Of pain

A month ago, I was at a hospital for a spinal check-up. This hospital happened to be one of those super-speciality ones which usually cast some kind of a repelling effect on me, but since it was the only hospital available in the vicinity of my office, I chose it.

After a minute long security check and a 15 minute process of paying the fees (Oh yes, out-patients first pay and then get treated there), I was sent to a large room with long curtains all around. A lady clad in a white coat took a look at the bill, and then asked me to go into another hall. I went into this another room which had about 20 interning doctors, intently listening to a seminar by their fellow student. I was asked to take a seat and was told that one of those twenty will attend to me once the seminar was over. And so I sat, trying to make sense of what the speaker was talking about. After about 5 minutes, I realized that it was about ‘Ankle injuries in Soccer’. Interesting. A few minutes later, the seminar was over and I found myself lying flat on a bed with the doctor by my side getting ready for my examination.

“Can you lift your left leg please. Yes. Good. Does it pain?”

“Yes”.

“Right leg pls. Does it pain?”

“Hmmm. Not much”

“Ok. Tell me. On a rate of one to ten, how do you rate the pain?”

“Sorry I didn’t get you”

“See, zero means minimum pain. One means a little pain. Like that.”

“Oh. And ten means?”

“Horrible pain. Something like intolerable” (you should have seen his face when he said ‘Horrible’)

“Ok. Then I think its 8″

“8? 8 also is horrible.”

“Huh? 7 then”

“7 is great pain. Do you get tears in your eyes when you walk?”

“No”

“Then choose something else”

“Tell me doctor. What do you measure this scale against? Like, there has to be some reference, right?”

“Nothing like that. Patients are intelligent enough to know the pain they have!”

Finally, he made me choose 4 and decided the prognosis on the basis of it.

During the walk back to office, I was thinking about this conversation and I came up with these questions: Is pain absolute or relative? If pain is absolute, then can there be a viable design of a ‘pain meter’? Is Pain subjective or objective? If it’s subjective, can there be a psychological method of reducing pain? If it’s objective, can it be subjected to tests by our fictitious ‘pain meter’? Can pain-killers be made better by making them work on the subject rather than the object?

These are the questions that keep me occupied these days during the long bus journeys I make every morning.

Short story: Good and bad liasons

The city:

Its a busy street; a string of fancy cloth stores dotting the left and a line of restaurants under brightly lit hoardings on the right. People walk around haphazardly, sub-consciously avoiding bikes and cars. He, with a heavy bag, walks carefully but uncertainly, avoiding bumping into people.

The smell of coffee attracts him into a small eatery. He goes in and orders a cup of coffee after making sure that the amount of money in his pocket matched the number on the blackboard behind the bespectacled cashier. A boy, who he thinks to be around 12 years of age, brings his coffee and places it on the table.

The village:

Three hundred kilometres away, an old man lies under a cot. Waiting. Waiting for, he knows ceratinly, Death. There has been silence for sometime which scares him more than the deafening gunshots. ‘There is always a silence before the final ambush‘. He hears footsteps. He can now feel shadows moving behind the door. He remembers a question he had once asked- ‘But what if I feel scared, Comrade? What should I do? ‘ He remembers the reply he got that day, now. ‘Think of the cause. Think of what you will leave back for your people, your son‘. He thinks of his son who, by now, must be in the city. He utters a prayer and waits for the inevitable.

The metropolis:

The lord sips a glass of beer, watching TV. He smiles thinking of the conversation he had had with the man-in-charge. The man-in-charge had told him excitedly, ‘We will finish them today. Most of them are gone. Just a few more dogs remaining. I will call you with the good news in a few hours.‘ He calls for the right-hand. ‘Order them to move the bull-dozers in‘, he says. ‘Tomorrow?‘, the right-hand enquires.  ’Yes. Before sunrise‘.

The city:

He pays the bill and comes out of the hotel. A drizzle has begun. A look at the sky confirms that it might get heavier. He walks hurriedly along the road and enters a main road. He walks for some distance and hops into a bus. A child seated on his mother’s lap looks at him and smiles. He only stares back.

No one on the earlier road noticed that he went into the hotel with a bag and came out without it.

The village:

The head-of-operations congratulates his uniform-clad men. ‘The operation is over‘, he shouts. His men clap. The men bring out the body of an old man from his house. The head-of-operations looks at the body and the bullet hole on the forehead and laughs. He turns to his men and asks, ‘Any clue in the house?‘ ‘Nothing at all‘, says one man, ‘but sir..‘. ‘What?‘, growls the head-of-operations. ‘Before we shot him, he said something about his son teaching us a lesson today.‘

The Metropolis:

The lord watches a news channel. The on-the-scene-reporter in the village, though visibly shattered, talks softly- “We have seen a bloody end to the armed struggle which this region witnessed. This evening, the police announced victory after they swarmed a village rumoured to have been sheltering armed men.  It is feared that the death toll might touch atleast 100 though the official number does not confirm this. We also have unconfirmed reports that several innocent villagers were also killed in this operation..” The Lord switches off the TV and calls up the man-in-charge. “You like, sir?“, asks the man-in-charge. “Yes. Thank you. I shall deliver to you the things I had promised.“

Next day; The City:

I am reporting Live from this small street in the city where a young man, aged about 20 has hung himself to death. What is startling about this death is the suicide note which the man has left behind. The suicide note spoke of a bomb which the man supposedly planted in a hotel, but didn’t detonate it inspite of having the mobile detonator with him. The Police upon reading the note searched the said hotel and traced the bomb. The officer who was incharge of the search confirmed that the bomb was very powerful and the death toll could have been a large number if it had blown off.

This incident is now being related to the SEZ episode, which ended yesterday with all the armed struggle being ruthlessly crushed by the forces. The SEZ, which will comprise of a few chemical industries is coming up on a piece of agricultural and forest land which the farmers and the locals didn’t want to part with. The protest turned violent last month when the police attcked a group of people who were raising slogans against the government. One person was killed in the attack. From then on, the protests had turned violent with the villagers turning their anger against the policemen of the area. Several environmentalists have aired their protests against the SEZ.  They had often accused the government of liason with the promoters of the SEZ…..

The Village:

The bulldozers mow down the huts and houses with a quick pace. A few remaining villagers stand and watch as the place where they were born and grown up is being levelled to dust. They realize that in a few days’ time the sweet air of the forest and river will be replaced by smoke and dust from the towering chimeys.

What makes one happy?

In the last few months, I have been a little curious to know what people do in their lives. No, I dont mean the lives of ones I know, but about those new people I have been meeting. I think this curiosity developed because of a general boredom I have been facing over the last few months. That has led me to try and understand how people who seem to be happy do it. Or rather, what have they done to be so?

So one such curiosity led me to this conversation I had with a lady I met today.

She: So what do you do?

Me: I am an engineer. IT.

She: Oh. Software engineer. (some exclamation there)

Me: Yeah. (smile)

She: Where?

Me: (I tell the name of the org. When I tell people the name of my org, I normally pry their eyes for signs of recognition. It’s tough when you are not working for Pepsi or Coke you see.)

She: Oh. PDF?

Me: Yes yes. PDF. (happy!) Where did you study, by the way? (I didn’t ask her where she worked because I knew it.)

She: I did my graduation in New Delhi. You know St.Stephens?

Me: Of Course. (God! St.Stephens! Level!) Graduation in?

She: Mathematics.

Me: Oh. Ok. (This is when I began trying to imagine her 12th std percentage. Must have been what? 94? 96? Brains!) So how Bangalore?

She: After St.Stephens, I took a break for an year. Then I went to IIM Indore for two years.

Me: Oh! IIM! (Happy that my jaw didn’t drop at that)

She: Then I got into a finance firm on a marketing assignment. That’s how I came to Bangalore. (smiles) I worked there for six months. Realized that I wasn’t enjoying it. Quit it. And became a teacher.

Me: Great.

There was nothing more I could say. Even if I had tried.

Fall from grace

The raging disquiet notwithstanding
The mind still ravishes at ‘the thought’.
Riddance seems impossible
So does the feigning of nonchalance

Schmaltz is the tone of memory
Until the addiction begins to haunt.
Imaginations are aroused; Poetic words are formed;
Delectable is the feeling until reality dawns.

Between the ears, the war has screamed on
Picking no winner between Yes and No.
Caught between selfishness and trust,
The mind silently bears the brunt.

For the mind such dichotomies are frequent, but
This fall from grace undermines everything else.

-Thejas

When there is nothing else to do

Last Monday. After I just got into office. On the office IM.

Me: Read my blog. www.vrthejas.wordpress.com

He: BJP won’t get rid of the communal tag bcoz ppl wont allow them to.. ppl as in the media

Me:

He: Oh come on, one line in their manifesto says we’ll build a temple and they become communal!!! what a joke!!!

Me: They ve not been tagged as communal because of that one line.. it is written in their history

He: Ya.. if ppl can’t forget history, how can they get rid of it?

Whatever they do, they’ll have tat tag with them.

And Congress is secular!! That’s another big joke

Me: I think BJP can get rid of the communal tag if leaders like Arun Jaitley or others take over.. Narendra Modi ll do more harm to the BJP than others

He: And u won’t talk abt Cong’s communalism?

1984, 1947, 1969 and 2006

Wondering what 2006 is???

OBC reservation!!!!

Me: LOL

I agree

Vote bank politics… like all parties…

He: hmmm.. yeah..

Me: Look, I am not in favour of the congress… nor am I against the BJP

There are positives in the BJP.. and there are negatives… same goes with the congress too

He: I know u r not.. But ur blog says so.. And sometimes ur text chats as well..

Remember those scraps on Orkut?

Me: LOL… LOL… I am against Hindutva

Not the BJP

I am against the temple

Not the BJP

He: Hindutva is something that has been kinda criminalized by the media..

Its not Hindu extremism.. Vajpayee had given a clear definition of Hindutva.. Others have misinterpreted it

Me: The ones who have misinterpreted it also happen to be in the BJP and the RSS..

They think that it is Hindu goondaism

He: Not exactly.. They are the anti-social elements..

Yesterday after the BJP guy won in Mangalore, some Muslims were attacked near Bantwal

Do u think the MP would do all that? Would he wanna lose Muslim confidence.. Never.. already Muslims voting for him would be almost null

And if he does it, it goes down to zero

Definitely some anti-social elements are behind it..

Me: Thats true… but the BJP does very little to distance itself from such elements.. like the Ram Sene episode.. BJP took almost a week to announce they had nothing to do with the Ram Sena… They were once again playing vote bank politics.. They wanted to appease the Hindus

He: Hmmm ya.. I agree with u..

Finally, we decide its time to start the week.

Good times are here

‘Indian voters have matured, its now the turn of the politicians’, said one article title on the centre-sheet of national daily. That line does two things: It eloquently summarises the election results and also sets the agenda for India’s future. Somehow I believe that this is the moment that India will talk about some time in the future as the one that changed its course, for good.  

The best thing that has happened to India in these elections is the ouster of the Left. This is a lesson for all parties which assume that negativity in governance is populist. I could make even my gardener understand why the Nuclear deal is good for India but the Left did not get it. Or rather they pretended so. It is also a lesson for parties which assume that they can snatch away land from farmers and give them off to industries without once making the farmers understand why the govt was doing so. The entire country heaved a huge sigh of relief when the initial trends showed that the Left was playing no part in the present government. In the next five years, I believe that the government will shed its socialist inhibitions and resume reforms which were stalled due to the Left’s presence.  

I have always believed that the best thing that can happen to India’s economy, recession or no recession, is an NDA government. It was the NDA government under Vajpayee which put us back on the trajectory of high growth rates, it was the NDA which began bold reforms by having a separate ministry for Disinvesment and it was NDA which made India Shine. But why didn’t we see anything about their achievements in their campaign? This is the question that pains me. Rather, they decided to touch-up their manifesto with a little bit of their hardline past with the inclusion of a promise to reconstruct the Ram Mandir. Come on, aren’t we tired of this temple rhetoric? The people of India have understood long back that ‘Temple politics’ wont get them anywhere as a country. All the talk of bringing back money stashed in Foreign banks also didn’t serve any purpose. It was obvious that the BJP would suffer the same thing as they did in 2004. They simply didn’t appeal to India’s poor.  

In contrast, UPA had all the ingredients for an effective campaign. They had the NREGA which was a major hit in all the states that implemented it. There was the farmer-loan waiver scheme which again was a hit. While Advani’s ads on International websites were talking about money in Swiss banks, Congress’ campaigners were telling Indians about these schemes. The NDA was confused and divided over who was the right person to lead them, while the UPA had pre-announced a PM candidate. The Congress had a brigade of youth actively involving themselves in the polls while the BJP remained an aging party. Advani was engaged in a personal and negative battle with the Prime Minister while Rahul Gandhi spoke right from his heart and praised even his poll adversaries for their developmental works. 

I wish the BJP does some soul-searching after this debacle and begins preparing itself for 2014. With the right leadership and vision, I am sure we will see a much better performance by them. In case we dont see a BJP resurrection, I am sure we shall witness the Congress going arrogant and when that happens, stagnancy is all we will see. BJP will need to get rid of the Temple mindset, get rid of the ‘Communal’ tag, get rid of the old so-called saffron warriors and emerge stronger. 

Meanwhile, with a clear mandate, the UPA is expected to embark on the widely expected reforms in economy, health care, education and Judiciary. There are urgent tasks at hand like dealing with our troubled neighbours and setting right our economy. With no Left hinderance, I expect and wish it to be a smooth sailing for the country until 2014.

The Sahyadris beckon

I have been quite busy in the last couple of weeks. It began with the weekend trip to Tirupati and then came a working weekend and then came a very busy weekend. It certainly has not been the kind of life that I had dreamt of during my college days. There are lots of things to be done and I very frequently find myself searching for some extra time to finish the tasks. Prioritizing tasks is something that I have been learning in these times and it looks like I might need some more time before I master the art. Sometimes when I try to look at my life from a higher perspective, all I see is chaos. 

Hence I decided to take a week off from work and spend a few days not quite bothering about anything. I shall be leaving for Madikeri later today. There are numerous tasks to be completed when I return, but I have promised  myself that I won’t even think about them for the next three days.  So, three days of tranquil awaits. 

I shall keep looking for your updates on Twitter and shall not stop tweeting either. Have a great week. Ta Ta.

Elections 09: And vote I did

- This really made me go jealous. WTF!! Sorry, I had to rant about it. 

- Coming back to the purpose of this post- I went out and voted today around 10 am. I never really thought I would go so early considering that I was busy ogling at Tamanna Bhatia till 3:30 am.  Ayan is a really well made film. 

- I couldn’t find my voter id card in time. Anyways, my Voter id card is a total aberration. My name has been misspelt. My photo on the card appears as if it was taken inside that ‘really scary’ house- 13B. The address tells me that I don’t belong to my house. And let me not talk about the sex. Finally, my passport bailed me out.

-  This time I was conscious not to repeat the confusions of last time. And it was a fairly simple process. I did have a little difficulty in finding the name of the candidate I wanted to vote for. For a second I even thought I had voted for the wrong candidate. Thank god, that didn’t happen. I had really not cared when I accidentally marked the wrong answer in CET Chemistry. But if it had happened here, I would have gone really mad. 

- Voting has been going on very slowly in Bangalore. I have been tracking the numbers since morning on TV. Just 18% till 11 am! WTF! I mean, these people who didn’t vote don’t deserve to walk or drive on our roads, they don’t deserve to travel in our buses, they don’t deserve to drink the govt. supplied water. Why should they when they have least respect for their fundamental right? If you didn’t vote, shame on you. And I mean it. 

- I see a fair number of people on TV complaining that their names are missing from the list. Come on. What were you all doing all these days? If you had a sense of responsibility, you would have checked upon it earlier and ensured that your name was on it. These people are going to brag about their appearance on TV all week, I am sure. 

- Over to May 16th. I am eagerly waiting for the day. I am expecting a fractured mandate like everyone else. Post-results drama will be a must watch thriller. Until then, I will have to be contended with envy over invasion of Frieda’s lips and more screenings of Tamanna’s movies on my laptop.

Elections 09:Where has ‘education’ gone?

I was reading Thomas Friedman’s ‘The Lexus and the Olive tree‘ last evening. In one of the chapters, he mentions the importance of government spending in education, and how this figure indicates the health of a country’s economy. This reminded me of the facts about Finland I had read the previous evening.  Finland is the highest spender on education in the world and it is rightly seeing the kind of economic growth that it deserves.

Why have Governments in India been lethargic when it comes to educating the Indians? 1987’s Operation Blackboard was partly successful even though most of the funds didnt reach where it was intended to. BJP’s ambitious Sarva Siksha Abhiyana seems to have met the same end. All that reminds us of Sarva Siksha Abhiyana now is the graffiti that we see on the walls of Government schools. The  school in my area still lacks proper seating arrangement and toilets facilities.

If you have been going through the manifestos of all our political parties, one thing is starkly clear. There is no mention of ‘increased allocation’ towards education in any manifesto. This is more than depressing. Parties emphatically mention loan waivers, bringing back black money from foreign banks, introducing salary caps for CEOs and scrapping the nuclear deal but clearly choose to not mention education. Is Education not populist enough for these parties?

Samajwadi party’s manifesto is a horror story. Below is a news item from The Hindu.

Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav, who unveiled his party’s manifesto for the Lok Sabha polls here on Saturday, said the party is against English medium education and the use of computers and will work to ensure that they are curbed if a government is formed with its support.

“The use of computers in offices is creating unemployment problems. Our party feels that if work can be done by a person using hands there is no need to deploy machines,” Mr. Mulayam Singh said at a press conference after unveiling the manifesto.

Appalled nonetheless after reading this piece, I was left wondering why parties could come up with manifestos like this. Doing nothing to educate the masses is one thing, but publicly announcing that they would not allow Indians to get acquainted with English and computers is shocking. How much more anti-national can a party get?

I see this as a sinister ploy by all parties to deliberately leave Indians uneducated and it disturbs me like nothing else. Uneducated Indians are the biggest sources of votes for such parties and such manifestos, though negative, are extremely populist among the uneducated. These are impoverished people who will vote for any party that offers them a Rs.100 currency note or a packet of arrack. How can these parties win without the help of such people?

This can be reversed only when the educated people in India come out in large numbers and vote. Until that happens, such scoundrels will continue to plunder our nation.

Warning: This post drifts aimlessly

A couple of days back I stayed awake past midnight to watch Barack Obama’s G20 press conference. Manmohan Singh had just finished a superb press conference when Obama came on. He spoke with panache about the steps the G20 leaders had agreed to take to deal with the monetary crisis. But the highlight of the press meet came when that corresspondent from India was given a chance to question Obama. 

‘Thank you, sir, for choosing me. This is Simrat from the Times of India‘, she started. My heart skipped a beat. ‘Who the hell is this beautiful woman’, I was thinking. I have been watching Times Now ever since it launched but had never seen her before. It reminded me of a statement I had made to a friend a long time ago- ‘It’s tough to find a beautiful journalist‘. I was proved wrong. 

It also reminded me of those several discussions I had had with friends about the right girl to get married to. And after every discussion, I used to conclude that the best girl you can ever marry is a journalist. Why? Because you could talk to her about anything, anything in the world and expect her to know about it and comment on it.

I had this very brief online friendship with a journalist a few years ago. She was born in the same year and month as me and was exceptionally brilliant. In those days, I had developed a mad passion for Latin American history. I used to spend nights on wikipedia and other sites reading the hisory of every Latin American country. One day, I mentioned to her about this mad passion of mine, and she immediately said that she once had the same interest. And so, we began talking about it every night. I remember our discussions going past midnight into the wee hours of the morning. She had read every book of Che Guevera. She knew everything about Eva Peron, Fidel Castro and Pinochet. It was amazing how I had found a girl with whom I could have really interesting conversations.

All my life I had only met girls who always complained about men- how men are so dominating, how men are cheaply behaved etc, but never found any girl having a desire of doing something that could enable them to stand up to men. So this girl was a welcome change. I could talk to her about cricket, about technology and about psychology. I was very interested in Freudian theories at the time and she, being a psychology major, was very obliging to teach me every concept she had learnt in psychology. We discussed politics all the time. She was a big empathizer of the left, and I was then pretty indifferent to them.We had our first fights there- while discussing politics. Fights turned into ego clashes after some time and slowly, it turned to scorn. When I look back at it, it feels really funny how fights could emanate out of nowhere. And one fine day, both of us didn’t want to talk to each other. So there it all ended. I still have her number and we talk even now, but they have become rare. And we now make sure that the conversations are restricted to only what we are doing in our lives right now.   

Moral of the story: Journalists are interesting when you want to sit and talk all day and all night, but when you want to live with them and share your life with them, it can get very uncomfortable. And since most of these journalists are born with ideologies of their own, it can get very tough. 

When I began writing this, I wanted to write about the G20 summit. It then changed to Simrat and then it turned to my story. I am debating if I want to publish this or just put this among the numerous unpublished posts lying in the ‘drafts’ folder. But now, I have decided to post this one, and by doing so open a new avenue to post more such obscure posts. How much more simple can life get!