Breakfast!

Yesterday I went to a small shop beside our campus, for breakfast. Well, to speak the truth that was my "brunch"! Brunch-shoppies in this part of the world are not that hi-fi. They are mostly single hall place with rickety benches to sit upon and a perenial mild stink meandering all around. But the cook in this place would be working just at the entrance of the shop. You pass by the road, you can see all the meticulous effort he was putting into whatever he was trying to make. And in the morning he will make "parathas" or "pratas" (as the Singaporeans call it). To roll one paratha he will take at least 5 minutes. He will fold it in numerous folds, so that finally it will look like some idol of Ganesh. Then he will spread it and roll it properly into a multi-layered round shape. His devotion to his work would draw me near this shop and once a while i will come to this place for a brunch.

Well... coming to the main story, this yesterday I was having my brunch when a lad from the next door shop came. And he started his breakfast. Those from India pretty well know this phenomena. A neighbourhood brunch-shop is like your next home where you can popin anytime. But many times you tend to forget to pay him. Hence, i expected our guy form next-door shop to have a decent breakfast and go without paying. To my first surprise, he took to his heart's fill. And then to my second surprise he out-right paid Rs35!

Rs35 for breakfast for a lad whose income may not be more than Rs1000 per month! Strange??!! This is the spirit I found here. Peopl believe in spending...in living life today... in having all the comfort that can be had. No tension for future no remourse for the good old days. Something we all need to learn. Live life each day!

Problems and solutions

I am fresh from a rewarding tour to my native place. Somehow I always find that in my visits I come to discover certain different angles of viewing the problems of life. Thanks to my parents!

This time me and my father were discussing about certain village school, where the good man who set the school, has employed few destitutes as teachers and care-takers. Everything else in the school was very nice. But the problem was the fact that lot more could be done if the people in the school are a bit more pro-active. There I found the refined defiiton of the problem of our land. Its the lack of "proactiveness".

So the real question of development is how to motivate people to be a bit more proactive!

I found something which seemed to me as a solution. Somehow I laid my hands on a book that has been lying in our home for few years at least. It was the explaination of Gita by Acharya Vinoba, translated by Annapurna Maharana. (PS: Acharya Vinoba is one of the true yogis of our era. Those who have heard the stories of AngurimAlA or Valmiki, Vinoba is man who did the same magic in our era. He went to Chambal (the once-heaven for dreadful dacoits!) emptihanded and made them submit for a better peaceful life! Annapurna Maharana belongs to a family which has given all its wealth, both material and man for the land. And please mark that the discourse was made to an audiance consisting of jail-inmates!)
Reading through the book, I got a strange feeling. May be here lies the solution. If somehow we can melt the ideas a bit further and convince people that its an reward in itself to work endlessly with no expectations,.... if only.......

Hind Swaraj

History is something which always intrigues me. How would things have been in the past. What made Mr.XYZ to take this or that decision. If he or she would not have done this or that, then what would have happened to us. Well... there are many questions in this world without any proper answer.

After hearing again and again from one of my friends about this title (Hing Swaraj) by M.K. Gandhi, I decided to run a google search on the web for this book. Luckily I got a PDF version of the book over Internet. That evening found me reading through the pages of the book.

First thing that astonished me was the date of publication, 1908. And the second thing to astonish me was the style of writing of Gandhi. It was odd and can in no words be termed as interesting. But still, there were certain discoveries that I made through the pages, which made me to trade further.

• First of all, the idea Gandhi had about Swaraj (or freedom) was completely different from what we have got in India now. This implies two possibilities. Either he was overly hypocritical (which I wont accept); or his figure was exploited by the rest of the Congress leaders to accomplish whatever they deemed to be correct.
• He talks many things which may sense null in today's context. Like he shuns railways, the profession of doctors and lawyers etc. In short he shuns almost everything that is adapted form west. In today's world, can we live a life without the western discoveries? I dont know. May be once a year, we can try to live like that for a month or so and try to observe how easy it is or otherwise.

Lastly, he raises two major questions which left me thinking. First of all, if we have a British system, a British governance and a British law without the Brits, can we still claim ourselves as independent? Secondly, if somebody else has fought independence for me, how can that be my independence? Hence unless and otherwise I find my own independence, I will still remain "parAdhin".

Blood donation!

Hold on......I am not going to give you another of those "bhAsans" (oratory) saying that you should donate blood. I will just narrate a story which happened to me yesterday. Yesterday we were having a blood donation camp in our campus. They made me the faculty-in-charge (for the lack of a more fitting faculty [;)] ) So I was wearing a batch showing the same symbol as was there on the pamphlets put up on the notice boards. This was marked by one of our security guards. For those who are not familiar with the security guard system in India, let me inform them that here private security guards are obtained through some agencies. The agencies are paid 3000 rupees per month per guard, whereas they pay just 1800 (~$45) to the guards. From that point of view, these guards are among the least paid employees in IIT.

Anyway, one such guards say me with the batch, and asked what is this thing all about? I told that they are collecting bloods, so that it can be given to some deserving patient. After that I went to my chamber and was resting for a while, when the guy came with one of his friends. And they want to donate blood. They say, till now they have not done any work of merit (as if we have done a lot!), hence let them donate some blood. Moreover, they said they are having a lot of blood which makes them angry sometime, so they should give some blood. Lastly, every evening the wretched mosquitoes suck so much blood, hence let some blood be given for some better cause!!

I contacted my student and arranged a slot for them. So delighted were they that they thanked me in profusion and said they will bring a lot of "laddus" (a sweet dish) from their village, the next time they visit home.

This is not just for blood donation. I think this is becoming the norm of the day. The more we are provided, the less charitable we become!

Dinner at Dhawa!!

For the old readers' information, lemme mention that now I am in one of the most remote parts of the nation, Guwahati, Assam. Not that I have any complains. Things are keeping me on my toes; so that I rarely get any time to miss anything! ...rarely indeed, except for occasions when some of my students mention about a dinner at a dhaba! How can I deny it :)

To cut the long story short, there was nothing exciting or new about the dhaba or the food or the water...even the ThumsUp was tasting exactly the same! But the difference was the way we went there. I would say it is the most adventurous thing I have done till now, after the roller coaster ride in Orlando. Semi-road from our institute gate till the national highway (NH). This path was covered in pitch darkness, which we could cover cutesy Sahus's cell-light (ultimately courtesy LEDs!). Just imagine 7 guys on bicycle, riding by the light of an LED (magic of silicon devices :p)!

Next came NH. NH's in India dont have any bicycle path! Hence you have to ride beside the main road. Dark as hell, and huge trucks coming from both sides. A truck from front is so scary. It will blind you with its bright light for few seconds, and you will realise what real blindness is once its gone. Its like left on the road to ride a bike, with your eyes blind-folded. (Try doing it to get me!) And to add to it all, if you miss the "beside" of the NH by a few inches, you might fall into one of the ponds which keep on repeating themselves on both sides of the NH! With all this, by the time we reaannalched the dhaba, I would have drained at least few pints of adrenalin and my heart beat was touching 200 per minute :p

All said and done, the outing was definitely a memorable experience, which will definitely go in the annals of the IITs! Lastly let me thank my student friends: Circuit, Sahus, Mohit (seen in the snap from left to right), Puns, Neta and Anda!!

Simplicity

How do we define simplicity? Staying with whats bare need! And who will delineate greed from need? What is need for me can be termed as greed for some Mr.X/Y/Z. So how does one qualify for "simple living n high thinking"? By the way, why the heck should I try for "simple living and high thinking"? Whats so wrong about "high living and simple thinking"? Does simplicity brings happiness? I doubt it strongly. Lets take an example of the life style of a village farmer, whose life style we can brand as simple with a good agreement. But does that farmer know about the simplicity in his life? NO. Most of the cases, if the life is simple, then the man might not know that its simple. And if one knows that his life is simple; or in other words, he/she could afford a more luxorious life but still takes a less luxorious life..............then .......well i would say he/she is running behind some mirage. There is nothing great about simplicity. The notion it slef is relative and "one who knows that his life is simple loses the merit of it"!!