Idea Conceived, Deliver a Healthy Baby Now

 

Almost 90 per cent of the ideas entering the brains of normally sane people are practical to a highly decent degree. It’s just to be human to think and contrive scores of ways and means to achieve our means. As per the ‘survival of the fittest’ theory, our brains try to equip us with best defence mechanisms through activities, plans, schemes and strategies. The result is a big bustling bazaar of practical ideas.

 

However, millions of practical ideas die in brains, being kicked in the womb by the forces of indifference, negligence, lack of confidence, etc. It’s not an accidental miscarriage. It’s simply stabbing the ideas in the womb with the knives of self-doubt, ignorance and complacency. It’s an unseen, unproveable sin. And we commit dozens of such since almost daily. Here I must emphasise that by practical ideas I mean legally and socially permitted ideas, not the dubious and nefarious ones that result in loss to others even though they fetch some gain to the doer. 

 

Believe me a sane idea in a normal brain is just like a ball kept at the table top of a mountain. It just needs a beginning push, just enough to allow it to cross the level ground and reach the margin where the slope starts. After that it is bound to roll downhill under the gravitational forces born of your starting effort, other constituents in your scheme, various correlated fates and efforts, etc., etc. The ball of your system will just roll down buddy. So prove only this much that you have decently workable legs having at least that much strength as required to move a stationary football. Kick the standstill ball on a small plain in your brain.  Just give it a deft touch by conceiving an idea, use a mild kick to start the process of generation and you set the system rolling gently. See carefully through the time of the pregnancy and see yourself deliver a healthy baby scheme.

 

 

The Common Story of a Common Man

 

Jaipal is around 45 but looks an old man of 60. Hair beaten by all types of winds; teeth gone in munching the stones that life has to offer; facial features roughed off like furious desert storms hitting against a lifeless rock face for years. Life has very little to offer to this daily wage earner from my neighbouring village. Still he gives best to the society around; makes this darkening world a little brighter with his self-motivated commitment for the labour tasks at hand.

His friends call him 'Tihadi', i.e., the one who has been to the notorious jail in Delhi. But as you watch this bony figure heaving massive pulls at the conscience-lorn rope at the worksite, you don’t find any justification for the title. Well, the famed Indian justice system mostly catches the smallest fish and allows the whales a safe passage. He was caught ticketless in a local passenger train to Delhi. Fine was to the tune of 500 rupees. 'But my whole being is not even worth that much!' he pleaded before the checking squad. So he landed up in Tihar jail to earn the nickname. The babus made him do a hard labour to earn his roti and dal. There was no encashment for his fruitless work, of course. Unconcerned now, he stretches out every sinew of his frail body to make my world better at the construction site.

 

For the marriage of his eldest daughter he had pooled almost his life-long earnings, and put them in his hovel. There was a fire and his 60,000 rupees turned to ashes. But then sometimes people get sentimental; thus many came forward with a hand of charity. Money and gifts were collected by the villagers. This single good-countering-bad stroke of destiny has, may be, kept the thread of honesty tied to his being.

 

He has not even a bicycle. I ask him the reason. 'There is no space to put it at my place,' he says. I look for signs of a joke on his decimated face. But he is damn serious. His fellow labourers bear witness to this fact. His only possession is a tiny 10×15 yard depilated room. So where is the room for poor man's merc, i.e., bicycle? I think it does not need more emphasis to decide that he is amongst the poorest of the poor in the country. There is this scheme of BPL card in rural India. The card-holder enjoys many benefits like subsidized wheat, rice and kerosene from the public distribution system. If one can arrange some patronage and blessings from the mighty village strongmen and pradhan, one can get 25,000 rupees for house construction as well. But for such big benefits you must in a position to pay back many times more in other forms. He does not fit anywhere in this give–take equation. So despite many rounds for a BPL card he is found the least eligible for it.

 

The world may not care about him. The economic breeze blowing coolly in India may not kiss to vaporise the sweat beads on his hardened, bowing back. Swanky cars may glut the roads while he does not even get his bicycle. Scamsters may swindle public money to the tune of hundreds of millions and go scot free, while he spends 10 hardworking and insulting nights in Tihar jail. He may stay in a tiny hovel while he helps construct swanky apartments for others. He, but, has got his reward. The reward of goodness. Despite countless promptings to the contrary, his basics have not changed. He is true to himself. And this truth to the self is the fuel that is pulling the cart of this big, bad and still worsening world. It will collapse when the last of his type will say bye to this world.

 

Acidified Roses

 

Flower buds are soft and lovely. They blossom later to spread resplendent smiles. Children are still softer. We call them the future of a country. This expectation is conditional on the family, society and institutional support that is to be given to these human buds to enable them blossom fully.

 

A kid's palms are very soft. These are spared from becoming coarse. The soft palms need to stay soft so that bright evolving destiny takes a shape; slowly, gradually solidifying into concrete hardened realities. Elders use their leathery knuckles and stony palms to allow fine maps on the kid's palms so that they grow up as successful, happy individuals. But there are kids who are yoked into the merciless grind of survival game right from the beginning. They earn for themselves. These human buds do not get the time to blossom fully before becoming the fully functional part of the productive society. Their palms are never at ease to allow fine lines to evolve and chalk out lucky pattern for a happy future. The lines get cut by the razor sharp edges of harsh reality they tread upon on a daily basis.

 

On an impersonally honking and noisy crossing in Delhi, two kids pulled their heavily laden rickshaw out of the traffic mess. Horns blared. Getting-late-to-office elders threw curses. Traffic policeman even gave stares as if they had broken all the rules in his rulebook. Unconcerned they just expertly managed the odds heavily stacked against them by this uncaring world. There was no kiddish scare on their faces. These two boy-men cared a damn about the situation getting worse around them. They tended for themselves. I do not think we have any right to nurture any expectation from them as adults. Society and institutions have not given them anything. These have just robbed them of their childhood. Equipped with stony experiences and needle sharp instances, these kids have the right to draw any damn line on their palms. They reserve every right to cock-a-snook at the so called civilized and rule-based society. By killing a childhood, the society loses its right to lay claim on the desired, suitable adulthood.

 

 

The Outer Core

 

All of us carry an aura around us. It comprises an electro-magnetic field born of the flow of the life energy through and around our bodies. The quality of this aura is a function of our mental, physical and emotional states. Anger, regret, fear, jealousy, desperation, sorrow, rejection and hopelessness create a sort of negative energy and consequently a negative aura. It means we carry bad aura. It pollutes the surrounding environment like a heap of garbage. Now isn’t it our bounden duty to keep the environment clean by remaining positive, happy, smiling, poised, relaxed, sympathetic and compassionate? It’s our duty man! It’s as good for others health as it is for our own. All the steps to the cleaning of all types of pollutants start from the self.

 

Stay happy. Try to be cheerful. Life might be boxing you on the ears, expecting a cry of pain. It’s better to laugh. Subdue your pain while you laugh. Laugh louder with each strike. Make it a habit.  It will stop boxing your ears. It’s a sadist so would love to hit you as long as it hears yours painful cries. It expects you to cry. So give it a surprise by laughing indeed. It has no digestion for too many surprises. It will stop boxing your ears. It has many other heads to box, the heads that will cry loudly after getting struck. Just by doing this we do a social service as well. By appearing happy and cheerful we make the social arena cleaner as well by absorbing the malignant traces of jealousy, anger, depression and rivalry. Do it for you, even others will smell the fragrance.

 

The outer core has to appear healthy and intact like strong battlefield armour. It helps you in managing a healthy position in society and your profession, even though deep within yourself you might be gnawed by the pains and pangs of defeat and dejection. Maintain a firm, likeable, presentable outer core. If it becomes a habit, the things within and outside have to follow to change in your favour. It’s inevitable. There are not many takers for the darkness. There are but many takers for the bright sunlight. Dispel that darkness lurking around your manoeuvre. Regale yourself in the resplendent hues of hope, optimism, smiles and confidence. You can even pretend these things if your situation is totally opposite within. It might be difficult but this is the only way to change your circumstances outside. Be an actor. Act it so well that even you yourself start believing in it.   

 

 

 

Brown Jugaris

 

As Indians we need to learn that sometimes sticking to some more feasible (and more Indian sounding) means and mechanisms does not essentially indicate the signs of a poor, third world country. We just need to come out of this age-old British Raj habit that anything said, done, contrived or any product, service or technology do not necessarily become the reference scale for excellence to downgrade our own stuff with relatively poor marks. 

 

Western toilet seats are great! They serve a great purpose in countries where the people to loos ratio is pleasantly equal to 1:1. You use your utility and any unbecoming fallouts are still digestible because it’s more or less personal like your underwear. But in India, a single loo bears the brunt of so many gastronomically thundering furies as would not be suffered by the combined total of a whole Western settlement. Given the unrelenting bombardment the Indian toilet seat served its purpose well. Now coming to the grafting of Western loo concept in India. Big families, big offices, big crowds at public toilets in malls, cinemas and elsewhere make it nightmarish even for peeing, forget about putting your arse down for unloading. And if the urgency forces you, it’s just like perching upon somebody's great work just seconds ago. But while exposing our bottoms to so many eager bacteria and viruses we draw solace in the fact that we are doing it in the Western way. 

 

Another example is the poorly creaking state of new Greenline buses in Delhi. It is modelled on the Western kind of public transport: smart, sleek, used by just as many passengers as won’t even fill up all the seats even during the rush hours; and last but not the least meant for malai jaisa smooth suave roads for best jerkless rides. Now here is the concept dumped in India: the poor thing travels sluggishly with thrice or fourth of its carrying capacity; its low floorboards hitting the road while it jumps painfully over potholes; technically inefficient DTC staff not having any clue whenever the poor thing runs into troubles. During the old days, the drivers were half-mechanics and sorted out most of the problems themselves. We have to accept that we Indians are jugaris (contrivers): the jugglers and contrivers who juggle up various unrelated elements to meet and resolve uncountable, ever-opening problems and issues. And this trait has seen the Indian elephant slugger ahead slowly but steadily on the path of growth. If we just graft the Western concepts outlandishly and slavishly we will just put our bums to risks. 

 

 

 

Materialism is Cool

 

Web of bondage! It has been a great topic of discussion between the materialists and spiritualists. Much as the spiritual guys will crib and advise against mankind's fruitless run after the so called 'physical fruits of bondage', the materialists on their part do have apparently justified arguments of this being the logical conclusion of the very story of our evolution and growth. With my limited perceptions, I look at the physical world as a sort of cosy room sheltering us from bad weather elements--our den that closes over our being and gives it a physical identity. If the spiritualists call it a web of bondage which stops our souls from shooting off into the hitherto undefined cosmos, I am pretty much comfortable with this.

 

Deprived of all the physical confines around me, I will just feel like a tiny speck open to the infinite risks looming around in only God knows what directions. My room, my little abode of material possessions, my set of comforts, my tiny world of cravings and desires gives me a direction. I am pretty comfortable with that. I am its maker. It gives me a sense of pride for creating something out of nothing. Yes I do see through its windows that there is a larger meaning beyond the self-derived confines of the walls of my room. The feeble, but steady, light of faith tells and ensures me at least this much. But I am a human being. And pretty much in love with my identity and roof.

 

If the spiritualists take pot-shots at me, I can just give them one humble and practical promise--I will try to raise the ceilings of my room to allow more of the space of which they are so possessive. But I will retain the cosy confines of my room, my material bondage. Because that is being human! It’s good to be materialistic as long as my soul can take comfortable slumber in my room; as long as I do not steal from others’ rooms; as long as I do not throw mud-slings at others' rooms. One more logic, how can I walk the tightrope to infinity in the cosmic womb, unless I steady myself at a point with the bamboo of the physical fruits of my labour? It’s just like travelling in your car. The journey might be into the unchartered corridors of space, but you need a shelter, a roof. I am happy with the materialistic room around me. It defines this phase of my evolution. Without it I will be lost.

 

Lions and Deer of the Social Jungle

Dharma of Social Jungle: The greatest punya (good deed) of the social jungle is to protect one’s own interests at any cost.

 

Sin of the Social Jungle: Pap (sin) of the social jungle is to allow one’s own interests to be harmed under any obligation, duty or weakness arising out of the hypotheses of religion, morality, ethics or any other type of socio-religious injunction.  

 

Anti-socials, politicians, business magnates and others of their ilk are the social lions—a suitable personification of those fierce lions roaming in the jungles. Their ravenous appetite for power, perks and status needs and requires them to prey upon the poor weaklings, i.e., social deer. The social deer comprise the abject and still poorer personifications of those grass-grazing herds of deer in the jungle who just nibble at the grass blades; who are inherently weak products in the game of evolution. So the social deer are intrinsically weak and churn out virtues of the lameness and moralist talk, by creating the great facades of evil and sin (these are mere hypothesis), constructing the majestic and disillusioned citadel of religion and ethics—the fearful songs of the escaping and the fleeting hordes of masses.

 

All this also boils down to the question of being practical or impractical. As simple as that! If somebody is brave enough to defy the blinding hypotheses and naturally nurture his self interests at any cost then it is just a simple occurrence of somebody being a social lion. While the one who is constrained from following this duty to the self due to the weaknesses arising of the limitations at the levels of physique, mental power, social compunctions or family bindings forcing him to compromise the real duty to the self, he then becomes the fodder to satisfy some lion’s appetite; becomes a mere inconsequential step in the staircase of somebody’s ascension to the peak of power and glory.

 

Judges—the so called upkeepers of justice on earth—are the most efficient and practical men (thus a fantastic breed of lion who are untamed and unchecked in any manner). At every step of the ladder of dispensing justice, they have to pamper injustice just to reach higher and higher. The talk of justice is too idealist and impractical. The hypothesis of justice survives to act as a sort of opium for the masses. Practical judges very soon realize that the elements like integrity, honesty, morality, commitment to the so called virtues are no aids to one’s entry to heaven; rather in the field of social jungle they are simply the antonyms for armour, swords, shields and lancers to cut down the fellow self-interested fighters. Just imagine the fate of a soldier devoid of all these weapons! He is just there to fulfil the natural function of getting cut down. Our day to day social survival is simply a battle for protecting self-interests in which deepest, mostly invisible and sometimes blood-soaked, cuts are inflicted on fellow human beings.

 

Here is this social lion, all adorned with the impressive mane of justice and crowned with the duty to protect the deer! He is still hungry to ascend a few more steps on the social ladder. To become a bigger lion, he is simply required to eat more and more deer. And he has done exactly the same! Very cleanly, smartly and without batting an eyelid! He smoothly feasted on 102 deer. The very same poor herd of weak, impotent, cowering, justice-lorn group that had pleadingly looked at his face for two years in the Court of Justice. The poor group always unaware that it was nothing but the morsel for the satisfaction of his gluttony. In one merciless stroke—as all practical steps must be to qualify for success—he ate 102 lambs and burped away to further glory with new, vigour, health and criminality (the most virtuous trait to become a bigger, stronger lion), to eat still fatter preys at the higher seat.

 

For full two years, these poor lambs had looked at his indifferent face seeking some tiniest trace of mercy. But how can a lion go against its nature? They never realized that the wise owl perched on the highchair found them just tiny frogs to be eaten to muster up more nocturnal hunting prowess. Suddenly, swiping away all the gibberish, hypothetical talk of the weaklings, and bravely bracing himself up with the tidings of war weapons, he gave smart piece of winsome battle skills and mowed down all those disillusioned fools and weaklings who had come running to his cave, seeking life where only death had all the business to do. So to escape from one lion (the newly installed Chief Minister of Haryana) they landed up in the den of another lion. And lions will be lions. If sheep run from one den to another, it saves energy for the lions as well. So the Assembly of this lion, amply proving its status of being the regal court of the mighty canines, just sanctioned the luncheon of the grassy subjects under its domain. The King lion just proved his ruling status—an able commander of a still mightier Lioness (the de facto ruler of India ruling India through a proxy paper tiger) eating still tastier livers in the higher capital. Her Highness, the top-most lioness, has longer teeth to taste even the mane-covered flesh of these lesser lions.

 

Jungle lions fight to keep their territories and the bunch of female cats. Social lions, especially the political social lions, are pitched against a tougher task. But they have far more chickened humanity to lunch upon and then wage the battle.

 

While the bull fight it out for the higher stakes, the grass tufts at their feet get inevitably trampled and mowed down and mix in the dust of nothingness and ignominy. Similarly, this group of 102 hardworking lambs, always pleading that it will be of great Civil Service to the lion got trampled upon.

 

The advisers and soothsayer rushed to preach that still there was a mightier den ruled by a stronger lion who can get the injustice undone. But they forget that mightier lions perched upon still higher seats are still more efficient hunters. After all they rose through the same battle. Even if they unnaturally have some pity for the battered, bruised and blood-soaked horde and say ‘Mercy grated!’, it will still rub chilly on some lonely conscience left out in the joint humiliation. What is the use of reaching the spring of justice if every step on the path forces you to forget the fundamentals of your life, the very sinews that grew with you? You just become identity-less. It is just like peeling off one’s own kin. What is the use of getting justice if on availing it—if one is lucky to avail it after all—you turn blind and spiritless by the time you are shown the make-believe fruit?   

 

PS: The deer horde comprises the 102 successful candidates in Haryana Public Service Examination, 2004. They were denied appointment by the mighty lion, the Congress Chief Minister of Haryana who proudly prodded the state judiciary (partner hunters) to carry out his intention of not allowing them appointments. With equal gusto he servilely pampered the ego of the supreme lioness, the Congress President, to rule as the unquestioned ruler of the state. As is to be expected, the state and its lions won. The candidates lost. The lions won...the deer lost. What else can happen?!