Karad

So here I am in a place called Karad, somewhere in Maharashtra! There aren't many bears around. Which saddened me at first, because I wanted to see a real wild bear. But there are 2 rivers, and the scenery makes up for the mosquitoes and the heat.

Why am I here? It all happened this way. I wanted to do a CTARA project in summer.

Sometimes, i feel like my work in IIT is way too sheltered. If I have a question, I just go to the Professor and get my concepts sorted out. There's really no active learning. CTARA projects are different.CTARA deals with real world problems that are complex and multi dimensional. It's not just the technology one has to look at, but the social prejudices, the economics of the problem as well as legal factors.

For example, last year I worked in a slum rehabilitation colony Majas. Majas is huge. There are about 1000 residents living in the colony. These people originally belonged to slums located on the Jogeshwari-Vikhroli Link Road. The slums were demolished to make way for the road and they were thus shifted to Majas.

Majas had several problems. The colony was filthy because the residents has not abandoned old habits of flinging waste from their kitchen windows and continued this behavior in the colony. There were rats the size of puppies scurrying around. The people were so poor that even saving a few Rs here and there made a big difference to their life style. The economics of different solutions to their waste disposal problem was paramount.

In addition, there was insufficient security protection for the women folk. Drunken brawls etc. were pretty common in the evenings. A colony of that size by rights should have had a police chowky. The people of Majas were blinded my caste. They also mistrusted authorities. They were staunch supporters of different political parties with the Shiv Sena dominating the list and many a colony fight had a decided political edge to it.

I went into the field, with my lovely sophisticated ideas of biogas plants and different waste disposal schemes and my broken Hindi. I came out, a different person, though unfortunately my hindi did not improve much :P. I went in chock full of energy ideas, I came out a sadder and wiser person. The people did not want a bio gas plant. They wanted affordable water, which mean a revamping of their inefficient water distribution scheme. They did not want their septic tank to keep overflowing every day. They did not want a water tank located in such and such area because they believed the BMC would snatch the land away from them, and they would be left without a pump. They did not want such and such a person to be in charge of handling an issue and taking charge even if he/she was willing because they belonged to a lower caste. There were so many constraints!

Working with them ,talking to them, coming up with all the constraints and identifying possible solutions was challenging and I learned a lot! As anyone, who knows me would know, my Hindi is atrocious and communicating with former bar dancers and what not really was tough. Luckily, that helped me make a lot of friends as people laughed at my efforts and looked at me as a big joke and were ready to help the poor weak minded girl out as much as possible.

I got to know a lot of kids there my age, and a more determined bunch I have never seen. They were set on rising in the world and supporting their families. Their juggling of working at CCD in the day, studying in college in the afternoon and doing odd jobs in the evening and night was truly marvelous to behold.

In addition I met a lot of interesting adults. One of the women I met had been a bar dancer. She was confused and scared when the MMRDa relocated them and tried to teach them how to manage their cooperative housing societies. She actually had the guts to take up a Social Work course and learned the rudiments of managing a cooperative housing society, waste disposal techniques etc. Even though she was of a low caste, her learning prompted the rest of the society to accept her as secretary of the Union of Majas.

The good experience I had made me want do another CTARA project this summer, but this time in my core field of energy. I accepted a project to do an energy analysis of different types of brick kilns with a class mate. My team member went home and only came back on the 19th. Brick kilns close around this time before the rains begin. I thought we would have to drop the project. I knew I could not handle the survey by myself as I didn't know enough Marathi to save my life. However, we decided to just hop into a bus and try and do as much as possible while we could on the 20th of May.

It was a completely last minute plan.

I had been very frustrated with my other work. I decided to just play along with Fate and go to Karad.

And thats how I find myself here.

It was so hot in the morning, that I felt like lying down on the fiery bricks and let the vultures go at it. It was far too hot to live forget about moving and talking and asking survey questions. So here we are, back in our residence here waiting for the heat to abate before we venture out again.

After all, if all fails at least I can say that Life is an Adventure!

The Impossible Dream

A couple of days ago, my grandfather read me a passage from Hiawatha. The Song of Hiawatha is my favorite poem!

I was about 10 when my grandfather first read it to me. The squirrel Ajidomo, the strong man Quasind, the good Nokomis were so real to me. :)

Well,this time he read to me Hiawatha's wooing of Minnehaha, the lovely Laughing Waters.

I felt a little dissatisfied at the ease at which the whole business came about. Grampy laughed at me when I told him that.

He then told me that he used to read that passage to Grandy during his courting days.

So there were days of real romance... Not the crass, cheap kind that Louis L'Amour writes about but real moonshiney Romance.

I feel that our generation is very Unromatic. Our lives run like well oiled clockwork, efficiently, crisply, relentlessly. What happened to that touch of Don Quixote in us?

What happened to the Impossible Dream?

To dream the Impossible Dream
To fight the Unbeatable Foe
To bear with unbearable sorrow
To run where the brave dare not go...

My first Date with Spinoza

Im so excited! The mail brought me a long awaited treatise on Spinoza's, Ethics this afternoon. I took it with me to the lakeside to read. It's impossible to muddle through a book like that in your room.

The boathouse is my 'thinking' spot. Somehow whenever I'm there the Heavens conspire to grant me whispers of half formed truths and flashes of something which is beyond a puny human's intellect. I think L.M Montogomery would understand my flash! It was exactly like she described it in her 'Emily' stories!

I read the first chapter. Let me first tell you the little I know about Spinoza. I have repeatedly come across his name when I have read 'The Razor's Edge' by Somerset Maugham and when I read 'The Brothers Karamazov' by Dostoevsky. I also kept on coming across references to El Greco's paintings. I was determined to follow up. Spinoza lived in the 1600's. He is a Dutch philosopher and is the Father of the Rationalist Movement. He defied the basis of Descarte's theories of Christianity and managed to straddle Materialism and Determinism without belonging to either. Spinoza played a key role in framing Dutch policies, as he believed he had discovered the secret of achieving 'Happiness', that ethereal concept which all of us want and so few attain.

In short in the 1600s Spinoza said that God/Nature is not external to the world as we perceive it, but the Creator cannot be separated from the creation as it is in the Creator's nature to create and thus it's creation can just be a manifestation of 'Itself'. This concept strikes a blow at the very concept of Religion and of priesthood etc. Now I'm not saying I agree with this, or that I even fully comprehend this, but it's something that I've thought a lot about. Why would God choose to create this world and no other? etc. This solves that conundrum.

Spinoza also says that man is not special. We are just a far more complex accretion of molecules as compared to other organisms. In other words we have a greater degree of animation. Our Thoughts and our Motion or Extension are intertwined inextricably. Smells a bit deterministic no? Shall have to read on to figure this out as I strongly belive or rather I wouldn't like to imagine not having Free Will! But just think about it! Doesn't this sound a bit like Evolution? Man is just more evolved, and has the greatest capacity to think compared to any other object on earth.

It inspires me to just imagine a plump little Dutchman in the 16th century thinking such beautiful thoughts!

Will post again when i read more, but I feel tingles of excitement already!

Questions

Is there a God? There must have been or what was the First Cause?

But if there is a God, is a he a good God? And if he is then why does Evil exist?

'Bad' people are bad because of circumstances beyond their control. Their 'badness' could be hereditary or it could be born of privations faced etc.

Are they really 'Bad'? Should they be punished for having the wrong DNA, or for a fault which was not theirs to start with?

Why would a good God do something like that?

The Hindu belief in rebirth and karma, where your sins catch up with you in your next reincarnation, seems to be the most logical theory to explain Evil. It justifies why I am me and not you.

The theory of rebirth tires and frightens me.

What is 'right'?

2000 years ago, the very definition of righteousness was different. Polygamy and so many other things were rampant. We read about this in the Bible. We are told that it was a custom at that time and therefore is acceptable.

Scary.

I wonder 2000 years from now, when we live in Huxley's Brave New World, (that is if global warming does no catch up with us first) will the Future look back at us and laugh at us for being monogamous etc? Shouldn't what is right be more absolute? More defined?

I want Answers. After June 4th I start reading Spinoza properly. Somehow I feel I will find something in his philosophy

HELP!

I don't know what I want to do with my life!! I want to do so many things!

I want to go on stage and throw in my lot with artists and vagrants and live a peripatetic life!

At other times I want to run off to Paris and become an author and sit late into the night discussing Spinoza with art students in a smoky cafe.

I want to continue with research in energy and live in a clean room!

I want to spear head the UN's Clean Energy Movement and Change the World! :P

I want to do absolutely nothing! And read books all day and eat chocolate!

*Sigh*

HELP!!

Night out

Things didn't go according to plan yesterday. We had everything charted out, but 3 am found us at lakeside. We were just a bunch of friends sitting together, 'neath a golden moon.

It was so painfully sweet sitting there, laughing over memories and talking nonsense in that delicious stillness.

The day, the tourist asked Shrax if she knew where IDC was, whereupon Shrax nodded her head saying, 'yes' thinking she had done her job! The tourist had to laughingly rephrase her question to 'SO where is IDC?'

The day we piled up in Tap and Gujjwujj's room and watched a horror movie, clutching each other and eating copious amounts of gujju snacks.

The day we painted our wing t-shirts. The outings we had gone on, the places we had been to, the people we had met!

Our past seemed to be separated from us by just a pale quiver of moonbeams. It was very near and very, very dear.

After that at around 5ish we went to the VMCC roof top, considerately making enough of noise to dislodge any sweethearting couples. The view was breathtaking! Tap saw hope in the shining lights of the airplanes that roared above us, while I saw hope in the beacon of light shining through the tangle of trees on Sameer hill. We watched as the sky lightened and dawn broke.

Shrax was in her element! She organized a full scale photoshoot. I don't think I've laughed half as much at the kind of poses she was wheedling us to do!

It was pretty satisfying to see the sun rise. The sky was streaked with pink. It was as if Aurora had decided to become a hipster and had got highlights! :P

It just shows doesn't it? Everything happens for the best.

:)

It does feel good to have your own teeny weeny slice of the internet!

*Sigh* This semester has finally come to an end! And whatte semester it has been! I socialized like 400% more than I've ever done!

Apart from that, I had 7 courses + a seminar + my 12 credit Design Project. *Time to gloat over how much I've churned through*

I didn't do too great on my endsems this time. I have never had more projects and I sort of got really burnt out working on them, and then just couldn't focus on my endsems :(

I guess I should be feeling sad about it right now but I dont. This was probably my funnest sem so far. I've realized how truly awesome it is to be in college. In the words of my fav Party Song, 'I knew it was Now or Never! These were the best days of my Life!'

And it's not over yet! H is leaving tomorrow for JHU. And so tonight, we're planning on partying like crazey. I'm so excited! I'm going to dance and dance and dance and pretend tomorrow does not exist.

I guess in the cold gray light of tomorrow, today will seem very far away and consequences of this semester will catch up with me. But today, tomorrow does not exist. Hang Consequences!