Shakespeare inspires

"Come what come may,
Time and the hour runs through the roughest day"
-- Macbeth

CS Camping

When I told a friend that I hosted a stranger at my house without any connection whatsoever, she was surprised. When I told her that I went camping with a bunch of strangers for 2 days she didn't believe me. She did not expect me to do things like that. Well to be honest I did not expect it too.
But you know I'm that kind of person who likes to surprise people. I would do something totally not expected of me. Just for the heck of it.

So if you remember few posts back I started doing everything which negate my form shaped in life so far. Things I never thought I would do. To be honest I still don't have the answer to why exactly I am making the self-negating choices. May be just to surprise you. May be just to reassure myself that I was not-doing the things-I-don't-do by choice, not that I can't. I am not sure. All said there are moments when out of nowhere I would start missing being my old self. Introvert and enjoying solitude.

Here is what I did for the weekend. If you don't know what Couchsurfing.org is about, it is a website where you get to meet and connect with locals and travelers in your city and/or be guest when you travel. The beauty is that you are meeting total stranger. It is like facebook except you go talk to your friends instead of checking out their 'wall' passively. I went to a 2 day camping trip near my town and befriended a lot of strangers. 2 days in the wild I connected with people really well. It was a big group, some 30 odd people. It was difficult to meet everybody the same way but then some were there just to get drunk and date free of cost.
It was overwhelming to meet so many people outside of school. In school we are friends with very homogeneous group of people. They are all nice people, one of the brilliant minds, nothing against them. But when I look back and count how many friends I have in my town who are not in school (or their spouses) the answer is a whole number which is not a natural number. I think you get to learn so much by interacting with a heterogeneous group of people. I thought I could use a little diversity in my friend circle.

Anyway, here is a group photo of part of the group. I hope they don't mind the picture here. As someone in the group noted, it is easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.

Problems?

Problems, problems, problems. Problems aplenty. Who doesn’t have them. Life is full of problems, isn't it? Yes it is. Of course. I have a secret formula to make all your problems evaporate into nothingness.
Read the stories from the other side of the fence that Gaurav tells here. Excerpt bellow.

"For Mr Ramesh yadav, pulling rickshaw is a child’s play; something which can be handled by his left hand alone. He never misses his right hand! He is pulling rickshaw for the past 10-12 years. With the combined income from rickshaw and the 3-4 beegha farmland in his village, he educated his children and arranged for the marriage of his two daughters!

I wasn't able to maintain an eye-contact with him when he said “इंसान को हौसला नहीं खोना चाहिए” (one should never lose courage) because I had tears in my eyes."

Read the full original article in hindi on BBC. Or read the english translation of the same at Gaurav's blog.

Okay by now if you still feel your life is full of problems then read about the "The Sacrifice of a Rickshaw-walla".

If you still feel your problems are big enough then you are just being unreasonable.

You know most of our generation (including me) , among the people I know, will never experience what necessity is. For them necessity is galaxy s3 or iPhone 5 or xbox or a new car. To KNOW what it is you will need to go the other side of the fence.

If you still haven't closed this tab then may be you will appreciate a little bit of political crap I get into time to time. It is about what A Sen and Jeane Dreze have to say in "An uncertain glory: India and its contradiction".

Sen and Dreze basically argue that the reason India contributes to 43% of children's death due to hunger in the whole world is because we don't have state subsidies in education, health and infrastructure. If govt. invests in these three areas they will help reduce the inequitable distribution of wealth. But govt. is more interested in votes than wealth distribution.

So what's the way out? As long as there are people working towards this goal there is hope. If you and I become apathetic to the cause and give up then the apathetic and pessimistic people who say "this-country-is-going-to-hell" win.

I hope to see the day when people form protest rallies for better healthcare system or better education system than for more diesel or petrol subsidies. That will be the day when "this-country-is-going-to-hell" people will be proselytized.

I don't know if I can do that on my own. In fact I'm not doing anything positive about it except ranting my thoughts on a blog which, at best, is read by handful. I only wish I can convince more people.

Noam Chomsky said in one of his interviews "what is striking about India is the indifference of the privileged class towards unprivileged class".

Haha

I am "like a sweet innocent flower, budding". One of my guests told me.

Really? Not sure if a lot of people will think that about me. :) It is a positive comment though. I guess. So I will take it.

A story to cry

I will tell you a story today. I am not a story teller. I don't know the art. I don't have good vocab. I don't have impeccable gramer. But I will go on because I need to.

Story starts before independence of India. It is about a little girl. From a small town but from a rich family. It was a family which owned at least one cotton mill, 3 town houses, several jewellery shops, countless farms and gardens. Everything was in abundance. Money, gold, servants, parents' love for this girl. You name it, it was there. She was youngest and dearest of all.

This little bubbly girl never realized why her neighbours next door living in small house are poor. Why would they live the way they lived. She was that kind of girl who would secretly drop packets of garden fresh mangoes onto their house. She would take her share of rice on the roof-top and pray to God that birds come and have it. Just for the pleasure of giving it.

Things started changing to some extent after independence when ceiling laws were enacted. Some property was lost but what was left was still magnanimous compared to rest of the country's population. At eleven, while life was still wonderful and seemingly she would never face dearth for rest of the years, the inevitable has to happen.

The Marriage.

If you think 11 years is too early for marriage I suggest you to buy a time machine and wind it back 60 years. It 'is' norm. Marrying their daughter to a son of elderly learned businessman in a relatively bigger town of post-independence India did not seem like a bad idea to her parents. While not a rich family her in-laws owned several businesses and were still well to do.

Few years into the marriage and she came closer to harsh reality. Not so friendly in-laws. Not an ideal husband to a teenage girl. Things started to become ugly when after few more years, as economy imploded, 'several businesses' waned into one. A fairly lively restaurant close to a large university. Not too bad, right? Not compared to what was to come. Several miscarriages at early age only added to misery and subtracted family support.

On a fateful summer day when she along with 3 children was visiting relatives in a far away village the greatest misfortune fell.

The robbery.

The restaurant+house was robbed to the last penny. Only things not robbed on the house were the bricks in the walls. What followed is a tragic story in itself. A story which tells how with zero family income she managed to fight hunger, disease and death. How she successfully raised five children with zero to minimum support from husband or family. From penniless toddlers to better strata of middle class the children have come. If the tale be told readers will cry blood. I know because I did. I will save you the torment.

If ever there walked a truly selfless human form on earth it was her. Now she is gone. Last night she took her last breath. RIP.

She was my grandma.