Apparently Priya was floored by a movie dipicting the cause of adoption, that is, a family legally taking the responsibility of a child who does not belong to them biologically. Keywords here are 'family', 'responsibility', 'child' and perhaps 'belong' too. Priya has written earnestly about the subject in her blog, to which I am adding a few points from my judgment. (Note: I, also, recently happened to watch the movie 'Gone Baby Gone' which is a very intense depiction about the similar subject, but may be from a completely different angle).
First question that comes to my mind is - 'Why does a child need to get adopted at the first place?' Natural disasters (Tsunamis, earthquakes), I think, are the primary cause of leaving behind in their wake deprived, orphaned children. Other causes can be parents meeting an unnatural demise, or parents abondoning their child because they don't have resources to bring up the child.
Then the next question is 'Whose need is it getting fulfilled by adoption - the child's or the parent's?' I think, answer here would be both sides, child's being a little overweighing because of its susceptibility and vulnerability.
Then 'Why is it always parent's responsibility to take care of every need of the children?' I think, children must be the responsibility of the community first, then family's. Why are we so sure that without a family a child can never have a good life? Why is community so prejudiced when it comes to giving and so open when it comes to taking? Community must provide every child the basic resources and values, parents should be there to monitor the day to day growth of the child. 'Community' here can be a very confusing term open to all kinds of interpretations. But, for a moment, just honestly think about it with an open mind - think of five families together taking care of a child and the amount of affection and knowledge that child gets entitled to.
Then 'Why do couples seek children?' If it is because of social pressure, or following the crowd routine, or i-don't-know, then those couples don't deserve to be parents. Such people look for an emotional crutch because of which they get married to each other, and later have children. Such relationships always end up in a disastrous failure.
Genes are really very important here. Genes are the building blocks of an individual. And if there is any fault in them you cannot really do anything about that. Anyhow, that is beyond the control of man, so we can only respectfully accept the fact. But labeling the genetic fact as 'good blood' or 'bad blood' is the result of many bright years of bollywood and cable TV - it's not a gospel coming from heavens. The great Mrityunjaya (Karna) of Mahabharata is still struggling to find a place for his talents, but always gets judged by his cast.
Whether a child must know that he or she was adopted? Well, ofcourse! The problem with parents most of the times (especially with Indian parents) is that majority of them don't talk to their children with honesty. They always believe that things must be understood without stating them. That's impossible. This gap between parent and child has to be removed. They don't reason with their children, they think that authority will do its work all the time. But then children grow up and authority goes away. We really need reasonable people who can be reasonable parents.
Then issues like 'incapable parents, after adopting a child magically get their own biological child' or 'the biological parents of the child are still alive, and the child wants to meet them' are more related to the individual's intelligence about dealing with complicated relationship problems rather than adoption. We can see real life examples around our neighborhoods, of two biological brothers being treated differently, because of the immaturity of the couple. Children don't want to see their own father and mother. Such issues have never ceased to exist and will continue unless people wake up and see for themselves what is good and bad for them, and not what others think about what is good and what is bad for them.
First lines from Gone Baby Gone:
I always believed it was the things you don't choose that makes you who you are. Your city, your neighbourhood, your family. People here take pride in these things, like it was something they'd accomplished. The bodies around their souls, the cities wrapped around those. I lived on this block my whole life; most of these people have. When your job is to find people who are missing, it helps to know where they started. I find the people who started in the cracks and then fell through. This city can be hard. When I was young, I asked my priest how you could get to heaven and still protect yourself from all the evil in the world. He told me what God said to His children: "You are sheep among wolves. Be wise as serpents, yet innocent as doves"
For last two weeks, I haven't been able to catch up with the latest news about the nation and the world. Whatever “breaking” happens, reaches me after one full day, when the sudden inferno of attention it once created in the news channels gets extinguished with its hajjar times repetition.
Bhutto was assassinated, Kenya is burning bad, BJP triumphed in the home state (Himachal Pradesh) as well, India got slaughtered by Aussies once again, and New Year arrived with some episodic disgracing deeds of countrymen across the cities. Every news, which was labeled ‘Breaking News’ in the news channels in last two weeks reached me after becoming supersaturated on the television screens.
The latest retired ‘Breaking News’ which hit me hard was the molestation of some girls in Mumbai and Pune on the 31st night. Especially the Mumbai one – I mean how a mob of 60 people can ambush two girls and molest them? There is something terribly wrong in the way the mind set is getting shaped around the cities. The economy is growing, of course, but are people growing up to justify the GDP growth?
I wouldn’t say it was the responsibility of one particular section – Police, Mob
, Politicians, or provocative dressing of women – like the desultory discussions that followed. I would just say it was a matter of shame for the whole nation. And it makes it even worse discussing such events like this . It appears that the first thing everyone does after such tragedies is to play “Who is to Blame!” game. And once the game is over, everyone starts waiting for one more game to come their way. Is it so exciting?
Instead of building a firm foundation of trust and understanding, we are getting drowned in the quagmire of blame-storming, finger-pointing, responsibility-shrugging and moral lethargy. Can relegating the responsibility and blame to some section clear us of the stigma of what happened?
Society has to change, and for that every individual has to change and this change can be brought only by right education, right policy and right implementation. We have to build a strong platform of trust on which our posterity can stand tall and take off for the new future. Growth has to turn into muscle to be meaningful; otherwise the 10% growth which we are boasting of today will render the nation obese. But who is going to do it and when will it be done remains again an open question... Till then I just hope with fingers crossed (not pointed to anyone)...
Father of modern Economics Adam Smith wrote about an old Platonian paradox in 1776: The things which have the greatest value in use have frequently little or no value in exchange; and on the contrary, those which have the greatest value in exchange have frequently little or no value in use. Nothing is more useful than water: but it will purchase scarce anything; scarce anything can be handed in exchange for it. A diamond, on the contrary, has scarce any value in use; but a very great quantity of other goods may frequently be had in exchange of it.
This enlightening abstraction needs a little more addition. Value of water depends on the thirst of the person and the availability of the water, same with the diamond. Suppose the man is dying with thirst and there is little water available but beyond his reach, he will give everything for that little water.
Same might not be true for the diamond. Now since the water is unlimited in almost every country except a few, and diamond is very scarce, the equations have shifted a little. This unfolds another human trait that mind craves for something which is beyond its reach, and ignores what it has with it. As needs keep getting satisfied more and more new needs come out. This chain reaction leads mind to misery. Look at Africa. It has the most number of diamond mines in world but still it is under developed because…? In a land where basic needs of its population are not satisfied with plenty, having things which other countries value more, lead to corruption at the basic level.
There is another trait – more we consume/use some thing, less useful it becomes to us. It is called law of diminishing marginal utility. Chocolate is the best example. If you are eating it after a month, first chocolate is like heavenly ambrosia. Second tastes good, third is ok and fourth could have been avoided… if you eat fifth, sixth, seventh – it makes you sick!! The numbers may differ depending on the individual tastes, but the ultimate effect is the same.
Well – excess of everything is bad. That’s the reason we don’t allocate all our income to only one good! Our aim consciously or subconsciously is to maximize the utility of our income! And that depends largely on what we value and what we prefer when we go out in the market hunting to satisfy our needs!
A few months back, when the nation was going through the debates of reservation/quota in the institutes of higher education, I came across an article by Mr Valson Thampu (the principal of St Stephen’s college Delhi). I don’t quite remember much of that but at that time I had jotted down some of the lines from the article. Sometimes you know that there is something inside you but you cannot see it clearly. Then suddenly you read, listen or see something which liberates that vague image of your mind and that dark area of your conscience becomes enlightened forever. Those lines:
“Merit is often a little more than just the accident of being conceived in a right womb.”
“Purpose of education is to liberate, not to imprison your soul... St Stephens understands that education is a way of liberation not a market driven commodity...”
“Unfortunately today we can easily find a means to live but we cannot find a reason to live for.”
As the weekend dawns, to begin with, a couplet from Bashiir Badr’s ghazal:
Ko.ii haath bhii na milaayegaa, jo gale miloge tapaak se
ye naye mizaaj kaa shahar hai, zaraa faasale se milaa karo |
(If you embrace someone out of the blue, nobody will even shake hands with you. This city is of a different mood; keep a safe distance in meeting others…)
In college we had this course called Probability and Statistics (ProbStat in short). Though I was only able to clinch a safe ‘C’ somehow, yet there was a probability distribution which captured my fancy. It was Normal Distribution or the Gaussian distribution with that characteristic Bell Curve which looked
more like a mountain in paintings of kindergarten students. Whenever the professor drew that curve on board I used to wait for him to draw clouds and sun coming from behind the mountains. But instead of sun, when professor wrote scaring formulae and hypotheses beside that curve, it used to wake me up from my imagination and I scribbled them down for the upcoming test series, which never helped.
It was a few years after accepting my defeat in ProbStat (and subsequently in evens and odds of life) I realized the importance of Normal distribution. Most of the world’s phenomena follow this distribution. Traffic jams, ATM downtime, grading, elections, carbon dating, inflation, geometry of selfish herd, habits – every place where there is a possibility of precision in the crowd comprising of people with similar goals, normal distribution is applicable. Take for example a population of people who are into body building. There are very few John Abraham’s with 6 packs on their stomach and the majority lies in between John and Johnny Lever. Similarly majority lies between Sachin and Agarkar in population of cricketers. Based on this normal distribution I received my ‘C’ in the course because when the professor finally drew that fateful graph of post examination marks, I fell at the ‘C’ side of boundary of ‘D’ and ‘C’.
The point that normal curve proclaims is pretty simple – there are very few extraordinary people (be it on the positive side or the negative side) in this world and majority lies in being an average.
What is the point? Since we all are in one crowd or the other, knowing our position in the normal curve can give us some insight to our life. What about the couplet in the beginning? Well, there lies another crowd and another normal distribution.
The knowledge is not complete until one relinquishes whatever he has learned. Mind is like a glass of water. It cannot hold more than its capacity. Whether it goes to a small pond or to an ocean it cannot fill more than it can hold. The only way it can own everything is by breaking itself and dissolving into the ocean. Sushil's blog says it in hindi here.
Since few days there is this strange fear of death revolving around me. Questions of almost meaningless absurdities are disturbing the peace of mind. Inevitable it is, but I don't want to escape from my fears anymore. After being scared of my fears for sometime now I have started getting intrigued by these questions. What will become of me after I die? Body will feed the earth, but where will I go? What will become of me? What is it that is floating in my head? What am I? Who am I?
Lord Krishna said a lot about this in second chapter of Bhagvad Gita:
Nainam Chhindanti ShastraNi, Nainam dahatii pavakah
Na Chainam kledtyantapoh, na shoshayatii marutah...
&
na jayate mriyate va kadachin nayam bhutva bhavita va na bhuyah
ajo nityah shashvato 'yam puraNo na hanyate hanyamane shariire...
It intrigues me now what this actually means. Just knowing these words is not enough until that fear has subsided from my total existence. My mission has transformed into becoming a person who has overcome all his fears. I want to make my fear fun.
This endless journey - when will it end?
