Category: Random Thoughts

Recently two women spoke the words in which I firmly believe.

The first was by my friend Veena. Her brother (my very close buddy) and her parents had been on the lookout for a suitable alliance for her. While she initially seemed fine with it, very soon she got very confused about the kind of life partner she was looking for. A couple of weeks back she called up her brother and told him that she would want some time for herself to know more about herself and think about what it was that she would like to have in her life partner. Needless to say, my friend (her brother) happily agreed.

The next was by my cousin Sujana. Her parents had been on the lookout for a suitable alliance for her for the past five years and at last she decided to go ahead with one of them (Congrats Suju, I had almost given up hopes of you getting married ;)). In a conversation we were having the other day she told me “I am very happy Rahul. At last I found someone who I feel is compatible. I had decided that if I wouldn’t find anyone who is compatible, I would remain a spinster”.

I have always believed – “Marry because you want to, not because you have to”. In other words, I see sometimes parents get really worried when their daughters reach the age of 22-24 and when they’ve considered four to five alliances which didn’t materialize. My friend and my cousin embody my belief that one should know what they’d expect from their life partner and one should only commit when they are completely convinced and not because of parental/peer pressure.

As I grow older and as I see things happening in my society, I’ve begun to realize that “People Love To Hate”. Anything goes wrong and they take out all their hatred and anger against someone. I cannot take a better example for this than the recent Mumbai blasts. Something has gone terribly wrong and what do people do? They curse the politicians and blame the Indian Intelligence Agencies. They see Ram Gopal Varma at the blast site the next day and they begin to call him names. I am still in two minds whether a movie on something such as the Mumbai blasts should be made but I definitely doubt if it was really necessary at this point of time to make his visit to the the blast site a national issue?

My father is a doctor and he gets to see people from different walks of life as part of his profession. Recently I got to know of an incident which has literally shocked me. It seems a well-off Marvadi business family had recently approached my father telling him that the menstural cycle of their 12-year daughter had recently started and they would like to stop it for a couple of months. My father was slightly surprised and asked them the reason. They told him that their daughter was getting married in a couple of weeks, and if the groom’s parents got to know that her periods had started, they would double the dowry. Therefore to avoid the extra dowry costs, they needed to stop her periods for sometime. What surprised me was not the fact that dowry and child marriages are so rampant, but the fact that such practices exist in a developed city and within a reasonably rich community.

Yet another incident about a child being bitten to death by red ants in a government hospital (http://www.hindu.com/2008/12/09/stories/2008120960521100.htm) shows how bad things are in our society. Probably there might be some other cause for the death of the child but I won’t be surprised if the red ants were the cause for the death of the three-day old infant.

With reference to my peers (w.r.t economic status), I think most of us are blessed with good education, proper shelter, loving parents and definitely a hefty salary job. We work in comfortable environments, sleep in A/C rooms, party on weekends and keep growing our personal investments. And do you know what is this blessed life doing to all of us? It is making us insensitive to the problems faced by the underprivileged. We all curse the politicians and blame the law breakers. But I really don’t know how different are we from them. After all as soon as we are done cursing the politicians and empathizing with the victims, we just get back to what we are doing and forget about it (like the false promises made by politicians who forget them the moment they are elected). And I am sure that a lot of us would have been offenders ourselves had we been born in a poor family.

Our society is plagued with many problems and social evils. Being financially well-off we generally don’t face many of these problems or we can find affordable solutions for our problems. There is a lot of inequality in our society. One might argue that we are paying taxes to the government but it is clear that while we still get to take away huge sums of money, there are many who don’t have access to basic facilities such as health services and education.

My simple question to all of us is this – Apart from blaming and cursing and saying that things are terribly wrong, in what way are we directly or indirectly contributing to making our society a better place to live in?
Yes it is true that our politicians are corrupt and that our Intelligence has failed. And I also don’t say that one shouldn’t look for personal comfort or for future investment. But are we doing our bit to help the people who are not as privileged / blessed as us to hope for a better future?

My deepest condolences go out to the victims of the Mumbai blasts. While I might not have in any way been directly linked to it, in a very indescribable way, I somehow feel responsible for their deaths because I feel I have not given back enough to the society in return for what I have received from it. May the souls of the blast victims rest in peace.

A mail I had sent to one of my friends who said that she did not like giving dowry but was helpless as everyone in her caste expected it.

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From: Rahul Amaram
To: xxxxxxxxxxx

Subject: think about this

When one involves in giving/taking dowry, it is not just a simple one-time transaction. By giving dowry, you are encouraging a meaningless age-old activity in which many women have been tortured and have also lost their lives. In a way, you are actually approving the dowry system by actively involving in it. Read more – http://www.indiaparenting.com/womensissues/data/013.shtml

I know you HATE getting involved in this activity. But yet when I asked you if you’d give dowry you said “What can I do? It is in my parents hands.”. I personally think there are very few things in one’s life over which there is no control. For ex. in this case, you can always say that one of the pre-requisites for your marriage (like you said you will not quit working) could be that you will not give dowry. I don’t deny the fact that when you take a stand against dowry, the number of alliances you get will greatly reduce. But at the same time I don’t think it will fall to zero.

Learn to question. In India, I personally think there is a lot of prejudice against women. For men, there are one kind of rules and for women there are other kind of rules. You might think that “I am ok with the difference in the way society treats man and woman as I can be happy with this inequality.” But you must understand that by doing this, you are reinforcing the society’s current practices for which your daughter and their daughters will also have to face this inequality.

The question is never “What can I do?”. It is “YOUR” marriage and if you don’t want to give dowry, it won’t happen. This is completely in your hands, not in your brother or your parents. The simple question you have to ask yourself is “Am I strong enough and is it really worth to face the consequences of not getting involved in an activity which I think is so wrong”? Remember you just don’t represent yourself, you represent a part of the entire woman race.

Gone are the good old days of DD News when the entire day’s news were covered in about half an hour. Now is the period of 24-hour news channels. And along with it, gone are the days when news actually was something important. The following few instances really make me wonder whether what I’m watching are news channels or entertainment channels:

1. A girl falls into a bore well shaft and she is rescued later. This had been broadcast live by all the TV channels through out that day. In the evening, I switched on the TV to know the day’s headlines and I checked about 6 news channels and the only thing being relayed was about the rescue effort.

2. Dalip Singh Rana (better known as The Great Khali) is a professional wrestler from India who seems to have created quite some sensation outside India. I’m happy that someone from our country is popular outside. But I was completely pissed off on watching “Headlines Today” the day he returned to India. Because throughout the day the only thing they telecast was his arrival and what he was doing for that entire day. Not to forget the endless discussions they have about him. I mean seriously is Khali really such an important person that a news channel be dedicated to him for one whole day?

3. And just about a couple of days back there was another piece of news about a video clip floating in the internet which had a footage of a ghost. They kept repeating that 10 seconds shot for easily about an hour.

And not to forget this kind of information gets classified as “BREAKING NEWS”. I can go on and on about the kind of crap news channels show now-a-days. Seriously it makes me wonder is it that there is nothing important happening in India that these news channels have dedicated themselves to showing such content?

Today I free myself. I had been unable to see why I have been haunted for so many years. But today I somehow realized this as I lay in my bed. It is probably those very few moments of truth which you come across your life. And it surprises me that it had been so simple yet I failed to see it.

As funny as it might sound, my fears have always been like – “What do I do if someone kills my very close friend and to get the court to punish the culprit I would have to bribe the officials? Will I bribe them? Will I compromise on my values?”. Yet another one among them – “What if someone kidnaps my child? Will I pay the ransom or will I stick to my values and let the kidnappers harm my son?”

And today I have understood the reason for these fears. All these fears arose from the single fact because I had been bound by my values. And if you read the above questions carefully, you shall realize that what bothered me more than the event (murder, kidnap) was the fear that I might compromise on my values. I had begin to identify myself with my values. I had begin to define myself on those values. All to such an extent that the very thought of comprising on them began to make me feel so empty. Strange but true just as people become dependent on their work, people become dependent on their spouses, people become dependent on their materialistic pleasures I had become dependent on my values. And just as a person is scared of losing his materialistic comfort / work / spouse, the thought of losing my value system simply haunted me. Because I had began to identify and define myself on those values.

And yet for every word I speak, I just seem to keep getting stronger with my value system. The answers to all my questions as of now still remain the same as they were yesterday. If you ask me if corruption is wrong, I’d still say corruption is wrong. If you ask me if u’d let ur child die in the hands of a kidnapper, I’d still say I’d let him get killed rather than paying the ransom. I still have my belief system and values in place. But what is different from yesterday to this moment is that as I say all this I feel free. I am no longer a slave of my belief system. It is what now I begin to follow whole-heartedly. Or as they say in SSY, I have now become a leader rather than a follower in this particular aspect.

I have the freedom to laugh. I have the freedom to cry. I have the freedom to love. I have the freedom to hate. I have the freedom to break my word. I have the freedom to keep up my promises. And yet the thought of being so contradictory doesn’t disturb me because today I openly proclaim that everything I feel, everything I promise and my entire value system is only true for that moment. I might be an entirely new person the very next moment. I do not identify myself with anything. And accepting this has certainly taken a lot of load off me. This is perhaps one of the few moments in my life when I feel so free.

Any guess which game I am talking about? If you are from India, then you’d have no second thoughts reg. the game I am talking about – “Cricket”. Plzzzzzzzzzzz, will someone tell me why do people here treat cricket like THE MOST IMPORTANT thing of our country? I’ve gone nuts trying to understand this. After all it is just a game. So enjoy it. Get involved. Be passionate. It is as simple as that.

Over the past one month, I’ve heard of people gathering together to conduct mass prayers because the great Sachin Tendulkar and Munaf Patel are going to play a CRICKET match =)) =)). I wonder if anyone ever conducted such mass prayers when Indian soldiers were out on the battlefield in Kargil.

And what happens if these players fail? Any guesses? Ok … here are your options – 1. Burn their effigies 2. Break their homes 3. Try to harm them and their families 4. All the above. Alright you get no points on this one … I guess all of us are aware of the correct option :).

In India, cricketers fall into only two categories – God and Beast. I guess we tend to forget that even they are human. And this is what I observed with many young players. First they perform well. Indians take them to the worshiping level. Then they probably get over-confident or complacent or feel extremely pressurized. Eventually their performance falls. And all of us are ready to blame them and disgrace them.

And like I read somewhere this is going to go far ahead. This issue is going to be raised in the parliament. There would probably be a few murder threats to the players and/or their families. The news and sports channels knowing that this is a perfect opportunity to lure the audience would have an endless number of shows discussing things like “Why did India fail?”, “Was it a right decision of the BCC to appoint Chappel as a coach?”, “Do you think it is right for Dhoni to come in so many advertisements?”, “Should Dravid be dropped as a captain?” and the list goes on.

I’ve just gone through this article It’s only a game and I can’t agree more with Sambit Bal. For those of you who have similar views as mine, I’d highly recommend reading the article. Seriously, I think it is time we stop showing so much importance to cricket. While we can can continue to be passionate about it, I think it is time we treat the game as a game!!