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This blog is back on-line after a few technical changes. I assure you that I have definitely not left the building.
Years ago I used to watch a British comedy series called Bless Me, Father on public television. The setting was a church in a small town in England and the stories revolved around the parish priest and his young curate. In one of the episodes, the curate asks, “Father, why do you spend so much time with the rich in our parish? Don’t you think that the poor need our help more than the rich?” The father replies: “No, the rich need us more. They don’t even have the comfort of the illusion that money is the answer to all their problems.”
Ethan Zuckerman invited me to join in a Global Voices Brainstorm on Tuesday 29th March at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at the Harvard Law School. It was a great opportunity for me to meet with many people associated with Global Voices:
Global Voices is an international effort to diversify the conversation taking place online by involving speakers from around the world, and developing tools, institutions and relationships to help make these voices heard.
Check out the Global Voices Manifesto when you get a chance.
A bunch of Indian bloggers are getting together on Saturday 2nd April in NY, NY for lunch. Details are at Seshu’s Tiffinbox. If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere, as the song goes.
Hi from the Big Apple. Brilliant day outside with snow from yesterday’s blizzard blanketing the city. I am visiting with my friend Reuben who lives on 116th and Broadway (Columbia U.)
I have been wandering around the world for the past couple of weeks. Which partly explains why I have been neglecting this blog. Then there is the acute case of writer’s block that I am suffering from. It is with some trepidation that I am pushing against that block. So here goes nothing.
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My journey began on the 16th of February when I left Mumbai for New Delhi. After a bunch of notable meetings, I headed south to Nagpur, my home town. A few days there and then I went to Bangalore. It had been donkey’s years since I had last been there. Things had changed. It was the center of India’s information technology storm. The city appeared to have hit puberty and grown big overnight and was too big for its boots. I had been warned about the vehicular exhaust pollution but it was still a shock to be actually immersed in it in the city center. In any event, I had a bunch of good meetings and visited with my friends. I arrived back in Mumbai on the evening of the 28th.
This one is turning out to be a real web log: an account of where I have been. Boring stuff but I think this will get me out of the fear of writing.
Anyway, the next day, March 1st, I had a bit of bureaucracy to take care of. I had overstayed my 180-day visitor’s visa by a few days and it appeared that I will not be allowed to leave India without having my visa extended. So off I went to the Foreigner Registration section at the Mumbai Police Commissioner’s office. It took about 3 hours to pay a penalty of $30 and get a piece of paper that extended by visa by a few days.
It had been a long time since my last encounter with the Indian government bureaucracy. I had to fill in a few forms, wait for a long time to meet with the appropriate official and witness first-hand antiquated processes which appeared to serve no apparent purpose other than to employ people and fill numerous registers with handwritten notes. The main official I met was courteous and helpful. Why had I overstayed? Circumstances I could not avoid, I replied. He filled in a few forms, walked over to various parts of the office where he pulled out other various registers and wrote in them. Then he went to another part of the office and brought with him a rubber stamp and stamped one of the registers. Went back to put away the rubber stamp and then moved the register to another part of the office.
After about 15 minutes of this, he finally declared that I will have to pay a penalty of $30. I reached for my wallet. No, he said. I had to go to another section and pay the fine and then I have to bring him back a receipt and we will continue with the process. So off I went and waited for about 20 minutes at the other section. When my turn came, the man filled in three different registers with the same details that had already been entered several times in various registers earlier: name, date of birth, father’s name, passport number, etc. In each case he would carefully pick up carbon papers, carefully insert them in to the registers, then enter things in triplicate. Another 15 minutes and I was all done with paying my fine and getting a receipt. Back to the other guy. He now gave me a piece of paper which extended my stay till March 2nd. And then he got up and went to another part of his office, found a rubber stamp, and stamped my passport with it. I was about to thank him profusely when he said, “Please collect your passport after 6 PM.”
He explained that they only take in the cases between 10 AM and 2 PM, and after processing, returned the passport in the evening. Could I please have my case expedited? Well, since you are leaving in less than a day, perhaps an exception could be made, he said. He handed me the passport and I left.
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Information technology tools are great for handling information. Computers are useful things for pretty much any application which deal with information processing, storage, and retrieval. At that Foreign Registration office, I am sure that a bit of IT hardware and software would not be out of place. But it would of little utility unless the processes that run in that office are rationalized. The need for rational processes is greater than the need for hardware. Buying hardware is easy; rationalizing processes is hard.
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Later that night (early morning of 2nd March, actually), I took an Air France flight from Mumbai to New York’s JFK via Paris. Same awful Air France food. Why do they serve icy-cold hard rolls with the food? In any event, I met my friend Courtenay in Paris during my 5 hour layover and had lunch with her. It was snowing and cold in Paris, the coldest March they have had in 30 years.
OK, writer’s block cleared. I guess from now on, I will be writing regularly. Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more; it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
Those lines from Shakespeare’s Macbeth are a sure-fire way of deflating any false sense of importance one might have while going about one’s business. Blogs, especially, are tales told by an idiot, and this one is no exception. All this strutting and fretting does not amount to a hill of beans. In equal measures I get hate-mail and praise-mail. To prevent the emotional swings between highs and lows in response, I try to recall Shakespeare’s lines above.
Equanimity is not something that is easy to achieve and I think I fail fairly miserably on that front. There is a story, a Zen story, which exemplifies equanimity to me better than any other.
Once upon a time, in a certain village, it so happened that a pretty young unmarried woman became pregnant. The parents were furious and upon questioning, the young woman confessed that the old Zen master in the village was responsible. This enraged the parents and they went to the Zen master and berated him without restraint. They told him that he has to take care of the woman and the child. The Zen master listened to all the abuse without a word and when they had exhausted themselves he simply said, “Is that so?”
He took the young woman into his home, looked after her, and when the child was born, took care of both mother and child. Then one day, the woman was overcome with remorse and went to her parents and confessed that she had lied and it was not the Zen master but a young man from another village who was the real father. The parents were absolutely horror stricken: they had falsely accused and then burdened an innocent man. So they went to the Zen master and fell to their knees and took a long time telling him how sorry they were for what they had done to him. The Zen master listened to them patiently and all he said was, “Is that so?”
I know that I would like to have that Is that so? attitude. But I also know that perhaps in this lifetime, I may not get there. The poem IF by Rudyard Kipling does have a bit where he talks about treating triumph and disaster as imposters.
A close friend of mine drew inspiration from the poem when he was struggling with his PhD thesis. You can see reflections of the lessons from the Bhagavat Gita in Kipling’s poem. For the record, here is the poem:
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:If you can dream–and not make dreams your master,
If you can think–and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings–nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And–which is more–you’ll be a Man, my son!
How shall I go in peace and without sorrow? Nay, not without a wound in the spirit shall I leave this city.
Long were the days of pain I have spent within its walls, and long were the nights of aloneness; and who can depart from his pain and his aloneness without regret?
Kahlil Gibran The Prophet
My days in Mumbai are numbered. Strictly speaking, all the days of our lives are numbered. I will soon be saying goodbye to the city that has epitomized to me all that is wrong with India. I know there are people who swear by the city. I think that they are in a minority. But then, one might say that even minorities in Mumbai are pretty large numbers. Continue reading “Homelessness in Mumbai”
On this blog, I have pondered the matter of education quite a bit because development and education are inextricably related. Irrespective of how rich an economy is by the usual measures of GDP, if the population is not educated, it is not a developed economy. An economy may have a high per capita GDP, due to say exporting oil, but it cannot be considered a developed economy.
Continue reading “A Review of Education Related Posts Here”
“Another damned, thick, square, book! Always scribble, scribble, scribble! Eh! Mr. Gibbon?
– William Henry, Duke of Gloucester, upon receiving the second volume of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire from the author, 1781.
Well, what do you know!
This blog won the Best Indiblog Award. To be more specific, of those who cared to vote (around 600), this blog got around 38 percent of the votes. Thanks to each of you who considered my modest attempt worth noting. My sincere appreciation for that vote.
I admit that I am not surprised that some people actually find my writing acceptable. Nor I do not find it entirely surprising that 62 percent who voted did not vote for this blog. I don’t expect to be popular. More about that later. The topic that I concentrate on largely is not a happy one. One does not like to be reminded that one’s country is in dire straits. We see the evidence all around us if we care to just see.
Some people have criticized my point of view. I don’t like criticism. I don’t want to be told that I am wrong. But I need to be told my faults. While I like to be told that I am right, I need to be told even more where I am wrong. I am a pretty smart cookie but I am not so smart as to know all by myself where I screwed up.
Back to the topic of being popular. I think that if one is totally honest, one is not likely to be popular. Which may partly account for the fact that politicians are inveterate liars. They seek popularity and they lie. They lie because they know that people are gullible and that they can get away with transparent lies and blatant falsehoods. People would rather believe in some feel-good fiction than in hard facts.
Given the gullibility of people at large and their need to believe in happy fiction, democracy has a near-fatal flaw built into it. A person who states it like it is is going to be at a disadvantage when it comes to unpleasant truths. And most of the time, a society or an economy confronts hard facts, irrespective of how rich or powerful it is. I recall Walter Mondale telling the hard truth to Americans that taxes will have to be raised, and George Bush, the Elder, said, “Read my lips: No New Taxes.” Later, after having won, Bush went on to raise taxes like nobody’s business.
The poorer the country is, the more its politicians lie. The most adept at lieing win. They have to — because the truth is too awful to bear. Farmers are suffering? Promise them free stuff. Can the country afford it and will it actually make them better off? No and no, but do it all the same because that is what guarantees winning at elections.
India is caught in a trap. Venal politicians lie and the gullible public votes them to power because they would rather hear a pleasant lie than hear the unpalatable truth. Anyone with any sense in their heads would reject them outright but then when were the good and the holy in majority anyway? Democracy assures the rule of the venal over the gullible.
In any event, I will go on scribbling and only time will tell if I am correct in my assessment that we are doomed unless we face some rather harsh reality.
Goodnight, goodbye, and may your god go with you.
PS: I have loads of emails. Please bear with me if you have written and haven’t heard back from me yet. I am going to reply to all my emails.
The IndiBloggies 2004 voting is under way. Some well-meaning person nominated this blog in the category Best Indiblog. I kid you not. So if you are one of the half a dozen readers of these ramblings, and if you have nothing better to do, do hop on over there and vote for some of the excellent blogs listed. Vote early and vote often, as they say. I would have surely won the award if I had Bush’s team of Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, Cheney and gang to fix the votes for me. But then I don’t and so I won’t. Pity really. It would have loooked good on my resume. Not that it would have made much of a difference to my resume. It is so pathetic that only a couple of Nobel Prizes would give it sufficient credibility for me to get a decent job. But as the man replied when he was asked by the judge why he mugged his own grandmother for a dollar, and he replied, “Your honor, every buck helps”, I too say, my resume needs all the help it can get.
Atanu Dey : Life is a Random Draw 