Colors of Bravery

It was while reading the newspaper last week that I chanced upon this. There was a news item about how two 6-year-olds saved a baby from being gored by two bulls. My first thought was that I should probably write a story on this. But when I sat in front of the computer, with nothing but a white Word document in front of me, I realized that story writing was just not meant for me. Oh yeah, I could have written something, but it just wouldn’t have made the same kind of impact that I’d wanted. So, I dropped the whole idea of doing it myself, though any of you talented folks can pick up the idea and try developing it into a story, and I won’t sue you for intellectual property rights or copyright violation or any such stuff.

There are yearly bravery awards which India gives on its Republic Day to children who have shown exemplary courage. Isn’t it really wonderful to see these children doing super-human stuff? In fact, the Principal of the school in which these particular kids mentioned in the newspaper report study said it inspired the whole school, and every student there wanted to do something brave. What set me thinking is what happens to these kids when they grow up. Do they grow up being brave? Do the pressures and responsibilities associated with adult life work towards eroding this element from them? Interesting thought, isn’t it?

As a child, I realized life was very simple for me. There was right and there was wrong. There was good and there was bad. There was black and there was white. There was a clear idea of what is to be done and what is not to be done. Do right things, do good things, because that’s the only way acceptable to God was what was drilled in. As I grew, I slowly began to realize that some things which looked right to me wasn’t really right at all; what I felt was good wasn’t always that way. Suddenly, things weren’t crystal clear anymore; there was a blur. What was black and white earlier started taking an increasingly grayish hue. Things that I would have done enthusiastically earlier were thought through and abandoned most of the time. I felt that as I thought more about something, I started seeing all that was wrong in what I was planning to do. Fear of failure was the biggest impediment.

How do we sustain the bravery shown by these young children? There are going to be umpteen hurdles for them to cross in their lives, and it is absolutely necessary that they sustain the spirit that they showed so early in life. Even as we talk about these few souls who were recognized, let us not forget about the millions of other children who show great courage in living through testing circumstances in an attempt to ultimately triumph in life. Their journey, while less recognized, isn’t one bit lesser. But as a nation, do we do enough to sustain this spirit? No, I am not questioning the governments, I am questioning each of us. Will we, as parents or guardians, encourage our kids to do what these children did if we knew what they were going to do? Will we allow them to do it again if such a situation were to arise? If so, there is still hope, and I always believe in hoping for the best!

Barriers Within

Ever since it gained independence from the British, India has been plagued by border disputes with two of its neighbours, Pakistan and China. We’ve also fought a few wars and few more skirmishes for this over the years. Even now, this issue remains active, and the border demarcation remains contentious. Every time a politician wants to drum up nationalism, they just have to talk about this one issue, and we can see a country divided on everything else joining together. This isn’t true just in India but also in Pakistan and to a lesser extent in China.

Whatever our politicians might be, they are definitely smart, sly but definitely street-smart. So, when they realize that they can never arise to the level of national politics, they use the tricks used at national level at a regional level. One prime example of this is the current escalation of tensions between Maharashtra and Karnataka. Even after almost 62 years since getting independence, we still don’t see ourselves as Indians first. We are Malayalis, Marathis, Biharis first and then Indians. Fights still erupt frequently in various parts of the country based on regional issues. It doesn’t matter to us whether India suffers, what seem to matter is whether Karnataka or Gujarat or UP succeed.

As a kid growing up in Kerala, I found it amusing when the elders in my house used to speak in terms of the three main divisions in Kerala during the British time – the kingdoms of Kochi and Thiruvithancoor, and Malabar which was under Madras. This was about 40 years after independence, but most of these people were yet to come out of the colonial mindset. It was pleasing indeed, then, to see that mindset slowly vanishing and a common indentity of being a Malayali replace it. Even so, I still thought of myself as a Malayali first.

Sometimes, it takes a tragedy or a disaster for us to wake up, and for me, it was the Kargil war. While I was shamed by what happened to Babri Masjid and was horrified by what followed in Mumbai, it never felt like awakening the Indian within me. To me, horrendous as it was, it still was a tit for tat. It was like two bullies, wanting to show their might off, taking on innocent and helpless bystanders to prove their point. Kargil was different. It was an attack on the nation, a breach of trust, and suddenly, it made me realize that in all our infighting, we probably are losing the bigger picture. I realized that being a Malayali wouldn’t matter much if India itself wasn’t there.

Coming back to what I started off, how does it matter if a district is in one state or the other? Why do few leaders think that the minority group of the border area is ill-treated by the majority group? In that same token, why would a minority group be ill-treated by the majority group? Are we helping the nation grow by such petty and narrow-minded approach? Or are we saying that we are willing to forego a common good for our personal and short-term gains? We fight among ourselves for our land, our water, our electricity…..how are we expecting others not to then? I always wonder whether I’d ever see we Indians rise above the regionalism in my lifetime. I guess time will tell, it always does.

Religion of Atheism

My brother’s a big fan of Monty Python series, and after watching their Life of Bryan during one of his sailing trips, he was all ga-ga about it. So, when I had some free time yesterday, I was reading about that movie in Wiki. To those not aware of the group, they are the modern masters of British comedy. As for the movie, it is a spoof on organized religion with a fair bit of political satire too thrown in. Apparently, this movie caused a lot of debate when it was released because it was thought to be anti-Christian because it talks about a Jewish person, Brian, who is born at the same time as Jesus, and is all about his life which finally ends atop a crucifix. In Wiki, I also read about how the director of the movie, and the others in the Monty Python group, defended it against various religious groups or leaders in debates in television or radio.

Going through all this just got me thinking about the religion of atheism. Atheism can roughly be defined as a lack of belief in Gods which would then translate to having no belief in religion. But how would the world have reacted if a similar movie had been made by an atheist from Iran (I choose Iran because they’ve got a great movie industry there), born to Muslim parents? Would it have been the same, or would the reactions have been even more vehement? If Satanic Verses were written by a westerner born to Christian parents, would he be still alive? Having said that, I don’t know whether the fatwa on Salman Rushdie is off or on.

In India, we did see an instance of M F Hussain painting Hindu goddesses nude. To start off with, if no one had told me it was a Hindu goddess, I’d not have known. Of course, the blame lies with me for not knowing modern art, where each color is supposed to mean something, each line’s supposed to mean something else. I realized how ignorant I was when I read a news item in which a horse’s painting was mistaken for a human’s, and art experts in Europe still thought it was great after knowing it was done by a horse and even had an exhibition of the same! So yeah, I really am ignorant about modern art. Probably, I should learn from that horse on how to paint.

Now, coming back to our topic, Hussain felt so much threatened that he felt safe to leave India for Dubai. His exhibitions were cancelled, his works vandalized. But we have our temples filled with similar or even more explicit images and idols – made by Hindu kings, of course. And to make matters better, they probably even weren’t atheists! How would Hindus have reacted if an atheist born to Hindu parents had done what Hussain did?

As a Hindu, the greatest atheists I have seen are in temples. One of those instances was at Kalighat in Kolkata. I had gone to that temple while in Kolkata for my wedding reception. So, there was this long queue for Kali’s darshan, and I wanted to offer Rs. 100 at the Hundi (a metal box for submitting offerings). Not finding one, and seeing everyone offering a priest standing before the Kali idol money, I thought that would be the common practice and did the same. This priest was shooing away everyone after about 10-20 seconds and did the same with me. That is when he glanced at the note I offered to him and saw that it was considerably more than the Rs. 5 or Rs. 10 he’d been receiving until then. He called me back even though I was eager to go out (having been used to the clean temples of Kerala, Kalighat was a totally different experience to me). So I returned, and he made me pray for about 2-3 mins even though the queue was really pressing hard for me to move on. He wanted me to continue praying kneeling down, but by then, I was beginning to worry more about my pants getting dirty, and Kali was definitely not in mind. Anyway, after so much praying, and a generous blessing from the priest, I felt rejuvenated and free of all the sins until then. Just as I was about to step out from the sanctum sanctorum, another priest stopped me and extended his hand. While I realized the gesture (being in India, you’ll also learn how to ignore it) and shook my head in the negative. Upon seeing this, he started off in Bengali, and according to my wife, a couple of words were definitely not fit to be used in a temple, but thankfully I didn’t know any Bengali at that time and could convincingly smile at all that and walk off. That, though, probably wiped off all the blessings I received from that first priest. It also made me realize that the second priest has to be one of world’s eminent atheists, to be right there in the sanctum sanctorum, demanding money, and to be angry enough to let out a torrent of abuse when not given, without any single thought about how God would react to all that. After that, I have given a special attention to priests, and I have found them to have definite traits of an atheist.

I am not sure I will receive any answers for the questions I raised here, but these are indeed genuine doubts I have. Does your religion matter if you are an atheist and want to criticize a religion?

Return to the Grind

It has been ages since I keyed something here, and there’s no specific reason for it. I guess I started off writing blogs in an effort to showcase my writing talent to the outside world, but when reality sunk in that only the closest of my friends would ever find my writings to be of good quality, it just petered out. Hard reality’s got to be the best critic. It just shows you where you stand in this world, and in times like these, for me, it isn’t always a pleasant one. After all, who’d be happy being covered in mediocrity. Then again, for someone like me who isn’t really willing to shake off the cobwebs of laziness, it becomes rather tedious to come out of it all.

Well, coming to the present, one might wonder why I’m writing again, then. I definitely am wondering it myself. One reason is because one of the 3-4 readers of my blog actually lost the address and has been pestering me for it. Now, even for someone as lazy as me, there’s something called as pride. How would it look if I did send her the address and she did check it up, only to find that it still contains the same old stuff as always? Since she knows me, it won’t actually come as a surprise, but then, I thought ‘why not surprise her and put something there?’ The other reason, which is probably the real one, is that I’ve been thinking of restarting the whole exercise, and this merely acted as the final push. Whatever it is, here I am, sitting in front of my computer, using the BACKSPACE more than anything else, as I try to construct some meaningful sentences.

New Year has arrived, and it has brought its own problems for me. While I had a blast on the New Year’s Eve and went for a day’s trip on 3rd, the excesses of these days finally caught up with me, and now I’m having a headache, sore throat, and a runny nose. I hate headaches. It could be because I rarely get them. No, not even after a night of binge drinking. So, when I finally do get them, it isn’t a very pleasant feeling. As for sore throat and runny nose, we’ve been companions for long. In fact, I’m missing that other friend of mine - wheezing. While the former two friends keep visiting me every second month or so, wheezing makes it a point to visit me during this season. There was a time when we were inseparable, but ever since I started flirting with inhalers, my relationship with wheezing has become rather platonic. Sure, she comes in once in a year, but hardly spends time with me. The thing is, she’s awfully jealous of all those inhalers and can’t just stand them. Even when I stopped seeing one of the inhalers – Budez – wheezing refuses to spend time with me.

Sore throat actually is a sore point between me and my wife. We both feel we are extremely compatible with each other, but there are these very few things in which we can’t agree upon. The treatment for sore throat is a prominent one among them. She is a staunch believer in salt warm water gargles while I am not. Of course, I’ve heard how good those gargles are for sore throat right from a very young age, but I somehow never felt much better gargling water, which was already burning and blistering the whole of my throat, but also which could cause me to spend an entire day on a WC (not welcome, you netizens, but western closet), spraying bile and other yucky stuff around. Our compatability, though, wins at the end in that she makes me do it once while I escape it the next time. Either way, the sore throat goes away only when it feels like going away.