tiny steps

Today morning while Jasmine was dropping Jispa off to school, she called me. Jispa has a question “is religion compulsory? Like is it compulsory to have a religion or in an official form you can leave it blank?”. Hmm interesting thought. “I dont know for sure, but I think its optional to have a religion, but many government forms and school forms don’t allow you to say ‘none’”. “but isn’t it my fundamental right to practice whatever religion I want; don’t we have that as a right?”. “well yes, you have but democratic society moves a little slow for this. See things move slowly. Earlier there was the ballot paper and people who dint want to vote for anyone, went and made two stamps on the paper, invalidating their vote. It was a form of protest in which they also got to the booth and ensured that no one cast a dummy vote on their behalf and they refused to choose amongst the crap. Once the electronic voting machines came in this was not possible and hence the NGOs lobbied for “none of the above”. So now you can press none of the above (NOTA) and exercise your right to vote for no one. Yes – right now, even if NOTA wins the majority, nothing will happen and the politician with the majority is still elected but slowly it will make an impact. It will embarrass people and who knows what this will entail in the future. Similarly, today on the Aadhar card, you can choose your sex as male, female or transgender. This is also a big thing in the long run. These are small steps for now that will have greater impact. Democratic society moves slow but it moves with the collective will of the people. Things today will have impact tomorrow. While you were always free to be an atheist, people happily just put in their father’s religion in the form. Now it will slowly change.” Then I remembered and recounted a story of a friend of mine who married inter caste and had a kid. They fought a lot with the authorities and left the religion on the birth certificate blank.

Read story here http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Repository/ml.asp?Ref=VE9JTS8yMDA5LzEyLzI3I0FyMDAxMDQ

Yes, democracy moves slowly and that is by design. It’s also something to do with collective will and conscience of the people. Jispa and I went to see the Guardians of the Galaxy 2. We now see super hero movies without torturing Jasmine. It’s been a great thing to have father daughter time outs watching these action movies. Before the movie starts in India, the national anthem is played. This has been a source of much dispute with the liberals objecting to this jingoism and some refusing to stand up. It is after all not mandatory to stand during the national anthem (its hugely controversial). This has issues with the law and the jealous jingots using force on the rationals. So before this movie – one guy was sitting down and he was obviously a foreigner. Jispa looked at me and spoke to me on that. I explained that “yup, you have a choice to stand or sit but yes, the rest of the populace will jam your happiness if you don’t. But more importantly, it is a question of collective conscience. I may not stand for the anthem but I also realize that I am in India and that this small act of sitting is disrespectful to my hosts. Yes, choose to sit that’s ok. But being insensitive about it in public is a bit of a wrong thing to do. Of course we shouldn’t be on our part too irritated about it. He should understand and we should as well. Intolerance towards people sitting is the worst.”

I don’t pray but I also respect that people believe in the stone that placed in the middle of the sanctum sanctorum and I must appreciate that. I must behave in line with the custom, if I choose to be a part of it. If not, I can exercise my choice and sit at home. Mere misguided rebelliousness if no use to society.

I think I have come a long way. When I was young, I wanted to join the army and fight for my country. Then I would stand anywhere, even alone, when the national anthem was being played. I hated local societies as local political shit shat. Today I have done a complete volte face. Now I am a non-believer in the concept of nation hood and a complete believer in local societies. The impact is greatest when local. Local societies can do much more to change their life and that of their progeny than what nation states can do. And that is granted to them by the construct of the law. Change happens in small things and in small steps. It takes the bearings of age to temper the brute of youth. Things are not what they seem and solutions are never what immediately occur to you. Multiple sides, angles and implications are required to understand the impact of anything. It takes effort and sometimes – inaction. Breathe.

Social Capital

Sometimes Jasmine gets quite mad at us. Us – meaning Jispa and me. According to her we feed of each other and get worse.

Often I am accused of being too strong a personality for my child. One friend was chastising me for loving history and teaching it in a way that makes it interesting. She told me that what I was doing wasn’t fair. This was, thanks to me Jispa will love history and that I will be responsible for it. Oh come on yaar. Another day, quite recently one friend told me that its not fair that thanks to me Jispa won’t read fiction. Now what did I do? I hate fiction. I don’t read fiction but I don’t stop Jispa from reading it. Of course if she reads too much fiction I would ask her about it, hopefully learn from her point of view and understand her interests. I would get into debates about how fiction is a waste of time and effort and money, especially when there truck loads of non-fiction there to be consumed, and equally interesting. I may even win the debate but the final decision is for Jispa. She needs to know what she wants in life. And is it my fault that I am a personality, a large personality around the house with a  strong point of view. I read, I understand, I think and then I transfer. These days I have become less opinionated than before. I have become more circumspect. I ask questions to Jispa more than I teach her. She is free to think of her views and keep them but I am free to question them or ask her about another point of view. What’s wrong in that? I think not talking openly about views, counter views, questions and counter arguments is the most dangerous thing to do. The most dangerous question is not having one.

Many people will think that I am feeding Jispa opinions, debate and argument. They will think that I am feeding Jispa with my world view. What they fail to understand is that I am trying to merely instill in her a dose of skepticism. An irreverence of sorts. The ability to question everything. At one extreme it will give you no joy as you cannot trust anything. No love will be clean and unspoiled and unquestioned. But that is not the objective. The objective is to have the ability to question it and yet be comfortable with it. This is the essence of what I seek to teach.

These days picking a book to read has become a little difficult. Whatever book you pick up, there is a healthy dose of criticism in all of it. Every hypothesis that a book seeks to promote will have a strong and valid sounding counter argument. Today morning as I was sitting on the potty seat and was considering starting a new book sample  that I had downloaded on my kindle. It came recommended and had caught my eye but at the same time, had been critiqued. My thoughts flashed to another book sample that I was reading, just the day before. That one spoke about the ‘Wheat Belly’. That book’s premise is that we as humans should stop eating wheat as it causes all sorts of bad things, including making us fat. Ever since I was diagnosed as being lactose intolerant, food has become a bit of an obsession with me. I have spent a lot of time thinking and reading about food. One thing I realized was that Indians are pretty new to wheat in their diet. Only about the last 60 years or so, after the green revolution. But it became so widespread in our diet that we did not realize that our grand-parents itself hardly ate wheat. Including the granary of India – Punjab. It becomes difficult to read any book, or understand anything, or feel anything for that matter with a complete no holds barred approach and unbridled enthusiasm. I end up like today on the potty seat, smiling to myself. Ok – may this is interesting but also what are the chances of this being true. How time do I spend on book, trying to understand the author’s “POINT OF VIEW”. The same with people. A wise man told me that “don’t get close to anyone. You will find chinks even in God from a close distance.” This last one is a challenge. How do you relate to people, love them, be with them and not be close to them and not see their chinks? Possibly the answer is to acknowledge these chinks. To accept them, to anticipate them and smile when you find them. Because these deficiencies are just their but yours. These are the color of your eye glasses as you see them. I like seeing them and noticing them and smiling to myself. On a negative spiral I do get irritated with them. They have the ability to hurt me. But as Jasmine says, you love these people and you love spending time with them so just simply do that. Why think more. She is right. That’s the simple part of life, that co exists with the complicated part of life. One cannot let the presence of one interfere with the joy of experiencing the other.

These days, Jispa is coming to my lectures and giving me valuable feedback. She wants me to make these lectures a bit more interesting and wants me to be a little less strict when dealing with unruly elements. Sometimes I scold my kids just to keep them in check. I started this new thing of having a test in class basis some reading material I give them in advance that I want them to read and come. This created a weird situation. I had more than 100 kids attending my class. Oh dear me. I gave the test and gave an open offer for kids to leave. Some left but still a majority stayed. Teaching 100 kids is utter useless. An absolute waste of time. It’s like a TED talk. It becomes a monologue. No interaction, no joy. So, this time, I have made the test but the kids are free to access this online test from anywhere. If you have read the material and you are getting the test right, then you deserve the right to bunk class. That is the truth. So why should I be so fussed on attendance. Let’s see what happens today. I only want around 50 kids to attend. The genuine interested ones only!

Let’s see. Also I am impressed with Jispa’s ability to give me feedback on my teaching. She is not directly critical but suggests what she has seen as good examples and what she would enjoy. I like her style of trying to make her dad improve. Very very cool.

Coming back to the first point. According to Jasmine, Jispa and me feed off each other. I think that’s true. We tend to like similar stuff and we keep irritating mom with it. As of now, Jasmine thinks both of us are overtly anti social. Jasmine told Jispa that’ you are just following your dad without thinking. You both think that it is just cool to be anti social.” Anti social is loosely used here. We don’t mean we are anarchists and that we create unrest. Here it simply means that we are happier alone, without the really dumb people who we meet outside the confines of our home. I guess you can definitely call us arrogant, after that last statement. But I guess, when you meet so many opinionated people who don’t read and who don’t think its becomes difficult to socialize and mix with so many jokers.

Coming to another interesting point of view. Recently I heard of and read about a concept of “Social Capital” by Robert Putman. He wrote a book – Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community which was an extension of an essay he wrote - http://archive.realtor.org/sites/default/files/BowlingAlone.pdf . Wikipedia says “Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community is a 2000 nonfiction book by Robert D. Putnam. It was developed from his 1995 essay entitled Bowling Alone: America's Declining Social Capital. Putnam surveys the decline of social capital in the United States since 1950. He has described the reduction in all the forms of in-person social intercourse upon which Americans used to found, educate, and enrich the fabric of their social lives. He argues that this undermines the active civil engagement, which a strong democracy requires from its citizens.”

This made me think and rethink. I have been in the past been critical of every one’s social instinct and every little social interaction. Especially when it is all centered around food. My gymkhana organizes it festive functions around food. Independence day, republic day, gudi padava and so on. My building also has a feast on similar days. To my untrained and arrogant mind, I saw it aa waste. An indulgence of sorts by people who just wanted to gather around and eat. And may be so. But now I realise - it is a valuable creation of social capital. If you organize a stupid get together, no one will come. But if you center it with free food, people come , interact, talk and create bonds. Food is a necessity and also a chore. It is a joy to have and a pain to create. Free food banquets attract people, help them open up and talk to each other. From here on, you create social capital. From social capital, you strengthen democracy. Local clubs, associations and groups of people coming together for whatever cause they want, fundamentally help create a sense of ownership and from there self-governance shall rise. Politicians have long understood this and created exploitable social capital by creating smaller groups for common purpose. The Shiv Sena in Mumbai organized itself through branches or shakas and established wada pav centres and reading clubs across the cities. The politicos organised cricket and kabbadi events and patronized clubs. Even the celebrations in my gymkhana and housing society are to my mind politically motivated – as in organized by the secretary with a view to keeping the population happy and fed.

Social Capital is important and one must be a part of it. I am guilty of not understanding it well enough and not participating in it whole heartedly. Possibly I can’t change now, possibly it’s not for me, but it is not right for me to sit and critique the formation of it. School and colleges have these clubs. Housewives have their kitty parties. Societies and gymkhanas function out of it. Shut up and use it, exploit it, encourage it, guide it.

One small thing – the author talks about the steady demise of social capital and one thing he blames is TV and internet. But I guess, he did not realise that Internet on mobile is giving us Whatsapp groups. Here social capital is again getting formed, and strongly so. Nice. Lets wait and watch.