Retrospective Series : Part 7 : Christmas Cheer

Driving down the road towards our home, we are engulfed on both sides by brightly lit bushes, trees, snowmen, santa, the occasional train model, even a wierd looking cartoonish blob that remotely resembles a christmas tree. The edges of the homes are covered in dainty little yellow lights, mixed with blinking purples and red and green. The couple of snow falls that we have had since early december, add the final touch to the Christmas feel as romanticized in the children's books that we all grew up reading. Turn on the radio and almost every FM station you tune into has a rock, jazz, country or classical version of the christmas carols blaring. Yes, it definitely feels like Christmas. In fact, by the time its the 26th of December, you are thankful that this overload of cheer is finally done with.

I write this as we are busy preparing a plum cake (baked at home, indian style) for our Christmas party. As I was mixing the dough, I was reminded of christmases long gone by. Christmas was definitely a unique experience growing up, because in a town comprising of 3 christian families, the neighbours definitely were very curious about this wierd celebration during the cold winter months. The church from a nearby town would send down its choir for the Carol singing and the kids from the neighbourhood gathered to hear the orchestra on the move. I would be practically terrified of the attention this yearly display brought onto our family. My parents cherished it because it probably reminded them of their childhood growing up amidst church and carol singing. No such luck for me as I dreaded the questions my friends in the neigbourhood would ask me the next day. "So who was the fat guy in the funny suit ?" "Is he related to you guys ?"

Two things that I eagerly waited for during this season was the baking of the cake and the Christmas tree. I would be the errand guy, buttering the pan, grinding up the spices, getting the zest out of the orange rind, cleaning and drying out the raisins. Then of course after the cake mix was poured, I would have the honor of cleaning out the mixing bowl with my fingers. Today in hindsight, that would have been considered a health hazard because of the raw eggs in the mix, but then when you are a kid, its "Bacterium - Step aside - Big daddy is coming over."

Decorating the Christmas tree was a saga of its own. Consider this; In the middle of a temperate deccan plateau, a fir, pine or spruce was almost unheard of. So what does one do ? The alternative, a conifer that is grown as a hedge tree in homes and parks. The first evergreen conifer that we used as a Christmas tree was literally stolen from a park. (I was not involved in the actual stealing by the way..nor were anyone from my direct family. Somehow the tree was found lying in our backyard, probably left there by Santa's elves... wink wink.) After that christmas we planted our own evergreen conifer in the yard to use as a live christmas tree. Ok, now that we had solved the problem of finding a tree, what about the decorations ? Unlike our current Christmas tree in front of the bay window, which we decorated by buying a truck load of buntings and lights from Home Depot, my childhood trees were decorated with improvised glitter. We made do with sparkly streamers and little string lights. Painted cubes of thermocol made up the gifts hanging from the branches. The brightly colored eggs were missing and little balloons took their place. Kids and adults from the entire neighbourhood would come home to take a peek at the christmas tree. No one had seen such a tree other than in movies or in books.

As tonight's cake bakes, the aroma is definitely kicking up some old memories. Hot cake fresh from the oven is something to die for even without memories attached to them.

Before signing off for the long weekend, may this be a merry Christmas for everyone. May there be peace on earth. May the coming New Year be a pivotal year in everyone's lives, may all our dreams turn into reality, may there be less suffering and misery in the world and above everything else, may we all strive to be better human beings. God bless.

Retrospective Series : Part 6 : A struggle for the minds of our people

"Liberalisation is not a process of mechanical economic policy-making, but a struggle for the minds of our people, and we do believe we are succeeding,"
- Manmohan Singh, Prime Minister of India, Dec 2005.
ASEAN Summit.

The year was 1990. A crisp new decade. I had just finished my 10th grade and was moving on to a different school in a nearby town for my 11th and 12th grade. Television in India was exemplified by a Goliath called Doordarshan which broadcast one channel to a billion people. The 22 minutes of singles picked from Bollywood musicals and showcased as 'Chithrahaar' was the prime time show of the week. The 9 pm news usually featured Rini Simon who would read out a government sponsored baritone of the days events. A turbaned man surfaced from the depths of anonymity to become the new finance minister in a fledgling congress government. A government propped up by truck loads of money and horse trading. The prime minister of the day, Narasimha Rao seemed to place a great deal of confidence in him and when I heard that this guy was a Doctor in Economics and yet had managed to become the Finance minister of the country, I was shocked. It was an unheard of event. In my experience the only educated people that I could remember having ever occupied political office were a few of the presidents. Other than that, everyone else was the usual "son of the soil" "wolf in sheep's clothing" kind of muck. As a kid, I had written essays on the population problems that India faced, the illiteracy that was endemic across the poorer parts of the nation and myriad other subjects. Ironically I do not recollect writing any essays on improving the economy or the money making potential of the country and its country men.

The next two years of school were tumultuous because of the gut wrenching competition to get into a professional degree program at a good University. Amidst all this personal chaos, I began noticing that we had more television channels beamed into our homes via private satellites, news was no longer served in baritones, MASH was the coolest show on TV and 'Bold and the Beautiful' was the king of Soaps. I even got to see my first computer and during fall of that year I programmed my first bouncing ball game in GWBasic.

During this period the debate in the country was intense. The doom Sayers and the eternal optimists both waxed eloquent about their end of the story. The doom Sayers cribbed about how the country was going to be relegated to the imperialistic pits of the 21st century and the eternal optimists harped on how the country would turn into a Singapore wonderland overnight. After I got into an engineering program, the debates and the essay competitions at the University too suddenly changed tone and tenor. Everything was about 'Liberalisation'. It was natural, because engineers are usually one of the first beneficiaries of a liberalized economy. 'Competition success review' a geek digest that catered to the fanatical Indian wanting to appear in any competitive exam was strewn from cover to cover with analysis and statistics on the new liberalisation policy and how things were getting better with the economy.

I ended up taking the side of the liberals in all my writings and debates. This was not necessarily because of a firm ideological belief, but rather one driven by reality as my middle class parents were evidently one of the beneficiaries of the new policy. I was living a life metaphorically far away from the real poverty of India and hence I never had an opportunity to better appreciate the negative sides of the changes. My mind had been converted towards a policy of liberalisation and I lapped up every word written or spoken about it.

Things were definitely getting better for the middle class as the years progressed and I got into the job market around the time that the IT bandwagon hit town. The winter of 2005, finds me in the US, reading the online edition of the Indian Express and I saw this quote attributed to Manmohan Singh, the same turbaned guy of the early 90s, who is now India's prime minister. I couldn't help but think, how true this statement was. Liberalization indeed is a struggle for the minds of the people. I converted early on because the conditions of real life aided me towards such a position. Would that have been the case if my family had suffered job losses, lower wages or I had trouble getting into a decent school or find a decent job ? Life is too complicated for every incident to be attributable to a hand full of causes, but nevertheless we always need a handful of causes as the scape goats. Liberalisation is one such scape goat.

Today I can proudly say that Liberalisation has my ideological support, but the journey towards that ideological position was fuelled entirely by the realities of every day life. I just happened to be lucky to see it from the good side. Are we even close to providing that realistic foothold to every Indian living so that he can climb onto this bandwagon and call it his own ? I am not sure. But achieving that goal, I believe is going to be the struggle for the country as a whole. A struggle for the minds of our people.