AIDS awareness rally up to Big Banyan Tree

Sunday morning, instead of lazying around, Mayank literally dragged me in to joining this cycle rally all the way up to The Big Banyan tree organized by Jagruthi. I anyways wanted to go there once, having heard about it so much.

This place was about 25kms from ISCKON. The route was pretty simple, go on chord road all the way till the end where it meets Magadi road, Then go on Magadi road, towards magadi. On that road after about 13kms there is diversion to the left. There is no signboard there, but then most people know about the place, so I guess you would not have trouble locating the which left. The diversion to the left, is a very small beautiful nice lane kind of road.

The place, itself was not that great. There is a park kind of stuff, and inside the park there is this banyan tree. Apparently the original big tree has died and fallen down, and right now there are 5-6, big banyan trees which apparently were the part of the big tree earlier.

For me the fun part of this trip was going on the cycle. Overall it was 50kms, I have never done 50km cycle before on one day. But it was little taxing, especially because the roads were up and down. But forget the tiredness and everything else, the worst thing about this cycles is that your bum pains a lot, so if you ever plan to cycle, get a good cushion seat.

We all were supposed to carry the placard, when we cycle. And it was fun, to see people reading the banner and smiling. My placard was related to safe sex and prevention of AIDS, and most people would read it and giggle. It was fun. There were couple of people who stopped me, to ask me about Jagruthi and that was good to see. But most funny thing was this guy stopping me and asking me if I was distributing free condoms !!

Below is one of the pic which I took with some of the kids who were really fascinated with the cycle. The second pic has the placard that I was carrying all along the way on my cycle.






PS1: Jagruthi is a NGO which works for AIDS awareness. In their Bangalore home they house about 80 children, some of them HIV+, some who have been sexually abused, etc. Jagruthi tries to educate this kids, and also provide them some vocational training.

PS2: Apparently according to the survey of 2007 by National AIDS control Organization there are about 2.5M people living with AIDS in India, which is about 0.36% of total population. Karnataka accounts for about 11.2% of the AIDS cases in India, which is third in list after Maharashtra and Andra Pradesh. It is also very interesting to note that, Mahashtra, AP, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu account for about 60% of the AIDS cases. I was surprised at this stats, because I thought that AIDS was more prevalent in North India, but apparently this does not seem to be true.

PS3: Some of the pictures of Big Banyan Tree place,

One of the trees

All the tree trunks have all kind of graffiti

Another view of the same tree.

India... The land of spiritually

I hate it when I get the middle seat, when traveling on an airplane. Window seat is best, for I still have this child like enthusiasm of looking outside the window, specially during take off and landing, and when spotting any familiar landmark on the ground from the high up gives such a nice feeling. But I hate the middle seat. But middle seat, that was in store for me as I was taking up this flight to Delhi for the start of my trekking trip to Valley of Flowers.

Well, I was almost the last to enter the plane, and as I was grudgingly walking to my seat, 23B, and WoW, WoW, WoW, I could not believe it !! There were two beautiful ladies on A and C. Could I have asked for any better start of my trek holiday.

The Aisle side girl, was a about early twenties aged, she looked fairly cosmopolitan, and could not figure out her origins (north, south, east, west??), she was reading sudha murthy, "Wise and Otherwise". Good for me, that was some subject, which I could talk to no end, about sudha murthy and her NGO stories and so on. As soon as things settled, and air hostess was through with that regulatory speech on safety, I started my attempt to start the conversation. But this girl turned out to be very snorty, I dont know sometimes some people act as if they are carrying the entire burden of universe on their shoulders, and consider it a crime to smile and chat for couple of minutes.

I decided better to leave her alone and turned my attention to this other lady. She was glued to looking outside the window as a five year old, climbing the plane for first time. She was not Indian, was very red in her cheeks and guess she was from Europe,

"Hi", I said,
"Hi",
"Where you from?" I asked,
"Am from Ukraine, earlier part of USSR", she said
"Traveling",
"I come to India searching for spirituality",

WoW, that was great, I had always read on web, people traveling to India for spirituality, but had never personally met one. And then she went on and on and on and on. Telling me about India and how it fascinated her, and how this place was so beautiful and how spirituality was still, a part of everyday life of each Indian. She told me things which I am ashamed to say that I did not know about India. She took out her camera and took me through the photo tour, of her journey, from Manali, to ladakh, to Hampi of temples and monestaries, telling me stories about them.

Listening to her, I was wondering how much do I actually care to know and understand the rich culture that we have. Most of the times, we just discard the stories from Ramayana and Mahabharata as just the work of fiction. Also probably the way they show on TV, with so many arrows disappearing, and more than life figures that really makes it look far from reality. But the entire conversation made me feel very happy, and wanting to learn more.

Conversation also reminded me of reading this research done by some firang (or some website was it, dont remember, Alzheimer I guess ), and his inference was that Ganga is not a natural river. He had done some analysis of the base of lot of rivers and came to conclusion that Ganga is actually a man made river. I guess if you are aware of the story of how God was pleased with Bagirath's penance and he send Ganga down. And in all probability guess Bagirath was a great Engineer and he crafted way of all small streams coming for Himalayas, in to one big man made canal, which we now call Ganga.

Anyways, because of all this interesting conversation flight journey ended in no time, and by the end this snorty girl seemed to be interested in talking, but then it was already midnight and I was lost in thoughts of Ganga, and spirituality guess I was already half way up to my trek. Could there be any better start to trek to himalayas?

PS: Was away on Trekking, and hence the blog was silent.

Making teaching simpler

"Suppose for each 2 idlis (form of Indian bread) that you eat you will get one chocolate, so how many idlis you will have to eat to get five chocolates" asks Uddhav Sir.
Immediately I see kids counting on fingers, and most of them come up with the correct answer 10.

Now the problem is tweaked in many ways, for three choclates how many idlis? and so on, and they start enjoying it.

then finally, at the end of class, almost as after thought, Uddhav sir introduces the notation :
He also introduces the word Ratio.
"

The above was one of the Maths class that I attended in the school called Ananya. This is the school for the street children and I have mentioned it lot of times in my blog. It is not a formal school. All students are divided in to groups, based on their capability, and they just learn. There is no fixed curriculum, when students are perceived as eligible they give the exam through NIOS.

"For teaching multiplication we had done this project, wherein I asked student to measure the distance between our school gate to the shop that is outside from where they get chocolates. They had to measure the distance and paint the sign board on the shop for our school. So they counted the distance in the unit of their footsteps, then they measured their foot steps. And with little help they automatically figured out multiplication. Got a card board, and nicely painted it, with the number." says Shashi Aunty, who runs this full place, "This small project turned a normally boring multiplication class in to something very interesting which involved drawing, painting, and most importantly understanding what is multiplication"

When you think about it there are so many simple ways to teach everyday things to kids. Little more time consuming, but these techniques are more effective in sustaining the interest of students in subject and they appreciate the concept better.

"Most of the conventional schools don't do this kind of education because they don't have time, since they have to finish the curriculum . Here in Ananya there is no curriculum. It is full of fun and project based." adds Uddhav Sir.

On similar lines, long time back I had read this wonderful article called Lockhart's Lament. This article is more related to Maths and here the author laments against the boring form of classroom teaching. There is a very simple example in his essay related to how to calculate aread of triangle, which I really liked. I will quote from there


To calculate area first imagine a triangle inside a rectangular box:


I wonder how much of the box does the triangle takes up? Two-thirds maybe?
I do see something simple and pretty:


If I chop the rectangle into two pieces like this, I can see that each piece is cut diagonally in
half by the sides of the triangle. So there is just as much space inside the triangle as outside.
That means that the triangle must take up exactly half the box!
Hence the area is that of half the rectangle.


That makes it so simple right, area of triangle is equal to half of base and height. It is such an interesting way to teach rather than to mug the formula. The school in which I studied in never taught like this, it was always learning formulas.

The above ideas look so simple, but I am not sure how many schools adopt this. At least the school I studied never taught like this. Though the above ideas look simple, I guess it is difficult to come up with such ideas. Simple in expensive ideas that can teach science, maths etc. I also wonder if there is any resource available on web which have accumulation of such tricks/methods to teach. I have not been very successful at this search, all I have landed upon are some kits for science experiments which are way to expensive to be adopted by most of this NGO schools.

Actually Uddhav Sir, has asked me if I could come up with some ideas specially related to Maths. He has also given me some NIOS textbooks which are equivalent to conventional third and forth grade. But so far I am blank. Let me try and see what I can come up with. Ideas are welcome say for example, to teach division??


Related Articles,
About NIOS : Cant attend regular School, Try Open School
Another blogpost on Ananya: Different Perspective

Thought for the day..

"Some of the greatest feat in this world were accomplished by people who were not smart enough to figure out that they were impossible"

(Remembered this when conversing with a friend, had read this long time back in Readers digest)

Nice Sign boards

Sometime back I had visited Butterfly Park in Penang, Malaysia. It was awesome park with lot of butterflies and all kinds of insects, but what impressed me most were the sign boards.

Presence of Mind..

The other day I was going on a bike (as a pillion) on inner ring road, and an speeding red maruti overtaked me and banged in to the Tempo traveler right in front of me, which resulted in tempo traveller overturning and falling in to the ditch next to the road. Further a biker in front of me flew off from his bike and again fell in to the same ditch. All this happened in a just about couple of seconds.

Surprisingly nothing happened to the people in the maruti, except that the front of the car got damaged, but the car was still in driving condition.

After the shock of some ten seconds, I just got off to try to help the biker guy who suffered the biggest injury in this full incident, but by the time there were already lot of people who had started helping. And I realized that I was not doing much of value add there, other than to add more commotion, so I left.

In this confusion the maruti guy vanished, and then I was wondering why did not have the presence of mind to note the number of the speeding maruti. I was someone who had the best view of the full incident. Forget about pen and paper, I could have just taken the photo of the number plate with my camera enabled mobile. But it never occurred to me.

I was wondering if this presence of mind is the inbuilt talent some people have or this is gained by experience? Some people around me are amazingly good at that to do the right things at the right time, wasting no additional time. And seemingly things don't occur to me that fast.

I just hope that the biker guy is safe and surviving.

Article 377 and Alternate sexuality

Recently there was a Gay Parade in Bangalore, Delhi and Calcutta. This reminded me that sometime back we had done a whole issue on Alternate Sexuality in Sattva in October.

I read somewhere some BJP leader commenting that it was against the tradition and blah and all. I really dont understand, why people have to bring religion/tradition in to this. My only point is that most people know so little. I remember when young, I would have asked this question 2-3 times, I never got any answers or got very unconvincing answers. It was always an hush-hush topic. Most of us just put 2 and 2 together and come up with out own conclusions, at least I did not know lot of things when we did that issues.

So here I am going to put one FAQ that I had prepared for that Issue. It is related to article 377 of Indian Constitution the act against which this parade was there.

Here is the article,

Note:
This article was written by me and originally published in the Oct 2007 issue of Sattva, an ITIHAS initiative. Sattva, is an ITIHAS initiative: an e-magazine focusing on the social sector.
Related Sattva Issue .. Oct 2007, Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité – Freedom, Equality and Brotherhood

"
FAQ on Section 377,
Section 377 is one of the most frequently contested and controversial legal sections in ‘The Indian Penal Code’. And here are some reasons why


What is section 377?
Section 377 of Indian penal code was drafted as early as 1860. and it reads as follows.

"Whoever voluntarily has carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any man, woman or animal shall be punished with imprisonment which may extend to ten years, and shall also be liable to fine."

How is this section used?
Today this section is mostly used to harass people. Police use this section to blackmail and extract bribe from various gay communities.

Is there a petition filed to repeal this act?
The petition to repeal this act was drafted by Lawyers Collective HIV AIDS unit on behalf of NAZ foundation in December 2002. This petition was rejected by Delhi High Court in Sept 2004. In April 2005, this case came up in Supreme court before a bench headed by Justice Sabharwal. They saw reason to remand the case back to the Delhi High Court, that is where it stands today.


What events led to this petition?
On 7 July 2001, police raided a park in Lucknow that was frequented by the MSM (men who have sex with men) community. The raid led to the arrest of an outreach worker of the Bharosa Trust, a NGO working with the MSM community in the area of HIV/AIDS prevention. The police also raided the offices of Bharosa and Naz Foundation and seized materials from there, arresting nine people in all. The media sensationalised the arrests, describing the police action as the busting of a sex racket. The arrested persons were remanded to judicial custody on 8 July 2001; and were charged with section 377 they were allegedly beaten up and their offices sealed.


What are the main arguments to repeal this act?

• It violation of the right to life as a result of HIV/AIDS prevention work being impeded, and the MSM (Gay) community going underground, i.e., refusing to publicly avail of HIV-prevention options such as condoms, out of fear of being arrested
• this law's proscription of "non-procreative sexual activity" violates the right to life because a person's sexual preferences are an inalienable component of this right.
• It enables and perpetuates social stigma and police abuse

What is Governments argument not to repeal this act?

• Section 377 has been applied to cases of assault where bodily harm is intended and deletion of the said section can well open the floodgates of delinquent behaviour and be misconstrued as providing unbridled license for the same
• Section 377 reveal that it has been basically used in India to punish sexual abuse of children and to complement lacunae in the rape laws

Does similar section exists in England?
Interestingly no, this section was introduced by British in India in 1860s, but this act has been repealed in England quite long time back.

Which organizations are working towards repealing this act?
Naz Foundation, Delhi, is working with Lawyers collective in spearheading this petition. There is a forum of NGOs, called "Voices against 377" who are actively supporting this petition. In addition this petition gained a wide scale publicity and support, with the open letter written by Vikram Seth to repeal this act. This letter was supported by people like Amartya Sen, Pooja Bedi, Shyam Benegal.
"




Related Reads... The Queer Case of 377 by Siddharth Narrain


PS: Sattva is looking for writers, people who want to write about various social issues/solutions, Do drop in a comment if someone is interested.

How to get driving license in Bangalore ?

Lot of people keep asking me how to go about getting driving license in Bangalore, hence I thought of making a full post of this. So here is the procedure for getting DL in Bangalore without giving BRIBES. And trust me it is not all that difficult. (Though this is relevant to Bangalore, guess should apply to rest of the country as well.)


Step1 -> Filling the Learner License Form,

You have to fill the following form. Along with the form you would need the following.
1. Age Proof (Passport, School Certificate, 10-12th Class certificate)
2. Address Proof (House rent agreement, Ration Card)
3. Three Photographs,

Step2 -> Giving the Learner License Test.

After you have filled the form you will have to go to your nearest RTO office, and give the written test. You can find your nearest office here. Ideally you should go sometime at around 10am.

Do the following,
1. Pay the fees at cash counter (30 rupees)
2. Get your documents verified
3. Give the written test.

Nothing is confusing there, once you go there you will be able to figure out.
Written test is itself very simple, there would be 15 multiple choice questions, and passing marks are 10. I guess anyone who has reasonable head on his shoulders should be able to clear it. But in anycase before you go you should take a look at this.

Once you clear the test you should be able to collect your learning license same day after 4:30

I went at 10am, and was able to finish everything by one. I think I went and collected my license later in the day.
Official website for learner's license is this.


Step3 -> Chill out for 30 days.

Step4 -> Getting the permanent License, filling the form and documents.

Well now you will have to fill the following form.

And whatever vehicle that you are carrying, take the following documents,
1. Vehicle Registration certificate
2. Insurance
3. PUC certificate

Step5 -> The D day, before the test,
1. Reach your nearest RTO office by 11
2. Buy a sticker with a big L, "indicating that you are learner" and put it on your vehicle, put on front and back to be safe. Dont forget this else you will not pass the test. You will easily get this sticker at some shop near RTO for 5-10 rupees.
3. Get your documents verified. There is a queue but it gets over very fast. Take the above mentioned documents you should not have any problem.

Step6 -> Giving the driving test.
1. Once you do above step, you will have to give driving test, there would be inspector down, and you will have to queue along with your vehicle. The traffic inspector will brief you about the rules, like giving indicators, and hand signals. And he will ask you to drive. ( a small circle or something)
Caution: He would not fail you until you drive real bad. But please ensure that you give all the right hand signals, very important, signals for left turn, right turn, for stopping and so on. Especially for the left turn, lot of people tend to ignore it.
Also do note that signal for left turn is not showing left hand, it is showing right hand by rotating the right hand by the wrist. This is the most common mistake that people make :)

Once done he will sign your documents saying PASS/FAIL

Step7 -> If you fail :( : (
Dont worry, sometimes it happens, I also failed the first time. My fame to fail was that I did not give hand signal while taking the right turn. Does not matter come next week to give the test, and you will PASS. But it is very unlikely that people fail, out of 4 of us who had gone for the license, I was the only idiot who failed, and it was fully my mistake :)

Step8 -> Yipeeeeeee :)
You can collect your license on the next day. Relief for twenty years.

Important Notes:
1. Second saturday and forth saturday are holidays for RTO so keep that in mind.
2. Never land up in RTO at 12PM types, because then you would get struck waiting in lunch time, and dont blame RTO employees for having lunch, they need to have lunch as much as we do and they dont have the luxury of having biscuits, coffee at will/ or even AC as we all do in our IT companies.
3. Take a book, it always helps.
4. Patience is the key, Smile works, tone of voice matters a lot. People working there are same as our next door neighbors, nice and good.
5. All the time you would be pestered by people who would claim to give you license if you pay them 1000 bucks, but DONT do that.
6. Carrying a pen, gum, stapler etc helps.

Surya Namaskar

Since last one month or so I have been religious doing Surya Namaskar. Got introduced to it in the Art of Living course that I did. And I love it, I think it is on of the best things that you can do in the morning. One round of surya namaskar hardly takes about 30 seconds, in five minutes you can do ten of those.

I wonder why did they never teach this in my school, and it was not only in my school, I asked couple of colleagues in my office and they also did not learn it in their schools. My school taught all kinds of fancy stuff like Karate and all, but nothing about this.

I know many people consider yoga boring and to some extent even I do. But this is so different, five minutes of surya namaskar, and you would feel so flexible and nice.

Am putting this nice video that I found on You Tube, in this video the lady does it more than once :). Actually surya namaskar has only 12 steps and you may find this useful.

Different prespective

"Before I joined Ananya in 1998, I was just wasting my time. I was in a children's remand home in Bombay, and then in a hostel in Hubli. I ran away and got into smoking and drugs, until one of my friends introduced me to this school. I started studying here. I have stayed here for eight years, I have given my 10th class exam, and now I am working in CAPS IT solutions. I work as an office administrator. I want to thank Ananya, and all the teachers, because whatever I am today is due to them. I want to encourage my other friends who are in Ananya to study", he says

"Dont you want to study more?" I ask him

"No, now I want to work for some more time, I want to get my younger sister married, after that I will study more, I want to learn software uncle, (he calls me uncle, even though I dont like being called uncle)"

"Do you not want to get married?"


"No uncle, I read in paper daily, husband wife fighting, so
I dont want to get married, first I want to study"

This was my excerpt of talking with one of the Ananya students on one of my visits there, I wanted to post this for a long time but never managed to do it.


PS: Ananya is a school for the underprivileged children in Bangalore. It is one of the most wonderful NGO schools that I have seen.

How much do we own?

"
As Alexander wandered around north-west India around the fourth-century BC, he queried a group of Jain monks on why they were not paying him much attention. He got the following reply:

King Alexander, every man can possess only so much of the earth's surface as this we are standing on. You are but human like the rest of us, save that you are always busy and up to no good, travelling so many miles from your home, a nuisance to yourself and to others!... You will soon be dead, and you will own just as much of the earth as will suffice to bury you.

"
I had read this in Prasanna blog long time ago, but this thing has struck on me. This kind of keeps giving me a warning bell, whenever I get angry at someone or I hold a grudge against someone. Because just things in life come and go, people come and go, relationships keep changing, cities keep changing, and what would just remain finally is some photographs, some mails, some gifts, some moments struck in memory. And most always or not, in retrospect, when I think of the above quote, I regret all the grudges/quarrels that I have had, all the times my self esteem has prevented me from telling sorry or making up, and all the times when I just did not care.

How Bangalore came in to existence..

This month for the issue of Sattva, I had to do a brief writeup on History of Bangalore. And it was very good, and interesting, doing the research. Considering that I have stayed over five years in Bangalore I hardly know anything about Bangalore history, and interestingly enough most of the people whom I asked in my office, who have been in Bangalore from quite some time did not know much.

Bangalore dates back its history to over thousand years, but it was a small village, as compared to Hampi and Srirangapatnam, which during their glory days were apparently great cities. I also read at various places that there is a folk lore that Bangalore owes its name to one of the Hoysala Kings, (which was as early as 11th century), who on his hunting expedition, lost its way somewhere here. Tired and hungry he came across a poor woman who fed him boiled beans, and the king named the place “benda kaal-ooru” (which in Kannada means town of boiled Beans), which was eventually colloquialised to “Bengalûru”.

Later Kempagowda who was one of the ministers of Vijaynagar formely found Bangalore, by building a small mud fort, and four watch towers in four corners of city, (they still exists, there is one in Lalbaug in the right picture)

But apparently Bangalore still remained a small settlement, until till about early 19th Century. When British defeated Tipu Sultan and got hold of Srirangapatnam, they set up their settlement there. But apparently it seems that the place was infested with lot of mosquitoes, and after ten years of many malarial deaths, British shifted their settlement to Bangalore, and start developing which we present day call cantonment area.

So Bangalore developed as two distinct settlements, one consisting mainly of British near Cantonment and the other one consisting of local population near the city area (what we call chipeth). Hence all this names of Infantry road, Brigade road, Residency road etc.

In course of doing all this research I also read this interesting book on Bangalore from Peter Colaco. Next time you get jobless in crossword take a look at this book.

I think that in schools you should have a simple chapter on regional history, which I guess is very important. It was not there in my syllabus in my schooldays. I grew up only learning about History in bigger perspective of India as whole.

It is funny now that Bangalore all of sudden has become a all new city to me. Each of the road and building I pass has a different story and meaning for me. Some day when I become more free I will try to pen down other things about Bangalore.

Running the Marathon..

It all started with Alice mail to participate in Marathon, he literally forced me to register for this. I had the option of 10K run and 5.7K run, and always as ambitious as I am, I chose 10K run.

Later some people told us that you could raise money for some NGO running for the marathon and then started this mad rush to run for NGO post. It was good hectic last week, to get NGOpost registered, to set up payment gateway and then to get the Tshirts designed and printed. It reminded of the time we used to do nightouts in college preparing for those cultural festivals.

Finally came the Sunday, I was able to run 10 kms in about 1 hour and 13 minutes, it was not bad. Though later in the evening legs had become very soar. I have never run so much before, but cheering and people running around you can made a lot of difference. There were so many people, army people, old ladies, some families standing outside their apartments cheering and urging you to go. It is funny that for something as physical dumb as running should be controlled by your mind and how the surroundings can make you feel.

So it was good fun and the event was wonderfully organized, but the only thing that bothered me was the picture on the right. There was loads of plastic litter'ed everywhere. Though it is true that they cleared most of roads of this, because I did not find any traces of them when I was driving later in the day. But I still wonder if all this can be recycled. Why use plastic when we can avoid it.

I also contributed three bottles to this, could not help it, it was so hot. But next time I think I am going to carry my own bottle.

(Picture: courtesy Murali)

Being Environment concious..

These days I have become majorly environment conscious. Whenever I see little bit of plastic, I keep asking myself, "Is there anyway i can avoid using this".

The other day, I had gone to Cisco. As soon as you enter Cisco and go around, you see various posters pasted which keep stating how eco-friendly Cisco is. It is good to see a big company as Cisco being environment conscious. But what saddens me everytime I go Cisco is the way they use bottled water. Unlike most other companies which have normal water bottle for each employee, which keeps getting refilled from water dispenser, Cisco has loads of half liter packaged water bottles. So most of the employees who keep coming to cafetaria pick up 1-2 of these bottles. Imagine about 1000 employees and the number of water bottles getting used per day. And how much waste that will be generated. Maybe they recycle it, but still why do all that when you avoid the situation all together. And what amazes me is that this is same campus which is filled with all posters of environment friendly quotes.

Then I go to meet a friend of mine in oracle the other day and I went in to their meeting room and they had this normal water bottles which had to be refilled from water dispenser. This made me really happy "Your company is truly environment conscious", I told my friend.

And we were generally discussing this, and then there was this friend from a top MBA school and he was saying that these days, lot of students before considering a company for placement also try to figure out how environment friendly the company is and how much does it score on its CSR. Maybe this is still a far fetched thought, and personally till now I never thought of such things before taking a job. But it does seem a good idea, and I shall keep this in mind next time I think of hopping job, and then Cisco probably has lost some points already.

Satsungs

The earliest Satsung that I remember attending was when I did not use to go to school. And the only thing I remember is that me and my sister were playing "Ichuk Michuk" (Some game you play with hands, cant explain it here). And all the people surrounding us were asking us to be quiet.

Today I went to "Radha Soami Satsang", it was held somewhere near Tumkur road. And I was surprised to see so many people there. It is organized by this organization (I like their tagline, Science of Soul).

With due respects, I really appreciate the efforts of the organization to do all the great work that it is doing, but I sometimes wonder if it is really worth it.

When people go there they break traffic lane disciplines to ensure that they reach first, without bothering about the traffic jams they cause, they would park the vehicle the way it is more convenient to them without bothering a bit about others, try to sneak in the line just to ensure that they get the best seat. It just seems to me that the ultimate purpose of these people is to attend to this function, and everything else does not matter. I find it so amusing because I guess the primary purpose of attending all this satsangs and temples is to cleanse yourself and think of others. The same thing I find with Tirupati as well, the atmosphere is anything but spiritual.


I remember once when I had gone to Art of Living, and then Guru Sri Ravi Shankar had come. And at the end of Satsung, he called for all the people who were having birthdays that day on stage, and there was this friend of mine next to me, who just went off. It was not his birthday. When I confronted him later outside, he said he did not care because he got a chance to see guruji closely it seems. To me that beats the whole purpose of coming to Satsung.

Not saying that you should not attend the satsungs, but most times I do feel that it is like getting a tick mark on their life's resume.

What if all these people instead of travelling all the way from their homes, and spending so much time, could just go to one of the NGOs in their respective town and donate some time/money. What could be a better satsang then making a positive difference in someone life.

Freegans :

Quite sometime back I had read about this girl (in US), who would search in garbage bins for food and use it. Not that she was poor but that she was a part of community called Freegans. I had lost the link for it, but then today again it popped up in one of the feeds.  Freegans are community where people believe in using the minimum resources required for living and conserving and reusing stuff. 

More here

http://freegan.info/

An excerpt here 

"It's not a few bad products or a few egregious companies responsible for the social and ecological abuses in our world but rather the entire system we are working in, we begin to realize that, as workers, we are cogs in a machine of violence, death, exploitation, and destruction."

This is so similar to Story of Stuff. 

Sometimes I also wonder, being a hardware engineer about all the hi-fi tech stuff we keep making. Increasing speeds from Kbps, to Mbps to Gbps and so on. If all this is worth it?

 

Random thoughts..

My blog had kind of gone in hibernating mode, and these are just some random thoughts.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 Actually these days I have been spending lot of time writing for this one magazine called Sattva. You can take a peek at this, it is not a masala magazine, it is a NGO magazine. It is a monthly magazine and every month  we do a focus on different topics, like education, health, alternate sexuality and so on. March edition was on Human rights. 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Yesterday I was having an argument with my friend regarding buying a house in Bangalore. I am totally against it. My argument being, "Why to pay EMI for next 25 years of life, for something that I am not going to carry along with me. I mean think about it, all those small, no sunlight entering, kind of houses in one of the massive residential apartments, (they always give me identity crisis),  and when you die you cant take it along with you anyways. It may sound selfish, because my parents spend greater part of life trying to build a house, but it was different in those times.  And getting a beautiful house in the place you belong is different from buying this lunch box kind of houses in Bangalore. Home town houses are something nice and they are something that maybe people in future will cherish. Hence I find this mad rush for securing this ever expensive houses in bangalore not very meaningful. Sometimes I just feel that we get caught in all this web of buying a house, buying a car and before we know life has already gone by."

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

My cousin in hyderabad is in ninth now, so this year that school finish their ninth class syllabus in feb and have started giving them rigorous tenth class education. I really find it so absurd that such big schools would think in this way, and put so much pressure on this poor kids as if tenth class is one massive exam and their entire life depends on this one thing. I think they did not see Taare Zameen Par, or even if they saw it, they just wept during the movie and came back and forgot all about it. Wonder if movies make any difference?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The other day I was talking to one of the Maths teacher, in Ananya. Ananya is the school for underprivileged kids, and the school gives them basic education to prepare them for Open Schooling tenth class Exam. And he was explaining me that most of children there struggle with Maths, not with basic maths, but things like trigonometry and algebra. Not being from any regular school they find it very difficult to grasp these subjects. This could also be because they dont find much relevance of this in their daily lives. And then we were arguing if kids really needed to understand all these, and then if you think about it you hardly use it in day to day life. Further most of this kids dont plan to become engineer or doctors, they just want to get some basic education (like Home Science) and get some decent job and support their families. 

Also read this beautiful article called "A mathematician's Lament" related to above.  Swarna forwarded this to me and I absolutely loved it.

 

Story of Stuff,

One of my friends forwarded me this video and I really liked it. It is awesome. Do take a look. After watching this video , I have become very conscious, about the waste that I generate everyday.

Do take a look and Njoy.

Getting the driving license in Bangalore

IS EASY. You dont have to pay bribe, you dont have to stay in long queues, it is simple and straight forward. I had got my DL that way some three years back. Of course you will have to give driving test and get all your vehicle documents verified. So it would take about 3-4 hours, but the system works.

This post was prompted because couple of days back, I saw this skit, which was supposed to be humor. It was about how in India government system does not work, making fun and submitting to the fact that nothing can be done about it.

So I dont know about other government offices, but I do know that Karnataka RTO works fine.

Anyways I got the below in the mail from iVolunteer,

http://pgportal.gov.in/

"
Government of India has an online Grievance forum at http://darpg-grievance.nic.in/

The government wants people to use this tool to highlight the problems they faced while dealing with Government officials or departments like Passport Office, Electricity board, BSNL/MTNL, Railways etc etc. So use this grievance forum and educate others who don't know about this facility. This way we can at least raise our concerns instead of just talking about the ' System' in India.


It really works, I myself lodged a complain against one Bank around 6 months back. Bank took an action immediately on that and after two months, I got a confirmation (by letter) from the following department that my complain has been requested.

Similar experiences has been reported by couple of my colleagues too.

The response from the department is bit slow at present but I have seen that it is active, which is good sign for future.
"

I dont have any personal experience with this, but will try it for sure next time.

So I guess government has lot of initiatives, just that we have to start using them.

Cheers.

PS: I have added a full post on how to get the driving license in Bangalore here.

About Me

My name is actually Rajesh, but since college people have been calling me Goli and hence so is my name now, and my blog name.

Professionally am an hardware turned marketing engineer now, but as most others I do feel that such jobs suck and I should get out of it and do something else in life, but dont have the courage to leave this job and leave all the corporate luxuries :D.

Apart from work, have tried my hand, at guitar, salsa, film making, writing, aerobics(ing), with moderate and no success at some.

Apart from this blog I do write for a monthly e-magazine called Sattva. Along with some friends am also involved in running the website called NGOPost.

If so thy wish, you can get in touch with me at togoli-at-gmail-dot-com

--
Goli