Loss and Gain

You never know the worth of anything until you have lost it. Had a chance to go to the place I was born and brought up for my cousin's wedding. The love and affection we received from there made me re-evaluate the kind of life I am leading - far away from most of the people who really know me and whom I know well too.

By the time you pick up some friends and contacts and begin to take root, you find again that it is time to move. And then you leave, leaving behind memories that gradually fade into dull images, occasionally refreshed when you go visiting them - for real, or now virtually, on FB or other networking sites. But mostly it is 'out of sight, out of mind'.

Of course, time smoothens out the rough edges. You tend to forget the little fights and grudges seem to pointless when you are so far away. What remains are sweet memories that smell of roses; forgotten garbage doesn't stink. 

So back we are to the city, where our days are ruled by the digital clocks  and watches, where our time is at least as precious as money and where anonymity is the norm. I do not know my neighbours. Why get to know them when I know they will be gone by next week? Peripheral attachments are the least painful ones when being removed.

Of course, we love the anonymity. It gives us freedom to do what we want without having people around us worrying themselves to death about our 'deviant behaviour'. It makes us all instrumentalists, rational men and women who choose their goals and means rationally rather than emotionally.

And as the politician from Britain said, Gandhi was wrong about villages. The future of this country is in its towns and cities. How much ever you romanticise it, there is not much charm in living in a rural area that kills freedom of thought and action in the name of culture and tradition.

Still water stinks in the long run.

Some things change, some do not.

Having listened to absolutely lame jokes about memory loss and numerical illiteracy by from the Home Minister, we are forced to redefine the meaning of 'Just when you thought it couldn't get any worse, it did'.

US Govt's IQ went up finally. They have realised in the end that no matter what you do, how muchever you give, Pakistani army will nourish the terrorists it thinks are good and kill the ones it thinks are bad. 'It', of course refers to the top brass of Pak army and no one else. So better save the money in these hard times.

Palestinians are trying to get their state recognised in the UN General Assembly. Of course, Israel will find some way to thwart it. The rest of the world can just wonder at how such a small country that is barely visible on my mini-globe dictates terms to the whole world. Amazing. Stunning. Moral: Never judge anyone/anything by his/her/its size.

Enjoying a week of peace without fasts and blasts and diesel price hikes in the country. I understand that Congress has no intention of returning to power in the next general election. Or it already has some news that BJP is going to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Or that BJP will lose the election by D-L method. Like our cricket team. It obviously loses the games it plays badly in. But even if it puts up a winning show, rain and D-L do them in.

I am not going to learn the name of the Japanese PM until the day of examination. It is a futile, pointless exercise to learn a difficult name and then to unlearn it when the next one takes charge, even before the year finishes.

It seems EU and Germany have got themselves addicted to 'economic cliffhanging' like the Republicans. The IMF report on global economy of the year is sure gonna read like a best-selling, nail-biting, on-the-edge-of-your-seat, nightmarish thriller. However, movies and books do end.

The climate here is absolutely horrible. I sometimes feel I'm being microwaved. And whenever I read about morons denying climate change, I am reminded about my hobby in seventh standard - I would draw hundreds and thousands of triangles and measure their internal angles in the hope that at least for one of them, the sum of the angles wouldn't be 180 degrees. No, I was a perfectly normal and happy child.

Sometimes I just wonder why our government makes unimplementable laws. After a lot of thinking, I find that it may be doing so, so that the public 'servants' may find their work 'intellectually stimulating' (and financially rewarding).

While reading Indian history, I am just shocked to find how little the government has changed even after independence. We even continue to have the tax on salt that Gandhi protested against in his Dandi march. Not to say of corruption, police excesses, government indiffernce, etc.

So much for our tryst with destiny. I'm feeling miserable.

Absurdities

The proposed Women's Code Bill in God's Own Country seeks to punish parents with more than two children and people/institutions promoting such families with a fine or a prison term. The Bill would have made sense in any other state in India but never in Kerala. The state will be facing the problem of declining, ageing population soon.

A good number of American politicians and elected representatives do not agree with the general scientific view on climate change or evolution. This in a country that is (or was?) at the frontier of all scientific and technological development in the past few decades. Sorry to rub it in, but is moronism the new religion in the U.S?

Japan, very famous for its law abiding, orderly population, also has very corrupt politicians.

ISI claims to be fighting terror. (Give me a break!)

Silvio Berlusconi continues to be the PM of Italy which has a predominantly Roman Catholic population. Taking the spirit of forgiveness to new heights!

CBI claims to be an independent agency. (I'd rather believe that sun rises in the west.)

TRAI believes limiting the max. no. of smses a person can send to 100/day will help stop both spamming and terrorist activities. [Yeah! ;)]

Saudi Arabian women can vote and contest in elections, but can't drive.

life and laziness

The fan is on. Books lie on my table, on my bed, on my chair, everywhere. It is a long time since I felt serious enough to read those. The exam approches nearer every second, but I don't have the heart to read all those books.

Life seems empty most of the time. It seems to be an eternal wait for some excitement. Yawns succeed yawns, tv shows no longer make me laugh or cry or even smile. I just go on living like dead wood. Is this life?

The things I want to buy never reach the stores. Silly mistakes are made all the time. I live as if I'm some kind of addict when I am not. I wonder how I would be if I were actually addicted to something.
Even depressions add beauty to life. A soft, sad touch or may be evn the harsh, violent tone. Not denying that joy is the most beautiful colour of all. Yet things of beauty are rare in the world.

What do you call a life without emotions? Where you get to know that another week of your precious life has gone by when your mother drags you to the Mass on Sunday mornings? When you fail to distinguish between mornings and afternoons and midnights? When you feel that your life is becoming dry in spite of the fact that you are young and optimistic?

I'd like to go on a tour. Or read a wonderful book. Or take a walk to the beach. To see the golden sunset. The roaring waves. To feel the angry, blowing wind. To live again.

And you still wonder if I'm lazy?

ApologiesApologies

The biggest problems with the government service are the Official Secrets Act and the Civil Service (Conduct) Rules. A civil servant cannot criticise the government and its policies, however rotten they may be. For me, criticism is as natural as breathing. And three months in a highly secretive establishment was enough to make me paranoid about the stuff I write. Hence the long break. Like Holmes said, everything related to my previous job has been completely washed off my brain. So no need to worry now.

We will start by roasting the Republicans in the U.S. because right now, they are the worst idiots in the universe, bar none. (How I wish I could use stronger language!) Their presidential candidates are global-warming-denying, bible-thumping fools who would take the world down with them if any one of them got elected. Not that I am an Obama fan. I'm tired of his showmanship as much as anyone. But at least he sounds like he has got a modicum of grey matter in his head though it is of not much use these days.

I was watching in horror as the Republicans and the Democrats made a cliffhanger of a simple decision of raising the debt limit. Whatever anyone else says, S&P was right in downgrading the U.S. rating. Somebody ought to give them a shock treatment at times.

With the unemployment rate standing still and the announcements of downsizing by the finance sector firms, we are nearing the border of another recession. And our biggest problem is that this world has no one to really look up to.

In U.S., Barry is more concerned about his re-election than saving the world economy, the heads of the Wall Street still believe that the world hasn't moved on from 'Greed is good' days of Gecko, intelligent and sensible Republicans are an extinct breed, Dems are useless and Main Street is helpless.

In EU, the French are mired in controversies, the Germans can never be convinced to spend enough, the Italians and the PIIGS....(don't know how many more countries can a malformed animal name accommodate) countrymen need money to pay their bills thanks to unbelievable levels of spending, dropping efficiency and militant trade unionism.

And the BRICS haven't arrived yet, whatever the economists may say about the Chinese dragon and the Indian back office.

In our own country, we have got a double digit inflation level, a government which seems to be still afraid of reforms in spite of a general support for it on top of a good parliamentary majority and an opposition which has only one panacea for, one opinion on, each and every problem affecting this country: 'We want the PM to resign'.

We had a meaningless, fruitless fast-cum-media-cum-middle-class-campaign in the past few weeks which promised to cure the country of all ills but ended with a defeat-masked-as-unconditional-victory. Right now, we have the C-company taking on the A-company. Hell, if half the people who supported the campaign stopped giving or taking bribes, corruption will be soon buried. Now that the jingoistic farce has ended, I hope people will go back to their old ways. Otherwise, we may lose out on our way to become the most corrupt country in the word.

The Sports bill, a sensible bill that has come out of the sports ministry will never see the Legislature. And nothing will happen to the governments in Delhi, Gujrat, Karnataka or any other state. We always fight for abstract principles and theoretical institutions. We will figh or fast till our death for them. Reforming the existing institutions or even supporting the people trying to do so is so passe. Where is the groundswelling support for Hegde or the Gujrat Lokayukta or even the Sports bill?

This world is doomed.