The First Family

This was one post that I wanted to write for a long time but had kept as a draft for a while now. I have lived in BTM, Bangalore for almost 3 years now till until a month back when I moved to Fraser town, Bangalore. One of the prominent activities that perpetually goes on in BTM is building construction, apartments mostly. Construction in Bangalore is not just powered by cement and steel but also by families of migrant workers from neighbouring states of TamilNadu and Andhra and as well as from states as far away as Bihar. To me when I first saw families constructing buildings in BTM, it was a queer sight because I've never witnessed it before. I've witnessed building construction as a 8 to 6 activity in which the building is left in peace at night to rest and to grow the next day.

This is how it works in Bangalore. A family or a couple of families come stay at the site of the building and start constructing the building from scratch. The worker's families construct small shelters out of mud and hollow blocks to live adjacent to the building when it starts to grow from pits and concrete basements. The men from who work at the site are skilled while women mostly cook and take care of the unskilled part of the construction like gathering sand and stones. I've seen the children play around unmindful of the construction with other children and dogs that feed and grow along with them. The children grow up amusingly among steel and cement and sand around the building and as they grow big so does the building.

Women at the site cook using earthen stoves, usually rice and vegetable bought from the neighbouring shops, new found neighbours, neighbours introduced to them by the building they've come to construct. I've seen men bathe at the bore well pumps drilled for the building's use. They bathe on the road adjacent to the building unmindful of passers by or the traffic, they bathe as though they want to show off their hardened biceps and abs to passing by software engineers who go to high tech gyms and pay a bounty to try and reduce their excess fat.

There is always a pack of dogs around the building site and the working families. Dogs that spring up as puppies from nowhere when the construction starts and grow with the children and the building. The house warming of the building happens on the night when the building gets a roof over it. Its the time that the working families move from the shelter along the roadside into the house amongst stacked up floor tiles and timber. They live as the first occupants of the building in unfinished rooms with no walls and doors.

Its the time of the year that the construction families find a new home again. The building they set out to build is completed and its time for them to move on. They've raised the building as they'd raised their children and the dogs that grew with their children. They had built it with their sweat and labour and the building had been grateful to them as well. It gave them a livelihood and a home, but alas, its time to move on and they part ways. The men, women and children move along with the real estate market of the town and the building stays back with the dogs that grew with it, awaiting its new occupants. The construction families with their tents and dogs are nomads in this concrete jungle and they are the first family of this real estate market.

Opinions are useless

We have our own opinion about anything and everybody in our lives. We tag people, objects, organizations and governments alike. We spare nothing that comes across our paths. Everything is tagged and categorized as either good or bad, black or white. When I talk about opinions here it doesn't mean our understanding about a person or an object but rather the opinion that we form about the person or object. Let me explain with an example to make things clear. Its my understanding that my neighbor is cranky in the mornings and its my opinion that he may start a fight with me given a chance. Sometimes we magnify our understanding of a subject to disproportionate levels and form useless opinions about the subject which may not be true after all. Many a times we absurdly form opinions about a subject that we have not encountered in person but have heard of it through the words of others.

The reason I feel opinions are useless is because it puts a filter to our minds. Once the filter is formed we tend to view the subject through that filter always and this doesn't give us the real picture about the subject. For instance, many of the stereotypes in this world, a source of misunderstanding and conflict is because of the opinions that were formed about the subject in question. From terming Jews as misers to terming the Muslims as bomb makers, its all our opinions into play. I've experienced this in my day to day life and I've wondered how stupid I was to have opinions about someone. For instance, in my induction there was a guy who spoke aloud, with a gruff voice, I immediately formed an opinion about him that he was an aggressor. He then turned up to be in my team and once I started to know him in person I understood that he is one of the nicest guys around and I was surprised about how I'd formed an opinion about him that clouded my mind.

Opinions about subjects in life doesn't give us an open mind and puts us through unwanted emotions. A open minded approach without filters in our minds would help us stay calm and would help us avoid anxiety and misunderstanding. In short, Opinions are useless.

Blogumus, The Flash widget

What do you think of the flash widget that I've set up under Labels? Cool eh? I'm really fascinated by the way the labels just swirl in that space. I first saw this widget in Amanda's blog, A letter from Netherlands.Yesterday I was so fizzed out in office that I wanted to do something for a change and decided to set up the Flash widget for my blog. Googled and found out that the original flash widget by Roy Tanck was customised for blogspot by Amanda Fazani and its called as Blogumus. Setting up Blogumus was surprisingly simple and here we are with a blogumus for my blog. Only after setting up Blogumus did I found out that I seldom tag my blogs, just two tags were swirling in the empty space of blogumus, so I rolled up my sleeves and started to tag all my published blogs and fed Blogumus and boy did Blogumus started looking good :-)

are we really Intelligent?

I wonder if we as Human beings are really that intelligent. As I look around myself all that I see is a support system that we have built around us, an artificial world in defiance to nature and evolution. Every organism in this world has adapted itself in line with the natural way this planet functions, except for human beings. I wondered in awe when I watched Attenborough(hope this is the right spelling :-) present snakes as one of the highly adaptive species. Snakes have adapted themselves to the land, sea, air(yes, few glide from tree to tree). Snakes are found in caves, deserts, mountains, in deep seas and they've adapted themselves wonderfully to live in accordance to the environment that they've chosen. Snakes which live in deep oceans, have gills and their tails are modified into pedals to swim. When I marvelled at the adaptability of the snakes I realized that they're not as intelligent as we are but they are definitely wise. They don't know about satellites or submarines or space shuttles, they don't run multi national companies or financial institutions but they have been living for millions of years in this planet without destroying it. But we as the self proclaimed intelligent species have developed into a species that is trying to destroy the only home that we have, the earth. We launch satellites trying to explore life away from earth but have we thought about preserving the life in this earth? Its so stupid to look for life away from earth and spending millions on such quests when our survival in this planet is threatened by our inventions, climate change and global warming. As agent smith says to morpheus in Matrix, we humans are a parasite that feeds on planet earth, we are not trying to preserve it but we are trying to deplete it and move on.

Yes, we humans may be Intelligent, but we are definitely not wise.

Business and social responsibility

There is a general perception that business and social responsibility don't go along with each other. When I think of it, there are several questions that prop up in my mind. Should business plans and business models have morality, like human beings are supposed to have? Can we say that Pepsi, even though a profitable business, has no morality because all the profit it musters is by selling a carbonated drink that has no proven health or nutritional benefits to its customers? In fact, drinking Pepsi will give consumers bad teeth and tossed up digestive cycles. I would say yes, Pepsi as a company has no moral responsibility. Its products are just pushed to consumers through bulk production, combined sales with other junk food such as pizzas and Pepsi markets itself through celebrities in mindless campaigns which ultimately misleads its consumers, mostly teens and youngsters into more consumption.
Pepsi doesn't force consumers but just sells. Obviously, the consumer wants Pepsi otherwise there is no logical explanation for the Pepsi sales. Liquor and tobacco sales fall under the plank but the sales of liquor and tobacco don't affect a wide range of consumers as Pepsi does. For instance, in a given population of 100, there can be 50 who smoke, and this 50 would be mostly adults. There can be 50 who drink, mostly adults again. But in a population of 100, almost 80 would drink Pepsi and this comprises of children and adults. What makes it worse is that Pepsi unlike tobacco and Liquor alters the food consumption habit of the population, driving them towards unhealthy food habits like regular consumption of fast food and junk food.
Pepsi as a company that sells carbonated drinks and fried foods has its fair share in causing Obesity, a growing problem among urban dwellers in most parts of this world. So having said all this I wonder about Pepsi's view point about business sustainability. I guess, for any business the well-being of its customer is its prime concern, so when the well-being of Pepsi's consumers is jeopardized by consumption of its own products, how does Pepsi view this? I understand that recently, they've ventured into the fruit juice selling business. Are they trying to redeem themselves by at last selling something that their customer can find some value in? Again, I wonder at the notion of corporate social responsibility of companies like Pepsi. I feel that it would be a joke if Pepsi contributes towards humanitarian causes from the money they've got by running a business that has no morality.

A Trek, A group of Friends and thoughts about theology

There were two incidents that happened last weekend that made me write the second part of the Uncertainty's child series. I haven't planned the sequels yet but like the shrek movie series, I'll role this one till there is anything left out in me to write about how I feel about religion and god. Sometimes I do wonder why I take up such serious topics and not just write about day to day life or something light hearted but theology is one topic I've thought of seriously and I somehow have the urge to pour my heart out about it. Now, coming back to the topic, I was reminded of god in two instances last weekend.
I was trail walking with my friends last Saturday in coorg and it was a hike to a waterfall. Our onward journey was an event less one except for the discovery of leeches on sriram's legs and the discovery of and pre emptive strikes on a few leeches which tried to get on my leg and Marcelle's legs. We reached the waterfall after dirtying our shoes considerably much to the complaint of Marcelle about how she doesn't like to get wet and stay wet. I was wondering how did she risk a 3 km trek under overcast conditions with just warm tops and a three quarter then. I know that's because I carried my jerkin and umbrella ;-) Anyways as we walked back Marcelle had a doubt and she duly asked me how during a trek do people recognize the correct trail to follow from multiple trails on a trek. She asked me that because I kept on comparing this trek with the trek that I had gone for in Australia and I somehow projected myself as an expert trekker :-) So, when Marcelle asked me how I would recognize the correct trail I told her usually there is only one trail. As soon as I told this, our trail split into two, now how would you explain that? I guess Marcelle would've thought that I was one big fart ;-)
We followed the trail that was lower than the other and ended up lost among thorny bushes. So we decided to walk back and take the other path that went up. To be honest, I wasn't worried for me, as a guy with other guys I would say this was a manageable situation but there were girls with us along with Marcelle and I felt worried about the prospect of being lost and worried about a downpour as well. At that moment, I prayed to god to help us out. We did find help in out Japanese friend who came along and showed us the path and we reached our rooms. As I think of this now, I seriously feel that as a human being I got reminded of God only at the heights of uncertainty. Me lost on a mountain trail with my group would've been something that early human beings would've encountered on a day to day basis, a life filled with uncertainty and no wonder the belief in god and religion developed in them.

Males : Biologically irrelevant

Two days ago there was an article in bbc that said that scientists have engineered a human sperm in the lab. Its just another news article in bbc, neither was it a celebrated post not was it "breaking news" but it was news to every human male or for that case any male animal or insect in this world that the biological purpose of its existence is no more. Objectively speaking, the species of this world doesn't need a male any more for its propogation.
I seriously don't have any words to describe what those darn scientists have done. The reason that the scientists have offered for their research was seriously funny to me, those scientists wanted to help the females whose husbands/partners are infertile to conceive it seems. gimme a break man, like as though if those females donot conceive the human race would become extinct. With the world groaning with human over population I seriously cannot justify the motive provided for such research, thats why I propose a conspiracy theory. My theory is that some revengful female scientists whose partners have abandoned them, embarked upon a mission to set this world free of these philandering males and thus researched and engineered the human sperm. Man, when there are so many things that are direly needed to be engineered in this world, like say a human heart or lungs which could've stopped illegal organ traficking, why did those scientists engineer a sperm, something that is abundantly available in India and China.
There is solace for men though because of the social importance men hold, so men won't become obsolete even though they've become irrelevant now. I wonder what this means to the animal world, lions for instance where males exist just to copulate and propogate their genes and protect a pride from other lions, this research has made the beautiful lions with their wonderful manes irrelevant to lionesses(Note: lionesses donot enjoy sex like human females do, it is just an act of reproduction with no orgasm involved.) So lions exist just for the viewing pleasure of visiting tourists and wildlife photographers, I wish I could tell this to a lion.