Indian society's acceptance of affection

It is very strange that while we call ourselves as a close knit society which considers its people equal, cares about those who are a part of it and is counted in one of the most social communities in the world is hesitant to the idea of accepting declaration of affection in public. When I say, declaration, it is not the same as display, that is far beyond even the scope of discussion for our community, what I mean here is just acknowledging love or affection towards someone and when I mean affection in public it includes all the relationships, whether it is declaring affection towards your father/mother/sister/wife anyone.

I am unable to understand why is our society not able to accept it when someone wants to declare their love towards someone in public, why does it make people of our society uncomfortable to accept that someone might have the need to express the love towards his dear ones, in public. Is it that they feel tacky about the idea itself. The other day someone posted a status thanking his father for all the wonderful things he has given his son, and what I see is a fountain of comments like: "Why dont you just send an sms to your father", "Oops! My Dad isnt on facebook, it means I cant celebrate fathers day now", "And here comes the showering of father's day messages".

It is interesting to think how come we never came up with any of these days; "father's day", "mother's day", "Valentine's day" or even "Teacher's day", while on the other hand we have each day of the week dedicated to a God and have hundreds of festivals but all in the name of religion, I am not against thanking God, but we should also thank those who showed us the way to God and who have an emotional presence in our lives. Instead, what we choose to do is, we refuse to accept these special days, we label them as westernised culture or commercialized festivals with hidden intentions of some particular industries who would want to increase their sales using these days. Coming back to the comments like: "Why dont you just send an SMS to your father?",  what is the meaning of festival or a special day?, isnt it celebrating it with people, expressing your joy and happiness to the public and sharing the same feeling with those who celebrate the day? We are very happy celebrating other festivals like holi, diwali and christmas in public and with public, but we cant celebrate "father's day" or "valentine's day" in public, why? because we are a shy community which is still not exposed to the idea of someone thanking his near and dear one's in public. You can go ahead and thank God on the festivals for giving you what you asked for, but you cant thank you father on father's day in public, mother on mother's day in public and girlfriend on valentine's day.

Although a large number of people do support the idea of declaring their affection in public, but this message goes to those who think it should be a personal affair and thanking should be done privately, over a call or in a room or over a text message. I would request such people to stop ctritisizing those who want to acknowledge their love towards someone in public and instead start thanking the ones important to them, it isn't cool to just look down upon someone who has the courage to express his true feeling in public, not everyone is trying to gain publicity by thanking their dear ones in public, few likes or few comments in appreciation is not going to alter someone's life to a great extent.

Rise above your ego, rise above criticism, shed this behaviour of feeling empowered every time showing someone else down and start accepting things which might bring you close to the people who are important to you. CELEBRATE LIFE, it happens once :-)

 

Rendezvous with Kolkata (Part 1)

A small town boy with his bag hung around his shoulder and suitcase in his other hand lands up at a busy railway station, people start rushing their way to the exit gates of the station as soon as the train arrives at the platform. There are some nearby mumbles and some distant shouts in a strange language which sounds like someone experimenting talking out loud with a “rosogulla” in his mouth. “Taaaaaxi laaagbaay keee”.

 

The young lad exits the gates of the railway
station to find himself facing a huge bridge over a river with a holy significance, not only for those who live in this place, but for someone who is alien to this city can also sense the aura of this river “Ganga”. There are people walking with bunch of bananas on their head to be sold, wooden buses which seem like a magnified form of toy buses. Welcome, to the “City of Joy”, but the young fellow didn’t know where to look for joy. He was expecting cleaner streets, taller buildings, fewer people on the roads and expected more from a city which was a metro and was once the capital of India when India was still under British rule.

Probably it was too early to befriend a city, but they say that “the first impression is the last impression”. Well, that is not true with this city. He did not like the city at the first sight, it was too simple for him, but what he overlooked was the lessons it would teach him in the next few years, give him a different perspective to look at life and people.

The first outbound visit our guy made in Kolkata was to a busy street market named “Esplanade”, the whole area would give the feel of the city still living in the British era, with the same old English style buildings with huge windows and the trademark red color which was once the symbol of colonization. Why, is this place so famous? Was what he exclaimed by looking at it, after all it is just another street market around the whole area. Soon,  he realized that it was the people who gave the place the recognition it bears and not the buildings or aesthetics, the buildings will be there for may be one more century, but what remains the same is the enthusiasm of people shopping on those streets, the bargaining happening with the vendors around, it is those girls who end up in a catfight when they want the same piece of bag or shoe which makes “Esplanade”, it is those men who stop at the lemonade stall out of tiredness to quench their thirst that makes “Esplanade”. The street food, which makes you curious to look into other’s plates for temptation than your own, the bakeries and markets so widespread underground, that you are compelled to think if these were built by some secret civilization like Mohanjodaro or Harrapa. Then there are movie halls, single screen movie halls were still the more prominent ones in Kolkata then. Globe and Metro were movie halls which were a regular hang out for all genres of people, since till then the multiplexes hadn’t spread their branches in the Cine Tree of Kolkata. Oh! And how can you forget the juvenile eyes that would often meet at the crossroads of esplanade for the search of that someone special in your life. The great Mughlai food at Rehmania would lead you to a different era all together, and what better can it be than to spend your evening walk at park street.

 

This is the difference between any city which is made of buildings and a city which is made of it’s people, the one made of people will give you an experience, something to take back with you, leaving a part of you in it and sneaking away a part of it with you, the one with buildings have bricks and mortar and they are the same everywhere.

By now our guy had learned how to look at the city, he knew that he had to stop, feel the ambience of any place, look at the people, get the feel of the place and not just visit someplace but be there, then and there, that’s how you look at Kolkata.

There are cities which boast of being the financial capital of the nation and cities which claim to be the fastest developing ones in the country, but here is a city which is developing slow, agreed, which is not the most developed one, agreed, but this city surely knows how to respect opinions, you can see the streets of Jadavpur college and Presidency college being jammed with young college students discussing politics and the participants may even consist of an active Politician being one of the members listening to them. Try raising your opinions in the much developed ones, either you have to be too loud to get your opinions to those concerned or you won’t have time from the rat race to try sharing them.

Our guy has seen the very true fact which is often spoken about India, in Kolkata. There are two Indias and similarly there are two Kolkatas, one is of those who go to City Center malls, who go to underground and venom and are the joy part of this “city of joy”, the other is of those who stay in temporary slums of alipore, who are not even the city part of this “city of joy”. If you are someone who is not accustomed to looking at this part of India, you are barely half Indian, and in Kolkata you can find both the Indias living in harmony.

Park street, is the joy part of the Kolkata and our hero is no stranger to it, he has visited every restaurant at Park street which could give him gastronomical delight. There are nowhere such coffee shops, which could relax you and make you have a conversation over coffee with their signature heritage style than in Kolkata, Fluries, T3 (now shut L) give you more than what CCD and Barista can ever give, they make you feel homely and indulge you with their environment rather than imposing it on you. They don’t give you a menu, they give you a platter to select from, it makes you feel like home each time you visit them. The food at each and every place in Park Street is to die for, be it the small roll shop which could make you wonder what do they put in it to make it taste heavenly and you might have to fight with a good number of people to make it to its counter and order one, but it is worth the experience.

There’s more to Kolkata which can’t be covered in two pages or in one thought, but it sure is a laid back city which takes it’s own time to introduce itself to you, if you rush through it you will miss it’s soul, if you look around and take the feel of the city, you will know it and know it well.

“ POREY DEKHA HOBEY” (Leaving it to you for translating)    

Do we really need FDI in education sector?

Let me tell you a small story. Couple of months back, when we were getting our house re-innovated, there were a lot of masons working on the house. Among them was "Hiralal" a 12 yr old kid who was working as a mason, when i noticed a minor working under the premises of my house I brought it under the concern of my parents and spoke with the child myself. On asking, what led him to work at such an early stage of life? and whether he went to school or not? His reply was- "Saab, I am the only male member of my family and i want to study, but there is no one who can pay my educational expenses, thus I myself have to earn in order to attend night school". Here is a child whose dreams will be shattered if FDI is allowed at such a nascent stage in the education sector in India.FDI in aviation and retail is much understood, aviation industry in India is quite inefficient and needs a strong backbone build up for working efficiently, retail industry will give consumers with more choices and bring in competition with FDI, but education industry in India is neither inefficient nor does it require competition at this stage. Indian education sector till higher secondary is very diverse in it's nature, there are government schools, trustee schools, private and semi-private schools which cater to the education of youth. What FDI will do to Indian education sector is that it will increase the class difference in the education system. Of-course there will be more International schools of the likes of Woodstock and Pacific international school and there will be teaching through I-pads and online workshops, but what would happen to the likes of hiralal? 38% of students live in rural and small town areas, there will be no question of them being able to afford the same facilities as the students of international schools, this will create a class difference in the Indian education system, pushing rural students out of the competition altogether.

 FDI is efficient in product and customer service areas, like aviation, retail or B2B scenario, but in areas which  are facility driven, FDI brings upgraded technology undoubtedly, but with a higher price tag. The question is why should it be FDI which should be brought in first and why not equality in the facilities across the diverse forms of institutions? Once there is a benchmark equality among government, private and semi-private schools, that will be the right time to announce FDI. There are many supporters of FDI in higher education sector, I would also support FDI in higher education provided the price tag association is not present, otherwise there is no incentive of having programmes like " free primary education". The ultimate objective of any educational programme in India is to remove the rural and underprivileged students from the shackles of class difference in the education sector and make the next generation equally competent across geographical and demographical boundaries and this aim will not be fulfilled until the shackled generation graduates and steps into an employed world. With the entry of foreign and more capital intensive players in the education sector, comes the motive of their running business, ROE, ROI are the terms which will be used in a sector which should talk about percentage cover. Though I fully support capitalist way of business, but capitalist business is always preceded by socialist way of business, first comes equality and then comes up-gradation. The same applies to education sector which requires equality first and then up-gradation. Though a free-market economy is the most efficient manner of trading and it is what ultimately benefits the market, producers and consumers is a true concept and thus the future of education sector also has FDI in store as a free market possession, but a free market economy functions it's best only when the ability and willingness to buy in the market is uniform and there are no wide disparities in these among the buyers. What's in store for the education sector in India is something which only future can tell, but there is one thing for sure, it will be highly interesting to see the sector shape up, the question is.........WITH or WITHOUT FDI???

NOT JUST ANOTHER TUNE

Music is not just seven notes, few chords, just another tune or the new chart buster. There's a bird in a cage and when you set it free you can hear it chirping, that is music. There's a car stuck in a cold winter night with it's engine down and you are on the driver's seat pressing the key harder each time, the roar of dim engine, that is music. Good music can inspire many, but real music has a lot of inspiration behind it.

    Contemporary music is my choice, different people connect differently with music and appreciate it differently too. Some clap, some tap their feet and some nod their head. There are emotions in you and for each emotion there is a connect. How you connect with your choice of music is by feeling the same which the musician might have felt when he had created it.                                        

    There's a guy who is passionate about music, he is sitting in his room and music pours into his ears, he listens to it and discovers that it is his favorite band playing across the corner, but he can not go, so he takes out his chair to the balcony, sits there with eyes close, lights a cigarette and enjoys the sole presence of music around him. He is appreciating his favorite band from a distance, but this distance itself is the connect between him and music, this distance is what he is enjoying in the music and not those seven notes.
   There's a deaf girl, whenever she sees anyone singing, playing guitar, she looks at their fingers striking the chords, the motion of the strings and the charisma of this music created on the face of the musician. It all is like a flow from the strings to the finger and then these chords strike her and she can feel something, some goosebumps, there's something moving in this silence which shakes her and makes her feels the presence of music. This silence is the connect between her and music, this silence is what she is enjoying in the music and not those seven notes.                                                                                                        
  There's much more than what music seems to be, it is not just seven notes, few chords or just another tune, it is a connect, a much deeper one.What's your connect?

REVOLUTION,ERA AND US.

Revolution is at the back of minds of every individual.There is no era of revolution.But it is breaking free from a particular era and stepping into another one,when all of them exist in the same time,in our lives,our minds,there is not just one era,but many of them.It is us who have to choose whether or not to live and die in the same one.To break free from one and step into other.There is a bhagat,a che,a fiedel,a vinci in our minds,in our era.

   It is an idea which has to be discovered and yes,idea is contagious,once we know it,it will spread like fire.We have been living our lives the way we have seen,we have been thinking the way we are taught to,right and wrong are so deep rooted in our conscience by the world that we don't want to search for it,we want to choose it blind folded.

  There is a chain which has bound us by tying in the cage of stereotype,of monotonicity and we have to break this chain and have the courage to take a step forward,to explore the world,to bring a REVOLUTION.

This world is hiding revolution from us and not letting us find it.But they don't know that "the more they try to hide a diamond from a pirate,the more he will desire to steal it.If revolution is hidden let us steal it.Let us show the diamond not just to ourselves but also to the world because beauty increases with appreciation.

When we think of revolution we perceive it wrong as opposing or revolt,yes!! it is opposing and revolt against the system which has caught you by hand on a traffic street and is not letting you cross.It is opposition of that system,moulding of it and changing it....