Holi hai.... aur bahut kuch hai...

HINDU. MUSLIM. CHRISTIAN. We rate these 3 religions on the basis of number of followers and you would get these 3 religions on top 3 positions* (in a reverse order though). And may be that is why we see lot of heat and friction between the people of these 3 religions. We have had many great personalities asking us to live in harmony but there efforts have been in vain against the politicians effort :) . Well, it seems now even nature has stepped in against the politicians (read 'power greedy'). We had three festivals of these three religions on one day. 21st march 2008 was the day when Holi, Id and Good Friday fell. I think all who read this would know what I meant to say by mentioning this point. The same old 'please unite' ka naara. Bhai log (and behen log too), even nature is urging us to stay united. What else do we need?!

One more thing which was sort of ironic coincidence - Dhuleti (one day after Holi) and World water day fell on the same day. Holi has transformed from festival of colours to festival of colours and WATER (and I think it won't be too long before we add Noise to it, with DJ business flourishing). I got a forward email which gave a shocking fact (not sure if its a fact) that the quantity of water that will be wasted in Mumbai on the day of Dhuleti will be equal to what is used for irrigation in Rajasthan in ONE YEAR! I did not believe that fact and dismissed that as exaggeration. But when I went down for holi celebrations in my society, I saw arrangement of rain dance! What a profligacy?! I was forced to restore that forwarded email fact from the recycle bin folder of my brain and give it a second thought. What made me even more sad specifically was that the World water day had to fall(22nd march) on the same day as Dhuleti.

* For people who are interested in stats christians form ~33% , Muslims ~20% and Hindus ~14% of the world population

Life Stages of India - an analogy with Human life

A wise man once said that status of a man in his different phases is dependent on different factors. The status of a man when he is 20 reflects the position of his parents in society; at the age of 40, person’s status is majorly a reflection of his own achievements and at the age of 60, it’s the achievement of his children that defines his status in society. I wondered if same applies to our country, India. And I found a very interesting analogy (though not sure whether someone else would find it interesting :) ). Analogy that I can think of goes like :
India(as a person) <-> Government of India.
Parents of India <-> Freedom Fighters.
Children of India <-> We, the people.

India is 60 years old now (considering she was born on 15th August 1947). When we see the prestige of India in world around 1967(20 years old), I think people across the world admired our culture and it was seen as a country with bright future. This was what our freedom fighters had sacrificed their lives for.
Then, comes the mid stage of India's life i.e. in 1987 (40 years old now), Indian economy was in dire straits. License raj, bureaucratic corruptions, ever declining Forex reserves, labour strikes etc. had taken indian economy to ransom. India was still called ‘Developing’ nation. The use of word ‘Developing’ was euphemism I suppose, because Indian economy was nothing more that ‘Stagnant’, rather ‘Un-Developing’ would have been the perfect choice of word. Well, we cannot blame only the Government for this as we are the ones who elect them, but I feel Indian public was still too nascent to know the powers of democracy.
The last stage(by last, I mean the latest :) ) of India’s life : 1987-2007(60 years old,..actually 60 years YOUNG). This is the period when Children of India made their mark. In almost whatever fields people have ventured into, we have done beyond expectations. Government did take a step of liberalising Indian economy in 1991, but that was more of a forced step than a well thought one as government treasuries were nearing bankruptcy. (Again, taking nothing away from PV Narasimha Rao, who really hurried up the whole process). And about the present status of India, I think I need not say much about it. sone ki chidiya aa rahi hai *!

(i would love to have your comment on this.... if you have some additions to this analogy or even if you can find an audit in my way of thinking.. i am sure there are many cases which i have missed out here... I would love to get those from you)

*took the liberty of taking that from a TV commercial of Future Group