People like us who had thronged the streets in their thousands just yesterday (or so it seemed) to welcome their princess-bride after her grand wedding to their beloved crown prince now huddled in their homes and wept.  They had marveled at her beautiful clothes and expensive jewelry and they had loved her delicate beauty and grace, her sparkling doe eyes and her flawless complexion, but most of all they had fallen in love with her as a woman, like their prince had been, for her wonderfully open and warm personality and unbounded charm.

After the long celebrations we had all been shocked and saddened just as suddenly by the turn of events that forced our prince to leave the kingdom and roam the jungles like an unknown and unsung commoner, and our grief had been multiplied many fold when we found out that his beautiful young bride had chosen to accompany him into hardship and danger rather than enjoy the luxuries of the royal household.  While our love and admiration for her loyalty and courage had soared to new heights, we were also terribly worried and scared.  Most of us had never seen the real horrors and dangers lurking in those vast stretches of dense jungles, tall mountain ranges and twisted and broken ravines in the south, but we all knew dangers were aplenty and our overactive imaginations made them appear far worse.  But as time went by without any incident we had even started to think that it would soon be over and they would be back to claim their rightful place on the throne.

And now this.  We feared for her honor and we feared for her life if she refused to compromise that honor.  And we feared for the life of our prince because we were as sure as night follows day that he would fight for her.  The Asura was vastly experienced in battle, had a huge and well-trained army with sophisticated weaponry, and he had all of his mighty brothers and sons to help him.  Our prince was very young, not even battle-hardened yet, and he had at his side only his even younger brother and a motley group of monkeys and bears led by a defeated and deposed monkey-king.  And yet, come what may, he would go to battle.  Of that we had no doubt.  That was the warrior’s code.  What we didn’t realize then was that he had some intangibles on his side.  He had the blessings of his gurus, he had the prayers of an entire kingdom and he had the Truth.  Of course, we should have known that the outcome was only to be expected.

It was dashami, the tenth and last day of the annual Puja for Goddess Durga but this year the celebrations had been muted – most of us choosing to pray for the safety of our prince and princess in the privacy of our own homes rather than celebrate on the streets.  Towards the end of yet another sad and depressing day a lone pigeon flew in with the news, and our whole world changed in that instant.  The Asura had been defeated and killed, our prince had emerged victorious, and he was already headed home with his bride.  The Goddess had heard our prayers and the plain old dashami had just become Vijaya Dashami.

It has been almost three weeks now since that momentous occasion.  Every house, courtyard and street has been paved with rows and rows of oil lamps since that day but they have not been lit yet.  All these days the holy flame of the Niraanjan has been our only source of light and we are all waiting with bated breath to finally transfer that flame to the public lamps.

It is getting on toward dusk when the first runners approach the outskirts of the town, shouting the good news -

The prince has reached.  He is finally home.  It is Diwali.

So, frankly, an autobiography at this stage is out of the question, and if you have been eagerly reading on after the first sentence in the fond hope that I may have changed my mind during the course of the last paragraph I am sorry but you must continue to remain disappointed.  It is a hard burden to bear no doubt, but someone has to bear it and better you than me (or I – if my Wren and Martin is to be believed).  If you are still reading this then I must really commend you on your patience and optimism and I have no doubt it will be amply rewarded if you enjoy reading stories filled with feelings of horror and doom, because that’s exactly what I have been feeling for the last few days as the big four oh approaches stealthily, like a hungry lioness of the wide African Savannah advancing on a helpless little antelope that is blissfully unaware of the impending danger.  The only difference between that helpless little antelope and me (apart from the number of legs) is that I am painfully aware of the impending danger.  They say time and tide wait for no man and I assume I am no different as far as time or tide are concerned.  That the 40th birthday will arrive I have not an iota of doubt in my mind, unless a lightning bolt from the heavens arrives first (which given the recent thunderstorms we have had does seem like a possibility, although remote).

Actually I don’t so much mind turning 40 but what I am scared about is the almost universal obsession in the minds of my fellow travelers along life’s journey that I must enjoy this day.  Many of my readers must have themselves passed through this point of no return along their respective journeys and may identify with the sentiment.  Phrases like “naughty at 40″ are bandied about freely by the people who are planning your surprise party, and talk about cakes designed to resemble parts of the (female, in my case) anatomy, and/or racy performances, abound.  The general idea seems to be to gather together a bunch of people (all of whom are either the same age or within a reasonable tolerance thereof) and try to embarrass the person in whose honor the party is being thrown, in celebration of the fact that they have finally turned a corner that they can never hope to turn again (unless someone invents time travel soon) and moreover, a corner that, in direct contravention of all standards of human decency, is situated at the top of a large hill from where, consequently, it is all downhill.  Now I have nothing against cakes or racy performances but I prefer them to be more traditional in shape, like round or square (at least the cakes), so as to avoid eliciting giggles in members of the opposite gender.  Before any irate members of the gender in question start shooting me nasty comments let me clarify that I have nothing against giggling either – just that I don’t want my birthday cake to be held responsible in any way for that.  And of course racy performances are most welcome too but they must be accompanied by a statutory warning that the person concerned may then not be held responsible for any subsequent actions arising (in a manner of speaking) therefrom.

People who are planning a surprise party for me are advised to make a note of the above.  Please also note that I will not dance (in any shape or form whatsoever) because it pains both my joints and my sense of aesthetics, and no amount of cajoling or pleading will move me from my position – which will be on the overstuffed sofa that is closest to both the beer cooler and the snacks counter.  Also, guests may please be informed well in advance that I will not get up individually to hug each one of them, so they may want to think of batching up their hugs while I am already on my feet for something else, or forgo the pleasure altogether.  Exceptions will only be made for pretty guests of the opposite gender, or guests bearing expensive gifts irrespective of gender.  The party must end (at least for me) the moment I fall asleep or pass out – please do not try to wake me up in a misguided effort to continue the revelry.   And of course, the music must be suitable to the mood of the party.  Needless to say, please do not attempt to smuggle any karaoke into the party because I will not sing a single bar – bars are meant to be leaned on while nursing one’s beer and not sung, and certainly not by people whose voices may well do justice to badly tuned chainsaws, like me (or I).  If you agree to all the above, by all means do think of planning my party but I must warn you -

the lightning bolt is not selective.

The question remains though – do I have a better solution, or should I just shut up and suck it?  Here is what I think -

First and most important, we must realize one thing – the title of this post is blatantly misleading.  There is no magic bullet.  OK, two things – there is also no Messiah (note to Rajinikanth fans – please do not shoot me, angry letters or otherwise).  This is because Messiahs lived in the past and we live in the present.  So no Messiah and no magic bullet.  This means that whatever it is that needs to be done, we must do it ourselves.  I already proposed this as my solution but it was shot down as being too idealistic and naive – as a friend rightly pointed out, we cannot just pin our hopes on the possibility of an en-masse introspection and consequent saintliness by the general populace.   Something more concrete will need to be attempted.

Second, and equally important, we must define what it is we want to fight.  Actually, it may be easier to define what we want – and then we can simply fight whatever it is that prevents us getting what we want – which is, the right to live our life with dignity, without fear or favor, and with the best possible standard of living we can afford within our honest means.  We want to lead a happy life, we want to sleep the blissful sleep at night, and we want to awaken to our children’s laughter the next morning (of course, I realize that for this to happen our children need to get up before us but let’s ignore that technicality for now).  We want to live in a country where the water, the electricity, the roads, the health and sanitation, and the social security – to name a few fundamental services – all work as expected and the only wheels we have to grease belong to transportation vehicles – literally.  We want to live in a country where we trust our government to do what is right for the country and for the majority of its citizens.  We want to live in a country where our children can take for granted a better quality of life than what we do or did.  We want to live in a country where the rule of law is supreme and where it is the same for everyone – regardless of religion, class, caste, economic status, political affiliation or whether we think Tendulkar or Dravid is the better batsman (we know it’s Sehwag of course, but whatever).

Let’s see now – what prevents us getting all this?  In my opinion (maybe for the sake of brevity we should just take it as a given that all of the following is my opinion, so I don’t have to qualify each thought and idea with those words) this is what prevents us getting what we want -

Inadequate or incompetent representation in Parliament

This is simple enough to change.  We should all just step out and vote for the best candidate we can.  Oh, but all the candidates are equally bad, you say – how do we choose?  So what we need is a “None Of The Above (NOTA)” option on the ballot paper.  Make a law that if NOTA gets the majority then that seat must be deemed unelected and there must be a by-election for that seat with the added constraint that none of the candidates on that ballot paper can contest that seat for the next five years.  Implement this and just see how quickly we get good candidates to choose from.

Undue government meddling in things that don’t concern them

Government must only control policy matters of extreme national importance – defense, internal security, economic policy, and law and order.  Everything else must be deregulated and privatized and subject to competition.  Whatever the government spends on the PSUs and on subsidies must be released to the common man in the form of social security and other direct benefits.  Let the common man use that additional income to buy the appropriate goods and services as they see fit.  Real competition will bring automatic accountability and transparency, and create value.  For example, instead of the government providing rice at Rs 2/- and subsidizing Rs 18/- (or whatever), give the 18/- directly to the concerned person and let them decide if Big Bazaar provides better value than their local kirana shop.

Legal logjam due to huge backlog of court cases

To remedy this the government can appoint more judges and make cases time-bound.  No one should be able to get continuance after continuance on mere technicalities.  Make the courts work round-the-clock, using shifts if required.  After all, the BPOs do shifts and they seem to be doing fine.

Manual intervention and control

Use technology for automating the hell out of everything.  Use manual intervention only as required on very specific extreme or outlier cases.  Land records, legal documents, licensing, bank accounts, any remaining subsidies, municipal taxes, income taxes and so on must all be computerized.  Tap into the genius of Indian techies from the private sector to design the next generation security systems for protecting all this online data and work-flows.

Stagnation and complacency

Pay the IPS and IAS cadre as per the market standard and take away all intangible perks.  Set appropriate performance targets and link performance (as opposed to seniority) to promotions and pay-hikes.  Non-performers must be laid-off and replaced.

Discretionary power

Everything that is still under government control must have extremely clear and documented processes and ways to track the implementation of those processes.  Think ISO or CMM.  Something like that.  No babu should be able to stop, delay or even speed-up any process based on their discretion (aka “whim and fancy”).

* * *

Will the above eliminate corruption?  Can this even be done?  I have no idea.  I’m no legal or constitutional expert.  I’m also just another common man with a simplistic solution.  Einstein once said “Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe“, so it is quite possible that we’ll still somehow manage to mess it all up.  But it could be a start and it may lead to the desired end.  Failing this, of course, we can still find solace in the words of Mariah Carey -

So when you feel like hope is gone, Look inside you and be strong
And you’ll finally see the truth - That a hero lies in you.

Meanwhile, ordinary citizens will furiously vent their ire and angst on national television with the news anchors goading them on to even greater heights of vitriolic oratory; bollywood celebrities and many other fortunate netizens will update their preferred social networking statuses to express extreme emotions ranging from acute rage to complete despair and helplessness; some of the more hot-headed among them will even call for a full-scale war to finish this menace once and for all; others will demand measured surgical strikes into enemy territory to wipe out terrorist hide-outs and training camps; and there will also be those, albeit in a minority, who talk about how peace is imperative if we are all to survive another decade.  The overwhelming tenor of public sentiment, not surprisingly, will be that it is high time the government took some “action” although, if questioned, no one would quite be able to articulate exactly what that action should be; still, some of the more liberal intelligentsia will organize candle-light rallies and marches, and read each others poetry at joint peace conferences in five-star hotel ballrooms, as examples of concrete action.

Responding to this strong public sentiment, the government will of course set up an investigation team, and possibly a commission or two, to probe into this latest outrage (whose report with any luck could be expected anytime in the next decade or two); there will be shrill posturing in international fora for a while as the government mounts an international diplomatic offensive; world leaders will express sympathy and condolences in public even as they are secretly glad that it is not them who will have to fix this crap – at least in this instance; the appointed commission will eventually recommend measures like having even more bureaucracy at state and national level to coordinate law-enforcement efforts of the half-a-dozen or so agencies involved in various capacities – agencies that are already trying hard not to step on each others’ toes or get into political turf battles (at least publicly); and some of these recommendations may even be implemented by the time our children grow to adulthood.  Last, but certainly not the least, even if there is any significant progress in the investigations and some alleged perpetrators are caught there is always the criminal justice system to take advantage of in a bid to delay the proceedings until the accused pass away into a happy afterlife, most likely of natural causes.

All this will go on for a few days until eventually even this horrific incident starts fading from public memory as more mundane concerns – like making a living – start taking up more and more of the collective public attention span; the media will find some other story to grab eyeballs (like the ridiculously high legal drinking age, to take one example); government spokespersons will quickly move on to hooking or ducking some new bouncers; the opposition will go back to trying to destabilize and topple the government so that they themselves can get a chance to show the voting public how much more inept they can be; until finally only those who have suffered in this tragedy, those who are no more and those whom they have left behind, will continue to remember and grieve and hope that time will really heal …

until the next time.  and the next.  and the next.  and.

Now I will be the first to admit that I haven’t studied this model in detail but from what I have heard, prima facie, the following are the main things that concern me about it (I know that a lot of people who have already invested in it will not like this post, but hey, it will at least give them something to think about) -

Risk-free guaranteed returns

I mean, just stop for a bit to take off the blinders and think about it from first principles – 4X in the first year translates to roughly 400% return on investment.  Forget 400%, lets talk only about one-tenth that, or 40%, for the sake of argument – now the most successful companies in the world struggle to make 40% profits year on year; the best stocks on the stock market cannot guarantee 40% year on year; gold does not appreciate at 40% year on year and nor does real-estate (except in some exceptional cases)  - in fact, the only businesses I can think of that can guarantee those kind of returns are possibly the drug cartels (and even that is not risk-free!) –  so how is it possible for this company to offer those returns?

Still there are huge numbers of educated, and presumably wise, people who are sold on these numbers and the only reason I can think of is that they want to believe the numbers are correct and that they will happen, at least for them.  Be that as it may, the answer that is trotted out to the question of returns is that it is not just an investment but a work-from-home opportunity which pays the investor/user for the work they do – thus giving them the returns.  This brings me to my second concern -

Requiring an investment to be a contractor

Which legitimate company wanting to get work done from external contractors in return for remuneration requires those people to first invest money in the company?  In my mind, basically, work-for-hire is a simple concept

1. Person A does work for Company B for an agreed upon rate of remuneration
2. When the work is finished Company B gives appropriate remuneration as per agreement

It seems to me that at no point is there any reason for person A to give money to company B for either 1. or 2.

Oh, but you’ll say, in some cases companies do take a deposit from their vendors, or that franchisees do need to invest money to start a franchise, and I agree that in some cases this is valid – for example, when the company is providing the vendor with the raw material to convert to finished goods the company must take some deposit to cover their costs in case the vendor runs off with the raw material or something.  Still, I haven’t heard of any company taking money from its contractors against an assurance of paid work in future.  That brings me to the third concern -

The work itself 

It appears that the company is paying these investors/users to take surveys, and they pay Rs 500/- per survey per user (or respondent).  Apparently, they can afford to do so as they are themselves paid Rs 2,500/- per user per survey by the client companies that commission these surveys.  Right – now lets do some simple math -

1. Number of users taking a survey = 10,000 (which seems a reasonable sample size to get any kind of good market insight – right?)
2. Cost to client company = 10,000 x 2,500 = 25,000,000 – 25 million Rs (for one survey!)

Now my facts and figures could be wrong, and so could my math (I once got 7 out of 100 in my 11th standard calculus exam) so potential investors can do their own, based on their own facts and figures.

What I do know is that when I did a few market research surveys back in the early 90s as a part-time job we were paid Rs 5 per respondent, and even allowing for inflation the figure of Rs 500 seems a bit excessive (and Rs 2500/- even more so!) – it is possible of course but it doesn’t seem probable, at least to me.  So if not from client companies commissioning surveys where does this company get the money to pay the survey-takers at the rate they promise? Which brings me to my final concern -

The expanding pyramid scheme

I may be totally wrong (and I hope I am for the sake of approximately 13 lakh people who have invested in this already, if one is to go by the claims) but given all the above, this looks suspiciously like an expanding pyramid scheme to me.  For example, when I was in college there was a scheme where you were required to buy a piece of paper (a right-to-sell) from someone for say, Rs 300/-, then you sell it to three friends for Rs 300/- each and you keep your Rs 300/- + some percent of the remaining Rs 600/- and pay the rest to whoever you bought the right-to-sell from (your upline or upstream) and this cascades up the pyramid.  So in order to recover your Rs 300/- you were required to rope in at least 3 more gullible friends and they were required to do the same to recover their own money, and so on.

In other words, the return on investment for each layer of the pyramid depends on a much larger lower layer being created, thus expanding the pyramid – i.e. more and more gullible people putting in a capital investment to serve the return on investment needs for those invested prior to them.  In most, if not all, such cases when the bottom stops expanding the weight of expectation of the top layers makes the whole structure collapse on itself and leaves the lower layers brutally exposed.  Now scientists estimate that not even the universe will continue expanding indefinitely, so what can we say of this pyramid?  Forget the law of diminishing returns, if this pyramid collapses then it could well turn out to be a law of vanishing returns for a large section of investors.

Being just a mere mortal and no soothsayer I don’t know if this will actually happen, though.  For all I know the pyramid will keep on expanding at the same rate as world population and thus never run out of people for the bottom layer – and maybe the meek will yet inherit the earth.  I don’t want to predict either way, so I will only say this -

- good luck, but caveat emptor.

And therein lies the real problem.  Because we haven’t done jack – we only think we have and we bask in a sense of satisfaction that is not only false, but downright dangerous.  Because in so thinking we have subconsciously absolved ourselves of the responsibility of what we could really do – what we should really do.

Let’s leave aside for the moment the dangerous clauses in the Jan Lokpal bill that make the Lokpal institution an unelected, non-democratic super-power institution with virtually no public accountability.  Other people have argued that point much better than I ever can but they seem to have been lost in the sea of virtuous chest thumping and pious roars from people whose main aim seems to be to make the non-supporters feel guilty for not being supportive of the anti-corruption sentiment.  What they don’t realize is that the lack of support on this issue by some people is not aimed at undermining support for the anti-corruption sentiment nor is it meant to belittle the efforts of one man standing up to an entire government.  If anything the dissent or non-support is with the way in which corruption is sought to be tackled – by setting up another institution, bigger and more powerful, to try and keep a check on the existing institutions and moreover, one which is police, judge, jury and executioner all rolled into one.  It’s like a class-teacher creating a bigger bully to control the smaller bullies in class and giving him a cane and the authority to use it as he sees fit.  It’s fine as long as the bigger bully is honest and fair, but what happens when power goes to his head and he himself starts bullying not only the smaller bullies, but all the other children as well?

In any case, my point is not about the Lokpal Bill and its possible shortcomings – my point is about the educated middle-class and its role in this whole media-managed circus.  People like you and me who went and lit candles and marched to various public places in support of this movement, and who went to sleep that night feeling good and satisfied at having done “our bit”.  People like me and you who woke up the next morning and in the rush to drop our kid to school jumped a signal because we were running late and there was no cop around – and anyway there was no traffic coming from the other direction.  People who went to work and submitted Saturday night’s dinner bill to their expense account even though no business was conducted and they knew it – but hey, why pay tax on it when the government is anyway siphoning off the tax rupees to certain numbered Swiss bank accounts instead of using them to improve infrastructure?  People who think it’s fine to wine and dine the purchase manager of a client so their orders will go through smoothly or their bills will be paid on time, or who call in a favor for their child’s KG admission, regardless of merit, to the desired school – but everyone does it, don’t they? So why should we be the ones to suffer – after all, good education is so important!  People who slip the LPG gas-agency delivery man a couple of fifties to get their cylinder out of turn – but of course, eating out is so expensive and how can we cook without a gas cylinder?  People whose first reaction when someone tells them that they paid a traffic fine by going to the main traffic police HQ because the cop on duty did not have a receipt-book is ‘oh – you should have just settled it there and avoided all the time and trouble’ – because our time is important and cops are anyway so underpaid!

It may be just a small amount but we conveniently forget that for every corrupt person taking a bribe, there is – dare I say – an equally corrupt person giving it.  We justify it by saying that we have no choice – oh, but we do.  We can choose hardship over convenience.  We can choose to suffer rather than compromise our principles.  We can choose to wait forever or even to go without something rather than pay under the table.  But no – we do not even consider hardship as a choice, and so we believe we have no choice but to go with the “system”.  We the people, my dear friends, are as much a part, and in fact a direct cause, of corruption as any corrupt politician, babu, cop or big business.  The fact is, we are all hypocrites with a very selective morality but we choose not to see it – because that would mean doing something tangible to change it.  As Mahatma Gandhi famously said, we must be the change we wish to see in the world.  We must change ourselves despite knowing that it may not change anything in our lifetime – and that is not easy.  Still, when (eventually) a sufficient number of people start doing the same without a second thought maybe our future generations can live in a corruption free society.  Till that happens, though, no amount of public gathering, candle-lighting or marching will make a whit of difference -

- and the real obstacle to this kind of change is in thinking that it will.

It is unbelievable how the man has a Midas touch.  ”I am just lucky that I get great players and that they respond to me – even the seniors who have been playing Test cricket from long before I started playing for India”, he modestly claimed in the post match press-conference when asked about his various successes.  He had said before the world cup that he wanted a team that would (not just could, but would) stand in the way of a runaway truck if required – what was left unsaid was that he himself was willing and able to do the same for his team.  Credit your team when you do well, shoulder the blame when things go wrong – that’s the Mahi way.

The self-professed armchair experts had panned him for everything – his team selections, his shuffling of the batting order in different games, his decisions on the field, his own form as a batsman and even his endorsements.  The same people are probably hailing him now as a sort of cross between Superman and Hanuman.  But he seems like a man equally at ease with criticism as with praise, a man who can take the rough with the smooth with the same zen-monk calm and the same quick grin following a witty quip, a man who can soak up pressure better than any sponge ever invented, a man who makes his decisions and backs them whether they work or not, a man quick to accept his mistakes but at the same time who makes a telling point when he says that “some decisions work, some don’t – and decisions that work are hailed as great strategy”.  Straight from the heart and damn the consequences – that’s the Mahi way.

They say he was responsible for backing – indeed insisting on – Yuvraj’s selection when Yuvi was woefully out of form and touch and looked set to be discarded.  It seems only apt that Yuvi repaid the faith of his captain and produced the performances when required.  Every member of the team has repeatedly said that the team is in a very happy place right now – they enjoy each other’s successes and revel in each other’s achievements – they back each other up in tough times, certain that things will soon turn around, that they can turn things around.  It’s not just hope and faith – it seems like an unshakable self-belief.  The steel in their wrists is now matched by the steel in their spine and the fire in their eyes.  ”Pressure is easier to handle when it is shared,” the captain said after the finals, and he has done more than his share of the sharing – sometimes leading from the front, sometimes fighting a rearguard, yet never ever giving up – that’s the Mahi way.

The journey has not been long, but it has been huge – from a ticket-collector’s job at Kharagpur station via the sports-quota to the highest-paid brand-ambassador with endorsements worth more than 50 crores (and set to grow higher after the final) – from a gawky small-town boy from Ranchi to a well-traveled, sophisticated and articulate spokesperson for the game worldwide – from a long-haired power hitter who batted with any piece of wood he could lay his hands on to a clean-cut, cool and calculated finisher of games for India – from a duck on ODI debut to a world-cup winning man-of-the-match 91 not-out under tremendous pressure a mere six years later.  Just how much huger can it get?  And yet – despite his phenomenal success, despite the fame and adulation, despite the fat payments, despite the big motorcycles and fancy cars, despite the new-found celebrity friends – despite all this and more he seems rooted in reality.  Even as his hands reach for the stars his feet seem firmly planted on the ground, his head squarely on his broad shoulders, his eyes steady, his jaw set firm, and his grin still every bit as genuine – that’s the Mahi way.

I vividly remember hearing Ravi Shartri on commentary all those many years back talking about the new crop of youngsters coming up through the India-A ranks and he especially mentioned a young wicket-keeper, Mahendra Singh Dhoni, who could also “bat a bit” – and boy, did he bat that bit yesterday!

… but I guess by now we all should know – that’s the way… Mahi way.

They say that the only certainties in this world are death and taxes and, if we are to believe reports about certain cutting-edge advances in medical science happening as I write this, then we may very well be able to strike death off that list by 2050.  They say we could soon start reversing the ageing process and eventually become immortal by 2050.  And yet, without our mortality would we even remain human?  Would we not be just machines?  What’s the fun of being a machine – unless you are a run-machine, in which case you would get lots of endorsements and money and fame and maybe women will throw themselves at you and … but I digress.  The Mahabharat tells us of Ashwatthama who was cursed with immortality for  sins which shall remain untold here.  But the key thing to note is that immortality is thought of as a curse in this case.  I feel it would well turn out to be a curse in any case.

However, leaving aside immortality for the moment, let’s consider mortality.  The surprising thing about mortality is that although we all know we will die one day, we don’t always live like that is true.  We live like we think we will live forever and I feel that’s a mistake.  Life is very fragile and can be snuffed out at any time.  That’s what I learned one night long back when my car had a very close encounter of a nasty kind with a much larger beast of the concrete jungle with more (and larger) wheels and a decidedly more stupid driver.  It was a simple misunderstanding (at 3am, no less) of the most basic law of physics, with both vehicles thinking they could (and should) occupy the same point in space at the same point in time as well – granted that space and time is a continuum and that time is considered just a fourth dimension but even then we cannot expect it to oblige us to that extent (incidentally 3am is a time when most misunderstandings seem to occur if the number of drunken phone calls to ex’s is any indicator!).  The upshot of it all was that some steel panels got badly mangled and I missed meeting my maker by just a fraction of a second.  Understandably, I was quite shaken up for some time to come – not quite understanding why that fraction of second had gone my way and not the other.  I still wonder about it sometimes.

Or take the natural disaster unfolding in Japan right now – an earthquake followed by a tsunami and the thousands of people it has affected.  They were all probably busily going about their daily business – having lunch, hurrying to a meeting, coming home from school, worrying about the mortgage payments or just enjoying a well-deserved siesta – when somewhere deep under the sea some tectonic plates decided that was the time to shift.  For all I know some long undiscovered volcano miles under the precise location of the next key I am going to type on my keyboard will decide this is the instant to erupt and this post will forever stay unpublished.  Or a meteorite will choose to hit the earth at the exact coordinates of your luxury barcalounger even as you are reading this, sipping chilled beer and trying to ignore your conscience nagging you about that cholesterol-laden steak you had last night.

My point is that we are all mortal, and it would be nice if we recognized it for what it is and enjoyed our own mortality.  We are not going to live forever and there is no point pretending that is so.  We may as well be happy on a day to day basis.  What’s the point of all this hate, envy, anger, and unhappiness about silly things, when it can all dissolve in the blink of an eye.  So go on – take that well-deserved vacation now, eat your juicy steak or enjoy the chilled beer if that makes you happy, say those magic words that can light up someone’s smile, forgive quickly and forget even more quickly, give in to your passion without being apologetic, follow a long-held secret dream, maybe take time to smell the flowers and don’t fret about the bee-sting if you smell the wrong flower, get a dog, chuck that lousy job,  get married or divorced (whatever you fancy), have kids and watch them grow-up without regret, play with colors even if your clothes get messy and don’t worry about mud under your fingernails – in short, get busy living -

coz your mortality ain’t going to wait forever.

If that is so, the question becomes really simple – how do we want to pass the intervening time?  The way I see it, there are two options before us – we can whine and whine about things till the cows come home in the hope that someone will come along and make a difference, or we can try to make a difference ourselves and be winners in the process.

Take the example of sport – which in my mind is the best metaphor for life that we have.  It is fashionable these days to deride the commercialization of cricket, the amount of money that the players get compared to the pittance that other sports and sportsmen get.  People (including some sportsmen from these other sports) complain about the lack of support and encouragement from the government, about the lack of infrastructure and funds and about the general apathy about their sport in the minds of sports administrators.  While I don’t debate that point – after all, we all know about government apathy, don’t we – I don’t think that is the reason for their lack of success in these sports.  What stops these sportsmen from winning despite these conditions?  Long-distance runners from Kenya and Ethiopia and other impoverished African nations do not win major international marathons because they get sponsored Nike shoes – they win despite not having any shoes at all.  Winning changes everything.  Win instead of whine and the world will be at your feet, and the shoes will come.

Even in the case of cricket there was no money to begin with and many past cricketers are still living in penury.  The money started coming in after the team started winning – beginning with the ’83 WC and going on to win nearly every major competition for the next two years culminating in the famous “Champion of Champions” Audi.  Those of you who are born recently will never know the excitement we felt then – of getting up at 4.30 am to watch amazing coverage by Channel 9, where – wonder of wonders – the white ball was still clearly visible even after the shot was played, and of seeing Roger Binny take out 3 Australian batsmen before your first cup of tea was even brewed.  Still, the point is that cricket became rich only after it became so popular, and it became so popular only after the team started winning.  Why can that not happen with other sports?  Hockey, for example, is as exciting and enjoyed the same adulation in yesteryears when we were winning Olympic golds by the dozen and only started falling on hard days once we stopped winning.  The lesson is simple – everyone loves a winner and no one loves a whiner.

This whining phenomenon percolates through all our thought processes.  We expect hand-holding and mollycoddling at every stage.  We expect the government to keep the roads clean and the rivers sparkling and the air fresh, and yet we ourselves think nothing of throwing plastic garbage bags into the river from every bridge that we cross or chucking that packet of chips out of our train window the moment the chips are over.  Why?  Because it is so damn convenient.  We expect the government to improve the state of primary education and keep more kids in school, and yet we will complain about every increase in the education cess on tax.  This is not to advocate increasing taxes or government spending – rather it is the exact opposite.  The government is certainly not bathed in milk (to transliterate a popular Hindi saying) but neither are we.  We intensely scrutinize our kid’s school and teachers to make sure it has the latest and greatest teaching methods, most competitive curriculum, best teacher-student ratio and all the other facilities that go to make the modern school, so as to give our children the best of support and infrastructure to succeed – but do we even think about giving them the confidence of character and depth of heart that is essential for real success?  Do we give them freedom to make mistakes – to learn and to move on and to keep going regardless of the results?  Not by teaching it to them, but by setting an example.  Are we making them winners or whiners by being winners or whiners ourselves?

For winning finally boils down to the individual and whining can never change that – we win not because of favorable circumstances but despite unfavorable ones.  Note that I don’t mean ‘winning’ in the usual sense of ‘not losing’ – it can also be about losing with dignity and grace, if required.  It is really about the human spirit.  It is about sheer strength of will and gut-wrenching determination.  It is about playing hard but fair, and about not giving up till the fat lady* sings – no matter what the odds.  And it is about accepting the outcome, whatever it may be, and picking up and moving on.

And that’s what makes a winner – the rest are simply excuses.

- x – x -

* or “horizontally-challenged person of the female gender”, for the politically-correct

Still, be that as it may, in my mind it throws up a more interesting question.  Every character in the aforementioned movie – and, in fact, the real-life incident – has a decision to make – that is, should they stand by the truth and face the consequences or should they take a convenient escape route and be safe.  This dilemma is very well put in perspective by the main witness for the prosecution who says that he was asked to choose between a huge sum of money and a bullet in the head to falsify his testimony and so weaken the case, and even though he didn’t want the money he didn’t want the bullet either, and so he chose the money.  I thought that was a really tough choice to make and found myself wondering what I would do if I had been in his place.  And disturbingly, I see that I have no clear answer.

I am sure we all love our heroes in the stories – men and women who always do the right thing no matter what the price, who will battle to their last drop of blood for what they truly believe in, who would rather starve to death in the gutter than sell their honor – but I wonder if any of us can actually be those heroes?  Can we plunge into a burning building to save a child without a moment’s thought, or fight armed hooligans to save some unknown girl from a fate worse than death (as they used to call it in the old romance novels), or pay off someone’s debts with the last of our savings?  Would those battles be worth fighting?  I would love for the answer for me to be a categorical yes to all such questions, but I honestly don’t know what I would really do if were faced with such a situation – if the child was my own, if the girl was my (girl)friend or if the debtor was my brother or buddy maybe the decision would probably be easier and more instinctive – but otherwise?

To take another case in point, I was justifiably proud of my behavior a few years back when I was caught talking on the cellphone while driving and I dutifully went through all the trouble of going to traffic police headquarters in the old city and paying the appropriate fine and insisting on the receipt – I fought that battle rather than take the easy way out (that of slipping a fraction of the amount to the cop at the scene of the crime and saving myself a lot of time and trouble).  But would I have done the same if I had hit-and-run someone over on a dark and lonely street late in the night?  Or would I have just quietly slunk away and hoped never to be caught?  I believe (and hope) I would have enough integrity to do the right thing even in that situation, but I would be lying if I said that I knew that for sure.

To that extent, I would say that we are all – myself included - hypocrites at some point or the other.  We love it when someone else does the right thing – we glorify their sacrifices and sing their praises around campfires – but when it comes to us personally we try to find convenient excuses to justify an escape route.  In fact, never mind the big decisions but what do we do for the everyday small decisions when we have a choice between the difficult but correct thing to do and the easy convenient escape – when our boss blames a colleague for something we screwed up would we own up in the team meeting?  When a lucrative client snubs a friend, whom do we side with?  Would we park in a no-parking zone “just for a couple of minutes” because there is no cop on duty there?

There are probably different answers for each of us and I suppose we all have different thresholds and tolerance levels when it comes to making that choice between right and convenient – and yet, some part of me still believes that all of us must have some limit beyond which we will not take the easy way out -

- and that becomes our battle worth fighting.