Thatched House

We are all familiar with the mind boggling question, ‘which came first, the Egg or the Chicken?’ But in life, things don’t have to be so complicated all the time. There are things where the choices are easy. What would you do if you see a woman on your right caught on fire while on your left you see another woman needing a hand to lift a pile of firewood on her head? Who would you help first? Of course the woman on fire. But priority setting based on the common sense of the order of things is not very prevalent. I saw a banner in Delhi which says, ‘Computer Course for Slum Dwellers’.  The government in order to generate employment opportunities for slum dwellers came up with the plan to teach them computers. It doesn’t occur to the government that the slum dwellers toil to put food on their plates daily, forget about reading and writing. Let me present here some sets of things and let’s think which should be first and which should follow. Which one first? 1.   ...

We say VIPs are responsible for traffic jams. So, imagine what you will get when you put all the VIPs in one place and make them drive through a narrow passage at the same time. I’m not talking about some wannabe VIPs who clamber for recognition and visibility, but real big fishes: Ministers, Parliamentary Secretaries, Opposition MLAs, Commissioners, Secretaries, and Directors.  If you want to see what might happen in such a situation, come to the Nagaland Legislative Assembly during the assembly sessions. If you get access permit to witness the assembly proceedings from the public gallery, don’t leave early. Stay behind to watch the ‘Road Show’. The Assembly complex has a sprawling compound where elephants can play football. It defies the reality that there is hardly any space left in Kohima for an average guy to pitch his tent and start a family. The parking lot is also spacious because only cars with A or B stickers can enter. I had the privilege of having a B s...

An article for students of North Delhi-ICEU Since June 2010, I have been earning ₹25,000/month; tax free. Nine months later, now I have just over ₹3,000 in my bank account. Every month something or the other always comes up: brother’s college admission fee, travel expenses, cooking gas, rice bag, wedding gift, new clothes, sickness, etc. All this makes it so easy to forget that I’m being paid quite handsomely. I do not compare myself with the Ambanis but I do have colleagues who are getting paid more than me. Of course, I know a person in my office who earns only ₹2,500/month and works as hard as me, but again there are at least 2 other people who are getting paid more than ₹50,000/month. There ends my sympathy for the one with ₹2,500. What attracts people to the Civil Services if not for the fame and money? There are people who want to serve in the administration, but what will be the proportion of such people among the total population of civil aspirants? If in the course of your s...

If you never try We can never be

If you want to find hope search among the ruins