Within 4 months of its occurrence, the Delhi Gang Rape has completely disappeared from public discourse. Even The Hindu, which reported the case with maturity and persistence, no longer prints the details of court proceedings on the first page. And this case is supposedly in a “fast track court”. So much is wrong at so many levels: broken judicial system, unaccountable government, and most tragically, apathetic us. Good news is: if we all contribute just a little time, thought and resources to even one cause we truly care about, big collective change can happen. The world has always been tilted more towards wrong than right. Thankfully, we live in a time where a few click on our laptops can help set that balance right.
You Only Live Once
'You only live once but, if you do it right, once is enough.'
Mae West
On dogs
Mansi loves animals. In Berkeley, she spent a lot of her time working with the Berkeley Animal Care Services. She would attend to dogs and cats, take them for walks and help out in their care. My only contribution to this task in all the months she did it, was to drive her to the care shelter and pick her back up. In spite of multiple opportunities to accompany her to the shelter, I never did. I wasn’t too much of an animal enthusiast. It’s just something I had never paid attention to: whether I loved animals was a question I had never asked myself.
On our evening walks, we would usually find ourselves sitting in a park, watching people playing with their dogs. Berkeley is dog country: well, dog and cyclist country. To think of it, all world should be dog and cyclist country: people and vehicles have not proven to be very successful alternatives. Anyways I digress. Watching these dogs play, I started paying more attention to their behavior. What struck me first was dogs have very unique personalities: I could spot a playful one, a mischievous one, a bored old one, an unfriendly one that really didn’t want to hang out with other dogs. Some of these dogs would get bored of fellow dogs, and stray our way. When some dogs surround you and start acting cute, you have little choice but to pat them. So, over these evening walks, I started observing and even liking dogs.
The evening walks continued after moving back to Delhi. Like always, Mansi would pay attention to dogs, only this time they were everywhere and not in a park. She would stop often to either pet a stray, or buy a packet of biscuit and feed him. I often stood at arm’s distance and shouted cautions such as “don’t touch him – he’s probably infected!” Sometimes, I would make ridiculous statements like “you don’t have to feed them you know, they are strays and are experts at finding food. Your feeding them affect their scavenging skills.” I think what’s more ridiculous than that statement, is that I believed in it.
In some ways, Delhi is more of a dog country than Berkeley. For all the comforts and rights dogs enjoy in the West, a lot of animals with declining health and no owners are euthanized there. In Delhi, stray dogs thrive because they are not “put away”. They survive on what we throw away, sleep under cars, play and fight with each other, and die when it’s time. Bottom line: Delhi is a good place for an animal lover who wants to help. On one of her evening walks, Mansi spotted an old bearded man carrying a big bag of biscuits feeding every stray in the neighborhood. He was being followed by an army of dogs, all vying for his affection and some biscuits. She came home and told me of the Pied Piper of dogs she had spotted. I knew what she was talking about: I had seen him feed stray dogs ever since I was a child. I was happy to know he was still alive, and still at it.
Few days later, Mansi came back from a walk and told me she had spotted that uncle, and struck conversation. His name is AK Goyal. He told her that feeding strays was his way of experiencing pure, selfless love, and that he felt the affection he received from these animals far outweighed the petty price of feeding them. Mansi asked if we could help him (I was auto-signed up for the activity by her). He said that in the park right in front of our house lived two dogs, and he could used help in feeding them since his old dog Manu who always accompanied him refused to go that far (our apartment is some distance from his).
Mansi was very happy to be given this responsibility. The next evening, we bought a large bag of rusks, and left for the park with some of it. Dogs are good at hiding themselves when they want to, so we had to look around for dogs that fit his description: one old, white male and a smaller, brown female. We spotted them, threw some “come hither” gestures their way and waved the bag of biscuits. Reluctantly they approached us. The female was shaking and terrified of what we may do, but couldn’t help herself getting drawn towards food. We made two piles of rusks, and left.
The next day, we returned in the evening. They recognized us: the male came running but the female was still scared, and approached slowly. We fed them, and were on our way again. Over the next few weeks, they understood we were harmless (makes me think of how many people would’ve just kicked them around for the fun of it, they seemed scared of people in general). They would be joyous when we approached them, run around in circles, wag their tales furiously and escort us to the park gate when we left. All this affection rubs off on you; it did on me. I lost my reservation against strays, started patting them, and now usually come back home with their licks on my hands and sometimes even on my face.
Like Goyal uncle had said, as I got regular in feeding them, I realized they really were about pure selfless love. Feed a dog once, and he’s all yours. One small act of kindness is enough to convince him that you’re worthy of his love. And dogs always seem to have a lot of love to give away. We’ve been feeding them for four months now, pretty much without fail. It’s a routine: Mansi or I go to the park alone or together, they come running to us, insist we pat them, and only after we’ve played with them for some time do they graduate to eating their food. A lot of times, they accompany us all the way back to our apartment gate.
We bumped into Goyal uncle one of these days, and told him we had been feeding the dogs regularly. He smiled and told us he had given the two names (he has named every stray dog in the neighborhood, and some smart ones even respond to their names). He called the older male Buddhu, and the petite female Chhoti. Good names, I thought. Buddhu really is a little dumb, and Chhoti is pretty small for stray standards.
Everyday, I look forward to the 10 minutes I spend feeding Buddhu and Chhoti. To connect with another creature: not through words, or actions, but just through touch, makes me believe love can connect different species. Under this skin, maybe all of us living beings are the same: hungry for love, compassion, and some patting.
Buddhu chilling with Mansi
Chhoti is not camera shy.
Life Lessons Recap…
Here are some life lessons I am reflecting on this Saturday afternoon. Now, I pass you my wisdom:
1. Truth is definitely stranger than fiction. You just need to find the people who live that strange truth, which is a fraction of the large human population. Surrounding yourself with the right or wrong people can make all the difference. If your truth is strange for the people you’re with, the problem isn’t the strangeness of your life as much as it is the dullness of theirs.
2. Humans are simply animals in clothes. They live in a concrete jungle, minimize risk in their daily lives, and will abandon all morals when their survival is at stake. So really, humans are simply animals in clothes. Once this truth is internalized, it’s easy to lose fear of people and also forgive them for their more-often-than-not evil ways.
3. Learning to engineer the mind is tougher than mastering any external force. It is also more rewarding than any external victory. It is a controlled mind that can create joy in misery. An uncontrolled mind can find misery in heaven.
4. Everything around us is an impediment to controlling the mind. From the people eager to learn everything about us to social media sites that force us to paint a picture of a happy life, everything forces us to look outwards. In all this relationship-balancing, success-painting and errand-running, the only person ignored is our own selves. How do you feel every time you log off Facebook? Do you feel “Aah, that was the best 10 minutes I spent today.” Or do you feel “Really? Did I just spend my time liking pictures of what people ate for lunch this Saturday? Won’t it all just mean crap (literally) within the next day?”
5. So really, the sum of 1,2,3 and 4 is this: don’t stress about what you see and project outwards. There’s too much chaos. There’s chaos in our homes, on the streets, in the Parliament, and in the galaxy. And one human lifetime is very short to fix all this chaos. There’s a sea inside of us though, waiting to be discovered. Diving inwards may make people – weird, reclusive, whimsical. But it just may make you happier. So, don’t care, and do your thing.
Thinking Cinematically: The people's prerogative
It is a difficult thing to love a popular art form, especially film. It means that one must accept that there is an assumption of equality of opinion amongst the public in relation to the form in which you have chosen to invest yourself. That is to say, most people feel qualified to watch a film and give their opinion of its quality.
Sanjay's note: Last week, I was arguing with some friends who kept insisting Argo was one of the best films of 2012. I disagreed, because I felt a good film should have dealt with Iranian characters more deeply, and provided an insight into the mindsets of both sides involved in the stand-off (Iran and America). My friends thought I was taking the film too seriously, and that Argo does qualify as a great film because it's a taut thriller and a complete entertainer.
This blog sums up my feelings on why such difference of opinion arises on films. Different people seek and see different things in films, and hence people's own perceptions and experiences color their review of films. Do read if you're a cinephile!
Rishtedaar-inspired rap
Note: Maama Maami mentioned here are fictional. Real maama maami are very sweet people. “Maama Maami” here epitomize a certain category of folks, who we all encounter in our lives.
Ghar baithe shaanti se gatak raha tha chai,
Jab maama maami ghus aaye andar bin ghanti bajaaye,
Boxers mein ghoomna maana jaata hai indecent,
Jaldi daala pyjama aur lagaai thodi si scent.
“Kaisa chal raha hai beta” mamaji ne poocha,
Bola kar raha hoon kuch entrepreneurship sa,
“Kitna kamaa lete ho” aaya maami se question,
Diya answer toh dekha unke chehre pe frustration.
“Beta yeh sab theek hai, par naukri kab karoge”,
“Kuch saalon mein apni galti ki keemat bharoge”,
“Tumhaari umar ke ladke ban gaye CEO”,
“Monu tumse chhota hai, khareedi hai Pajero”.
Aisi baatein sunke mera mann hua vyaakul,
3 ghante baad maama maami ho gaye gul,
Waapas bhari apne pyaale mein maine phir chai,
Told myself I’ll live once, only defeat is not to try.
Nahi hai Pajero, par Wagon-R ki jai,
Cannot go to Rome, but Taj paas hi hai,
Desk pe din bhar baith khud ko deta tha gaali,
Kiye kuch experiments, toh mann mein hai khushaali.
Aamir Khan ki movie “3 idiots” zaroor dekhein,
Usme ek paatth hai, agar aap sabak lein,
Jeena ek baar toh phir darke kyon jeena,
Chase your random dreams, mauka milega yeh phir na.
Failure hai overrated, kuch nahi khota,
Thoda adjustment hai, but who kab nahi hota,
Zanjeerein hain artificial tod sakte ho,
Zindagi ki gaadi kabhi bhi mod sakte ho.
Many fleeting thoughts
A lot has been written about the tragic incident that occurred on a Delhi bus the night of December 16th, 2012. An innocent, regular girl, wanting no more than to live a regular life, had to undergo heartbreaking suffering. On December 29th, she departed, leaving us all to continue living in a cruel, insane world.
She is gone. The aftermath has consisted of a national outrage against sexual harassment of women in India, many protests, and a dead government waking up to its people’s demands. An atmosphere of conflict and rage still persists all over India, especially in Delhi where I live.
On a personal and spiritual level, I have felt a number of things in the last many days. Thought of jotting them down here.
- Karma does not explain suffering. How does one explain the suffering that girl went through, on that bus, at the hands of those deranged men? The simplistic explanation offered by Karma, that we pay in this life for actions in our past life, seems perverse in this case.
- Life truly is unpredictable. Our plans are made of dust, and we are constantly fooling ourselves into believing they are concrete.
- I have always believed that the litmus test of fairness is: how do you treat and co-exist with those less powerful than you. Humans have always failed this test. Rich countries exploit poor countries, men exploit women, humans exploit the helpless animal kingdom. As a species, we are morally bankrupt. Other animals never take from nature more than they want. When they fight, it is for the existential need of food and reproduction, never for greed.
I believe in smiling at life’s absurdities, and moving on. However, the suffering of the girl haunts my mind. I can simply pray that her family finds peace someday, and that we can do better as a society in providing a safer country for everyone, especially women and children.
