Mumbai bleeds - Bridge the imbalance

The attack on Mumbai . Over 150 killed , hundreds injured. 20 odd terrorists held the city at ransom. The politicians have sanely (and strangely) shown restrain and have not retorted to mudslinging.. for how long is what the question is. The resilience of Mumbai has been challenged yet another time and oddly enough, we don’t hear news such as ‘Mumbai will bounce back’. People are scared. The army, the Police and the NSG become heroes and so would the terrorists in their respective ‘nations’. Sons became martyrs, husbands became heroes, children became hostages, the suave became pedestrian, the whites became blacks, the bearers became bystanders, ratans became helpless, and I became someone who kept watching TV for longer than what my wits would permit.

I got the same SMS from several people - “Forgiving terrorists should be left to God, but fixing their appointment with God is entirely our responsibility” ; asking me to Pass it on ! I realized that they have succeeded – they (terrorists) have managed to pass it (hatred) on!

Gandhian as I may seem, but I have realized that anger, hatred, revenge, tit-for-tat are so futile an expression, that vanity of its consequence does not need anything more than common sense as its catharsis.

It is impossible to eliminate the terrorists. Napoleon for one would not mind me using the word (impossible) . There is no better way to curb terrorism than to create an environment of conscience awakening. Imbalances always create chaos, sooner or later. It is the distance between the rich and the poor, the learned and the ignorant, the resourceful and the struggler that creates such imbalances. As countries search for innovative techniques to immunize themselves they forget to awaken their conscience. They forget to build the bridges as they are busy building walls. Break the imbalance and see the difference.

Quest for Knowledge

Quest for knowledge is the only relevant quest for man. For, in that (quest) lies the true meaning of life. The quest for knowledge is self-sustained and continuous

I tried to put this theory to test in the last year or so. Before you read-on through the passage, I must confess that the ‘realisation that I treaded the path of knowledge and that it would lead me to something was not a forethought’

I asked myself … ‘ when was the last time that I learned something new’ and realized that it was donkeys years earlier .. maybe sometime in college. I know that we keep hearing the phrases such as ‘life teaches you in every step’ ; ‘we learn something or the other everyday’ etc etc. There is a difference between this form of learning (which is to learn something new based on your existing knowledge) and the form that I am referring to .. i.e. to learn something new.. I mean from scratch….. just like when we were kids.

So, coming back to my story.. When I came to Bangalore I needed personal transportation , buying a car and driving it to office was the next natural progression ( for someone who drove the Activa at a little over 30 kmph in Delhi roads and who still does not know how to drive a geared two-wheeler .. you may call that as a ‘leap’ rather than a progression). Obediently, I enrolled myself in a car-driving school. It was a 10 day course .. 1 hour each day. The teacher , in his early 20’s, the best thing that could have happened to me – I thought – same age group you see !! Within 10 minutes of training on Day-1 I realized that the going would be tough. Somehow my Activa days were flashing in front of me as a monster that would not allow me to move forward ( > 30 kmph). The first gear was the toughest. At first the teacher was nice.. ‘you need to release the clutch gently, while you accelerate ( gently again)’ . The subtlety of the exercise was too much for me .. no less than doing a in-vitro-fertilization (IVF) with naked eyes. The teacher’s patience broke in the 9th minute.. thereafter he started dealing with me like a kindergarten kid. Each driving nuance was drilled into my head.. with absolute disdain to my ‘age’ or ‘stature’. At the end of 10 days I realized that my confidence level was exactly as it was in Day-1.

The second story started in office .. my colleague mentioned that he was going to learn Spanish .. I simply piled-on. It is easy I thought to learn a new language considering that I have a “finesse” to grasp new languages. The teacher on the first day mentioned that the ‘key to learn Spanish is to stop translating it from English’ – incidentally that is exactly what I do to learn new languages .. My most potent weapon was barred from being used. . Every time my Spanish teacher looks at me, I see in her eyes the words that say .. “ How can you be such a moron.. what you are learning now is something that children in Latin America learn before they join school”. Two months on and am still struggling. Not sure how many more years it would take to get there ..

These two experiences have left profound impression in me. When I am learning I keep my baggage of arrogance outside the class… All what I am outside the class in kept outside the class! If not anything, these two experiences have taught me to be more enduring and humble. To be child-like .. I say ! So the message to me was loud and clear .. keep learning .. for the quest of knowledge will keep me grounded and humble.

Many of us would begin to opine … and would ask .. If you keep learning all your life, when would you reap the benefits of what you learn.. or to put it differently .. ‘the measure of how well you have learned is the success it yields… ’ hence success is an essential element of learning or quest-for-knowledge. Where I differ with the above theory is .. Being successful or famous is the not the most important thing, 99 % of the people are not famous and it is stupid to have an aim / goal to be famous and successful.

The quest for knowledge is the most important thing .. Success is the by-product and it becomes so inconsequential when the journey (of learning) is so enchanting.