I walk into Office No. 1 this morning, hearing a joke about Anna Hazare's fast. Who is this Anna Hazare? In Office No. 2, I open my old friend wikipedia, and see the typically squishy face of an old man wearing a Gandhi topi. An ex-army man (which probably explains his fascination for punishments) who worked on a model village. What is this model village? I want to write a story about it, only I'd like to begin with the end: Sonpari lived in an ideal village: and then draw out limbs of it's perfection. I'd get stuck there: defining perfection.
Anna Hazare's ideal, or rather, wikipedia's account of Anna Hazare's ideal, involves a lot of punishment:
"Anna's moral code of conduct is also quite strict. Anna believes that punishment is an essential component of the process to bring about conformity to social morality. When a child stole a fruit from a tree on the common lands, he was tied to a pole and the fruits were kept before him to teach him a moral lesson. The fruit bearing trees are not protected by any watchman. Not a single fruit is stolen and ripe fruits are distributed to balwadi children and the school children. Public beating was used not to create terror but to bring public shame on the defaulter so that he/she exercises more self-control."
So Sonpari will not live in Anna's village. She likes to illegally acquire fruit.
Lately I've been thinking a lot about my place in my life. Not exactly surprising given my ripe old age of almost 24. Shouldn't I know things more clearly now? Here I remember what DN, a prof from my old college, said about still wondering what she wants to be when she grows up. Scary stuff. I'd like to know soon, please, preferably by the time I'm twenty five.
In school, I was fairly unaware of the politics of the world I lived in. In college came revelation and I've partly relinquished independent thinking on the ride I've been on since. I've played the student, a partly compromised student, because I have had so much to learn. I was linked to the blog of someone who has written about a stint at Devdungri, an MKSS collective that we'll be heading to soon from work. She's playing out many people's dream. She's actually going on the journey, not everybody does.
It's useful to have a skill. Why didn't I get one? Us Social Science people are equipped to do-what exactly? I will have to fall back on writing; dig it out from the attic, dust the cobwebs from the surface and let Sonpari take it for a walk, twice daily.
Anna Hazare's ideal, or rather, wikipedia's account of Anna Hazare's ideal, involves a lot of punishment:
"Anna's moral code of conduct is also quite strict. Anna believes that punishment is an essential component of the process to bring about conformity to social morality. When a child stole a fruit from a tree on the common lands, he was tied to a pole and the fruits were kept before him to teach him a moral lesson. The fruit bearing trees are not protected by any watchman. Not a single fruit is stolen and ripe fruits are distributed to balwadi children and the school children. Public beating was used not to create terror but to bring public shame on the defaulter so that he/she exercises more self-control."
So Sonpari will not live in Anna's village. She likes to illegally acquire fruit.
Lately I've been thinking a lot about my place in my life. Not exactly surprising given my ripe old age of almost 24. Shouldn't I know things more clearly now? Here I remember what DN, a prof from my old college, said about still wondering what she wants to be when she grows up. Scary stuff. I'd like to know soon, please, preferably by the time I'm twenty five.
In school, I was fairly unaware of the politics of the world I lived in. In college came revelation and I've partly relinquished independent thinking on the ride I've been on since. I've played the student, a partly compromised student, because I have had so much to learn. I was linked to the blog of someone who has written about a stint at Devdungri, an MKSS collective that we'll be heading to soon from work. She's playing out many people's dream. She's actually going on the journey, not everybody does.
It's useful to have a skill. Why didn't I get one? Us Social Science people are equipped to do-what exactly? I will have to fall back on writing; dig it out from the attic, dust the cobwebs from the surface and let Sonpari take it for a walk, twice daily.
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