The monk, The 'dweep' and the grand diversion!

हे जी रे.. (4)

हे..

रामचंद्र कह गए सिया से (2)

ऐसा कलयुग आएगा

हंस चुगेगा दाना तुन का (2)

कौआ मोती खाएगा

हंस चुगेगा दाना तुन का

कौआ मोती खाएगा

हे जी रे..

फिल्म : गोपी (1970)

संगीत दिया है: कल्याणजी-आनंदजी

गीत के बोल: राजेंद्र कृष्ण

गायक: महेंद्र कपूर

Apple music link to the song: https://music.apple.com/in/album/ramchandra-kah-gaye/1352497375?i=1352498126

Would Dilip Kumar while filming the song have thought that 51 years later, a relatively unknown, slightly overweight, average looking 36 years old from the cage of his residence in Gurgaon, would borrow from his song to attempt succinctly summarizing the India of 2021? Perhaps, not. And yet, here we are!

Who would have thought that a nation whose founding fathers back in 1947 cobbled 552 princely states, (the balance got included in the Indian republic subsequently) and the provinces under British control together, a landmass which housed not just the most impoverished 31,86,60,000 people (1941 census) but also 1/8th of humanity; masses barely educated, with a literacy rate of just about 12%; would have shown the farsightedness of including ‘scientific temperament’ in its founding document, and yet they did. The first PM of this country and also the one to have got elected the most number of times till date (3 straight terms) made sure that India got premier institutes of science like IITs, AIIMs alongside laying the foundation for reasoned enquiry, data-based decision making and statistical analysis, by instituting various census and surveys as an effective arm of the government. India has achieved quite a bit in the last 74 years, it is a thriving country with an active and alive democracy (though under serious existential threat for the last 7 years) but she could not do enough to rid herself of her ‘unscientific approach’, deep-rooted backwardness and moronic entanglement and fascination with anything resembling ‘spirituality or ancient Indian tradition’. 

Needless to say, we are paying a heavy price for it in these pandemic times. Society is naively and naturally falling prey to misguided and downright unlettered suggestions, being made by those in power. Reproducing a few for you here to familiarize you with the degree of the absurdity of these statements from the ruling party of the day.

• BJP MP Pragya Singh Thakur believes that drinking Cow urine will cure Covid-19. The lady in the past has also claimed that she cured herself of cancer with Cow Urine!

• BJP HRD Minister Pokhriyal denounces the theory of evolution, he says that ‘no one has seen a money turn into a man’!

• BJP Culture Minister for MP, Usha Thakur proposed ‘yagna chikitsa’ for preventing the 3rd wave!

• BJP MoS of health and family welfare Ashwini Kumar Chaube had suggested that standing in the sun for 10-15 minutes every day will kill the Covid virus!

• Lifelong RSS prachhakar, BJP karyakarta and current PM Modi put forward the instances of Karna from Mahabharta and Lord Ganesha’s trunk to suggest that cosmetic surgery and reproductive genetics were in use in India thousands of years ago! 

• BJP Union minister of railways Piyush Goyal is confused about who discovered gravity, he also believes that mathematics did not play a part in the discovery of the said physics principle. 

The theatre of the absurd does not end there. The satellites of supporters orbiting the ‘political narrative’ of the BJP almost involuntarily, have also paid their dues in furthering the cause of utter nonsense’.

As ludicrous and crackpot as it may sound, in India lead by Fakir Narender Modi (मेरा क्या हैं मैं तो फ़क़ीर हूँ जी झोला उठा के चला जाऊँगा, words of the honourable PM) of 2021, qualified and respected doctors are being forced to defend ‘the science of allopathy and modern medicine’ by arguing with a saffron-clad self-styled Ayurveda and Yoga guru with questionable past, who did not even complete his primary education; in TV studios, at a time when the world is reeling under Pandemic and India has emerged as a hotspot of the world, recording the most number of cases and deaths. What is even more grotesque is the fact that he seems to be winning the battle thus far. Poor doctors, who studied their lungs out, wrote an all India entrance exam, qualified in it, studied medicine for a minimum of 6 years and a max of 15, stand ‘assailable’ in the world of narrative. 

You may wonder why I pronounce Baba the winner in the fight, at least thus far? Here is why.

• Baba openly and publicly lampoons the whole science of modern medicine in the most scurrilous tone imaginable, and yet continues to roam free. He floats his pronouncements on Youtube and other social media platforms, where he enjoys a thick follower base. 

• The quack has bought about 20% (approx) of all advertisement slots on all popular commando comic news channels (a term originally coined by Shekhar Gupta of the print to describe BJP propaganda news channels). Advertisements for his products are flashed even on debates that they organise to banish some of his fallacious claims. Such is the might of the Yogi.

• The Saffron clad Yoga Guru’s wealth and social reach gives him the political muscle needed to make the health minister, who by the way is an allopathy doctor himself and current union minister for road transport & highways and the minister of micro, small and medium enterprises in the Government of India; stand in acquiescence on his either side when he publicity unveils ‘Crononil’ a collection of herbs, untested by any scientific means, as preventive and curative medicine for aliments induced by “Covid-19”, a deadly virus that has killed people in excess of 35.2 lacs, globally. 

• Nothing stops him from selling the ‘cure’ to Indian consumers.

At this point, you might be thinking how do these ‘men of tradition, spirituality and Yoga’ make it so big? To understand it we will need to take a little dip in the history of the nexus between politicians and “Babas and Gurus’. 

• PM Indira Gandhi, daughter of the man, who professed scientific temper; in her days of power had Dhirendra Brahmachari as her Yoga Guru. He used to be just as powerful then, as our Ramdev is now.

• Spiritual guru Chandraswami provided mentorship to PM PV Narasimha Rao. Stories of his influence are part of folklore in the southern part of the country.

• PM Modi is known to be close to Ramdev and many like him, some of his favourite people are also currently serving jail terms for heinous sexual crimes.

I have listed three PMs here but if you dig a little you’d find that over 90% of elected CMs too have some or the other affiliations with one or more ‘men of faith’. 

The unholy alliance between power, politics and these ‘Godmen’ is not hard to understand, these men have a huge following, running in several lacs. They wield enormous influence over their followers who willingly let these godmen tell them who they should vote for. Politicians naturally have an affinity for these people. 

It may be ill-omened that the Government led by PM Modi allows flimflammers like Ramdev to defame the authentic and scientific line of treatment and even speak disloyally of the effectiveness of vaccines when seen from the vantage point of governance and public health and safety but we will need to concede that its political dividends are enormous. And perhaps that is why, he is allowed to rage and rave, as he wishes. The monk who can buy a Ferrari and much else said and I quote, “What can the doctors do, they could not save themselves,1000 of them died despite taking double doses of the vaccine”. Would such a comment not add to already grave vaccine hesitancy in the hinterland of India, you be the judge of that. The government chooses to not intervene with the penal action, no prizes for guessing why.

Politics is a field in which genius moves are often cacodemonic in character. I would like to call your attention to the brilliance of the timing of Ramdev’s attack which is no less crafty,  in the unit of malevolence with which politics measures itself. You might wonder why am I saying such a thing? Let me uncover the bigger act in play here for you.

The peak at least in official numbers for the 2nd Covid-19 wave seems to have passed now in India, with daily caseload reduced to nearly ½ of what it used to be at the peak a few weeks ago. The public attention had started shifting from delinquencies in the cure (Oxygen, beds, ventilator, meds and medical staff) to deficiencies in prevention (vaccine). The number one conversation currently running on the minds of people is vaccines or lack of it. People have understood, by and large, that there is no alternative to getting inoculated when it comes to meeting the challenge that the virus and its many variants in circulation pose. PM Modi’s preoccupation with elections, disdain for the advice of the scientific community, contempt for knowledge and ill-informed bravado came in the way of his administration procuring the number of doses needed to protect the Indian people. As a result, India is experiencing a vaccine drought, of sorts. The mammoth gap between supply and demand, as can be seen in the attached numbers which are a testimony to dwindling rate of vaccination in India.

The administration leaves a lot to be desired for and it does not want the public to understand, acknowledge and discuss its many failures. If there is one thing that PM Modi is concerned about then it is his own image. Recently, BJP’s president joined PM Modi and RSS members to brainstorm ways of recovering from the dent in the image of his leadership, the performance of his government and particularly the mess in UP. The meeting ended with BJP National president, Nadda making a public appeal to the party workers and elected representatives to become ‘more visible’. They understand that the truth is out there and people are taking note of it.

The government desperately wants the nation to look the other way, so it in its masterstroke has expertly manufactured a number of controversies to completely hog the headlines of the newspapers, discussions in prime time and by extension the attention of the people.

 

• They have effectively fashioned a dispute at the peaceful arcepalogo of Lakshadweep. Twitter trends are abuzz and the national media has been forced to turn its gaze to the disturbance that Modi’s trusted BJP party member and currently the administrative head of the island, Praful Khoda Patel has created by suggesting to bring in new laws. Including the one to allow alcohol in the island, mind you, it is coming from an ex-minister of the state Gujarat, which has been in prohibition since time immemorial. Some of his other radical ideas are: 

• Land Development

• Beef and Cow slaughter ban by implication, the draft, however, hides direct mention. It must be noted that the BJP is fine with beef-eating in Kerala and the NE.

• Goondas act; ability to arrest anyone for a year!!

• Ferocious and published feud with Social media giants (Twitter, Facebook and Whatsapp), OTT platforms and digital news organisations. The televised theatre of sending Delhi Police over to Twitter’s headquarters in India and several letters being written to Whatsapp have all been timed to coincide with the crisis so that the shortcoming of the Government on the handling of the 2nd wave gets drowned in the noise of these issues.

• Whilst at the Whatsapp topic, you must know that neither parties are fighting for the interest of the users. Whatsapp wants to send metadata freely to Facebook to strengthen its advertisement business and also employ mountains of data for future product creation. The government wants Facebook to break ‘end to end encryption in the cover of identifying the original originator of a ‘fake message’. Many believe that Modi Govt will use the access to clamp down on free speech. Triangulate and bring down posts criticizing the Government, as it has done several times in the recent past, particularly with farm bill protests and the Covid related posts exposing failing of the GOI.

The BJP knows that when these measures are announced there is going to be a widespread protest, noise and chaos. It not only understands and estimates but also anticipates groundswell in opposition to these measures, coming from all directions - and that is exactly what it wants. So that the nation does not find time and attention to focus on the sparsity of vaccines, hiding of deaths and massive undercounting of infections, prominently. With the mess hidden those responsible for it will also get an opportunity to distance themselves from it.

Like it or not, it is indeed a political masterstroke. 

Fight with the Social Media companies, Socio-political disturbances in Lakshadweep and Baba Ramdev’s deplorable, injudicious and irresponsible remarks together provide the best cover that PM Modi and his associates can ask for and create at this point in time. They have succeeded thus far in shaping the national narrative. Whether they continue to march ahead unchallenged and undefeated in the future or not, will depend on how much attention we the people give to what issue? People will need to decide to not get distracted from the number one issue of the day, which is ‘vaccination of a billion people’- nothing that they throw our way will break our resolve. 

We got to use the currency of our attention, judiciously. 

Let's unite in demanding accountability for mismanagement of the pandemic and above all for the quickest possible vaccination for all, not just those who can afford to buy their way out of the pandemic.

Till then take care, goodbye!

Failure, a roll of the dice!

As we enter into the final week of 2017, I have to thank you for your continued support, I had not hoped to cross 7K on readership, so soon, but we did, 7056 to be precise ( till 24th Dec 3:45 PM). It has been a great year for me. Early this month, I sent out emails to randomly selected returning readers/commenters to ask them if there is a specific topic on which they’d like to hear from me. I received 347 responses, studied them to ascertain that roughly 86% people hinted at hearing on “failure”!

I thought a great deal about it .. re-lived most of those moments when I encountered failures and what transpired from each of those events and how life kept changing, sometimes irreversibly. I also got drawn into thinking how would life have been without those moments of failure, for a brief while that thought felt really nice .. and I did get seduced into devoting more to a failure free life but as I scratched the surface a little, I realised that my thinking had quietly shifted from being realistic to wishful, a few hours later, the idea almost appeared unreal to me and then I jogged back to my failures again to gather all that I had learnt from my own falls.

A day and a half with these thought & I got fairly certain, that my life wouldn’t have been what it is today ( could be better, and I’m working towards it) had I not failed. I tried looking at it a little more dispassionately, separating emotions from the core issue or the event. Most of my failures started to make perfect sense, then.

Come to think of it .. life is only a tad better than roll of dices more so because one thing leads to another. If decisions operated in isolation, failure & success wouldn’t have mattered as much, but because life is a series of events one coming after another in a logical and progressive sequence - each event is indeed imp. 

Let’s accept this - Shit happens! 

Don’t you agree? As much as we would despise failing; we all do once in a while, ins’t it? 

Everything counts, from you letting the snooze button win most mornings to you not choosing right things to eat or loosing to your own lazy self and thus missing on your exercise routine. Even in areas which are more formal in nature, lets say an investment tanking or an assignment flopping big time - We’re in a way a sum total of these!

Let’s open it up a little. Failure often times is considered bad, expect for that fact that is not always so. Some failures actually propel us to a progressive future, enables us to make amends and move on with our life just fine and even those which do not really make us into something better at least leave us with a better understanding of who we actually are. 

Both successes and failures start at a decision .. irrespective of the size, impact or even the context, a decision is always the starting point.

I like to think of life as a puzzle and each decision as a block in that massive build up that spreads itself across a stretch as long as a lifetime.The choices that you make lead you in a certain direction, remember nothing is absolute- your wrong could be someone else’s right, our lives are interconnected more interestingly then it may  appears to us. We keep moving forward each day a little irrespective of us failing or succeeding - because that puzzle called life, knows one thing and that is how it would like itself to get concluded. While it may seem like you hold the console but for the most part .. you actually get played.

No one I know has it figured out completely .. nor do I have it completely within my grasp but what I do know is that no one ever walked this earth without failing more than a couple of times, at things, they today are successful at. Failure really is the GPS to success, in ways more than one for those who really desire to succeed. 

Life will never be free of failures .. there will always be victories and losses. All of us will have to not only put up a fight for a seat at the table better yet try work harder to get to the seat at the head of the table. So long as there is life .. there will be struggle and so long as you struggle .. possibilities of meeting failures will be there.

So what you really can and should do is to think of an approach towards dealing with failure. The questions is to work towards a strategy to make these stumbles rare and too far and few in between by being meticulous, sincere, alert and above all careful. 

I wish for you to succeed but if life catches on .. you could make use of these three tips.

1. Quitting too early is uncool: Quitting is easy but not fun. In more than half of the occasions where I have chosen to be persistent, I have succeeded. Even in the face of most strongest opposition and most unfavourable of the circumstances you sometime have to just hang in there. You can’t finish first without being in the ring for longer!
2. Regard for Rejection: We give in, because we face rejection, sometimes even from people who we trust & look up to. Rejections can’t be the reason to give up on anything, what you need to pick up from it is the clues to change, to get better. You need to work your way thru rejections. Our world is not always very warm but it does get kinder to those who handle rejection gracefully. Validation is not as valuable as you may think. It is ok for some to not understand you or your plan as well as you do. Offer a nice smile and move on.
3. Future is not a mere repetition of past. - Everybody commits error, the important thing is to learn from them. Because you’ve failed in the past .. you shouldn’t try in the future is the most unwise advise that you’d ever get. If you care for it .. go for it! Let not failures of past limit your ability to carve a future full of success. You can change the pattern.. if you really want to.

If you ask me .. it is a constant struggle between the below two.

1) Desire to succeed

2) Fear of failure

There will be times when these two mingle into each other and become inseparable, you have to remember - nothing defines you better than your will. Law of averages applies to everything and it will caste its spell on you too, you will stumble, you will fall, you will get knocked down sometimes in the face and hard - it is all part of the procedure.

Fear and failure is part of life, the trick is to recognise it as a fact ; you’ve to give strength to your desire to succeed and in that long journey take a few failures here and there with a grain of salt. Nothing great has ever been achieved overnight. If you wish to succeed be ready to be in the middle and fight it till you knock your opponents down.

You real opponent is “failure” - deal with it. 

Gather yourself & stand again - for it is worth it.

With that I end this.. wishing you a very Merry Christmas and a Happy new year 2018.