Ghosts of Christmases Past

It's Christmas and I reflect on Christmases past. I grew up in an environment where I had three major festivals: Holi, Diwali and Christmas. From the time I was about 8-9, Jhulan Jhatra and Magh Bihu was also added. Jhulan Jatra was a really fun festival where we had a whole display area with small idols, animals, etc and best thing was we got money. Holi was fun, dirty and rough. Strangers were no exception and everyone who came into our lane got a heavy dunking. Diwali was noisy and full of preparation. I remember the sunning of the crackers started a week before the actual bursting. Magh Bihu saw us creeping silently through Mon Bahadur's cauliflower and veggie patches behind the Textile Institute in Ambari to collect as many as we could before he saw us and chased us. Our moms were all waiting ready to put these stolen veggies in the communal kichdi they were preparing.

But Christmas! Sigh! Christmas is not and never was a festival... it was and is Magic. Christmas started in November for us those days in Silpukhuri where the whole gang would be busy after school rehearsing for the pantomime we would put up in front of our parents.These were secret rehearsals well hidden from the eyes and ears of our parents mostly in Buli and Bula's house (the top floors were still under construction and we had lot of empty territory) and the script would be prepared by Buli ba, Nita ba and the senior kids... Costumes were made with the help of moms and Dads who pretended not to know. The stage was set in a drawing home in one of the homes, audience was seated and the play began. The one I remember most clearly was 'Jack and the Beanstalk'.

It would be an exciting time at school too with lovely long holidays in sight. Our school fete with the wonderful 'lucky dips' and food and games stalls heralded the beginning of winter. Someone would be Santa (always wanted to know whether it was a Sister from our convent or maybe a Father from Don Bosco dressed up as one.. never got to really find out!) and we would all get packets of sweets, whistles and sometimes biscuits too. Carols were on full swing, both in school as well as at home. Silent night sung by me could move you to tears!

Santa at home would usually be a visiting cousin, mostly my cousin from Shillong. As my brother and I always had a Kong ( a Khasi Nanny) looking after us, we would accompany her to church on Christmas day...not midnight mass. Our most subtle good children clothes and best behaviour. I prayed with great fervour those days. I could see parents doing some secret stuff and later realised it had to do with our presents. Once, I had at the last minute asked for some state-of-the-art kind of doll at the last minute and I remember someone telling me that North Pole is now closed and I (bless me) truly believed.

Christmas, now that I am much much older, continues its magic and feeling of immense joy. Our house is still always full of songs on Christmas day... Balaram, my younger son especially is extremely vocal with Jingle Bells. Now I am the one with my husband secreting presents here and there, filling stockings on tip toes. A couple of years back, I fell asleep before my boys and the stockings remained unfilled and this time it was I who told them a story of how there would be two days of stocking filling because Santa got a bit late on the way.

Christmas for me had nothing to do with Religion (neither did Diwali or Holi). Yes, of course we had nativity scenes and we knew we were celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ. Christmas for us was that wonderful time of winter holidays, presents, songs, joy and happiness all around. Christmas for me still is that wonderful thing that gives me a glow inside. You want to give, give, give. You want to hug the whole world. Christmas is simply a feeling that's warm, happy, comforting and fuzzy. Something like a mug of hot chocolate.

A Merry Christmas to each and everyone of you. May joy, happiness, peace and hope always be with you!

Net Neutrality versus Digital 'Equality'

Okay, now I tell you  that because the poor does not get food, I will from now on give food to them.

Please click on the button to allow me to give food to the poor. You will of course feel it's a good thing and click on the button. Someone is doing something good and you are doing good by supporting it! Digital Equality! However, the food I am giving comprises only coffee (I have a deal with Nescafe), tomatoes (I have a deal with a tomato farmer), KRT rice (I have a deal), no dal (no deals were made), amul milk (again, deals). so, what's wrong? Nothing except the fact that you will be able to have just these foods, and nothing else. These you can have as much as you want. Will you get proper nutrition..no. But at least you get to eat, no?


Now take this in the case of the Internet... it becomes more sinister. I will give you free Internet (you will of course need a device) but there are only certain sites that you will be allowed to access. So, how does this become wrong? At least you are getting the Internet, right? I will be allowing you access to Times of India for news (because I have a deal with them. Not Hindustan Times, Not Indian Express... because their views might be different from mine). For shopping you may go to flipkart and not to any other because again I have a deal with them. Facebook of course is something you may be on the whole day and I will make it full of attractive ads from my partners so that you get motivated and encouraged to be our customers. There will be attractive discounts of course. There won't be any blogs, articles etc that tell you a different picture of the government. If an article has been written by someone or a picture has been taken that shows the government in a wrong way..the whole world will see it but  you poor thing will have to make do without it because it wont be on the sites you are 'allowed' to see.


So, not only will be you reading what I want you to read, you will be buying what I want you to buy, discussing what I want you to discuss. The Ambanis and Zuckerbergs will sit pretty because, my dear, we are meant to sit pretty and you are just a poor thing... you must be so thankful to us for the freedom we are giving you. I like the word Freedom so much that I have renamed my Internet.org as 'Free Basics'..the Basics, of course, are the ones I want for you. I know what's best. And as for digital Equality, I will not mention it but there are alternatives like Mozilla's Grameen Phone in Bangladesh that actually allows you to surf the entire Internet on 20 MB free data per day.

And, of course, I will be donating 90% of my stock as charity for my daughter.

saare jaahan se accha hindustan hamara

If a cow is killed, we can kill a man
but if a man is run over, we can overlook the fact
(who asked him to sleep on the pavement?!)
yesterday I read about a filmstar who pulled a foetus out of his girlfriend in their bathroom...
Can anything shock us?

chetan bhagat's a bestseller
while salman rusdie had been banned
we give asylum to taslima nasreen
while we demolish babri masjid
we worship devi
we kill the girl child
we expect to be paid for marrying a girl
we can't kiss in public
we can rape in public
awards were returned due to a conspiracy
are farmer suicides are also a conspiracy?
for marriage we look at complexion, education etc but for rape, anything goes...even a toddler
we hate pakistan for terrorism
we garland bal thakeray
the victims of the world's worst industrial disaster still await compensation 30 years later
while more than US$16.4 trillion are stashed in Switzerland banks as black money
saare jaahan se accha hindustan hamara

Fighting pollution in our little ways

Forget cigarettes, just breathing your air will now kill you. So much so that we now have diseases named after air pollution such as the Beijing cough. Asian countries are under the greatest threat. Air pollution in India is estimated to cause 527, 700 deaths every year. Not just health, it's economics too. Deaths caused by air pollution cost the European Union €161 billion. Air pollution travels much wider than water or land pollution, for example air pollution in China can travel up to California.With increasing levels of air pollution that actually makes us inhabitants of gas chambers, I thought let me become a school child once more and just write down five ways in which we can help reduce or at least stop adding more pollutants. More like a note to myself as to what I can do and what I am doing or not doing.

1. Use public transport as far as possible (yes, that includes the metro and city buses. and no, it does not include taxis and autorickshaws). 80% of lung diseases are caused due to pollution from cars, buses, trucks and other vehicles. I stay in the back of the beyond and can hardly use carpools but I make up for that by not using the car everyday. Assam could also do with better public transport in cities. The overcrowded and polluting mini city buses have really passed their expired by dates. Local trains too can be greatly improved. A good shatabdi like the one plying between Ghy-Jorhat takes a lot of load off the roads. Think about this: A single bus carries passengers that are likely to drive 40 cars.

2. Encourage cycling. Yes, cycles can get us from one place to the other. Consider the dimensions of small towns and the distances from home to office. Not really big distances. We don't have cycle paths in Assam but lanes and bye-lanes are relatively safe. As for where I stay, I can cycle without a care in the world but do I? I will, I will! There are lessons we can learn from the bike friendly cities of the world.

3. What about walking? Not morning walks and evening walks but walking for work, walking to the market, walking to a friend's house. Let's start walking. Initially, I read somewhere, walking in the morning will be easier and then as we get used to it, we can walk anytime, anywhere, etc etc.

4.Have you planted a tree this week? or a plant?
Let's seriously get planting..at home, in school, in office, on roads. And while we are planting, let's not cut down or let others cut down old trees which are gems in fighting air pollution. I am getting interested in a whole lot of plants... huge trees, flowering shrubs, vegetable gardening, potted plants. Trees obviously are the best. The seven best plants for purifying indoor air are  Boston Fern, Palm Trees, Rubber Plants, English Ivy, Peace Lily, Golden Pothos (money plant), and flowers like Gerberas (Tulips too).

5. Alternative fuels should not be alternative any longer. Let's read more, experiment more, discover more about green and alternative fuels. Let us make our kids aware of energy, alternative energy sources and biofuels. Let's talk solar power.

Your floods, My floods

My two bits on the Chennai (TN) floods vis-a-vis Assam floods, media coverage etc and what we can learn.
Did Chennai really get national media coverage? No, it didn't initially but citizens did not give a damn and didn't stop allow that to stop them from actually helping and acting on their own... they did not complain, did not whine but set about making news their own way. Media followed the Chennaites..it had to if it didn't want to lose face..so did the politicians. where there's honey, there will be bees.

Chennai floods

Each one is helping the other... Twitter is abuzz each sec with tweets asking for and offering help, normal citizens like you and me are out in the streets bringing people to shelters, distributing food, doctors are moving on their own to people needing help, people are throwing open their homes to total strangers.

Chennai, whether we want to admit it or not, is a much bigger metro than Dibrugarh or Guwahati or any other city in Assam. It is the fifth-largest city and fourth-most populous metropolitan area in the country and 36th-largest urban area in the world. Chennai's economy of US$58.6 billion PPP(US$17 billion nominal GDP, 2010) is currently rated the fourth-largest economy in India. Disruption of corporate communications and industrial houses here obviously means more attention. Water levels were also extremely high, reaching up to first floors. Being the HQ of The Hindu, it obviously, as it should, got local 'national' news. 
Instead of comparing and cribbing about govt and media attention being partial and Assam being treated poorly, let us try and learn how ordinary citizens can make a big difference without depending

Dibrugarh floods

on the govt. (central/state both) Let's really stop blaming and whining and actually start acting on our own. Each one doing whatever we can when there is such a natural calamity or disaster. Media is not covering, what's the big deal? You become the media. Who's stopping you from flooding social media with reports of your areas, putting up pics, everyone pitching in to help people. And why do we have to wait for floods in Assam next year? Instead of comparing media coverage, etc. right now, let us discuss why floods come, steps that can be taken from now on to minimize damage/casualties, form groups for this, motivate others. If there is a major drain blockage near your house, why don't you let all of us know about it? If there is water stagnation, why don't you take pics and share? Let's make a difference ourselves. Aren't we tired of cribbing?