The Reservation cauldron boils again, SC does a fair job...

With images of anti-quota protesters still lingering fresh in our minds, the build-up to the case was closely watched and now that the SC has delivered its ruling, its time to see what it means actually to both parties...

Politicians across the spectrum feel compelled to welcome the verdict which is most natural since no politician can offend the sizable OBC vote bank by not welcoming it or praising it as a step towards inclusiveness and equity or historic by taking things to an extreme. Many politicians had expected more and with the exclusion of creamy layer from the quota ambit, they can't hide their disappointments - our honorable health minister, Sharad Yadav and Ram Vilas Paswan fall under this significant category.

Before the day of hearing, one was waiting in an excited state of anticipation to see whether this verdict would let the "overstepping into the legislature domain" argument crop up. Well, it hasn't until now at least. The courts can heave a huge sigh of relief on that.

I have never studied in any "central institute of excellence". But one of my friends who has, gave the example of a rich SC/ST person showing the photos of the huge stretch of farmlands his family owned. Such a person no doubt got into IIT only because his family was able to afford the good primary education and later the coaching to take up the entrance. So, creamy layer exists well and truly and one is not even sure how much of benefits of affirmative action have truly went to the needy. With the absence of any such data, including the creamy layer under the OBC quota ambit would have meant shutting down the doors of opportunity to the truly deserving. Hence, whatever be the merits or demerits of saying that the 27% provision of OBC seats will stay, the exclusion of the creamy layer is a welcome step. To quote, the court seems to have said, the inclusion of "elite backwards" would go against the "basic structure" of the constitution. Hence, legal troubles can be forecast if the Government challenges this.

But this has opened another question. Since the court has now accepted the existence of creamy layer by excluding them from the quota ambit, what happens to the so called economically weak upper castes? Should they continue to bear the brunt of an alleged crime that they never committed in this generation in the first place? The politicians should give an explanation for this and people like Mayawati and Deve Gowda are already out with calls for more quota. Will this ever stop? Probably India is the only country which will pride itself on adding more and more castes into the backward category and certain sections due to "genetic accidents" will no doubt be able to claim the benefits of such "affirmative actions towards inclusive growth" for years to come.

Periodic review, which the court has mandated is another small welcome step. Considering the fact that 14% of general category students who entered IITs last year belonged to the OBC category and 6% of students shortlisted across India for interviews in IIMs were OBCs, review should be done periodically.When the court says, once a person is a graduate, he becomes "educationally forward" and hence would be ineligible for further benefits, (meaning post graduation) it holds perfect sense. But, politicians are already asking for political consensus and review!!

Coming lastly to the increase in seats (54% to make the general category seats unaffected), this will be very difficult even in phases more for the IITs than the IIMs. The scope for expansion is very less in terms of more land for IIT-M and IIT-Powai. Moreover as PV Indiresan, a former director of IIT-M wrote in a national daily, there will be immense pressure to stretch existing classrooms, laboratories, hostels and not to mention being forced to recruit more faculty. How is the Government going to ensure that quality isn't getting diluted with all its antics to keep the general category from feeling let down.

The problem with the whole development is that real progress on the education front seems to be the last in the agenda of our politicians. What else would explain the pathetic infrastructure for primary education in rural areas, teacher absenteeism and dwindling infrastructural provisions even in state run colleges of excellence? Well, I for once don't expect any answers to this either from the HRD ministry or the finance ministry. One thing is certain. We can look forward to "education cess" in the next union budget. As for the poor forward castes, I think somebody will extend them the "benefits" of quota soon. For, don't they also vote?

Insensitivity or plain indifference?

Of late, something very subtle yet deeply significant is taking place. The youth of today are forgetting the basic moral science lessons that they learn as children. Manners, courtesy and concern for fellow people are at danger of losing their very meanings due to the strange lack of sensitivity among a sizable section of youngsters. Perhaps, I may be a little wrong in attributing this to only the youth of today as no doubt some middle aged people are also falling prey. But in my opinion, it is the changing and increasingly urban lifestyle that is the catalyst driving this trend and youngsters get influenced more easily.

When one considers, how:

All the people want to get down of the bus (when it reaches its destination/stop) at the same time and nobody is in any mood to relent and give way to a fellow passenger. Waiting for a few seconds in anything that remotely resembles a queue leads to a barrage of complaints on the pathetic condition of the state’s facilities!! The old people and children suffer most as a result by getting pushed and jostled with least respect/concern.

People get impatient very easily on roads as they are being driven mad by the increasing traffic every day so much so that at times, they start honking a good half a minute before the signal turns green. The person at the head of the row is forced to violate the signal thanks to this supremely strange attempt at getting on one’s nerves!!

Hardly ever do people remember to say a “thank you”. The driver of an office shuttle in a very cautious manner gets a person to his/her destination. When the stop comes, all he gets in return for his patient maneuvering of traffic is a thud/bang of the door on his face.

Thanks to the omnipresent cell phones, people these days have the comfort of listening to their favorite music on the go. It takes a real marathon effort to get a few words by way of response/answer from such a person. One should consider oneself lucky if one gets any at all for the earphones rarely change their position. “Can you be a little louder?” is the standard response/expression. For God’s sake, one’s involuntary reaction is to close one’s ears for the poor indifferent chap is shouting thinking the other person to be deaf!!

Eye-contact is also becoming a rare norm. Instead people prefer having preoccupied expressions as if they are doing you a favor by listening to you. One gets the impression that they are indeed hard pressed for time!! Fiddling with mobiles, adjusting ear phones and checking messages are becoming the rule…

I left out washing dirty linen in public by talking private matters loudly over cell phones in public places!!

In summary, it would not be long before gentlemen and ladies would cease to walk this earth. Instead, it wouldn’t be surprising if all one finds are people with an inflated sense of self importance or plain indifference.

What do you do, when-

What do you do, when -

You meet a person who has seen so many aspects of life which you never imagined in your wildest dreams...

You feel that you are getting yourself into a mess and know that it can't be helped...

You feel that you have just had a GREAT experience and have nobody to share it with or when you feel that words would fail to describe it...

You begin to doubt your potential and feel that you are expecting too much out of yourself...

You feel depressed thinking about your dreary existence that pales in comparison with your own vision of a rosy and adventurous one...

All the aforesaid things happen in the space of a single day,

You-

Book tickets to go home for the next weekend,

Have a glass of apple juice and a 5-star and

Smile at a little girl struggling to balance her new bicycle and find that she is smiling back to you!!!

Living a mirage

What is life but a sequence of mirages?

Are we ever immune to erroneous perceptions?

Aren't we forever falling preys to illusions?

What is a mirage, isn't it an inflated desire?

Isn't it a perception we wish, we had, but don't?

We are all parts of a minuscule portion of HIS illusion. We are all living a mirage with our day-to-day assumptions, conclusions, perceptions, confusions, petty fights, jealous thoughts, proud justifications and inflated accusations. If HE realizes that his mirage no longer fascinates or excites HIM, a minuscule portion disappears from the Earth's face...

When we graduated...

At the crossroads we were caught,

We weren’t sure if we were just students again…

Or had we grown a little, matured?

Childish adults we were, united by a

Joyous warmth that made us smile…

After a good 8-9 months separated, we were all brought together thanks to our university scheduling our graduation day ceremony well after we had all started working. In this not so short time period, some of us had grown really long hair, some among us had changed a little perhaps due to the difference in our environments, but mostly I should say the experience away from each other served two purposes. It contributed to an enlargement of our ‘experience’ bank and drew us closer for the yearning to feel the various things that bound us together were still lingering fresh in our memories waiting for chances to break open.

The atmosphere at CEG was festive. It is easy to imagine that if one can visualize nearly 3000 young adults in yellow robes eagerly and excitedly trying to catch up on lost time. Most of our conversations were short for we were meeting a lot of people in the flesh after a seemingly long time. They were centered around how each of us was (the universal conversation opener, ‘How are you?’ will never lose favor even if it almost always doesn’t get a completely accurate answer!!) in new settings, how we are finding our work environment and how the new place that we have all moved into feels like…

That apart, the usual gossip and rumor mills churned overtime in the name of pulling each other’s legs. It was also an occasion where cameras of every hue and color were pulled out and used to their maximum potential. I was in a dream like state, listening faintly and lost in dreams of another time when we from MIT used to come to this campus for our placement. Those are memories wrapped in gold, whenever I think of those days, it seems as if all of them happened only yesterday and by a strange stroke of misfortune, I find myself far removed from them now. Time is a cunning worker, it lures us into believing illusions, it comforts us at times by transporting us to golden periods of our lives, yet the very same time when it jolts us back into reality wrecks devastation. It leaves us feeling like fools.

To me, memories of days spent at MIT are like this:

“I have just seen an interesting cricket match in the hostel. I have Mani and somebody else from my class close by my side. I see the afternoon sunlight filtered through the tall trees lining the stretch to the lecture hall from the hostel and lighting up the features of a beautiful girl walking towards us. The light filters through her hair and casts a thin glow in whose foreground the girl’s face gets poised in a seemingly eternal beauty.”

“I enter the gates of the college a little late and in the aftermath of the hurried running, my breaths are short and I gasp a little for proper air. Thinking of the lecturer’s face receiving my late entry, my legs shake a little as I run, but nevertheless I continue. I avoid any face during all this, some times a class mate from the hostel takes the same route to the lecture hall and I heave a little sigh of relief…”

“Two of my friends are walking just a little ahead of me very close together with one hand on another’s shoulder in filmi style. I am trying to walk along with them, but they always make me feel a little aloof and separated from the group. To join the conversation, I make a remark, it is sometimes acknowledged and responded to and at other times not, in typical fashion again. We are discussing things, about which we’d prefer to go on and on, but soon we reach either our classrooms or the veg mess where we prefer a drink of water even if we are not always thirsty!!”

CEG was like a stranger till the placement days but then it also became our pointless hangout post tests. A little seriously discussing the paper or hopelessly looking forward to the next company on the radar, the days were relatively event less if only there weren’t the CEG and AC tech girls always hanging about near the canteen.

Months later, these memories remain fresh… friends and classmates – I saw them again, said only “hi” to some, talked at length with some others, but the day in itself offered a different respite with its occasion and meaning. We graduated at last!!

Simple and Profound!!

This is an extract from Iris Murdoch’s ‘Under the net’, her first novel, produced like an outline without loss of what she most probably meant to convey. A character, Hugo is in conversation with the narrator.

Hugo: “There’s something fishy about describing people’s feelings. All these descriptions are so dramatic…If I say afterwards that I felt such and such, say that I felt ‘apprehensive’ – well this just isn’t true.”

Me: “But suppose I try hard to be accurate.”

Hugo: “One can’t be. The only hope is to avoid saying it. As soon as I start to describe I am done for… the language just won’t let you present it as it really was…if one said one was apprehensive this could only be to try to make an impression, it would be for effect, it would be a lie…one does make far too many concessions to the need to communicate.”

Me: “What do you mean?”

Hugo: “All the time when I speak to you, even now I am saying not precisely what I think, but what will impress you and make you respond…in fact, one’s so used to this one rarely sees it. The whole language is a machine for making falsehoods.”

Me: “What would happen if one were to speak the truth? Would it be possible?”

Hugo: “…When I really speak the truth, the words fall from my mouth absolutely dead and I see complete blankness in the face of the other person.”

Me: “So we never really communicate?”

Hugo: “Well, I suppose actions don’t lie”.

This little exchange affected me and my understanding of everyday existence deeply. We use words as if we know what we mean. But, do we? We only have to ask ourselves whether we’d be using the same words, the same expressions if the listener was different. For instance, if I went to a resort and had fun there, would I describe my experience with the same intensity and feeling to two different people even if they were both my friends? Rarely so. This being the case, why do we attach so much weight to what another person says? We take offense even at the most innocuous utterance and we are elated at even the most banal of descriptions depending on who the person we are communicating with is…

Words are nothing but simple tools which at times we mistake for complex entities by taking whatever is said to be “As it is”…

This extract made me hunt more of Iris Murdoch’s works and I have never been disappointed. If I can say that she was largely responsible for myself starting to write a diary collecting all the little dialogues and portions in whatever books I read which I like, I’d not be lying.

Planning to post more of this type in the future not confined to only Murdoch’s works…

When I became an Uncle...

When I return from work everyday, I see kids taking lessons from the house owner’s wife. Some of them smile at me and I smile back. There is this cute little girl and boy who raise their large eyes as if they are not enough to take in my appearance and I can’t help but smile at their expressions everyday. I feel welcomed in a manner much similar to how a person might feel when his favorite pet looks forward to his caress.

One day, the lady of the house wanted to ask me something and since she felt the kids might do a better job in conveying the matter in English, she requested the little boy to stop me as I was going up to my room. He called “Uncle, stop!!” For a moment, I was surprised but soon enough recovered. Yes, I have never been called Uncle by anybody.

Coming from this little one, I smiled at him and in his own sweet English he told me whatever was necessary to be told. I realized that some people do take me for an uncle. Had I grown old? Do I look like an uncle to little ones? I know that it is only “Uncle” that the boy had remembered to use but nevertheless, would he have used a different word? It is futile to think in these terms. The crux is that, words hardly matter for how many times do we ever attach any worthwhile meaning to them? Uncle or Anna, he is comfortable talking to me and looks forward to my smile everyday. That is more important and I am glad about that!!

Nowadays, he says “Hi, uncle!!” as I go up and I say “Hi” in return!!