The business of Tragedy

The business of tragedy...
This is one of the most profitable venture that exists in this world and people tend to approve of it the most socially,morally and emotionally...
Hey wait a minute... am I talking crap.. business of tragedy.. how is it possible??

Well friends if you see that not all tragedies are money making milking cows,for exapmle when there was an earthquake in Gujarat people dod not make money there, rather this was truely one of the worst kind of tragedy.. but imagine other situations specially where the tragedy has occurred due to human error...
Don't believe! Keep reading on................

the first example I would keep that is of freshness is the Bhopal Gas Tragedy......

1980's was the time sonce the catastrophe took place but look at them now... still they are fighing for justice.. well that is not a problem. Infact that is good and very much humanly right.. but what is wrong is the fact that some people and organisation that tend to make money out of it.

I happened to attend a 'talk' with Indra Kumar, the writer of 'Animal People', at St. Stephens College,Delhi.Actually I had met him first at Jaipur Literature Festival where he himself had told me that he would be visiting Delhi because of the invitation from St. Stephens. Quite a chubby but influential writer... the book was good and I did buy it afterwards.

But what attracted my attention was the presence of an NGO supporting th cause of the Bhopalis there. Well initially I was quite impressed and also of the fact that their efforts were bearing fruit and that it was indeed making the Central as well as the State Govt. think about their state of being.
But slowly and gradually things began to dawn on me. Are they truely fighting for a cause.Last year too they had staged a dharna(protest) at Jantar Mantar but it only led to unfulfilled promises and so this yar they were the repeat the same stint and that they would stage a walk from Bhopal to Delhi on their legs.......
But I happened to think that these Gandhian ways of protesting and dharnas and stuff what meaning did they have or are they ust being manipulated by the NGOs. Well last year they did not get the result, this year hey wanted to walk all the way from Bhopal to Delhi to protest so what next..... Till when are they going to show such stints.... Well when they would walk from Bhpal a truck with complete medical aid would be there to help and medicate those who fall ill and more so even they happen to get tired....Why this medication....

The point is... the victims of such tragedies are already living a life of a living dead. Then how much do you want to kill them further.... Why not go after a full fledged war.. why not brak some offcies and stuff and go for a complete hunger strike that would be fast unto death..I mean they are already dead, just a piece of diseased meat hanging on a structure of bones... why not lead the remaining life for a meaningful purpose,why not fight for true justice with such a vengeance that would tantacially amount to either do or die... Its their problem... what will the world do at the most.... show their empathy and talk about the blasphemes ways of the govt. IS this what they want? Is empathy and solidarity going to fulfill their stomach,going to bring them justice... even though it has not been found who the real culprit was or the gas company was alone the sole responsible for such a henoius act...
Thus ultimately the conclusion lies that something is wrong somewhere.....
The problem is the NGOs.. they won't leave the people to die in peace and just give them a raw hope justice..... and will continue to mop up money from other sources like donations, selling of "I support the Victims" T Shirts and other such goodies at a considerably high price... stage a dramatic protest march where the protesters act like puppets and then the show is over....
If that is not all there is more... There is more... what is the biggest impact of globalisation.. that companies set up banches all over the world and thus the existing national company would face difficulties in terms of their monopolistic ways...
So what do these national companies do.... try there best to prove the ill effects of the foreign invaders by supporting such tragedies.. so that they ,the foreign companies are not able to enter India... and there you are lo and behold... people would not sentimentally approve.. it because they are human animals devoid of the power to think and thus if they would not approve of such things.. the govt' would find it difficult approving any thing of such importance and there ou are the selfish,monopolistic Indian companies are successful...........And all this is nothing but the business Of Tragedy..........

Another prime example is the Irag war....
US went ahead with the war to revive its weapons industry,to prove its superiority in the world and finally to drink some oil....

So what is the final outcome... Irag is destroyed and US companies and foreign ones too are having a jolly good time rebuilding Irag all with the tax payers money.....
The business of Tragedy...

Have you seen the movie Shindler's List...Watch it! Wonderful movie and an all time classic.
Here Shindler is a struggling German businessman who finds an oppotunity to make money when the German govt. takes anti Jewish steps like confining then in ghettos and stopping them from carrying on further commercial activities......
But Shindler utilizes this tragedy to make alot of money but ya its a different thing that his heart changes afterwards and he saves alot of Jews from going into the hrrible gas chamber..
Anyways here was the beautiful example of the gas tragedy.....

Making money out of tragedies has become a lucrative business.. recently farmers in Punjab had a bad cultivation...
Soon they were brought to Delhi wearing Sexx 'save farmers' T Shirts protesting against the govt.... and a few private enterprises... the circus lasted for a day..... and then it was over....everyone went home smiling....
Another is the Singur tragedy.. I fail to understand what was the big issue about such a thing.. the govt... was willing to relocate them(farmers) to some other place,but still the protests went on... Why MAmta Banerjee and a few NGOs found a way to milk the govt. as well as TATA. I don't think they succeeded.

The History is full of such examples.....
The Moral OF the story is : dont give to such sentimental craps publisied by ridiculous NGOs untill and unless the fight is good enough to bear results and not a media circus......
Secondly when you see a tragedy... then remember.. someone is making money out there... :-) Especially the tragedies due to human...

Keep reading .. will be back with more interesting stuff....
till then
Sayonara

Back from the wild goose chase

aaaaaAAH!
Thats the cry that comes out first when you happen to finish your end semester exams in an engineering college,mine finished on 23rd may and still I have not recovered andits been four days since the exams were over.....
It has been a long 23 days marathon that included the practicals and all nonsense viva and stuff...and you could add an extra 10 to 15 days to it.... so in short 1 and a half month of total crap time.........
And you knw the effect that these 45 days has on an individual..... I will give you my example.. hope you would not laugh... but I guess..anyways..........
Well first comes the difficulty of getting into the exam mode.... since most of us are used to the last minute cramming and these being an engineering subject....which actually cant be crammed.. so at the end of the day we tend to break all laws of the universe.... so wen we try to cram a noncrammable subject... the first thing you tend to loose is your power of thought...and thinking ability.... so we tend to mug up all so that agood answer is vomitted on the paper...
So after the exams the first thing you feel is lost... you have to suddenly come out of the trance to feel and think again.....it took me 4 days for it....
The 2nd thing you feel sleepy... suddenly you feel as if the whole world is devoid of a good sleep. You feel a typical sense of tiredness and a sense of drearyness that is killing.... I slept for almost 14 hours with only an hour gap in between....and you feel so cool after that my god.... sleep seems to be like a drug at that moment.....
But the worst thing I feel that happens to me during this time is that my waistelines starts to increase again... and I grow a little heavier again... all my efforts fot the Operation Reduction goes waste.. alll those crap food,tonnes of tea and coffee with sugar shows the effect....
And the biggest thing I feel I loose within this period is my creativity and vision... suddenly the world starts to seem to enoromous,unconquerable,evil and what not...... and it takes me sometime to revert back to my old state of naturalness and confidence.
Anyways,its one year more and I hope after that this chapter of my life shall be closed........

But why does such a thing take place..... is there any significance to it... this is the state of 80% of the engineering students country-wide.....
One of the basic facts that I believe that occurs is that Enginnering for most of us is an unknown adventure.... which actually gets worse as you happen to realize that there is no purpose or signifince out of it.
Moreover given the state of our education system,our professors ensure that we adapt a crap culture of mugging and vomitting in the exams.....
Engineering is essentially creativity,we are not knowledge creaters,rather we are the ones who create myriads of applications out of one single knowledge.... and creativiy cannot be put to use into something which you don't love and like.....
Given the rigidness of our education system,this is the common state of distress for most of us.
We don't happen to like what we are studying,we don't have any purpose of the subjects that we are studying, the question of 'WHY' of everything remains unanswered in everything.
Moreover we think something else before we come here and something else is found in the college and we go out with something else of this college. THe whole journey remains a wonder and once we are out of this Alice in Wonderland and into the open world,that is the time we get the real pain,the real shrug.

The real problem that we face is the lack of sense for direction,where we are going,what we are studying what we should be studying and all the stuff.
That's why I have called this post 'back from the wild goose chase' because that is the state of affairs in our lives at the moment.

Anywyas coming back to the main theme....
..is there a solution to this directionless life that we lead. There is.But we have to let go off certain good for the great,then only all the possibilities would exist otherwise,there is no chance,not a ray of hope,only disillusionment.This is something which is actually very tough and even as I say I too don't have the real ability to fight this off and come out a winner. But yes I am trying,and I hope to succeed in the near future......
till then
sayonara

Treading an unknown path

Reading an unknown path.
This is I think one of the most adventurous and revered thing that an individual would want to do in his lifetime.
Treading an unknown path.
We have living Histories of people like Steve Jobs and Bill gates who travelled that unknown path,broken myths,customs and everything and have become the most respected and feared people in the corporate world.
Yet both had dropped school in their college life.
Like them there are many more examples.Dhirubhai too is our best Indian examples and coupled with him are all those Gujaratis who have travelled that uncommon ways ands have set examples for those unknowns. If that was not all then there were people like who even got into the IIMs and IITs and did not think twice when they finally made up their mind to go anew and create that path which might take centuries to follow up again.

So what makes an individual take up such extreme steps. History is full of such examples. If we were to talk in terms of BC then there is always Aristotle to quote who despite eing from an aristrocratic background decided to go on his own.
In search of wilderness. maybe that describes them better. Steve Jobs,when he left the college didn't even know what he wanted. Though bill gates on the contrary always had a vision. He moved clear goal and a determined spirit. Yet he dropped out in his pre final year of his college.
Aristotle too went the same.
Yet they were all labelled insane. Yet in their course of insanity they changed History and became living Histories themselves.

The first thing that stikes me is why do they want to take such a step. The answer I guess lies in their individuality. It probably seems that they are born with a different set of traits,a soul that commands free will,never to be tied down to anything. A heart that is rebellious,which does not find any meaning in the commonly pursuits of a common mind.
While most other success stories that we have read have been a success of struggle,but these were the men who created histroy by choice and acknowledgement of giving up something that sounded the good.

One of the primary reason that I personally feel makes people take a different and an extreme route is in their satisfaction.Yes by satisfaction I mean pure and happy heart which is content of what it has creates with its soul.
Well what I mean to say here is for most people success is a relative term.For example when thousands of people are running after something which they think is good and one such individual who has won it comes out to be a success. But one problem that exists here is that this success was a relative term. He got here because others could not. So he feels proud not because he has achieved something rather because he has defeated many.It is the social sanction given by the society that makes him feel proud.

By treading a different path what I mean to say is to find that one thing that gives you the utmost happiness. I know everyone cannot be an entrepreneur in the true 16th century Italian sense, but yes what I know is that this question can only be answered by an individual who has gone thorugh the ordeal of trying to be an entrepreneur and finally been unsuccessful. The rest they die with the notion that If I could......'
More different from the dictionay meaning of entreprenuership,I would like o define it in a philosophical sense that it is trading an unkown path, a path that leads to you ultimately and at the end of the road you find yourself.
A balance between the heart and the mind is inevitable though because as one treads the path he cannot and just cannot ignore the world inhabited by other men. Thats why Steve ?Jobs,even though he was successful, failed once in his lifetime but then he again rose and this time he remains a constant success.
The point is,in the initial haydays of the struggle,we should not be afraid of loosing something or anything,especially those which we have not achieved, but once we reach a stage of life where we have gained something,we seriously cannot think of loosing it again. No wonder Warren Buffet says: "The first rule is to never lose money and the second rule is to never forget the first."
Remember,if at this moment of your life if you are striving for success, you cannot remain in the loop if what frightens you is the cake that you are going at he end, but yes once you have found your path,achieved something,then you should always remember that there are many sitting there who would want to eat your cake even if it does not matter that it would give them satisfaction and hat the cake is of their taste.Since they have never cared to find what their taste is like,they will continue to get jealous of yo because they see you enjoying your cake and they come to terms to the fact that your cake must be something special.
Anyways more on this later.