A great experience filled with kindness.

 

First of all, let me begin with what I saw today. I was walking down the road just to change my mood and relax my nerves a few minutes ago. I was completely mesmerized by what I saw. Someone came from the opposite side and gave the rickshaw puller, who was sleeping on his rickshaw, some food to eat. I was not shocked to see that because in India, some people don’t like to waste the food and when some food is left they gave it to the needy. I feel it’s a good thing to do for those people who want to help others but couldn’t because their financial conditions don’t allow them to do it. In order make the ends meet, they can’t do what they really want to do.

Anyways, this story is not about the person who gave the food to the rickshaw puller this is about the rickshaw puller himself. He received the food and thanked the person who gave it to him, when that person is gone, he looked around and saw another rickshaw puller sleeping just like him. He, with the food in his one hand, approached the sleeping fellow, wake him up and asked him if he was hungry. The other man replied in the affirmative. He then offered him half of the food given to him and came back and started eating his share in silence.

When he was done, as he didn’t have much left for himself, I approached him and asked him, “Weren’t you hungry, pal?”
“I was… I haven’t had anything from the morning” he replied.
I then asked him again, “Is he your friend? You guys always share food with each other.”
To which he replied, “He just came in this town a few days back and never knew anyone here.”
“I know why are you asking all these questions from me? You want to know why I gave him the food,” he added.
Well, I was curious to know why??
He then said, “I don’t know that he too was hungry, I asked him and he said yes so I shared the food with him. He was here before me. It’s his spot to pick up the travelers in this locality. I am new here. If I hadn’t been here today that guy would have given the food to him. I accepted the help because I was hungry and I just thought he would be hungry too.”

I was astounded by the answer. I had no reply. I was in tears, but I tried not to show him, I shook hands with the man with some sort of pride in his actions and moved on thinking about the lesson I just learned from him. He taught me a lesson today. I had everything I can dream of yet I don’t share it with my own family, but that rickshaw puller who had so little to offer and he didn’t think once before sharing it with others.

I will write more about kindness tomorrow….
Here is the link to the new article: Why should I be Kind to Others??

Jai Hind 🇮🇳

India Since Independence

 

Today, I wrote about India Since Independence. What have we achieved? What more is needed and most importantly What are the blemishes we have faced in the past 7 decades.
Well, one could write a 700-page book about that (ask Bipan Chandra 🙂 ) but I tried to put my feelings in less than 400 words.

Do read and tell what you think…..

On 15 August 1947, Pt. Nehru made a tryst with destiny and with that India encountered its rendezvous with democracy. And since its inception, India has never looked back. It is on the right path and continues making the right decisions despite the hard conditions it has faced in the past.

Our forefathers wanted it to be a welfare state and they made sure that India doesn’t face the hardships it has faced for over 200 years. It was made sure by the constitution tabulated by Babasaheb and other members in the Constituent Assembly.

India has been advancing in almost every field, from literature to science. All of that is favored by the reforms (be it land, economic or others) and policies which are made for the people by the people elected by the people. In the economic field, we have achieved unprecedented success and most of our 5-year plans have been successfully implemented with shining results. We have also achieved success in agriculture and education sector and most significant achievement has been done in defense and space-related programmes with our own indigenous missiles and space vehicles.

With the days of success, India has seen some dark days as well. These include emergency in 1975, the emergence of Naxalite groups and terror attacks which have damaged our country from within. Other than that poverty and unemployment are the menaces which are doing the most harm to the nation.

Despite these problems, India is the fastest growing economy. In the 70^th year of independence, it is developing at a faster pace than it ever was. The need of the hour is to emphasize on education and youth. Because these are the one which can help India regain its old glory back. The more reforms come in the field of education, the faster India will progress not in one or two sectors but all round dream of development will be realized.

To conclude, I must write that it the result of all the pains and hardships of our forefathers who fought for our freedom, all the leaders who lead us here with the reforms, the decision-making ability of our bureaucrats and the power given to judiciary which is leading India towards betterment and development at a rate faster than any other once-colonialized country in the world.

Jai Hind 🇮🇳

Is the Death Penalty Effective??

 

The very first thing we need to know is – What A death penalty (Capital Punishment) actually means?? It means punishing a person for the crime he had done in his past by killing him in any suitable way. And now I am quoting a brief history of death penalty via DPIC: “The first established death penalty laws date as far back as the 18th Century B.C. in the Code of King Hammurabi of Babylon, which justified and used the death penalty for 25 different types of crimes. The death penalty was also in the 17th Century B.C.’s Draconian Code of Athens, which made death the only punishment for all crimes, as well as in the 5th Century B.C.’s Roman law of the Twelve Tablets. Death sentences were carried out by means such as crucifixion, drowning, beating to death, burning alive, and implement.”

 

Now some questions which arises in my mind and what I think about them —

Is death Penalty morally right? Is It Necessary to fight fire with fire?No killing a man is not morally right, although now it is morally accepted by the society that killing a man who kills a man is right. And fighting a fire only increases the fire; we need water to fight a fire.

Is death penalty actually reduces crime rates?

I myself along with hundreds of surveys say that nations without the death penalty have had consistently lower murder rates than those where they punish a person by hanging him, shooting him and beating him to death.

Even if the death penalty did reduce crime rates, Will it then be acceptable?

I don’t think so, I am a peace-loving man and I love every human equally, but that does not mean I want that person to roam free who had done that crime, he should be punished for the crime he had done, but not by capital punishment.

Is it fair in terms of crime done by rich and poor? The death penalty targets the economically disadvantaged those who cannot afford to pay their legal bills. There is a saying in the US “Capital Punishment is for those who have no capital and gets the punishment.” And many stats show that is the truth.

How much does it cost? Is it necessary to spend taxpayers money on criminals??

The amount of work that is involved in taking the case all the way to the supreme court to try to get a stay of execution (These are called appeals) It can sometimes take years to exhaust all appeals. Most of the prisoners on death row do not have the funds to fight in court, and so we the taxpayers foot the bill. Lawyers charge for every stamp, every piece of paper, and every minute they talk about the case no matter to whom that might be. You add all this up, plus the cost of housing, feeding and keeping a prisoner for years, plus the cost of the actual death and funeral and it can add up quickly. It not only costs a bundle of money for the death penalty, it costs a bundle of money to keep a prisoner in jail for a life term. Either way, we the taxpayers foot the bill.

Here are many reasons to support that death penalties are ineffective–

• There are many other alternative punishments for those who had done the crime one of them is imprisonment for life without parole, in which the prisoner should work for his living in the prison.
• What if, Death Penalty is given to the innocent? Yes, there are many cases in which judges gave the death penalty to those who did not commit the crime. What do we say to his widow and children? Do we erect an apologetic tombstone over his grave?
• In many cases, death penalty gave criminals publicity which they don’t even deserve, and this may cause attention seeker kids to do that crime to get famous which causes harm to themselves and their family only.
• There is something indecent in the rituals that surround executions and the excitement they provide to the public. We should worry about those who gather outside the prisons to cheer the executioners on; sometimes the crowd started chanting “KILL HIM, KILL HIM.”
• If we abolish the death penalty in our country, we can be more effective in defending political and religious prisoners who face it abroad.
• The death penalty costs even higher than to keep the criminal in the prison for life.
• The death penalty may prolong sufferings of the victim’s family and close one.
• Capital Punishment does not reduce crime rates. So why should it be necessary?
• The death penalty fails to recognize that guilty people have the potential to change, denying them the opportunity to ever re-join society.
• The death penalty punishes the poor.

Many people support the death penalty as reparation for the wrong done to a victim’s family; they undergo severe trauma and loss which no one should minimize. Executions do not help these people heal nor do they end their pain; the extended process prior to executions prolongs the agony of the family. Families of murder victims would benefit far more if the funds now being used for the costly process of executions were diverted to counseling and other assistance. The harm was now already been done, but encouraging our motives of revenge and avenge which only ends in another killing, extends the chain of violence.

The death penalty is never ever acceptable. It only violates the two of the basic human rights which are right to live and no one should be subject to torture, by the giving death penalty we took away one’s right to life and also subject him to torture sometimes even psychologically by letting him wait for many years to face his death penalty and that wait seems terrifying even if he has done the crime but he is human and should be treated like one. In the end, I just want to say that death penalty should be abolished, not even from our country but from this world. If it is necessary sometimes then it should be in the rarest of the rare cases.

Jai Hind 🇮🇳

A Step Forward Towards Being The Change!

 

After 2-3 drinks my friends were showing my bff’s relatives that they were happy in their happiness by dancing on the occasion of my best friend’s brother’s marriage(I don’t care if that sounds weird) After being exhausted all of us went to sleep, where we had a great laughter before sleeping. We all decided to leave the next morning and when we reached Bahadurgarh the nearest bus stand from the wedding house, we were heading towards Sonipat via Kharkhoda so we board a bus to Kharkhoda which started moving in a few minutes.
Bus conductor came towards us and asked for tickets, we gave him money and then to my surprise he moved towards other passengers without giving us the tickets. We waited for a while, but when we thought he was not going to give us tickets, then a friend sitting next to me called him and asked for tickets. He answered with a smile, ‘‘what is the need of tickets, If I am there’’. Then he sat with us and started influencing us with his shitty talk and told us about his salary (Rs. 8,000) which was very fucking low in this too expensive country like India. Listening him talk I suggested that he should do some part time work to support his extra expenses (In my Opinion, some of them were useless) And He replied, ‘‘Brother I have started many businesses, but not a single one of them profits, after that I bribed an officer Rs. 500,000 and got this job as a conductor in Haryana Roadways which is not even permanent. I have spent tons of money of my family on me to earn money but, I always saw losses and losses’’. He stopped for a while and then started again, ‘‘When I was about your age, I also thought of eradicating corruption from this country, but when it comes to hot food all that thoughts become cold’’.

Now bus stops and 2-3 more passengers came and he went towards them to ask them for their tickets and sat near them. And a loud discussion started between me and my friend about the complete scenario and the way that man was doing corruption which I felt was wrong, because I thought of minimizing the corruption in our country and I was very much obsessed with Mahatma Gandhi’s idea of ‘being the change’ but by letting him do corruption in front of my eyes I was supporting him do so which was not right. After seeing us discussing on that topic, I don’t know what changed him, but he came towards me and handed me tickets and with some anger in his eyes and said, ‘‘Take It!’’ and went towards the driver’s seat.

I was happy at that point of time that I didn’t become part of this corruption web at least for once. When we were leaving the bus, the conductor was standing on the door and He gave me a bad look and said, ‘‘Are you happy now?’’ I smiled and replied, ‘‘Very Much’’ and left the bus with a sort of proud feeling on all of us.

I considered that incident as my very first and smallest victory against corruption and people doing it.
Jai Hind 🇮🇳

We Are Indians! We don’t change.

We are Indians and we will continue to spit on the no spitting sign, we will continue to smoke in a no smoking area, we will continue to listen to loud music even after 11:00 PM, we will never put waste in dustbins, we need to ‘Chain’ the glass with drinking water tanks, we need to put ‘Remove Footwear’ sign in front of temples, we need to write ‘Be In A Line’ on the walls near ticket counter, we litter near ‘No Littering’ sign and in short, ‘We will never change’

But we will always criticize the person in power because they are the one who is doing nothing other than scams and corruption.

We like things this way because we don’t want to do something.
We don’t want to go near the dustbin to throw waste because either we don’t care to find or that dustbin someplace far.
We can not keep ourselves quite in hospitals.
We can’t control for 5 more minutes to find the toilet.
We can’t stop spitting everywhere after eating paan.
We can’t find a place where we don’t irritate other persons from the smoke of the cigarette.

We don’t want to change.
I mean, if we don’t change then what difference it will make that which clown is in power.
If we, the people of this nation, don’t change for this country then why do we expect that PM, CM will change this country for us.
We need to change from within.

But How??? How Can We Change?
For this, we can start from not throwing waste on roads because this is the easiest thing which we can do.
After that start writing up for something on Facebook, Twitter and Blog
Then if you think the time is right and you can change something you don’t like, come forward and speak up in public.

I want us to make me change the title of this ‘note’ from ‘we don’t change’ to ‘we can change’, then to ‘we will change’ and finally to ‘we are change’.

#BeTheChange

Jai Hind 🇮🇳

From My Diary….

This is an old story which I want to share with you guys.

When you have done something wrong, just admit it and be sorry.
I am writing this because I feel sorry for something I did recently and I want to admit it.

So, what I did was the thing I want to fight in my near future, which is Corruption.

This was the evening of 22nd March 2015; I with my 4 friends was going to visit Bhagat Singh’s Mausoleum to pay homage to the martyr on his martyrdom day (23rd March). We were going to board Punjab Mail and bought tickets for general Compartment.

The train arrived at 9:15 P.M. and we ran for the general bogie and as we expected, it was over-crowded even to put a needle in that. We didn’t even try to board that compartment and went forward to get on the bogies reserved for Indian Army soldiers. None of us expected that Indian Army can say no to civilians like this.
After getting rejected by them our bad luck started when our eyes happened to see the Ticket Checker for Punjab Mail. His name was Chamkor Singh, actually, he was telling his name to fellow travelers with pride, when they were bargaining for seats in sleeper class in the name of Gurdwara Sahib (Holy Sikh Temple). But when we begged him for seats, he suddenly told us to go and sit in 3-tier (non-AC) and all of us happily and without even thinking what he was saying, moved our asses on that train.

I thought what a strange night is this?
A few minutes back we were refused by Indian Army and now this TC was trying to help us.

After sometime when we made ourselves comfortable in that coach and started playing cards, he came to check our tickets in a hurry. We show him our tickets and he demanded Rs. 200 each, thinking about our budget, we asked him to lower the price and to our surprise, he did reduce Rs. 200 and took Rs. 800 for all 5 of us, marked our tickets checked, gave us 4 seats and left.
When he was marking the tickets, I thought he was going to write seat number and give us a receipt for the money he took from us. But there is no receipt for a bribe. All that happened in a hurry and by the time he provided us with seats, we reached Rohtak. I went out to grab something to eat and then I started thinking about what just happened, Was that corruption?
And suddenly my inner soul replied, “Yes, that was”. I came back without buying anything and Chamkor was nowhere to be found in that coach.

That was the time, I started feeling worse about myself because I want to fight corruption at some time in my life and for the first, I was directly connected with the crime.

Like every human -In my thoughts- I started to rationalize the whole scenario in a way that I was helpless and I was not wrong and all that shit. But it took me much less time to realize that I was the one who is responsible for that crime.

I admit it and I will be sorry for the rest of my life. Because no one ever died choking, trying to swallow his pride down the throat.

Jai Hind 🇮🇳

When I met a Soldier.

 

Soldiers. The persons who are ready to sacrifice themselves for the sake of their country. I feel they are one of the most selfless Indians you will ever meet.

They don’t care about how they look, they don’t care about the politics going on (sometimes that politics involve them directly), they don’t care about their social lives, themselves and their family. The things they care about is their country, their country’s prestige, and their country’s safety.

Today I met a soldier while talking to him I tried to understand the condition they are living in. How they have to suffer due to the politics going on around them. Today’s post may be titled as “When I met a Soldier” but it’s not about how and when, it’s about the problems they face now and then. And how they overcome those problems with minimal resources without demanding much from the authorities.

Talking to that person I found out that they are certain irregularities and mismanagement in the Army. For example:

• India can easily buy better weaponry and equipment including lighter bulletproof jackets, but due to corruption in the highest places we are not doing anything and letting those terrorists and enemies kill our soldiers.
• Even the clothing given to the soldiers are not up to the mark. The jackets are big and noisy and when you have to carry ammo pouches your enemy can hear you from a long distance. The quality of shoes and helmets are even worse. I want to quote him, “The less I say about these things are the better.”
• The most severe problem is the local support. In areas like Kashmir, the army doesn’t have any local support. People are throwing rocks and abusing every time we are on duty. Sometimes it feels like what is the point of protecting these people. But then we remember Indian map. The army is there not to protect those inconsiderate people, but to save this country’s pride.

Then I questioned him why is he there even with the problems they face.

His answer shook me completely.

He replied, “Sahab, paisa jitna yahan milta hai utna to hum kahin bhi kama lete. Ye desh ki seva karna, wo uniform pehanna; uske baad raat ko jo nind aati hai wo boht sukoon ki hoti hai.”

Even writing this gave me goosebumps again.

I think these politicians only want to be glued to their seats they use soldiers’ names and always promise to do this and that, but when they come in power but in the end, nothing is done and achieved.

And to improve the situation of the soldiers and armed forces the internal and external corruption should be eradicated. Politicians should take armed forces more seriously and voluntary services should be added to the armed forces. This will make this our youth more disciplined and more aware of the actual scenario.

Jai Hind 🇮🇳