If you are a frequent flyer or have been in an airplane in the last few years, you may have looked at the Skymall magazine. Every time I fly I grab the magazine first to see what’s new. There is a lot of exciting and very innovative stuff advertised in it. I call it the magazine of creative people. But this time it was different. I noticed a pattern in the variety of products that are being offered. There are so many products which make simple day today tasks mechanical or electronic – in other words they make us lazy! I had this instant flash of characters from Wall-E where future generation has weak legs and can’t even walk. The movie portrays how the human race became dependant on robotic devices for basic tasks in our life. If there is anything to learn from the movie it is that there are a lot of mundane things which we do and should be doing to keep ourselves active. I also remembered my grand parents telling my parents how their generation was more hard-working and then I hear my parents telling me the same thing. So are we becoming lazier generation by generation? Definitely the electronic age has dawned upon us and has changed the human life – how we do things, types of medical issues we have, how fitness centers are blooming every day! Now I am wondering where am I taking this – I have no complaints about the Skymall magazine because that’s their business. How we live our life is our business – the choices we make and what lifestyle we choose. Human brain is creative enough to think of ways to make life easy – just remember the cost!
Archive for the ‘Public Service’ Category
Mera Desh Meri Jaan
Posted in India, Life, Public Service, Social Networking on May 23, 2010| Leave a Comment »
My country my pride
It started as a dinner conversation with my colleagues. We were discussing how horrible the traffic is in Cairo. That’s when I told them about traffic in Delhi. One thing I have learnt in my globe trotting is that if you can drive in Delhi you can drive anywhere. And that would apply to most other Indian cities as well. We have mastered the technique to occupy every square inch of the road. The traffic pattern is no longer linear – just think of any geometrical figure and you would find that there. However our conversation did not stay on traffic. It got interesting when we started talking about how over a billion people live my country which is about the size of Texas and some neighboring states. How’s life in India? That’s when I started telling them about India. We are a service oriented country and there is a fee for every service. Well you have to understand the cost of time and that’s when you will appreciate this fees. It would normally take couple of months to get your passport but the guy standing outside the passport office can get it faster for a nominal fee. You can probably get away with a traffic violation for a fee. You can get some legal documentation sitting at home again for a fee. There is a fee for everything. This is the system but then I thought – India works, this system works! We may not have the highest standards of operations but work gets done – probably faster than most developed countries. Yes again there is a fee! Which other country has a billion people and a system which is this efficient? Believe me, I am not a supporter of such practices but I am proud of my country – every aspect of it. Even with a low literacy rate and high poverty we are still one of the strongest economies in the world. There has to be something that keeps it going, whatever mechanism is that – it works!
You may be thinking everything that’s happening in my country is correct. Not really because every house has a good and a bad and so does India. There are people fighting against corruption, people protecting women’s rights, people helping small children and people helping other people. Remember those people. There are things that need to be fixed but think about it – we all live in a complicated social-religious-political-economic web – and it still works!
PS: My colleagues left with a good impression about India and a desire to visit it sometime.
To Err is Human …
Posted in Life, Public Service, Social Networking on February 13, 2010| Leave a Comment »
My wife and I watched an Indian movie recently “Yeh Mera India!” – this is my India. After the movie we got into this conversation about socio-economic problems that India has. This was one of the best movies we had watched in a long time. Then we started thinking of “Crash” – an American movie which won several Oscars a few years ago. Now I am not writing this to discuss how Indian producers take ideas from Hollywood movies.
You watch Crash and see the socio-economic problems in US while Yeh Mera India portrays India’s. These problems are really not very different from each other – they just have a different face in a different country. They are all very complex, have developed over many years and leave a very weird taste in your mouth. Really – we have been doing this in our daily lives? Inadvertently yes, we all have been! Crash portrays a rich lady who is prejudiced against her Hispanic house worker and in Yeh Mera India another rich lady is prejudiced against a lower class house worker. Same thing, both issues are common to respective countries or let’s say societies. Crash depicts racist element in a white cop who has bitter feelings for African Americans. He goes out of his way to satisfy his alter ego and suspects every African American has a dark background or history. What do we see in India, religious hate – Hindu-Muslim conflict which has been going on for ages and people keep hurting each other in riots or protests. A feeling so deeply embedded in these cultures that it will take many years for it to flush out of the society – or is it never? You can keep drawing a parallel with other cultures – suppressed women in Japan, peasantry in China, race/color clashes in Europe, economic warfare in Africa, religion in Mid-east and list goes on! You watch such movies and then turn your head towards world news, its all just messed up – we as humans are messed up. We have developed these complexities which we sometimes tag as culture, sometimes as social issues and sometimes as ethical meltdown. As much as we worry about terrorism and want the world to be united, these issues are far worse. They are in us, in our day today lives, in our daily interaction and are becoming a part of human nature. These are the things we are passing on to our future generations. So how do we fix us? An international summit of world leaders cannot fix this or a small group of activists cannot change it – only we can – you, me and billions of other people! This blog is not to start an internet email chain where you forward to 100 other people and get blessed. This blog is to think, feel the change in your self and pass it on. This is my start!
daras 