The Ob-Man Cometh

I've been planning to write about Barack Obama for some time now. Just haven't brought myself to doing it. I started out having mixed opinions about this man - and my opinions were coloured by the fact that India's equations with the Republican establishment in Washington are at an all-time high and that India stands to gain significantly from a continuation of that regime in the United States under the leadership of John McCain. But Obama, the man, has changed it all.

The story of Obama is one that holds universal appeal to anyone who thinks that democracies really work and that in a land of freedom like the USA or for that matter, India, anyone with the right attitude and skills can make it... and make it big. Obama stands for what he has preached to millions on his campaign trail - Hope. His two books - The Audacity of Hope and Dreams from my father are said to be remarkable memoirs of an even more remarkable man. They bring to light the challenges faced by most anyone who is born into a life akin to that of Obama - a life of struggle and trials. It didn't help that he was an 'African-American' in a predominantly white nation. What truly brings out his character is that Obama has succeeded thus far, in spite of the odds that he has been faced with.

The story of his life, at least the initial part, is not unlike that of any young man facing many challenges - financial instability, experimenting with drugs and the like. What distinguishes Obama is the choices he made when faced with the same situations that all of us are faced with. Obama, for me, is the greatest beacon of hope in the 'free' world. While he has had his share of not-so-proud moments along this campaign, he's more than made up for those few and far between occasions. And yes, I hope that he becomes the next President of the United States. Despite the fact that he may not be Nuclear-Deal friendly. Despite the fact that he may clamp down on outsourcing. A good man deserves to be on top. Let us not believe otherwise because of our personal prejudices.

Mea Culpa

Free India is Sixty-one. It's been an Odyssey of sorts - a long and eventful journey for a nation that is truly unique in its identity. That identity too has undergone a transition. We have moved on from being a land that was the spiritual watershed of the world to one that is on the brink of modernity - we're both proud of our past and secure of the present. We have great hopes for the future and a passion to prove ourselves on that stage of the world. But as much as we might want to take heart from the fact that we have moved forward by leaps and bounds in a number of areas since 1947, there are just too many departments where we have shamed ourselves. No. I will not go into a detailed autopsy of the nation's failures. What I will do is fix blame. And I am convinced that the blame lies squarely with one person. Me. India isn't what it should be today because of me, because of my inaction as a citizen. I have failed. And so has every other human being who resides in this country, smug in her air of self-righteousness. The real culprits are those that sit in the comfort of their homes and complain about everything that is not what it should be. We're all wimps. Resigned to our lives of unhappiness and dissatisfaction in a nation where we see only problems and no solutions. The roads aren't the way they should be? Well so what're you doing about it? Have you filed an RTI petition to find out what went wrong? The quality of public health is dismal? Have you done anything to ensure that things change? Well if I haven't, then I also lose my right to complain. Democracy, my friends, is a two-way street. Your duty is not limited to voting once in five years. If you want all the services that you expect from a functional democracy you have to be active enough to ensure that you get them. It is the bare minimum expected from a citizen. The obvious question that comes into mind here is: How can I, a single helpless soul make any difference to a whole system that's composed of countless people and has a lot of inertia going for it? It's simple really. Do your bit and encourage others to do the same. That's the essential nature of a democracy isn't it? The whole thing works on the assumption that everyone will do their bit and that all of it will add up to something larger than the sum of its parts. James Surowiecki calls it 'The Wisdom of Crowds'. As part of a crowd of a billion plus people, all you have to do is make sure you do the bare minimum expected from you. If everyone does the same, there's simply no way the will of the people won't prevail.

Capitalist Coffee

I have nothing against coffee. Or against capitalism for that matter(well most of it anyway). But I can't stand the way the two combine to represent that which is not right in our lives and times. Truth be told I like my coffee. I just don't like the way it's been commercialized into something way cooler than it really is. Coffee is coffee. When you start charging us fortunes for obscure variants of the same darn beans, you're overdoing it. These days people sell coffee as if it's part of a whole new lifestyle. Dude! What kind of loser do you think your customer is? We have better things going on in our lives than your stupid 'thiswillblowyourmind'ccinos.

I especially hate it when you go around telling me that this or that brand of coffee is a specialty that you've imported specially for me from half way around the world. Now hold on a minute. Either of two scenarios is possible here. Either you're lying, in which case eat shit and die. Or you're suggesting that you shipped something as trite as coffee over thousands of miles just to sell it to eager dimwits who'll roll their eyeballs and lap up your pseudo-special cup of capitalist coffee. In which case don't bother selling your stuff to me. I ain't buying. Literally.

And it's not just coffee. These days everyone from everywhere in the world wants to sell us everything. There are guys who want to sell us three McMeals a day. And unfortunately for a few of us, they manage to stay in business. What most of us fail to understand here is that we're being sold a lifestyle which is not only unhealthy, but also unsustainable. For all of capitalism's great boons, this is something which is simply not acceptable. You can't try to get the whole world to eat your way simply because you can sell it cheap by leveraging your huge industrial supply chains. It'll screw up the planet. If you think about it, you're suggesting that food which is consumed at Point A be produced and shipped over from Point B, on the other side of the globe, just because someone's figured out a way to do the whole thing profitably. There's something so inherently wrong about this that in the long run, it could challenge a whole lot more than just our health.

To be continued...

How do I make a difference?

A couple of days ago I was having this discussion with my friends. After a hard day's work(especially on days when you've been rubbed the wronged way in most of your interactions with other humans), these discussions tend to border on both the insanely idealistic and the depressingly cynical. And the 'tone' of the discussion usually fluctuates randomly from one side of the aforesaid thin line to the other. So, anyway, this discussion was about what we should do with our lives. As young kids straight out of college we still have some dreaminess left in us - the part that wasn't drowned out in the drab practicality of the so-called 'real' world. So you see, we're still in it to make a difference. How we're going to get anywhere close to achieving that, I have no idea. And it's probably because we felt that maintaining the status quo won't get us anywhere close to being able to make a difference, that we had this discussion in the first place.

So how does one make a difference? And to dissect this godforsaken question even further, who or what do you intend to make a difference to in the first place? To society? To your sense of duty towards yourself? I don't really know the answer to this question or any others which we may have posed to each other and to ourselves during the course of that discussion. But what I do know is that the discussion kept going back to a well-known speech by a certain Mr Steve Jobs. That impassioned speech by Mr Jobs to the graduating class at Stanford exhorted his audience to 'find what you truly love'. I guess that's what it boils down to at the end of the day. If you're trying to make a difference, you're going to find it really difficult unless you love making a difference with whatever it is you're doing.

The nature of these discussions never allows one to draw a definite conclusion about the conclusions from the discussion. You just feel better because you had the discussion. That's a great reward, per se. So it was with this one too. We never reached a consensus on what it is we should do to make a difference, but we did remind ourselves to continue to keep looking for such pursuits.

I will always remember...

I will always remember...

Those mornings and afternoons spent sleeping...
The nights spent watching movies..
The zillions of hours killed in the canteen..
The long walk back from Khalsa...
The mad mugging on the last day before all exams..
Those countless hours spent on 'bakwaas' in other people's rooms..
Those anxious minutes spent waiting for the BIT bus at Xavier's..
The daydreaming and sleeping in all classes...
The fight to somehow reach 75% attendance..
The constant cribbing about Mess food...
Those afternoons and evenings in OC doing nothing..
The Samosas and Chais in Sharma Dhaba..
The mad rush to the birthday boy's room at midnight...
The 8 PL's spent doing everything but preparation..
The fakait cricket matches in front of the hostel..
The thousands of CS matches and the myriad cries of "Fire in the hole!!"
The placement parties in Madhuban...
The beauty on campus just after the rains..
The bitter winters spent cuddled in the hostel room..
The 5 Rs coffee at IC..

All those magical moments spent with friends at BIT.. I will always remember every one of them... Cheers bhai log!

Bad, Bad Times

I've been thinking about the world at large recently- about the events, people and attitudes that have shaped our world in recent times. And I have to say, these are bad, bad times. I didn't find much to be cheerful and optimistic about. Why do I feel this way about things? Well, to start with the general politico-economic mood in the world is gloomy. The greatest country in the world is in the throes of economic recession and the repercussions are evident the world over. Every day in the news we get to hear about another financial institution having run itself into muddy waters.

Till just a year ago, our country India seemed unaffected in the face of this global gloom. We seemed to outshine circumstances with our internal growth story. People said that India's economy has finally come of age and things will continue to look up the way they have. Our Sensex scaled astronomical highs within weeks and experts were out of breath just imagining where it might go in the future. But very abruptly we were reminded that we're living in a world where everything is increasingly interconnected. Just one of the perils of our globalized times. When one section of the seamless global economy feels the heat, so does everyone else.

Oil prices are rising and with it the prices of all essential commodities. Our populist government has tended to keep us insulated from high oil prices by passing on the burden of subsidies to public sector oil majors, but that seems to be an increasingly tenuous solution to our problems. Inflation rates are at their peaks and garrulous housewives are complaining. To add to all that an unforgiving summer is approaching fast. This could mean more power cuts and water shortages in a country where the infrastructure has never kept pace with our huge population. Of course, come monsoon showers and we will conveniently forget our summertime woes. And come autumn, no one will remember the floods of the rains.

As if all this were not enough, our country has run itself into a huge food deficit. Our per-capita agricultural production is at the levels of the seventies. Which essentially means that after the Green Revolution we conveniently assumed that we had done enough to ensure food sufficiency and happily went to sleep. This time around though things are different. Given the steep rise in commodity prices across the globe, no country will be willing to export important agricultural products like wheat - at ANY price. We can't even buy our way through this mess.

The alarm bells that are ringing now should have been ringing long back. Even now most people choose not to hear them. Those who do are bemoaning the vileness of these times. I say if God has been waiting for an opportune moment to send us a Messiah, THIS is it.