Monday, December 31, 2012

Happy 2013!


When I look back at the year 2012, I'm a bit surprised how sanely did I pen down something at the start of the year and I feel it holds good for the current year as well..... Here is what I wrote last year!

But when I look ahead am a bit skeptical as I do not know how to wish for this New Year! It has become very customary to say Wish you all a Happy and prosperous New Year, every single year! But at the end of every year when we try to reflect back, we almost have not had what we have been wished for at least as a society or as a Nation or even as a race. 

Each year we go through a lot of back stabbing, deceptions, mistrust, disrespect and so on that sometimes it feels so inhumanely impossible to believe that we are human! Worst is, it keeps increasing every year. Can it be stopped? Of course yes!! After all, we are humans and can't we return to be human again? This is nothing personal for or about me. It about us as a race in this world.

I see the problem for all of this is greed! Greed for anything and everything! Isn't it? Isn't greed the mother of all problems we have in this world today? We live in a world where we trust money more than people around us and buy security with our money. Not sure how we could have changed so much for trust was the basis of everything.

I'm not trying to be negative here, in fact, am trying to see how we can remain positive about our future and what we need to do to live an happy life! And let me be also honest, am in the same league as others! This is no mean an advice to everyone.

So, here I'm wishing myself and everyone an year with less greed and work towards what only we need! Let us go back to our roots or at least search for them! Am sure we were lot humbler a few decades back!

In this New Year,
         May we feel lot safer because of people around us and not because of money!
         May this world get the peace and harmony it deserves! 

I want to still call the Year 2013 as the year of Optimism!

-Raj

Saturday, December 29, 2012

State of Affairs - 29th December, 2012.


I really do not understand what people are talking about in terms of special parliament session, stringent laws, non bailable offence, capital punishment, clemency and all such stuff!

This is not a law and order problem for goodness sake, this is a societal and cultural issue after all. An issue of making both genders aware and honor that female gender is not weaker. It is about making men to respect womanhood.... It is about making each mom, sister, daughter, wife and aunt feel safe....

No law can make a man (or a woman for that matter) respect and protect a woman from this. It is a society that will make her safe! It is the guidance we give to the younger ones that will make a daughter feel safe and the make a son a responsible person.

It is a bloody change that we all have to have within! Ask me how? I don't know, but for sure I know that law alone cannot make a man not have a boner every time he says a lady alone! I don't know. People are so emotionally tied up to a problem and are thinking from within the problem where we will never find a solution. 

May be sex Education? I don't know... but I feel and know laws alone would not make this change!

You 23 year old brave heart! You represent every single Indian woman who for sure feels unsafe in this country, not now, not then and even here after. My heart goes out to your family who will now get into the public glare while they will forever be inconsolable!

While you will rest in peace, may you be the torch that guides us to our inner peace. We may in due course of time forget the issue, but not you! Certainly I'll never forget you or the issue!

I now know what I need to do to protect my little one!

- Raj

Sunday, December 23, 2012

Childhood now and 20-25 years back.



The other day at office, a few of my friends over lunch were having a discussion on how our generation was when we were kids and what were the advantages of those days.

One thing that we debated was on the art of relationship building, how our generation (age group) built that talent.

In those days, when I was a kid, I used to get out of my house myself, make friends and play with them safely. From where I hail from, the friends that I had then are still mine. They continue to be who they are.

How did they become friends? Not like how it is now. None of our parents brought us all together and said be friends. We got out, we shook hands, became friends, formed a team, bought a team bat, sticks and ball, played together, went for matches (ball bet matches). Nobody taught us how to become friends or how to be careful from people who are harmful. These instincts were ours and only ours. We even knew each others strengths and weakness (there was no luxury of coaches), who will bat up the order and who will bowl the first spell and so on. This of course did not stop with Cricket. When there was football fever, we did the same with that game as well. Of course, everything in the localized games as well like the Bambarams, killi thaandal, Koli Gundus, Ice Numbers, Medu pallam etc.,.

We built the art of team building, knowing each others strengths and playing accordingly to the situation. No matter what happened (like losing the ball bet matches) we all stuck to each other as a team and we ensured that we bring our pocket money to buy the new ball! We knew how to survive as a team more than with the team we build in our corporate world (I mean no offence here, but the politics of corporate world is a separate topic altogether)!

Our friendships did not stop there alone. We went to build relationships with each others family and eventually we become family friends. We took our friends family as our family, our moms, our sisters, our brothers. Was it not a good example of building relationship?

Back then we had one bat/kit for the team and often it used to lie in some one's place depending on whose parent was less strict. We could move in/out of every one's house irrespective of how rich one was or if they had a girl and so on. There was trust in everyone and everything (of course once the trust was established). 

While I cannot complain on the current system where we talk to our neighbors on the social media than personally, we talk to our friends over phone, chat and email than again personally, sometimes am scared. I see a lot of parents complaining that their children do not get out of their houses and play and that they need to force them out. For we ourselves do not have any great relationship with the neighbors, how would we expect children to do that? I'm scared because I wonder what it would mean to Nilaa in future. Would she have the instincts to build the skill of building trust, relationship and team? 

Each child now has a bat/ball on his/her own. Where would they have the life's training of how to build trust and respect? I'm concerned that the current generation may not have the instincts of adjustment and for all I know the families are get increasingly more nuclear not just from a joint family context but with the decision of single child concept as well. Back then, when TVs were rare we used to accommodate our friends and even their families into our living rooms to watch Chitrahaar, Oliyum-oliyum and even Ramayan/Mahabaratha. Not to forget the cricket matches (Reliance World Cup - 1987)! We did not have remotes to fight for and when there was a conflict, it was resolved. Now, we have TVs in each room literally for the sake of conflict avoiding. How do we learn the art of conflict resolution?

I know I may sound a lot paranoid here by jumping on to various topics, but I feel my concerns are genuine. I hope that this generation picks up the instincts to know whom to trust and build trust with them. They learn how to build relationships and also know how to sustain them. They know how to build teams and live with them.

I know I have good people around me because of how I was brought up when I was a child; how well my family supported me; how well my friends responded, but most importantly, the initiative was from me. Everyone else supported.

I hope I support Nilaa in this aspect. I wish she has good people around her by virtue of her own choices and actions than our (Leelas's and mine) wishful thinking. 

Hope is the only cure to all problems. :)

- Raj

Friday, December 21, 2012

Capital Punishments for Rapists?


I don't know why people want capital punishments for Rape... What is the point in making those buggers go away in just few minutes? Should it not that they should live their whole lives regretting what they did?

This is what I think they should go through!
1. Their Man hood cut.
2. Made to walk nude for number of days that the court determines.
3. Spend the rest of their lives as servants of the victim and the family.

Is it not possible? I do not think this is radical or even really an extremist view. I'm just asking for just taking away a few inches of the muscle rather than the life.

I do not really think a capital punishment would ever scare those who would want to even think of a rape or would the rapists be regretful of what thy did!

- Raj.

Friday, December 14, 2012

I wish the Mayan Calendar ended yesterday!


Not sure how to express my grief and anger.... 
I do not know how the families of those kids would live with this tragedy for ever! 
Can't imagine what we call as free world and see this happening....

Is it that, we can be at peace only we die and cannot enjoy peace when we live?
I'm very literally disturbed....

May those who died rest in peace! :(

I wish the Mayan Calendar ended yesterday!

- Raj