पल तो अगम अटल जल भी कहाँ था

सृष्टी का कौन है कर्ता
कर्ता है वा अकर्ता
ऊंचे आकाश में रहता
सदा अध्यक्ष बना रहता
वही सचमुच में जानता या नहीं भी जानता
है किसी को नहीं पता, नहीं पता, नहीं है पता........

-----------------------------------------------------

वो था हिरण्यगर्भ सृष्टी से पहले विद्यमान
वो ही तो सारे भूत जात का स्वामी महान
जो है अस्तित्वमान धरती आसमान धारण कर
ऐसे किस देवता की उपासना करें हम अवि देकर

जिस के बल पर तेजोमय है अम्बर
पृथ्वी हरी भरी स्थापित स्थिर
स्वर्ग और सूरज भी स्थिर
ऐसे किस देवता की उपासना करें हम अवि देकर

गर्भ में अपने अग्नि धारण कर पैदा कर
व्याप था जल इधर उधर नीचे ऊपर
जगा चुके वो का एकमेव प्राण बनकर
ऐसे किस देवता की उपासना करें हम अवि देकर

ॐ सृष्टी निर्माता स्वर्ग रचयिता पूर्वज रक्षा कर
सत्य धर्म पालक अतुल जल नियामक रक्षा कर
फैली हैं दिशाएं बाहू जैसी उसकी सब में सब पर
ऐसे ही देवता की उपासना करें हम अवि देकर

Easter

Happy Easter to everyone.

I received a church pamphlet a couple of days ago which asked a very good question - what is the significance of easter beyond the easter eggs and a good long weekend?

Of course, the pamphlet was to goad people to attend church on Easter, but that aside, it put me to thinking. Two thoughts. First - Most of our festivals today have lost their religious and spiritual significance and are reduced to being shopping extravaganza breaks from work; and as far as I know, this is common across religions and countries. This post is not about this. I'll do another post in a couple of days on this topic. Thought No. 2 came from a statement made in the church pamphlet - The true message of Easter is that by being reborn, Christ has shown us the way to conquer death.

What a beautiful thought! I won't go into the details of Christ or Christianity here, because I am neither a Christian nor a scholar on Christianity, my whole take on Christ being a tremendous amount of respect for him. But what a beautiful thought! Easter is the celebration of the spiritual life being longer, stronger and everlasting, if you have lived that way. Don't even go on the religious path. By spiritual, I mean, what you stand for; the essence of your life is your spirit.

If the essence of your life is great, the death of the physical body is just another event. If the essence of your life is telling people to love their brothers and asking them to be good to each other, your spirit will continue to live. If the essence of your life is to guide people on a way of peace and salvation, you will live on. Who in the world today is more alive than Christ?

It does not matter which religion you belong to or whether you are an agnostic or an atheist. This is not about traditional religion, this is about how to live. Christ or Buddha or Krishna or Mohammad or Guru Nanak are as alive today as they were when they were physically here; perhaps more so as they now live in billions of people around the world.

So Easter, my friends, is a celebration for everyone as the celebration of the conquest of life over death. So have a nice time, enjoy, and remember that the way to conquer death is not by living forever but by living "good".

Names

In India, every name has a meaning. My name, Himanshu (हिमान्शु) means moon. हिम इव अन्शु यस्य सः (One whose rays are cool like ice) is the origin. This all basically stems from the fact that most of the names have a Sanskrit origin.

Where it becomes interesting is that very often, its not Sanskrit but the adapted version of the original word that gets bestowed on someone as his identity. Don't get me wrong, there is no problem with this. This is the way languages are born and grow, by adapting, borrowing from other languages, twisting pronunciations and so on. I am a great fan of the enrichment of languages in this way and am quite opposed to puritanism in languages. However, it leads to some interesting things, especially in names.

Most often, the name adaptation is influenced by the local languages. A good friend of mine is named Suprio. As he is a Bengali, its pronounced Shuprio, as Bengali's have a way of softening their words pronouncing "S" as "Sh". It took me a long time to remember that Bengalis also have a way of pronouncing "a" as "o" (अ as ओ) and so what was being pronounced as Shuprio originally stemmed from Supriya (सुप्रिय), meaning very loveable. [Note: Don't confuse this with Supriyaa (सुप्रिया), which is often written as Supriya in English, and is the feminine version of the word I am talkin about.]

Then there were these two friends of mine in my high school, names Pramendra (प्रमेन्द्र) and Parminder(परमिन्दर). If I were to tell you that their surnames were Pandey and Singh, and you have some basic understanding of north-Indian surnames, you can surely match the names to surnames. I am not sure whether both of them, in their years of studying Hindi together, realised that their names both stem from the same Paramendra (परमेन्द्र) and that both their names are adaptations or abberations (अपभ्रन्श), one being extra-sanskritised while the other the Punjabi version.

The trends in naming people have changed. My parents generation were all named after gods. Our generation has mostly these sanskritised meaningful names. The trend for the next generation seems to be short and sweet sounding names. All my friends' children have beautiful names like Ansh, Yash, Jiya, Parth, Rahul and so on. Nice sounding, easy to pronounce (both for Indians and Americans) and nice enough meanings. Friends, the names not mentioned here are simply a sign of my age, not of the beauty of those names. I must commend all of you in naming your children so beautifully.

Finally, an interesting coincidence in names. My wife, Madhu's (मधु) name means honey/ sweet. Apart from the fact that I like sweets a lot, note that our names put together - Madhu Himanshu - translate to honeymoon.

P.S. - My wife reminds me that moonhoney doesn't mean anything, and that is an indication she should always be the first.

Happy Holi

होली मुबारक
ये होली आपको जीवन में खुशियों के रंग भर दे
Or to speak in English, wish you all a very happy Holi. May the festival of colours fill your lives with colours of joy and bliss.

Prayer

There is a book called "My conversations with God". Wonderful book. One of the concepts in the book is on the concept of thankfulness being the only correct form of prayer. I don't claim to be quoting the book or being an authority on it, after all, I read it years ago. I am just expressing in my own words a concept which I truly believe in.

God is all about belief. Some people call it realisation, but then all belief is a realisation in the view of the believer, so its just playing with words. God is about realising that there is no separate God, that all that I am is the physical realisation of the abstract form called God. Me, the physical form was created to enable the abstract God to experience one way of existence. Finally, there is no difference.

There can be only two states in belief - you either believe in God or you don't. The don't itself can have may states, but that's irrelevant here. So if you don't believe in God, what's the point in praying? And if you believe in God, then you believe that he is everything himself (excuse use of masculine), then you believe that he is the know-all and the designer and the progressor of all events and actions; and if you do believe this, what's the point in praying and asking for something? He already knows what you are going to ask, its after all he who is experiencing an emotion through you and hence it is he who is feeling the need for what you are about to ask. So why bother asking?

Then people complaint, our prayers go unanswered. That cannot be true. A true prayer cannot go unanswered. A true prayer is like God setting up a task for himself to do. Surely, if God sets up a task for himself to do, it will happen. What does not come true is a prayer without belief. What does not come true is a new-year resolution type prayer. When you make a promise to yourself to do something you are not really committed to, you never end up doing it. Similarly, when you pray without really believing in God, the prayer never takes the form of God setting a task for himself, and hence will never be realised.

A true prayer is a prayer of thanks. A true prayer says, "God, I know that you know what I am feeling and what I need. I also know that what I need will be fulfilled by you. You are the source and the end of all my needs and desires. So thanks for giving me these needs and desires, and thanks for fulfilling them.

And, by the way, thanks for giving me the wisdom to realise all this. Have a nice day, I'm planning to have one too".

Noirissime

This piece is not for those who think munching mindlessly on a sweet Hershey’s bar is eating Chocolate. Or for those who consider white to be a variety of chocolate.

This piece is for those who consider chocolate to be the greatest edible substance known to man, for those who consider that God gave human beings the sense of taste so that he could appreciate chocolate.

I recently came across Lindt Excellence Noirissime. The GRAND EMPORER of chocolates! 99% Cocoa! Yes, 99%. Pure Bliss. For those regions of the world where this particular brand is not available, I can only offer my empathy, for I was myself one of the deprived ones till a couple of months ago. No more!

The primary ingredients of most of the chocolates in the world are – cocoa, milk and sugar. A reduction in the amount of sugar makes a chocolate bitter; a reduction in the amount of milk makes it dark. Pure chocolate lovers like their chocolates as dark and as bitter as possible. Dark/ Bitter Chocolate is an acquired taste. Adding milk and sugar makes the taste more acceptable to the hoi-polloi. It’s like adding tomato-ketchup to a well-done sheek-kebab. There is nothing more reprehensible that the sight of a well-done sheek-kebab being drowned in mindless ketchup, where does the original taste remain? Correction, one thing more reprehensible is putting so much milk in a chocolate that it becomes white and still calling it a chocolate.

Back to my favourite chocolatiers! Lindt produces the best chocolates in the world, no doubt about that. OK, one of the best! Here’s quoting them directly from the back of the chocolate pack that I am currently consuming; and I absolutely endorse this statement. “The Master Chocolatiers from Lindt express all their passion for chocolate in the Excellence range. EXCELLENCE NOIRISSIME is a revolutionary innovation in chocolate which reveals the true taste and strength of exceptional cocoa beans.”

For years that I have spent in India and Australia, I have always found myself drawn to dark and bitter chocolates. Cadbury’s Dark is good, but too sweet. Nestle’s bitter is also decent enough, a bit less milk would have been better. Lindt’s own Excellence range with 70% and 85% cocoa is great. The best dark/ bitter chocolates I have tasted (I should say had tasted because now I am sold on Noirissime) were the Brazilian 80% cocoa chocolate that a friend got for me, I don’t recall the brand as I could not get them again.

So imagine my delight when I saw Lindt 99% displayed in a shop window. Went inside, bought it and, like an idiot, bit into the bar. Noirissime is, I repeat, not to be chomped on while on the run. Its heavenly taste is to be enjoyed at leisure. Sit back on your favourite couch, take a small piece of the chocolate, put it in your mouth (don’t bite or your whole mouth will turn bitter) and let the chocolate melt in your mouth and take control of your senses. Let me again rely on Lindt’s copy-writers to give you the appropriate tasting advise.

“EXCELLENCE NOIRISSIME 99% is a unique chocolate that reveals all the strength and richness of cocoa beans. To fully appreciate all its flavour, we recommend that you progressively develop your palate through our range of high cocoa content chocolate bars, starting with Excellence 70% cocoa, then 85% and finally 99% cocoa. To best experience Excellence 99% cocoa, taste a small piece and let it melt in your mouth. You can accompany your tasting with a coffee to help bring out the bouquet of cocoa aromas.”

So guys and gals, go ahead, search it out and enjoy!

Prejudice

My name is Prejudice.

I hear a start. Why are you so surprised? If celebrities can name their children all weird names, why can’t my parents? You see, someone once told my parents, ‘Prejudice is the root cause of all the problems in the world’. So because of my earlier mentioned sweet nature, in my childhood, I never gave my parents the chance to get an impression that I am the cause of any problem. I ensured that they knew I was the problem. The cause, the effect and the whole nine yards in between. Hence Prejudice.

I can hear a question coming. What do I look like? Well, therein lies my secret, my dear friend. I was born with the trick of being so obvious that I am invisible. I mean, I do not hide behind things, or assume others’ shapes. I always ensure that I am in plain, clear view of everyone, wherever I am. Yet so few people see me as I am.

What I do is to play games. What I do is to be at many places at the same time. What does that mean? That means that I have the ability to be one moment with the observed, the next with the observer. Often, when person A is looking at B, I stay with B and when person B is looking at A, I stay with A. This results in both A and B believing that they are free of Prejudice but the other one is plagued with Prejudice.

A game that I play is to get my friends along and play tricks on people. Most common is my friend Division. Now Division is a very smart guy. He is helpless without me, of course. Here’s what we do. We chose a group of people. Then division divides them into two groups on some random basis – religion, skin-colour, language, country, caste, race, wealth, education - there are so many things. Then I go to one group, take up the form of “Prejudice against the other groups” and mingle with the group so much that I become a part of their identity. Then I repeat the same things with other groups. Then both Division and Prejudice sit back and enjoy the fireworks between these groups. It’s real fun. The best part is that the effect is so long-lasting. One time effort, long time fun.

Our favourite is when we use religion as the basis of our play. It’s ironic because neither I, Prejudice nor Division have a single religious bone in our body. All the Religions call us their enemies, but the followers of most of them are so susceptible to our pranks. We love it. It is so easy for me to take the form of “That religion was created just to oppose others” or “That religion is so violent” or “That religion is backward and promotes immoral things” or “That religion has been persecuting us throughout the history” or “That religion is the majority, so will suppress us”. My personal favourite form is “We are the most tolerant religion, other religions are not tolerant and will fight against us; so we must fight back”. Height of oxymoron-ism, isn’t it? You won’t believe how less evidence I have to use to take these forms. People are so ready to believe these that, at times, I feel they need me and that they cannot live without harbouring Prejudice in one form or another in their minds. All those poor Religions have been working for ages to better humanity and we use that identity itself to destroy it all. Don’t you love it?

The other day, another friend of mine, Jealousy, asked me to help her play a prank on a young dusky beauty and her boyfriend. What we did was, first I went to the girl in the form of “Men only like fair-skinned girls”. Next, Jealousy guided a fair-skinned girl to collide with this girl’s boyfriend. You should have seen the scene. The poor guy didn’t know what hit him. First this fair-skinned girl collides with him, then slaps him saying, “You idiot! Don’t you have any shame? You see a fair-skinned girl and you start misbehaving”; then the girlfriend slapped him saying, “You don’t like me because I am dark” and then the girl started crying. Poor guy got slapped for no fault of his and on top of that, had to apologize profusely.

Now, while you are reading this, don’t be fooled into thinking that you are not influenced by me. My influence knows no bounds, no boundaries. I affect men and women alike, Orientals and Occidentals alike, educated and uneducated alike, rich and poor alike. Everyone is equal in my eyes. Well, not exactly equal. I have to admit that I have to use different forms and different techniques to influence different people. One thing I have to be careful about is not to be prejudiced myself. So I cannot assume that all men would be influenced by my “Women can’t read maps” form; neither can I assume that all women would be influenced by my “Men can’t ask for directions” form. I treat everyone equally in that I have to analyse what form of prejudice a person be influenced with. There’s always one form or the other that works.

Let me tell you a bit about what I stand for. My name literally is pre judice or prior judgement. This means that I influence people to judge other people a priori i.e. without knowing enough facts about that individual. Or in other words, prejudice is judging an individual based on the group he/she belongs to. In areas where casteism prevails, for example, I influence Brahmins to pre-judge a man to be dirty and unhygienic if his caste is Shudra. Post 9/11, I influenced a lot of Americans to pre-judge anyone wearing a turban to be an Arab and to pre-judge any man to be a terrorist if he was an Arab. Nepotism prevails because I influence people to pre-judge individuals based on whether they belong to their extended family or not. Xenophobia prevails because I influence people to pre-judge foreigners to be untrustworthy. In bourgeois societies, I influence people to assume that people belonging to the lower class do not know how to behave, have no manners and no taste of things to appreciate, so we can’t mix with them. And so on. The most interesting thing is that my actions are not one way. I influence the rich to judge all poor people as uncivilised at the same time that I influence the poor to judge all rich people as exploiters.

Let me also tell you that I am not all bad. In fact, the whole idea of everything being able to be classified in good and bad is a prejudice in itself, isn’t it? Though normally my name is used in the form “prejudiced against”, let me tell you I am not all negative. Like the prejudice about blondes. While people pre-judge a blonde to be dumb, they also pre-judge a blonde to be sexy and desirable. While people pre-judge others on the basis of their clothes and communication skills, they are quite often making a positive judgement, pre-judging a person to be good just because he is well-dressed or can talk smoothly. There are a lot of positive judgements happening on the basis of a person fitting a certain stereotype, without evaluating all the aspects of that person. Prejudice is all about classifying people into stereotypes, and humans can’t live without classification, for sure. Think about it, thank the stereotypes; evaluation of a person takes a lifetime. If stereotypes were not there, all our life would just be spent evaluating each other, rather than getting anything productive done.

Let me tell you about my India experience. India is a very interesting. The country is no better or worse than others from a Prejudice perspective, in the sense that any Indian is as likely to be prejudiced as any other country’s citizen. The interesting thing here is - there is such a myriad of cultural interplay here, such a beautiful variety of social stimuli that the number of things to be prejudiced about is infinite. India is my biggest success and biggest failure. Biggest success because I have instilled in almost every individual a deep prejudice against multiple things. Biggest failure because when an exam looks too easy and you don’t score cent percent, you feel failure. And when you realise that all your correct answers, your wins are changing their shapes, you feel even bigger failure.

That’s India for you. Every individual here harbours so many prejudices. Prejudice against people of lower caste/ upper caste/ their own caste; prejudice against people of other religion/ own religion; prejudice against people with higher/lower literacy; prejudice against people who succeed/ fail; prejudice against people from other states/ own state; prejudice against people who speak other language/ own language, prejudice for/ against the richness of Indian culture; prejudice for/ against rituals and traditions; prejudice against people of younger/ older/ own generation; prejudice for/ against love/ arranged marriage; blah, blah, blah. There is hardly a chance to form a fresh evaluation of a situation/ person. Almost everything is pre-judged based on so many stereotypes.

My initial game-plan was to create impressions in people’s minds against “people not like us”. In India, I realised this “us” changes for every individual almost every instant. There is this guy, whose religion in Hindu, was born in Bihar, brought up in Delhi, is an engineer and MBA and is employed as a project manager in Bangalore. So many labels that this man wears. He is prejudiced against Muslims when he is with his religious community. In office however, his prime prejudice is against the non-MBA engineers who do not know how to manage projects and yet have the nerve to compete against him. Muslim MBA engineers are his allies then. He is prejudiced against English speaking south-Indians when he is with his Delhi friends, but when he is at a client location, he is prejudiced against these northy-freshers who come straight out of college speaking Hindi and don’t know how to speak to a customer. He has to fight the prejudice against Biharis everyday, but himself looks down upon Biharis who have stayed in Bihar as lazy idiots.

Now here’s the interesting thing. This guy makes some wrong decisions because of his prejudices, selecting the wrong people in his team, supporting the wrong kind of organisations in personal life, having unnecessary complexes about his self and so on. But overall, he is a good person, a good social being and a good project manager. This is where I fail. Inspite of lots of individual screw-ups, the overall individual in India is still a functioning individual. In spite of having created so many differences and divisions, they still seem to co-exist reasonably well. Its baffling, to say the least.

Look at Mumbai. The city houses Juhu/Ville Parle, the most upmarket of suburbs anywhere in the world just adjacent to Dharavi, world’s largest slum. Don’t think for a moment that these two classes don’t hate each other, they do. The “haves” always curse the “have-nots” for blotting their landscape; the “have-nots” always curse the “haves” for spending money on frivolous things rather then uplifting the society. But they co-exist. People from Juhu buy leather goods made in Dharavi and people from Dharavi are the taxi drivers in whose taxis the Juhu-ites roam about. The biggest political party in the city is a Hindu party, and does cause a lot of religious tension in the city, but the city business is run by a lot of Muslims/ Parsis and the business goes on smoothly. There is a deep anti-non-Maratha sentiment prevalent among Marathis and the issue of driving all non-Marathas out of Mumbai is never completely closed, yet half the population of the city is from other states, does not understand Marathi, has adopted the city as their only home, are the backbone of the city’s functioning and so very well-mingled with all the Marathis around that’s its impossible to distinguish. Inspite of all this, the city still functions well, in the financial capital of India and is proudly taking India through its tremendous growth.

Look at Bangalore. The new-age city. Supposedly the educated people. There is a deep north-south divide. Forget North-South, there is a significant Kannada-Tamil divide. There is a big divide on the lines of language – why can’t these southies just accept Hindi as the national language vs. why do these northies want to force Hindi down our throats. There is a divide between IT workers and non-IT workers on the lines of haves-have-nots divide. There is a divide between people who have stayed in western countries and. people who have been in India all their lives. Inspite of all this, the city still functions well, in the new-age growth capital, the IT centre of India and is proudly taking India through its tremendous growth.

If you don’t know India, you won’t believe this. These people are always ready to pick up some excuse or other to fight with each other. If nothing else, they will fight on “Is Sachin Tendulkar better or Sourav Ganguly?” or “Is Kishore Kumar a better singer or Mohd. Rafi?” or “Is Shahrukh Khan a better actor or Aamir Khan?” These are not mere discussion topics; these are lines on which the country is divided.

I have come to conclude some things. The reason for my enormous success in India is due to variety inherent in the local culture. That is the reason I have been able to create so much negativity. And that precisely is my reason for failure - my failure to lead these people from negativity to destruction. The reason is the inherent variety. Everyone here expects the other person to be different. Everyone here expects to compromise his prejudices for work to get done. And that has inculcated an overall tolerance which enables these people to continue and to prosper. There are days when I am able to attack that tolerance, I am able to convince these people to put their common-sense aside and go with their prejudices. Days like Dec6. Days like Jul11. But these days are few and far in between. When I am able to remove that tolerance on a permanent basis; that will be the end of this country. Wish me luck!

The Key Planet

Based on real-life incidents that happened in Dec 2003

Chala ja raha tha main jhoomta hua
Kisi ke khayalon mein khoya hua
Movie dekhne ka plan tha bana hua
Ghar pahunchna hai jaldi yeh taya tha hua

“What do you mean, you don’t have tickets for Saturday? I want to watch the movie on the weekend.”
“Sorry sir, the first available ticket is Tuesday”
“Tuesday?”
“Sir, rear stall will do?”
“How many times do I have to tell you I want Balcony only?”
“Sorry Sir.”
“OK, give me two tickets for Tuesday 6:30 show.”
“OK Sir. Sir, your address and telephone no.?”
I gave him the required details and asked him when he will deliver the tickets.
“Monday morning, Sir.”
“Sure?”
“Sure, Sir. Don’t worry at all, Sir”

The tickets finally got delivered Tuesday afternoon to my home. My wife called me up to inform me that though the tickets have arrived late, I must arrive home in time.
“Don’t worry, darling. Today the workload is less. I will be on time”
“I’ll believe it only when it happens”, my wife said.

Surprisingly, I was actually able to finish my work by 4:30 that day and nothing new landed up in my mailbox. At 4:45, I left my seat. As I was passing by a colleague’s seat, I offered him a lift till Silk Board. He also came with me.

Approaching the car, I started fumbling my pockets for the keys. They were not there. At least, not in the pockets. They were there hanging peacefully inside the car, and the car was properly locked.

“Shucks! What do we do now?”
My colleague said, “Don’t worry, this is a Maruti. All we need to open this is a metal scale.”

Of course there was no metal scale available. After running around for some time and checking with our building guards, we finally went to gate no. 5 and told them our plight.
“Sir, we have this file. See if it helps.”

It did not help.

“Sir, there is a bike servicing shop near Chandana Hotel. They would have something.”

I told my colleague to go by the bus, while I started got out of the campus and started trudging towards Chandana.

The guard again. “Sir, ask someone for lift.”

So I requested a car exiting the campus for a lift and the car-owner agreed. It is not difficult to get a lift from a fellow Infoscion. I told him my story, to which he said that there is a service station 1k.m. down near the Electronics City Phase-2 entrance and they will be able to help. Great!

He dropped me at the service station. The service station guy agreed to come to Infosys, spent some time searching for tools, took out a battered car, which I am sure belonged to some other customer, and asked me to hop in. We reached Infosys, completed the formalities of gate-pass and all, and then reached the car.

The service station guy said, ‘Sir, this is Alto. New model. This will not open with a scale simply.”
My heart sank. “So then what should we do?”
He took out a bent looking rod triumphantly, put both the scale and that rod through the beading of the front door window, and done. The car was open.

Two things struck me immediately. First, it was so easy to open a locked car. Second, I can still make it to the movie. Its just 5:30.

“Thanks boss. How much for this?”
“A hundred rupees, Sir”
“What, a hundred rupees for such a small task?”
“Yes, sir”

As I had no time for a bargaining discussion, I handed him a hundred-rupee note and rushed towards my home. I did not even wait to give my wife a ring and tell her all this. As I was driving, I was cursing my decision to discontinue my mobile connection. I was also praying that there should not be a jam at Silk Board.

Such prayers are, I think, God’s way of telling that that he is not duty-bound to listen to anything we ask him. There was a jam. I reached home at 6:10, which without the jam should have been 5:50 at the maximum.

I wife was waiting, with an angry, questioning look on her face.
“Lets just go for now, we need to rush to the movie hall. I’ll tell you what happened on the way.”

On the way, I told my wife what happened, spicing it up a little with my plight at doing this entire running around, so her anger came down a little. We reached the hall exactly at 6:30 and rushed inside the hall. The movie was just about to start as we were being seated.

I fumbled through my pockets again.
“Now what happened? Did you again lock the keys inside the car?”
“No, dear. I was just checking. They are here, in my pocket”
“OK. Now give me my mobile. I need to put it on silent mode during the movie.”
“Mobile? What mobile? I don’t have any mobile”
“I gave my mobile to you to hold while I was locking the door”
“Oh yes! You did. I must have left it in the car”
“What?”
“OK, OK. Cool down. I’ll just run downstairs and get it.”

So I ran back to the parking lot, got the mobile out of the car, rechecked that I had kept the car keys in my pocket, then locked the car and went again inside. Why the hell does she have to make calls during interval, for which she needs the mobile?

The movie was good, and after the movie, I took her to a good restaurant, so by the end of it, she was again her normal sweet self.

“Feeling tired. Lets go home now”

So we drove back home, taking the longer but low-traffic route, so that driving was fun.

On reaching our home, I told my wife to proceed upstairs and open the door while I cover the car with a cover.
“OK, give me the key”
I had a mood to say, “You have yours” but did not want to start an argument, so put my hands in my pocket to take out my key bunch, which contains both the car keys and house keys.

“Oh God!”
“What happened now?”
“I locked the car keys again inside the car.”


“Oh no”
“And all the service stations would be closed by now”
“So what do we do now?” My wife, the ever practical.
“I don’t know”
“You can’t do anything now, lets go in and sleep. We’ll do something in the morning.”
“I have to go to office in the morning.”
“You’ll have to go a bit late. There’s no duplicate key or metal scale and bent rod at home”

I went to the bed with a heavy heart. How can I become so forgetful that I do this twice in the same day? Have I gone crazy? What has happened to me? I was never so careless.

Got a fitful sleep and got up early morning. Unfortunately, the service station guys don’t have their car-keys looked inside their cars, so they did not open before 9. And when I contacted the ones near my home at 9, they said, “Sorry sir. We don’t know how to open an Alto. If it would have been a Maruti, then it was not a problem.”
“But this is a Maruti!”
“No sir, this is an Alto. Maruti is 800”. Poor Maruti, the Brand Managers of all medium and high end Maruti Cars would die if they hear this.

So finally, fed up, I gave a call to my regular service station, which is around 5 km from my house and told him that I had locked in the keys.
“No problem, Sir. I’ll send a person immediately. Give me the directions to your house.”

Finally, something happened as it should. The service station guy came, opened the lock with just a metal scale, took thirty rupees and went back, even saying “Thank you for calling us, Sir.”
“The thanks is all from my side, buddy.”

*******************
I would have put down the incident as one of the “forgetfulness” experiences and forgot about it, but it was not to be. Life, they say in Astrology, is governed by the position of planets and stars. If that is true, there must be some planet for Keys, or Key Planet that is in an unfavorable position for me.

The weekend following the car keys incident, my wife went to Patna for a month to meet her parents. On Wednesday, when I came home in the evening, I was feeling very tired and lonely. I lied down on the bed to rest and had almost gone off to sleep when I remembered that I had to pick up clothes from the clothesline on my terrace. So I went out to the terrace. Suddenly, there was a gust of wind and the door to the terrace closed behind my back.

“Hello”. This was to a middle aged man strolling on my neighbor’s terrace.
“Hello”
“I have locked myself out of my house.”
“What?”
“Yes. You see, the door to my terrace has a self-locking Godrej lock, and when I came out, a sudden gust of wind came and closed the door. So I am locked out”
“Oh I see”
“Actually, the door stopper is magnetic, so when I open the door fully, it remains open. But I think by mistake, I did not open it fully, so the stopper did not engage”. I could not bring myself to say that maybe the mistake happened because I was feeling sleepy. Anyway, all traces of sleep were far away from me at that moment.
“Isn’t any other door to the house open?”
“No. The main door is latched from inside, and now this door has closed itself which needs a key to open it.”
“Is there any other entrance to this terrace?”
“No, this terrace can be approached only through my house”
“Hmmm! So what do we do now?”
“Can you please tell my landlord? He stays on ground floor” My house is on second floor.
“No problem at all”

My landlord came out of his house onto the road in front of our house. Thankfully my terrace is road facing. I explained the whole problem to him.
“OK, I’ll see what I can do”

He came back with a set of keys.
“I have some keys here. See if any of them fits your locks.”

But there was apparently no way for me to take the keys from him. They say, necessity is the mother of invention. I immediately located an old clothesline lying discarded on one side of my terrace and dropped that to the landlord. He tied the bunch of keys to the clothesline and then I pulled it up.

Went to the door and tried all the keys, big, small, medium. No result.

“Uncle, none of the keys fit”
“OK. Wait”

He went inside his house and got another set of keys. None of them worked. He went inside his house again, leaving me wondering about the peculiarity of my situation. I was trapped in my own terrace, with no access to my own house, in shorts and without even slippers. And was dependent on some key from somewhere fitting the terrace door lock. Why the hell has this landlord put self-locking locks on terrace doors?

“OK. Here’s the last bunch of keys. Try this. I just spoke to my son and he says that one of these keys should work”

Of course none of them worked. But my landlord is one sprightly old man. From somewhere, he got a wooden ladder and used that to climb onto my terrace.

“Give me the keys. Let me try. You, young generation, are good for nothing”

I handed over the keys to him. He also tried all the keys, none of them worked.

“OK. So this is not working. We’ll have to call a locksmith”. He turned away.

Then he suddenly turned back. “Let me have one more try”.

He tried all the keys again, this time turning them a bit harder, with force. None of them was working.

“So this is the last key. If this does not work, we need to call a locksmith”
“We won’t even get a locksmith. Its already late evening”
Suddenly there was a click. The door was open. The key worked.

I heaved a sigh of relief.
The story has not ended yet. If the planets were able to influence only one or two events, nobody would bother about them, right? They have to show their effect multiple times to prove their power.
That sigh of relief lasted only till Saturday. I went to a locksmith in the morning to make a duplicate key for my main door. As the Key Planet ensured, this duplicate key did not work, so I went back to the locksmith.

“Sir, I will need to see the lock”
“OK. Come with me to my home”
“Sure, I’ll send my boy with you”

I left him at my main door and went inside the house to get some water. When I came back, I saw that he had opened up the whole lock, and all the levers were lying by the side of the lock.

“What is this?” I shouted.
He said something in Kannada, which I had no way of understanding. Thankfully, the maid was around, and she speaks both Hindi and Kannada. So the rest of the conversation was through her as an interpreter.
“Ask him what has he done”
“He is saying that he is trying to fit to make a duplicate key”
“I know that. Why does he have to open the lock for that?”
“He says he was trying to make the duplicate key work”
“Just ask him to put the lock back in place and ensure that at least the original key works”

The guy nodded his head and started putting the levers back in the lock, testing it with the key after putting every lever. The key was not turning after he put in the fourth lever. He again took all the levers out and started putting them back again. I realized that he has forgotten the sequence of the levers.

Then, after trying several permutations and combinations and failing consistently, he suddenly picked up my key (the one which I had given him to copy) and started hammering and filing it. I shouted at him to stop.

The maid came, hearing my shouting.
“What happened?”
“Ask him what has happened?”
“He is saying he will put in the levers and make the key for that”
“What?” The guy was actually planning to change the lock and the key. My landlord is going to kill me for this, and more importantly, my wife when she comes and trying opening the house with her key.
I told the maid, “Just ask him to leave all his tools here, and go and get his elder brother”

The guy went away, and his elder brother came after some ten minutes.
“What happened, sir?”
Thankfully, I will not need and interpreter with this guy.
I explained the whole situation to him.
“Sir, don’t worry. I’ll put it right in a moment”
After ten minutes, he was also nowhere.
“Sir, your key is also a duplicate one. Can I get the original key?”
“No, you can’t. Your brother has spoilt my key also and now you’ll spoil the original also”
“No sir, don’t worry. Anyway, I can’t do anything without it”

I went to my landlord, asked him for the original key. He took it out and gave it to me, giving me a weird look, probably thinking, “What kind of a man is this? Some problem with the key or other.” Perhaps he does not know about my Key Planet

I took the original key to the locksmith.
“Sir, see. The key that you gave me does not match this original key properly. It was a bad duplicate”
“Boss, it was working”
He had nothing to say. Anyway, he took another five minutes, and put the lock in place with the original key working. And he made minor alterations to my key and made it work. Then he made another copy (which was the job he had been brought in for anyway) and ensured that it worked.

I gave him a weary thanks and he went away. I went to return the original key to the landlord. He again gave me that weary look and asked me, “Got the work done?”
“Yes. Thank You”

As I was climbing the stairs to my house, the only thought in my mind was, where is the Key Planet going to strike next?

Hindi - the Indian national language

Originally written Apr-2002 for Infosys Bulletin Board

In a world where the opinion of others doesn't amount to anything and where all of us will keep on believing what we have already decided to believe, I am also tempted to put in a small story of mine.

A small boy hailing from a northern province of Bihar and staying in Delhi is told by a friend that Madrasis hate Hindi. He wonders why? It is such a beautiful language. A thought occurs to him, "Probably Tamil is even more beautiful". But then he realizes that beauty of a language cannot be a criteria for ignoring other languages. He has learnt Hindi, though his mother tongue is Maithili, which is a very sweet language. He has learnt English. There is a beauty in all of this, and he does not see a reason for beauty to cause a conflict. So there must be some other reason.

He goes to his native place for summer holidays. And he comes across an interesting scenario. He is told that Maithili is a language, it has its own script (tirhut) and its own grammar and its own ancient literature, but due to certain political pressures, the official line is that Maithili is a dialect of Hindi. He is shocked. How can a language be affected by political pressures? What does it cost anyone to classify Maithili also as a language? Its a matter of classification for people who are not interested, and a matter of joy for people who are. At this stage, the boy obviously does not understand politics at all.

As he grows up, he learns a bit more about politics. For a period, he just believes politics is something for politicians and that its just something bad thrust upon good, nice, common people. That belief does not last, of course. The political issues are on the whole the issues of people. Its people who believe in those issues, who take sides in those issues and fight along those issues, whoever and whatever be the influencer.

So he thinks of this "Madrasis hate Hindi" thing again. What he realizes first that his friend was being an idiot in calling all South Indians as Madrasis. Second, he realized that the opposition to Hindi is not uniform in South India, it varies from state to state and region to region. Third, he realized that most of the human beings need generalizations as some sort of psychological pillars to rest their thoughts on. Fourth, and this he realized quite late, is that generalizations are usually true, at least on a general level.

What he could not realize, and has not realized till date, is why do some people call Hindi a regional language only? Why do some people think that learning Hindi as a third language (English and Mother tongue being the other two) happens only in South India? Most of the north Indian states have their mother tongues different from Hindi, and not all of these can be shoveled under the banner of dialects. Gujarati, Marathi, Bangala, Oriya, Punjabi - to name a few - are also languages, aren't they? Don't people learn Hindi in the states where these languages are mother-tongues? Do they oppose Hindi as it is done in South India?

The "why" of this whole issue pained him, because all the south Indians he had met were people just like him. What he realized when he asked these questions to himself is that he is committing the same crime of generalization. But then, even if he replaced the phrase "South Indians" with some specific state or region or even individuals, the question still remained. So he turned again to politics. The answer he came up with was "Hindi was forced down the throat of these people, hence the opposition". This was not really correct, because if was true, all the states can say that Hindi was thrust upon them, as Hindi is not the mother tongue to only a very few states. But he still let this answer remain, thinking that probably it was a matter of handling of the issue.

As this is a story of realizations, I'll tell you some more of the boy's realizations. As he further grew up, he went to various states on India for his education and his jobs. What he realized was that there was the feeling of "Hindi is not mine" at a lot of places, but while north Indian states seem to have accepted it as a unifying language, south Indian states did not. He had also realized that all his "why"s will not be answered in life, because life is not governed by "why"s, human beings don't have a reason for everything they do, and he had come across a beautiful statement ,"Insanity in individuals is something rare but in groups, nations and epochs, it is the rule".

What he also realized is that people will often accuse others of the mistakes they commit themselves without even realizing. Like when he went to Mumbai, he found that his Maharashtrian friends started speaking to each other in Marathi even when they were in a group where not everyone is a local, thus alienating some people in the group from the conversation without consciously meaning to do so. With his background of speaking in Maithili at his hometown, Hindi in Delhi and English in office, he found that the switch of language depending on the people around him is quite natural and he could not understand why others can't do it. He realized that people don't have decency to say "Excuse me, we have to share something which can be done only in Marathi", they don't have the decency to use Marathi as only an exception, they don't have the decency to be aware that they are alienating people by their actions, they don't have the decency to involve everybody in the group. He realized that he will have to live with this attitude. After all, who is he to complain, doesn't he have his own inefficiencies?

What he found equally interesting was when a Bengali friend of his complained of this Maharashtrian attitude, but started speaking in Bangala when he took this boy to meet some of his Bengali friends. And when he came to Bangalore, he found people complaining of South Indians behaving in this manner. What he realized was that people are inherently insensitive on the "involving people around you in conversation" issue everywhere, of course the degree of this clannishness and insensitivity varies.

What he realized, mainly, is to let things be, though he also realized that that's the defeatist way of looking at things.

Patriotism

Originally written Mar-2002 for Infosys Bulletin Board

Patriotism is the conviction that a country is the greatest just because YOU were born in it.

Are we really so self-conceited?

Why does the statement "I love my county" or "I love my city" need a "because"?

Why do we always get defensive whenever anyone criticizes our country or our city and start on a series of justifications?

Why can't we separate out the two statements - "I love India" and "India is great" and realize that there need not be correlation between the two.

I love India because this is my country, good, bad or ugly. I don't care about the good, bad, ugly part while deciding whether to love India or not (anyway this decision is not a conscious one). Of course, I care about the good, bad, ugly part of it as a part of loving India, because what I love, I care about.

Then why do I need to prove that India is the greatest to every Tom, Dick and Harry on this earth? Or is it that somewhere, I need such proofs myself?

Actually, the care that I talked about above can be brought about only by a correct realization of the good, bad, ugly aspects of my object of love, not by any sort of defensiveness.

I happen to be fortunate enough to be a native of Bihar, because it gives me a much better perspective on the separation between goodness and liking. Goodness is a physical state, it is a fact, the fact may not be apparent, but it is still an objective reality. Liking is a feeling, and I don't need it to be objective at all. There are so many bad things about Bihar, which everyone knows and the media keeps on highlighting. Yet, I love Bihar. There are so many good things also, perhaps hidden, perhaps in small pockets. But even if these good things were not there, I would still love Bihar. Whatever, it is still mine, and hence I love it. Period. Earlier, I used to start justifying about my state, now I don't. I realized that I don't need your approval of my state to love my state. Simple really, isn't it.

I love Bangalore. Because its the place I stay. Because there is something called my home which is in Bangalore. Does that mean I think it is the best in everything? Of course not. I am one of the so-called "bangalore-cribbers". If I call something in India bad, does it mean I love India any lesser? One cribs about only what one cares about, isn't it?

Cricket, or something like it...

Originally written in Feb 2002 for Infosys Bulletin Board

I remember a story by Dr. Christian Barnard in my school textbook called "In celebration of being alive". It was a CBSE (Central Board of Secondary Education, the education body in India) book, so I am sure a lot of Indians amongst you would have read it. It is about Dr. Barnard visiting a children's hospital where lot of kids having terminal diseases are admitted and he being surprised by the way those kids find ways of enjoying life, amidst all the pain and sufferings. It was a beautiful story, for sure, but what struck me most was the title of the story, "In celebration of being alive".

It's actually a simple fact of life. We, as a species, want to live. And in wanting to live, we want to forget our problems and enjoy life as much as we can.

Most of us are aware of all the pain and sufferings around us, at least to some degree. The point is, what do we choose to do with it? Do we leave our home, like Siddharth did, leaving Vasundhara and Rahul behind, to become Buddha? Or do all of us become Medha Patkar, taking up one side of an issue, the side which we believe will lessen the sufferings around us, and go and fight everybody on earth? Well, these are great people, I know, but the whole humanity is not great. I am not even sure if it is a good idea for everyone to become great. But the point is, the natural reaction of people against pain, against sufferings is to shy away from it.

We, the so-called common mass, are very happy to see social workers work for upliftment of the society, we are ready to appreciate them and their work with all our heart. We are very proud of those soldiers who are protecting us from the aggressive tendencies of our neighbors, we are ready to sing patriotic songs and celebrate their victories and mourn their losses. But we, in all honesty, want to do all this appreciation from a distance. Because we realize it, consciously or unconsciously, that what these people are dealing with are not the "celebration of life" part of the scheme of things, so we instinctively shy away from these.

We am told, "You are indifferent to soldiers dying in Kargil while you are supporting their favorite cricketers". We agree. We would not remember today name of five soldiers who dies in the Kargil war, but we do remember the names of players in the Indian cricket team and the names of actors in that wonderful movie we saw a week ago. Yes. Are we supposed to feel ashamed about it? OK, we are ashamed at our callous attitude. Thanks for giving us the option of feeling guilty about this and getting on with our lives.

We enjoy cricket because it is trivial in the larger scheme of things. We watch movies because it is trivial, significance-less thing to do. Who do we respect more, a soldier in Kargil or Sachin Tendulkar - from the bottom of our hearts, most of us respect that soldier any day. We will thank him for the sacrifice he is making for us. At the same time, who do we think about more, discuss more with our colleagues - very honestly, Sachin Tendulkar. Because Sachin helps us make our moments light, he helps us take ourselves out of the drudgeries of live, he helps us give our lives those trivial, meaningless moments.

Come to think of it, Sachin helps us make out lives trivial. Most of us, in spite of all out ambitions and our grand plans, are small people. We just want to get through with this life enjoying it as much as possible. When told on our face that we are insensitive, we feel guilty. But in all honesty, whether we realize it consciously or not, we believe that life is more about calling strangers on the road, "Kaise ho Murari Laal?" (How are you, my friend?) than thinking about our own or somebody else's lympho-sarcoma of the Intestine (That's from the Bollywood movie Anand).

So closing down in celebration of triviality.....

Soft Drinks - Do the Dew

Originally written in Jan 2002 for Infosys Bulletin Board

"What is good, Pheadrus,
And what is not;
Do you need someone to tell you that?"
- Robert M Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Several times, I have been faced with this dilemma - is what am I doing worth it? Now, this question can be talked about on a very generic scale, but here I just want to talk about self-indulgence.

So I ask myself - is it worth eating so many sweets just because I have got a sweet tooth, fully knowing that my grandfather had diabetes and I am susceptible to it? Is it worth eating so much of non-vegetarian food just because I find it tasty, at the cost of gaining weight and getting cholesterol inside my arteries? Is it worth having a Thumbs-up because I happen to like the taste, fully knowing that it is acidic and detrimental to my health?

Is it worth buying an Allen Solly shirt or a Levi's jeans just because I like the feel of that fabric and that style of stitching, fully knowing that the shirt is priced way beyond what it should be? Or for that matter, is it worth buying that Crocodile T-Shirt just because I think that it is hip and stylish and I consider looking hip and stylish important, fully knowing that I am not getting a value-for-money deal?

The question here is not whether my likings, my choices in life, my way of looking at things are correct or not. They are what they are. I am what I am. Its not that I am not changing. I am not what I was yesterday, neither what I will be tomorrow. But I am what I am. And given that, my choices in life will be governed by what I like today, at present.

Someone once very appropriately said - "All good things in life are either illegal, immoral, fattening"

Its not a simple equation. I can't get away saying that I do this because I like it. I mean, yes, I like having Thumbs-Up but I also like remaining healthy. And if I say I like having Thumbs-Up more than I like remaining healthy, it won't be correct. Put that way, I of course like staying healthy more than I like Thumbs-Up. Yet, I still have Thumbs-Up. Not in ignorance, but in full knowledge of the ill effects it has on my health. Why? Why do I do something like that? Why am I self detrimental?

I guess I have no answers to it. If anybody has, please tell me. Meanwhile, every time I am faced with such a dilemma - I will ask myself, "should I do it?" Some part within me will answer. It may be the logical, evaluative, thinking part of me which may prevail, or it may just be my laziness, or something else. But I know I will end up doing what I want to do at that point of time, irrespective of all this logic.

An interesting question, of course, is whether what I want will change just because I have thought and written this piece?

Musings of an overpaid typist

Originally written in Jan 2002 for Infosys Bulletin Board

Ya, that's what someone I know closely calls software engineers as. In her opinion, software code writing is the most over-hyped profession of all times, one she would not like to classify under the "knowledge workers" category. It doesn't help that she herself is quite good at programming, and does most of her analysis of financial data by improvising quick algorithms and writing programs to handle them. She stresses that it is the problem definition, by her as a user, that is the only important part in the process.

I'll tell you her favourite analogy. There's a concept called "relative advantage" in economics. One of the most frequently cited examples for this is - Suppose there's a lawyer who can type at 1.5 times the speed at which his typist can type. It still makes sense for the typist to do typing because the lawyer's time is more productive when he spends it in court rather than typing. So that is where the typist's (and the software engineer's, according to my friend) utility lies.
A humbling thought, many would say. Not really. Just sound economics. Every unit this this great set-up of ours called world-economy works (or rather should work) according to relative advantage. And whether the job of a typist involves thought or not, I won't go into, lest the typist union should catch me. So lets just leave it at the point that I am happy to be an "overpaid typist", at least with the overpaid part of it.

But then, am I overpaid? Has anybody on earth till now said that he/she is overpaid? Lets look at it this way. I typically work more no. of hours than most of my non-software counterparts. Compared to that, I am paid very less. The per hour billing rate which I charge my employer is certainly one of the lowest among all my friends. You know the reply my abovementioned friend would give me - "Well, labourers are always the least paid and exploited of the lot. So the idiotic hours of working which you people put in just shows that labourer attitude. But your hourly salary is much higher than that standard, so you are still overpaid". Then she would pause and continue, "Should I tell you where you are underpaid? Its not in what you get less, its what is being taken away from you. This industry recruits the most talented people of the country, and puts them to the work suited to second-raters". And I am reminded of the statement from Atlas Shrugged, "This is the place where you employ the ablest of the aristocrats for the lousiest of the jobs". My friend would continue, "School drop-outs actually. And please excuse me of those glorified school-drop-out stories, I am speaking of people who simply don't have brains enough to get through a professional college. This industry stunts your intellectual growth, and that cost perhaps is what makes you really underpaid, net-net." I am thinking, "But that's exactly opposite ideal to Galt's Gulch as painted in Atlas Shrugged".

Is it really that bad? I would say not. But then, let me not rely on my personal opinions, so I voice these thoughts to some Infoscions. The responses range from total agreement (exception being the overpaid part, to which none agreed) to absolute rejection. From, "Ya, the only thrill I get is when I try to predict stock market" to "What man, to come up with a perfect design, an elegant working piece of code is the biggest kick of life". Reminds me of Rahim - "rahiman is sansaar mein bhanti bhanti ke log" (O Rahim, there are all kinds of people in this world).
So I let things be as they are. It seems frightening to come to any concrete solutions about the nature of work I am involved in, as I realise that it is as much a comment on oneself. Ignorance is bliss.

The Direction of Civilisation

Originally written in Oct 2001 in personal diaries

Descartes once said, "I think, therefore I am" and thus laid the foundation of the realization that in the scheme of things, the job of a human being is to think. In the process of evolution, a huge, almost magical gap lies between human beings and other species - a gap created by the fact that human beings have a well developed brain, a brain which can think, a brain which has the capacity to be intelligent, to make schemes. A brain which is occupied not only by the need to control the parts of various body cells, but which also has the capacity to question things outside the human body, to make designs and to implement them. A brain which can go into the question of "why brain" and "why me".

Yet, what do human beings do with that brain? For majority of the part, they are either working to earn their livelihood or sleeping or engaging in a hobby that escapes from the thinking process. While sleeping is entirely biological and as yet, human species needs sleep or rest for its survival, the other two aspects, namely our work-life and our leisure, are primarily a product of what we have learnt from the civilization. It is an indication of where we, as a species, are going. And it clearly indicates that our civilization prompts us to make less and less use of our brains.

Consider history. We started by being hunters in the jungle. Our brain helped us to make weapons to be better hunters. We captured fire. Then, we invented agriculture. We began to be less dependent on other animal species for our food. Nevertheless, our primary occupation in life was still food. Then civilization began, societies were formed. Here a deviation began. Our basic needs increased from food to shelter and clothing. Since people now needed shelter and clothing, they began to make shelters and clothes. This was perhaps the first indication that human beings, inspite of having created time for themselves by needing less time for their food production, used up that time in producing things which they themselves had brought into their basket of needs.

Take clothes for example. From the cave man who simply used an animal skin to cover his body from various forces of nature, we have moved on today to a time when clothes are a part of personality, an indicator of your status in the society etc. What you wear is what you are, or almost. Along with this have come other advancements in other make-yourself-comfortable products like artificial heating and air-conditioners and what not. This has actually led to a situation where the need of clothes as a protection for body has almost vanished. But have clothes vanished? No. Or rather, the advancement in these other products have led to a situation where you can were dresses with practically no cloth/ fabric in them. And what happens? Instead of realizing that we don’t need clothes anymore and coming up with a “No to clothes” campaign, what we start doing is – create different lobbies. One for cultural protection which criticizes skimpy clothes, one for women stating that clothes are a measure of female independence, one for dress designers stating that they need their freedom of expression, one comprising of men who state that wearing sloppy clothes is their birthright and yet another one comprising of staid professionals criticizing the clothes young generation wears to work.

I mean, isn’t it amply clear that clothes are an indication of the civilization gone in the wrong direction? So much of human thought, human energy wasted on some idiotic cells of cellulose. Or human ego, which is not much useful either.

Then there’s the omnipresent work ethic. Work is supposed to be the aim of human existence, not thought. Since childhood, we are trained to learn things so that we would be able to earn a living. Vocational training is in major vogue. Study hard, because that will fetch you good marks, that will fetch you a good professional degree, that will fetch you a good job. Study engineering, don’t do research in physics, because there are lesser jobs for physicists. The emphasis is not only to discourage thinking at the childhood stage, but also to encourage getting into non-thinking jobs.

However, man has to pamper himself as a thinking animal. So he will label day-to-day problem solving as thinking, he will label people management as thinking, he will label the tactics involved in driving as thinking. I agree that most of the jobs involve use of brains and thought, but wasting your thinking on mundane activities – is this what your mind was made for? 99% of human mental energy goes into thoughts that should not be labeled as thinking, because they leave humanity no richer at the end of it. I mean, how does homo sapiens as a species benefit or progress or evolve if a significant proportion of its mental capability is involved in thinking how to transport himself to office next day. Crazy. Emphasis on productive work rather than thought is another indicator of civilisation gone in the wrong direction.

I can go on infinitely. The whole concept of sophistication sucks. How does it matter if I eat with fork and knife or use chopsticks or hand? Or whether I shake hands or do a namaste or bend 90 degrees or touch feet? And yet, these are the very basis of civilization. How do I find sense in any of this?

If you honestly ask me, everything indicates civilization is taking us in a direction where we are being encouraged to make less and less sensible use of our greatest evolutionary strength, out mind. Or in short, civilisation is counter-evolutionary.

My Conversation with God

Originally written in Dec 2001 in personal diaries

He came and sat on the park bench besides me. I gave him a glance and fell back into my thoughts.
He addressed me, “Excuse me, do you mind some conversation?”
I was in my usual bad mood. “Yes, I do.”
He smiled, “Even after I tell you that I am GOD?”
I have him a thorough look and started laughing. “Oh, really!”
“You don’t believe me?”
“OK, if you are GOD, prove it”
“How?”
“Answer a few questions of mine.”
“Shoot.”
“First, if you are GOD, why are you asking me what I want to ask? Can’t you read my mind? You are supposed to be antaryaami!(omnipotent)”
“Oh! I see that this is going to be a nice debating session. Please proceed to your other questions and I will answer them together.”
This guy was really confident of what he was speaking.
“Second, if you are GOD, why can’t you inspire the feeling inside me that you are GOD? Why is there a need to prove? Third, why are you meeting me? I am neither a saint nor a Satan. So why me?”

Now he started laughing. “When people think of me, they generally bring religion into focus. You did not ask me anything about that?”
I could see that this guy really believed that he is GOD. To me, he seemed like some ordinary pedestrian. “Well, lets begin with these three.” I don’t know why I was humoring this guy.

He suddenly asked, “Why do you think I am obliged in some way to listen to you people, to solve your problems, to answer your questions?”
“Ha, so now you are backing away!” I entered the mode of pinning down the guy.
He answered, “Well, have you created anything of your own ever?”
“Yes, a lots of things.”
“Like that toy robot you made for the school exhibition?”
“How do you know that?”
“You forgot, I’m GOD, I’m supposed to know everything.”
“OK, so this is a well-researched attempt to dupe me. Well, I see the trick. I’m leaving”
“You are right about the ‘looking up your history’ part”
I stopped. “Ah, so you admit.”
“Admit what? Of course, when I come to meet one of my creations, I look up its history. Don’t you look up the past performance of your subordinates before meeting them?”
I started to say something, but he interrupted me, “Now let me talk a bit. When you created the toy, why did you make it with two arms and two legs and one head? Because you always extrapolate your creations from yourself. Your self is the only reference point you have.”
“What about the machine-dog which I created?”
“Oh! I forgot I gave you counter-logic abilities also. The dog was also a projection of the things around you. Your reference is what you see, what you sense. So you project from that.”
“Get to the point, man!”
“Be patient. What I was coming at is that you try to create out of your current reference. Even your imagination is in reference to your current environment.”
“So what?”
“So have you ever thought why you could not make the thing exactly same as yourself? Why the robot had something less than you?”
“Because I didn’t know completely of my constitution and hence couldn’t replicate it in the robot.”
“So the machine was lesser than you. Still, could you exactly predict what the machine is going to do next?”
“Yes, I could. But I get your point. I could do such prediction only because it was a very basic machine. If I had given it even a bit of intelligence, a bit of sensitivity to environmental conditions, I could not have predicted the response without knowing all the variables”
“Right. And the point you are making is that knowing all the variables is a waste of time, because you have designed the robot to act appropriately. Its like knowing the time taken to heat the water becomes useless if you have a thermostat temperature control”
“Yes, but I still did not get what you are arriving at.”
“What I am arriving at is that in the same way, I can also get to know what exactly you are thinking by getting to know all the variables that I have designed to affect you, but why should I put the effort? Why not ask you directly?
“I may lie”
“You lose if you lie. Anyway, I control your variables also. I have arranged them so that you won’t be lying.”

I was pissed off. This guy was talking some sense sometimes, but crap most of the time. Still, I said, “Proceed”
“So that answers your antaryaami question. Coming to why I can’t inspire you to believe that I am GOD, well, I can, but then my whole purpose of talking with you, making this effort to come down into this world of my own creation, would be lost.”
“Can I ask what is the purpose?” I was beginning to get intrigued.
“Can I take that later? First, to finish off your initial three questions, well, you because …”
“Yes?”
“Nothing. The choice was absolutely random.”
So much for my ego. “Am I supposed to feel lucky?”
“That’s your problem. I’m here because I want some feedback from you”
“Feedback?”
“Yes. You are a software professional, so you can perhaps understand it a bit better. This world of yours is a system designed by me and I want to get some feedback about the system from one of its components.”
This guy really, really believed he was GOD.
He continued, “I can see the disbelief in your eyes. But can you just assume for some time that I am GOD and talk to me?”
“Why should I do that?”
“Simply because this is the most interesting thing which has happened to you in quite some time, even if it proves to be false. So just humor me for some more time”.
This was true. I was sitting in the park contemplating on the sickening rut that I was in these days.
I decided to go along with him, though a bit aggressively.
“So if you are GOD, can you tell me why there are so much pain in the creation? So many wars, so much unnecessary bloodshed? Anxiety in individual lives, anxiety in civilizations. Why all this in this creation of yours?”
“Do you really want to ask that? The pain, the anxiety, is all supposed to be a part of the system that I have developed.”
“But why? When I design a system, I provide a painless “Close” button. I understand that death and regeneration was necessary for growth, for evolution, but why pain? Why not death straight away?”
He sighed. “I am tempted to say ‘So that you remember me, the creator’, as your priests do. But I won’t. Because I am not dependent on your praise or criticism.”
“Then what are you dependent on?”
“On the performance of my system. You see, you can visualize it like this. Humans today can make a toy world, give each toy a specific behaviour and then oversee how their system is behaving. Similarly, in our society, I am the creator of earth and am responsible for this system.”
“Who created you?”
“Nice question. How am I supposed to know? Probably, I am also a part of a bigger system. But we are digressing here. Lets come back to your system.”
“OK, so why so many religions? So many differences between people on the basis of religion, color of skin, genetic race, area of living, language?”
“Oh! I though I will ask you that question. I had not planned for any of this, neither had I put any restrictions on these not entering the system. I gave you people intelligence to react to stimuli in your own manner, form your own civilizations. I created a self-managed system with minimum GOD interference required. All this is your own creation.”
“But you could have stopped it.”
“Yeah, I could have, but you see, this world is only my experimental model. Probably I will put these checks in my next system.”
“So how satisfied are you with your experiment?”
“That’s why I have come to you. You give me feedback. What changes would you like to be made to the universe as such? And don’t be shortsighted. Think from a system point of view. I will come again tomorrow.” And he walked away.

ANY OF YOU HAVE ANYTHING TO TELL HIM?

Second Meeting

I suddenly found somebody walking by my side on the pavement. The second meeting has begun.
“So, what are your suggestions?”
“First I want to ask you some more questions.”
“Good. That means that you want to understand the system more thoroughly.”
“Not exactly. I just want to ask some more questions”, I repeated.
“That’s fine. Shoot”
“Why does the concept of GOD exist in our minds? Was it for your self-satisfaction? Surely the knowledge about the creator or the concept of the creator is not necessary for the system.”
He laughed, and then suddenly became serious. “You know, I had actually not planned on this. I had created the whole of your planet with sufficient self-sustainable features. But somehow, I overestimated what you now call EQ of the human species. At one point of time, I realized that they needed a higher assurance for survival. So I was forced to introduce the concept of supernatural in their minds. However, the development of that into various gods, prophets, religions, sects etc. is completely a product of the human mind.”
“I think the concept of religion should be removed from the system”
“Ah, probably you are right there. It is creating more problems than it is solving. That’s true. But you see, it is not as simple as that”
“Why?”
“For one, the concept of religion is inseparable from the concept of supernatural.”
“Then remove that”
“I wish I could. It is not possible in this system. Probably the next system I design after I scrap this one, I will give more importance to emotions and their handling, and hence would remove the need of the concept of supernatural. As of now, in your system, the way it has evolved, it is not possible.”
“ ‘After I scrap this?’ Does it mean this civilization is doomed? Then why bother with these sessions?”
“Don’t worry. It is not going to happen in your lifetime. Anyway, its just what you call versioning”
I remained dismayed.
He continued, “Coming back to the topic, the fact is that you people need an assurance of a higher providence to cope up with life. Given that, religion by itself enters the picture. Even if the current religions are all scraped, some genius among you will come up with the idea of following a path for being more close to that higher providence”
“Then let us have one universal religion”
“You underestimate yourself. Man is an intelligent being. If somebody tells him – ‘This is the way to do this’ - he will immediately question that. Why else do you think there exist atheists and agnostics in this world?”
“I am more worried about the theists and disputes amongst them.”
“That what I am coming at. Given this questioning nature, but with a need for a higher providence that is greater than this questioning nature, what happens is that many of you settle down on one of the paths proposed. Many of you start their own paths and other people follow them. Hence multiple religions, multiple sects, multiple superstitions, and so on”
‘So there’s no cure for this.”
“I told you I will correct this in my next version. Till then, live with this. Think more. See you later.”
Then he suddenly took the lane to the right and walked off. Before I could realize, he was gone. And I suddenly realized that I was exactly at the same spot from where we had started.

Translations and Thinking

Originally written in Jun 2000 in personal diaries

Let me begin by narrating a story to you. I am a native of Bihar, but I have stayed in Delhi since early childhood. Now this put me into a peculiar position as regards languages, especially during childhood, juggling between three languages - Maithili (my mother-tongue), Hindi and English. Now at that time, the penetration of English was very low, even in the educated people in Bihar. So I would be an object of teasing whenever I would go to my native place (as "English babu"). The biggest tool was translation. I would be asked to translate, "Ghoda sadak par adak kar bhadak gaya". The nearest translation that I could find was, "The horse stopped on the road and panicked". Now, though this is a good enough translation of the sentence as a whole, please note that not all of the words have been literally translated. "Stop" is not the correct translation of "adak"; neither is "panic" a translation of "bhadak", at least not in the exact sense.

Now when this was pointed out, this used to put me in a spot. As a solution, I came up with the statement, "If you want to speak in a language, think in that language. Don't think in one language and try to translate". This wisecrack, arrived in childhood to get out of an inconvenient situation, comes back to me often, especially when people ask for translations of a word. From Hindi to English, English to Hindi, Sanskrit to English, Sanskrit to Hindi, whatever.

The point, dear friends, is just that. Just like two synonyms never mean exactly the same thing, there is seldom an exact translation of words between languages. Each language was developed in a different context, a different society and culture. Language, in the final analysis, is the verbal representation of thought processes. And since thought processes are not independent but interdependent on the context and the culture, language cannot escape being the same.

This leads to a tussle. What is the Sanskrit word for "Perfect"? "Upyukt"? No, that means "appropriate", or rather, "useful for this situation". "Sahi"? No, that means "correct". "Doshahin"? No, that’s "errorless". "Trutihin"? No, that’s "flawless". "Nipun"? No, that’s an "expert". "Sampoorn"? No, that’s "complete". "Uchit"? No, that’s "right for this situation". I could go on and on.

The statement which directly follows out of this is "I guess you can't just find a Hindi substitute for "perfect" without knowing the context. What I want to ask is, "Is this a problem with the word 'perfect' "? No, any word you choose, it is quite likely that this issue will arise. Then I thought of my childhood story and thought, "Why should there be a word in Hindi or Sanskrit for 'perfect' "? Its not that once upon a time, there was a sage who picked up a dictionary of Sanskrit and created the English language. If that were the case, translation would have been perfectly fine, because the two languages would have been product on the same civilization or in other words, the same set of thoughts and ideas. But that is not the case. The fact is that English and Sanskrit (or for that matter, any language) have been developed independently, in two different civilizations, in two different contexts.

Each civilization, when faced with a situation or an idea or a thought, coined a word for it and the language was formed. The situation was made further complex by the fact that each civilizations was interacting with other civilizations, and that led to a lot of interchange of ideas, thoughts and images. It also led to the two languages getting a bit close to each other.

The next question is, so why have not the languages grown closer, why is this article being written to defend non-translatability, in this era of globalisation and intermixing of cultures? Well, two points. The first is of course that the cultures are still not completely mixed, each retains within itself certain thought processes which are very unique to itself. The second, and in my opinion more important, is that even the ideas or thoughts which a civilization takes from others are warped according to the existing framework of the receiving civilization.

I’ll take an example. Suppose I have a thought in my mind and I want to convey it to you. Also assume that we both know a common language. This is what will typically happen:

Lets label the thought as [T]. I’ll convert that thought to speech. What will come out is [T minus T1], because of the limitations of the language I am using, my understanding of the nuances of the language and my capability of thought processing itself. This is called selective transmission. Now this [T minus T1] reaches your ears (assuming no transmission loss). Based on how much attention you are paying to me (and how good your hearing is), you will receive [T minus T1 minus T2]. This is called selective reception. Now based on how important you think my inputs are to you, and on what your mind is preoccupied with, your mind will retain only a part of this to process, let us say [T minus T1 minus T2 minus T3]. This is called selective retention. Then your mind will process this input based on its own understanding of the language and its own capability of thought processing. So what you will finally get the thought as is [T minus T1 minus T2 minus T3 minus T4]. This is called selective cognition. Now this process is continuously happening as we converse or even as you read this article. And there are several other parameters than what I have mentioned above. To simplify, lets say that what you get is not my thought but your perception of my thought.

Now imagine the same thing happening when the transmitters and receivers and interpreters are whole civilizations. And the language of communication is alien at least to one of the two parties. The whole thing becomes a chaos. How do you expect, then, that any two languages can be translated into each other? Whatever words you are able to translate, consider them to be exceptions. All that you can do, is transliteration, which essentially means, understand the whole thought behind a sentence, then try to express that whole thought in the other language. The words, expressions used, may be way different, but the point will be conveyed.

Novels

Originally written for my sister's eloqution preparation Aug 1994

Respected …. and my dear friends, have you ever read that passionate creation by Jane Austen, her novel “Pride and Prejudice” and seen the TV serial Trishna based on the same? Or have you had the pleasure of enjoying the moving stories of the great Hindi writer Premchandra and watched the dramatised version of the same on TV?

Respected …. and my dear friends, the topic for today’s debate is “Television has made novel-reading superfluous.” I am totally against the motion, I would go on to say that the topic itself is superfluous, in fact preposterous and I feel sorry that a full-fledged debate is needed to refute the statement. As an English(H) student and as a connoisseur of good books, I dread the time when such a statement would become truth.

I am not going to criticize or condemn television, I myself like watching TV and respect it as a media to provide infotainment. However, I am not going to accept that it has surpassed the qualities of books and can replace the books. The expansion of satellite communication has certainly provided us with an opportunity to sit glued to television day and night and choose among various available channels, but that does not undermine the importance of books. Give me a good book and I am sure to shut off the TV. In a lighter vein, that saves electricity.

A supporter of the topic of debate may ask, “What have novels and books to offer over and above TV?”. I ask, “What not?” Prof. Basu was telling us in class that there are four styles of introducing comedy in a plot. One, make some character comic. Second, make the dialogue comic. Third, create comic situations. Fourth, make your language comic. The first three can be created in a play or film or TV serial but the fourth, the language of the book or the style of the writer, if you prefer, can never be achieved anywhere else except the book. And it is so not only with the comedy but also with every other emotion or though conceivable, be it a tragedy, love, horror or anything.

Any number of examples can be cited to verify this. One just has to read a literary piece and then watch its dramatised version to realise the shortcomings of TV serials. Read RK Narayan and see the televised version of his stories. Read PG Wodehouse and watch the serial Jeeves and Wooster on Star Plus. Even Sherlock Holmes looks better in print than on screen. Read Cosmos by Carl Sagan and then, watch the serialised version on television. And in case you have missed these books/serials, read Fountainhead by Ayn Rand, the serialised version of which is soon to appear on TV. In all cases, you will find that the TV does not grip you as the book did, you may even find that what is being shown in TV is not exactly the picture you had in mind for the plot.

Any connoisseur of good taste, anyone who wants thoughtful entertainment and not just pass the time, anyone who feels good to become involved with, to be a part of the plot and not simply watch it as a third person would never leave books, novels for TV. Tell me the name of any TV serial and I would immediately tell you at least ten books which would make you, or at least me, drop the very idea of TV.

The advent of new technology, my dear friends, should not and has never removed what is good in the existing society. In fact, technology has only supplemented and helped the existing. There is an increasing tendency in the western countries, especially USA, to have books, novels on computer floppies instead of printed paper for the ease of transportation and reading.

What you get in a book, you never can get on TV screen. A novel is you in solace, you identify yourself with it, in fact, it momentarily takes you out of this world and gives you a new identity. Books change a man, not to mould him into something new, but just in the way every thought changes him. Do you know what is the greatest invention of mankind? It is language. And a novel is the best example of the heights of beauty that the written form of this invention can attain.

Let us look around the world. If TV had been able to make novel reading superfluous, there would have been no publications in the UK or the US, who have had a large number of TV channels for years. In fact, not only the contemporary novels, people are going back to the older times and the 15th to 19th century novels are considered as classics, not only in English but in other languages also.

The only objection to novel reading that is acceptable is that you need time, preferably continuous time, to complete a novel while a TV serial or a TV programme takes but a small time. But I honestly tell you, once you develop the pleasurable habit of reading good novels, you will tend to go for novels which take more time, because only that time would help you to get involved with the novel and experience, not just appreciate, the true beauty of the written word.

In the end, I would only say that till the time when humans will think, till the time when humans would want thought not only in their work but also in entertainment, till the time when humans would appreciate beauty and would appreciate a work of art and till the time when humans would remain humans and not become machines, nothing, leave aside television, will be able to remove the Novel from the rightful place that it has in the society.