The Arguments within

Merchant Navy tete-a-tete Software/IT Arguments broke out between my pal from IT sector and myself about the significance of our profession. Of course a very peevish thing to fight about, but that’s how human mind continues its growing-up. Even with all its meaningless gossips, such talks often contribute a lot in shaping our decisions of life. To me it was also about evaluating a decision in retrospect, which I had made long ago, when I would aspire to a be computer professional , but some how accidentally arrived into Merchant Navy. Software is a risen industry, with lots of consumption of human work force, elite, hi educated and hi-tech educated, gender mix, decent paying, white-collared and more respected. Merchant Navy, on the other hand, was an old time profession, (arguably one of the oldest method of trade in human history), has been so written about in history that it is rather a cliché now; provides handsome money packets, risk-involving, unpopular to the extent seen as sleaz...

Cultural moorings Here is the scans of something interesting i came across, which tells about some cultural limitations of us , Indians, as a whole (and not just the IAS's). (source: IGNOU course ware for Indian Administration, BPAE-102)

Peregrination to China M y earlier recollections about China are that of nation of communist which is so deeply bogged into poverty,and thus Communism, that Mithun-movies still make a blockbusters over there. (aila, even Mithun has come out of his ‘gareeb chotta laug’ image to work in Guru and other neo-classics.) My experience particularly rest on one incident I had suffered at the tanker terminal in the port of Quindao where a local ‘mafia’(as Chinese goons fondly/lingo-challenged call themselves to foreigners) who put his knife on me and somehow managed to direct me that I should not do any shopping in his area lest he hit me! And then he even ensured that wherever I went the shop-keepers refused me whatever I wanted- an international phone call, an IP-card, etc. This was in year 2003. But the last four months in Xin Ya shipyard (in Zhou Shan)- anchorage and berth- formed the new picture in my mind which is what I think the world ‘fears’ about the growing economic-force of China. I...

“I ain't Lord Ram, you see...”!! ----this often came as a guise for own perjury from him. I think we need to deeply understand the concept of upholding the Rama, first. I will word it like--- 1)there was one and only one Ram, 2) perhaps none of us can rise high to become another Ram. 3) even as Ram remains unsurpassable, we all still admire Ram. We still strive to emulate him. 4) We despise Ravan. In principle, this debate again turns into a fight between Idealist and the Realist. Ram is the Ideal, while Ravan is the Real. It is sorely needed to be appreciated that it is our attempt to emulate Ram that we all are expected to follow by norms of our society. Our struggle to emulate - the Hypocrisy in another sense - is a human need. The corollary to this would be that Hypocrisy and ‘Struggle to emulate’ are inter-twined concepts. Very easy to be confused. HYPOCRITICAL JUSTICE There happened this case on my ship when a bosun, a pump-man and a trainee OS were sent off from ship after t...