Graciously Yours!
P.S. : Because on some days even words fail to express!
Black and White.
Some say the world is black and white.
Some say the world is grey.
Which is the truth? Which a perspective?
Or is truth itself just a perspective?
To him the world was white and black,
The greys he’d announced as sins,
To empathise with others he’d given up,
Sympathies he wanted abound.
He stared from a distance the lives others lived,
He announced harsh judgements about them,
Little wondering that while he pointed fingers at them,
It said a lot about him.
Always assuming he was on the right,
Pious he thought himself to be,
Faced with the woman who stole for a hungry child,
He failed to pronounce her to be a thief.
Memories of his hard childhood rushed back,
He recalled his mother in the woman,
Ashamed of how cold he himself had become,
He brought the duo back home with him.
The next morning, he found the child asleep,
The woman no longer to be seen,
His world of whites and blacks ripped apart,
The greys in fifty shades stared through at him.
Graciously Yours!
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Thought Flash #4
You know you’re finally understanding physics if you recall fluid dynamics while seeing the shampoo coil on your hand. If you use the hand shower to deliberately feel the recoil effect! If you consider wind speed when dropping something from ten floors high! Something that wouldn’t break someone’s head, obviously! I’m not violent, just curious. 😉
Graciously Yours!
P.S. : Thank you, Destin for doing what you do! Picture Courtesy : Smarter Every Day.
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We, the Indians?
A New Zealander’s view on the reasons for corruption in India:
Indians are Hobbesian (a culture of self-interest).
Corruption in India is a cultural aspect. Indians seem to think nothing peculiar about corruption. It is everywhere.
Indians tolerate corrupt individuals rather than correct them.
No race can be congenitally corrupt.
But can a race be corrupted by its culture?
To know why Indians are corrupt, look at their patterns and practices.
Firstly:
Religion is transactional in India.Indians give God cash and anticipate an out-of-turn reward.
Such a plea acknowledges that favours are needed for the undeserving.
In the world outside the temple walls, such a transaction is named a “bribe”.
A wealthy Indian gives not just cash to temples, but gold crowns and such baubles.
His gifts cannot feed the poor. His pay-off is for God. He thinks it will be wasted if it goes to a needy man.
In June 2009, The Hindu published a report of Karnataka minister G. Janardhan Reddy gifting a crown of gold and diamonds worth Rs 45 crore to Tirupati.
India’s temples collect so much that they don’t know what to do with it. Billions are gathering dust in temple vaults.
When Europeans came to India, they built schools. When Indians go to Europe & USA, they build temples.
Indians believe that if God accepts money for his favours, then nothing is wrong in doing the same thing. This is why Indians are so easily corruptible.
Indian culture accommodates such transactions morally. There is no real stigma. An utterly corrupt Jayalalitha can make a comeback, just unthinkable in the West.
Secondly:
Indian moral ambiguity towards corruption is visible in its history. Indian history tells of the capture of cities and kingdoms after guards were paid off to open the gates, and commanders paid off to surrender.This is unique to India.
Indians’ corrupt nature has meant limited warfare on the subcontinent.
It is striking how little Indians have actually fought compared to ancient Greece and modern Europe.
The Turks’ battles with Nadir Shah were vicious and fought to the finish.
In India, fighting wasn’t needed, bribing was enough to see off armies.
Any invader willing to spend cash could brush aside India’s kings, no matter how many tens of thousands soldiers were in their infantry.
Little resistance was given by the Indians at the Battle of Plassey.
Clive paid off Mir Jaffar and all of Bengal folded to an army of 3,000.
There was always a financial exchange to taking Indian forts. Golconda was captured in 1687 after the secret back door was left open.
Mughals vanquished the Marathas and Rajputs with nothing but bribes.
The Raja of Srinagar gave up Dara Shikoh’s son Sulaiman to Aurangzeb after receiving a bribe.
There are many cases where Indians participated on a large scale in treason due to bribery.
The question is: Why do Indians have a transactional culture while other ‘civilized’ nations don’t?
Thirdly:
Indians do not believe in the theory that they can all rise if each of them behaves morally, because that is not the message of their faith.Their caste system separates them.
They don’t believe that all men are equal.
This resulted in their division and migration to other religions.
Many Hindus started their own faiths like Sikh, Jain, Buddha and many converted to Christianity and Islam.
The result is that Indians don’t trust one another.
There are no Indians in India, there are Hindus, Christians, Muslims and what not.
Indians forget that 400 years ago they all belonged to one faith.
This division evolved an unhealthy culture. The inequality has resulted in a corrupt society in India where everyone is against everyone else, except God and even he must be bribed.
Brian from Godzone
NEW ZEALAND
A friend sent this to me a month ago. And all I could say then was, “If I think he’s right, it makes me less Indian. If I think he’s wrong, it makes me untruthful to myself. Undoubtedly, his is a very Western point of view and I’m sure there are cases in non Indian countries where bribes have won them wars and treachery for money wasn’t unfamiliar. But I neither have the information right off the tip of my tongue nor do I intend to look up for it because that would just result in mud slinging and digressing from a thought process which deserves a second thought, at least.”
A month later, I think it’s time we gave it a second thought. What are we doing to ourselves? Are we so afraid of failure that we will keep kneeling before idols? Don’t we want the chance to retrace our steps to find out our mistakes? Or is the ultimate goal always money? Isn’t that what makes us corrupt? Isn’t that what has always led to wars, be it Indian or non-Indian? How does it matter what the other person’s religious beliefs are? How does it matter if they pray five times a day or once a week? How does it matter if I am an Indian or an Irish? After all, country borders are nothing but ‘shadow lines’.
Yes, Brian from Godzone is right in a lot of ways. He’s right when he talks about wealthy men giving more to Gods than to other poor men. He’s right that temples collect so much that they don’t know what to do with it. He’s right that our caste system separates us.
But he’s wrong if he says all Indian men are self-centered! India is a large country. 1.25 billion people out of the Earth’s 7 billion live here. If we were all equally selfish and vain, the world would be far from over by now.
He’s wrong if he thinks only Indians played underhand in wars. “At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the World War.” (And it took me just 30 seconds to lay hands on this information.)
He’s wrong if he thinks it’s our Hindu religion which makes us worse as humans. No. We are the ones who choose to pay to the Gods. They didn’t ask us to. Let’s not sling mud on Them. I wouldn’t want to point out how many controversies the Churches are embroiled in.
He’s wrong if he thinks only Indians have divisions in their societies. At least we don’t pick people on their skin colour. Oh wait. We do. Fair and lovely. Fair and handsome.
This isn’t about WHO’S RIGHT and WHO’S WRONG. This is about WHAT’S RIGHT and WHAT’S WRONG.
And corruption is wrong. War is wrong. Dealing with religion in money is wrong.
But so is intolerance. And mud slinging. And generalizing!
Let’s just try and make the world a better place to live in. There can be nothing more right than this. Would you want to agree, Brian?
Graciously Yours!
P.S. : Friday post! Because Saturdays were becoming too predictable 😉
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THOUGHT FLASH #3
If Bollywood can apparently ‘influence’ our generation into drugs, alcohol and abuse, I wonder why it couldn’t influence our elders into accepting inter-caste marriages, homosexuality and a corruption free India.
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The House That Wasn’t. Part 0
5 years, 2 months and 19 days ago – 7:30 PM.
Pankaj was trying to close shop as fast as possible. The skies were overcast. He’d decided to leave this town too. He wasn’t sure how safe it was for Tara now. The residents were getting suspicious. Tara was his daughter. He’d lost her mother to a witch hunt three years ago. He was afraid of Tara’s fate too. She was nine but her thoughts hadn’t progressed accordingly. Just like her mother’s. The ‘doctors’ said she was mad. He didn’t believe them. But he didn’t tell anyone about his daughter either.
He made the last sale of the day and hurriedly cycled down to his place. He couldn’t figure out why he was a nervous wreck. He felt something ominous would happen. He shut the door behind him.
Tara’s voice was drifting from the floor above. She often spoke to her toys. “Tara, I am home,” he called out.
She didn’t answer. He walked into the bedroom, onto her toys strewn all over the place.
He could see his daughter hiding behind the bedpost. Walking towards her, he kept asking, “Where is Tara today?” She giggled. He happened to glance outside the window to see a group of people walking towards his house.
Picking her up gently, tickling her so she didn’t protest, he explained to her slowly, “Daddy and you will play a little game now. I’ll hide you and you will keep quiet for five minutes. Okay?”
The bell rang.
“Did Tara understand?” he asked hurriedly.
“Yes, Daddy,” she answered softly.
The bell rang again.
Hoping she had actually understood, he put her down behind the bed again.
Now they were banging on the door.
He hurried down.
There were some kids hiding behind the men. Questions rained down on him. “What have you done to the house? The children say they hear voices from the house. The house throws stones at us, they say. Our children are afraid to come to this part of the town.”
“No, there’s no one in here except me. I am sure your kids must be mistaken!” He sounded confident but didn’t look the least.
Just then, he faintly heard Tara’s voice. He hoped the others hadn’t! To douse it out, he began, “Now if you’re done, excuse me, I have to make my dinner.”
But they had. “Wait. What’s that?” He prayed, she would remember he’d asked her to be quiet! But as fate would have it, she spoke again. This time louder. It spooked out the men. The children ran away to a distance.
“That’s nothing. Just the skies perhaps.” He tried shutting the door, but they were quicker. They barged in. Two men pinned him to the door.
“There’s nothing to fear. Please leave me alone,” he pleaded. He looked at the children standing a few feet away. They looked frightened – of the house or the brutality, he wouldn’t know.
The men split up to search the house. Some took out knives, some had hand-held pistols. Hearing all the commotion downstairs, Tara peeked out of the room. The little child thought they were playing hide and seek with her! She ran to another room laughing!
The laughter spooked them. The men rushed upstairs, each scared but none admitting. The peals of thunder and flashes of lightning were not helping!
“If only Tara would sit quietly in one place,” Pankaj thought. But as soon as she saw a pair of feet coming up the stairs, she braced herself to scare her father. Giggling, blissfully unaware of the danger looming on her and her father, she jumped out of her hiding place, peals of her joyous laughter pulsating through the house! She wanted to scare the man whose feet she’d seen, but death scared her instead.
Screams were followed by thunders outside and cocked guns inside! One of those bullets hit the child and it was the last time laughter was heard in that house.
Until… 5 years, 2 months and 19 days later when…
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The House That Wasn’t.
“What is it that is stopping you?” she asked. “Come on in! I am sure the place isn’t haunted.”
He stepped in. His torch was slipping from his hands due to sweat. In the eerie silence of the house, the buzzing quiet of the night outside seemed favorable. All those stories he’s heard in his life of 19 years came back to haunt him.
“Will you even move?” his girlfriend whispered.
“How did she even manage to get the keys?” he wondered. He took his first step forward and his shoes clicked louder than ever. Coherent thoughts were giving way to fear again.
“Couldn’t you wear sports shoes or rubber slippers?” she whispered angrily.
“Well, you never told me you’re going house hunting today,” he retorted, scared of his own foot step.
“Take your shoes off,” she said, “or you’ll scare the ghosts away!”
“I am not going to do that,” he said.
“Fine. Then try and be less noisy,” she said with gritted teeth.
“If you could be less nosy,” he mumbled under his breath.
She held him by the wrist and walked around. The furniture was strewn all across the floor. Cobwebs shone into the torch light, dancing around him. The musty smell of the place was getting on to him. He spotted a cracked mirror hanging on the wall ahead. He averted his eyes lest he saw something he wasn’t meant to.
She kept talking to him but not one word got through to his conscious. His mind had its own set of defenses in place. His body was tense and alert. She stepped on to broken glass. His scared jump had a feline touch. She laughed at his reaction. Her laugh echoed in the house. It was scary. It wasn’t the laugh he had fallen in love with.
Soon he’d know why. She had stopped laughing but the house hadn’t.
Fear crept in her eyes too.
Graciously Yours!
Picture Courtesy : Pinterest.
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Thought Flash #2
If prayers mattered more than performance, the Indian cricket team would never lose another wicket.
Graciously Yours!
Picture Courtesy : BBC.
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Happy anniversary, indeed!
The last piece of cake was smeared on his face!
“Twenty years of marriage! What’s the secret?” asked a colleague in jest!
“You agree more than you disagree. And you learn to shut up!” Sameer replied at once.
“At least there’s someone who can shut Sameer up,” they joked!
Only they didn’t know it was a joke.
Like every night, that night too he went back from office to find his dinner laid at the table. Hers was however missing. He checked his text messages. An unread message from her said she’d return late after dinner.
Post dinner, he returned to his room – his part of the house.
Normally, he’d have slept after reading a book for an hour or so but he’d expected today to be different. He’d wanted it to be different. Probably he should have made it different. By his bedside was their picture. From one of the early vacations in their marriage, when they were still young and so much in love! Time and tide waits for no man and didn’t wait for them either. They both took each other and time for granted. Constant fights and tiffs led to so much disagreement that they found it easier to live in separate rooms. Yet, surprisingly either didn’t want to leave because they still enjoyed each other’s company. It was a strange situation. And had been for more than a couple of years now.
For some reason unknown to him altogether, he walked over to his wife’s room today. Her room was so much neater than his. He could smell her in there. Nandini’s bedside had a picture of theirs too. A more recent one. In front of it, lay a slightly wilted rose. Surprised, he went and picked it up. A note lay beneath, “Wait up for me today, will you? Happy anniversary!”
***
She came home an hour later. He was barely managing to keep his eyes open, but the minute she walked into the hall, sleep left him for the night. And for good! Her tired eyes smiled on seeing her husband waiting.
“How did you know?” he asked, as she came and sat beside him.
“I was hopeful,” she said, barely meeting his gaze.
She nestled herself in his arms and every single fight that they’d had over the years seemed to melt away in that moment.
Probably, this was their second chance.
Night smiled as it fell upon the two souls. It pushed them to a closeness that not even dawn could penetrate!
Graciously Yours!
Picture Courtesy : Pinterest
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If only you’d…
I tried to reach out,
But the answers to your questions
I have, I doubt.
I tried to help you
Get up and around in this world of lies,
But do you really wish to?
I waited for you to see me,
The moon waned and waxed,
But all alone you wanted to be.
Days went by,
Turning into months and each time
I see you, I sigh.
You wanted a friend,
That’s all I wanted to be,
But then life happened.
Some day you will
Get your answers from death,
I wish you smiles until!
Graciously Yours!
Inking The Thinking. 