Honing the art of perfect 'doing': smart, suave and marketable

Need to learn the art of balanced "doing". But fall off the rope usually. Most of the time it's underdone, and the consequent target misses, falling off the mark, and more importantly the rumbling shadow of self doubt, reproach, frustration, helplessness and even cynicism. Other times, it's overdone, and its precipitous after effects, falling off the cliff with the overdrive, giving more despair than not doing at all, and resultant efforts to undo, to chip down the extra, and getting into a zone totally crazy beyond the extremes of overdoing and underdoing, landing in a zone where you no longer know whether it's a tragedy or a comedy. God when will I learn the suave art of just doing, finely balanced, perfectly nailed, expertly nuanced?

The Taliban of north India

Name the word Khap panchayat and modernists and educated in India will forget Taliban in tyranny and will start a cacophony of atrocities. Well, if you compare a firecracker with a nuclear bomb and get scared then nothing can help you. In December 2014, the law minister of India had condemned Khaps as unconstitutional bodies. How many social bodies belonging to different religions and communities will he declare unconstitutional that come under criticism on account of their deviation from the mainstream conventions??!! The basic mistake committed by khap critics is that they put these social bodies under the sledgehammer of their judgement on the basis of gross generalizations on account of few abstract cases. Obviously the worst critics of khaps are urban based intelligentsia who do not know how things work in rural areas where people are forced to take shelter under a common sky, unlike the urban individualistic mode of life where you need not bother about anybody around you. Rural ways and means of life, particularly in Jat society in Haryana, are too simple and too complex for city gentry to understand and comment upon. It is very easy to compare Khaps with Taliban, but all of us know that it is grossly unjustified comparison. Khaps are not judicial bodies. These are social units that cover the administrative loopholes in rural areas where people agree to certain social norms for common benefit. By surrendering few individual liberties, this system provides proportionally larger common gains. Had Khaps been that bad, dissent against them would have surfaced from the ones who live under Khaps. Quite surprisingly, people under Khaps are almost contented with them, while the whole world around them is crying foul. See any debate on television, you will have some educated super-conscious individual fretting and fuming against Khaps...and who he/she happens to be...somebody who has possibly never been to a real village where Khaps operate...damn funny!!

Vertical towers of prosperity or the horizontal spread of reservation benefits?

Something on caste based job reservation. The issue is politically so sensitive that just an off-hand remark by RSS chief was enough to decimate BJP's hopes in the last Bihar assembly elections. So nobody dares to touch the issue at the practical level.

The so called ‘lower castes’ have been systemically exploited for the last 5000 years in India. There is no doubt that they need institutional support to bring them into the mainstream. Not that the government cannot give them positive incentives in other regard. Reservation in itself is not the end. It is just one of the means to the end. However, in the present system of reservation there are flaws that need to be corrected if the real cause of Dalit upliftment is to be achieved.

I have seen three generations of elite Dalit families reaping reservation benefits to rise on the socio-economic ladder. Like someone’s father is a class one officer in railways. He raises his family comfortably ib Delhi, provides best education to his children. His son, born, brought up and educated in Delhi, becomes a police officer. The police officer’s children born, brought up and educated in the best set up get reservation benefits to get governmental jobs. On the other hand, I am surrounded by poor educated Dalit young people in the countryside who haven't benefited from reservation in any way. They have the qualifications, but in the fight within the reserved category they are easily beaten by the elite Dalit families. So does it really serve the purpose. The cause is served if the reservation benefits spread horizontally across the social strata instead of creating vertical towers of prosperity in the same families where the reservation benefits pile up across generations.

The solution can be: Let reservation be a first generation benefit only, i.e., the children of a reservation beneficiary will not be eligible for the scheme anymore. When a Dalit gets a job on reservation, he/she is supposed to bring up his children in a way that they can compete against the best. It will help in spreading the reservation benefits horizontally to the other poorer Dalit families rather than the vertical compilation of benefits in the already rich Dalit families. Unfortunately it has been the trend so far. Job reservation is supposed to provide more and more people with basic amenities of life rather than some particular families reaping the benefits on account of the already existing benefits.

Love the bad road of your life

Thank God life is not just a smooth road, taking us uninterestingly to a plain destination! Guys be thankful that it is pot-holed and bumpy. The vehicle of our life gets jolts and jerks which are in fact the lifelines for our material and physical being. It tests the vehicle of our being. The latter responds and this see-saw battle releases energy for the engine of our survival. Seen rotting, rusting vehicle chases in dump-yards? They re at rest. The don’t move and aren’t thus part of the expansion of the cosmic energy. One is alive as long as one is connected to the threads of cosmic expansion, be it a leave on a twig, or a tree, an elephant or a mosquito. It’s only the movement. You are relevant as long as you are moving in the scheme of things. So guys if your road appears bumpier than others, just feel the sea-storm of energy your system is creating not just for your own survival but for the common cause of creation and survival at the universal level as well. As a struggler you contribute far more to a great unseen cause than it appears on the common plain of our material existence.

Walk ahead to be a social phenomenon and not just stay a natural phenomenon you are born as

Contradiction is inherent in nature. Positive–negative, acidity–alkalinity, dark–light, etc., etc., these are all manifestations of a homeostatic balance. You know stars are held by this same dual, contradictory force of nature. Gravitational force pulls the molecules to the core; at the same time super-temperatures force the molecules to stay away from the core at a feasible length. The stars smile and shine just because of the contradictory chemistry of these two opposing forces. Remove either of them and the star meets its end. Remove gravitational pull, the star will explode as a supernova. Remove the escaping force born of high temperature, the star will suck into its own core as a black hole. So survival means a fine zone in the twilight of creation and destruction. Natural laws apply to humans as well; they hold the same validity if we treat an individual as a system. A human life is a wonderful phenomena sizzling like a shiny star in the twilight of humility and pride, altruism and selfishness, good and bad, faith and atheism, etc. So greatness lies not in casting off one side of this undercurrent. It lies in just tilting your balance just a bit on the side of so-called good aspects in the pair. Why? Because we are social phenomena as well, apart from being the natural ones. Our consciousness equips us to shine and survive like a star–but with a definite purpose. The purpose of general well-being; of helping others in maintaining the same balance of survival; of contributing proactively to the overall balance hung between two contradictory frames. We can contribute more than what our natural states have defined for us. Believe me! It works. Just help someone in need. It can be a tiny bit. As tiny as an unconditional smile! You will feel yourself elongating your natural self a bit to the positive side. This is what it takes to be being human in the social sense, which is a degree higher than existing humans just as a natural phenomenon.