The Pivotal Moments in life

Disclaimer: All character that are appear in this blog are almost fictional and this is a good enough account of the horrors I faced during the conversation mentioned with some exaggerations

If one see the birds eye view of their life, they will notice that the life is defined by some pivotal moments and rest everything is a follow-up to that moments decision or incident. When we are young most of our pivotal decisions are made by our parents and then we live up with the consequences, one perfect example would be the great Rahul Gandhi, I think he  and now the congress party are both suffering from wrong decisions of his parents.

As a kid our life outside home is always decided by the kind of friends we make at school and in our neighborhood. Just imagine if Harry Potter had made a decision to be friends with Draco Malfoy vs Ron Weasley; the story would have been completely different. I am talking about all this bull shit because I had a pivotal moment in my life recently with a very good friend ,so before getting to the point I wanted to give a backdrop of what I am going to say unlike the fate of Jon Snow I want people to know what is going on before they are stabbed(reference to an acquaintance ).

To begin with one of the big pivotal moment of my life was when my parents decided that I am OK at maths and need to pursue engineering, I don’t have many complaints in that regard, I consider my parents to be at least smarter than Tushar Kapoors parents while choosing career for their children (why is he still an actor ?). So I became an engineer, got a job worked for a couple of years with hopes of making big and starting my own company someday, but with no concrete progress in that regard.

I was having a great time with my college friends while working, we had money we had spare time , we had resources and as you can imagine our spending decisions were as bad as that of Vijay Malaya, buying  stuff we don’t need, spending in places which made no sense and so on (though we didn’t have a calendar ).

So coming to the point, some of my friends had girlfriends we used to tease them with prospects of marriage as Indian government does of bringing in the black money and ending corruption, both make the subject uncomfortable but with no likelihood of either becoming true in the in the near future. As Joey from friends will say "it is a Moo point". It's a cows opinion it does not matter."

But one of friends who recently made a girlfriend walks up to me one fine day and says Seth Suit Silvale( get a wedding suit tailored ) and I remember I was stumped with no response to give, two other friends of mine who were with me at that time had the same expression on their faces. We were as confused as NewZeland is against spin bowling we had no clue what the hell to do next.

Our feelings could be described as that of all comedians who one day are told you are not allowed to make Rahul Baba jokes. We had no clue what to do, it's like you are making a joke that Sir Jadeja can take 10 wickets and score a triple century in the same match, and he actually does, then the joke is not funny and the one cracking the joke starts looking stupid. It is a pivotal moment in your life when the jokes you crack can no longer be classified as jokes but they become somehow reality.

You could see from my friends face also that he was shit scared himself but he dodged the inevitable for another year(postpones is engagement). The next pivotal moment was when my parents forced me study further, apparently B tech is not a good enough qualification. So I decided that I want to learn more in the technical domain and would like to study analytics. This has opened more avenues for me and I think my parents again forced me to a good decision (moral of the story, listen to your mom )

Now after the end of my course I received another call from the same friend who  already got engaged during the course of my course. He was also interviewing for a company in the same city that I was also planning to stay. During the first half of the conversation I was pretty excited that my friend was coming to stay with me. But as soon as he recommended that he wants to stay with me, it triggered my panic mode. I just hung up the phone and it just dawned to me that all this is real now and he will be married very soon and things are going to change for all of us. I was as frightened as Suresh Raina is of short balls. I consider this as a pivotal moment in my life and the prospects of him staying in the same place with me scared the shit out of me. Though my friends created very interesting scenarios for me and I really thank them for all their imagination but I am freaked out.

As the great Joker said ' all you need is a push rest the gravity takes care'. My friend is now pushed and he is going to fall. Only Batman can save us now.

The JNU Equation

Time and again India has proven that for our politics and our political agenda cares more about the past rather than the present or the future. We spend most of our political effort and consensus building on events that occurred in the past and which have no effect on any policy or any way improves the life of the people.

Conceding that these things are important but making it the only political agenda is outright ridiculous. The JNU debacle is one such example of utter nonsensical politics by all parties that call themselves secular first and patriots second.

Reading from the accounts on the internet it seems that one group from JNU(self proclaimed Marxist) wanted to organize a protest on the Judicial killing of Afzal Guru, a parliament attack convict. Officially the protest was a cultural event to protest the Supreme court ruling just after the third death anniversary of Afzal Guru. The group invited many Kashmiri's from outside of campus to voice their protest against the supreme court ruling.The were protesting against the corruption in the judiciary which resulted in the eventual execution of Afzal Guru who they referred to as a martyr.

I am a proponent of free speech but I think you should always criticize people and organization and not national Institution like supreme court of India. If you start questioning Institution it means you have no confidence in the  fundamentals of the country which for me classifies as anti-national.

Continuing the story, ABVP(the right wingers or the BJP folks) wing of JNU stepped in and said that a protest of this sort should not be allowed. The college administration agreed on banning the protest as they thought that it might create the pointless hysteria which it eventually did. The group of self-proclaimed Marxists went anyway with the protest and agreed to do it without mikes and much fuss. The ABVP stepped in and starting intimidating the Marxist which could have been easily avoided. To make matters worse the Invited Kashmiris came in and then they started shouting anti-national slogans like: "won't stop till India is destroyed" and "If you kill Afzal Guru from every house in Kashmir will produce a new one"

As an Indian I am offended by these remarks and think that it is unhealthy to support any remarks that are outright anti national. I am OK with people criticizing the right wing, the government and even the specific people in power but questioning, criticizing and threatening India and its fundamental Institutions is wrong and invites fierce condemnation.

Now the fun part was the politics after this incident. The most weird and counter-intuitive thing to me was Rahul Gandhi supporting the JNU students. I want to remind Rahul Gandhi that it was your government that hanged Afzal guru and rightly so. The students were protesting against your government decision  and somehow the strange part is that no one finds it strange neither you nor the students. I guess politics and political agenda are as characterless as any Tushar Kapoor movie.

I guess rather than problem solving capabilities, accountability and manifesto promises ,people judge governments and establishments on how they treat their ancestors and their beliefs. I guess this is why we move with so much tussle since we are so tied up with our past and beliefs that we don’t see what is good for us in the present and the future.

I think it is a classic example of game theory where everyone wants the best outcome for themselves and eventually due to mutual conflict everyone has to settle for an outcome that is way poorer than the optimal. Mr. Nash(won Noble price for game theory) was right, the more selfish and self-centered we are  the more we will suffer. As Mr. Nash says don't go for the most beautiful girl, you won't get her and waste your chances of getting the other ones which will eventually result in your happiness. I don't when will we understand his simple and beautiful mathematical logic