Gandhism

How does it feel to share ones birthday with as great a personality as Mahatma Gandhi? It may be a heady feeling and it may well be a responsibility also as I discovered soon after I reached an age of understanding my surroundings and perceiving the happenings with more clarity .Or may be there is something in that date(2nd October) itself which makes one behave in a particular fashion.
First time when I realized it, I was a seven years old, class two student. Usually, I was considered a good student by my teachers, both in academics and extra curricular .I always found books very fascinating but for one…yes I could never get myself to like Mathematics specially the tables. Nonetheless, I tried hard to get at least as much marks as was required to come in top three positions and more or less always managed to get as much. My final exam was approaching but this time it seemed to be going haywire and I got apprehensive and anxious about the Math paper and in my anxiety did something which I felt would help me score good marks. I wrote the tables on the back of my exam board! The question paper was distributed and everyone started writing the paper in silence. That day our Principal was in our classroom. I did the sums which I knew and then needed the help of that table written behind the board Meanwhile the Principal kept on taking his rounds .when I felt confident that I was out of his sight I slowly tried to turn the board.
“Any problem”?, reverberated the voice of the Principal .I looked up. He was standing overhead and his hand was advancing towards my exam board! I gathered all my guts and said, “Oh no, everything is fine…was just stabilizing the board.”
He looked in to my eyes…“I know, you can’t do anything wrong”, he said and left. I heaved a sigh of relief but the words he spoke kept drumming in my mind… “you can’t do anything wrong”…Yes, I left the sums which required me to refer to the table and came home. The result was announced after a few days. I stood second by a narrow margin but still felt like a winner. Surely I had overcome the temptation to cheat and it was enough a reason for me to feel like a conqueror!
It has been about twenty five years since then and even now when I am on the verge of committing anything which is considered not in sync with society norms or established virtues, a voice seems to echo somewhere, “you can’t do anything wrong ”!!!!
At times I have spoken the truth even at the cost of my own self-esteem and have suffered the embarrassment and awkwardness too but honestly it was nothing if compared to the contentment and gratification I felt afterward.
I may not fight for masses as Gandhi did but still feel a sense of accomplishment by simply standing by the truth…ALWAYS.

The status of Hindi in contemporary India

The ever burgeoning Hindi channels on Indian television, both in entertainment and news segment seem to consolidate Hindi's position as a preferred language but a close look and you know the reality! Just take a look at today's youth in metroes and cities and the truth will be far more than revealed. Even when they use Hindi for a change,its peppered with English words.
There was a time when a course in Hindi was a preferred subject at higher levels but its no longer so, where as English' growth towards north is manifest.
Its quite apropos to mention one incident...there is this friend of mine who, while discussing the school admission procedure ,recalled his school days and said with nonchalance or rather with a tone of pride that since he studied in convent he had difficulty in clearing the Hindi paper in the entrance test of the next school when his father was transferred. I have my doubts if that nonchalance would have existed at all had he failed in English!
And the trend is reflected not in educational Institutes only, its equally palpable in the other areas of activities. Now its being increasingly associated with distinguishing the class also. The higher the class,the more use of English.Even the literature is no longer an exception.Gone are the days when writers like Mahadevi Verma, Munshi Premchand, Maithili Sharan Gupt, JaiShankar prasad,Ramdhari Singh Dinkar influenced and introduced revolutionary thoughts in many generations. The house stocked with their books usually had a high status in society. Now its difficult to find a person from the upper crust of the society ,buying a Hindi Literary work . whether its a neighbourhood bookstore,a posh library or a railway platform bookstall, its the Salman Rushdis,Jhumpa Lahirihis, Vikram Chandras ,Anita Desais who are ruling the roost.Not that we did not have the writers in English earlier-who can forget the great R K Narayan and his creation Swami, Swami Vivekanand, Rabindranath Tagore or Mulkraj Anand-but Hindi was never sidelined like this.
Is it something to do with the evolving thought process of the educated urban young Indian population who after having been exposed to different cultures and sensibilities find it difficult to understand , appreciate or relate to the restricted thinking of the vernacular writers?

Although there are some who try to stablish the fact that Hindi is growing in popularity by giving the example of increasing readership of Hindi news paper but its simply the result of growing literacy rate in North India and that means the people in rural areas can read Hindi only and have no other option. By no means it can be taken as an indication of growing popularity of Hindi.
It does make one wonder what is there in store for Hindi? Will it ever be able to reclaim its lost glory?May be yes,if the language can broaden its views and its outlook.

Oscar

Oh..Gowd...My net was down for the last three days and I am already feeling archaic in terms of news and happenings around...yeah the great old television is there but...nothing can match the instant and spontaneous nature of net and yes i did miss blogging!! By the way,got to know that apna India has been finally able to send a non controversial entry after three years-(hey don't you remember last time it was this -oops forgot..something to do with the royal secrets and guards)-to the Oscar in the guise of Taare Zameen par.Hope this time 'MR I DON'T CARE ABOUT AWARDS' gets the Oscar home.

Now since I am talking about this oscar thing...I thought about it for a while..is it really important for the Indian cinema to be recognized by a country and culture which hardly seem to understand ours and which seem to hold entirely a different perspective towards life ethos and culture!What is it that makes us crave for the recognition by them?

Quintessentially our movies are manifestations of life,colour, vigour and joy with our own interpretation of the same.It may seem incongruous to the Academy of American Motion Pictures but who cares?Yes there is no denying that technically they are far better than us but then as they say, recognizing ones weakness is one step ahead towards the goal.As far as content is concerned we too have movies like 'Do bigha zameen' ,' Ardh Satya' ,'bazaar' ,Dil chahata hai,rang de basanti,lagaan....bheja fry,khosla ka ghonsla....and the list goes on......So why are we fussing and palavering about getting that Oscar?In any case America has been fleeced out .Now may be they will have to find out producers for their films from third world countries..who knows?.Ha..ha..ha....But in any case.....I am waiting for the day when the movies from all over the world jostle for our very own Filmfare award in the foreign film category.Amen.....

Why do we let go of certain values when we grow up?

Today my son's (he is seven years old) friend came home to play with him. They were playing and talking within my earshot. In between their usual chit chat there was this very unusual(for the grown up world) thing which caught my attention. My son was telling him about something which had happened three four days back but was not very clear about it so to he tried to give some reference to that event."arre jis din hamara jhagda hua tha" (the day we fought!).And here they were...sitting together again and chatting away to the glory!!
It made me wonder what it is that take away this quality from us when we grow up? Why do we become so polite that we no longer express our views with clarity.Why do we let our ever burgeoning ego come between us and our loved ones? Why do we let the pretense take over our personality? We seem to have lost our ability to argue without having the fear of losing respectability.We do not speak our mind specially if its against the mass held idea!We nurse our ego and let go our friendship......At times I do wonder if the very purpose of growing up has become redundant? Aren't the children better off than the grownups?

the relevance/ irrelevance of social networking sites

Finally I broke free...!!! Free of those so called social networking sites.Though I still am a member of one of the various social networking sites which float in the virtual world nonchalantly....most of the profiles I had created are non existent now...but not before it forced me to think why I had joined it at the first place and now why I am feeling a sense of near ecstasy after coming out of it? And seems the ordeal was not secluded to me only!According to a study by comScore Inc..the growth in new users of these site in North America is beginning to level off. Paradoxically this is the place where it all started!!!
There is no denying that these sites offer excellent platform to social as well as business networking but unfortunately, while the business networking through these sites may be rational and corroborative for the ones seeking business liasioning,it seems to be taking nowhere when it comes to pure social networking.
Apart from being prone to identity theft.....this well may be a platform where unsolicited friend requests keep popping up and if you do take the risk of checking the profile of those sending you the interest...be sure to be encountered( in most of the cases) by some porn video or something similar to that.
After studying various profiles(if its not set to 'private'),I felt that it was more to do with seeking solitude and doing things(in this case,expressing) in the safety of the vast audience of the virtual world,which generally can't be performed in a civilized society without losing the social respect and standing and yet be securely unrecognized.And it was not long before my thought got verified in the form of an invite from someone I knew(not)but obviously he was oblivious to who I was!Only when I wrote the message thanking him for the invite and conveying my regards for his wife,did he realize who I was!!He,who I had known as a person of worldly virtues(though this itself is debatable)was here with the kind of profile a teenager possess'. A happily married person with two teenage children was here for dating!!
Then there was this person who kept asking for 'friendship" despite innumerable denials and even after reporting 'abuse'. And these kinds of incidences left me wondering whether my profile was there for me or for those unwanted visitors?
Apart from these visitors I was feeling equally trapped by those omnipresent advertisements which seemed to galvanize my whole identity......With each use there was this palpable sense of being used as a commodity.
And more over,I started having the doubts about very purpose of these site.Do we really need these sort of things to stay connected with our near and dear ones? Will these sites ever be able to help us in nurturing and maintaining a good relationship with our immediate neighbours in the real world? Will it ever teach us that it is more important to know the people and environment surrounding you in the real world than knowing and developing that 'not so real ' relationship in that virtual world?

Are women really free?

When we talk about the freedom , liberty and equality for women...do we really mean it?Yes,indeed the basic and core meaning will remain empowering women with education,financial independence in order to provide them the aforementioned status and we are somewhat getting there but after that??The truth is, socially women are as oppressed as ever and the society in general and men men in particular hold the same inequitousness towards women!!!
Here I am talking about the so called upper crust of the society which we are made to believe is a place where women have more say and can roam around with much more surety and security than their counterparts in a lower rung society.
The other day I went with my son to a club for a social evening which was supposed to b a non formal family event. After playing two rounds of Tambola we went for the dance and while I was dancing my heart out with a friend of mine...this fellow came up and asked if i could dance with him...yeah...ok I know whats the big deal if he asked? I refused and thought the matter to be settled but to my utter surprise he kept popping up, asking the same thing, ofcourse adding something extra with every request.After a point I didn't even deigned to respond to his remarks!What was this and why?....because i was staying alone and dared to attend a social evening and entertain myself, dressed in that nice looking dress? And I knew that there have been instances where the so called male mentality has blamed the dressing sense of women for all the wrongs done to them(the women).I could not handle that anymore and returned home with the thought that next time I will go only when my husband is by my side.....!!!And came with that, the thought..am I really free ..am I really independent?At least at that point of time I didn't think so or may be we will have to redifine the meaning of freedom for women.