Indian Politics and The Art of giving up television

Over the last few years (I think since 2011?), I had given up actively watching television, more so to focus my time on things more creative and useful to me and people around me.

Its been over an year that I stopped reading newspapers, the main contributor to wasting 45 minutes of my morning time to read something that had already happened, and that too about rapes/ murders/ corruption.

But still, old habits die hard! 

Maybe once in 6 months or so, I try to punish myself, I forcefully make myself sit in front of the TV and keep switching channels during the night.

On one such channel surf a few months back, I happened to stop at a “debate” on a Malayalam news channel. The topic was, of-course, the Supreme Court verdict on Sabarimala.

What caught my attention was that there was a group of “panelists” debating over a topic in such a manner that no one can understand what the other is saying. Even the moderator/ anchor is shouting in between and it was just too much noise! Some of the prominent words I could make out from the “noise” were “fascism”, “communism”, “secularism”, “feminism” and many more of such fancy words. The news channel didnt function the way it should’ve, it was dishing out opinion on topics that they do not fully understand. People somehow seem to enjoy seeing others argue/ fight. Its this psychology that the channels use to provide entertainment to the common man! With not enough news happening around to fill their 24hour content bandwidth, news anchors try to become entertainers! 

After about 10 minutes or so, I was tired of all the polemics and just switched-off the TV and went to sleep.

More recently, with elections round the corner, the biggest democratic process in the world, I again decided to check what’s happening around and happened to visit another popular Malayalam channel where 4 people were trying to corner 1 guy and thereby proving their point and taking the discussion towards their preset agenda. Again, the words commonly used remained the same.

From the knowledge of English that I had acquired over the years, I thought I knew the meaning of these words, however, I thought I need to revisit the dictionary and bring in some more clarity, in my mind, about some of these terms that people so loosely use in their discussions. I also thought that this might help some other people like me.

Fascism:

Refers to an idea of extreme allegiance to the concept of one’s nation and authoritarian rule. Hitler and Musolini were the famous leaders who were said to be fascists. Fascists only believe in their supremacy and wish that all others have to listen to them. Our current Prime Minister and his followers are allegedly fascists.

Communism:

The theory of a society without class discrimination, where all land/ property is owned by the state. People who believe in this concept are called communists. Some of the examples of communist governments can be found in Germany, Russia, China and a small part of India (Kerala and Bengal). Communism proved to be a big failure in not being able to meet the economic expectations of citizens. Nation is of least importance to them, probably that’s the reason Deshabhimani (the newspaper owned by the Communists in Kerala) doesn’t even greet people on the occasion of Independence Day or Republic day (because an Independence Day celebration will tag them as fascists?)! Marxism and Leninism form the basis of communism which claims to work towards a classless society. Though I have great faith in this theory, I do not have faith in the people who claim themselves to be implementing these ideals! How can you have a classless society if you are not ready to give up your wealth? Our so called communist leaders themselves don’t give up their seats, their wealth, their possession, but they expect others to do so. Only a sanyasi can do that, and that too someone who’s spiritually (mind it, not religiously) at a very high level that he looks at things with such dispassion that he doesn’t need anything more in this world to be happy. Isn’t this the message that our vedas, puranas, gitas and upanishads have been trying to convey? If that be the case, our scriptures are full of communism, and spiritual thinking is a must for being a good communist. Shouldn’t our communists propagate the learning of religious scriptures to promote communism? This also means that they should be able to love human beings (humanity). The communist leaders that we see today seem to lack some of these qualities and they’ve created their own forms of communism that’s nothing short of fascism.

Socialism:

Another concept that gives importance to community based development and ownership. India was envisaged to be a sovereign socialist republic (according to our Preamble). Enterprises are owned by government for public good. This seems to be opposite of capitalism where individualism is more prominent and private consortiums have a say in the affairs of the state.

Secularism:

Dictionary defines this to be the principle of separation of the state from religious bodies. So then, why is the government so much involved in temples/ Sabarimala (for sure, money can’t be a reason!)? It seems, India became a sovereign socialist secular republic during emergency brought in by Smt. Indira Gandhi. So our leaders wanted to bring in a separation between religion and state. We are free to practice any religion that we like and its left to the people. Governments, ideally, shouldn’t interfere?!

Feudalism:

The social practice of people owning lands and peasants working on those lands in return for protection and food. Much of India still practices this system. If we go by the definitions, I’m a feudal lord because I’ve employed a guy to take care of the cows at my ancestral land!

Feminism:

The theory (by females) that advocates equality of sexes. But then, when a similar theory like communism has failed, can feminism be far behind? Why are women wanting equality when they are already much higher in stature when compared to men? If the society is talking about feminism, this is an indication that women don’t fully understand their full mettle and that men have started having inferiority complexes. Males are always an inferior creation when compared to females, but the males have always bull-dozed their way in the society purely due to their show of physical strength. It’s only a spiritually enlightened (not religious) society that can ensure women are treated with all the due respect that they deserve.

The list of “isms” can go on & on, never ending but the fact remains that TV channels (and a lot of online content) want to create a world around people and make them think that what they say is the ultimate truth.  They try to weave a virtual world around us with so many lies and prejudices that we end up believing it! They also seem to follow the theory attributed to fascists that “If you keep repeating a lie often, people will tend to believe it to be true”. 

Does that not classify TV journalists as fascists? And so, isn’t communism another form of fascism, where the focus is not on nationhood but on a different ideology? Well, I’m neither a historian nor a political analyst, I may be wrong or may have a misunderstanding of some of these concepts, but the fact remains that we are in the world of “Maya”. Don’t go by Microsoft’s old theory of WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get), rather go by WYSIWTWYB (What You See Is What They Want You To Believe). Its very hard to differentiate between this new world and the physical world. 

AI has become so powerful that it can now create surreal experiences for us (for ex: https://thispersondoesnotexist.com where the photos of non-existent people are generated by an AI engine). 

The real enquirer of truth now has one more hurdle to cross, the barrier of fake news. 

So, the more spiritual you become, the more you learn to give up, the better for you…I meant watching TV!

I think I’m more peaceful and happy now, by staying away from newspapers and TV channels.

The Cancer Conspiracy

On the 1st of December 2015, I learnt about the death of my paternal uncle. After a 6 month long battle, he lost out to the might of a disease that we all call as cancer.

Was it really cancer? Nobody answered in the affirmative and it still remains a mystery to me. Inspite of all the speculation that doctors had, none of them could really pin-point and say what he was really suffering from. We never had a family history of any such problems. Slowly people started speculating on the causes for his lung cancer (or was it blood cancer? or was it tuberculosis?). Was it his food habits or was he exposed to too much pollution or some other radiation? A vegetarian to the core, a man of good discipline, no vices and a good god-loving human being. His suffering in the last 6 months of his life just went on to prove that medical science, inspite of all the advances it can boast of, has not reached anywhere!

We all become helpless in front of something that we call destiny!

Isn't this Genocide?

It was around the same time that there was a lot of "internet coverage" on food adulteration and pesticides being used on vegetables. It is a well-known fact that Kerala is a consumeristic society, and  it depends a lot on goods being delivered to them, very much like Europe where a lot of stuff is imported, not many things can be grown, people are old and depend on immigrants for labour. There is a very slow "revolution" in Kerala to become self-sufficient, at least in terms of vegetables. More people have become increasingly aware of the "agricultural terrorism". People are being slowly poisoned to death. This is a pure case of genocide.

Terrorism is usually associated with use of violence to create terror or instil fear in people in order to achieve certain goals. So one could talk about religious terrorism, political terrorism or biological terrorism; and we can see that the people behind this have some kind of ideology that they want to enforce on people. In this case, the ideology seems to be to make more money. Currently, people are in the grip of a fear, the fear of falling prey to these diseases. This spread of terror doesn't get classified under any act that deals with terrorism.

Just to side-track, Kerala anyways had another form of terrorism; especially in my hometown, the BJP and CPI(M) political party workers have been killing each other since a long time. We jokingly ask; "Whats the score?" and my cousin says "5-6", and its not hard to guess that an equaliser is in the waiting! Each of them wishes to terrorise the other (and the people around) to show that their ideology is far superior than that of the others.

Well, in my uncle's case, the hospital where he had been initially admitted for diagnosis, had recently installed a PET scanner. They made him do the PET scan and still made him wait for 2 weeks before trying a biopsy. In fact, the doctor called my cousin couple of times and was trying to counsel (read it as soliciting) him to get the diagnosis done. Most doctors have become marketing agents for devices and medicines. They love the spread of cancer, so that their profits will grow. They want people to eat in plastic containers, they want people to breathe polluted air, they want people to get addicted to junk food and want people to eat adulterated food. Only then can they swell their pockets!

So is the case of media. All TV channels, newspapers and online portals are glorifying cancer and trying to make money of it. They only showcase the victims and the doctors who've become successful against cancer, but nobody has been able to tell what the root-cause for the cancer was. Since there isn't one single responsible thing, they blame it on "lifestyle".

Why are they blaming lifestyle?

Eating junk food makes you fat, everyone should realise that. This leads to making you do exercise. This is what the doctors will also advice. Jogging/ cycling is the most preferred exercise and this requires that you be properly geared/ attired to do this.

While exercising, one needs to listen to music. After coming back, we need to watch TV (relaxation) and for this we need a good home-theatre, and a nice couch to sit comfortably on. While watching TV, I need to munch and also read through the messages received on my smartphone. I need air-condition to quickly do away with my sweat.

Who are the people who make money out of our lifestyle?

1. Fast food joints

2. Shoe companies

3. Fitness gadget makers

4. Gyms/ fitness equipment makers

5. Apparel companies

6. Doctors

7. Hospitals/ pharma companies

8. Furniture shops

9. Smartphones

10. Television

11. Cable TV

12. Snacks/ drinks manufacturers

This was just a small part of a new lifestyle that we are going through. All of them rely on our laziness and inactivity to make money. There is no physical people-to-people contact or genuine relationships that we make. The "systems" around us do not want us to do it. One "system" promotes the other and so they do not cross each others' path. For ex: shoe companies will promote electronic gadgets. These gadgets will in turn promote smartphones. Smartphones are promoted by the media. Media creates news based on the interests of their funders. In the end, they want people to be glued to television, and not coming out for anything. People become introverts and lose the fighting spirit of life. This is not a passing phase, this is the reality that we are in, and I do not see people coming out of this grip.

Till about the end of 1980's or the early 1990's, companies had fixed target growth rates. They would be happy if they achieved 8-10% growth YoY. But corporates have changed. They do not have any responsibility towards anybody. They only want to grow exponentially, YoY. They define targets like "triple profit in 5 years" or "reduce operating cost by 3 times in 1 year". This leads to people using unscrupulous methods to create profit and thereby people become insincere, products lack quality and   doesn't help anybody in the long term. Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) merely becomes a tax saving scheme and a tool to create a public image. Indirectly, they all fall prey to the "mafia". They do not work on cutting the root-cause and rather go after symptoms. Their thought could be: "I can't change public behaviour, but I can only influence the consequence of it. I'll use every opportunity available to me as part of this human behaviour"


Who are the people behind this?

Well, nobody can give a right answer. If people at every job in the food-cycle did it with utmost sincerity and dedication, we wouldn't have a problem. The farmer needs to be careful with the kind of pesticides that he uses, and so should the transporter/ retailer be careful to ensure that things are properly/ hygienically handled. So should the government agents, in ensuring every human being gets bare minimum clean food. But I guess, this is too much to ask at the moment, and we are all destined to fall prey to all the "lobbies" and "mafias" that want to squeeze and make money out of us. This is the age of "Kali" and one can't expect good human behaviour from every quarter!

One can't really put a face to this evil. There are multiple individuals involved in this and one can't narrow down on one single person. Thats where everyone gets away with. No doctor can authoritatively say that the cancer inside you was caused because you were subjected to extreme radiation in May 1997 or you smoked excessively between 2000 to 2004 or the pesticides in the coconut water that you mixed with your drink last night caused the cells in your lungs to be tumorous!

There was this joke on the internet thats apt for the moment:

In 1917, Colgate came to India and said "why do you guys still use salt and charcoal to clean ur teeth, use our paste!!". 

Now in 2015, Colgate is advertising asking "does ur toothpaste have salt in it?" And goes on to say "our brush is coated with charcoal which is GooD for white teeth". 

It took them 95+years to know that.
But we Indians will never realise our GooD old values

Where is the Conspiracy?

The conspiracy is not about a hidden group of people trying to hide the potential discovery of a treatment system for cancer. If someone had found one, I don't think that can be hidden for long. Rather, the conspiracy lies in the fact that there are people who are willingly trying to play with the health of the people just for the sake of making money. The conspiracy lies in the fact that even while one person is suffering, the other is trying to exploit the victim. The word "humanity" seems to have been lost, and man is proving that he's indeed an animal!

What next?

To me, any act that terrorises people is a terrorist act, and shouldn't  have a place in our society. But what can we do about it? The world has always been violent, is currently so, and will be so in the ages to come. We are destined to fight and get killed. Cancer is one such terror thats in our society thats being caused (to a large extent) by our own people and its slowly wiping out a section of the better people we have. Man is an intelligent animal that doesn't mind killing its own species for its physical pleasures.

Only the fittest will survive, not because they have been exercising too much, but because they have stayed away from carcinogens.

Ambassadors of Indian Culture

A couple of days back, while walking down a nearby busy street, I noticed a motorist spitting on the road. It so happened that he almost spat on the leg of another lady pedestrian. The lady seemed to be in her mid-twenties, and was formally dressed, maybe on the way to her workplace. Her quick outburst was "...you culture-less idiot"!! Although she escaped from having to clean her dress or leg, that left her in a bad mood, and that I think, would've eventually held on to her psyche for hours during the day. If she had found a stone, I'm sure she would've hurled it at his head!

But what stuck to my mind was the word "culture-less". There can only be a culture, but nothing "less" or "more". I searched through the dictionary and found that culture is defined as follows:

The ideas, customs, and social behaviour of a particular people or society (Courtesy: https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/culture)

So, now, with the definition in hand, the lady was definitely wrong; at least grammatically!

Lets take a look at a few examples of using culture:

1. America has a gun culture.
2. Africa has a drug culture.
3. Indians have a culture of raping their women!
4. Accepting bribe is part of our culture.
5. We have a culture of idolising foreign culture
...and so on.

So, its clear that culture differs from place-to-place. 
India, especially, is a big nation, and we have a history of a varied culture. 

In recent times, we've been hearing a lot about crimes against women and girls, is this the culture that we want to cultivate?

We see videos of couples being beaten by a group of self-proclaimed moral police, is this the culture that we want to pass on to the next generation?
And it really surprises me when people go around beating others in the name of culture, thereby introducing a new culture of intolerance.

We are the present-day ambassadors of an Indian culture, that we very proudly project to people, not realising that we are only being proud at what our ancestors have done. Our present day culture is not something that we can be proud of. We do not carry forward any of the good things of the past, and at the same time, we haven't been able to successfully deal with modern culture.

History gives us enough proof that great empires have fallen due to their over-indulgence in sex, booze and internal violence. While we boast about our "great" culture, we should realise that we are not the followers of that "great" culture, and that a fall is very imminent.

How much land am I entitled for?

Usually, most of my flight travels are in the night, and I hardly get to see the "ground" below in broad daylight. I prefer aisle seats, and sleep for the most part of the journey. It so happened that my last travel was during the daytime, and I had to exchange seats with an elderly gentleman who had to frequently visit the loo! The flight happened to fly close to the Himalayas, and I was really awestruck at the sight outside. We are usually not very cognizant about the enormous size of the planet that we live on!

I decided to do some rough calculations to see if we can find out when this world will be filled by our fellow beings, and when will we be in a situation to decide that we do not have anymore space left than to sleep beside each other!

Calculation:
Surface area of land available on earth = 148,940,000 km² (Courtesy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth)
Human Population on earth = 7.4 billion (Courtesy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population)

Cool...so, if we were to divide this equally among all human beings, I'm entitled for about 4.9 Acres!

Now wait, our population keeps increasing at the rate of 1.1% a year on an average (Courtesy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_growth).

At the above rate (assuming it is going to remain constant), what this means is that in 895 years, each human being will be entitled to have just 12 ft² of land, just sufficient for all of us to lie down next to each other. This, by considering the fact that we've cut down all trees, all mountains have been flattened out by then, we no longer travel by road, and multi-storied apartments are no longer possible due to high air traffic!


Side note:
The above calculation is not at all an indication of when the world will end!

High density of population doesn't mean the end of this world, it just means that we lose a lot more privacy (for those who need it), and we can gain more insights into others' life (for the more voyueristic ones). We would be fighting among each other for resources, and shamelessly reproducing like animals.

On the other hand, we have the law of natural balance (Courtesy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balance_of_nature), by which we hope that earth will bring back equilibrium whenever one race grows beyond control, in which case our calculation above will have to be revisited! No wonder, we'll see a lot of Asian folks migrating to the West, and a lot of folks in the West migrating to Mars!

Disclaimer: The author assumes that human beings would have destroyed all other living forms before he can embark on the mission of total control on the planet earth, and make it un-inhabitable for himself. The author also declares that he's not an expert at human demography, and that predictions made above are only indicative!

The Idiot's Guide to honking on Indian roads

Over the last couple of years, I've been a regular user of a "slow-moving" locomotive for my daily commute to my office. I either use my electric bike or my bi-cycle, depending on my mood. More so, because the traffic is irritating, and maneuvering bigger vehicles requires too much concentration. I soon realised that slow-movers are objects of ridicule on the road. Even while I go about travelling on the extreme left of the roads, I was seeing that people come behind me and start honking, maybe they want to say something to me? Well, as they speed away staring at me, I hardly get time to ask them what they really wanted to tell me..."Get out of my way you.....*****?"

One honk, multiple uses!

My neighbour starts his car/ bike en-route to his office, and as he approaches the apartment gate in the basement, he starts honking. Our building, with the great acoustics that we have, starts vibrating and resonating with this great musical tone, and in this case, the security staff promptly opens the gate for him.

Once we are out in the open road, we honk at every turning, because we do not want to reduce our speed, but instead expect our fellow road user to reduce the speed upon hearing our honk.

Youngsters, who are on their flashy luxury sports bike, honk when they see a good looking person from the opposite sex, so that they can grab attention.

You are driving and the person in the front car is on the phone, you ought to honk to tell him that he is breaking the law, irrespective of the fact that you are neither wearing a helmet nor wearing a seat belt!

The vehicle moving in the front has applied brakes because he noticed a speed-breaker, but you go behind him and honk, trying to tell him that he's done the greatest crime.

There's an elderly person walking on the footpath, and we start riding our bike on the footpath to beat the traffic, go behind him and honk, to indicate that grandpa is blocking our way!

We are driving, and we notice a huge cow standing right in front of us....and we honk! Luckily, cows have learnt to pick up the meaning of our honks, and unlike homo-sapiens, they slowly and graciously move out of our way.

We are moving on the extreme left of the road, and there are people trying to overtake other vehicles from the left, and you happen to be blocking them due to your slow speed, then you've had it boy!

Honking as a communication tool

One could go about describing various uses of honking, and also various styles of honking, with special emphasis on the duration between honks. But the fact remains that honking has come to be a language of its own, and is largely used as an attention seeking technique. You cant really assign a specific meaning to a certain style of honking, but my experience says that it has become purely contextual, and hence a very universal language for communication.

In software parlance, we can notice that there's a publish-subscribe design pattern that we can apply here. We've subscribed our minds to listen to the publishing of a honk. And the correct recipient will receive it properly. In case the receiver doesn't respond in timely fashion, there's a retry mechanism that ensures that the notification is sent, and the subscriber receives it. Human mind is now accustomed to it.

Honking is also used as a bullying tool, where bigger vehicles try to intimidate you with their fancy honks. A smaller vehicle is always seen in lighter vein when compared to a bigger vehicle, and if you happen to come in the way of a bigger vehicle, you are bound to be ejected from his trajectory by means of a very loud long honk!

Why complain?

This is such a wonderful communication mechanism, I wonder why people complain about this! Except for the fact that exposure to high levels of honking can cause hypertension or other related psychological problems/ mood swings, this is not known to cause any environmental pollution, still people like to categorise honking under noise pollution...crazy!!

Conclusion

When in Rome, be a Roman! None of our spiritual/ philosophical ideologies work on the road. For the newer people who are going to drive/ ride in Bengaluru (or anywere else in India), its to be noted that as per law, unwanted honking is an offence, but we do not have provisions yet to define "unwanted honking". So, you need to wade through the traffic with constant honking, whether you like it or not.

I'm reminded of Mother Teresa's statement; "If we cant love the person whom we see, how can we love God, whom we cant see?". So lets all try to post a small smile while driving, and give some love to our fellow road users by forgiving them for a few of their mistakes, and hope they too will reciprocate in a similar way, for our mistakes!


The way we honk is an indication of the society in which we live. The prevailing honking style is an indication that nobody respects the other. The minds of people are so restless, they can hardly think of being considerate towards their fellow travellers. A little bit of compassion/ love towards the city and the people around you can drastically help in making each others' journey far more enjoyable.

Economics and Irresponsible Behaviour

I've been a firm believer in staying close to office, and to a large extent I've successfully been able to stay away from the crazy Bangalore traffic for the last 10 years. The last 5 years have been really good, with me having to travel only 3kms, and the roads I take en-route to office are seldom blocked. Over the last 6 months, I'm having to face a different kind of traffic on the road, and its not from vehicles, its the traffic of cows.

The road close to my office entry gate happens to be the "sorting station" of Bengaluru waste collectors. More than half of the road is dumped with house-hold waste, and cows feed on them, about 10-15 of them. Holy Cow! On one hand we consider cows sacred, and on the other hand we allow such "inhuman" activities on cows. How irresponsible can "we" be? Yes, its the same educated "we", its the same "well cultured" "we", its the same religious "we" who are responsible for this. I wondered what might be prompting us to do this, and there's got to be some benefit that the human being sees in doing things the way he does. Every action by any living being seems to have an impact in this world, and there's lot of economic sense in being irresponsible, and "we" Indians have unknowingly mastered it?

Experience 1: The curious case of the crying child

I was in a super-market, and noticed a child crying relentlessly for a toy. To avoid onlookers staring at him, the father graciously adds it to the cart. A while later, the same kid starts crying for a chocolate bar, and the same thing repeats. After a while, the kid wants juice, and the parent obliges again. In the end, he ends up buying many things that he didn't originally plan for.

Children are quick to learn the buttons that need to be pressed, in order to get their parents give them what they want. But its up to the parents to ensure that we educate our kids. In the end, I feel its the irresponsible behaviour of parents, in buying all things that the kids ask for, that drives the market. Companies are adept at cashing-in on this psychological factor, and why would they want us to become more responsible by denying stuff to our kids? The more we buy/ spend, the better for the country/ economy? And such parents wrap it up with a justification that its out of love for their kids. Meanwhile, the parents who deny unwanted stuff to their kids become objects of their kids' hatred.

Experience 2: Freedom to dump waste anywhere

I was returning home on my scooter, and noticed a couple going in a car, ahead of me, enjoying an ice cream on the go. Very soon, I saw the wrappers being thrown out of the window. Again, irresponsible behaviour, I thought! Just a very minor incident when compared to the waste problems that Bengaluru is facing. In the end, its the same callous and irresponsible behaviour that's causing the problem, but that seems to be very good for the economy. We've given jobs to lots of "paura karmikas", we've given jobs to many truck drivers, we've given jobs to recyclers, we've ensured that cows eat our wet waste, we've ensured that BBMP contractors are making good money by transporting waste, we've ensured that villagers around Bengaluru have health issues, indirectly helping the healthcare industry and the pharma companies...and we've ensured that money flows through various pockets. Why the hell should I segregate and be a responsible citizen?

I can even think of many instances at the workplace where higher management seems to be content by having an irresponsible manager, that seems to make more economic sense to them than having a top-quality professional! Likewise, there are many other instances around us that make you feel its not worth spending the extra time trying to be a responsible citizen.

Our systems don't seem to be happy with responsible behaviour at all, and so the odd men always have a tough time in coping with the environment around them!