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!

I am tweeting

A great addition to WordPress came last week in the form of the Twitter widget. If you look at the right panel of the blog, you can see all my twitter updates under ‘My Tweets’. Ever since I added the twitter widget to the blog, I have been updating Twitter quite regularly, sometimes more than once a day. So isn’t this an additional reason for you to visit my blog?

If you are not on twitter, get in and start following me and I shall do the same.

By the way, you got to watch this video. It’s really funny.

Elections 09: Why you should not vote for the Third Front

(It has taken me a long time to start blogging on the fast-approaching elections. I wanted to write a lot of things since February. But I never found the time to start off. Anyways, it’s never too late for anything. Here’s my first post!)

When the emergence of the Third Front was announced, I was elated. Sixty years back, we began with a single ideology. Yes, there were the left parties, there were regional parties, there were religious parties, but what the people of India lacked was a major force to counter that of the Congress. We had to wait 30 years for us to see a non-Congress government, which came in the form of a post-emergency relief to the people of India. Indira Gandhi fought back to power a few years later and not until the Ramjanmabhoomi movement did India see any new ideology. What emerged from the Hindu movement was a party spurred and backed by the self-imposed insecurity of the Hindus. 

There are people who suggest that the Congress and Nehruvian policies are the main reasons for India’s stagnant economy until the 1990s. That is very true. Nehruvian socialism failed to take India on the deserving road of prosperity. BJP on the other hand has come to be known the world over as India’s extreme right wing party, the party responsible for the demolition of the Babri Masjid and the shameful post-Godhra riots. In post-colonial India, no organization has sown the seeds of hatred and division among Indians as much as the BJP.  

With the aggregation of all other parties under these two major parties ever since coalition politics began, the reason for multi-party system has been forgotten. To the best of my knowledge, there is no party in India that can claim to be part of neither the NDA nor the UPA.

So, the emergence of the Third Front is a good thing right? It has to be. If there are two shops in your neighbourhood competing between themselves and suddenly a new third shop comes up, there will be even more competition among the shops and the prices will come down and finally the ones who benefit will be the residents of your neighbourhood. But is it going to be the same in politics? It obviously will be. I cant think of any place or system where competition is a bad thing. 

I was very interested to see the common agenda, or the manifesto as they love to call it, of the Third Front. So far, I have not been lucky. But an indicator of things to come was recently revealed through the CPM’s manifesto. I read the manifesto on Wednesday and all my enthusiasm, which was sky-high since the inauguration of the third front, vanished. CPM being a major partner of the Third Front, will surely play a major role in India’s policy making if in case we have a PM from the third front. And if you read below, you will see why this definitely spells doom for India. 

Here are a few statements (italicized) from the nonsensical manifesto:

• Nuclear deal will be scrapped – God, how I wish these people went back to school. Why dont they understand that India needs energy to feed its growth? And what better form of energy than the clean Nuclear energy! In my opinion, India’s focus in the next few decades should be on growth and not maniacal nuclear tests. So what if we lose the right to test? We anyways dont have the guts to bomb Pakistan to ashes! 
• Reversal of Neo-Liberal economic reforms – Come on, are you telling us that you are taking us back to the License Raj? The Wall Street is calling for more economic reforms in India so that we see more foreign investment, and here is this party nonchalantly disregarding the effects economic reforms have had on India.  
• Reservation in the private sector – Are you talking of making India’s private sector as inefficient, lethargic and corrupt as our bureaucracy? Aren’t you aware that there will be an outflux of companies from India if this becomes a reality? Imagine what it can do the unemployment scenario of India. I cant imagine my job in a software company going to another not because he can write better code but simply because he has a better caste. Disaster! 

If in case the Third Front announces the formation of Government, I am sure that we will immediately see the BSE and NSE collapsing like we have never seen before. Here are a few people talking about taking India back to the stone age and I am hoping that the people of India, you and me, do ourselves and our great nation one huge favour by not voting for these ridiculous harbingers of regression. 

Dont vote for the Third Front!