A decade of botched dreams, yet off a dreamy reality!

Do I dream big? Well, I do! I sometimes dream too big for my own comfort. The last decade (2010 - 2019) was all about dreams. I had had big dreams fall terribly short, yet I had always got up dreaming bigger!

Ten years ago as a fearless young boy, I had quit quite a high paying job in the glitter of the IT hub with a promise of a career in Europe to work in the remotest jungles of a terror hit Assam. It was one of those decisions which I will think twice before taking it now. The fearlessness of the youth I presume! But never once do I regret. For I took a wild decision hearing a voice within, and life has never been the same again.

Then another of those wild dreams!  Did I listen to that inner voice again? They have a tendency to send me on these wild goose chases.  A decision which led me to meet incredible people; an obvious life-changing decision. Those two years made me the person I'm. It gave me a sense of belonging. It gave me life's perspectives and of course a better understanding of the world around me.

Then that day happened! That day I wish had never come, not in this decade, never in my life. The day life hit rock bottom. The day when amma was diagnosed with that dreaded disease. Well, the fight after that. Fight against the disease and in fact the fight within against sinking hope. Well, defeats do end up bitter, but I ended up better. Through that struggle and dare I say the next few years were the best of the decade. To marry a rockstar and at the same time work with a dream team, is all I could have asked for.

If you grow up in a small town, you always dream big dreams. I did too! Dreams, when they become reality, which leave you with a sense of wonder and gratitude and the last year was all about that. The year finally ending up working among the better people the world can offer.

Life in the last decade was incredibly adventurous. Took me to places I had not dreamt off. Yet life was full of botched up dreams; dreams which never really took off! As I look forward to a new decade, I look forward to living new dreams, and of course, stuff out of the syllabus of life prescribed, for those I expect and those I don't together constitute the dreaminess of it all.

Happy new decade people! 

The sidewalks of the road, the peripherals of life!

As I sped past the church, I saw some rags lying on the middle of the road. I was going in a hurry and did not have much time to react. It did look different though. But then life is so fast. I flew past the pile of rags lying there.

After my work is done, I returned back and I could see the rags again, this time from quiet a distance away. As I came closer I could see a face emerging out of the filth and the mess, the pile was. It was a man lying in the middle of the road covered in a brown sack. As I went past him again, I managed to see him beg with the corner of my eye. I sped past him, but my eyes kept returning to that man. What if somebody hits him? He is sitting in the middle of the road. The inner man in me started asking the difficult questions. After a few minutes of tussle within I decided to turn back.

I decided to try and put him back to the sidewalk of the road and went up to him. He saw me coming and started asking for some money. Taking pity on him, I took out a few rupees and gave it to him. He thanked me. I turned back. But could not go. You are here to take him and put him in the side walk. Not to tip him some money. The inner man's voice again. This time a little louder. But, he was dirty and shady and ragged and naked. How do I do this? I kept questioning my wisdom to come back to him.

Gathering some courage, I went and finally told him, "Sir, can you please come to the side of the road, somebody might hit you"; He said okay and continued to sit there. I waited for a few minutes and repeated the same again. He thanked me this time and continued his begging in the same place. May be he could not move, I thought. May be his leg is stuck somewhere. The inner chaos was becoming louder. But how do I touch and lift him? Or do I ask him one more time? May be he did not understand. I gathered more courage and went to him the third time. "Sir, can you please come and sit on the sidewalks and beg. Somebody might hit you".

There was a quiet; a small pause. He turned back slowly and said, "I know it sir, but nobody gives me any money if I sit in the side walks. People look at me only if I sit in the middle of the road. Why anybody, even you saw me only coz I was sitting here ", he stung back.

What does it take for me to look at the hurt and the suffering in the sidewalks of life? Sadly, I needed them to be sitting in the middle of my life to even consider them humans.

Reminding myself that the story of Christmas was the story of the peripherals. Those on the sidewalks of life.

Merry Christmas!

The CAA - NRC protest

This has been on my mind in the last five days. Through the stupid sickness which has put me through difficulties, the mind has always been on this.

"I'm not safe in this country anymore, I do not know whether my friends will be Indians, I do not know anything in this country", this voice of the young Jamia girl crying is repeating in my mind again and again and again. 

I have read, re-read every available article on this! Though I'm completely against this government,  have listened to their side of the stories too. I even sincerely listened to H. Raja, Adv. Sai Deepak and a few of their other intellectuals as well. Not to say, last night I even had dreams on this.

May be it is time I take my mind off this before it starts affecting my mental health. I seriously don't know whether it is even right to be thinking along these lines, when the country I so love is bleeding. Alright, I will leave my rant for another day. Will come straight to the point now. 

I'm not here to explain in detail again why I believe CAA in itself is discriminatory and put it along with the NRC it is really dangerous. Also not here to explain why they have to be seen together and the Home minister of the country has said umpteen times that they are to be seen together with or without the nitty gritty of the law. 

But, I'm here to talk about a thing called 'State capacity'. Now that the NRC exercise is done in Assam, with 19 lakh people have been said to not have documents to prove citizenship. So these 19 lakh people went from pillar to post to get whatever documents they could and yet could not convince the officials on the veracity of the documents. What next for them? They go for an appeal says the government. So they appeal in the high court and then to the supreme court. So 19 lakh more cases on the already burdened courts. How do you even monitor the 19 lakh people now? Even if one case is adjudged in a day it will take 14 years to finish off all the cases. 

Alright, let us imagine the worst case scenario that all 19 lakhs are proven by the courts to be foreigners, Bangladesh is not going to take them back. So we have to keep them in concentration centres. As coldly as it may sound, how are we going to build concentration centres to hold 19 lakh people and how much are we going to spend on building them. The biggest jail in India, the Tihar jail holds 11000 odd inmates though it was built to hold 5000 inmates. So are we going to build 172 jails of the size of Tihar in Assam alone? Tihar is 400 acres big! So are we going to build 70,000 acre worth of concentration centres and jails? Never forget, this is just in the Assam, and we have 29 more states. 

Okay! So now that we have built so much more jails and every illegal immigrant is put in, what next? Who will guard them? Who will fund their food? Or do we plan to let them rot to die? 

Okay, let me calm down a bit. Not go overboard. Let us just imagine the NRC is passed by the government and in the best case scenario asks every citizen to go to a government official to prove his citizenship using any document he has. Though the home minister has categorically said even voter ID and Aadhar should not be used, I will give benefit of doubt to him. Let us assume, we are told any document is fine. We just have to show it to them officials concerned. 

We are 133 crore Indians now. Since Assam is already done, we are 130 crore more people to finish off the process.Let us imagine there are 1,00,000 govt officials given entirely to do this process. They are very efficient and each person finishing off the work of 20 people every day working 10 hours a day. It will take almost a year for everybody to finish off the process! By that time India will add another 1.5 crore more people. 

Of course we should take into account the amount of money spent by the state on this process. Some reports say it will be approximately 55000 crores. This is without the amount of money and time spent by the people of the country in running around to prove citizenship. 

As somebody who loved policy making and want to study public policy at some point in life, a government which has not thought through the STATE CAPACITY to implement a law has no right to pass the law in the first place. 

As I was about to sleep yesterday night, one picture came haunting by! One beggar was sifting through shoes left by people as they ran helter- skelter during yesterday's police lathi charge in the protests in Delhi. That my dear people is this country. He does not care one bit about citizenship! All he cares for is shoes to protect himself from the cold of the night. 

The chowkidhar who sold us the lamp!

We were a joint family, and a large one at that. Uncles, aunts, sisters, brothers and cousins. One whole big mess!

Two generations ago one uncle married outside our religion. The usual fights happened. We never let the uncle in again. He settled down near us. We fight often! More often these days.

We were not very rich. But slowly yet steadily we were growing richer. Few in the family went abroad to study. A few went to other places of the world and became rich. The family field was giving way to modernity. Cows were being replaced by tractors. Some women even wore jeans. Our culture did not allow them. Though most of us complain about the tight jeans, in our innermost hearts, we do like them. Though the crops were failing and a few of my family suffered from hunger, malnutrition and poverty, there was hope. A small flicker of light at the end of the tunnel. Our salaries were growing at nearly 10% every year and slowly the light was burning brighter.

This man came selling lamps. He said his is the brightest. "This lamp can show us the light for years to come",said he. It can show us in better light, in fact he said this will make us all new. He called himself  'Chowkidar', the watchman! He said he has used his light before in one small part of the house and it had worked wonders. The large family we are, could not really concentrate on every small bits of our house. What was the relation between a chowkidar and a lamp? I know you have that doubt! We did not ask him either. Neither did he answer. He had a white beard and we don't question people with white beards generally.

So he started guarding the gate! Five years since he came selling that lamp. Was it six? It almost feels like forever!

Suddenly he said the money we were using to live were all black in colour and should be banned. Black money? But not everybody has the same colour money. Why do I lose my money?  I protested! Listen to the chowkidhar; he knows better, said the big family. The feeble protest fell on deaf ears and all the black money vanished. But they are still found, I protested again; Shhhhhh!!! It vanished said the chowkidhar, don't question his wisdom, they told me. I shut up.

Suddenly we realized our salaries are not growing as much as it used to! The genie in the lamp he showed is not out yet. Wait for a few more years, the genie will be out soon and then we will see the good days, the chowkidhar said. But, we were already having pretty decent days sir; Of course the old chowkidhar slept in the night and a few robbers stole our money. But we were never this poor, a few of us fought. But he is fair. Fair skinned people never lie, said my extended family. I had to nod.

Few months ago the chowkidhar said that for the northern part of the house to shine brighter, they have to switch off the internet and shut people down for a few months. The northern part had always been a problem. May be this is the solution, we thought. Not many in the family liked the northern part of the house anyways. You remember that old uncle? They say the northern part of the family stay in touch with them.

Now the chowkidhar brought in a new man! His deputy. This man also had a beard. Well, you know what we do with bearded men, don't you? This new man is full of josh. Sometimes very rustic. He looks like the Bollywood villain. But most of our heroes in movies were villains once. Remember Rajnikanth?

He now wants all of us to register in a notebook. He wants proof of us living in our house.Not many of us can prove our allegiance to the house, some in the family protested. The poor in the family never had any document to prove they belong, was their contention. But what if a few from that old uncle's family remain inside the house, says he! They are taking your work; And that is the reason why your money is not growing as much as it used to. But, what if a few of our own family members don't have proof, asked the some who are fighting?

What if they don't have proof? Good question!

I told you this man had a lot more josh. He came up with this brilliant idea.  All the family members belonging to different religions, let them be given a free entry into the house. But all those from the Uncle's religion, we will not allow. The chowkidhar and his deputy were happy! Simple ain't it? The uncle's religion not allowed; All others allowed without even registering.

Did I tell you that our family had members practicing all sorts of faith? Including that Uncle's faith? So what happens if my family member, who has lived here for many years, practicing Uncle's faith, cannot prove his allegiance to the house? The smartest family member asked. He will be sent to the Uncle's house, simple, said the deputy! But what if the uncle does not include him as well? Then we will build jails and put them in. Then, we won't have any problem with them. But we never had any problem with them before also no, deputy? The smart ass protested. The deputy never listened.

The family which had survived the pettiest of fights is breaking into pieces. For it appointed a man who was selling a lamp as the chowkidhar. I wish we had known then, that men selling lamps don't make good chowkidhars!

But why do we need a chowkidhar in the first place?

State's monopoly on violence

The country was sleeping when four young men were shot dead by the police. Rewind eight days, these four men were supposed to have done the most gruesome of crimes, rape and murder of a young doctor.

The young doc, who was coming back from her work was tracked, raped and burnt to death even as the family and the police were searching for her in the wee hours of that sad November night. Four young lorry drivers were supposed to have done the crime and the police promptly arrested them within a day or two and the police were given ten-day custody by the court of law to prove their guilt. Among the sadder days in India as another of its daughter met the horrible end; Another young dream nipped in its bud.

Now, let me clarify certain concepts clearly.

Violence is wrong! Morally, ethically and legally wrong. It is wrong on any human being's part to use violence against another. So, imagining that those four young men were the real perpetrators of the crime, what they did is wrong. But can police use violence? If violence is wrong, then why only certain men and women calling themselves police(Government employees) carry instruments of violence, like guns? To understand this, we got to understand that in a modern democracy, the state is given a monopoly on violence. To put it simply, any government has the right to use violence on its citizens, and by monopoly I mean, ONLY the government can use violence. Nobody other than the government can use violence on anyone else.

Ah, then can any random government employee use violence on any citizen? What if some random policeman or army man starts shooting randomly? That is why the state has developed a mechanism called the rule of law. Rule of law basically means "the restriction imposed on the arbitrary exercise of power by subordinating it to well-defined and established laws". So the state has its own laws within which it can use violence; There is a separate entity created by the modern democracies called judicial systems whose sole responsibility is to decide whether the rule of law is followed by the state and by the citizens.

One of the most important and established restrictions on the state is the concept of "Innocent until proven guilty". The presumption of innocence, that is, till the mechanisms of justice prove any citizen guilty of a crime, the citizen is considered innocent. So the government mechanism can suspect someone to have done the crime during their investigations. But till the mechanisms of justice, which are a separate entity, decide on the guilt. Those two are a separate entity. The governments and the courts! These are kept separate as safeguards given within the system to protect the government mechanism from the illicit use of violence.

Let us get back to today's happenings. So the police suspected four people to have committed the crime. We shall give the benefit of doubt to the police. But till the mechanisms of justice prove their guilt, these people are innocent. The onus is on the police and not on those young men to prove the guilt to the courts (Mechanisms of justice)

Imagine in case the police is given the right to violence without the courts, any random policeman can use the instruments of violence on hapless citizens just by suspecting guilt.

I understand that the crime was heinous. But for any heinous crime should come within the rule of law, letting the state use its monopoly on violence without the rule of law, will be a dangerous proposition.