Can we buy god?

This is a question that was planted in my mind ever since I witnessed a particular incident more than 2.5 years back. I was at the ‘Bikshandar’ temple, a century’s old ‘Lord Balaji’ shrine near my house, with my friend Jagan. We were there to seek the blessings to the Lord when we were spectators to a very peculiar event. A family of 4 was going from altar to altar with the priest in tow. Every time the priest had completed the pooja and retreated with the flame (‘deeparthanai’ in Tamil…not sure what it is called in English), the mother distributed crisp 10 rupees notes to the sons and instructed them to place it in the flame plate offered by the priest. During the entire period, the boys were fixated on getting the notes from their mother and depositing them! All the while, the priest was gleefully pocketing the notes while strenuously putting up a fake smile for the family.

The fact that the family was assigned an exclusive priest and that the priest practically ignored other worshippers [including self and friend] made me feel bad. I have always thought of temples as schools where everyone was equal and treated likewise regardless of their social or economic status. It was then I realized that god can actually be bought. Our temples, especially the really old and famous ones, are turning out to be hangouts of the rich and famous. Special entrances or enhanced entry fee [and by extension quicker access] and exclusive poojas for VVIPs are the order of the day in these establishments.

As I write this post, I am starting to realize that money is actually replacing caste. In the past, the caste you were born into determined whether you allowed entry into a temple and if so your roles and functions inside. But it looks like your economic status will be increasingly dictating your access to religious places and the services rendered. It looks like one evil replacing the other. What are your thoughts on this?

An interesting incident

Hi All,

More than a month back, I travelled from Bangalore to Chennai by a Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation [KSRTC] bus. I was carrying some luggage with me and had promptly left it in the luggage compartment as per the instruction of the driver. The driver collected Rs 500 from me for the luggage and promised me a receipt at the end of the journey.

I kept pestering the driver and conductor for a receipt throughout the journey but to no avail. They just gave me some frivolous excuses and boomeranged my requests every time.  I was pretty perturbed by their behavior but could not do much due to the fear of being thrown off the bus. At the end of the journey neither the driver nor the conductor made any effort to issue a receipt. The driver just returned Rs 150 to me and stated that Rs 350 was the ‘charge’ for the luggage!

Upset with the proceedings, I decided to take up this matter. I shot a mail to the complaint email stated in the KSRTC website. Truth be told, I wasn’t holding my breath. C’mon this is India.. a place where even physical complaints don’t get investigated and now you are expecting a virtual complaint to be taken seriously..get real dude!! I wouldn’t blame you if that was what you were thinking. My fear that my complaint will go unattended was further cemented when I did not even get an auto reply acknowledging my email.  So this probably was an email which is not monitored at all.

Days went by and hope receded like a low tide. I thought of sending a 2^nd email or perhaps calling them up. But the realist inside me started taking charge to ensure no such thing would happen. Just when I thought all hope was lost, I received a call from a person who claimed to be a ‘case officer’ from KSRTC. He informed me that my case was looked into and was found to be genuine. He further informed me that since no receipt was issued, KSRTC was willing to refund the money I paid for the luggage. Again I was not holding my breath but to my surprise I did receive a refund from them a couple of hours later! A week later I received an email from the Divisional Traffic Officer, Bangalore Central Division. I am reproducing the email below verbatim.

Sir,

                Re: Your email complaint has been verified in detail

We are in receipt of your email complaint dated 28^th August 2012. The matter has been examined in detail. Necessary disciplinary action has been taken against the driver who performed duty on that day. And the conductor of the vehicle is suitably warned and instructed to behave politely with passengers. Sorry for the inconvenient caused to you on that day and continue to travel in KSRTC buses in future also.

Regards,

Divisional Traffic Officer,

Bangalore Central Division

I have been reflecting on this incident the past few weeks. It seems to be that the game changer in all this is technology. It was an online complaint that made me approach the KSRTC people in the first place. I wouldn’t fancy myself standing in a derelict government office full of cynical officers discouraging you from the launching a complaint. Let bygones be bygones sir…Probably a bad day for you…Locating that office itself would be quite a challenge and even I were to find it, we all know where complaint papers go the second we leave. Straight to a dust filled cabinet never to be opened again. So technology brings convenience.

Additionally, being physically present at an office exposes me to retaliatory attacks from the very people I am complaining against. Who is to say these people don’t have friends on the inside. So technology offers yet another thing: anonymity

Finally, accountability also comes into the picture. I have a proof of the email and the relevant people/department cannot refuse in the future that they did not receive a complaint or lost it somehow. So the government officer looking into this case has to account for this complaint and the consequent action (if any) was taken.

It is clear that infusion of technology into governance has several benefits for the citizenry. I really hope that the amateur steps taken by our central government and state governments see their logical conclusion.

P.S. Not sure if I need to say this..but I am going to anyway…

In the interest of full disclosure, I am in IT professional so I have a positive bias towards technology. Also, deeper penetration of technology into governance would benefit me, albeit indirectly and in a minuscule manner.

Subordination of women in Indian societies

This has been a topic which i feel has not been discussed at length in various fora in india due to myriad reasons. Combine that with my recent urge to chip with my 2 cents worth, this topic becomes a potent candidate for my blog!

Through this post i wish to explore the instances of female subordination and reasons why manifestation of such practices are tolerated in our society. The below content might make some queasy but what the hell...what good is a blog post that doesnt stir up things...!!!

Subordination is defined as being subject to an authority or belonging to a lower/inferior class. There are several instances of this in our society. Women have never really been masters of their own lives. They have been taught to look up to their fathers, husbands or brothers and follow their words verbatim. Have you ever wondered why women address their husbands as 'ji', 'yennaga', 'ri' with all these words meaning to show respect to the person being addressed. Why this inequality in a relationship where both partners are supposed to be pillars of strength for each other and where love and affection matter more than respect. To answer this question we must dwelve deeper into the place where it all started.

Yes the marriage. Indian weddings are blatant examples of female subordination and all this happens in the garb of preserving tradition and culture. A couple of years back, i was at a friends wedding and I was aghast when i saw the bride prostrate at the feet of the groom when he presented her with a saree. There are other practices like the bride 'serving the first meal' to the groom. Then are examples of how still many women in our country dont even get much freedom in choosing their own husbands. They are not even active participants in the very discussion that matters most in their life! Fathom that! I could rant on but you get the point. Subordination is entrenched and instituitionalised in our society. The traditions have been framed in a way to ensure total subjugation of the female kind and any questioning of the practices tantamount to questioning of the culture or the religion itself.

It is quite puzzling as to how as a society we tolerate these retrograde practices and why not many corrective steps have been taken to rectify the situation. At this juncture, it is only appropriate that we compare of our women folk with their western counterparts, just to make sure that this scenario is only an India or more broadly a Asia/Africa specific one . Western women have seen magnificient strides of improvement in their lives. Most are masters of their own lives and have the last word on what they want to with their lives.

Now there are several reasons why this subordination has been decimated in Western socities, the usual ones being improvement in the economic status of women, better educational qualification etc. I wish to highlight one more angle to this debate, the role of women themselves in eradication of subjugation. Yes, agreed that change was more forthcoming in Western socities but where change wasnt given on a platter, Western women fought hard and attained it. They continually questioned status quo and wrangled their lives away from their male brethern. But sadly Indian women either didnt do that or were not successful enough.

Now i dont want to be seen as blaming Indian women for the condition they find themselves in today. Most of the blame must be approportioned on the system that setup the elaborate web of subjugation and kept it up even in these contemporary times But Indian women as a whole dont seem to be much interested in fighting for control of their lives and are willing to accept things are they are. This attitude needs to change and until they come out with all guns blazing, i am afraid things will only get worse from here...






 

When was the last time you did something for the first time?

Approximately a month back I did something I thought I had not even a wee bit of inclination towards, even in the wildest of my dreams. Cook! Yes, this writer finally managed to gather enough courage to go to the kitchen, pick up a few utensils and cook himself a decent meal.

In order to ensure that there were no disappointments, I started off with something easy namely Pudina and cocon

ut chutney with Dosa. The coconut chutney was easy to prepare with very minimal actual cooking involved. It was the Pudina which presented a little bit of a challenge and frankly it did give me a few jittery moments.

When my mother narrated the method of preparation over the phone, I just religiously jotted it down without questioning her. But when it came to the practical session, I started feeling a little wobbly. How else would an amateur cook react when the instructions read like ‘handful of this’ and a ‘pinch of that’? But as time went by, I realized that cooking is not an exact science but rather an art of approximations and it is this that made cooking an exciting and innovative exercise.

Having been emboldened by the results, I wish to try my hand at more complex recipes. Chicken Chettinad and Mutton Keema, here I come. Moreover, I realize that my scope of television entertainment has widened. All of a sudden, shows like ’MasterChef’ and ‘Highway on a plate’ seem more relevant and appealing.

While we are still on the note of food, my project mates and I went to a premium restaurant for a quarterly dinner. The place is called Premier Inn and it is located in the Whitefield area of Bangalore. It is actually a hotel with a restaurant in the ground floor. The restaurant was spacious, well furnished and had customizable seating options. The waiters were generally courteous and helpful (apart from the time we kept asking for repeated starters!). The buffet spread was ample and did cover a good number of Indian cuisines, both vegetarian and non vegetarian. And you get discounted ‘you-know-what’ during the happy hours….:)

Mumbai so far...

Hi All,

Self is back in this space after a really looooonnnng time. I have been busy with searching for & eventually switching jobs. As part of my new assignment in a new organization, I had to move to a new city namely Mumbai, the city of dreams [or so they say]. And move I did, from the pleasant confines of Bangalore to the bustling & uncertain atmosphere of Mumbai.

My journey across the great Indian Deccan plateau had to happen via the air route given the tight time frame I found myself in. Not that I am complaining. Much to my surprise, the flight departed on time and managed to get me to Mumbai in one piece. For those not familiar with Indian conditions, this by itself is a major accomplishment! The air journey was reasonably comfortable and the pure rush of adrenaline that courses through your body when the plane is taxiing down the runway & preparing itself for takeoff is worthwhile for the thousands you pay for the hour or so ride.

The joining went off smoothly. It was other related incidents which I wish to elaborate on here. I was prodded on by a fellow joinee to take the notorious suburban railway back to my hotel on the first day of induction. I reluctantly agreed but had a bad feeling about it from the word go given that it was just the third day of my landing in Mumbai. To top it off, I was linguistically challenged. The only Hindi I knew then (and prob. even now) was “Hindi nahi maalum hai” (I don’t know Hindi).

At the train station, a mass of humanity had gathered and was anxiously waiting to be my fellow passengers. The train arrived and there was a sudden increase in activity. People started pushing & shoving mercilessly. It was as if I did not exist. I got a little peeved by all this and “lost precious time” (according to my friend) by which time the train was impossibly full. The next train arrived a few minutes later and this time I doled out the same treated that was meted out to me earlier on. I angled & scuttled my way across to board the carriage. My friend was suddenly all praise for me and even commented that my initiation (read into a Mumbaikar) had begun. My friend continued to enlighten me on various aspects of rail travel in Mumbai.

The 2nd day of induction was equally eventful but this time for all the wrong reasons. Another fellow joinee offered a motorcycle ride back to my hotel and I gladly accepted especially after the “sardined” train ride the previous day. But it seems, as always, God had other plans. The bike I was riding on didn’t have the usual mirrors. The ubiquitous traffic policemen, deployed strategically at various traffic signals, gleefully stopped us and fleeced us accordingly. I felt bad for the poor guy who lamented that till that day hadn’t been caught and that too twice in a single day.

I have also witnessed my first terrorist attack. With the frequency with which bomb blasts are happening here, I guess everyone must add terror to their list of firsts when they are narrating their experience in Mumbai. People have been just reduced to statistics and terrorists are striking with such audacity and certainty every 2 years that you get confused if the authorities here are really in charge and have things under control.

So, there you have it. This is how my Mumbai sojourn has been so far.

My cousin's grad day ceremony

Hi All,

I attended my ultra genius cousin’s graduation day ceremony last month, 26th Feb 2011, at the Bangalore Medical College & Research Institute [BMCRI]. The event was graced by the Mr Bharadwaj, Governor of Karnataka, several eminent doctors & the entire brass of BMCRI’s faculty. The media was in attendance too, hoping to get good sound bites and capture some picture perfect moments.

The atmosphere was vibrant and alive. Overjoyed students, proud parents and relieved (!) faculty members. It was like a throwback to my own graduation almost 3 years back. Like all typical Indian ceremonies, this one too started off late. We are like this only, yaar!

The governor arrived with much pomp and gaiety. After the usual welcome address, a string of speeches commenced. [more on this later]. Then came the awards distribution. Everyone, especially the parents, was in awe for the prize winners and that’s when I realized this country’s craze for academic prowess never vanishes. Call it a middle class disease. This was followed by the ceremonial Hippocratic Oath, a rite of passage for medical practitioners. Finally, much to the pleasure of the graduands, the degrees were handed out, but not before mentioning some suave qualities about each and every one of them.

Most of the speeches, save the one by the Dean, were interesting and note worthy. There was a doctor who was prescribing competition with self being a much better challenge than competition with peers. Another one which proved statistically that having more doctors per capita will not solve the medical problems we are facing now. That was a real insight to me. A bureaucrat was detailing the state of hospitals and medicine in general in Karnataka. But the one who caught my attention the most was an eminent doctor who gave up his great career to work with tribals in interior India. He was narrating the appalling conditions in rural India and that it only takes a little bit of resolve to address the challenges we are facing. This man was austerity personified, dressed in just a formal shirt and pants while most of other invitees, probably rightfully so, had their coats and suits on.

The day ended with a sumptuous lunch, loads of photo taking and a cultural event which was actually an excuse for the graduands to let their hair down. I was overwhelmed by how the guys and girls danced as if nobody was watching. There were even some who might have put Prabhu Deva to shame! That was when I realized how many of us, self included, were/are so coiled up in life that we don’t we even realize how to have fun anymore. I remember telling my aunt how un-inhibitive these kids were. To all my friends and well wishers, self has taken a leaf or two out of the books of the graduands and is evolving. Effects will be visible soon

Pic courtsey: My cousin, fifth from the left

Modern Revolution for Dummies

Folks,

The winds of change are blowing across the Arab World. As the rest of the world watches on with jittery nerves, unprecedented events are unraveling on a daily basis. Regimes across the Arab world, thought to be ‘stable’ till now, have either fallen or are facing a real threat of collapsing like dominoes. By the time this post reaches it’s Holy Grail [i.e. my blog site…:)] it would have been more than a week since the autocratic Egyptian government fell and more than a month since the Tunisian regime found its rightful place. Bahrain, Yemen & Libya are witnessing sustained protests and it’s any body’s guess on what will happen there.

Now, I don’t really want to go into intricacies of these revolutions and give a blow by blow account of what transpired there. I am sure most of you would have got daily fix from watching the news. I rather want to concentrate of the characteristics of a modern revolution.

What creates/sparks revolutions?

1. Pent up frustration - Long years of autocratic rule just creates one thing: Pent up frustration. A pressure cooker like situation where people are just waiting to explode. Even in so called democratic countries (like erstwhile Egypt), lack of true political reform and imperceptible benefits led to the turmoil we witnessed.

2. Iconic Images – Remember the ‘Tank Man’ of the Tiananmen Square protests in Beijing, 1989. The image of the man, who refused to give way for a tank to pass, still flashes in our minds and must have been a great rally point for protestors then. It must also be noted that the more recent self immolation of a vegetable seller in Tunisia was what started this unrest in the Arab world.

Indications that a revolution will probably be successful:

1. Relatively peaceful - If there is something the Egyptian revolt has proven, it’s that non violence is still relevant and a potent force to be reckoned with. [yea, Chak De Gandhi]The protests were not without their share of violence but given the magnitude of the protests and the competing interest of various parties involved, violence of much greater scale was expected. But, thankfully, that was not to be. Egyptian protestors were so responsible as to set up ‘check points’ and swipe down the fellow protestors to ensure weapons didn’t find their way into the protest area.

2. Participation of Women - Women power was out on display during the protests. There were mothers, housewives, sisters singing and chanting out on the streets with their children in tow. Women change the dynamics of any protest. Unlike men, who are just looking for an excuse to turn violent women, women have more pressing domestic concerns and for them to disregard that and turn up and mix with the crowd is a phenomenal thing. [It indicates to how much and how far the rot has spread.] All this in a region where women, apparently, are treated more like cattle than human beings!

3. Social Media - It would be safe to say that the revolution in Egypt would have come up to nothing if not for social media like Facebook. In social networking sites, people connect on a personal basis and this ensures that news is actually appreciated rather than just viewed, as we do it on TV. The fact that the internet was shut down just days after the protests broke out in Egypt reiterates the critical role of the internet and more importantly the social media.