Author: Swatantra Kumar

Swatantra is an engineering leader with a successful record in building, nurturing, managing, and leading a multi-disciplinary, diverse, and distributed team of engineers and managers developing and delivering solutions. Professionally, he oversees solution design-development-delivery, cloud transition, IT strategies, technical and organizational leadership, TOM, IT governance, digital transformation, Innovation, stakeholder management, management consulting, and technology vision & strategy. When he's not working, he enjoys reading about and working with new technologies, and trying to get his friends to make the move to new web trends. He has written, co-written, and published many articles in international journals, on various domains/topics including Open Source, Networks, Low-Code, Mobile Technologies, and Business Intelligence. He made a proposal for an information management system at the University level during his graduation days.

Categories
Comments n Critics

The Roadies contestant and the Balochistan connection

He must have known what to expect. The auditioning panel always dishes out unhealthy dose of humiliation. So he smiles, seemingly unflappable.
It’s been so long since I saw television that I’m stunned at the sight of a young man being insulted on national television. I’m squirming on behalf of this aspiring Roadies contestant, angry at the ‘judges’ who are calling him stupid to his face.
But the next minute, the young man loses my sympathy when he says that he agrees with the ‘Ayodhya verdict’, though he doesn’t know what the verdict is. He doesn’t know what the Ayodhya issue is. He thinks Ayodhya is where a ‘war’ happened and confuses it with the big one in Kurukshetra (which features in the Mahabharata). This strapping young man also doesn’t know who the president of India is, but assumes she is male.

By the time the video clip ends, the interview panel is falling about laughing. They are calling him ‘cute’. How else do we deal with the fact that young, school-educated, urban Indians don’t know a thing about themselves or the forces that are shaping their nation? They’re so ignorant, they’re like children.
And what does the unfortunate Roadies aspirant have to say for himself? “I don’t watch the news much.” Yeah, why find out about politics or history when you can watch Roadies on TV, or even better — be on TV!
I wouldn’t have cared about his refusal to read newspapers, or choosing to spend his life in the gym. But the thing is, he has a vote. Sooner or later, he will look around and notice that things aren’t okay. He will be angry and will want to fix things. But he will not know about Ayodhya. And because he doesn’t read the news, he will not know how, despite a high-profile investigation being underway, official documents that could have told us about the Gujarat government’s handling of the riots might have been destroyed. And so, he will not use his vote wisely.
There was another video doing the rounds on Facebook a few months ago. A BBC (Urdu) reporter goes about Lahore, in Pakistan, asking people what they knew about Balochistan. Most people didn’t know anything, not even the names of Baloch towns. But they say, ‘It’s part of our country’. Others excuse themselves saying, ‘I’m not interested in politics’.
Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? We know there’s trouble in Manipur and Kashmir. But not much about the people there. Try talking to people in Mumbai or Delhi about why things are so bad in Kashmir, and you inevitably hear: “It’s an integral part of India!”
But we don’t want to know why there are questions about this integrity of India. Why get into the details, eh? We are not interested in politics. And we don’t like to read newspapers. We watch Roadies; we go the gym. And if things get bad, heck, for the sake of our nation/religion, we will use our muscles.
Watching the Roadies audition reminded me of some young men, volunteers for the Bajrang Dal in Mumbai, who wanted a Ram Mandir in Ayodhya. So I asked if they had read the Ramayana.
They hadn’t, and didn’t want to. They just wanted to take a train to Ayodhya and do whatever their leaders demanded. I also asked them if they had Muslim neighbours, friends, colleagues? The answer was: no.
A few months after this interview, Gujarat 2002 happened. I always wondered how young people become part of hate pogroms. Now I think I know. It comes from not knowing, not wanting to know.

'Coz sharing is caring
Categories
Comments n Critics

An act of Teaching

 
A chemistry professor decided to teach his students a different lesson one day. Holding a glass of water in his hand, he asked the students, “How much do you think this glass of water weighs?” “500 grams!” came a voice from the back. “600,” said another student. “I don’t really know!” said the professor, holding the glass up to make sure everyone could see it. “And unless we weigh it, we won’t know.” With the glass still in his outstretched hand, the professor continued, “What will happen if I hold it like this for a few minutes?”
“Nothing!” came the reply. “Right, and if I hold it for an hour like this, what might happen?” “Your hand will begin to hurt,” said a student. “Indeed. And what would happen if I held the glass in my hand like this for 24 hours?”
“You would be in tremendous pain,” said one student. “Your hand will probably go numb,” said another. “Your arm will be paralyzed and we’ll need to rush you to the hospital!” said a student on the last bench.
“True,” said the professor. “But notice that through all this, the weight of the glass did not change. What then causes the pain?”
The class went quiet. The students seemed puzzled.“What should I do to avoid the pain?” asked the professor. “Put the glass down!” said a student.
“Well said!” exclaimed the professor. “And that’s a lesson I want you to remember. The problems and worries in life are like that glass of water. Think about them for a while and nothing happens. But think about it a bit longer and they begin to hurt. And if you think about them all day long, you will feel paralysed – incapable of doing anything. It’s important to remember to let go of your problems. Remember to put the glass down!”
We may not have been in that classroom that day, but it’s a lesson we would all do well to remember. Put the glass down! Always. It’s not just problems and worries. Sometimes, we feel hurt and betrayed by a friend. And we carry that grudge through our lives. It grows and causes us anguish and pain. Learning to forgive – and forget – is not just good for the other people, it’s great for you. Nelson Mandela spent 27 years in jail and when he was finally freed, you can understand how angry and vengeful he must have felt. But guess what? When he became President, he invited his jailers to be present at the inauguration – in the VIP seats! If he could forgive after 27 years of suffering, surely we can too.
It is the same with our fears too. A failure or an incident in early childhood becomes a deeply entrenched fear over time. Fear of public speaking, fear of Maths, fear of rejection. You name it, and chances are, we have it. Someone gave us that glass to hold when we were little kids – ‘you are clumsy, you are no good, you can’t do it’ – and we have faithfully held on to it all our lives. ‘I can’t’ – becomes a thought that stays in our mind and grows – leading us to complete paralysis. Time to put the glass down!
The story goes that there was a hardworking man who lived a contented life with his wife and children. Every evening when he returned from work, he’d follow a ritual. Outside the door to his house were three nails. On the first one, he’d put his hat. On the second he’d hang his coat. And on the third nail, he’d unwrap an imaginary turban from his head and ‘put’ it there. A friend happened to see this and inquired what he was putting on the third nail every day.
“Those are my problems, my worries and my anger,” said the man. “I have lots of that at work, but when I come home, I remember to take it off – and leave them outside. I don’t take them home with me.” Maybe you should learn to do that too. Starting today. Put the glass down. And see the difference!
'Coz sharing is caring