Skip to main content

Lessons from 2016


When you are on the wrong side of fifties you don’t learn anything anymore.  Whatever happens comes with a feeling of déjà vu.  Even PM Modi’s demonetisation did not excite me though I did gloat a little over the predicament it would bring to some of our political leaders and other traders who stashed away hoards of black money.  I knew it would serve little to curb the black money menace in India or corruption in the country’s politics.  We are by and large a dishonest people.  Expediency is our only solid guideline.  The aftermath of the demonetisation has shown that even the PM’s own party men were quick to amass the new 2000-rupee notes.  That’s how India is: incredible indeed!

There’s a lot of hardship that people are undergoing especially in the rural areas (where I now live) where cash is the only means of transactions.  Yet very few seem to be complaining because people seem to believe that their hardships are going to reap rich dividends soon.  That’s another joke that the year 2016 brought me.  People always put their hope and trust in some pie in the sky.  Illusions soothe us to a great extent. 

As a blogger I witnessed a sea change in blogging during 2016.  Many good bloggers left blogging.  Some of them took to writing books.  I don’t know what happened to the others.  Spurred by the copiousness of literary output by bloggers, I too gathered my short stories into a slim volume titled The Nomad Learns Morality.  Its abominable crash at the sales counter too failed to surprise me. 

I achieved something much more significant at the same time.  I built a house of my own.  I ceased to be a nomad.  Building the house was perhaps the only relatively new lesson that 2016 brought me: you can build anything within a short time provided you have money in your bank account.  Money is the only miracle worker in my country.  Even our godmen and sadhvis will fall prostrate before the god of wealth provided no devotee is watching.

2016 is ending on a good note for me.  I sit at home with a fractured foot which underwent a surgery.  I had a fall from my two-wheeler.  As soon as I fell a lot of people ran to help me.  I was rushed to hospital after being given the necessary first aid.  There is still a lot of goodness in the world.  But even that is not a new lesson.

We are supposed to be learners from cradle to grave.  If you are interested in astrophysics or some such thing, there will always be something new waiting for you every morning like the discovery of some planet many light years away.  If your interests are more mundane and plebeian, you will find the same old lessons repeating in new shapes and designs.  Human behaviour has undergone little change in the last many centuries.


PS. Written for Indispire Edition 147 #lessonslearnt


Indian Bloggers


Comments

  1. Right you are Sir. Hope, 2017 will be at least slightly better.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Every New Year comes with new promises. May the promises materialise.

      Delete
  2. Good to know about ur lessons in 2016, very nicely penned.its really very sad that some bloggers have left blogging, i miss some of them.

    ReplyDelete
  3. What sells well in the market makes me question sometimes.....The fact that your collection of stories is excellent in terms of literary merit is undeniable. But it definitely hurts to see that people don't understand the value of it.....It hurts me a lot when I see good stories getting comments like 'Lovely', Great'...etc. I get the sense that the story has not been read....and it disappoints me....And here I am not talking about my stories....I am learning and I know I am not that great...but there is some excellent stuff out there in the blogging world including yours, that does not get the attention it ought to....Please take good care of yourself....Hope your leg heals soon.....I thought you were busy....didn't know you got hurt.....My best wishes to you.....

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Some people make much difference. Thanks for being one of them.

      The world has changed. Serious stuff is out of place. I understand.

      Delete
  4. Get well soon sir. And loved your perspective from the other side of being fifty. And it goes without saying that learning never stops. Astrophysics or evolution. Have a great end to this year.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks for the wishes, Nitin. Yeah, look forward to the new year with a lot of optimism.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why I won’t vote

From Deshabhimani , Malayalam weekly Exactly a month from today is the Parliamentary election in my state of Kerala. This time, I’m not going to vote. Bernard Shaw defined democracy , with his characteristic cynicism, as “ a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve .” We elect our government in a democracy. And the government invariably sucks our blood – whichever the party is. The BJP and the Congress are like Tweedledum and Tweedledee though the former makes all sorts of other claims day in and day out. BJP = Congress + the holy cow. The holy cow has turned out to be quite a vampire and that makes a difference, no doubt. In our Prime Minister’s algebra, it is: (a+b) 2 which should be equal to a 2 and b 2 . There is an extra 2ab which is the holy cow. In George Orwell’s Animal Farm , the animals revolt against the human master and set up their own nationalist republic. Soon politics develops in the republic and some pigs become leaders. The porcine

Prelude to AtoZ

  From Garden of 5 Senses, Delhi [file pic] Hindsight gives an unearthly charm and order to the past. There can be pain too. A lot of things could have been different, much better, if only we possessed the wisdom of our old age back in those days. As a writer put it, Oedipus, Hamlet, Lear and a lot of those guys must have thought, “I wish I had known this some time ago.” Life is a series of errors with intermittent achievements. The only usefulness of the errors may be the lessons they teach us. Probably, that is their purpose too. We are created to err so that we learn, I dare to put it that way. I turn 64 in a month’s time. It’s not inappropriate to look back at some of the people whom life brought into my life so that I would learn certain lessons. No, I don’t mean to say that life has any such purpose or design or anything. Life is absurd. People come into your life as haphazardly as vehicles ply on your road or birds poop on your head. Some of these people change the chemist

How Arvind Kejriwal can save himself

Narendra Modi and Amit Shah have a clear vision. Eliminate all opposition. Decimate them or absorb them. My previous post [link below] showed a few people decimated by them. Today let’s look at the others: those who are saved by joining the Bharatiya Janata Party [BJP]. 1. Himanta Biswa Sarma  This guy was in Congress and faced serious charges related to the multi-crore Saradha chit fund scam. He also faced corruption charges related to drinking water supply in Guwahati. His house was raided by the Central Bureau of Investigation [CBI]. Then he switched over to BJP and all his crimes just vanished. It’s as simple as taking a dip in the Ganga and all your sins are forgiven. Today he is the chief minister of Assam. Nothing is heard of all the charges that were levelled against him. 2. Amarinder Singh  This former Captain in the Indian Army was a Congressman until Modi’s Enforcement Directorate [ED] started raiding him, his son and his son-in-law. He put an end to all those raid

The Good Old World

Book Review Title: Dukhi Dadiba and irony of fate Author: Dadi Edulji Taraporewala Translators: Aban Mukherji and Tulsi Vatsal Publisher: Ratna Books, Delhi, 2023 Pages: 314 If you want to return to the good old days of the late 19 th century, this is an ideal novel for you. This was published originally in Gujarati in 1913. It appeared as a serial before that from 1898 onwards in a periodical. The conflict between good and evil is the dominant motif though there is romance, betrayal, disappointment, regret, and pretty much of traditional morality. Reading this novel is quite like watching an old Bollywood movie, 1960s style. Ardeshir Bahadurshah, a wealthy Parsi aristocrat in Surat, dies having obligated his son Jehangir to find out his long-lost brother Rustom. Rustom was Bahadurshah’s son in his first marriage. The mother died when the boy was too small and the nurse who looked after the child vanished with it one day. Ratanmai, Bahadurshah’s present wife, takes her

The Blindness of Superficiality

An Essay on Anees Salim’s novel The Blind Lady’s Descendants Superficiality is a deadly human vice though most people seldom realise it. It is easy to live on the surface of everything from one’s profession to religion. Anees Salim’s novel, The Blind Lady’s Descendants , tells us a story of superficiality as lived by quite many people. Amar, the protagonist of the novel, is 26 when he thinks that life is not worth living. He became an atheist at the age of 13. He had become a half-Muslim at the age of 5 when his little penis was circumcised partly since he ran away in pain during the process. Amar’s atheism, however, is as superficial as most believers’ religion is. What initiated little Amar to atheism is “Dr Ibrahim’s farting fit.” Islamic prayer has to follow many a rule. “If you break wind during namaaz, you break a big rule, and you are to discontinue the prayer then and there, with no second thoughts.” Little Amar was unable to control his giggles as Dr Ibrahim struggled to