Pencils and Erasers

As a child I had a very bad habit of scribbling at every given opportunity, in every paper and on all the walls. Not that I think of it as a bad habit. Ever noticed how most things that you want to do are labelled under "bad habits"? Else it is just a crazy thingie to do! Anyways scribbling is somethingie I still enjoy! Gayathri used to be so patient while I used scribble my way to glory, ofcourse in her notes!!
And all these dayz that I have been on my yum bee yae I had to restrain myself- 'cos I simply had to grow up! and also 'cos most folks here are also trying to "grow up" and dont take kindly to such stuff!! And so I had to stop doing somethingie that my fingers always wanted to do!! And when after a one whole year of self restrain I did "it" my neighbour had the "are you crazy" kinda look and erased the whole thingie!! Gosh do I miss Gayathri!!
And that was one I realised something! It is much easier to erase stuff while it takes much effort and time to actually "create" something! Oh yeah! Big deal!! But why do you need to erase things just because they dont fall in line with certain standards? Why change yourself so that you conform to certain "standards"? While going around with an eraser in hand, doing d politically rite things and erasing off d other stuff may seem only proper, are you really listening to yourself? Doesnt that count too? What do you want to be? The pencil that may be wrong at times but is still proud of all the mistakes that it has done, the eraser that goes about being critical about everybody else or one of those hybrid pencils with an eraser attached that of its own accord erases things it doesnt deem fit enough! What about the pen you might ask? I would still prefer the pencil to the pen 'cos the pen doesnt have a choice.The pencil decides to let something remain out of choice.
I am proud of being a pencil.I have made lots of mistakes but I am not ashamed of them. These experiences have made me what I am and in a sense reflect the person I am. Given a chance I would still make them!

Nivi, the poetess

I had dreams,
colourfull dreams in my eyes,
washed down by the tears,
that I couldnt stop.

I saw colourfull bangles,
in the market fair,
I tried them on.
But they broke,
they werent made for me.

I cry,
and it is just not the kajal that flows.

I cry on,
And I dont stop myself.
I cry for myself.

A hole's in my heart,
that grows bigger
with each passing hour.

I aint ashamed
"But this is not fair".
Just not fair.
Not fair at all.

You may have killed a part of me,
But the rest is still there.

I am what I am,
And you cant change
the Who I am now
Not that I will let you.

You may break my bones,
not my spirit.
My dreams may have been washed away,
but others will take their place soon.

For you can do anything;
but never make me stop dreaming.
Dreams are my own,
My only treasure.

What if I dont have anything else?
As long as I have dreams in my eyes,
Hope in my heart
And the courage to walk the way I have picked;
I am.

Ideological Killings

Whatever be Gopal Godse's reasons for killing Gandhi was he right in killing him?Is it right to kill somebody just because you dont believe in what he believes in?Even revenge killings are acceptable; yes there is something very primitive about them but then arent all of us, in one sense. But then does it make any difference to Gopal Godse as to what others think of him.He cleansed the nation and that is the belief he will go to his grave with; "And well you cant expect ordinary mortals who fall in for big words to see the "truth", can you?What if they shun you?Condemn you?That reinforces your original belief right?"
And so Gopal Godse shall go to his grave with no remorse and perhaps even with pride that he did the right thing, with no fear of being condemned and shunned.And thats just the matter with ideological killings.You cant make that person feel remorseful-infact the person begins to see himself as a martyr, what if people shun him?It makes him more of a martyr.

Gopal Godse's Interview

Fifty-two years ago, on Jan. 30, 1948, Mohandas Gandhi was shot dead by Nathuram Godse, a Hindu extremist. Godse believed that the Mahatma, or great soul, was responsible for the 1947 partition of India and the creation of Pakistan. Godse and his friend Narayan Apte were hanged. His brother Gopal and two others were sentenced to life imprisonment for their part in the conspiracy. Gopal Godse remained in jail for 18 years and now, at 80, lives with his wife in a small apartment in Pune. He is still proud of his role in the murder. Although Godse is largely ignored in India and rarely talks to journalists, he agreed to speak with TIME Delhi correspondent Meenakshi Ganguly.
TIME: What happened in January 1948?
Godse: On Jan. 20, Madanlal Pahwa exploded a bomb at Gandhi's prayer meeting in Delhi. It was 50 m away from Gandhi. [The other conspirators] all ran away from the place. Madanlal was caught there. Then there was a tension in our minds that we had to finish the task before the police caught us. Then Nathuram [Gopal's brother] took it on himself to do the thing. We only wanted destiny to help us -- meaning we should not be caught on the spot before he acted.
TIME: Why did you want to kill Gandhi?
Godse: Gandhi was a hypocrite. Even after the massacre of the Hindus by the Muslims, he was happy. The more the massacres of the Hindus, the taller his flag of secularism.
TIME: Did you ever see Gandhi?
Godse: Yes.
TIME: Did you attend his meetings?
Godse: Yes.
TIME: Can you explain how he created his mass following? Godse: The credit goes to him for maneuvering the media. He captured the press. That was essential. How Gandhi walked, when he smiled, how he waved -- all these minor details that the people did not require were imposed upon them to create an atmosphere around Gandhi. And the more ignorant the masses, the more popular was Gandhi. So they always tried to keep the masses ignorant.
TIME: But surely it takes more than good publicity to create a Gandhi? Godse: There is another thing. Generally in the Indian masses, people are attracted toward saintism. Gandhi was shrewd to use his saintdom for politics. After his death the government used him. The government knew that he was an enemy of Hindus, but they wanted to show that he was a staunch Hindu. So the first act they did was to put "Hey Ram" into Gandhi's dead mouth.
TIME: You mean that he did not say "Hey Ram" as he died?
Godse: No, he did not say it. You see, it was an automatic pistol. It had a magazine for nine bullets but there were actually seven at that time. And once you pull the trigger, within a second, all the seven bullets had passed. When these bullets pass through crucial points like the heart, consciousness is finished. You have no strength. When Nathuram saw Gandhi was coming, he took out the pistol and folded his hands with the pistol inside it. There was one girl very close to Gandhi. He feared that he would hurt the girl. So he went forward and with his left hand pushed her aside and shot. It happened within one second. You see, there was a film and some Kingsley fellow had acted as Gandhi. Someone asked me whether Gandhi said, "Hey Ram." I said Kingsley did say it. But Gandhi did not. Because that was not a drama.
TIME: Many people think Gandhi deserved to be nominated TIME's Person of the Century. [He was one of two runners-up, after Albert Einstein.]
Godse: I name him the most cruel person for Hindus in India. The most cruel person! That is how I term him. TIME: Is that why Gandhi had to die? Godse: Yes. For months he was advising Hindus that they must never be angry with the Muslims. What sort of ahimsa (non-violence) is this? His principle of peace was bogus. In any free country, a person like him would be shot dead officially because he was encouraging the Muslims to kill Hindus.
TIME: But his philosophy was of turning the other cheek. He felt one person had to stop the cycle of violence...
Godse: The world does not work that way.
TIME: Is there anything that you admire about Gandhi?
Godse: Firstly, the mass awakening that Gandhi did. In our school days Gandhi was our idol. Secondly, he removed the fear of prison. He said it is different to go into prison for a theft and different to go in for satyagraha (civil disobedience). As youngsters, we had our enthusiasm, but we needed some channel. We took Gandhi to be our channel. We don't repent for that.
TIME: Did you not admire his principles of non-violence? Godse: Non-violence is not a principle at all. He did not follow it. In politics you cannot follow non-violence. You cannot follow honesty. Every moment, you have to give a lie. Every moment you have to take a bullet in hand and kill someone. Why was he proved to be a hypocrite? Because he was in politics with his so-called principles. Is his non-violence followed anywhere? Not in the least. Nowhere.
TIME: What was the most difficult thing about killing Gandhi?
Godse: The greatest hurdle before us was not that of giving up our lives or going to the gallows. It was that we would be condemned both by the government and by the public. Because the public had been kept in the dark about what harm Gandhi had done to the nation. How he had fooled them!
TIME: Did the people condemn you?
Godse: Yes. People in general did. Because they had been kept ignorant

If you are reading this.........

Its been a long time since I blogged last and it wasnt because I dint find time.Somehow the very idea escaped my mind.And so, after such a long hiatus I am back!New Year came and went as usual nothing out of the blue happening.No resolutions.Have been doing quite a bit reading these days and it feels nice.And there was this Arthur Hailey character who feels just like me - there s this guy in Strong Medicine who finds his earlier works so amateurish and naive that given a chance he wants to tear them up!!And thats the way I feel now, like every other time.And thats the way I would be feeling about this particular post too.In fact that feeling's already started......So what if you are reading this?I dint!!!

The majority isnt always right!!

One of the comments I received for my previous posts was that the majority isnt always right!!Of course the majority is usually never right.Precisely because what is obvious to most eyes is just what is happening in front of their eyes-the present.
My last post was about how Chandrababu Naidu ended paying for his good governance.Yes people like chief ministers who give them free electricity,free seeds,free water,free insecticides-you name it.These chief ministers are always the more popular ones.But then let me put a question-Wont somebody have to pay for this?So who pays?The chief minister?The agricultural minister?The government?Naah.Its you and me-the working class who end up paying taxes which are used for giving subsidies.And to whom?To the rich farmers!!Yes I said rich farmers.
People who own more land,who have more land under agriculture will obviously profit more from these subsidies.And farmers with more land usually tend to be better off than most of their counterparts, except ofcourse during famines when perhaps larger land holdings might mean larger debts.And what finally comes out of these gross subsidies which in any ways dont reach out to the people actually in need thanks to rampant corruption, gross inefficiency and a lethargic bureaucratic approach-deficit!!The treasury runs out of cash that it cant even pay its own employees.But then our politicians make good out of even this-just blame the previous government.Like they say spend the first two years of your tenure giving media interviews on how the state was being inefficiently and corruptly managed by your predecessor,the next two years in trying to swindle as much as you can from the treasury and last one year thanking people for voting you, telling them how five years werent enough to wipe out all the bad that your predecessor had done and so requesting them to give you another five years for the business left unfinished.

Good Governance

There is this subject we have called Indian Society in Transition-where our guest faculty more or less talks about the great Indian urban-rural divide,how the poor grow more poorer while the rich get richer and....
And today we got to view this Assamese or Bengali or Oriyan short film-where this girl called Laali wants to go to school but her parents want her to graze goats.So she studies without her ppl knowing.When they find out they get angry.Then her mom falls sick and she doesnt take the proper dosage because her husband is illiterate and cant read the presciption.So they have to take her to the city hospital which will cost money hence warranting a trip to the mahajan.The mahajan tries to swindle the father which Laali manages to thwart.Father learns his lesson and Laali gets to attend school.
During the discussion our faculty talked about good governance and Corruption Vs. Inefficiency.And this was where this classmate of mine cited S.M.Krishna and Chandrababu Naidu.Vhandrababu Naidu was after all voted the best Chief Minister.So why wasnt he re-elected?Anti encumbancy factor did him in?Or was it that his over zealousness in projecting Hyderabad as Cyderabad that did him in.If my memory serves me right think I read in India Today as to how most ppl in the rural areas voted for the Congress-simply cos he did nothing for them!!
This set me thinking.Was Chandrababu Naidu's model wrong?After all you cant concentrate on all areas simultaneously.And not all areas will respond to these development works in a similar manner.So you would first start out with areas you think will respond more to whatever it is that you will carry out.And the trickle down effect works faster.Making a farmer or a craftsman rich and then making him buy computers will take long time.But make a software company rich,make the s/w engineer grow richer-he goes out , spends more money-perhaps more on mobiles and cars and such things but also on other things.He doesnt buy more food just because he earns more than he once did but then more money is in circulation and this money does reach the "lower rungs" of the society.And this takes comparativly less time to achieve.Isnt this just what Chandrababu Naidu was trying to do?
But then the ethical question is that can you always shrug and say this serves the majority and that the maximum good to the maximum people is always the right option?The rural community isnt the minority-after all most of the Indian population lives in villages.However there is more of money circulation in the cities and towns than in villages perhaps because there arent as many reasons and ways to spend in a village than in a city.Hence money passes more hands and more ppl are benefitted.And hence,though it may seem as if just one particular sector was being given more priority, in fact this model serves the purpose and for all!

Intelligence Quotient

one lazy sunday afternoon.nothing much to do and i switched on my system and got to the yahoo page.And i typed intelligence quotient, dunno why but that was the first thing that came to my mind!And I came across this page which talks about how Jesus Christ has the highest iq ever recorded(by the way back then did they even have this concept of iq leave alone iq testing).
Mind you I amnt giving this any communal colour to this.But I just found this article outrageously humourous!!
Says this article
quote "Modern tests differentiate minute details, such as from one year of age to the next. We do not have those details, but do have that a child of 12, which can also be generally stated as 1/2 adult. A preliminary low estimate so far would then be the given age times 2, or 100 x 2 = 200 IQ Jesus interacted with the smartest people. Adults generally have a range of about 70 IQ to 130 IQ, with the smartest people of a representative community perhaps having an IQ of about 130 to 150. So we are looking at 300 IQ for a low estimate. But Jesus interacted with the smartest people. Adults generally have a range of about 70 IQ to 130 IQ, with the smartest people of a representative community perhaps having an IQ of about 130 to 150. So we are looking at 300 IQ for a low estimate." unquote
OK this sound ridiculous but do you know what is more ridiculous and outrageous.This article also talks about Galileo, how many people think him to be smart although he struggled with his own ideas.Yet if he were around today he would be in grade school because any modern 12 year old knows a helicopter doesn't look like his illustration.A 12 year knows how one looks like beacuse he's seen one!!again the article says
quote "IQ is to measure intelligence, not behavior or teaching patterns, therefore a high appraisal is figured at 300 as noted above, times subjective guesstimate 1.5 = 450Q."unquote
What was the logic behind this article??
And then ofcourse there was another one I found which talked about why Asians typically score more on an IQ test while most of the research work and innovation happens in the US.A guy replied IQ is a measure of your learning capabilities!(!!)And so they import all the technology from the US and use them in their backyard!But then arent most of the researchers in US of Asian origin.And who ever said that IQ was a measure of your learning capabilities??
Needless to say it was pretty much entertaining to go through all this stuff!!

Deadlines and Evaluations

Reading thru my blog and my diary all that I find are references to the exams,the presentations,the quizzes that I had and how I muffed up.Hasn’t anything else been happening in my life that I can even think about?All these five months that I have spent here have not entirely been academic centric and for that matter I haven’t ever been that kinda studo.But yet all that is constantly crossing my mind these days are my grades,my summer placement and final placement.But is that what a b-school is all about?
Or is that all that I want from my life?deadlines and performance appraisals?You need to have deadlines because there ought to be a definite time frame within which a job needs to be completed .Evaluations are indeed important because u need to know how well or how bad u have fared. But is that all to life?

26 October

Had finance and business law exams today.Pathetic as usual.Have been listening to music all day.Finished reading Harry Porter and the Half Blood Prince today(know thats late.could get my hands upon it today just today!)Feel very bad the way my life is going on.Am I really doing justice to my program.My grades are kinda okies but I havent been doing stuff I should be doing.I am still allergic to the brown paper!Not that I expected to like reading all that stuff just by joing a B-School.But somehow I always felt that I would definitely appreciate the paper if I only knew certain things-things I would learn or expected to learn at a B-School.Sadly thats not what happened.I dont even read the Hindu these days!!And to think that there were times when the first thing I used to do in the morning was to read the newspaper without even brushing my teeth. Mom used to get mad at me!And fighting with Dad as to who got to read the paper. Time does fly; by more so when all that you want to do is hold tightly to it, not wanting to let go.Called up Vasu's place in Chennai.She is in Hyderabad!Feel happy for her.She's got into Infosys.Anyways have Economics and Management in Information Systems(!) together tomorrow.

25th October

Had a market research paper in the morn which was pathetic.On expected lines though!Not having prepared or anything.Had a Executive communication paper in the afternoon which was okies kind.Had to write an essay on Research Report Writting.If not anything else my prof for sure will have a couple of laughs!Have finance and business law together tomorrow!Dont know a word.But what the hell!I managed to create my first blog,ruined it,deleted it and again created my blog with the same url-all on the same day!!