Apocalypse Now?

The recent earthquakes and the other natural and man made hazards suddenly got me thinking one day whether this is the approaching end- of the world and of civilization. We are all aware that doomsday is long gone and I am sure almost all of us took a mental note in 2012 when the world was after all in one piece. But what if we have been imagining the end all wrong?

Be it because of the movies or just imagination, but I have always imagined the end to be a day when the earth sort of sucks in every living soul and everyone is gone and there is nothing left of what we called the Earth. But what if that's not it? Since I was a child until very recently, I had no idea what an earthquake felt like, never thought I would ever know what it was like to have an earthquake. However, in the recent past over the last year or so, I have experienced around 4-5 earthquakes already. It definitely shows something is seriously wrong. It might be due to the deforestation or the planting of huge rods on the Earth for building metro-rails and flyover or the building of huge multiplexes. It is a world where people live inside mobile phones and are more familiar with their office computers than their families, a world where the poor is becoming poorer and the rich even richer. The newspapers are filled with killings, bombing, rape, protests and what not. It becomes a task to actually look for some happy news. Everybody knows the effects of global warming, and yet the number of air conditioners and air conditioned classrooms never ceases to increase. People complain about climate change and yet never stop a moment and do something about it in their own little way.

When I thought about all this I though maybe apocalypse is really coming this time but on second thoughts, what if its apocalypse now? What if this is the end of the world everybody has been dreading? Maybe apocalypse is not the end of mankind and the earth after all, not literally at least. Maybe it is this end of humanity, of rationality and of peace. To me it sounds pretty much like the end already. Maybe everybody should just stop and think whether the blind race is worth it or maybe its time to open the eyes and take a step towards what is actually worth the while.

Birthday calls or birthday pings?

Birthdays are meant to be special whether you are a year old or a hundred. If you look at it that way, the days before the birthday are the ones more exciting that the birthday itself. The birthday comes and before you know it its gone. For me, one of the many things that I have looked forward to on my birthday are the numerous birthday calls one after another. It feels like birthday only when the phone starts buzzing and doesn't stop for a very long time. The sheer excitement of being on a call and having five more on wait is what has always made the birthday kick in for me. 

This ritual has however, unfortunately for me, changed a great deal over the years. While we get used to new and newer forms of technology or communication, we often leave behind the old methods. So, before Facebook and Whatsapp came people used to wish each other generally over calls and sometimes over a text message. Now people ping each other on Facebook and Whatsapp instead of wasting balance on a call. If you ask me why people do that, well, to begin with, you save balance, its easier, faster, also it often saves awkward conversation with people you do not like a lot but have to wish. However, if you look beyond these merits, it has a dark side like everything else. The personal touch and the little chit-chat which used to happen while calling and wishing a person is completely lost with the system of pings. For instance, you cannot call up a person, wish her and hang up. You have to talk for a bit and then politely hang up. Even though you might not always want to have a conversation with a person, that wish might have made a person's birthday a wish more special, an extra call on wait. Those of you who, like me, have counted the people who have called and who have texted etc. at the end of the day will understand what exactly I mean when I say "a wish more special". I accept that often I have taken the benefit of pinging people on their birthdays as well just like you. But that was probably because until now I had not realized what a call might be worth. It is okay to ping each other for every other thing, but I hope after reading this, some of you would try and keep the old system of calling and wishing going. These are the small little gestures that matter, that one remembers, that we should try to preserve against the force of time.

To dadu..

I always shared a special bond with my grandfather. He was the kind of person I looked up to, respected, pampered and loved to the greatest degree. He worked with the Air Force and had a very adventurous life. He married my grandmother when he was around 20 and since then they have been the most perfect couple. There were certain things in him like generosity, good humour, affection and so many other things that made him very popular among his friends, seniors, grandchildren, and everyone else including the rickshaw pullers, shopkeepers and maids. He was a person everyone loved. It is'st possible to sum up what he meant to me or what kind of a person he was but this would help all those who did not know him to relate to the picture.

And for all of you who knew him, you can imagine how amazed I was at the accuracy of the analysis of his handwriting which I found while going through his documents.

Are marriages really made in heaven?

They say "Marriages are made in heaven". I wonder if that is true. Last night I was travelling in a train with my friends. Because we had booked tickets last minute, my friend and I had only managed to secure RAC tickers which means that both of us were allotted only one berth. Nonetheless, we invited two other friends, who were supposed to leave the next day, to join us so that all of us could have fun even if it meant four people share one berth.

So anyway, as we boarded the train we found a lady sleeping on the sorry side lower berth that we were allotted. On asking her to move, she called out to her husband who was sleeping in the adjacent middle berth. The woman complained that she had a bad leg and could not climb onto any other upper berths, but gave us our berth nonetheless. The husband in the meanwhile got off from the middle berth and promptly climbed the berth above us and lay down comfortably. The lady kept standing and complaining to her husband that he had booked bad tickets and how he should be more careful. She said, "tumi erom ticket ketecho, ami ki korbo ebar?" meaning you have booked such tickets, what do you think I should do now?. In reply, her husband, almost showing a temper, says, "tomar ja iche tumi koro, ami jani na." meaning do what you feel like, I do not know. Helpless the lady made a failed attempt to climb on the one of the empty middle berths. Then having no other option she took out one of her sarees from her luggage and spread it out on the ground. Not being able to take it anymore, we insisted that the middle berth was not very difficult to climb and if she agrees we would help her to climb up and down whenever necessary as it was not possible for the four of us to manage in a middle berth even if we tried. We also offered to request some other male passengers on her behalf to let her sleep in their lower berths. However, she said she had other relatives in some other berth and left. All this continued for almost half an hour and all this while, the husband silently lay on his berth not uttering a word of concern or worry. Just as we were thinking she has managed to get a proper place with her relatives she came back saying they were on the other end of the train and she could not find them. We again offered to help in any way we could but she said she will just lie down on the ground and that it was okay. All this time her husband, instead of offering to help, kept insulting her and abusing her publicly. At such a point what shocked us the most was the fact that after she spread her saree on the floor, she started offering her husband tea, food and snacks and insisted that he went to sleep and made himself comfortable. He obliged. In the morning, when he woke up after being woken up by her a million times, she said "how much will you sleep? do you care that someone has stayed awake the entire night", and he says "So what should I do, that is none of my business". Then he ordered her to give him tea and while sipping the tea he kept going on and on about how he will fight with some relatives, how he is not at all selfish and everybody else is and so on.

Are marriages really made in heaven? Maybe they are. There are only two explanations to situations like these. Either marriages are really made in heaven so that the perfect woman is matched with a man so that in spite of such behavior she is capable of being a loyal wife and making the marriage last. Or, a far sadder explanation would be that most women in our society have grown up the believe that this is the normal male behavior and it is their duty to put up with it and serve him and to go on with the marriage no matter how much torture or humiliation she has to put up with. Out of the two which one would be a happier explanation, I wonder.

Disclaimer: To any man who is reading this, I do not mean any offence or do not mean to make any generalizations. It is merely based on my experience being a girl and on certain incidents in my life.

A better place.

Some say it's better to die young than suffer the hardships of old age. Others argue that no matter what, a person should be kept alive for as long as possible. Most of us are aware of the debate circling the notion of Euthanasia. While some believe that people should be released from extreme pain and suffering and should be allowed to die, other argue that death should not be brought voluntarily and a person should be kept alive till he dies naturally. However, it is only when one is in that place does one realize that the choice is not so simple. Recently, the death of my grandfather raised these questions in my mind. A part of me keeps telling me that its a good thing that he is at rest and relieved from all the things that were ailing him. But there is another part which tells me that in spite of everything if only he could have lived longer it would not be so bad after all. What he would have chosen had the choice been given to him, well, I don't know. Everyday I see so many people with so many sorts of ailments. Some are poor, some insane, some handicapped or disabled while some just unlucky in every way possible. Today itself, in the morning while climbing down the metro stairs I noticed a man climbing up from the other side. His legs were permanently bent forward from his knees and he was walking on his toes and I have never seen another person put in that much effort to climb stairs. He had a walking stick and another person to give him support, but to balance oneself while climbing up stairs like that is one hell of a task. Yet he was doing it, and he probably does it everyday, more than once. In spite of that he still chooses to live even if he has to put up fight at every stage. While I was walking from the metro station to my office I saw a beggar, a lady who looked like she was a hundred years old. Yet she kept the fight going and she asked every person to give her some money hoping at least one would listen. After seeing these things, I couldn't help but wonder, when we say a person is in a better place once he is dead and free from all the pain, perhaps its completely a built up notion to console ourselves. If there are so many people going through so much just to keep going a little longer maybe this is the better place after all. 

Is it a colourless world?

The theories of reflection suggest that the colours we see depend on the amount of white light it absorbs and the amount it reflects. White light is colourless light like ordinary daylight, ie, it is the light humans see when all the colours (VIBGYOR) make up visible light. The different colours which comprise white light have different wavelenghts. Light always travels in waves and wavelength is nothing but the distance between the crests of two waves. Scientists say that when white light falls on any object or surface, some of the wavelenghts get absorbed while others get reflected. We see the portion of the light which is reflected and that is how we perceive the colour of a thing. When all the colours are absorbed a thing appears black and if none of it is absorbed, an object appears white. For example, when white light falls on an apple, all the colours of VIBGYOR gets absorbed excepting red. The red light is thus reflected and that is why when we look at an apple it appears to be red. Similarly, a sunflower is yellow because it absorbs all colours other than yellow, a rose is red, a chocolate is brown and parrots are green.
So if every colour we see is a result of refection of white light falling on it, what is the actual colour of a thing, rather, does colour even exist? If white light was not there, would roses be blue, or green, or would they be colourless? The colours make everything looks beautiful, be it a garden or a temple or a bride. But, do all these things even have a colour of their own? What if white light is no longer available one day: would the world be colourless? Even if it were colourless, what does colourless actually look like? I wonder....

Bad news for the "purely non-vegetarians"!

Recently, a lot of news has been coming up regarding polar bears feeding on dolphins. Dolphins do not generally form a part of the diet of a polar bear but scientists have found out recently that there have been more than a few incidents where polar bears have been found to be feeding on dolphins. Research says that even though dolphins are found in the Arctics in the summer months, they have never been observed there during any other time of the year when the sea is covered with ice. However, with increasing global warming, there has been a strong retreat of ice which is why the dolphins might have wandered that far off during winters and fallen prey to hungry polar bears. Sad isn't it? Wait. It does not end there.
This is where the twist is. I found in an article that us non vegetarians are substantial contributors to global warming by virtue of our immense appetite for lip smacking steaks, Tandooris, kebabs and all the other hundreds and thousands of non-vegetarian delights. Surprised? So was I. Apparently, animal agriculture is responsible for 14.5% of the global greenhouse gases. Over the years, large areas of forests have been cleared for animal grazing.  Also, it consumes a major portion of the freshwater resources while contributing to air and water pollution. How many of us would have imagined while enjoying a big piece of mutton or a delicious pork chop that the contents of our plates would, somewhere far away, be changing the menu for a polar bear's dinner. Well. unfortunate as it is, it is true. Now the important question is how many of us are strong enough to do something about this. We have all in some occasion talked about global warming and how it should be reduced. How many of us are actually ready to take up this challenge of giving up our beloved non-vegetarian diets for the planet? It is a small step but yet for some of us a very difficult one. I do not know if I am strong enough to be able to do it immediately but I earnestly hope some of you reading this are.

The wealthy snatchers!

After many days of procrastination I have finally sat myself down to finally put into words the post that I has been pending for over a month. A few days back while I was reading the newspaper, I read an article which especially drew my attention. It said that studies and reports have revealed that the majority of the cases of snatching by bikers are committed by youths of extremely wealthy families. The wealthy youths to keep up with their wealthy lifestyles have taken to robbery and chain snatching which provide them with easy cash for expensive parties, malls, alcohol and drugs. This information got me thinking how most of us develop this wrong notion that the financially needy for the underprivileged are the ones who are responsible in any case of theft, pick pocketing or robbery. I do not mean to make any generalizations here but what I mean to say is most of you will understand or will be acquainted with the idea that all of us have at some point come across the idea that the poor are the ones behind most of the crimes like theft, snatch and run, drug dealing etc., driven by poverty or otherwise. Whether knowingly or unknowingly, people tend to blame the poor for anything that goes wrong be it global warming or the cleanliness of the city. I will not lie. In the Indian society it is very common for people to immediately blame the servants, drivers and caretakers for anything that goes missing even before giving it a proper search. They may be right in certain cases but is it not wrong to assume it by default? It is true that some of us are in financially weak positions while others are comparatively financially sound. Does that mean that the needy are always looting the rich to satisfy their necessities? The Article clearly suggested a different idea, not based on conceptions but based on reality.
It is time we change our notions and open our minds. What is important is that each one of us should first take responsibility of our own actions. Like just a few days back a friend of mine could not find her scissor. The first thing that came to her mind was the cleaning lady stole it. It is surprising how naturally it comes to us to blame someone for something just because they are weaker than we are. The scissor, however, was found just a minute later buried under a few books that had been carelessly kept on the table. Unfortunately I know that this is not isolated incident but is a very common mistake that one often makes. What is important is that everyone takes some time to think and to ponder before they form an idea, before they hurt someone, before they blame someone, before every small action that they take, before they shift the responsibility to someone else.