Father of Which Nation ???

Inspired from Amartya Sen's book - An Argumentative Indian 

Though Mahatma Gandhi played a central role in India’s fight for freedom, the generation of today hardly seems interested in him. The point of focus here is not whether his efforts were good or bad – the point is that he made a distinguished effort, and while we may have an inclination to discuss about every other person, why such apathy to the supposedly father of the nation?

One of the primary reasons for this is the restriction on free opinion. As ironical as it may sound, we have no freedom to discuss about the person who helped us in attaining freedom. We are not allowed to discuss, debate, argue and explore him or his philosophies. We have to swallow them ‘as-is’. Even a comment or an observation on his work, would provide fuel to some or the other so called nationalist group in India, who would charge you with allegations of disrespect against the nation.

It is because of this no one discusses him or his ideas. It is because of this that his ideas have remained ideas of the past - they have not been adopted or further developed to fit into the contemporary times. It is because of this that his influence is constantly diminishing and it is because of this that he has been type casted into a mere monument of an old man walking with a stick.(Have you ever see a portrait or statue of the young Mahatma Gandhi ?)

But what be the cause of this ‘because’? We can identify this to India’s fixation of manifesting its extraordinary achievers as God. We have national gods as well as regional gods. Mahatma Gandhi and Sachin Tendulkar are examples of the first category. Rajnikant is a prime example of the latter category. These achievers are the Gods of the masses. And one is neither supposed nor allowed to evaluate, criticize or discuss God .God here is too big to be discussed by mere mortals like us. Whatever they do or say has to be accepted. End of discussion.

And what be the cause of this ‘fixation’? The deeply religious psychology of our countrymen might have something to do with it. Another cause of this fixation is the fact that we do not have many role models to look upon. Hence the few we have are propelled to God status. This scarcity of role-models could be attributed to the fact that we do not have enough role – models in proportion to our enormous population and the few we have are not projected well enough to influence the mass population.

Explore the icon - Sachin Tendulakar. Today Sachin is an active player, still playing – still a bit of a mortal. So we discuss about his game, his attitude, his commitment, his excellence and his shortcomings. Hence we learn from him. After 15-20 years when he is away from the limelight, he would have become a God and it would be prohibited to discuss about him. He would become a fountain of experience and excellence from which no would be allowed to drink, and eventually people will become disinterested in him. His legacy and class would not inspire the coming generations anymore. The ‘little master’ would become a ‘lost master.’

In the same way , we have lost and  are set to lose so many sources of inspiration; if we do not inculcate the nature to debate on them. Without debate , instead of building on  a legacy , we would  find ourselves always starting from scratch only to lose mid way and then again starting  from scratch again and again.

Animal faith

The more independent our free will becomes with age , 

the more barriers we impose on ourselves with our self made boundries......

Early morning temple visit
Awakened the spirit within me
All problems now seemed so small
 I could win them one and all
All negative thoughts went aside
And peace originated from my inside.

And as a holy me walked home,
That cow calf grabbed my attention
Stuck in the drainage nearby
It meeked for help and resurrection

Temple brought out my passion and zeal
A God’s soldier is born to heal
Half hour of diligent hard toil
I rescued the calf back on firm soil

It started caressing my feet in affection
It seemed reward enough for my good intentions
But just then from afar,
The calf owner came up running,
Short of breath but not short of thanks
It carried away its calf while brimming

Looking at the owner and calf depart,
Satisfaction took leave from my heart
All my efforts seemed a waste.
Not even blessings I deserve to taste
From the bounty of my Almighty grace

If only I had already known it,
While I was busy toiling to save it,
But chances of prior notion were slim,
And the cow never told me it was Muslim.

Etched in Time

A thing of beauty lasts forever. In the last few months, In the last few months I have felt this saying literally come to life.My last few months have been embedded travels to diverse historic places.

A visit to these fascinating places and timeless artefacts brought a strange thought to my mind – We visit these historic artefacts in our contemporart times and marvel  at the ancient society which once thrived n these lands. We wonder what was the dream which  possessed these people so as to produce generation-surpassing monuments.
However we should relaize that at some point in the past  commonplace mortals would have toiled to put in place these immortal monumnets.Little would have a stone carver , toiling under the sun thousands of  years ago chiselling away at the stones in order to earn his/her daily meal ,  imagined that an ordinary worthless stone would, a thousand years from now be an object of wonder and amazement  for the yet to be born generations.

For instance – have a look at the snapshot of the Halebedu Temple walls – a temple constructed around the 12th AD by the Hoysala dynasty. The temple passed to us the architectural acumen of a long past generation. The bodies of the thousands of people who made this temple have long been turned to dust but their efforts have been etched in time forever.Th eof the Hoysala dynasty drew a die but the stone temples stood the test of time,

Till now we have discussed about the past, now let’s look into the future. Imagine about 1000-2000 years from now (assuming the earth and life does not collapse before that ) when our generations would also have become a thing of the past and new generations would discover some of the objects and artefacts of  our times – what would they interpret of us ?

A lot of these interpretations might also depend on what things the future generation find?

Maybe one of our countless sky scraper might survive the test of time and still be erect in the time of the new coing generation.This tall building  might make them awe in delight – “How could the older generation make such tall precise buildings when they did not have the developed quantum tools (soemwhat just as we say now  - How the ancient peopel moved such big stones to make the massive temples without having the developed electric and mechanical tools).

Our countless weapons might make the new generation wonder why we had so many weapons which could destroy the earth multiple times. Was it because we were fighting with other planets?  The new generation would wonder how we managed to interact with extra territorial life with our limited mechanical physics (just like we wonder how did the old cultures already knew the secrets which modern physics is unravelling today)

The new generation might get hold of the facebook wall data of one of us ,see 1400 people in the friends list and imagine that they have found something related to a past  influential king / leader who guided people with his/her words (or rather) scraps of wisdom. The last scrap on these walls  might be analyzed by the new generation as a clue to understand how the old  generation perished.

Only time will tell what the future generations would interpret of us. But we would no longer be there to listen.
Only our artefacts would speak of our times,
Only our artefacts would keep us etched in the coming times,

Indian Sports - What if we could....

While the FIFA World Cup 2010 was intoxicating the whole world it was a touch amusing to see India (a country where most people would not know who is the captain of the Indian national football team) showing ferocious and passionate support for their favorite teams and their favorite players. Even the odd timings of most of matches (kick off at midnight 00:00) were not a deterrent for the vehement supporters.
It makes one wonder – why does not a complete 90 minutes Indian football match generate the same enthusiasm among Indians as a transient run towards the goal from David Villa?   What makes us feel deflated when Messi missed a goal but the embarrassing low world ranking of the Indian Football team (132 / 208) does even not make us blink an eyelid?

When one tries to analyze the questions above it brings a few interesting things to the fore front –

• It is almost a modern axiom - Football is such a passionate a game that no country can keep itself aloof from it. Hence .It comes as no surprise that same is the case with India. Another modern axiom is – Quality thrives. Hence it also should come as no surprise that since Indian football is not able to provide quality, the fans have naturally spread their interests beyond borders where quality is supreme.

• Another adage is – Too much pain brings apathy. Fans in India have been disappointed so many times that now they have closed their minds on Indian Football.

• Another fact to be noted is - Every country needs heroes. If it cannot find one it will invent one. In the case of India, a scarcity of national stars has made us search beyond for inspiration.

As abysmal as the situation may seem, all is not lost. If we can bring back the quality in football (or for that matter in other Indian sports). We have inspirational players like Baichung Bhutia and Sunil Cherti in our team. All we need to bring back quality is funds and management. But funds only flow in when there is market for the sports and market is ensured only by consistent quality. This viscous circle needs to be broken. 

One innovative solution could be to use cricket’s immortal popularity to push up other sports.

• Imagine a sports championship between India-Pakistan or India-Australia where you have 9 matches in all – 3 in T20 cricket , 3 in football and 3 in hockey. Winning any game (in cricket, football or hockey) gives 5 points to the winning team and a draw in any game gives 3 points to both teams. The team which has the maximum number of points after the 9 matches wins the sports championship.

• We should conduct 3 matches – football, hockey and cricket all in a day one after the other to keep the excitement flowing in all sports. Also we should have a common sponsorship for all the 9 matches/ whole championship and equal prize money to all participants (be it from football, cricket or hockey), This will ensure sponsorship funds, moral boost up and quality improvement of all the games and the players involved in an equal manner.

• The excitement generated among the viewers by this format would help to revive the emotional bonding for other sports – something which has been lost due to apathy.

This model and other innovations like this would definitely bring alive the passion in India football (and other sports like hockey etc).It will gradually help to improve India’s  virtually unknown status in world sports to a one of  respect an pride..

There is light at the end of the tunnel but we need to move towards the end of the tunnel.