Rongali Bihu: A very Happy New Year for me.

I started the first day of this Assamese Year 1424 by touching the feet of my parents, asking for their blessings; and giving them small gifts of love. I am blessed to have got this opportunity for the second time in my aware adult life. But when I look around, there are not many old parents and not many children who are as fortunate. They live far away from each other.

Families in Assam are separated today, separated for economic reasons looking for a better life, for a better livelihood. We separate for a better education, and then for the lack of an employment opportunity in our home towns. I separated from my parents at the small age of 11 years when I got admissions to study in the prestigious Sainik School Goalpara in 1987. From then, till January 2014, I stayed away from my parents and my close family in almost all the festivals. The separation was became starker after I had started working in a full time job from 2001. The separation is temporary when you are away from your family for higher studies. It becomes semi-complete when you start working separately from your family, and then becomes complete when you marry and raise your own family away from your parents.

It is only when I had quit my job in Mumbai, shifted to a small town called Duliajan in Assam, and started staying with my parents, in the house built by my parents, that I started understanding and appreciating the significance of a simple family life with your parents and neighbors. It is surprising that the idea of progress has somehow become an anti-thesis to a happy joint family life.

FAMILY LIFE

Everyone needs a house to live in, but a family of elders and children inside makes it a home. A home is where one learns the softer aspects of life. A school gives us technical education in various subjects. It makes us eligible for a career. A job gives us experience in doing a particular commercial activity, and gives us money in return. A home and a family gives us love, gives us unconditional support and teaches us the values and frailties of human life.

Our home and our family teaches us the values of tradition, of relationships, of money, of happiness and sadness. It lets us experience old age through the eyes of our grand parents and then our own parents. It makes us modest about the inevitability of the disabilities that comes with age. Most importantly, our family helps in binding us to the values. We may dislike the binding that a family builds around you when we are young and rebellious, but my impression is that we will cherish those bindings and strict rules, as we grow older and wiser.

Surely, our families cause a bit of heart-ache as well. For instance, I have come to realise that in every dispute between parent and child, both cannot be right, but they may be, and usually are both wrong. Interestingly, it is this situation that gives family life its peculiar charm.

ECONOMIC LIFE

There is no denying the fact that it is difficult to earn a good living in a society which is not doing well in terms of a healthy business environment. Assam and its economy could not flourish to give its citizens enough jobs and business opportunities. Secondly, our education made us 'un-suitable' for agricultural handwork and income. Agriculture being our primary occupation traditionally lost its charm as a career avenue and that caused a lot of strain on our societies and families. It became one of the major reason for the separation in our family systems. It led to 'un-naturally rapid' work-led migration from villages to urban areas in the state and outside the state.

Economic life in a village, staying with your family, was centred around cooperation and coordination. It was based on sweet (sometime sour) relationships. The whole village was a well-oiled support system for an individual in his economic, social and spiritual journey of life. In contrast, life in an urban area is isolated, individualistic and materialistic. Materialism after a certain threshold becomes competitive and leads an individual away from the cosy comforts of a family.

Also, the economic life of a village could not connect to the markets of the urban economy and the produce of a rural economy couldn't demand its rightful value in the globalised economy of today. As a result, the rural economy didn't get efficient. Adding to that was the land availability for a growing family. This was a concern in the smaller towns and villages closer to towns where land ownership was not enough for a growing family. Children had to move out in search of a career to other regions of the state, and mostly outside the state.

Lastly the manufacturing and the service sector didn't mushroom in our state due to various reasons which could have created many jobs for the youth of our families.

MY STORY

I want to tell my story in a small town with no family land, after living the life of a highly paid MNC employee in the most urban of urban cities, Mumbai; with a hope that perhaps it can be a thinking point to leave the logically obvious lucrative urban individual life.

It is quite obvious that I feel quite strongly that it is more fulfilling to be with your parents and your children growing up with your grand parents, grand uncles and aunties. I would never go back to Mumbai. I have been refusing lucrative job offers that have come my way to take me back to Mumbai.

I am happy. It is surprising even for my wife and so it may surprise you as well. I need to tell you that  that simple reason why I am happy is because I have made my life simpler, easy. My easy life like everybody else's, revolves around a few beliefs. My beliefs are just simpler and basic.

1. Knowing to keep yourself busy is the first step to happiness.
2. Although it is better if you get to do what you love, to earn a living, yet there is nothing worse than not doing anything for the want of doing something you love.
3. Handwork and focus guarantees your objectives in life within a justifiable time frame. No point in getting impatient. 
4. Your life is as good as the good that you do. Being good is about trying to be truthful, not thinking ill about anybody and not doing anything that may harm any third party emotionally or physically.
5. Believe in the dignity of labour irrespective of the kind of labour that you put in. The society loves or hates you because of your character or nature; definitely not because of the kind of labour that you do.
6. You become a better person if you can sacrifice your immediate happiness to take care of your parents and elders.

These are easy beliefs that everyone is aware of and the good news is that they work.

I had my plans when I left Mumbai. They didn't materialise, given that the complicated planning was done in Mumbai without studying ground realities of a small town, and my own abilities to organise a business. When you work for someone, you only acquire skills. You do not become enterprising. I didn't learn to become a businessman.

To keep myself busy, I had my fallback options ready. We had a small shop with a tailor and a few embroidery machine. My parents had established that shop to retail school uniforms and to take orders for embroidery. Since my parents had practically retired from the business, the shop was making losses. I was never involved in the business, but without a second thought, I started attending the shop. With time, the shop had its own ways to keep me busy. It gave me ideas that can be tried. I didn't care about the tag of being a shopkeeper and started investing time and money into the shop. I had the advantage of knowing computers that helped us plan better. I had the advantage of language and experience of living in Mumbai to get supplies directly from manufacturing hubs, in order to offer a competitive price for school uniforms. I could understand the intricacies of the business within no time and the business peaked up after the first 6 months.

It was easy and I was less stressed. More than that I was having breakfast, lunch and dinner at my home with my family: my parents, my wife and my two dogs.

I am happy with my easy life. I even take a nap in the afternoon once in a while. Even when I am busy, I am busy with my own work that matters to me directly. I get time to clip the nails of my parents, shave my dad's beard, visit my relative's place and get to know about my family history. These are small pleasures of life that completes your life.

Embedded below is a video of Jon Jandai who had given me inspiration about leading a simpler life and a happier life.

Honesty is the best policy!

When we were in school, there were a few proverbs or phrases that were engraved on our minds through constant usage. One such phrase was 'Honesty is the best policy'. In our hostel, if someone did something deceitful, or had told a lie, the repartee used to be, "remember, honesty is the best policy". 

This maxim used to mean that if we maintain honest behaviour in our day to day life, it will reveal our good character and sincerity, and will bring honour and happiness in the long run.

As a kid, I used to rationalise that human beings are perhaps inherently dishonest, for us to have felt the need to parrot such quotes deep into our minds. As an adult today, my rationale sort of stands verified with experience and observation. Indians, in general do not have the strength to be honest and truthful. They don't have faith in honesty to yield a happy life. It is a confused or partial faith in honesty that gets compromised easily in day to day living of our lives. It is unlike the developed western economies where we can say that only people in particular are dishonest. Overall, they do not feel the need to be dishonest.

Personally, I have always had a deep relationship with this phrase. I thought and still think that it is an universal truth. Honesty benefits our life and make it beautiful. Unfortunately, the trend seems to be going the other way. Our societies are becoming dishonest and deceitful by the day. It is irrespective of the fact that the density of temples or mosques or churches are increasing. To common logic, places of worship should increase the incidences of honesty in a society. In contrary, it seems that rising dishonesty is the reason why worshipping places are mushrooming in every banyan tree possible. It seems that we are becoming a society of sinners to our own conscience, and we need worshipping places to placate our conscience, to seek forgiveness from our Gods. It is easy to say sorry to our Gods, as we do not have to deal with Him in our day to day business. Some of us who deal with God everyday, whom we call the Pujaris, are even dishonest to their Gods. They take money to take 'the sinners' to God faster with minimum hassle.

Our society was never like this. Temples were made and maintained by kings and rulers. General public used to visit those temples (or work of art and magnificence) during special festivals. Instead, societies used to have customs and rituals that they used to practice during births, deaths, marriages, full moon, eclipses etc. Perhaps, we didn't feel the need for so many temples, mosques and other places of worship.

I do not completely understand why and when we started losing faith in honesty. However, I have a theory that originates from my studies about oppressed societies. Societies oppressed by rulers and colonial powers, often face scarcity of resources that they have to fight for to exist. During times of extremes, basic instincts to survive over-rules concepts of fairness and honesty. It becomes a situation of him vs me, or his family vs mine to acquire the bare necessities food, shelter and protection. The rich becomes richer and fewer. The poor becomes poorer and more in numbers.

India have had British oppression for 200 years, in which period the even the Industrial Revolution in Britain was financed by de-industrialisation of India. India weavers, textile merchants, and even agriculture was affected. India’s share of the world economy by the time the British arrived on its shores was 23 percent. By the time the British left, it was down to below 4 percent. India's trade share in textiles was 27% which was down to 2%. We have had British PM Winston Churchill leaving us to die during the Bengal famine, as late as 1940s, when he had diverted essential supplies from Bengal to pile food reserves for the British.

There is another think tank that believes that oppression of India had begun much before British arrived. If we agree to that part of history, India had had over 600 years of oppression.

It is perhaps this oppression that has evolved or rather, spoiled our character to such depths in our collective minds that seven decades of independence have made almost no difference to India's character in terms of our belief in honesty. Just like our economic size in relation to the world has not changed after independence. Six centuries of colonial ravages cannot be undone in two decades or seven.

From my life, I have enough evidences that honesty has a direct relationship to long term happiness. Dishonesty, unfairness, lies and deceit have a direct relationship to long term sadness and misery. If we look closely at any corrupt family over a period of twenty years, my theory about happiness will be prima facie proven right.

Worshipping places do not make a society honest and fair. It is at best an escape from the turmoils of being dishonest. The worst consequence of too many worshipping places is a divided society with a false sense of security.

We need to restore our faith in honesty and in being good. It is the only way to rise from our perils and lead a happy and content life. Honesty and fairness can also bring economic progress distributing wealth equally in terms of the amount of hard work being put in by the society. It will create a feasible business environment and eco-system that will enable all of us to do fearless business with minimum risks.

I re-affirm with full belief that honesty is the best policy, and believe me, it will prove itself to be so in your lifetime, if you belief in it.

There is hope and there is time.

I was connecting my Lumia to my Onkyo home theatre system to listen to one of my favourite mix of MixRadio, when a particular raw nerve in my brain connected me to my life when I was in class V. I was depressed about not having a cassette player at home then.

I remembered going to my mama's (maternal uncle) house with a hope to get their walkman which was lying un-used. Ignoring my shame, I remembered asking for that walkman. I remembered getting a naked speaker from a friend and buying a big bellied earthen pot for five rupees. I remembered fixing the speaker to the earthen pot to get better bass. I was unhappy, but I had hope.

When I was graduating in Economics from Cotton College, there were motorcycles all over the place. Cheap 2-stroke Japanese bikes had flooded the market after 1991. I didn't have the fortune to ride one though. I had made a deal with one of my bike-owning friends that I would introduce him to one of the girls that he liked, who was incidentally my good friend. Luckily the deal worked and I had got the opportunity to ride a Yamaha RX100 twice - once inside a cricket field and once on the road. I had become a 50% biker. After that day on the road, my riding had to wait for another 3 years.

I once had asked my relative to let me learn driving his car. He had refused. I requested their driver. He too had refused.  I was sad, unhappy, anxious and perhaps depressed. But I had hope.

I kept working at whatever came my way with limited short term expectations. Neither did I have big ambitions, nor was I devoid of little hope. I was walking through life, giving the best I could.

Today I am 17 years past my first job. I am about to be 39 years. I have all the materialistic comforts that I never thought possible in my lifetime. 17 'only' years changed my life forever to the better in terms of what I earlier didn't have. It was completely unexpected. My limited short term expectations never could reach such heights.

Our lives are long, really long. Anything can practically happen. An ordinary man, Mr. Narendra Modi becomes the Prime Minister. Mr. Arvind Kejriwal, another ordinary citizen and an aspiring civil servant, becomes the Chief Minister of Delhi with a new political party in little over 3 years of his political career.

There are times when one feels that there is no ambition, and there are times when one feels there are too many things to do without a sense of focus. In both the scenario, one must take a long breath and think again. Moments when there seems to be a lack of an ambition, there are daily work that may need immediate attention such as getting the shoe polished. Doing your day to day jobs also give you a sense of accomplishment which will ready you for the bigger ambition.

Moments when you feel confused with multiple options, a long breath will help you realise that there is time to do all of them sequentially one after the other. If we take business ideas, a small business idea needs a minimum of 2 years to stabilise, and one can do 5 such business ideas in 10 years. It is another matter that you may be happy getting stuck to the first business idea that you had initiated.

My life mantra is that there is hope and there is a lot of time in one lifetime. Let us be genuine, be good, work hard at whatever life gives and life will give you what you hope for.

My Happiest Investment.

In my life of 38 years, I have invested my time and effort to achieve many things at different points of my life. In some, I succeeded. In some I succeeded partially.

I read. I travelled. I helped riot victims.
I worked late nights and whole nights when the office time was 9 to 5.
I quit my corporate life to be with my parents.
I prayed.

My happiest investment so far, however, was one of my new year resolutions many moons back when I was penniless, jobless and directionless. It was after becoming a graduate with a prospect of becoming another educated unemployed youth in Assam.

I had thought that whatever be the case, I will try hard to be a good human being - truthful, helpful, honest and harmless. It was a lot of hard work and sacrifice not to be bad, not to lie, to be helpful before self, not to take shortcuts to earning money, not be revengeful, and be honest about your weaknesses.

From a monthly salary of Rs. 1500 in 1998, life conspired to enable me to study at the best communication institute - MICA which charged Rs. 750 for its prospectus (and another Rs. 700 for the CAT prospectus). It gave me the strength to resign as an AVP in Deutsche Bank 15 years later to come back to look after my parents. It has made me positive and courageous to tackle life.

Even believing in being truthful, helpful, honest, harmless and selfless gives you immense power, self belief and a sense of pride.

Today in this new year, I reaffirm my resolution that life is short and the happiest investment is to sacrifice everything to think good, do good and be good.

A HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL OF YOU, MY ELDERS, RELATIVES, FRIENDS, BROTHERS AND SISTERS.

Life

Life keeps you unhappy in search of ... hmmm... something. Anything it can be. Almost anything. Even death.

If you get death, you will still perhaps search for something else.

Is being incomplete, life?

Memento Memories - We too keep notes!

OK. So what am I doing?
Oh, I'm chasing this guy.
No. He's chasing me.
Ah! Fuck!

------

I have this condition.
A condition?!
It's my memory.
Amnesia?
No, no, it's different from that. I have no short-term memory.

I know all about myself, I just...
Since my injury I can't make new memories. Everything fades.

If we talk for too long I'll forget how we started...

For any movie maniac, this would ring a bell. Memento for many, Ghajini for few.

Just for the un-initiated, Memento is a 'must watch' psychological thriller film written and directed by Christopher Nolan, adapted from his younger brother Jonathan Nolan's short story "Memento Mori". The movie later inspired one of the greatest bollywood blockbuster - Ghajini (the Ghajini hair cut, though was original bollywood creation).

This is not a movie review, but a reflection of the movie that fell on me.

The movie is about Leonard Shelby who believes in his life through notes, Polaroid photographs with caption and permanent tattoos on his body. Since he has short term memory or practically doesn't remember anything and anybody, he trusts his instincts, handwriting and tattoos.

'You really need a system if you're gonna make it work. You kinda learn to trust your handwriting... ...where you put them is really important. You need a jacket that's got, like, six pockets... You just kinda learn to know where things go and how the system works...'

Don't we all write notes? In the corollary, don't we find people who doesn't write notes inefficient and often forgetful workers. Don't we consider 'Post-it Notes' as one of the world's most innovative products? Don't we find ourselves a bit lost if the minutes of the meeting are not circulated or noted?

The only difference being that Leonard Shelby had too short a memory. We all have short memories and some reference memories.

The movie makes a great statement on belief systems, instincts and intuition. Its all about self belief about what you perceive in life.

...I have to believe in a world outside my own mind.
I have to believe that my actions still have meaning.
Even if I can't remember them...
I have to believe that when my eyes are closed, the world's still here...

We too know so little about the world in spite of being scientifically so advanced to send men to space. The only option is to have faith and belief.

Its believed that medical science only knows only 20% about the human body. There are innumerable diseases that the medical fraternity calls 'Auto-immune Diseases', which in simple words imply that we don't know the cause and cure. We know so little about what's going to happen in the next instant.

We have created technology to fill ourselves with documented knowledge - wikipedia, google, blogs, libraries et al. But can we read, understand and assimilate all of that in one life-time to understand life,... to understand ourselves.

Am I really sure that the laptop with its lithium battery wont burst on my lap while I write this blog? Its all about my belief that's making me continue to keep the laptop on my lap

So what we do is we believe in our instincts and strengthen them through daily conditioning. Its about habits that we pick up from our childhood and the culture that we come from. We have to accept them and be happy with ourselves. One life time is too short to keep thinking of changing for the better, especially when it is difficult to understand 'what is better'

Conditioning didn't work for Sammy, so he became helpless.
But it works for me.
I live the way Sammy couldn't.
Habit and routine make my life possible.
Conditioning. Acting on instinct.

The movie beautifully portrays that this system of belief, instinct and intuition can be strengthened by conditioning and has to be complimented by past memories (references). Otherwise the system will shake and dis-integrate. We have to remind ourselves about who we are.

Today, in our busy lives, we tend to forget who we are, where did we come from and why we are wherever we are. Its about an un-ending desire for progress and material success accumulating stress, anxiety and confusion in the process. We forget our objectives, about why we started the journey and instead create newer objectives.

We all need memories to remind ourselves who we are.
I'm no different.

Leonard Shelby could keep his single mindedness because of his systemic notes that he either tattooed or written on Polaroid photographs. Everyday the first thing that he reads is 'Remember Sammy Jenkins' which is tattooed to his left upper arm just by the side of his thumb. That statement starts his process of understanding his life, his condition, his purpose and therefore deciding on his next move.

We are not so fortunate. We don't have a trigger to start the process of understanding life everyday. And we end up our days scampering like rats.

The best part of Memento is that Leonard Shelby can choose to not remember a few details in his life. He starts every day with a clean slate with no hatred, biases and pre-conditions. Morever, he can choose to not write notes about something that he may repent in the future. He can choose to forget. Today, most of our sadness and depression is about the memories of our past.

We may not remember the minutes of an important meeting, but we would surely remember our sad moments, failures, humiliations and bad relationships. Some memories are best forgotten but we cant help it.

We have to let go of some of our past. Even if it means 'no learning from that past', it's worth it.

To cut long story short, Memento is an amazing insight and perspective on memory, instincts and conditioning behaviour. A must watch for an healthier outlook towards life.