I’m sorry, you don’t have beggar knocking on your door!

Few months back, while distributing invites for a social gathering in my city of Kalyan, an odd feeling struck me as I made my way from one housing society to another gated colony. The compulsory ritual of entering your name in society register and residents feigning ignorance about their immediate neighbours was too much for me. I started feeling privileged to have grown up in a mohalla, or mohallas to be precise, because growing up in a mohalla means not remaining confined to just one. For the benefit of my friends living in big housing societies, modern gated colonies or high rises who have no idea whatsoever of a mohalla or life in a mohalla, I shall give a glimpse.

In our mohallas we are woken up in the morning by rhythmic sounds of pawwalas, machhiwalas, bhangarwalas and beggars. As we step out of our doors we see life full in action: from shopkeepers opening their shops too sweeper doing her job; from labours on their duties to schoolchildren on their way to schools. We find ourselves in the mid of all this churnings. It rejuvenates us and fills us with fresh energy. Now just compare it with the sleepiness of housing complexes… Dreary!

Take the case of neighbours. Mohallas can loosely be translated as neighbourhoods –implicating thatmohallas are perhaps the only place where you find real neighbours. Not the ones who don’t even know the names of the people living adjacent to their houses, as I encountered recently. To us neighbours are more than people living in the immediate vicinity; they are simultaneously our friends, kith and kin and trustful companions. Many of us have a habit of handing over keys of our homes to neighbours when we set out for a journey. Some families are so close to each other that you don’t even need permission to enter each other’s homes. There’s hardly anything about your life and relations that your neighbours don’t know –of course the traditional Indian nosiness also plays a role in it. But you never feel lonely here.

We make our first friends not in school but in mohalla. And they remain fast friends entire our lives. One of the biggest advantages of mohallas is that most of the houses are in chawls or low rises. This physical closeness translates into closeness of hearts. It gives us a better opportunity to socialize. I’ve sweet memories of playing cricket, beyblade, marbles, hide-and-seek and what not in gully-mohallas of Old Kalyan. We even cultivated rivalry of a sort with guys from other mohallas. Today, while those of you in high rises are glued to your computer screens chatting on facebook we gather in front yard of someone’s place or nukkad to indulge in more human form of conversation.

On the other hand the life in high rises is bereft with a kind of isolation. And much of it has to do with the attitude of its inhabitants themselves. Gated colonies are being projected as dream homes. Today residents of these housing complexes feel safer that their houses are well secured and no one can enter their societies without running into the watchman. No beggar, hawker or company salesman to ‘disturb’ them. They don’t need to go to the market outside. Their food requirements are catered by the shops inside their colonies. Residents themselves like to live a cocooned life. They go to work early in the morning and return late in the evening without bothering about their neighbours or neighbourhood. Even on weekends they prefer watching TV in their homes to socializing. This makes me sometimes wonder as to why media and intellectuals call lower middle-class Muslims as ghettoized? I mean I find these people from the upper echelons of society living in these modern gated colonies more ghettoized!

And look at its social cost: Your minimal socializing with the ones who live in your immediate neighbourhood doesn’t help in your evolution as a better human being. The one who doesn’t bother about those living near him can’t really be expected to have concern towards the entire society. Living in a mohalla, we could interact and empathies with people from all strata of society. In housing societies you are simply cut-off from the entire world. You lack ‘a human –humane interaction’ –to borrow Arundhati Roy’s phrase – with the less privileged of the society. You don’t have a beggar knocking on your doors so that you could appreciate poverty. The sounds of political rallies and other social churnings don’t reach you, making it unable for you to participate actively in public life. In ourmohallas it’s the neighbours who are first to respond and extend a helping hand in a situation of crisis. We find none of this sort happening in high rises. What we did find was, neighbours who were ignorant of a murder in their neighbourhood for a long time -until the stench arising from dead body grew too strong.

That’s why when I see high rises and modern housing societies being constructed in our mohallas it fills me with sadness. And I turn towards the virgin parts of city, full of chaos; but humanity too. The familiar sight of women haggling with hawkers and neighbours indulging in animated conversations lifts my spirits and I merrily ride through lanes and bylanes of the mohalla on my bicycle. It’s the air of mymohalla that I love!

Being Orphan

The other day I was talking to my younger sister, who studies in 9th standard, about her School life and sharing some of my experiences, too, as both of us had some time to kill. As she was informing me about her teachers, friend circle and classmates, she started telling me about this ‘weird’ classmate of hers whom she was not really interested befriending or for that matter talking to. That girl, I was told, was a bit ‘strange’ in many ways. Many of times she would talk ‘nonsense’ like living in the jungle bordering the city. Or as once, in the school, when she was asked why she was late, she started crying and mentioned about her encounter with a knife wielding man who beat her up on her way to School. She was said to be in a habit of stealing money from home. She would say conflicting things about her family members. She hardly had any friends.

Later in the talk it turned out that she was an orphan living with her poor grandma. Rumor has it that, my sister told, her mother was killed by her father who was consequentially sentenced to jail. The picture became complete. At this instance my mind jumped to one of my school friends who was also ‘weird’. Children would call him ‘scientist’ for the larger part of his ‘nonsense’ talk was about his future scientific invention plans. I don’t recall if there was anyone he could call a friend besides me. He was also an orphan, having lost his mother in an accident and his father left him and his sister at the mercy of his uncle.

I started thinking about the tragedy of children rendered parentless at tender age. We who are brought up in the comforting shade of our parents and warmth of family life tend to take our parents for granted. That sense of security, belonging, love and being cared that we so much enjoy is simply absent in the case of those orphans, resulting into unpleasant consequences. The relatives, however loving and caring, can never be substitute for the parents.

So when these kids see other kids with their parents, they feel terribly lonely. They find no one they could share their joys and sorrows and anxieties with. No one they could ask for guidance or goodies. For they know that those taking care of them are simply not their ‘own’. What’s more, if the departure of child from his parent(s) involves certain degree of violence or conflict, as in the case these two kids, then it has grave psychological effects on their tender minds.

Most often our parents are our gateway to the society. Especially when we’re young, people recognize us by our parents. That’s why the orphans, most of the times, live a detached life wherein they find solace and company in the world of their own fantasies. So you can’t really blame them for telling some of the stories of that world to their schoolmates. And this results in further alienation.

There’s one more aspect of their misery: insecurity. Even if your parents are poor you have a sense of financial security and support and an assurance that you won’t be abandoned or treated as a burden, which is not the case with orphans. Besides, whom do you think can they complain about irate bullies at school? Most of the times they don’t get those essential lessons of mannerisms and morality and vice and virtue. This combined with their unfulfilled aspirations and sense of insecurity makes them feel vulnerable and turns many of them into criminals.

Prophet Muhammed (pbuh) said, “Whoever caresses the head of an orphan (in affection), solely for the sake of Allah, a good deed will be written to his account for every hair over which he passed his hand”. The message is to never let an orphan feel lonely and assure him of parental support which he wants so desperately. Encourage kids to befriend such ‘weird’ boys and girls and keep them in close company instead of running away from them. Support them financially, if we can, without embarrassing them.

At a time when divorces are happening at an alarming rate, the no. of single mothers is increasing, babies are born to unmarried teens (most of whom lack proper care especially from paternal side) and homosexual couples are legally having kids we should, for the sake of well being of children, defend the traditional family system with full force. Statistics show that in Britain, where the rate of teen pregnancies is the highest and the family system is damaged beyond repair, a crime is committed every two minutes by youngsters. It is high time that we realize that parents are not just an invaluable gift of God but an essential need of child and fight all those social evils that deprive a child of one or both of them.

Musings: Engineers, Environment & Society

At a time when “Eco-friendliness” & “Going Green” is flavor of the season and engineers, especially from Civil branch, and builders are squabbling to project their next real estate endeavor as “Green” and technical journals are full of “Green Technologies” with yet new, and intricate, jargons doing rounds, I find myself a bit confused. Because, on the other hand, I find newspapers and TV full of glossy commercials, selling us the latest gas guzzling SUVs or CFC ejecting ACs, and government ads , boasting of new infrastructure projects and power plants – all recipes of environmental disaster. Big media houses and corporations which run campaigns about ‘Going Green’ scoff over activists protesting big infrastructure projects and environment ministry regulations, calling them “Green hurdles”! What’s happening on the earth?

When you dig deep into it – something we the engineers seldom do when it comes to economics and politics (All that boooring stuff, ya know!) – you’ll come to the conclusion that all this Green talk is a bit farcical. Either way the big corporations and politicians are trying their next trick to make big buck; environment be damned! Even when they are asserting their green credentials they are making an attempt to be in the good books of Activists/NGOs and make soft corner in the consumer heart. Keep watching them till they show their true colours – which certainly don’t include Green.

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Much deliberation has led me to a conclusion which, I think, holds as much true for individuals as for organizations: Being Green isn’t about being fussy, it’s about being simple. Think it over. We may discuss the myriad technical ways to curb noise pollution, but don’t mind breaking all the barriers of Decibel during festivities. We may post wise little statements about preserving water on FB and make excellent presentations on rain water harvesting, but fail to follow simple guidelines of using water judiciously: Use bucket instead of shower; Keep water tap closed while brushing or shaving. We may bemoan over the spiraling fuel prices and express gloom over the future scenario with some of us giving serious thoughts to alternate energy or green energy, but riding a bicycle or using a public transport service, like bus, instead of bikes is below our standard.

Load sheddings and electric bills may bother us, but we aren’t at all bothered by tube lights left glowing and fans rotating for nobody at our homes and workplaces (Especially in the college, I’ve figured, the best way to ensure light and air our your head when you enter a room is to turn on all the switches on switchboard… Why bother your head about finding the correct one?). We may be concerned about the hole developing in Ozone layer and subsequent global warming and climate change, but will never figure out that CFCs responsible for it are mainly emanated from our ACs - a luxury at best which can be done away with. Yes, being green isn’t about being fussy, it’s about being simple, silly!

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That brings us to the logic of introducing EVS as a subject in Engineering (and other gradation courses) – something we much fret about. Let’s go back to the basics. What’s the definition of Engineering? Is it anything other than utilizing natural resources for the benefit of humanity? And if the benefit of mankind is the ultimate goal, we should appreciate the fact that there already exists a perfectly engineered system put in place by the Almighty for our benefit. Look around you: Water cycle, mountains, your own body… Aren’t they marvels of flawless engineering? As engineers we can strive for the betterment of society using our God-given genius, but should take care that we don’t disturb the delicate balance of nature.