Just another Monday???

So let's be honest here, how many of us were upset when we found out 26th Jan was a Sunday this year, and we were missing out on a Holiday. There's nothing wrong in admitting it, we work really hard throughout the year and it is fair to look forward to these sure shot holidays that we get every year, nothing wrong at all. The problem starts when that is all they end up becoming.

And it starts getting worse when we start enumerating the great achievements of this great nation, more out of the guilt we feel for not feeling patriotic the rest of the year, through emails, SMSs, Whatsapp, FB, twitter and what not. Suddenly, it dawns upon us how great our country really is and how important it is to spread the word, lest our friends forget it. And then, we get on with life again the next day, like any other Monday. It almost seems like  in these three days we use up all our patriotism and have nothing left to offer after that.

No, this is not a hate post to all of those people who are sharing great achievements of our country , and wishing each other on Republic day, I myself do the same, and I feel it is very important, these holidays are symbols of our independence and our republic, and all the efforts our freedom fighters put in to get us independence, so it is very important that we celebrate and enjoy these days. But, and this is a big but, it is important to realise that these days are only symbols, and these feelings should not dessert us on other days.

I feel we need to celebrate our national holidays like we celebrate Lohri. It is the day our farmers celebrate their harvest, but that doesn't mean they don't work hard in their fields the rest of the year. Lohri, or Pongal, and other harvest festivals around the country are a celebration of a farmer's year long hard work and the crop he produced. That is how we should look at our National holidays, a celebration of patriotism practised throughout the year, not just a once a year extravaganza of messages, wishes and TV programs that make us feel patriotic and proud of our great nation.

Things are easier said than done, aren't they? we can say today that from now on we will be patriotic all around the year, and we will be the best citizen any country can have.But how is it going to happen? what do we need to do to be patriotic throughout the year? What can we do for our nation? Is there a book with all these answers?

I feel we live in exciting times and answering these simple questions might actually be easier today than maybe 3-4 years ago. I don't propose any answers myself, I believe it is every individuals prerogative, and duty, to figure out these answers himself. Matters of patriotism are very personal and nobody should preach anybody about them. I just want people to think about these questions, for asking these questions to oneself is much much more important than actually finding concrete answers to them.The answer will come from within.

Its up to us then, each one of us, do we get up tomorrow morning like its just another Monday morning, or do we resolve to ask the questions that need to be asked and find our answers ourselves. Jai Hind.

Dharna VS Dharma

What does a CM do? What are his roles and responsibilities? What is his Dharma? keeping the legal, constitutional definition aside, my intention is to think about what are the answers to these questions in the context of contemporary times, with respect to the people of Delhi, and with respect to Arvind Kejriwal - The Anarchist CM.

Anarchy is the word being used to describe the Aam Aadmi party's Dharna and their ways of getting their points across , right from the opposition to the media, everyone is using this word, and the AAP is not getting any respite from any corner.  We have to understand one thing here, AAP's idea, inception, and rise to power has been full of Anarchist flavours, so their governance being Anarchic should hardly be of any surprise.

The people of Delhi voted them into power knowing very well, being impressed by even, their anarchic and disruptive nature. You can't buy a ticket for a Rohit Shetty entertainer and expect an Anurag Kashyap epic when you enter the theatre. I know its not as simple as that, a CM is supposed to have some responsibility towards governance, but he is also entitled to his own police force, otherwise how can he assure safety to his people, and the fact that he takes to such unprecedented,extreme (anarchic some might say) measures to ensure his Dharma should be taken in a positive light instead of  aspersions being cast against him. At least he is ready to ask the tough questions and fight for them in these times, instead of using them as an excuse for his government's inefficiency.

A Dharna is his way to express the frustration and helplessness that any one of us will feel if we were in his place. He cannot turn away from his Dharma and shirk the responsibility away by completely blaming the central government. In the previous Delhi governments, this precise problem was a perfect excuse to respond to most law and order problems, and everyone said how convenient it is for Sheilaji not to own up to anything and not even do anything about it except to write a letter to the Home minister once in a while!.

There is also the argument of all the disturbance and inconvenience being caused to the real "Aam Aadmi" by these protests. How four metro stations are blocked and how the republic day preparations are being affected. Like somebody very rightly said, if you want to build flyovers you have to bear with the inconveniences that come with its construction. The "Aam Aadmi" needs to ask this question to himself, is he ready to feel some inconvenience right now to cherish the fruits of the flyover in the future.

I just feel, something had to be done, there a very many such issues facing Delhi right now, and all of them need to be taken up, need to be addressed, just like some of these issues would require deep thought, wisdom, fresh new ideas in terms of governance, others would require extreme, aggressive steps that many may call anarchist. It is for us, for each one of us to contemplate, how can we get things done in this country, have letters to ministers ever achieved anything here? we shout out loud only when people don't listen to us, and how the centre responds to the CM's Dharna will tell us if he is shouting at deaf ears or not.

Let's just hope that someday the Delhi phoenix rises from these anarchist ashes.

The Moral Compass

How do people calibrate their moral compass? Does it always point true north ? Or does it sway from the nort-east to the north-west depeneding on where their comfort zones lie, down south even, sometimes if the need be.

Here's a hypothetical scenario: although there are many of us who stop at traffic signals diligently in our regular day to day lives, but in times of urgency when we are going to miss an important meeting or a flight, would we really stop? or would we just make sure no cop is watching and jump the signal, because this is after all a matter of urgency and moving fast is very important, more important even, than sticking to our own principles, or traffic rules in this matter.

The matter of practicality comes in at such times, I fear. We tend to get practical and focus on accomplishing the task at hand rather than where our moral compass is pointing to, the compass is sometimes too inconvenient to follow and it is not deemed prudent to be so rigid in our stance, let common sense prevail they say, and so do we.

At the risk of sounding like an idealist I ask this question, should we not follow our principles come what may, because they are, after all, the rules by which we have decided to play this little game called life. And breaking these rules feels like cheating, that too in a game which we play with ourselves and rules we have set-up before hand. Am I sounding too harsh? shouldn't we be allowed to break these rules, who's watching  us after all, and who's getting hurt by this, and these are self-imposed rules, surely we must be allowed to make amendments, shouldn't we be? Its like the British saying they will play cricket with 12 players in their side because they invented the game!!!

I ponder these things more these days because a strange incident that happened last month. Me and my wife had a 9 pm train to catch one Friday evening, we packed our luggage, locked the house and took the elevator to get down. It was around 815, the cab was waiting for us outside the society and given the traffic conditions we would have to hurry to get to the station on time. As we moved out of the elevator and were walking towards the society gates, we saw a large crowd forming close by in the society compound, out of curiosity we just walked a couple of steps towards the crowd to check what was the matter, and there to our horror, was lying a girl, not older than 20, blood flowing from under her head, she had taken a fall from the terrace of our 12 story building and as per the people present, had died on the spot. Who was she, did she fall accidentally, or was pushed by somebody or did she do this to herself??? All these thoughts were racing in our heads now as people asked us to try and identify her, I could see the panic on my wife's face when she was asked to take a closer look, not having seen a dead body from that close ever before in her life. She was on the verge of breaking into tears, of breaking down,  and guess what was going on in my head, I regret it, but I was thinking about the train and how I would miss it if I did not leave the place that very moment, in my head I was telling myself to control myself and my spouse and get both of  us moving, because it was very important that we don’t miss the train. I thought about the girl, and how unfortunate it was, and how it would look inhuman if we just walked pass right now, but I told myself that we had too, and that’s what we did, within 5 minutes we were in the cab racing towards the station.

I know I sound like a heartless person, and people will abhor me for such callous actions, and no, there is not 'but' in this sentence, I cannot and will not defend my actions, I present them as they are. I did an inhuman deed in the name of being practical and letting reason take control over emotion, the good thing though, was that my wife talked sense into me about half way to the station and we turned the cab around to come back. Her point being, somebody had died that day, in our society, in front of us, how can we just walk past something like that so callously, I tried to argue with her with all the practicality and logic I could muster, but even I knew somewhere deep down inside( at least I like to believe so) that what I had done was wrong and we should return. And so did we.

I would not like to delve much into the specifics of the matter, we did spend the night in utter shock. Discussing what had happened, and also, how we had reacted to it. And that is where the question of a moral compass rose in my mind, why do we tend to lose it in the times we need it the most. In trying times, these principles should give us strength, but we drop them at the first sign of trouble. And if that's indeed true then what is the point of having any principles at all, why put up this charade? Maybe some of us aren't and some of us are?

I do not try to answer these questions, they are beyond me, and neither should any one else, but it is very important to ponder over such questions, to think about them, because that's what makes us human, and it is also important to understand  that if we lose our moral compass for good, we might end up being savages lost in the jungle of life.