Crying into the kitchen sink…

This is not really about the kitchen sink. It is about everything but that! This connects with the kitchen sink, because I was washing dishes as  I watched TV. In the olden days women sat together and sang and talked and gossiped as they did work. Now we are alone and we watch out favorite TV shows. Each on their own TV.

A slumchild  won an  Oscar.  The child’s eyes sparkled with interest and fun as the film received a best fim nomination. The positive effect of all the growing connectedness and global villages is that little  boys from Mumbai slums get to go to Oscars and receive awards. I wonder whether this little boy ever visited the real village from his parents must have migrated to the cities to leave behind their agricultural life styles for industrialised ones. This is how India is becoming industrialised .. by abandoning her villages and overcrowding her cities. 

Another positive effect of all this connectedness is that friends from decades past are showing up in my life again, looking for me and finding me on the internet. Friends who have moved to America still show up on facebook and yahoo and make enquiries and make demands.

In the depths of my heart, there is a pain. My son has experienced for the first time in his life, betrayal and desertion by young girls and middle aged men. He has learnt the lack of value of the spoken word in today’s Indian society. A society where the Immortal Vedas were preserved in their pristine purity by word of mouth for 20,000 years.

He has learned what is like to be attacked  for something you have not done and to be branded for the same. What it is like when the proof of your innocence is deleted, and those in power can insult and degrade you and seize and hold your precious possessions.

He has heard his parents telling him, that this unspeakable episode where the guilty are honoured and the innocent are penalized, is really good for him. We are really happy for you, his father and I told him. Now you know first hand that there is danger and villainy in the world. We hope you will be cautious going forward. We have equipped you with love, courage, reason, reasonableness, intelligence, talent and truth and now we are sending you out into a world where these virtues are not only rare, but also act as lightning rods to attract trouble. You will be fine we tell him, just be careful. Don’t do anything, don’t touch anything and don’t say anything. If possible don’t even go anywhere.

I want to go and stand  up for him. Everyone tells me to step back and stay out of it. These are bad days they tell me. A muslim boy was shot and killed for drag racing and running away – because he landed in an Army officers quarters and fished out his cell phone. The real terrorists are roaming the streets. Boys were killed for threatening to attack girls with acid, with out a police case, a court case or a trial. A brother and sister were roughed up for going home together on a Valentine’s day. Hell, now a days people are killed for booking a railway ticket, a movie ticket or a bus ticket on a day when one of our million terrorist groups choose to attack it.

We are caught in the cross-fire between the law breakers and the lawless law enforcers. Our law breakers have succeeded in giving increased powers to our law enforcers. Now an innocent man must learn to fear both the law breakers and any law enforcer who may suspect you with or without cause.

These are truly bad days. We are told that this is still Prathama Pada of  Kaliyuga and that though Dharma is limping along on a single foot out of 4, that MahaVishnu will not come to save us for another half a million years. Oh Siva!, we cannot wait that long. We are afraid of living our normal life. We are afraid to think freely and speak freely.

I long for the protective bubble of IISc and the Software profession. In one there was honour and in another there was money. In the olden days, those fed up with this country used to run away to America if they could. It used to seem that at least America was in Satya Yuga, a land of milk and honey. And even there two buildings full of people were killed just for going to work.

Something has to give. I want a good society. Not one where I have not only to fear people of all other religions but also people of my own religion. Where I not only have to fear people who are out to do bad, but also those people who are out to do good. Heaven alone knows how they define good. They no longer want to go through our archaic law system or wait patiently for our overloaded and infinitely slow judicial system to do justice.

Can beauty, culture, poetry, music, art and all the blessings of civilization flourish or even survive in a lawless and uncivilised, disorderly society?

My young friends meet me and ask me with great concern how I am doing and tell me not to worry. All my young darling friends, how can you not worry? Look at what we have left you. Better technology than what we had, more connectedness, so that if one country’s economy fails, all countries come down with it, and more divisiveness, so that you have that many more reasons to hate others. Our generation has raised the global temperatures and stockpiled nuclear weapons all over the world.  We have polluted pure rivers like the Ganga and contaminated oceans with oil spills. We have driven many beautiful species to extinction. We have made a mockery of education, justice, law and democracy.  Even of healthcare.

And from your generation, we demand respect and obedience. We want you to take our advice on things. It annoys my generation to see you confident, competent and proud.

Krishna said that we must act! We must do our duty. In these changing times, do we know our duty? Well here is my blessing to your generation.

“Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic wars;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action -
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake. ” Ravindranath Tagore.