Can we answer any of these questions?

The day I saw the T-Shirt with the message - “I'd love India, if I didn't have to live in it”, I actually started believing that there really are few people who aren't proud to be born in India. There are people who aren't happy about being Indian, but they keep there voices low, from the fear of being hated by the numerous others who are proud to be Indians. 

It's known that India has had a bad time in the last few hundred years. The European exploitation left it crippled, and it requires a hell lot of work to make it stand up and walk again. I would like to raise the first question - “How much work are we doing? Can we hope that India will stand up and walk again, with the amount of effort being given?" 

We forecast ourselves to be the next superpower in a few decades, but does everyone know that a developed country requires the whole of its population to be developed and not just the creamy layer? I wont argue that nothing great has ever happened in India. There are and were great people, who showed us an example of what is possible with a bit of extra effort. There were Dhirubhai Ambanis, who proved that a common man can become a billionaire. There are Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalams who dared to build missiles for the nation. But the numbers are very less, seems to be pretty less when we boast of being the largest human resource provider in the world. I wont want to emphasize on all the problems that's holding the country back, I would want to share the root causes – The Faulty Education System and Corruption, and how both of them are cyclic. 

Education is undoubtedly the most indispensable requirement for prosperity. A developed country needs 'well-educated' citizens. But, corruption makes education dirty. Its obvious that corruption makes everything dirty, but when it enters the field of education, we are going to pay a heavy price, because it directly affects economic growth and well-being of a billion Indians. 

Its a very common debated sentence, that a youngster in India isn't free to choose a career according to what he wants. Most of them are forced to choose either engineering or medical science. Even in some cases where the student is not forced, he still doesn't have the guts to choose a third option, because being an engineer or doctor is the best way to survive! Yes, an engineering degree is the easiest way to get a good job, and being a doctor is a good way to earn. 

Someone who'd want to start a small business after college would not be considered respectful, because people think it was because he didn't get a job. In most cases, being an entrepreneur is a matter of compromise and a not a choice. 

There are little more than 100 engineering colleges in the state of Odisha, but the question is - “How many colleges have the infrastructure and facilities to provide quality education?” Most of the private colleges that produce thousands of graduates every year, do not even have the resources necessary for a quality high school education. 

I wont just list the problems, I would list the solutions too. 

First and foremost, the government must stop helping people to run businesses in the name of educational institutions. These days, when a group of entrepreneurs decide to setup a private college, all they think of is making money out of it. “People are crazy to get a engineering degree, so we can 'sell' it to them. And we would never incur a loss in the business because all of the seats would definitely be booked every year. Who cares about education? Its the best way to make money.” This is what they'd think. This is where the government must act. Affiliations must be issued only to those colleges, who have a satisfactory education model consisting of facilities, educational culture, good faculty and facilities that motivate students to be innovative and think out of the box. 

    Just a few acres of land, a building with few classrooms and a registered name don't make a college! Rules do exist everywhere, but corruption makes it dirty, to the extent that anyone can get setup a college with a mediocre capital, with additional under-the-table deals! In the long run, such ventures only depreciate the standard of engineers, rather than contributing to economic development. 

Lets go deep into the scene of a private college. The management doesn't really care about hiring good faculty, and is the obvious reason why those teachers are one of the least paid employees. The essence of a educational institution is a group of qualified and great teachers, all other stuff comes second. But, private colleges give the least priority to hiring good teachers. Second, talking about innovation, a student who wants to work on a innovative project in the final semester, never gets support and resources from the college, rather gets demoralized when his work is never recognized or given any extra credits for the efforts he put forth. These stuff have no value, its just a spend-money-get-a-degree environment. 

    “How many computer engineering students can install an Operating System in a computer? How many electronics engineering students can open up all parts of a radio and again fix them back? How many civil engineering students can say why a suspension bridge is a better solution across a river?” The question is - “How many?” This question is enough to illustrate the falling standards of engineering graduates. 

When young, people say they are proud of being Indians, and seem to be really patriotic. But as adults many of them involve in practices that hamper economic growth. The recent scams revealed the height of corruption. People accumulate black money in swish banks, in return for humiliating and raping the country's image at the international level. When some politician smuggles money out of development projects for the country, isn't the situation like stealing from the country's rights? Aren't they stealing from the primary school kids in a small village who are waiting for their lunch? Aren't they stealing from fellow citizens and insulting their motherland? I would rather say, the pride of I-Love-India is just a show off, the only thing they care about in a crippled economy is making money! 

The biggest unanswered question is - “Who will bell the cat?” 

Or shall we try to get out of this country and settle abroad?

Would you like to answer any of the questions?

A million things I'd like to say, but I can't.

It was raining and pretty cold outside and I called someone for the obvious reason of chatting for a while, but had to hang up soon. It was because it was hard to talk, it was something that wouldn't let me speak what I wished to express, and that had made me talk more to myself than to the other people around me.

I wondered the last time, I had my voice, a perfect and fluent speech, the voice that could speak its heart, the voice that I wish I had now. I was helpless about it, because the voice had left me ten years back, in a world where I needed it badly, to survive, to be happy, to be social and to find love.

I remembered that day back in 6th grade, when a teacher said to me - "You know a lot of things but the problem with you is you are quite mischievous". These were the kind of comments that I used to get from teachers very often, after I would be caught disturbing the class, but still would be able to give satisfactory answers to the questions that followed. I never stuttered, or did I know what stuttering was.

Its obvious that we can not remember all incidents of our life, so don't remember how I contracted stuttering. The next incident I remember was in 7th grade, when I and a group of friends were being punished for playing a prank with a girl of 6th grade, whom I met in a painting class. As we were kneeling down outside the class, and our class teacher was about to arrive, and all of us were pretty nervous of facing his questions, I remember requesting the guy beside me to help me with my speech when the teacher would ask me for an explanation. By that time, one year past the former incident, I had become a severe stutterer.

I have tried hard to recall the exact time and reason of how I got the problem of not being able to speak fluently, but I don't remember any incident that happened in the one year gap between the two I described above.

Stuttering made my life hell, mostly because mine was a case of severe stuttering. Most people who would want to advice me about it would say, "keep a stone under your tongue at night when you sleep", others would ask me to read the newspaper aloud every morning. But, the stone stuff is for people who have incorrect pronunciation, a speech disorder that's called "lisping". My case was not that at all. Those days we had very limited knowledge about speech disorders and I kept hoping this would be cured someday. I had heard many stories of some distant relative who used to stutter in childhood and grew up to be a fluent speaker. I was hopeful that the bad speech problem would go away as easily as it appeared all of a sudden.

The worse days had started and the mischievous part of me had died now. I was once the "disturbing element of the class" and now I was one guy who would sit silently even in lunch breaks. It all started after fellow-classmates humiliated and teased when my speech blocked. Later, I wasn't able to even answer my roll call.

I would practice everyday while walking to school. I would think "today I will do it. Today I wont stop", but I would always get blocked at the instant I stood up to say "Yes sir!" As, I grew up stuttering became a trauma, something that made me hate myself. I could figure out by then, the more I grow up, the more problems I shall face, the more humiliated I shall be. I consulted few speech therapists, and had certain amount of improvement but stuttering would again come up to high level once I left the speech exercise practices. Sometimes the stutter was too unpredictable. In few short spans in my life, stuttering would almost disappear, and I would be happy about it, but it would again come back suddenly some day again. I have had this sort of episodic dis-fluency for years together.

This was all I did today, expressing my thoughts in words, in someway different to the numerous other days, when I'd just recall and forget. Could I ever get my voice back,

or would I always be the person, who thinks - "A million things I'd like to say, but I can't!"

A fox is the life of the party

He stands tall as always, on a hilltop.
Its dusk, and the sky's all crimson.
He's a big tiger and looks down the valley.
A bunch of foxes have a party in the valley. They have hired a DJ, fixed up disco lights. There's so much beer that you could drink all night.
At places, foxes and vixen have chats drinking cocktail after cocktail, talking endlessly, while the DJ adds more tracks to queue. Such is the sight in the valley, the lonely tiger just looks in despair. He sits down on the hilltop to relax, but still glances toward the fox party.


Just then, a white tiger comes in & joins the big tiger.
"Hey mate, you looked depressed..", the white tiger tries to look jolly. "No, I'm ok", says the big tiger. "Oh, not again mate. I tell you, just look at yourself! You're a real big tiger. You have got power. Your ancestors were kings. They are just mere foxes. To me they look like dogs", and the white tiger bursts in laughter.

"You're too drunk. Leave me alone", retorts the big tiger. "We both are drunk. And just look at yourself, you're sitting head hung", the white tiger tries to convince him to cheer up.

The big tiger looks at the fox party for a minute and speaks, "You know white, we all are so drunk. We just had the purest vodka ever made, that those foxes could never have in their lives. But, they are happy. And we're not!

And the tigers-are-the-king-of-the-jungle stuff is crap. It was true once upon a time long long ago. Now foxes are the life-of-the-party."

The white tiger stills tries, "You need to look at life from a positive perspective. Being a pessimist never changes things."

"Ok, but wake up to the real world. Our world! And the crap that happens to us!"

"You know, your power is within you. You could just go down and scare all the foxes away with your roar. Aren't you happy? Your roar could vibrate the jungle!", the white tiger now tries to talk sense.

"So, what?  At the end of the day, all foxes united could kill you, or make you crippled. Who will come to defend me then? Just you. I have got one friend. And I am not happy."

The big tiger stands up with tears and adds more, "You know what I got for being honest? You know what I got for having this big and useless heart? You know what I got for being so nice to everyone? You know what I got for not telling lies? Not trying to be cunning? You know what I got for doing the divine act of following my mind?"
He points at the bottle, "Alcohol in a cold dark place and Tears."
The big tiger is weak and speaks more, "I would be happier to be a fox rather be so powerful and cry! There are just a handful of tigers left in the entire country. You see, tigers don't survive. One who is honest sucks! He dies! What kind of life is this?"

The white tiger falls silent. May be he starts thinking...