Post # 27 # On Black Laws and Dark Views

Irom Sharmila has been on a
protest fast since Nov 2000

For long we have been complaining that we are not getting enough attention from mainland India. This is not about Narcissus and things like that, but a wretched tale of a neglected part of India. Neglected is quite a light word if people know the reality in Manipur with regards to the largest democratic country by virtue of its ignorance about condoms and contraceptive pills. A controversial front newspaper story in the Telegraph, a leading daily in the eastern part of the country however, has had a lot of stories to tell us.

The news which was published a couple of days ago is nothing unusual, but about the love affair between the star campaigner, Irom Sharmila and his boyfriend. Let’s put the records straight first: Sharmila has been on a fast since Nov 2000 (that’s more than ten years ago!) against the draconian Armed Forces Special Powers Act; all along the national media has been willingly or unwillingly ignorant about her; for ten years nothing substantial was printed or published but this ‘insubstantial’ side-story on an important front page; now a powerful group of civil organisations in Manipur has banned the newspaper and several others are pouring in their condemnation.

This whole issue of newspaper-published-shits-and-gets-banned looks like a passing event, though without no reason. So many people are getting killed and injured because of this controversial martial law. In the process, we have also become too intolerant to accommodate others’ views. But why is it that the mainland people, the mainstream newspapers always suck a big time?

In a broader aspect, India sees in us as a buffer zone. It does not matter how people are eating bullets and drinking bloods as long as its vested interests are safeguarded. Otherwise, there could have been a lasting peace in our region, where anyone will be bowled over by its natural beauty. These things apart, the march will continue. India must know we are not voiceless. India must know if the shits continue all the time, there will come a time it has to eat the shits more than it can chew one day.

Post # 26 # Night Warriors Never Whine

Outsourcing is a one of the mantra driving the Indian economy. Business.mapsofindia.com mentions, “India, since the past few years, has experienced a paradigm shift due to its competitive stand in the business world. Being a huge market itself, as well as the home to cheap and skilled labors in abundance, India became the favorite hunting ground for the companies to explore the market and grow their business.”

Well the above paragraph is too hard for this blog, but I can’t help taking help of a reference. In the last decade, we were as kids only happy stomping our foot to Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath and their ilk for two reason: firstly, we were too young to care for the mundane things like jobs or economy of a country, and secondly, as far as we know life was all about thinking and acting local though our lives were tinctured with rock n’ roll. Then Bob Dylan re-sing, The Times They Are a-Changin’. Now the tincture is gone as I’m tracing a way back to my roots, reading poetry, researching the stuffs from all over and imbibing the ethos of our time. I have also changed my slogan to thinking global and acting local.

Now back to the issue that matters. Outsourcing has made us richer, has turned me from a small-town nonentity to an Error Checker, ready to check any error committed by anyone across the world. But we need a boring, uncommon calibration that we can find nowhere else: Time Adjustment. For example, the guys on the other side will always be sleeping while we are working, and we will be sleeping when they are working — a real case study for the needs of proper and meaningful communication an without which business will be doomed. As a means of synchronization, we do a monthly rotation of day and night shifts.

PC World predicts India's revenue from outsourcing could be $225 billion in 2020. I need no billion or million but a real nice sleep. What the heck? Why are the old men and women so fond of jogging in the morning? Good night. 

Post # 25 # On Life and Work

Some recent posts on work and job, here and there, lighted a bulb on my mind. For every week, 40–48 hours of my most ‘productive’ time is spent in the workplace. My employer and manager’s views are quite obvious than the dawn of sunlight at the end of the night: to ever increase my productivity and gel along with other people who we clubbed together as colleagues, like chipping in together in our project work like some animals bound by territorial pissing. Working 40–48 hours is quite a long time, isn’t it?

Is livelihood what defines our life? I don’t think so. Financial things and philosophy are strange bed-partners. There are several reasons for this statement. Livelihood is not life. For that matter, no fragmented parts of human existence can define what a life is. No politics. No education. No science. No religion. Not even our beliefs. None of them can explain why we are living. We need to understand the ‘whole’ to know the essence and its parts. So, to put it bluntly, life is not work. To hell to those people who pray work is worship. Forty to forty-eight hours are more than enough, but not enough to give us an essence of life. And what are we without a life?

So reassuring it was when I read Oscar Wilde, when he wrote, “Work is the refuge of people who have nothing better to do.” Why cannot we live without work? Work, I mean, going to office every day — worrying about the salary, running for paying the bills, brooding for the sake of future. I want to go back to the state of nature. But since it is not possible, I would keep searching for the alternatives to find more meaning in our existence. Please don’t tell me it would be hard after ‘killing’ more time at the workplace than where it really matters. Surely, this world is so full of contradiction. Perhaps, the sustenance of life, in or out of 40 hours, is our work even if life is not merely sustenance. 

Post # 24 # Wake me up when September ends

"It's a shame that the only thing a man can do for eight hours a day is work. He can't eat for eight hours; he can't drink for eight hours; he can't make love for eight hours. The only thing a man can do for eight hours is work."
William Faulkner 

Consolation?

What is one of the worst dreams on a Sunday night / Monday morning? !Ping. Being at work! I usually love Charles Lamb's essays, but I love him more when he said that he was always late for work, but that he would make up for it by leaving early. I would not elaborate but somehow I was gladdened, this morning, by the fact that I did get a few hours to read papers and do things like that before getting ready for work. But boy, it was terrible even before I got up, I had already been to my oh-fiss.

Well, I'm not indifferent to my work. I like it, in fact. Perhaps because doing nothing is the hardest work, never knowing when I'm finished. The convention that we have to give our asses eight hours a day, six days a week, however, makes me quite apathetic towards this whole business of work and workplace. Karl Marx and those guys did a commendable job in reducing the working hours, even if America hates his followers like I hate Monday mornings. But what I really want is to further decrease the working hour to, say, four hours; that way, I will start loving my work, I will give my 200% from the usual 100% (I can show you the spreadsheet, though I take a dozen fag breaks a day), I will never complain about my managers in my 'entire' life, and the list will go on.   

On a much lighter note, the weather is getting pleasant with each passing day, as autumn draw the curtain over the intolerable summer heat. The humidity is still here like a shameless cat, but when September ends, the air is going to be a lot nicer and conducive. And maybe, it will also make me less lethargic getting up in the morning, makes me ready getting a bath, and makes retiring on work days so comfortable with occasional drinks and movies. I hope so.