Merry Christmas

It was 3:45 pm, I was in my office, as usual scarcely with work.Suddenly the door of my bay (we call here Offshore Development Center-ODC) burst open and a man dressed in the attire of Santa Claus came, saying "Hello everybody, Merry Christmas to all of you !". He was running awkwardly which made me wonder that is he our HR? This guy was followed by our office support staff. This Santa was running from cabin to cabin and workstation to workstation distributing chocolates. We were glad that company "is" giving something apart from salary...

When that guy was gone (He was definitely our HR, and that guy is otherwise very serious), I began to think that in the whole year, lots of festivals and seasons came, but we were never even greeted by anyone so 'formally'. Is this because the company is serving the clients from outside the country and most of the customers are from western countries, that we are supposed to celebrate one particular event so formally?

I come from a city which is not a metro or close to cosmopolitan culture, at least not when I was kid. When I was in school, all I knew was December 25 is a holiday, and Jesus was born on that day and Christmas and Xmas are one and the same thing. I used to wonder what kind of celebration is this? All that I could see was a decorated tree, which we used to refer to as "X for Xmas tree" .There was only one guy in our entire colony outside whose house there used to be a xmas tree decorated on 25th december. It was a nice sight. Though that family was not originally from my home town.

when I came out from my state (Rajasthan) and was introduced to the cosmopolitan India, I saw how much celebration happens on the day of Christmas. It is, but I think, a sign of 'show off'.

I am not against Christmas celebration. Its a festival and we have to celebrate it in the same spirit as we do celebrate other festivals. But India being a conglomeration of several religions and castes, ask yourself, do we celebrate every festival (Lohri/Eid/Baisakhi) with same spirit? 25th December is so extravagantly celebrated because its also a holiday season and close to year end, and can be coupled up with New Year celebration. However, somehow I believe that this behavior is somewhat a hype that we create and that too while not properly respecting a religion. How many of us (non Christians) go to church on Christmas? Do we really try to read and learn about teachings of Jesus on this day?

I remember in good old days, on 25th december Doordarshan used to telecast an English movie (I think used to be dubbed in hindi) on the story of Jesus. We (all kids) used to feel sad watching Jesus being crucified in the end. But what that movies were intended to do was leaving an impact on the kids about teachings of Jesus. That how much pain God takes for mankind, That how much love God has for us. That's the beautiful message of Christmas. And the concept of Santa Claus is an extension to this message. He brings gifts to kids on Christmas. Such a beautiful concept about love and respect towards God.

But while practising our "hype" for such occasions do we really have feeling of spreading this message?

Forget us, our time is gone. And we have already been mould to think in a specific direction. Think about kids. The younger generation, who needs to be taught all good things. Who needs to be believed not in the hype of Santa Claus but the message that Santa Claus' concept brings. I would suggest every kid to watch a movie "Polar Express" on the day of Christmas.

All concepts and rituals related to the Almighty is worth respecting and Christmas is a day to spread love, forgiveness and happiness in the world. If this is the intention of the organizers of events related to Christmas celebration, then hats off to them !

I am eating that chocolate now.... Merry Christmas :)

Change in "State" ?

One of my favorite books in childhood was the Atlas. Yes, I remember whenever I was having any doubt about area or population of any country, I used to sit with my Atlas, which was a very old one. That atlas was published somewhere around 1987. It showed USSR as the largest country of the world. It was only when I read history that I came to know that USSR had long been dissolved in 1990 into 10 independent countries. I used to draw the boundaries of those countries in my age old Atlas. And dissatisfied with that, I created an atlas of my own (yes!) in which political maps of countries were drawn (not on scale, but freehand) and the different flags of countries.


I used to feel very sad while reading about USSR as I thought how bad it was that the largest country of the world was disintegrated. It was later that I realized that USSR was, like our own country, a conglomeration of different ethnic and religious group. It was the demand for "proper recognition" of every group which led to the downfall of the superpower.


In the year 2000, 3 new states were created in India by carving out from some bigger states. The reason was same. "Proper recognition". People supporting Chhattisgarh, Uttaranchal and Jharkhand believed that they have many cultural differences with Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar respectively. I don't know the real reason but whatever it was, I was happy because creation of these 3 states made Rajasthan the largest state of India, area wise (earlier it was M.P.)


Years passed and after my graduation from Rajasthan, I left Rajasthan and for doing MBA I went to Hyderabad. Hyderabad, so far is the best city I have seen. It is believed that as a student of Management, you are supposed to know a lot.When I started following the local news there I came to know of the demand for "Telangana" region. At that time I was aware that the main reason for this movement is what they called "insufficient/improper representation/recognition of telangana people". Not a big deal, there were such similar demands already popular in various parts of the country, so who cares.


Now let me tell you something I know about this issue, from mythology point of view. In the Hindu epic Mahabharata, there is a separate mention of Telangana and Andhra. The pandava Sahadeva is supposed to have defeated Telinga (Telanagana) and Andhraka (Andhra) tribes during his quest for the Rajasuya Vagya of his elder brother Yudhishthira.But if we consider the epic to be the source of our demands then we would end up with an enormously disintegrated country as we had Jaipur, Alwar and Ajmer(Pushkara) as separate kingdoms that time. In that case We may head for another Kurukshetra war!


But, coming back to Telangana issue.2 years back I came to Karnataka and by now I have a fair idea of the lifestyle of South India and I want to share this with you that I am so proud to be an Indian ! We have so much diversity, so much ethnic varieties. Our diversity is 100 times more complex than that of USSR. Of course disintegration of USSR has no relation to the demands in India. But consequences may be the same.


Recently government approved the creation of Telangana because the leader of Telangana people was on a hunger strike. Student agitation was on run and situation was getting worsen. So our government Okayed Telanga... But that decision received harsh criticism and is followed by similar demands from different states.


The people demanding Telangana or any other state should first look at the outcome of such decision. Bihar was considered backward. Jharkhand was carved out of Bihar. Now both Bihar and Jharkhand are considered to be backward states. There is no difference in lifestyles and people living below povery line in Uttaranchal and Uttar Pradesh. We don't talk about development here. We don't talk about uplifting life standard of people here. What we have done has simply increased the number of states in the country in GK Books and have made more atlas books obsolete. There is a change in state but there is no change in "state" of people. We demand for proper recognition of our ethnic group but we keep forgetting that India is not about separate recognitions, India is about unified representation.

People raising such demands must understand the pain our great leaders like Sardar Patel had gone through to accumulate, unite and strengthen this great country of ours. We already have lots of issues to look at, more important ones, so please don't flood such demands. The mere happiness of a child, after knowing that his state is now area wise the largest, can be sacrificed for greater good.