A lot has been written and spoken on the recently concluded general elections in India. Many a trend came out in this exercise from all the stake holders. There are 2 I really want to write about.

What does the mandate mean?

It is widely being reported that this is a mandate for stability, secularism and reforms. Nothing to take away from this observation, but one should keep in mind that this is a generalization drawn from the final results without taking into consideration the fact that the final count is an aggregation of multiple factors at play. While in some constituencies it was the entrant of a new player that played spoil sport for non congress led parties, in others it was other factors like pro or anti incumbency vote, and in others it could have been anything from a ‘no’ to right wing politics to good old allegiance to the family scion. One should be careful while drawing generalizations from the aggregate results, for it is these inferences that drive policy decisions. Yes, it is a mandate for stability at the center. Yes, it is a mandate for secularism and clean politics, but when it comes to inferring that it means a mandate to opening the flood gates on reforms, I am a bit skeptical. I am not anti reforms, but I am definitely against the unfretted privatization and permitting of foreign investment from ‘then hallowed now dubious’ western corporations. The travails of corporates in the western world couldn’t have come at a better time in the India’s quest for growth; an eye opener. The following article I came across in the ‘Frontline’ by Dr. Athreya, who taught me economics during my masters degree at Trichy, is one I agree with completely.

What a low TV journalism has hit?!!!

In recent months, whenever I watched an English language news channel to get the latest on the happenings, I was left wanting far more. These channels, all of them, have lost it. The quality of journalism is pathetic with real issues never being reported. In a country of India’s size and diversity there is no dearth of issues to report. Instead, what you get to see on these channels is everything except good reporting on real issues – relentless advertisements, unparalleled frenzied self marketing, talk shows with irrelevant issues, panels of people who look like they are just another group of people having an emotional and uninformed discussion in their living room, journalists fostering personal bonhomie with the power mongers on live camera, repeated telecast of the same 4-5 news items through out the day, sensationalization of the smallest bit of irrelevant comment from a minnow in the political landscape on the most irrelevant topic as THE news of the day and also the emphasis on it being an EXCLUSIVE news item. A sad state of affairs. What paucity and shallowness we see in TV journalism today! The culprits are none but Rajdeep Sardesais and Barkha Dutts of the world.

Emails have invariably come to invade our work lives and personal lives. In personal emails, etiquettes come naturally; that is what I believe. But in the case of work related emails, I think all organizations should have a primer for email etiquette. Even this doesn’t seem to work in some cases where it is done, like in my company, but nevertheless, it has to be done. There are soft skills programs to sensitize everyone in the organization to these aspects, but, in spite of them, I come across so many outright rude mails. I can’t credit them to lack of language skills, because the language structuring is pretty good in most of them. What I have realized is that people use emails as a tool to emphasize and reiterate their position in the organization, be it an explicitly defined  role or a superior position which is in the gray. The most irritating and common manner in which this is expressed is by starting the mail without a greeting. This comes across as very rude. The other tool used is to end the mail with no words like ‘thanks’ ‘regards’, or even a casual ‘cheers’ but just the name. Besides these, the structuring of the email in terms of words used and general tone of the mail smell of condescendence, in a failed attempt to impose one’s non-existent authority!  Lack of time to put in a few words of greeting at the start and end of an email, also a conscious effort to keep the tone of the mail neutral is one of the lamest excuses you can get.

Well, What do I do with such mails?  Initially, I used to get agitated and restless; but in the end I usually let it be forgotten if it didn’t need any action from me or didn’t indict me, so to say. Later on I realized, “why should I let them off?”. There is no logic to let these people get away with it. Now, I actually enjoy such mails for they act as a let out vent. I am equally rude in my reply and I take enough pleasure in writing such mails and hitting the send button on them.

I woke up on the wrong side of the bed today. Not that it made a difference to anyone; on second thoughts, yes, it did. Ask my wife. She would tell you how difficult I have been today to put up with. I have not been able to put my finger on the reason for this feeling. I have been grumpy for the whole day. Restless, walking up and down, gorging on food, shifting base, repeatedly, across the only 2 rooms available at home! It is a bit of a paradoxical situation with me; I just love to stay at home and basically do nothing over the weekends. But, keep me locked up for the whole day at home and you get a good concoction of the kind of person I have been today. Simply put, you don’t want to be near me today. On days like this, I need to get out and get some fresh air. Well, that is exactly what I did a few minutes ago. I went out for a long walk; and there is no better time for a ‘introspective walk’, if I can call it that, than a Sunday evening. All the shops are closed, the streets are empty as if there has been a curfew imposed on the town, the only shops open are the Chinese and Indian shops selling take aways or the burger and pizza outlets. Basically, you don’t have to put too much thought into mundane yet critical things like looking right and left before crossing a street. You can walk across with your eyes closed and yet be alive! Well, I managed to be alive after that blind trick; So, did I manage to get something out of the walk. Sure I did. My mind is clear as still water now. There is only one thing I want now. A BURGER. Ha! Life is unconditionally simplified now, to say the least.

Do you remember anything about the first time you walked? I don’t remember that. My memory fails me with a whole bunch of similar things – the first time I uttered a meaningful word, my first day at school, the first prize I won at school and a numerous  other things that would have meant the whole world to me at that time ? I am sure, as I progress towards adolescence and beyond, there would be countless occasions to cherish and many others to be just left as bygones. When I look back now, I realize that many of these probably didn’t merit such a furor of emotions and attachment. Nevertheless, it is exactly these milestones, the highs and lows that has shaped me more than my education or anything else. For the outside world, I am what I am because my cognition and behavior was  and is guided by these unseemly or joyous occasions. Internally, I define myself with these milestones more than anything else. I judge myself with these, chastise and pat myself, predisposed by these blips on my life’s radar. Some blips are as large as the ocean, drowning me forever, others are like the tip of a pin – pricking and poking. Then there are the huge helium balloon blips, that lift me off the ground into weightlessness, into the ethereal experience of joy.

How did I choose them, when did I give them form and identity? Or is it that my environment and the people around me gave them to me? Do I share my milestones with others around me? Are there school friends, college friends, family members who share the common experience? Did they recognize the same events as a milestone in their lives? Did they give it the same shape and form? A hundred questions!

I think, I chose my milestones partly driven by the judgment of the outside world and partly because of my fad during that period. So, if being good in sports as well was an emphasis at home and Boris Becker inspired me, then the simple act of playing tennis after school for 3 months became a cherished milestone for me. Why ‘milestone’ and not just another leaf from the pages of memory? Because, those 3 months did give me a part of me which still lives in me and is not yet history. Of course, there are the obvious landmarks of marriage and graduation which are more concrete. Do I share milestones with friends? Except for mere completion of academic courses, on the calendar, I don’t share much common milestones with my friends; which is sad to a certain extent.

Milestones – we may formalize them or we may not even acknowledge them when they happen – no matter what we do, we can neither deny their existence in our lives nor the power they sway over us.