Sloth Vs bhelpuri-wallahs

Well, as I had feared, so it happened. I opened a blog, posted an entry, engaged in some self-indulgence and reverie and then never even visited my website! Nevertheless, I am trying to work on it, and post something else. Of course for now, only the most pressing of thoughts or issues spur me into action or rather writing in this case.

I am visiting family in India these days, and walking on the streets of Chandigarh brings back nostalgia sometimes. As an aside, walking is all I can do in Chandigarh these days, driving on the streets of India is a scary endeavour for me. Coming back to the topic at hand, it has been a wonderful few days being back in India, albeit bitter-sweet at times. I had forgotten some of the issues I felt so strongly about, and one of them was the public officials' erroneous attentions to management. One of the shopping areas in the city is filled with local peddlers making fresh bhelpuri for you - the best I have had in Chandigarh. Nevertheless, they are constantly hassled by the government officials because they are apparently illegally operating on the sidewalks! every five minutes the hoards of these bhelpuri-wallahs have to pick their little makeshift tables filled to overflowing with savoury chutneys, bhel, fresh coriander, limes and an assortment of Indian snacks, run down the sidewalk looking for safe havens, and in the process loosing customers. Oftentimes, they have to throw the materials somewhere so that they are not found with it, in turn causing them to suffer huge losses.

Their plight and the local government's attitude confuses me. I have seen the streets of my city, and those of countless others in India, littered with beggars who are free to roam and harass the public without any fear from the officials. They roam about scot free. Compare them to the bhelpuri-wallahs who are making an honest living through hard-work by selling their goods instead of lounging around in filth to instil false sympathy in the passer-bys and beg for money that will be squandered on alcohol and ice-creams. Believe me on that - I have seen child beggars come and beg for money for food and then run to the ice-cream parlours and eat Baskin-Robbins! I have also seen many beggars abuse and literally turn violent when my parents offered to room and board them and pay them if instead of begging they would work as maids or nannies!

We may be a nation that is tolerant of begging, but begging as a means of supporting the lazy and corrupt is by no means something we should be tolerant of. If I have interpreted it correctly, begging or bhiksha was used as a way of providing for the ascetics, hermits and the scientists of the ancient world. Bhiksha was a way for the Hindu society to support these philosophers, thinkers, scientists and researchers. I look back at it as a form of Research and Development funding that the society arranged for - the society took care of the material needs of these scholars, and they contributed to the society by increasing the knowledge base. What are the modern day beggars contributing to India? Aren't these street-side peddlers a much better recourse than beggars? Are we encouraging sloth and laziness in our country by encouraging beggars and discouraging honest vocation?

A journey begins...

My first attempt at penning down my thoughts happened some decades ago, when I was still young enough to be affected by the thought of putting things down on paper as a way of immortalizing myself - ah the wisdom of adolescence! That attempt did not last for long. If I recall correctly, my desire to put some permanence to my experiences by penning them down died soon after my second journal entry. I realised that after the first day of writing an extraordinarily long journal entry with vivid details, on subsequent days I was too tired or bored to write anything more insightful than, " Went to school and came back home again." As such, you can only imagine my hesitation to start doing that all over again despite the rapid (and sometimes rabid) fascination that people seemed to have developed for blogging. Almost everyone I knew, be it a friend, a distant colleague or my own baby brother was indulging in extravagant display of personal reverie (as i perceived it) on the world wide web.

I can admit quit candidly that I have resisted the urge to showcase my poor judgement about life and writing in general on the blogs, for many many years. The reasons ranging from the need for privacy, to the earlier failed attempts at being able to consistently write something down everyday or on frequent basis - the most basic idea behind blogs, or any other kind of journal entry, as I understand.

What changed? Why am I then doing the very thing I have abhored and avoided for years? a sudden face-to-face encounter with memories from the same adolescent years a few evenings ago. since then, three days to be precise, I have been ambivalent about blogging and thinking far too much about a subject that I admittedly did not care much for. I came across a book full of my poems - poems that I had composed when I was 15 or 18 or even 23 - poems that my mother d once threatened to send to some publisher as "anonymous" if I didn't pick the courage to send them myself. I was shocked, amused and frankly quite literally blown away by my own ability to compose poetry. For years now, being in a PhD program, I have struggled with my own lack of confidence as a writer. I realised now that it isn't a lack of ability or a talent (of which I do not boast at all - rather I cannot boast) but a fear of being incompetent. I believed, infact I am afraid I still might, that I had used up all my finesse, talent and writing ability all those years ago and now I am just a dried up academic. A few hours ago I finally decided to put that theory to test,. This blog is thus an experiment, for myself, to see if I really have no writing, other than articles for journals and assignments for students, left in me. I solemnly hope I am wrong, and I am going to try and prove to myself that I am, but as all experiments go, I am also open to the idea of realising my theory is fatally true after all!

So here goes nothing...!