Book Launch- This Place

“As a writer, I feel come, let me take you somewhere and you feel it, feel this place — you may never go there or care about it — but you feel it as you are reading the story,” says Amitabha Bagchi at the launch of his book ‘This Place’.

In ‘This Place’, Bagchi takes us to Baltimore. The story is about a man named Jeevan who manages accounts of his landlord, Shabbir, in return for a rent-free accommodation. Kay and Mathew are his neighbours. The city authorities decide to demolish a few buildings including the one in which Jeevan is staying and thus begins a conflict. In the meantime, a woman named Savita enters Jeevan’s life, making his life more complex. The book deals with various questions around morality, fidelity, masculinity, loneliness and the central theme — displacement.

Bagchi says he knew he had to write about his US experience, especially Baltimore — he has stayed there for around six years; he needed to get a few things off his chest. He had started writing his first novel in Baltimore and finished it while still in the US and he wrote ‘This Place’ before ‘The Householder’. He had gone back to Baltimore to research before writing the book, but it was more about “how the city feels” to him rather than physical research.

“Baltimore is like a child gone wrong. There is crime, drugs, prostitution... it is the inner city of America without the glamour of New York. People had been left to rot. No one cared. This book is to show that look someone cares. You can’t live in a city without getting attached to it in some way.”

Bagchi has tried to capture various hues of American life through his characters. Kay, for example, has a problem with fidelity — a common thing in the US — and she has to deal with the pressures of morality. Mathew is a failed computer science PhD student. He finds out that a problem that he had been working on has been solved by people in IBM. He gets this idea that he can improve their solution and goes on a wild goose chase. Meeting several people who had achieved more than him instils in him a sense of failure.

“Among educated middle class Americans, there are steep pyramids of achievement. While some people are extremely successful, some fall on the side. In MIT computer department, for example, only one out five joins the faculty while the other four are made to leave with a feeling that they are a failure, which is not always justified. It is true for all professions. The society is unforgiving even of its talented and educated people,” elaborates Bagchi.

Another character, a real life one, that appears in the book is Cal Ripken, a basketball player from Baltimore. That Cal would be a part of the story, says Baghchi, was something that he had decided at the inception, though it was much later that he figured out how.

“Cal was a loved figure, a high achiever; he was like Rahul Dravid. Dravid has qualities of being a man... For me, there is nothing more manly than Dravid on the field, killing balls, no boundaries... getting the job done. Someone has to take the responsibility... Cal was that kind of a figure— taking no injury breaks, went to work every day and dealing with the pressures that come with masculinity.”
Baltimore, according to Bagchi, is a working man’s town. With the moving away of industries and disappearance of jobs, the city has become a shell of what it was and it has become difficult for men to provide for their families, which, in turn, undermines their masculinity.

Bagchi was inspired by painter Edward Hopper and the influence is seen in some sentence constructions like ‘chair where the paper was read’. Speaking about the way Hopper’s paintings—landscapes – are arranged (around a slanted quadrilateral made by light), Bagchi says, “I see in Hopper the tension between humans and space. If the human is removed, the paintings still work which makes the presence of the human in that space extremely fragile. In the book, space exists independent of the character. It shows fragility of life. Hopper’s paintings try to capture that there is so much space but not enough people to fill it with; completely different from Delhi,” he laughs.

And while descriptions were inspired by Hopper, the story itself was inspired by Medha Patkar’s speeches and documentaries on Narmada Bachao Andolan and the problems related to displacement it brought forth.

“Novelists are the keepers of a species morality,” says Bagchi and adds, “I know it is naive, but I feel that novels are a moralist’s medium. You can be a moralist without moralising.”

The book was launched at MoonRiver on Saturday.

Man with a vision

Found this in my notes. This profile is an assignment I did in college.

Man with a visionFebruary 17, 2011

He sat cross-legged on a red sofa, his hands on the handles and head held-up high. His black hair had retreated to the sides and back of his head, revealing a large portion of his brown scalp, not an uncommon phenomenon among young. His brown eyes looked amused and a smile played up on his lips showing white teeth beneath thicket of black moustache. He had just asked me to guess his age. 35?

35, he heard the voice. He laughed as he looked at the blob of mass from where the sound had come. “My wife should hear this,” he said aloud. He called out to his manager, “Ranjit! Did you hear that?”

“Yes sir,” he heard a familiar voice. He looked to his left at the source of the sound. A new blob of mass of nondescript colour had appeared. He did not know how far it was as everything was two dimensional. But he could judge the distance to the voice. He got up and walked towards the blob. Putting his hands on where the blob’s shoulder should be he said, “And you say that I look old!”
“Sir, there is not much difference between 35 and 40.”

He disagreed, “Of course there is!” In his life every year counts. He let go of the mass and made his way to the sofa. He knew where it was.

For C. Gopalakrishnan, or Gopi as he is fondly called, struggle defines life.  As he sits in his comfortable office in Nethrodaya, a hostel for visually and physically challenged people that he founded in 2002, he recollects how his lifelong fight for the rights of visually challenged started.

The year was 1988. It was an early November morning in Chennai and the weather was moderately hot. A group of 150 college students assembled in front of the Central Government office at Shastri Bhavan. They were from College Students Graduate Association for Blind (CSGAB). At 8.45 a.m., they started shouting slogans and in less than an hour proceeded to block the road.

Gopi, then a first year student of English literature in Pachiyappa College, was one of them. The demands were simple. Allow the visually challenged to study all the subjects in college and not just English, Tamil and History. The police watched with disinterest. Such protests were a routine affair.

Two hours later the traffic situation had become worse. The police, after receiving orders from their seniors, arrested the students and took them to Nungambakkam Railway Station. From there the students were stuffed in police vans and sent to Nungambakkam Police Station. They were left off in the evening at half past six. A few days later government accepted their demand and opened up more courses for the blind.

“There was no looking back,” he says. Over the years he protested for various rights of visually challenged. He was imprisoned 16 times, once -- chained and beaten.

“The important part is not that I was hurt but that we won. We are like tea bags. Unless put in hot water we would not know how strong we are.”

He is aware that rights are not served on platter. One has to fight for it. But his fight against social prejudices has proved to be a tough one.

Nethrodaya was born of a similar fight. While doing a project in second semester of PG Diploma course in Social Entrepreneurship, he found that the blind beggars in suburban metro stations were not allowed to be vendors. They did not bribe the police as the ‘normal’ vendors did and hence they were reduced to begging. Surprisingly, most of the blind beggars were graduates who could not afford the cost of living in the city. Nethrodaya was started to provide free accommodation to visually challenged and later extended to include physically challenged. However, what had enraged Gopi, more than the living conditions, was the discrimination against the visually challenged.

“What right does anyone has to judge our capability? We can do what ‘normal’ people can,” he says. Gopi has never believed that he was blind and at times he has fooled others into thinking the same.

Last year in October, Akhil Ajit, a final year student of Bachelors of Social Work went to ONGC (Oil and Natural Gas Corporation) to apply for CSR grant for a certain college function. He entered the lift with Gopi on the ground floor. He overheard Gopi speaking about Murali, the person in-charge for giving CSR grants. “Sir, are you applying for CSR grant too?” Akhil asked. Gopi said yes and told him about Nethrodaya. It was 15 minutes later, when someone in ONGC office told him, that Akhil realised that Gopi had only partial vision. “I was shocked. I could not guess from his walk or anything that he could not see.”


Gopi was six years old when he was detected with Retinitis Pigmentosa. It is a genetic disorder in which the vision depletes with time. It is commonly found in communities that have inter-relation marriages. Gopi’s parents were Nairs from Kerala who practice endogamy in order to keep the property within the family. They had migrated to Chennai after marriage.

They were dejected when series of eye check-ups and consultations with doctors revealed that their son’s ailment could not be corrected. Only cornea related eye problems can be corrected. Mocking at the irony he says, “My cornea are in perfect condition. Believe it or not, I can donate my eyes.”

With blindness comes social untouchability which is more prevalent in the elite culture than anywhere else.

In 2006, Gopi decided to shift the Nethrodaya building as larger accommodation was required. The state government allotted them a land in an elite area in Mogappair where number of bureaucrats live. When the residents found out about the allotment there launched numerous protests filing 16 cases, which they won in municipal court and lost in High Court. They tried preventing the construction at every level by obtaining various stay orders. Their reasons ranged on degree of ridiculousness, from “seeing a blind person in the morning is a bad omen” to “we have invested lot of money in these houses, if you come the land prices will dip.” They said that seeing a blind person will lead them to depression.

“Education has not given them wisdom” says Gopi. “If they cannot be of any help they should not become hindrance in other people’s life. I don’t see why they can’t go about their work instead of cribbing about other people’s business.”

The new building was inaugurated in 2009. Since then Gopi has found many sympathisers. The vegetable vendor provides them free vegetables. There are others who support them, but were unwilling to stand-up against the bureaucrats.

In Nethrodaya, Gopi attempts to blur the line between ‘normal’ and ‘challenged’. Things are provided according to the needs. The residents are given classes in computer, music and yoga.

Gopi finds respite in his family. His wife, Usha, pampers him. Theirs was a love marriage. He dotes on his ten-years-old daughter Sethulaxmi, who chirps around the house. To him she is his sunshine. Sethulaxmi remembers the time when her father invited her favourite actor Surya to Nethrodaya. “I love Surya! He came and he hugged me. I was four then. He said nice things about my daddy,” she rattles her fondest memory.

Each year there are a number of things that Gopi learns and a lot of things he prefers to forget. It helps him win his daily fight with frustration. For now, he plans to start a high school for visually challenged girls. Gopi proves that vision has many definitions.

Book Review: Inferno

Inferno
~ Dan Brown
[SPOILER ALERT]
Dan Brown has been accused of writing the same novel again and again in different settings. The accusation limits to his Robert Langdon series, the latest of which was released this month with much fanfare. While the plot remains the same – Harvard symbologist Langdon running out of time to save the world and the only way to do it is to decrypt secret symbols, messages or puzzles. You do learn a lot about art history, though it is rather difficult to segregate fact from fiction. Anyway, I like the Langdon series for precisely that. I like the build-up, the use of symbols and history to solve a puzzle. However, the magic Brown created in ‘Angels and Demons’ and ‘The Da Vinci Code’ has not been replicated either by ‘The Lost Symbol’ or his latest ‘Inferno’.
The story starts with Langdon waking up with a head wound and retrograde amnesia in a hospital in Florence and seeing his doctor being shot while trying to stop an assassin from entering his room. With help of the assistant doctor, he manages to escape. He finds a strange device in his jacket, which turns out to be a projector that shows an altered version of ‘The Map of Hell’ by Sandro Botticelli. The painting was inspired by Dante’s Inferno. He also has hallucinations about a woman with silver ringlets and an amulet asking him to “seek and find”. With no memory of the last two days, he tries to solve the puzzle of the altered ‘Map of Hell’. It turns out that an eminent scientist, Bertrand Zobrist, had created a plague to kill a large portion of the population thereby “saving the world” from the ills of overpopulation. Following clues related to Dante and his Divine Comedy, he has to reach the place where the plague would be released and somehow contain it. For a change, Langdon fails and in some ways so does Brown.

The debate on overpopulation, substantiated by graphics (presumably real), does present a compelling case for a scientist taking a drastic step to obliterate a good percentage of the world population. The chase and parallel stories help build up for the climax and once you reach there, the storyline just drops. You don’t feel like reading anymore, to follow up on the characters. It is just not good enough and it’s Brown’s fault as he set the standard really high with ‘Angels and Demons’ and ‘The Da Vinci code’ in which even the epilogue was interesting.
I guess that is a problem with series, it is really hard to keep up with the reader’s expectations. If I were to rate the book till chapter 76, I would give it 4 out of 5 stars; till chapter 100, 3 out of 5; the whole book – just 2 or may be 1-and-a-half stars. Yet, I will buy his next Robert Langdon book (I read somewhere that he has 12 great ideas for the Langdon series), and pray it holds candle to the first two books.
PS: [Not to be read if you haven’t read the book already] Till chapter 76, the build-up and the story is wonderful, though repetitions of Zobrist’s video are irritating and I wish he had just described the entire video in one go and not repeated it. But when you find out that whatever you have read so far is a farce, you feel cheated. You travel with Langdon and pray that he escapes his foes and saves the world only to realize that all of that was staged! Really!! Still, you read on hoping for a good explanation for the farce, only to be let down again. The assassin that tries to kill Langdon in the opening scene is in fact a professional who specialises in “pretending to kill people”! Really Mr Brown, I have better expectations.

Book Review: The Shiva Trilogy

The Shiva Trilogy ~ Amish Tripathy
*Spoiler alert*
Tired of being at constant war with another tribe, Shiva, chief of a Gunas (a Tibetan tribe) decides to cross the Himalaya and relocate to the Suryavanshi kingdom – Meluha. Nandi and other Meluhan soldiers lead the way. On reaching Meluha, the tribe members are given somras, a drink that kills anti-oxidants in the body thereby increasing longevity (most Meluhans are over a hundred years of age). When Shiva takes it, his throat turns blue and the Meluhans believe that he is Neelkanth, the saviour of whom prophecy spoke of. Daksha, the emperor, Kanakhala, the prime minister and many others proclaim him as God and entrust him the task to destroy ‘evil’. However, there are others like military chief Parvateshwar, who do not immediately accept him as God.
        Meluha is a highly organized society. The people love rules and hold very high moral values. The citizens are divided into four castes based on their abilities and interests. While the Brahmins are men of science, Kshatrias are soldiers, Vaishyas are traders and Shudras are labourers. There are sub-castes which denote the rank like Nandi is a bull, which is a high rank in Kshatriya but not as high as a tiger. It is an egalitarian society where no work is considered small and women, too, are free to choose their profession. The rules and the system were put in place by a charismatic king Ram and hence it is called Ram rajya.
        There are attacks on villagers by masked men. According to the Meluhans, they are Nagas – a tribe of deformed people. They believe because of bad karma, some children are born with deformities, like extra limbs or deformed nose, and such children are sent to the Naga-land across Narmada. They also believe that Chandravanshis, their rival kingdom, has joined hands with Nagas and is mounting attack on Meluha and hence they are ‘evil’.
       Meanwhile, Shiva falls in love with Sati, Daksha’s daughter. Romance, which is not epic, follows and eventually they marry.
       Meluhans attack Swadeep, the Chandravanshi kingdom, and take their king as hostage. The Swadeepan princess Anandmayi (who is really hot, wears revealing clothes and takes milk bath once a week) is angry at Shiva because they too have a legend of Neelkanth who was to save them from the ‘evil’ Meluhans.
       Shiva is confused. Chandravanshis are stark opposite of Suryavanshis. There are numerous poor in Swadeep, there is economic, social and political inequality in the society. There are bureaucrats who sit on files and take bribes, there are labour unions that go on strike if their demands are not met, there is a lot of poverty and the system is irritatingly inefficient. Yet, Shiva realizes, they are not ‘evil’.
      Shiva turns his attention to Nagas, wondering if they were ‘evil’. Later, it turns out that they, too, are not ‘evil’ but victims of the great ‘evil’. Shiva, thus, embarks on the journey to find what is evil and how to destroy it. He is helped by Vasudevs (a group of people who, like IAS officers, are selected through a tough competitive process), Nagas (including Ganesh who has elephant ears and a trunk-like-nose and Kali, who has several hands), some Meluhans and Swadeepans.
       The book is racy and keeps the reader engrossed. However, it is not a literary piece that one would like to re-read. It would not make its place among the classics. It’s something one would read on a train journey.
       I read Immortals of Meluha when it was released and honestly didn’t think much of it at first. What intrigued me was the trailer I saw on Youtube and the idea that Lord Shiva may have been a human before he became a legend and a God.
        I liked the plot, but found many dialogues (especially ones between Shiva and Sati) really corny. It is like a TV soaps not much logic but high on entertainment value (I’ve seen girls go gaga over really corny dialogues that RK – of Madhubala—says).  There is so much PDA, endless flirting between sensuous Anandmayi and uptight Parvateshwar and touchy family moments like Ganesh protecting his younger brother Kartik. Amish Tripathy has covered most of the mythology and legends associated with Lord Shiva.
       Where the story fails miserably is covering the journey Shiva makes from being a tribal leader to being a God. Meluha is a highly rational society, where a person earns his or her place in the society through talent and merit. Yet, when Daksha, who had ulterior motives, proclaims Shiva as Neelkanth, everyone starts treating him as God. There are some who take time like Parvateshwar, who starts admiring Shiva for his military acumen and is overwhelmed when he joins the Melhuan fleet. But it’s just not enough reason to treat him as God. Moreover, it is hard to see eye-to-eye with Parvateshwar because Shiva’s military innovations – like the turtle formation and trident—were neither original nor out-of-the-box. We have seen them in movies and serials. Though one may argue that these might have been an innovation when we see the time the story has been set, but it does not impress me as a reader and certainly does not convince me how he was suddenly accepted as God.
       Although numerous philosophical questions have been discussed and debated in the three books, there is no particular philosophy that Shiva endorses. He does not fight against an evil dictator or for a certain cause (he starts fight against somras in book three). When you look at history and how Budhdhism, Jainism and Christianity came into being and how Budhdha, Mahavir or Jesus came to be revered as God, the plot seems weak. Shiva was put on the pedestal because of his blue-throat.
There are other discrepancies too like in Meluha, which depicts epitome of a rational society, there are age old traditions that are followed without questions.  
        Even though the last book, ‘The Oath of the Vayuputras’, answered all the questions and tied loose ends, it seemed that a little less effort was put in the book as compared to its predecessors. It could have been a little tighter and some parts could have been rewritten. I presume this book had lesser number of drafts.
        If you like Bollywood movies and watch TV soaps, if you are looking for entertainment and not literary satisfaction, if you are ready to overlook inconsistencies and logic, if all you want is something for light reading, then this is the series for you. 

Book Review: The Casual Vacancy

The Casual Vacancy

~J K Rowling

‘Kay climbed the stairs and operated the stiff handle on the door for Robbie. The room smelled rank. The bath was grey, with successive broken tidemarks around it, and the toilet had not been flushed. Kay did this before allowing Robbie to scramble onto the seat. He screwed up his face and strained loudly, indifferent to her presence. There was a loud splash, and a noisome new note was added to the already putrid air. He got down and pulled up his already bulging nappy without wiping; Kay made him come back, and tried to persuade him to do it for himself, but the action seemed quite foreign to him. In the end she did it for him. His bottom was sore: crusty, red and irritated. The nappy stank of ammonia. She tried to remove it, but he yelped, lashed out at her, then pulled away, scampering back down to the sitting room with his nappy sagging.’

This is a scene from the Fields, a slum that lies between a small British town Pagford and Yarvil, a city which provides employment to most people in Pagford. Now, the Pagford Parish Council wishes to delegate entire responsibility of the Fields to Yarvil, but Barry Fairbrother, a councilor, fights against the proposal. His main opponent is Howard Mollison, who believes that people living in the Fields are miserable, rowdy and drug-addicts by choice.

When Barry dies of aneurysm, the town is first shocked (oh he was just in his 40s), is saddened by his sudden demise and then the excitement trickles in as to who will fill the casual vacancy and decide the fate of the Fields.

Pagford appears to be a picturesque, idyllic and a boring town, but with each page, JKR has peeled onion layers to reveal a town at war. ‘Rich at war with poor, teenagers at war with their parents, wives at war with their husbands, teachers at war with their pupils… Pagford is not what it first seems,’ as the book’s jacket puts it.

The story revolves around some 20-odd main characters of different age groups – from teenagers to people in their sixties—and they are the most memorable part of the story which moves slowly and is hardly remarkable.

The teenagers in the book, though they go to school, never seem to be worried about homework, classes or the likes. Instead, they take drugs, smoke, have casual sex, take revenge from parents and one of them has stalker tendencies. There are many dysfunctional families in Pagford and as the story develops, one finds how the dysfunctional families resolve their differences and the functional one disintegrates.

The book has no magic and it certainly falls short of the standard JKR had created with the Harry Potter series. One reason is that while she had seven books to give depth to her characters in HP, in TCV she has given anecdotes in brackets at many places which explain the reason behind a character’s action or way of thinking. While the anecdotes succeed in establishing the character, they at times are unnecessary or break narrative. Secondly, her ending could have been much better. All in all, the book is good for a one time read and I sincerely hope JKR’s next book is better than this one. In HP and the Sorcerer’s Stone, Harry was to be sent to Stonewall school for higher studies and perhaps his life would have been similar to the teens in TCV, had magic not saved him.  

PS: I’ve read many reviews criticizing JKR of putting in a rape scene, given that due to her Harry Potter popularity, most of her readers are bound to be young. Well, I would like to point out that Dumbledore’s sister, Ariana, was also raped, though it has not been said in so many words, and then his father murders the muggles responsible for it.       

People Change

People change, especially when they start getting success. It is a fact and a pretty well known one at that. When my friends tell me about their relative or friend who started changing, ignoring them, talking in condescending tone and distancing themselves, I wisely nod and say this happens. People change, especially when they start getting success or achieving better than those they know. It is a fact.

         But then, I experienced that. A person, to whom I was close (at least I think so), with whom I shared a lot of things, sorted out my dilemma, discussed issues before reaching a decision, then debated on those decisions and their consequences, started distancing and avoiding me for no apparent reason. I assumed that the person was busy, or preoccupied with some personal problem. So, I waited, tried striking casual conversation, but my confidant did not reply back. And it hurt.

         I wondered if I had done or said something wrong. I waited for an explanation, any intimation of what is going on in the person’s life, any conversation and a month passed. Today, with Facebook and Twitter, one can easily figure out what’s happening in other people’s life. It appears that my confidant is celebrating his own achievements and those of a family member. Well, people grow apart. That happens. It is a fact.

         This is not the first time that people have distanced themselves for no apparent reason. There was another person for whom I cared for like a sister and it turned out that all the while she was working against me, behind my back and all the while pretending to be my sole support during a difficult time. That hurt too.

         Then there were others, whom I did not know very well and who, for reasons unknown to me, had started disliking me. It was apparent in their behaviour. One of them was walking down with me on the staircase (by sheer chance). After two flights, she exclaimed loudly about a wrong accessory she was wearing and climbed back. The same female had to thank me for getting her paper and she did so without looking in my eye. And when someone dislikes you so much, you can feel that when you are around them. It puzzled me greatly, for I could not fathom the reason behind their hate. We had hardly talked. I am a nice person and quite shy and take my time in opening up with people. My friend said because of this I came across as arrogant and scheming. That surprised me. But then these were people I hardly knew and though I wished they would tell me what their problem was and I, in turn, could give them some explanation, (even if it made no difference) it did not matter much. And over time, I started ignoring them too.

         Then there was this girl, who played a prank on me in school and I hated her and avoided her for almost two years. Then, at one school trip, we became good friends and though we are not in touch, I harbour no ill-will towards her. So, people change, perceptions change and sometimes you just find out more about how a person really is and that changes everything.

         What can you do to prevent yourself from being hurt? I have a thumb rule. If you share things with a person and the person does not share back anything or is closed, then beware of what you say. It doesn't always work, but it is a good rule. This is experience speaking.

         As for my confidant, I shall wait and hope things become how they were, that this is just a phase. And if it is not... well then, such is life. People change, especially when they are successful. It is a fact.

Being Human

Detective Beckett: “They are just clothes.”

Teddy (dress designer): “Just clothes detective! Clothes are civilisation. Clothes are what separates us from animals.”

Detective Beckett: “...Not always”

~Castle Season 2 Episode 3 – “Inventing the girl”

       A friend of mine once teasingly told me that as we evolved into humans from apes our body hair reduced and since she (being one of those lucky females) hardly had any body hair she was more human than me. I know some people who believe that wearing branded clothes makes them better than those who wear clothes bought off the street. The city people believe they are more cultured than villagers, who in turn feel they are better than the forest dwellers. The whole concept of western civilisation is based on west being more civil and some believe that it is through emulating the western model of development and culture can one be more ‘civil’ or by extension more ‘human’.

       What is it that makes us human? Clothes? Culture? Money?

       In Delhi, a couple went on a holiday to Thailand locking their 13-year-old maid behind. They threatened her not to touch the food or else they will beat her when they will return. They had cctv cameras installed in the house to track her movements. The newspaper report went on to say that the girl had uneven hair and bruise marks showing that she was habitually abused. As the couple went on a vacation to Thailand, it is safe to assume that a) they were literate and b) they were well-off and probably wore branded clothes. So do they qualify as humans? 

       This incident is not exclusive.

       “Geeta, Priyanka and Parul were 12, 9 and 7 respectively when they were sent to work at the house of Manish and Ritu Gupta in Faridabad, Haryana, in January 2006. Priyanka and Parul would wash the clothes and manage the household cleaning (which included scrubbing the washrooms barehanded with acid), and Geeta would do the kitchen work. By the girls’ account, punishment in the Gupta household for slip-ups at work was nothing if not sadistic. Being locked into a wet bathroom on winter nights was perhaps the mildest. Beatings with dumbbells and cricket bats were common; the children would be gagged so their screams would not be heard. “When we did not finish our work on time,” says Parul, “Madam (Ritu Gupta) would throw our food into the commode from where we picked it up to eat.” During the two years the children worked for the Guptas, they neither got any money nor were they allowed to visit their homes. Says Geeta, “I was desperate to call my parents, and I once became adamant about it. She (Ritu Gupta) snatched the paper on which I had the number, put chillies in my eyes and tied me naked to the kitchen door. She did not give me food for the next five or six days.” Geeta says Manish Gupta attempted to rape her several times. He also shot Priyanka in the thigh with an airgun, apparently because he thought she ate too much. “They did not even call a doctor after that,” Priyanka says. Manish Gupta is an architect; his wife is what is commonly referred to as an ‘educated’ woman'.” (From Tehelka)

       Do these people qualify as humans? These are people we see and meet every day. An acquaintance told me about her friend who was studying in IIT-Delhi at that time. He was her neighbour and they had a teenage boy as their domestic help. She told me that once after a party, this friend and his sister went to their mother and said the help should not be given such good clothes as everyone in the party thought that he was their sibling. In another incident, their mother was worried about her security when construction work was taking place near her house. She locked herself and her dog inside the house during night and made the help sleep outside. These episodes make you wonder if there is something critically wrong with our education system or just with our conscience.

       “A man becomes what his society rewards him to become.”

          ~ Amish Tripathi in Immortals of Meluha

       Unfortunately our society rewards only the rich and glorifies their action which makes other in the society emulate them. There are no rewards for being nice or for having qualities that once defined humanity. It is our actions and our sensitivity to those around us that makes us human. But this sensitivity brings us no rewards, which is why it is not a treasured virtue. In the race for filling coffers and imitating the rich, humans have forgotten humanity.

       In his book 'The Division of Labour in Society' (1893), renowned sociologist Emile Durkheim talks about collective conscience. He says early societies had moral basis for being integrated. Modern society, on the other hand, has weaker collective conscience and is held by complex division of labour. I suppose there is a lot of truth in that. If the moral fibre is weak, what then defines humanity? It seems 'to err a human' is not an exception but a norm. As Dr.Gregory House (from the popular series House) tells his junior Dr. Cameron, "Your problem is that you expect people to do the right thing." I suppose that is a problem. But the following sequence helps me make my point: 
House: “You, on the other hand, continue to be flabbergasted every time someone actually acts like a human being. Foreman did what he did because it worked out best that way for him. That's what everyone does.”
Cameron: “That is not the definition of being a human. That is the definition of being an ass.” 
~House Season 2 Episode 18 – “Sleeping Dogs Lie”
      There it is. Selfish and malicious acts are not 'being human'. The modern society has given each one a fair share of problems. Some have received more that their share and some less, but the least we can do is make sure that we are not adding to someone else's woes and be a little more sensitive to those around us. Doing that is the first step towards being human.