who would have guessed?

Right now elections are on our head. with the General elections coming up to decide the prime minister of the country the imagination of the nation is fired up. On one side the incumbent Congress ruled by the family and a seemingly inept young candidate – Rahul, is pitted against the big man from Gujarat with a massive PR blitz – Modi. Its fun to watch the two in action. The congress seems to be commiting one blunder after and another and Modi can seem to do no wrong. He has tall claims and promises and promises a lot. The young scion bumbles and struggles to take grand and prefers the boring grass roots approach. Good intentions in my book, but good intentions can’t do much for PR.

But the fun bit is that I love to see the way Indians are divided along these lines. It’s stupid. They have this amazing love for the right wing fascist dictator who simply claims and promises without really doing anything. And the young Turk gives plenty of guffaws to his detractors that even the diehard loyalist finds it difficult to support him. But people don’t understand the cause, the lies and the commonsense around the entire thing. The economy is not that easy to run. It has a mind of its own and is affected by global factors and things far beyond its control.  And blindly supporting one against other is an act of stupidity. Then comes the AAP party. Built on the anti-corruption stand, this party has tasted success in Delhi only to do even more fun and entertaining stuff. Their chief minister Kejriwal, another seemingly well intentioned guy is prone to protesting even while being in power. Surrounded by a string of leftists he tries to restore the power to the people. He probably never read the book ‘animal farm’.

No no… I don’t have any solution. I am not the stupid devil’s advocate who swings both ways. I have my views and I am going to vote selfishly, in my favor. The world be dammed. That is if I vote at all. But the pressure is pretty strong. I can’t be seen without a mark on my finger after Election Day. In a world of self-righteous people trying to uphold dharma, I would be a complete misfit. In any case these days if I open my mouth I am a conversation ender. The other day in the car while I was dropping some the kids to the station on the way home, somebody spoke about Rahul’s speech and Modi. I opened my mouth and there in three minutes I achieved absolute silence. WTF. When you simply question belief and ask tough questions people are forced to think twice. And that’s the first time they do it and hence the silence. But I have learnt to keep my comments to myself over these years. Keep quiet and let the party flow. Don’t kill it.

Forces of economics and collective human nature are not easy to fight. The trick is to manage the situation and push for small bits of change. You must have your philosophy in place and then slowly work towards it. Small bits of change will push the policy over a period of time and thence the population. Very rarely would big change be effected in a small period of time and rarely in the way that you would have envisaged. Being nimble and smart and taking small steps towards a direction is what gets you anywhere. That is the advice of an older man, I guess.

Also I came across this video which sums up the entire equation. Here is a bunch of comedians who figured out that this all tamasha is a bunch of crap and designed to have divisive opinions where no underlying exists. It’s a house of cards. A fuc*&INg Ponzi scheme.

That is the role of free speech in life. The ability for people to bluntly say what they want, poking fun at anything they wish to criticize. It’s so bloody important. I have tried my best to keep that in the house. One must poke fun openly and bluntly and one must have the grace to accept it and also have a retort. Most of the time we are impervious to such blatant humor at our expense. I try and be open to it. While in a position of power in the office in my team, I am naturally the big guy who crack jokes at anyone. But then there are some in the team who cock a snook at my position and decide that I am fair bait as well. They are the young and the irreverent and they keep me on my toes. These are few and far in between and I keep them very close to my heart. They keep me in check.

At home I am fair game for Jispa to also similarly be made fun of. She can take my case anytime. Sometimes I do have to check her and tell her she is being rude but most of the time I hope I am fair game. Such fun ribbed criticism is what keeps us in check. The ability to say openly and to accept while having a retort is what keeps the lubrication of a family going. Jasmine is slightly more sensitive to this. She gets upset and that time I tell Jispa or make a sign to stop. Not everyone can handle it easily, with a sleight of hand. But not having it altogether is a crime I do not want to commit.

It’s not been an easy journey for me to be happy about such comments. It has taken time and effort and bit of wisdom and self-belief topped by oodles of self-deprecation for me to reach here. I had two elder siblings who would push me to the edge with their brand of humor. Then I had NCC where the atmosphere is pretty unforgiving. Then was office. You learn over a period of time. Sometimes I give Jispa a hard time and Jasmine tells me to stop irritating her. But I told Jasmine ‘you Jispa doesn’t have siblings. She is not going to be picked up on by anyone at home. I give her a bit of a hard time sometimes just to fill in the gap. She should learn to be picked up on and learn to deal with it in a smart way’. My siblings were pretty tough on me. Pretty tough, especially for someone who kept loyalty and love as the primary standard. So it was a bit of a letdown. I am not doing the same to Jispa, just a few gentle nudges towards what having a set of irritable siblings mean.

Who would have guessed  - the health of a democracy can be gauged at its ability to laugh!