Yet another birthday

I turned 24 last week and though on every birthday I sit alone and ponder over the significant happenings in my previous year, this time I decided to do it more systematically by writing a blog post. While I'm too undisciplined to write and maintain a diary on a daily basis, a quick recall and introspection on every birthday of how life has been the previous year is probably a good practice.

I must admit that I totally enjoy all the attention I get on my birthdays. All the dear and near ones keep calling and sending text messages throughout the day, my grandma from Mysore sends a greeting card without fail, my colleagues try to be a little nicer that day, C shall have two gifts ready. One is a planned gift which I get after forcibly answering that difficult question - "What do you want?" and the other one is a "surprise gift". I love how my mom on her own tactfully tries to understand what I want and buys it for me or gives me the money to buy it. Then there are these "friends" on facebook who post birthday wishes though I hardly reciprocate the same on their birthdays.

While I feel special throughout the day, when I get into my own space, it feels terrible. As usual, I have hardly done anything that makes me proud. No significant milestones, no major change in lifestyle, no change in the ridiculous selfishness and self obsession with which I've always lived my life. For most part, I've been busy with nothing other than developing and maintaining some software that I can never relate to. Worse, I haven't done that really well too! Life has been so pointless and ordinary. There is a lot to do, a lot to change and there's no time. I have to rush.

The most exciting thing that happened last year was the birth of my nephew. My favorite pastime has been getting entertained by this unbelievably well behaved and adorable kid. While I think that a lot of kids appear well behaved to everyone except their parents, I'm sure this kid's parents wouldn't disagree with me.

I have made a few new friends but two of them have been special. One is N, whom I also hold in high regard for his thought processes and the other one is my roommate S who despite being a great friend is a hero for reasons which I'll write about in a different blog post.

Reading has never been as much as I wanted it to be. However, here are the books I read last year -

• Stumbling on happiness - Daniel Gilbert
• Outliers - Malcolm Gladwell
• Akka - P Lankesh
• Mookajjiya Kanasugalu - Dr K Shivarama Karantha
• Thinking fast and slow (incomplete) - Daniel Kahneman
• India after Gandhi - Ramachandra Guha (This one is my most favourite)
• The Cartoon Introduction to Economics - Part 1 - Klein and Bauman
• Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
• The Good Boatman (currently reading) - Rajmohan Gandhi

Hell! That's not even one per month! Shameful.

I did an online course on Social Psychology and also got to do quite a bit of reading on some of the prominent topics on psychology. For anyone interested in learning something seriously online, I recommend coursera.

I've traveled more than I thought I would and here are the new places I visited - 

Delhi, Agra, Jaipur, Bharatpur, Zainabad (Little Rann of Kutch), Thol, Velavadar, Munnar, Yercaud.

Watching plays has been my favourite hobby. I have watched over 30 plays and what's special is that the movies to plays ratio has been around 1:5. A lot of plays have been fantastic but one experience that will stay with me forever is the play we watched the whole night at Kalagrama. It started at 8:30 P.M and got over at 5 next morning. The play was an adaptation of Kuvempu's "Malegalalli Madumagalu". An interesting and successful experiment indeed.

Unbelievably, I took up running more seriously than ever! I ran 10K twice last year, along with occasional 5K, 3K and lesser K runs. These have been great fun. Today, I just can't believe that when we were made to run over 1km a day on chilly mornings at my boarding school, I bitched about my P.E teacher and tried all possible tricks to escape.

Now I have stepped into a new year with, I believe, a new zeal and conviction. I just hope it lasts long. It would be a disaster if I won't be more content about my life when I turn 25.

Well done AAP!

When I recently wrote this article titled - The need for an alternative, I was just hoping that some day, a party like AAP or Loksatta starts making things tougher for BJP and Congress. I have to admit that I wasn't even remotely optimistic about that happening in the near future. AAP proved me wrong with a startling and impressive victory in Delhi. When the talks of them forming the government with some outside support was doing the rounds, I was hoping that it somehow comes true. I wasn't thinking much. I just wanted to witness that moment when Kejriwal and his team take oath as cabinet ministers. These guys, along with thousands of volunteers had created history. Although BJP won more seats than anyone else, the fact that AAP trailed by just four seats is remarkable. In Delhi, by contesting elections, they not only helped people tell Congress that they are fed up with them but they also signaled BJP that this frustration and unhappiness would not easily translate to a belief and confidence that BJP shall be a better option in the upcoming general elections.

If not for people who desperately want to vote for BJP for reasons best known to them, for others who wanted to vote for BJP just because of lack of a powerful alternative to Congress, AAP has come in as an excellent option. To assume that AAP wouldn't commit any mistake and that India will become a superpower if we vote for them is stupid. However, I think it's safe to give them a chance. To its credit, AAP  has neither been formed with ridiculous ideologies that BJP was formed with and continues to strive for, nor is it as shameless and corrupt as Congress. In fact, AAP has got all the right ingredients for a political party to begin with. It was started with the fight against corruption as the base, it has been cautious enough not to entertain tainted candidates, it hasn't shown inclination towards any religion or caste so far, it has been striving to give a feeling that its politicians are more approachable, are more closer to common people and hence are in better position to understand the problems at ground level. For us who have been repeatedly taught by our politicians to be cynical about themselves, all these ideologies that AAP is talking about might appear to be plain politics and nothing else. I think it is too early to assume so and dismiss them. It is indeed a political trick to grab votes, but without something of this kind, it is almost impossible to win elections in India and unfortunately, to make a difference, you have to win elections.

 In a country where political parties have always made use of money, caste, populistic measures and sometimes celebrity status to win elections, if AAP is using anti-corruption stand, end of VIP culture and measures which are appearing to be populistic sometimes, I wouldn't worry much. They have raised the bar for politics to an extent that after they formed government, people had a re-look at their manifesto and started asking them when they would fulfill their promises. I don't think that has happened in my country in recent times. As far as governance is concerned, it is too early to judge them. We might not agree with some of their decisions in Delhi, but putting them in the same league as that of other parties so soon is a little unfair. For a long long time now, genuine Indian voters who do not vote for wrong reasons have had to choose lesser evil while voting. This time, we don't have to do that. AAP, till now, hasn't got any black spots. If they go by their ideology, in general elections, their candidates shall not have tainted background, shall have some experience of social service, shall be spending lesser than other parties, shall not ask for votes just because they are Brahmins or Muslims or Dalits and shall not be contesting because of their family background. With media and other political parties eagerly trying to spot them violating their own rules, the last thing that AAP would want to do is breaking its promise unapologetically like other parties do. We recently saw the induction of Shivkumar and Roshan Baig to cabinet and induction of BSY back to BJP in Karnataka. The intentions of Congress, BJP and AAP are same  - To win general elections. For this, while AAP has been shouting that they'll field all clean candidates and provide good governance by putting an end to corruption, BJP and Congress are playing their usual game of  banking on caste-based voting. Although AAP knows that with the way they are going, they might lose votes of pseudo-intellectuals in urban India and uneducated folks in rural India, they have shown no signs of deviating from their stand so far. That makes them more trustworthy.

Besides all these, what really sets AAP apart is that they have huge scope to correct their mistakes whenever they encounter them. Being a party which is just growing, they can afford to take political decisions more easily. Removing a tainted candidate for example is much easier for AAP than for Congress and BJP. Candiates here do not come with money power. They do not come with mad fan following. Also, like I said earlier, they know they are being watched closely. They haven't yet developed that thick skin that other parties have developed. They can kick out a Yeddy or a Reddy in no time if they really want to. Compare this to how reluctant BJP was while throwing Yeddy out though a very senior guy like Advani wanted to and see how they got him in now. After all this comes the question of efficiency in governance and bringing in right set of policies. For that, we will have to first give them a chance and see how they perform. If they mess it up too, let's get back to choosing the lesser evil.