The White tiger test

 

There is a very simple test of how you feel about India. I call it the White tiger test. It consists of answering a simple question. Do you like the book The White tiger by Arvind Adiga?

Some people would say yes. For them India is a land of poor and the hungry. Of people who could go to any extent to get a decent standard of living. Of violence and trickery. Of exploitation and upper caste bias. These traits of India, which come out clearly in the book shout out to expose the real truth behind the veils of grandeur and hypocricy in the country. If you feel this is true you would love the book.

Some people say no. For them this is the country of unity in diversity. Of mutual love and cohabitation in difficult circumstances. Of sprinkles of success here and there. Of a functioning democracy. Of the land of merit. The India of these people is no where in the book. And if you belong to this category, then you would hate the book.

Where do I stand on this test? If I had taken this test in my 20’s I would be in latter category. I could not read the book then. I put it down. I hated it. Now after living so many years here, I love the book. I read it recently and also watched the movie. Laughed out loud at the humor and appreciated the lens the writer has put on our country. Something which is well known to everyone, yet gets concealed in the hyperbole.

The problem is not that things like these happen only in India. The recent Booker prize winning book, Shuggie Bain portrays a pretty dreary picture of the Scottish city of Glasgow. A story of a broken family with an alchoholic wife who takes multiple sex partners, a taxi driver husband who leaves her for someone else, her children who leave her one by one expect Shuggie the titular character who is gay. The book does not paint a good picture of the city with its low income parts, the banter and the violence and mental health issues. Yet it does not look like anybody is protesting.

Another book which comes to mind is the stream of consciousness Booker prize winning book Milkman from Anna Burns. An Irish woman in the book is being stalked by a man. The book paints a dreary picture of war torn Ireland and takes us into the mind of a fearful woman. If anything like this about Jammu and Kashmir is written today, I would not be surprised if it does not raise eyebrows.

Closer home we have Munshi Premchand. His books bring out the stark class and caste discrimination in his times. The story Kafan is a masterful portrayal of a man not having a shroud for his death. I guess probably those times were different. Munshi Premchand is considered one of the greatest writers in India. I wonder what would have happened to him had he been writing in today’s times.

Writers write about the bad things in the society. It is sort of their job to sweep out things so easily shrugged away below the rug. Some of the best books are about painful things in life, things that others do not want to talk about. The White Tiger brings one aspect of it beautifully and convincing manner.

Then of course, a reader has the choice to feel offended too. People have inbuilt perceptions of things around them based on their personality and experiences. A portrayal not suited to their inner worldview can bring out the worst in some of them. Who knows it better than Salman Rushdie!

Anyways do take the test. A better way to know how you feel about your country.

  

Why everybody wants to do an MBA?

When I was at kgp, in our final year, BLACKI was a cool term. It meant students who had successfully secured an MBA seat in Bangalore, Lucknow, Ahmedabad, Calcutta, Kozikodhe and Indore IIMs. Students who belonged to this group, had their eyes gleaming and there chests upright. They spoke with a swagger, interspersed with a little dose of humility so as to sound human. I never appeared for CAT in my final year, had no intention of doing an MBA. I also never understood why there was so much enthusiasm for people choosing this as a career after slogging for engineering and science for four to five years.

I have been listening to Thomas Picketty’s Magnum Opus ‘Capital in the twenty first century’. And now I realize why the rush. Managers are the nuevo landlords of this generation. People whose income, except a few big capital owners, who still rule the roost, have skyrocketed in the last three decades. Income from the super managers and managers at high position holds the maximum share of income in most of the developed and developing nations. They sit on the upper decile of income earners like a span of ministers. Some of them have their presence in the upper centile as well, in the race for the throne.

Engrossed in movies, research, classes and few other things that cannot be talked about, I had no idea of this transformation which had taken place in the economy, while I was in the final year. Everybody wants to climb the income ladder. Money is power and the more you have, the securer you would feel, in your den. All students who had their eyes on climbing higher in the income race knew that it was an MBA from a good institute which could give them that. And they made all preparations they could.

I, on the other hand had no plan. Going with the flow, like a man rushing into the Mumbai local, without even making an effort, I sat for the placements. And got selected in a consultancy firm. I applied to some Universities, and got selected in one for a PhD, which I eventually decided not to go for. Even while working for the firm, I could not decipher this secret which was widely well known. Then bored and angry at the shallowness of the world I was in, I decided never to work for people who controlled wealth. Maybe it was a feudalistic outlook that made me think that most of my friends are going to work for people who own wealth. That is they are the warriors of the super rich who use them to proliferate their wealth. I think I may have been a little wrong here.

Managers who are successful create their own wealth. And they own a part of what they create. I may sound naive but this simple fact was not clear to me in my final year. Not that the intricacies are crystal clear now, but it seems that one can become super rich in today’s world if one is a manager. Few steps higher than the other professions like professor, teacher, engineer, and so on, something which was not true before the 1980’s when this phenomenon started.

So would I have been a different person had I known this earlier? Probably not much. I instinctively knew that world is not for me. And after one and a half years at a corporate firms, my instincts were assured. Life is much more than money. And power can come through other ways. But a sense of peace prevails when you understand a little bit of your past. I am not sure with so many other IIMs coming up, if BLACKI is still in use. But one thing is for sure. With money pouring in the bank accounts of the managers, the eyes are still gleaming, the chests are still upright and the swagger is still swagging around.  

The Memory Conundrum

 

If lives are lived, memory is formed. As life goes on memories are embedded in the dungeons of the mind, as if they are rich minerals embedded deep under earth. They lie there, dormant, sleepy, and silent. They may have been judged, may have been interpreted by the prism of the consciousness of the memory holder. These judgments and interpretations color the memories and give them a form of their own. These memories, sweet, bitter, joyous, hellish, all get together to make the memory holder what he or she is in this world.

It is strange how much these interpretations change when the memory holder undergoes a change of personality. The memories once sweet could become salty, once bitter could become pale and unworthy, once pale could just brighten up. There was a time I was totally depressed. And all my memories sort of turned bitter or inconsequential. As if they never had any steam, as if the world that passed by eyes never happened or should have happened. As if my memories were the pall bearers of the dead weight I was carrying within me. When I got well and brightened up, the same memories jumped up and shouted to be remembered. To be reinterpreted and judged once again and to throw away the badges of negativity I had placed them under.

Today I talked to my brother who went to IIT kgp just like I did. We talked about our days there. And now those memories won’t leave me. I hated them sometime ago. I wished I wasn’t there. And now I wish I am there again. With friends, with the big banyan trees, with the tea shops with red teeth stained dadas selling bun maska, with the serenity of the library, with the rigour of the classes, with the football matches. The same memories which daunted me when I depressed, now enlighten me when I am not. I feel my interpretations have changed.

Memories can also be deceptive. That is they may not come in their true form. For people like me who suffer from schizophrenia, one has to be really careful with memories. The mind can throw at us things which never happened. Incidents that are imaginary, images which are unreal. As Prof. Nash said when he recovered, the idea is to be rational, to be able to filter out the real from the unreal. To be able to pick out some of them and to be able to closet the others. I am sure this happens with other people too. To varying degrees.

Memories can be connected to each other. Like a string of ribbons, coloured differently. Just like memories have to be interpreted these connections have to be interpreted and reinterpreted too. Our mind does this all the time. And as we change as people, these connections change. The ribbons join themselves in different patterns. A whole new story may emerge out of a labyrinth of facts, an important event can become mundane and a mundane event can suddenly take the form of significance. Ask the historians. They know it the best.

So does one trust the memories? Does one go about feeling them or does one pay no heed to them wafting around the mind as if they are fishes and our mind a deep ocean? Can we actually afford to get rid of them? I am sure in the future there were will some artificial intelligence to achieve this purpose. But as of the present world, it does not seem likely. If one believes the great South American writer, Gabriel Garcia Marquez in his book Love in the time of Cholera, “He was too young to know that the hearts memories eliminates the bad and magnifies the good, and thanks to this artifice, we endure the burden of the past.”

 

An Obama in India?

 

I am reading the wonderful book by former American president Barack Obama titled ‘A promised land’. It’s his story told with honesty and intelligence. One is astounded with how much he remembers and how literary he can be at times. Obama is one politician who impresses, who gives hope that principles can still have a seat in the murky train of politics. That not all politics is about status quo and bumping fists with Machiavelli. That power can sit in the lap of someone who genuinely wants to make the world a better place. And most importantly of someone who can speak the truth and accept their own weaknesses and faults.

One then immediately thinks of whether India can have an Obama like politician. Someone who is an outsider, someone who feels the pulse of the people, has principles he or she follows, and someone who has risen up from the ground with sheer talent. Nothing is impossible so one cannot rule it out. But then there is the gut feeling that it will never happen. Not because people as talented as him are not present in the country but because people like him will either never join politics or will never rise up if they join.

I am not a political expert but I don’t think I need to be to come to this conclusion. In today’s India, to rise to power at the center, you either have to be a Muslim hating Indian or a bootlicking one. You have to have the knack of looking over the gross incompetencies of the system in addition to able to praise the status quo reinforcing the existing incompetencies. If you want to rise up, you have to bend down. Close your heart, take unfair sides, tell lies, until you are an expert in all of this. Till you reach the top which in our country would be at the age of probably more than 60, you have become a person who does not instill any hope to the fair and just but only to the cronies and the greedy.

What will happen to Obama if he was born in India? He would probably go to an IIT and then go to the promised land to live a life of hard work and comfort. He would have in his youth sensed the futility of making an effort here. He would hope that some day his children will learn the values of the constitution of the most powerful country in the world. And bring some change where change can actually take place.

I know it is getting too negative of my own country. Everything cannot be so bad. And it is not. There is our rich culture to talk about. About the many achievements, about democracy, about pluralism, about the colours of festivals and about the many examples of brotherhood and sisterhood. About humanity. It is true. It is not that bad, some people would say. But why then it does not instill that confidence? Why then we have more Obama’s rather than sons and daughters of politicians, read from abroad, uninspiring, compliant, without any flair?

Maybe there are examples of Obama like politicians. Maybe I don’t know. Maybe it is actually not that bad. Or maybe it is. There are so many maybe’s. An Obama in India is needed, this is something I can say with certainty. Someone who calls a spade a spade and steps up on the tempo. One can solve so many problems of this country if one Obama can come across. Problems which are crying to be solved but have been kept on the docks just because the people who are responsible are not interested. Or are just plain incompetent. So, an Obama please!

 

Disability and jugad

 

Yesterday was the International disability day. It’s a day to remember and perhaps celebrate disability. In India, like many other things, disability runs on the jugad system. When people get disabled, their life has to be lived as if the country is incapacitated to look after them. As if people do not have time for them. As if a man who needs a wheelchair has to run his life on a pair of crutches. And most importantly keep smiling. Because the others who are fit want them to do it.

Today I was talking to a friend and we discussed why people are so unenpathetic in this world. It’s a serious research question. When I was doing my PhD, I had a mental breakdown. I had serious delusions and hallucinations. I was sick for three years, spending all the time in my room. Everybody around me knew I was sick. I stayed like that for three years spending a time which would be worse than staying holed up in a dungeon. But in those three years not a single soul came to help me out. My advisor had no time to talk to me. And I was in the best institute of this country where people sit at top business companies and government positions. There are even courses on ethics.  We discussed why this is so. And none of us had an answer.

Daniel Kanheman in his book Thinking fast and slow tries to answer these questions. There was an experiment in which a person needed immediate help and out of 20-30 people who could help him, very few turned up. I think their conclusion was that everybody felt it was someone else who would help the person out. It was not their duty. In my case no one turned up. This is not a surprise, but a norm.

Thankfully the country has good laws on Disability. But everybody knows that laws in our country could be more disabled than any other thing. Our policymakers have still not figured out how to make those laws implementable. The Mental Healthcare Act for example is good. But it needs proper implementation before the people could reap the benefits of greater independence given to the mentally ill. Till then the jugad system continues.

A disability does not mean a person is finished. Or that the person cannot achieve great feats. There are numerous examples of disabled people doing some wonderful things. Hope which is an ingredient of any success needs to be nurtured in case of disabled people. If hope dies, the person will die. Even if they live. And it is the hope of a good future which is being snatched from many disabled people. We die in the minds of people. And when that happens, the person feels it. And that punishment is greater than any other the society can give to its members.

And surprisingly, this is not limited to illiterate people. Even the most literate and successful people want to stay away from the disabled. Or only meet them at charities. Disability is connected to weakness. People could not be more wrong. It is not the weakness that holds them back, it is the social structures. A mentally ill person cannot even think of navigating the bureaucratic and complex structures of business or politics. Not because they cannot understand stuff. But because people do not want to understand them.

I am going to give you a cliche that things should change. They should always. In a direction where everyone can be happy and satisfied. In a direction where people are not forced to smile or comply but do so with their hearts open. In a direction where someone who is sick is not left to rot because people around them are busy looking after themselves. It will then be the time to celebrate the disability day with gutso.  

 

A simple thing

 

One must have heard many times: ‘Yeh to pyar mein paagal ho gaya’, or ‘Sar pe chhot lagne se iska dimag kharab ho gaya’, or ‘Iske sath dushkarm hua tha, so iska mood thik nahi rehta hai.’ If you go mad in love, or have a brain injury, or a sexual abuse, our society has easy explanations. Every consequent event in your life can be tied to that known event as if the event of the past is a horse pulling the cart of your life. As with many things in our daily lives, it is hardly known why people in such circumstances behave like they behave, and if there is a scientific explanation and cure for the phenomenon. The grand assimilation which the Indian society is so capable of just assimilates these occurrences like many other things like corruption, bribery, illegal drugs and so on. What is behind these people and many others who suffer something called a trauma?

A traumatic event in your life fills you with negative emotions of all kinds. When the event occurs, the mind and the body is overwhelmed by these emotions. One can be shocked, irritated, angry, in pain, jealous etc. It depends on the reason for the trauma. And can occur with people with all walks of life and of all classes. Parental neglect can cause trauma to children. An accident can fill you with a dread and trauma. An abusive husband or a wife can overtime inflict deep scars. Love as we know has caused many a trauma. Cheating husbands and wives are a prime example. Why do these events cause so much pain to us all through our lives and why is it important to deal with them professionally, something which is not drilled into our lives as children or adults?

A scientific known fact about trauma or a simple thing to remember is that traumas can be easily triggered. If you have had an accident, then a movie where the characters suffer an accident can trigger your trauma. The trigger could be anything in your life, a thing that people hardly pay any attention to. If you have a cheating husband, the stories or image of his person of interest can trigger. If there has been a childhood abuse, then people similar to the abuser can also trigger the events of the trauma. Or even having sex later in your life can trigger it reminds you of the abuse. If your parents have been abusive, then an abusive teacher can trigger those childhood traumas. What happens when the traumas of the past are triggered?

The emotions replay themselves. You go through the same emotions which you had undergone when you witnessed the trauma. It is as if the past events of life have resurfaced and are being replayed. The body and the mind go back in time. The person looks as if without any external cue they are suffering. People close to them could also deduce that they are acting out or manipulating others which is not true.

It is a scientifically proven fact that women who have been raped in childhood are more likely to undergo subsequent rapes. Children who are abused are likely to be bullied and abused in the future. Such traumas can lead to severe mental illnesses. It is surprising that even though research has firmly established these facts, it is hardly known to us in our everyday life. When we say someone has gone mad in love, we do not understand that the person is undergoing a trauma of failed love again and again. When a woman can be easily lured and slept with, she is called names and bad mouthed, even though it could be her past abuse which is leading to her sleeping around.

We need to understand this clearly. And put a stop to the lax assimilation we have so easily accepted.

(A lot of my understanding for this piece comes from the book ‘The

 body keeps the score’) 

Dusshera: Right and wrong.

 

Today, just outside my society building, three effigies are standing. Dressed in colorful clothes, with faces dipped in the blood of cruelty, they symbolize evil. They will be burnt. People are already standing in good numbers to see them up in flames. The victory of good over bad, right over wrong.

I often have difficulty saying right from wrong in today’s world. In some parts of India, the three effigies that are going to burn are not evil, but gods. Ravana is worshipped. He has temples. To acknowledge him as evil would be to betray the devotees of this great king. Wouldn’t they hate that their king or their god is being caricatured and then shamed for people to display their support for the good?

These doubts come to me when I ponder over other things as well. Building an industry is good for the economic growth of the country. It is the right thing for it gives employment, raises living standards and provides goods to the consumers. It is an answer to the poverty of people, a light in the growing darkness of their empty bellies. But then one thinks of the trees being felled, the pollution in the air, the lands of the locals displaced, the waste being thrown into the rivers that one wonders whether it is at all good. A child may have an empty belly but he still has a land, a home to call his own. If the factory takes that away for nothing, what good is it?

I think about women being asked to comply, to leave their jobs to look after their husband and children, to call the kitchen of the house their temple. It is right for them. The man can earn and she can support him in household chores. She has to dress the way the husband’s family wants. But then what about her independence, her wishes, her power to determine her destiny. What about the slow drift from her times of freedom to this fiefdom, of becoming an idea of someone else. What good is it!

I think about the good behavior of the mentally ill. Of leading their life zombie like on medications. Of keeping quiet and in subservience to the people around them. To not speak on things they do not understand, to not expect much from their life, to be told that the best thing for them is to roll through life as if vitality has been sucked away from them. To be looked and laughed at. To be labeled so that others can form instant opinion of them. What about their opinions? What about the truths of their lives? What about the stigma and shameless they feel because people around them are just not good enough to understand them? What about the injustice and wrongs done to them just because others put the blame of their insufficiency on them?

I think about PhD students of this country. Of having to study under able guides who will build them up for future success. Of being told to study science as if it were the Vedas those were to be remembered. Of being asked to stay away from topics that are not fit to be explored. Of limiting their curiosity as if curiosity is an obedient wife which should be put in place. Of writing what is good for the consumption of the guide. What about the beauty of wonder and the power of awe? What about taking a stroll in unexplored territories? What about asking tough questions that can inform the society? What about challenging the status quo, what is wrong in all that?

Sometimes these questions come into my mind. Sometimes one thinks about rights and wrongs. Some wrongs that could have been right. Happy Dusshera.