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!