August 21, 2013 is Blue Moon

August 21, 2013 is Blue Moon. The phrase 'Once in a blue moon' has come to mean something that incurs very infrequently. So is my birthday that happens only once in a year. Life is looking okay for now. Off the job, well, not quite smooth. I have seen now 28 years of life of details.

The perennial question from childhood in my mind is - Is it merely an accident of birth that led to one person having huge wealth and other condemned to poverty ? The search for the answer of this question has made me an idealist in this practical world. To argue with one's own kin and friends for the ideal of fairness is difficult. One has to drop imposed morality and biased faith for one's own. I try to explore the issues of social hierarchy, religion, loyalty, corruption, sexuality, war, crime, and punishment by becoming morally ambiguous. I am ready to inherited cultural values if they are not respecting human rights. Even I have been rubbing with the comforts, the ragged edges of reality are forever pierced in my heart.

The things we admire in men; kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling are the concomitants of failure in our system. And traits we detest; sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first, they love the produce of the second. - John Steinbeck

We are the choices that we made. Sometimes good and other times bad. Mechanical engineering was out for me because of my inability to grasp technical concepts at engineering and lethargy. That left me with job in IT sector but I came to conclusion that negative choices are always the worst choices. I never feel to be such out of place and failure as in the engineering sector. The privilege of failure must not be taken away because to have continued success gives birth to mediocrity. It is the struggles and perseverance that has made me much strong today. Today, I am thankful to bad ones for widening my experiences.

No one ever owns up youth or the women he loves. But there is great mystery in love as it doesn't obey our expectations. Sometimes love is unrequited and unfulfilled. I may be a loner but definitely not a monk, voyeur or hermit. But this desire is like abyss. I am not even sure now what is true now in love. Let me not dwell into ancient evenings and distant music of past. Alas ! they are gone. I am ready for the new encounters, passions and sufferings in the love.

I have so many layers in memory, that I can peel away a few in the words. I had acted like another person so many times yet I was coming to the term of my real self slowly. Even self is dynamic notion but I was more of myself in recent years. Personal identity is an enigma, fragile & tenacious woven by threads of choices and inheritances. I assume that we all are held together by wisps of memory, few strong and mostly feeble.

The pace of life is unhurried nut not slow. While others plan, I dream. Yes, there is chaos in the dream but its worth it. I am happy to take the path of my heart without giving up for trend, instant relief and gratification. Notion about me by others is impossible to change. I do not sulk about missing out but get excited by what lies ahead. With growing age one owes responsibilities, more burdens, more obligations and also comes our ability to deal with the complexity. I don't know what lies ahead in the womb of future. Let us play between serendipity and causality. Life is strange. That is for sure. I am doing what I assume as right.

66 Years of Independence

15th August comes again. With each passing days, India seemed to less shining and more as the great land of Al-Absurdistan. I am ranting on Independence day because we are not bothered about freedom, justice and fairness. The goal of development can't be achieved without securing these premises.

When are we putting aside petty political fights and begin focusing on the real problems that threaten our nation ? India is a capitalism encased feudal societies where people hide their prejudice behind a mask of newly coming material wealth. We are amnesic of the issues to be addressed with utmost importance for voices are hushed up or ignored in the media due to business interests or political pressure. We accumulate huge foreign reserve and emphasizing stock piles in food grains. An obsession with government jobs that give access to social and economic security without any accountability.

India possesses a range and quality of intellectuals that perhaps only few developing society in the world can match. They are considered both brilliant and scholar. But it is the lack of courage to call a spade a spade holds us back. People lack certain level of individuality to take a stand on serious matters of concern. There is no moral decline of the whole society. Our morals were always like this but it is now they are exposed in the public face.

There are lot of martyrs involved in our struggle for independence and rarely we remember them. There's no going back now. Our independence somehow was not the birth of an open mind in Indian context but only reformation through the western weapons of ideas. We as Indian rarely see ourselves as part of perpetrators and carriers of an unjust system. Sixty years of idealism, emergency, socialism, caste reservations and liberalization followed, has been bringing about the end of feudalism and the rise of equality and a new social order. Rising inequality disturbs me to a great extent. One look at human history is enough to prove that eventually it is always the freedom and inclusive institutions that has build up great nations.

It is very important to ask a simple question before making any decisions - Progress for Whom and on whose cost? Capital investment into infrastructure, Industry building or Subsidy demands sacrifices. But those who are making and those who progress are not the same set of people. I am not a communist but can 't accept an hedonistic version of America. I belong to a nation whose identity vividly unfurls in a maelstrom of violence, riots, discontent and poverty. In the end, we all want civilized, just and equitable India. I dream of India to be more humane rather than exotic and incredible.

Hard Times

Once a good economy crumbles, results go wrong, inflation hurts more frequently and GDP rate turns slow. Read these three articles to understand, how India has been ruined by Congress !

Blog Post 1 - All confusion apart, I strongly feel that the Congress (I) must not come back to power in 2014–directly or behind the scenes. They must be made to sit in opposition and lose big time like PPP did in Pakistan. That should be our first priority.

Let India not become Bihar of 1990s where you could be incompetent with impunity because you were sure to come back to power with the caste equation in your favor. There was not even any attempt to perform; there wasn’t even a pretense of integrity. Let India not become Jharkhand of today either where lobbyists rule and voters suffer–again without an end in sight to the nightmare.

Blog Post 2 - A story of destructive governance and citizens who did not speak out.

Blog Post 3 -If patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel, there is nothing like appearing to care for the poor to divert attention from the arduous, painstaking task of building public institutions that are critical to implement the provision of public goods for the underprivileged. Instead, progressive legislation has become a substitute for building the state's implementation capacity to do even the most basic of tasks. Indeed, it is undermining it - if you can barely do three things well, adding five more will undoubtedly ensure that everything is done poorly.

There has always been a gap between public policy and public will ; But performance of UPA is really bad and the scorn is well deserved on them !

How Hardliners Win in Chaos?

In all revolutionary settings, Islamisicts, repeatedly cooperated with party of moderate libertarian inclination, and later have double-crossed them to capture power for themselves. Let's take an hypothetical example where Islamic Ulemas are allowed to make a list of 'ALL' the things that are wrong with society, and then suppose power center instituted EVERY social change that they demanded. Within couple of years, they will come with new list and with fierce pressure within . The drive for power is only satisfies by imposing a code of moral behavior.

Once the power-hungry and orthodox types have captured control of the movement, there are many moderate Muslims of a gentler breed who inwardly disapprove of many of the actions of the leaders, but cannot bring themselves to oppose them. They need their faith in the Islam, and because they cannot give up this faith and act against social pressure, they go along with the leaders. And those who have guts to oppose them will be physically assaulted, exiled, jailed and even boycotted with the help of the twin notions of blasphemy and apostasy. Thus the fact that many individual Muslims are personally tolerant and fairly tolerant people by no means prevents Islamic hardliners form having a totalitarian tendency to capture power.

However, the most dangerous individuals of all are True Believers. They are governed by dogmatic approach to Islamic ideology who avoid aggressive behavior but work quietly to promote collectivist values even with absolutely good intentions. But they create a society which gradually outcaste individuals with individualistic behavior, and so forth. Denial for others and blind belief are the instruments of True believers and their followers.

The funny thing is replace Islam with Left and all the logic will still appear to be true.

There was a great marxist named lenin, who did two or three million men in. That's a lot to have done in, But where he did one in, That great Marxist Stalin did ten in. - Robert Conquest.

Tawang: The Hidden Paradise.

I planned to Tawang for my dreams to see Buddhist monasteries . The three musketeers (Gautam, Mriganka & Himanshu) were the travelers. We had finalized our tour itinerary for Arunachal after reading all tour reports on travel sites. We started from Bhubaneswar and reached Guwahati via Kolkata. Route to Tezpur from Guwahati was unexpectedly a plain grassland and took nearly 5 hours with state bus service. We got our permits done at Tezpur office only just before closing of the office. It seems sad to take Inner Line Permit to visit in our own country. But when we have draconian acts like AFSPA in North east India, this seems to be less of our all worries. This part of India is seeing a grave human rights violation and things will go messy in future due to our state actions today.

We took a 6 days tour package from Tezpur ASTC agent Miraz. The route from Tezpur to Tawang have patches of really bad road. Bhalukpong was the start of Arunachal Pradesh. There is a proposal of train line to Bhalukpong. 370 km route was covered in two days with a transit stay at Bomdilla. We traveled through West Kameng, home to the Sessa Orchid Wildlife Sanctuary but March was not the right season for their flowering. Tawang is a beautiful place. Local people talk about Koyla Movie shooting and 1959 escape of 14th Dalai lama to India. We were lucky to get permit to visit Bum-La Pass. The road to Bumpla Pass from Tawang is of strategic importance but badly constructed. I will assume that a certain level of corruption in this. We trekked nearly one and half km on the road to Bumla pass as our vehicle can't go due to fear of slipping on the road. It took really some effort to walk and enjoy beauty of Bumla pass situated at 15000 ft. Seeing a Madhuri lake on the return was a most calming thing on our nerves in the whole journey. We returned to Tezpur with one night stay at Derang.

Gautam and Mriganaka at Sela Pass

We @ Bum La Pass

Indian Army with Us

Madhuri lake View

Tawang Monastery

Sela Pass during snowfall

I had not talked much about tour itinerary, hotels and cuisines here. Momo and Thupka are really things to try out there. Chinese items were flooded in the market. So decide oneself what to purchase. We did learn about 1962 war through memorials of Rifleman Jaswant Singh Rawat and Subedar Joginder Singh Sahnan. Nature lovers can enjoy Rhododendron and orchid sanctuary in their flowering seasons. This trip takes us through Fall, lakes, valleys, mountains and passes with all season of Rain, snow & sunshine coming together in six days.

There are ample opportunities to develop tourism here. There is a high unemployment rate while road construction, military contracts and tourism industry are only booming ones. Irom sharmila chanu and Mary Kom are well known and represent Manipur but there is no famous personality except Dorjee Khandu in my knowledge from Arunachal Pradesh. Our drivers(companions)told us about many problems faced by NE states. They were especially extortion and kidnapping by Bodo in Assam, insurgency in Nagaland & illegal migrants of Bangladesh. They even claim (not sure) of open for sale market of AK 47 and pistols at Dimpaur. Vulgar remark about the driver and army people on their need of women wherever they go left a bad taste in my mouth.

Ethnic people consist of Nepali, Garo, Bodo with Buddhism and Christianity as emerging religion. I learn that Buddhism have different sects and even more rituals than other religions. 'Om Mani Peme Hum' is the most widely used of all Buddhist mantras. It was again told to us that Christianity is having soothing effect on tribal people (not sure of this). Muslim -Tribal tension is really building here. It seems that a lot of money is pumped by central government but there is misuse of funds by local political leaders, military and bureaucracy. North-East region has sadly turned into one of the worst-hit conflict zones in Southeast Asia.

What I like was the whole society has given more liberty to women in every aspect than their northern or southern Indian counterparts. It is a shameful and racist act to use word Chinki for them. Continuous use of that word "chinki" represents ignorance, bigotry and deep rooted callousness even in our well educated class. Now can we start respecting NE people by not calling them Chinky? While Super Mom Magnificent Mary is making India proud more than any of us, its shame Northeast women are often stereotyped as "cheap" and "easy".

I need to read more about history of NE region. Any reader can suggest me a good book. That will be helpful.