Kolkata Yatra

I have been fortunate enough to visit Kolkata last weekend. It was a sort of a dream for me to see what this city looks like as I had heard a lot about it. This metropolitan city is in a peculiar state where Left govt is ruling, though leftist ideology in Bengal is declining now. I was eager to see the old capital of India which was the base of Indian national movement and which has perhaps the oldest and the most enriched history of literature, art, industry, science and people life in general. Calcutta as it was called earlier is an historical place from where major socio-economic movements and revolutions for betterment of people’s lives have arisen.

The major aspects of experience of this visit are- people’s lives, religion, historical places and entertainment. Taking the first aspect, people I came across seemed busy in their lives irrespective of their standard or class except some couples who like to express their love in public sitting on the benches of parks (I think we need one branch of Bajrang Dal here for moral policing!). Kolkata is a major hub of industries where people from nearby places travel daily to earn their livelihood. It was a typical of a city where one can see the most well to-do person as well as the most poor at the same place. Bengali people have a very special kind of face-built especially women. Women here have Durga like face with broad and big eyes ending near the ear, big lips, round face coupled with untied hair. This place seemed to me women dominated in terms of their visibility and appearance at public places.

Another major theme here is religion. Durga puja is the most celebrated festival here which renders the city “more” overcrowded. Big Durga idols were travelling in the city with people rejoicing at loud voices. Banners and hoardings displayed festivity of the environment with attractive product offers. People were too excited and busy for their festival of the year.

Historical places I visited are- Dakshineshwar Temple, Howrah Bridge and Victoria Palace. Dakshineshwar temple is old Kali temple where Swami Vivekananda and Ramakrishna Paramhansh used to visit. There was huge crowd there as it were starting days of Navratra. For Howrah Bridge, we did not need to go far away as it could be seen from Howrah railway station. It is a giant old bridge connecting Howrah to main city. Visit to Victoria Palace was the most memorable one. It is a great place having great historical significance. It was built in the memory of Queen Victoria of England. It was a giant whitish palace which really looked like a palace of a King or Queen. There was a gallery displaying painting and idols of old English viceroys, commanders in India, paintings of past people and their way of lives under colonial rule, paintings of old historical temples and different places of India, exhibition of weapons of English times, pictures and description about Bengali cities, lives, people, literature, music, art, science, industry and what not. It was a full show of Bengal history under colonial rule. I was mesmerized by the beauty of the park area surrounding the palace with pond, lush green grass and trees.

For entertainment, I went to Aquatica, a water park. It was full of fun with water gliding, swimming and different water challenges. The rain was also on time with people in full mood for joy and delirium.

On the whole, it was a one day and two night trip (two nights for travelling!). This is too short a time to fully experience such a lovely city. But for a first time visitor, it was a day of excitement and bewilderment.

Living a life at a distant place

Before proceeding, I want to mention that I am being allegedly trained at NTPC Kahalgaon in Bhagalpur district in Bihar since last month. It is very interesting to write about the first job experience. But for me, it is a less of an experience of the job than the experience of living in Bihar in a govt. company’s township away from city. There are three aspects of this experience as mentioned above- Bihar, Govt. company and remote area which is at 30 hours of journey (of course by train!) from home.

Looking at the first aspect, as it turns out, Bihar does not seem that much a bad place. Except from news of looting by burglars in the train, some mishaps by local goons, and so on, it seems a place where people are struggling to get their lives running. At such place, opportunities are substituted by tough dull work. People are moving to other states for jobs (and often make news by getting beaten!). But here am I, a person who has moved to Bihar for work. It feels different and very strange when I tell my friends that I have come to Bihar. But this feeling, I guess, is more about moving to a different distant place than about moving to a backward and disturbed place.

Now I hear that Nitish Kumar is putting his all efforts to change some things here and also getting awards for this. It is also heartening to note that people are, at some places, choosing their leaders based on developmental issues.

Now let’s look at another aspect- a remote place. Though I have not enjoyed comforts (or discomforts) of cities all through my life but four years spent in Delhi is enough for anybody to get addicted to a city life. But to be honest, I have seldom enjoyed that life in Delhi. It was all too confusing for a person like me having a village background. I did not quite understand different people there and also the reasons behind what they were doing. It was too much to handle those different paths or options. I also tried my hands at some options but not knowing good reasons behind them. I still regret sometimes for not choosing one path and excelling at that path only. But coming to the point, by spending some time away from such place, I am now feeling little bit relaxed so as to clear my mind removing the garbage filled in it by a city life. But at times, I feel restless about lost opportunities. Anyway, life here at a remote place gives time to think about ourselves and what really we want to achieve.

There are, of course, some problems here about different facilities like Internet, TV, entertainment, but then, we find different ways to engage ourselves like reading (novels), sports, exercise, gym, discussions (mostly about food and salary!) etc. And interestingly, I find more sense in doing these things than what I did living in a city with all the facilities available. Another thing that I have to mention here about is weather. It is very pleasant with fresh cool breeze and occasional rains. Though this area has often been affected by flooding of rivers like Kosi, for a person from Rajasthan, it is still a thrilling experience. Besides this, connectivity of this place with other places turns out to be very poor. To reach home from here would in itself be a great achievement.

Now let me put my thoughts on the last aspect- a Govt. company. Not many surprises here. It is a typical govt. company having lot of resistance and passivity in terms of changing or improving things. To get a one simple facility is like trying our hands on a draconian task. To change one process is like you would have spent your life while file pertaining to changes reaches to its destination. People here have developed, with passage of time, special traits so as to survive in this environment. They no longer take pain in thinking about ways to improve things. They start to accept and appreciate the so called culture of Contacts or Jugaad which is the only way to get things done for you.

Let’s put aside the problems and mention some positives. Despite so much stagnation in the company, it has managed to not only survive but also to excel in some sense in the growing power sector market. Its net profits are touching Rs. 8,000 Cr. and revenue to Rs. 40,000 Cr. per year. It is aggressively expanding to set up more power plants with higher capacities in all the power generation areas- coal, hydro, nuclear etc. It is currently recruiting more than 1,000 engineers from IITs, NITs and other colleges every year. This, to me, sounds very peculiar about the company which, while maintaining a typical govt. hierarchy and time based growth structure, is showing such a growth. I may be excused for sounding like a marketing person of this company in this para, but it is a matter of surprise for me also after facing these facts.

Now leaving aside this serious and boring description, let me try to conclude my thoughts. My purpose of writing this was to be able to convey to my friends who keep asking on orkut/phones how I am at this place. But I have to still mention what I am feeling here and what am I going to do in near future. Well, feeling is mixed but slightly positive. And future plans are, for the moment, unborn because of the huge bond amount. :)

The great lecture

The title says it all ! Though it is not fashionable to write about any thing related to lectures given by some professors but incidentally, there happens to be some great lectures who teach us more than anything ever could. This one was given by Prof. Dinesh Mohan who is teaching the course Ergonomics. He belongs to TRIPP department which has been in news for BRT corridor concept.

The lecture was about educating the people to follow rules for safety. But we can use this concept in all the fields. When we know something, and want other people to understand it and follow the same, it becomes increasingly difficult. Whatever education, preaching, advertising we might be giving to influence others, it rarely has any positive effect on them. Instead, there are studies proving the negative influence of that education. Be it related to crossing the roads by 8 year olds, wearing the helmets, use of seat belt, other health related safety precautions, when we try to teach people about all these, it becomes fashion to be negligent about them. One example given was of U.S. students attempting more dangerous tricks with fireworks to influence their friends when it was certified that fireworks are dangerous to play with. Similar is the case with use of helmet or seat belt. When people were compared on the basis of received precaution message on T.V., there was no difference in usage of those precautions among people who received those messages and those who did not.

There is an interesting point about telling others what is right for them to do. If we do not speak them as equals, they do not listen to us and become more negligent. If we behave like we are more intelligent people having more knowledge, listeners do not like it. It becomes even more futile when the message given is not based on pure scientifically established facts but represented as just an ideological viewpoint. This issue raises the question of futility of all the advertisements that are done regularly on hoardings, print and electronic media trying to indicate just the superficial safety precautions but not the hard core scientific facts behind those precautions. We are continuously being told what we should do and what we should not. Unfortunately, it does not work that way. It is more than enough to tell that, from what happens what and why.

The other interesting point comes of enforcement of these precautionary habit among people by laws. The model we have adopted is to impose fine on people who do not follow these rules. But it is very evident that rules can not be imposed on all people with perfection and people start to find loopholes to get away without following them. Take the example of use of helmets. Apart from corruption, people prefer to buy a very low cost helmet which is enough to save them from a fine. But many brain injuries/deaths have occurred to people not using the right kind of helmet. Take the case of smoking. By policy, rules have been imposed on people to abstain them from smoking in the public place. But how many people do we see daily smoking in public places and how many of them are fined? If we blame it completely on the system, then we would be making a huge mistake as we have been doing till now. In the case of helmet, instead of just advertising that use of helmet is safe, we could spread awareness to the youth and their parents by depicting the real picture about the injuries that people are suffering with and those that could have been avoided with the use of helmet having necessary safety features. In the case of smoking, before imposing the law, we could have educated the public about the different fatal diseases and their occurrence among people who smoke, we could also educate the public who do not smoke about the effect of passive smoking on them, problems that is caused by smokers and are not their faults. This way, it could generate resistance not only among non-smokers to let smokers smoke in public places but also on smokers by their parents telling them ills of smoking. The whole community will then cooperate in implementing or correcting the law.

On the last words, the failures in implementing the laws do not reside with govt or people but on the ways by which we try to educate people.

Pressure, Intoxication and much more !

The pressure to do a lot of things freaks many people out, mostly like me. Living with some (only some) high achievers of same age, we are under tremendous pressure to be like them. This was not a problem before when media was not that active and news of achievement of those achievers did not reach to our family or society. Now when everything is open, we find no place to escape. At this very soft phase of life, we are being expected to get top management degree, to start a new company, to accumulate wealth like anything. I mean, this is completely ridiculous. If we do all of this at this point of time, what will we do in the rest of the life? That is exactly the reason why life span of people is getting shorter and shorter. Please give us some time to play leisurely (I put stress on leisurely because people expect high achievement in sports too), to visit places without particular motives, to read books (not to improve english!!!), to dance loosely (not to participate in GD competition!), to sing rudely, to dress up normally (not modern) and many more things. And please do not expect so seriously from us to have girlfriends. I mean, how many good girls are there on the planet? (There must have been some bad incident with me for why do I seem so frustrated today running away from responsibilities :P)

Apart from pressure, we are continuously being hypnotized and intoxicated by our professors, friends, media, girls and their photos, politicians, film stars, cricket stars and who not. They first laugh at us, then they use us for their selfish purpose and again laugh. This is not stopping. Believe me, we are not made to bear all this at this age. Guys, wake up, take the charge, free yourself, destroy your enemies. It has to stop. And it will stop.

Learning from difficult times

These times are exceptional and unusual for many of us. It is in nature's rule to move things in full circle. When people start to become crazy, when there is a lot of noise around, when it is believed that things always become bigger and better with time, just then nature perform its miracles. In India, it becomes much more hyped when there are some signs of improvement. Nobody can forget Bharat Uday movement. Now all the figures regarding GDP, growth rate, cash reserves, forcasts of becoming superpower, company's growth rates and net profits, salaries of bollywood and cricket stars, country's billionaires and gifts to their wives/husbands ( I have not heard gifts given to husbands, though. Sorry, I am no feminist.) serve the purpose of fuelling our mind regarding country's rise. There is no problem in having notion of optimism, but when the guys trading in the stock market start to become dissatisfied with a company's profit growth rate of slightly less than 30% on quarterly basis, there is some problem. And we are facing consequences of this in Satyam fiasco. We thought that home prices always rise. We faced consequence of this in global recession.

Now let us look at placement scene on our campus. It is terrible, as we all know. Guys we thought would get placed on the first day, got placed on 24th day and some are stil not able to find out their day. I think that these situations provide us an opportunity to give time to ourselves, to develop ourselves, to decide about our real future. There is nothing to worry because time is a great leveler. It plays with us sometimes but will position everyone in the right place according to their qualifications. What we should learn from these difficult times is that craziness is worth pursuing only when the base is strong. Otherwise, it makes people mad.