After a not so long hiatus from writing, I am back. Yes, I shall always refer to this as writing. The word "blogging" somehow takes away the old world charm that "writing" has.
Never mind.
I'd gone to Calcutta a few days back with some friends. After a disastrous mid-semester examination, there was little else to do in good ol' kharagpur. We came close to missing two trains in less than 12 hours; one of the trains we actually did miss! It was a fun trip; decent weather, good food, a great movie, amazing company and for everything else there was Mastercard.
One thing that I've always noticed in Calcutta and back home as well; or for that matter in every moderately big city, is the amalgamation of people- varied fashions, cars(!!), trams, buses and taxis jostling for space with the teeming populace. There are big shots and then there are the lesser mortals. There are pricey malls aplenty, so are footpath stalls and the flea-markets, big,small and non-existent labels. More importantly, there is this divide in society, to put it crudely, between the classes and the masses, which is very apparent.
Cut to present day Kharagpur, or most fully residential campuses anywhere in the world. Wear anything you wish and go anywhere you want to. Share your room with a millionaire's son. Hang out with people from uptown bangalore, mumbai suburbs, old calcutta or deep down south. Get a new wardrobe becomes a function of the number of friends you have. Develop an accent which is a difficult-to-place mix of all the people you come in contact with. Cultivate weird tastes in music, movies and tv shows. Be best friends with the future CEO of some multinational company. Be privileged to have known the next Nobel laureate from India. Relish the fact that the price difference between the priciest and cheapest grub on offer won't ever be more than a hundred bucks. Karl Marx would have loved this.
Not that there are no shortcomings of living in a campus far away from a city. With no airport. Or a proper theatre, a multi-speciality hospital or n number of things that i could mention right now.
But the people, they make up for it all.
After all we remember only the good things, right?
posted by Eesha Nayak @ 12:36 PM
8 comments
8 Comments:
defintely, the first impression this conveys is that those inner 'writing' urges have come out in full spree. man....look at those phrases, the words, the adjectives, the whole style of the writeup.........and yes, the topic !
On a seriious note, this exact thought had passed my mind only a few days ago. coincidently, its budget day today and guess what......no increase in corporate tax !! the stockies r happy!
these bigshots have 3-4 bungalows in one city (which are shown to be 'guest-houses') where they keep throwing these lavish parties, none of which are taxed. anyways, this "divide" has no end in discussion. but thankfully, with the retail boom leading to competitive prices (especially with relaince entering into it) i guess, the "lesser mortals" too woudl have a lot of thingies (hiterto considered 'out of reach') just the way the cell-phone today is no big deal.
feel like writing (blogging :)) a lot more but have to go somewhere.
hmmm i dont wanna spark off debates here.. but for the thinking you have this is an absolutely wonderful peice of writing...
for our age i guess this is the best way to live
but working adults in a society without divide leads to a sloppy society...
regarding the divide.. US has a large divide between the poor and the rich... but then the State cares... the only difference in india is that the state does not care... ironically india is a 'mixed economy' a mixture of fools...
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to be honest the entire evening i was at unrest ... just because o feel how wrongly we ppl jump to conclusions.. Equality is a nice concept.. but it works best on paper... it is against the fundamental of human existence... it is against comeptition and it makes one lazy.. It wud be a wonderful concept had the world been full of philanthropist... in the world today it would mean on a set of equally wretched ppl..
a wonderful book which explains the dynamics of equality and justice is by John Rawls. " A theory of Justice" He was a profesor at Harvard.
IF we imagine that we are living in a hypothetical state of equillibrium . We are to assume that we are all rational, free , self interested people who were ignorant of our place in society-of our income class and status. LAstly, let us also assume that we all do not suffer from an excess of envy. With this veil of ignorance, RAwl contended that , we would agree to two principles . First that each person should have max liberty compatible with other peoples' liberty. Second we wud opt for equality unless inequality helped everyone , including worst off, and everyone had a chance to reach to the top.
Having agreed to the two principles of such a hypothetical circumstances
of a social contract one practical consequence of his second principle is that in practical terms asa w worker I would consent to the president of the company earning more than me as long as it motivates the President to earn greater profits for the company there by ensuring a bigger bonus for me.
More over dear.. good for the rich are a poor man's bread.. Value addition has always been India's biggest strength and I guess we should capitalise more on that.. We need not make the rich anti poor and anti nationalists. WE say that we do not tax the rich.. This is factually wrong. JRD Tata at one time was paying 97% of his income as tax. PAtheitc. Rich enterpreneurs of today are very concerned abt India's future and support numerous NGO's.. Its the upper middle class business men who are defaulters.. but then it is the anti trader policy of the governments which is at fault... We need the poor to be better... that shd have been the main aim of our policies... sadly it has always been how to make the rich poorer... doesn't work tht way.
I am really sad that I wuoted other ppl to put forward a point. i rarely rely on statistics.. But i feel strongly for a better India. I hope we realise what the need of the hour is... Try reading Amartya Sen. Gurucharan Das's editorial in ToI is awesome too.
in the context of whatever u wrote.. KGP with its short comings is ideal for student life.. and it certainly rox... may be i went out of context in my comment.. but then.. equality aint always a virtue is all i meant
you missed on one big fact out here ... the biggest lan in Asia .. that is most probably the source of living of a number of guys out here :-).
Rest everything Life is life be it Calcutta be it California or the place where future entrepreneur's dwell.
beautifully written
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