Riding the wildcat!

In March of 09 a bunch of my friends and I, went for a skiing trip to New Hampshire. Going from dreading the frigid days in Wisconsin to waking up at 6.00 on a Saturday morning to go skiing was a transformation that I never expected. Anyway here is a small video of my skiing escapade from last season at the Wildcat Mountains. Credits for shooting and editing this video should go to a friend of mine, Karthik, who happens to be a proud snow boarder. As I clearly stated to him, the purpose of bugging him to upload the video online, was to show-off! Haha! Enjoy!

- Vijayasarathy-

The Real Slumdogs

No one can deny the sad state of Indian slums and the despicable conditions under which women and children have to lead their lives. I remember going to school on rainy days through the low lying areas of G.N.Chetty Street in Chennai and witnessing the slum dwellings half submerged under water. I would envy these kids because they were playing in the rain while I had to go to school. Whereas if you assess the situation as a grownup it makes you cringe in disgust of the appalling truth, that this inequality has permeated our society like an epidemic, a society that boasts of equal opportunity for everyone (or does it?). It is so blatantly visible, but either no one notices or no one cares. When someone who recently saw ‘the slumdog millionaire’ enquired if India really was infested with slums as depicted in the movie, my instinctive reaction was to deny that and talk about the tall buildings, the economic boom, the city life, our rich culture, our moon probe and the other what not’s. (I am truly proud of what we have achieved in 60 years of independence.) But when I think of the real situation, I am reminded of the animal farm where ‘All animals are created equal but some animals are more equal than others’. And the napoleons of our country, equated to the power hungry monsters called politicians, have let us down in every possible way. To fix a system that is not working we have to identify what is broken. The question is where do you start?

I would start with blaming the lack of empathy among the great citizens of India. If we drive through slums we not only close our nose and eyes but also our minds and hearts. I don’t know about God, but beggars surely are omnipresent, in front of temples and mosques, in bus stops, train stations, beaches, movie theatres, you name it. Sometimes we shoo them away, other times we give them a buck but we don’t stop to think how to elevate these lives out of misery. The practice of giving seems to be lacking although one often hears of it in films and political meetings. The aathichuvadi’s and thirukural’s have plenty of words of wisdom urging people to give to the less fortunate, but those just remain words we ‘mug up’ for school exams. The idea of looking out for one another probably took a walk years ago and never came back.

When I say people don’t give, it is not completely true. In India, people have to ‘give’ to get even the simplest of things done. We have to ‘give’ the mail man to get our mails delivered properly, ‘give’ the electricity board officer to keep power in our homes on rainy days, ‘give’ the water board personnel to keep water running in the taps, ‘give’ the metropolitan building authority to get the land certified, ‘give’ the police man every other week to make it to work on time, the list is endless. I feel that our economy is fuelled more by these unreported ‘givings’ than by our paychecks. Everyone knows bribes are illegal, but no one cares because we believe nothing can be done since it is prevalent at all levels of office. Almost everyone in public office is a scam artist and it is sadly an open secret. We give so much to the greedy that we don’t have anything left for the needy.

Following this lead will ultimately bring you to the root of all evil, the blood drinking hounds of our society, the real slum dogs of free India, our own home grown politicians. These are probably the most corrupt lot on the face of this earth. Statistics suggest that out of the funds allocated for any public project less than 15% actually goes towards the project. The rest is spent bribing these “public servants” and their loyal bureaucratic counterparts in office. To make things worse, the steps one needs to go through to implicate these criminals are so complicated that you would grow old trying to initiate any action against anyone. More recently the media seems to be undertaking sting operations to shine some light on the bribery problem, but the attempts are few and far between. I know that no country is perfect but to be one of the worst 5 in terms of bribery is not something to be proud of. I believe this nonchalantly immoral way of conducting business at the highest levels of public office does trickle down. Ultimately the laws remain only as effective as those who enforce them.

In spite of all these challenges we will continue our growth because of our hard working middleclass. However, in order to see the end of slums and poverty as only we know it, the attitude of entitlement paraded by politicians and government officials need to go. Who ties the bell around the cat’s neck and how seem to be the open questions. Only time will tell!

-Vijayasarathy-

Just panning it out!

There have been times when we put on a thinking hat, gazed dreamily into emptiness in a dimly lit room for hours together and delved into a train of thoughts only to have rejected them as disillusioned or just not having had the motivation or time or energy to pursue the answer. This is a reflection of one of those times.

........

All of us have been through epochs in time when things didn't go as planned. Depending on how short or long these periods were, the experience may have varied from being an interesting twist to the plot, a challenge to address, a hurdle to overcome, a gloomy day in the season, a series of unfortunate events or perhaps stormy weather prolonging the days of agony. While we relished the smaller challenges, we tended to suffer as we plowed through the longer trials. The initial enthusiasm at the opportunity presented by a challenging situation may have deteriorated into days when you just didn't care anymore.

During some of these longer periods of testy days (in recent memory) some random but frequent thoughts on topics that otherwise evade my everyday ritualistic world, like spirituality, meditation, prayer, philosophy and God would fill the void during the evening walks with friends (going through similar phases). These thoughts were the result of a day when you did all you could to make it count, but nothing happened. A string of these days would suggest that you were not in control of your life, while the quintessential truth as you had known it, suggested otherwise. The process of reconciling this cognitive dissonance created a platform that brought together the elements of spirituality, meditation and God. These were ways to balance an equation that was out of whack, add order to randomness and inject sense into events that seemed to have gone awry. I had thought of God frequently before but there was less questioning. Spirituality was just a tool for achieving control of the mind and not the righteous way to true happiness. As these days prolonged, I wondered if our way of life, where everyone did the same thing, in some form, way or shape, where we all spent our time running after pieces of man-made paper inherently accepting a vicious cycle, was really the way to be. I questioned if I was being rational or if I was just rationalizing. Was I looking at the world through a prism?

Finally, when the days of toil came to a happy ending and the solution to the dissonance was finally discovered (that it existed in the first place because I was not running with the rest of the crowd) the spin on it was that the hard work combined with an element of luck had paid off. Quickly, as I adapted to the way of life which I was just questioning earlier, everything seemed to be just fine. The thoughts instantly disappeared as I began to savor the taste of success. The new vigor injected by the turn of events drowned out those questions (although they remained unanswered).

Did we, during the process of evolving to the place we are at now, discover this to be the best approach to achieving fulfillment in one's lifetime? Or was the potential of the less traveled paths just dismissed because they weren’t just as appealing? Is the ignominy of our indulgence rather a blessing in disguise? The questions linger on.

-Vijayasarathy-

The white stuff must have got me high

Just after falling down a few times, my blue jeans was completely wet. I was having cold feet because of the wet socks. My fingers were frigid since the 10 dollar gloves were no good either. I lost my skis many times. I thought I had twisted my ankle. I just wanted to make it down hill back to the renting place. I just wanted to live.

Almost 5 years ago, I was having morbid thoughts on the slopes of Beaver hills in the mountains of Utah. All I could do to prevent crashing into trees or taking a 10ft dive was to stop abruptly by hitting the ground sideways. Five year old kids zipping past me made the situation seem worse for me. I didn’t know how to slow down, stop, turn or recover from a fall. And fall I did, many a time. Sympathetic passersby stopped by to ask if I was OK. Some told me to try the pizza wedge. Others told me to zigzag my way down. I did, to no avail. I fell and tumbled at every turn. After about 50 falls, I had mastered the art of getting up. About a hundred falls later I figured out I could use my already aching butt to make my way down. I sat on it through the bumps and troughs, determined to make it, no matter what. After an agonizing 2 hours I could finally see the rental office. I tumbled through the last of the many steep slopes and 20 minutes later I was where I had started.

Back at the rental place, I was trying to revive my fingers. I couldn’t feel them anymore. I ran warm water on them. I didn’t feel anything for a few minutes. Finally when the blood rushed back into the fingers, it was so unbelievably painful. I hadn’t experience anything like that before. I was still not sure about the ankle although the pain was much lesser than I had expected earlier.

As I was limping to the car, I began to recollect the events that took me to the top of the summit. Barely 10 minutes after I put the skis on and only after going down a small slope a couple of times I had impulsively hopped on to the lift. Only I didn’t know that the lift dropped you at the summit. As the seemingly endless ascent to the top began, the implications of this blunder began to sink in. I even considered taking the lift back to bottom of the summit but it looked equally dangerous. I had never worn a pair of skis, never been to a skiing place, never watched anyone ski, never skied down a slope until that morning. How did I ever think I was ready for it?

In spite of all the self inflicted torture, by the time I made it back to the rental place, I began to get a feel for skiing. I had tried the pizza wedge a few times. (It seemed to work when I was in no danger of crashing into a tree or hitting the ground!) I had learnt how to fall without hurting myself too much and to get up from the fall. And I was still alive. So I decided then that the next time I tried skiing, I would learn at least the basics before hopping on a lift.

….. and so I did. I went to the Wachusett ski resort a few weeks ago, took a lesson and have been skiing almost every weekend since. Not a pro yet, but one day I will try to make it to the Winter Olympics for the disabled (a twisted ankle or a broken knee!! All bets are open). I guess I’m just high on Boston lager and the Boston life!