Labour Day Contradiction

Today, the 1st of May, Labor day is a holiday that celebrates and honors workers.

This photo on facebook reminded me of the shirts that the construction workers working on my site wear.

These are all semi-skilled laborers – masons and bricklayers. Their shirts are not half as bad – but somewhat similar. They would prefer to wear no shirts at all when they work outdoors in the sultry weather but they usually put on some threads to cover up.

Are they working today? YES.

Would they prefer not to? Would they prefer to enjoy this Labor Day public holiday, put up their feet and rest? NO WAY.

They are paid daily wages and such holidays held ‘in honor’ of their hard work or ‘celebrating them’ are meaningless to them.  What they do celebrate is the fact that they have work today.

They want to work today. They do not want to lose a single opportunity to earn.

Should I force them to rest? Should I force them out of a day’s pay?

No?

Then how do I settle this contradiction in my own head about ‘how can laborers work on labor day?’?

Or should I just kill my own thoughts about this contradiction that have absolutely no bearing on the real life of these men?

I talk to them daily and I know their lives. They work for the contractor that I have hired. They are paid fair wages as per the norm of this area. They are neither bonded labor nor are they slaves of any sort. They work of their own free will driven by the same motivations as the rest of us.  They are the masters of their own time.

And they have chosen to work today. They have chosen to ‘earn’ today.

They are oblivious to the idea of labor day. And even if one were to educate them on this concept, they would probably trash it as an idea that does not apply to them.

This contradiction is purely my problem – a result of straddling two almost-unconnected worlds.

jm

May1, 2013

Sleep deprived in the Urban Forest

No – not urban jungle. I mean the urban forest.

I live near the center of Panjim city with a little hill behind my block and a landscaped garden with trees in front.  The main color seen outside any window is green.  If I were to count the old trees visible from my windows the number would be greater than 30.  Because of the hill, the horizon is less than a quarter km away making the green in this expanse very dense.  A forest.

The number of concrete structures is less than half a dozen. And the city centre is less than a kilometer away. And so this is an urban forest.

*

Everyone speaks of the benefits of living within nature.  The fresh air, the calming effect of greenery, etc etc. And I believed all that. Until recently.

Sometime in the past year, a bird has taken up a nest residence in to one of these trees.

There have always been birds but this one is worth writing about.

This bird that wakes up precisely at 3.30 am and begins its sweet shrill singing.  At aroung 5.45 am the pre-dawn twilight it stops. For two hours the singing is constant and repetitve.

A bit like my kids practicing their piano skills in their childhood.

And if I  evaluate it objectively, it is sweet.

But between 3.30am -5.30am it is hard to be objective……

Maybe she has migrated and is jet-lagged.

Maybe the worms she likes wake up earlier than others……

The crows have migrated away …. probably for good reason.

The property prices – I wonder if they have gone down in this area.

The health score?  Don’t know whether the oxygen from the greenery has helped the human lot, but I for one, am a sleep deprived zombie groucho.

Living within nature. In an urban forest.

(On a serious note – this bird has the most unusual and long tweet and it is quite sweet – if only we could delay her music enough for me to record it and put it up for bird enthusiasts who might enjoy it!)

jm

April 2013

Success

The success of an individual lies in the distance that she has managed to cover between the mindset (and therefore life) of her own grandmother and the life of her daughter.

That is her own personal contribution to evolution. Because no matter how fast technology and the media and society turn around us, unless the mindset absorbs it all in an open unbiased way, there can be no question of ‘choosing’

And without choosing, we will just all blindly follow the footsteps of our ancestors and so will our children.

The contribution lies in how far we have traveled on the bridges of intense thought to change the course of our lives and the lives of our children.

(This idea is applicable only to those segments in a ‘developing’ stage such as women of India or the tribes of India. These are segments in which there is still a great potential difference (to borrow a term from physics) between the ambient group and that particular segment.)

With my life being as it is, it would seem I have a high degree of freedom.

But my mind has always  been caught up in the very same shackles that bound my grandmother.

My grandmother gracefully accepted what society taught her – that men are superior and women are lesser mortals.  To me, it was always an axiom that no man is ever going to be superior or inferior to me just by gender. But this idea was quite incomprehensible to almost every person I knew. While every educated person paid lip service and pretended to believe in ‘gender equality’ their lives always reeked of obeisance  to males. And so, I had to fight to preserve my faith in my idea and myself. Surprisingly the fight was mostly with women who did not want their belief system rocked and chose to find comfort in ‘letting things be’  rather than in freedom or equality.

When you are fighting a whole paradigm, there is no specific fight and no known enemy.

It is an all-pervasive background – oppressing every attempt of the soul to grow into the sunshine of freedom.

No doubt with all the wrenching and fighting I overcame the hurdles and bloomed. But every scorching thought of imposed inferiority made me lash out and before I knew it, I had grown thorns.

An unwanted unanticipated side-effect of chasing the sunshine against all odds : Thorns.

But these thorns performed the critical function of protecting my core. And by the time I was the mother of a daughter these very thorns were very very useful in fending off anyone that threatened her sense of equality & freedom.

And so she has remained absolutely untouched by the concept of gender bias in her own life. Raised as an equal between an elder and a younger brother, she has no sense of limitation or bounds on account of her gender. She views it as an absurd idea that women cannot do as much or as good as a man.

So ensconced within the thorns that I grew defensively on my own soul, my little bud has been nurtured safely away from the clutches of gender bias that pervades the Indian mindset.

My daughter, a daughter of India has been delivered to Tagore’s dreamland “Where the head is held high and the mind is without fear, into that heaven of freedom ….” let my daughter reign.

That this journey of transition between my grandma’s life and my daughter’s has been crossed over the bridge of my own life -   is my most powerful accomplishment  – one that outshines all others on my CV.

jm

April 2013

 

My daughter & her dreams …

Please support her dream of contributing to society. Click on this link to read more..

Thank you for your time.

jm

Feb 2013

Indian History – my education system failed me

My school teachers and my school text books always told me that India had been ruled by the British.

But through my travel and the books that I have stumbled upon and read, reveal that nearly half of present-day India – the regions marked in yellow in the map above – was never ruled by the British.  These states did not come ever come under the British rule.

Why then, was this not highlighted by the textbooks of primary school and secondary school history – a subject that was compulsory for 10 years of my basic schooling?

I first became aware of this fact only when my guide in Ladakh mentioned in passing, the fact that Ladakh was never under the Raj. And for a while I thought that this was an exception that applied only to Ladakh.  But now I see that this ‘exception’ applies to roughly half of India.

Am baffled at this important and significant omission of my educators, people who were paid to deliver an education program to the children of the state through taxes paid by the people.

Was this unimportant? Was this insignificant?

I will go out and buy history books of all levels Grade 1 – 10 to verify this.

And I welcome views of others people from other states in India whose education did teach them that large regions remained independent of the British throughout history.

(My schooling gave me an S.S.C. from Maharashtra Board)

jm

Feb 2013

 

Addition to my “wish list’

Want to do this someday:

Jump off a mountain

jm

Jan 2013

 

And one more reaches the finishing line

A friend died yesterday.

Known him for 30 years from the first week at St.Xavier’s college.

Everyone was too busy in those days so we hung out together but I did not really know him then. Besides none of us had evolved yet – we were babies then.

We all went our way after graduation and lost touch.

But every year I’d receive greeting cards at Diwali & and New Years by snail mail from ‘Muks’ as he was called. There was no internet and there were no cell phones and I had just started out my life so we had no telephones at home either. So the annual card was the only connection – and I’d call back to chat and wish him back.

Babies, change of address and life interrupted the flow and we lost touch until somehow it was reestablished.

And then we got to know Muks well.

He led an exemplary life fulfilling his duties as a son. The things he did for his family awed me. And I talked about him to my children as a role model for family values. He was exactly my age but at around the age of 30 he had managed the hospitalisation of his dad for a liver transplant in Singapore. All other aspects of life had been set aside by the entire family in order to watch over the father. This dedication impressed me – because who could set aside half a year this way in today’s day and age?

He was always wealthy in college – but his behavior never gave us an inkling of this wealth. He’d received a Mercedes Benz for his birthday – a green one – and he’d drive it to college – but out of modesty he’d park it far away – so that it would remain a quiet fact.

He was the single source of contact when we needed to find anyone from our batch because he was the one guy who stayed in touch with everyone. He’d write to wish everyone for their birthdays. And since the days of email he’d write to everyone else to remind us of X’s birthday or Y’s birthday. He’d arrange meet-ups and introduce people who he thought might get along. He was the glue that bound people together.

Why did he do it?

He was probably busier than most of us – with a large company to run and a large and close knit family to be a part of in addition to social engagements and active interest in theatre, travel and photography. So why did he make time to keep up with people. He kept up with everybody. Not just one or two – but everyone who happened to be there in his class – was known personally to him.

We’d chat once a year on his long rides to the airport and catch up on life and make plans to meet up. Years ago 1991 – we’d made plans this way – and Bombay was just too busy. Then it so happened that we would have both be in Udaipur (his home town) at the same time  so we agreed to meet there. I was pregnant with my first baby  so we met up for coffee after my day of work and had a great time – the first time we met 5 years after graduating from college.

And so before I went to Udaipur a few months ago I called him up. But he did not answer. I assumed he must be travelling overseas or must have been busy.Who would have imagined that he is not taking calls because he is battling cancer?

I found out only 3 weeks ago. He was in hospital then. Met him. With his best buddy Saif.

Saif laughed and joked and with his family surrounding him, we tried to wake him from his coma with tales of old jokes and old pranks. He did not wake up. Not that evening. Not ever.

Yesterday he passed away.

I regret not having acted on our plans to meet up more often. He worked so tirelessly in staying connected and put in all the effort needed to call and arrange group meet-ups. Without ego & with enthu. I regret losing all those opportunities.

For all his good karma, he had a good life.

And in the end he received the biggest reward that life can shower on a person – something that only the fortunate good people get : he died in the arms of the family that loved him and cherished him, in the arms of the people he loved and cherished – surrounded by his wife, his children, his brother & sisters. He breathed his last ensconced in love.

A well deserved reward for a life lived so well.

Will miss you buddy!

July 16th, 2012

Sanyas

Sometimes I feel like I have done everything there was to do. That there is nothing left to be done anymore that could engage my heart mind and soul for the rest of my life.

I wonder if anything remains that will consume my soul enough to sustain my life. For, I cannot bear the idea of just existing and waiting in boredom for death.

Am at the odd place where I am contemplating giving up many things.

I want to be wrapped up in a layer of nothingness and remain that way – just barely conscious of my life.

Maybe it is Sanyaas I want.

To give up all worldly desires and pleasures. Actually it would not really be much of a ‘giving up’ of desires – it is simply that desires have ceased to arise inside me.

Give up worldly pleasures? Most objects that mean a lot to most people already mean nothing to me … but the simple stuff – will I be able give up the vada-pavs of Bombay and survive on a just a fistful of rice everyday?  Will I be able to survive without a mattress and a blanket? Or on 3 sets of clothes? Will I be able to control my desire for conversation? Without books or television? And without the internet and phones? With just my thoughts to keep me company?

I have no desire left to travel. Or to go out seeking adventure. I have no desire to sleep. Or to engage in stimulating experiences. Or to feast.

Maybe it is just a passing moment. Maybe it is just PMS. Or maybe it is some inner longing.

But I do wish to experiment with Sanyas and attempt it in all earnestness. As earnestly as I pursued every passion in my life.

Maybe with this I will be able to still my soul as Krishna tells Arjun to – to control it so that it becomes like the flame of a lamp in a windless room.  That stillness is as attractive as it is hard to attain.

Will try it anyway. For a day. For 3 days. For a week. Forever. In one small aspect of life and then another and then another … in small steps.

Until I am at that destination.

Attached to no one. Connected to nothing. Passionate about nothing. No ‘Moh’ and no ‘maya’.

If I never write on these pages again – maybe I will be gone and at peace.

In my world of Sanyaas.

jm

July 2012

Media Invasions

The Holocaust to me always meant the genocide of European Jews during WWII.

It was the biggest human tragedy that I knew of and the enormity was due to the large numbers.

However yesterday – only yesterday – when I am nearly 47 – did I read about the massacre of the Indigenous Americans  – the number was around 11 million!

( Sharon Johnston, The Genocide of Native Americans: A Sociological View, 1996)

The questions that arose after I got over the shock were :

How come this had not come to my notice?

I am not an aggressive reader but I do read more than an average person.

My children argued that my ignorance was a result of not being part of the environment in any way. By that logic I should not have known about the Nazi atrocities either.

So after mulling over it, I think the questions is one about ‘media’ and not my personal engagement or oblivion.

Maybe the Native Americans were not spreading their story as aggressively as others. Maybe effort and time and money were more needed to do other things than to publicise their story.

Another instance: Hurricane Katrina and the Mumbai floods happened within the same month. About 1000 people died in each location. Within a fortnight, the people had ‘adjusted’ to the situation and the media had moved on. As a result the Mumbai floods dropped out of the radar of the world media. But Katrina remained a tragedy that was talked about for a whole year!

Was one group of 1000 less significant than the other?

Were the 11 million dead less noteworthy than the 6 million that all school children learn about?

In an ideal world all news about everything would reach everybody and we’d all the the capacity to absorb it all.

But since this is far from possible, our minds are fed with stimuli in two ways : what we select for ourselves and what is forced into our environment without our active consent or seeking out.

And in small infinitesimal amounts we get influenced by everything we read, see, hear and experience until vague (at first) and then eventually definite opinions are formed about this and that.

We think.  We process. And our logic is our own. But the background factors that feed that logic are only those things that are within our experience.

So ought we to modulate the media that reach us to ensure that views from all the various groups receive an equal audience with each indvidual?

Otherwise one is likely to be influenced by just the ones that talk the most or the loudest.

There’s a cute little poem :

The codfish lays ten thousand eggs,
The homely hen lays one.
The codfish never cackles
To tell you what she’s done.
And so we scorn the codfish,
While the humble hen we prize,
Which only goes to show you
That it pays to advertise.

How does one solve this and do justice to ourselves by ensuring that we also know about the codfish?

How does one stop life from becoming similar to “The Truman Show” which of course is an extreme case but the parallel is not hard to see.

jm

June 2012

The Kohinoor Diamond

Quoting from Wikipedia:

“The Kōh-i Nūr  which means “Mountain of Light” in Persian, also spelled Koh-i-noor, Koh-e Noor or Koh-i-Nur, is a 105 carat (21.6 g) diamond (in its most recent cut) that was once the largest known diamond in the world.

The Kōh-i Nūr originated in the state of Andhra Pradesh in India along with its double, the Darya-ye Noor (the “Sea of Light”).

It has belonged to various Hindu, Persian, Rajput, Mughal, Turkic, Afghan, Sikh and British rulers who fought bitterly over it at various points in history and seized it as a spoil of war time and time again.

It was most recently seized by the East India Company and became part of the British Crown Jewels when Queen Victoria was proclaimed Empress of India in 1877.”

Today a news item  on the BBC caught my eye as a parallel.

Quoting from BBC.com

“Berlin museum must return Nazi-looted art

A German court on Friday ordered a leading Berlin museum to return to a Jewish family in the United States a valuable collection of posters stolen in 1938 by Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels.

The collection of some 4,300 posters, valued at around 4.4 million euros ($5.7 million), was taken by the Nazi propaganda ministry from Jewish dentist Hans Sachs, the top poster collector in Germany from the early 20th century.

Later that year, Sachs was sent to a concentration camp but released a few weeks later, and fled with his family first to London, then to New York. He died in 1974.

In 1961, he received a sum of 225,000 deutschmarks — more than half a million euros in today’s money — in compensation from West Germany

The collection survived the war and languished in the cellar of the German Historical Museum, at the time behind the Iron Curtain in East Berlin.

The Federal Court of Justice, based in the western city of Karlsruhe, ruled that the Sachs family “was the owner of the poster collection and can demand it back” from the museum, ending a tug-of-war that had lasted for years.

Not to return the art “would perpetuate Nazi injustice,” the court said in a written statement.

The museum said it would accept the judgement and would “shortly” begin talks with the family to decide how to proceed.

Matthias Druba, a lawyer representing the Sachs family, said his client hoped to find another museum in Germany that would display the posters as works of art, not as historical artifacts.

“Ideally this would be in Berlin, because the Sachs family originally came from Berlin,” Druba told AFP, adding that they had held back from the search for a new home until the ruling had been handed down.

Hans Sachs’s son Peter, who had brought the claim against the museum, is a retired airline pilot and as such “doesn’t have the means simply to build a museum,” Druba said.

“In any case, this was never about the money, but about restoring the family’s history,” he said.”

BBC Link

Parallel situation?  Is it time to begin hoping that the fairness shown by German courts spreads to the rest of the world?

jm

March 2011