Mister Prime Minister

I have been feeling the urge of having a conversation with you over a cup of coffee, which doesn’t seem feasible in the near future, so I thought of atleast writing this to you. What I have learnt about India is that it is one of the most successful democracies in the world, which has been inherently blessed with abundant diversities. From modernists to fundamentalists, from liberals to leftists, from NRI’s to illiterate villagers, from pearl white to pitch dark, we have all varieties of human existence here. And you are the proud head of such a state (which now sounds like a joke).

The head of the state, which is politically you, is the subject of most of the jokes which lie in my inbox today. I have been an admirer of your intellectual prowess, however, last couple of years and the events which have taken place have completely brainwashed my fondness for you. A political figure, who was mostly apolitical, highly intellectual, backed by vast sea of knowledge, has now become a mere puppet (your de-facto might be the coalition dynamics or Sonia Gandhi or Rahul Gandhi for that matter). How weird does it sound that the PM of world’s largest democracy is nothing more than a rubber stamp. Okay, knowing that the fault is not completely yours and I do pity your situation,but still is it fair enough for a common man to repose his confidence in you?

We are a developing country doesn’t facilitate the masses to avoid the dominance of scams in the newspapers every second day. Poverty doesn’t facilitate bribery nor does illiteracy facilitate crime. All these scenarios depict something which is tantamount to the failure of the system of democracy as a whole. The dirty politics being played in the parliament makes us think of the concept of democracy in India as nothing more than a fallacy, and Mr. Prime Minister do you have an answer to the question that what has given you the comfort of becoming impotent while holding such an important office in such a vast country with enormous human resource at your hand?

We are moving towards a better future, but how? And what is your baseline? Events taking place in every nook and corner of the country don’t say the stories of progress. We encounter that a 5 year old child dies after being stuck into a borewell for 86 hours, a woman is raped in police station when she goes to lodge an FIR about being gang raped, where pilots go on strike, where a majority of people can’t even read or write INDIA, where farmers commit suicides in high numbers, where health and sanitation reforms sound like a taboo, where child labour is as regular as watching porn ( ministers are good at the latter), and the list might go on endlessly. However, we are so busy at handling 2G and CWG, that we can’t even procure the basic living conditions for each one of us, let alone talking about growth, prosperity or development.

As the head of an elected government, you are answerable to each one of us for how could you trod upon our expectations and aspirations and make us a subject of global mockery.  

Sunshine and Rainbows

As I sit down to write this, I am going through a major upheaval within. I feel so restless and so pressurized. It seems as if it is a real tough time for me as God is testing me in multiple chapters of life. And what do I do? Should I be brave and do my best or feel doomed by the thoughts of failure? It’s not that I have never faced failures in life; I have had a basket full of them. From a star to dust, I have faced a major downfall and here I am, back to my saddles, ready for another battle. At the most, I will lose and then again get up to move on.

From where do I get this feeling? The answer is very simple. We need abundant sunshine in life. That sunshine brings brightness to our days, calms us in the night, tells us that we are beautiful, we are smart, and we are capable of doing what we imagine. All we need is to discover that piece of sunshine. It is there around you, explore your world, something will be there which would tell you that YOU ARE NOT A LOOSER, it would be the feel good factor of your life. It can be anything, anyone. If you ask me for a clue to locate your sunshine, I would say anything, the smile of your lover, the hug from your father or even the pink roses of your garden, the kiss from a small kid in your family or a simple message from your mentor. All of them make you feel great and helps you keep going.

Every morning when you wake up, do you smile? Do you feel that wow it is a beautiful morning? Do you feel glad that you are alive and have one more day to explore this world, learn something new? All of these questions might have the same answer i.e. NO because we take our life for granted. What if you don’t wake up only? And what if you don’t get a chance to say your final goodbye? We all have so many problems, our managers are devilish, our parents don’t understand us, our colleagues hate us, our lovers have no time for us and these petrol prices are all time high. Gosh, life is so difficult and we just hate our lives. Is it so bad? Is it that nothing is good or worth loving in this life?

Or if at all, there nothing worth loving in your life, atleast you are there. While earning your bread and butter, struggling for good grades, working your ass off for a good appraisal, you have forgotten yourself. Parents, spouse, girlfriend, boyfriend, friends, children, neighbour and even watchman are important but what about you? Do you value yourself? How about finishing your work, going home, and after supper, going to terrace with a mug of coffee and feeling the cool breeze blowing over your face? Such moments make you feel alive. They give you strength for the challenges of the coming day. However, we hardly take out time to make ourselves feel good and feel charged up.

I often hear remarks like, “Life is unfair”, “I am fucked up”, “life sucks”, “I am fed up”, “I have had enough” and an entire sea of such small phrases which turn you into a big time looser. Don’t use them or atleast don’t use them seriously. Keep it simple and fun. If you had a bad day at work, come home and tell your sunshine person about it, spill that anger and disgust out of yourself and go to sleep. But please don’t wake up with the same pumpkin face. Atleast you be fair enough with the new day. Don’t pile on things, keep removing the trash out of your life, be it your old bike, screwed up assignment or even a not so happening relationship and most important believe in the line that WHAT IS GONE IS GONE.

New day, new start should be your action plan, love yourself and feel great about what you have. And have some sunshine in your life. And do come back to me tell me about what is your sunshine factor.

Looking towards the horizon

Woods are lovely, dark and deep

But I have promises to keep

And miles to go before I sleep

And miles to go before I sleep.

-          Robert Frost

I have always lived by these lines. Whenever I felt low and disturbed, these lines have played in my mind over and over again. They tell me that no pleasure, no pain should stop me, I should keep moving ahead, every day, every moment. Nothing should obstruct me or distract me.

 Infact life is all about taking up a journey, this journey starts the moment you open your eyes in this world and ends when you close them. The start and end point doesn't matter. What matters is the course taken between these two points. Ask yourself have you made the most out of what you have? Do you feel proud of what you are? Do you complain too much and try too less? You are the best person to judge yourself. No assessment, no appraisal can tell you what you deserve, provided that you know what you are upto and how much you are putting in.

Our problem is that we can’t ignore the unimportant stuff in life. If someone is trying to insult you, why should you even care? However, our general practice is to keep thinking about that same piece of shit again and again. And thus, we make things from bad to worse for ourselves. When someone says you are good for nothing, we actually prove them right by doing more mistakes rather than doing our work even more precisely.

What people think about you should not matter to you; rather what you think about yourself is of utmost importance. People will always pull you down; they will be arrogant and jealous. You need to keep your cool and excel. Make yourself happier and let their jealousy increase. You should accept your mistakes and learn from them and close the chapter, don’t carry it with you for the rest of your life. Stop feeling bad about yourself.

Every new day comes with a new opportunity. Make sure that you thank God for it and when you go to bed, you have something to discuss with him (Other than complaints). We hardly realize how privileged we are to lead such a life, we have abundant opportunities around us, we need to grab as much as we can and keep moving. We need to improve every day, and stop worrying about what has passed. Focus on your today, the days to come will become beautiful automatically.

                                                                              

                                                                 HAPPY JOURNEY

Emotional Dynamics

Girl sees a boy, boy is smitten away by girl’s beauty, and they feel something for each other, confess their love, spend each possible moment with each other, get possessive, live for each other, fight with each other and then become strangers one fine day.

This was such a not so small and cute love story, isn’t it? Truth is usually ugly. And the times we are living in, love is a myth. It hardly exists because it is very difficult to pursue it for an entire lifetime. A very strong force is required to love someone and love the same person till you breathe for the last time. The pace of the world is so fast that love evaporates very soon when it comes to priorities, privacy and possessiveness.

In most of the cases we misinterpret our emotions. Even a hint of liking a person seems to be love and that too with a romantic dimension. We confess it too early and get distracted even earlier. We get bored, we ignore, we blame and then we drift away. There no scope for understanding or empathy, because it is just not meant to be there. We need instant emotions, instant relationships and instant breakups. And in this course intensity and trust is lost and we end up getting into multiple fake and materialistic relationships.

We don’t have time to stop and think that is it really love? And infact how we are even letting our intelligent brains decide that Ok boss, I have fallen in love. Just because you find a girl sexy or a boy hot and you want to sleep with that person, you say you are in love with that person.

 If I say that X and Y are into a relationship, X hasn’t seen Y for last five years, they don’t talk daily over phone, they don’t poke into each other’s personal life and are still happily in love with each other, does this concept sound weird to you? It will sound bizarre but such relationships also exist.

Such people take their own good time to understand each other, they believe in each other and they don’t confess their love to each other after a week of knowing each other.

Why do we need to tell each other that we are in love, can’t it be communicated silently? Don’t we realize it every time we look at each other or every time you read his or her name or when you keep looking for excuse only to catch a glimpse of that person?

 What is the point of getting into complex stuff, attaching expectations and ruining your present for something which will not materialize in future? Why is it so difficult to live the present moment fully and cherish each other’s presence? Why give a name or keep reminding each other of the trauma attached with the future of a given relationship. Flow with the stream and enjoy the tide. If you are honest and truthful and deserve to be together, you would be together, EFFORTLESSLY.

Finding solutions

Last time when I wrote about feeling responsible and not giving up, one of my close friends told me that I know the problem, I address the problem but I give no solution. He actually made me think about this. Infact the size of this problem within my generation is so huge that it has turned into an epidemic. We have eventually turned so materialistic that even friendship has turned jazzy. We want to show off how many friends we have, we have become so cheap we hardly respect our female friends, we have become so carefree we hardly think about life 10 years from now, we don’t plan, we don’t take precautions, we are so used to LET GO that we have become unstable, be it career or relationships or even our decisions.

While thinking about solutions to this epidemic, I could do nothing except to pity me for even trying to find a solution. I mean how am I eligible for doing that? Infact even if I give out a solution, is it going to make a difference? Why should I spoon feed anybody, why can’t you people carve your own paths. All of us differ from each other in an obvious manner, and thus our solutions are bound to be different. I can hardly find a person who is actually trying to bring a revolution or a change for that matter. And the ones who are struggling to make a difference are taken as jerks.

Trust me if I even go and tell somebody that I love reading books, that person is going to come back to me and ask me if I am ok. My approach is firm here, I hardly care what they think about me, yes I read, I write and I discuss, I want to tell the comfort seeking people that it’s high time you better move your ass or you would be left with no chance to do that later and I tell this in whatever way I can. I say what’s the harm in being responsible? Why should you even give a damn to people who say that you are boring just because you focused? It’s entirely your call whether you want to be chased by your girlfriend or you want to chase your dreams. And why should I even come into the picture to tell you your action plan. It is your life dude, action plans should be tailor made for you and you design them, you act upon them and you are the best judge of what is your next step going to be like.

How can an outsider come up to you to tell you about how intelligent or capable you are, rather, your work should reflect what substance are you made of and of course, for this, you need to realize that hidden potential inside you. You have to be focused and honest with yourself. You should stop caring about people who make fun of you; you should smile back to yourself at the end of the day and tell yourself that you are proud of what you are because there is no better you than you. Whatever you are doing is not because you want to prove it to the world rather because it is for your own self. 

Discover what you are

Each one of us is a human being by default (at least the ones who are reading this). We are made up of a different material altogether. We are intelligent, emotional, visionary, sharp, humorous, and compassionate (though finding all qualities in a single man is a rare event). However, each one of us is sensible and senseless at the same time. When we see ourselves at par with the entire cosmos, we hardly have any identity, any existence and on the other hand if we look at our small family or small group of friends, we have a role to play or sometimes multiple roles to play.

World has turned into a stressful place these days, I find majority of people saying that they are not happy, they are sad, depressed, dejected and a pool of all negative emotions which prevail. Infact at times I also do the same. All of us have unfathomable depths of energy and innovation within us, though some of us use it and some do not and some are not even aware of it.

The unaware lot does nothing and is mostly a self denigrator species who feel bad about themselves. They not only underestimate themselves but also think that their existence is a sheer waste. Negative thoughts of all shape, size and hue find a home in minds of such people. They feel depressed and helpless. Such people belong to the vulnerable species that project themselves as victims most of the times.

When we point a finger towards someone we hardly care that our effort stands null and we are equally responsible for whatever has happened. Dreams and goals are two different things altogether. We blame God, our family and all other possible people for our failures without mentioning that we too have done nothing to achieve those distant goals. It is so easy to crib all the time.

Ask yourself that are you brave enough to take the blame of your failures to yourself? First you accept that it’s you who has not given 100% and then realize the sea of energy within you and start afresh. There would be no VICTIM within you then, you would become a warrior

At any point of time when you would want to just give up, remind yourself that “I am a distinct human being and I have my own identity, I have a role to play in my family, in my nation, and the world as well, and I can’t let anyone, anything ruin my dreams. I will stand firm and face my failures and stand up again to give it one more try with a new zeal and after learning my lessons.

Modi and Modesty

For quite some time, I have been seeing Mr. Narendra Modi as the prime contender to the post of Prime Minister. However, last night I was brought out of slumber. Infact I was taken aback that if I can live amidst such misunderstandings, what would be the condition of the common man who cannot spare time and even afford to read statistics and reports about the ground reality. The very next day, I had a clear idea of what image has been projected when one of my friends remarked that BJP was secular party.

It was at that point, I decided that I wanted to be vocal about the real face of Vibrant Gujarat. Gujarat has been the cradle of some very famous and talented personalities like Mahatma Gandhi, Dhirubhai Ambani, Sam Pitroda, Dayanand Saraswati, Ratan Tata, Azim Premji, Vikram Sarabhai etc. Not only this in a very short span of time Gujarat has progressed manifolds, especially post Godhra. Chief Minister Narendra Damodar Modi has been globally acknowledged for making Gujarat a global business hub. Be it industry, or energy, or tourism, or culture, Gujarat’s performance has always been outstanding.

Behind this mask of prosperity and well being, we have an ugly face which has deep scars of communalism and inhuman approach. Gujarat is already bearing the dark stains of Godhra mass killings and this barbaric act was proudly supervised by Mr. Modi. Ask your conscience, how fair is it to kill innocent people in the name of law and order? How sane is it order ruthless killings in the name of religion? And how constitutional is it to give way to communal feelings in a secular state?

How would you explain the absence of muslim settlement within the five-kilometer radius of Ahmedabad University. Or how would you explain the over populous Juhapura which accommodates muslims more than it could have afforded to? What has stopped Mr. Modi from implementing the Central Scholarship for Muslim students when over Rs. 10,000 crore meant for scholarships for muslim youth were returned to the Centre while Gujarat is observing that urban poverty in Muslims is fifty percent higher than even OBC’s (and a good 800% higher than Hindus).  Can Mr. Modi deny that Gujarat has become Hindutva’s main production unit which also manufactures inferior status for Muslims?

When we talk about Gujarat’s progress we need to pay heed certain aspects here. How is the prosperity competing with the rise in anaemia in women and children which has gone up from 46.3% to 55% in 2004? While Muslims are exploited and looked down upon, there are hardly a handful of Muslim prosecutors appointed by the state to stand up for their protection. What accounts for this discrimination? How is Mr. Modi going give a justification for this hostility towards Muslims?

On top of this he has started off his Sadbhavna Mission diplomacy. I wonder if he understands what is sadbhavna! If he can ever come out of his fanatic approach and understand the pinch of losing your family behind the veneer of communal riots. How would he justify his insensitive and barbaric orders? How long would he hide his sinful thoughts under the limelight of progress and development? What he is doing in his state will soon spread over the country. No wonder he may order a massacre of Muslims all over and emerge as the General Dyer of Free India and would be assassinated in a similar fashion. We really need to know a lot about the people we appreciate, for we may not at all be aware of the animal instincts behind the mask of a savior.