AlphaBetting

A strange word or rather a coalition of words caught my eye in The Hindu this week. Someone, I don’t remember the author or the article, but it was about a statement by someone regarding a minimum qualification for journalists. People, well journalists in particular were not so pleased by that.  The word that caught my eye was Academic Inflation. It does raise one’s brow doesn’t it? I have this bad habit of observing words, vocab if you want to call it. I like to observe and think and rethink about meanings and reasons for use of certain vocab. I think I was 16 years old when my sister took me as a ‘subject’ for her psychology practical exam. I was given a test and in the end she announced that I had poor verbal abilities.

Ouch!

Years later, the CAT 2012 proved her right. 

OK so my vocab sucks, maybe that’s why I’m interested in looking more closely at words and that’s how this caught me. Academic Inflation. It really is something, and it’s happening all around. How many times have you heard your peers saying “one degree just isn’t enough anymore”? My sister herself took up masters because she thought just having a bachelor’s degree was worthless. (I’m not sure how much she loved the subject, lemme not get on her bad side over a blogpost)  My dad had also told me that I really need to pursue a master’s course. He too thinks one degree isn’t enough. Forget these people, I can point a finger at anyone in a crowd and say he has atleast 1 friend, if not himself, in the US studying MS. It’s the trend. Two degrees is mandatory. 

My nephew was being admitted to a school and the enrolment application form said that both parents need to have a master’s degree. Seriously?? OK parents being graduates is common these days, but PG?? Come on!! So the value for education is decreasing. Today your kid can get a school admission if you’re a graduate, tomorrow you need to be a PG and then a PHD??

In economics, inflation is a rise in the general level of prices of goods and services in an economy over a period of time. Or a reduction in the purchasing power per unit of money right? So Academic Inflation would mean the reduction in credibility providing power per unit of education? Or something like that.

We’ve heard most people saying that they go for a master’s degree to add more value to themselves, but a degree is not a certificate of competence, is it? So what does that mean? The people who do masters are actually people who are incompetent to survive with just a graduation degree? Then doesn’t that make them less intelligent? 

With increasing popularity of Steve jobs and the kind; on the one side we have a propaganda about studies or structured education not being a necessity, and on the other we have people scrambling and swarming exam halls and classrooms because they want to be more credible. All these mean, the higher your educational qualification, the lower is your competence? 

 

So if we take a clean sheet approach where each person is stripped of their qualification or background, and graded based on their ability to think, work and other performance measurement criteria, then where would each one stand? Nooo we don’t want to do that… Cuz its just easy to throw around my weight cuz I have a fancy MS or a Phd.. but wait... So does everyone else in my country!! I’m gonna buy more degrees! Another Phd perhaps??

Timepass for real??

The name of this blog, Dr Timepass was something I came up in my first year college for a nerd band, we thought it was geeky enough and also had a little word play involved. We thought Time would eventually pass and swallow if not solve everything.  It’s not much, but if you had academic and romantic setbacks early in college, then this line can mean a lot. We would live strong thinking about the future; thinking that these times would just pass.  

Can time really heal? I always doubted.

Most of my learning and revelation happens at work, a certain Wednesday of March 2012 was something similar. The wooden wall décor in the meeting room of 8^th floor reminded me of a bed time story my father would tell me when I was little. 

I’ll try to keep it short :D

The story is of a young boy. He was a very mischievous and rather rough sort of a kid. He would fight with his friends at school, knock things off shelves in grocery stores and things like that. His father would be badly hurt by the complaints brought by the other people in the neighborhood. But he never raised his voice to scold or yell at his son. Instead, he went to the market and got a plank of plywood and a hundred iron nails. He called his son and explained.

‘Look son, every time I get a complaint from someone I will hammer a nail into this board and at the end of the week, you can come see how many complaints I got and decide what you want to do about it’

The son being his rough and unruly-self walked out not bothering about it.

As days turned into weeks, the father would do his hammering of nails as the complaints increased. The boy never came and saw the plank. 

After a few months, the father was shocked and hurt to see that the plank was full of nails, and his son had never once come to see the plank.

The father went to his son and called him to see the plank. On seeing the wooden plank packed with hard iron nails something struck in him.

He would eventually realize his bad deeds and turn to the ways of good. His father would then tell the boy that it was never late to correct his mistakes and tell the boy that he would remove a nail whenever someone came around to praise the boy.

So, in time the boy turned to the ways of being good and earned a lot of love and respect. His father would also be happy on receiving praises of his son and would remove a nail each time.

When all the nails were removed of the plank, the boy stood by his father proud chested and asked what his father thought of him now. The father being a man of intellect, told him 

‘Observe closely, all the nails have been pulled out, but have the holes been filled?’

The boy would hang his head and then look up in remorse. 

‘What is once done cannot be undone. No matter how hard you try, the holes cannot be refilled.’

It brings us back to Dr Timepass. Is it really impossible to fill some holes? Does that mean the phrase “time heals” is bull crap? 

Ah time, so fascinating, so frightening, and so precious. I just wish I have enough time to fill those holes.

Rights Wrong Write

Its an age old belief that Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth follows and always comes after saraswati, the goddess of knowledge. The wise and well read also said that the true lustre of knowledge and wisdom, the sheer brilliance of art and literature is often found to shine from underneath the clutter of poverty and obscurities.

 There might be a few exceptions to the latter statement, but the bare sense of rating Saraswati over Lakshmi holds a lot of meaning. Have we somehow lost this teaching? Or has the teaching itself lost upon us? Whichever might be the voice used, lakshmi clearly seems to be leading the way today, and the ‘New Age Indian Authors’ who are also the point of talk in this article, are the staff holders of this lakshmi led regime. 

As common as it is for people to want to be heard, it is also quite common for people to have stories; not to mention the crave for fame and the desire to tame success. A mix of all this is what gives rise to the tragedy called “The New Age Indian Author”. Yeah, what follow is going to take an aggressive turn against the new age Indian authors, so if you like the Chetan Bhagats and Rashmi Bansals, you stop here. 

Everyone has stories, and everyone likes to be heard, the more people hear you the more happy you feel and if popularity, success and money come along, then who wouldnt want to become a writer? My question to these authors is- doesn’t writing have a purpose?  are just money, success or popularity reasons enough for writing books? Or do they even care about any of this?

When I first thought I could also turn author, I came up with an attractive and a fairly interesting prologue. Thrilled at this, I showed it to my dad, who is again an author,  but by no means has new or age on his side

.

‘It’s not bad. I think you might have an interesting story to tell, but I wouldn’t give a good review, you have a story and you mean well but thats not enough. You also know Kannada well, but not quite enough to be an author. Be more descriptive, romance a little with the words, make reading a pleasure. Make it look like literature and not a news report.’ Said my father.

I was not surprisingly, crushed and a little hurt; which led me to conclude that my father was too old for lite reading.  Only now I realise that this ‘lite reading’ is a bug. A bug that is one of the reasons for the encroachment of these new age authors on an enchanted lane of literature paved long before there existed a ‘lite reading’. 

While speaking to my aunt on this topic, she seemed to be outraged, her exact words were

‘Just because you have a lot of money and know people in publishing, it doesn’t give you right to put crap on paper. That’s reader abuse!’

True, I thought. How many IIMs have you seen turning into authors? Or as my aunt said, serve crap on paper. You take the names, but it holds good for most. This is where we see lakshmi taking lead over Saraswati. Just because you are rich and have an IIM diploma it doesn’t mean you have what it takes to write. I wouldn’t want to go on to explain how bad the writes can get, mostly because I don’t want to get in trouble, and also because I don’t want my post to turn too big. 

All said and done, I do believe people are good at heart, even if you’re an IIM. So just stick to being good.

Reminds me of a song that translates to ‘A Bird that spans the skies doesn’t expect an award for being what she is’ 

Are we so obsessed with success and popularity that we expect recognition for being selfless? Does that even count as being selfless? Or has selflessness become another qualification to sell yourself?

What started off as an expression of dissatisfaction for bad books and poor literature by these story sellers has manifested into something much different. Nonetheless it is worth thinking. Do we need to accept and implement these new found definitions and meanings of selflessness? Or would we use it as a cynical complement? Think!

Oh yeah..  I almost forgot... Don’t buy their books if you like English

  

Democracy with an H

It’s not hypocrisy; it’s just democracy with an H. That pretty much summarizes how the politicians… No wait.. Why just politicians? That’s how all of us think. The last few days have been so shameful and disgusting for the democracy of India. What makes it worse is no one knows what is right and what wrong. It’s true that right or wrong are relative terms, but the events of 5^th june really negate every little bit of hope that the common man has in reason and justice. 

Looking back into India, corruption has always been a part of any society and it remains to date. People come to power only to make personal use of it. Defining democracy, it is a form of government where citizens elect their leaders to serve them. Over a period of time, the serve has been replaced by rule. So now, people in power are just rulers and not really leaders or people who come to serve us.

Speaking about the recent events, we all know who anna hazare is, he is an ex army soldier and now a popular social reformer. Ok I won’t bore you with his facts.. moving on.. anna hazare fasted to bring the jan lokpal bil into act and can be called to have been successful(hopefully) to a certain extent… but what his fast did was it raised a hope.. and there he was, world famous over night and had lots and lots of followers (including kids like me who decided to skip dinners and got yelled at by mom) now if this was it.. it would’ve been great.. but we’re all humans, and everyone wants a piece of action and so it was with popular leaders, diplomats, movie stars and that.. is where baba ramdev comes in.

Baba ram dev is supposed to be a samyasi who took to teaching yoga and pranayama and lived a (supposedly) peaceful life.. like all teachers and “good-doers” he wanted to spread his goodness and started with a few things like yoga research centers and stuff.. all this is cool.. but in September 2009, he bought an island for 2 million pounds!! How can someone do that? So he has this huge “aashram” in haridwar, has an island where he again has his “aashram”(which I think is actually just a spa) and flies in a private jet.. this has got to be the most coolest “sanyasi” in the history of sanyasies.

Ok so the deal about 5^th june.. now one cant really point out whos wrong and whos right.. it seems that a few reports and papers say that baba ramdev hired the ram lela maidan to conduct a yoga camp, now how can he call for a protest satyagraha?? If you ask the bjp.. I guess they would just say “its immoral but not illegal” anyway.. so that was the baba’s bad.. what about the government? From going to the airport to receive a “sanyasi” to sending cops in the middle of the night and breaking apart a crowd of more that 50k people, does anything make sense? everything makes the government look like a confused and desperate flock of crows.. and now we have the political tamasha of everyone digging history, making allegations and hurling stones and shoes at each other.. where am I? where are you? Or where is any citizen of India? long live democracy huh? 

From what we know, a sanyasi is supposed to be someone whos abandoned everything and lives only for god.. this doesn’t sound like ram dev baba now does it? Actually that’s how its been with all spiritual leaders, everyone has some part to play in politics or with big money. So if the learned, enlightened, holy men who’ve abandoned everything and have inner peace(sorry, saw kung fu panda yday) cant keep their hands off money and power, how do you expect the politicians to be clean? 

What I mean is, the government may not be perfect, democracy might not be working, and not all gurus may be leaders, but you are you... What I mean is… some people look for leaders and some for followers, you.. Just need a path. If your path is right... everythings right.