2012....2013

2012 was an year of contrasts.

If you are looking from the outside, you would see a great year for me professionally. I have learned a lot, definitely grown as an individual, achieved a lot of things which I set out to achieve not just in the beginning of the year but many many years ago.

While 2011 was about survival, 2012 was about consolidation.

But if I look at it from inside, it was not so great.

On Republic day 2012, I wrote a note on how I was fed up with the Indian state. How the government betrayed the nation during the winter session of the parliament was fresh on my mind. And then just when the year was about to end we saw how badly equipped, archaic, distorted society we live in.

2012 was a year when I discovered that I need to live a disciplined life to master my body and my mind. Recurring back ache and neck ache taught me that while it is ok to push the limits of my body and mind, I should slow down and not burn out. The battle with the demons in my mind was tough one.

2012 was the year of self-discovery for myself.

All the people I have spent time with, all the places I have lived at, all the books I have read and all the events around me have shaped my thoughts into what they are now. I sought out most of these experiences, forbidden or otherwise, in a quest guided by parental advise, curiosity, and mostly (I believe) rational thought spanning many many months to discover who I really am. My values today are distinct - from my parents even though they have had the most impact on my life, my sister, even though we shared a lot of experiences together, from my best friends with whom I shared and learned from. Things are different, yet, they are the same.

My twitter and facebook stream is littered with gems of intellectual masturbation - seeds of intellectuals I read and my own personal discoveries. I have started taking myself not so seriously. Humans have inhabited earth for 65 mn years and the earth itself is 5 bn years old. I have lived, learned, laughed, cried, argued, served for only 32 years. I am mindful that whatever I do in this life would be forgotten when someone takes my name for the last time. Yet, whatever I do changes the world in the itty bitty small way.

I discovered for myself that "in the end, the whole of life becomes an act of letting go, but what always hurts the most is not taking a moment to say goodbye." 2007 was the first time when I lost someone I deeply loved. 2012 would not be the last. I dont let go, I dont give up even though it is easier. I dont fit in.

( I wrote this post in the last week of December. Unfortunately I got interrupted and could not complete it. I believe I was taking myself too seriously by keeping it in draft mode and hoping that one day I would come back to it and finish it. I am setting it free even though it is wet behind the ears)

Disruptive impact of RTE

I dont have much respect for the government interfering with lives of private citizens. Its quite unfortunate that several participants of the government behave as if they are overlord's of common men forgetting that its citizen service and not government service they are employed for.

However, there is one sphere where I think government has a tremendous role to play i.e. in keeping us free. When I say free, I mean ensuring that the rules of the game are such that have-nots are empowered by necessary resources and tools so that they can compete with incumbents without resorting to violence or changing the rules of the game. A revolution, for example, is where the have-nots change the rules of the game to compete with incumbents. A democracy is a great example of a system where have-nots can come together, elect their representatives and change the rules of the game within the system. The reason why banana republics of Africa have one bloody coup after another because the have-nots find no other way to compete against the incumbent president.

That said, I think the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act is a great example of government doing the right thing by disrupting the incumbents. The Act requires all private schools to reserve 25% of seats to children from poor families (to be reimbursed by the state as part of the public-private partnership plan).

I have come to believe that more than the facilities provided by the school for child's development, it is the friends you make at school or rather it is the social circle you get introduced to which plays a bigger role in your success in life. Your teacher's, learning aids, curriculum etc. etc. have a role to play but it dwarfs in comparison to what a child learns from his environment, his friends, his parents.

I do not have any facts to back my claim above and I am basing this opinion on anecdotal evidence:

• Intelligence is equally distributed between rich and poor.
• Kids from poor background do not have enough role models to emulate and make their lives successful.
• It is equally hard to build a large outcome than it is to build a modest outcome. The most powerful ingredient of an outcome is ambition. If you are not a deep thinker, you have a reference from what you have seen possible and generally you benchmark your ambition around that.

(I wrote this post on May 24, 2012 and left it unfinished. Now I have lost the train of thoughts which I was expressing here. I doubt if I would ever finish it - and it does not make sense to keep it as a draft).