This is no time to be a cynic

Like most Indians - I too feel the anguish of Nirbhaya's death. 

Her death is one in many that get reported. There are those numerous nameless others who suffer this crime and it never goes beyond the victim's knowledge and the perpetrators smug knowing and harrassment.  Many a time the reaction to such incidents is a tired cynical outlook and a "Things never change" attitude. This is no excuse. To be blunt this is not the time to be cynical. Being cynical is to be safe and removed from the feelings of anger.

This case pierced the sense of apathy towards such crimes; and I am thankful that it has. As I go through life I have realized one never knows when the tipping point will occur and what will trigger it. The only thing one can do is contribute even in the face of impossible odds.  You see we need a trickle before it can become a flood. We need the fury against each and every crime. We need the sense of injustice when people misuse their power. We need a sense of outrage against every person who thinks to violate women with impunity.

Yes there is a part of one's mind that knows - the momentum may be lost eventually.  The media will move on to other issues. That does not mean we stop. We never would have won freedom if our freedom fighters had given up after the first war of independence. 

And sometimes ... sometimes it takes one incident to turn the simmering wrath into flash ; history is full of such cases.

• Roop Kanwar's death which lead to the enactment of Sati related law
• Montgomery Bus Boycott - that lead to the civil rights movement
• Rodney King's beating 

Change is never easy.  Change for the better - even more so. 

So ......... Contribute. Make demands. Ask for better implementation of laws and quicker justice.

More importantly look around you and inside yourself - change the underpinning inside that devalues women routinely. Change that sense of entitlement that tells you - it is okay to abuse and then abscond from responsibility of heinous actions by saying "She asked for it". This change goes for both genders. Teach your children respect and empathy.

Make that change - In every house; by each person. There can be no better eulogy than this. An eulogy of action.

Let her death not be in vain. And no - this is no time to be cynical.

RIP Nirbhaya, Amaanat, Damini

Just a 'little' wisdom

Sometimes I think that I wish I had the wisdom ( slight though it may be ) that I now have , when I was younger.  May be my choices would have been different and perhaps I would not have taken some paths that did not work out for me. Life certainly would not have been the same. I would have made fewer mistakes may be ??

But then it I think again .... if I had this knowledge then .. I never would have been foolish .. never would have taken risks ; risks that , only being young and the-world-is-mine-attitude would have made me take. Risks that are incomprehensible to my current self.  I never would have experienced the dizzy emotional highs and lows that were so much part of me then.

So I think .. that while age brings wisdom .. it also tells me ...it does reduce one's risk appetite ... and this is doubly so when you have a baby .. and that baby's future to think of ! :)

And so - when I view a youth ( guy or gal - does it matter ) zooming past on a bike texting / talking on their mobile I just hope their fairy god-mother keeps them safe ( and the others around them too ! ). No I never did that [ hey we had no mobiles then ! ;) ]  but it makes me wonder how life allowed me to sashay through with nary a scratch.

Post trip blues .....

After we came back from Sikkim it is seemingly taking us a long time to get back to normal. First there was a gas leakage at home when I opened the valve for cooking. Calling the emergency number made us realize we would not get any action in the night. So we wound the pipe which we suspected was leaking with brown cellophane. When finally the gas people - 2 people turned up. Well at least the 2nd guy came with the required pipes so we went ahead with him and got both the pipes changed. It was clear the last guy had cheated us ( specifically me ) - first by overcharging for the pipes and second by giving a pipe that was to expire soon ! Anywayz ... the gas leakage taken care of .... the next problem started ...

I found the front tyre of our car had no air. Hmmmm .. hardly had that been fixed when the car would not start !!! Uh oh .... looks like the cold weather in Pune had had its time to work on the battery. So today the battery people came - said the battery was not drained by was less charged so had to take the battery to the battery re-charging unit. It will be done by tomorrow.

And the week is not yet over ... wonder what else is in store ??? All small small things .. but nuisances nevertheless ..... ! :)

Sikkim - Tips for Travel

Ideally this post belongs to my traveljaunts blog but then I write about travel here too and I see no harm in repeating.

Hmmm ... so Sikkim travel tips ..... where do I begin ?

• The roads of Sikkim are truly tortuous !! I mean this literally .. the road has turns on average every 25 - 50 meters. Unless you have a cast iron stomach - this is going to be a real problem when you travel. There is winding .... and there is "winding". Sikkim is tightly tightly wound ! :)
• The soil of Sikkim is very loose - so the roads are always half eroded due to landslides / rockslides / water erosion / road being done etc.  Always the road state is in a flux ! :) BRO works through out the year to keep the roads clear.
• Due to the above reasons - distances of even 20 kms are a long long journey. Did I mention tortuous roads that feel torturous ? :)
• In November - it is very cold. Temperatures go to minus so yes one needs lots and lots of warm clothing. Don't go with what the Sikkim guides say - they think the temperature is not too cold in November ! :)
• North Sikkim needs permits. The travel agents take care of this - but you need approx 6 PP snaps and 6 ID proof xeroxes. Yes even for a child. We took our baby's school ID. They seem to prefer Voter ID for adults! 
• Out of 6 days we felt we actually saw points of interest only on 3 days. Travel to the places takes time. Not that the scenery is not pretty but still.
• North Sikkim - altitude sickness is very prevalent. Be prepared. 
• Our driver mentioned that for every itenary - there is an extra driver's point that can be taken to by the driver on extra cost. For e.g. - on the Yumthang valley drive - travel to Zero point is optional and extra. On the NathuLa drive - travel to Kachenjunga view area is optional and extra. Do your research.
• BSNL is the only service provider up in the mountain and that too only to a point. 
• Since Nathu La is closed on Mondays and Tuesdays - if you are going to this place on the last day of your itenary you may want to consider driving from there onwards to Zuluk and then go to Bagdogra airport / JBP  railway station. You need permit for Zuluk so you  should take care of this before. We came back to Gangtok which I felt could have been avoided and instead could have made a circular route with Zuluk in the fray.
• Places to see include points in West Sikkim and Bhutan which can be accessed by road. We felt - those areas could be done in another trip in which we would include Darjeeling too. This is a personal preference. 
• Unless otherwise mentioned - driver is not available for the full day. 
• Try and include meals in your hotel stays - there are not many options on the road other than Maggi and tea.
• I would definitely recommend home stay - Hidden Forest Resort in Gangtok and Teen Taley Eco Resort ( home stay again ) in Rumtek. They were fantastic.
• And last but not the least our driver - Mr. Ketan Pradhan - 94343-56528 / 94348-69042 who is associated with Alpine Nature Beyond was wonderful. Safe driver , very interested in actually showing us places and very punctual. He is the best driver / guide I have come across so far. 

Change ...

After sometime a beautiful picture begins to pall , a lovely perfume you get used to and can no longer smell it, wonderful scenery is taken for granted , novelty of possessions fades off ....

Water still for a long time stagnates and a constant diet of rich chocolate desserts would become boring ... and fattening too :) When the same exercise is done daily your muscles get used to it ; within a single day if you were to do the same task obviously you would go out of your mind due to the monotony !

So what does this all mean ?

CHANGE !!! It never ceases to amaze me that change is the only constant and the only thing that one can really like .. and yet it is always fought ... we fight to keep things same .. !!!

Why ???

(In)Sane parents !

We give new meaning to the term dysfunctional !

1. The "mele main kho ja" type

Child is in UKG - nobody to pick her up at the gate. So we drop her to her home .. and 3 of her family members in the house say "Oh we forgot about her " ???? Errr what ?

I sincerely hope they never take her to a mela - prime candidate for all those movie dramas !

2. The "barking" type

Parent - "Naksha what is the name of the covering of a tree?"
Naksha - "Bark"
Parent turning to her child and saying frantically [ test day syndrome ] - "Now remember , the covering of a tree is bark" , "B.A.R.K" , "Baark" ... "BAARK" ...

After a few more seconds of this scary "barking" the child ran away ! ;)

3. The "don't eat junk food" type 

Screams at her child for wanting to drink colas and eat chips and not do any physical activity. Fifteen minutes later is slouching on a sofa watching her favorite program - while munching on a giant bag of chips with cold fanta.

Junk food rules don't apply to middle-aged bodies I guess ! ;)

4. The  "fantastic swimming teacher" type

Two year old baby - swimming pool - both parents talking to other parents after spending 2 min in the pool. Boasting about the different techniques of teaching swimming. The child nearly drowns !! Luckily - spotted and taken out of the pool and they give a glare to the person who saved her.

I agree; it sucks to be interrupted while pontificating !

5.  The "waiting for her to grow up" type

Teen daughter - already 'knows' everything. Parents still waiting to have the "talk"  - about - "Not taking biscuits/chocolates from strangers" ... wow !

You missed that boat already dears ! LOL ....

6. The "I need my privacy" type

Child comes to neighbors house regularly on Thursdays at dinner time. After some time neighbor asks about it - Child says "Oh my dad wants to spend time with his girlfriend".

Love your neighbors - you never know when you will need them ! :)

7.  The "my child is like your child" type ... ;)

Saturday morning - 8am - drops her child to her friend's house without giving any heads-up. Picks up her child around 6pm. Does the same on Sunday. Reasoning - "Both my hubby and I had an exhausting week at work yaar !! We needed to relax" !!!

A friend in need is a friend indeed eh ?

8.  The "don't look into the eyes" type

While talking about her child - never looks into the person's eyes. She makes me feel like crossing my arms and saying - "Lady I am straight" !!!!

9. The "opinion poll" and "Hair-scare" type

Baby got hurt , big deep gash in the middle of crown - the mom calls 6 people for opinions on what to do - hey it is definitely not a "take-her-to-the-doc-if-you-have-a-doubt"  moment - she feels she will look foolish (???) if it turns out to be nothing ! So ..... what to do ?

Eventually she does not listen to everybody telling her to take the child to doctor considering the amount of bleeding. Instead she buries the gash in cold cream and turmeric. Six days later goes to a doctor ( for an unrelated reason ) who tears a strip of these "educated parents" and out comes the gooey mess with some hair - p..a...i..n..f...u...l..l..y.. for the child. Me thinks she was lucky the child did not go into septic shock ! The turmeric did its job I think.

And the ending - "I was so glad they did not have to shave her hair in that area or need stitches , it would have looked ugly ! " (??). Did not realize hair could not grow back!

10. The "logical" type

Mom buys only 2.5 inches spindly heels for her baby - says she looks very cute with them ... and wonders why her daughter falls down so often when playing running games ... ???

11. The "worry wart" type 
Who agonizes over every decision, thinks, re-thinks and thinks again ....until it becomes a truly tortuous torture and ties herself into mental knots ! :) What ??? You don't recognize me ? :)
Yours truly ! ;)

By no means is this list exhaustive! :) And in case you wondering - these are all true.

Empathy

Empathy - Magic bullet to cure all problems !

Is that an eye-catching title ? Or more like a silly way to catch attention to something like a sale ? Never mind ! :) As a Mom  of a school going child .. one thinks perennially about schooling / classes / tuition / education system / school boards / subjects and the like.

And while there are so many things one learns in school and so many things that get 'unlearnt' - like the joy of learning while pursuing marks - I feel that if there is one thing that I could add to the syllabus - I would add the teaching and learning of empathy.

Now this does not sound very earth shaking does it ? But it would bring about a paradigm shift in the thinking process and the way life itself is handled.

Why empathy ?

• For one thing is is not wishy-washy like sympathy.
• Secondly it involves some amount of imagination and courage. It makes us go beyond ourselves and into the shoes of the person across whom we are sitting.
• It is more than conscience too.
• It is not connected with religion at all. So no dogmas need follow.

Yes all other moral values like - honesty, compassion, discipline, contentment ( vs avarice ), industriousness , respect for others etc are good but I would think empathy is at the root of all these values.

Think about it -

• If the creator of the Ponzi scheme was empathetic - he may not have ended up looting the life savings of so many old retired people. He/She would have understood the devastation that loss would bring about.
• Domestic violence would not be an issue b'cos the person involved would understand the physical and mental pain the victim would feel.
• Women complaining about the glass ceiling and discrepancy in wages for the same work would be heard with an open mind.
• Dowry deaths especially the heinous burning would be a thing of the past.
• We would perhaps switch to "Ahimsa Silk" so as to not kill the millions of silk worms for our usage. Ditto with animal furs...
• Child Abuse would make the person feel so abhorrent that it would not come to play at all ....
• Human trafficking - what is that ? :)
• We would have fire escapes that work, more water works in villages where women have to go miles for water, roads that don't vanish in monsoons, teenagers who think it is great to weave around aging trucks with no power steering more circumspect.
• Who would there be to teach a guy to walk into a railway station and fire bullets into unsuspecting people ?
• Nobody would wake up after an operation with a wrong missing body part.

... And so on ......

Empathy -  would lead to being more responsible. More open to negotiations. Not just expecting without taking responsibility. Ameliorating problematic situations. It would make us better humans. And therein lies the crux.

Writing and Musing ...

It has been a long gap. I have not taken time to write a blog post for eons. It is definitely not b'cos I lack ideas but sometimes ideas are like butterflies - hard to pin down. And who in their right mind would want to pin down butterflies ? :)

I have this habit of of jotting my ideas everywhere ! On little bits of paper , mostly from old envelopes or pamphlets that come inside the newspaper - just my little bit to help reduce paper wastage. Or on my textbook wrappers :) Of course the problem is once I finish reading that textbook - the ideas go along with the textbook wrapper ! :)

I can already hear the clamor - get Evernote already ! And I do have Evernote on my phone - but I get so damn tired to typing on my phone ! Whether it is the 3*9 keyboard format or the regular typing keypad - I think typing on a phone is really terrible. I am a 10-finger typist - so typing on a laptop or scribbling on a piece of paper is any-day preferable to inputting on the phone. Again there is of course an answer to that - I could use the typepad that can take in my handwriting ! Or the speech to note option .. see ?? Guess I just prefer to scribble on bits of paper ! :) To this - I can always have a mini-notepad handy ! I do manage to keep the most important pieces in my drawer , which is a jumble of dusty odds and ends.

The way I look at this simple chaos is - If the same topic keeps knocking on my brain many times , it takes shape almost unconsciously writes itself. So that topic has to make through the first pass from just a few thoughts floating around my brain in a vague way to something concrete that generates a mind map ! Lately I find that many topics have died under this discern barrier that I maintain and so to some extent while I classify my blog as a slow-blog -I think I will allow some amount of spontaneity to creep in too. [ Now how is that for impulse? ] Not all mind maps are created equal so while some topics do touch a chord, many do not ! That is a risk one takes.

I also feel the need to be in the mood to write ! :) From the time I remember I have been writing ( hey no giving my brick bats for the quality of my writing ... I know there are vast areas for improvement ) stories while in school, diaries and I maintained many .... and letters .. I was a mean letter writer. I used to send pages and pages to my penpals .. who were prolific writers themselves ... 20-26 pages per letter was the norm ! And when whittled down to the serious writers, I had about 20 pen pals with whom I corresponded regularly through out my college days. :) It got to a stage where I started using tissue-thin onion paper to write since paying for the postage of those thick volumes was becoming too much for my student budget ! :)

Getting back to this post - I am writing as I am thinking ! Something I used to do more often before and now do so mainly when replying to mails of friends. The downside of this are many but I am not going to get into that - otherwise this post will never be published ! :)

Generation Milestones ....

Sometimes it seems like ......  I have lived way too too long .... :)

• I get a dejavu of dejavu !! Not only do I feel I have done this before .. I feel I have felt the same dejavu before too ... ugh ! :)
• When I hear "Going down" ..... I know it refers to bending from the stiff waist to pick up things from the floor .... ;)
• Master Health Check-ups are impending doom/horror stories or torture chambers to be lead into ...
• I know too many people who have more than a passing acquaintance with doctors ...
• 25% of the talk with friends seems to revolve around health related issues, medical insurance and life insurance...
• The newspaper headlines about increasing taxes, petrol prices and crime rates never seem to change ! 

And the last .....

• Going .......... going ......... going ........... gone ... sounds ominous .... !!