When AuntJi Shakes Hand!!

She was confused, being suddenly introduced to a lady of her age, in forties. Thinking, if she should take the initiative and give a loose hug to her, like most autiji’s do in India, or say Namaste, with folded hands like tradition Indian way of greeting. Both of them smiled at each other and there was a small pause. I was looking, curiously, to see how these upper-middle class ladies would greet each other. I was sure; they won’t do it like the way my grandma does. She hugs you until you concede. To my surprise, they both shook their hands. Now, I took a small pause to digest things. I had never seen before an AuntiJi shaking hand with another lady in India. An important thing to note here was that they were both dressed in simple suit-salwar, a tradition dress of woman in India. One thing is sure: Namaste is out.
May be the year 2009: The Year of Women Empowerment in India, worked out. I still remember my discussion with my dad few years ago about why women sit one-sided on the back of bikes with their husbands. My dad, who is really good at making theories on the spot , gave me some explanation about the discomfort a women would have with legs on both sides of a bike. In the last 1 month in India, I have been observing how women sit on bikes. Interestingly, they have proved my dad’s theory wrong. Leave aside the college girls, who are into the IPod world. I saw many mid-20s,30s women who were sitting behind their husband’s bike, holding them with both hands, with their legs on each side of the bike, surprisingly, all of it being in a suit-salwar.
Many may call is westernization. But, there is another factor to it-recognition. Indian women are recognizing their potential. They understand very well their contribution to the GDP. Many of the women are working, independent but still in culture. It will be interesting to see in the next 5-10 years when these empowered women would be driving bikes on roads. At least, some eyes will be rolled.

Static Shock

AAh!, What the heck! Every time I enter my office or home I say these words. Reason: Static Shock. Those of you who live near equator may not have had any such shocking experience because it is mostly a cold place's phenomenon. It is a light electric shock that you get when your body accumulates more charge with respect to a neutral conducting object. So, when you touch a metal object,like when I touch my office door nob,you get excited. At that moment you wish to punch or kick hard the door nob so that even it feels the same what you feel about it. But, believe me it is not a good idea; I learnt it from my experience.

After being victimized everyday, I tried to find the ways if static shock could be avoided. To my surprise, I found an electronic device for avoiding the static shock on the web which you would need to carry all the time;it was more than $10. After thinking more, I challenged myself, being an electronics engineer, to find some electronic law which can help me save my money and my life(though no one ever died of static shock but why take risk). I researched my undergrad book from freshman year when you are first told that electricity line to your home doesn't come from nowhere. Through Wikipedia I found out that if I touch a high resistance material then all the charge accumulated on my body would discharge slowly,thus I won't experience any shock. But the problem was that I would have to know before touching such a thing that I am charged. Unfortunately, I get to know this the moment I get discharged.

With no help from electronics/Wikipedia/Google/friends , I thought about a very different aspect of dealing with my enemies,static shock and my office door nob. As someone said,'If you can't win join them.' So, next morning, Knowingly that I am charged, I went to my roommates' office, who had not cleaned his dishes this morning, and I just poked him. Next morning, to my surprise,kitchen was clean. I started using my uncommon sense, and every morning I would meet new people to make friends with them and break away our infant friendship with just one hand shake. It is really fun to see people's expressions and what they say. I love when someone says,AAh!,What the heck!

Censorship?

In the last month,there was much hullabaloo about Google's pullout from China to protest against the Chinese government's censorship over the internet. Even the US government and various human right's groups supported Google, but Google didn't get much support from its corporate friends. According to Global Times, an online sister newspaper of a Chinese official newspaper, the Chinese government censors internet content for the betterment of its citizens and Google must abide by its laws in order to function in China.After all this debate, Google pulled out its search business from China.

Even I supported Google on its unprecedented move. After all, it is an era of FREE SPEECH. The US is the paramount example of free speech;here you can search anything you want from terrorist organization working against the US to free porn.Well, this is what is said at the international arena. However, recently, I observed that developed societies tend to change their rules when things seem against them.Here is what I observed:

I am the president of an organization which works for a particular group of residents living on campus. There was an email to the entire resident's email list from a lady expressing her concern over the cars not stopping at stop signs. Surprisingly, the matter went out of proportion;instead of replying to the sender, everyone was expressing his or her own views to the entire email list. From speeding cars, it went to educating kids abut crossing roads, taking all of the stop signs off the road,refraining from sending an email to the resident's list to celebrate 'Earth Day', and finally begging to stop all of this S#*@. It got much worse. For some, it was entertaining, waiting to see who sent what. For others, it was annoying, yelling, "WTF WTF." Overall, it was a serious issue.

I was waiting until the morning to see if people would calm down. I was planning to take the matter to the Facebook group. However, to my surprise, an email I sent to the resident's email list regarding some other matter didn't show up in my inbox,instead it went to a moderator. "A moderator" I asked myself,shocked. We never had any moderator before to censor our content. I pinched myself to make sure I was in the US.

After contacting someone in the office, I came to know that now every email to residents will go through a moderator, who will make sure the content is appropriate for the residents. After thinking for some time,I went back to the comments section of an article in Global Times about Google's unwise decision to pull out of china, and deleted my comment in which I had mentioned US, India, Europe as examples of countries for free speech.

I remember,I had faced the similar moral dilemma of finding out who is right or wrong when the US government had released the Human Rights report concerning china and other places in the world.I was torn,because at the same time it had given the permission under the Bush administration for some serious torture techniques to be used in the Guantanamo prison.

I believe that the scale of development is not a correct scale of any country's or civilization's human rights record. The real test of any country's human rights record is how it treats others when it is at the receiving end,all without bending the rules.

Gay Sardar

"That's so gay,"I have heard this sentence many times before, but quite a lot in the last week which has been extremely good. The interesting thing is the way it is being used in conversational English.
Many youngsters in the US use one of the most controversial words, Gay, as noun or an adjective but in different way. I noticed some of these guys using it as frequently as the other two most spoken words in US-Thank you and Fuck you. I think, as gays get more rights, probably, the use of the word gay would rank higher.
The very sights of two guys, who may be brothers, sleeping together activate the gay area of this young guy's brain. I am sure he would barely skip the chance to make some comment using the word 'gay.' As far as I know, the word gay as noun also means happiness. I came across an interesting use of it as an adjective. For example, one of my friends (whom I know from the last 7 days) was taking to his friend on phone. He was quite upset with him over some matter and said him that he (his friend) was having 'gay attitude.' It seems anything which sounds weird is characterized as gay.

Similarly, the word 'Sardar' is used in Indian community to describe a particular behavior. Actually, sardar is the noun used for Sikh males, who are considered as brave persons. However, our GenNext has gone a little far and with time the word sardar now has different meanings in conversational language. It has been dragged outside the boundaries of oxford and Cambridge. Nowadays, it is used to describe any silly act or stupid person. It is said that the highest population of sardars is found in jokes rather than their home land Punjab. Being a sardar I have learnt how to laugh at myself. For non-Punjabis the very introduction of any joke with sardar in it makes them laugh out loud. Any failed act may prove you to be a sardar. Any fickle joke means you are sardar. Making tea in pressure cooker means sardaron wale kaam. Always singing Punjabi songs in antakshri means hardcore sardar. In nutshell, any weird act can prove you to be a sardar or a relative of sardar.
So, what is common between a sardar in India and a gay? Well, sardar's fought against oppression, for freedom of religion and some other kinds of freedoms too. They came into existence from within the society and they created their own space by struggle and sacrifice. Similarly, in the 21 century, gays are also trying to create their space in the society. They are also fighting for their gay genes to be acceptable in the world. Now the point is that even if they get their constitutional rights in next 10-15 years, the word gay won't be used in its actual meaning. Like sardar, it will be used to describe any weird act in the world which has not been done before. Few more years then the dumbest thing would be described by the word 'Gay Sardar' which will not one bring a smile on others face but remind us that they have always contributed to the society.

What is Arranged-Love Marriage?

In India, in general if you are a girl between 20-25yrs with a college degree,then it is the ripe age to get married,or in case, you are modern (making use of your college degree, I mean earning) then you can buy more time. Similarly for guys, but they have to have some job along with above things.
Traditionally, before any marriage,the parents from both sides would inquire about each other's families through middle man and then sign the deal. There would be very little scope for the guy and the gal to know about each other. That's what is called arranged marriage. You know about your partner after you are married. I know many successful marriages happened this way.
But now at 24, it's my turn, I didn't realize it untill one of my friends got her Mr. Right though a Indian matrimonial websites. I was aware of such sites before, but I never showed interest in understanding their work until a close friend of mine found her finance.
Usually, it would be appalling to some of you, who believe in love or love at first sight. But thinking logically, I found that the probability of finding your love in the young section, between 20yrs -29yrs, of 3billion women population is very bleak. For an open minded Indian (that the term if you are peso-modern/educated)to find a his/her match in his/her caste becomes next to impossible.I came up with a number,200, that the number of girls I interacted in my life who were of same age as I was. Assume 10,000 gals to be the sample space of my true love, the p=.02 which also means that I need to get in touch with rest 9800 women before I turn 30.
It is not about defending or refuting anything about arranged marriage or love marriage but trying to understand how to make the best decision which may not be the right decision.
One of the things I found is that some open-minded parents are giving some space to their children in deciding their life partners. Based on the above calculated probability, it is very difficult for an average Indian guy to find a date in a country where 'SEX' is a taboo(I am not taking about you, who has girlfriend/boyfriend). Some may disagree with it but there is a general mentality in Indian males that a girlfriend can not be a wife.

The new concept is now ARRANGE LOVE. Parents, who have already made a decision on the girl,introduce their son to her in informal ways that neither the gal nor the boy knows about the plan. They interact for some time (months or years) and once they become comfortable with each other, the talk of marriage pops up on the dinner table.
The guy, who is more comfortable with someone he knows, has more probability of choosing her than the unknown ones.

So, this is how arranged love marriage works.

Why? Because we are a developing nation and we are also developing our culture.

Who is doing wrong?

The Obama administration has put strict restrictions on hiring international students by the companies who have received any amount of the bailout money that was issued in order to boost the country’s economy by giving more jobs to American citizens. Not only that, he has enacted a legislation under which any company who ships its jobs overseas won’t get some of the tax benefits offered by his new policies. They call it the ‘Recovery’; however, some call it ‘Protectionism.’
In the 70’s, when Indira Gandhi, India’s prime minister, visited the US, she was called an ‘old witch’ by the US president, Richard Nixon. It was mainly because she was supporting the independence struggle in East Pakistan, which the US didn’t want to happen. But, there were some other reasons as well, like her decision to send American firms away from doing business in India which had a deep negative impact on India’s growth for the next 20 years. At that time, the Us president was right to some extend as Mrs. Gandhi was following protectionism ,even though, some Indian economists also warned her of the dire consequences. The consequences were so dire that by late 80’s the country had to mortgage its gold to receive loan from World Bank.
In 1991, the prime minister of India had to call an economist named Manmohan Singh to hold the Finance Ministry. That moment was the cornerstone in the history of the nation; it achieved 8-9% economic growth from measly 3%.The fast growth gave India the world recognition it was longing for. Actually, the very important thing he did was the removal of many obstacles for Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and encouraged privatization. Mainly, he scraped the protectionist polices the country was following for years. Presently, he is the prime minister of the nation.
Recently, In the G20 meeting in Britain, Manmohan Singh urged the US president not to isolate the country by some of the president’s aggressive protectionist policies. The US is going on the same route as India was 28 years ago. Dr. Singh emphasized that more global co-operation is the only key to recover from this economic recession. Global cooperation is present in the world today, for example, we know how US is dependent on Chinese manufacturing industries, and similarly, many countries are dependent on US for high-tech technologies.
In this global village, it is not hard to understand how much our lives are connected to each other across oceans. Thus, the more protectionism we adopt, the less the cooperation. Hence, the more we slide into the abyss of this crisis.

India:Diversity is the Unity

A country whose two-thirds population is illiterate, has more than five hundred languages, twenty seven states, most having a different ethnicity, different cultures from N-to-S and from E-to-W, different food habits, and most importantly, more than eight religions got its independence in 1947.Yes, I am talking about India, the world’s largest democracy.

After India got independence from Britain, it was believed by many that it would soon disintegrate into different sections. For example, the foreign policy of Eisenhower’s government in US reflected this notion; for a while they were waiting for the disintegration to happen, before finally acknowledging India as a nation.

Last month, India held general elections for its 15^th parliament, 62 years after its independence. Again, the diversity of the nation was being considered to be an obstacle in its unity. India is a multiparty democracy, where Congress leads the UPA and BJP leads the NDA. The UPA is considered to be a secular coalition, where NDA is a Hindu right wing coalition, though it is alienating itself away from that sticker.

For the last 10 years, it has been observed that small regional parties in both the coalitions are getting more bargaining power. Earlier, their demands were only local, so the government at the center had to succumb to their demands for local issues for the sake of their support at the center. However, in the last 4 years they were threatening the coalition on some foreign issues and big reforms, which they were cautions of for no big reason. Nonetheless, Manmohan Singh, India’s prime minister of the UPA, led the nation to a 9 percent growth rate during the first 4 years of his governance. In contrast, some argue that the more share of regional parties in the government is need to represent the diversity of the nation.

But recent elections results showed that history has repeated itself but in different context. The congress party received more than 37% of the seats and it needs just 29% to form a government. This big share of the congress in the government means that all the hopes of the regional parties are thrashed by the people of India, thus clearing the way for big reforms without much hullabaloo in the parliament. The impact of this victory can be understood by the fact that the National Stock Exchange jumped 15% in 30 seconds when this news broke out. The trading had to be halted for next 2 hours.

Some experts say that what India would have achieved in next fifteen years is equivalent to what it now would achieve in the next five years. A nation where nearly half of the people can’t speak the national language properly has shown that there is something common that binds every person from North to South and from East to West. India has shown the world again that its diversity is its unity.