GOD does not have a FaceBook account

I have enough free time or you can say I am a FaceBook addict (but I am not), so I login to FB multiple times a day. And every time I login, I see a God’s photo or a religious update on one or other friend’s profile; presently the Hindu-Muslim riots photographs in Assam & Mumbai are the prominent ones (I am sure most of them are morphed). On seeing so many religious updates sometimes I worry if GOD has a FaceBook account; Ya, that can be the only reason everyone is eager to show their love for the God (infact religion) in here.

This reminds me of a story about an innocent child’s faith on GOD, which I read during my school times. A child writes a letter to GOD, requesting him for Rs.100. He didn’t know God’s address, so he posted it with a title ‘TO GOD’ without any address on the envelope. The post officer checked the letter while collecting it from the post box, and he didn’t want to break little child’s faith on GOD so, he replied him back with Rs.50 note in it. On receiving the money, the child was very happy and he replied GOD with a thanks letter and writes a complaint also “I am sure you must have sent Rs.100 for me, but these corrupt Post Office Employees steal half my money and I just received 50Rs. Next time please send me the money through courier only”

I am not sure if the people on FB are that innocent or stupid. I used this word stupid because today I saw a picture on FB with a stupid comment; seriously a stupid one, so I could not stop myself from mentioning it here. Someone please tell these people that, if your prayers could be answered by just sharing a photo then there wouldn’t be so many sadhu’s out there looking for solitude in Himalayas and places like Banaras, Varanasi & during Kumbh melas; that’s another thing that even they didn’t get a glimpse of the GOD.

I am not denying it; earlier I also used to like those religious photographs or share it. But now, enough of it; I am not that free to share or like a thing on your request or order. Some times I wonder, how the world would have been without religion? I don’t know about the world but FB would definitely have been clean and less clumsy. Of course Mark Zuckerberg’s earnings would certainly be reduced as most of the Indian traffic on the site is because of these updates only. Some times I doubt that it might be a tactic used by FB Co. itself to increase the traffic on their site.

Whatever it is, but that’s for sure we people have totally lost the basic fundamentals of Religion and GOD. All that we care about now is to prove our religion better than the other; all that we want now is larger number of shares of our GOD’s photo than that of other religion. There are so many pages on all the networking sites explaining the falsehood and wrong practices of other religions. Why don’t we just mind our own business, infact I should say our own Religion. Why we are always poking nose in other’s Religions. And mind it; Religion is a personal thing; your devotion to GOD or anybody else is your personal matter, so keep it up to you.  Don’t display your affections publically; if you are so eager to do that go to some temple or join some NGO and help the needy ones, display your love for the humanity, don’t just waste your time and others on FaceBook, GOD does not have any FB account to check your updates.

What after Olympics?

18% of the world’s population and not even 0.8% of the total Olympic medals and we are very happy & cheering on the biggest feat of medals till now. Six medals do seem like a rich haul for a nation that has been happy just to participate. Olympics are over and we will get over the fleeting ecstasy generated by each of these handful medals. There will be lots of people including me who will whack our sporting authorities for being poorly administered, blame our spending on sports, and criticize how we treat our sports stars (I still couldn’t believe that India sent Mr. Bachan for the Olympic Torch bearing ceremony) and then…. And then we will forget until next games…….

The supporting authorities & the failed Governments have also devised excellent ways of fooling people. As soon as a sports person wins a medal different state governments and departments start showering money on them that too crores. And mind it; these are the same governments which do not have enough money to provide food, water, shelter, roads, education to its people. This culture of rewarding the already rewarded is sick.

I am not writing this to undermine the great performance of the athletes at the London Olympics. They deserve attention and praise. But the funny thing is that before the Games began, nobody gave a fair chance to these players. Instead of showering money on them after winning medals, Government should spend money on the sports and sportspersons before they went to qualify for those events; they should be given good facilities, proper diet, good permanent income to sustain their livelihood. But before these games all the focus was on the glamour boys and girls of Indian sports who have won some medals in the past, and they failed this time I will say only because of the media pressure. And now all the attention being given to players like Vijay Kumar and Mary Kom, is not because we want to recognize their talent and appreciate the sacrifices they and their families have made to reach where they have now despite all the miserable conditions which our country put them into. We're applauding them because as a nation we are desperate for medals and Vijay, Mary and others have given us a false hope that we are a rising power in sports but we are not…..

No country has performed well in sports without taking care of the basic needs of its people. In India where majority of the public don’t have access to clean drinking water, where almost all the people are without regular supply of electricity (here I am not considering Madam ji and electricity spent on her Robots), where public is without good healthcare system, where the poverty line set by the government is 28Rs/Day (Yes, we can only laugh at it) and its better if we don’t talk about the access to the playgrounds and sporting facilities. How do we expect to do well in sports? Even the present number of medals is a miracle.

The Games are over and again there would be power-grid failures, fights for drinking water, Traffic Jams, shortage of food because of poor monsoon, Floods in Mumbai because of heavy monsoon. Despite all the economic growth of the last decade we are still world’s most malnourished country, yes even worse than the African countries. One in every three malnourished children in the world lives in India. But, for a reason beyond comprehension, instead of worrying about this lopsided development, we seem to celebrate it.

A long medal tally in Olympics does not make a country great, instead only a great country can stretch their medal tally to the top. And please don’t fathom that India is a great country (I won’t buy it if you again start debating on culture and all that), in no way it is. While we the general people continue our obsession with the Olympic medals, there are plenty of Indians who would continue to loose a million battles every day. And till the time we don’t care about these basic things, we will remain pretty much at the bottom of the Olympics medals heap.

Give us good living; we will give you good medal count.

BluesImHof & Bollywood Euphoria

Finally, I got something to cheer about my present Deutschland trip. Last weekend was the best one of my two months of stay here. “Are you interested in music?” My friend and colleague asked me during lunch few days back. A Punjabi, and you need not to ask him if he likes music or not, they just love it and love it madly. So, was my answer to him. So, he invited me for a weekend break to his home place Mainz city, about 40Kms from my place Frankfurt. There they organize a music concert ‘Bluesimhof’ every weekend of July, and it was a big successful concert running since ten years.

Blues is type of Jaz music and ‘ im hof’ means in a house, so its like a music concert in a old house of a village, Sounds interesting? Yes, it was. So all set and I was in Mainz city on Saturday at around 11 o’clock, there my friend was waiting for me along with his girlfriend. First they took me around the Mainz city for site seeing, Old market, Roman temple, thousand year old Cathedral, Rhine River and in the evening we moved to their village Einglheim about 10Kms from there. The scenic beauty of the road from Mainz to Einglheim was mesmerizing. Narrow roads through the wine yards which were spread to miles on both sides, small villages hinged on the far hills, wind turbines, stud farms, it was all there in that few kilometers of stretch.

After having some rest in the cozy guest room of the typical hut shape European house we moved to the concert venue - a village house, a kind of which we have seen in old Hollywood movies, a big open area in front surrounded by high walls and a big high roof hut at the end which contains a small stage in the centre, all around the four walls there were many stalls of local food and off course the Beer. The organizer was a friend of my colleague, so we got the nearest table to the stage. We ordered our food and drinks, all set and in an hour the ‘Kai Strauss band’ was on stands.

The reason why I am writing this blog is not the wonderful performance of the group, but the interesting conversation I had there. A mid aged lady Mrs. Grazina Nicolaus was quite interesting, she was born in Latvia, her father is Russian her mother is from Poland and now she is married to a German, moreover she can speak six languages. If this didn’t amaze you the next thing she told me was – “I am a die hard fan of Bollywood movies” to that, my eyes were struck wide and she continued “Ya, you know Aiswarya Rai? She is so beautiful” and her expressions while saying this was like anything.

“And I love Shahrukh, that movie in which he got drunk for Aiswarya and eventually dies at her door step”

“Devdas” I completed her sentence.

“Yes, Devdas. It was so romantic”. She told me she had a large collection of Bollywood movies dubbed in German language. “Only the songs are in hindi, and I love their music also”.

“Have you ever been to India?” I asked with curiosity.

“Noooo” a sad reply.

“But you must go, you love Bollywood romantic movies; then you must visit Tajmahal – the symbol of love” I said and I couldn’t believe on my ears when I heard her reply to that.

“I want to, but you know I am afraid of snakes, they scare the hell out of me”

Now what’s that, from where the hell these snakes came from? I didn’t utter a word but she read my expressions. “Ya, I saw in so many movies, they always scare the girls and I have a kind of snake phobia”

I laughed uncontrollably on that. It took me long minutes to make her understand that India is not only Bollywood movies or what they show in that. Finally, before leaving for the night she half heartedly agreed to my definitions of India.

P.S.In the bed at night I was thinking ‘What was more interesting, BluesImHof or the Bollywood Euphoria?’

Fight against corruption doesn’t END here

They (Politicians) set a Trap and Team ANNA walked right into it. Or should I say this was the only motive of Team Anna also?

Some of you must say I am biased like Indian media, but believe me nobody has paid me for writing this and nobody has pointed a gun on my head. I am not a pessimist also, I was even a part of many of the Anna’s rallies against corruption, and I am sure one day if not this then some other revolution will definitely change the course of our nation, nothing lasts for eternity not even the bad times, you know. 

But as of now Team Anna’s struggle ends here, and it is going to become a part of the problem itself. As I denote, ‘it’s a middle class thinking that problem can only be solved by diving direct into it’, but that’s not the case. If Team Anna has wanted to recover ground they must have supported the clean candidates from outside, rather than entering the political fray itself. It’s not like that only Team Anna is clean and every other politician is corrupt, only he is a true patriot and no one else.

A political party is much more than an NGO or a movement focused on just one issue. It’s not that all other needs of people have been taken care off and the only last wish they have left is to remove corruption. This single ideology of corruption is not even a sure starter for a political party in a country like India, where sixty percent of the public is below poverty line and where whole life span of a man goes in arranging a shelter and daily bread for his family. There are so many other major issues also Population, Poverty, Education, Caste, Religion, Development, I speculate if any of the Team Anna member has a first hand experience of these issues or even thought of that. For a moment if we assume that Anna does manage to get few MPs elected to Parliament (Which seems very difficult, that I have experienced in recent Punjab elections; Manpreet Singh’s People’s party of Punjab did not get a single seat with all the honest leaders and same ideologies as of Team Anna in it). Then also other parties MPs vastly larger numbers, who'll oppose Anna's demands, and thus defeat him easily.

And it’s not only in politics but, corruption in India is systemic, not incidental. Corruption is what funds Indian democracy; whether we like it or not, it’s our lifestyle now. And it will take years and lot many efforts to remove it from our genes. I wonder why Team Anna lost its fire just in a year. Team Anna's decision to enter politics is a sad let-down, it reveals that there is lack of ideas at the core of the team. In my view they would have agreed with the Lokpal Bill as passed in the Lok Sabha. It would have been a good start and few years later, a smart Anna would have rallied again and brought about new changes. That’s how laws get made; you can’t hit the bull’s eye on the first attempt.

The politicians will be very happy now they set a trap, and Team Anna walked right into it. They have Anna exactly where they wanted him. Now he will learn how complicated politics is, how easy it looks from the outside and how difficult it is from the inside. As of now I give credit to Anna for just one thing, he made the general public aware of their power and gathered them under one umbrella, other then this Anna failed in every respect.

Just hoping, that this step of Team Anna will not help Congress in 2014 elections as it happened for Akali Dal in last year’s Punjab Elections.

P.S. The WAR is still ON