Right to Life

Every Indian is angry and asking for answers. How many more such deaths and destruction we need to go through? Nothing seems to help break this "Kumbhkarn" slumber of our people and politicians. Is it because we are utterly fatalistic and self-centered? Is it because we are too lazy to even bother to go out and make our voices heard and our ballots count? Is the constitution too weak to ensure accountability of our leaders? Is our country just too vast with too little autonomy at the states to manage a huge population and long border? Lots of easy questions but not so easy answers.

Terrorism is a modern menace that has no religion, no country and not even a specific ideology. It is almost like a occupation where there is recruitment, training and deployment to carry out a business. Of course, there are countries where it is easier to conduct such business and there will be always such islands where these businessmen are able to setup their camps. Few years back, Afghanistan, Sudan, Indonesia were the safe havens. Now, it may be Pakistan, Bangladesh and Somalia. So, blaming a government or a religion alone does not suffice. We need to prepare ourselves to protect our people and society from being soft targets. There are some steps that to be taken internally and there are tasks to be carried out in other countries, including hot pursuit, diplomatic pressures and multi-lateral cooperation with countries facing similar threats. Countries and societies must have infrastructure and systems that make it difficult to carry out such crimes against humanity.

Right to life is more fundamental than any other rights. If it is the lack of funds that is preventing the government from taking necessary steps, what about creating a security cess in the line of education cess? Our primary and secondary layers of security are outdated and stretched to the limits. Would the businesses and people mind paying a little extra to see a more sophisticated police force and a more pro-active intelligence? As long as the government can maintain some accountability and transparency with regards to the security cess, this may be the only way to upgrade our security. With prayers on my lips and hope in my heart...towards a more secured society!

Poetry is History

Recently union minister Mr. Kapil Sibal was in news for an unusual reason. He had published a book of poetry! That got me thinking about the demise of poetry and poets in recent times. Poetry is almost ‘History’ now. Except for some ‘Hasya Kavita’ or ‘Humorous Poetry’ in Hindi, there is very little happening in this field of literature. I remember, when I was in school, poetry was as much a part of the English subject as prose and same thing applied to other language subjects as well. Is it the same in school curriculum now? I remember when I was in college; there was a news item in the paper about one English poet living in penury in Orissa. We had one of his poems in our curriculum and I felt sorry for him. But, I had a feeling that all poets liked to live that way and they got their satisfaction from writing. But, would such a poet want any of his students to take up that line?

I remember an incident when I was in 10+2 college. I had Oriya literature as one of the compulsory courses and there was a book of poetry in the syllabus. The various poems were well-written but were often pretty complicated and indirect in what they meant. I used to visit my uncle who is a Mathematics teacher to get some free lessons in calculus and there used to be one Oriya professor who used to visit their home regularly. I asked him once to explain me some of the poems and lo and behold, he just jumped on the chance. May be not many students were keen to study the subject in his college or he was really passionate about it. He used to spend hours discussing few stanzas and would often ask me to close my eyes and imagine the scenes. Since there was lot of disturbance from other people in the house, he would ask me to go someplace where I could contemplate in silence. Many times, I ended up in the bathroom, trying to imagine what the poet was seeing or thinking!

Unlike prose, which is fairly straightforward to read (there are some notable exceptions such as ‘Ulysses’ by James Joyce, considered the book of the century, which I found extremely difficult to read!), reading poetry requires a different attitude. If reading prose is like downing a shot or drinking a mug of beer, poetry is more like savoring old wine.

Poetry needs time to read, reflect and enjoy. Poetry needs imagination and indulgence to appreciate and one can not apply just everyday logic and rationality to poetry. Like an endangered species, poets and poetry need protection now. But, it may have been too late already. The computer is very adapted to write prose. Try writing a few lines of poetry and the spelling and grammar check will underline each line as mistake. That’s of course, in a lighter vein.

Be it English, Hindi or any other language, poetry was always the more celebrated art in literature. Poets were considered as romantic, charming, bold and intelligent. The poetry of Robert Frost ‘ The woods are lovely dark and deep, but I have promises to keep, miles to go before I sleep, miles to go before I sleep’, or that of Wordsworth ‘The solitary reaper - Behold her, single in the field,Yon solitary Highland Lass!Reaping and singing by herself;Stop here, or gently pass!’, so timeless in their beauty and so rich in meaning.

The art of poetry is too unfashionable in today’s fast world. Kids are spending most of their time in front of TV and reading habit is going down. This is not only in India but in most of the countries. No one seems to notice the slow demise of this form of literature. But, is it not really sad? Don’t we want our children to experience the feeling of reading poetry? Don’t we want them to feel the emotions wrapped up in those lyrical words? I am going to search for a book on poetry next time I am in a bookshop! I will update if I am successful.

Tuesdays With Morrie - A professor's last lessons

Recently I had the privilege to read a wonderful book titled ‘Tuesdays with Morrie’ by Mitch Albom. Initially I was little skeptical about the book thinking this would be another of those ‘self-help’ books from the American stable. However, since it was discussed in the Corporate Ethics class, I thought I would give it a try. While it may read like a typical ‘self-help’ one, it is a true story and is not a feel-good type. The author, Mitch, did have a college professor Morrie Schwartz who had got this rare disease named Lou Gehrig’s disease and was dying a slow death. Mitch spent 14 Tuesday with his beloved professor in his last few months of life and chronicled what the professor of sociology had to say about life, love, death and many other topics based on his own experiences and learning. The book has been adapted for a movie by the same name and you can listen to some of the original recordings of the conversation between the author and his professor at http://www.albom.com/video.html.

To me, the book was more like a reminder rather than new lessons. When we live, we live as if we are never going to die and waste a lot of time in petty things and do not enjoy the time we have on this earth. And when it is time for us to die, we are never prepared, we have too many things ‘yet to do’, ‘yet to experience’ etc. It would be interesting to ask oneself, ‘what if today is the day for me to go? Would I still be doing what I am doing now? While talking about ‘Emotions’, the professor says, often we don’t let our emotions show because we think that would be silly. But, that stops us from experiencing the natural emotions that God has given us and we are stopping the flow. And only by letting the emotions run, we can really detach ourselves from these emotions. Detaching oneself from the experience or emotion does not mean that we don’t experience them, rather we soak in them and understand their true meaning.

On the topic of aging, some interesting perspectives have been thrown in. I think many of us age unmindful of the fact that we are aging. Then suddenly we discover a bigger bald patch on the back of our head or a friend makes a comment on how one looks, that we become momentarily conscious of the fact. We should be unhappy about aging if aging did not make us any wiser. If we are as ignorant at 32 as we were at 22, well, we should have stayed at 22. But, if we can understand life better and appreciate it more at 32, should we still remain at 22?

What do we mean by wholesome living? Is it a life where all our material needs are fulfilled and we have all the money and all the toys that we care for? Or is it a life full of love, a life which is devoted to the community around and a life that creates something positive? The answer is obvious when questioned but we rarely think about it. We are in a permanent hurry and we are never in the moment, always looking for the next big thing that is going to happen to us. Morrie explains how he used to wave and smile at people who wanted to get ahead of him in traffic.

People become mean when they feel threatened. This is something I have experienced many times and continue to experience even at campus. Life seems like a zero sum game; if someone else gets something, means I am not getting it. I have to deprive someone of something so that I can have it. We go about life with this mentality most of the time. However, the truth is that the feeling you get when one gives something to someone, is many times more fulfilling than the feeling one gets when consuming the same. We need each other to feel good and feel happy and we cannot build this community with fear and greed. Thus goes another one of Morrie’s dialogue with Mitch.

The last part of the book talks about forgiving, others and more importantly self, for things that one should have done but could not do. One has to make peace with living so that we can make peace with death. All of us have to die, its natural. But, we don’t die like plants and animals. Because as humans, we have relationships and relationships live on, our memories live on, of course, only if we have loved and built relationships over the years. When Morrie is asked what he would do if he had a healthy 24 hours, Morrie does not wish for anything extraordinary or fantastic but, just a nice breakfast, walk in the nature, spending time with friends, having a nice dinner at a restaurant and dancing away the night and then have a good, deep sleep. Just an ordinary day but how many such ordinary days we spend without really appreciating what we have and what could be taken away with a stroke of bad luck.

I wish many more of us will read this book and get reminded to love, laugh and live.