Home, my sweet home-Part 1

The recent slogan rocking the nation is: Make it In india. All the best and bright youngsters are unable to survive in this shining   India and given the pressure of unemployment leave the country in pursuit of job elsewhere and contribute to the development of some other country and make it still more prosperous and peaceful country. They have to leave home, parents and close relation.Even those who remain within the country get settled down somewhere outside.Did not Jofn Ed  Pearce say some time ago,”Home is a place you grow up wanting to leave and grow old wanting to get back to “

My parents could build home for me to grow up in the village  only to end up eventually in the Pondicherry town eventually after my wandering in Mahe, Karaikal and pune for long.my parents must have longed to be with me.

They tightened their belt and gave me education to escape from their life of working near fireplace or escaping from the life of coalmines as a saying goes.

By attitude and character and by sheer temperament they were sacrificial in nature and did everything for  me and later for my only sister- a cute girl of fair complextion with whom I had a kind of estrangement by quirk of fate for a longer period . ruminating in tranquility I now feel how the cruel and wicked fate have paid a dominant role in every phase of my life.

Hard work combined with professional honesty and integrity propelled my parents to conduct their business by sending rice in the village and eventually rise in the moral universe which had already started shrinking in the cooperate world economy. Till their end they lived in a hut kind of small house with no power connection or tap water. There was a very  big and deep well in the backyard and that quenched the thirst of hundreds of people in the neighborhood. There was always water even during acute summer. Electricity connection and the tap water came at the end after my entry into the college.It was a  home, a very sweet home from which I did not want to go.As  a young shy boy I was more attached to my parents

Animals are placid and self contained,no one is demented and they are all respectable and happy.what about the human?when will he become a good animal not grabbing others' life and property/

Guess who said this?

I think I could turn and live with animals; they are so placid and self contained.

I stand and look at them long and long.

 They do not sweat and whine about their condition.

They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins.

 They do not make me sick discussing their duty to god.

Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania

Of  owning  things.

Not one kneels to another, nor  to his

Kind that lived  thousands  of years ago.

Not one is respectable or unhappy

Over the whole earth.

These beautiful lines belong  to Walt Whitman. Powerful lines to portray the noble and beautiful life of animals free from care and fear, guilt and jealousy and how they are at ease with themselves. Contrast this with the rich and the affluent looking miserable always, with all pomp and power. Shamelessly but more scrupulously  these rotten elements  fall at the feet ,cry for a while when situation  demands, accumulate money in billions at home and buy islands overseas, molest  the river by excavating all the sands, make the mountain and rivers disappear, and do not fail to worship their goddess and invoke the name for every word they utter. Are they respectable? Will the real god make them happy?Because of kneeling down again and again  their immune capacity  will improve and live long and loot the nation in the name of democracy-buy the people ,off the people and remain  far away from the people. Give subsidy in thousands and tax them in  crores.Will this drama be enacted forever? Is there no God to tame the rascalised criminals and blood suckers who rape the mother earth and disturb the eco system? Animals are happy .Do not disturb them

No more empty speech or stupid slogans to bring water.harvest it when it falls from above;Let the judiciary declare river itwater is the national resource and does not belong to any state where it does originate

Summer heat is scorching. Water has  become scarcer and  a costlier good. Water can not be manufactured in any factory  and it has to fall from above and the people and politicians must harvest it from below without making it as a tradable commodity as we have done. While Tasmark drink and equally poisonous soft drinks are available quality water is still away from the reach of commoners. Come  elections all these shameless parties /spineless leaders, who only ruled for long (50 years) without doing anything  substantial  now crow on the stage  they will do miracle if only we elect them  the same clowns again and again.

Cauvery and Mullai Periyar which are vital life lines  for three states’ livelihood  are shrouded in perennial controversy ; they will  remain as contentious issues as long as the earth rotates and offer fodder for electoral benefits.So long as their fate depends upon the whims and fancies 0f unpatriotic ,anti-national , stupid and corrupt politicians polticising the issues  and molesting the economic contents and thus have a great Say and also that the good and honest politicians including the so called elite and the educated  do not want to say what they really want to say keeping  the interest of the nation in mind.

Meanwhile what we shall do and say. Write poems or do some good translation of good poem .I do the latter. With due courtesy to Thina Mani and Thanigai selvan let me translate a few lines from Tamil:

To sail through Cauvery  (River)

 We no longer need  boat  

Camel  is just enough .

we can live in a godless world and not in world without love

Today I read a short story .the central character is a matured girl working in multinational company .one day she helps an unconscious person on the street and renders medical help at a private  hospital and the counter girl asks; is he your father? Then a flashback  …

she takes the old man to her apartment  and feels that the dead father has come to compensate this way. The fact of the matter is the old man is indeed rich  and the relatives snatch  him way after some time  not out of love but to get the signature on the property documents.

By strange and pleasant quirk of fate our heroine appears  on the scene and mediates when the old man refuses to sign on dotted papers. Our girl succeeds to settle the issue by asking   her  share in the property  as she  too has saved him from death and looked after for some time and bargains.

Guess what she could have asked?  Appa /father!.when blood relations trivialize love and want  his property and keen on abandoning him to the old age home , the girl who is virtually a bolt from the blue, an unknown and outsider  is so passionate and craving for father’s love  and considers  him as her property share and experience bliss and get soaked  in pure love.

Love is a source of delight and hence to be valued and the absence of which is a source of pain.It is only after death of the close relation we understand this simple truth. We can live in godless world but not in a world where there is no love.

Education has not helped to clean politics currency with politicians has emerged as a component of Money Supply

I read once that education is one of the best ways of escping from the life of coal mines.my parents worked near the fire place for more than two decades and led a sacrificial life to educate me and I am in a better position today than what I could have been otherwise.of course all the people cannot get away from the physical work.
The essence of education is to build our character , develop our awareness about one's own concern to fellow humans and address to the problems confronting society.true we can't press the computer button to resolve all the issues  and all the pressing questions of the day.It hss become all the more important for civil society to assume  larger role as the money making madness of the corrupt politicians has gone up in exponential terms and they do not  have any  sense of shame,nor do they have a moral fiber to cloth their physical frame. Many billions of rupees have been unearthed in the recent days indicating thereby the huge unaccounted money circulates in a parallel black economy and there is no will to set right things as many cogs in the machine of bureaucracy are too willing to help the establishment and  actually aid and abet this crime.If the educated fellows are behaving like clowns and abandon their neutrality and sub serve the interest of the ruling class and hardly bother about people.s welfare what shall we democracy has become a luxury and more and more money based.It is time the heightened stupidity and arrogance of power is tamed by the ballot.there is not much hope as people have to invariably choose between the devils and the deep sea.Ambedkar,Annadurai,kamaraj,Kakkan and Nallkannu to name only a few are the noble ones woh did not exploit the office.Governance has become costly and the bad is driving good  and good people are preferring to stay away from the drainage of politics.Will miltary  enlightened military will help? I am not sure! 

I met my barber friend after a very long time-some insight from market economy

Being a disorderly orderly person walking which is a must like breathing has become more elusive and erratic reflecting my pesonality.the positive fallout of going to the beach yesterday was that I met my barber after a very long time.He is 76 now, hale and healthy.He is a tall well built man and yet strikingly slim.he lost his wife a decade back.while conversing  he made a pertinent observation that he  had a wonderful wife-a lady who never raised her voice or had any grumbling.He was very much appreciative of her that  he missed her and that they were one among the ideal couples lived thus far in this part of the region.i was reminiscent of my precious first decade of marital life and another decade too  before the emergence of a series of currency crisis 0f  1990s in the world economy.we were lucky to enjoy the warmth and comfort of  home and women managed the household like a non economist Finance Minister.
My association with the barber began in 1964 -my entry into the PUC-the equivalent of 12th standard in Tagore Arts college  housed in calve college building on Mission street.For a haircut the fee charged was just 50 paise-half a rupee.He told me that when he began his professional life in the town-The Bharathi street the rent he paid was Rs 25 and the advance amount was Rs75 only.Till I left for Pune in 1978 he had dressed my hair.Even when I was in presidency college 1968-1970,I made it a point to make visit to pondicherry. He always  had a bad feeling of being a barber and how the society looked down upon them and so on.I used to give him support and strength by saying that without their tribe how many cannot present themselves and also that it was a honorable profession where one  can have his own freedom of action and not dependent on any employer.Later his son became lawyer and he swapped his profession for trading in rice.that was also short lived and  his shop became the office room of his lawyer son.
meeting old friends who had played a significant role and virtually shaped you gives more joy Indeed the life is made up of these kind of small things.Like barber friend there are are many who have lent a helping hand in moulding my life.When i get aged  all these nostalgic thoughts fill the mind and make us understand the interdependence in life.True as Adamsmith says, it is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer or the baker that we expect our dinner but from their regard to self interest.But there is always life beyond self interest .Then only market economy will work.We are merely components of a larger general equilibrium system where everything depends upon everything else

Each person in the crowd has his own troubles,sadness written on his face and wrinkles formed in his mind

My apology for my neglect of blog writing.I cannot give any rational explanation.One plausible explanation could be my academic commitments in Hyderabad central university and kottayam M G University.Like a student I  PREPARED FOR  THE LECTURE by going through Paul krugman's old Columns.

We humans do not live life as it is to be lived and with all rationality and affluence and riches  the peace and bliss have become more scarce and elusive.Long ago Blake captured this:

A mark in every face i meeet,
Marks of weakness, marks of woe".

This is also the time of stupid marks and students worry more about their grade and not about their passion.In the age of marks and grade and also the dominance of  market and ofcourse the manipulative and seductiveinfluence of  media which includes internet where is the time to look/read Marx-the young Marx who wrote about the devaluation of human being.Allover the world recession has hit on the face and jobs have become rare and Market fundamentalists are confident that the economy will find its own equilibrium with booms and bust the integral component of the capitalist model.They do not bother the wrinkles on the face and mind anxiety written on the forehead and all uneasiness and helplessness locked into their hearts

.How much pain on the faces which have forgotten to laugh.More anxiety and fear about the future, incapacity to get the necessary connectivity sum up the honest and good.Merit alone does not  define and guarantee the right job.Contrast with birds and animals  having the wisdom and courage to be happy and healthy and do not crave to eat more than they want and be content with they can acquire by hard work  where human greed is non-existent.