Category: Article

No Child’s Play

~ Pied Piper ~ Leave a comment

We cannot always build a future for our youth, but we can always build our youth for the future.  – Franklin D Roosevelt

The news on the TV shows a child with a firearm. The title just says that he is a child soldier.

The kid, who should be playing catch with a ball, is now playing suicide with bombs.

What has the world come to, when such kids are being targeted via hate chat boards. This an improper using of chat and message boards and overall social media. Though, social media is not supposed to be at blame. it was meant to bring people together and build relations and thus spread love.

The youth/ teanagers are rebelious. They always have been, throughout the history of mankind. But when did this rebellious youth turn from running out and smoking a cigarette, to becoming a child soldier ?

It is a sad day indeed, when kids are being brought into the wars of men.

Charavak, Millennials’ way of life

~ Pied Piper ~ 3 Comments

In a quest to seek knowledge, I come across a variety of books from multiple different genres.

In pursuit of the same quest, I know I should be pragmatic, which means I need to keep my mind open for all schools of thought.

Recently, I started studying the Charavak Philosophy, ancient school of Indian materialism. The Charvaka epistemology states that whenever one infers a truth from a set of observations or truths, one must acknowledge doubt; inferred knowledge is conditional.

This school of thought actually appealed to my intellect.It just meant that now my mind and my intellect can be on the same page for once.

I believe, the practicality of all the things will also give way to a simpler lifestyle, though it might also take a toll on the emotional aspect of life. For eg. If you have a 6-year-old, asking how he gets a gift or a cash gift every time he keeps his tooth for the tooth fairy, it is better to lie to him out of love, rather than explain the dynamics of how economy works or how his father/mother replaces the tooth in the middle of the night.  Maybe, that is a practical thing to do, but it is still driven by emotion.

I know of how the practical approach to life fails, but I also know of how it succeeds in life. In Hindu literature, it is brilliantly explained with the notion – Ram Rajya. Named after the famous, godly king of India in 3400 BC, a kingdom, wrought in Chaos and corruption was morphed into a beautiful and law-abiding place almost similar to the concept of Eden. The citizens were very strict in following the laws which were laid down by the great Lord Ram.

Yet, the practical way of life was flawed, as the emotions came second to practicality. Over the centuries, there grew a discontent and that became the downfall of this once great philosophy.

Does it mean that the philosophy itself is wrong ? perhaps not. Each person has his own thought process. Hence the individuality of humanity comes into picture.

Now a days, due to social media, it seems like the next generation would rather “google” the answers and accept the first result (or the most convenient one)  than actually  think on whatever task they had at hand. In such a scenario, wouldn’t it make sense that we have the Charavak Philosophy integrated into the lifestyle ?

The only word which the millenniums seem to have integrated is materialism.  They think a fancy mobile, expensive clothes and fast cars is the ultimate aim of life. Hence, they spend truck loads of money on items, just to post it on social media, and then go into an endless pursuit of checking how many people “like” it. Have we become so needy ? If we are, when will we start liking our inner self ? When will we get in touch with our inner self ?

The atoms…

~ ddgaikwad ~ 3 Comments
Recently, I was reading an article from one of the science magazines. It was an article that I came across, relating to the research being conducted using LHC or the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva. The worlds most complex and advanced machine.
This article provided the details about how the scientists are trying to unravel the mysteries of the Universe and its inner workings on a level that one cannot even grasp! And they are trying to unravel the workings by smashing atom together, so that it could decay into its smaller constituents… Which could be further studied…
It got me thinking, we as humans, who are trying to understand what makes up the Universe, what are the basic components? How they came into existence? Why they are the way they are? This is something which really tips the scales of awesomeness to the MAX!!
If you think of it in this way, we are smashing atoms in tiny bits to understand their makeup, to decipher those grand and big hidden mysteries of the natural world..
But, when you think a bit further, humans and the machines used to smash those atoms, are themselves made up of countless number of atoms…
So, in a nutshell, its the atoms themselves who are smashing these other set of atoms, to find out what they are really made up off?
At the first feels a tad bit creepy, but then one tries get a grip of how grand it is! It makes the head spin even thinking about it…
Makes you wonder, how could something which has no life, comes to existence to study itself?
Is that not a big mystery in itself? Is it not like the maker himself is trying understand what he is?
Any thoughts?

Does Power beget evil ?

~ Pied Piper ~ 3 Comments

I was having a chat with one of my colleges yesterday. The topic of the discussion was -how it is evil to strive for power. I was the champion of power. I don’t believe power itself is evil.

Let me explain myself.

Power is nothing but the will to be the best. To be so good, that people would follow your advice/ teaching without question. This “advice” could be through the show of force or through show of knowledge. The power which is enforced through a show of force, though powerful in itself can always be nullified or countered with someone who is more adept in the “intelligence” department. Let’s see an example :

You are in a bar, and a few beefy bullies try to show power by pushing you around. Now you, a skinny, powerless but intelligent person can do a lot of things to save themselves. You may call the cops. But they may take some time to arrive at the place. You may simply pay the football team in the bar room, who are causing a lot of ruckus, to beat the bullies up.  If you are short of cash, simply order a drink and serve one of the groupies in the football team, hinting that the drink is from one of the bullies. The high testosterone levels in the football team members will help you to beat the bullies up to save their “honor”.

In any case, you overpowered an enemy who was in superior strength and numbers and hence – more powerful.

Now you, in this case, used your intelligence as power and saved yourself from getting bullied. Does this make you evil ? I don’t think so. It is natural to save ourselves and those we love.

Now, power itself is not evil then. But the person wielding that power, could inherently be evil, which would just mean that even though power itself is not evil, it was used to spread the evil.

Let’s take another example.

Imagine two accomplished neurosurgeons. They have the power to save people by performing very critical and complex surgeries. One of them uses his skill to heal the people and the other uses the skill to sell the body parts on the black-market.

Does this mean the power to perform complex surgeries is evil ?

The balancing act…

~ ddgaikwad ~ Leave a comment

My transition from childhood to teenage to an adulthood, has not been that bad, but not that good as well… its somewhat been like where in the difficulty level settings for the life have been preset to medium… Oh well…

The memories are not that vivid, but quite faint of me being a child and being in the first grade, I was one of those introverts, trying to cope with the chattier ones, (what a pain those kids were…).. As being an Asian (Indian for that matter) there has always been a pressure to perform in the academics, but, since I knew my own capacity, I always used to manage to stay in the lot of top 20 kids of the class… and soon this became an balancing act for me to keep the same pace till my grade 10… (but little did I know that this pressure to perform would stick to me in the coming years as well…)

What a relief it was, when I joined in the junior college, and as a freshman I was pretty much able to choose the subjects and branch of my liking, (options, being, science, commerce and arts) looking my well balanced marks, was able to get a seat in the science branch, along with subjects of my liking. Little did I know, this will initiate another set of 2 in the balancing act.. this time it was, balancing the marks, completing the assignments, completing the experiments, (for me, I had 4 subjects) spending 7 out of 4 days just completing the experiment sheets… rest of the 3 days, studying hard to keep the Asians standards or just staying at the edge of them…

Then with all this balancing was able to graduate and join a good company and start another journey… initially all was good, able to learn new things and was happy about the progress as well.. Seems that Life was set and then would just go with the pretty good Life that I had always wanted in those yesteryears…

But little did I know that I have entered one of the grand schemes ever!! Still being part of it, but this time the stakes are pretty much high and pressure and the time all seems to have mingled together…

This time around, it is huge, its time to balance, work, work pressure, money, the finances, relationships and still there is Asian standard of performance, the balancing act has never been this huge and it has become more intricate.. no matter what…

The conclusion would be, Life itself is a one big balancing act!! sigh….

Old tech…

~ ddgaikwad ~ 2 Comments

I know that this has been said by many and many more times, that the old tech was the best tech… or old school as they call it…
Came to a realization this Dashera, why the old tech or the old school as you may call it, is called that way and why its the best way?

Let’s take small trip down the memory lane, shall we..?

During 80’s, with every Diwali, Dashera, or any big festival, there used to be this hustle…
Which included, (as some of you may recall), head to the post office, get a dozen or two letters… Come home, sit at the study desk, make list of all the relatives, start writing well wishes and all the pleasantries, and that too mind you in really, really and I mean really good handwriting the best ever…! Finish the writing, put down the addresses accurately (you know India post, ahem!) In a week or a two head back to the post office and post them…
Phew! Come back and wait for the responses…

Then came the 90’s, the telephone had started to become the house hold appliance, but still not that common… An entire area of 100 house hold would be sharing one phone number… Then there were also those STD booths, where in people used to flock during the night, for the lower call rates and so they could have those really long conversations with all the relatives and friends… Still this was exciting and magical, to listen the person, who was hundreds of Kilometers away, but felt like he was just besides us…

Enter the 2000’s or Y2K as they called it.. hehehe!
We had the intrusion of phones and sms messaging was just gaining popularity, but was not main stream.. the call rates were pretty low as compared to 90’s and the conversations used to last a little longer… the best part was that only the required person could be reached out and no one would even know, wink wink…

Enter the 2010’s, Internet is a common thing, the “smart” phone is in every person’s hand…. Now we just wish each other by sending a mass text, or an image or just a gif, searched and downloaded from some heck of a server, we don’t even know…?
Or best, just put a greeting one of many Whatsapp groups and you are done… The hassles of calling, writing have become a thing of past…

This type of communication has lost the personal touch, which was there during the 90’s and well late in the Y2K… but, these days, all seems pretty mechanical, there is no personal touch, heck! your friends so called close friends as well, will not bother to memorise your birthday, they heavily rely on online services…

Still there are so many other who are still going with old school way… but, they are just the endangered species… seems that this is how the future, pretty non-personal, and mechanical… sigh…!

Hometown…

~ ddgaikwad ~ Leave a comment

There is this place called as the Hometown, this place, has a special meaning in everyone’s heart… It could be a small village, a town, a city or even a huge metropolis….

We all have this connection towards it, there is this strange feeling that runs through, when we are traveling towards it. There is this smile which keeps on popping up on the face when you are there. The things seem so similar and that they have a weird connection towards oneself…

It is a place, where we never feel lost or alone or as an outsider, it is a place where one can feel an authority, a connection, a nirvana… All roads are familiar, all places are known, every nook and corner…

When one is there, it feels like as if we had left it yesterday and are back again the next day, we cherish those get together spots or katta’s, those wada wallas and those ice cream parlours, we know them since our childhoods and college days…

But, then there is this feeling that, you have to go back to the place where you work and make a living… There is always this feeling within, that someday, someday I will come back and settle down here, a place which one knows and is cherished… A place where you have that irreplaceable sense of connection…

But, still as time passes, one keeps on cherishing the memories, from this one place called as the Hometown…

As the vacation nears to an end, we pack the bags and plan to come back here to spend some more time, albeit but like an athithi…

The transitions…

~ ddgaikwad ~ Leave a comment

There have been times when I was completely unaware of certain things in my own way and life… There was a time when everyone used to call me with my name or a nick name or something that would really make you uncomfortable in a group of people…

Then the years go by, and you move from School to College, you are a junior, then another year passes by and you are a sophomore now…
In those years of college, you call whoever you want, with whatever name you wish, there are no barriers, there are just these friendly gestures, and best of all no one gets offended… Because you know that something similar will be thrown back at you!

Finally, you graduate and move to the “real world”, you start looking for job… you start addressing people with proper salutations, you know because you need to look good and you really need that job…

You get the job, you start working with a team, they are all of your age, passed out in the same year…
Again you have that same college kinda environment, you feel liberated, you work with same enthusiasm, you make progress…

You start moving upwards in chain of command (I mean the corporate ladder…)

One day you move out and head to another Organization, now you have your team, you work with them, you do your best.
You create healthy and friendly environment where people are with you because, there are no barriers of seniority or age or industry experience, everyone is content and learn form one another…

Then one day, the team you loved is spread across, its no more there… you go to work with heavy heart and a lot of thoughts.. you see another set of team, you try to create the same rapport, But…..
To your shock you are made to realise, that you are senior, in age, position and industry experience and should behave like one! All these words come out of the mouth of a kid, who has been recently hired…

Suddenly you see all these barriers! Then you realise small things that have changed in the due course of time…
The gatekeeper calling your sir… The new kid addressing with respect… The cab driver, even though elder than you, addressing with salutations…

Next day you just wake up with a heavy heart and get ready and head back to work, thinking what went wrong in all these years… Get to office and start working, keeping those barriers up and observing all those newly joined grads and remembering your own good old days….

Announcement

~ Pied Piper ~ Leave a comment

Greetings readers,

It brings me immense pleasure to announce that balletofwords.com is now hosted on blue host.

Finally, the control freak in me will get the kind of control I am looking for.

I hope that this path will lead to some wonderful new experiences.

 

I would like to thank all those patrons who were kind enough to donate, like my posts and spread the good word.

Pied Piper out.

Shalom, Namaste, Pip Pip..

 

Kids and the pressure cooker.

~ Pied Piper ~ 2 Comments

You know in the old days, (wow… I feel very old now) i.e. 10 years back kids used to play outside and used to beg for  more mins before coming home. I know I did. Life was simpler back then. You play for two hours everyday except Sundays and vacations, then study for a few hours and sleep soundly till you reach the high school. Then you pass the exam, select a good college and try to keep yourself afloat long enough to graduate and look for a job. That’s when you can start to stress yourself out.Well this is what I did.

Now I see kids sitting on benches, playing on their ipads and various other tabs while the ground is mostly used by people out for a jog, or at-least what is more like brisk walking.

I am sure you are aware how much time, money, paper and blogs are filled with articles on the topic of ” Kids these days are more engrossed in their smartphone than the ground”. I am confident you might have chuckled at the article and remembered the “good old days”. I did this myself today. Which prompted me to write this article.

I saw my little sister, who is not even 14 yet, fuss about the points she got in her class tests. Now, let me tell you, in India thee is only one exam that matters and the marks of only that exam are considered while selecting a good high school. (we select the high school first then we can select the college , after two years in high school). This kid is scoring a perfect score in all her exams and still she fusses about her marks. She is stressed that she might loose a point in one exam and loose the top spot. Though admirable quality, winning, not for a 14 year old.

Now, parents are always blamed for pushing their kids. But not in this case. Both the parents try to convince her to take a “chill pill” once in a while, but to no avail. I can’t seem to understand when she will enjoy life ? when will she just take a break once in a while to sit still and do nothing, just breathe ?

I guess this madness will stop only when people stop associating intelligence with the grades or marks scored in an exam, but till then, it will continue to be a rat race.

 

Priorities

~ Pied Piper ~ Leave a comment

We live in a modern age. An age where we live a fast life. Everyone is in a hurry to do something. It could be the haste to get education, haste to get married and settle down, haste to earn loads of money, haste to retire, haste to cross the road, anything…

But in our haste, are we not forgetting to live life ? to make friends, to act like a friend, to understand and talk to people ?

I would like to get my point across with an examples which I came across while reading.

Our heroes in this example will be John and Oliver… the most common names for the western world.

John gets a call from Oliver. He notices he has a lot of missed calls from his best friend. Doesn’t he understand the concept of “being in a meeting “, thinks John. He gives Oliver, a call back.

J : Hey Oliver, sorry I missed a lot of calls from you . I was in a meeting.Tell me, how are you ?

O : Hey man, I am in the hospital

J : Oh, everything alright ?

O: No. Mom has been hospitalized.

J: Oh. Sorry to hear that man. I have a meeting right now. It is a very important meeting for me, as soon as I finish it up, I will be with you to check on your mom’s health.

O : It is not my mother who is in the hospital mate. It is yours. She fell down the stairs and broke her back. The neighbors were trying to call you but could not reach you. Finally they called me. I rushed her to the hospital, completed the formalities and admitted her.

J :  What(shouting)!.Oh my god. I am on my way to the hospital right now.

When John reached the hospital, he literally fell down to his knees in front of Oliver. He could not even look Oliver in the eyes due to the shame. With moist eyes, he managed to say, “I am very sorry Oliver, I..” before Oliver cut him off in mid sentence.

O: It is Okay John. It is not your fault. When you found out that it was not my mother, but yours that was in the hospital, you came running , forgetting about your meetings and career and money making. I don’t really blame you for that. But I had read a sentence once, No one is really very busy.. It is all about priorities. All of us are like that. But remember, a mother, at the end of day, is mother. Even though it is not yours.Anyway, I should go now. I left a meeting in mid session. I will drop by in the evening to check on her.Take care man.

Saying this, Oliver went on his way. John could only remember one thing which Oliver said : No one is really very busy.. It is all about priorities

 

Thanks World !

~ Pied Piper ~ 4 Comments

Facebook, in all its wisdom, informs me that today is the day I complete one year as a blogger.

I did not realize that it already is a year since I though of started putting my quirky thoughts to words. More importantly, I am surprised to see that I was able to last this long, given that I have the attention span of a monkey.

I would like to thanks all my readers, who “liked” my posts and encouraged me to pen more entertaining and useful material. This is the main reason I was able to go on for this long.

I would also like to thanks a few people who were generous enough to donate money after reading my write-ups.

I would also like to thank my Mom, Dad, friends, colleges, office internet and the guy who keeps looking over my shoulder, just to see me struggle to get the typo right.

 

Thanks all.

Shalom, Namaste, Pip pip …

Sandy Cricket

~ Pied Piper ~ Leave a comment

It is Qatar national sports day today.

The Emir has graciously declared it as a holiday. He wants people to play on a day, which I think is an extremely good gesture, seeing that more and more kids as well as adults seem to be avoiding the open grounds.

To honour the Emir’s wishes, we decided to play cricket. Truth be told, we Indians simply don’t need a reason to play cricket. My friend took me to a place where I could see a lot of like minded enthusiasts playing the game. We set the boundary lines, the pitch to play on, all the usual rituals on the lines of “who will bat first, should be me since it is my bat”…

During the course of play i noticed a few things which made playing Cricket in this desert, a new and exiting experience.

  • The ground was extremely windy. So every so often, you had to shift the body so that the back can be against the wind. This protected the eyes from the sand particles.
  • The ball always got a natural swing due to the strong winds. So when trying to throw the ball, wind had to be taken into consideration which gave you the feeling of being a sniper or an archer.
  • Since the batsman had to run against the wind to score a “run”, it was easy enough for the fielders to get him run-out and the batsman got a good cardio out of it. Although, in later stages of game, smart batsmen(like me) stopped running and relied heavily on big shots to score runs.
  • You could shout all you wanted against the wind, no one will hear your screams.
  • You spend most of the time fetching the ball from a nicely placed shot. This shot could be of any other pair of teams playing on the ground. But in good faith, and hoping that they would do the same when your ball went into their play area, you have to retrieve the ball and throw it across.
  • You could ask one of the friends who does not want to play(there is always one) to fetch the balls in distant places on the ground, using his car. Petrol is cheap, take advantage of this fact by driving it around for no apparent reason than to fetch the ball
  • Your hands, especially the forearms start to pain after 4 hours. Do not type anything for atleast two day. ( I am in a lot of pain right now, but had already started to type when the pain hit me. I don’t like to keep things unfinished.)

 

 

Qatar Festival

~ Pied Piper ~ Leave a comment

Its been a month now, that I have been to Doha.

I finally found enough time to visit places. And luck would have it, It is the season of festival in Qatar.

I was fortunate enough to capture a few videos of the festival. I am happy to share them with you guys. Hope you enjoy.

 

 

I know the video quality and shooting style is not that great, but I did my best.

Poor Restaurant, Rich Restaurant

~ Pied Piper ~ 1 Comment

I am a foodie, so I like to visit plenty of eating places. During  the sorties, I observed a few things which might differentiate pricey fancy restaurants from cheap  budget restaurants.

Fancy : If you have to stay in a queue and have to be quiet, it is bound to be a fancy place.

Budget :You can be in a queue and shout to your hearts content. 

Fancy : The “Fancier” the place, less the portion of the food.

Budget : The Portion does not depend on the cost, but on the whim of the chef.

Fancy : The waiters take their time to bring the dish to the table. They event wait an appropriate amount of time, before bringing the next course.

Budget : The waiters bring the food very fast, even though you haven’t finished your current meal. 

Fancy : You can stay and chat as long as you want. Mostly, you wouldn’t be told to hurry up and leave as the guests are waiting.

Budget : Strong chance that people, ungraciously shouting, might form a queue and stand behind you till you complete the food , so as to book their seats. 

Gender Equality ….

~ Pied Piper ~ Leave a comment

Why is the world obsessed with Gender Equality?

We, the Indians, are past such petty issues. We believe in caste inequality.  That is much better and easier.
All you have to do, is claim that you are from a reserved caste and you can easily get an admission in a good college or get a high paying government job, irrespective of your ability to perform it.

So why oppress women when you can oppress men as well as women, based on their caste ? And that is all completely legal.

Paris Attacks

~ Pied Piper ~ Leave a comment

My heart goes out to those who lost their lives in Paris.

Such a heinous and cowardly deed. Religion is supposed to be a path to enlightenment, and yet it is incorrectly used to separate humanity from a human.

My condolences to all the families who lost their dear ones in the attack.

God bless all.

Bribery…

~ Pied Piper ~ Leave a comment

Winking at corruption is not Government policy… That is completely unthinkable.

It is just government practice.

When I say such things, people call me a cynic , among other things.

For such people : A cynic is what an idealist calls a realist.