Money matters

 Look at the title of the blog today. The second word, "matters", used in this title is both a noun and a verb. It means both: monetary issues and it also means money matters, that is, money is important. 

I thought of this title because of the DHFL issue. Some 77,000 individuals have invested literally crores in that company. The Wadhwans got their  company in to trouble, and now those thousands of common Indian citizens are in hot water because  only 23% of their basic principal or investment is getting returned, that, too, without any interest. 

Undoubtedly, there must be big sharks amongst the investors who might even be privy to hanky-panky. But mostly it is the small time investors who used their meagre life time savings in the DHFL share trading. As it was an extremely safe proposition, given the Gurgoan boom, they were not exactly wrong in their monetary/financial decisions either. Once the Wadhwans turned themselves in and the company finances got mired in insolvency issues, what with later mergers by big shots such as the Piramal's, nobody cares for the small time investors. 

Lost in the mire of financial technicalities, the issue has now bounced in to the Supreme  Court. It is not clear if any PIL can be filed so that the supreme court can take cognizance through a suo motu action.

May be, the Media must look in to this truly valid issue as daily livelihoods of many senior citizens would be involved. What with the reduction in the banking fd interests, such private players matter. Actually, the realty boom the world over has bust ever since the 2008 American tragic crisis. Even in India, we had the DSK issue, for instance. But the very amount involved in the exact transactions in the present  instance is truly mind boggling. Hope everybody involved takes proactive measures, and within a given  time framework. Well, every industry cannot meet the Tata's!Lucky Air India at last!

I teach "My financial career" by Stephen Leacock to my f.y. b.com students. My basic contention about the sardonic, sarcastic  essay is that it opens up the heartless, indifferent treatment meted out to the hapless common man by the big business and finance conglomerate. So sad that the DHFL insolvency issue proves me right!!!

Pratima@ money may make the mare go, but it drives small time lives in the direction of the cremation ground, and fast! 

GANDHI

  Gandhi, great Man, simple at heart

  And, non-violence was his only art

  Nothing but truth was his only fort(e)

  Dandi where soured power, 'n 'got lost'

   Hearts of followers lovingly made heaven,

   India hence got an inimitable freedom.

Pratima@ life as an eternal experiment of self exploration/was Gandhiji's genuinely radical vision

Contentment

 Been There, That done

 forms just the plinth 

Contentment builds on.

It houses joy

 that  peace plans 

that freedom breathes

that happiness cements

that throws in to dustbin

envy that peels off

jealousy that stinks 

arrogance that boils

pride that rots

Contentment is a home 

Where the divine resides!

Pratima@Aai-Papa taught us contentment as they longed for it, lived it, loved it!

The Worst Villain Ever

 Who is the worst villain ever?  Chengiz Khan to 'Saddam'(as he was minimised by the Yankees), and beyond, there would be very many candidates for that wretched position. I am not much interested in that torrid viciousness, especially because each one has his coterie  of bhakts and haters that is not ready to listen to the other(s). It is sheer egoistic din without much thought. Personally, I find the haters rather interesting . In my opinion, they are so busy painting the imagined adversary as the most evil one that they are literally obsessed with him/her, even more than the bhakts. They almost seem to need simplifying, dehumanizing, demonising, diminishing, 'other'ing him/her as if for their own existence!

Well, why worry about such weirdo's, available aplenty? Let us instead look at one of the worst one available in English Literature. The worst villain, that notorious department, is totally eclipsed by Iago.

In fact, he owns villaindom. Nobody can compete with his " motiveless malignancy". Just for sheer fun born out of wickedness, he creates such a web of lies, rumours, suspicions and hatreds that an absolutely innocent girl is viciously victimised. Of course, he is ably supported by the cupidity of Roderigo and his one-sided obsession with poor Desdemona, the hurt ego of Brabantio, her father and the inferiority complexes of the absolutely stupid Othello, and, oh, yes, her own innocent lie born out of the desire to save the lost destiny!

In my opinion, though, Iago's villainy emerges out of his lust for power. He needs power over others as in the case of Roderigo, her reject, over Cassio who supersedes him and whom he presents as her paramour, and, of course, over Othello, his ultimate target.  When he has tested power through his manipulation of Roderigo and Brabantio, he is like a man-eating tiger cum hyena lusting for the poor/pure Desdemona and the stupid Othello. He is someone Machiavelli can take lessons from, given his spidery web of deceits, lies, calumnies. In the process, he captures Othello's soul, like the devil.

Who, and what, defeats him finally? Sure it is his wife's blistering attack on the foolish Moor's brainlessness.  But more than anything else, it is Desdemona's gentle goodness. When Othello hits her in public, in front of her powerful relations who have always been wary of her decision, she covers up his behaviour. Why, even when she dies at his hands, her attempt is to save her love. Well, that pristine purity of purpose is the ultimate antidote to power lust/greed, I believe, not only in the personal space(s), but in the public sphere, too!

Pratima@villainy can victimize, but cannot corrupt integrity and innocence.

Art is Heart

 This afternoon was quite a wonder. Let me explain why. It proved to me the veracity of my deep faith in the power of art. 

Well, on one of the wapp groups, there was this anecdote about a lady collector who goes to a girls' school. After her speech, during the Q-n-A session, a student asks her why she never wears makeup. The lady hence tells the story of her childhood, ridden with poverty and the worst difficulties of all sorts. Soon she has to work in mica mines for minimal wages to earn bare minimum necessities. Children are preferred in mica mines as they can enter the hole like openings to ferret out more produce. As ill luck would have it, one monsoon, the roof of the mines caves in, burying her entire family underneath. Despite so many misfortunes, she manages to educate herself to become a collector. As most all items of makeup use mica, she possibly cannot use it, is how the story ends. 

My Eng Lit soul, reared on "Jane Eyre" and "Oliver Twist", went its usual senti way, and I reminded myself of how people suffer impossible atrocities in this weird world, and how one is luck incarnate in comparison, et al.

By 4 p.m.-ish, however, it was found out that there was no such collector, and that she was a product of a Malyalee author's imagination. Did I feel cheated? Absolutely no way! In fact, it proved to me yet again how art is heart. The superb power of the wor(l)ds an author creates! Fiction truer than reality! I remembered Aristotle on probable/possible! Yes, indeed, art gives you heart and soul, and tempers your head. Long live (he)art!

Pratima@our saddest thoughts give  birth to our sweetest songs! Of course, I owe the deepest apologies to Shelley, my one time, and even now, though in a different way, hero!

A Day Divine

 January 26 is indeed important for us Indians. If August 15 celebrates our Independence, January 26 solemnizes our sovereignty.

In my opinion, our sovereignty is of utmost importance in the current context. No, I am not talking merely of our borders and the Chinese attempts to tamper with our frontiers. Abler minds of strategists and stronger bodies of the soldiers are fit to take  care of that tangible threat. 

Here  I am referring to other subtler menaces that are not immediately visible, yet are real  palpable dangers. Given the high consumerism in the post globalised world, the MNC/TNC conglomerates are the genuine most hazard to the national sovereignty. The pandemic can itself be an example if conspiracy theories are to be believed. There is a strong likelihood as per the conspiracy theories that the trans- national pharmaceutical companies created the monster virus scare that spiralled out of control of most nations, whatever tier they may belong to, advanced to underdeveloped.

In the same fashion, AI controlled warfare, given the digital revolution, can assume Frankenstein proportions. The very invisibility and yet dominant presence of such enemies that can create unique warfare that include chemical weapons harming bodies and thought infections ruining minds is a lurking demon difficult to be bottled.

Identity politics carried on at schizophrenic decibles is yet another threat to the federal and sovereign status of a multi-cultural entity like our country. Such 'media'-ted pogroms by all sorts of 'interest' groups imprison minds and vision in a truly threatening way, given the underlying 'we' better than 'them' binary scripting such narratives of ALL shades and sizes.

Which are the solutions? Thinking minds that can gauge, question, critique the chinks in the armours of ALL the subjugating strategies. The best solution has to be the right to education to create such an ambience. More debates about the NPE, about Liberal education, about credit banks that can energies the multi-disciplinarity, allowing foreign universities without compromising on equity, multiple are the ways to create an efficient educational ecosystem to use the current  buzzword. As we enter the seventy fifth year of our Independence, we are to thus become internally strong and resilient.

Pratima@sovereignty of, by, for people

Tourism ahoy!

 Tourism is respected the world over. In the western part of the world, it has always been important so much so that it was once upon a time, almost till the mid nineteenth century, an integral, though informal, part of upper class education. Even in India, it has been not been any different. In fact, once upon a time, to get "vidya" meant leaving home, getting used to a way of life very different from one's own household, which trained the disciple in the modes of lived life, and  not merely  only in modules of theory.

Times have changed totally now, and thus the very way of the world. Education is no longer wisdom. Given the onslaught of information via the infotech way, it is often not  even knowledge. Rather, it is more an "up-skilling" in an industry-'wise' way! 

Actually, be it the spice trade or even earlier still, the silk route, India has always been a great tourist  destination. Such an attraction is but inevitable, given the  inherent vast variety that our continent size country celebrates. We are 'multi-' in many a ways. The Tourism Day on January 25 pays tribute to that varied wonder called India.

In India, there are so many geographical, historical, natural, religious, spiritual, artistic, artisan sites that a lifetime would not be enough to cover them all. We must not forget the burgeoning health tourism. Why, until the absolutely necessary stringent laws were put in place, many a parts of the Indian hinterland were h(e)avens of surrogacy tourism! 

Given the rise of the aspirational middle class, post 1991, added to this unending list are the foreign destinations, often popularized by the Bollywood. Now a days, highly personalized, individuated tours that could include stay-in's are acceptable, why, in fact, popular! Very soon space tourism might no longer be a 'special appearence' scenario. Already adventure tours, whether up the summits or beneath the seas, are the "been there, did it" blasé feel, no longer the right of the rich.

 Such is the 'wanderlust' of Indians that the Covid pandemic and the reverse migrant rush during the summer of 2020 with its heart rending visuals of the 'long march' could not dull it. Every week end, the sites near cities need blockades now in the wake of omicron!

If the tourism and hospitality related  service sector is to grow ethically, protection of nature and  sustenance of environment must be the goals. Only then can we now reiterate that "touring wide makes a (wo)man healthy and wise".

pratima@ in memory of the childhood excursions!