e-firsts

It was during one of the college tours that I found myself in middle of an intriguing experience. Once we had got down from the bus, I thought of first getting a top-up recharge for my cell-phone and ventured out in the nearby market. Even though I had never been to this city, Varanasi, but some of the roads, buildings and shops seemed so familiar that for a moment it seemed like a dream. It was almost unbelievable for a moment that I was roaming around the markets and streets as if I was born there! But the shock was yet to come. In search of a top-up shop, I approached a small-shop at the corner of the street. The shop was a typical kirana-cum-paan shop with items stacked over one another and thought it seemed like a complete mess but none of the items actually spilled over. Since it was morning, the owner was still offering prayers to the deities. He seemed around fifty years of age, grey hair, tilak on forehead and dressed in a saffron dhoti-kurta with a very serene appearance. To keep myself occupied, I started browsing through the various types of rudraksha which were on display.

As his prayers got over, he turned around and to my utter dis-belief; he called my name and asked me how I was! I can not describe what had struck me at that moment. I was completely nonplussed. But what was about to come was even more shocking. I not only replied to him but also referred to him as ‘Shankar Trivedi’ and he just nodded with a gentle smile on his face. All of it seemed like, I had already experienced it earlier (in a dream or otherwise). However baffled I was, with the events of last 1 minute, I got the cell-phone recharged and went straight to the hotel. The rest of the tour went as usual and we returned back after paying a visit to Kashi Vishwanath temple.

I had never been to the city before, forget about going to this shop and forget about meeting this person before. But somehow, I felt that I was revisiting a familiar place! Once I got back home, I googled for possible meanings of such experiences and learnt about ‘Deja-Vu’ experiences for the first time. I don’t know whether this experience exactly qualifies as a déjà-vu or not but I could not think of any other rational explanation.

I also learnt that nearly one-third of us go through such experiences, some of them on a regular basis while some infrequently. As per Wikipedia, the most likely explanation of déjà vu is not that it is an act of "precognition" or "prophecy", but rather that it is an anomaly of memory, giving the false impression that an experience is "being recalled". Also, one of the psychologists, Arthur Funkhouser, defines three types of déjà vu to more clearly differentiate between different neurological experiences. These are déjà vecu (already experienced), déjà senti (already felt) and déjà visité (already visited). Not going into many technicalities, I can just say some of the experiences are just strange. Aren’t they?

Just saw some interesting facts, sharing them! Don’t know about their origin or authenticity but some of them surely seems funny.

1. Bats always turn left when exiting a cave. (so every bat in the world turned left since the days of adam & eve?)

2. A monkey's skull wrapped in leather and paper was used as a soccer ball in the very first World's Cup Soccer Championships in Uruguay. (too much daaa!)

3. Ants never sleep in their wholelife. (how long is their life, few hours maybe? )

4. Our eyes are always the same size from birth, but our nose and ears never stop growing. (only eyes?)

5. Only humans shed emotional tears. (mostly fake)

6. Men who kiss their wives in the morning live five years longer than those who don't. (wow, so got a panacea for long life :P )

7. 30% of Chinese adults live with their parents. (for Indians, it may touch 90%)

8. The Mona Lisa has no eyebrows. It was the fashion in Renaissance Florence to shave them off! (Vinci had quite an eye then!)

9. To sell your home faster, paint it yellow. (that’s why we don’t see many houses painted yellow.. lol )

10. Donkeys kill more people annually than plane crashes. (kickass!!!!!!!!!!!)


(Source: http://www.interestingfacts.org , http://www.funfactz.com)

Few days back, I was casually browsing Youtube when I came across a video of a 4-5 year old toddler escaping unhurt from a speeding train after falling on the rail-tracks at a subway station in US. Thanks to some alert passengers, her life was saved. As soon as her mother took the baby into her arms, she kissed the Cross and uttered “Thanks to the almighty God for showering your blessings on this child”. Normally, there isn’t anything spectacularly different the way she reacted, probably most of us act in similar fashion except for few hardcore atheists. I must confess, m not a complete believer but neither m a complete atheist but personally I find the debate of some-supreme-power, religions and human existence, as pretty fascinating.

In this conundrum, I can recall a quote from Karl Marx, “Die Religion…ist das Opium des Volkes" translated as "Religion is the opiate of the masses" or “"Religion is the opium of the people". Though he expressed these views nearly 170 years back, they seem quite apt in today’s times too irrespective of geography. Nevertheless, he restricted his analysis to class struggle in the socio-political milieu of his times otherwise what could explain the religious bent of masses irrespective of class status (in his as well as current times!). I think he was right in case he saw religion as a kind of comfort blanket for existential queries and hardships of daily life. But probably he was more interested in the practical aspects of religion rather than philosophical or meta-physical aspects. For him, religion is an illusion which eases the pain (of the oppressed) produced by exploitation by rich classes and a series of myths that justify and legitimatize the subordination of subject classes. In some way, religion justifies the social order and a person’s position in it (akin to ‘determinism’). Infact he attempts to trash the following lines from, ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’ – a popular Anglican hymn.

The rich man in his castle,
The poor man at the gate:
God made them, high and lowly,
And ordered their estate.

For Marx, religion is simply a manifestation of class-struggle. Thoughts of Bronislaw Malinowski are somewhat similar to him. He believes that religious beliefs reinforces social norms & values and reduce anxiety by providing confidence and a feeling of control in times of distress. He goes on to add that “religious rituals surround the events of crisis-of-life like birth, death, marriage etc”. But views of another prominent sociologist, Talcott Parsons, look more acceptable, he says, “religion gives meanings or makes sense of all experiences, no matter how meaningless or contradictory they might appear”. (Enthusiasts can refer to Religion section of Sociology – Themes & Perspectives by Holborn & Haralambos)

As for my own understanding goes, I can relate to Marx and Parsons partially. Religion can be compared to a painkiller, which provides a ‘cure’ to the people related to things like a fear of death/thought of an afterlife for which there are no explanations or right answers. Thus it provides some plausible explanations to seemingly meaningless questions (or very profound – depending on the way one sees) of human existence which has troubled thinkers right from the onset of human civilization. I am sure, these questions won’t be answered anytime soon but I m confident that the baby had her share of luck when she escaped a rampaging train. No doubt, scientists can run probabilistic models with respect to such incidents but I don’t think they can explain the chances of somebody surviving in a similar accident with 100% surety. Maybe visiting a nearby temple is an easier option than blaming human-built complicated mathematical models :)

Come the 31st of December and the phone & mail starts buzzing with HNY messages. Since none of us like to be in an embarrassing situation of ‘forwarding’ the same message to the sender, it starts a quest of searching for some ‘nice’ quotes. While not being enthusiastic about this ritual of sending sms on new year or other festivities, nevertheless I turned to the modern saviour – Google, and found some interesting ones. Three such quotes are:

Making resolutions is a cleansing ritual of self assessment and repentance that demands personal honesty and, ultimately, reinforces humility. Breaking them is part of the cycle. - Eric Zorn

First part of Zorn’s quote is basically utopian while second part is much closer to reality. I got accustomed to this ritual of HNY in school and somehow really believed in it for a few years till I started finding it utterly boring. Perhaps it just seemed ‘cool’ to send sms and mail e-cards at that time.

New Year's is a harmless annual institution, of no particular use to anybody save as a scapegoat for promiscuous drunks, and friendly calls and humbug resolutions. – Mark Twain

Twain has hit the nail right on its head. After school and 1-2 years in college, all this formalities and niceties just became too mundane for me. I don’t remember making any resolutions or fulfilling them, if I made any. As years passed, the sms or calls became restricted to just few close friends. Friends really don’t care for a sms or no-sms on HNY. Do they?

Many people look forward to the New Year for a new start on old habits. – Anonymous

Well, this final quote puts it succinctly. Our behaviors, habits, job schedules or daily activities hardly changes; what changes is just the page on the calendar hung silently in the remote corners of our rooms. I just now realized that there is no calendar in my room, should I get one?

The alarm rang sharp at 4:30am and despite a deep urge to sleep again, the thought of missing the train to Delhi stopped me. I put on the lights and kept lying in the bed half awake. In five minutes, the painful sound of the alarm broke the silence again. After turning off the alarm, I switched on the tv with one of the channels showing morning puja ceremony at Tirupati Balaji. Somehow these chants have always attracted me. May be it has to do with vivid memories of similar chants whenever as a child I visited my nanaji’s place in Delhi. In mornings, evenings and sometimes in day too, a nearby south-indian temple always played these chants in a female voice which many years later-on, I learnt, was of M.S.Subbulakshmi. Having finished the daily chores, I turned to packing my baggage. Thankfully being a bachelor saves a lot of effort as well as time in packing :) With nearly one hour for the train, I thought of cross-checking with the hotel to confirm the cab ferrying me to the railway station. Few moments later, a hotel staff came to pickup the luggage; I completed the formalities and sat in the cab. The driver seemed over-enthusiastic to carry my luggage which incidentally was just one hand-bag, maybe in expectation of a tip or as a result of basic courtesy training which is now customary at most of the hotels.

Even at 6:00 am the station was bustling with activity. It seemed every single human being of the city was on a perennial journey (which I think all of us are). Next, as expected of our efficient railways, came the announcement of train being late by half an hour and for a few moments I cursed railways for taking away precious 30 mins of my sleep. Agitated, I moved on to have some tea and got a copy of TOI plus one regional paper to kill time. Obviously the purpose was not to enlighten myself about the policies of government or the events of previous day, which anyways seems a repeat telecast always. There is hardly any positive stuff being carried out by news dailies with news of sundry politicians, egoist film stars, megalomaniac industrialists, bus accidents, missing persons filled from page to page. Just glancing through the pages for something catchy, I reached to the cross-word page and took my pen out as if I will solve it in one minute. Word after word and phrase after phrase, I was getting restless as I had managed only five words till now.

In my enthusiasm to fill cross-word, I had missed the gentlemen who had come and sat silently on the adjacent seat. He had not disturbed me at all but to my amusement he had taken the copy of regional paper from the bag (I don’t know, when and how he did it) and was reading it, as if trying to find something. I just gave him a glance and having got no response, started gazing back at the crowd consisting of loads of anxious passengers, yelling vendors and patrolling policemen. But for some mysterious reason, I could not help myself but to look towards the gentlemen sitting next to me, who was still busy in looking for something in the regional newspaper. Middle aged, about 30-35 years, poker face but highly sensitive and roving eyes! I thought of asking him if anything was troubling him or what exactly he was looking for but somehow I could not. Before I could think of what to do next, he stood up, put the paper near my bag and left hurriedly without even uttering a ‘thank you’. Maybe I was expecting too much from a stranger but is it so difficult to thank other people? By this time, the train had arrived, I picked up both the papers along-with the luggage and after not much of an effort found my AC coach. Having settled in the seat, I glanced around to see my fellow passengers, most of them were sleeping even now. With not much to do, I thought of compensating for the sleep in the journey itself.

After three hours the destination arrived and I got down. Even though the train was late by half an hour, thankfully the hotel cab was still there. Settled in the cab, I started checking mobile for the engagements of next few days while enjoying ‘Linkin Park – In the End’. Since some of crucial details were not present in mobile, I reached out for the diary in the bag. The newspapers also came out with the diary. I opened the diary and while I was glancing through the appointments, my eyes fell on an envelope which was protruding from the regional newspaper. Suspecting it to be a regular ad-insert, I neglected it for a moment but inquisitively just reached out for the envelope. The envelope contained a picture of 4-5 year old boy, a letter scribbled in plain english, a phone number and a ‘thank you’ note. I was completely dumbstruck. It was a plea from the same gentlemen, whom I had met in the morning at the station, about his missing son. He confessed that he didn’t know me (or any of the passengers whom he had given this envelope earlier) and just wished if I could help him in anyway to locate his son. I was bewildered for a moment and did not know what to do next. Gathering my thoughts again, I asked the driver to go to Times House on Bahadur Shah Zafar marg. Meanwhile I rang a batchmate of mine who was in a good position at the daily. Thankfully I reached in time, narrated him the incident and to my relief he was more than willing to print the ad in ‘missing persons’ column for one month.

While returning, I kept pondering why the gentlemen chose to give me the envelope and I don’t know if the gentlemen will find his son or not but probably I could respond to his plea in an appropriate way. While I was still perplexed over the events of the morning, a smiling hotel staff welcomed me and took my bag and I thanked him in return. I also thanked the almighty God for giving a chance to help another fellow human being. Maybe sometimes the railway delays are not so bad after-all.

“…aur un masoom ladkiyon ke muh me motichoor ke laddoo jab tak thoos diye jaate hain, jab tak unki saansein na ruk jayee (…and laddoos are stuffed into mouth of female infant till she loses her breath and her little curved fingers go lifeless…)”

As soon as I heard these lines, a feeling of deep angst and hatred ran across my body. I couldn’t continue and came back to my room with those lines still echoing loudly in my ears. Unable to control myself, I just started browsing to get more thoughts on female infanticide / feticide. Though I was aware of incidents like strangling, dumping in garbage bins, drowning her, burying her alive., this one was most barbaric of all! I had only one question after this – WHY?

I somehow was startled to know:

“An estimated 2,000 unborn girls are illegally aborted every day in India” – United Nations

i.e., approx 7 lacs annually. And these are only feticide figures; there is hardly any data in India about infanticide. Though a gender bias is present in one form or the other in every nook and corner of the world but it hardly takes a gory picture as in Asian countries (India primarily due to socio-cultural reasons and China due to its 1-child policy). Some more weird examples are:

- Ancient Greece and Rome, "exposing" the female infant -- to let her die.
- Jews, flogging of father for having a girl child.
- British Monarchy, 21- gun salute for prince but 10 for a princess.
- Dutch proverb, "A house full of daughters is like a cellar full of sour beer."
- China, daughters are called as "maggots in the rice"

And mind you, the evil is equally present across all strata of society. The ever evolving medical science has just made it easier to perpetrate such acts. Infamously, once when Mohammad Ali was asked about his children, he replied, “One boy and seven mistakes”. M speechless!

I will not dwell either on more figures or the reasons for such practices (both of which I assume are well-known in Indian context) but what is disturbing is that it is not even considered a crime and rarely do culprits get convicted!! In today’s time of hyper media activism, there is surely some sensational reporting, some harsh conviction of the accused and soon the news dies down and the cycle goes on. Surprisingly, most of the times female are accused of bearing a girl child (which is away from scientific reality as proven) and hence she is supposed to perpetrate the crime willingly or un-willingly

Though a lot of efforts have been made by Govt and society, and there have been obvious reduction in such crimes (compared to a period where whole lot of such things was just un-reported). Perhaps we can have a provision for legal recourse against her parents for any bias (as being done for work-place). And secondly I just wish that feticide is also dealt as seriously as homicide. Let her atleast breath the fresh air, let her atleast see you with her twinkling eyes…and let her atleast have the right to live.

..."Do you have a choco-bar?", The vendor religiously pulled out one and I started enjoying the same looking in the craziness of Janpath at Connaught Place (New Delhi). This area is so much full of activity, there is so much hustle-bustle going on that sometimes you really wonder "what are they upto? why is everybody going crazy?" and my mind instantly started to roam around twenty years back in time to the rustic life of Indian villages.

Being born in a village from western UP, always reminds me of those open green fields, chirping of birds, the scare crow and the gofan (a sling used to throw stones to scare away birds eating crops). It was in 1986 when parents moved from the village (due to dad’s new job). Life became pretty mechanistic with customary schools nearly 10 months a year and then 2 months summer holidays. But it was these 2 months which were the best part. I vividly remember the scenes when my grand-father used to greet us with sparkling-eyes on our visits. Next one and half months were just fun especially with some of my cousins also around. There was nearly NO routine, just eating-playing-sleeping, more-eating more-playing more-sleeping and the cycle went on unobstructed for full period :) Most special were visits to mela and almost weekly to the local market with my grandmother. Have you ever sat on a tonga where buffalo-carts would desperately try to outrun horse-carts? Time travels you see!

My grandmother used to love me too much (m being the eldest kid in family), the customary pennies everyday and a gullakk is actually a true story :) I would be the chosen one among all kids in the house whenever it was some special occasion like visiting families for daawats (kind of festive community feasts on marriages etc) or visits to markets, or even visits to relatives in nearby villages. The daawats always had kheer, puri, aloo-ki-subji with jal-jeera. The hosts would invariably put a lot of boora (powdered sugar) in kheer which I used to hate always. Nevertheless, the taste buds always liked the delicacies.

In daytime, mostly we were accompanied by grand-father to the fields where he would show us different types of watermelons, muskmelons, sunmelons which he specially used to crop in summers. Mostly we would run all by ourselves deep into the fields and try to get some fruits & berries. His eyes constantly followed us and as soon as we returned, used to peel off the melons and distribute to all. Some days we would leave early mornings and come back by evening. It was always an amazing experience taking a bath in cold tube-well water, the breakfast and lunch was mostly delivered in fields where we would feast upon in shades and seated on rope-knitted charpoys. Sometimes, we would chase away stray animals with ropes and sticks in hand. The chase would invariably always leave a trail of dust which used to take time to settle and the scene was panoramic specially with the sun-setting down in the horizons. On returning back, the food was traditionally served to senior male members and rest would have it later. Many a times, we sat next just watching him. He always wore a “gandhi-topi” and “dhoti-kurta” and was a man of few words. Infact I don’t remember him speaking much. Heavy voice, few small sentences! The days will pass so fast that the departing day will come and there will be lot of customary-crying (somehow I never thought it was real) by relatives! What I recall, are only the teary-eyes of my grandfather.

Years came and years passed by, I graduated from one class to another. It was in 1995, it all came to a standstill when my grand-father passed away. I never went again to our ancestral home. It wasn’t a conscious choice but when I grew older, I myself had no inclination to visit again. And I knew for obvious, there would be nobody waiting for us. No sparkling eyes in anticipation!

“Hey Bachchan…….Bachchan…”, It was somebody patting on my shoulder which brought me back to reality. Standing behind me was my class-mate for whom I was waiting at CP. By this time, the choco-bar had mostly melted and some of it was on my shoes, we started strolling towards Café Coffee Day with me still engrossed in wilderness of the past. Somebody has aptly said, "What we remember from childhood we remember forever - permanent, stamped, inked, imprinted, eternally seen."

-Bachchan

…Even though it was around 00:05 am, wasn’t able to sleep thanks to my nocturnal tendencies developed over a period of time (compulsory night shifts at SAIL & forced night shifts at IIMB being the equal culprits! ). So, just went around the window in the room and stood nearby gazing at the stars. The soothing instrumental songs and the cool breeze were making the atmosphere serene and gave me a good opportunity to mull over. Being a lazy ass, I pulled across a cane chair, 2 pillows and one cane stool just to rest my legs. For some weird reason, today my mind was wandering across TV channels and its programs and there is one new program which has been subject of constant chatter even before it was aired. Yes, m talking of Bigg Boss! (Imported version of Big Brother). Interestingly, only God knows what an extra “g” in big means…greatness, genuineness or just Gas ;)

Being a die-hard sceptic myself, I had never been a big fan of reality shows specially the ones involving small time actors. I had vague memories of 2-3 episodes of BB season-2 which just had lots of vulgar love & hate drama and fist-fights with choicest of abuses being used at the rate of 72 per minute. Anyways, the pre-aired drama about the “Pop Philosopher”, Mr Big B was enough for a mortal me to watch the opening episode at least. The show started, 13 participants announced and sent to a cosy-beautiful designer built place (Can’t refer this as “Home” as there is no-family living there, all are just workers) to spend their next three months.

Let me put some simple thoughts (questions). Is anybody of 13 participants a real celebrity! Most of them are un-successful bunch and using it as a platform to enhance their careers in bollywood (Claudia Ciesla already being an international name courtesy her Playboy fame can look towards Hollywood too). Last 3-4 episodes have just shown some petty ego-clashes, ugly advances of some “Desh-drohi” famed KRK and real nautanki of Rakhi’s mom. Don’t want to bore you with any further details of “cartoon-characters”. Fact is money is the only driver here, producer has invested crores with BigB getting a cool-126 crore for the deal as per reports, and the concerned channel “Colors” has to gain TRPs as there can’t be a bigger bet than BigB. The returns already been quantified, now there has to be a process to have high TRPs for 3 months and churn money for the channel. Hence, the crowd of un-successful jokers has been put in place with “ready scripts” being given to each one with “desired roles” clearly defined and supposedly the outcome too! But the curry can be made more tasty as the show progresses which depends on junta’s voting pattern which being a decisive factor in maintaining TRPs. Every participant being paid money to win as well as loose at the most opportune moment. One of them even categorically maintained that he was brought into the show just to spice up. Similarly, who knows Sherlyn and Claudia before? India is well-known for exporting spices for centuries, aren’t we ;)

Sparing you the horror of BB and not harping on the foreign origins of almost all the shows (Interestingly, the biggest reality show of the country is being managed by foreign hands only, Madam SG, pun totally intended ;) Lets focus on similar stuff fooling around on different channels. Two shows worth mentioning:

Sach Ka Saamna (Moment of Truth) – Attempts of moral policing by parliamentarians and orthodox fundamentalists helped the show un-necessarily, Ok concept but more swamis (Ramdev and AshaRam bapu) and politicians should be casted too! 1000% , all the polygraphs will fail, might break also actually :P Factually the participant go through the question set already in a closed room already once, and only some of those questions are repeated on being aired which isn’t the case with original version.

Kya Aap Paanchvi Paas Se Tez Hain? (Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader?) - Can’t have expected a better host than SRK (but I always hate him for his over-confidence and show-offs….Why should he not be frisked ? Might blog later on about VVIP culture, sticking to reality as of now). Indian kids are undoubtedly smarter and the American version have dumbest of answers specially from blondes (atleast those on youtube. Read this – A contestant when being told that Hungary is a country, replies…”OMG, Hungary is a country!! I thought that its just the word hungry in english dictionary!! )

Fundamentally, entertainment is an industry and there are companies which have shareholders and investors who want returns and profit is the ultimate motive obviously trying to keep the creative aspect of the industry intact. There are many such shows today and there will be hundreds in future which will try to fake reality. Since, sometimes our personal lives are touched and impacted by such shows too. So, as viewers, we should not be fooled by absurd realities and just see as them as games BUT keeping the notion of reality away from our credulous minds, better to think them as “nautankis” ;)

The breeze going stronger by then, even my lappie had gone into sleep and I was actually half sleep thanks to the weather. But I can’t stop without thanking Mr. Robert Adler who invented TV remote. We still hold the veto power and its this power which governs the not-so-real television. Long Live The Remote :D