What Men have made of men?

The title has been inspired from the poem, Written in early spring, by William Wordsworth. Man seems to have crossed the threshold of being human and has become so much cruel. This poem is my reaction to the increasing abuse and rape of women, who most deserve love, care and affection.

I write this with a sense of disbelief

and a feeling of amalgamated shame

My thoughts are smeared in grief

with a tinge of anger flame

 

How can you be proud of a nation

where women get misrep

In the chart of social evolution

we have been taking a toddler step

Mankind is now a misnomer

for Man has stopped being kind

and these thoughts around my mind hover

to help protect nature's best find

Man has shed his human-ness

and set the beast let loose

Strong laws and quick justice

how long can we afford to snooze?

If you say its the attire

that makes a man instigate

In all the sense of satire

I wish you a better fate

We kill her even before she plays the game

to every mother's sigh

We forget its the men to blame

who gave the X and wh'Y'

Lets do something to make them feel abash

and resort to deal them tough

I wish God could use a cache

and punish them quick enough

We have waited more than we should

and we cant do it longer

It's time we join hands and stood

against men who are less men and more ogre

lets spread the love most sought

and help her as she is shaken

let's all sit down and give a thought

and let the humane feelings reawaken

As this poem draws to an end

I hope men stop being sick

I ask for their ways to mend

to every tom, harry and DICK

-Sayee Balaji

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A day at Wharton

Last Saturday, I had the opportunity to go to Wharton to attend the 17th Indian Economic Forum. The speakers for the day were big names from various spheres that drive the Indian economy - Politics,Healthcare, Education, Infrastructure and Media( in the order of how they should be ). I was very keen on listening to each of these speakers and what ideas they have to shape our tomorrow. The first session was Arvind Kejriwal's. He spoke with passion. He had ideas. Not sure if those ideas are going to work. A political circus that India is today, where most of the show is run by animals and jokers trained to wiggle and act at the swish of a whip...having ideas and a futuristic thought is commendable enough. A chunk of the audience felt his ideas are just vaporware and might not address the problems to be tackled. I am not too sure about this. Being part of the race that mocked the Wright Bros when they said they would make flying a reality, I am not too worried. I'd rather let the misanthropic feeling gracefully sink in. Kejriwal spoke of how his party would function like a corporate( in terms of efficiency, not motives) and how measures would be taken to address some critical problems at the grassroots level. For one, no one has tried to take this level of granularity in addressing an issue. And if they were to work as planned, I'd look at them as harbingers of change and development. Whether Kejriwal would be able to survive the alligators of corruption-drenched politicians and dynasty leaders as he swims through a pseudo democratic India, remains to be seen. We have waited all along choosing between the devil and the deep blue sea. I wouldn't mind waiting for this.

The next session was Montek Singh Ahluwalia's, the deputy chairman of the Planning Commission of India. An Oxford grad he is, he was good with this speech. But I felt his goodness stopped with the choice of vocabulary. He didn't really explain why India is performing poorly compared to the other countries. He didn't really have a solution for the future. There are 2 types of planning that one can do. 'Plan today for today' and 'Plan today for tomorrow'. Then there was his, 'Plan today for yesterday'. What I mean here is, he seems to be someone who takes remedial plans than trying to do things upfront. I call this, 'Pizza Planning', where you can just work for a Margherita and then add the required toppings towards the end and still getaway with it. Might taste good, but good for health? Maybe not. What I am asking for here is a home cooked meal. He is after all , the chef of the planning kitchen and I'd expect him to know this.

Keeping up with the food topic, the next session was lunch! Was decent. Pasta, wraps, brownies and juice. Need I say more?. The session to follow was on Private Equity and Venture Capitalism. This is when I started to realize I was in Wharton, but I wasn't in Wharton yet! I stepped out for a walk rather than force myself to google every word of what they spoke. This turned out to be interesting. I saw several police officers lined up at the gate. Turns out, there were a group of protesters outside the building voicing against the decision of the Forum to un-invite Narendra Modi for the conference. The protest was a surprise to everyone out there,even the cops. The protest was done in Gandhigiri style, distributing hot gujarati food packed in lunch boxes! I accepted the box with a grin and started to "venture" into everything that was in it. My own version of venture capitalism.

The next session was on Women empowerment and Shabana Azmi just had to be there. The talk was good and this is a no-brainer. Women empowerment is very essential to our nation and we should do whatever it takes to root out female foeticide/infanticide, dowry and differential treatment. No country can be called developed, unless Women have equal opportunities. Gender has no role in dichotomizing rights. From what I hear and see, I think its getting better each day. So, let's keep up with that.

The next couple of sessions to follow were on Healthcare, Education and Infrastructure. Not all aspects were touched. But the ones that were debated, I feel the panel did justice. Healthcare is the backbone of any country. Our problems are complex. We have multiple problem statements. We need to transition from paper records to electronic health network on one end, and we need to first make healthcare accessible to 57% rural India on the other. We need to promote and boast about medical tourism that's been on the rise over the last few years and we need to tackle the high rates of malnourishment among rural children. We might have to do this together, each of us taking different goals and meeting them. This should be the way to go for the future. Education - Things that I learn, I want to know why and how, not what, when and where. We need to prepare our societies to encourage children to follow their passion and this could become a reality only when all the avenues have enough job opportunities. In other words, we need to become a 'Hobby friendly' job market, where people could pursue jobs in the field they have always loved. Infrastructure - Can you please stop building makeshift flyovers and save us the embarrassment from other nations as it breaks down? Can you help me get home quicker and less stressful so that I have better time to spend with family? Open questions, answers lie somewhere.

The last session of the day was Media. Javed Akhtar, Shabana Azmi and Boman Irani on the dais. Was entertaining and had the biggest audience. Shows how much people love them and how much responsible they should be, as an instrument of Indian democracy. They debated films and journalism. Nothing can be perfect. But I feel we are in fact coming with good films these days. No point in going brouhaha over the bikini scene in a movie or a bad song lyric. Not a utopian world. Let's look at it as a choice basket and we are free to pick ours. Journalism has two sides again. I am seeing liability and accountability on the rise with news channels questioning more and more. But on the other hand, we need to stop having Aishwarya Rai's pregnancy as a flashing news headline. We also need to stop being stupid in live telecasting police operations( 26/11) and think about the nation before channel TRPs.

Healthcare, Education, Infrastructure and Social Health are the key pillars that will shape our future. We need to plan to orchestrate these instruments well and create a wonderful song, that is India!All these seem to be pieces of a giant jigsaw puzzle. But I am hopeful we will be able to put them together. After all, its a billion hands working on it.

Thanks,
Sayee

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The disappearing red tribe

Less pay, people starting to travel light, ramps and travel friendly bags all have a reason for their dwindling population. A decade or two ago, they were the sultans of stations. They were the go-to guys to know which train would arrive on what platform. “When in doubt, ask the porter” was the unanimous mantra followed by all travelers. Draped in soiled red shirt, a lungi or pant depending on which part of India you are and a towel wrapped around the head as a turban to ease the weight of the luggage, the porter was a very known figure among every traveler. For Rs.20, he would carry your bulging luggage( perhaps moaning about its weight which is almost half the traveler's) from your seat to the taxi or rickshaw stand outside the station. A porter was also the fastest creature in the station . With all that weight on his head, he would still be twice as fast as you and would sneak between people to reach the destination happily waiting for you.

This 5 minutes is quite a challenge. You would have to keep a track of where he is so that you don't lose him or more precisely, your luggage. The deal to fix a price to hire a porter is interesting in itself. He would start off with a quote to which you would instantly disagree and convince him of how the distance is not too long and the luggage isn't that heavy either. Makes me wonder why we need to hire a porter then!! After several rounds of negotiation and him narrating the plight of his family, you finally agree for a price. He wraps the turban on his head, bends a little and places the luggage on his head, hangs one over his shoulder and carries one in his hand. There have been several times when I have felt sorry for the guy, especially when his age looks unsuitable for this job but he has to do it to win bread for his family. The porter is also a very intelligent man. Some say, he can even guess all the items in your bag just by lifting it! That may be too tall a claim , and most of us would tend to disagree. But without him, traveling around the station would have been a hassle.

When you travel in trains these days, you see very few porters around. The ample display boards everywhere tell you which train arrives in what platform and when. Samsonite and the likes have made the phrase “ sliding your luggage” more meaningful than “carrying it”. Ramps have replaced staircases in several stations making our job all the more easier. I am not trying to put the entire red clan in good light. I have heard about theft of luggage by them. Some even get into a bad argument if you don't agree to their price. While these are totally unacceptable, I feel sad for the ones who are good but don't find customers for their living. They are the ones who have decided to carry your weight to carry the burden of their family. All they might earn each day would be close to two hundred rupees. We all fall prey to the exorbitant ask by auto-wallas. Some of us fight back, while some yield. It might be worth giving the red clan a second chance.

So, the next time, whenever you travel, hire a porter and support him. All I ask is for you to “Carry” this thought as you travel.

P.S : This post was not in exchange of a free service by a porter. Except my laptop and my coffee mug, there is no personal affinity with the color red.

Thanks, Sayee

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Unique 'Rail'ationship

Last week, I took a train from Chennai to Bangalore and what you are going to read for the rest of this post, is about my love hate affair with Indian Railways. Travelling on Indian Railways is a life in itself. The public sector is so intertwined with our culture and way of life that it goes a step beyond helping you reach places, to teaching you the art of living. If you have read enough philosophy books or have even quickly glanced at the italics under the title of every chapter, you know this important lesson : Never give up! If you have booked a ticket through IRCTC, the online reservation system, you know exactly what I am talking about. The website has been carefully designed to test the patience of Indians and give the fruit of success to the one who survives through it. Hindusim says, "Only if you commit a sin, you take a birth. Else you are given moksha". Well, IndianRailism says " Only if you commit a sin( agents/bribe ), you get a berth. Else you are given ' Website not found / Server Error ' ".

The joy one gets as he breaks out from the cocoon of IRCTC is beyond words. Not the height of joy, but the person becomes so tired and tested along the way, he loses the power of speech. "Never give up" doesn't stop there. It is a very powerful mantra uttered by all senior folks, while at the ticket reservation counter, hoping to get the lower berth. The poor senior folks have climbed enough, that they don't want to take that ladder again. More on the Hinduism-Railism parallelism later. Back to my trip. I sinned, so I travelled. If you ever want to see a place with over 10 thousand people, bustling with activity at 5 am, come to Chennai central. The next challenge - Make your way to the correct platform. It isn't really a challenge to reach the correct platform. But it becomes one if you have just about 10 minutes before the train departs. Challenge taken and job well done. Engine chugs. Train departs. All trains are not the same. Some are fast, some are slow. Some are on time, while some are consistently late. Some pamper you with food and beverages, while some treat you as yet another mere mortal. The one I took is fast, is on time and serves food.

Ever since I was a kid, I used to love being on the trains. I love to watch the passing towns, villages and paddy and I love waving to the kids, mostly ending up getting a similar acknowledgment. If you travel general class, you can sense the real India. Back to Religion-Rail parallelism now. "Men are of several kinds, shapes, sizes and smell. Treat everyone with love and care". Well, not quite. I am not sure how you can love a co-passenger who comes in with 10 over dimensional luggages for a family of 3. How to love a co-passenger who is loud or burps louder. How to love someone who stares at you the entire journey without a smile, as if you are a convict who has just escaped from prison? My current journey did not have any of this. But, have experienced these before.

In a cabin of 8 berths, you have 8 different characters. Some keep munching all along. A real issue comes if you have a lower berth and you want to go to sleep. You can't unless all the others go to bed. And if you are an early morning person and if the person on the middle berth is a travelling salesman sleeping with the disgusting stincking pair of socks, good luck!. You have to adopt, what is taught in Yoga as the C curve posture. Because the middle berth cannot be brought down yet, and you have woken up because you had nothing else to do, you have to stick your head and legs out, while resting the middle portion of your body on the seat. You do this until that person gets up, or if that doesn't seem like a near future event, you just go back to sleep. You will then be frequented by beggars and hawkers to lessen the weight of your wallet.

Remember, most of these journeys are long. So, when you travel with family or friends, you come prepared with some games like cards or snakes 'n' ladders to kill the afternoon boredom. As a kid, I always wanted to step out of the train during stops and scare the hell out of parents by not boarding back till the train starts to move( Actually, I would be twice scared. Just that we tend not to show it! ). As you do all this and finally make it to the destination, you come out a whole new person. You have met new people, seen new things, heard different languages and even tasted different food. All this just over a train journey. This is the love I have with Indian Raliways. It gives you a new experience, every single journey.

As a kid, we used to travel a lot between Mumbai and Chennai. Reaching Chennai, I used to love the auto-rickshaw( Madras autos are brighter yellow and also sound more). I use to love the merry go round ride on the Gemini flyover and I used to love the first cup of filter kaapi on arrival. This time, When I returned from Bangalore, I still enjoyed and loved all of this. It is good that some things in life don't change. As they say, you love it or hate it, you just can't ignore Indian Railways.

-Sayee

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In search of cerebral vacations

Out of the several things man has been known to continue doing ever since his race inherited earth, is taking vacations. Strange it may be, but the fact is man just cannot be put in a monotonous world for ever. There is a yield point, beyond which our brain and our body stops cooperating, gets on a strike and demands a break. This is when a special impulse travels through the nerve cell and stimulates a reaction from us, which usually is a shoulder shrug or a customary fling of an object as a expression of you being irate. This is when the outside world knows they wont be seeing you for the next few days.

Vacation planning is not easy. In fact, research tells that most of one's vacation is spent in planning one than actually enjoying it. The most common factor that causes this is the very nature of human kind, unique, non decisive and greed. Vacation means to travel with company. If you go alone, it's not just worth spending much just on you. You'd rather be at home and swirl in the endless cycle of YouTube recommendations. If you have company, you are placed in a better situation but that comes with a conditions apply tag. The asterisk reads good luck arriving at a decision. Thanks to varied individual tastes, this task is time consuming and tough. You usually start on the origin of the convincing curve, where you are dominating and you put forth you vacations ideas. The rest of the curve is arguments and the end of the curve is when you decide to let go. You either break down halfway through the curve or you travel till the end of it. Very few have succeeded in getting lucky at the origin.

As herculean a task it may sound, there are tips to get around with it and still make things work in your favor. Enter, "Cerebral Vacations". Remember, the prime reason why you are planning a travel is because your brain gave up and you body had no say in it. So, if you can give a break to your brain cells and give them enough rest, they would stop complaining and you would feel much better too. You can also skip the pains of going through the curve of crappiness. Sounds like an idea? Great! But what exactly do you do to take a cerebral vacation? Pretty simple. There are, according to me, 2 ways to do it. One, Do Nothing. Two, Do something that means nothing to you. The first task can sound weird, but trust me, we are all capable of doing that and without our conscious, we have been already doing them often. Example, stare at your wall for five minutes. Or better, focus completely on your food as you eat it. These acts are highly recommended and have shown promising results. The second task requires resources - Computer and Internet. The net is so full of shit that you can search from UFOs to a ukrainian recipe to the fattest man on earth to viral videos and to the current temperature at the base station in Antarctica.

When all these fail, start blogging or read one.

-Sayee

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Another Diwali wested!

Sulking in my room dimly lit, the only sound I hear around me are from the strokes from my keyboard as I type and some sounds of laughter from outside the quaint pub across the street. Those laughter sounds seem to fade away. So I assume those people moved. All I am left with now is the QWERTY crackers this Diwali.

A little while ago, I spoke to my parents back home where all my relatives have gathered to enjoy the festivities together. This is one of the most beautiful aspects of a festival. In this fast paced world where people are too busy to even enjoy their own lives, its moments such as these that bring people together and rests faith in humanity that knows to share joy, love and happiness. Of the many festivals that we celebrate, Diwali is my favorite as it is much more than just another celebration. It is the excuse for kids to get new clothes. It is yet another day of shopping for the ladies with newer and better arrivals carefully designed to extend their shopping time endlessly. It is the much deserved break for the men from their everyday toil at work. It is the time when the shop owners light up their shops and decorate them to attract shoppers. It is the excitement for the village folks to come to the city and be amazed at its sheer vibrance and to pick their favorite clothes. It is the hope for the several thousand folks who have come to the city to earn their bread and now would like to go home and spend the Diwali with their near and dear ones. While the festival glows in such glory, we should not forget that this is also the time of the year when several innocent and hard working kids in the cracker factories lose their lives in the dark while working to brighten up the lives for others.

Diwali marks the return of Lord Ram victorious after his battle with Ravan in Sri Lanka. This is a two day festival but preparations and the festive mood begin as early as a week before the actual day. The way it works out in our family is we all decide to meet up at either one of our homes and celebrate Diwali together. The ladies get busy with making delicious sweets and snacks. The men get ready to empty their wallets while the kids help them in the same. Me, my brother and my cousins used to get flyers from all firework shops to decide and make a budget on what to buy this Diwali. This is no easy task and trust me, is usually better than most presidential debates or at least the most recent one. The crackers come in hundreds of varieties and colors and sounds. There are the usual set of fire fountains, wheels , bombs and rockets and then there are themed crackers that usually represent movie stars, national icons and sports. We carefully go through the exhaustive list and decide on about three dozen of them that we think would not be too much of spending by dad. We usually come up with an estimate much beyond our dad's and then we finally agree on the average.

There is always this gleam that we used to sport on our faces as we purchased those crackers and brought them home. It was as if we had won a million dollars as promised by that UK bank in my spam email or the apple i-pad that we were supposed to win for being the 1000th visitor to a particular website. Kids often boast of their set of crackers as being the best over their friends'. All of them do. Finally, on the day of Diwali, it would turn out that all of them have almost the same set of crackers. The day of Diwali is marked by several customs and traditions that have been followed and passed on through ages and generations. This includes a special oil bath in hot water mixed with a few drops of the holy Ganga river, a body smear of sheekakai, accept the new dresses from the eldest member of the family after doing namaskarams and then you are all set to get started with your decibel show. I have always stayed in an apartment complex and we always had the curiosity to see who would burst the first set of crackers for the day. I remember getting up as early as 3 am to give some time for the rituals and be the alarm bang for the residents. AFter several hours of bursting crackers and taking pictures, we go back home to have a heavy feast and then conquer the couch to watch the special shows on TV. Sweets and snacks are then exchanged with friends and neighbors. When the sun has seen enough of the city and decides to retire, we go back to our cracker business again. This cycle repeats for the next two days. The remainders of the crackers are saved for a later festival that comes a month from now.

As the two day festival draws to an end, its time to dive back to the routine everyday life. Relatives bid adieu, shops start to reopen, buses and trains swarm the city as they bring back people from all around the state back to their jobs, kids get sulky about getting back to school and dad gets ready for their usual work. And moms, they are extra special and all they need now is a big thank you from all of us and some much deserved and needed rest for the rest of week. But such wonderful people moms tend to be, you find your lunch packed in your boxes before leaving to school the next morning.

It is Diwali today and I now have to go to bed for I have a project submission later this afternoon and an assignment the next day. Happy Diwali to me!

-Sayee

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Sandy!

That's not my friend who studied college with me. That's the hurricane also dubbed as Frankenstorm by some, that left us east-coasters wind-punched, drenched and hence indoors. Things in Baltimore weren't too bad. The rains and the winds seemed like they wanted to join in on the Halloween spirit and lashed at us bigger than ever. I hear that several areas in Maryland, Virginia, DC and New York have been greatly affected with power outages and floods. I really hope conditions improve quickly, businesses reopen and people get back to their routine stronger.

This is the first major hurricane I have witnessed after coming to the US. We had one sometime last year. But thankfully, it wasn't much drama. Just some items kept near the windows fell and people had to set their hair again. One of the things I saw and really appreciate is the emergency preparedness system here. Things aren't perfect. But, there is so much to learn and incorporate in India. We were quick enough to take the naming trend from here and started giving regional names for our cyclones. Why not put in place better tracking and response systems?

Earlier in the weekend, the path of the cyclone was traced out and all the areas that were likely to be affected were notified and asked to start acting quick. There are emergency preparedness and response teams at every level - Federal, State, City and also institutional. Evacuation routes planned, special emergency helplines created, every person in the city is notified to stock essential supplies, schools and colleges inform every student about the situation and change in schedule of classes and more! Hospitals ensured of power and in the worst case, patient shifts were also planned. The power company reaches out to every customer seeking support and asking to be safe and make sure that all power dependent devices are fully charged as they try their best to provide uninterrupted service. And what's more, they also had real time data with geographical mapping on the individual houses that has suffered power outage and those were changed immediately on being restored.

I cannot help but draw a quick comparison to the system we have back in India. Imagine the number of lives we could save with better tracking and response. Why should a patient who came surviving a critical condition later lose the battle to a power outage? Why should people stand,watch and lament as hundreds of coastal houses get washed away? Why should people be left hungry and starving without essential supplies? It is Halloween and perhaps the right time for these questions to haunt us. Man has been selfish, cruel and ungrateful towards nature. And when she responds, we just can't take it. Let's try our best to get back to good equations with her. Keeping in mind, she's a woman, that task is probably going to take a while. Meanwhile, why not try to be better prepared until the next time she shows her wrath?

Sayee

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