Ruminating over life...From my dateless Diary

At one stage of life we will realise that letting go is something all of us will have to go through.For sheer survival haven't we detached ourselves from the cosy and warm environment of mothers womb.

This obvious central truth of delinking and a sense of detachment continue all through our life  from the birth for the good of humanity.

We leave the neighborhood we know for acadmic growth or to make our parents happy.The same spirit to trade off in life continues to penetrate while deciding to love and marry.

Yes despite academic pressure or corporate success, life moves on with marital success or failure with or without love.we read in the paper, many bright economically independent women pretend to have  a perfect marriage  even as they suffer daily spousal abuse and vice versa.

One might ask why with all independence and economic empowerment these women tolerate the abuse and the plausible answer could be the stigma of a broken marriage to contend with and or some lingering faint hope that the partner can be reformed through love .

Apart from marital bliss or pain there are also times when we get rocked by inexplicable mental agony over financial or physical loss... suddenly we feel that lights are falling and shadows are growing darker all around and that we alone are encircled and singled out by the Destiny..

To be continued

From my academic debris

From my dateless Diary , The first day of the forty first year in service,7/08/2010

I look back at the road I had walked through Economics bin the last four decades.At discreet time interval I had experienced many a time ten minutes fame, finest academic triumphs and also the cruelest humiliations. In sum there was more joy than sorrows.

I know I had not engineered any earthshaking invention or contribution or innovative ideas.But with tremendous strength of character and conviction I can say loudly that I practiced more the than the optimal work ethics and more importantly I took the teaching profession with all sincerity and seriousness and my passion for teaching has never waned even for a day, single day.

Like Cleopatra Economics made me hungry even while it satisfied.Like a labourer, artist or ordinary painter I was doing my job;it was more of a tapas under chaos .

I had always experienced  some sort of pressure or struggle at work place.Though basically gentle and non interfering in other's affairs and tended to shy away from political game, it was my fate that there were times I found myself embroiled in situation that had seemed to go out of control and become a victim.

But all through the series of the crisis I did not reciprocate hate politics and didn't attempt to commit suicide when my legitimate academic entitlements were denied and glossed over on spurious and technical grounds.All these gave me the much needed perspective and understanding of life and people.

Now when I type by listening to Tamil old cinema songs I want to add that the retired athelete has nothing to prove.

He still will have a zest for sports related activities.I am still in it, albeit in a modest way with the spirit.

I am neither retired nor tired.My physical ailments have not stood in the way of reinventing and rededicating myself to learn new things.

Even now I feel like a old student of 1960s and 1970s, and a child and poet in me will take care and protect my innocence,and residual commonsense which is nothing  but economics as was once told by my professor V Sasankan in my B A class.

The fear of death :written on 21 April 2005 ,corrected on 29/11/2021 after returning from Adelaide and typing today

The theme is not afraid of death, but unwillingness to die.

It was written long ago.Most of my writings are drawn from my life experiences and also centring around the politics and economics behind the corporate driven economy and growing criminality venality and amorality in business, politics, inclusive of acdemics.

Poem

All of us  are destined to die one day, any day

At any time, anywhere by some means,

Natural or accidental,but just inevitable, the only

Certainty in life,...

As a finance minister, confroned with a severe balance of payments crisis and ballooning fiscal deficits can't

avoid a massive devaluation of the currency and can't

choose the timing and the percentage of  devaluation

We too, mere mortals can't have a date with destiny

As per our preference and convenience

Fifteen lakh gold threaded coat and extravagant thousand

Cars culture following the leaders

Will not cannot come to any rescue..

But the other day I didn't want to die,

It was really a strange feeling, a stupid wish, absurd

And I know it is an impossibility theorem

And the inner meaning must have been the deep thought

In the unconscious mind  to leave behind something

Substantial, academically and also  as a person 

Who will abandon the serenity of Pondicherry and 

the seductive influence of economics .

This was triggered by a dream wherein my artist friend

A former student once in TAC ,who had the honesty and 

Sense of humour to say after my   class, on the first day

On transfer from Karaikal, (another conclave of UT),

Sir, I like your heart, and I love you very much,and 

I also love your way of teaching macro, but but

I can't sit in the classroom because we don't have the habit

Of  not sitting in the class continuously.

It is a different story altogether when a prominent writer in 

Pondicherry my friend,for more than for almost four dccades on the beach  was introducing this gentleman

He is a great artist and also worked with Director Bharathiraja and so on my boy with all shyness told my friend :sir he was my professor, in my Third year BA during emergency period much to the embarrassment of

Professor Panju who has been getting a host of awards and also actively engaged in the Tamil literally arena

He only died in my dream, which almost looked real

And cried in the dream and once it dawned upon me

It was all a dream  what a relief it was.

The special bond and inexplicable affinity towards him

Could have triggered the idea, I don't want to die.

Each one of us is an achiever..we shall be proud that each one of us is an achiever

The one thing that unites all human  beings , regatdless of gender ,age ,religion, or ethnic background is that we all believe that we are above average drivers.

No need to compare, immitate and become somebody else.we need not dance to anybody's tune  and erase our identity and autonomy.

We are what we are and all us not only look different, but we  are really different.we shall be more proud of this fact that we are so.

Each one of us is an achiever.Among the millions of sperms generated in a particular ejaculation in a God directed and conditioned drama of life only one sperm succeeds to penetrate the egg in the womb and outsmarts others.

Gentlemen, you are in the  million having won the race and evolved as  something special and unique...A marvellous creation of God.

More than our work, and accumulation of wealth and also the knowledge what matters most is how far we succeed in our life to help others I whatever way we can and render service to society .

Economics and politics works through us but  most of us have abdicated our rights and  responsibilities and have b ecome passive spectators and thrown the accelerator and the brake to the criminalised politicians(exception is there)  and also insensitive and corrupt cogs in the administrative macine.

Instead of becoming a joint venture of the honest and the good  democratic experiment has degenerated into moneymaking lottery machine wherin the outcome is fully known for those who enjoy power  but  completely uncertain and arbitrary for the  vast sea of population ,being sucked into the grinding poverty and critical inability to find a job which will keep the fire alive in the kitchen.

When are we going to  be achievers in checkmating those  corrupt politicians and also businessman holding 250 crores cash in multicoloured Modi's new money which in the considered judgement of three times CM and formerly  tea vendor turned politician whose mass appeal especially in the north is simply incredible.

We shall not lose confidence in fighting all kinds of injuries  and injustice of time , the expression I learnt yesterday

Will I qualify for the title of Academic Terrorist bestowed upon me long ago?

Life is a unprofitable episode that disturbs an otherwise blessed state of nonexistence:

Who said this?... Nietzsche or perhaps Schopenhauer

I am not sure,my memory is weak

Be that as it may,

In the interlude I would like to remain as an

Academic Rebel and be helpful to the downtrodden

by voicing their cumulative frustration with the 

Corrupt insensitive rulers for ages

The incompetent rulers who are not even worth

a plateful of cabbages

Being faithful to my profession and the world of 

Academics, the right ones who championed the 

Cause of the weak and the poor and 

helpful to all protest movements 

I will qualify for the title

Academic Terrorist on the campus.

Keynes and Marx, Thiruvalluvar and Thirumoolar

Will give  strength and purpose to my existence

And make my life meaningful....

(This was written on 15-5-2018, at 3 am...

At Adelaide I  again wrote about the woes and the heartbeat of 

Agitating farmers... today I am happy that their collective will has made the aggressive ruler to kneel down.A nonviolent struggle will have Focus and also purpose.

By quirk of fate I found out the old poem today)

Prof D Sambandhan

Corruption has been talked about more not to root it out, but to ride on power in the post truth world of today.

Like the inexorable process of globalization, the age old institution of prostitution,  the word corruption too has always merited attention , not to stampout the cult of deeply entrenched cancer of corruption but to talk about it sensationalise and dramaize it to capture power and undermine the opposition as if  the aspirant is pure gold and has nothing to do with it.The fact  of the matter is that the substantial segment of the society comprising of the administrative machinery judiciary, police and the rent seeking corporate companies.The newly launched electoral bonds with no transperancy and promising unfair advantage to the prospective winners has legaised corruption.

Corruption is not merely an abstract concept or moral or legal issue, but a hydra headed monster which has  threatened and demolished the very survival of the foundation of the democratic fibre of our society. While the nature, content and degree of corruption and unfair tade practices in politics which itself has emerged as prime business activity like real estate and the like  are more cancerous and toxic in countries like India ,it is something which is tolerable in matured advanced economies where for normal and legally permissible privilege one need not shell out money.

The famous Bush Language of US and Them,has entered into our political lañdscape now.The ruling party say X , could easily threaten the crooks and criminals to support it lest the Enforcement agencies would  make their life miserable.Those sectors where black money and black wealth generation are rampant meekly yield and submit to the establishment and also sing the glory of the government no matter how anti-people,  it's policies are.

Goverment indulgent towards corruption in high places are well known, but selective raids take place?

This means, politicians make more noise deploring corruption ,but allow the container lorries,filled with tonnes and tonnes of currency notes to disappear and vanish into thin air after detaing it fr a while.

Under any regime, the tendency to harass and sideline anri corruption crusaders is visible and the action of politicians belie their words.

Expectations of the tribe of politicians to root out  corruption is like asking for the Moon? The law seems to bend backyard to protect the guilty and greedy and reckless ly rich getting richer by evading taxes.

Unless honest men in public life, including the Bureaucracy emerge , the nation is doomed to degeñerate into chaos .,

When fence is eating the crop, and the creator takes time  by imagining, His law will take its own course like the slow price adjustments in classical macro model, we shall be spectators of the familiar drama enacted every five years.

Do I understand my importance and also my importance in my subject

Good work is not done by humble men.It is one of the first duties of a professor, for example in any subject, to exaggerate a little both the importance of the subject and  his own importance in it.A man who is always asking,

"If what I do worthwhile? andAm I am the right person to do it" ? will always be ineffective himself and discouragement to others.Je must shut his eyes a little and think a little more of his subject and himself than they deserve.

I exactly fit into this quote by G H Hardy and despite my sense of diffidence I have never questioned or underestimated my love and potential for my subject and my role in it, as  I am still in it at seventy plus.

To be honest my subject Economics has given me more than I deserve.

Post retirement wife's death, visit to Adelaide twice and post Adelaide stay at my home town I have remained active reading and writing .

It's not an exaggeration to say that I have captured the spirit of my Mahe stay, my first appointment as Assistant Professor and HOD, being a one man department.

The subject is making me hungry while it has adequately satisfied my hunger...

The pleasantest feeling is that the academic greed is refusing to die  and I pray that it will persist, albeit in modest doses, till I breathe last and help execute multiple projects I started long ago.

A few on line lectures are waiting in the wings and I hope God will enable me to fly with my academic wings in the arena of international finance..

(From my post Adelaide Pondicherry Diary)