Of India, and changing India

All of us, once at least would have asked this question: “What will happen to this country!” (“kya hoga iss desh ka!”)…

I have asked this question several times to myself and now I helplessly admit that I have concluded that “iss desh ka kuch nahin ho sakta!”. India is going to remain India. By this I mean the attitude of the people and not the other dynamics – like usage of mobile phone for example. Recently I traveled in a train a few times after some years. I observed the train is exactly the same as it was decades ago, every single compartment was the same, the toilets were dirty, the bedsheets were not as good and just about anything that you could have observed about a train during your travel over the past few decades! I have travelled across many different sections of the country from North to South and from East to West. (What I found is the platforms in Andhra Pradesh and Himachal Pradesh were the neatest of all. The platforms of Uttar Pradesh were the worst of all. All other zones come in between somewhere.) I have travelled in general compartments, sleeper class, 3rd AC, and 2nd AC – in that order from childhood to adulthood as my changing ability to spend changed. The situation of each compartment and services remains exactly the same – by and large.

Now I want to know if India is changing, train resembles India, why has it not changed at all since decades?

Also, the movies – there was ‘Zanjeer’ about an honest ‘dabangg’ police officer in 1973, and then there is Singham on the same lines in 2011. 40 years and the same theme??? Does that mean the corruption situation is still the same?

Of course, things would have gotten only worse, surely owing to the increased population of ours and some changing environmental parameters. Then, are we actually changing?

Why are there NGOs for women empowerment perpetually existing? Are they not able to empower women or are there enough women to empower at any given time? In that case again, things have not changed for women at large right?

I may be termed as a pessimist but being an optimist here is very unrealistic to me. My most logical sense is, change happens – but at an individual level, at a small group level may it be a small community or a village (In case of railways too, there might be pockets like South Central railways for example that might have changed but to generalize, it is the same still!). For change to happen at an individual level it takes a few years, for change to happen at a family level it takes a decade or so, for change to happen at a community level it takes a few decades but for change to happen at a national level, it would take several decades but there are too many barricades in between that stop from the change to happen. For that mass change to happen, everybody needs to feel that change is needed for him or her, and there needs an individual or a group to make each and every individual feel the need first of all – that I feel is a close to impossible task! A lot of people don’t feel the need to have sanitation. When you go to some places like Uttar Pradesh, there is hell lot of dirt all around. Won’t people feel the need to not make the place dirty first of all, or clean it up once filthy? How many individuals can run the swach bharat abhiyan? can a small group go and clean the place all the time? That group needs to be dedicated for that task alone in that case, which is not possible. Even in a household, if just one person takes the responsibility to clean things up and every other family member keeps making the house dirty, how would that situation be? We are changing in terms of adapting to the new revolution like mobile phones or internet. But our basic attitude remains the same at large, it has not changed at all! We change in small groups and move to a strata that has changed or is changing, and feel that India is changing. It is a myth  India will remain India unless the attitude of each and every one of the 1.2Bn people changes, possible?

I was a part of Jagriti Yatra 2014 where I met someone from Kenya. I asked him what is the one word that comes to you when you see India, knowing that he was visiting India for the first time. He said ‘dirty’, ‘chaotic’ and a few other related adjectives, I appreciate his honesty. It doesn’t feel particularly good when a visitor feels like that in your country  But I have to accept the reality, though it is a harsh one. He mentioned India is not a country where people should be left on their own, they need a dictator kind of a ruler who will give them a task and just get them to do it, no matter what. Only then India will improve. He gave the example of Rwanda, I was curious and asked him how many years did it take Rwanda to transform? He said 30 years for such a small country.

Imagine about India transforming then!

This country is run by women

For quite some time, I have been observing around and I come to the conclusion that this country is run by women (this is a generalization, outliers remain though)!

If you actually see and analyze, the amount of work that a woman does is much more than the amount of work a man does. There are set duties for a woman, almost all the duties are pertaining to others in her life; anything that she has to do for herself she has to take extra time out – whether it is going for a walk, or office, or beauty parlour, or gym, or any other of her choice. Any of these activities happen only if and when she gets free from her routine duties that are defined for her. And even when she is on her own in any of these activities, you would notice her taking calls pertaining to her ‘duties’ again  Why is everyone so enthu about defining duties for women? A friend of mine said once that they didn’t have a cook during their childhood, if they went out on a day of the weekend, her mother used to prepare the food once they were back home. In her own words, ‘bechaari meri mummy ghar aake khud saara khaana banaati thi’, those were not the days of cook for them, also not the days of ordering from outside. I am sure many households are still like this, except for very few outliers.

I had a maid servant some time back who looked like a 12-year-old kid. She was married with 2 kids, she didn’t know her age to tell me when I surprisingly asked her after coming to know she had 2 kids. She was very hard-working and diligent, her work was perfect, she used to come on time, when she came that is. But she used to fall sick very often. Poverty leading to no proper food was most likely the cause. When asked about her husband, she mentioned once that he doesn’t do anything; then a few days later she mentioned that she got the society pass for him too with the help of the other house owners where she worked. So the husband got to sweep the society and earn some money. This lasted a few days and in those few days she was happy and regular at her own work. But just after a few days she again became irregular and when asked, during the conversation she mentioned her husband left the job. There was no feeling of frustration or desperation, she very casually mentioned about her husband leaving the job. He was not doing anything again. She used to work from 6AM to 11AM in the morning, go home and make lunch, feed her children and have it herself. Again at 4PM, she used to come back for the afternoon part of the work. I once asked her if she cooked anything before 6AM when she came for work? She replied in the negative and I came to know that her children don’t eat anything till lunch time. She could not afford that much milk to give them, it seemed. She would be most likely beaten up by the husband also very often. What is all this I wonder?

I have a vegetable vendor near our colony. We make sure to buy from him whatever is needed so that they make some money. They keep vegetables, milk, bread, eggs, curd which are the usual regular day-to-day stuff. The shop is run by a couple who have 3 kids. A few days earlier, I went to the shop in the morning when the woman had opened the shop and was organizing things. There was another customer before me. Our guard came running and asked her where her husband was because a kid had fallen ill and the guard wanted her husband, who also runs an auto-rickshaw, to take the kid to a clinic. She said he had gone to the vegetable market in old Gurgaon, which is his usual morning task. Soon, the other customer left and she burst out in tears (I don’t know what comfort she shared with me) – she said her husband has not gone to the market but he is sleeping because he didn’t come home last night, and was found in the morning in the neighbourhood. He was drunk last night. She was so worried that the vegetables stock was not enough for the day. The kids were ready to go to the school but he is not in a position to drive the rickshaw. She also mentioned there are two other drunkard friends of his whose families are in Bihar. They are regular drinkers and her husband joins them. She was worried about him not making rounds of the auto-rickshaw, saying income from that has stopped because of his habits. While saying all this, she also said ‘didi, 3 bachche hain, ek baar bhi bola nahin hua nahin ki subah uthke school ke liye tayaar kar de’? (didi, I have 3 kids and not one single day has he woken up in the morning and offered to get them ready for school). He is always found loitering around, instead of taking the rickshaw rounds.

What nonsense is all this? Here is a woman who is trying to do everything from managing household, to kids, to the shop. It is obvious that this auto-rickshaw has to be driven to make money, and it is obvious that this man has to make money. Why doesn’t he get it? Why is he not fearful like her on how will the household run? And on top of it, he is so dumb that he cannot weigh the vegetables properly and calculate the money too. I very patiently tolerate his dumbness only because of his wife, I want her to make some money. She has taught him to use the calculator, she once lightly shared that he loses money because he makes wrong calculations. How nonsensical!

I think there is an inherent talent in women that they can multi-task (tasks of different variety, not many tasks of same variety – there is a difference and the former needs more talent) much better. And in the lower classes, I have noticed many couples where the women are much more intelligent than the men. Since childhood, girls are brainstormed about ‘duties’, which take up their entire time, and they are not left with any to grow in their own way. And more often than not, they just succumb top those duties. I am sure they would be getting married under this immense pressure to perform their duty, and further perform more duties to have children and run the household. Had this not been the case, they were capable of getting a much better spouses and would have grown a lot differently, to great heights.

I witnessed an instance in a village where in a family many men were refusing to marry. It was high time as per their age that they get married. There was an elderly man who expressed the worry, ‘why does no one want to get married? who will cook in the household?’. I was shocked! They want them to get married because they can’t cook themselves? Why don’t they teach them to cook themselves?

Who has given the right to men to define duties for women? I think these kinds of men especially are afraid that they would be left behind if these duties are not imposed on women, and when women become more successful their ego hurts and things like acid attacks happen! Otherwise I wonder why are there no acid attacks on men? (At least not reported).

Most of the women face situations like these, at various levels at various intensities – some or the other in the family, in the society, in the surroundings is there to remind the women about their ‘duties’, sadly women themselves also, very sad!

I am reading this book ‘Lean-In’ where Sheryl Sandberg described in detail on how women inherently don’t come forward to take on new things (possibly because of the upbringing, its in the air), and in work-life balance, with all the fears and the biggest fear of being a good mother/wife/daughter etc., usually work is left behind. How true! I realize it is a world-wide phenomenon and just an India story. The intensity magnifies manifold due to the other problems in our country.

To all women – read the book Lean-In.

Why I love Internet!

I keep reiterating that the major problem solver for me is internet. Any issue or a problem or a question that I face with, I first type it on Google for it to look up on the internet and my problem gets solved usually in the first click, and a few times in a few clicks. While it is amazing how Google finds out right link to the solution for me, it is amazing how people all over the world have already faced such a situation and patiently documented their problems and solutions. Indeed the most useful and amazing innovation!

- My mother messages me 'paap means sin, punya means?'; and I Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V on google on my mobile phone and I find the answer in the first link itself :) And I type the message back to my mother - all happens in 3 mins time.

- A Motorola phone of mine stopped working, it just doesn't switch on. I try my best to do something with the available buttons on the phone, I ask a colleague of mine. Then I type it on Google, the first link is a forum where people have discussed this problem and also have suggested solutions that have worked for them! I followed the most talked about solution and it worked in the first attempt!

- I was working normally when suddenly wherever my cursor goes, it would select everything I click. I didn't know what to do, I opened a new tab on my browser and just wrote 'cursor selects everything, and didn't have to even click and go to the respective page to get the answer - problem solved!

- Eggs in one form or the other are a part of our breakfast usually, till about some time back it was usually the boiled ones. We used to boil the eggs normally in a small steel vessel. I was tired of the same and looked up in Google if we can boil eggs in a pressure cooker, the answer was yes and its been 3 years or more I guess now that I boil eggs in a pressure cooker.

- My pet Bruno was unwell the other day with bad stomach. I knew there is a medicine at home in his first-aid kit, but the strip of tablets was torn and I could not see the name of the tablet to be sure that is the medicine I should give him. I could see the end portion 'dal' on the strip. I wrote on google images 'dog bad stomach dal', and I got the tablet strip images with the name 'dependal', the strips were exact match of what I had with me. I gave the medicine to my Bruno with confidence and he was alright the next morning!

- Most of us would have seen the last Google Search Ad, the famous 'jhajhariya' one. I had a similar experience. I had a colleague long time back, whom I completely lost touch with. I had made a lot of attempts of asking people, common friends and colleagues at various time periods about her whereabouts. Out of the blue one day I thought let me try Google. I typed her name alone, no luck. I typed her name+school+<place I knew she was in>, the school link came up with her name as some head there. I clicked and saw a picture of her's in an event group picture. I called up the school and through that I got her mobile number. I called her to find her astonished and saying 'tumne mujhe kaise dhoondhaaaaa!' - this was before the jhajhariya ad :) I found her after almost 8 years :)

- I had my in-laws come in and they were watching a programme on the television where some random guy rattled a long sentence claiming it was his own creation. I had heard it before and I knew it was not his creation, it was a meaningful dramatic dialogue that is made of the movie names of Amitabh Bachchan. I had a cassette of Amitabh Bachchan songs that started with this dialogue. I wanted to look up for the same because it was quite fascinating. I looked up randomly putting some names of movies as I recollected from the long dialogue, it took a few iterations but I did get it and felt really good :)

Long live internet, people who actively post content on the internet; and Google!
The few things that could make it even more powerful is translations (currently, they are not very accurate - I used many dictionaries English to English, English to Hindi to English, English to Telugu to English, Hindi to Telugu to Hindi, English to Gujarati to English - it is fascinating to use a dictionary, feels very knowledgeable and intellectual, but I very reluctantly now use Google); and identifying songs by the music when someone is humming (I found that there are a few websites for this for English music, I think it will be great to have this for Hindi music as well - going forward I guess it would be very useful).

Lyrics - where are they going!

I heard this song playing in a radio channel whose lyrics go like this - "....aa tujhe pyaar karoon sare aam baby...', and I am realizing the lyrics go like this:

Har shaam baby, tere hi naam baby
Aa tujhe pyar karoon main sar-e-aam baby
Hai intezam baby, kar ehtram baby
Iraade nek mere, na koi ganda kaam baby
Ishq, pyaar aur waar khule aam karoon
Main hoon mutasib tujhse
Dil ye tere naam karoon
Aaja meri baahon mein
Let me love you baby
Kahin tu mujhse ye na keh de
Je menu yaar na mile, mile.. mile..
Te mar jaawaan

How can anyone write these? Do they make any sense at all, how dirty & nonsensical is the language even to read!!! There were those lyrics once which said, 'tumhein koi aur dekhey, toh jalta hai dil...' and now these which say "....aa tujhe pyaar karoon sare aam baby..."!
Earlier the songs were mostly the voice and the lyrics, now it is the beats mainly, I learn that even voice is made up using technology. (I really like Alia Bhatt as the person she is and as an actress too, but when she came to Comedy Nights show for a film promotion and sung the song 'jugni, pataaka guddi', the notes she tried to catch were nowhere closer to what the song was and the rhythm was totally out of place, and I learn she has sung that song in the movie.)
Is it the lack of isolation and peace; or is it the less time spent appreciating the nature that people are not able to write well and still the song becomes a hit! This song was very 'catchy' apparently, I recollect my cab-mate almost yelling at me when I changed the channel on noticing this song playing :) "Arrey Sridevi, tum beats suno, itni emotional kyon ho jaati ho", she said :) I was at the parlour and they had incidentally played the Kishore Kumar's songs for a change, all amazing ones ranging from 'oh mere dil ke chain...', to 'zindagi ke safar mein guzar jaate hain jo mukaam...', to 'rimjhim gire saawan..', to 'ek ajnabee haseena se...', to 'koi humdum na raha...', to 'yeh reshmi zulfein..', after a few minutes most of the people there started humming those along. One thing is they are sung by the legend. But the more powerful thing is that there is such deep thought and meaning in those lyrics. They probably didn't write to write, they just got written it seems by their emotions!

My best friends!

"Best friend" is the one living or non-living thing in one's life that is the most amazing thing one can ever have.I have had very less number of friends in my life and a lot of circumstances led to me being an extreme introvert and not sharing anything with anyone usually, that made things worse by me almost not being able to call any human being 'my best friend' and I doubt if anyone could call me as theirs. I feel sad about this but when I think, I find that I did (and do) have three best friends <in the order I got/found them>:

1. Transistor:
We spent some years schooling at my grandparents' place in Vizianagaram. Vizianagaram is a very small town, the district headquarters that houses many good schools and colleges. There was a phase during that stay when we did not have a television at home. We had a very old transistor that was in a pretty bad shape, almost dead. But it used to play, with a lot of disturbance. Every evening, I used to wait longingly to play it, all my Maths homework and anything related to Maths used to happen during the 1.5 hours between 7:00PM and 8:30PM (which included dinner of about 20 mins also). 7:00PM was time for Hindi news for 10 mins, "Fauji bhaiyon ka karykram Jaimala" of Hindi songs used to start at 7:10PM, go on till 7:50PM. There used to be a break for 10 mins and at 8:00PM, another program of Hindi songs used to start, go on till 8:30PM. In between there used to be another channel from 7:50 to 8:10 that used to play some Hindi songs, I used to switch between channels very patiently and used to hear all the songs without a miss even with all the disturbance on the channels. And then used to start the boring time, I remember at 9:00PM, there used to be English news by someone called Vijay Danielle, I can't find this name now on the internet :) I used to sleep early and wake up early so there was just about 30 mins of time for me to get bored, during which I used to usually hear to my grandmother's stories and chats. I (we) could hear her for hours together. That 1.5 hours of time used to be so crucial in my life, radio was the device that made me familiar with most of the old Hindi songs. Normally the anchor used to say 'aaaiye sunte hain fauji bhaiyon (she used to read out the entire list of fauji bhais who made the farmaaish) ki pasand ka gaana x (male singer) aur y (female singer) ki aawaaz mein film z se'...I could tell from the names of the playback singers on which song was going to come. There were days when none of the channels played good songs, and that day I used to go into depression, very bad sleep, very low enthusiasm for school the next morning but followed by an exciting wait for the clock to tick 7:00PM again, to hear good songs. Almost all the singers I knew only through the radio, that's why I think I know the films and songs and singers but I don't know the videos and the picturizations of many, many. There are songs like 'muskuraata hua dil churaata hua mera yaar' from the movie Lahoo ke do rang starring Vinod Khanna and Shabana Azmi, it is a beautiful songs with very good lyrics but the picturization is extremely hillarious (not meant to be :)). Another such song is 'chalte chalte mere yeh geet yaad rakhna'. And many more.
I used to come home for the radio, I used to finish homework other than Maths fast for the radio so that I can do Maths during the radio time, I used to keep the radio attached to myself throughout the evening and sometimes a bit later in the night too when I wasn't sleepy, it used to be my life! I could not have existed without that device. It was indeed my best friend, till the time it existed at home and the time it became extinct, I miss it so much! Even now, I love to hear good Hindi songs, mostly slow and not too loud ones unless the song has really good beats and there are many more avenues available for the same, but that fascination is irreplaceable.

2. Book(s):
My mother was a very intelligent girl/woman and for various reasons, could not pursue her studies & career the way she wanted to. She was an introvert, not liking many people around her and always appreciated being in touch with books and always used to tell us to make a book our best friend. She used to make us 'read' (apart from 'studying') books as a part of our daily routine. My elder sister enjoyed it more than me, for me it was a bit boring at times and irritating too when my mother forced me a lot to read when I didn't want to. We were forced to read all sorts of things - essays, lives of great people, bed-time stories and what not! The first time I read some sort of a short story was in my 12th standard's English subject book of short stories. The first short story I completed I felt really good, I realized I was engrossed in the story so much that it was a surprise for me to find out where I was after I completed the story. I developed the habit of reading gradually but never actually took proper time out to read regularly. After I met my husband, I picked up the habit from him again and developed quite a bit as he reads a lot. Quite a few years now, I feel my mother was right in many ways, books are and can be actually very good friends of ours. It feels very nice and refreshing to meet them often. It is good to take time out for them. These are the friends always there with you, they will always have time for you and give you knowledge and information that become amazing tools to build all sorts of conversations. I truly admire people who write and every time I see any book stall or a depot or a big shop, I am left dumbfounded by the massive amounts of information/knowledge/recreation/entertainment that lies inside those infinite number of books. Hats-off to all the writers in this world!

3. Dog:
Read I as We (my husband and me)
What do I say after the universal saying about this best friend! I have this friend of mine with me for over 6 years now. And it is not that my parents got it home and I am just another member of the family. I got him myself, into my family and I take care of him myself. Long back I learnt speaking English standing the conversing in front of a mirror. I did study in English medium throughout and while I was theoretically perfect, I did lack in speaking skills. Wherever there was a mirror and I found some time with it alone, I used to whisper in front of that in English randomly. Now, it is not for practice that I do, but I think this friend of mine has replaced the mirror now :) No matter how much I speak, he listens to me. I was an extreme introvert who hardly uttered a word with anyone around. After getting him home, I have started speaking to people much more than I used to do earlier. He sleeps when I sleep, he runs around the house when he knows I am home and he can't find me around, he waits for me at the door when I go out in odd unusual hours (they recognize patterns somehow), he waits for me to talk to him, he waits for me to make something for him as he likes food cooked by me more than his regular food, the clock ticks 6:30PM and he starts waiting for me when he is left at his day care thinking I would come and pick him up any time (again a pattern he has recognized and concluded something logically). Emotional blackmail :) but I come home running from wherever I am because I know he is waiting for me. I give up dinners and any outings in the evenings to stay with him because I know he likes to be with me, I avoid as much as possible to keep him alone at home during the evenings because I know he doesn't like me going out leaving him alone at home in the evenings. I need not do all this, he doesn't demand anything nor does he create any damage when alone at home any time, but I don't know why I still do, with no pain or force. My best(est) friend indeed!