Modern Day Slavery

• You navigate through existence and enter into nothingness. In between you sleep every night and that is probably what keeps you sane.

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• One does not have to spend the rest of one’s life fearing hell or thinking about heaven if one does not believe that there is life after death. In any case just imagine how boring heaven would be!

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• The Creature Man was created under mysterious circumstances.

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• The so called proud working class is nothing but another form of modern day slavery. The working class is always overworked by their master; eight hours of daily labour does not seem to be enough; most of their time is spent in trying to afford enough food supply, shelter, and the necessaries and comforts of life, leaving them very little time to further their education or to indulge in leisure, amusement, sleep and a little vagaries of life.

The lowest and most degraded form of human existence is the experience when the individual has to toil, labour and be depended on others for wages to pay for food, shelter and the necessaries and comforts of life.

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• The human race has no interest that everyone should be educated, fed, have access to medical facilities, or promote peace, well being, happiness to every man, woman and child regardless of their class, sect, colour, party or country.

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• There are people who believe in flying saucers, in telepathy, in astrology, in the Bermuda Triangle, in reincarnations, in gods, in satan, in Vastu Shastras, in Feng Shui, in Falun Gong, in heaven and hell, in Raelism, in black magic, in ghosts-spirits-souls,. . . . . .

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The ghetto in the sky

In a city like Mumbai, with it slums, high-rises and fancy apartments, the entire population lives in a ghetto. To me a ghetto is an overcrowded, over populated urban area. There is not much of a difference between people living in a poor area and of those living in high-rises. Both are squeezed into small places and this makes them very angry, exasperated and frustrated. These people are more likely to commit crime.

In the poorer area, because of the overcrowded, social and economic living conditions, crime rates are high. In the areas where there are high-rises, streets below are unsafe. The higher one lives, the higher is the possibility of crime being committed. If one lives on the ground floor, one has more and immediate access to the streets. One’s car is much safer on the streets if one lives on the ground or the 1st floor. The higher the building, the more people are lifted from the street level.

Now the ghettos are in the sky!

The Art of Bargaining

At the end, I don’t want to lie on my deathbed and wish that I had spent more time in the office with those gloomy fluorescent lamps, those countless emails & phone-calls, those colleagues stabbing you in the back, those over paid bosses, those talents going unrewarded, the countless absurdities of office life. No sir, I would not like to spend time at that frustrating and most illogical place on earth.

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People don’t take much interest on other people except for their social positions

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The Art of Bargaining
I spent sometime in Linking Road trying to understand how stuffs are bargained and purchased.
Bargaining must be an art, otherwise how do we define the following
1. The customer disagrees, bickers, squabble with the shopkeeper.
2. The customer points out defects in the object that is to be purchased
3. The customer sweet talks, coax, pursue, entices.
4. The customer displays, irritation, displeasure, annoyance.
5. The customer derides, mock and scoff at the shopkeeper
6. The customer intimidates the shopkeeper never to come to his shop again
7. The customer shrug shoulders.
8. The customer cautions and reprimands the shopkeeper
9. The customer feigns walking away from the shop displaying resentment.
10. Finally when the bargain has been won, heads are shaken in melancholy as if
defeat has been acknowledged with resignation.

So the next time you intend to purchase something, try out the above points and see for yourself the art of bargaining

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We people are a crazy lot.

We people are a crazy lot.
We consider ourselves smart,
but we smoke, drink and gamble.
We fall in love.
We have morons running the offices.
We declare war on each other.
We react irrationally during the boom and collapse of the stock market.
We don’t listen to our parents and we don’t seem to have much respect for them,
but we are ready to kill or die for faith and religions which were created by ancient barbarian civilizations.
We people are a crazy lot.

Mere & More Cash

Perhaps no one comprehends Sexually Transmitted Diseases and the ordeal of having to live life being infected, more than the prostitutes. Nevertheless, prostitutes live a life filled with risk in spite of the dangers, embarrassments and the humiliations of the job. Mere and more cash perhaps stimulate them to take up this perilous job.

But why the prostitutes - in fact most of us do exact that! We jeopardize our lives for mere and more cash. The construction workers who builds high rises, the soldiers who sign up for the frontiers, the office executive who keeps a highly profile stressful life and knows that this is harmful for his health - all accepts hazardous jobs in exchange for privileged salaries.

Both the prostitutes and the above set of people know what they are doing – a tough and dangerous job that offers financial compensation for doing it. They all have high negotiating powers, shrewd choices and looks at the world with a hard-hitting tougher view.

You may find this offensive, barmy, stupid, bizarre and perhaps ethically disintegrated, but this is a social problem.

Giffen Good

If you travel to any city in this world, you will observe that the city is demarcated between wealthy neighbourhood and poor neighbourhood. I do not know if this is a political malfunction, but you will see that the wealthier neighbourhood has fresh coats of paints, the traffic zebra lines are clear and discernible and the traffic lights work. Both neighbourhoods have the same elected government. Why does this inequality exist? Is it that the rich have friends in the government, or am I cranky that the poor neighbourhood people are stupid and incompetent?

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We all live in our comfort zone. In fact, most of our time is spent inside this comfort zone. We like to do familiar things. By doing this familiar things, we gain experience. When we gain experience, we are less likely to make mistakes. Since none of us human species likes to make mistakes, with the passing of time and the gaining of experience, we cuddle to a corner called comfort zone, where we make less mistakes and bide our time.

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Giffen Good

Inferior qualities of potatoes, dal, wheat, rice, are some of the staple food items that is absolutely a necessity for the poor and the Below Poverty Level people. Without these, existence would become a question. In economics there is a theory called the Giffen Good. When the price of these essentials rises, demand too rises and because the price rise creates more poverty, poverty in return creates more demand.

Normally in economics, price and demand travels the opposite directions. If price rises, demand goes down and if price falls, demand goes up.

Maybe in India, onions, sugar, most vegetables, rice, eggs, chicken and of course dal are the staple food for the poor people. Otherwise, I don’t see much decrease in the usage of these food items even though prices have shot up.

By the way I wonder what would happen if the price of Tiffany Diamonds, expensive French perfumes/wines, Rolls Royce, Rolex fall. Would the demand go up or would it come down since these are perceived as exclusive or high status products?

The Bengali as supremacist

Existing as a Bengali these days has become a source of embarrassment and wretchedness. The eminently intellectual and cultured West Bengal is now being compared with its more iniquitous neighbour - Bihar. At face value it does not emerge as an innocuous but an absurd thought. We as Bengalis who think of us as culturally supremacist, if not subtly racist, demean, scorn and denigrate Biharis, this indeed is a bizarre thought!

The CPM as per media reports seemed to have raised a heavily armed private army. There was carnage in the village of Netai. The Maoist thanked TMC for supporting their cause. All these have been confirmed by the Intelligence agency.

Binayak Sen was imprisoned for his association with the Maoist. The Maoist thanked Mamata Banerjee against land acquisition in Singur and Nandigram. Should Mamata be smacked with the same charges that put Binayak behind bars? Who should the voter vote for, considering that both sides have hooligans patronizing the party and being patronized in return? Do the voters have preferences, considering that both the CPM and the TMC seem to incline on criminal violence to settle disputes which should be decided legally, democratically and in an electoral manner? The questions are difficult but elementary.

Going forward, there might be a change of guard at the Writers Building but nothing much will change for the mass. The politics in West Bengal will remain more or less the same, no matter how much we Bengalis consider ourselves to be more civilized than our neighbours. No matter how much we deny it, West Bengal seems to have a history of organized violence and we apparently are doing nothing to dismantle it.

So now how can we get rid of these monsters and have some other alternative to lead us?