Saturday, 27 March 2021

Thinking out loud

 I have not posted here in a long time. Life just got so busy. I guess I did not have much time to ponder on things. Or even if I did, may not have occurred to me to write it down.

Today, however, while having a conversation with a friend I got to thinking about something that always leaves me confused and unsure...

I always believe that people should respect each other's opinion and choices even if they don't make any sense to them or even if they seem ridiculous or absurd to them. I often have heated arguments with people who feel that their opinion is the correct and supreme and anything to the contrary is nonsense. If people don't respect and accept things they don't agree with, I believe there will just be intolerance, violence and dictatorship. 

Having said that, I often wonder, am I going against my own principle if I am questioning someone's right to judge someone else? What I mean is, by saying that people should not judge or be intolerant about things they disagree with, am I myself disrespecting someone's else's right to judge?

Which brings me to my next question, is there an extent to which people should have the right to make choices free of judgement? Is it ever okay to not respect someone else's opinion? For example, if someone tells me a woman belongs in the kitchen, I do mot think I will ever be able to respect that opinion. Does that make me a hypocrite?

I wonder.... 

Tuesday, 16 July 2019

One more cup of coffee?

A few days back I saw a huge pile of used paper cups at a tea stall near my office and started wondering... I'm sure all of you reading this know that we need to save paper and minimize the use of plastic and environmental impacts and what not. Most of us have been studying it every year in EVS classes in school. But we often miss out on how all of what we have studied and what we read and hear is connected to the simple aspects of our everyday lives.

When I saw the huge pile of disposable tea/coffee cups my first thought was whether they were made of plastic or paper. If they were made of plastic, I could only imagine how much plastic waste is created by these cups every day. And if they are made of paper.. well, I read up on it and it turns out that the cups are either made of plastic or they are plastic or wax coated paper cups. The real shocking thing about this is that millions of trees are cut down and billions of gallons of water are used every year to produce these cups. 

This is not fresh news ofcourse. We often read about certain things or know about certain facts but we are so used to our busy routines that we overlook how everything we read or hear applies to each of our lives. Obvious things like printing on both sides of a paper are more commonly implemented. But little things like minimizing use of disposable cups or straws or paper tissues often escape our attention. So this post is for all of those people like me who want to make a difference. Lets raise our mugs to no more paper cups at work. :)


Monday, 31 December 2018

Our Everyday Heros

We often come across strangers who do something to help us when we are in a bad fix and then they disappear and we never see them or hear from them again. Even though they do things they did not need to do and nomatter how grateful we feel at that moment, we often mention them a few times and forget about them after a while. Their heroism is never rewarded, mentioned or remembered.

Recently I met one such person while travelling from Jalgaon to Pune. We had boarded the bus without prior reservation and there was only one seat available. The conductor said that a few people would be getting off in about 2 hours and we could then take their seats. So I let my mother occupy the vacant seat and I thought I would stand until I get a seat. It was about 11pm and I was the only person standing in the darkness of the bus when the conductor took pity and offered me a seat behind the driver and told me that I could sit there until I got a proper seat. Right when I was more or less comfortably seated behind the driver a man approached us and said something to the conductor in Marathi which I did not understand. The conductor then asked me to step inside and on doing so I understood that there was a couple with a kid sitting right next to my mother. On observing the entire situation, the husband had volunteered to sit outside in the cold behind the driver while I occupied his AC reserved seat.

I do not know his name. Neither do I remember his face. But his act of heroism is something which deserved some mention somewhere. So I decided to write a post on him to pay tribute to him and to all the other everyday heros who save the day but whose names we never get to know.

If you have had such similar experiences please feel free to share. :)

Sunday, 29 July 2018

Can we fight without being fought?

I was faced with a weird dilemma the other day at work while drafting a legal document. Have you ever been in a situation where you were at a loss about what to do because the other person was being too honest? I was faced with a similar situation where i was drafting a reply and i came across the following paragraph:

I started the drafting fully geared to contradict everything the opponent said and make his case a complete nothing. And then this innocent honesty threw me completely off track. You must be wondering what this is all about so let me explain a few things about legal drafting.

It it standard legal practice that while replying to any document filed by the opponent, if any statement is not categorically denied it is implied that such statement is admitted by us. So over the years it has become the practice to deny every statement of the other party irrespective of whether it is true or false. For example, if the opponent writes that apples and oranges are fruits, we write that it is denied that apples and oranges are fruits. Because, well, when we are arguing, are we ever humble enough to admit that the other person is right about something? Not really. We often keep fighting knowing that we are wrong and in most cases the favour is returned by the other person and the momentum of the fight stays intact. This is the same in case of a legal battle. We deny everything the opponent says just because the opponent said it.

I felt bad for the person who drafted this because it is almost never that you find someone who is honest enough to agree to anything the other party says. I found it almost childlike with the broken English and the repeated "I didn't know". To be honest, our case was not even completely justified and yet I was prepared to counter him if he fought. But i didn't know how to react when he was being honest. Just like we have learnt since childhood that you do not accept sweets from a stranger, as a lawyer I have been taught to say " it is denied that..... (basically whatever you said)" but how do i deny something when the person is agreeing with me?

Maybe our mind is so conditioned to deal with people trying to hurt us that we are at a complete loss when someone is not. I can recall so many instances when I've taken a step back from helping people assuming ill about them. Haven't we all thought twice before giving money to a poor person doubting whether he will buy medicines with it or gamble with it? Or even worse, in this moral dilemma we don't help the person and then later find out that the person was indeed suffering and not trying to fool us for money. I'm not saying its always wrong cz we defend ourselves only after being tricked in the past. But what do we do in a situation where we are prepared to fight and the other person lays their arms down? We can either lay down our arms too or we take advantage of the situation shoot at an unarmed person. In this case, unfortunately, i was compelled to do the latter but i hope in real life we can make a better choice. I hope we don't reach a stage where we are so used to acting a certain way that we no longer have the choice to make that choice. I hope we do not eventually become fighter robots.

Sunday, 22 July 2018

Urgent Action Needed!

We must have all heard the saying "charity begins at home" on various occasions. Earlier today, while having a conversation with my brother, we ended up talking about how it has not rained in two months in London and what measures can be taken at individual and government levels to control global warming. Global warming is something to which I was first introduced in the primary years of school and unfortunately, over the years, the situation has only turned from bad to worse.

Warning: In case you are planning to quit reading further let me tell you, this is not one of those long boring essays about what global warming is, how it is caused blah blah.

This post is just about some small things we can do everyday to help us all live in a better place. Sometimes we are all aware of a situation but in our busy schedules we do not realize that there are small things we all can do to make a difference. So I thought i'll list out a few small things which we can do to, well not save, but help the planet. Here goes:

  • Reuse: I know its not possible or plausible to completely say NO to plastic but maybe we can try and reuse plastic goods as much as possible. Like carrying plastic bags when we go to the market instead of taking new ones, buying reusable glass soft drink bottles instead of plastic ones whenever possible, reusing the plastic bottles as water bottles or flower vases and so on.
  • Beat to heat: Using ACs is a habit for many of us. Some of us even sleep in AC rooms in winter because, lets face it its comfortable. But if we all consciously try to minimize the use of ACs as far as possible maybe we can give the planet a chance to cool down.
  • Use public transport: I know that we all enjoy luxury and it is always more pleasant to just sit in your car and travel from one place to another instead of walking in the sun or mud and fighting to find space in crowded buses or trains. But even if we all use public transport instead of private cars or cabs 3 out of 10 times that still make a HUGE difference globally. 
  • Save water: Every drop counts. Be it while brushing the teeth or taking a bath, we can make sure that we take only what we need.
  • Say NO to paper: Many offices and government bodies have already become paperless. We can all try to reuse paper, print on both sides, take notes on the laptop etc.
  • Reduce meat consumption: Yes its true. In one of my previous posts I have explained how consuming too much meat causes global warming in the long run.

I know that at this stage it is difficult to absolutely prevent global warming through individual efforts but if every 5 out of 10 people did a little bit for the world, maybe it wouldn't be a bad start after all. As John Lenon said,
"You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope some day you'll join us
And the world will be as one"

Monday, 25 June 2018

From non-vegetarians to carnivores?

Many of you might have heard about the recent meat scam in West Bengal. Basically, a huge chain was apparently supplying rotten chicken and the meat of dogs and other dead animals picked up from dump yards and garbage. Anyway, leaving the gruesome details apart, a meat crisis was naturally a cause of immense discontent for a non-vegetarian lover like me.

Soon after the scam broke out, I had a dinner date with my office colleagues and we got to thinking what we could have at the restaurant. Even though all of us enjoyed veg food, a dinner date did not sound complete without some meat and chicken. We weighed our options between dead dog and rotten chicken and finally ended up ordering chicken. All this while, there was one question that kept on playing in my mind, why does it feel okay to eat certain animals and weird to eat others?

I have always been a big foodie and I have had chicken, mutton, beef, pork, quail, squid, octopus and various other kinds of non-vegetarian delicacies. And while the choice of edible and inedible animals vary across the world, I am sure all of us are comfortable consuming some animals while consuming some others do not feel so okay. Dogs and cats for instance, do not fall in the edible category for many of us, even though we are totally fine with mutton or pork. I wonder why. Is it because they are domestic creatures? But then so are cows and buffaloes.

Today I read an article about a man who was jailed for selling cat samosas for 8 years. Why is it that eating some animals seem cool but eating some others don't? Is it because of mindset or is it because of our love for some animals and indifference about others? Does the love for different kinds of meat make us more animal like or is it just a lifestyle choice like clothes? Why is it so that selling chicken samosas will make you rich but selling cat samosas will land you in prison? I wonder....

Tuesday, 12 December 2017

Selfie Suicides

This post has been long pending and I am sure numerous people have written on it before but, what the hell, one more wouldn’t hurt. I was having a conversation one day with my cousin, my mother and my aunt about a relative who was sitting on top of a Mumbai local train and got electrocuted. It reminded me of a news report about a person who died the same way, only he was posing for a selfie while on top of a moving train. This got me thinking, how much is a selfie worth?

These days the selling features of a phone are not its call features but by how advanced the selfie camera is. They call it selfie phones. But the question is, how important should selfies be to a person, enough to risk their lives, or even worse, risk other people’s lives? I had read about an incident where two students climbed on to a rock that rise out of the sea during low tide to click a selfie with his friends and did not notice the that the tide came back. They were swept away when a man who lived nearby noticed this and dived. He saved one of the three youngsters but drowned himself. Human nature is such that people constantly need appreciation and acknowledgement. Selfies are a perfect way of demonstrating oneself before the world in the most daring, exclusive and exquisite ways. But is it okay to fall into water canals or drown in rivers or get hit by a train in this pursuit of appreciation? I doubt.

Maybe if we all took a little time off our busy schedules to appreciate the people around us for little things like a new haircut or a new recipe or an assignment well done or maybe just for providing good company people won’t feel the need to go to daring extents to be appreciated. Here’s hoping. J