Roti, Kapda aur Makaan

Insomnia these days has become a part of life. also what is surprising is that the time my sleep vanishes has been constant; @ 4 : 30 am and no matter what so ever i do after that, sleep doesnot beckon me. It is also surprising becoz these days in office have been pretty long and demanding and , a sound sleep is inevitable, but nevertheless..

Day before was a holiday and was one of the perfect times to write this blog but today morning sees more befitting. This thought is not that which crosses mind only as a passing fad but has been born on several occasions and i thought it would only be right if i put it here

One of these days, i was coming back from office and was later than the usual time, about 9:30 pm.It was raining very heavily and hence there was a lot of traffic and that only made matters worse.On reaching home, i found out that the main gate was closed and i would have to get out of my car in the heavy rain and open the gate to park my car. I was very tired and this only made matters worse since i am of the kind who doesnt like to get wet but options were few. I parked my car and again had to get wet becoz the aunty who serves the tiffin had not left the tiffin outside my house as is the daily routine and i again had to venture in that heavy rainfall for my dinner since I had not had anything after lunch and hunger was beyond control.

When i finally managed to reach home after this "excursion" of mine i was completely drained and mad with hunger. I flung my wet clothes to one corner of the bathroom, changed into my night dress and started having dinner. Post that, i ventured out into my lobby to enjoy the rainfall, which till sometime back was irritating me beyond control and that is when this thought occured to me.

No matter, how tired we are or how bad our day has been, at the end of the day we all yearn for one thing..to go back to that brick and mortar construct which we call "home". The serenity and peace we get lying on that bed in our own room is worth a million dollars and not even TAJ EXOTICA of Maldives ( i know becoz i have been there :), its really good) can offer.

We shed our clothes of the day as if we are shedding all the worries and tensions that stuck to them like a moth and get into a pair of washed loose fit night dress which gives us the comfort that is unmatchable at that moment to even the Giorgio Armani's of the world.

Hot home made dinner has been waiting to tinkle with our taste buds and we attack the food as drought stricken Somali has been subjected to food after a long time. The satisfaction we get after that food and the blessing which come out of our stomach can actually bless somebody with a 1000 years of life or 100 pandavas like sons.

Not every body is as lucky as us to get this. When i see the people who live by the road side i really feel sad as to how they would be dealing with natural misfortunes like heavy rain with no extra pair to change to, no house to go to at the end of the day to relieve themselves of the day's work and no food to satisfy that burning sensation of hunger which in itself can kill without the body actually submitting itself.

When i was young, i though "roti, kapda and makaan" is an old hindi "pakau" 1970's Manojkumar movie. little did i know that it was the slogan of the masses asking for the basics of life. As per me, from 1970 to today, little has changed, and though the slogan in itself might not be contemporary, the reality is. As usual getting figures by googling doesnot interest me becoz a milliion and some no here and there will actually not change the reality.

A sunday article "Swaminomics" in TOI spoke about the nutrition levels of food that is consumed by children in India. This is like talking about bidding and hosting for Olympic games when CWG is in such a state.

i am not sure or let me say i am very sure that this post of mine will do nothing to change the situation that we are in but any time sooner or later we get a chance of changing the way things are i think this should be part of our " Common Minimum Programme" as Leftist would have put it.

Take care!!

Wandering thoughts...

04 Sep. 10

My brother just reminded me that I had stopped writing “blogs”. Simply put, stopped writing. So why had I let all those unstructured thoughts vanish?

These days I am staying alone. It’s been about 6 months now and I just wander around the house alone. I walk to a nearby tea shop to have tea/coffee twice a day on weekends just as a pretext, though I have ample of milk and other ingredients required. I feel good when I venture out and breathe that air, see the people, the shops, the traffic.. (Some will say, don’t u have enough of them over the week?) no seriously..

I have around 300 contacts in my phonebook, some 195 odd friends on Facebook, am following 92 people on twitter and some 50 odd are following me, 15 odd BBM ( Blackberry messenger contacts), 1 wife and 1 brother. The reason I mentioned these 2 people separately even though they being part of all ( almost all..Thank god wife is not on twitter) the above social “networking” sites, r the 2 most and anytime accessible people in my life.( these days, even wife is not so easily accessible since she has found someone..JUNIOR).

When I was in Ahmedabad, my wife complained that I don’t give her enough time. I myself complained that I don’t give enough time to myself. Now that I have all the possible time in the world , I am complaining that the people I know do not give me enough time. I yearn for the phone to ring or the BBM to blink. Contradiction?? Actually no..

In spite of all of the above means and ways to stay connected with people, when you actually feel like calling someone and talking to them there is this small “jhijhak” whether that person will be in a position to speak to u or would like to do so. I was utterly surprised at myself when one of these days I asked a very close friend of mine on twitter if I can call him and speak to him. Strange? Actually very strange.

Our lives today are so hectic and we are so much under time pressure that our groups of interactions are getting smaller and convenience based. We get very little time for ourselves or our dear ones, that we want to try and spend that time just among those 2-3 people as per our convenience. Hasnt it happened that one of your old close friend is online and though u haven’t spoken to him/her for a long time, u get invisible..Not because u don’t want to speak to him. It’s just that you don’t want to talk to him “just now” because u only have an “X” amount of time with you which is truly yours and you already have a predicided menu for that . Just try and recollect from your list of “friends” that we have on our “lists”, when was the last time we spoke on a one to one and you will be surprised to find that you would not have done that with 90% of them in a long time unless the list is made up of only office colleagues !!

Times will change and I will be back with my family. These thoughts will again start wandering in the opp direction. .

*The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the view of the general public

Pivatisation

A Sunday morning is one of the best times to put your mind to work at things which r not selfish. The idea of this blog actually triggered back on one the weekdays, but could only manage to reach here on a Sunday.

I could very well start this blog by “Googling” figures on how India is doing vis a vis Rest Of World in terms of poverty, health care, education, no. of female child foetus getting killed, blah blah blah….but then immediately the right side of the brain would come up with things like growing GDP, increase of mobile density, how well we managed recession and similar blah blah blah…And so today, I thought I will not talk about things that are already known.

What triggered this thought is the sight of men cleaning “man holes”, actually “dangerous man holes” containing toxic chemicals and waste, bare handed, with trousers rolled up to their thighs which makes the lower torso fully exposed to this hazardous waste and not to forget that they go completely inside and breathe “poison” which is not even suitable to exhale. Are we as a “state” (read country) so poor, that we cannot provide this people with suitable body suits and masks??? We are not.

So why don’t we do that?? The answer is we don’t care. So why don’t we care?? Because if that person dies doing that job, we have 15 or may be another 150 waiting in line to do the same job. Also because if that person dies, his family cannot sue the govt for putting his life to potential death risk; forget suing, they will have to spend rest of their lives outside govt offices waiting for the paltry sum of Rs 10,000 or 15,000 which is the “human life value” of the man hole cleaner.

So what should we do?? I came up with this idea...Can we privatise the govt?? I know it may sound ridiculous at the first thought but lemme give it a try...

Ok, so the first job is to create an organizational hierarchy. Instead of the president we will have the”Chairman” and the PM will be the “Group CEO”.

All cabinet ministers will be “Vertical Heads” for their separate verticals like Home Ministry, External Affairs, Rural development, Defence etc.

All chief ministers will be “CEO” for their own state. The ministers in his cabinet for difference portfolios will have a direct reporting into the CM with a dotted line to the Vertical Head, for e.g. the Finance Minister of Gujarat Mr. Vajubhai Vala ( I think, pl excuse me) will report into Mr. Narendra Modi with a dotted line reporting to Mr. Pranab Mukherjee)

Each state will be a cost centre and a revenue centre and funds will be allocated centrally basis performance only. Also free cash flows (net profit) every month will have to be transferred to the central account with P&L and balance sheet at the end of the month.

So and so forth...we will create an organizational hierarchy.

So, once the structure is in place let’s talk about the work.

Every CEO of the state will be completely responsible for all the affairs at his state. He will have his KRA (Key Responsibility Area) on which he will be reviewed every quarter by the group CEO. Some of them could be:

1) How secure do the people feel in the state (there will be an index called CSI – citizen satisfaction index which will have questions pertaining to all the things affecting him and scores will be taken from there)

2) % literacy vis a vis last quarter with sub topics like % female literacy, primary education, secondary education, no of schools built, no of teacher per school, etc

3) % people BPL & % of people getting 2 meals a day

4) % employment

5) % of deaths happening in the state with a pie chart of reasons and justification

6) Condition of public healthcare (can be measured by no of hospitals per thousand people, no of doctors per hospital, etc)

7) Incremental FDI brought to the state and the effect on employment

8) % increase in per capita income of its residents.

9) Accounting every rupee inflow and every rupee outflow

These are just some of them and the list can be revised and discussed upon.

In a similar way, the CM will conduct a review of its ministers to get a fair idea of what is happening.

At the end of the year there should be an appraisal system and the results will be made public.

All cabinet reshuffles will be done basis performance only.

Also, the P&L of the state and the centre should be published once in a month in all major newspapers so that the public can know of the workings of the state.

In a nutshell, unless and until we bring professionalism in running a state (read country), we will not be able to ably distribute the fruits of high growth rate that our country is achieving to the needy and unless and until the condition of the “bottom of the pyramid” improves we will not be able to celebrate this growth, our conscience will not allow us!!

Jai hind.

Myself....

Around 2 hours before I was watching TV. While swapping channels, one of the channels was telecasting the movie DDLJ and the song “tuje dekha to ye Jana..” was being played. Though I have watched the song a lot of times before, this time, it brought back some known sensation to my body, some known smell, some known vibes. Truly speaking I couldn’t relate to it because I have been in a lot of relationships but there was something in that song that struck me that moment; have still not been able to figure out what…

This took me to the thought of my first relationship. Today when I sit and think back about it, I actually never felt anything for that particular girl; it was just that none of my friends at that age (17) had a girlfriend, this particular girl was the most approachable and accessible and I wanted to show off. Some of these stupid things led me to my first relationship (never call it an “affair”, I hate using that word). But the thought does not end there. If that day I would have been explained not to just rush into things just for the sake of it, I could have saved myself for what I started getting branded as( I am still branded the same)

It could have saved the innumerable attractions and failed relationships. What is more striking is, even after after that incident all the other relationships, (bearing one of them) were mere relations that were built on infatuation/attraction and later carried on for the sake of emotional & physical security & needs respectively. Also, after the age of 17, after my first relationship, which thank god took 17 years to start, I have barely remained without a girlfriend. Sometimes I even went to the extent of 2 timing.

So why was that in spite of having friends, in spite of having all other things very normal to people around me, I was always looking out for someone who could give me that emotional/physical security??

Was it something related to my childhood, I don’t know…

Today, it’s been 2 years to my marriage and I am going to be a father in the next 6 months. On the wall opposite me in my TV room, hangs a large collage prepared by my wife and gifted to me on my our anniversary ( I really don’t remember). That collage has selected pics right from the day we met till our honeymoon and some even after that. When I look at the “gentleman “in those pics, I really feel “was this me??” was I really posing for these pics this way and why was I smiling?? What was I thinking..

I am really not ready to face the judgement on myself on whether that kind of thinking is proper or not, because though we may not believe in it but I have faced it that things cannot always be black or white, sometime they ought to be grey also.