WHO IS THE WHITE ELEPHANT ?

"You'll have to deposit an amount of INR 100,000 for the form, Sir. And ... let me inform you that this amount is entirely non-refundable. The annual fees would be an amount of INR 575,000. You may add an additional 50,000 for other miscellaneous expenses, Sir" Thus rattled away the administrator-cum-counselor (So much for cost-cutting !) with a dead-pan expression during the entire verbal diarrhea , except for the quintessential, cosmetic, symmetrical smile that adorned her visage. Of courset, to my over-suspicious eye (I choose to believe it's sharp, though)it was an attempt  to hide the trepidation regarding the possible acceptance of the absurdly, obscene amount, by me. But the years have added a lot of platinum not only to my mane but also to my demeanor. In that, quite opposed to her, I could hide my disbelief with a calm similar twist that adorned my lips. 

The above talk was to do with the admission of my son in the involved school which has subscribed to the IGCSE stream. The amount, as of such, was not a shocker. I knew that many of the blue-chip 'international' schools in tony areas quoted amounts which were quite in the same range. But this school's no-great-shakes reputation and its location in a regular middle-class area granted the situation a ludicrousness , that could have sent a less poised person reeling into a coma. Lest you start thinking, why I would opt for a school of this cadre in the first place, the answer lies in the question itself. The ho-hum reputation of the school made me rightfully believe that the fees would be nothing more than 40% of the amount quoted. Being a parent who was almost predisposed to opting for a shift to the home-schooling system, I just needed a school close to my residence. Simply put, just in order to minimize the time investment that my son would have to chip in. For, schooling schedules are big-time time-killers. I have come to this conclusion. I am , of course,being more stoic than  cynical here. So, this was the only school my 'closed' mind had considered. And this again was to allay the tiniest of self-doubt that my son, who had been conditioned to nine years of formal schooling, had started nurturing with regards to home-schooling. 

At this point of giving vent to my constant itch to dole out opinions, I would like to reiterate that the charming lady in question must have felt the same level of shock, when she first got educated about the fee lolly that she had to quote. If I allow frivolous levity to get the better of me, I would like to emulate one of those page 3 , air-kissing types , who would go " 6 lakhs for a name like that ? Sisodia ? (name changed) Is tacky the name of the game ?"

Moving further, I went into the nitty-gritties of the process of justifying the princely amount. This met with a retaliatory blah-blah about 'an Olympic-sized swimming pool', which was, of course 'temperature-controlled' , an air-conditioned basketball court, an 'A-class auditorium', air-conditioned smart classrooms and other similar perks, which would challenge any taxonomist (if you have such a one ,for all such  garish consumer fare !) worth his blood. My irreverent edge sharpened and honed, I asked innocently," Are we parents eligible to make use of the swimming facilities ?". And that met with , " Nooo...... Sir, how can that be possible ?" leaving me wondering whether it was a rhetoric or a question that warranted an answer. "What about  handling the multiple-level academic dynamics for the children. Isn't that what IGCSE is known  for ?", I continued without any waning of my pestilential assiduousness. And she went "Oh! That's something I am not sure of. But I suppose there will be some arrangement made. I'll have to check this part" My response was (silent one, of course) 'You said that ? You are not sure ? And you are the admission in-charge !

But quickly recovering , I could manage to veer the topic to a "And how will you convince your current students' parents to shell out more that 250% of the current fees ?" "Well, that will be labelled as the new building's fund". This was the reply that came in a jiffy with miraculous alacrity. Ooh la la la !  I could literally sense the blurring of the divide twixt hard-selling and marketing. I should be giving tips to corporate honchos on how to convince investors to pitch in so that the former's household expenses could be taken care of !!

And then came the salvo ! "Are you open to candidates with LDs? (which my son, appropriately corrupted by me, expands as L...d Deficiencies !) And the charming lady " Oh! What is that, Sir ? How do you spell that ? D..Y...S..L...E... Sir, I will have to check with the management. I will get back to you by tomorrow" Needless to say, to my relief, the reply given after a full day went as " Sorry Sir. But we cannot consider candidates with dys... dys . I mean, that disease". Since the speaker mode of my mobile phone was on, my son who was sitting next to me in the car, heard this declaration. And then followed a duet of rambunctious laughter seasoned with varied imitations of the word 'disease'. And we celebrated the shutting down ( sob! sob!) of the last door to schooling. And on a charmingly serious note, the more vibrant and unconstrained  but structured arena of learning, by way of homeschooling, seemed visibly clearer. And the hyperbolic (seemingly so !) statement made by a wise man, "I dreamed of education ; schooling massacred that dream", got mapped and zeroed-in by my cerebral scanner.

Lest the impressionable lot of young parents fall into the trap of homeschooling, I would like to say that it's not exactly akin to a laissez-fare , fly-fly world inhabited by members of the class Aves. It's a pretty tough call that one has to take, as a parent. It involves the ability to hone your seeking abilities and skills - the ability to seek out all possible resources of learning - both for the parent and the child. It deeply involves the ability to take on the pleasure as well as the onus of designing a schedule, a system, where your personal vision can  easily get wedded to the larger goals of education, both formal and informal. And these goals are, of course, about letting the fruits of your learning process seep into your life skills and life system. It also involves exploring your innate ability, as a parent, to work on developing new skills - vocational or purely academic - for your child as much as for yourself.

A parent may also have to seek out efficient ways of compensating for the lacuna created in terms of 'social skills' , which otherwise would continue with compulsory mingling with schoolmates. Ironically, in my case, this past  one year of homeschooling has been a raging year for my son in terms of social dynamics. But then the so-called social skills are quite akin to a double-edged sword. The kid could end up, unwittingly and unwillingly, being pushed into groups of peers among schoolmates, who are not of his liking. Blame it on the we- do- not -have- much- choice situation !

Apart from all these, as a parent, you will have to move out of blindfold zone and banish out all thoughts that the system is going to serve as a panacea for all kind of ailments ! Then it will be no better than living under the illusion that regular schools are centers that offer turnkey solutions to all educational and developmental woes ! Also you need to follow the theory that your decision to lock a certain decision should be governed more by the keen attraction towards that decision than a repulsion against the opposite of that decision. In my case, we had a very fruitful stint with schooling and I am sure that my son's nine years of formal schooling have been a decent learning stint. But at this stage, the marginal benefits of schooling are either redundant or futile.

In a nut-shell and as a conclusion, I would like to strongly opine that the world of homeschooling is a beautiful world replete with immense scope for exploration , both for the parent and the child.But I would largely not be interested in promoting it. Just to avoid wasting mental energy on arguments with hardcore skeptics who are way too inert to get educated about the system that they are so steadfast about opposing. I could share a few more 'pearls of wisdom' (huge assumption, here !) with those parents who are seriously considering homeschooling as plan B. I would also like to pat the shoulders of those who are steadfast champions of the system. Simply because, they are cocksure of what they are doing. So what if they are bitter and at times even cynical about conventional schooling ! And so, if you belong to the third category, that is the aiyyo- aiyyo-arre -baap -re- udi- baba one, please spare me the 'pleasure'. Excusez moi !

THE ENTREPRENEURSHIP- START-UP CONUNDRUM

          Once again my obnoxious, holier-than-thou attitude goes haywire, vacillating from one extreme to another, swinging through a plethora of issues, right from demonetization to plastic money to cashless transactions. All with a smug smile ! Reminding my visual imagery dynamics of a Cheshire cat that has slurped up a tub full of cream ! My 'practical' and 'smart' friends appear to be biting dust    ( Or is it my imagination running riot ? ) And once more I laud  (for whatever reasons, at this juncture) my three-odd-decade-back decision to etch out my professional space on my own. Back then, the rationale was an upstart 'Not too dotty about waiting for someone's condescension of dropping salary checks on to my spread palms' . Needless to say, I had to lend my natural auditory appendages to a host of hush-hush comments. From " Does it make sense throwing a cushy prospective job in a top refinancing institution ?" to "Why take the risk ?" via "None in the family has ever ventured into anything but being part of the service class ", I had had it all,  heard it all . And I must admit, there were times when I did allow myself to sway . If  nobody caught me during those moments, I have nothing to thank but my congenital 'gift' - a natural poker face !!

          A few years later, the pride ( at times superficial ) of issuing salary checks and employing skilled and qualified personnel kept me going for a long time. Candidly speaking, this exercise turned out to be quite a killer at times . What with all these getting wedded to overheads like obscene electricity bills, a host of  new commercial taxes (those were the days post the initiation of the New Economic Policy ) and stationery bills. Added to these woes were the pressures of following market norms and gimmicks. Thankfully , I didn't succumb to them.The rationale this time was..... Well, there was no rationale this time apart from the heart and head taking turns at ruling over each other ! To cut a long story short, I often felt the need to accept that I had bitten more than what I could chew. If not a single issued check from my side has bounced, to date, I have to thanks Dame Serendipity, and none   else !

      

          Then came the stage of investments in immovable assets - office space, residence - which brought with it a host of challenges, including the Damocles' sword of paying my EMIs which got ameliorated through solutions like, what is called crowdfunding today. The adjective traumatic would be an euphemism, to describe those days. But the perks came along too ! I learnt the usage of one new term  -  back-burner ! The dynamic nature of shifting priorities was another lesson that came as an additional benefit. People might like to call me a warped masochist, but I hungrily slurped up this hugely interesting learning phase too. And yes, they gifted me with tiers and tyres of adipose around my once-trim waistline too !! 

          Rising from these ashes was no mean task. The how's , why's et al are things I don't need to articulate anymore. But yes, it was a state of mind which had to be squeezed, pushed and goaded ; but all by myself. And  all these travails and roller-coaster rides patently honed and sharpened my ideas of entrepreneurship, Or, I would choose to believe so ! Talking about the state of mind, my cerebrum helps my mapping process and I recall the words of Adora Cheung , CEO of Homejoy. She defines start-up as ' A state of mind of a group of people who collaborate to make the explicit decision to forgo stability in exchange for the promise of tremendous growth and excitement of making immediate impact " Why would I choose to introduce this at this point ? Simply because I connect a start-up with a highly-focussed and adventurous form of entrepreneurship . If you take the 'forgo stability', I can almost proudly compete for the title of Start-up King. For, rocking the boat is a much cherished and revered activity of mine. And, of course,it rattles me from the ennui of a boring, smooth sail . 'Excitement' ? Oh yes ! That's something that is a very important requisite that makes me decide to the take the plunge and keep swimming !

          Neil Blummenthal's definition goes this way : An entrepreneurship working to solve a problem whose solution is not obvious and success is definitely not guaranteed. Hmmm.... Adventurous, I am . But foolhardy ? Maybe, if I could get a strong 'influencer' !! To sum up this entire didactic outpour, I would articulate it as a hypothetical informal interview, which would go as 

Question :  What exactly do you do for a living ?

Me          : Well, I am a trainer. But I'd choose to believe that I am

                    20% trainer, 30% mentor and 50% entrepreneur

Question : Must be making quite a lolly !

Moi         : Hmm....I suppose. But yes ! I remit an amount of X as 

                  service tax, Y as income tax. And of course, there are 

                  salary checks worth Z. With my lowest paid employee

                  grabbing and amount of A.

Question : Cool. So, those are your expenses . But...

Myself    : No, dude. These are my investments which pay me rich

                  dividends. In short, I am totally blissed out, thanks to

                  these.

        

          I would choose to believe that many of my fellow entrepreneurs will be in consonance !

SMART LIVING;RESPONSIBLE LIVING ?

                   

                     

                         Pardon me ; am I getting presumptuous ?

                 Bear with me ; am I on a self-congratulatory spree ?

                 Humour me ; I might get a trifle unbearable .....

       ..... as unbearable as the autorickshaw driver behind you, who honks incessantly with the sole purpose of goading to skip past the red-alert signal, when morally ( legally, as well ) I am bound to to wait for at least a good half a minute. If the honk had verbal power, it would say " Bugger off, dude. Can't afford the luxury of enjoying trivial matters like waiting for the signal to change colours." To  be fair enough, and self-deprecating , as unbearable as me,              moi, myself ! The above-mentioned citizen of India is an apt prototype of the mass of males who use the same vocational skills to fend for themselves and feed the umpteen mouths at home.

     It first happened during one of those occasions ( it happens quite often these days ) when my rickety car, whom I call my soulmate now, for it begs for moksha , redemption, salvation, thanks to having outlived its 15-year-old run, was at its monthly visit to the 'spa'. I was naturally forced to sign in for the services of the ubiquitous rickshaw to get to my nearby workplace. Being a denizen of a metro like Mumbai, where the scores of good causes initiated by vigilant and and sensitive activists get gobbled up by large-scale indifference, after the initial flare-up of enthusiasm, I have been letting the being-responsible-citizen bug get the better of me, for quite a good period  of time. So, a little hesitantly, a little with confident-trepidation ( oxymoron ?), I pushed the envelope and almost whispered into the 'chauffeur's' ear  a 'request' to wait till the signal turned a fecund green. He turned around, mouth almost agape, eyebrows raised. Then he settled down to a hesitant, but warm smile. "Aap shaayad pehle passenger hain,   saab. Baaki toh.. always in a hurry, with ants in their pants. Ha ha !" This was his response. One thing led to another and the talk finally ( in those short 10 minutes ) culminated to a mutual agreement of being a trifle more patient in such a milieu. If not for anything , at least to act as good guides, if not role models, for the kiddos.

     Cut to a good fifteen minutes post settling down to mundane chores like getting my PC working , it suddenly struck me that I had to call up my son's school for an appointment with the Principal. And that's when it dawned upon me that I had been left rudderless, for I had been deprived of the magic-wand of modern-day communication - my cell-phone ! Probably in the rickshaw ? Being suitable blessed with a great flair for hyper-ventillating, my      near- fossilized presence of mind decided to hang up its tattered boots. A good ten minutes later, divine wisdom decided to descend upon me and I took the chance of giving a tinkle on my registered number, using my landline. One more long period of continuous ringing was driving my nerves to their splitting peak ; the manifestation was a hyperbolic slap on the forehead with my open palm. Tethering on, with a desperate attempt to invoke the favour of Dame Luck  , I kept the exercise of redialling on..... Till the       doorbell rang ' Ting tong'. Door opened . Security guard gives a toothy smile "  Koi aapse...." "Yes, yes, yes !!" was my alacrity-replete reply. 

     Rushing down the stairs, I saw my knight-in-armour. Said he " Kya saab, baatein toh badi badi. Mobile rickshaw mein hee... Aur vibration mode mein ?" The next few minutes of his narration made me realise how much the man  had felt the need to take the extra effort to rattle his presence of mind and memory to come back after a good five-kilometre drive, remembering where he had dropped me. His simply worded talk about how he felt the need to be largely honest was spiced up with a wink, which was followed by the observation by him that dishonesty was a specially nurtured skill, which he was unable to develop. A profusion of thanks from my side was  reciprocated with a modest wave of his hand. 

     Truncating the ecclesiastical blah-blah, lest you think what relevance all this blah-blah has to do , in terms of relevance,with what has been named as the title, I would like to ask if my 'holier-than-thou' ranting makes sense ? Just my way of sharing my experience of how practical and feasible it is to be a little more sensitive to the needs of a changing world around me. People around me notice it and it does reap decent dividends. Retrieval of my cell-phone ,among many ,is only one such instance. And the additional perk of invoking the more sublime qualities from within a fellow being is a special 'kick', of course !!
      Any takers ?

THE HILARIOUS AFTERMATH OF SUBLIME EXPLETIVES

     As a member of a family which was quite often on the move from one part of the country to the other, my childhood is studded, peppered and maybe embellished with a few gems in terms of experiences. And the ones that occupy the foremost regions of the association areas of my cerebral hemispheres are the ones that I have had in terms of the most amusing situations around the rampant usage of swear words. They say that the first word that a baby comes out when she breaks into speech is 'ma' or 'mama' or 'amma'. So pure , so natural , so unadulterated ! And on the opposite end of the spectrum, it is also true that the first few words that one gets attracted to, in a foreign language is the string of cuss words so endemic to that language ! Pure ?? Natural ?? Unadulterated ??

     The first incident took place when I returned to Delhi, at the age of nine after spending a year in the South for a year, thanks to my father's recuperation schedule, post an attack of pleuracy. Needless to say, I wasn't treated to an array of oil lamps a' la Deepavali, as I couldn't lay claim to any link with the Ikshvaku clan of Lord Rama ! I knew I was a mere mortal ! But I was welcomed with open arms into the clan of local brats. During one of the scuffles between the ruffians of that clan, one scrubby member screamed at a fleeing brigand loudly with a hyperbolic screwing up of the face, 'maadar chhod' 'behen chhod'. I was suitably shocked more at the drama behind the situation than at the impact of the ' sublime' words. Later on, pondering over the incident, I was suitably impressed. Suitably impressed due to my amazement at the evolution of THE  Indian cuss word. I was elated to 'realize' that we had evolved to such an extent that even our cuss words were notches above mundane standards of  crudity . 'Abandoning' or 'chhod'ing one's sister or mother unprotected in an irresponsible fashion was a swear word of the worst degree ! I had obviously misheard the phonetically softer 'd' as the harsher version !Of course, it wouldn't have made any difference, as I really didn't know what the 'profound' word actually meant !

     Another instance that comes to my mind is the one which I had with my five-year old nephew when I landed on the turf of Mumbai, all of 21 in 1985. With the state of my knowledge of the State language being nothing short of something that would demand a shameful exile under the biggest boulder, I was shell-shocked when the little moppet screamed 'gandool' one fine day . I missed the terminal 'l' and concluded that the precocious one was 'ably' using the word ,which actually meant someone who tags a commercial value for the usage of  the terminal orifice of his egestive wastes'  for carnal pleasure !
I, like a true zealot, reported the matter to his morally upright  mother . And she, in all alacrity, gave him a royal pasting. The quizzed lad indignantly claimed that he had merely exclaimed at having seen a thick fat 'gandool' crawling up the wall. His loving mother gave a dramatic twist to her efficient neck-joint and shot a smouldering look , which when I later understood,  meant : 'Gandool' is the Marathi equivalent of ant, you virtual image of the fossilized remnant of a feather-brained nincompoop !

     And there was my aunt's mother , who had a great fetish for replacing her h's with p's. To add to this 'charm' she was heavily challenged as far as the national language, Hindi's vocabulary went.
On one of those rare occasions where she ended up 'serendipitously'  dealing with the family's washerman ( my aunt would religiously prevent her interception with the washerman, milkman, green grocer and their ilk, fearing thoroughly embarrassing situations ! ), she demanded that he needed to do the entire month's 'hishaab' ( accounts ) immediately . Then and there, right in her presence ! The assiduous lady added that she wanted to see how he did the 'hishaab'. Considering the fact that the sweet lady always mixed up her h's and p's and the modified word meant the holy act or urination, the harrowed man was pertrified at the 'promiscuity' of the octagenarian ! 
       And how could I forget the embarrassingly hilarious situations which would crop up in Delhi, when the milkman would ask my neighbour to unlatch her 'kundi' (latch of her door ) to facilitate delivery of the milk packets, or in Mumbai, where the local gardener would suggest that my aunt grow 'the yellow roses in her larger 'kundis' ( flower pots ). Before you start questioning the bawdy humour behind this, let me tell you that the sweetly dramatic sounding word , in our mother-tongue meant one's derrie're !

      My ardent obeisances to the holy souls who coined these sublime words and spiced up my otherwise drab memories !
 

OF GUILT, GUILT COMPLEX, CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

     Accomplished thespian painter Anjolie Ela Menon recently stated that anyone on the streets can take to protests these days. Call it the arrogance granted by democracy or the alliance between the 'protestor' and the media's assiduous penchant for snooping around for 'scoops' ! How else could you describe the recent tirade of hate protests against talented actor Rahul Bose for his opinions about considering amnesty measures and reformation chances for undertrials, of course, after considering that evaluation of the genuineness of the plea for the same has been made. Since he had categorically stated that the chances of such cases should not be entirely ruled out, he does believe that there may be just a few such rare cases. It just speaks volumes of his moderate temperament. And moderation indicates a high degree of descernment and mental, moral and spiritual evolution. What's wrong with many of us ? We get so cynical that we just jump to conclusions and throw a spanner into the moving cogs of any wheel, regardless of what the matter is . Having an opinion is almost diametrically opposite to being opinionated ! Or is it a pseudo sense of power we derive when we 'stand' up against somebody whom we subconsciously perceive as being more powerful than us ( Sadly, we do feel , though subconsciously, that any celebrity is the epitome of omnipotence ) ? 

    Lest one starts believing that I am championing Rahul's tweets, let me state that my views are not in exact consonance with Rahul's. I have a take that takes somewhere from where he started turning vague about the measures that should be taken to evaluate the degree of genuineness in the plea for reform. When a criminal facing the gallows is asked whether he would like to reform, he is bound to answer in the affirmative. Either to escape punishment or due to the guilt complex that pervades his psyche, owing to which he exonerates himself by blaming his background, his childhood and his parents. Every damn thing except himself ! It is in extreme cases of  crimes of this genre that warranties capital punishment and that are off-shoots of violently vicarious, perverted minds, that strong psychological intervention becomes mandatory. The criminal has to be 'psyched' into accepting the magnitude of his crime and his psyche should be rather 'purged' to transform his guilt complex to pure , unadulterated guilt , which is devoid of any excuses and is rather replete with true remorse. That will be when the beast or 'id' ( as Freud would have loved to term it !) is vanquished and the 'superego' or the spirit of ideal human behaviour  takes the driver's seat !

     But then , no man is an island. It cannot be ruled out that majority of the crimes, especially the violent ones against women and children are the results of a skewed and distorted socio-cultural milieu and ironically the value system inculcated in the perpetrators of the crime  by the older women of their households. Isn't it true that most of the heinous crimes against women have been commited either by 'more powerful' women or misogynists who are born out of the interaction between tender minds and irrational women, who nurse attitudes and behaviour heavily skewed from the normal ? Can all such related people be subjected to this kind psychological purging ? Tough question and a seemingly impractical task. But then , aren't we talking about setting up precedents ? No perverted mind thinks about  the horrifying consequence of  death penalty when it commits a crime. But when brought to the level of human purity, the same mind would suffer from a genuine guilt which is probably worse than capital punishment !

     Having said that, I would say that the judiciary has to function in a more objective way, for , it has to set  tougher precedents as well as arduous deterrents against all crimes. So, if it is a death penalty, so shall it be ! Let the soul face it ! But if it is a reformed soul, he will accept it with a smile on his face, which will speak volumes of the relief at having received deliverance, salvation, a chance for atonement and maybe even 'moksha' !
 

OF AMBITIONS, COMPETITIONS AND SELF-DEPRECIATION

     The triumvirate of poetic devices comprising of paradox, oxymoron and irony seems to be my current obsessive compulsive disorder. 'Emphasis through irony', 'Moronic oxymoron', 'Moron's oxymoron' are the common phrases that pepper my bland ( I suspect people opine so, though do not mouth it due to politeness! ) verbal articulations, these days. Sample this. A hapless corporate honcho ( I call him a 'slave' ,though) buddy of mine happened to be the most recent 'beneficiary' of philosophical 'pearls of wisdom',when I declared,"You know dude, the most selfless man is the product of acute selfishness !" This was met with an expression which could have jolly well vied with that of Pallas who was made to face Medusa after his shield was stolen by Nemesis ! And then followed the unsolicited verbal diarrhoea," Listen a truly selfless man reaches such a plane of motivation that, according to Maslow he revels in his self-actualization. He is just concerned about his opinions about himself. The only motivation for him to define a desire to do something is his personal happiness. So, now tell me chief, did I make myself clear ?" He shook his head with an oscillation significant more for its frequency than its amplitude and which implied:This incorrigible dimwit of a nincompoopic pseud is doomed for sure ! Incorrigible I am, for, I don't seem to learn the art of keeping my trap shut.

     Cut to a more recent frame ( Hopefully one that would put me in a more decent one !). The occasion happened to be one when I was having a poignant discussion with one of my lady friends who also happened to part of the Parent Teacher Association coterie of my nine-year old 'junior's' school. The subject veered into future plans about our children's education. And I stated quite innocuously about my plans to seek admission for the kiddo in a well-ranked and time-tested residential working on educational philosophies resembling those of mine. A school working on the thoughts of an erudite and modern thinker and educationist. She immediately went on a tirade against my decision, going on and on about how imperative it was for me to take a call on my decision ( As if 'Junior' had already secured admission in the aforesaid school !).Getting on the defensive, she almost stated ( she must have called the mode subtle !) that her kid deserved something much better and he was getting it all at home. To which, I (read unlike other parents) didn't nurse the 'holy ' notion that I could offer the best option to my child at home. And that, all parents had glaring limitations which were paradoxically being tom-tommed as assets by them. Having been politely shut up the assiduous lady's sermon ( ladies, at times, do love to go on with their lop-sided arguments, just because they perceive that they have won the previous round by sedulously rattling on !) now moved to competitive exams at school level and how important it was to build in young minds the 'competitive spirit' She gloated about the tutor who was 'training' her young turk for a State level competitive exam in Mathematics. And very kindly, she asked me ,"What do you think Mr.Iyer?" To which I replied, " I am more of a sucker for being ambitious. So , deliberate competitiveness is not my scene."
She gave me a quizzed look, which meant 'So what's the difference ?' And I went on with my 'gyaan' about how being ambitious was about carving a niche for yourself, about creating an inimitable slot for yourself and not about scampering around with multitudes for pre-ordained slots. I added authoritatively and quite 'male-bitchily' that competitions were meant for the mediocre who loved to delude themselves that they were notches above the commonplace , while being ambitious helped one take care of petty competitions without being so deliberate about it. The lady didn't know what hit her! And I on my part, resembled Oscar Wilde's Remarkable Rocket , which felt that it was so clever that it often failed to understand what it spoke !

     And, dear reader, on your part, it is you who has to perceive or judge ( they are two different ball-games altogether ! ) whether I have been honestly self-depreciating or dishonestly pompous or honestly pompous or dishonestly self-depreciating. Choose your combination . And do comment !
     

IS DARWIN ROLLING IN HIS GRAVE ?

       I remember having seen a brutally sensational movie, about a decade back.The intentionally futuristic movie , narrated in an almost mythical but grossly spine-chilling fashion, was one of a woman getting married into a womanless family and subsequently being brutalized by the men of the family. The story had the backdrop of a town, which had this traumatized girl as the sole woman member.

       Today, when I keep coming across newsbits ( I squirm at the concept of 'updating' myself ) about lexicon-defying  and human-behaviour-defying attrocities against women, I wonder whether the film was a clear prophetic paradigm. And I, for my part, have been at tremendous unease , although the post-Godhra riots and the post-partition upheavals were not unknown to me. The mere sight of a truckload of ironbars makes me traumatically break into bouts of sweats. What I am penning down is, probably an attempt at a sublimational release. Within a couple of months of a gruesome brutality wrought upon a student of physiotherapy in December 2012 ( I refuse to classify it as mere rape ), an entire Pandora's box , an entire  can of loathsome worms seems to have been left
open. And out is spewing an unending volley of similar crimes, each gorier in degree than the previous one. A pregnant woman raped and then stabbed several times. A disgruntled lover shoving an iron rod down his paramour's mouth. Or a goon threatening a harrassed woman with a fate similar to that of Nirbhaya , as if the incident was a standard, a prototype . I shudder at the thought that crimes similar in magnitude and manner would be termed as 'Nirbhayad', just as castration got a new nomencaltural identification as 'Bobbitized' !

        On one hand, it has woken up the equanimous and the less inhumane among us, out of  their reverie to understand the vulnerability of the human body and psyche. On the other, you almost fume in indignation and ask whether it has to be at the cost of  what a nubile
23 year-old had to go through for what would have seemed to her as epochs. On one hand we raise our voices against female foeticide, while on the other you wonder as to whether a woman has to aspire for a better life or to choose a better mode of dying !

        Is it a case of one sex against another ? Or as a 'well-meaning'
( let's give him the benefit of doubt ) political leader stated, a case a migrants against locals. I doubt this. For, the victim as well as the perpetrators of the crime were not locals. Sounds trite, but it is definitely a case of sanity, rendered weak due to minority in sheer numbers, losing a gory battle against insane and depraved brutality, strengthened by sheer numbers again.

       What comes to my mind is a case study that exemplifies Darwin's Theory of Natural Selection, in which he propounded the paradigm of 'survival of the fittest'. It is about two sets of moths, grey ones and black ones, in Birmingham, with the grey ones being larger in number in the pre-Industrial Revolution era , due to their ability to camouflage themselves against predators, among the  clusters of fungi that formed a thick patina on the barks of trees. But the Industrial Revolution changed the scenario, what with soot spreading itself all over the trees. In the following few years, genetic mutations in the following generations ensured a step-by-step conversion of the grey moths into black ones. So much so that black moths became almost extinct in that geographical region !

        Should I nurse the temerity of prophesizing a similar change in the structure of human population ?