Freedom eeh..

A few days back I was reading “The White Tiger” by Aravind Adiga that got him the man booker prize and I was stuck across a phrase

“Do you know about Hanuman, sir? He was the faithful servant of the god Rama, and we worship him in our temples because he is a shining example of how to serve your masters with absolute fidelity, love, and devotion.

These are the kinds of gods they have foisted on us. Understand, now, how hard it is for a man to win his freedom in India”

Before I’m ridiculed by the controversies of mentioning a writer who has stayed half his life abroad and has come to criticize India which many feel has developed, to be ridiculed by the nuances of poverty and the likes, I would like to clarify that I don’t buy either of the opinions

Having said that I cannot deny that this particular phrase was much thought provoking asking me the very basic question, are we free

I classify freedom as emotional and social. Well we have always been bounded by some kind of imaginary chains throughout our lives. When we are small we are bounded by the responsibilities that our parents have for us and the obligations we are expected. Now I’m bounded by thinking of the future and my career. Some years down the line I would be bounded by people who don’t even exist in my dictionary right now

But I agree these bounding are necessary for keeping sanity at place, coz these are more of mutual obligations

I am more concerned about social freedom

I begin by asking is power good or bad, is hierarchy necessary. If yes, how do we make sure that the people promoted on the top of the pyramid have their ethics and ethos right?

With power comes responsibility but is there a mechanism that makes sure that the sides of the coin stick together

Some believe money, but I say power is the world’s greatest aphrodisiac. Money doesn’t care who owns it. A bum can win it in a lottery, or a dunce can inherit it. But power is different, it is to own the world

I now believe certain sections of our country and society, considerably many such sections, power have changed the obligations that they have.

Corruption has completely modified the way things work and become a part of the smooth flowing mechanism of this country. Guess what, even we have started using corruption to our advantage and for the middle class as well this has become a boon.

In certain cases it’s not corruption but the lax attitude of the people on the top, the concept of reversed obligations has whitewashed what we cherish as freedom.

How many times it has happened that you are not pleased by the teaching methodologies of your faculties and couldn’t do anything about it

How many times has it not happened that you are working under a boss u know he is literally screwing you but you cannot quit because of various financial obligations, including bonds and stuff

You pay taxes but are using broken roads, staying in the dark etc etc

Why is it that we have to pay more then what is required at government houses, be it taxation, mutation of houses etc

I took cat on 18november, morning slot. It was a slot that made news because of a total of 5-6 questions that were wrong.  Mind you there are three sections with 20 questions each. Every correct attempt takes a person miles above. Add to that the time spent, anxiety, tension and other factors surrounding these wrong questions. As the process suggests such question were reported to the authority, and promises were made that the needful will be done. Statistically giving marks to everyone who took the paper is unwise, I attempt 31,5 questions wrong I am given marks for them means my net attempt becomes 36,these 5X3 15 marks is a huge advantage to me, but not for the ones who got correct papers , if they don’t mark us I attempted just 31 coz I didn’t had 60 questions to choose but only 55,which again is not so good an attempt compared to everyone in every other slot. 

As the results came out, it was disaster, on talking with some of the people who took cat in the slot; I came to know they have marked us averagely between 80-90 percentile. Complains, media campaigns nothing brought about a change and many are here about to lose a year for no fault of ours

Having said all these is there a way out. Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies. In all the cases it has been highlighted that being at the bottom of the pyramid giving your attorney to someone else is no longer a humble submission. I don’t see a revolution in the next few years but I’m hopeful to being on the top of the pyramid in some time. But till then it’s all about being in the flow

What it means to be a disable

To start off with I’m a wannabe MBA and the genesis for righting this post comes from a horrible group discussion (GD) I had in the selection process of Tapmi. This year Tapmi has gd as an elimination round add to that I’m extremely bad at gds. Owing to the elimination condition the gd was one big fish market

It was the biggest fish market ever possible. Even the fishermen would run with their fishes.
I’m extremely bad at gds, and if it’s a fish market I hardly come in. So for the 1st 15min I was nowhere in the discussion. Every time doing the ”extending to what he has said” and 5 people are speaking and no one stops, my entire point got spoken out but no one noticed. I was all set for the embarrassment to leave the group after the process.

Thankfully at 1 point the panelist interfered and said our vocal decibels would not help and warned us, we got organized for a minute and that is where I gave 1 solid point.
Later again 1 more point and that’s it. Of the total 20min I had an airtime of maybe 30secs.The gd got over, I was all set to leave. The panel came in and announced the names that have been shortlisted, and surprisingly I made it

During the entire process I felt as if I’m a dumb literally or else the process has gone off to some other planet where my language does not belong. Interestingly I had a thought within the gd ”how would a deaf or a dumb participate in a gd like this”. As far as I know IIMs have reservations for disabled but exactly how is it that they go through the process. One If they have no voice to put or they can’t comprehend what is going on I guess he would be busy with his sign language in one corner while the discussion continues, if at all a scribe is allowed who is novice as far as gds are concerned he has no chance. On the hindsight being disabled and being special he might get an advantage with special emphasis being given to him

I continued the discussion with one of my friends and inevitably the discussion went to whether disables can be good managers. I reached to the consensus that the way they are managing their lives it indeed is a great bit of an MBA but honestly acutely disabled (blind, deaf, dumb) don’t stand a chance of being an able corporate manager. My friend who didn’t quite agree said you don’t know what it means to be one, as If he knew, but actually I have been there once and my memory faded back to the beginning of 2010

People who have seen me can describe my physical attributes in a single word “plump”. Well this tag has been attached since my schooling days and I hadn’t done much about it. Of late I decided, look now within a span of 2 years I would be pursing MBA in some other place, a new start a new beginning let’s do something about the plump thing before I start of there. So I frantically started yoga, pranayam, gym and what not. But I realized my diet has gone directly proportional to my efforts on weight losing. In spite of doing something about it I went hell bent on exercising. Increasing the counts everywhere every day, till one day I got up with a sore back

I’m a young guy, and young guys don’t have back pain so continued till couldn’t continue anymore. But the pain won’t stop. It increased and went up and up till a point that I was bedridden, my parents took a note of it, and honestly I was a bit paranoid for the first time

Initially I went for homeopathy, then saw a physician, got some x-rays, till finally dad came down and took me to a senior orthopedic at Apollo Kolkata .In the waiting room where young girls had come with their grandpas I had come as a patent with my dad. However in pain I’m, it doesn’t really express when I’m in front of some hot cute girls, but all I prayed was to save me the embarrassment, coz if the doc called me in front of them they might suffer some severe heart aches heart breaks

Slip disc it is, so be it, almost everyone seems 2 have it ones, my both maternal uncles had it, my neighbor had it, nothing to worry, take rest will be fine.

But things got worse. At one point one or the other leg used to get completely frozen. Moving around in the house, basic stuff became a nightmare. It was then I realized what amount of effort it goes into picking up a phone that’s ringing across my bed. You need to first turn and look where the phone is, move your upper part of the torso at snails space, rotate the one leg that’s good hold the one that’s not good, twist it bend it, scream a whisper and then you are up. Time passed medicines changed and over a month has passed. Mind it this was an important year for me, I had CAT in 9 months time, had joined TIME and missing out the initial few important classes, pressure from college was rising all this adding to the gravy.

By the end of feb, I was sick of stinking in a room. Visitor’s sympathy that used to sound good initially started irritating me. I saw my mom in a new light who amidst all the tension owing to me was at her best ,doing every little thing, right from running the phone down to me, to get me a mug and a tub to clean my hands post meals, making me more guilty of my arrogance and ignorance that I had.

But I’m an optimist, I’m a hell of a positive person, 2 days I have joined swimming and I have already started reading success stories on how to cross the English Channel. I looked at the positives. Now that I fall in the physically handicap category, I could get through IIM in a meager 90 percentile. People including my mom would never scold me again. At least for the next 2 years I will have whatever I want for in the meals, my pocket money is bound to go up

I also decided that I would go ahead with my life, I remember telling my mom on my bday(25^th Feb) that if by the end of this month If I don’t walk again, get me a wheelchair and think I’m a handicap but I have to go ahead, 1st march, whatever happens I am going to time again .I saw some videos by nick vujicic, read some inspirational stuff and almost all kind of disable personalities found a place in my YouTube downloaded videos.

I also ignored the cons, of all the things I could never do in my life (one of my idiot friend told me I would never get married and stuff) coz I knew somewhere deep in my heart that I would be fine someday. When I was in class 8 I was a great fan of WWE. I remember once when Triple H had hit HBK Shawn Michael at his spinal cord with a sledge hammer and he had been confined to a wheel chair, weeks later amidst all that tremendous background music and the euphoria he jumped up from the wheelchair and kicked it away. Now I know it was all doctored but having seen that at that point of time it has etched in my memory now, besides having seen my quota of inspirational Hindi movies where the hero gets up as far as he has legs, even the English classics like The Curious case of Benjamin Button has a similar scene

Honestly I knew I don’t have polio or anything like that its just silly disease and would heal soon

By god’s grace I met Dr AK Pal at Peerless Kolkata who just by seeing my condition said I had Sacroilitis a simple bone infection that would go away with some cheap medicines and it did. And it did so fast that in 2 days time I walked up the stairs till 5^th floor for my TIME class on 1st march (Damn the diseased lift)

Having said all these I feel extremely lucky that it wasn’t permanent. My heart goes out to all those people who are not that fortunate. I have started taking special care of myself and have become more cautious (not about my diet though) .Whatever happens, any disaster, anything that was not what I expected I still thank god for giving me eyes to see these wonderful things, ears to hear all the music life has for me, tongue to speak my words of wisdom and every other part intended to do what they should

I cannot help but feel distressed when I think of the disabled around me. All I have learnt from this entire episode is to value whatever we have, coz we are not going to no its worth until we lose it

Development Politics vs Identity Politics

Any government democratic or otherwise has agendas and propagandas. Polices that eventually burns down to politics. Any political party and for that matter even the ruling class will have policies be it either classified as development politics or identity politics. Development politics, the name itself is quite clearly stating that the agendas are welfare oriented, were it’s the politics for the people by the people and of the people, policies can have a long term return or otherwise, but benefit to the society is the main aim.

Identity politics is more about establishing a political party as a brand and marketing itself to stay ahead of the competition, it has got to do with able politicians who started off on the development foot and the successors are just extending the name and benefits of the previous good work that has been done. Party and power are the main motives of the politics and development is there just at fag end.

Identity politics can me more clearly defined in the context of power monopoly where there exist only one main power and no strong opposition to control it. A case in point can be the politics in west Bengal with the CPI(M) ruling the state for 34yrs now. Parties at the time of election are just identified by the fact that they ruled for so long and so forth and no scope of developmental thinking is even induced, coz they know, they are at the mercy of these parties which are bound to be re elected and as said the development at the fag end has always been there. But CPI(M) didn’t start of as identity politics, in the very first opportunity to act as the power holders, they connected with masses mostly poor an crushed out the communist culture if any that pervaded in West Bengal at that time, private players and industries regardless of their backgrounds were considered enemies and stress was given on agriculture and allied works which instantly struck a cord with the poor masses that Bengal had ,which consisted of the waves of immigrants from Bangladesh that came in two different lots. But now as evident West Bengal had earned a reputation of non industrial state and the actions of communist feelings disregard for the rich even though not so cunning still prevades in the lower masses of West Bengal .With trade unions in full swing, bandhs and the power of the masses to spill blood at the slightest context has turned the communist people of Bengal into institutions of egos and irresponsibility. But as every cloud has a silver lining, change is sweeping in West Bengal, how competent the present strong opposition in West Bengal would be is yet to be tested on ground but the powerhouses have known identity politics isn’t gonna work anymore.

Another example of development politics overshadowing strong identity politics is the win of Nitish Kumar from Bihar. a state so pressed in the darkness, underdeveloped illiterate masses have now come to realize, that funny talks up the podium and the dose of entertainment that Mr. Lalu Prasad has been giving them in his sweet humorous tone is not gonna actually help them survive, where every other state is running into technology and development. People have realized that the unbound pool of resources in Bihar in the form of resources human or other needs to be tapped and development is the way ahead.

But more importantly the kind of politics played it’s the people who need to wake up from their limbo and have rational logical thoughts; the assessment of every bit in and around them is the need of the hour. If it can be preached politics developmental or identity will have to keep development as their fore most agenda