Mountain of light

Leaving on a holiday is so easy. Get the backpack out, throw in a few clothes, pocket the tickets and all set to go on a vacation. No laptop to carry, no presentations to worry about, no appointments to reconfirm and no formal clothes to be washed and ironed.. However what is not so easy is leaving the daily worry schedule behind. Leaving career worries, financial worries and general in life worries and stresses that seem to take up more and more of my time. Maybe the vacation will give me the oppurtunity to look it all from a distance as a third person looking at the worries and myself at the same time. It will probably help me see how miniscule these issues are in the larger scheme of things. Or maybe not. Maybe i'll just soak up the sun, eat sleep and read as I usually do on all my vacations.

Who wants to think and analyse anyways. What good has analysis done to anyone. What good has it done to me. It just makes simple things complicated and suddenly you don't know what to do or what not to do. If you are a student or a practicioner of business management then you might think this is the apt time to call in a consultant. Unfortunately, that is not the case with my personal affairs. There is no consultant to call in and there is no report that will deal with my worries. The problems, stresses are all mine and have to be dealt by me or they just lie unresolved. Which is not such a bad thing actually. I have so many unresolved issues and I just tend to conviniently forget them unless the whole thing blows up on my face or I am reminded of it or both. You hear so many quotes on life that you begin to think that one day at the fag end of your life you might churn out a quote yourself and that quote would also sum up your life as it has been or as it has not been. That quote might be your sole contribution to the the business of living and to the english language if you are lucky. Oneday someone might read that quote and truly identify with it. Not that it will make a diffrence to either his life or yours but then what makes a difference anyway.

I have spent two years writing into this blog and analysing to death everything that I have written about. I have churned out a few bylines in the process. Maybe people have come to my blog and identified with what I have said or maybe its got them confused. Maybe its made things clearer for me than what it was before I started to write about it. But again what do I do with this clear picture of issues that don't affect my immediate life.I might frame this picture and hang it up in my living room and look at it once in a while. But what about the issues that affect me more closely, nothing that I seem to think or do makes things clear there. But to be fair I don't do much about them anyway. Except taking vacations to run away from them once in a while.

Happy Holidays!

It is all about discipline isn’t it. Discipline at work, discipline in your studies, discipline in your savings and that biggest virtue of all – moral discipline. I see my life disappearing and getting trampled under these boulders. Its like a landslide coming from the top of a mountain towards my little cottage at the foothills. Before I know it my life will be ironed out and I will fall into line. Culled into someone I never wanted to be, someone I never wanted to look at in the mirror. Disciplined people look like robots to me, going about their lives in mechanical fashion. I don’t know if they even think what they are doing, if they analyse what else could they be doing. I think they are too scared to even think about living their lives in any other way.

Discipline comes under various guises – professionalism, maturity, sense of responsibility and decency among others. I am supposed to aspire towards these qualities among others. This is what makes me acceptable to everyone and their uncles. This is what grants me that social acceptability. Undisciplined vagabonds have no place in society because they have no cloak of acceptability to hide their indiscipline. Some of these attributes are forced upon me by my parents (well wishers?) and some of it is dictated by monetary considerations. Getting up today morning and coming to work was pure monetary and it went against the advise of every nerve in my body. I came to work today so I could buy that music CD, so I could go pay for that Italian meal and for my cable internet connection. Nothing that I can do today can offer me any professional satisfaction, not by the way my morning went. I have to discipline myself not to take leave on every small pretext which a few corollaries down the line means that I am able to pay for my needs.

I don’t see any point in externally imposed discipline. The realization and the actual act should come from inside. But then the problem with people is that once they discipline themselves they take it upon themselves as their mission in life to discipline everyone around them. I thrive in my indiscipline, in my chaos and this cluttered mind and even my cluttered table. I’ll start to hate myself if I get too disciplined. I don’t think anyone should have a problem with what I do as long as I am not hurting anyone (including myself). I think discipline is too boring and too staid. Once you get into the disciplined way then there is no end to it. There is always someone higher than you and someone more disciplined than you. I guess we look to get inspiration from disciplined people because it doesn’t come naturally to us. I always come across people who make me look like Operation Brassstacks, but do they inspire me? No! I like the way I am and I will change only when the impetus comes from inside of me. I like to keep my balance inside of me and not outside.

Which is not to say I am the perfect man. I am not and never will be. Who wants to be perfect anyway? Too boring.

We as citizens of this country are often guilty of picking out our country’s faults and harping on them and not focusing enough on the positives. No matter how bad a situation is there are always bound to be some positives. While it is important to talk about the negatives and work towards constant improvement, I feel that we should also talk about the positives and give credit where it is due. I am also guilty on this count and from this post onwards I am going to look at a situation and talk about both positives and negatives, as they exist side by side.

We often talk about how our political systems don’t work. How the regulators, watchdogs of the system don’t do their jobs effectively. Most of what we say is by and large based on true facts. But what doesn’t meet our eye and I blame the media for it partly, is the fact that there are people out there who are fighting the corruption and the red tape in the system. They are fighting inspite of the fact that it could potentially endanger their careers, they could be transferred out every 6 months or so because their political masters find them to be a nuisance and they could find themselves in some god forsaken place looking after animal husbandry. They need all the support that we can give them in the same manner, as the people who form part of the corrupt system should be afforded as much resistance from us. But do we support the honest and do we resist the corrupt? No! We (me included) are too busy living our lives, earning our bread and butter, and climbing the corporate ladder and what have you. But in all this we do find time to criticize the system.

I have wanted to write a letter to our current Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) – James M Lyngdoh. Except I couldn’t bring myself to write anything in the letter. So I was just a silent admirer, closely following him through the media. This week I read that he has been awarded the Magsaysay Award for Government Service. The site says ‘ The Foundation recognizes “his convincing validation of free and fair elections as the foundation and best hope of secular democracy in free and fair India”’ These are strong words coming from an independent, external institution. We (citizens, politicians etc) keep harping on how we are the largest democracy in the world. But what does it take to be that democracy, who is the watchdog for the democracy and who ensures that the democracy doesn’t turn in into an idiocracy (I made this word up!). Among the watchdogs of this democracy is the Election Commission that is headed by the CEC.

Over the last year this very democracy was threatened on two counts. One on ensuring peaceful elections (it was never going to be free and fair) in Gujarat especially after the violence that had taken place and second, ensuring that elections in Jammu and Kashmir are free and fair so atleast we can live up to being a “democracy” and not have a sham of elections which had been happening there for the past two decades. One would agree that in such circumstances the Election Commission would need all the support that it can get. Except what did it get in instead?

What it got instead was - A legal battle in the Supreme Court between the Central Government and the Election Commission (EC) questioning the EC’s powers to postpone the election in Gujarat by 6 months. The court ruled in the favor of the EC and had a few things to say to the Central Government in the process. The CEC’s name and religion was thrown about in public and it was said that he was in co hoots with a certain politician of Italian origin. The kind of abuse that went around, and how his middle name was repeated again and again would make even a hardened ruffian squirm. Much was made of an incident where he called certain bureaucrats in Gujarat as “jokers”. I think Mr. Lyndgoh was being very civil with them because I would have called them murderers. The bureaucrats ofcourse were quite enraged on that comment and there was talk at that time of a defamation suit. I mean we all know that there are jokers but we can’t call them jokers.

The elections in Gujarat went off peacefully, the results were a foregone conclusion. But God only knows what would have happened if the elections had been held immediately in the aftermath of the riots. We would never know I guess. The elections in Jammu and Kashmir were a thumping success and even the PM, whose statements are very measured and controlled, and whose party lost the elections, said that these are the first free and fair elections in Kashmir after a long time. Those elections in Kashmir will hold us in good stead for a very very long time. I don’t think we even realize the implications that will flow in the next few years from just one set of elections.

So, did we nominate Mr. Lyndgoh for the Bharat Ratna? Ok that is too high an award maybe the Padmashree then. I don’t understand the rules and regulations too well. Maybe there is a rule that serving civil servants can’t get nominated for these awards (but they can get awards from outside?). Ok so what about a statement from the PM congratulating the EC on a job well done. You could say well he was only doing his job. The past two decades of elections in Kashmir were because of people who were only doing their jobs and didn’t have the courage to stand up to the politicians. Another award Mr. Lyndgoh got was a “Star of Asia”, conferred by the Business Week magazine in the policy makers category. He was placed on par with the Chinese Premier Hu Jintao for his commitment to fighting SARS. Can you imagine the honor? Business Week again is a prestigious international publication.

Did any Indian organization, company, group of individuals confer him with an award? Not that I know off, please do tell me if you know of something. Did we tell him through a citation that, Thank you sir! We as a democracy are privileged to have you managing our elections. Maybe now that he has got the Magsaysay, people will sit up and notice and decide to give him an award. This is like what happened with Amartya Sen after he got the Nobel. The government stood up and took notice of his research and he also suddenly started getting so many awards.

To end I quote from an article of Rajdeep Sardesai (NDTV) in Mid-Day. He had this to say about the elections in Kashmir.
“Every Kashmiri you spoke to, would hark back to the 1987 elections, widely believed to have been rigged, an election which was seen to have given separatist sentiments a new momentum. This 2002 election has partly, if not entirely, buried some of the ghosts of 1987 and revived a flicker of hope in the valley. For that alone, Lyngdoh and his team, who have personally visited the valley at least half a dozen times in the last few months, deserve full praise. Omar Abdullah might wonder what went wrong, but maybe even he in a moment of reflection might pause to admire the quiet revolution brought about in Indian democracy by a man of few words with a black belt in judo”

Mr. Lyndgoh, thank you.

I subscribe to this magazine called The Little Magazine (www.littlemag.com). This is a bi-monthly publication and takes quite a while to go through. Each issue is based on one topic (like crime or media) and then they are essays on that article by people who are authorities in that field. Then there is fiction and poetry on the same topic , book reviews on the same and it usually ends with a film or a play script that is again based on the same cover issue. A lot of fiction and poetry is, quite refreshingly, from languages other than English. The magazine draws a lot from all corners of India to come with wonderful pieces. Each issue for me is a wonderful learning experience. The last issue I read was on Crime. Among the things they talked about was communal violence. I wanted to write about it for quite some time except I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to write. It is also easy to get very negative about the whole thing and then I tend to lose my point altogether.

Communal violence as I understand is violence based on among other things, religion. This is something I have never been quite able to understand. I understand people fighting over money, women, opinions, and even television remotes. But why religion? Most of us don’t even choose our religion, we kind off inherit it from our parents at birth. But then religion is also something we manage to hang on to most closely. As I start analysing the whole thing it is easy to see why communal violence happens.

India, as our founding fathers saw it, is a secular country where there is no discrimination on the basis of religion. All religions are equal. But even after centuries of these religions mingling together I see minority (in terms of religion) communities living all concentrated together. Near these dwellings will be a place of worship and the most of the shops in the surrounding areas will also be owned by the same community. Depending on where you go, inter-religious marriages are still frowned upon even by the majority community. We still don’t know too much about each other’s festivals even though we have lived with each other for generations. As in a country like ours, where different religions have co-existed for centuries, I would expect current thinking and ideas (even education) to draw upon the knowledge and wisdom from all these religions (like language, for example). To my mind, there is a lack of knowledge and understanding of other religions and how they are only different paths to the same God.

It is precisely this ignorance which shows its ugly face in the form of communal violence. Ignorance you see can breed a lot of negative attributes like fear, hatred etc. When we strike violently against someone isn’t it a combination of fear and hatred? Fear because the other person has the ability to bring harm to us, and hatred because we perceive that he has or plans to bring harm to us. This ignorance when combined with things like lack of economic opportunities, hunger, and some mischievous religious leaders, becomes this huge demon which is all ready to spout fire at the other community. This could take the form of demolishing century old mosques, raping nuns and burning clerics alive or even demanding for a Hindu state.

To my mind there are two ways of stopping this kind of violence. One, by effectively clamping down on the people who do the violence and the people who plan it right down to the last fire and two, by education and bringing down unemployment. Both solutions are easier said than done and I don’t see anything been done on any of these counts. Sometimes I get all cynical and wonder that given these conditions why isn’t there like a major riot every year and at each major religious festival. The kind of nonsense which sometimes get dished out in the front pages makes me shiver as I think of what kind of mind does it take to make these statements and what else is that devious mind capable off.

The other day I was searching for some famous quotes and among others I came across these two.

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction." Blaise Pascal

Harvey Milk, at a 1978 Gay Freedom Day Rally. (Harvey Milk was killed later that year by a fanatic).
"The fact is that more people have been slaughtered in the name of religion than for any other single reason. That, THAT my friends, is true perversion."

I was on a temporary break from writing in my blog and I must say that I missed writing. I enjoy connecting to my inner self as I pour out my thoughts. Sometimes what comes out in these outpourings surprises me and sometimes it leaves me curious. Curious to what lies inside the mind, especially because here I am analyzing other people and here is this whole new self inside me. Maybe this inner self also feeds on the minds of other people and that helps it to grow. As always there is so much to write about, so much to talk and discuss about and so goes the business of blogging.

An issue that has always been close to my heart has been women’s rights. Growing up, I have always been an advocate of equality of sexes, about women getting their fair due from society, about violence against women and sexual repression which ties up with everything else. My current work assignment is with a women’s rights project and it is starting to expose me to the extent of the problem. The problem is that men just refuse to give women their due and let them be whatever it is that they want to be. They like their women as submissive so they can keep them under their thumb and while they are free to do whatever they want to unchecked. This problem has so many faces. One face is marriage and how men like one type of women as their girlfriends and for pre-marital sex and another type for wives. The women who indulge in these activities are perceived to be loose and not fit enough to be taken home to mother. Another face is post marriage when the women is supposed to buckle down and somehow resolve home and office while the man can keep his late hours and keep his career glowing. I am not against women taking care of the house and the man going out to work, but these should be decisions taken and agreed upon jointly and not inflicted by the man onto the woman. There is also the case of how daughters are treated differently than their brothers. While the sons are allowed to go out and pursue their careers and wherever that may take them, daughters are not similarly encouraged. Yes there are exceptions and thank God for those exceptions but then for the majority this holds true.

Yes it is changing and its changing too damn slow. Men I see are finding it increasingly difficult to face up to the new woman. They don’t know how to react, where to look and they certainly don’t see their mothers in these women. Increasingly, women are not finding the right men and vice-versa. It is difficult for men to give the space that women demand of them. They find it uncomfortable (threatened?) when their woman stands up and holds a conversation and has views and opinions independent of them. Women feel that while they have moved on, men are still stuck in a time warp and their image of an ideal woman needs a drastic revamp. Its a classic mismatch and the only way forward is for the men to change. The men haven’t changed for quite some time now and they certainly haven’t changed for the women.

So why am I saying all this? Personally, some wonderful women that I know and have known have enriched my life. They have added to my thought process, broadened my horizons and have made me a much better person. It is not about control, it is about giving and getting so much more in return. It doesn’t suit anybody for men to continue to dominate women. By continuing with this domination, 50% of the society will never be able to come up to its full potential. I think if we start giving women the space and respect that they deserve in society, we will start cutting off the roots of a lot of problems. Problems like rape, sexual discrimination, eve teasing, female infanticide etc. have their genesis in the respect and space a society accords to its women.

And let’s start with the man in the mirror...

Another year whizzed past me, like a Brett Lee bouncer, before I could say “2003” and here am I staring at 2004 and making plans for the coming year. The new year party seems like it happened yesterday and the next thing I know its time to plan for the next one. As the winter chills me to my bones and forces me to stay at home it is also time for me to look back at this year.

A year is a long time in history, yet as I look back at it and try to write about it I can barely think beyond a few lines at the most. Not for me to churn out one thousand words on 2003.Yet so much happened in this year, so much that books can be, and have been, written on each of those happenings. I see many changes on a few fronts and no or little change on most fronts and its difficult for me to put it all together in some sensible form. So much seems to be happening everywhere, most of it seemingly disconnected, yet it is all connected in some fashion and it is that connecting thread which contains all our answers. I have always groped for that thread and sometimes I think that I have it but then something happens which doesn’t seem to fall in place and make any sense and I am back to groping again. But then man has been groping for that elusive link since way back in time. Whether it is the punter playing in the stockmarket or whether it is the head of a state running the affairs of a country. All of us have at some point (if not all the time) wanted that extra bit knowledge and understanding.

India Shinning – in the last few months of this year we have seen a whole series of “India Shinning” ads run by the government in all the national dailies. Those very dailies that are peddled by street urchins on all traffic lights. The ad is based on everything from improvement in agriculture to women empowerment. The ad gives a commentary on the state of the Indian economy and rattles off figures of growth, foreign exchange and other assorted set of numbers all set to give you the feel good factor. As one columnist very aptly said that in the old times the rulers used to proclaim their achievements by building minars and palaces, while in modern times the rulers bring out full page ads in newspapers and that too at the tax payers expense. Government ads have become much more snazzier as compared to the old DAVP ones. Yes agreed there has been a little bit of progress on some fronts and that has affected a small minority that lives in the urban areas. However, the majority still has to fight every day to fill their stomachs and educate their children. So what if we don’t get to see them in the cities, they still exist. Progress isn’t about showing off new malls to the outside visitor but talking about how much money did those poor labourers get for building those malls and do they have proper houses. It is about asking where did they come from and where are they now?

It bothers me to no end when we live in a society of such glaring disparities and then on top of that the government decides to use the taxpayer’s money to publish huge ads talking about India Shinning. Are we blind? Do we need the government to tell us that our country is shinning? Can’t we make that out for ourselves? What has suddenly happened in the last one year for India to shine? One good monsoon! Is that it? Is that what the economy is all about? Before the monsoon there was no feel good factor and just because we have had this great monsoon things are suddenly looking great!

As much as I wanted to end this year on a cheerful note, its difficult for me to close my eyes to the reality. But I do look forward to the next year with hope and excitement of good ideas being translated into action.

In the meanwhile I shall save my cheers for the New Year do. Cheers to the New Year!

Marriage. Why do people get married? What do they seek to achieve in a marriage that they can’t achieve outside of it or what do they seek to avoid by getting married? I have grown up with these questions in my head and have never got one answer. People have given me different versions, have confused me, fascinated me and even scared me. Even when I sought to analyse married relationships on my own I have come up with all kind of answers. All this while I was putting other people through the scanner and never quite asking myself the question on why would I want to get married, or even a more basic question if I want to get married. But somehow in all my inquisitiveness about relationships I have imbibed some opinions, advices and experiences of people. Why have I imbibed some and not all? Maybe its because those opinions were close to what I already believed in so it was very convenient for me to imbibe them. I don’t know if that is the correct explanation but that is the only thing that I can think of.

So it is I under the scanner now. I am getting married and I am asking myself those very questions that I would have asked of my married and soon to be married friends. I have never been known for an honest introspection but then that hasn’t been for the lack of trying! I have asked myself all the above questions and have got answers to some of them and for some questions the answer is I don’t know. Maybe I’ll have all the answers after I get married, maybe I won’t. But then suddenly when it is all being applied to me I don’t think these questions are relevant. Or atleast only some of them are relevant. Why am I asking all these questions of myself anyway? Especially since I have never sat myself down before any decision and asked questions of myself on why am I doing whatever it is that I am doing. I have just gone and done what I wanted to do. So then, why all this questioning on the decision to get married?

Maybe it is because marriages are under an intense scrutiny these days by everyone from psychologists to jewellery brands. Everyone is out to understand the married relationship and see how best they can focus their products and services on the couple. The psychologists talk about people being in otherwise dead relationships for convenience sake, for the sake of companionship, for kids and what have you. They look to market their services in counseling couples together and separately in reviving their marriages or helping them call quits if there is no way out. The consumer brands talk about reviving dead relationships by gifting diamonds, platinum, holidays, chocolates and flowers to get that smile back into the relationship. There is ofcourse this whole lifestyle industry centered on marriage where they talk about doing certain things in a certain way to make a marriage successful. Examples are given of “successful” relationships where usually the woman is portrayed as a super woman who manages a high profile job, kids, house and writes cookbooks in her sleep. In all this she always manages to look impeccable every time she is photographed. The man usually is in the highest income-earning bracket who takes his family to Europe when it gets too hot and to the beaches when it gets too cold and all this while he is not buying the latest “family” car or playing golf on weekends. There is ofcourse no mention about any friction that may have or does exist in their relationship. Maybe I am over reacting, but to me all this is very visible and it seems obvious to me why we give more attention to marriage than we should and this also has a huge bearing by the benchmarks by which we gauge marriages. I probably would not be so bothered if I was not affected by it at some level. Its hard not to get affected no matter how much you guard against it.

Meanwhile, it is the business of organizing a marriage. Also a pledge, that the next time someone tells me to think “out of the box” when planning for my marriage I promise to box him/her out!!

It is the year of the big elections what with both US and India going to elections this year. Its interesting as one compares the two democracies and sees how they countdown to the big day. It in some ways also serves as a reminder on how behind we are in the road to being a mature democracy. When George Bush came to power he was in some ways considered a minnow to politics and no one gave him a chance to make independent decisions outside of his coterie of advisors. There was ofcourse the famous Florida recount and loud murmurs of election rigging and what have you. I remember a friend in Washington telling me that when Bush came to Washington after winning the elections there was a big banner put up proclaiming. Welcome to the thief or something to that effect. I remember being horrified with the American public for picking up a man like him to run the US and in effect the whole world and worse of all, my favourite magazine The Economist backed him as a choice over Al Gore. This was the end of the world for as far as I was concerned. Four years down the line George Bush has belied all expectations and until a few months back very few doubted on his chances of running a second term. Call it good fortune, call it forgery of WMDs, call it spin doctoring but the man was and is a strong candidate for re-election.
Given this backdrop you would assume that very few Democrats would want to sacrifice their presidential aspirations in running against him. But no sir! They were queuing up as if it was the exclusive premiere to Lord of the Rings. They were angry Democrats who vowed to throw him out of power even if this was the last thing they did and they were egged on by even more angrier supporters. Some of these supporters have international exposure and are quite ashamed of the jibes they get for being Americans and all because of their current President. Most of these supporters are putting their money where their mouth is and if Bush still comes back to power then at least it wouldn’t be because of lack of effort from the Democrats’ side.

When Prime Minister Vajpayee came to power the general feeling was that this government would not last for five years and the fact that the BJP had little or no experience of being in power and that coupled with their temple agenda was a recipe for disaster. The Congress was waiting in the sidelines for the government to topple under its own weight and all it would have to do was to just walk in and stake its claim to glory, after all the power has always rightfully belonged to the Congress! Five years on the government has survived pretty well. It has survived a half-war from across the border and has unleashed a massive India Shinning campaign just a few months before it called for early elections. This is a sign of a very confident government which can do no wrong which is headed by a Prime Minister who has the Midas touch. Nothing affects this government.. communal riots, video exposes of corruption, scams everywhere, fiscal jugglery and its politicians mouthing all kinds of obscenities and everyone and sundry. This government gets away with murder and then has the gall to put out an India Shinning campaign. It is like an election campaign on taxpayer’s money.
Given this backdrop one would assume that the opposition would be raring to go at the party with a difference and its allies with all that it has got in its arsenal. It would have used these five years to garner support for this campaign and come election there would be no stopping the opposition from steamrolling the government. If only that had happened... I would have been the happiest person on earth. We would have seen an equal campaign from both sides and important issues being raised and debated about in various forums. Except as things stand now the current government is slated to come back to power and it is mainly because of a lack of effective opposition. A case in point - few days back was the second anniversary of Godhra and the opposition sat quiet through it almost as if it was afraid of antagonising the Hindus! The situation is so bad for the Congress that anyone who votes for it knows that her vote is a lost vote because even though it might help to win the odd seat, the party has no hope in hell to come back to power and what that does is that it pushes the fence sitters to the BJP and that makes the margin of defeat look even more bigger. Also the BJP will come back with such a swagger almost as if to say that the end justifies the means and whatever they have done over the past five years has been vindicated by the people and they have been voted back to power. I can’t bring myself to vote for the BJP no matter how good are the credentials of its local candidate. It is a mental block and if there ever was a mental block I was proud off then here is one. I am also not against BJP coming to power but what bothers me is the lack of an effective opposition which just lets the ruling party stomp its agenda through unfettered and uninhibited.

We as human beings inhabit and rule this earth and sometimes in our daily humdrum of lives very convieniently forget (or overlook) our fellow inhabitants like birds, animals, plants. Most of us don’t think about them until we are reminded of them by something sensational like cows in the middle of a road or a snake in a residential area or birds inside our roofs desperately trying to build their nests. Faced with such infrequent encounters we usually become awkward and don’t know how to deal with them. We certainly don’t feel comfortable with them sharing our space and we are pretty sure we don’t want them inside our living rooms.

So we decide to shoo them away, veer our automobiles around them or just c all the municipal department to deal with the vagabond animal who probably is even more scared than us. There is this usual talk of about how human societies have encroached upon animal preserves and how there used to be leopards and cheetahs here only decades before us. But what never comes
to fore is how uncomfortable we are with animals in their various forms. Should we stay when they are near us, should we pat them, can we beningly look into their eyes without signalling confrontation? How do we communicate with them when we can’t talk and are they even interested in even communicating with us. What will we tell them? Or even more interestingly what will they have to say to us? Will they have a few things to say to us about marginalising them in their own planet and about polluting the nature so much that they can’t live in what little space is left for them?

Its amazing how these thoughts were crossing my head as we made our way to Sultanpur bird sanctuary on the outskirts of Delhi. We were accompanied by two bird lovers who came armed with their binoculars, memories of past bird watching and book reading and ofcourse a very good eye to pick out birds from the middle of nowhere. Most of these are migratory birds who come to Delhi in the winters escaping from hasher colder climates in their
native areas. They all camp around this small lake in groups, pairs or by themselves. They just sit patiently for hours and hours and sometimes decide to take off when they feel the mood to show off their beautiful wings or maybe when humans come too close to them for a dekho. These are birds that I had only heard of or maybe read about. The place is very quiet and peaceful and only intersperesed with bird calls, the distant sound of highway traffic and the excitement of our wonderful companions on a bird s
ighting. Out came the binoculars and then the gush of recognition and then some information about the particular species. If the bird was not recognised then a mental note was made to go home and look it up in the books.

Those birds in someways reminded me of how we were as a race centuries ago. We were nomads who would migrate to different places in search of moderate weather, fertile lands and even animals to feed on. No passports, no visas, no tickets. You wanna go somewhere, just pick up your belongings and go. People were self-sufficient and they lived off the land for their needs of clothing, shelter and food. Birds and animals to me signify that nomadic lifestyle.

Its only after going to this bird sanctuary that I realised how much of nature that I miss out on in the routine that my life has become. There is so much on offer and so near me. I realise that I miss the bulbul that used to be a regular feature near my house every spring and early summer. I didn’t realise how much I had gotten used to it until 1 year i didn’t hear the call at all. I wonder what happened. Maybe they cut down the mango tree and the bird decided to cut its links with us. “You’re not worthy” may have been its reaction. As a kid I remember watching parrots perched on the tree ledge or even a group of them flying overhead. Wonder what happened to them, or maybe they are all there and I am the one who either has no time or my mind just has switched off. I don’t remember the last time I stopped to listen to a bird call that I had not heard before or atleast not heard for a while.

My nightmare is about the day when internet and television will just take over all our senses and we won’t need to step out of our living rooms to experience a bird sanctuary or even a walk in the great outdoors. That is when virtual reality won’t be virtual anymore. That will probably be the peak of our evolution and I guess the only way from there will be downhill.
Except I dont think the birds will be complaining about the lack of attention. They will be only too happy to star in the latest Playstation movie.

The summer is on us and it is time to stock up on the fluids and borough in during the day. The summers seem to be getting longer and more stronger every year or is it because my body is just getting run down and I can't take extremes as well as I used to. Growing up, I remember that acclimatizing myself, especially in the summers, was a very big deal for me. I used to make it a point to sleep without a fan for days together, to the horror of my family. I used to put myself through such hardships during the summer that you would think that I was preparing myself for a stint at some concentration camp! My father once told me "first deserve and then desire". Ok he told me that more than once and I kind of took it too literally. I said to myself , that I can't afford a desert cooler and I certainly can't afford an air conditioner and so then I can't be spoiling myself and developing habits that I couldn't support. This was ofcourse applicable to the cooling systems only! Even after getting my first job I never invested in a desert cooler, because by that time acclimatizing was pretty big with me and I didn't think there was any point in climate control in my room. I had to be one with nature and not run away from it. Those were hot summer nights.

Over the past few years I have come a long way from that state of affairs. I made do with a cooler for two years and this year it’s an air conditioner. The very sight of that air conditioner is an imposing sight in my room. It’s like a stranger in my room and I almost feel guilty turning it on. Climate control still rubs me up the wrong way and I hope that my body still retains some kind of conditioning to the heat outside. I have never wanted a Switzerland in my room, never wanted oxygen filling up my room or whatever those air-conditioning companies say to sell their wares. I am still not sure if investing in an air conditioner was the right decision, it’s pretty much been the first out and out luxury item I have ever gone for. I just think it’s terrible to be boarding up my doors and windows to keep the cool air in, this just leads to us getting used to exclusivity. This is how ivory towers are cooled aren't they? If our country is about heat and dust then its time we cleaned up and planted more trees to help bring the temperature down. Air conditioners and similar items to me reflect the gap between the haves and the have nots. It’s probably in a way ironic, that one side of the air conditioner throws cold air while the other side lets out a hot blast. Wonder what it takes for a have not to cross over from the hot side to the cold side?

Staying on this topic, I am quite fascinated by some of the air conditioner ads. There was one which had come out last year about turning the air conditioner on and going to Switzerland. Wonder why the company was talking about Switzerland when the Himalayas are so close to us and the Everest is just a few hours away by air. They've been talking about the benefits of nano technology in air conditioners and other white goods and I'll be interested to see how this hybrid air conditioners work. Nano technology promises much smaller devices to replace the big compressors and they will also be more energy efficient.

To cooler times...