Wisdom by Hindsight
23 year old Balwinder Singh has been carrying his blind mother on his back for more than two years, so that she can do “Char dhaam yatra”
This takes me to one of the stories that I learnt about devotion to parents when I was a youngster.
I wonder if such stories and Indian myths are told to modern youngsters.
My friend Usha, sitting in Australia came across this and shared it with me. I believe that it is a pity that within India, this has not received the same enthusiasm.
This is the news item.
This is Sebastian Coe’s explanation.
This is the reaction from young India.
“I hate to come back to this but I am finding it really upsetting. It’s a sickness, a malaise in people’s minds after years of corruption and entitlement, don’t care about anything; taught by our society “if I can then I have a right to”. No conscience, no sense of shame ? Fat sloppy arrogant woman in jeans sees nothing wrong in disgracing the Tiranga … marching publicly alongside athletes who have sweated and slogged all their lives for this honor. This loser must be socially boycotted and made to rue her act, criminally prosecuted for disgracing the national flag. I wish Sushil Kumar had just slammed her down to the ground. Probably his upbringing and culture did not allow him. Ramana Rajgopaul and Padmini Natarajan do your blogs have anything to say ?”
What more needs to be said?
I reproduce below the exchange of views between The Old Fossil and me in my post Deadlines.
TOF : Deadlines and punctuality aren’t the same thing to me. Deadlines I always think of as production with expectation, often because one person in a production is part of the critical path for another person’s results.
Punctuality on the other hand seems more along the lines of courtesy. I am almost always punctual, mostly to show respect to another and to feel respect for myself.
Me : Agreed but the end result for both is to be on time. The first to finish and the latter to attend.
TOF : Yes, but a deadline can generate more stress for me than punctuality.
My readers know how much synchronicity there is in my life. Here is what I saw in this morning’s newspaper.
My friend Meghadri shared a piece of art by Jane Kate Brown on FaceBook and asked if his friends knew what it was.
I not only remembered that, it immediately brought back memories of my childhood when we used to wake up to the smell of freshly roasted coffee beans which were ground into powder in that contraption before being put in a filter with steaming hot water to make thick divine smelling coffee decoction. The filter was this little gadget.
The Tamil Brahmin community to which I belong, called Tambrams now, was famous for their coffee prepared this way. Guests would not mind waiting for the whole process to be gone through to have a tumbler full of piping hot coffee. There was a ritual involved here to in cooling the concoction down by pouring from the tumbler into the other container called the davaraa.
The grinding process could only start after the beans were roasted first and that was done in this contraption.
The beans were inside the drum which was rotated over a charcoal fire. The older children in the house had the chore of turning the handle and since I was the eldest, I often had to do that. Mind you, this was an every day event. The powder was never kept in stock. Everyday, fresh stock had to be roasted and ground for fussy male heads of families.
While the smell permeated the entire house, the children were not allowed to drink either coffee or tea till almost teen age. What a cruel thing to do?
In homes were meat was regularly cooked, another grinding machine of a larger size was used to mince meat. These two grinders were kept separate in different locations so that the coffee aroma was never polluted with alien traces in the machine!
Do you remember these kitchen appliances? If you do, you must be close to my age!
the Delhi High Court has declared the result of the DNA test conducted at the Hyderabad-based laboratory. The court said as per the report, “Tiwari is reported to be the biological father of Rohit Shekhar and Ujjwala Sharma.” The link given will give my readers sufficient background about the story.
India’s politics is firmly dynastic in many respects. Please read both the pages of the article given in the link to understand the situation. The report is not exhaustive but indicative of the situation. A more interesting take on the subject of who is illegitimate is given here! Other reports say that the son claimed that he is not the illegitimate son, but NDT is the illegitimate father!
If you want some fun out of the old man’s discomfiture, you will do no better than to read my older post.
The interesting aspect of the N D Tiwari decision is the Indian National Congress Party distancing itself from the old veteran Congressman.
Padmum rightly asks if the distancing is indicative of the party’s reluctance to have another son rising within the Congress landscape!
Come Thursday evenings and that is exactly how I feel. The Friday deadline for the LBC posts hangs over my head like a Damocles Sword. But almost always, my Muse makes it possible for me to meet the deadline. Having said that, let me share a story.
On last Friday, my young friend Srinivas suggested that we meet for a cup of coffee at 4.00 pm, because, he did not want me to miss my daily siesta yet he wanted enough time to spend on a chat before he had to leave for another appointment. It started to rain by about ten minutes to four, so, I took an umbrella and strolled down to our favourite cafe which is conveniently within walking distance from my home. At exactly four I entered the cafe, and sat down to wait for Srinivas.
Srinivas turned up ten minutes later and was most apologetic for the delay and said something remarkable. He said that this was something he found amusing that people of my generation like me and his father where so punctual! Now, the problem is not that Srinivas was late deliberately. He had parked his car outside the gate of my residence to catch me come out so that I would not have to get wet in the rain and waited in vain. He rang me on my phone, which I had conveniently forgotten to take with me. He then asked the watchman to find if I was still at home. When the watchman told him that I had gone off somewhere, he drove down to the cafe. So, I did compliment Srinivas for being punctual too, and it was nice to see him blush! He told me that he ‘expected’ me to be on time unlike most others that he knew!
Now let us get back to the LBC. Leave aside the old bandicoots who inevitably post before deadline, the younger lot either post late or not at all.
Is this some kind of natural selection process that with the passing of time, the newer generations change values and discipline? Do they operate on flexible dead lines and time tables? Or am I the odd guy around here with quaint old fashioned values of being punctual and meeting deadlines?
I hope you enjoyed reading this post on the weekly Friday Loose Bloggers Consortium where thirteen of us write on the same topic. Today’s topic has been chosen by Padmum. The twelve other bloggers who write regularly are, in alphabetical order, Anu, Delirious, gaelikaa, Grannymar, Maxi, Maria SF, ocdwriter, Padmum, Paul, Shackman, The Old Fossil and Will. Do drop in on their blogs and see what their take is on this week’s topic. Since some of them may post late, do give some allowance for that too!