Category: Society & Culture

  • Times Now

    Absolutely nothing to do with the channel, but the title fitted in perfectly with the contents of the post, and so…a debate (which unfortunately i wasnt a part of) about the necessity of mobiles in our life, sparked off this post…
    Somewhere in the not too distant past, there was a phenomenon called time, which was allowed to be a consideration while we decided on things… but somewhere down the line, we decided to do battle with it… the necessity of Wi Fi connections and mobile phones is extremely arguable… we belong to a generation which grew up without the above, but are living with it now.. maybe the last of the generations to grow up that way, and so, to make it arguable…
    the ones after us are the ‘now’ generation, not just in context of the time they exist in, but in the consumption habits they have.. no, not they, we, because to survive i also have to be that way… and so i want news the time it happens – i may or may not care about the people who died or suffered in the news item… i want that pizza now, doesnt matter if the guy bringing it drives so crazily that he has a fifty percent of surviving the journey to my house… i want the work done by Monday, if you have to slog your back off during the weekend, hey, whose problem is that, or rather, is there a problem?.. amazingly i get away with all of this (hey, no hate comments, the usage of ‘I’ is only figurative) :)….
    i want it now, and there are slaves who will make sure i get it now… and that perhaps is why silly things like compassion and humanity are conceptual, not realistic… and joys and sorrows exist only fleetingly, for everything is only now and never later… some great man has said that there’s a time for everything, yup, only the time is always now…
    until next time, what now?

  • Singh.. when you’re happy

    The Bangalore University syndicate is about to pass a resolution which will prevent boys and girls from sitting next to each other in class.. about time, i say, after all, each gender needs to have its own space… hell, no one objects when they make separate loos for guys and girls.. 🙂
    but you cant blame these poor profs.. when guys start roaming around with long hair, and girls with short hair and all of them wear the same kind of clothes, the profs need to be able to have some sort of separation to distinguish among them… no one is thinking about the poor prof, there he is, walking around the class, lecturing and sharing a joke, he slaps a student on the back, it turns out to be a girl, and the next thing he knows, he is slapped with a sexual harassment lawsuit…
    okay, okay…thats enough of slapstick.. while i admit that its not exactly the greatest move by the university, a few years back, it was definitely an unwritten practice among students to sit separately in college classes.. yeah, maybe Kerala was a bit on the conversative side of things… a lot of kids come to colleges from all boys or all girls schools and therefore it is their first chance to learn to behave and mingle with the opposite sex… and creating an official barrier in the classroom may not be a good start at all… but hey, that still leaves the rest of the college.. and i bet the profs are thinking that while it would be a good idea to have sex education in classes, having both sex and education in classes may not be a great idea…
    But the problem that could arise is that pretty soon, the entire lot of students being churned out of BU will be of a very reserved type… and that should definitely make Arjun Singh happy, he loves the reserved types…
    until next time, boys and girls, whats your say on gender blenders!!

  • Deserving vs Reserving

    In movie halls, flights and trains, restaurants etc, there are those who are fighting for space at the last minute, and there are those who calmly walk in and take their seats… the latter deserve to do so, because they had the foresight to reserve the space .. the point to note here is that both sets of people started out on square one, some before the other, and that made the difference.. and so everything is fair.. now, if someone in the late entry set got in by just knowing the right people, thats perhaps unfair…
    and so, if we apply the same scope for reservations in the educational/ job system,. everything would be fair if everyone started from square one.. but that isnt the case, and so it makes sense to reserve places to level the scales… but what if, over a period of time, the reservations have done their job and further addition would start tipping the scale against those who normally occupied square one.. thats exactly what is happening… and that perhaps is unfair, because the regular folks havent gotten there by unfair means…
    and so perhaps it would be a good time to go back to square one, examine it and define it properly so that reservation is done only for people who are eligible even after multiple filters are put in, and since i am no expert, i can think only of socio-economic conditions as the key parameter… there have been too many changes these past few years for caste to be made a criterion.. a case in example would be that the erstwhile ‘upper castes’ in kerala are in a much poorer condition than the so called ‘lower castes’…
    it is absolutely fair that a person should not miss the chance of an education and a good life just because he doesnt have the finance for it… but in the same breath, it is absolutely unfair that a person should cede his right just because he made the most of his adequate finances and worked hard…there is an argument i made quite sometime back on the subject of meritocracy… if educationis the key to a better life, then, judging people by their intelligence levels is also perhaps unfair.. for only so much of intelligence is self gained, most of it is installed without our having a say in it… and so we are back to the theory of survival of the fittest.
    until next time, who is fit to decide what is ‘fit’ ?

  • Papa Preach!!

    It must be because all of us are around the same age, or maybe its the template way of our existence.. anyways, have recently read at least 3-4 posts that have to do with parents’ retirement.. and again due to the typical way of our existence, its mostly dads who are written about… also interesting are the comments, that in some way identify with the situation…
    while i do agree that retirement in some way creates a void in life thats difficult to replace, i have also begun to think that the above set of dads have achieved more than what we have, or will… and thats perhaps the better way to look at it…
    They have the respect of their sons, daughters.. they have settled themselves well, and even provided for their children.. they may perhaps have never known a career crisis… and they are proud of the work they have accomplished in their career…they havent worked so hard that they never had time for the little joys in life.. they have passed on a value system to their next generation..they can look back and say that they did justice to their parents, in terms of time and attention..
    yes, they might offer you advice that you wouldn’t follow, and bore you with what they did and how, but that, i guess is a nice way of knowing about a way of life that once was…
    until next time, father figures…best

  • Marginal Utility

    I can see all those with a fair knowledge of economics arch their eyebrows upward :).. to confess,i dont know it in depth… all i remember is the ‘orange’ example… and so (for the benefit of those who dont know the theorem) here goes, the satisfaction you gain by eating oranges decreases with each orange that you eat… and orange was only an example (for those who dont like oranges, and those who dont eat more than an orange at a time, i dont think you were considered while formulating the theory)… well, now since everyone is on the same page, the reason for the reference is to do with happiness… does the law of diminishing marginal utility apply to happiness..
    i faintly remember the prof saying that it was only applicable to (thats when i slept off..)….and so, i will humor my thought… even though happiness can come through different sources -listening to good music, an appreciative comment, good food, pay hike, doing a good deed, landing a good job, a good spouse and so on and so forth, could it be that our chances of deriving happiness out of something- anything, could be decreasing.. if not chances, at least the amount of happiness that we derive…
    if we keeping getting all the things that make us happy, maybe we start failing to appreciate them, which is perhaps what is happening to us right now… with so much of currency floating around, EMIs and credit card swipes may have changed the way we look at happiness, and made ‘happiness’ more easy, to the extent that even happiness is commoditised… maybe thats exactly whats wrong…
    until next time, laws are meant to be broken…