The year of the unseen!

Finally, finally, we have come to the end. End of what is the most difficult year the world has faced in almost a century. All of us had had bad years, individually! But as a collective, the world would have been a much better place if 2020 not happened. 

There was a non-human living thing which brought the earth to its knees. Strangely, the thing was invisible. It was everywhere. We all caught it. A few, it killed too! Yet it was not seen. 

I realized this year was the year of the unseen. 

Our eyes had never seen the scores of migrants living around us. I had never seen, people who had jobs one day, going to bed without food the very next day.  The world never saw and knew the insanely complex problems a pandemic can bring to the world, And truly we never saw a world stopping on its path! 

As I reflected on the last year, I realized I had never seen my privilege as clearly as 2020 showed me. The privilege of having food on the table, the privilege of having a job through it all, the privilege of living with families, and even the privilege of social distancing. 

I look forward to a new year. New resolutions, new beginnings, newer friends and a lot of new learnings. Things that I like and see and enjoy. Yet, I also want to learn to look at the unseen now. To widen my horizon and see through the prisms of life I had never done before. To look at the innate quality of life in every human being, to learn and understand their pain, things unseen! 

I'm dropping the last year into the unseen limbo of the past. Let it go, for it was imperfect and unclear, and thank god that it can go! Goodbye, 2020! Hope to never see-through anything like it. 

To 2021 and to learn to look at the unseen. To a safer and more peaceful and a more clear world. A world where we can not only see the seen but also learn to see through the unseen. 

Happy, happy, new year!

What if she had said no?

I love counterfactuals! The 'What ifs' of life. 

In the 19th century Thomas Carlyle, the great Scottish historian spoke of the Great man theory of history. According to him, history can be largely explained by the impact of great people who are highly influential. I had often asked myself this question; Is attributing historical decisions to individuals the right thing? Or are people just products of social environment? 

Okay, I will declutter the cobwebs. According to Thomas Carlyle's theory if there had not been a Hitler there would not have been a world war 2. Had there not been a Gandhi, India might have not taken the route of non-violence to independence. Had Martin Luther not fought reformation might not have happened. If Dhoni had not been the captain, India might not have won the 2011 world cup. Are these statements you go with? Or even if Hitler had not been there, there would have someone else in his place who would have started the world war 2? If Gandhi had not been there, another 'X' would have led India on the path of Non-violence. You get the drift right? What is your opinion? 

Yesterday is the 150th birthday of my hero. Aunt Ida, the founder of CMC Vellore. I was quietly listening to the virtual celebrations happening, reminiscing on my stint in the hallowed lanes of the college, when the wicked brain threw up this question. What if Aunt Ida had said 'No', on that fateful night? 

Aunt Ida saw three young women die during childbirth for want of women doctors and went onto become one. She came back from the US to build a small dispensary which had gone onto become this magnificent monument now. So, what if Aunt Ida did not answer the call to come back that night in the affirmative? What if she had just stayed back in the US and had just practised medicine there? Would there be a CMC now? Where would I be, since my grandmother is from that place? What would have happened to all the women who were empowered by her single-handedly? 

Of course, counterfactuals are just lies. Aunt Ida responded to the needs of my nation positively, and truly grateful that she did. But counterfactual helped me understand perspectives. For one nod of the head in the opposite direction by one random lady many thousand miles from my place, could have just prevented me from entering the world. Life! 

The ball does not show the dirt

The very month I was born, a man was ruling the imaginations of many young people around the globe with his ability to dance with a ball in his legs. Maradona, the name spelt wonder! I have seen my dad go 'awww' as he spoke about the man's ability to dumbfound defenders with scintillating football moves. There is a moment, which youtube has shown us millions of times when he immortalised life with 11 secs of sheer brilliance. An 11-sec hymn! There was something about his football that made the world stop and look at him. Something! 

Yet, that man was a flawed human. His addiction to alcohol and drugs is well-documented history. He was banned for doping and investigated for alleged involvement with criminal gangs. In fact, he was sent off a world cup for drug usage. Accused of racism, abusing journalists and worse was even jailed for using an air rifle. Fighting court battles to disprove parenthood are not gracious acts. 

I'm fighting within my inner demons of separating the art from the artist. How do you celebrate a man, who has caused so much pain and anxiety to his near and dear ones, says the logical brain. Ah, look at his dazzling skills; how could you not laud the sheer magic of his dancing feet with a football? The heart rebukes the brain. 

When the #metoo movement happened and many of esteemed artists like singer karthik and the lyricists vairamtuhu were accused of misusing women, the brain did create a flutter. How on earth did I enjoy Karthik's singing of all people? Why, oh why Vairamuthu? Why did you let me down? was a constant chant of my head. Yet, the heart's ability to look at the art, apart from the artist often held the fort. 

Where do we draw the line? Can we celebrate art for the sake of it? Or should we expect higher moral responsibility on artists, just coz they inevitably become role models for the world around?

On the day Maradona bid adieu to football, apparently his voice cracked and he sobbed and said "La pelota no se mancha"  The ball does not show the dirt! 

The fallible human should never be forgotten, no not even with time. But no matter how hollow the humanness was, it should never be allowed to cast a shadow over the glow the art begot. "La pelota no se mancha"  The ball does not show the dirt! 

Lessons from the last six months

It is a surreal feeling! When suddenly you realize that you are leading a team of superstars, yet ordinary mortals. 

I had been part of great teams. In fact, I had even written about one here before. I had had some brilliant bosses, and have worked with happy and highly productive teams before. But this is different! Completely different. 

Six months ago, this was a different team! There were trust deficiencies. A boss had failed us. It surely was not a happy team. I, myself, had started looking for a different place. Our jobs didn't look secure either. Gossips started floating around. Everyone looked hurt. Confused would be a better word. 

Today morning when we gathered around for our morning huddle, it just dawned on me, it has been six months and we have never been a happier team! We survived the job crisis as well, and in fact, have never performed this well in the last two years. What did we do right as a team? I'm looking back and learning 

I learn life lessons through sport, and so, I'm bringing in sports here as well. 

1) Look for the small lights at the end of the tunnel: The master of the chase, MSD in his heydays, always did that. He will poke and prod for a single. The small victories amidst the glooming loss. He will concentrate only on those ones and twos, never on the nervous atmosphere around. It helped him stay afloat. My team did the same. We wrote a proposal; wrote it again and again and concentrated only on that! Till it got approved, our focus never wavered away from that small beacon of light, amidst the darkness! The light in our case was the chance to give the proposal, one more time. 

2) Regularise routines: When the going is very tough Rafael Nadal always goes back to the basics. Just plain basics. No unforced errors. No fancy backhands. And never the big booming serves. This is what we did. we regularised our catchups, which were missing. Calendarised our morning huddles. Suddenly as a team we felt like we were doing something right. 

3) Open conversations on expectations: Ambati Rayudu was considered a prodigy as a 16-year-old kid. Yet he was always an underperformer growing up, till he started playing for CSK under Dhoni and Stephen Fleming. He became the rock star he was destined to be only after that. Whatever changed? CSK gave Rayudu a clarity of purpose, which he missed before. His role in the team was clear. The expectations from him were written on stone. We tried that in STIR TN. Through the changing leaderships and confusing change in the role of the DL, we tried to define our roles more clearly. Our expectations were talked about more openly. We wrote them down. Even bigger responsibilities were carried, for the expectations were clearer. We do have a long way to go. But, clearer expectations led to even clearer role clarity. 

4) Learning culture: When the original dream team, the American Basketball team of 1992 Olympics was formed, it was full of superstars. They played their first practise match against a university side, and to everyone's shock, lost it. The team had huge ego's going against one another; Chuck Daly, the coach of the dream team, brought them together and helped them see an opportunity like never before to learn from one another. Here is the best chance for Michael Jordan to learn about Magic Johnson's iconic ball handling skills; How else can you become better than by being with the best themselves? In our first team meeting, when we were discussing the culture the team will abide by, someone said, it should be a learning culture. That has broken the ego's down. We are officially now a team of rockstars learning from each other, wanting to be better at every step. 

5) The friend to goto: Gary Kirsten had just taken over as the coach of the Indian cricket team. India had just lost a big world cup. They were hurting. The previous coach was the controversial Greg. Sachin was almost on his last legs then. He had seen more lows than highs. Gary went to Sachin and asked, what does Sachin want out of him. Sachin replied, 'I want a friend'! Deepening relationships had played a major role in the TN turnaround. We have developed healthy relationships. We have at various points definitely found it easier to work with the friend rather than the colleague. 

As I look back, it is worth it! Every single effort of each one of us. We started off as four, now we are six. We were working in 3 districts, now 13. We never knew data analysis, now we do pivot tables. We had bitterness. Now we sure have big and trusting shoulders of each other to trust. We were lost. Now we dream of extending the programme to the entire state. 

The last six months had been quite a ride! As I look back and thank the heavens, I also look forward. For the long narrow road ahead, filled with dreamy expectations and unanswered questions, does seem inconquerable. But for my team! The team of fallible superstars. 

Casteism and Patriarchy - Ideologies which kill

She was working in the fields along with her brother and mother. She was at a distance from the others and four to five men from supposedly upper-caste gagged her and dragged her to rape and throw her along the fields. It took the administration 4-5 days to take her to the hospital and then after her death the police, in the abode of darkness cremated her body while holding the victims family house arrested and cordoning off the entire area. 

India has seen 87 declared rapes a day in the last one year. Like this girl, most of it against the women from the lower caste. These cannot be treated off as incidents but rather should be looked at as structural crimes. What are those structures which keep perpetuating such crimes? Structures should have ideological backings! Then what are those ideological backings which conserve such practices? 

Patriarchy, that the man is higher than the woman in the ladder of social structure is one of the major ideologies backing such crimes. Casteism, that there are people born in this vile world who are beneath you and your dignity of life is the other. 

Do you ascribe to one of these? Did you and your coterie in the name of marriage adhere to the ideology called caste? Did you say, any caste but Dalit? Are you part of the group which looked for caste in your partner, yet think you are not casteist?  Yes, you, who hide your caste feelings in the garb of culture! 

Then those who subscribe to patriarchy. All of you who think that the man is the better half in a partnership! Those of you who believe that women should be in the kitchens of the world. Did you say that such things happen, coz women dress badly? Do you ascribe to violence against women behind the veils of marriage? 

Every one of you is responsible for such a crime, for you cohere to an idealogy on whose backbone the structural crimes of rape and murder of Dalit women happen. 

Every time I have used the word 'you', my computer hark back and ask me, what about you? It is time we look deep within; Look at the mirror; Ask yourself the question. Do you ascribe to casteism and patriarchy in some small form? Then you are as much a part of the murder, as those bloody rapists are! 

Till such ideologies exist, the structures backing such incidents cannot be broken! And ideologies should die in the bottom most pits of our hearts. 

The original Indian reformer!

My favourite professor was taking the class. I was still getting to terms with everything that was happening around the hallowed lanes of the Institute of Development Studies(IDS), considered among the leading institutes in the world. Prof. M was doing his third class. I was literally floored by the man in his first two classes; It almost felt like a dream to be sitting there. Suddenly the professor's face became bright. He started talking about his time as a young man learning from, who he considered among the greatest brains in the world! Dr.Manmohan Singh! 

Yesterday I was playfully chiding a colleague about me being a part of 'gen z' and not 'gen y'. Well, I hardly care about the alphabets attributed to generations. But I'm truly happy that I belonged to the generation which enjoyed the fruits of Dr.Manmohan. 

Till the early 90s, India was called the land of poverty and filth. The land of snake charmers. The closed country of intrigue and mystery. We had closed our economies to the outside world. The government was mandated to provide everything. Private capital was seen as a dirty word. We waited for years to get a telephone connection. Maruti was the only car available, and that, only for the rich. My dad said he waited for a few years after he ordered chetak scooter. Only the government-provided education and only an abysmally low number could be accommodated. Government jobs were the norm; There was a middle class waiting to explode.

The year was 1991 when Dr.Manmohan did what is now called the dream budget. He removed import controls, and let the world look at the Indian market. He cut customs and excise duties. Exports were promoted. In the sectors which did not warrant government intervention, he opened out the markets Suddenly the IT boom and the manufacturing sector looked at an Indian middle class. India which was growing at around 1-2% GDP, started seeing double-digit growths. A generation of middle-class Indians including me lived the dream. His dream!

As I entered the hallowed lanes of LSE, there was his picture, right there on the walls along with those of the other great economists of our generation. The great Cambridge university has a chair in his name. 

In times, when mediocrity and noise are being celebrated, Dr.Manmohan Singh may be an outlier. But history truly will treat him kinder. For a real light can never be hidden! 

Happy Birthday, Dr.Manmohan Singh! You are the original Indian reformer. And I'm truly thankful as one of the beneficiaries. 

If only I could manage the idealism of my youth!

She looked beautiful! Nothing showed her age. I was in awe of 'P' when she spoke passionately about saving bonded labourers from slavery. 

I had just lost my mother. Failed to get into the civil service exams. The new government had taken over and I had lost interest in doing anything worthwhile with my life for the country. I have messed it all up, thought I. The new job made sense, but I was not the same passionate individual I used to be in my early twenties. Perhaps age does that to you, I told myself. Then, as someone in the late 20s, who had lost the will to do anything of any use looked at my friends in the corporate. They were earning ten times what I earned and could have earned had I not taken that stupid decision to jump the corporate ship and enter the development sector. I decided to do an MBA and re-enter the corporate bandwagon when Providence led me to this youtube video where 'P' spoke. 

She was thin and petite. Her voice shivered and hardly came through. "I lost my voice to a brain stroke when I was 23" said she; I woke up and sat straight. She continued! She told stories after stories of the lives she rescued from slavery, bonded labourers from their bondage, women from sex slavery etc. 

I was this confused young boy then! I had a lot of unanswered questions. I closed down that video with unanswered questions. But an image stuck in my head that day and has often propped up in my mind every time I quit. An image of a frail 'P', boldly standing up for the cause she believed in. Her face had that word 'Passion' written all over it. I clearly remember asking myself this question that day. "Where does she get such passion at her age? at mine, I don't have anything left."

Today, after a long telephonic conversation with her, I became nostalgic and went back to her videos. That same frail voice. That same petite beauty. The image that had stuck then still popped out. The image of 'P', weak as she is, with that face glowing with passion. 

What makes people so passionate about issues that they go back to the same world of rough and toil every day? Why did she not lose her love for saving labourers after the many years of blood and hard work? When did failure stop to master the idealistic dreams of the biggest achievers? How does she wake up with the verve and energy, to fight the system one more day, to bring forth justice for the truth again and again and again? 

As 'P' closed her video that feeble voice broke. I could sense a tear coming out. And today when I heard her voice on my telephone again, it smelt passion. The same passion which had brought tears to those eyes many years ago.

If only I could manage the idealism of my youth! 

My mom! And her heart!

On the day she left us alone and went far away, I decided to analyse the mind and the heart of the human! For she was a mother alright; but much bigger than that! She was my model human being; For the day I got married, my sister came to me and said, "Sam, don't expect your wife to be like your mother, for you will be disappointed, nobody can be like her". Not to belittle wifey's greatness, my sister was right! 

She had a complex brain, but my mother was a simple human being; Lemme explain. 

She did the right thing!  On the day when she was diagnosed with final stage cancer and in immense pain and agony, she remembered to check on her aunt and uncle and transferred some money and medicine for them, without even telling them what she is going through. When they both passed away(Same day)she, on chemo, gathered all her will to travel long, vomiting all the way, once to see the lifeless bodies of the aunt and uncle. Her greatest strength was the strength of the heart to control the mind, the body and their pulls and to do the right thing, every time. Like everyone, she had mood swings. Times of depression and anxiety. But even during those times, she always did the right thing. That remarkable ability to make the mind and the body listen to her heart, I think was her greatest gift. 

She was kind! We all knew that. She showed tremendous kindness for the world around; There would have been at least 20 old people who had lived in our house at various points of time and everyone was showered with kindness. In fact, mommy once got a letter from a random old lady saying she had heard about her kindness, asking whether she can come and live with amma since her children were not kind to her. But that is not what made her different. The difference is her heart's ability to show love, uncompromised love, even when her mind was not on it. There were days when friends were a pain; when her mind asked her to hate the family; when the body is tired on the inside, but on the outside, she could be showering love! And her heart bled love! No that is not hypocrisy; That is overcoming the humanness within, and she was a master at it.  The day she died, an old man, in rugged clothes, fell prostrate on the coffin and cried "Where do we go for love ma, where do we the poor go for love?" And that summed up her life. 

She was a workaholic! She could pull off an 18-hour workday easily without even looking at the watch. As a professional now, when I look back at her life, her greatest victory was not, not looking at the watch for 18 hours but the ability to cheat her mind into doing the same workdays, through the year, for more than 25 years without taking a break. In my living memory, I haven't known a time when she had taken a break (taken her mind completely off work) even for a day. The modern professional world believes and rightly so, taking breaks help to increase efficiency; but I'm sure, my mom would not have agreed for her heart had the great ability to trick the brain into doing what the heart wanted to do every day with maximum efficiency without a stop.

Finally, she let us be! I think that was the greatest struggle within. She had an idea of the world. She wanted her children to be that idea, like every normal human being. You could see the struggle within when we protested. One could sense her heart bleed. But never once she stopped us from doing what our hearts wanted us to do. In the prime of my career, in the glitter of the IT world, when the company was about to send me to the Netherlands for work, my heart resisted the idea. We were on our family trip to a neighbouring hill station, and the mother and I went for a long walk. I don't remember where dad and the brother were, perhaps eating ice creams. I had her hand on her shoulder as best friends do. "I'm not happy ma, in my work. Something is amiss. This is not what I want to do all my life", I told her. "I want to go to the remote mission fields of the terror hit Assam". I could sense her shock. Her heart did stop a second. Here is her son, planning to quit a high flying corporate career and a lot of money wanting to live in a tribal belt supposedly terror hit for less than half the salary. There was a long pause. A deep breath. And my mother said, "If that is where you are happy, I think that is what you should do"; 

As I reflect on her life now, I see a simple human being. She was not highly read. Not the biggest scholar. She was afraid to talk to strangers. Not the most travelled. But her biggest ability is to win over her mind and body and let her heart rule. Perhaps the heart was ruled by someone else! 

A failed society, a failed church!

Where do I start? It has been one such day when the heart is heavy and the mind is all over the place.

He is just 18 years old. When people use the term 'skin and bone', most of the times we exaggerate. This kid was just bones. The skin was literally hanging on the bones. I have seen pictures like this before, but this was real. Here is a human being in flesh and blood; I mean, there wasn't flesh, but he is talking and moving.

The boy is not eating well said the father. He has an acidic problem. Once the problems sort itself out, things will be alright, the father seemed delusional. His boy is dying, and the man has not understood the seriousness of the situation. He is not in the right frame of mind to understand I would presume, for no father in their mind would want to see the kid suffer.

A random neighbour realising something wrong called this organisation to help. There is a kid behind closed door emaciated and dying. God had been kind enough to involve me in the rescue attempt. We went there and brought the kid and the father to the hospital. After an initial investigation, the doctors immediately suspected TB. Their face said it all. They have not seen so much TB. I could sense a shaken wifey near me looking at the horror of it all. Everyone looked numb.

Where did it all go wrong? Here is a middle-class man, who had been working with fairly decent pay. He has a small house in Chennai, rented or owned is a different issue. Perhaps it is a broken family, with the mother in some other place. Of course, the father has lost his job and there was not much money to put food on the table. But how did the outside world miss such a horrible thing in the middle of Chennai? How did their church miss that there is something amiss?

In the heartland of Chennai, a boy who hadn't had food for 'God knows how many days', should be out in the open. The father had kept him locked for many days, it seems. Aren't there any relatives who knew the family? What happened to the neighbours? The church where the father used to go to? In fact, the father had taken the boy to the hospital twice, only to be administered some glucose without even diagnosing a disease.

Say hello to your neighbour. Perhaps they are going through hell. Listen to the broken relative. Maybe he has a sad story to share. The world needs your empathy. The world needs your attention.

Another 18-year-old is battling for life, for the sheer apathy of the society and the church! How many more do we lose before we are shaken up?

Defining a new world order!

After the locks are broken and our tyres hit the road, what do I go back to? To the same old world or a redefined new world order?

Now that God has given me enough time to sit back and reflect, a sudden thought came up. What if I get an opportunity to redefine my life?  The way I live, my thoughts, relationships, moral construct, ideologies so on and so forth. Doesn't that sound fun? Well, join me in defining this new world order.

I envision a world where hatred is foolish! Where caste, religion, race, gender and community-based discriminations are never even in the dictionary. Prejudice, bias and bigotry are forgotten entities. For humankind is measured by its intricate worth, the worth of being human. Forgiveness, trust and love as the fulcrum of relationships. Where the only conflicts are those within the heart; That will be a wonderful world, won't it?

What about a world without pollution and contamination? Pure air and a crystal clear river flowing across the cities. A world where we can leave the roads and follow the trail, where we preserve and cherish the green, where our lungs inflate with the onrush of scenery, of air, mountain, mist and skies. A world where we listen to nature rather than master it. I know, I go overboard, but this is the world my wife envisions and so be it.

How do we visualize the pace of life? Where humans don't try to keep pace with fellows, but rather listen to the rhythm of their own heart or dance to the tunes of the otherworldly drummer; Where culture and tradition do not define them like defining the book by its cover; rather humankind is defined by the tattered pages of the unread inside. Letting people live at their own pace, where there is no advantage in scurrying through life. Will that world become slow? I guess not; Pace will be defined by a different paradigm, I suppose.

I close my dreams with a quote from Arundhathi Roy. Who better to talk about a new world than the woman who fought all her life for one?

"This pandemic is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world, and ready to fight for it"

Foreign policy - A primer

I live in a huge family; Our house is among the poorer families in the locality, but we were growing into the middle class. Few family members had become rich and are doing well; We were hoping to be the next big superstar family. The world was beginning to take notice.

We have a neighbour who is bigger and ten times more powerful than we are. While we were struggling to even put food on the table, my neighbours had grown by leaps and bounds. We can see them use their power in the world around us. Though they were creating problems all around, they were becoming richer by the day. Most families in my area were buying products from the companies they owned. They were cheaper and sometimes were of better quality as well.

Suddenly, one day they started demolishing the common compound wall and tried to get a hold of some part of our land. These are difficult times. Many in the family had just lost their jobs. Hunger deaths can not only be heard but seen. On top of that, there is a disease that is threatening our livelihood. The neighbour is capitalising on these struggling times and trying to show his power. What do we do? What should be our response?

We can use our valour and power and go fight the neighbour. But he is more powerful! Surely if he strikes back the losses are going to be huge. We cannot lose lives. No, not even one. Losing lives to protect a compound wall is unreasonable. Idiocy!

What else? We can stop buying their products. That will dent their economy since we are among the major consumers. But, if we don't buy from them, where do we buy from? We don't have the capacity to manufacture ourselves. Most of our products are costlier and is leaving the family members who buy them, poorer. Is it worth the risk in times like this? That is a serious question to ponder.

The basic premise of foreign policy is to make the lives of the millions in India better, by generating wealth, prosperity and thereby power. So any relationship with any of our neighbour will have to rest on this strategic condition, that it will generate wealth, prosperity and hence power, in that order.

Is there a way out of our China mess without hurting the life of the citizenry? Only time can tell. Perhaps talking our way out of it looks the better option.

The dust bin of my life!

“A life without changing views is a life without questioning your own beliefs and biases”

This quote blew my mind off! One of the worst things about growing old is the trash bin you had used to throw away your own ideas. This bin keeps growing. I had written things down in the mind only to tear them apart and throw them off along the way of life, and written completely new ideologies.

A friend started talking about a movie which she loved back then but now have a completely different view. This got me thinking as well; I decided to open up that trash bin of my life and have a look at the thrown away ideas.

I was the strict culturalist who thought following one’s culture made sense. I had even thought the so-called ‘Tamil culture’ was morally superior. As I grew older I realized cultures by definition change and most of the cultures are in fact a hindrance to human development. Also, attributing moral values to cultures does not make any meaning now.

I once thought the solutions to most of our problems are with the governments; “More the government, better it is”, had been my tagline. Now I realise it is actually wrong and democracy by definition should have very little government. Profiteering was once a dirty word in my world, now I understand profiteering is actually beneficial and all my life I had been profiteering though I spoke against it.

I had often thought of myself to be extremely feminist only to realize that feminism is a much deeper construct and I had been the typical patriarchal misogynist my society had always been. As and when I touch the filth my trash bin had been, it is worrying how life’s constructs are often determined by your circumstances and situations rather than by reading and understanding complex ideologies. Okay, off to the next paper!

The next paper I’m picking up from the bin is about my idea of religion. Religion for me for a long time meant doing things in a corporate. The church was this large building where a group of individuals worshipped God. My conception of religion has changed so much that I don’t envision churches to be places of worship anymore. The institution of religion looks far more suppressive than it had ever been in my life.

And on it goes! The trash bin of life. I’m questioning my own biases and belief’s and hence the bin gets bigger. Is it possible that one day I will wake up and go back to a few of these ideologies? or once thrown there is never going back? Only time can tell.

Do you change views as you go by? Else, you are not questioning your beliefs and biases enough.

Seven young girls, a hope and a miracle!

Seven young girls, like the many millions in this country, lost their job due to COVID-19. As hope always does to anyone, they kept living in their meagre savings hoping that one day the lockdown will be over and life will come back to normalcy. Sadly, one can only hope! Life is a lot complex. Slowly the savings got over. The employer helped for some time with food, but nobody could afford free lunch forever. Realising that very soon they will have to start planning their way back home to Odisha, these girls started to walk towards the Chennai central railway station.

Sadly they attracted eyeballs. By the time a few volunteers from the 'Loving migrants' group found this out, there were men asking all sorts of questions. They were wary of even the volunteers until a few women in the group could convince them about their right intentions.

Now, sending migrants back home is a long and tedious process. They will have to be sent to a shelter house, tested for COVID, registered with the government, wait for their state's trains before they can reach home. All these take time.

The group set the ball rolling. The women shelter houses were informed about the presence of another seven girls. But sadly, the shelter houses weren't willing to take them in, fearing corona. "We don't let them in without testing for COVID", said their in-charge. But COVID tests in government hospitals are strenuously difficult affairs. They never could afford private testing. How long can they be left stranded on the roads? Especially with so many of the men watching their every step. The volunteers decided to spare some money and put them in a safe lodge until further action.

While all these were happening a volunteer 'A' who was packing the kits for the day's train to Assam happened to meet a railway official. A informed about the plight of these girls to the railway official. The official had a brain wave. "The Shramik train for the day going to Assam is supposed to stop in Odihsa to fill water. We will try and put them into this train" said the official.

These girls were packed off immediately in a small car and brought to the Railway station. But as luck would have it, another official from the Assamese embassy stopped the girls from entering the platform. "This is a train by the Assam government, meant for Assamese. We are not letting anybody else in"; A was stuck again; What do we do now? Take them back to the lodge? How safe are these lodges to stay overnight? The questions are many, answers are few and far between.

When the Assame official was looking else-where A managed to sneak in the girls into the railway platforms and with the help of the railway official helped them enter the train before anybody else could step in. The group managed to find someone in the Odisha railway station to pick them up and take them safely to their places.

When A narrated this story, he mentioned it to be a miracle that anyone could get a train the same day and reach home so fast. It is sad, that it has to be a miracle for young women in this country to reach home safe. It is equally sad that so many good people have to come together to safely pave a path back home for young women in this postmodern world.

Hope the situation settles down and hope the young girls can fly their nest again; Well, hope can be a powerful weapon in a world where miracles like these happen!

Finding God in unexpected places!

"What is he doing?" asked my friend pointing to a boy picking up the leftover water bottles at the Chennai central railway station. "Perhaps he is trying to make some money out of it, by reselling the old plastic bottles", I said. Perhaps he is! we both kept watching him as he went about the chore.

It was an odd sight! The central railway station was full of migrant labourers, who are hoping to get the train back to their hometowns. The volunteers were busy giving food to the scores of humans. The lockdown has caused them immense suffering. All of them had lost their jobs. Many had not had food for a few days. Most of them walked many miles to have got there. Everyone looked tired. Sick. Hungry. Frustrated. Confused. The whole atmosphere was a mess! An absolute mess.

In that charged atmosphere, someone cleaning was odd. We slowly went near him. "Aap kya kar rahein hain sir", I asked him. He looked up irritated. What is your business, said his face. He wanted to be left alone. "Sorry to bother you sir, but just wanted to know why are you doing this"; The man slowly opened up.

I don't have any other work sir; I'm a migrant. It has been three months since I have been living on the roads. I want to go home, but don't know when will I be able to get a train. The railway station looked a mess with all the water bottles thrown around. So I thought of cleaning the place. I'm not doing anything anyway, he finished with a small hand gesture used to show insignificance.

The blogger tentacles in me started to feel a story in him. The selfish intrusive idiot I'm, went to him to ask for a photograph. "Sir, I'm just cleaning the station to keep it clean. Nothing else. I don't want my photograph anywhere", he said firmly. That was a slap I badly needed.

To be a good man and to do good is one thing, but to do good work even when the world is against you is divine.

Divinity exists! In those human hearts who can rise above the circumstances to hold onto your convictions. 

My tryst with the migrant labour tragedy!

This was me till yesterday. Hiding from the world and from reality. My brother and I joined a few incredible group of people to help the migrants stuck on the roads due to the COVID lockdown. These people have been doing it for many days and we just joined them for a day to see what is happening. 

Young boys and girls, most of them as young as we are, if not younger,  were sitting by the road. "Kaana kaaliya?" I asked a young man; "Nahin saab", came the reply. He said they were waiting for a train to take them to Bihar. "Train to Bihar?" I asked him. "Haan Ji, hum patna thak jaana padega"; If only he knew that there is no train to Bihar tomorrow, I thought to myself. If only they know? They knew there are no trains tomorrow. Nor for the entire next week. But they are willing to wait. Till they get a train. Do they have a choice? 

As I quietly laid down in bed late yesterday night in the airconditioned comforts of my bedroom, the image of that boy who spoke to me came haunting back. He looked smart. Tall and handsome. In jeans and sneakers. 

How does it feel to beg for food, I asked myself. How does it feel to not know when and where life is taking you? What are his thoughts right now? Is he thinking about his ageing parents? Or his lost dreams? Perhaps he is thinking about the unpaid loan and the after-effects of that. Does he even have the mental energy to care about these things in the absence of the bare minimal food? 

"Where are the toilets for so many people?" I asked one of those there. "Don't ask questions for which you don't have answers for", said he; If only there are answers! I told myself. Till the point, you and I bury our heads in the cacophony of the world without listening to the intricate cries of pain of the real human beings there are no answers. 

Even as these thoughts were wrestling for space in that small brain space of mine, a sudden thought came to me. If a few men, like the volunteers who took us, who had their eyes and ears open to the harsh realities of the suffering could find answers to the questions thrown at them, why can't I?

Perhaps, I have my eyes and ears in the deepest bottoms of my privilege! 

The man I bow down to!

"I know the value of life, I lost my brother due to the lack of ambulance and timely action," said Manikandan.

My sister saw the video of him going about his business of saving lives in his small Ambulance. She and her husband decided to give some money to him for his selfless sacrifice. The man picked up the call, acknowledged their praise and refused money! REFUSED MONEY! "Sir, I am doing this for free; I'm fine and comfortable with what I do, thank you very much".

As my sister pinged me this story, I could visualise her in tears. Here is a man who is serving the society for free, and not taking any money for his service. No, he is not like my sister to be giving a part of her earnings to charity. Never is he the common man like me, to sit and talk away, the society's issues on Twitter and Facebook. This man is real. He genuinely goes out of the way to help. From whatever little he has, he gives; And he gives his all.

There are a few who start strong and wither away. Perhaps this man is like that. He would have started this sojourn during COVID times, I told myself; "I have done this for 49 months and have saved 650 lives. I have not gone home during corona times. I sleep in my ambulance and police provide me with food". Manikandan answers sceptics like me.

"Why do you do this when your life itself is in poverty," many people ask me says Manikandan. I want to do this for my brother. To the best of my ability. Till I can.

I bow down to that man, not because he refused the money, but because, for him, the cause is more important than the money.

Will I ever find that purpose in my life, for which I can give my life, without expecting anything in return?


For those who can understand my language - https://www.facebook.com/584025382087845/posts/831515464005501/

The woman who fought patriarchy and changed Indian health care forever!

"Sir, I want to start a medical school", said Ida. "Come again? You want to start what?" Colonel Bryson woke up from his slumber. "Medical school colonel"; "A medical school for women" replied Ida. Ha, you are joking, ain't you? the colonel just shrugged it off! Do you know what you are asking? Do you know the famous joke on the sheep brains, doctor? the colonel continued. There was this big feast where mutton was served. One guy went to the cook and asked him where are the brains, the sheep's brains. The cook nonchalantly replied, they were all female sheep. They never had any brains. You know this famous Indian joke, don't you doctor, the colonel continued. Women don't study in India doctor Ida. They just don't. Just leave this foolish idea of yours and get going. Colonel Bryson, the in-charge for medical schools in the then Madras Presidency during British India told Dr Ida Scudder, the women who founded the biggest and best medical college in India.

Dr.Ida was not quitting. Colonel, you know the needs of this country. So many women are dying for want of women doctors and please let me start one, cried and begged Ida. Do you at least have the money to start school? oh, the money will come, Ida just shrugged it off. But do you have at least the buildings? We will build them shortly, Ida was persistent. The man was getting irritated. Who will teach Dr.Ida, who will teach? Do you have the teachers? Bryson was angry by now; I can teach colonel, said Ida. Serenity personified!

The frustrated colonel let Ida have the final laugh. Okay, Dr.Ida, you win, I will let you start the medical school, provided you get 3 applicants. Three! I'm sure you won't even get one. But if you have three students, go ahead and start the first medical school in India for women.

Dr Ida Sophia Scudder got 64 applications then. She chose 18 women. The first 18 women medical doctors from India. When the first year of the Madras University exams concluded, the colonel met Dr.Ida again. Promise me you won't quit doctor if all your girls fail. Even the men have found it tough, many of your girls may fail, Bryson told Ida with the typical masculine arrogance. When the results came, only 50% of the men passed, while all of 18 Ida's students passed in first class.

Aunt Ida, for me, is the greatest human to have lived in this country, for she fought against all odds, and the biggest of them all, patriarchy, to give us all health care. What if Aunt Ida had quit against the might of human stupidity that day? I would not have been where I'm now, for my grandmother belonged to the second batch of her students after the medical school became a medical college in 1942. Today more than 50% of medical doctors coming out of India are women. Almost all of the gynaecologists of this country are women. For that day, one woman stood against every nonsense the world threw at her and won, and changed Indian health care forever.

Remembering her on the day 60 years after she died! But for Aunt Ida, we may have still kept our women in the kitchens of the world.

But for him, I would have lost hope a long time ago!

I did not have much ambition. Happy go lucky was I. Sport was all I wanted and all I did!  I was 17 and going nowhere. I had not prepared well for the most important class XII exams, and anyways I did not care much. It was the summer of 2003 when my uncle gave a cassette and asked me to listen to a man speak.

"Listen to a man speak?", I thought to myself. Just to please my uncle, and of course, to show off I listened to that man. I played the cassette once, twice and many times over. Every time I listened to him, it did something to me. My heart missed a beat. Every time!

Then, life happened. Failure in class XII meant I had to reconcile to the fact that I will never be the doctor which the world around me expected me to become. His words gave me my life's meanings. When the mighty and the glitzy world of IT did not give me satisfaction, I turned to him again. When the loneliness of the mission fields of Assam hit me, he was not far away, and when the pain of going through mommy's final moments bothered me, I did turn to him for solace.

For Ravi Zachariahs always spoke the right words. He wrote the perfect prose. He had the poise of the words and dexterity of language, that can attract anybody. But the flowery language was just the music, his life was the words that spoke. My travel music was his words. He was the jogging companion long before the modern-day podcasts got me hooked. When my faith was questioned, and when I question my faith myself, Ravi was the sole voice which had held me onto the belief in Christ. For sure, the voice was his, but maybe the words came from above; For I doubt humanity have answers to some of the questions he had answers for.

I write, delete, write again and delete again! My words cannot justify the life of the man, whose words made me the man I'm! RIP Ravi, for you made my life meaningful, by the power of your words. Perhaps the words were otherworldly! 

Corporates are bad! Government's are good!

" If you're not a socialist at the age of 20 you have no heart. If you're not a conservative at the age of 40, you have no head "

I read this and it made me think. When I was 20, I was a hardcore socialist. For those happy and ignorant, "socialism is the political and economic theory which advocates, means of production, distribution and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole".  We pool in all the economic resources and divide it equally. This division of resources will be regulated by the government. What a beautiful Idea, I thought. 

India grew up with socialist ideologies as well. The government will lead the manufacturing of all the goods. All services are provided by the government. They are all provided evenly. There is no divide between the rich and the poor. The British who were the sole reason for us being the poor country have gone. The good Indian government will take the resources from the rich and share it evenly with all the citizens of India. Redistribution is the word! We will all live happily ever after. After all, we have our own government and so we will soon be rich. 

Life though was not the same. After forty years of socialism, in spite of the good people in the government, there was something amiss. Ah, the government is filled with corrupt people. We change the government we will be fine said a few friends. I completely agreed. After all proper redistribution cannot be a bad idea, can it? Change the government, and bingo, we will be rich. For sure this time! 

Few people advocated private ownership of property. The evil and the wicked, I thought. How can anyone who has his intentions on making profit be of any good to the common public? The rich corporates, they are money suckers. They are not like the government, who intends good for the public. They are only after the money. They will do anything to get more and more money. They might even kill. Bloody corporates! I even refused to buy products from the corporate bigwigs. I would rather help the poor farmer, you see. The 20s and idealism go well together, I presume. 

But the ideal world of socialism with more and more government means of production did not seem to be working. In fact, the poor have remained poor forever. Where did it all go wrong? I kept asking myself! I started to read economics, and it dawned on me the folly of it all. 

Human beings are primarily selfish; they will look for their own good before thinking about anyone else. Of course, there are saints but they are the outliers, not the norm. Incentivize the human being, he will work. The first lesson of economics, got my brain rolling. 

The government and the corporates are made of human beings. The very same human beings. The government-run industries did not succeed because there was no incentive for human beings in those industries to be the best. While those in the private sector flourished because they have to be at their best to survive. The market competition made human beings in the corporates to give their best. Thus socialism, with state-run production and service industries can never be as efficient as the best-run market based private entity. 

But can we do away with government and its regulations then? Well, that is for another blog! 

Hitler, Mussolini and nationalism!

On the 30th of April 1945, exactly 75 years ago today, Hitler shot himself in the head; Just two days before, on the 28th of April, the Italian premiere Mussolini was shot by few of his own party members when he tried to run to his safety in disguise. Two men, two world leaders, both enamoured with power and respect, had to die such sad deaths within days of each other. Why? What did them in? Not only did they lose their lives, but also became the scorn of the world for years to come. What do we learn from them?

Mussolini was the biggest leader of Italy leading them to the world war II. He became the country's youngest prime minister in the year 1922 through democratically elected means and was its premiere for two decades, almost till his death. He wanted to make Italy the biggest country in the world, and bring back the glory of the Roman empire. At the same time, he had the idea of bringing together a group of people to have a shared sense of purpose and destiny. The very idea of a government was to give people a shared identity! Revolutionary nationalism was what it was called then.

When we think of Adolf Hitler, images of the holocaust and the gas chambers come to our mind. He led Germany for more than a decade, till falling over dead by the end of the second world war in 1945. Hitler had a fascinating ideology of the state(government). His construct of the state is to preserve the racial characteristics of mankind! In short, he wanted the state to preserve the purity of his race.

In a world and more so in a country, which is having a re-look at nationalism, and starting to have a monolithic ideology of the concept of state, Hitler and Mussolini stand as a stark reminder of what can go wrong in this path.

A philosopher once said, "Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it". Are the nationalists listening? 

Has COVID widened the gap?

The virus does not discriminate said, my friend. or does it? My curious mind started the debate within.

Surely the virus does not discriminate, but is the pandemic partial? Are the poor, people from the lower caste and class affected more than the rich? Does the wedge between the have's and have-not's become bigger by the day after COVID-19 lockdown? And the bigger question, have our cultural and religious differences been magnified by this tragedy?

So I thought of examining these questions with simple examples.

Me, the quintessential upper-middle-class boy from among the bigger cities in the world. How has it affected me? Almost nothing, but for the mental trauma of sitting through the day inside closed rooms. My salary has not been affected at all; I still have my house close to the beach and my life is as peaceful as it had always been. Right behind my house is a small slum. An area of people living along a small rivulet of the Adyar. The Indian city version of a rivulet! So the people there have lost their business, for the markets are closed. They have lost money, many I heard go to bed with a single meal a day; Most people would have used up all their savings if at all they managed to have some. Will their lives ever come back to normal again? In this story, have our lives trod different paths? Ain't the gap widening?

Did you hear the story of the many migrants walking hundreds of kilometres, many even falling dead? You can't miss such stories, can you? But did you also hear that the GOI arranged flights to pick people up from across the oceans?  No, I'm all for picking people up and dropping them in their respective places; but why not do that to the migrants as well? Ah, their lives matter less than those living abroad, ain't it?

I wish some NEWS to be false, but they are on your face every day that you hardly can miss them. The NEWS of people from one religion being vilified, the sad reality of them not even given admissions in hospitals. Oh yes, there were children found to be eating grass and guess what, they belonged to the most backward community. Has the pandemic even dug deep our gaping wide cultural holes of caste and religion?

When it is cloudy and dark, sadly my society disintegrates instead of coming together; For we don't want them together when the sun is out and the skies are clear and blue.

What Ambedkar means to me!

Who am I to write on the great man? I was fighting my insecurities.

Of course, I have read a few of his essays. I live in the country abiding by the book(constitution) he helped draft and of course, I'm a big fan of him! But does that qualify me to write on one of the greatest men this country has seen? 

I mean that man was a genius! To have done his doctorates in two of the greatest universities in the world(Yes, two doctorates!); for someone who was considered to be an untouchable is mind-numbing. Here was this 14th child of the family going to school. The school does not allow him to sit along with other children owing to caste. And all the other 13 quits. Only he survives. In fact, he was the first from his community to have completed schooling. It was that tough!  The first Mahar to have ever entered the prestigious Bombay university. The man was so good that he gets a scholarship to enter Columbia University and then to the hallowed lanes of the London School of Economics. 

What would have I done? Had I been in his shoes! Being ill-treated at every step. Made to sit alone in a class. Poured water from above by a clerk so that my body does not touch the glass. What would have I done? Would I have survived? It was so easy for him to just quit and go back to the daily wage labourer job or join the army. No?

The man is being inherited by everyone around. His community of course; The socialist ideological left-wing since he wanted the governments to be running the industries, also the economical right-wing since he advocated for markets in a few areas. The 'liberals', think of Ambedkar as his own since he fought for the rights of the individual, while the constitutionalists want his piece too, for Ambedkar drafted the Indian constitution. Strangely even the casteist right-wing, who he so much abhorred, want their pie too! For the man could not be dispensed with.

Yet, what does he mean for me? The common man, who hardly understands ideologies?

He is the ultimate middle-class dream. If that man can challenge himself and resist the world and be the absolute best, why not me? He embodies everything which I wish have! The dog in the fight. If I can challenge myself and challenge the world and be the best I can be, Columbia University, LSE, two doctorates, scholarly knowledge in all of economics, law, constitution and political science, can never be far behind.

Ambedkar mean to show me the meaning of what it takes to be the best, come what may! 

What if your people have different ideologies?

This friend pinged me crying bored! I'm bored sam; can't even watch TV. "My entire family is watching Zee TV and ABP news through the day and I can't bear them and their ideologies", said she.

"What do you do sam, if your entire family has a completely different ideology from you? What do you do? They blame my one year stint in the western world for my liberal views. Oh, you have been brainwashed by them; Ain't good for you, and on and on and on"! You get the drift right? That your people, the family you live with, the friends you go out with, the neighbours with whom you share food with, or even the modern-day relationships on Facebook and Twitter have all different viewpoints; rather they sometimes abhor you and your thinking for they were poles apart.

Have you guys felt the same? I have often felt it. Have often fought and rebelled!

What do you do? Do you fight? or just keep going, acting unawares? Or just let it be, they are just ideologies; Why does it matter so much? After all, they are your people; ideologies cannot be coming in between relationships, can they?

Of course in an ideal world, ideologies or viewpoints cannot and should not be relationship breakers; But is it really possible in this day and age of rampant media where dividing people is the order of the day and they intentionally want you to be divided. Is it even possible to brush these differences aside? I mean, I for one cannot carry on my relationship with a rabid Islamophobe, rather someone who divides people rabidly on the basis of any religion for that matter.  I personally cannot tolerate anyone talking casteism. I better stay away from the arrogant 'I'm the superior' caste or the 'they are the Dalit' discourse'.

The complexity of the modern-day relationships!

Well, I don't have answers. I guess it is for each individual to decide where and how do we draw the line between our emotional ideas and the quality of the relationship.  Maybe some relationships are not worth the debate, and maybe some debates are not worth losing a relationship! 

Lessons learnt from you uncle!

I'm an Indian and obviously being a cricketer was one of the big dreams growing up. So, I meet this man, white-haired, but still physically very fit in the workplace. Someone had told me he was Indian Cricket team's physiotherapist for some time. The child in me woke up. "Ivara pidichu yepadiyaavathu Rahul Dravid kitta oru photo yeduthukidanum", I told myself! And for that selfish reason, I became friends with him. Of course, he was the boss's father. You had to be good with him! 

I slowly developed the conversation and brought up cricket. Uncle was nonchalant about it. Oh, that was during Pataudi's period. 'Pataudi ah, appa Rahul Dravid ah theriyaathaa', my mind switched off! But he kept going, And suddenly he said, then I went to Disney for some time. Disney ah? I was still trying to comprehend that statement, but uncle went on. The nonchalant body gyration went on too. I was there when Asha Kiran was being developed. Then I worked here and then there. On and on and on! Uncle, saapdelaama, pasikithu; My mind was still trying to comprehend his life. As you would have noticed by now, for my mind to work, I have to eat. Oh, I forgot, in between, he spoke about writing some books. See, I remember a few things at the name of food! 

Sam, do you like beef; We went early in the morning and brought this beef specially cut in this size and this shape. "Oh, ivarukku samayalum theriumaa, appada, thalai suthuthu" I told myself. 

One of those days I and the best friend were talking! Or should it be called gossip? Benji, avarukku yelaame theriyuthu, ana apadiye amaithiyaave irukaare benji, I told him. He nodded! 

Those were my dreams. Being with a cricketer, being in Disney, working in remote mission fields and of course being an author! He has done everything I wanted to ever do in life. Every damn thing! Yet, when he looks back at his life, there is no sense of achievement! Just a plain acceptance of grace. Those nonchalant body gyrations I spoke about, they were reflections of that acceptance I presume. 

Then we became good friends. You can call us Beef friends, for every time I come to Vellore, Uncle makes sure he makes beef. And they are some of the best beef I have ever tasted. He helped my mind work faster I presume. The faster it works the more lesson I learn you see. 

When I look at his life and reflect on it now, there is one thing which is remarkably striking. For a man to have left high profile jobs in his prime of life, to do what he wanted to do, he must have listened carefully to the inner calling. Cricket and Disney might not have been his dream, but leaving them would never have been easy. At a time when the 'what next' question is knocking loud at my door, reflecting on his life, so beautifully lived, is a lesson in itself.

70 years of life lessons uncle. So much more I can write! but leave them for our future conversations. Here is to many more years of life and being a source of inspiration to many like us. God bless!

In search of his identity!

His beautiful girlfriend invited him to her sister's wedding. "I am inviting only you", said she. 'Only You',  Those words fell on his ears like a love song. Off he went. The first time of meeting her family.  Nervousness! Excitement! He imagined her in a saree.......

He was locked up in a room, beaten badly. Peed on! Before he realized what had hit him, his life was torn in front of his eyes. 

What happened in between? Why did that happen? 

This young boy was made to realize he is from a caste considered lower. Suddenly he is realizing that the world does not see him as an equal. He looks around to see, his world to be very different from the world his girlfriend lives. Who am I? He asks himself. Who am I? 

Why am I, getting beaten behind closed doors? 

Why even the gods do not let me near him? 

Why even the men who laugh with me hate me? 

Why do more of my people get killed in the railway tracks? 

Why do more of my men suicide? 

Why have I never got into the temple cars? 

Why am I given separate glasses in tea shops? 

Why is my house always in the peripheries of the village? 

Why only my men die under sanitation pits?
Why? Oh, Why? Why? 

As the news came of the six young children from the Musahar community eating grass as food in the prime ministers' own constituency, I went back to watch the movie 'Pariyerum Perumal', which is the story I had just narrated! 

I tried to put myself in his shoes, but I could not understand his question. "Who am I?" did not resonate with me since I was never repressed. So I change my question. "Why only them?" In a country as big and as poor and as chaotic as my country is, why only the Musahar, the mahadalit community children, had to eat grass to survive. Of course, they are the poorest of the poor; But why? Why do they end up the poorest always?

As he went in search of his identity, it is important, I and my country ask the question, Why only them? Or why more of them?

Corona and empathy!

Suddenly every Tom, Dick and Harry has become the doctor; including yours truly. In a family where the father, mother, wife, brother, sister, MIL, FIL, SIL are all medical doctors, I'm almost the loudest doctor at home. From telling what my dad has to do, to tell what my aunt's friends have to do, the fake doctor in me had been quite vocal.

It is so easy to speak out loud if you don't know anything about the virus you see. But then you have to read more to talk loud. At least louder than your coterie of docs to be heard and taken seriously. That makes it mandatory to read more than them. So I was reading and listening to Dr JP Mulliel, widely regarded as India's leading epidemiologist and Christian Medical College's former head of community medicine. He said something which came out of the blue and I want to discuss them here

He said,  "Treat the Corona patients with compassion, there is a good chance that you might be one too"; This hit me hard!

Yesterday a friend pinged me on how her society in Kolkata refused her entry after she had come home from Mumbai to work from home; There was another friend who had come back from Paris and was refused entry though he promised quarantine. There were reports of doctors not let into the flats fearing transmission; This, after we supposedly clapped our hands to appreciate them the day before! Do you remember the news of the suffering the Air India crew had to go through to enter their own homes? And the usual hatred against the North East brethren, Coz they look like the Chinese?

It is tough to be ostracised from your own society. Mentally disturbing to be sent off by your own people. Where will they go, if not to their own houses? The mental trauma of it all is real.

Dear India, Of course, the virus spreads. Truly we have to be careful about our proximity to our neighbours. But social distancing never meant social ostracising. Everyone in the country has to live; and can surely live at a safe distance from each other.

Empathise with the patient! For you might be the next. Empathise with your neighbour for you are human. 

Whatsapp and corona!

Five hundred unread messages showed my WhatsApp! I did what I usually do with my WhatsApp; Just open it and close it, to take off the unread numbers. Curiosity piqued, I opened a few of my groups to read. Corona and the prime minister's latest curfew announcement were the order of the day on the WhatsApp groups.

There were all sorts of messages. All sorts! 

"The virus will live only for 12 hours and that is why the prime minister has asked us to sit at home for 14 hours; To break the community transmission of the virus", said one. "If we clap on the 22nd of March all the viruses will be dead due to some astronomical energy", said another. There was even one message which said, "Corona was invented by the Illuminati to depopulate the earth"

Just to set some context, I will break the myth (ie) the first WhatsApp message here. Research by (Doremalen, et al, 2020), published by the New England Journal of Medicine suggests that the new coronavirus (COVID - 19) can live in the air for 3 hours, up to 4 hours on copper surfaces, more than 24 hours on cardboards and up to 2-3 days on plastic and stainless steel surfaces. This research clearly shows that there is a gap between the perceived truth and the researched truth. 

Okay, I can hear you ask, how do I know whether the research is true or not; What if the research is wrong? To be honest, I don't know. That is why I have given the name of the author and the publication here; Lesson number one to learn here is, if possible to check the veracity of the message you forward, before forwarding it. If it is not possible to check the truthfulness of it, please forward it with the name of the author in it. If you are not able to find both, keep quiet and close your WhatsApp down.

So one friend asked me, I only forward the positive messages, what can go wrong even if it is a false message? The value of your truth will go down! For we all know the 'shepherd who cried wolf' story, don't we?

Also remember, every fake message has a beneficiary with a selfish intention, to begin with. Why abet a selfish intention, if you don't have a stake in it? 

The real India's fight against Corona!

So I started my first day of Work From Home (WFM)! An emergency meeting in the morning, then some work, then one in the afternoon, and the one where I had to present in the evening and then some more presentations made! Not a bad day, I told myself. Not a bad day! I not only managed to distance myself from the outside world but also did some useful work. Then I came out to see my buzzing city from the balcony. Chennai has not yet stopped! Ah, Chennai, you should stop! You cannot afford this, I murmured. Social distancing is a must I say; We should be more responsible, continued my monologue.

Bang, it hit me! As if somebody had thrown a stone on my mind, it hit hard. The privilege of the so-called social distancing. Basically, of work from home!

The other day my brother overheard the Uber driver telling another that he has not got one trip that day, and if he does not manage to get a trip, he will not have food on the table. So, social distancing is a joke for him; For he had to drive to live, sadly!

How do you tell the man I met in the Reang tribal village bordering Mizoram and Tripura about Corona? And the importance of work from home and staying away from people? For a start, his house had 15 people and they all lived together in that single shed they called home! What if one of them catches a virus? How do I tell him to transport the patient to the nearest hospital, 100 Kms from his place? what if he harps back, "if I go with the patient, who will pay me my daily wage for the day? " What if the patient is the sole breadwinner of the family?

A few days ago as I went walking along the Marina beach in the early morning, there were hundreds of people sleeping there! Thousands every day sleep on the beach sand. On the pavements!  Below the bridges, on railway platforms, on empty railroads, along the sewage canals, every damn place. Do I talk to them about social distancing? Society and its community is sadly their only solace!

Social distancing sadly is a privilege of the rich!

Of course, I am working from home till the corona is done away with! And try to protect me and my ilk from the dreaded virus. But with the realisation, that privilege is what is protecting me and not social distancing!

Social media - Hatred and love!

I’m an addict! Addicted to twitter. Many times I have tried to come out of it, only to go back to find a solace there.

Solace? In twitter? After much thought, I decided to leave that word as it is. Twitter in the last few years had been a part of my life. I rarely do WhatsApp groups. Almost never open Instagram. Facebook, once in a few days, only for a few minutes. Yet twitter has been addictive.

What do I find there? Why do I go back to that small place again and again? Strangely I find hatred and abuse prevalent in twitter, and both of them annoys me. I had often found twitter to be obnoxiously abusive, that I had thought there is no hope for mankind. Twitter breeds hatred. People come to twitter often to hate. Hate and abuse are the only two words I could go to when I describe twitter. Strange that twitter with all its hate anger and abuse is where I find solace! Oxymoronic, ain’t I?

Then I found this group of friends on twitter. I went on this wonderful conception called the food walk done by one Twitterati. We just went around different shops tasting different food.

In one of those shops where we caught some breath, I was watching a few in the group talking to each other. They looked like good friends. You could see love and respect. On prompting they said they had known each other through twitter. And one of them even said most of the best friends of life are from twitter.

It suddenly dawned on me I had been doing twitter and to a large extent the social media wrong. Of course, abuse on social media will continue. Surely I will revel in what I had done all this while; to look for the latest updates on the country and its polity and weep. In all probability, I will again go mad reading through the insanity my twitter world had been. But through it all, I surely now know, that there are small pockets of beauty and love in this vile world; And I’m thankful that I saw one of them today.

Kobe — Won over my hatred by insane work ethic!

Mr D had just selected me to play basketball 🏀. No idea why he did what he did; I was this plumpy short kid, standing among the first few in the queue of young adults made in the ascending order of heights. For the next few years, the ball and the sound that made were the only things I knew. Kobe had just started playing NBA and was already a rock star in the first few years of his NBA sojourn

My basketball days were at its peak. I had recently been selected to represent my district. Our school team had already won the District School meet. Naturally, the NBA was all I wanted. And Kobe was this young kid, playing like a dream for the LA Lakers.

The year 2000! I loved to bits one guy called Reggie Miller. He played for my favourite Indiana pacers (Yes, you guessed it right!  They were my favourites coz their name had 'India in it). The NBA finals had Kobe pitted against Reggie. Kobe went berserk. I remember clearly getting up early mornings to watch Kobe run amok over Reggie and his pacers. My team lost. I cried!  

College happened.  Reggie retired and new sporting heroes in Vince Carter and Allen Iverson came into our lives. Kobe was at his job, still winning most valuable player awards.  Life took different turns. Basketball was relegated to newspaper articles. Kobe was often seen there as well.  When the sport was turning younger and faster, Kobe was still keeping pace with the young.

Why does he still play? Can't he just retire?  I mean, he was still making LA Lakers win and I hated it. He was competing with LeBron and his ilk and I hated him more for that. But Kobe played on. Generations came and went. Never did Kobe go anywhere. 

Then I read this story.  As narrated by R, once the physical conditioning coach for the US Olympic basketball team. And I became a fanboy. For who cannot be a fan of the irrepressible Kobe? 

It was 4.15 am when Kobe had called R and asked him to come to the gym to help him with his conditioning. R, stepped out in twenty minutes to see Kobe drenched with sweat already. Then they worked out together for a good two and a half hours and R went back to his bed tired. He had to come back to the courts at 11.00am after all. When R managed to drag himself out to the courts at 11.00 am, Kobe was there practising some sharpshooting all by himself.  R asked Kobe when did he come back to the courts! I wanted to do 800 shots and so stayed on said Kobe nonchalantly. 

Kobe, the first superstar I hated for he defeated my hero, became the rock star I loved for that insane work ethic. To stay at the top for 20 years in an incredibly tough sport like the basketball is beyond imagination. 

RIP Kobe. Too young to go, kobe!  Too young. With you, a part of my childhood died as well.   

Ambedkar, titanic and discrimination

As I stood on that stairs and looked at his name written on that wall, I could feel goosebumps; For many years ago on those same stairs had stood the man who built the foundations of my country. Nearly 130 years after his birth he is politically and socially relevant than ever before. 

Dr B R Amedkar, the man who led the drafting committee of the constitution, was born into the Mahar(Dalit) community. A few days ago, a relative of mine made a comment, those are 'Dalits' they behave like that! Ambedkar was born nearly 130 years ago when casteism was rampant. He was made to sit outside the classroom since his sitting inside would have made the class impure. The teachers did not touch his books, for maintaining purity. Oh, he was never allowed to touch the glass of water! A peon would pour water from a height for him to drink; What if the peon is absent? Ambedkar would go without water that day. 

Ah, the greatness of our culture and society we often boast about. Just that it got impure by that young kid going to school. 

From being the outcast, to go on to study at Columbia University and then at the LSE, and finally to lead the drafting committee of our constitution, leading men from the very own community which ostracised him, that man is a genius.

"No, we don't discriminate on the basis of caste! We just marry within the same caste, just in case". "We are against the caste system. We just don't marry Dalits, we don't mind marrying anybody else". People from that community always fight! People from this community deserves being treated like that. "Ah, she belongs to my caste, It is easier for me to connect with her". We have all been there and done these. All of us! Every one of us.

The very same discrimination Ambedkar fought against!

From Ambedkar's memorial, I came to the Titanic Museum. The greatest ever construction mankind had ever made. The gorgeous Titanic. You all know the story, don't you? Titanic hit the iceberg and Titanic sank. Two hours and forty minutes are all it had after hitting the iceberg. Two hours and forty minutes of saving lives. At the end of it, more than 60% of first-class passengers were saved while less than 25% of third class passengers were saved. 

Mankind! Cruel Mankind! Can you never stop discriminating even when lives are at stake?

If not casteism then classism, we are discriminatory! Yet, when we were born, naked and crying, the personhood of mankind/womankind is the same across! Nobody was created to be inferior. Nobody is inferior.

As the Titanic sank, two men brought in their dogs to the lifeboats! While others around them sank to their afterlife hoping and praying that they are not discriminated at least there!

The privileged few!

I was angry! They never knew how difficult my life is, I told myself. "I have worked bloody hard and most of it all alone, to have come to this level", I patted myself on the back. It cannot have been easy, for nobody in my family understood what it meant to be a 'non-medico' in the family. Nobody studied engineering. None quit engineering to enter the social sector. Almost none went abroad to study. And surely nobody works with the government.

Classic sulking upper-class privilege! Ah, the privileged home-bred dog complaining about not getting food on time. That was me!

Suddenly I remembered that word, 'Privilege'! Google defines it as 'having special rights, advantages or immunities. So I stopped my filthy monologue and started to write my privileges down; simply put, certain advantages I have over others, which I have not done anything to deserve.

Born to doctor parents have to be a privilege, ain't it? And surely having both of them alive and well till my twenties was too. Going to a rich private school seethes of privilege for only 25% of my country could afford them. To study in a top engineering college and to do a masters in what is considered among the world's best institutes without a student loan was a privilege too! That meant someone else had to work hard so that I study.

Did I deserve the car we had? The bed where my head rested? the bicycle I drove to the school complaining that I do not have a motorbike? The food on the table, four times a day? Well, I ate four times a day, all through school and college! Of course, I did well in my first interview to have got through to my first job but wasn't my language skills a privilege? For far better experts in the subject could not get through the interview for want of better language skills.

I often boast of quitting the high profile job to work in a remote part of the country! But how can I boast of it as my achievement for my dad helped me get the job! I did clear the initial stages of the civil service exams, for I had a room in the heartland of the capital, somebody who could teach the subject, someone to cook and someone to wash my clothes. There were surely people who had to work and cook and wash and also prepare for the exams.

The privilege of the economy, society, religion, culture, family, and of course the locality!

I can go on and on and on, on this! I will stop here. Just realising I have had special rights, advantages and immunities all along with my life, for which I had to be thankful. And surely be cognizant of the privileges.

And if you are reading this, having the internet in your personal computer, recognize your privileges and be thankful for them!