Welcoming the Nouvel An

Fellow homo sapiens! We have almost completed yet another revolution around the Superstar. :) Cheers to this world which has rubbished predictions of destruction on Dec 18th- 3 years and 3 days ahead of the D-day pronounced by the Mayan calendar- incidentally the day that brought 'Vettaikaran' to the theatres. :-p
2009..
Far better than 2008 to me, personally. I made a lot of new friends, within college and outside. Lost my 10 pointer status (I hated being called a nerd because of it!). Had a lot of those cherished 'getting-scolded-while-suppressing-sniggers' moments. Wrote a decent poem (RoadSpeak). Travelled alone by air for the first time. Progressed from "mujhe hindi malum nahin" to "mujhe hindi thoda thoda malum". Got an idea of what corporate life is. Organized and went on a girls-only PV (I've proudly described the excursion in a previous post). Did a couple of mini-projects (they are not too great, by the way)...
India in 2009-
She completed 62 years of independence. The Hand that ruled was allowed to hold office here for yet another half decade, after witnessing some really pathetic and hopeless election-time party switches, coalitions, hate speeches, confessions, ignorance-claimings and so on.. A lot of old dust was raked up- Kandahar, Tytler, Masjid, Sikhs, PoTA, 26/11- the mud slinging and the resulting stench nauseated the citizens. Finally, King Cong was chosen by the rational common man.
Chandrayaan-I failed prematurely, though it had fulfilled most of its requirements by then. A Nobel prize to an Indian-born mind. Several Indian-borns attacked by racists abroad.
On the terror front, we have put up a strong defence against external anti-social forces this year, but the Home Ministry is still struggling against the internal threat posed by the naxalites and the pro-Telengana and pro-Gorkhaland activists. India is in need of a stronger Hand in these areas.
In the field of entertainment, India took a giant leap when ARR and Resul Pookutty did us all proud by bagging Oscars. Michael Jackson's drug-induced death shortly before he was scheduled to start a musical tour, sent shock waves throughout the world. To the contrary, Indian Doyennes of music- D.K.Pattammal (Carnatic) and Gangubhai Hanghal(Ghazal) passed away peacefully.
In the field of sports, we saw Sachin completing 20 successful years at the pitch and Federer completing his career Grand Slam. There were also the negative phases. Michael Phelps had to apologise for his Marijuana intake. More seriously, Andre Agassi admitted to having taken stimulant drugs during his successful come-back tournament in 1997 and having lied to the authorities about it. If that was not bad enough, another poster boy for sports, Tiger Woods has lost his reputation due to allegations of infidelity.
The Copenhagen summit failed to produce fruitful results and we are still discussing on how to save the environments while concrete jungles are replacing the actual forests and the dark clouds over the earth are indicators of not just the coming rainfall but also of our downfall due to increasing pollution.
Hope- the one white insect from Pandora's box that helps us survive till date. I do hope for a lot of things to happen in 2010- among them is the wish for the world to not come apart in 2010 or later...
Happy New Year, folks!

Ups and Downs

Almost a year.. Few improvements, remarkable regressions and mostly the constant state of ignorance (which is bliss only as long as you are ignorant of the ignorance itself).

The "Soft" Power

A party that swept the polls with a vast majority just half a year back now faces deposition from its very own stronghold of votes. Parties today seem to be making a habit of buckling under pressure from regional elements. Be it the BJP which gave in to the demand of the Reddy brothers, albeit not wholeheartedly, or the ruling Congress which has lost its sheen after declaring that a separate Telangana state would be formed, money, power and influence are ruling over rationalism, secularism and unity of the nation as a whole. If the nation is secular, inclusive and does not tolerate regional/caste-based politics, the Shiv Sena should have been banned long ago and the MNS should have been nipped at the bud by a strong ban after the outrageous attack on innocent Railway Employment Applicants.
India is not as strong as she should be. A soft power, it sure is. Quoting Mr. Shashi Tharoor's wonderful speech at TED'09, India as a soft power can attract other nations with its values, ethics and technologically strong youth power. But it is too soft for its own well being. The vibrations of Mr.Chidambaram's microphone (after his declaration of the intention of forming a separate Telengana region) would have hardly died down before the Gorkhas started demanding a separate Gorkhaland. If this is satisfied too, then our Marathi Manoos will start fasting-unto-death. Then maybe Mr. Karunanidhi will fast (with three air-coolers focussed on him, lying in a comfortable bed, in a shaded spot) approximately between breakfast and lunch times one fine day, asking for a Tamil State where only Tamil is taught to all the commoners' children(while the children from rich and powerful families are sent abroad to study at Cambridge, Oxford, Harvard or Yale).
And here comes the worst part of this separation fiasco. The kids will then have a lot more states with their capitals to be remembered, their climatic variations and agricultural patterns to be studied in detail, in Geography! I pity my one-year old nephew who is happily dismantling things and uttering nonsensical words without any clue as to how these images he sees in the TV are going to make him carry a heavier Geography book in future.

The Perfect Government- Non-Existent.

It has been 17 years since the Babri Masjid demolition and we now know for sure what we knew already, thanks to Justice Manmohan Singh Liberhan. The key leaders of the BJP and RSS have been indicted for inciting the flame of communal violence which then spread throughout the nation which, according to the Constitution and our school Civics textbooks, is secular. We cringe when we think back to the time when the persons, who face criminal charges now, had been elected by us to rule the country for 5 years at the Centre. We are happy that the BJP was not able to win the latest Lok Sabha elections.
While all this is true, also equally veracious is the fact that the party which is ruling the nation currently is nowhere near being described as honest and righteous. A quarter of a century ago, the nation witnessed the largest ever Genocide since Independence. The assassination of Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards (who were allegedly enraged at her having triggered a rampage at their holy shrine), did not in any way call for a massacre of all Sikhs in India. The incident is and will for ever be a horrible scar on any secular face that the Congress tries to put up. Jagdish Tytler may have been barred from contesting the polls and a Sikh may have been appointed the Prime Minister, but these will do nothing to replace the lost loved ones from the many Sikh families, run and brought up by a single parent (mother), if any, in most cases.
This brings to mind the discussion of the possible stability and goodness of a government that could probably have been formed by the recently created (and soon disoriented) Third Front. That event can only be described by a Poisson Distribution of probability, for it was known to be very much impossible right from the very beginning. Well, assuming that the impossible had somehow occurred, there would have been a certain consequence- the rapid breaking up of the disparate parties in the coalition.
I don't even want to discuss the comical "Fourth Front" formed by Lalu Prasad and Ram Vilas Paswan! Another Poisson must be born to invent a probability distribution for such an occurrence!
So, this brings me to the title of this post- a perfect government. Does such a thing ever exist?
Mani Ratnam may have portrayed youth entering the Parliament to bring in reforms and a breath of fresh air in 'Ayutha Ezhuthu'/'Yuva'. But I feel that there is a significance in the movie ending even as the young guys enter the Parliament after being elected. There is no assurance of a honest government even then. After all, human beings do tend to get corrupted by the attraction of money and power. Even if one single person tries to be proper, the environment simply doesn't let him/her to be so. Movies like 'Mudhalvan' can only be movies. Not reality.
Asking for an impeccable governance and honest rulers (though this might not be a valid generalization, I take the liberty of considering a majority who are not) or claiming to be able to provide one is pure Hypocrisy! Let's avoid it and try to be pragmatic and elect whichever government provides us an optimum amount of benefits, after all the trade-offs involved.

The fog has cleared!

All other options have been positively ruled out. Belling the CAT will be my first and foremost goal.

While I had realized that I am no scientist-material after attending a workshop on Research last weekend, a sudden clarity of thought came about two days ago in a post-lunch DSP class and that was when it dawned upon me that I had fallen for a managing-related career somewhere along the tumultuous path of frustrating indecision that I had been traversing, for the past several months. Now that I see the light at the end of the tunnel, I must make out my path (which by the way is pretty tortuous and not as straight as it seems) to reach it, overcoming distracting obstacles and learning (by practice) the art of multi-tasking.