Compromise is not a struggle

 Compromise is not a struggle

Once while I was sitting at bus-stop waiting for a bus, and suddenly a man around sixty-four or sixty five years old came by and sat beside me. Honestly, he was well-suited than me. I was just watching him. He was wearing a perfectly ironed shirt and pant and nicely polished shoes. I presumed that he might be a high profile government officer. 

I plugged out my earphone from my mobile and put it into my bag, while I realized that the man was watching me. As I glanced at him awkwardly, he smiled politely. Even his smile seemed too much professional.

“Young lad! College boy?” he asked.

 

“Yes,” I nodded, ignoring a strange conversation.

“Must have drowned yourself in fun and enjoyment,” he said.

“Not actually,” I shook my head. “I don’t do fun.”

“Pity then. You should,” he grumbled. He paused for a moment and then asked, “So what do you study?”

“Computer science,” I replied bluntly. 

“Tech people,” he sighed. “I really admire you people, but I curse you at the same time.”

Undoubtedly, I was surprised by that sentence. Why would an old man like him curse people like me? 

“Why is that?” I asked curiously.

“When I was like you, perhaps bit older than you, I was working in a private company. We used to make metal components of vehicles and automobile. I worked there for two-three years, and then I quit. I wasn’t really a smart man like you. I was just an ITI guy, who could work on those old instruments and machines. But then this new thing came. Computer Science. They assured us to change the face of technology. Well, honestly, we all were happy that something different was coming along. But when it did, many things were made automatic. They had reduced man power at considerable amount, and many of my colleagues became jobless. I was fortunate though. I had already learnt some new things which might have kept my job for few years. But those men were really poor and they couldn’t learn these new things without proper education and training. We saw many people switching their career and starting a business. Many of my friends took shops on rent and started business. But still, I heard many people went back to as worker at construction sites. Unfortunately, your technologies had reduced man power there too. But still there was a chance of getting a job that could feed you. But I was always pitied on those people who couldn’t make it through,” he explained.

I was quietly listening him. That man was making some really appropriate points, on which I agreed. That must be really unbalanced and chaotic situation back then. 

“Anyway, I decided to make my son a techy person like you. I could never learn that computer thing, on which my son mocked me for quite long time. But I made him an engineer, just like you,” he said.

“That’s good,” I spoke blankly. 

“Yes,” he nodded. “Although, he is quite older than you. He is currently working too. But still sometimes when we discuss with each other, he mentions the same problem with his generation. He once told me that they learn things and they get upgraded in few years and they don’t get time to learn those new things. And he also mentioned that nowadays, engineers have worst fate. Is it?” 

“Yes,” I admitted. Well, I knew that most of us don’t have that glorious future. 

“Do you know what people do in such situations?” he inquired.

I remained quiet and that said it all.

“Compromises,” he said. “Some compromise with money. Some compromise with knowledge. And some compromise with skills. It is not actually their fault for not being qualified for the job, is it? Yet they have to compromise.”

“I wouldn’t,” I grumbled out of pride. “I would never compromise any of these.”

He looked at me curiously and said, “But sometimes you don’t have a choice.”

“But compromise is never an option. It doesn’t just waste your hard work, it makes you dishonourable. One compromise may not seem a big deal, but when you succeed, you just prefer compromise at every point of your life just because of your obsession with success,” I said calmly. 

He kept staring at me, while I said that. “You seem like really good lad,” he whispered. “You know where these things lead us. Tell me, are you obsessed with success or peace?” 

“I don’t know what I want yet. But I do know one thing that I don’t want success that has no meaning of that word,” I muttered. “For me, success is not just achieving wealth and prosperity. The journey matters the most to me. People choose different ways to get success. We call them shortcuts. But if you walk with self-pride, it is very unlikely that you’ll get success. I have heard many people telling me that once you reach there, nothing actually matters. But I still can’t stand with this concept of getting success by faking things. I can’t be dishonest with myself to just reach there.”

“But most of the people don’t work that way,” he grinned. “You’re right that for some people even little bit of dishonesty ruins the joy of their success. Because everyone has different priorities in life. Some people make their success priority. But some people make their honesty their priority. Legends say that honest ways lead you to success. But those legends were made during honest world. This is just a dishonest world. Here, honest ways may starve you to death.”

“When I come to your age, I don’t want to feel that my entire life was worthless. But perhaps dishonest ways will put me in that feeling of worthlessness,” I confessed.

“Then you shouldn’t be dishonest with your life,” he advised.

“And it will keep me away from success, forever,” I grumbled in disappointment.

“I’m not going to lie just because you could keep your motivation. But yes, it is very likely that it will keep you away from success,” he admitted. “Honesty is not everyone’s cup of tea, boy. People think that their compromises are their struggle. But it’s not. Compromise is not struggle. Honest people are rare. No one stays that way. But even if they do, how many of us know about their honesty?”

“Perhaps we don’t want to show people our honesty. Why would we?” I said.

“Yes, we shouldn’t,” he agreed. “And that is the you live with honesty. You may never see the face of success in your life, but you know the face of honesty. And believe me, it is more assuring than success.”

We remained quiet for a moment, as a bus passed by. 

“You said you quit the job. What did you do then?” I asked curiously.

“I became an insurance agent,” he replied calmly.

There was a strange silence for few moments. We both knew that irony, and I honestly wanted to laugh, yet I didn’t. However, he started laughing and I joined him.

Feminism : A process to achieve Gender Equality or Domination?

Feminism

A process to achieve Gender Equality or Domination?

Nowadays, people have assumed that both these terms have the same meaning. However, they don’t understand how these terms convey their meanings. In an ideal world, people would need Gender Equality which would give all the genders equal rights in everything, including transgender people, who are remarkably ignored while talking about Gender Equality. Now it’s the time we all understand the difference between these both terms and decide which we want to choose and head with.

What is Gender Equality?

Gender Equality, as the term literally means, is a state where all the genders (not only men and women) are treated equally, with giving them equal rights. The laws for genders should also be equal so that they could defend themselves equally.

Nowadays, women rights have been raised so high that laws have been bent toward a specific gender, which is preventing another gender from defending itself, even if it is right. Not all people of all genders are good. If there are terrible men, then there are terrible women too. When you give powers to certain category of people, the bad ones would try to misuse it to achieve their own selfish goals. It is fact. However, these biased law are influenced by feminism, not by gender equality.

What is Feminism?

Feminism literally means to favour feminine gender, which apparently means to favour woman. If you think that Gender Equality and Feminism mean the same, you’re wrong. Now you must be wondering why. Because, Gender Equality is our goal, not the process. On the other hand, we are using Feminism as a process to achieve our goal of Gender Equality.

Apparently, for last many years, people have been feeling that the wold is cruel to women, which is causing them to suffer a lot. That may be true, we don’t deny that. And for that reason, people have seen an inevitable need to establish feminism and support it so that it could raise woman empowerment from feminine perspective, and eventually, we will reach our goal of Gender Equality. Feminism is being used as a process for Gender Equality.

You must have seen men favouring Gender Equality instead of Feminism, and most of you would be wondering why.

Why men favour Gender Equality instead of Feminism?

Initiatives like Feminism look worthy when they are approached. However, such initiative should have some limits that could prevent misuse of the concept. Apparently, Feminism does not have any limits. Presuming by the current scenario, it wouldn’t be a surprise if Feminism would be used as domination power once we have reached our goal of Gender Equality. Such initiatives could be initiated, but to stop them at their predetermined destination is hard. Because the people who have always been supporting Feminism, would insist to keep it in order to keep balance in society. In future if we achieve Gender Equality through Feminism, Feminists would like to follow the concept in order to keep the situation that way.

However, when you overuse something, it takes the shape of horror. Feminism has vast chance of being dominating power. And then in the name of democracy, people would ask for men empowerment in order to achieve balance once again, and that would eventually cause domination once again. And this cycle will never stop.

That is the common difference between Feminism and Gender Equality, which you must keep in mind before declaring that you’re supporting this and that. We are not stopping you from supporting either of these things. It completely depends on you. But if you want to achieve the real goal, you must think before you act. 

Democracy : Rationality v/s Influence

Democracy

India has been a democratic country for past 66 years now, and even if you ask some 18 years old, who are supposed to be holding a voter right, is uncertain about the difference between Independence Day and Republic Day. If we have such uncertainty about these things even after 66 years of democracy, what would the situations have been in 1950 when they first gave people the right to elect their own government?

India got freedom in 1947, which made us free people. No more slaves. However, when we became a democratic nation, 60% people had no idea how the democratic country works. Because most of us had never been into democratic country before. National Congress had a power to influence people at that time, since most followers of Gandhi were from Congress. Meanwhile, people had nearly forgotten the role of real martyrs by 1948 when Gandhi was also declared as Martyr. Most of the people had believed that we got freedom just because of non-violence. Thus, all of the efforts of violent freedom fighters like Bose, Bhagat Singh, Azad had vanished all at once. People had influence of Gandhi and his followers, who apparently were Congress. In 1947, Nehru was made the Prime Minister of India, who was not actually elected by people at first.

Let us now imagine a scenario here. Suppose, you are a common man of an independent India. However, you are uncertain about how the democratic countries work. And you are asked to vote to choose the leader of your country. Who would you choose? For me, I would look back to see who has recently been a leader, and how his leadership was. Apparently, the country was under Congress’s influence then. So naturally, I would vote for a person representing that party or follower of the person who had just been a leader. That would be anyone’s choice, since we don’t know how other people would rule. We have recently been assured about every facilities and some wise and delicious words to which we are certainly attracted, and we would vote for it. However it is not our rational decision, because we are too naïve to make a rational decision when we are still influenced by our freedom. Irrationally made democratic decision is not a democratic decision at all.

Seeing the apparent history of Elections, we can see what influence can do and what democracy we have chosen. Even at this point of time, when a person doesn’t know the different between the importance of 15^th August and 26^th January, how can we expect him/her to make a rational decision about the future of the country? When you are uncertain about the difference between freedom and democracy, how are you making a rational decision? However, people have been wiser so far. People have recognized that influence and its consequences. But still, are we being rational about the benefits of country? Or are we just selfish about benefits of our own?

We have given the enormous power in our hands. Are we sure that we know that power well? Governments don’t make people. People make governments. But how many times have you actually elected the government rationally?

It is still not only about democracy. Because democracy can still be used as dictatorship if you know how to use it. Yes, influence is one way to do so. However, majority of our people always run away from politics and political agendas, which is good for themselves. But, are sure that your uncertainty about politics and political leader would lead you to vote a right person? I don’t think so. How can you vote rationally when you are unaware of the political progress and development of your nations? We see roads, bridges, infrastructure, and markets being constructed. We see our essential facilities being upgraded. We see our individual benefits being increased. But is this all that defines a governance system? Are you aware about what your current government achieved economically and internationally? Are you aware about how your governments have developed so far? There are ways of development, and those ways often pass through corruption. And when we find about that corruption after 5-10 years, and the government is still in power, are we strong enough to reveal that corruption? Certainly no. Because we are part of that corruption, and we know that if we try to bring down the government in power, our individual growth would decrease. For past many years, we have seen government officers asking for bribe despite their fine salaries and well-paid schemes introduced by that government. And when the system is being pressured to be transparent and quick, the same government officers have criticized the transparency using various irrational issues. And who are these government officers? Among us. He may be your relative or your neighbour, to whom you have talked at evenings and heard them. And yes, it is an influence. If those people criticize transparency, you would be in influence of criticizing it too. Clearly, those officers are going to vote according to their individual unethical growth. But are we being honest and making rational choice, or are we just being influenced by them and making the choice accordingly?

You surely would be surprised how you have actually known your government so far. Or you would be surprised on the usage of power that you have been given. Rational and honest decisions would make right choices. But honesty often vanishes with influence. No matter if you are seeing things around you getting better, you will still make irrational and influenced choices because the source of your influence is in touch with government and you are not. We all are basically the part of a corruption that we want to abolish, but unfortunately, we can’t. The great political advisor Chanakya once said, “If you give power in wrong hands, it would take a horrible shape.” It doesn’t literally mean what it says. It means if the power is given to those who don’t know the value of that power, it is worthless. We have power, but we are still reluctant to value it. We are still learning. And that power is democracy.