Exception to the rule

Exception to the Rule:

How many of you think childhood is /was great
Think over it again.. Is it child hood or memories of childhood.  May be when we become adults, childhood is cherished..One such cherished memory of my childhood.  It happened almost 25 years back. I feel that it must have happened just before coming to this meeting.  That is the beauty of such heart touching moments.  Time has no effect on them.
It was English Grammar class.. Hold on.. I know English.. What is this Grammar?
"Grammar is rule and discipline of a language" words of my teacher Gopalakrishna still rings into my ears.  Rules and Disciplines had no effect on my life.. What is this rule of language??

I was always a last bencher during Gopal Krishna sir's class.  Maths and Grammar were my enemies from previous birth I guess.  It was a great time for my half finished dreams of night to have some logical conclusion.  It was a state of half asleep and half awakened! It was a total meditative mood I would not care whether it was maths or grammar.  Both sounded same to me. Set of rules and too much of discipline.

"All words ending with ly are adverbs". I remember hearing only this sentence.  I suddenly got up and shouted.. For example Idly Saar.  Even today I don't know why I said that?  The entire class busted out of laughter.  It was a great insult to the grammarian Mr. Gopalkrishna.    As my grandmother used to narrate, that Bhima had a Gada as his weapon and for Gopalkrishna sir, it was an umbrella.  It appeared into his hand in no time.  1, 2,3,4,5,6,7..10 ,12 I stopped counting.. Finally umbrella was broken giving rest to my teacher and some relaxation to my back.   Ahha.. What a days were those.. Crying was the greatest medicine for all the problems of life. Finally, school bell rang.. Who is not in hurry to run away from the school. I did not even remember the word Idly.   For my bad.. That peon Naganna started following me like a devil. "Grammar teacher is calling you... Come to the staff room said Naganna.
I touched my back once.. I was wondering how could he get another umbrella so quickly?
I started shivering and followed him like a faithful dog.I saw my teacher sitting alone in the staff room.  He looked at me with lot of compassion, I looked at him back. He embraced me and touched my back.  Asked me " child, did it hurt you?" His voice was trembling.  This was a new experience to me.. I looked into his eyes.. They were wet. He said, Seenu, this is my mistake.. "All words ending with LY are adverbs is wrong statement or rule" I should have said "Generally, all words ending with ly are adverbs"
He held my hands tightly and pleaded me to excuse him.  I could not imagine it was my teacher.  Tears started rolling on my check too.  He wiped my tears and said

 "Good teacher must know the rules, a good pupil, the exceptions".

Engrossed Moments!

Engrossed Moments:

It was a beautiful Sunday morning.  Myself and my walk mate..Walk with comfort.. what were you thinking.. it’s  my wife  were  in the park for a walk to get rid of our weekly guilt. There were many like us in the park.  Some of them were jogging, few of them were walking and most of them were crawling. Laughing club members were getting grip of their..Ohhh haaa.   We saw a young boy appearing from nowhere with his sneakers and trackers on.  He was running with his ear buds deep stuck into ears.  He slowed down for a moment, and I don’t know what happened he started dancing…there, we just saw a young boy engrossed into that moment.  May be that music would have struck deep chords within him.  He could connect himself with that music and to the situation he was in. 

On similar lines, my father used to narrate me a story.  He and his friends decided to watch a movie called Bharat Milap in my village’s touring talkies.  This movie was made on story lines of Ramayana  As they walked into the theatre premises, a board written on with “Housefull” welcomed them.  After a series of negotiations with Gatekeeper, they secured a place on ground. 

The movie started with prayer of Ghantasala NAMO Venkatesa..Namo Tirumalesha synchronized with curtain rolling up slowly to unveil the silver screen. After the initial happy scenes and moments in the movie, it reached a point of deflection.  Ram gets abandoned from his kingdom and walks out of  Ayodhya along with Sita and Lakshman.  Entire Ayodhya is standing on either side of road and crying to see Ram departing.   

Later, Bharat comes back and observes the entire Ayodhya is deep into sorrow.  He gets to know about Ram’s departure.  He rushes to the palace with frustration, anger and sadness.   He sees his father on his deathbed, and his mother Kaikeyi standing other side.  He goes to his mother and asks in sadness Maa.. where is Ram.. Maa.. Ram Kahan? Bolo Maa Ram Kahan? .. Bolo maa Ram kahan.  There was no response from kaikeyi.  His anger grew to fumes.  He shouted Maa Ram Kahan.. But there was no response from Kaikeyi.  There was a pin drop silence in a movie theatre.  Suddenly a voice came from behind.. “Bol be bol Ram kahan??  This voice had double the intensity and loudness that of Bharat’s, it had million times more anger than Bharat and billion times higher intensity of sadness.  

Suddenly lights came on. Everyone turned around to see who was that and discovered he is Mohamad Gouse – Gaadi Waala. (Cart puller). If Ghouse  was part of that scene he would have murdered Kaikeyi.  He was transformed as Bharat at that moment and transcended him to a different world. 

An anonymous prisoner writes:  HE was given a life term imprisonment.  He spent much of his prison time reading.  He must have read over 500 books, mostly classics, Autobiographies.  AS long as he was engrossed in those books, he writes, he was not in prison.  Reading was his escape.

Dear friends, in all the three incidents above, it was evident that when we get engrossed into those moments, we will forget ourselves, our presence, our surroundings and our worries.  We come out with a fresh perspectives and a better view of life.  My friend stopped worrying about the girl who did not like him after watching the movie Daar.  Mohammad Ghouse was popularly known & called as Bharat and was recognized for  narrating stories from Ramayana.  And reading books gave solace to this prisoner and made him to forget that he was in prison. 

The question arises that you get engrossed only by watching movies or reading books? Not at all.  Ramakrishna paramahamsa used to get engrossed into that moment by just looking at a bloomed flower.  Dr . Bendre, used to write poetry while he was on deathbed.  When asked, he said, he was engrossed in those moments of death. 

These are great people, how about us? Friends, let’s find those moments we want to get engrossed.  It could be reading, writing, speeches, playing with your kids, anything that you are passionate about and love to do. 

As Umer Khayam says

Yesterday was History, Tomorrow is Mystery, but Today is Gift that is why it is called Present..

Let’s discover our engrossed moments today and Cherish this Gift called “Today”

Freedom from what?.. Independence from whom?

Freedom from what?.. Independence from whom?

1857 – First war of independence, 1921- Civil disobedience movement, 1930- Salt Satyagraha, 1942 – Quit India movement.

Mangal pandey to Sardar Patel, Netaji to Gandhiji.  Kittur Chennamma to Rani Lakshmi Bai, fought, saved and pulled our nation from foreign rule.  Today, our country is governed by constitution and it is a Sovereign, Republic, Democratic country. 

We just celebrated another year of independence, we must ask ourselves what freedom and independence means to us?After the end of foreign we have been ruled by corruption & bribery.  For me, a freedom must be from corruption and Independence is from Bribery matters most. 

Let’s us look at some facts:  

As per IMF report, Bribery and corruption costs the world economy as much as 2 trillion dollars every year.  This money lost every year is equal to 2 percent of world GDP.  What an irony, as per World Bank report, India is now a 2 trillion dollar economy.  Look at the potential of corruption money, we can run country like India with this money.  How does all this happen? Dear friends, ask yourself if you have not paid any bribe in one or other form?   What is response?

Exactly, a study conducted by transparency international in year 2015 found that more than 62% of Indians had firsthand experience of paying bribes.  Our country was ranked 76th out of 175 countries in corruption.    This means, half of the countries of the world are less corrupt than India.  As per government reports, India Govt loses about 2 lakh crores annually due to corruption and approx. 40,000 crores lost due to delay in projects due to corruption & approximately 500B$ in Swiss Banks.  If corruption was not there, all our public enterprises would have improved their profit margin by almost 20%.  According to Economist, if corruption in India reduced to the level of scandinavian countries, then annual FDI investments would rise to 12% and GDP would grow at additional 1.5%.

You may be wondering how to stop this? How to proclaim independence from corruption and bribery?  You may be thinking is every system in our country is such bad?  Not really friends. As citizens of this country, we need to believe in our system and need to be fearless.   Let me narrate you a story of mine which happened during year 2013.

I was building my new home and my electrical contractor ran away with the money that I have paid to get the permanent electricity connection to my new home (that included the bribe part as well).  Now, I have to make our own arrangements.   I approached DISCOM office and completed all the formalities to get the new meter.

They asked to come after a week due to software issue.  When I went back we had to listen to same story.  I requested them, pleaded them but there was no mercy.  It did not take me long to understand that I need to deal with them under table.  To be honest with you, I did not had that extra money to give away.  I decided to fight back, my wife joined me. Anna Hazare’s photo which was stuck on back of my car (during the times of Janlokpal bill time) smiled at us.  We decided to go and check with them every day with our paragon chappals.  It reached to a point that our house warming was just a week away and there was no electricity, we both decided to go there and sit in the office till our work gets done.  On that day, we came to know that executive engineer going to be around in that office.  We waited for his arrival.  We had our housewarming invitation cards with us.  As soon as he came, we handed over the invitation card.  He asked us if he knows us. We said, yes, because we are coming here from last three weeks.  We told him that we not only know him but several others in his office.  We invited him to be a part of our candle light dinner during house warming.  No need to explain, we had new meters installed in next few hours.  He was a very sensitive and an honest officer.  In this case, our persistence paid off.

We fought corruption in Munnabhai style to proclaim our independence.  

Friends, fighting corruption starts from me & you.  There are many ways to fight the corruption, we used one such tool as “Invitation” but there are several others eg :1.  Ipaidabribe.com – which helps to capture the data related to bribe payments . 2. RTI , 3.Central vigilance web and there are several NGOs who can fight on behalf of you. 

Our ancestors’ fought for our independence from foreign rule and now it is our turn to fight the corruption for our independence.  Should we celebrate two independence days? Perhaps yes, in the “irony rule of corruption” it is that independence which is from corruption matters most.  We need to remember, Freedom movement is an ongoing process.  

Written as a part of my CC7 project speech as per TMI guidelines. 

References

http://www.transparencyindia.org/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_in_India