Shaadi Ka Ladoo.....

Sitting here, biding my time, I wait for the clock to strike 11 so that I can leave for the airport. Just when I start getting into the "What do i do now after checking-my-mails, getting-my-coffee" mode, I get pinged (IM ed aka Instant Messaged) by a friend of mine. He has tried to make contact after a very long time. Though that should be reason enough for me to be suspicious, my naivety gets the better of me, and I think that it could be because I am early to office (which in itself is a very fishy business). After a 10 lines of finding out how we are doing I come to know that he is getting "married". And I slide into my dream world of "baraat", "halwai", "girls" (of course, the ones other than the bride - what were you thinking ?). I am jolted out when I see myself sitting in the groom's cauldron. As the stylish girls would say, "Aannnyyywaaayyz........"

I have always been enamored by this marriage season. Seeing marriage processions, bedecked cars and people dancing as if they are the ones married - On second thoughts maybe some are dancing thinking "Thank God I am not yet married" and some others rejoicing the fact that now another loser has joined their ranks, under full consciousness. The lights always enticed me beguiling me into thinking that the whole thing is so happy and gay (According to Merriam and Websters Dictionary gay means "keenly alive and exuberant : having or inducing high spirits").

An aside, while I was looking for the meaning of the word "gay", one of my managers came from behind and "caught" me. Well, it was a tough time explaining that I was trying to be grammatically correct and not parliament-arily incorrect.

But when my sister got married and my dad set his sights on me like the Japanese have set theirs on the poor whales, (Watch Video) there was no Rainbow Warrior or Greenpeace around to save me. My mum played the part of International Whaling
Commission, presiding stoically over the proceedings as my dad posted my "profile" on matrimonial websites.

This is not going to be a disclosure of my bride-seeking accounts - since I am still in that mode. The same way as intelligence agency chiefs publish their books after they retire and not while they are in service. But sometimes these affairs are seriously hilarious (noticed my usage of the oxymoron !).

One guy called my dad and picked a fight with him because my dad told him that you can access all the information on the web and it was the other person who needed to give information. I guess Father-In-Laws-To-Be are touchy. Once my dad pushed me into seeing a girl all by myself; no reinforcements to back on. I mean normally, when I am with my parents, I am sure that I would not get kicked out of their house in case I crack a bad joke. Shit! Now when I think about it, that is the reason they don't like me. I crack useless jokes with impunity when I am with my parents. Voila! I am digging my own grave and asking my parents to oversee it. In this solo microflight I had to encourage questions like "What kind of a Mishra are you". Was that a rhetorical? I mean, the way people say "What kind of a nincompoop are you".

My dad has his own way of saying that "We don't mean no dowry". He says "We don't want anything but if you are giving a Mercedes, I am not going to refuse". Bottom line, he gives rise to more doubts rather than laying the existing ones to rest.

My granny is the hardest nut to crack. Reason - she melts down for every proposal. (Another exemplary play on the contrasts !). I guess she also believes in "Every child is special". It is hard to convince her to see the next proposal because she is stuck on to the current one and once she graduates to the next one, the story continues.

Mum and sister are stoic about the whole thing. I guess, even though I am their son and brother, respectively, they cannot see another woman suffering. Sigh! What a gross misunderstanding. I am the best husband someone can have. Humorous, earning enough to fend for myself - that way my wife will have only herself to take care of, not very bad in looks - considering that the only piece of make up I use is hair oil - that too if it qualifies as one. As I try hard to convince everyone that I am a good problem to have, please be on the look out for a homely, shy, outgoing and exuberant Brahmin girl.

Loved it ...

Indian society has finally arrived.....at Western doorsteps.....

It is a matter of coincidence that today morning when I was coming to office I saw two luxury buses. Well, nothing out of extraordinary except that these were SCHOOL BUSES. So what is wrong with that, some would say. Something, which even I deliberated with myself before forming an opinion. I mean, times have changed, mobiles were a luxury, now they are a necessity; mobile phone calls used to cost a bomb "back in early 90s", now they are practically free (if you take the right plan). So stop being someone at the older end of the generation-gap.

Well, I would beg to differ. Let us look that the main part of the issue; because seeing the luxury school bus was a coincidence. The actual incident is that of a shootout at a school in Gurgaon, India. We used to hear about campus shootings and deranged or frustrated kids and teenagers only in the US. When did the malaise travel the seven seas and start knocking our doors. Sorry, but knocked only once. Now it has barged into our lives persona non grata.

Two school boys studying in Euro International School, Gurgaon, pumped 5 bullets into their classmate. This school is supposed to one of the many international schools mushrooming all over India. Replete with all avenues for extra-curricular activities, they promise parents with an all round personality development of their kids. I am sure they did not foresee this development.

Quoting Chandra Shekhar Balachandran, an alumnus of Kent Sate University (USA) who spent several years teaching geography in American universities before returning to India in 2000 and promoting the Dharani Trust, an education research and advocacy organization based in Bangalore "Over investment in infrastructure is an extreme reaction to traditional schools with their spartan buildings and grudging sports facilities. But redefining schools which are institutions of learning into five-star hotel-like institutions is an over-reaction. Inevitably it has translated into high tuition fees, which only the super rich can afford. Little wonder that international schools, unlike even the most expensive traditional public schools, don’t attract students from diverse socio-economic backgrounds. This is bound to have some negative social implications".

Liberalization's children have bequeathed the responsibilities of their children to these international schools which, leave alone, develop the kid's personality, is actually pushing him into depths of degeneration. I strongly feel that parents have their share of blame to take in the Gurgaon campus shooting. VII standard students getting access to a imported .32 Harrison pistol, that too in a country where gun laws are not yet lax.

Discussing with a colleague, my thoughts lined up in this manner. Families that can afford to send their children to these international schools are mostly those where both the parents are working. They are more often than not unable to spend quality time with their kids. By quality time I mean time when they themselves are relaxed and are genuinely interested in what is going on the school, at the playground and in life as such. They misinterpret the old adage "Time is Money" and try to compensate the lack of time through money. They give in to every demand of the child, without weighing the pros and cons. The child's demands are often dictated by peer pressure rather than actual need. Schools today, with an average strength of around 45-60, do not consider themselves equal to the task of individual attention. In such a scenario expecting them to help kids with their personal problems is foolhardiness.

In the pre-liberalisation days when things like cut-throat competition (at an individual level) and attrition where unheard of, people had time to devote to their families. Kids looked upto their parents are role models and not as mere ATMs.

This friend whom I was talking to narrated an incident that he witnessed at a mobile phone showroom in Delhi. He was browsing for some phones along with his friend when a boy entered the shop. He saw the phone in my friend's hands and checked out its features. The phone was costing around 40,000 Rupees. The boy who surely was still studying in a school and already carried a considerably good phone, called up his father and literally commanded him to send the driver with the money.

I am ready to treat this as an exception rather than a rule and would rather pray that it be the case. But looking around me and on seeing the kids, I just wish that along with the latest gadgets they also start appreciating things like literature and nature. Let the Gurgaon shooting be an alarm bell for us, especially parents, to wake up and steer our cars away from the materialistic highway on which they are currently hurtling down.

Then I read comments like
"They should have metal detectors at the gate, and more security guards to check on students," - a father who sends both his kids to Euro school.
"Tax consultant Anil Sharma, who sends his two children to Euro International, says he will pull them out if the school does not step up its security."

(Comments taken from BBC news item)

This shows that we are not even close to recognising the malaise. Metal detectors being used for VIII standard kids. I am sure there are solutions that are better, more fool-proof and civil than that.

All Quite on the Western Front - Erich Maria Remarque

A review in a magazine for MBA-aspirants goaded me to read this book. If that review was available online I would have one incentive less to write this one. But then, reviews also have an individuality. My perception of a book, a movie or a person is definitely going to be different from that of another fellow. In that sense let me call this my view of this book.

As the book mentions, the author himself has been in combat during World War I. He has faced life at the war front and has been through the vicissitudes of wars, especially of the magnitude of World Wars. "All Quite on the Western Front" is narrated by Paul. Paul and his friends have been enlisted in the military, part forcibly to escape the guilt of being a deserter and traitor (sitting at home while the country is at war) and part out of the youthful exuberance to do something for the country and earn a name for themselves.

During school, their teacher preaches them lofty ideals about service to the nation et al. The youngsters look up to these teachers as their role models. It is only after they reach the army do they realize the hollowness and shallowness of it all.
The book is a masterpiece in that it uses the simplest of words to reveal the deepest of emotions.

"All Quite...." is a story of how tender children turn into expert military men and then into animals as they go from the safety of their mother's protection to the military bases to the war front. How youngsters are sent to the war front only to be used as canon fodder and nothing else. How emotions and pragmatism (bordering on selfishness and cruelty) act like two sides of a audio cassette. How the military man suffer from all kinds of mental trauma which results in their death or worse, getting maimed. How patriotism and jingoism seem like words from a foreign language and ideals seems like a cuss word when you have an enemy waiting to shoot you before you shoot him. How battle hardened soldiers find it hard to fit in any other mould. How they fear to even think about the good things in life, lest they lose the will power to fight. How the decisions, be it declaration of war or that of ceasefire, are taken by politicians and others in the higher echelons of power but leave the dirty job of implementation to the innocent and disinterested hoi polloi.

Erich has, laid bare the worst horrors of war in the most lucid words. It is a pity that human beings still do not understand that fight for their fatherland or motherland boils down to the simple expedient of managing to snatch the next breath from death itself. To quote two of the many pieces of gems in the book,

"In the outword form of our life we are hardly distinguishable from Bushmen; but whereas the latter can be so always, because they are so truly, and at best may develop further by exertion of their spiritual forces, with us it is the reverse; our inner forces are not exerted towards regeneration, but towards degeneration. The Bushmen are primitive and naturally so, but we are primitive in an artificial sense, and by virtue if the utmost effort."

"If your own father came over...you would not
hesitate to throw a bomb at him."