What life means to me?

To be honest I don’t know otherwise I would have achieved it in last 26 years. But I have vague idea what it is not.
It is not about passing time. You think you are passing time but in reality time is passing you. World is moving on and you remain there. But, world for everyone is different thing. But still it’s moving too fast isn’t it? In geographical sense also.
You get unknown amount time to visit this place called earth and the moment your time gets over you will be thrown out without any hesitation. Irrespective of class, caste, religion, race, sex, location, status you get the same treatment. Alas, there is one thing in world which treats everyone equally. Communists and Socialists can find solace in it.
Tough question I used to ask before. Why am I here on this planet? Am I just a by product of action of my parents or is there any specific purpose of my being on this planet. After a while I stopped asking this question. Because I realized that it’s you who has to make a call. Make it meaningful, purposeful, eventful. It’s you who is the king of your own destination, your own present and in turn mostly your future. Well why mostly? Let’s discuss it later.
For me life is a journey. Say train journey. Destination is fixed. Death. Path you don’t know. Co-passengers you can’t choose. Who will get on and who will get down you can’t choose. You may feel that life is steady but its not. Journey may not be jerky but that doesn’t mean that it’s not moving. It depends how far you can see. If you only see who is seating next to you, you may not feel much difference. You will feel when that person gets down and bid good bye or change compartment or station or train itself. But if you see closely its ever changing. The one who was standing and struggling initially may be sitting comfortably. The one who was sitting comfortably had to change train and now he is struggling. There are few who come with reservation. But of course they can move up higher in order only if they want to do it.
And for most of us life is like journey no idea about path, stoppages, diversions, or anything. We just follow our co-passengers. If they give GRE we give GRE. If they say MBA is good we go for MBA. If elder person says this is good we go for that one. But does elderly means bigger vision and better understanding of train system? Better understanding of your vision? Are we going on the path of our choice or going on path which someone has carved for us, someone has thought it is good for us or we are in rat race competing fiercely but doesn’t know why we are competing.
Money never attracted me in a big way. I can't say money doesn't attract me. But I have never persued dream of being billionaire. I have dreamed of it. But I didnt find it attractive enough. Because it cant be a goal. Money cant be an end it has to be a by product of your effort. We must enjoy our work, effort, hardship.

But still we think if we have car, house and high paying job we will be happy. We think if we will have pretty girl friend to freak out and envy our friends we will be happy. We think if we settle in west we will be happy. We go for movie to find happiness, fun. We go for dinner to find happiness. We do many other things. But are we really happy? Can complete and ever lasting happiness be attained? What do you think of this life? For me its just survival. Comfortable survival. It’s meaningless. It doesn’t matter whether I eat in the best hotel in the town or at road side dhaba. What matters is was food tasty? For me it doesn’t matter whether I’m in US or in India. Frankly I want to be in India. Because I feel I’m Indian. I cannot think of not being an Indian. Have we born to be just comfortable survivors?
What difference does it make? If you die today or tomorrow or 10 years later. What difference does it make to the world if you have 1 car, or motor cycle or 100 cars? Can you think beyond your own lunch, your own cloth, your sleep, your house, your toilet and your stomach! Even in a small way. Not mere tokenism but in a real constructive way. Can you? Do you? Will you? Come on. Did you leave some mark on the stone call history with the chisel called life is what matters. Your mark may be erased with time. Not every mark is as ever lasting as that of Buddha, Christ, Mohammed and Gandhi. But did you make any positive impact? Were you a liability or an asset? Did you construct something or destruct? Were you beneficial for the humanity or harmful? In my opinion it doesn’t matter at what level you play. It doesn’t matter whether your contribution is recognized immediately or not. What matters is are we human or just another insensitive yet socializing, talkative yet cunning, polite yet selfish mammals. Or are we just an economic entity in this commercialized world that earns, spends, pays taxes and generates revenue. Or are we just one in the mob? Who are we? Life is moving too fast but is there anything steady in us. Values? Beliefs? Commitments? That too is too flexible. World is too fast. Too fast than a villager like me can digest where yesterday’s big event is today’s no story. But still can we be steady yet moving, changing yet familiar. Same yet improved. Growing yet flourishing. Can it be possible? Or am I just dreaming at midnight? Sometimes it’s better to stop somewhere. So let me also stop.
I will find the rhythm of life to enjoy it. Are you also searching for it? Or the rarest breed who have chosen their path for journey. I envy you in that case.

How long will you cheat yourself?

PART (1)
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We had a rally on sunday in hyderabad. Around 500 people gathered and registered their protest. But in whole episode I saw and observed one thing. There was a whole lot other than those wonderful people who came to venue many people were very passive. And that’s 75% of the total lot. This is the lot who forward emails, comments on sites and do lots of talking about the issue at coffee table. You will feel that they really care. But when you ask them to come out in open and show your anger or frustration they will runaway. Their cell wont be reachable, they will be busy like anything etc.etc. Then some people I met who came and said Shreyas I would have definitely come only if you have informed me of venue time and date. How funny? I deliberately didn’t mention because those who are genuinely interested can definitely take effort to send one email asking me about details of rally. Well so I met few hypocrites whose talk and walk doesn’t match. I met few passive and reactive people whom you need to be brought to the venue like 1 year old kid. So how long will you cheat yourself? If you feel go and participate in a rally or dharna or anything that is happening around you. Yes, I forgot mention another big chunk of people. Scared ones. They are scared of coming physically to the venue. They will say don’t pull me into all this. They will watch ‘Rang De Basanti’ twice to alleviate their fears but they can’t. How long will you cheat yourself? Many people took view that it doesn’t matter. But I met one committed family who came to the venue. Parents and son. I salute their commitment to the cause. Proactivity in the blood. Apart from them when I went to Hyderabad central I saw thousands of people and I felt does their existence really matter? If you are a part of the system and if you don’t take a stand then do you really matter? Well even I was one of them. But will try to separate out myself. I want to see that my being in India and my love for India should show and should matter. Because if you don’t vote, if you don’t take position then there is no difference between an NRI and you. How long will you cheat your self? You are concerned about many issues but you don’t take position. You don’t invest you time and energy. May be you don’t find time because schedule is so tight then it’s understandable. If you are ignorant and not concerned about anything no issues. Enjoy your life. But when you sound you are concerned about the happenings around you and still when opportunity is right in front of you, you chose to ignore it and watch movie go to places sleeping what not. How long will you cheat yourself and others?

PART (2)
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One big and very wrong perception, in my opinion, we middle class guys have is politics is bad thing and one shouldn’t get into it. I think it is one of the reasons for many problems we have. Because some one has to govern. If you the better ones are not ready then remaining ones will take it. So either you take the responsibilities or they will. You may not have time to campaign and doing dharana and all other political agitations. But on Election Day its public holiday. Can’t you make good use of it by going to polling booth and casting your vote? But before that you need to register yourself as voter. So if you are not registered as voter then what is the difference between you and NRI? Both don’t vote. Both are concerned about happenings in India but both are not doing anything. As Gandhiji said ‘What you are capable of and what you do makes whole lot of difference’. You may be capable of doing many things but what you do is the only thing written in your life history. When will you stop cheating yourself? We need to stop blaming government and start taking responsibilities. Responsibility to educate children. Responsibility to provide sanitation. Many more responsibilities. I will take up couple of them in coming days.
We should work not only for our families and institutes where work but also for society. We cannot escape the blame that we are not doing enough to help people alleviate their poverty. Of course we not work on their behalf but we can educate them, give them ideas, give them small loans, so that those who are willing to come out of it will come out given proper direction and resources. When will we stop cheating our selves? If 30 crore well off people work to eliminate poverty of other 70 crores cant we remove it in just 10 years time? But is it so simple arithmetic? When different castes in rural India don’t play together, don’t eat together, don’t enjoy together don’t celebrate their functions and festivals together how do you think of integrating Indian and making it work in cohesive way? If we don’t feel that we are same if we feel that he is Brahmin, jat, kurmi, patel, baniya, rajput, dalit first then Gujarati, Punjabi, marathi, tamil, telugu and then Indian then how will you integrate them so that they work as one force? When Bihar is seen as a liability when north-east is fighting to severe its ties with us when J&K is burning every day when muslims are seen with suspicion and when muslims also see you with suspicion how will you integrate them?
By providing uniform education. Same quality education across the country. All teachers are trained to give quality education in their mother tongue or English or Hindi. They are provided with all the basic resources to provide decent education. Like all weather class rooms, black boards, duster, chalks, electricity, toilets, hostels. Teachers are trained repeatedly given workshops in vacations on how to teach and how to encourage positive attitudes. Bad teachers are sacked and good one are rewarded with good hike and promotions. Educationist and learned people are in the committee to advice education minister. HRD ministry is abolished and education ministry is re-instated. Education is given number one priority. Unless we do this and do it very soon new generation coming out every year won’t be very different from existing one. If we are talking of eliminating social injustice and social in-equality we must give education our number one priority. Instead of focusing on institutes of higher learning government should focus on primary education. Let industry take care of professional talent. They will create as many good engineers as they want. We must focus on primary education. How long will you cheat yourself? How fair is it to say that we have reserved seat for you on 15th floor but we won’t provide you with stairs to reach there. So those who can fly there somehow are welcome?
If we are sincere about eliminating poverty, in equality we must work towards social integration at primary school levels where different schools participate in different events. Not only once in a year but more often than that. More and more student to student interaction happens at primary school level. Then only you can think of integrating the society. Those children who have studied in air conditioned schools and never seen government school would never know the mentality of other guys. They are living in different worlds altogether. How will you make sure that students in government schools are as competent as students in private and international schools? Teachers. Let teachers interact in teaching workshops. Let them learn the same techniques. Let us make it mandatory for teachers to work one day in a week in public school. But before that one basic question of accountability and presence of teachers in government schools. Put cameras, buy digital cameras its cheap. Take picture of each teacher in every class they take and store it in digital library. Make it accessible to parents and public in general. We can use 1MP camera and 1 computer to store that data. Lets create an atmosphere where teaching becomes respectable job again so that people who enjoys teaching go in that occupation not those who can not be hired anywhere else land up in teaching. How long will you cheat your self that reservation is the answer to India’s problem of in-equality and social injustice? How long?