The Call of Duty

Yesterday night I binge watched ‘The Railway Men’ on Netflix. It was refreshing to see an inspiring portrayal of how people stepped up and answered to their call of duty in the darkest hour of need. It is mostly the Army and other times the Doctors, Spies, Police or Sportsmen whose tales are fittingly glorified. Other professions seldom get the opportunity to showcase the pure tenets of human character such as bravery and nationalism.

I work as a consultant in a software company. I wondered throughout the night, how my job does not provide any opportunity for a movie to be made on our professionalism. One occasion could be how the giant IT companies were arm-twisted into abruptly pivoting into a work-from-home-only model during the Covid lockdown and how they managed to do it. However, it may not be interesting enough to inspire people from other fields of life.

Our professionalism is also reflected in some degrees on occasions when our heads are on the line, such as at times of a major delivery. But that too is more due to fear of consequences if things go wrong, than the passion to do things right. And of course the seriousness and responsibility is almost always directly proportional to one’s seniority.

For most of my folks, the only major motivation to work hard is limited to impressing upon your client and supervisors so that you can gain financially with the next promotion, on-site or appraisal. People who do not have these three in near sight, tend to half heartedly follow orders and do the bare minimum required to survive in the company. The sense of accountability and ownership comes only when it is attached with financial gains. The reasons for such an attitude are:

• The constant feeling of being underpaid. Most of us live with a lingering guilt that our package is way less than the friend who recently switched or moved to Australia.
• A strongly conditioned mind that feels that your manager’s default setting is being mean to you and that his or her primary skill is to make you slog while they enjoy all the respect and comforts.
• Concepts such as work-life balance are so misinterpreted and trivialized that people start to hide their innate unprofessionalism behind such arguments.
• The sense of pride attached with IT at the start of this century has vanished almost completely.
• No sense of loyalty or thankfulness towards the company, which is mostly due to the first point and sometimes aggravated due to the second.
• A low ‘Hardwork-to-Reward’ ratio as the hard worker tends to get more work assigned to him/her. Also the rewards that the hard worker gets tends to follow the law of diminishing returns.

I am not sure what the solution is. This needs an unemotional and wider thought by experts and leaders of the industry. However I can think of one soft skill that can help to a large degree. A skill that somehow got lost with our parents generation. It is considering work as worship. I am sure just reading this phrase might have felt so old-school and regressive to most of us. Maybe because in our minds, we have categorized such principles as utopian and impractical in today’s times. However, there is a reason why we all saw such sign-boards displayed in offices and workshops in earlier times. People then were taught to respect their job, however miniscule or unimportant one felt it was.

Today however, one who talks about such tall principles is taken down ruthlessly as was seen in the recent case with Mr. Narayan Murthy, by an overwhelming battery of I-know-it-all but disconnected-with-reality content creators who proclaim to be the voice of the youth.

I hope my software engineer community course corrects soon and one day, even though there may be no movies made, we will be happy and satisfied while answering our call of duty.

मुखौटे

इन दिनों माहौल बड़ा सच्चा है…

घर से निकलते ही सब मुखौटे लगा लेते हैं,
मुखौटे के बिना कोई बात कर ले, तो अजीब कहलाता है,
दिल में क्या है, चेहरे पे क्या,
सब छुपाने में, मुखौटा कितना काम आता है.

किसी से बात नहीं करनी, तो बस मुखौटा चढ़ा लो,
कितना मुश्किल हुआ करता था देख के अनदेखा करना,
मगर आज-कल देखो कितना अच्छा है,
इन दिनों माहौल बड़ा सच्चा है.

पहले भी थे यह मुखौटे, सभी के चेहरों पे,
अपनों के बस काम दीखते थे,
दिख जाते थे गैरों के.
मुँह छुपाना पड़े, तो पहले शर्म आया करती थी,
आज बेशरम होने पर भी, ना कोई चर्चा है,
सच में, इन दिनों माहौल बड़ा सच्चा है.

– पियूष ऋषि

एक तूफ़ान आने को है

एक तूफ़ान आने को है…

फ़िज़ा काल बन के खड़ी है
हवा, बारिश, की बेबाक झड़ी है
एक बैरी तो पहले ही फन फैलाये बैठा था
आज आसमान भी हमें खा जाने को है
एक तूफ़ान आने को है…

वोह आफत करने पे तुला है
गुस्से में कुछ द्वेष भी घुला है
चलो देखें आज उसके गुरूर की हदें
बेचारा नहीं जानता, न हौंसलों से टकराने को है
एक तूफ़ान आने को है…

कल फिर एक नयी सुबह होगी
नयी उम्मीद, नया जोश, खुली फ़िज़ा होगी
जीवन में ऐ दोस्त कई पड़ाव आते हैं
ये बारिश तो बस तख्ती पोंछ जाने को है
एक तूफ़ान आने को है…

– पियूष ऋषि  

The Mandela Effect

(14 June, 2050)

Nelson Mandela, the famous anti-apartheid hero, was in prison for 27 years before getting released on 11^th February, 1990. He eventually died in 2013 at the age of 95. However, a very large section of people were completely puzzled the day he got out of jail. It was because they had distinctly remembered the widespread news coverage of his death in a South African prison in the 1980s. Their minds would take no reasoning as they were damn sure that he was already dead. Such strange confluence of perceptions was later termed as “The Mandela Effect” by a paranormal researcher Fiona Broome.

This phenomenon is said to occur when a large group of people believe an event happened when actually it did not. There are multiple and progressively stranger theories put forward by researchers who try to explain it. They include mass hysteria, mass hypnosis or even parallel universes. However, the most logical seems to be that of mass oversight.

There are many real-life examples of the Mandela effect. Most people remember that The Monopoly Man had a monocle which he never did, or that there was never a hyphen between Coca and Cola! Closer home, if somebody asks an Indian which city is more towards South – Chennai or Bangalore; invariably the answer would be the former, right. However it is actually not true. But why do we get it wrongt? Maybe because we associate South with Heat and at the same time have heard of the pleasant Bangalore climate, so one tends not to think “south” when they hear the city’s name. It may also be the fact that Chennai (or Madras) has always been the focal point of southern news and politics and thus we associate it to south. Mandela effect!

You would think why I am suddenly writing about all this today. It is because it bears resemblance to the real-life story of a late Bollywood actor. The day before I was spending my Sunday watching this old Bollywood movie called Chhichhore on Netflix in the ‘forgotten’ section. Suddenly, I remembered something when I read the cast. I had heard about the hero of this movie from my dad. This guy had died due to drug overdose exactly 30 years back from today. My father had mentioned his name when he was lecturing me against such habits. The actor was believed to be an up and comer in Bollywood but soon he wrecked his own career. Father said that people used to watch news on TVs back then and that everybody went crazy for a few months. All this roughly happened during the first outbreak of the corona virus. The actor’s death had led to many false indictments and arrests. He said that the actor’s scheming family tried to cover their son’s misgivings by falsely accusing many legends of the film industry who are now proud parents of our favorite stars. Thankfully they did not succeed.

However, I decided to do some research. It turns out that the media coverage at that time was so vile and puerile that people eventually became fed-up of this case. By the time the real results came everybody had lost interest in the story. There were many big names that were charged but they kept misusing the law to push their ends. They finally got rid of this monkey from their backs within a few years, hardly getting scratched. However the actor whose death triggered all this was constantly vilified. Conspicuously his movies were rarely talked about or shown on TV and his name was doomed to remain in oblivion.

Truth is that no matter what everybody believes today, the actor was a talented and hard-working guy who chased his dreams. He was surely not just A DRUG ADDICT WHO DIED DUE TO OVERDOSE.

Holy Menses

Ever heard of a culture celebrating menstruation? People in Odisha, a state in eastern India, do exactly that and in all vigor for the full 3 days. The festival called Raja (pronounced Raw-Jaw) is celebrated in mid-June. Presuming that Mother Earth is going through her periods, she is given due rest by suspending all agricultural activities. Women, especially unmarried Girls, treated as a manifestation of the eternal Goddess are taken extra care of. They are barred from doing any hard-work, while being endowed with good food, new dresses and lots of love and care. It perfectly complements an annual ritual at the Kamakhya Temple in Assam, another Indian state further east, the place where the vagina of Goddess Sati is believed to have dropped. The doors of this temple are curiously kept closed for 3 days in the month of June as apparently during those days, the stone idol too bleeds!

India, however, is a land of contradictions. We celebrate menstruation but at the same time keep it as a secret from our kids. As a child when I would oddly wonder why some days my Mother or my elder Sisters weren’t allowed to get into the Kitchen and almost treated as untouchables, I was given weird reasons how they had gotten impure. My grandmother would take the lie a few notches above and say that crow droppings fell on their head. I would think how lucky I and the other males in the family were, to have never met such fate at the hands of the crows! However just like many ancient cultures, menstruation was always seen as sacred in our culture as well. It is only in the last few centuries that this mythical symbol of feminism has been relegated to that of impurity.

We have also regressed in our overall perception of womanhood and sexuality. The semi-clad women and graphical images of sex on many of our ancient temples are not just the work of artists, but a peek into the society we once were. The only reason why the much celebrated Kama-Sutra was written by an Indian is that we thought and spoke on such subjects openly. Unfortunately any discourse on love and pleasure was later vilified to be kept as secrets. Much like the modern-day women, we had no purdah or ghoonghat centuries ago too. However for some 500 years in the middle, Men lived a deprived life. Their loss!

Multiple reasons can be attributed to this change in thinking. Constant invasions from people following a more conservative and orthodox religion, may have led to over-protectionism. In any case some cultural overlap is inevitable when you start living together. The English rule did a lot of damage as well by relegating our minds into the darkness of self-pity and inferiority.

However, Hinduism has always been a religion that has constantly evolved. In some aspects we have gone back a few yards, but there is no reason why we cannot come back. In fact we have made great progress recently. Not just the Hindus other religions too have evolved in their perceptions of feminism. A noted Muslim poet wonderfully describes the society as under:

Bepardah nazar aayin jo kal chand bibiyan,

Akbar zameen mein ghairat-e-qaumi se gad gaya.

Puchha jo unse aapka pardah vo kya hua,

Kehne lagin ki akl pe mardon ke pad gaya.

All said I feel proud of the religion that I follow as it is by far the most scientific and the most complete. However, it is upon us to understand the deep-rooted meaning in all our customs and practices. Our gadgets have evolved a lot over the years, it was time our minds evolved too. Glad that this correction is gaining speed. Only yesterday I saw a man buy a pack of tampons from the medical shop and he did not ask the guy to wrap it with a newspaper. Happy Raja!

Why we need a women’s day?

Some days are artificially made special by attaching a set of virtues with them. Like Holi or Diwali are celebrated to mark the victory of goodness; it is a reflection of a thriving and healthy society that we find ways to celebrate other such good things.  Be it bravery and valor on an Army Day, pride and patriotism on Independence Day or love and commitment on the Valentine’s.

Then there are days that become special due to an event. Like a Birthday or an Anniversary or the day you first made love to your partner (for my uncouth friends, I meant the day you got laid). People put effort to make it special for someone dear, and vice versa. Why not! Anything done on that particular day carries a lot more impact and memory-value than if one would do the same thing on any other regular day.

Women’s day is essential on both these accounts. There are so many qualities to reaffirm and celebrate on this day. Nothing else can align better with compassion, care, endurance and beauty.  And on top of it the fact that God has designed women to always be made to feel special. Least we can do is earmark a day to do something which was always kind of our responsibility.

However, this day has become far more important in today’s times than it had ever been. And in this fact, lies a lot for our society to ponder about. Centuries of constant entitlement and superiority complex within men have skewed the rightful place of women in our society. We have just started to catch up now. We must ensure that it does not come out as mere jingoism as that will just make it terribly counter-productive.  Some women might tend to think that all this is irrelevant, while others might feel that they are still not considered equal and that men are just over-compensating.

It is not a tool to atone the centuries of wrong-doing. The only reason to celebrate this day must be to show our genuine appreciation and respect for the better half of our society and all the good things that they do.

Also please refrain from any kind of tokenism. If you are doing something special this day, better mean it. Women curiously have a great knack of sensing genuineness. One more thing, especially for Indian men, please don’t go too far ahead and compare women with Goddesses. The deeds of our ancestors and some of our fellow citizens have left us with no moral foothold to say such tall things.

Now there are these jerks that keep coming back every year with the same old adage that why just have 1 day in a year when every day should be women’s day. They say the same things on Mother’s day as well and on Valentine’s Day if they are short of money. Guys please stop questioning, over-thinking and ultimately over-complicating everything under the Sun!

Then there are even bigger jerks who would say ‘what about Men’s day?’ FYI, 256 days from today we do have the International Men’s day on the 19^th of November. However, nobody knows why it isn’t celebrated with the same passion and enthusiasm. Can it be because nobody cares? Not sure. It needs a lot of thinking. You might as well ask the first set of jerks.

 

The day after the storm

It’s oddly peaceful; as I walk up to our roof to see the early morning Sun, something which I haven’t done for quite some time now. The damage from the storm is apparent in the faint earthy smell of the air, puddles of water, dust and leaves spewed across the floor. It is heart-wrenchingly clear when I look across the street. So many trees lost their valiant fight and have fallen to the ground, some bent for life. As I carefully walk past bits of broken glass and rubble that had dangerously flown around, flashes of yesterday’s dark clouds, non-stop rain and unforgiving winds keep coming back, but then the soft cool breeze and the clear skies of today quickly calm things down.

People have started coming out; complex expressions on their faces, a mix of helplessness and relief. There is a kid who seems very happy having experienced something like that, although the mother is clearly pissed off trying to clear up the mess. Most of the men have flocked together at the tea stall in the corner (drinking lemon tea for a change), talking animatedly about the devastation caused. Some kept saying that many lives got saved owing to all the preparations while others remained miffed, as usual.

With no urgent notifications on WhatsApp or Instagram to attend to (the towers went down too along with trees), it feels as if life has gone back in time. It is a nice change. Why else would it feel interesting to watch the birds come down to eat shreds of food that lie around. Why else would I keep thinking where had they hid themselves for a whole day to have survived this wrath. Maybe while they eat they too are sharing their own stories, just like the men on the street.

Not just the birds, many people too, the lesser privileged ones, had to be shifted to safe centers leaving behind their thatched houses and all the belongings at the mercy of Nature. They had waited impatiently to go back and pick up what is left, so that they can begin to start anew.

Life, just like nature, can be uncertain. Sometimes you might be forced to make a new start; you just have to deal with it. As we all try and make our peace with the storms in the sky, we might as well do the same for the ones in our minds.

The Dead Cat

You might have heard of the famous thought-experiment called Schrodinger’s cat. The Nobel Prize winning physicist Erwin Schrodinger argues that if a cat is kept in a box with some radioactive element, which has 50% probability of decaying and killing the cat; then till the time you haven’t opened the box’s lid, the cat can be assumed to be in a state where it is simultaneously both living and dead. It is only when you open the lid and look that the cat takes up one of the two states, i.e. either alive or dead. Though this paradox is mainly used to understand quantum physics, it can be extended to certain real life situations as well.

Take Aarushi Talwar’s murder case for example. Even after 9 years of frenzied media coverage, several contradicting court verdicts, one CBI report after another, and not to mention the widespread speculation, nobody still has a clue what might have happened with the kid that night. Did her parents really kill her or did they not. Just like the cat, Aarushi’s case is perennially left to remain in an ambiguous super-imposed state.

The lid in such cases is however opened way too many times. Sometimes by courts, other times in the over-indulgent and insensitive media rooms and most times in our drawing rooms over cups of tea. Everybody has their own judgment. Some see the cat dead while others see it alive.

In most such high-profile and widely covered cases, diverse opinions are invariably formed based on which concocted media report you liked better. We get curious to see if our judgment was correct and not what the reality is. We end up not caring about the cat anymore. No matter what the truth is, our conflicting opinions make sure that every party loses. Our curiosity always kills the cat.

My ‘baba’ God, your ‘baba’ Fraud

Most of us become just as puerile as the title, when it comes to our faith or religion. In wake of the violence caused due to the conviction of Gurmeet Ram Rahim, head of the ‘Sachha Sauda’ sect, on charges of raping two women devotees, many people have brought out their sharpest knives to criticize the irrationality of his devotees. They completely disregard their our own blind faith which they may be having for any other such baba or guru. It is very rich to detest somebody else’s beliefs when we never question our own.

I personally have relatives living in Sirsa, the place where the sect is head-quartered; hence I get first-hand accounts of the insane popularity and also the disdainful misdoings of the man. People all over the country are just catching up on what his followers already knew, or should we say had heard. They are brain-washed people who have made themselves believe that their guru can do no wrong. Yes, some of the rioters may be doing it due to their inherent mob mentality, some may even be paid trouble-makers; however majority of the lakhs of people gathered are driven only by their honest faith in the man.

Ram Rahim may well be done with, just like Asharam or Rampal, but his followers will soon find somebody else to rely upon; to bow to; somebody else to remote control their fragile emotional minds. This inherent need of having a leader and then forming a rigid group around him is perilously dangerous for our society.

The fast life, ever-growing discontent, unfulfilled aspirations and uncontrollable desires lead people to find solace in people who are masters in manipulating their feelings. Admiration grows into passion, passion becomes faith and soon that person becomes their tangible God. There is a reason why there are lakhs and lakhs of devotees in India and abroad for gurus like Sri Sri Ravishankar or Jaggi Vasudev. Of course, not everybody who has lots of admirers is evil; however, creating such influential parallel power structure is quite risky. Sect based violence is the blueprint of religion based violence and can easily be extrapolated into one too.

Only when people become prudent enough to question their babas and strong enough to keep their faith from going beyond their own control; that we will be able to filter out bad babas from the genuine ones. Hope we get there soon.

Poor People’s Rich Gods

Last year, ‘Shri Saibaba Sansthan Trust’ which administers the Shirdi Temple declared that its yearly income was 600 crore.  This was only the cash earnings; the worth of gold and silver offered at the temple has not been evaluated yet. The Ajmer Sharif Dargah’s annual income is reportedly above 200 crore. According to its annual report, Caritas India, the official development arm of the Catholic Church in India earned in excess of 100 crore in the last financial year.

The richest of all the temples in India, the Padmanabhaswamy temple, is estimated to have treasures of around 130000 crores. Yes, you read that right! The second, Lord Venkateswara temple at Tirupati, is visited by approximately 60,000 visitors daily who donate around 650 crore to the temple in an year. The gold on the deity itself weighs 1,000 kg. Similarly, the Siddhivinayak temple’s dome over the Ganesha idol is coated in 3.7 kilos of gold. On an average, the annual income of the temple is 48 crore.

The income of religious organizations has boomed due to increasing commercialization of religions. Take the popular Ganesh festival as a case. Started by Bal Gangadhar Tilak in 1893 as a festival to knit communities together and mobilize Indians for the freedom struggle, it has today become an exercise in displaying wealth and competitive spending power. The most famous and popular Ganesh festival at Lalbagh, located in what was once one of the poorest localities in Mumbai, has become one of the richest Ganesh mandals with devotees coming from all over. However, people living in nearby chawls continue to remain poor.

In a strange reversal of developments from the West, where religious institutions have seen a decline in income while people have become wealthier, in India, the Gods have become far richer and at a very brisker pace as compared to general public. As times become uncertain and pressures in life cause unbearable stress, more and more Indians are turning to religion for solace. Religious organizations of all faiths are seeing an increasing numbers of devotees. They contribute increasing amounts of money to their Gods in order to placate them. Going by visible evidence of the crowds at such places, a large share of the money comes from lower income groups. These are, in all probability, people going through rough times who hope that a donation to a religious entity will change their circumstance.

However, with all this money going around, has anybody ever read about or seen any substantial contribution made by these institutions towards social welfare, lest some token initiatives or self-promotion. The spend-to-income ratio of our much-revered religious institutions is dismally low in most cases. Isn’t their contribution disproportionate with regards to the influence they have over people? Why should they not be treated like any other profit-making body and be made legally bound to spend a certain amount of their earnings on social schemes? Does it not mean that our expectations from corporate entities are also unfair, if we don’t demand a similar contribution by our religious entities?

Instead of using the donated riches for further ornamenting deities who already have their own superabundance, if religious institutions use the money to support philanthropic initiatives which will improve the lives of ordinary humans, they might garner more blessings for themselves and their devotees.

Let us bring in another angle here. It is alleged that every year the Indian government spends close to 300 crores on more than 100,000 Hajjis. Special flights are run on the national carrier, Air India; air-conditioned Haj houses have been built across the country; and pilgrims are provided free food and lodging during the course of their trip. Even Islamic countries do not give subsidies for Haj. The situation with regards to Hinduism is even murkier. Rarely are questions raised regarding government subsidies to Hindu and Sikh pilgrimages, in temple upkeep, in paying for the salaries of Hindu priests, and for events such as Maha/Ardha Kumbhs, where organizing one such event alone can cost the exchequer around 200-250 crores easily.

The question of whether a secular state should be finance religious activities is part of an extensive debate as to how exactly to define ‘secularism’ in the Indian context. Religion is a touchy subject in India, and the interface of government and religion even more so.

The fault is not limited to government’s rich splurge or institutions making tons of money in the name of religion. Only a fraction of the religious spends of an average middle-class Indian family goes directly through formal channels like temples. There are many other ways, especially in Hinduism, in which you are coerced to spend money to show your commitment towards God. Organizing Poojas, Mangal Path, Rudra Abhishek, Greh Pravesh, Graha Shanti, etc are a few among thousands of such ceremonies, starting from birth till you have gone. There are millions of people from pundits, astrologers, palmists, florists, to gem stone dealers, who are part of a massive and magnificent industry. The sheer size, reach and authority of this industry is staggering.

Making money is not bad at all; everybody in this business of religion is not a cheat. They are people earning livelihoods by catering to people’s beliefs. After all they help give people what they want, happiness and hope. The problem only comes when they over-power the wits of gullible individuals, forcing them in choosing to spend on religion over other necessities. It is when you abuse the faith of the people that it gets dirty.

At the end, everything boils down to the people; as always. It is understandable if you spend on something you trust on, but there has to be a pragmatic limit set. However, most of the people spend money on God, only to derive some sort of benefits or heavenly favours. They are happy to bribe the heavens, but I think that is the only place where bribes don’t work. Others do it for show-off, hearsay, desperation or fear. I think their rich God will only have pity for such poor people!