SMS Gamesmanship (Banter)

Distances have been shortened by technology. Though not a very efficient job well done, it has done whatever it could to bring people closer. Distance need not always be measured by the kilometers between two people, in fact it need not be measured at all. It is felt more than measured.

Two people: X and Y, keep going despite the distance with a lot of wit, and humour, with technological aid. Here’s a sample of a flurry of text messages sent to each other as a part of their conversation. Funny and filled with banter to the persons involved but absolutely weird to a third person. Have a good read and notice the gamesmanship involved.

Person X to Person Y: I want to climb the Mt. Kanchenjunga
Person Y to Person X: I want to mount Ms. Kanchenjunga
Person X to Person Y: Get rid of your oriental fixation
Person Y to Person X: Get rid of your fixed orientation
Person X to Person Y: What’s wrong with you?
Person Y to Person X: Wrong you? With what?
Person X to Person Y: What was the fixed orientation thing? It’s too wide a term and can mean anything...
Person Y to Person X: A Thing too wide? It was an orientation term, and anything mean can fix it
Person X to Person Y: I am not mean. I am nasty.
Person Y to Person X: Nastiness is no mean time
Person X to Person Y: Well hung?
Person Y to Person X: Hung well…
Person X to Person Y: Ding DONG bell pussy in the well?
Person Y to Person X: Well Bell did dong her p****
Person X to Person Y: Whose?
Person Y to Person X: His sow…
Person X to Person Y: Why not the swine?
Person Y to Person X: Why swine the knot?
Person X to Person Y: Cos Juliet tried swinging her knot.
Person Y to Person X: Lol… ok boss… Off to buy ingredients for lunch… We'll play later
Person X to Person Y: Ok… Got work to complete here too.

The End.

Who's the Brother?

The promising thought ubiquitously spread across the mainland of the country (forget the pariah north-eastern part of it) is the young populace teeming the streets and fields of our “motherland”.

I have often felt profound grief and a sense of rejection at the very thought of the mores thrust down the systems of the group we belong to. Often, it is not our mistake that young people commit ethical blunders. It is a residue of the system that we come out of. The paradox within the system does not recognize the viability of the merits and demerits of its produce.

Often, too many responsibilities are thrust upon us without adequate conditioning. And perhaps the there is an utter lack of orientation for the same. The system does not prepare us like the armed forces do or does it makes us aware of the variables we would have to encounter. We are often bundled and thrown out in the open like a bunch of treated tomatoes ready to be canned; often confused by our roles and course of action. Or perhaps like a pair of shoes. Crafted and sold but unsure of the ground we are most likely to tread upon.

In India, we are witnesses, like a circus audience. The vagaries of the dumb political charade that thrives on every nook and corner of the country and everything else it foments is adjusted to our own internal systems. We are pusillanimous by nature and are avid spectators, or are terribly ignorant wannabes. And not to hurt anyone’s collective conscious or sensibilities, but Indians are a terribly selfish lot of people. And also, like it or not, we are extremely political in thought, word, deed, and pretensions, and are embarrassingly ambiguous.

In a MBA lecture held at a semi – prominent business school a lecturer started sermonizing that in the age of rising of economies among the BRIC nations, India was the most forthcoming. And the reason for the erroneous assumption was that India was one of the most well acknowledged pluralistic societies on the face of the earth. We are diverse in caste, creed, sex, and so on. We are also perhaps one of the most intelligent species on the earth along with the Jews. We dominate or contribute significantly to almost all major business transactions or growths. True. But also, how unfortunate! The aforesaid reasons are no reasons why India should be tagged as “the most forthcoming and accomodating” country in the world when the “Atithi Devo Bhava” as a principle is only for certain group of people only.

As much as we cry loud and hoarse about the treatment meted out to Indians outside its shores, and the racist attitude of the Caucasians and so on so forth, we forget that our own backyards needs more cleaning than the neighbour’s kennel. It is like watching a terribly bad Bollywood family drama and providing our slanderous and sarcastic critique on it while forgetting that our own personal lives function strikingly and frighteningly similar to it.

As young Indians, we are taught about the spirit of Indianness. The same in-bred quality in us that forced the Europeans to quit the country; the same spirit that’s pulling (or pushing) this country to be on par with the political super – powers of the world. While I say that though, the Indianness is not about getting done with our habitual ambiguity in talk and action, or about being more accommodating to fellow Indians than our foreign guests. As much as we dislike the word ‘racism’ we are racist in a way in letting caste and communal differences take over proper Indian sensibilities.

Being political in nature, political activism is all pervading in every strata of higher education in the country. Despite the technical superiority of our students, there is a lot to do for the students from the non – technical courses. Student political bodies like the SFI and AISF, and other similarly polyp like political organizations in educational institutes impair the intellectual capabilities of the students. There has to be a clear demarcation between political activism and intellectual development because there is a huge difference between the two which otherwise is like a bad marriage which by an exception may produce an intelligent child.

The effect of the spread of such organizations is probably felt in Business Schools now. With so many mushrooming around the hallowed IIMs, a clear marketing strategy is required to give the other B – schools to differentiate itself from the IIMs and the rest. One strategy is to project the institute as a student driven institute. Not that the other institutes do not have student participating but lo and behold! Some want the students to run it! It is another tool of management learning methodology. Apparently. But the farce of such a proclamation is that once an unsuspecting student enters the classrooms of such an institute sooner or later the poor soul is going to slowly unravel the aura of the student driven hocus pocus.

The truth behind a typically student driven institute is that there would be body of student run organizations focusing on various disciplines (apart from academics). The over – reliance on such a body gives it a certain amount of unneeded political power which in all likeliness would be misused and manipulated to suppress dissenting voices. And of course, there are the other political situations which involve a sense of false and temporary camaraderie, and hollow pat on the back, and other shenanigans. Such an environment would deprive the student who seeks academic value and a certain competitive advantage over his peers from other institutes in a demanding job market. Not every student coming out of such an institute can be capable of handling such an ambiguity or opacity, and even if the students do learn to handle such an environment, is this what teaching and learning all about? If it is, it’s a terrible loss of face for quality education. To be able to earn big money, and vacillate vacuously after spending a tidy sum of parental money and two precious years of one’s life in an educational institute is an utter loss of academic self – respect and dignity.

‘Older’ adults, trustees, management authorities, and others must understand and acknowledge the fact that students are students. Not everyone is capable of handling anything that’s close to a whiff of power. We are after all Students. We are learners first, and activists later. Activism comes from learning and not vice – versa. A little show of enthusiasm is not a sign of maturity. Policy makers should create a distinction between activism (of any kind) and education. Without uninterrupted education, one will never be able to provide anything of substance, and that is not something the country needs from its young populace. When policies are made irrespective of the nation and other organizations, there should not be any rift in practice and policy formulation. The Youth cannot always handle such divisive indistinctness. That should perhaps set the tone towards educating Indians about Indianness. And remember, the North – Eastern part of it is still a pariah.








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Bp's Timeless Quotes

"Men are like women's pantylines. The more they try to hide themselves, they more they end up showing."

Question Insanity

I finally finished reading "Who Killed Daniel Pearl" by Henry Bernard Levy. And, needless to say I am disturbed. I am unable to fathom the extent of man’s insanity, or at least his insane interpretations of tools of social control. As weird and ironical as it sounds, I still believe that equality as a proposition/principle (whichever way you look at it) thrives on the actuality of inequality. Tools of social control, or for that matter any aspect of any culture, or culture as a whole has failed to rein in what it was meant for – control the extent of human liberties. In a clash of metaphysical philosophies, the intangibility of one led to the demise of the other. Let me be clearer. The evidences of culture that we see today, as the word “evidence” indicates, are what we see. This tangibility of culture (as a crucial part of the whole) is minimal when compared to the whole of the conglomeration of beliefs that it actually is. The larger and the core of the ‘culture’ is what lies within the closed spaces of our skulls, therefore intangible. I believe that no one has absolute control over the overabundance of thoughts and ideas that exist in the head. Keeping science fiction theories at an arm’s length, or even farther, no machine, human, animal, science, or object, or technique can detect and examine the vectors in the mind. Without doubting the intention the formulation of any method of social control, it is pertinent to point out that in the war of the two largest indefinable forces that run everything on earth; it is without any doubt that it is the enigmatic mind that wins.

I do not wish to argue the reasons for the development of religious beliefs. As much as I would like to believe that it happened for the good; that it is the same despite the difference; that it is true, it is difficult for me to believe that this is the same religion that can arouse hatred. As much as I would like to believe what the sincerest faithfuls have to tell me about the absolute truth that their religion is, I still will doubt its veracity because evidences point out to the existence of the “other” gods too. As much as I would like to believe the point that pious humanists make about the existence of religion being the ramifications of one soul, the one God, I still will question his line of reasoning because the teachings of God in these separate religion that are similar have certain references in them that put them in direct conflict with each other. Did God being all knowing not see the consequences of such an action? The immediate answer (from most faithfuls) would be that these are the handiworks of the devil, Satan. Why does God allow Satan take greater precedence over him? I am ignorant but I have questions that no one will be able to answer satisfactorily other than God or probably I lack the faith to understand, or the curiosity that is dissatisfied by a priest’s answer because he is human who is as susceptible to errors as much as I am. I do not doubt the existence of God. I suspect the reasons why different religions spawned during the same time (or around it, at least) carrying the same message of love, goodwill and peace and yet puts each other with direct conflict. I may be insolent but there is something that is very unclear and nobody has questioned it yet, blame it on blind faith. I dislike blind faith especially when it has the potential to lead to insanity.

Or perhaps, we seek refuge in others because we lack belief in our own internal systems.

Time and History

I am no revolutionary when it comes to national issues. Despite my efforts to not let minor national issues bother me, I am disturbed with the way history is taught in the classrooms. It is not fun anymore. I am not taking any efforts to adumbrate the revision of teaching methods, by the way. When we – my teacher and I – spoke about the India that was during the lovely 40’s and 50’s I missed being an elderly person! There is a side of history that was never explored by any teacher. History was synonymous with the clichéd ‘stories of the past’. Keeping aside the oft-explored condition of past prime time, the central theme of any history is its relevance to the most important factor that rules our lives – Time. Taking the cause and effect theory to levels to suit my stretches of liberty, the present and the future are all very calculative, that is, if we need to avoid disaster/ geo-political calamity. It is a pity that no scholar has ever tried to bring in the dimensions of the present and the future into the intricate subject of history. We study a part of the present that is the recent past.

It is amazing how time changes almost everything that lies in its course and the ramification of this adroit variation gives humanity something that he cannot do without – history. The past is history and somehow the future never transpired to be a segment of history, which by all rights should have been have been considered too simply because time forms and, is history. While history lessons in classrooms have always been interesting until as long as the teacher was witty and well informed. We must confess that the parallel of time is vast and, relics and sheaves of pages tucked together to form a rudimentary text to teach the illogical and recorded data of the past prime time have just done away further with addition of the ‘expert’ wisdom of a pretty, clairvoyant charlatan. While I believe I am digressing from what I had set to opine on I will not, in any way justify the present state of history that is studied by both students and academics. I am no Nehru in any way but I do feel very strongly about the relation of the past to the present and the future because of the importance of time in our very own personal lives.

I grew up as a solitary soul untouched by any feelings of fond affiliation to the milieu that I lived in. This fostered a desire to experience life through action has influenced all my thoughts and activity. To me, even a sustained form of action is a kind of action, which becomes a part of the actions to come. It is not something entirely abstract as it seems to be, but it is much unrelated to action and life. The past becomes something that leads up to the present, the moment of action, the future that something that flows from it; and all three are inextricably intertwined and interrelated. Even my seemingly actionless life is tacked somehow by some processes of thought and feeling, to coming or imagined action, and so it gains for me a certain content without which it would bring about a vacuous state to my environmental existence.

We all come late to history and, even then, not through the usual direct road of learning a mass of facts and dates and drawing conclusions and inferences from them, unrelated to your life or my life’s course. Therefore, as long as the present ‘Generation Y’ does that history has a little significance for all of us. If history were to be constructed to suit a philosophy that would help in analyzing life in very simple mathematical calculations, this world would be such a wonderful place to live in. History repeats. Why would it repeat if we learnt from history? There are many things to think about, I am sure.

I have not read much about the Crusades but I know they were bloody and gory. I try to avoid the conflict between science and religion because religion is a very touchy topic today. A friend, who is very religious, once told me that he is secular in his views but he is a hardcore fundamentalist when it comes to his religion. That rattled me a bit. This is a man who is widely respected by many. He is sensible; thinks with his head. He respects other’s religious views and faiths. Yet, he claims to be a fundamentalist when his religion mattered. I did not misunderstand when I heard him say this but I am just thinking of the million ‘jehadis’ who are respected, loved and are intelligent. This sudden surge of violence over the past two decades in the name of religion is a very, disturbing trend that would one day slowly kill humane optimism.

Very rarely has one given some thought towards balancing one's emotional urge and the essentiality of the importance of the said moment and time. It is not the tight-rope walk we make it out to be. It is more intricate, yet extremely effortless. I think the prescription for it is a very delicately fine balance. If harmony is what we seek, and not congruency in what we think, ideate, and want the solution lies in harmony. To achieve harmony, we ought to very finely balance between what we think, percieve, want, and what should be done. Difficult choices always bring the best results.