Fathers and Sons

One realizes one's root when every new occurrence brings back a memory and search for an identity is over. I was trying to track history of my family through relations of fathers and sons and tell a simple story. It is not summary of growing divide between the generations but a simple tale documented fist time ever.

It is a story of my family based on the values that changed with time yet remain same in core. My great grandfather had been 10+2 passed out (first in my family) in 1902. He was born in mid 1880's and joined Primary School as a teacher despite of Zamindari background. My grandfather was born in 1920's and was educated till High-school. He didn't do any job due to his Zamindari Background. Such was the difference of view between them.

My grandfather was eldest of three brothers and remain a farmer till his last breathe. His brothers went to Jharia Bihar to work in coal mines. With the Zamindari system being abolished after independence and few court cases, the family fortune declined slowly. When great-grandfather was on the verge of the death, he said only this to his sons and grandsons : Let all things fall apart but never compromise on the education of children.

I am not eligible to comment on the education of families of other grandfathers. My grandfather has three sons and one daughter. We call biggest uncle babuji and middle one chacha. My father is younger of all siblings.

There were tough days coming ahead for the family. Babuji  followed the word of his grandfather and the level education in our family gradully rises above other families in the village and community despite of financial constraint.

The economical crisis can crush the dream and a man has to compromise lesser than his talent. When it is like not to have enough, its a all different learning experience. Tough times never last, but tough people do! That was the experience of mine father and his brothers of all those years.

It is assumed now-days that person whoever expected the young to be responsible anyway lacks sense ! But a generation ahead of me struggled and achieved education and economic stability.  Today, whenever I learn anything I remember the last words of my great grandfather that changed destiny of a farmer family.

I realized that during hard times, families pull together. If I observe anything from my past and forefathers, success will come by pulling together as families and stressing good education for everyone.

It is always better to have seen a place than never to have visited it. That I always remember while visiting many places around the world. My ancestral place still gives me different feeling whenever I experience some time span there. What is a man without forefathers vision and care...

Ten Issues - 15

1- Why Pandits aren't returning to roots ? : The Pandits, though, will tell you another story: of murders and village loudspeakers issuing threats. Jagmohan is rarely the central figure that Kashmiri Muslim makes him out to be.

2-Will Pakistanis put their national interest first? by Harini Calamur :If there is any country in the world that is a poster child for dictatorship, it is Pakistan. Over the last two and half decades at least, Pakistan seems to have been more stable and more prosperous under its military dictators than its “democratically” elected leaders.

3- Islamic Banking System: Threats and Opportunities --- The Islamic banking system is an important component of Islamic finance. Islamic finance has unique features because its foundation is laid on the principles and rules of Islamic law (sharia), which states that everything is owned by Allah and man has only been permitted to use it.

4- The predicament of the Islamic Republic by Hamid Dabashi. Green Movement's focus on civil rights voids it of the appeal needed to spark an Arab Spring-like revolution. Author is Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University.

5- Argentine Free Book Movement woos readers : In Buenos Aires, the 'City of Books', a novel idea sees books left in public places for readers to pick up and enjoy.

6- A Critique of Reporting on the Middle East by Nir Rosen : Too often consumers of mainstream media are victims of a fraud. You think you can trust the articles you read, why wouldn’t you, you think you can sift through the ideological bias and just get the facts.

7- The Insularity of American Literature: Philip Roth Didn't Deserve the Booker International Prize : "There is powerful literature in all big cultures, but you can't get away from the fact that Europe still is the center of the literary world...not the United States," Horace Engdahl, permanent secretary of the Nobel Prize jury, recently said. "The US is too isolated, too insular. They don't translate enough and don't really participate in the big dialogue of literature...That ignorance is restraining."

8- The UID Project and Welfare Schemes : This article documents and then examines the various benefits that, it is claimed, will flow from linking the Unique Identity number with the public distribution system and the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. It filters the unfounded claims, which arise from a poor understanding of how the PDS and NREGS function, from the genuine ones. On the latter, there are several demanding conditions that need to be met in order to reap marginal benefits. A hasty linking of the PDS/NREGA with the UID can be very disruptive. Therefore, other cheaper technological innovations currently in use in some parts of the country to fix existing loopholes in a less disruptive manner are explored.

9- Uttar Pradesh to set up 2000+ mandis : The Mayawati government proposes to reduce the distance that farmers must travel to take their produce to market to an average of seven kms. This should help farming families boost their incomes, writes Devinder Sharma.

10- Revolution U by TINA ROSENBERG : The Serbian capital is home to the Center for Applied NonViolent Action and Strategies, or CANVAS, an organization run by young Serbs who had cut their teeth in the late 1990s student uprising against Slobodan Milosevic. Author throws light on what Egypt learns from the students who overthrew Milosevic.

Thought of the Day : Economist Paul Krugman once remarked: If [George W.] Bush said that the world was flat, the headline on the news analysis would read 'Shape of Earth: Views Differ'. It was a pithy summary of how news organizations are now so obsessed with the idea of "balance" they will give both sides of any argument equal coverage, even if one side is plainly absurd.

Passing Time in Summer

Life is going fast and I have discovered that reading poems are anytime better than economics. Summer, summer, summertime and it is time to sit back and unwind. I am spending too much time on Facebook. That is a quite worthless pleasure of addiction. Sitting on the roof-top chatting with friends is better time pass than this. I can only say that I am finding it hard to bear the unbearable separation from internet for 2 hour also, need guts to overcome!

Writing has brought a fundamental error of intellectuals in front of me. An intellectual knows what one opposes but does not seem to be sure what one proposes. Status quo challenged has no meaning until an alternative appears.
Change happens where previous appear even slightly worse than current to the people. This is a fundamental factor in determining the nature and degree of the solution to any problem.

The criticisms, ideologies and debate are the second necessary but not sufficient condition for uplift of the unprivileged ones. The first and foremost required is empathy and sensitivity. Third is the most important one and that is right action taken by detail study of the subject (however complex it may appear) . I have known only 3 steps from my experience. Ignore this stupidity and loose talks, enjoy these lines...

हर बदलते आज में, मैने कल को देखा है,
हर बीते हुए कल में, मैने आते हुए पल को देखा है.
अभी जो बीता है उस पल में कल को देखा है |

Frog Haiku

A lonely pond in age-old stillness sleeps . . .
Apart, unstirred by sound or motion . . . till
Suddenly into it a lithe frog leaps.

Compiled Madness !

“The scale of the human socio-economic-political complex system is so large that it seriously interferes with the biospheric complex system upon which it is wholly dependent, and cultural evolution has been too slow to deal effectively with the resulting crisis.” —Paul R. Ehrlich is president of the Center for Conservation Biology at Stanford University.
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Both - the US and the Islamic Republics - wish the region back to its status quo ante, where and when they much benefited from the state of war they had manufactured, and under which they both shared the control and domination of the democratic aspirations of the people in the region.

Political crises are definitive, sustained, and even beyond the structurally dysfunctional state apparatus rooted in the demographic facts of a young and restless population ruled by an outdated and obsolete theocratic ideology.

Questions about loyalty, the role of military and the potential instability are unacceptable, intolerable, and contrary to the ideals of humanity and generosity. Playboy turned zealot youths, foreign mercenaries and a lot of people on high dose of religion. Pity is the response that will most fully preserve our own humanity but hard for the society living long in the bad habit of self-justification.

Islamic legal scholars are related to patriarchal values and not to the principle of justice. Israel's "lawfare" against the Palestinian people is rooted in a fictitious narrative of having a "right" to exist. Open politics of the street bred and mature individuals and leader emerge from them organically rather than imposed from above by political organisations, religious groups, or gender roles.

Pakistan India and fighting terror ! what a joke. There are lot of people who are eating away their own soul and conscience and calling it faith and patriotism. Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the ones who think differently

While India wrongly has thinking that development projects could persuade any people to forego their autonomy demands. There will be no Scheduled tribe in next 20 years as most of them will be killed, displaced in the name of development. What is a greatest sin in the world ? It is to be born poor and hungry ? There is no consensus by carrying with them all sections of middle class, rural and urban poor. It's plain genocide. 'Creation of conditions where survival becomes difficult for millions of people also amounts to genocide,' says Dr. Binayak Sen.
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I always feel greatest threats are internal rather than external? Civilizations, Institutions and even a person fall, not so much because of the strength of the enemy outside as through the weakness and decay withing!!!

Whether the new technologies overtaking us may be eroding characteristics that are essentially human: our ability to reflect, our pursuit of meaning, genuine empathy, a sense of community connected by something deeper than snark or political affinity. Facebook and Internet has turned me into some different creature.

Wolitzer describes them this way: “The generation that had information, but no context. Butter, but no bread. Craving, but no longing.”

The rule of the Information Age Jungle dictates that slowing down in life is fatal and that speed is the inherent requirement for this chaotic world that we are living in. Alvin Toffler coined the term “future shock” in the article “The Future as a Way of Life” published in the Horizon magazine in 1965. In his book “Future Shock” he has described future shock as “the dizzying disorientation brought on by the premature arrival of the future. It may well be the most important disease of tomorrow.” It seems that he was true about information overload and the accelerated rate of change in society due to industrial and technological growth. This need for adapting to the accelerated change is making us send our two-and-a-half-year old children to pre-schools; this is what is making us want admissions to elite institutions of the country; this is what is making us want a job with a heavy CTC and no work at all. This is the reason why “Speed Yoga Tutorials,” “Fast Piano Lessons,” and “Guaranteed Orgasms in 30 Seconds” e-books are now available. (Thanks to Sridhar)
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It needs guts to learn. Learning means one has to be humble. Learning means one has to be ready to drop the old, one has to be constantly ready to accept the new. Just being logically more proficient does not mean you have the truth. One of the most difficult things is to change an experience into explanation, and from one language to another it becomes almost an impossible task.

Art can create environment of sensitivity in which any scrutiny or process of questioning in which it is possible to change to occur. But where are the artists ? Why make up gives to the women ? I assume it gives confidence to her. Same as the artificial sophistication is promoted in the name of culture. Unsustainable.

Violence as a source of entertainment rather than its actual meaning. I am afraid of violence and mine life. I just want a bit of solidarity with people like Julian Assange who has just told us things that we were entitled to know. The democratization of information may actually lead to real democracy.

I am caught between self-righteousness and savage reality. With each new blog post also, I am doing what they do best, copying and stereotyping. There is no vision in me and there write-ups are an insult to the originality inside me. From when and why has I have become synonymous with rationality with brainlessness and wrong spellings with avantgarde ? Regret is a misery what one did not do while remorse is sorrow what one did do. I have both regret and remorse.

I rigorously study subjects prescribed by our institute irrespective of whether feel it shall provide us any know-how to launch our career. The adventurous and entrepreneurial spirit can be awakened by downsizing the baggage of bore some studies and big student loans.

I am not a prodigy. I may be infected with disease of being acknowledged by others. This perception has modified reality. I am chasing knowledge without any reason. Its is a mental wilderness of thoughts that is making me anxious and full of fear.