We undergo a plethora of emotions, in our heads, minds and the obscure entity called the soul. Passion is the eternal source of energy , but pain is an emotion that connect all humankind. Pain is also felt by animals. The only difference is that we make meaning of the pain that we encounter. Pain is triggered by disappointments, fulfillment of our aspirations. Pain has a different shade of metaphor. Its physical pain caused by a disease or injury, emotional turmoil regarding personal matters, its complex at its best. There is no motivator like pain, it builds resolve like no other medicine, it gives immunity against events that trigger basic crisis.  It ignites a fire in the belly like no other thing can. Life would not be life sans pain. The greatest emotional scars are left by pain. Physical version of the pain leaves us crying for relief, the physical pain goes away, but the mental scar does not heal too quickly.

Managing pain is crucial, channelizing its momentum is the key. It can make us stronger or break us. I pray that every bout of physical pain or heartbreak heals and heralds a new start.

We have many emotions that we travel through time, during various phases in life. Sometimes, we want to feel wanted, many times we feel that we have found a soul mate, a person we have found resonance with, in terms of interests, perspectives and simply have a splendid time whenever we meet and catch up. Giving labels to relationships sometimes limits the purview of the landscape of emotions that we explore in our lives.  We feel that precious moments that are experienced wont come again, and want to feel the most of it an a singular moment. Live a life in a moment, in all the splendor that life has to offer.

Keeping Faith is tough, we ask multiple questions of ourselves; am i good enough, can i make it through, will i screw up bigtime… are all the million riyal questions that we ask of ourselves when we meet a person, opening  or a situation that we do not wish to lose, even at the cost of our lives. I pray hard for the Will of GOD to be established in my life.  Well, Faith as small as a mustard seed can move a mountain.  Every journey has a lesson, a key take-away that transforms our mundane existence for the better. Life is Beautiful in all its strange contours. Faith leads to prayer and that directs us to hope against hope for the worse off option to not be actualized.  There are a million different things going on in my life. These are opportunities, thoughts, people, ideas moving in and out at differential velocities according to the weights they carry in the scheme of life.  Life is short, keeping up the passion and the drive is the key to make the best of the window of opportunities which GOD presents us.

Faith, Prayer, Love and finally hope are the sides of the same square that define our lives. These all elements are invaluable in the journey called life. Its bewildering at times lah! Keeping Faith is hard, failing takes a pound of emotional flesh out of our psyche as dreams dont realize all the time. We are expected to perform at our epoch perennially. Work Life Balance is indeed an oxymoron. Either we do well in our career or have reasonably fulfilling non work related time.  Let us atleast try to fulfill our calling 🙂

I hope, I hope…..

Heartbreak is something which is fundamentally common to everyone, more common to people who are chronologically young and also to those young at heart. This is a basic emotion, a one which makes us feel human. One of those very bundle of sentiments which causes us to retrospect, introspect and changes us one heartbeat at a time. Heartbreak is not connected to only a romantic notion, but it is experienced when we intercept failure when our hopes and reality do not collide. A heartbreak from a failure either from a event, occasion or a human relationship, makes us either very strong or makes us fragile in the event of another failure. It makes us skeptical of risk of venturing out in to the unknown.  Or it makes us fearless, having the faith of seen it all and what more worse can come out of this latest human initiative.

Heartbreak is one emotion well characterized in the entertainment industry. I follow Bollywood very closely so I have my personal favorites for heart break season. Tanhayee from Dil Chahata Hai, Mitwa from Kal Ho Na Ho in case of relationships or Tanha Dil from Shaan or a track from Lagaan can pep  me up for the day in case of a setback. This is one strand of sentiment that hits hard, and real rough. Its raw and real. Transformative power can felt in those quickened breaths and tears trickling down from the corner of the ears. The soul can see me through my real me from the outside.

Maturity is demonstrated in the light of a disappointing heart break. It keeps us sad for sometime  and then makes us realize that life is long beyond the incident and the zest is awaiting us at the next bend, it is the hope that keeps us alive.

Yet, we all hope at the back of our mind that we wish that things had worked out as we has planned, life’s beautiful is in its vagaries and its time that we acknowledge and appreciate it.

We all have this wonderful opportunity and a gift called life. The realization only comes when we have lost invaluable time in the process to pandering to our emotions and egos. A huge quantum of chronological space is lost in growing up and making sense of who we are. The question which comes to my mind frequently is ‘are we just here, to life a stable, comfortable existence, to continue the status quo or to make a dent in the wall of time’. Well, making a dent is very hard, it seems all the easy issues have been dealt with and all the intractable big issues are left and no body wants to touch them. These issues are significant, but the best minds are all working in financial services in front of rolling numbers on a screen.  Lets admit it, money matters and that Sunday brunch at the Four Seasons is pretty cool.

Change has to fight with the historical inertia of time. Making a simple academic domain transition is met with resistance and suspicion. Life seems to be reduced to a paper called a Resume, and a advert called a Cover Letter. Everything during University seems to be for the CV. Its all a project towards a ‘well rounded personality’. Anybody who goes against the tide of society and time is torn away into pieces. We live in the era of instant gratification, its all about instant success. No body has patience. I would like to thank my teachers on the eve of Teachers Day, who had patience when I was growing up and had the confidence in me to persist.

Life is a project with a definite timeline. No space for redundancies called ’emotions and sentiments’ are factored in to the bottomline of the balancesheet. Its a perennial rush hour to work. As Marx said in ‘Estranged Labour’, ‘the labour’s product is something alien , as a power independent of its producer’. Work is for survival, Social Darwinism at its glorious best.  The meaning of existence is lost as we do not have any time to think and to reflect. Its all a race to the finish line. Life is indeed a race and not a stroll in the park.  It seems the concept of the film Matrix is realizing itself, day by day that are all in a program to maintain the status quo and to keep us subdued via the regime of work life. Life is work and work is life.

Lets take out one day in our lives to rediscover ourselves, find raw joy and emotion once again…

I turned 25 last week, and i suddenly feel that i have performed a chronological quantum leap. Till a few days back, i was a care-free 24 year old graduate student working on his second masters and making a career transition from engineering to the social sciences. This means that i making a paradigm shift (a very Sociology of Scientific Knowledge term coined by Thomas Kuhn) from numericals, simulations and modeling to theories, meta-theories and the sheer emphasis on reasoning and ideas. Its un-nerving at times to sheer intellectual thrill. Suddenly a feel like a pseudo armchair thinker of sorts.  It is also frightening that sociology majors have very limited career options, well I consider myself an engineer first and a sociologist in training. I have always wished to bridge the wide cognitive gulf between the hard engineering sciences and the softer social sciences . The systemic approach to knowledge production needs both. These are organs of the same universal body of knowledge. Solutioneering is a 360 degree effort. Systemic issues such as mega trends of migration, financial crisis, globalization or climate change needs systemic, holistic solutions. I am just a spec of cosmic dust, trying to make a milli-micro dent at the world. Well, its an effort, dont know whether it will yeild an ROI or not. For the sake of love of labor, that is the pure pursuit of knowledge. Happiness has a premium as well such as insurance.

I do not know whether this nerdy initiative of mine to pursue doctoral research in the future in Sociology/STS/Public Policy, will yield me a future of financial comfort- a house, a car , retirement savings. Most academics are struggling to find jobs in the developed world, pursuing contract based post-doctoral opportunities for years after their PhD.This means no relationships, unhappy parents and a loser perception in societal circles. Well, being a nerd means being unpopular because we choose our own trajectory and not follow the herd. By this time, my friends back at my undergrad days have reached early middle managerial roles and some have got settled as well, and I sit down at my uni canteen drinking 50 cent teh-o at 4pm and reflecting on a course reading.

Academia is simply not sexy enough, women like financial safety! The chase is after Consultants, Bankers, Managers and everyone who has a life, not some over qualified but under employed academic or professional researcher. A life of a grad school researcher is tough, penny pinching at every point, a good drink at a pub over a weekend can mean two months of groceries!

I do not know where life is leading me, i can only say that it has been an exciting journey with more downs than ups. Life is indeed a spectacular teacher and a bad master. I count my blessings every single moment and thank GOD for his mercy AMEN. I am looking forward to to the next bend down the road and a blind spot seems ahead of me!

We have all been witness and an audience to the political theater on our screens, every single day since August the 16th.  Its been more thrilling than a Bollywood potboiler or a prime-time TV soap. Anna Hazare, a man of enormous integrity is still on a fast and frenetic back channel negotiations are going on, for a middle ground on the Ombudsman legislation. It has galvanized the nation into a national consciousness only seen during the Kargil conflict in 1999. There are very few issues that bind Indians together apart from Cricket, Bollywood, Faith and territorial conflicts, not necessarily in that order. There have been impassioned protests on the ground through out the nation,  and online movements on Facebook and Twitter, drumming up sentiments of curing the cancer of corruption once in for all. In my opinion, this has been India’s first post liberalization revolution.  The fuel is provided by the media and intelligentsia and the oxygen is the sheer sense of frustration on the part of the middle class in this war against graft. The cascade of corruption scandals has germinated a sentiment for change when they see multi billion dollar scams such as 2G and CWG.

An Ombudsman bill is a good beginning, this agitation is hopefully the beginning for a more aware electorate, which will do an entire generation of voters a whole lot of good, even if it is a minuscule minority of educated youth. Make no mistake, this movement is a middle class initiative. It is the middle class who cannot avoid corruption, for simple bureaucratic chores like getting a document or pension through a government office. The poor cannot pay, and stay the way they are, the rich treat corruption as an opportunity to hasten up their priorities.  This Jan Lok Pal legislation will be a source for fear factor in the minds of government workers, sword dangling above their heads. But it is the middle class too, who pay donation to get their children a seat in professional colleges and to settle a case with law enforcement, when ever they are deep trouble.

Corruption is cultural in India. Corruption is the modern day version of the ‘bakshish’ system. A culture of sycophancy and patronage taken be institutionalized and scientified.  Its a systematic malaise which has to be solved slowly from the roots via incentives and checks  & balances via policy innovations. The Public Distribution System  for food grains is a prime example. Remove the bottle neck as afar as where people can buy the grains from instead of a fixed shop and the motivation of the dealer undercutting the consumer will be done with. The Subsidy should be provided at the point of purchase.  Installing better systems to measure malpractices via fraud analytics is one approach. Nandan Nilekani, the Chairman of the Unique Identification Authority of India and Co-Founder of Infosys, pointed these aspects in his interviews to media outlets a few days back.  Laws in the books look pretty, but have to be implemented to make the system better. Corruption is behavioral in character; its up to people whether to pay a bribe or to go through the long cumbersome process. The Power is in our hands as the animation series – Captain Planet said.

Let us think beyond legislation, think strategically, think systemic. A law is good but this sentiment is gradually turning towards  anti governmentalism and regime change. Well, that’s another issue which will be decided at the ballot box in 2014 or earlier.  Lets change ourselves by not trying to pay or receiving the ‘box of sweets’ on a Deepawali or Dussehra first. My best wishes and prayers are with the brave people behind the Jan Lok Pal movement, it is a start, a start for reform-needed by a generation who need it the most.

People do blogging for meeting various personal and professional ends. Some do for sharing their perspectives on various issues, some as an online real time dairy on their lives and a growing number to do as an online portfolio for their talents.  Writing a amateur blog, is not Shakespearean  in art form. I write because I feel strongly about issues, and convey my emotions on a particular facet of my interest be it in governance or social matters close to my heart. As every aspiring writer and regular blogger knows, while having a day job (i am a grad researcher), blogging for us takes a minimal quantum of time of our days schedule, we do it, because we love to do so and share our perspectives and in the process create a community of like minded faithful online. Its passionate, spontaneous and real…

We live in the era of the pro-sumer- we not only consume online intellectual content, but we add to the dialogue of ideas regarding the issues we read. WE react instantaneously to policy changes in our vicinity and raise our voices in response to the injustice that we perceive as educated lot, than the ‘silent; majority who live reactionary existences by commenting in their living rooms.   Its inconsequential in the larger scheme of things. Bloggers appreciate feedback; whether bouquets or brickbats. Ofcourse, the greatest gift u can give a writer is criticism!

Not everyone is Jeff Archer, we can be Chetan Bhagat or Shobhaa De, Indian English has a particular style and audience. We all cater to our specific niche. Three Cheers to the blogging community.

This year has been very eventful, the raging Arab Spring which brought secular Arab youth down to Tahrir Square and brought down Tunisians and Egyptian regimes. Bahrain is teetering under protests and Syria & Libya are reeling under civil wars triggered by mass scale participatory protests, which have graduated in to full scale civil conflicts. The Arab youth had legitimate reasons of political non participation under single party and monarchic rule, which brought them (the common strata) nothing but economic deprivation while the resource rentier elite, is siphoning off millions to offshore tax havens and enjoying decadent lifestyles.  The bottom line is regarding poverty and access to opportunities of livelihood not the color of ethnicity and religion.

One week ago, British youth in London was shot dead by police which triggered off protests which spiraled off into rioting  and has lead to a 100 million pound damage in arson and looting. There is an opportunistic element to the rioting- looters packing off 57 inch LCD TV’s and upscale marts being looted. Ofcourse the Afro-Caribbean community are sharing the blame for the carnage, but i understand the UK underclass has struck back against the empire, where cutback in midst of a recession where bankers earn million pound bonuses and the commoner gets laid off. Graduate unemployment is as its worst in many years.  The jury is out- Bread and Butter issues have to be addressed otherwise, a french revolution is indeed on the cards. The french have been on the streets, the Norway massacre was in part a action against the government for its pro immigrant policies, the white under educated masses are joining right wing movements, making the specter of Right Wing Extremism, a real possibility after what happened in Oslo.

The Integration experiment has failed. Today three British Nationals were mowed down by a car in Birmingham, where they where guarding their mosques. The Black Community, often disenfranchised have hit back via petty crimes against the Asian communities which are far more successful. The Riots are directed against businesses; symbols of capitalistic success.  In an era, where being cool means having the latest I Phone and latest car to show off, the celebrity myth has taken its toll with youngsters living under a pile of debt they know will take ages to clear off at its best. Now, the iota of college debt determines the degree of affluence, a person will live in their lifetimes. Now a days, PhD’s are working as Janitors. Over-educated and Under-employed is the paradigm for the new generation except for a few industries.  The riots were coordinated via Blackberry Messengers which cannot be hacked by security forces. Riot planning has gone hi-tech and socially networked.

The times are very uncertain and vulnerable, jobs are few and far in between in this age of higher degree inflation. Marriages breaking down, social cohesion is being threatened by migration and globalization. Sociology should indeed be taken very seriously by policymakers from now on…

Yesterday we heard the news that Madam Sonia Gandhiji, is in the United States for a medical surgery. We wish the great Indian leader, a speedy and a safe recovery. The bigger story is the appointment of Rahul Gandhiji to a four member panel to oversee party affairs in the absence of the Congress. This is very much anticipated as Rahulji has been the ‘Crown Prince’ since a while, while the present Prime Minister Dr. Singh is preparing the ground for him.  Indian Politics is completely monarchic in character. It is all the relations of politicians who contest elections right from the Zilla Panchayat to Sansad Bhawan.  Murli Deora exited the cabinet, and his son entered the council of ministers. Pranab Da’s son entered the regional legislature, Chidambaram’s son is already a politico. ‘Son Stroke’ is an affliction even in the opposition benches; Jaswant Singh’s son to Mulayam Singh’s ward are all in the fray. Its all a Family affair- resembling the film ‘Hum Sath Saath Hain’. It is indeed a total Barjatya production.

Rahulji is being making quite a splash in the media with his taking on the Mayawati regime in Lucknow, he is trying to revive the congress in many parts of the country.  He has failed miserably in Bihar and Tamil Nadu. He is no match via a vis a Narendra Modi or a Yashwant Sinha or a Jaswant Singh. He is a tolerable orator, I guess he is a better organizational man than a mass leader. Priyanka Gandhi is much better. I would pitch for him as he is certainly a better bet than a third front loser from the regional satraps.

There are many potential ‘market entry barriers’ for the educated common folks to join politics, until that time- Rahulji is certainly a good bet.

First it was Saddam Hussein Al Tikriti who stood up to the US and its allies and was sent to the gallows. Of course he had made the fatal error to enter Kuwait, which he erroneously had considered the 19th province of Iraq. The badly judged invasion in 1990, caused an Arab powerhouse to falter and come under UN Sanctions which killed thousands in the dearth of healthcare and food supplies.  He was couped up in a hole when the US forces captured him and sent him to a trail whose decision was a foregone conclusion. In the aftermath of the revolutionary Arab Spring, strongman Hosni Mubarak and his sons plus cronies are facing trail whose sentence has already been printed, the trail is for media consumption.  Both have many parallel’s- military background, secular credentials and were buffers against the rise of a Shia Iran. Rumsfeld was a good friend of the Bathist regiime in the 1980’s during the conflict with its neighbor.  The gravest error which Saddam made was to attack an Oil rich southern cousins, and the Al Sabah’s are long time US Allies since the 1950’s.

Ideological Bathist cousins in the Alawite administration of Bashar Al Assad is reeling under a revolt which it is crushing violently as demonstated in the Hama Ramadan eve massacre. Syria is a difficult cuppa to handle because of its close relations with Iran and hence the Hezbollah and Hamas. It is a powerkeg on the boil, waiting to explode. A Burmese Junta indeed in the making. The same goes for Mr. Gaddafi and his clan. Gaddafi’s are fighting to the end, and I do not think they will be even provided a dignified exit in a International Criminal Court Trial as Mr. Milosovic of Serbia. The Bahrain Government is recruiting Baluchi fighters from Pakistan to quell the Shia rebellion and Saudi Police are always there to help. It will well on its way to being a satellite state of Saudi Arabia, the King Fahad Causeway will only be a technical demarcation now.

The Old Guard of the Cold War era have almost receded in to the shadows of history. It is time that Bahrain and Syrian regimes alter trajectory to save face.   Syria and Bahrain are known to progressive, secular arab regimes, now it has the danger to be the newest Hamas’es of the explosive region. Bahrain’s envoy to DC is a Jew!

History is indeed a great teacher, only if its students are ready to take a leaf out of it.